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Out now at Paizo's store!
When you consider the number of things a 1st-level character can do in a Pathfinder RPG campaign, it’s pretty clear that even the lowest level characters have completed some intense training. But what do you do if you want to start an adventure before your wizards have mastered their 1st-level spells and paladins have discovered how to detect evil at will? The Genius Guide to Apprentice-Level Characters presents simple rules for creating 0-level or 1/2-level characters who have some instruction but aren’t yet fully trained members of their class.
Out now at Paizo's store!
When you consider the number of things a 1st-level character can do in a Pathfinder RPG campaign, it’s pretty clear that even the lowest level characters have completed some intense training. But what do you do if you want to start an adventure before your wizards have mastered their 1st-level spells and paladins have discovered how to detect evil at will? The Genius Guide to Apprentice-Level Characters presents simple rules for creating 0-level or 1/2-level characters who have some instruction but aren’t yet fully trained members of their class.
Sold to me due to nostalgia for the AD&D Treasure Hunt adventure.
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I know others who have always talked about doing pre-adventures (as a group or solo) using rules along these lines, but have always been too busy to come up with the rules.
That's us, we make rules so you don't have to!
You are just determined to make me poor arn't you?
We prefer to think of ourselves as determined to turn your money into new kinds of gaming fun. But yeah. :)
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What would be some good adventures to run for 0-level characters? I think it would be neat to start one up. I loved this concept in 1st ed. Have a close group of adventuring friends like in Stand By Me.
I would think something like a lone CR1 being the big bad or even a CR2. Like a Gnoll terrorizing farmers or a Ghoul haunting an old abandoned graveyard.
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I imagine I could use a few different types of pre-level 1 adventures. A couple I've considered using in the past include:
A single solo session with each member of a new group to have them go through a couple of (very very low CR) challenges while they're learning their skills- be it soldier training, rites of adulthood, or apprenticing to a wizard.
Set the 0-level adventure a few weeks/months/years before the characters are even in a position to go adventuring, like when they're in their young to mid teens (or equivalent for each race) and have them be a group of friends who get into some mischief or caught up in some minor scheme, like the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
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What would be some good adventures to run for 0-level characters? I think it would be neat to start one up. I loved this concept in 1st ed. Have a close group of adventuring friends like in Stand By Me.
I would think something like a lone CR1 being the big bad or even a CR2. Like a Gnoll terrorizing farmers or a Ghoul haunting an old abandoned graveyard.
way back in 2nd ed, I once ran a 0-level adventure that focused on two goblins who had taken up residence in the town's stable/barn, and only the town's teens believed the goblins was actually in there. Of course, on addition to being 0-level, the teens had to arm themselves with a pitchfork, butcher knife and frying pan, as I recall.
When they killed the goblins, they came to the attention of a local knight, who made them squires, then one joined the church and another became the court wizard's apprentice, and so on.
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Set the 0-level adventure a few weeks/months/years before the characters are even in a position to go adventuring, like when they're in their young to mid teens (or equivalent for each race) and have them be a group of friends who get into some mischief or caught up in some minor scheme, like the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
That's a *great* idea!
You are just determined to make me poor arn't you?
You know, a real Succubus might think of other ways of "compensating" these guys for their products.
Great idea!
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...i wish there wasn't such a big delay between getting the product up here and making it available on RPGNow...
Sorry! We try to make it no more than a day or two. But that's one of the things Hyrum took care of for us and, well...
In general we're managing without him okay, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit there are some things it turns out won't work as well without him.
Drain their life force and term them into eternal soulless slaves?
That was my first thought, yeah.
Drain their life force and term them into eternal soulless slaves?You are just determined to make me poor arn't you?You know, a real Succubus might think of other ways of "compensating" these guys for their products.
Well, Yeah!
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...i wish there wasn't such a big delay between getting the product up here and making it available on RPGNow...
Lookie here!
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So, in addition to expanded favored class options, will all future Genius core class releases also have information for using them as apprentice characters (e.g. the "apprentice stat block" that this book gives us)?
All that information will be available eventually. We don't yet know for sure what format it's going to take. Not everyone wants APG-style alternate favored class advancements or apprentice-level rules, and even with a PDF there's a risk of eventual bloat.
I might include it with classes, or collect and gather in free expansions, or clutch the only copies to my chest while perched in a clock tower and demand a ransom for it. It's still under discussion. But it will be generated and made available somehow, in any case.
*Normally* I take SGG class products in with updates to official Paizo classes, such as I am sure we'll be seeing in Ultimate Magic.
Dammit, Owen! Just when I'm completely broke cause of the divorce you have to put out something like this...
--
Steve Creech
DragonWing Games
Reviewed.
Thanks for the review, DM.
Just for the sake of discussion ... since your review says that the PDF includes everything one needs to use this material, what could we have included that would have helped the product to better "wow" you?
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Hmm good question. I mean it turned out to be pretty much what I expected and it works. Which is just stripped down classes. I guess what I was hoping for was something like background traits. Maybe something like this.
Farmer - You grew up on a farm and helped your family attend to the chores of the farm growing up.
Requirements - Str or Con 12+
Bonuses - Profession Farmer and Handle Animal are consider Class skills. +1 skill point must be spent on Profession or Handle Animal.
Something along those lines is what I was hoping for. Basically something that would have been useful for everyone. Regardless if they want to play 0 level characters. To me that would be a wow of going above and beyond what was needed, yet something that fits in the concept. I mean what they did before they was adventures.
Are these rules based off the old 3.0 apprentice level rules?
What would be some good adventures to run for 0-level characters?
Goodman Games has a few 0-level adventures that they made for 3.5e.
(I've played this one, it was really cool, but I can't seem to find it for sale anywhere. OOP maybe?)
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Hmm good question. I mean it turned out to be pretty much what I expected and it works. Which is just stripped down classes. I guess what I was hoping for was something like background traits. Maybe something like this.
Farmer - You grew up on a farm and helped your family attend to the chores of the farm growing up.
Requirements - Str or Con 12+
Bonuses - Profession Farmer and Handle Animal are consider Class skills. +1 skill point must be spent on Profession or Handle Animal.Something along those lines is what I was hoping for. Basically something that would have been useful for everyone. Regardless if they want to play 0 level characters. To me that would be a wow of going above and beyond what was needed, yet something that fits in the concept. I mean what they did before they was adventures.
I agreed with your review almost completely, and so I thought I'd add that, while the actual product is worth the money and does what it is suppose to do, I did kind of wish for a little more crunch for actually running a 0-level game.
Your ideas about traits are a good idea. I know what I'm about to mention is probably way beyond the pale (buy, um, maybe for a follow up?), but I was thinking of something that does something like the old inspiration points in the Greyhawk Adventures hardcover for 0-level characters (how many people remember that one?).
Basically, it let you spend inspiration points to do things that you might do later in your career. While I know that this system kind of assumes that you already have a class in mind when you start out, something like that might still be useful for determining if your other "half" is going to be multi-classing or filling out your current class.
Plus I liked the idea that 0-level characters kind of survived on dumb luck at times when seasoned adventurers might normally have a harder time.
I'd say they were in part inspired by those rules, but I didn't look at or reference them while building these.
They are similar, but I think the rules in this product actually make more sense than the 3.0 rules did. A little cleaner in presentation, more logical in context.
Your ideas about traits are a good idea. I know what I'm about to mention is probably way beyond the pale (buy, um, maybe for a follow up?), but I was thinking of something that does something like the old inspiration points in the Greyhawk Adventures hardcover for 0-level characters (how many people remember that one?).
Heh.. how many remember Len Lakofka's article in his "Leomund's Tiny Hut" column in the Dragon magazine long before Greyhawk Adventures? One srticle (may have been a series) discussed "pre-1st level characters". Your PCs started with negative XP and earned their way to 1st level at 0 XP.
Fighting classes (Figher, Paladin, and Ranger) spent time at "Man-at-arms" training for all or part of their pre-adventuring career, while Rangers and Paladins also needed additional, more specialized "courses". The more powerful the class was, the more pre-1st level training was required and the more negative XP you started with. From memory, the Fighters needed only the "Man-at-arms" training and started with the least XP "debt", while the Ranger may have had the most.
In any event, the Inspiration Point model sounds good, especially if the characters begin with a pool based on how long and dangerout the initial adventure is .. a short "introductory" adventure having a small pool per PC, while a longer adventure (maybe one meant for 1st level characters) offered a bigger pool. The GM or player should track how the points are spent, with an eye to seeing which class the PC gravitates toward naturally.
The problem with that, of course, is that only addresses the use of 0-level PCs as "before they were heroes" characters. It does not address the multi-classed-at-1st-level situation.
For another take on apprentice levels. Kolja Raven Liquette has some notes for his home campaign posted on the web. He hasn't updated it in ages though.
http://www.wakinglands.com/htm_files/the_classes_page.htm
Sethvir
My thoughts:
Overall i liked it.
The half and half way to multiclass at 1st level was a nice touch and unexpected. mechanics are simple enough and easy to apply to any class. I can definitely see using it for some styles of games i play.
The only thing i personally would have liked to see would be a way to have Unclassed 0-level characters so they could drift into certain classes as the game goes on.
Perhaps KEJ's inspiration points suggestion above (yes i do have that and remember it KEJ!) or perhaps 'floating' half feats/skills/class-features that require some type of UMD-esque style of rolling to use. (still at the apprentice level 1/2 power as well.)
Perhaps KEJ's inspiration points suggestion above
In our weekly Genius Meeting last week we talked about KEJ's inspiration points AND DM's background traits suggestions. They BOTH sound like really awesome ways to expand on the Apprentice-Level material.
They're now officially in the mix of "intriguing ideas" that we're poking around at ... who's to say what the final result may be?
I'm curious as to what they do differently from what I had in mind. I really must buy this when I have more than $9 in my bank account
See, we make these cheap so you *can* buy it when you have only $9. (No, seriously, I get it. We'll wait.)
(If only I could find a way to profit from my all my homebrew material for D&D/Pathfinder).
I will note my entire RPG writer career began with a thought very, very similar to that. Have you considered if you can compile any of those rules into enough words for a PDF or article for Kobold Q?
This one really struck my interest because it's a new way for me to do below level 1 games. I'm curious as to what they do differently from what I had in mind. I really must buy this when I have more than $9 in my bank account(If only I could find a way to profit from my all my homebrew material for D&D/Pathfinder). Anyway. Someday you shall be mine $2 PDF I can't afford. MWUHAHAHA!!! or something like that...
Enjoy your PDF. ;)
I don't know how I can properly thank you, though, so all I can say is "thank you very much."
Enjoy your PDF. ;)
It brings joy to my heart to help out a fellow gamer.
No worries on proper thanks, simple thanks is enough. ;)
As a random question, could The Genius Guide to Apprentice-Level Characters be used in conjunction with an ongoing story? Say the PC's come across a crazy wizard who turns them into children? At which point you hand out the character sheets and wait for them to figure out how to return to normal. Or possibly have a Deity induced dream where the PC's are children fighting through the dreamscape? Or is it more of a starting point building up to 1st level characters?
As a random question, could The Genius Guide to Apprentice-Level Characters be used in conjunction with an ongoing story? Say the PC's come across a crazy wizard who turns them into children? At which point you hand out the character sheets and wait for them to figure out how to return to normal.
Actually, it should be PERFECT for that. Which is a neat idea I may borrow for my own games.
Actually, it should be PERFECT for that. Which is a neat idea I may borrow for my own games.
Feel free to use it as it was just a random thought I had while reading other people's comments.
I reviewed this over at robot viking.
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For those of you who have used these 0-level classes as pre-teen adventures what did you do for stats? I've been thinking of setting the pre-gen PCs stats at 8 to start and use the point buy system (5 points). Please note this is for a 1-shot for a monthly meetup so the characters will not be leveling up.
Any advice/ideas?