Pathfinder vs Skies Above

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

	Pathfinder	Skies Above
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy
Play Style	Tactical, Crunchy, Combat-Heavy, Character Building, Dungeon Crawl, High-Fantasy, Grid-Based, Heroic, Ascending AC, Exploration, Classic Fantasy, Lore-Heavy	JRPG, Cinematic, Combat-Heavy, Tactical, High-Fantasy, Heroic, Character Building, Mana Points, Theater of the Mind, Lore-Heavy
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.	Roll d8 + two Attributes + modifiers against a Target Number (typically 10, increasing in steps of 4 for harder tasks). Natural 8s explode, rolling and adding again; every additional 8 raises the Critical Level, scaling damage and effects. A natural 1 is an Epic Fail that halves the character's Defences until their next turn. Critical hits dealt and taken generate Overdrive — once eight stacks accumulate, characters spend them to take an additional action that round, modeling the limit-break payoff of classic JRPGs.
Dice	d20	d8
Complexity	High	Medium
Accessibility	Very High	Medium
Community	Very High	Low
License	ORC	All Rights Reserved
Cost	Free (ORC)	$$
Publisher	Paizo	Lost Haven Studio
Year	2023	2026
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 a JRPG-inspired tabletop adventure — picking from twelve jobs like Dragoon, Dark Mage, or Engineer, channeling elemental magic blessed by eight goddesses, and journeying by airship across floating sky-islands in the aftermath of a magical cataclysm.
Highlights	Complete rules available free on Archives of Nethys. Three-action economy gives every turn meaningful tactical decisions. Character customization through ancestry feats, class feats, skill feats, and general feats at every level. Four degrees of success on every roll add granularity to outcomes.	Exploding d8 with stacking Critical Levels — multiple natural 8s in a row cascade into larger crits and bigger effects, so heroic moments scale rather than cap. Overdrive accumulates from critical hits dealt and received, and spending eight stacks grants an additional action that round, giving combat a JRPG limit-break rhythm. Twelve job roles span melee, magic, ranged, and support archetypes, and characters add a second job at level 12 to cross-pollinate abilities and weapon ranks. Eight elemental goddesses anchor both magic and the bestiary — every Skyfolk lineage is blessed with resistance to one element, and creatures carry specific elemental weaknesses that double incoming damage.
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 requires selecting feats from multiple categories at every level, which can overwhelm new players.	Combat is the most heavily detailed pillar of the rules, with conditions, elemental damage, front/back row positioning, and an optional battlefield grid — investigation, intrigue, and downtime get coverage but less mechanical depth. Light and Dark Mages cannot learn from the opposing path, locking each spellcaster out of half the elemental spell list and pushing magical variety into multi-job characters. The exploding-d8 swing is wide — consecutive 8s can demolish encounters while a natural 1 halves a character's Defences and opens them to brutal counters. Setting and mechanics are tightly woven: Skyfolk lineages, the eight Goddesses, and post-Breaking lore are baked into character options rather than presented as swappable flavor.