Mythic Bastionland vs Pathfinder
Compare Mythic Bastionland and Pathfinder side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Mythic Bastionland | Pathfinder | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Play Style | Rules-Light, Hexcrawl, Exploration, Attacks Always Hit, Domain Management, Sandbox, Atmospheric | Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy |
| Core Mechanic | Attacks always hit: roll weapon damage directly with simultaneous combat. Guard absorbs damage before Virtues (Vigour, Clarity, Spirit). Gambits trigger on 4+ damage rolls for special maneuvers. Omen tables guide myth discovery across hexcrawl exploration. | 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–d10 | d20 |
| Complexity | Low | High |
| Accessibility | Very High | Very High |
| Runnability | High | Very High |
| License | Proprietary | ORC |
| Cost | $$ | Free (ORC) |
| Publisher | Bastionland Press | Paizo |
| Year | 2025 | 2023 |
| Best For | Arthurian-style campaigns of knights seeking glory, ruling domains, and hunting strange mythological creatures across a wild realm. Great for groups who want structured hexcrawl play with emergent storytelling. | 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 | Simultaneous combat system, detailed hexcrawl and myth-hunting framework, award-winning layout and art (2025 Ennie Gold), domain management adds campaign depth | 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 | Combat has more procedural steps than it first appears, omen system can feel prescriptive, Arthurian tone limits flexibility, setting context buried deep in the book | 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. |