Chapter: Playing the Game
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62 rules
| Name ▼ | Page | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Playing the Game | 443 | Chapter 9: Playing the Game |
| Making Choices | 443 | Pathfinder is a game where your choices determine the story’s direction. |
| Checks | 443 | When success isn’t certain—whether you’re swinging a sword at a foul beast, attempting to leap across a chasm, or straining to remember the name of the earl’s second cousin at a soiree—you’ll attempt a check. |
| Step 1: Roll D20 and Identify The Modifiers, Bonuses, and Penalties That Apply | 444 | Start by rolling your d20. You’ll then identify all the relevant modifiers, bonuses, and penalties that apply to the roll. |
| Step 4: Determine the Degree of Success and Effect | 445 | Many times, it’s important to determine not only if you succeed or fail, but also how spectacularly you succeed or fail. |
| Specific Checks | 446 | While most checks follow these basic rules, it’s useful to know about a few specific types of checks, how they’re used, and how they differ from one another. |
| Attack Rolls | 446 | When you use a Strike action or any other attack action, you attempt a check called an attack roll. |
| Spell Attack Rolls | 447 | If you cast spells, you might be able to make a spell attack roll. These rolls are usually made when a spell makes an attack against a creature’s AC. |
| Perception | 448 | Perception measures your ability to be aware of your environment. Every creature has Perception, which works with and is limited by a creature’s senses (described on page 464). |
| Saving Throws | 448 | There are three types of saving throws: Fortitude |
| Skill Checks | 449 | Pathfinder has a variety of skills, from Athletics to Medicine to Occultism. Each grants you a set of related actions that rely on you rolling a skill check. |
| Notating Total Modifiers | 450 | When creating your character and adventuring you’ll record the total modifier for various important checks on your character sheet. |
| Special Checks | 450 | Some categories of checks follow special rules. The most notable are flat checks and secret checks. |
| Damage | 450 | In the midst of combat, you attempt checks to determine if you can damage your foe with weapons, spells, or alchemical concoctions. On a successful check, you hit and deal damage. |
| Step 1: Roll The Damage Dice and Apply Modifiers, Bonuses, and Penalties | 450 | Your weapon, unarmed attack, spell, or sometimes even a magic item determines what type of dice you roll for damage, and how many. For instance, if you’re using a normal longsword, you’ll roll 1d8. |
| Damage Types | 451 | When an attack deals a type of damage, the attack action gains that trait. |
| Step 3: Apply the Target’s Immunities, Weaknesses, and Resistances | 451 | Defenses against certain types of damage or effects are called immunities or resistances, while vulnerabilities are called weaknesses. Apply immunities first, then weaknesses, and resistances third. |
| Conditions | 453 | The results of various checks might apply conditions to you or, less often, an item. Conditions change your state of being in some way. You might be gripped with fear or made faster by a spell or magic item. |
| Effects | 453 | Anything you do in the game has an effect. Many of these outcomes are easy to adjudicate during the game. |
| Areas | 456 | Some effects occupy an area of a specified shape and size. An area effect always has a point of origin and extends out from that point. There are four types of areas: emanations, |
| Afflictions | 457 | Diseases and poisons are types of afflictions, as are curses and radiation. An affliction can infect a creature for a long time, progressing through different and often increasingly debilitating stages. |
| Counteracting | 458 | Some effects try to counteract spells, afflictions, conditions, or other effects. Counteract checks compare the power of two forces and determine which defeats the other. |
| Hit Points, Healing, and Dying | 459 | All creatures and objects have Hit Points (HP). Your maximum Hit Point value represents your health, wherewithal, and heroic drive when you are in good health and rested. |
| Actions | 461 | You affect the world around you primarily by using actions, which produce effects. |
| Movement | 463 | Your movement and position determine how you can interact with the world. Moving around in exploration and downtime modes is relatively fluid and free form. |
| Perception | 464 | Your Perception measures your ability to notice things, search for what’s hidden, and tell whether something about a situation is suspicious. |
| Light | 464 | The amount of light in an area can affect how well you see things. There are three levels of light: bright light, dim light, and darkness. |
| Senses | 464 | The ways a creature can use Perception depend on what senses it has. |
| Special Senses | 465 | While a human might have a difficult time making creatures out in dim light, an elf can see those creatures just fine. |
| Detecting Creatures | 465 | There are three conditions that measure the degree to which you can sense a creature: observed, hidden, and undetected. |
| Concealment and Invisibility | 467 | The concealed and invisible conditions reflect certain circumstances that can make a creature harder to see. |
| Hero Points | 467 | Your heroic deeds earn you Hero Points, which grant you good fortune or let you recover from the brink of death. |
| Encounter Mode | 468 | When every individual action counts, you enter the encounter mode of play. In this mode, time is divided into rounds, each of which is 6 seconds of time in the game world. |
| Structure | 468 | An encounter is played out in a series of rounds, during which the player characters, adversaries, and other participants in the encounter act in sequence. |
| Turns | 468 | When it’s your turn to act, you can use single actions (◆), short activities (◆◆ and ◆◆◆), reactions (↩), and free actions (◇). |
| Basic Actions | 469 | Basic actions represent common tasks like moving around, attacking, and helping others. |
| Aid ↩ | 470 | Trigger An ally is about to use an action that requires a skill check or attack roll. |
| Crawl ◆ | 470 | Requirements You are prone and your Speed is at least 10 feet. You move 5 feet by crawling and continue to stay prone. |
| Delay ◇ | 470 | Trigger Your turn begins. |
| Drop Prone ◆ | 470 | |
| Escape ◆ | 470 | You attempt to escape from being grabbed, immobilized, or restrained. Choose one creature, object, spell effect, hazard, or other impediment imposing any of those conditions on you. |
| Interact ◆ | 470 | You use your hand or hands to manipulate an object or the terrain. You can grab an unattended or stored object, open a door, or produce some similar effect. |
| Leap ◆ | 470 | You take a careful, short jump. You can Leap up to 10 feet horizontally if your Speed is at least 15 feet, or up to 15 feet horizontally if your Speed is at least 30 feet. |
| Ready ◆◆ | 470 | You prepare to use an action that will occur outside your turn. Choose a single action or free action you can use, and designate a trigger. Your turn then ends. |
| Release ◇ | 470 | You release something you’re holding in your hand or hands. This might mean dropping an item, removing one hand from your weapon while continuing to hold it in another hand, releasing a rope suspending a chandelier, or… |
| Seek ◆ | 471 | Traits: concentrate, secret |
| Sense Motive ◆ | 471 | Traits: concentrate, secret |
| Stand ◆ | 471 | |
| Step ◆ | 471 | Requirements Your Speed is at least 10 feet. |
| Stride ◆ | 471 | You move up to your Speed (page 463). |
| Strike ◆ | 471 | You attack with a weapon you’re wielding or with an unarmed attack, targeting one creature within your reach (for a melee attack) or within range (for a ranged attack). |
| Take Cover ◆ | 471 | Requirements You are benefiting from cover, are near a feature that allows you to take cover, or are prone. |
| Specialty Basic Actions | 472 | These actions are useful under specific circumstances. Some require you to have a special movement type (page 463). |
| Reactions in Encounters | 472 | Your reactions let you respond immediately to what’s happening around you. The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens. |
| Movement in Encounters | 473 | Your movement during encounter mode depends on the actions and other abilities you use. Whether you Stride, Step, Swim, or Climb, the maximum distance you can move is based on your Speed. |
| Size, Space, and Reach | 473 | Creatures and objects of different sizes occupy different amounts of space. The sizes and the spaces they each take up on a grid are listed in Table 9–1: Size and Reach (page 474). |
| Moving Through a Creature’s Space | 474 | You can move through the space of a willing creature. If you want to move through an unwilling creature’s space, you can Tumble Through that creature’s space using Acrobatics. |
| Terrain | 475 | Several types of terrain can complicate your movement by slowing you down, damaging you, or endangering you. |
| Cover | 477 | When you’re behind an obstacle that could block weapons, guard you against explosions, and make you harder to detect, you’re behind cover. |
| Special Battles | 477 | Sometimes fights occur while the characters are atop mounts or when the PCs take to the sky or seas. |
| Exploration Mode | 479 | While encounters use rounds for combat, exploration is more free form. |
| Downtime Mode | 481 | Downtime mode is played day-by-day rather than minute-by-minute or scene-by-scene. |