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I was wondering what parts I could sip over with out much problem. I have all ready decided to skip reading all of the character classes in there entirety. I will be dming my first game so I will not even have my own pc, so I figured this can wait, also I was thinking about skipping reading the entire skill descriptions for all of the skills. I ave read the first part regarding acquiring ranks and the rules associated with skills.
Basically I just want to speed up my reading so I can get to dming the game fr a new group.
So which parts if any could I skip over and read as they come up in game or read later?
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Quite honestly as GM you want to read the whole damn thing. But even then you'll reread it a zillion times and catch something new everytime!
So let's be blunt. Read the Combat chapter, then read the Magic chapter. If you know the big picture of how fighting and spells work you can muddle through a game.
You're going to want to read the gamemastering section next so you can build the framework of the adventure, encounters, treasure, and XP.
Being a beginner you're gonna have to make more rulings on the fly. Don't worry if it's completely correct, you'll have time to check it later. Just make the ruling, be consistant in that application the whole session and keep the game moving.
--Vrock Solid
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How experienced are the intended players?
If they're familiar with PF, they will be able to make their own PCs, if they know D&D 3.0/3.5, they will need to refresh as they could come up against a few things that have changed (max ranks for skills, improved Hit Die for some classes, etc).
If your players already know what classes they want to play, those are the ones you definitely need to familiarise yourself with first. Maybe ask them to be kind to you and play something simple.
Don't commit to some gigantic plot arc, play some games where it doesn't matter if everyone screws up. Don't try to save the world, just have some overconfident mercenaries go raid a goblin lair. If they die, they die.
If Player A positions himself badly and gets flanked/Sneak Attacked, don't argue about 'what I would have done', or be pressured into a do-over. Their next character won't make the same mistake, and oh, look, the goblins have a prisoner, who just happens to be the same stats as the dead guy, and could use that gear....
Don't have giant Mosquitos attack first level characters.
That's how my sister gave up D&D forever.
Otherwise, use common sense. You may have to convert 3.5 characters for some of the players, so skim, and read anything that sounds like your gaming group.
I'm going to follow King of Vrock's example and be blunt.
You, as GM, get to skip NOTHING.
Not races. Why? It's the foundation stone of a character's abilities.
Not classes. Why? You need to know what your PCs are capable of, and most of it is in there.
Not equipment. You need to know what stuff there really is in the game for when crafting questions come up, for armor check penalties and what they mean, and so on.
Not skills. You'll need to know about taking 10 and 20, opposed rolls, and what you can do with Survival, Stealth, and Perception.
Not feats. Your fighter gets more than you can shake a stick at. The others have plenty as well. With skills, race, class, and equipment, this is what 1st level characters do.
Not spells. You need to know what your casters will be doing.
Not combat. This one's obvious.
Not magic items. Same deal.
I think I've made my point. I'm not advocating in any way that you must memorize this mess. But reading it all through will give you a surprising amount of familiarity with things. You'll have a better idea where to find things, an idea of what you won't need regularly and what you will. Knowing where things are in the Core rules is more than using the table of contents and index, it's also just having familiarity with the contents of the book. And that familiarity will speed up gameplay.
If you're DMing then you need to read (and understand) the whole core rulebook (except for maybe spell descriptions because we all look those up anyway unless a spell is cast all the time).
Don't have to memorize it but at least be familiar with it and maybe bookmark the rules that you will have to reference often.
You need to be familiar with what the classes can do, how skills work and how combat and magic work in order to make calls in game.
Have your players played Pathfinder before? If so, hopefully none of them will try to pull a fast one on a new GM, but for now, I'd say "Trust them at the table, then go read up on the rules afterwards".
If not, your job becomes much easier as you all get to learn it together.
I'd say read the first chapter about ability scores, the races chapter, the opening to the classes chapter and the intro paragraph to each class (just so you know what they are thematically). Read the intro to the skills chapter and the list of skills (they all do pretty much what they seem to), the intro to the feats chapter (although you can skip the list of feats for now), the whole chapter on combat, skim the chapter on magic & spellcasting, and you can skip the rest of the book, for now.
Then, before each session, read in detail everything that relates to the monsters/NPCs you're putting your players up against. And there's going to be a lot. You're going to want to either run a published adventure or mini adventures of a session or two, to get the feel for how things work. Don't do anything above 1st level. Don't do anything major. Don't be afraid to make a ruling off the top of your head, but look it up later and correct yourself at the start of the next session if you blatantly contradicted the rules.
It's really much easier to play a game first before you start trying to run it. If you have any experienced players, ask them to run a session or two of "We go attack the goblins in the cave" just so you learn the basic mechanics.
For classes you only need to read the classes you will use for NPC's in your game. If you are sticking with monsters at first its not a huge deal, just make sure your players know their own classes well.
The combat section is probably the most important as it is your job to keep combat moving.
Skills I would say is also important, because there are going to be lots of times when you call for skill checks. IE there is a wolf sneaking up on the party, and you ask them to roll perception to see if they notice it before it attacks. Or they will ask you if they can use skills alot. IE a player asks if he can use diplomacy to convince the town mayor to help them find the goblin hiding out in the sewers, or a knowledge arcana check to see if he knows anything about dragons. So you can expect to need to know skills fairly well.
You can probably leave out feats and just look in on feats your npcs or monsters are going to use. Then ofcourse the game mastering section is important, and the magic section, but again dont read every spell, just the ones you plan to actually use. Magic items can probably wait as well, especially if you are starting at low levels, the players wont have any magic items for a while most likely, so you can wait on that part as well.
Read the entire thing. At least twice. There are all-imcompassing rules for things concerning spells that aren't in the spell descriptions that you will need to know. Especially how SLA vs Spells are.
It says casting spells with somatic components provoke attacks of opportunity.
It says spell like abilites have no components or focuses.
However, they still provoke.
Little stuff like this. Scattered all over.
Read the entire thing.
If you were a new player, I'd say you could skip lots of the book. Learning the game by discovery at the table can be huge fun, maybe the most concentrated fun you'll have.
As a DM, you're stuck with reading the whole thing.
If you absolutely can't wait to start gaming, I back up Mok's suggestions:
Skills
Combat and Movement
Magic
If you are starting at first level, you can temporarily skip magic items and the higher level spells.
I'd suggest that your first session be devoted to character creation as a team exercise. That will let everyone perform the process once and witness it a few times.
What are you thinking about running? Something published or a homebrew?
You might not need the wish or prismatic spells yet.
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All of it and their WILL be a test later. :)
I would say, read the combat section, the spell section except spell descriptions and the GM section. If you do that and you know 3.5 decently you could run a game.
Now with that said i would recommend before each game decided what you are going to run and then read those parts. Have a Wizard NPC? read the wizard class section then and read up on any spells, feats, skills he takes.
If you do that, you break up the reading into smaller parts and before you know it, you will have read the whole book.
I was wondering what parts I could sip over with out much problem. I have all ready decided to skip reading all of the character classes in there entirety. I will be dming my first game so I will not even have my own pc, so I figured this can wait, also I was thinking about skipping reading the entire skill descriptions for all of the skills. I ave read the first part regarding acquiring ranks and the rules associated with skills.
Basically I just want to speed up my reading so I can get to dming the game fr a new group.
So which parts if any could I skip over and read as they come up in game or read later?
Hmm. Yeah you need to read everything. If you're learning it (and by you I mean the group as well as yourself) so you don't get overwhelmed I'd suggest going about it like this:
Read the Races. They're important.
Read the Classes that the players want to use. If no one is going to be a bard or a druid or the like don't worry about them.
tip might want to restrict the players to being barbarians/fighters/sorcerers/paladin/rogue. They're the most straight forward out of all of them. the other classes are a lot of fun, but can be very confusing to beginners.
READ THE SKILLS. This is as big as combat. Sometimes used in combat, but basically the plot is guided by skill checks. There's a basic pattern to everything. Roll a d20, add your bonus. 'Normal' challenges need a DC (or result of 10). Harder stuff 15. Very difficult things that only someone really skilled should be able to do 20 or more.
Equipment: mostly the arms and armor. Most of the other equipment is fluff. Yes, the fluff is important but when you're learning the ropes don't worry so much about if they have flint and tender to start their camp fire.
Magic: Read how magic works, read the first spells that can be cast for any player characters (so if there's a cleric, read the 0 and 1 st level and any 'domain' spells he has.)
Combat: Read thoroughly. Then make up a mock combat and see if you remember how it goes.
*make sure you know how charge works
*make sure you know what attacks of opportunity are
Monsters: Stick to something basic, ideally non-magic wielding baddies. Fight some orcs, fight a giant frog or two, but avoid something with like 10 special abilities and lots of magic. You'll either use him incorrectly, in which case the evil wizard is an unsatisfying pushover, or your players will in their inexperience get totally owned by him because 'they didn't know he could do that.' At most, have the magic/special abilities guys be of mook/fodder level so you can play around with them but they don't really have the capability to explode everyone. Magic in PF/DnD is one of those really works or really doesn't kind of scenarios.
Additional rules: mostly its the various status effects, and details. Don't worry about carry weight and overland speeds. As long as your players aren't trying to do something ridiculous like carry a kitchen on their backs, earn your wings first.
Don't worry about prestige classes. You can skim environments and most of the other stuff. Again, good stuff, but get the basics first.
Tip: You're gonna make mistakes, but so what? As long as everyone is having fun. In moments of uncertainty, make a call, pick a number, make a rule- as long as whatever you decide feels fair, you're in the green. Don't be afraid to endanger the players, that's the DM's job. Make a story. Ideally, you want to push them as close to potential defeat as possible. But if they get killed, well sometimes some of the heroes die in stories.
DM'ing is the art of subtlety playing to lose.
I'm going to disagree with everyone here and say "read only what you need." Start a game at first level. Don't read all the races and classes. Skim them. Once your group has picked characters, go ahead and read the races and classes that they picked. But only worry about the first couple of levels. Skim the skills section. Skip the feats until your player's have picked them. Read the feats they picked.
The two sections you should definitely read are "Getting Started" and "Gamemastering". Getting Started has a list of Common Terms that is very important, several things are only defined there and I skipped over it on my first read through.
Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Read enough about combat that you feel you can have an orc hit a goblin and vice versa. Then grab a 1st level module and have at it. If you have experience in older games, something simple like Keep on the Borderlands is a classic and easy to convert.
I really think that learn as you go is the best way, especially with an entirely new group. You'll pick it up pretty fast.
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Thanks for all the feedback guys. I have decided that since I am totally new to this game, as well as all of the player, i will jus read all of the book.
I also have decided to take notes on certain things, like taking ten or 20, how to lvl your character, and combat stuff like different actions, and stuff like that.
She's not kidding... players will test you constantly.All of it and their WILL be a test later. :)
If they ask you about Wish spells, the answer is no.
I was wondering what parts I could sip over with out much problem. I have all ready decided to skip reading all of the character classes in there entirety. I will be dming my first game so I will not even have my own pc, so I figured this can wait, also I was thinking about skipping reading the entire skill descriptions for all of the skills. I ave read the first part regarding acquiring ranks and the rules associated with skills.
Alpha. You must always know what you didn't know last session. Take note of rules that you did not know during a game session and studying them before the next session. As a GM this should be a want.
1. You need to know the combat section like the back of your hand.
2. You need to fully understand the strengths or weaknesses of whatever your putting your players up against.(This can't wait until just before the session beings) This includes all the spell descriptions that your monsters might cast.
3. You need to read the description of any conditions that the players might face(the conditions are in the glossary. They are very important)
4. You need to fully understand the strengths or weaknesses of your players characters. (This is only slightly less important because they will also know there characters.) This includes all the spell descriptions that your players characters might cast.
Having a lot of experienced players around is also very good but just because they know how a rule works does not mean that you know. Always know what you didn't know last session.
The core rulebook is virtually a collage text book(it even has little examples and a glossary.) Making notecards and studying are not bad ideas.
A GM must (grok) the rules.