Pathfinder 2E Path 2 Victory Roleplay: The rules light hack of Pathfinder 2E

[SepulchralVerdigris]

March 2025 update:

Full game on the GitHub page or itch.io.

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A few months ago, I released Path 2 Victory, a miniatures skirmish game based on Pathfinder 2E.

I realized I enjoy it best when played as a dungeon crawler – usually by controlling a party of heroes fighting against a “cardboard AI” (rolling dice to decide how the monsters act), but sometimes run by a GM.

Buried in the miniatures skirmish game was a rules light roleplaying game.

P2V: Roleplay simplifies the PF2e rules so monster and hero profiles fit on a single playing card, but the rules are rich and detailed enough to provide tactical and imaginative gameplay. You can play solo or with friends, and with a Game Master or GMless.

You might like P2V: Roleplay if:

• You’re intrigued by Pathfinder 2E but find the rules daunting.
• You want to lean into the tactical combat of Pathfinder 2E.
• You’d like to play adventures solo, with a whole adventuring party under your control.
• You want to play without a Game Master.
• You want to make original characters to play in Path 2 Victory skirmishes.
• You enjoy open source: Path 2 Victory is under the same ORC License as the original game.

Download here​

You need the Path 2 Victory base game to play P2V: Roleplay (available at the same link).

Let me know what you think

I’d love to hear what you make of it, especially if you get a chance to play it.

In particular, I’m not an experienced Pathfinder 2E player. So if there’s important details I’ve missed or something I haven’t thought about (not just necessary sacrifices for the sake of simplification) I’d love to hear them.

And if you have any requests for player characters created under this system, or to see monsters, feats or spells from Pathfinder 2E converted into Path 2 Victory equivalents, please let me know.

I’m planning to publish some more example characters and monsters over the next few weeks.

 

[dave2008]

Thank you for sharing, I will definitely check it out.

 

[Sanglorian]

Creating characters in Path 2 Victory is so quick and fun I’ve been doing it for some of the Creative Commons-licensed character sketches Bertdrawsstuff makes (see them for yourself here).

I started with the Duellist:

If we had converted the Swashbuckler to Path 2 Victory yet, that would be a natural place to start, but it looks like rogue or fighter would work too.

I decide on rogue, and starting at level 6 allows for a couple of feats in the fighter archetype.

Between Fleet, Nimble Dodge, Reactive Strike and Fighter Resiliency, I reckon we have an agile but formidable melee combatant who is particularly dangerous when his enemy is off-balance or surprised.

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The Mage Hunter proved a bit trickier. Despite the name, he seems to be a magic-user himself - but I haven’t adapted the Magus (and probably won’t until there is an ORC licensed version).

One of the advantages of Path 2 Victory characters being so sparse, though, is that a few key choices can really define a character. In this case, maybe Counterspell and the Detective background (i.e., training in Society) is enough to define this character as a “mage hunter”.

I give him Light Armor Proficiency to help model a gish, and pick out spells recommended in a “how to make a PF2e gish” guide I found online.

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With summon undead a first-level spell for wizards and clerics, I felt spoiled for choice for modelling a necromancer in Path 2 Victory.

He does have a wicked-looking dagger (is that held by a third, skeletal arm? Or is it suspended from his belt?), but I thought cloistered cleric was most appropriate - and touch of death will still give him a reason to wade into melee from time to time.

Level 2 allowed me to work in Versatile Font, which gives him power over life and death.

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Anyway I hope that inspires you to have a crack at making your own Path 2 Victory characters. It's very easy and very quick.

Next time I'll show some characters made from classes that we haven't published yet - like ranger, barbarian and bard.

 

[sevenbastard]

Do I need to own Pathfinder 2e to use or is everything self explanatory in the downloads?

 

[SepulchralVerdigris]

Do I need to own Pathfinder 2e to use or is everything self explanatory in the downloads?

Between the base Path 2 Victory rules and Path 2 Victory: Roleplay, it should be self explanatory.

That said, I could well have missed things! I'm interested in any feedback of that nature so I can edit it and make it clearer.

And in practice it probably requires a fluency in some kind of d20-based game (D&D from 3rd edition onwards, Pathfinder 1e or 2e, etc) because it doesn't go into a great deal of detail explaining things like what a d20 is.

 

[Sanglorian]

The next three characters use classes that haven’t been published just yet - the Ranger, Bard and Barbarian.

The archer is straightforward - a level 1 ranger with the Martial Disciple archetype and the Initiate Warden feat to pick up gravity weapon. With the longbow taking a free action, and characters limited to one free action per round, Flurry does not seem particularly useful. However, there’s a rule change coming to Path 2 Victory that allows a flurrying ranger with a longbow to shoot twice (getting the reduced MAP on the second strike in a round).

Since the image is literally titled “Bard”, I figured as straightforward a bard as possible was the way to go. The bard is Path 2 Victory’s first occult caster - but this character hasn’t picked up the creepy, spooky or psychic spells that are also present on the occult list.

Lingering composition lets the bard keep courageous anthem going an extra round, freeing more time for illusions and rapier strikes.

Spiked Cloak is a barbarian. Not much to write home about here. I’d like something that reflects his magnificent spiked cloak - some way of counterattacking or damaging someone who makes a melee attack against him, for example. Let me know if you have any ideas and I can put together a higher-level version.

 

[SepulchralVerdigris]

I'm thrilled to announce the first full release of Path 2 Victory: an A5 (half-sized) book of 160 pages, with nine classes, beautiful open source art including an original cover by Emiel Boven. The book includes Roleplay, solo dungeon Crawl and miniatures Skirmish rules in one.

The new classes are: Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Ranger and Witch.

One change I'm quite fond of is using the four essences (Matter, Life, Mind, Spirit) as spell lists (casters get access to two essences, based on their tradition). Now each spell only appears on one list, whereas if I wanted to stick to primal, arcane, occult and divine I would be repeating most spells. Having spells split by essence would make it very easy to fill the missing traditions: Life + Spirit (people have suggested this could be a "fey" tradition) and Matter + Mind (perhaps "psionics").

More info on the GitHub page or on itch.io.