Firstly, no, this article isn't going to bash DnD 5.5e. I've run many, many more games of 5e than I have of Pathfinder, I enjoy both, and truth be told neither is my favorite class-based D20 fantasy RPG. Pathfinder and DnD are just different, each one better for some players and not for others, and it's not my job to tell you what to like. No, this article is about money - because just about every month you can buy all three core Pathfinder books, a stack of supplements, and at least one adventure path, for less than a single DnD book.
I'm talking, of course, about Humble Bundles, and it is worth noting that this is referring mostly to the digital editions of these rulebooks. If you only want to play with the dead tree edition of a rulebook (and I wouldn't blame you, it's how I prefer to run games) then this is no use to you. But if you're a happy tablet user or play a lot of games over the internet, the value being offered in just about every Pathfinder bundle is simply stupid.
We regularly cover Humble Bundles at Wargamer, because a) it's something our audience likes to read about, and b) we get a very small affiliate kickback if you click a link on our page and then buy the bundle - thank you if you do that, by the way, it helps to keep the lights on. This means that we notice trends among them, and the trend for Pathfinder is "For 30 bucks you'll get 1,200 pages of core rulebooks, and then three dozen other products".
If you're primarily playing DnD 5.5e because you want a game that is well-supported with expansions which can do a lot of heavy lifting for you, it's cheaper to buy the complete Pathfinder game system and get a full campaign thrown in than it is to pre-order Ravenloft: The Horrors Within. That feels especially relevant when the official D&D release schedule is so sparse; where DnD relies on third party content creators, Pathfinder has wave after wave of official supplements.
Pathfinder's most recent Center of the World bundle - which will have ended by the time this article is published, so in this instance I'm not trying to tempt you into buying something - also included Player Core 2 and NPC Core, both of them major supplemental rulebooks, plus a 400 page city guide. Then there were dozens of adventure modules including the full Devil at the Dreaming Palace adventure path, stacks of adventure maps and flip tiles, and even a couple of novels.
I only have two buddies who are interested in playing a Pathfinder game, and my day job as a reviewer means I have literally more games than I could ever play. Even so, whenever there's a new Pathfinder Humble Bundle, I find myself staring at it like I'm the guy in the unfaithful boyfriend meme.
This is genuine idiot behavior on my part: I could ask the folks at Paizo to give me free review samples of any PDF I want, and I don't because I don't have the time to test them. It's just my vestigial bargain-hunting instincts, left over from my decades spent as a nerd without this kind of privileged access.
Perhaps Paizo is just fixing a problem that it's created for itself. Playing an RPG requires friends, a shared space, a way to keep records, and knowledge of the rules, but actually buying the Pathfinder rulebooks will cost you over a hundred dollars, and that's a big barrier to entry if you've already sunk your cash into DnD. These Humble Bundle deals allow Paizo to remove that barrier to entry, and hopefully entice some players to stay.
And you might well decide to stay - or at least to holiday in Pathfinder from time to time. Like all class based fantasy RPGs that run on D20 systems, Pathfinder 2e and DnD 5.5e share more than 90% of their design DNA. Pathfinder is crunchier, gives you more mechanical tools to express yourself in character building, and more small options each turn in combat; it gives you lots of choices and lots of interesting stuff, at the potential risk of getting bogged down in crunch. And if you bounce off, well, it cost you less than a new campaign book to try.
What's the best RPG bundle deal you've ever bought into? Or do you have a stack of 'bargains' sitting on your hard-drive, unplayed? Come and chat about it in the Wargamer Discord community.