Learn to play Pathfinder in five days
A tutorial by Flintlock
Contents
Day 1: Getting started
Day 2: Exploration and combat
Day 3: Character creation: the basics
Day 4: Character creation: choosing a class
Day 5: Character creation: preparing for your first adventure
N.B. Some parts of this tutorial have been copied from other Pathfinder resources.
Day 2: Exploration and combat
Dungeoneering for dummies
While the rulebook contains quite a lot of rules for movement - walking and running speeds, carrying limits, and so on - I've never enforced them as GM, because they feel unnecessarily complicated. As long as the players are reasonable about it, it's enough for them to describe their movements in terms of "I walk to X". I usually assume that if some characters are slower than others, they'll travel at the slowest member's speed so as not to get separated (unless they tell me otherwise). That doesn't apply in combat, though - more on that later.
The game is also supposed to be played on a game map of 5 ft x 5 ft squares, so that everyone can keep track of their precise locations, but in order to cut down on the amount of preparation the GM has to do before each session, my group has always played without them. We do have dungeon maps sometimes, but they are just there to serve as a reference, and aren't necessarily to scale. We also have maps for bigger areas like cities and regions.
As you travel around, you'll encounter various people and things to interact with. For anything beyond basic conversation and actions, you'll need to use
skills. There are
rather a lot of them, so I'll just give a few examples.
Two of the most important skills in Pathfinder are
Stealth and
Perception. You will inevitably come across situations in which you want to avoid combat - if the enemy outnumbers you, for instance - which is where Stealth comes in handy. To use it, first tell the GM what stealthy action you intend to perform, like "I sneak behind the pillar to avoid being seen by the guard". The GM will then ask you to roll d20 and add your dexterity modifier to the result. Let's say you roll 14 and add 2 for a total of 16. The enemy soldier then
opposes your Stealth roll with a Perception roll, adding his wisdom modifier. Let's say he rolls 11 and adds 1 for a total of 12. Since his (modified) Perception roll is lower than your Stealth roll in this case, he doesn't see you. The GM may also add a penalty to your Stealth roll if you are trying to do something particularly difficult.
Perception is also used to detect and avoid traps in dungeons. Different traps have different
difficulty classes (DCs) - you have to beat* the trap's DC with your Perception roll to detect it. Since you obviously won't know where the traps have been placed, the GM will usually tell you when to make a Perception roll. (For different purposes, like overhearing conversations, you can ask to make the roll yourself.) If you set off a trap, you might still be able to avoid some or all of its effects by making a
saving throw. Saving throws have their own mini-section below.
Many of the other skills are related to physical capabilities -
Acrobatics,
Climb and
Swim, for example. As you might expect, more difficult actions have higher DCs, which you have to beat with a d20 roll (plus modifiers) to succeed. You can ask the GM how difficult something is before you decide to do it.
One final thing to consider while dungeoneering is visibility. Some races (which we'll be covering tomorrow) see better in low- or no-light conditions than others, but it never hurts to carry a backup source of light with you.
* "Beat" in Pathfinder practically always means "match or better", so you can succeed with a tie.
Combat - turns
Everything changes when it comes to combat. There are much stricter rules that have to be followed to make sure everyone - friend and foe - is treated fairly.
Combat is divided into
rounds and
turns. A round is completed when every combatant has had a turn. When it's your turn, you can take as long as you like to plan your actions, announce them to the GM, roll dice as necessary, and determine the results, despite the fact that a whole round - including everyone's turns - is supposed to represent just
six seconds of real time in the battle.
Six seconds isn't very long, so you are quite limited in what you can do in one turn. There are three* main types of actions, as follows:
Free actions: a free action is something that takes virtually no time at all. Examples include speaking (a sentence or two), dropping a held item, and falling prone (lying flat on the ground). You can perform
a reasonable number of free actions, at the GM's discretion, on each turn.
Move actions: A move action takes up a small amount of time in a turn. As a move action you can move (obviously) at up to your character's base speed, draw a weapon, pick up an item from the ground, stand up from a prone position, get on or off a horse, buckle on a shield, and so on. You can perform
one move action per turn.
Standard actions: A standard action takes up most of your turn. As a standard action you can make a melee attack or a ranged attack, cast a spell, activate a magic item, or use a class feature like channel energy. You can also use a standard action to take a second move action if you prefer. You can perform
one standard action per turn.
You don’t have to take all three types of actions on your turn. For example, if you are already holding a sword and standing next to an enemy, you could attack them with your standard action and not use your move action or free action. You can take your actions in any order - attacking and then moving away or moving to an enemy then attacking are both allowed. You can’t "save up" actions from one turn to use them on your next turn. A small number of actions take up a
full round, which means you won't be able to perform any other move or standard actions at the same time (you might still be able to do some free actions).
* Strictly speaking, there are a few other types, but they come up so rarely that it's easier to refer to three.
Combat - attacking and defending
This is where the fun starts. Whether you're making a
melee attack or a
ranged attack, you begin by rolling d20 and then adding (or subtracting - some character classes aren't designed to use weapons) your attack modifiers. Let's say you roll 15 and add 2 for a total of 17. The GM will then compare this number to the enemy's
Armor Class (AC). If your attacking roll beats the enemy's AC number, you score a hit, and then
roll again to determine how much damage you deal. Every weapon has its own damage die - a simple dagger uses 1d4 (i.e. it does a maximum of 4 HP damage per hit), while a heavy crossbow uses 1d10. Some weapons have additional damage modifiers, like 1d8+1.
Each ranged weapon has its own operating range, and although you can still fire it from outside the range, you'll have to take a penalty on your attacking roll, making it harder for you to hit your target. You have to be at least 10 feet away from your target to use a ranged weapon.
You also have an Armor Class. It is calculated as follows: 10 (base) + armour bonus + shield bonus + dexterity modifier + other modifiers. When an enemy tries to attack you, their attack roll is compared to your AC. In other words, the better equipment you have, and the more agile you are, the more likely you are to evade attacks. "Other modifiers" refers to things like spells which give you temporary increases.
Casting spells works differently to using weapons. Although some spells have to "hit" in the same way a standard attack does (using d20), many of them are guaranteed to hit. In those cases, the target usually gets to make a saving throw - see the next section. If you choose to play a magic-casting class, you'll have to do a bit of reading into the spells available to you to see how each one works, because they're all different.
Saving throws
There are three types of saving throw:
Fortitude (against things like poison and disease),
Reflex (to dodge traps and avoid falling into pits), and
Will (to resist mind control and many spells). Don't worry about when to use them, since the GM will always tell you. I'll just give a quick example: each guaranteed-to-hit spell cast against you will have its own DC, depending on the skill level of the caster. If you can beat that DC with a d20 roll (plus modifiers), you might take only half damage or avoid the effects of the spell altogether.
Taking damage
Your character will have a starting level of hit points (HP) that depends on a few things, like your class. If you reach 0 HP, you are
disabled. That means you can take only one move action [x]or one standard action on your next turn, and if you choose to take a standard action, you'll lose another 1 HP, putting you at -1 in total and giving you the
dying condition. If you are dying, you are unconscious, and you will continue to lose 1 HP every turn until you either become
stable or reach the negative of your constitution (Con) score (I'll explain what Constitution is in tomorrow's lesson). So, for example, if your Con is 10, standard for a human-sized creature, you will be dying until you reach -10 HP, at which point you will become
dead.
But you can just get an ally to use a Phoenix Down on you, right? Well... no. There are no Phoenix Downs, or any equivalent items, in the world of Pathfinder (unless the GM has decided otherwise, but that should go without saying by this point
). If you're dead, you're dead. There may or may not be some powerful magic somewhere in the world that can bring you back to life, but your comrades will have to decide if they are willing to abandon their current adventure to save you - the longer they wait, the more difficult it is to bring you back to life. It's far easier for them to make you stable before you become dead, by using a skill called
Heal. Hopefully you won't have to worry about that, though!
Technically, monsters also die at the negative of their constitution scores, but often the GM will end a battle when they reach 0 HP to keep things moving along quickly. If there's only one Goblin left, and they're unconscious and bleeding on the floor, the three player characters
really shouldn't have much difficulty finishing it off.
Combat - initiative and attacks of opportunity
Still with me? I know this has been a long lesson, but this will be the final part, so don't give up now.
When combat starts, every character has to roll
initiative (d20 plus modifiers) to determine the order of their turns. The GM will also roll initiative for the enemies and any NPCs in the battle. Imagine you roll 14 and your comrades roll 12 and 17 respectively, while the enemies roll 16 and 9. The order of the turns will be as follows: Comrade B -> Enemy X -> You -> Comrade A -> Enemy Y -> and back to the start, depending on who's still alive.
Any character who comes under attack before they have a turn in battle is caught
flat-footed and uses a slightly lower AC, without their dexterity bonus, to try to dodge the attack, so it's important for weak characters to have high initiative modifiers.
There is also the possibility for a
surprise round of combat, either when you surprise the monsters or the monsters surprise you. This usually happens with an ambush, or when one group sneaks up on the other group. When this happens, the GM has each sneaky creature make a Stealth check and the other group makes Perception checks to notice the sneaky creatures. Anyone who fails the Perception check is
surprised for the first round, meaning they can't take any actions and are vulnerable to attack by the non-surprised combatants. Anyone acting in the surprise round can make either a move or a standard attack, but not both - so ranged weapons come in particularly handy.
Normally, you can only perform an action on your turn, but one notable exception is the
attack of opportunity. These are triggered by an opponent letting their guard down when they are adjacent to you, for example by turning away from you (to move elsewhere in the battlefield) or by concentrating on something other than the battle (like casting a spell). You can make only one attack of opportunity per round, even if multiple enemies would trigger such attacks from you, you must make the attack with a melee weapon, and you can choose not to make the attack if you prefer. The GM will usually alert you when you have the chance to make one, or when your action will provoke one from an opponent, giving you the chance to rethink your action (or do it anyway, if you're not worried about them hitting you). The attack of opportunity has to be resolved before the turn can continue, so if you're casting a spell, you'll have to survive the attack in order to successfully cast it.
If you want to move away from an opponent safely, you can take a
five-foot step, but only if you make no other movement on your turn*. The downside is that you'll only be five feet away from them at the end of it.
This fun video explains the whole concept pretty well:
* I initially wrote that you can't use a move action on the same turn as a five-foot step, but that's incorrect: you can still use the move action to do something like drawing a weapon, since that isn't a form of movement.
Homework
That's already a lot of information to take in, so your only homework is to make sure you understand it, and ask me if you have any questions about it. You could also browse the
list of skills to see what they all do.
Don't even know where to start
