Branching out
Your class defines who you are, but it doesn't have to define everything you can do. are the game's way of letting a character step outside their class — to pick up the tricks of a pirate, a spellcaster, a duelist, or a dozen other paths — by spending class feats on something other than their class's own list.
This is where a character becomes unmistakably yours. The fighter who dabbles in wizardry, the cleric who trained as an assassin: archetypes are how those stories get real rules behind them.
Dedication feats
Every archetype starts with a — the door in. You take it in place of a class feat (usually at an even level), and it marks you as having begun that path, often granting a small benefit and some training to start.
Once you've taken a dedication, that archetype's other feats open up to you, and you can spend future class feats on them as you level. A dedication is a commitment, though — which is exactly what the next rule is about.
Multiclassing
The most popular archetypes are the ones — each a whole class repackaged as an archetype. A Wizard Dedication gives a martial character a splash of real spellcasting; a Fighter Dedication gives a caster genuine weapon training; a Rogue Dedication hands anyone a rogue's skills and edge.
You don't become a second class, and you won't match a true member of it — but you get a meaningful taste, grafted onto the character you already are. This is how Pathfinder does "a bit of both" without the headaches older games had: it's all just feats, spent from the same pool.
The two-feat rule
There's one guardrail worth knowing, and it keeps archetypes from becoming a grab-bag. Before you can take a new dedication, you must already have two other feats from each archetype you've started. In short: finish what you begin, at least a little, before wandering off to the next thing.
It's a gentle rule, but it shapes planning — a character who collects dedications without developing them isn't legal. The builder's Build check watches for this and flags it, so you'll know before it matters at the table.
The Free Archetype variant
Archetypes are fun enough that many tables adopt a popular variant: , which hands every character a bonus archetype feat at each even level, separate from their normal class feats. It lets everyone explore a second path without giving up their own class's progression — a splash of extra flavor at no cost.
It's one of the optional rulesets you can switch on when you build a character, right alongside the GM variants. Turn it on and the builder simply adds the extra feat slots at the right levels; leave it off and nothing changes.