Pathfinder 2e Roleplaying Game
Spells Abilities Rules Sources
Chapter
Browse the rules by chapter

336 rules

Name ▲ Page Description
Concealment and Invisibility 467The concealed and invisible conditions reflect certain circumstances that can make a creature harder to see.
Hero Points 467Your heroic deeds earn you Hero Points, which grant you good fortune or let you recover from the brink of death.
Encounter Mode 468When 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 468An 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 468When it’s your turn to act, you can use single actions (◆), short activities (◆◆ and ◆◆◆), reactions (↩), and free actions (◇).
Basic Actions 469Basic actions represent common tasks like moving around, attacking, and helping others.
Aid ↩ 470Trigger An ally is about to use an action that requires a skill check or attack roll.
Crawl ◆ 470Requirements You are prone and your Speed is at least 10 feet. You move 5 feet by crawling and continue to stay prone.
Delay ◇ 470Trigger Your turn begins.
Drop Prone ◆ 470
Escape ◆ 470You 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 ◆ 470You 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 ◆ 470You 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 ◆◆ 470You 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 ◇ 470You 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 ◆ 471Traits: concentrate, secret
Sense Motive ◆ 471Traits: concentrate, secret
Stand ◆ 471
Step ◆ 471Requirements Your Speed is at least 10 feet.
Stride ◆ 471You move up to your Speed (page 463).
Strike ◆ 471You 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 ◆ 471Requirements You are benefiting from cover, are near a feature that allows you to take cover, or are prone.
Specialty Basic Actions 472These actions are useful under specific circumstances. Some require you to have a special movement type (page 463).
Reactions in Encounters 472Your 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 473Your 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 473Creatures 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 474You 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 475Several types of terrain can complicate your movement by slowing you down, damaging you, or endangering you.
Cover 477When 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 477Sometimes fights occur while the characters are atop mounts or when the PCs take to the sky or seas.
Exploration Mode 479While encounters use rounds for combat, exploration is more free form.
Downtime Mode 481Downtime mode is played day-by-day rather than minute-by-minute or scene-by-scene.
Game Mastering 483Chapter 10: Game Mastering
Planning a Campaign 483A Pathfinder game is typically structured as a campaign—a serialized story that focuses on a single party of characters.
Campaign Length 483The length of a campaign can range from a few sessions to many years. Two main factors determine campaign length: how much time you need to complete the story, and how much time players want to devote to the game.
Themes 484The themes you choose for your campaign are what distinguish it from other campaigns.
A Welcoming Environment 485The role of Game Master comes with the responsibility of ensuring you and the rest of the players have a rewarding, fun time during the game.
Character Creation 486At the outset of a new campaign, the players will create new player characters. Part of that process involves you introducing what the campaign will be about and what types of characters are most appropriate.
Preparing an Adventure 486An adventure is a self-contained collection of story elements, characters, and settings that become the basis for the story you and the other players tell. Think of the adventure as an outline for your own story.
Published Adventures 486Prewritten adventures include background information and nonplayer characters needed for the story, plus all the locations, maps, and monster groups necessary for both exploration and encounters.
Creating Adventures 487Building your own adventure is much more challenging than using a published one, but it lets you express yourself, be even more creative, and tailor the game directly to the players and their characters.
Building Encounters 488The most common type of encounter is a combat encounter, where the PCs face other creatures.
Running a Game Session 489A campaign happens over a series of sessions. Each session is usually several hours long, with multiple encounters, some exploration, and possibly downtime.
Running a Session 490During a session, you’re in charge of keeping the game’s action moving, managing the different modes of play, fielding questions, and making rules decisions.
Adjudicating the Rules 491As the GM, you are responsible for solving any rules disputes. Remember that keeping your game moving is more important than being 100% correct.
Pathfinder Society 492Organized play campaigns allow you to play in and run games all over the world with persistent characters. If you want to play Pathfinder this way, you can do so through the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild!
Running Modes of Play 493Pathfinder sessions are divided into three different modes of play: encounters, exploration, and downtime.
Encounters 493Encounter mode is the most structured mode of play, and you’ll mostly be following the rules presented in Chapter 9 to run this mode.
Choosing Adversaries’ Actions 493Players often coordinate and plan to be as efficient as possible, but their adversaries might not. As the GM, you’re roleplaying these foes, and you decide their tactics.
Bypassed Encounters 493What happens if you’ve planned a fight or challenge and the PCs find a way to avoid it entirely? This could leave them behind in XP or cause them to miss important information or treasure.
Ending Encounters 494A combat encounter typically ends when all the creatures on one side are killed or knocked unconscious. Once this happens, you can stop acting in initiative order.
Social Encounters 494Most conversations play best as free-form roleplaying, with maybe one or two checks for social skills involved.
Exploration 496Exploration mode is intentionally less regimented than encounters. As a result, during exploration you’ll be making judgment calls on just about everything that happens.
Exploration Activities 496In exploration mode, each player who wants to do something beyond just traveling chooses an exploration activity for their character.
Adverse Terrain and Weather 497Exploration gets slower when the party faces dense jungles, deep snow, sandstorms, extreme heat, or similar difficult conditions. You decide how much these factors impact the characters’ progress.
Rolling Initiative 498Transitioning from exploration to an encounter usually involves rolling for initiative.
Resting 499Characters require 8 hours of sleep each day. Though resting typically happens at night, a group gains the same benefits for resting during the day.
Downtime 500In downtime, you can sum up the important events of a whole day with just one roll. Use this mode when the characters return home or otherwise aren’t adventuring.
Playing Out a Downtime Day 500At the start of a given day of downtime, have all the players declare what their characters are trying to accomplish that day.
Longer Periods of Downtime 501Running downtime during a long time off—like several weeks, months, or even years—can be more challenging.
Retraining 502The retraining rules on page 481 allow a player to change some character choices, but they rely on you to decide whether the retraining requires a teacher, how long it takes, if it has any associated costs, and if the…
Difficulty Classes 503As the Game Master, it’s up to you to set the difficulty classes (DCs) for checks that don’t use a predefined DC.
Simple DCs 503Sometimes you need to quickly set a Difficulty Class. The easiest method is to select a simple DC from Table 10–4 by estimating which proficiency rank best matches the task (that rank is usually not required to succeed…
Level-Based DCs 503When you’re determining a skill DC based on something that has a level, use Table 10–5 to set the DC. Find the level of the subject, and assign the corresponding DC.
Adjusting Difficulty 503You might decide a DC should differ from the baseline, whether to account for PCs’ areas of expertise or to represent the rarity of spells or items.
Minimum Proficiency 504Sometimes succeeding at a particular task requires a character to have a specific proficiency rank in addition to a success on the check.
Specific Actions 504Several parts of this book, most notably Chapter 4: Skills, state that you as the GM set the DCs for certain checks or determine other parameters. Here are guidelines for the most common tasks.
Rewards 507In Pathfinder, player characters can receive three kinds of rewards for their heroic deeds: Hero Points, which they can use to get out of sticky situations; Experience Points, which they’ll use to level up; and…
Hero Points 507Unlike Experience Points and treasure, which stay with a character, Hero Points are granted and used on a per-session basis. At the start of a game session, you give out 1 Hero Point to each player character.
Experience Points 507As characters adventure, they earn Experience Points (XP). These awards come from achieving goals, completing social encounters, exploring new places, fighting monsters, overcoming hazards, and other sorts of deeds.
Treasure 508As the GM, it’s your job to distribute treasure to the player characters.
Treasure by Level 508Table 10–9: Party Treasure by Level on the next page shows how much treasure you should give out over the course of a level for a group of four PCs.
Treasure and Rarity 509Giving out uncommon and rare items and formulas can get players more interested in treasure. It’s best to introduce uncommon items as a reward fairly regularly but rare items only occasionally.
Different Item Levels 510The levels listed for items on Table 10–9: Party Treasure by Level aren’t set in stone. You can provide items of slightly higher or lower level as long as you take into account the value of the items you hand out.
Treasure for New Characters 510When your new campaign starts at a higher level, a new player joins an existing group, or a current player’s character dies and they need a new one, your campaign will have one or more PCs who don’t start at 1st level.
Environment 512Primarily used during exploration, environment rules bring the locales your party travels through to life.
Mountain 513Mountain environments also include hills, which share many aspects of mountains, though not their more extreme features. The most common disasters here are avalanches.
Urban 514Urban environments include open city spaces as well as buildings. The building information in this section also applies to ruins and constructed dungeons.
Climate 517Weather is more than just set dressing to establish mood—it has mechanical effects you can combine with environmental components to create a more memorable encounter.
Natural Disasters 518Climate and environmental features can be a hindrance or long-term threat, but natural disasters represent acute danger, especially to those directly exposed to their fury.
Hazards 520Dungeons are rife with devious traps meant to protect the treasures within. These range from mechanical devices that shoot darts or drop heavy blocks to magic runes that explode into bursts of flame.
Detecting a Hazard 520Every hazard has a trigger of some kind that sets its dangers in motion.
Triggering a Hazard 520If the group fails to detect a hazard and the hazard’s trigger is a standard part of traveling (such as stepping on a floor plate or moving through a magical sensor while walking), the hazard’s reaction occurs.
Disabling a Hazard 521The most versatile method for deactivating traps is the Disable a Device action of the Thievery skill, though most mechanical traps can also simply be smashed, and magical traps can usually be counteracted.
Hazard Experience 521Characters gain Experience Points for overcoming a hazard, whether they disable it, avoid it, or simply endure its attacks. If they trigger the same hazard later on, they don’t gain XP for the hazard again.
Hazard Format 522Hazards are presented in a stat block format similar to those used for monsters. A few notes regarding the format follow the sample stat block.
Crafting & Treasure 531Chapter 11: Crafting & Treasure
Investing Magic Items 531Certain magic items convey their magical benefits only when worn and invested using the Invest an Item activity, tying them to your inner potential. These items have the invested trait.
Activating Items 532Some items produce their effects only when used properly in the moment. Others always offer the same benefits as their mundane counterparts when worn, but have magical abilities you can gain by further spending actions.
Reading Items 534Hundreds of items lie ahead. Each item is presented in a stat block, much like spells or feats. The example below shows the structure of an item stat block and gives a brief description of each entry.
Conditions Appendix 618While adventuring, characters (and sometimes their belongings) are affected by abilities and effects that apply conditions. For example, a spell or magic item might turn you invisible or cause you to be gripped by fear.
List of Conditions 618
Blinded 618You can’t see. All normal terrain is difficult terrain to you. You can’t detect anything using vision.
Broken 618Broken is a condition that affects objects. An object is broken when damage has reduced its Hit Points below its Broken Threshold.
Clumsy 618Your movements become clumsy and inexact. Clumsy always includes a value.
Concealed 618While you are concealed from a creature, such as in a thick fog, you are difficult for that creature to see. You can still be observed, but you’re tougher to target.
Confused 618You don’t have your wits about you, and you attack wildly. You are flat-footed, you don’t treat anyone as your ally (though they might still treat you as theirs), and you can’t Delay, Ready, or use reactions.
Controlled 618Someone else is making your decisions for you, usually because you’re being commanded or magically dominated.
Dazzled 619Your eyes are overstimulated. If vision is your only precise sense, all creatures and objects are concealed from you.
Deafened 619You can’t hear. You automatically critically fail Perception checks that require you to be able to hear.