Blades in the Dark vs Pathfinder
Compare Blades in the Dark and Pathfinder side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Blades in the Dark | Pathfinder | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Play Style | Heist, Faction Play, Playbook-Driven, Fiction-First, Dark Fantasy, Collaborative, Open Source | Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a pool of d6s equal to your action rating; keep the highest. 1–3 is a bad outcome, 4–5 is a partial success with consequences, 6 is a full success, and multiple 6s are a critical with additional advantage. Before rolling, the GM sets position (controlled, risky, or desperate) and effect level, which determine the severity of consequences and the impact of success. Players can spend stress to resist consequences or trigger flashbacks to retroactively establish preparation. | Roll d20 + modifier against a DC. Four degrees of success: critical success (beat DC by 10+), success, failure, and critical failure (miss by 10+). Each turn grants three actions to spend freely on strikes, movement, spellcasting, or other activities. Multi-attack penalty (-5/-10) discourages repeated strikes and encourages tactical variety. |
| Dice | d6 dice pool | d20 |
| Complexity | Low | High |
| Accessibility | Very High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | CC BY 3.0 | ORC |
| Cost | $$ | Free (ORC) |
| Publisher | Evil Hat Productions | Paizo |
| Year | 2017 | 2023 |
| Best For | Groups who want structured criminal heists with shared narrative authority, where the crew's reputation and entanglements matter as much as individual characters. | Groups who want deep character customization, tactical grid combat with meaningful turn-by-turn decisions, and a richly detailed fantasy setting with free rules. |
| Highlights | Flashback system lets players establish preparations retroactively instead of planning before a score. Position and effect framework gives the GM a structured way to set stakes on every roll. Detailed faction game tracks rival gangs, noble families, and institutions with their own agendas and territory. | The three-action economy gives every turn the same three actions to spend on strikes, movement, or spells, so each turn is a fresh tactical decision. Characters customize through ancestry, class, skill, and general feats gained at nearly every level, letting builds diverge sharply within a single class. Four degrees of success, set by beating or missing the DC by 10, turn each roll into a range of outcomes rather than a binary result. |
| Considerations | Stress is the currency for flashbacks, resistance rolls, and special abilities, so characters who use these tools heavily accumulate trauma faster. The faction tracking layer between sessions requires more GM bookkeeping than the score phase itself. Downtime phase has several interlocking subsystems (payoff, heat, entanglements, vice, projects) that take time to internalize. | New players must learn the trait system, conditions, and four degrees of success before combat runs smoothly. Multi-attack penalty and numerous combat actions can slow turns for indecisive players. Character creation draws feats from ancestry, class, skill, and general pools at every level, making each build a slow step. |