Pathfinder vs Rifts

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

	Pathfinder	Rifts
Genre	Fantasy	Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero
Tags	Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy	Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gonzo, High-Power, Mana Points, Mecha, Superpowers, Tactical
Core Mechanic	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.	Combat and saving throws use a d20 plus bonuses, with high results overcoming a target number or opposing roll. Skills use d100 and succeed when the result is at or below the character's percentage.
Dice	d20	d20, d100
Complexity	High	Very High
Accessibility	Very High	Medium
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	ORC	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Commercial publishing allowed — Open and compatibility licenses	Noncommercial only — Palladium Books Internet Policy limited license
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	Free	$$
Publisher	Paizo	Palladium Books Inc.
Year	2023	2005
Best For	Groups who want deep character customization, tactical grid combat with meaningful turn-by-turn decisions, and a richly detailed fantasy setting with free rules.	Groups who want long-form science-fantasy campaigns that move from a ruined Earth to other dimensions. The game suits tables whose GM will decide which parts of the broad setting a campaign uses.
Highlights	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.	Occupational and racial class packages assign distinct abilities and advancement tracks, giving each archetype a different role in the party. Mega-Damage places many supernatural creatures and war machines on a separate durability scale beyond the reach of ordinary Structural Damage Capacity attacks. Rifts and ley lines make dimensional travel a standing feature of the setting, letting campaigns move between devastated Earth and other worlds.
Considerations	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.	Character creation combines rolled attributes with extensive skill selection, making first-time preparation lengthy. Combat asks each player to track an action economy, active defenses, and which damage scale applies. Magic and psionics use separate point pools and power procedures, adding class-specific rules to the shared system.