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There is a world of adventure waiting for you to explore. It’s a world that needs brave and powerful heroes. Countless others have come before, but their time is over. Now it’s your turn.
Pathfinder Core Rulebook

The Pathfinder RPG is the first, and arguably most well-known, Tabletop RPG system produced by Paizo Publishing. Paizo Publishing began life as a group that was split off from Wizards of the Coast in 2002 as an outsourced publisher for Dragon and Dungeon Magazines. When WotC announced the fourth edition of D&D, they took back the publication rights to the magazines in order to create exclusively online versions. Now without their only client, Paizo decided to publish a 3rd-edition-focused magazine of its own, Pathfinder, keeping up the Adventure Path tradition they'd established in the last three years of Dungeon while establishing a new in-house campaign setting — the "Inner Sea", based on a new world called Golarion. This saw the publication of the Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness and Legacy of Fire Adventure Paths published specifically for D&D 3.5 under the Open Game License. However, as they heard from more fans of 3rd Edition who were dissatisfied with the radical changes introduced in the 4th Edition of D&D, Paizo saw an opportunity: they would create their own ruleset, using the foundation of 3rd-ed D&D (the core rules of which were in perpetual open license under the Open Gaming License) to offer something new and fresh while allowing old players to build on what they already knew, created, and played. It also prided itself on being compatible with 3.5 (with a few rules alterations, of course, mostly in service of trying to patch what were then 3E's most obvious holes and broken parts).

Pathfinder Second Edition began public playtesting in August 2018 and officially launched in August 2019. The second edition diverges significantly from the game's roots as a modified version of D&D 3.5 Edition: among other things it simplifies the game's action economy rules, introduces a new XP system, and modifies how proficiencies work. It is also angled toward smoothing out the overall math of the game and making it significantly easier to run; GMing is generally easier, and encounter design is often particularly cited as being easy and fast to do while still producing satisfying results for the players. It also tries to rein in, to some degree, the infamous "feat bloat" of 3.5 (which, by the time PF1e wrapped, had reached truly epic proportions).

Pathfinder Remaster for Second Edition was announced in 2023, in the wake of Wizards of the Coast's attempts to revise the OGL. (While WotC seems to have abandoned attempts to revise the OGL — something roundly condemned by the RPG community — Paizo decided that the time was right to formally break any form of legal connection to WotC and D&D.) Remaster's goal is to provide a backwards-compatible revamp of the game that completes the system's divorce from D&D by publishing the system under a new, system-agnostic Open RPG Creative license. It removes a large number of elements that were specifically tied to the Open Gaming License or Dungeons & Dragons as a whole, most notably alignment, while reimagining, revising, or downplaying a number of legacy elements dependent on OGL content.

Paizo's official online ruleskeeper, the Archives of Nethys, is available for 1st Edition and 2nd Edition. In addition, a massive online index of rule information for 1st Edition — almost everything Paizo published, plus some third-party materials, minus many setting-specific and thus copyrighted names — can be found here.

The World of Lost Omens

Pathfinder products are mostly set in the Age of Lost Omens campaign settingnote , primarily around the Inner Sea region of the planet Golarion, which is in turn one of several populated planets in the setting's solar system, in which it serves as Earth's equivalent and receives overwhelming attention. The Fantasy Kitchen Sink nature of the game's setting as a whole means that a large variety of fantasy genres are represented, along with certain horror and sci-fi ones. This meant that you could run different themes of campaign merely by changing the locale on Golarion, rather than having to incorporate different settings, such as Dragonlance vs. Ravenloft vs. Eberron vs. Dark Sun as in D&D.

Thousands of years ago, the Human empire of Azlant thrived on the surface, while secretly ruled from the deep by the Algollthus, the aquatic monsters that lifted them to greatness. As humanity developed, they grew resentful and resisted against their aquatic masters. Fearing the growing power of the humans, the Algollthus sent a massive asteroid crashing onto their homeland. Azlant was destroyed, and most of the surface civilizations on the nearby continents of Arcadia and Avistan were devastated (but then, so too were the Algollthus). Meanwhile, the Elves, who had foreseen the coming Earthfall, mostly fled to the sanctuary of Sovyrian on the planet Castrovel, while the underground-dwelling Dwarves took the impact as a sign from their gods to make their way to the surface, beginning the "Quest for Sky," driving their Orc rivals before them.

Eventually, the living God Aroden, last of the Azlanti, appeared. He helped bring humanity out of the Age of Darkness, helping to establish the vast Empire of Taldor. As Taldor grew vast and decadent, the frontier colonies broke away and formed their own Empire of Cheliax. As Cheliax rose in power, the Church of Aroden moved its seat of power there.

Recently, however, the prophesied return of Aroden instead brought weeks of natural disasters, including a massive storm that continues to blow to this day. The priests of Aroden suddenly lost their powers, and by all accounts, including from Pharasma, the Lady of Graves, goddess of Death herself, Aroden somehow had died. Thus began the current period in Golarion's history: the Age of Lost Omens, as storms wracked the world and prophecy lost its power. Cheliax fell into decline and civil war, until the devil-worshipping "Thrice-Damned" House of Thrune seized power. With Cheliax's fortunes faltering and its ruling classes having given themselves to devil worship, its former colonies broke away in a series of rebellions and are now beginning marches towards prominence. In the north, a planar breach tore apart the nation of Sarkoris and opened the way for a massive demon invasion through the hole, now desperately held at bay by the crusaders of Mendev, while on the far eastern continent of Tian Xia, the continent-spanning Empire of Lung Wa shattered and its successor states are menaced by the oni warlords of Chu Ye.

As of Second Edition, the Worldwound in Sarkoris has been closed. Most of the Runelords that rose back in First Edition have been defeated, with one remorseful Runelord choosing a more benevolent rule instead. Cheliax was dealt two major blows in the form of a successful separatist revolution at home and against their colonization efforts abroad in the Mwangi Expanse, forming the nations of Ravounel and Vidrian. Now, however, the Whispering Tyrant Tar-Baphon has returned, turning the nation of Lastwall into the Gravelands in his wake...

Licensed Works

In addition to the RPG and its many sourcebooks, there are a number of related works:
  • Pathfinder Society, the ongoing public campaign run by Paizo using the Pathfinder system; it spans an overarching plot of several seasons.
  • Pathfinder Tales, a line of novels and other fiction.
  • Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, a cooperative card game.
  • Starfinder (2017), A standalone Science Fantasy game set in the Pathfinder universe, but thousands of years forward in a possible future where magic works alongside space-opera type technology.
  • Pathfinder (2012-2013), a comic series licensed by Dynamite Comics, featuring its iconic characters as the main cast and ran for a total of 12 issues. Other series published by Dynamite include:
    • Pathfinder: Goblins! (2013)
    • Pathfinder: City of Secrets (2014)
    • Pathfinder: Origins (2015)
    • Pathfinder: Hollow Mountain (2015-2016)
    • Pathfinder: Worldscape (2016-2018), a Crisis Crossover event featuring characters from other properties beyond Golarion.
    • Pathfinder: Runescars (2017)
    • Pathfinder: Spiral of Bones (2018)
  • Pathfinder Legends audio adaptions of Adventure Paths released by Big Finish.
  • Pathfinder: Kingmaker (2018), an isometric single-player RPG adapting the Kingmaker Adventure Path.
  • Pathfinder: Goblin Firework Fight (2022), a party game about goblins raiding the town of Sandpoint.
  • Pathfinder: Gallowspire Survivors (2023), a roguelite Bullet Heaven.
  • Pathfinder: Abomination Vaults (2025), an ARPG published by BKOM.
  • Pathfinder Online, an MMORPG adaptation, was put out to beta in 2014-15 after meeting its Kickstarter target. Since then, however, it has been in development hell due to the dissolution of most of the development team and no major publisher assigned. In 2021, the full cancellation of the game and any testing servers was announced, with Paizo preferring to pursue projects like the isometic games instead.

A Second Edition campaign named Pathfinder: Knights of Everflame (inspired by an earlier module called Crypt of the Everflame) ran from June to August 2019. The popular web series Critical Role also began life as a campaign for Pathfinder First Edition that was converted to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition before airing to simplify gameplay, and many of Exandria's features, including many gods and the Gunslinger subclass, are borrowed from the Lost Omens setting.


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"It's a Kitchen Knife"

When facing a level 15-18 adventuring party, discretion is the better part of valor. While storming the palace of King Castruccio Irovetti of Pitax at the end of "War of the River Kings", the Queen of the Stolen Lands encounters a group of Pitaxian soldiers who unconvincingly lie that they're just servants and make a break for it rather than try to fight her. (Video by StarSword)

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