Pathfinder vs Troika!
Compare Pathfinder and Troika! side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Pathfinder | Troika! | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy, Scifi |
| Play Style | Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy | Rules-Light, Weird, Random Character Creation, Low-Prep, Improvisation, Deadly, Random Tables |
| 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. | Three stats: Skill, Stamina, Luck. Roll 2d6 under Skill + Advanced Skill to succeed. Initiative uses a random token-draw stack: unpredictable turn order. Luck is a consumable resource that depletes with each test. |
| Dice | d20 | 2d6 |
| Complexity | High | Very Low |
| Accessibility | Very High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Low |
| License | ORC | Open (Troika! SRD) |
| Cost | Free (ORC) | $ |
| Publisher | Paizo | Melsonian Arts Council |
| Year | 2023 | 2019 |
| 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. | Fast, surreal science-fantasy adventures with minimal rules and random character generation. Ideal for one-shots and improvisational 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. | Simple rules, creative backgrounds double as setting material, chaotic token-draw initiative creates unpredictable turn order, consumable Luck depletes with each test |
| 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. | Initiative stack can leave players unable to act for long stretches, mixed roll-under/roll-over mechanics confuse new players, setting is implied rather than described, minimal tactical depth |