Pathfinder vs When Sky & Sea Were Not Named

Compare Pathfinder and When Sky & Sea Were Not Named side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Pathfinder	When Sky & Sea Were Not Named
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy
Play Style	Tactical, Crunchy, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Lore-Heavy	Tactical, Theater of the Mind, Resource Management, Faction Play, Lore-Heavy, Base-Building, Exploration
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.	Each hero has four action dice, one for each action type (Attack, Brace, Compel, Maneuver), with the die size set from d4 to d12 by the relevant attributes. To act, roll the matching die and read it against two thresholds. Against an obstacle, the Guide sets a failure threshold and a struggle threshold. Against a foe, the target's attribute is the failure threshold and its defense is the struggle threshold. Beating the higher number is a Success, beating only the lower is a Struggle that costs something, and beating neither is a Failure. Attacks deal damage equal to the roll minus the target's Guard and Armor, so one roll settles both the hit and its severity.
Dice	d20	d4–d12
Complexity	High	High
Accessibility	Very High	Very High
Runnability	Very High	Medium
License	ORC	All Rights Reserved
Cost	Free	Free
Publisher	Paizo	Purple People 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.	Groups settling in for a multi-session campaign who want combat built on resource trade-offs, spellcasters that each play differently, and a Guide comfortable improvising rulings. The island-hopping rescue-and-rebuild structure rewards tables that enjoy both tactical fights and settlement-scale stakes.
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.	Each of the four defenses both resists incoming actions and doubles as the resource a hero spends to power abilities, so every turn weighs guarding against acting. A hero rolls a different die size for each of the four action types, so strengths and weaknesses live in which die they pick up rather than in numeric modifiers. Invoking an Ideal after a roll spends Spirit for an advantage die the Guide sizes to how dramatic the moment is, linking vivid roleplay to a mechanical boost.
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.	The three spellcasting callings each run a separate resource economy, creating a real skill gap between players who take a magical calling and those who do not. The Shinarian origin locks Agility at 0, which bars the Wanderer calling and leaves those heroes unable to evade, outflank, or hide effectively. Sizing invoked Ideal dice, setting challenge thresholds, and reading the Dreamshape table all rest on Guide judgment rather than fixed numbers, which favors improvisational Guides over those who want firm procedures.