Pathfinder vs Swords & Wizardry

Compare Pathfinder and Swords & Wizardry side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Pathfinder	Swords & Wizardry
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy
Play Style	Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy	Classic Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Deadly, Vancian Casting, Ascending AC, Descending AC, Domain Management, Theater of the Mind
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 a d20 to hit, comparing the result to the target's Armor Class using either ascending bonuses or the original descending-AC math. A single saving throw number, adjusted by class, resolves every save against poison, magic, breath, and the rest.
Dice	d20	d20
Complexity	High	Low
Accessibility	Very High	Very High
Runnability	Very High	High
License	ORC	All Rights Reserved
Cost	Free (ORC)	Free (SRD) / $$
Publisher	Paizo	Mythmere Games
Year	2023	2023
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.	Players who want a clean, flexible retroclone of original-style fantasy for old-school dungeon crawling and sandbox campaigns that grow into domain play.
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.	Every character uses a single saving throw number modified by class, replacing the five-category save table of the games it emulates. Combat supports both ascending and descending Armor Class with parallel to-hit rules, so groups can use modern or original-style math from one book. Name-level characters can clear and hold wilderness to found strongholds, with random-castle and freehold rules turning late play into domain management.
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 death comes fast at low levels, where first-level hit points are often low enough for a single hit to be lethal. Spellcasters prepare a fixed list of spells in advance and expend each on casting, with no flexible at-will magic. Many situations are resolved by Referee ruling rather than codified procedure.