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Welcome to the hobby and to the boards. Someone will be round with cookies presently.
In answer to your questions:
1) I think Pathfinder works best with about 4 players and most pre written adventures assume that. That said, you can easily run adventures for one or two. Just bear in mind that the fewer the players the more things that can go wrong for them.
2) The core rulebook expands on the beginners box so that may well be worth getting. That said the core rules are all detailed in the PRD (there's a link to it on your left) so it may be worth looking at that first. If you want some reading matter, however, then it's definitely worth getting the core rules.
3) Get more dice. I have dozens as do most gamers. You'll need them.
Welcome!
So right now, I think I can get bigger groups together on occasion, but a lot of times it would be me and the wife and possibly my young son. I realize these types of games are not made for small groups, but what are some ways we could play with just us three? Can my son play one character, I play 2 characters and my wife be GM? Can GM also play a character?
I'd advise starting with 1 character per player and no GM-played PCs -- you all have enough to learn doing one thing at a time to start off. Also, I find that playing multiple characters at a time predisposes you to think of your characters as tokens in a board game, rather then developing them in a role-playing sense.
As noted, the overall assumption is for four characters, and most published adventures are based on that, but especially if you're planning on designing your own adventures, it's fun on both sides to change the assumptions. (One of my favorite games / characters ever was a game my brother ran in which I played the only character, a rogue-illusionist, in a stealth-based burglary and espionage game.)
How young/old is your son? Does he have a friend with a potentially interested parent who might both want to join you for game dates?
If I buy the beginner box, and money is not a huge issue, will it be good for learning purposes to buy the core rules and maybe bestiary or any other books. I have a work trip coming up so I will have lots of time to read, etc.
If you choose to keep playing beyond the beginner box, the core rules and bestiary are definitely the two books you'll want. If timing's right to get them now, go for it -- it sounds like you've got enough background in how games work to not get overwhelmed. Keep in mind that your son especially will benefit from some time spent on the beginner box rules before adding the rest of the core rules, but if he's of the gamer disposition, chances are he'll learn the core rules faster than you. :)
Also, more dice. Always more dice. At very least, take the fam to a local game store (if you have one available) so that everybody can pick out their own set to bond with.
Hello!
Welcome to the wonderful world of Pathfinder. What you read on the internet is true. 4th edition blows. Pretty much everyone I've ever met agrees PF carries the torch that D&D dropped. They make a quality product and are really great with their customers. They're like actual gamers. Not just a toy company trying to get all you money. I think you'll be pleased.
I think tabletop is much more enjoyable the video games. In video games you just play through somebody else's story where everyone who buys the game has the same experience. In tabletop you get to truly create your own experience along with your friends. Using your creativity and imagination. Also it's just much more personal hanging out with real people and beats a poker or football night.
Anywhos! For me I have a three player minimum. You don't really get a group social dynamic going on with just one or tow players. Where player actions play off each other. That said you can make it work. You can make single player adventures. You can play multiple characters. You can do anything you can imagine. That's the beauty of tabletop RPGs. As long as it's not part of an official event you can do whatever you can think of with it. Just be sure your players are made aware of any changes or alterations before you start.
The Beginners Box is a great place to get started. The simplified rules are perfect for getting new players started without overwhelming them. You really only need one box. All you have to get is additional sets of dice. Even once you're done with it the pawns and dice can be used in advanced games.
If you don't want to go too crazy I'd suggest just getting the Core Rules book and Bestiary to start. The Advanced Player's Guide, Gamemastery Guide, and Bestiary 2 are also great additions once you have the basics down. Beyond that I consider everything else to be optional extras. The Bestiary Box and NPC Box (once they come out) will also be a great alternative to a pricey and bulky miniature collection. They will save you a lot of time, money, and space.
Well I hope that helps. Have fun and make it your own.
PS.
Welcome to the hobby and to the boards. Someone will be round with cookies presently.
Cookies!!! ^_^
Welcome to the hobby.
As has been said, you CAn run a game with 2 players and GM but adding a couple more will fill out your party a bit and give more social interaction.
Some of the pre-packaged stuff will be harder to scale if you are new as well.
IF you are already looking to get the Core rules then the starter box may not even be where you want to start. It's an abbreviated rules set that may cause a hiccup in learning the real rules.
And yes.. get dice.. 2-3 sets for each player.
Making your own adventures is a breeze. Start at the end I the movie and work backwards. Flip through the monsters. Pick a tough one and make them your bad guy. Pick a set of minions for that bad guy, and maybe a chief henchman, who is often an up-leveled minion, like an Orc warrior with a few fighter levels. Decide what the bad guy's scheme is. This is usually Destroy/Kill, Item/Person X. Why are they doing it? How can you get the players onto their trail before they succeed. Then there's a Goblin attack during the town festival and your ready to go.
As the GM you make up the well's color, and any other details you like.
(This is why it's important to read the whole adventure thoroughly as GM before beginning to play. You must be sure you know what's important to the adventure and what is window dressing that you can fabricate yourself. And even if you mess up, ad libbing a way out of the mess can be fun too.)
Since you can make it all up yourself, this needn't be a money pit. All the rules you need are online for free. Of course the books have prettier pictures and great flavor text.
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Wow, thanks for all of the advice...that helps! If the prepackaged stuff is tougher to "make work" with less people, it will have to work for at least the beginner box stuff.
Right now I think it's hard for me to even imagine how to "make my own" so to speak, because I can't yet wrap my head around the concept of how actual gameplay works. I read through some of the free adventures on this site and although I understand the story that needs to be read to players, I am not sure yet how it will play out. In other words in one of the adventures it says something like, "players are allowed to ask questions about the "mysterious ruin", some of the more common ones are......" OK, so I get that but what if they ask me what color the well is? It has nothing to do with the story, and I dont know the color as the GM. That whole non-linear aspect is still strange to me given my inexperience.
I can see this being yet another potential money pit for me :) which is actually kind of exciting!!!
Check out this YouTube playlist. The DM is leading a new player though the concepts of the Beginner Box, and then they do a mini-session to show her how it works. I subscribe to his channel, and he plans on continuing the Beginner Box series with her soon.
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Hey All, I am completely new to tabletop RPG's although I have lots of experience with computer RPG's such as Elder Scrolls, Baldur's Gate, Witcher, Skyrim, World of Warcraft, etc. I am reading that Pathfinder is much better than D&D 4ed especially with beginner's box. I do have a couple of questions, hopefully not to noobish!
So right now, I think I can get bigger groups together on occasion, but a lot of times it would be me and the wife and possibly my young son. I realize these types of games are not made for small groups, but what are some ways we could play with just us three? Can my son play one character, I play 2 characters and my wife be GM? Can GM also play a character?
If I buy the beginner box, and money is not a huge issue, will it be good for learning purposes to buy the core rules and maybe bestiary or any other books. I have a work trip coming up so I will have lots of time to read, etc.
The beginners box comes with one set of dice, but with them being so cheap does it make the game run a lot smoother with more than one set?
Any other recommendations?
Thanks all for your help
To help answer some of your questions.
As for 4E and PFRPG, i wouldn't say one is better or worse. They are very different games in how they play and different people enjoy them. I do think Pathfinder has by far the better beginner boxed set of the two for learning how to play. The final thing is you may not know is 4E is coming to a end 5E DnD will be coming out in roughly 18 months.
Now onto your questions about Pathfinder.
Yes you can run games with just 2 players i have done it before. If your son plays 1, you play 2 and your wife is the GM and she runs a support NPC. Say the cleric who is built to be someone who heals the others and put buff spells on them so they are better it would work pretty well and you wouldn't have to adjust the adventures for fewer characters. Which is something I wouldn't recommend a new GM try, learning to GM is hard enough with out adding in making adjustments.
The beginner box is a great way to introduce GM's how to GM the game and players to play. Their is a choose your own adventure a GM can run themselves threw to learn the rules first hand. Then the premade adventure in the boxed set is set up to teach new rules in each encounter as you play threw them. Plus the box set streamlines the rules and makes it very easy to jump in and play right way. The best part is you can play the boxed set up to level 5 then if you want switch to the core rules using the same characters.
I would get at least two if not three sets of dice. The GM needs to have their own dice and the players need a set. I would recommend each person playing have their own set. Since there will be times you will need to roll say 5d6 for example. So more sets make that easier.
You can find the rules up here and at d20pfsrd. Also if you don't mind reading from a computer all the core books are only 10 bucks for the PDF. Personally I would check out the pfsrd here or at the link I listed. But the beginner box set, play it a bit and if you guys like it. Then buy the Core Rule Book, Game Master Guide(it is pretty helpful to new GM's) and the first Bestiary.
If you enjoy story based games you might want to consider getting one of the adventure paths as well. It is very helpful for new GM's. You can jump from the free starter adventure in the beginner boxed set right into one of the adventure paths.
I hope you and your family enjoy yourselves. If you have any more questions feel free to ask them. Also let us know how things turn out.
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Wow, thanks for all of the advice...that helps! If the prepackaged stuff is tougher to "make work" with less people, it will have to work for at least the beginner box stuff.
Right now I think it's hard for me to even imagine how to "make my own" so to speak, because I can't yet wrap my head around the concept of how actual gameplay works. I read through some of the free adventures on this site and although I understand the story that needs to be read to players, I am not sure yet how it will play out. In other words in one of the adventures it says something like, "players are allowed to ask questions about the "mysterious ruin", some of the more common ones are......" OK, so I get that but what if they ask me what color the well is? It has nothing to do with the story, and I dont know the color as the GM. That whole non-linear aspect is still strange to me given my inexperience.
I can see this being yet another potential money pit for me :) which is actually kind of exciting!!!
As I mentioned in my post above. The Beginner boxed set really helps walk a GM threw learning how to play and run the game and the starting adventure the GM can run really helps walk the players threw it. I strongly recommend picking it up.
Also once you have it you might want to invest in Party of One adventures by Open Design. They have 3 adventures so far, where they are like the old Choose Your Own Adventure books but they use Pathfinder rules. You can play them by yourself and learn how to play even better after the starter one in the Beginner Boxed set. You can find the Party of One books here. They are near the bottom of the list on that product page.
I only wish something like the Beginner Box had been around when I started back in 1981.
It is a GREAT introduction to the hobby. Colorful and informative. The character sheets are designed with novice players in mind.
If you decide to get further into the hobby, it forms a nice baseline to learning the ruleset. There are LOTS more rules.
Or if you wish to stick with the Beginner Box longer, there are some free modules here --> Click here!
And some free support material here --> Click here!
And some additional fun stuff here --> Click here!
Rumor has it there will be third party modules for the Beginner box, but I also would immagine any module made for First through fourth level characters could be easily used.
Oh! And Welcome to the hobby!
Greg
Good question. As a new GM (and tabletop RP'er) he may not be aware of how fast things can move on these forums. I'm sure he'll check in at some point.
* crosses fingers and hopes *
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OK so a couple of quick ones from the beginner guide tutorial adventure.
1. There is a lot of mention of things lasting a certain amount of time. Now, I know that each round in combat is 6 seconds right? However in the scenario it explains how certain potions last 1 minute, etc. in that case is that to be 10 turns or 1 real life minute? I know that's probably a stupid question but just makin sure.
1 minute of game time or 10 turns is what it means.
2. So the while idea of taking move actions, 30ft 20ft, etc makes sense in combat rounds, but sometimes it says players are free to do what they want? Then it will randomly say, "the wizard can take a standard action to do such and such". So, when not in combat can you just explore and move around freely?
Yes more or less. This is where it is more common sense. Like there is rules for moving overland aka how many miles a day you can go etc. Out of combat just narrate it and don't worry about stuff like move. Like if your son's fighter wants to cross town, don't worry how far it is and how many rounds it would take. just take a guess and say something like "Ok it takes you several minutes to cross town to the stables"
3. When weapons are foun in chests, etc it doesn't say anything about the cost of pickin them up?
If you find them, they are free. That is part of the reward for adventuring. You only have to pay for them when you buy them from town or something. I forget exactly where but there is a guide to how much wealthy in items a character should have by level. use that as a rule of thumb, but most of the premade adventures factor that into the items, gold and magic you find in them already.
4. When it mentions fire and rolling to save and all of that, it says the fire damage is 4d3 per minute or something that seems really big. Wouldn't the fire kill most level 1 players immediately or is there a difference between fire damage and regular HP damage?
If a spell or object or hazard(like a bon fire) says something like you take 4d4 damage of fire per round and has a save. You roll the save if the players character rolls a D20 with there save bonus and it is equal to or higher than the DC(difficulty) of the effect you take half damage.
So for example, lets say Bob the fighter falls into a blacksmiths forge. It says the damage of the fire of the forge is 4d4 per round with a DC 13 Fortitude save. So Bob would roll a D20 + his Fort save(assuming a avg 1st level fighter he likely has around a +5 Fort save) So if he rolls a 8 or higher he would beat the DC and only take half damage. So if you rolled the 4d4 damage and lets say you rolled a 2, 3, 3, 4 = 12 dmg. Then Bob rolled a 10 + 5 = 15 on his Fort save, which beats the DC 13. Then Bob would take only 6 points of damage.
Now the reason it points out it is fire damage is there is magic items and spells that can give you resistance vs fire so you would take even less damage then.
As for hit points a first level character starts off with Max hit points plus Con Stat Modifier. So lets take Bob the fighter again and say he has a 16 constitution, which gives him a stat modifier of +3. Fighter class gets a 1d10 hit points per level. So at first level Bob would have 1d10 max at first or 10 hp +con mod of 3. Or 10+3= 13 hit points at first level.
First level characters are fairly fragile, they are young people just learning their profession and are not much better off than Tom the Farmer growing his crops. As they level up they get more hit points.
Thanks again! This is one of the best forums I've been on, and I've been on tons.
Your Welcome and if money is not a issue I strongly recommend picking up the Pathfinder Beginner Boxed Set. It does a very good job of taking your threw character creation one step at a time in a easy to understand manner. Then does the same for teaching the Game Master how to run.
If you have more questions feel free to ask more.
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I have to heartily recommend the Beginner Box as well. Then search Dawnforgedcast on YouTube for his series of Beginner Box vids where he is teaching his GF how to play the game. Excellent stuff!
I am guessing this is the series of videos you are talking about here.
though the first video seems to be about the core rule book not the beginners boxed set. But he is indeed teaching his GF how to play. I imagine nd23rin will find the video's helpful, along with some of his other videos of GMing tips.
Welcome to Pathfinder. You're going to have a blast. To quickly answer your question about running with few players, here is my advice.
If I have three players, I run an NPC in the group that balances them out.
If I have two players, I allow them both to control a 2nd character (a sidekick type thing) in combat. However, in RP they only speak on behalf of their main character. Their sidekick is a silent partner (though he/she can certainly help with skill checks as necessary).
When playing with one player, I usually do both and/or cut back the encounters.