Feng Shui vs Pathfinder

Compare Feng Shui and Pathfinder side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Feng Shui	Pathfinder
Genre	Fantasy, Scifi, Historical, Modern, Post-Apocalyptic	Fantasy
Tags	Cinematic, Combat-Heavy, Fast-Paced, High-Power, Martial Arts, Playbook-Driven, Pulp Action, Strong GM Support, Tactical, Theater of the Mind	Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy
Core Mechanic	Roll a positive d6 and a negative d6, subtract the negative die from the positive, and add the Swerve to an Action Value. Meeting or beating the Difficulty succeeds, while open-ended sixes create extreme results.	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	2d6	d20
Complexity	Medium	High
Accessibility	High	Very High
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	All Rights Reserved	ORC
Third-Party Publishing	Noncommercial only — Atlas Games Fair Use policy	Commercial publishing allowed — Open and compatibility licenses
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$	Free
Publisher	Atlas Games	Paizo
Year	2015	2023
Languages	English, French, Russian	English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Best For	Groups that want fast Hong Kong action, tactical shot-by-shot fights, melodramatic hooks, and time-traveling campaigns that mix genres	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	A descending shot countdown makes every action and interrupt change when a character acts again. One-hit mooks support crowd-clearing spectacle, while featured foes and bosses use deeper wound rules for climactic fights. Feng shui sites link faction victories to changes in history across four connected eras.	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	Most starting archetypes have fixed statistics and schticks, so initial mechanical customization is limited. The default adventure structure treats investigation and social scenes mainly as connections between fights. Exploding positive and negative dice permit large reversals even when a character's Action Value substantially exceeds the Difficulty.	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.