So I haven’t actually run any Pathfinder games, but I’ve bought the book and looked it over, and it looks to me like it addresses a bunch of stuff that was annoying to me when I ran 5e games. I actually didn’t feel 5e did everything I needed it to – e.g. the guidelines for treasure are totally wack (and then there’s this insulting refrain of “Well you know, every game is different! Just do what you feel!” as if that’s an excuse for not providing a working out-of-the-box economic system I can reference), the CR system doesn’t really work that well and you have to get a feel for how to balance encounters totally separate from the guidelines, etc.

When I read the Pathfinder book and found an extremely specific guideline of how much gold, how many permanent items, and how many consumable items, an average party should get at each specific level if you want a generally balanced economy, and every item is categorized according to rarity + GP value + “level” at which it’s probably appropriate, I felt like shouting “FUCKING YES” because that’s what I was looking for in the DMG and fumbling around trying to create for myself when I didn’t find it. It does have treasure guidelines but they are very obviously just a bunch of non-working nonsense.

Ask me if I’m salty about this still lol.