Lesser of Two Evils: Pathfinder or 5e?

[Windjammer]

What if instead of tagging each pair of tokens with Adjacent, Near, Far, you had some graph of zones? Each player is in some zone, there's some adjacency relationship, and the relationships you care about are "in the same zone", "in two adjacent zones", and "in two non-adjacent zones". Each token has one item of information stored, and determining two people's relative distance is a pretty quick lookup.

That's precisely what I did in my 13a playtest in 2011 or so. You still need markers to track who's "engaging" whom, and the only thing quicker than 3.5 or 4e is abstract movement.

Running a combat this way with only the DM having the diagram behind the DM screen worked to create the atmosphere of a confusing fight (post explosion fog and fire, with combatants disoriented) but is not workable or enjoyable otherwise.

Either way, our group didn't find 13a combats tactically interesting, and I guess the system's forte and emphasis is really elsewhere.

[Hiram McDaniels]

what about the spell preparation limits, are they not as major as they look?

because I found it kind of alarming

I looked at this, spells prepared = caster level + casting stat modifier.

So:

Level 1 ~ 5 spells prepped (5 @ 1st spell level)
Level 5 ~ 10 spells prepped (~3/spell level)
Level 10 ~ 15 spells prepped (~3/spell level)
Level 15 ~ 20 spells prepped (~3/spell level)
Level 20 ~ 25 spells prepped (~3/spell level)*

*I'm rounding up, because I assume at this point you don't give a hot turd about 1st or 2nd level spell slots.

You can cast spontaneously from your prepped spell list, but you barely have any high level spell slots at all (1 slot each 8th & 9th; 2 slots each 6th & 7th).

So yeah...casters in 5E got hit pretty hard with the nerf bat, and yet martial classes haven't gained any real agency or interesting features. Personally, I would be okay with toning down spell guys a bit if sword guys got a corresponding upgrade in the form of Charles Atlas Superpowers or something, but as it stands it looks like the game got it's legs cut out from under it. Might be fine though, if you're a person who likes low-powered games.