Pathfinder vs Tales of Argosa
Compare Pathfinder and Tales of Argosa side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Pathfinder | Tales of Argosa | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Play Style | Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy | Deadly, Sandbox, Combat-Heavy, Dungeon Crawl, Roll to Cast, Gritty, Open Source, Sword & Sorcery |
| 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 d20 under attribute to succeed (roll-under). Luck saves deplete your Luck attribute with each success, ratcheting tension. Combat uses Nat 19 effects, Exploits, Fumbles, Crits, and Trauma tables. Dark & Dangerous Magic risks madness and Veil monsters when casting spells. |
| Dice | d20 | d20 |
| Complexity | High | Low |
| Accessibility | Very High | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | ORC | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| Cost | Free (ORC) | $$ |
| Publisher | Paizo | Pickpocket Press |
| Year | 2023 | 2024 |
| 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. | Sword & sorcery fans who want fast, brutal combat with diminishing Luck, dark & dangerous magic, and rich emergent sandbox play: group or solo. |
| 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. | Distinctive diminishing Luck mechanic, combat with Exploits and Trauma is consequential, large GM toolbox (hexploration, oracles, hirelings, mass battle), solo rules included, Creative Commons license |
| 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. | Diminishing Luck mechanic means characters weaken as they succeed, limited magical options in core rules, requires GM comfort with sandbox hexcrawl prep |