What this is
Pathfinder is a game of collaborative storytelling with dice. One person — the Game Master, or GM — describes a world and the creatures, people, and problems in it. Everyone else plays a single hero moving through that world, deciding what their character tries to do. When the outcome is in doubt, dice settle it.
That is the whole engine. Everything else in this book — the ancestries, the classes, the hundreds of feats and spells — is detail hung on that frame. You do not need to memorize any of it to start. You need to understand the frame.
This handbook covers Pathfinder Second Edition — specifically the Remaster, the current ruleset — and so does everything Pyrelight builds for you.
How to read this book
This handbook is meant to be read in order, at least once. The early chapters teach the loop every table runs on; the later ones add the pieces — building a character, taking a turn in combat, exploring, resting, and running a game as the GM.
The Codex's other shelves — the Bestiary, the Spells, the Items — are references. You reach for them mid-session to look one thing up. This is not that. This is the part you read on the couch before session one.
Players and GMs
Most of this book is for everyone. A few sections speak mostly to the GM — how to set a difficulty, how to adjudicate a surprising plan — and a few speak mostly to players at the table. Where it matters, the chapter says so, and the audience toggle at the top lets you hide the parts that are not yours yet.
If you are brand new, read as a player first. The GM chapters will make far more sense once you have felt the loop from a hero's seat.