New player / gm needs help :)

[Kazuma]

Hello everyone im 31 year old guy from Holland,
i have been interested in tabletop rpg's for a long time, but after watching the community college episode (D&D) several times i decided it was time to start playing.

i gathered a group of friends and to my luck they all wanted to play pathfinder, so i went and got the beginners box along with the core rule, the bestiary 1 book and gm guide,
We've played through the beginners box with 6 players and me as gm and we all loved it.

as i am really new to pathfinder or any tabletop rpg i bought the rise of the runelords adventure path, i think it will arrive next week.

i started last week making some PC's from scratch so i have a better understanding of them and i can help my players with creating them,

i have a couple questions but ill start with one,
some characters can get a companion like ranger druids and wizards but i have no idea how to create them (do i need to make a new character sheet for the companion) and how they work in-game (do i treat them like a 7th player at the table or does the companion attacks instead of the PC)

greetings Kazuma

[the Queen's Raven]

the druid has all the info in the core book for building and running animal companions for druids and rangers. And yes they can be powerful enough to be similar to a 7th player since they usually act on their own turn based on instructions that the druid or ranger gave them. this leaves the druid or ranger to have their own actions on their own turn. Familiars for wizards and a sorcerer (with arcane blood line) is more of a "oh hey look I have a per owl" they can help deliver spells for the caster but not a whole let else unless the time and feats are invested in it. and yes a character sheet for either animal companions or familiars is helpful. Try looking into the character folio there is a PDF version you can download and print out just the pages you want for each character.

[7heprofessor]

You can make a separate sheet if you want to, or just jot some notes down on scratch paper. They have few stats and don't gain very many abilities so they're not difficult to manage.

As far as treating them like another player, just treat them like that character gets two separate sets of actions. They're pretty powerful, but far from unmanageable.

Either way...just my 2 cp