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, Combat-Heavy, Character Building, Dungeon Crawl, High-Fantasy, Grid-Based, Heroic, Ascending AC, Exploration, Classic Fantasy, 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 | 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 | 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. | 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 requires selecting feats from multiple categories at every level, which can overwhelm new players. | 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. |