Learn to play Pathfinder in five days
Five, six, seven, who's counting?
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 5: Character creation: preparing for your first adventure
Quick recap
Character creation is a complicated process. Before we get onto the finishing touches, let's make sure everything is in order. By this point, your character should have:
- A name and back-story (we'll be playing in a world called Golarion, so use the Golariopedia for inspiration)
- An alignment
- A set of randomly generated ability scores (you should also have noted the modifier that corresponds with each score)
- A race (make sure you've applied that race's ability modifiers and noted down its unique features)
- A class
+ A deity/domain/bloodline/school, if applicable to your class
+ A list of known spells, if applicable to your class
- Skill ranks (remember to note which ones are class skills)
If you're missing something from the list, go back to the corresponding day of this tutorial and fill in the gaps. Classes and skill ranks were covered on day 4, while everything else was on day 3.
The things we'll be covering today are:
- Feats
- Wealth and money
- Equipment
Feats
Some abilities are not tied to your race, class, or skill: things like particularly quick reflexes that allow you to react to danger more swiftly, the ability to craft magic items, the training to deliver powerful strikes with melee weapons, or the knack for deflecting arrows fired at you. These abilities are represented as
feats.
While some feats are more useful to certain types of characters than others, and many of them have special prerequisites that must be met before they are selected, as a general rule feats represent abilities outside of the normal scope of your character's race and class. Many of them alter or enhance class abilities or soften class restrictions, while others might apply bonuses to your statistics or grant you the ability to take actions otherwise prohibited to you. By selecting feats, you can customize and adapt your character to be uniquely yours.
Every character starts with at least one feat. If your character's race is human or their class is fighter, they get one bonus feat, making two. If they are a human fighter, they get two bonus feats, for a total of three. The fighter bonus feat has to be a combat feat, marked with an asterisk in the list I link to below. (Note that some other classes, like the monk, also get bonus feats, but their feats are from class-specific lists.) Feats don't have to be activated - they are inherent abilities.
You'll find the list of feats (and some of the above text, which I borrowed) on the
feats page. There are plenty to choose from, but you won't meet the prerequisites for all of them. Some of the feats require a certain Base Attack Bonus (BAB). This is a class-specific value, so look it up on your
class page. All the spellcasting classes (and a couple of others) start off with a BAB of 0, while most of the melee classes start off with a BAB of 1. This increases as you level up, so more feats will become available to you later on.
Not sure what to pick? Here are some feats that often come in handy, in no particular order:
- Toughness: +3 HP, plus 1 extra HP at each level up. 3 HP might not seem like a lot, but for some classes, it represents a 50% increase on their starting HP!
- Improved Initiative: +4 on initiative rolls. The higher your initiative, the sooner you get to act in battle, giving you a strategic advantage.
- Skill Focus: +3 bonus to a skill of your choice (this feat can be taken multiple times, with a different skill each time). Ideally, every character in the party will be good at different things, so it's better to improve what you're already good at than what you're bad at. That doesn't necessarily apply to survival-type skills.
- Weapon Finesse: use DEX mod instead of STR mod for melee attack rolls. This lets you prioritise DEX over STR when assigning your ability scores and still fight well with melee weapons. Particularly useful for rogues and archery-focused rangers.
- Power Attack: +2 bonus to damage rolls (+3 if using a two-handed weapon) but -1 penalty to attack rolls. If your total attack modifier is high anyway, which it should be for fighter-type (includes e.g. paladins) characters, the trade-off is usually worth it. This feat is also a prerequisite for many other combat feats.
- Point Blank Shot: +1 bonus to ranged attack and damage rolls if within 30 feet of your target. If you think bows are going to be your primary weapon, this is a handy feat which is a prerequisite for many other archery feats, like the powerful Rapid Attack.
Despite those suggestions, I encourage you to at least consider picking feats that mesh well with your character's history and personality, since feats are one of the ways you can translate them into gameplay mechanics.
Wealth and money
The
equipment page contains a table with starting wealth values for each class. Rather than being a fixed number, however, it's randomly generated.
Let's say you're playing a ranger. The table says your starting wealth is 5d6 x 10 GP, so roll a six-sided die five times (you should remember what 5d6 means, but just in case...), add up the scores, and multiply the total by 10 to get your starting wealth in
gold pieces (GP).
If you roll badly, but your character is supposed to be well off (e.g. he's a prince), you can use the average wealth column on the table instead of your roll. Note that this is a
house rule - I've made it up, so don't expect to use it if you play with a different GM.
In the world of Pathfinder, 1 GP = 10 SP (silver piece) = 100 CP (copper piece). There's also a PP (platinum piece), worth 10 GP, but nobody seems to use it. The prices of very expensive items, for instance, are given as thousands of GP rather than hundreds of PP.
Equipment
Every hero needs equipment. At level 1, your item selection is quite straightforward: you're going to want a weapon or two, some armour (unless your class is prohibited from wearing any), and adventuring gear. Let's look at them one at a time.
Weapons
Weapons are broken down into simple, martial and exotic weapons, then into melee and ranged weapons, and finally into light, one-handed and two-handed weapons.
Every character is proficient with
simple weapons, with the exception of druids, monks and wizards, who have their own, narrower list of weapons with which they are proficient. Fighter-type characters are proficient with
martial weapons, while
exotic weapons require special training, in the form of a weapon-specific feat (i.e. if you take the feat for the Bastard Sword, you still won't be able to use any other exotic weapons, like the Dwarven Waraxe). If you're not proficient with a weapon, you can still use it, but you have to take a -4 penalty to every attack roll. If you're in doubt over which weapons your character is proficient with, check your class page or the information I posted in day 4 of this tutorial.
Melee weapons are used for making melee attacks, though some of them can be thrown as well.
Ranged weapons are thrown weapons or projectile weapons that are not effective in melee.
A
light weapon is used in one hand. It is easier to use in one's off hand than a one-handed weapon is, and can be used while grappling an enemy. They cannot be wielded with two hands. An unarmed strike is always considered a light weapon. A
one-handed weapon can be used in either the primary hand or the off hand, with a higher attack roll penalty compared to light weapons. Unlike light weapons, one-handed weapons can be wielded with two hands to deal extra damage. Two hands are required to use a
two-handed melee weapon effectively. Ranged weapons also require two hands to fire, but they can be held in one hand when not being fired, letting you use your off hand for other things.
There are some other ways to categorise weapons, which you can find on the equipment page, linked above. It also contains the actual list of weapons. Notice that each weapon has its own damage die: a 1d4 weapon will, on average, be half as strong as a 1d8 weapon. While every weapon has a chance of dealing
critical hits if you roll a natural 20, some extend the range to include 18 or 19 as well, so look out for that.
I suggest that every character starts off with a weapon, even spellcasters, since their spells are quite limited at low levels. Fighter-type characters and ranged damage dealers might want to consider carrying a cheap and light melee weapon as backup.
Armour (or armor)
Wearing armour (or a shield) gives you extra AC, making it more difficult for enemies to hit you. Armour is divided into light, medium and heavy categories. Again, check your class page to see what armour your character is proficient with - some classes cannot wear armour at all. Shield proficiency is separate from armour proficiency.
On the equipment page, linked above, you'll find a table called "Table: Armor and Shields". If you pay attention to the stats of each piece of equipment, you may notice that wearing armour is a double-edged sword: while it increases your AC, it can also limit your DEX modifier, reduce your ability to use DEX- and STR-based skills (think about it: climbing will be easier in a leather shirt than in chain mail), give your spells a chance of failure if they require you to move part of your body (like your arms) while casting, and cause you to move slower.
What kind of armour you get - if any - depends heavily on your class. You won't be able to afford any heavy armour to begin with, but if you're proficient with medium armour, you will probably want to get some, since its drawbacks won't affect you very much. You won't be casting spells, for example. If you can't wear heavy, or if you want to save money, get light armour, which also has the added benefit of not causing you to be fatigued if you sleep in it.
Shields have to be held in your off hand while fighting to be of any use to you, so there's no point getting one if you intend to wield a two-handed weapon. There is one exception: the buckler is small and light enough to provide its AC bonus even when wielding a bow or crossbow.
Adventuring gear
Further down the equipment page, you'll find "Table: Goods and Services". Think of it like an item shop in Final Fantasy games. I'll leave your purchases up to you. Think about what you might need on your adventure (I can tell you already that you're going to be leaving town), but don't waste too much time thinking about it; I guarantee you won't end up dying because you forgot to bring a piece of chalk (or whatever). The purpose of bringing adventuring gear - especially in your first adventure - is to give you ways of solving problems, but there are always alternate solutions. As long as you are able to eat and sleep, you'll be fine.
Your character might get some essential pieces of equipment for free - if you're a wizard, you'll start off with a spellbook, so you don't to spend your own money buying another one. Check your class page!
Carrying capacity
The
additional rules page contains a table of carrying capacities. Honestly, as the GM, I've never been too bothered about enforcing these capacities. I'm certainly not going to waste my time going through every character's equipment lists, checking that the weights have been reported correctly and making sure they're not carrying too much. If you want to do that for yourself, feel free, but you could also just go by this simple rule: "be reasonable". Carrying one sword, one dagger, a few pieces of adventuring gear and wearing leather armour is perfectly fine; carrying all of that in addition to a week's worth of firewood and 200 feet of rope is not. Even if your STR was so high that you could technically carry that much weight, I'd have to discourage you from doing it. Besides, that's why pack horses exist in the game!
Final words
This post is feeling a bit too long already, so it's a good thing we've reached the end! Your "homework" is to do the things mentioned above - pick feats, determine your starting wealth, and use it to buy equipment.
Don't worry about calculating your AC, your saving throws, and so on. The Roll20 character sheet will do all that for you. Having said that, if you want to learn how to do it yourself (good for you!), the information you need is on the
combat page).
If your INT mod is positive, (i.e. your Intelligence score is 12 or higher), you can learn a number of additional languages up to your INT mod. The list of languages is
here. You don't have to decide which languages to learn straight away; you can "save up" a free slot and then learn a language later in the adventure without having to put any additional ranks into the Linguistics skill, as you normally would (this is probably a house rule). Everyone gets Common for free, and if you're a non-human, you might get additional free language, so check the
races page.
When your character build is ready (or if it's not ready, but you're stuck on something), post it in this thread or send it to me by PM. I can't wait to see what you've all come up with.
A final disclaimer: there are still many rules I haven't mentioned in this tutorial. The rules I've covered include the most important ones, and they're more than enough to get you started with Pathfinder. Learning all the rules might be impossible (I still find rules which are new to me from time to time), so don't fret it. I started off by saying "fun is really what the game is all about" - always keep that in mind!
Thanks for reading!
