Using the Beginner Box to Create a Pathfinder Society Character
Monday, December 26, 2011
I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday and is looking forward to an exciting new year. I am sure quite a few folks gave or received the Beginner Box as presents this past weekend. Inside that box, there is a flyer for Pathfinder Society that includes a link to the website but no explanation of how to integrate the play or rules from the Beginner Box into use for Pathfinder Society play.
One of the earliest experiences I had during my first week at Paizo was Erik Mona, our publisher, handing me the Beginner Box and advising me we needed to have a guide that allowed players to create a legal Pathfinder Society character using just the Beginner Box rules. As I had not seen it until that moment, the task seemed quite daunting.
Like many of you, I had looked forward to the release of the Beginner Box with much anticipation and I liked what I found inside. I was scheduled to go to a trade show the following week and the airplane flight gave me plenty of time to read through everything in the box. The pawns also served as a good conversation piece for the people seated near me on the plane between Seattle and Chicago. It was at 36,000 feet that I started formulating ideas of what I thought should be included in a character creation guide.
Once I was back in Seattle, I posted a list of ideas and solicited suggestions from the Pathfinder Society Venture-Captains and Venture-Lieutenants. We brainstormed a good bit about what I had missed that should be included or what I had placed in it that should be taken out. We worked at the phrasing of sentences, brainstormed several more times about missed ideas, and finally arrived at the finished free product. The guide provides a step–by–step walkthrough of the Pathfinder Society character creation process while referring you back to the Hero’s Handbook. These instructions allow for a seamless transition from the Beginner Box to Pathfinder Society play. A special thank you goes out to Boston Venture-Captain Don Walker for his incredible amount of wordsmithing that went into the final document.
If you have any questions, especially if you are new to Pathfinder and Pathfinder Society, please visit the Pathfinder Society messageboards. Our Venture-Captains and Venture-Lieutenants are more than happy to answer any questions you might have, whether they are about how to find a local Pathfinder Society game or about how some rule works that is found in the Core Rulebook but not in the Beginner Box.
If you have never experienced Pathfinder Society, I encourage you to make a New Year’s resolution to give it a try. If you can’t find a game in your area, there are options for play-by-post Pathfinder Society sessions. If you are a veteran of the campaign, I look forward to working with you in 2012 to make Pathfinder Society even better than it is now.
Thanks! But really, those are Mike's words in the document. I just offered a few suggestions - was glad to help. I'd like to give a shout out to all the other campaign volunteers who helped with this document too.
I think it is a brilliant idea on top of another brilliant idea and look forward to seeing more Beginner Box players at my tables.
How do people handle a mix of core rules and beginner box chanracters at the table, eg attacks of Opportunity and other things that don't come into the BB characters??
I believe it depends on the type of game being played.
For Pathfinder Society games the Beginner Box players have to cowboy-up since the game is run under the full rule set.
For a home game using the Pathfinder rules, it is entirely up to the GM and players. I imagine if a group wanted to include BB players they might drop the Attack of Opportunity rules, but keep the Combat Maneuver rules since it is easy to add them to a BB character. And by drop AOOs I mean you would just not allow any actions that could trigger an AOO just like in BB play. I suppose regular characters with feats for AOOs could be allowed to use them if the situation came up. But monsters and BB players just wouldn't be able to do things that trigger AOOs.
Chris Lambertz
Digital Products Assistant
Don Walker
sanwah68
