This post is about my group’s experience with the Savage Worlds Pathfinder Core Rules, the GM Screen Pack, and playing the adventure Hollow’s Last Hope that comes with the GM Screen. Overall, we had fun but the jury is out so to speak as to how much everyone liked the system. I don’t think I did a very good job explaining the rules and that likely contributed to some of the confusion. I’ve never run the system or played it as a player before.
My regular group has playing Pathfinder 2 for a couple years. I’ve been interested in Savage Worlds for a while, and my group agreed to give the Pathfinder version a try with a short adventure. We played through most of the adventure, Hollow’s Last Hope, in two afternoons.
I wrote up the example characters in the book and each of my three players selected two. The book provided an example character for each character class including what they would choose for each Advancement, similar to level. For those familiar with Pathfinder, these are the Iconics for Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Wizard.
Rules I found confusing or difficult to get used to.
None of these things are faults or problems with the game mechanics. It’s all a matter of this system is very different from what I’m used to mechanically as well as many of the terms.
Pace & Ranges. Standard character Pace is 6, which means six tabletop inches per game round. Each inch is two yards (6 feet) in the real world. Weapon ranges are listed in inches on the tabletop. On the surface, this reads simple because you never need to know the feet or the yards. But what happened to me, and I think my players, when we went to play was my brain kept thinking in 5 foot squares. For example, a hand crossbow has ranges of 5/10/20. In my head, I was reflexively converting math that didn’t exist in this system.
The core dice mechanic. When you roll to do something you roll a die for your the attribute OR skill you’re using, called Traits, and a d6 as a Wild die. To help know which is which I gave everyone, myself included, a red d6 to use as the Wild die. These are rolled at the same time but each is totaled separately. Which ever die roll is higher, plus or minus modifiers, you get to use. The twist is when you roll the highest number on the die you get to roll it again adding the new result to the first until you stop rolling the highest number. For example, if you roll a d4 for your Notice skill and a d6 Wild die and you get a 4 for Notice and a 3 on your Wild die you roll the d4 again. Say you get a 3, your total is a 7. This can make for some extreme wide results. One the first rolls in our first session was a 26 from a d6.
Raises. Every 4 points full points over the Target Number is called a “raise”. This is calculated after modifiers. Raises provided an additional benefit such as extra damage but it can also be narrative. For example, if your target number is a 4 and roll a 8 that’s one raise. If you would have gotten a 11 that’s still one raise, but a 12 would have been 2 raises.
Actions. There are actions, free actions, and limited actions. Personally, I found the explanations a bit vague. This might be entirely because of my lack familiarity with the system. Playing more and working through situations where each is used I’m sure would help. I have other Savage Worlds books and will be looking through them at a later time for more examples.
I do like all these mechanics and after we got used to them they didn’t slow us down. We seemed to move at the same speed as the d20 based systems we normally play.
Rules I especially liked.
A deck of cards is used for initiative or turn order. Everyone draws a new card each combat round for turn order with extra benefits for drawing the Joker. I thought this would slow things down but it didn’t. Whenever a Joker is drawn the deck is reshuffled.
Bennies. These are similar to what other systems might call luck or fate points and are represented by tokens often poker chips. Each character starts the session with 3 they can use to re-roll almost anything, recover from being shaken, recover points used to cast spells, draw a new initiative card, or influence the narrative of the story. I’m probably missing a few things. The point is you can use them for a lot of different things. The GM can award them during the session for any kind of narrative reason or if one player draws a Joker during initiative EVERYONE gets a Bennie. I didn’t expect Jokers to get drawn very often but they did a couple of times a session. In most systems I’ve played players tend to hoard tokens like these and are very reluctant to use them. In Savage Worlds, getting three and having more ways to get more back it felt like the players were more comfortable using them.
Wounds instead of hit points. A character can take 3 wounds and on the 4th becomes incapacitated. Once incapacitated there are injury and recovery rules. Characters and tougher monsters are called Wild Cards. Wild Cards follow these wound rules but small weaker average monsters are taken out with only one wound. I’ve rarely like wound systems, because they often felt unnecessarily more complex than hit points. Savage Worlds doesn’t feel that way to me.
The Books
The Savage Worlds Core Rule Book (50$ U.S. physical & pdf or 25$ pdf only) is a 255 page hardcover with 3 cloth stitched in bookmarks. It includes all the rules you need to make characters and play including magic items & crafting, game mastery, and a short bestiary. You do not need the Savage World Adventurers Edition (SWADE) rule book to play. Currently there are a GM screen with adventure, 2 additional bestiaries of monsters, a companion, 2 advanced players guides, and an adventure campaign box (Rise of the Runelords) available but you don’t NEED them to play. There are also a wide variety of accessories themed to Savage Worlds Pathfinder you can get but don’t technically need. Here is a link to their official store with all the products in the Pathfinder line.
The GM screen comes with a 31 page Hollow’s Last Hope adventure for 20$ U.S physical & pdf or 10$ for only the pdf. The screen is thick cardboard with tables specific to Savage Worlds Pathfinder. My only criticism is the adventure Hollow’s Last Hope wasn’t fully converted to Savage Worlds. All of the things are extremely minor and in no way prevented me from running the adventure. For example, the point crawl map of locations has extra points that are never mentioned in the adventure.
How is it different from regular Savage Worlds
When it comes to rules, the only difference I could find is normally Savage Worlds doesn’t use character classes. This makes characters a more powerful by default. Normally, you get points or selections at each various steps to make your character any way you want. Savage Worlds Pathfinder adds a step for selecting a character class that then comes with specific abilities. The Savage World Adventurers Edition (SWADE) rule book has a little bit to cover major genres and then has additional companion books with additional options and guidance for fantasy, horror, sci-fi, and super heroes. The fantasy companion even points you to the Pathfinder book if you want to play with classes.
Recommendation
I absolutely recommend you give Savage Worlds a try if my points above sound like fun to you. If you have a chance to play in a game at a local store, at convention, or online with a GM who knows the system do so. As I said before, I think most of our confusion came from me not knowing the system well and not doing a good job explaining the rules to my players.
The right play aids can help make Savage Worlds more comprehensible to new players, and help the gm. Now the ones I have are generic SWADE ones, but they should still work or you can adapt them.
Also, having post its or index cards to throw in front of players as reminders of entangled, bound, shaken, fatigued, wounded, etc. with notes on how it affects play work wonders for speed of play, especially if you color code them. That tangible reminder helped us greatly.
I like SWADE core rules, but haven't tried customized settings except Savage Rifts.