Pathfinder 2e Roleplaying Game

Playing the Game

Pathfinder Core Rulebook (Second Edition), page 443

Chapter 9: Playing the Game

At this point, you have a character and are ready to play Pathfinder! Or maybe you’re the GM and you are getting ready to run your first adventure. Either way, this chapter provides the full details for the rules outlined in Chapter 1: Introduction. This chapter begins by describing the general rules and conventions of how the game is played and then presents more in-depth explanations of the rules for each mode of play.

Before diving into how to play Pathfinder, it’s important to understand the game’s three modes of play, which determine the pace of your adventure and the specific rules you’ll use at a given time. Each mode provides a different pace and presents a different level of risk to your characters. The Game Master (GM) determines which mode works best for the story and controls the transition between them. You’ll likely talk about the modes less formally during your play session, simply transitioning between exploration and encounters during the adventure, before heading to a settlement to achieve something during downtime.

The most intricate of the modes is encounter mode. This is where most of the intense action takes place, and it’s most often used for combat or other high-stakes situations. The GM typically switches to encounter mode by calling on the players to “roll for initiative” to determine the order in which all the actors take their turns during the encounter. Time is then divided into a series of rounds, each lasting roughly 6 seconds in the game world. Each round, player characters, other creatures, and sometimes even hazards or events take their turn in initiative order. At the start of a participant’s turn, they gain the use of a number of actions (typically 3 in the case of PCs and other creatures) as well as a special action called a reaction. These actions, and what you do with them, are how you affect the world within an encounter. The full rules for playing in encounter mode start on page 468.

In exploration mode, time is more flexible and the play more free form. In this mode, minutes, hours, or even days in the game world pass quickly in the real world, as the characters travel cross country, explore uninhabited sections of a dungeon, or roleplay during a social gathering. Often, developments during exploration lead to encounters, and the GM will switch to that mode of play until the encounter ends, before returning to exploration mode. The rules for exploration start on page 479.

The third mode is downtime. During downtime, the characters are at little risk, and the passage of time is measured in days or longer. This is when you might forge a magic sword, research a new spell, or prepare for your next adventure. The rules for downtime are on page 481.

General Rules

Before exploring the specific rules of each mode of play, you’ll want to understand a number of general rules of the game. To one degree or another, these rules are used in every mode of play.

In this section

  • Making Choices Pathfinder is a game where your choices determine the story’s direction.
  • Checks 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.
  • Specific Checks 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.
  • Special Checks Some categories of checks follow special rules. The most notable are flat checks and secret checks.
  • Damage 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.
  • Conditions 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 Anything you do in the game has an effect. Many of these outcomes are easy to adjudicate during the game.
  • Afflictions 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 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 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 You affect the world around you primarily by using actions, which produce effects.
  • Movement 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 Your Perception measures your ability to notice things, search for what’s hidden, and tell whether something about a situation is suspicious.
  • Hero Points Your heroic deeds earn you Hero Points, which grant you good fortune or let you recover from the brink of death.
  • Encounter Mode 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.
  • Exploration Mode While encounters use rounds for combat, exploration is more free form.
  • Downtime Mode Downtime mode is played day-by-day rather than minute-by-minute or scene-by-scene.