Pathfinder vs Tenra Bansho Zero
Compare Pathfinder and Tenra Bansho Zero side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Pathfinder | Tenra Bansho Zero | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy, Scifi |
| Tags | Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy | Drama, Character-Driven, Roleplay-Heavy, Corruption, One-Shot Friendly, Anime, Mecha, Cinematic, High-Power, Strong GM Support |
| 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 number of d6 equal to an attribute. Each die showing the skill level or lower counts as a success. The GM announces how many successes are needed, usually between 1 and 6, before the roll. In an opposed roll, the defender's successes set the number the attacker must beat. Kiai points can add dice or raise a general skill before a roll, or buy extra successes after it. |
| Dice | d20 | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | High | High |
| Accessibility | Very High | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | High |
| License | ORC | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Open and compatibility licenses | No verified route found |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | Free | $ |
| Publisher | Paizo | Kotodama Heavy Industries |
| Year | 2023 | 2013 |
| Languages | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese | English, Japanese, Spanish |
| 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 complete anime-style drama of samurai, sorcerers and mecha pilots in one long session, with the whole table rewarding memorable performances. |
| 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. | Aiki chits awarded by the table for memorable in-character play convert into the Kiai that buys dice and successes. Spent Kiai builds up as Karma, which players pay down by rewriting or sublimating their character's Fates. The Zero Act gives each character an opening scene and a GM-assigned Destiny, setting up a story meant to finish in one 4 to 6 hour session. |
| 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. | A character whose Karma is still above 108 at the end of an intermission normally becomes a GM-controlled Asura and leaves play. The book has no dedicated army-scale battle rules, though individual combat and Strategy rolls can still matter within a war. Scenes usually include only two or three PCs, so players spend much of the session as the audience or voicing NPCs. |