Old-School Essentials vs Pathfinder
Compare Old-School Essentials and Pathfinder side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Old-School Essentials | Pathfinder | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Tags | Dungeon Crawl, Exploration, Hexcrawl, Deadly, Sandbox, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Random Tables, Vancian Casting, Strong GM Support | Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy |
| Core Mechanic | Attacks roll d20 against an attack matrix or an optional ascending Armour Class target. Saving throws meet a category target on d20. Ability checks roll at or below an ability score on d20. | 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 | d20 | d20 |
| Complexity | Low | High |
| Accessibility | Very High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | OGL 1.0a | ORC |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license | Commercial publishing allowed — Open and compatibility licenses |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Publisher | Necrotic Gnome | Paizo |
| Year | 2019 | 2023 |
| Languages | English, Italian, Spanish, French, Czech, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese |
| Best For | Groups who want treasure-driven dungeon expeditions and open wilderness campaigns with fragile starting 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 | Treasure recovered from adventures provides most experience points, rewarding successful exploration over fighting alone. Reaction and optional morale rolls let encounters lead to negotiation or flight instead of automatic combat. Stronghold construction and taxation let accumulated wealth support a growing domain. | 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 | Characters die at zero hit points, and failed poison saves are usually fatal. Demihuman characters combine ancestry with class and have lower level limits than human classes. Declared spells are lost if the caster is hit or fails a saving throw before acting. | 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. |