Dogs in the Vineyard vs Pathfinder

Compare Dogs in the Vineyard and Pathfinder side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Dogs in the Vineyard	Pathfinder
Genre	Historical, Fantasy	Fantasy
Tags	Narrative, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Tag-Based, Drama, Collaborative, Improvisation, Roleplay-Heavy, Social Combat, Strong GM Support	Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy
Core Mechanic	Roll a d4–d10 pool from relevant Stats and Relationships. Players Raise with two dice and See by spending dice that match or exceed the Raise. Traits, belongings, and escalation add dice as they enter the conflict. Seeing with three or more dice earns Fallout. Giving concedes the stakes.	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	d4–d10 dice pool	d20
Complexity	Medium	High
Availability	Paid	Free core rules
Runnability	4 of 5 book tools	5 of 5 book tools
License	Proprietary	ORC
Third-Party Publishing	No verified route found	Commercial publishing allowed — Open and compatibility licenses
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	lumpley games	Paizo
Year	2004	2023
Languages	English, Italian, German, Polish, Spanish	English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Best For	Groups who want episodic frontier drama built around difficult moral judgments and arguments that can escalate into violence.	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	Escalation supplies fresh dice at the risk of harsher consequences, making continued opposition a choice about what the stakes are worth. Fallout changes Traits and Relationships to carry conflict consequences into later play. The town-creation ladder builds crises from interconnected grievances without prescribing how the Dogs should resolve them.	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	The Faith's patriarchal theology supplies concrete grievances in the town-creation rules and needs deliberate rewriting for another religious framework. Conflicts abstract range and movement into narrated actions rather than measured positioning. The GM must challenge the Dogs' judgments without preparing a preferred solution.	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.