Forbidden Lands vs Pathfinder
Compare Forbidden Lands and Pathfinder side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Forbidden Lands | Pathfinder | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Play Style | Sandbox, Hexcrawl, Gritty, Survival, Deadly, Exploration, Base-Building, Random Tables | Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a pool of d6s (attribute + skill + gear dice). Each 6 is a success. You can push your roll for extra dice, but risk damaging gear and taking conditions. Gear dice degrade on 1s. Year Zero Engine. | 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 | Medium | High |
| Accessibility | High | Very High |
| Runnability | High | Very High |
| License | Year Zero Engine OGL | ORC |
| Cost | $$ | Free |
| Publisher | Free League Publishing | Paizo |
| Year | 2018 | 2023 |
| Best For | Sandbox hexcrawl campaigns with stronghold building, resource management, and a dark fantasy tone. Great for groups who want to explore and carve out their own corner of the world. | 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 | Detailed sandbox tools and hexcrawl structure, stronghold building adds long-term goals, push mechanic creates meaningful risk, low-prep with random encounter tables and legend handouts | 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 | Tightly tied to its Ravenland setting, push mechanic can frustrate cautious players, stronghold rules require the full boxed set, hex encounters can feel repetitive without GM preparation | 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. |