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So, first off, welcome to PFS. First thing you're going to want to do is download the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Guide. You can find it in the player's resource section of the Pathfinder Society section. It will give you all the "home" rules that the pathfinder society uses for it's games, including character creation rules.
Second thing, you may want to get into contact with a local Venture Officer to find out where games are being played locally. There are 3 venture officers for NH, and you can find their names and e-mail links here.
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I'll 2nd the welcome. This is a wonderful community and while we may have our disagreements, we can all agree that we've chosen a wonderful game.
Another resource page that might be helpful is the Player Resources
warhorn.net is also another useful tool for finding games
And as Deighton mentioned there are VOs for your area that can help you get into games as well.
Good luck and happy gaming
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Hey all!
So here's my questions:
Pink, no blue....
What should I know jumping into PFS play?
That you don''t have to jump. There's a rotating player base so you can just show up and try it and if it doesn't go well try it again, and if not its no painful breakup or anything.
How should I build my first character?
You are an in game member of the pathfinder society. A group of murderho...erm. Adventurer archaeologists that scour the tombs and forgotten vaults of golarion for loot missing history. build someone that would join that organization, or at the very least wouldn't mind working for them. "Because they're paying me" is a perfectly acceptable answer to "why am I a pathfinder" but not necessarily the best one.
You can build anything you want. If you have your heart set on building Grabthnack the decapitator or BlastShadow the sorcerer go for it.
The vast majority of PFS does not require a whole lot of optimization. every once in a while the right/wrong set of circumstances might, but don't feel like you have to make something optimized.
Many scenarios involve a lot of role playing and investigation before you make with the hackey slashy. A wide variety of skills and problem solving utility has more value in PFS than it otherwise might.
Likewise, as opposed to a home group with a meatshield/healer/sneak/caster PFS groups are made from whatever 5 random characters people want to bring. Versatility becomes very important because a rogue with use magic device at +7 and a wand of CLW may be your best healer. Folks that have been around a while have multiple characters that can mitigate that somewhat by picking different characters.
The campaign is very human / humanoid centric. Tactics like trip and disarm and grapple stay viable a lot longer than they might in other coampaigns where your opponents are all giant monsters.
What should I expect as far as roadblocks to what I already know?
Advice?
The information (like the guide) is a little dense and focused on the trees so its hard to see the forest and some information you might beed is kind of spread out, so unlike what a lot of gamers like to do and show up knowing everything you have to wait and see how it works before you see how it works.
What to expect, lets say the game starts at 7
Game starts at 7
6:55 people start to trickle in
Folks eat, gossip, get settled in.
7:15 Geek soduku! People finalize how many people they have for which table. The veterans will then decide who's playing what character, trying to balance out levels, tiers, and party composition. The DM desperately tries to sneak in one more reading of he scenario
7:30: people get going. There's a mission briefing that one person will be paying attention to while most players find dice and minis check character sheets, phones,and chronicle sheets to make last minute purchases. You will get a flurry of 5 or six mispronounced names without much clear idea whether drendle drang is a person you're talking to, a place you want to go, or a particularly nasty curse you want to avoid.
You'll have a chance to ask questions, gather information and make knowledge checks to get some idea of what you're in for.
There will be ~ 4 encounters, usually some mooks for one fight, a trap or three, some sort of a skill or social challange, some sort of strong monster thats usually more likely to kill you than the boss, and then a solo or near solo boss fight. These will inevitably involve some "i'm over here he's over there what are you doing how are you searching how does that rule work" while trying to keep the game moving.
The encounters will test adventuring basics. Can you attack at both melee and ranged. Can you deal with swarms and other unusual creature types. Can you deal with damage reduction and incoporeal critters.
10:30 the boss fight starts! Hurrry!
11:05 The dm hurridly signs chronicle sheets and hands them out with a "go ahead fill them out"
Grab stuff get out the door hang out in the parking lot for a bit to come back to reality then head home.
A level 1 fighter adventuring with a level 11 fighter would be dead before seeing the first boss. Adventures have ranges that you need to be in to play them. Typically they range from 1-5, 3-7, 7-11. Within that, the DM averages the level of the party and decides on high or low tier, so for example if you're all new and playing the 1-5 , You get a couple of kobolds. If there are enough level 4s and 5s in your group, you'll be fighting kobold fighters and a shaman.
You'll pick it up fast enough, don't worr if you're confused, but this is almost guaranteed to be a flurry of numbers conversation at the start of the night.