Director of Brand Strategy
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Yes. We have a lot of pregens in the works right now, with the help of some skilled volunteers hand-picked to assist in the process. Included in those are the three APG classes that were taken down this summer due to some design issues. I can't promise they'll be in the first batch to come out, nor when that batch will see the light of day, but we're working on them.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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With respect, Mark: why?
It's the nature of the Advanced Players' Guide classes to be, well, advanced, and more difficult to play than the core classes. Even at 4th level, there's a lot going on with an alchemist or cavalier pre-gen. If the idea of a pre-gen is to allow someone to sit at a table with an unfamiliar character and play effectively, the APG classes make that much harder than the more easily-understood core classes.
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As an aside, and with apologies if this distorts the topic of the thread:
Over the past couple of months, I've seen players continually struggle with the pre-gens, and I've concluded that much of the reason is the presentation on the page. The pre-gens are displayed in the five-section stat block format. This is a familiar format to every game master, because it's how all the monsters are presented in the Bestiaries, and how all the NPCs are presented in the scenarios, modules, and adventure paths.
But for someone who has only played the game, and not GMed, the stat block is opaque. All the skills are one place, except for Perception. Dexterity is in one section, Initiative bonus is in another, and Reflex saves are somewhere else. A lot of the bonuses are already factored into attack rolls, so it's hard to determine the effects of, say, Strength damage, or picking up a shield.
I'm not saying that the stat block isn't useful for those people familiar with it, but I am saying that I got a lot out of the Wizards Design & Development column that walked us through the reasons behind its layout.
If we could present the pre-gens in a HeroLab-style sheet, it would look a lot more like the character sheets that most folks have grown used to seeing, and it would be a lot easier for new players.
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why?
The primary function of PFS is a marketing avenue for Pathfinder. So, by having pregens from the various "optional" books allows a player to test a class out before investing in the entire book. It also brings visibility to "cool" classes that a player may not know exist and the pregen could direct them to buy the book it is built from.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Fair enough. I can appreciate that line of reasoning, even if I disagree with its implementation. (I'm not that setting a new player down with a complicated 7th-level alchemist or gunslinger pre-gen is necessarily going to persuade him to buy the sourcebook.)
Is there going to be a Magus pre-gen?
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I know in my own experience players have wanted to play a wide variety of classes with the pregens. I have had a lot of dissapointed new players because they could not pick up a pregen of something like a bard or barbarian. Plus APG pregens will let players play around with the classes of those books, and encourage them to buy that book. Which is a good marketing strategy for Paizo.
My guess why the NPC/monster stat block is used is because it is fairly easy to pick up and find everything you need. With the traditional character sheet, things like special abilities are not explained, but are with the NPC stat block. It might be a bit cumbersome for a player who has never GMed or given the Bestiary a good look over. But I do not think it is that hard to figure out, especially if someone at the table can tell them where the things they need to find are.
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Over the past couple of months, I've seen players continually struggle with the pre-gens, and I've concluded that much of the reason is the presentation on the page.
Have you noticed an improvement in understanding the pre-gens with the ones released around GenCon (rogue, cleric, fighter, wizard) or is this based off earlier versions of them?
I think the newer versions are straight-forward and do a better job of explaining details, as opposed to before when abilities were just copy and pasted out of the book. Valeros has some pretty short, but concise descriptions that let you know why the statblock is handling things in certain ways. The other benefit of the pregens being more concise and straightforward is that coordinators don't have to print out multiple pages to give to one person, it's just one sheet. Having everything on a single page means a person doesn't have to go hunting like before (because the older versions had like 2 pages worth of information).
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Have you noticed an improvement in understanding the pre-gens with the ones released around GenCon (rogue, cleric, fighter, wizard) or is this based off earlier versions of them?
Some, but both versions. As an example, an inexperienced player was using the new 7th-level fighter pregen at the Fields of Honor convention a couple weeks ago. The line for Valeros' melee damage reads:
+2 longsword +12/+7 (1d8+8/19–20) and +1 short sword +11/+6
(1d6+6/19–20) or
+2 longsword +14/+9 (1d8+8/19–20) or
+1 short sword +13/+8 (1d6+6/19–20)
So, what's Valeros' bonus to attack? The fellow figured +2 with the longsword, and +1 with the shortsword. It was several combats into the module before anyone else realized that he was misreading the sheet.
Sure, somebody here will roll his eyes and say that everybody understands how BAB works, and what "+12/+7 (1d8+8/19–20)*" means. And my experience suggests otherwise.
* The player pronounced that "one d-eight plus eight ninteenths minus 20". He'd played 3.5 for years, but (a) never GMed, and (b) was used to other people helping him build his characters and leveling them up.
By the way, how much of that stat block do you need to unpack mentally to understand what Valeros' damage is, if he attacks with his longsword 2-handed?
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Yes. We have a lot of pregens in the works right now, with the help of some skilled volunteers hand-picked to assist in the process. Included in those are the three APG classes that were taken down this summer due to some design issues. I can't promise they'll be in the first batch to come out, nor when that batch will see the light of day, but we're working on them.
Thanks.
Are the old versions still legal for play?
I plan to run some of the sanctioned modules and want to make sure what options the players might have if they do not choose to make a new character on their own.
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As an example, an inexperienced player was using the new 7th-level fighter pregen at the Fields of Honor convention a couple weeks ago...
To be honest, that's the first problem. In general an inexperienced person shouldn't be placed in a 7-11 game. That being said, using the "stat block" method to present the pregen is the best way that I personally can think to put down a character sheet. In fact, my personal character sheets are simply word documents in the same form as a stat block. I understand that it isn't always possible to seat a new player at a 1st level game, but that would be the goal.
Also pregens have other uses than just for new, inexperienced, players. Replay, new experienced players, 3-person tables, forgot all your characters, etc. are all valid reasons to have pregens.
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* The player pronounced that "one d-eight plus eight ninteenths minus 20". He'd played 3.5 for years, but (a) never GMed, and (b) was used to other people helping him build his characters and leveling them up.
My first inclination is to say that no one could play 3.5 for years and be that clueless (4e maybe, because it is far more different), but I know some "highly educated" people who couldn't understand the concept of THAC0 after 10 years of play.
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Are the old versions still legal for play?
I plan to run some of the sanctioned modules and want to make sure what options the players might have if they do not choose to make a new character on their own.
I highly recommend against using the old APG pre-gens.
The old pre-gens had a few mechanical issues. The APG ones had the most severe one: they were built on a 15 point buy.I think this was because they were originally constructed for general play, and brought over to PFS.
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My goal is to have pre-generated characters for every class, including the Magus, at 1st, 4th, and 7th levels. It may take a month or two, but every class will be available in the near future.
I also have someone working on updating the 3 APG classes that are currently available to bring them up to the same quality as the other pre-generated characters.
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My goal is to have pre-generated characters for every class, including the Magus, at 1st, 4th, and 7th levels. It may take a month or two, but every class will be available in the near future.
I also have someone working on updating the 3 APG classes that are currently available to bring them up to the same quality as the other pre-generated characters.
I know this is a huge necro, but whatever happened to this?
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I know this is a huge necro, but whatever happened to this?My goal is to have pre-generated characters for every class, including the Magus, at 1st, 4th, and 7th levels. It may take a month or two, but every class will be available in the near future.
I also have someone working on updating the 3 APG classes that are currently available to bring them up to the same quality as the other pre-generated characters.
Life? Deadlines? Alternate priorities? Your pick...doesn't matter much which it was really.
It's been restated much more recently, soon after they made the ACG pre-gens available actually, that the plan has once again percolated towards the top of the workload and probably after the holidays/RPG superstar they might have a chance to get the others out.
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There are pregens already available in Master of the Fallen Fortress. Is there some flaw in those that makes them not good enough?
Baseline issue, they're 15 pt buys...so were the APG pregens they released for PFS when the APG came out. It was one of the reasons they were retired when the UC pregens came out.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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@David: it depends. Pregens aren't complex in the same places as normal characters. For example, constructing an eidolon correctly is something that often goes wrong, but it's not an issue with pregens. On the other hand, alchemists are clearly more complex than fighters.
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Ok, so any updates?
I found these recently, which include the APG pregens at 1st, 7th, and 12th, like the NPC Codex pregens. http://www.pathfindercommunity.net/iconic-characters
It also has a Seltyiel version at 1st level, but I am not sure where the original, discarded drafts could be found to check and revise from that precedent. For now, these are the versions I will be using for my Dream Arena scenes, where the PCs can combat all sorts of things in the arena, including evil versions of themselves. :) How fortunate that Liz Courts recently posted a forum design challenge based around that very villainous concept of changing all the non-evil pregen iconics into evil versions. Muahahahahaha! [ See Am I Evil? (Yes I Am.) {Paizo Blog} ]