Premade Characters

[Naquotar]

Does anybody know if there are any premade characters for the various beta tests? I'm currently needing to make a 12th level character and I just don't have the will to do it myself.

I would appreciate it if anybody can point me in the right direction if premade character sheets have been made for levels above 1, or if anybody is willing to share.

Thank you.

[David knott 242]

Other than the iconic pregens included in the playtest bundle, I am not aware of any such characters.

I do not recall which levels these characters cover, and I don't think they have kept up with the rules updates.

[Dasrak]

Here's a dwarf fighter/paladin/barbarian, with equipment that matches the requirement of the Heroes of Undarin scenario (which I presume is what you're playing).

The idea of the build is to have both the Retributive Strike of the Paladin and the Attack of Opportunity of the fighter (along with combat reflexes) to get lots of free attacks, and ideally convince the demons to attack your high HP dwarf rather than squishier allies. You have a very high to-hit bonus, and you have the certain strike feat to guarantee some damage even when you miss. The forceful property of the falchion (don't forget to apply it! It's a big damage boost) and the barbarian rage synergize very well with certain strike.

This build works best if it receives the holy rune for the group, or if your GM is lenient enough to allow you to have a +3 cold iron falchion. This allows you to deal bonus damage due to the demon's weakness, which is very nice thanks to your high chance of landing a hit with certainstrike. Buffs and debuffs are obviously welcome, as is flanking. Other than the tricky part of remembering all your bonuses, it's pretty straightforward to play.

Also you have the trick magic item feat, master in religion, and assurance in religion, which allows you to activate low-level wands. So if your healers are downed, you can use a wand to bring them back up in a pinch.

[Naquotar]

That is awesome, thank you very much for this. My friend wants to run that game this weekend, but I just don't have the hours it takes to build a suitable character for the one-off game.

[MaxAstro]

Awesome build, Dasrak.

[Nettah]

Looks like a really strong character outfitted well as a demonslayer, maybe you should have called him Gotrek instead. You still have some gold to spend on consumables. Mistform Elixir is generally one of my go-to, the 20% miss chance is really good. I'm not sure whether it's important or not, but I might want to grab a +2 combosite bow with a property rune over the ring of acid resistance just to have a ranged option if the need should arise, but maybe him always running headlong into the enemy is part of his RP charm.

[Dasrak]

Nettah wrote:

You still have some gold to spend on consumables. Mistform Elixir is generally one of my go-to, the 20% miss chance is really good. I'm not sure whether it's important or not, but I might want to grab a +2 combosite bow with a property rune over the ring of acid resistance just to have a ranged option if the need should arise, but maybe him always running headlong into the enemy is part of his RP charm.

All good points, and easy adjustments if Naquotar wants to make them. Heck, you could even use the Combat Flexibility class feature to gain the Point Blank Shot feat and make use of a composite longbow without suffering the volley penalty if you like.

Also, minor correction, I accidentally mentioned combat reflexes in the earlier post; this guy doesn't have that feat. I must have been mixing this guy up with a different build. It's not a huge deal (though combat reflexes would be a nice feat choice if he had the room for it) but I thought I'd mention that to avoid any confusion.

[Excaliburproxy]

Dasrak wrote:

Here's a dwarf fighter/paladin/barbarian, with equipment that matches the requirement of the Heroes of Undarin scenario (which I presume is what you're playing).

The idea of the build is to have both the Retributive Strike of the Paladin and the Attack of Opportunity of the fighter (along with combat reflexes) to get lots of free attacks, and ideally convince the demons to attack your high HP dwarf rather than squishier allies. You have a very high to-hit bonus, and you have the certain strike feat to guarantee some damage even when you miss. The forceful property of the falchion (don't forget to apply it! It's a big damage boost) and the barbarian rage synergize very well with certain strike.

This build works best if it receives the holy rune for the group, or if your GM is lenient enough to allow you to have a +3 cold iron falchion. This allows you to deal bonus damage due to the demon's weakness, which is very nice thanks to your high chance of landing a hit with certainstrike. Buffs and debuffs are obviously welcome, as is flanking. Other than the tricky part of remembering all your bonuses, it's pretty straightforward to play.

Also you have the trick magic item feat, master in religion, and assurance in religion, which allows you to activate low-level wands. So if your healers are downed, you can use a wand to bring them back up in a pinch.

Ha. I love this build. I would go with a glaive rather than a falchion for the reach/retributive strike synergy but this is probably the best Undarin build that I have seen.

[Starfox]

Excaliburproxy wrote:

Dasrak wrote:

Here's a dwarf fighter/paladin/barbarian...

Ha. I love this build...

Wasn't one of the design goals of PF2 to reduce the required system mastery? That seems to have failed soundly, and they are making it worse and worse by introducing more and more timmy options. :(

[Naquotar]

We played for 6+ hours today and got through two encounters...so much rules checking, ability checking, dice rolling.

I did really enjoy the character though, but it is becoming more and more obvious that I will not be able to play this game regularly without a character management program that remembers all of the abilities and modifiers and conditions and etc for me.

[Edge93]

As a note, if you do end up with both Cold Iron and Holy you will deal extra weakness damage twice on demons, according to a fairly recent thread by Mark Seifter explaining more detail on how Weakness works. I'll link it later if I can find it again.

Also when I saw this post I was ready to offer my Half-Elf Fighter with Forceful Strike and a Cold Iron Orc Necksplitter among other things. He's been a monster in Undarin. But then I saw this was well covered. XD

[pauljathome]

Naquotar wrote:

We played for 6+ hours today and got through two encounters...so much rules checking, ability checking, dice rolling.

I did really enjoy the character though, but it is becoming more and more obvious that I will not be able to play this game regularly without a character management program that remembers all of the abilities and modifiers and conditions and etc for me.

We managed to get through 3 encounters in "only" 5 1/4 hours. NOT including the hour we spent on figuring out who got what magic, characters exploring, etc.

A significant portion of that was looking up rules and everybody being unfamiliar with their characters.

But a lot of it (probably most, certainly at least 1/2) was the fact that the rules are still pretty darn complicated and fiddly. And, of course, combat by design takes longer.

One of the stated goals of PF2 was to significantly simplify play. I think that currently they're failing in that goal. I'm not sure if it is a little more complicated, a little less complicated or about the same. But what it is NOT is SIGNIFICANTLY less complicated.

The tight math slows things down a fair bit at times. While in PF1 one could often go "Hit" without worrying about how much, now one very often has to do the math to make sure that it isn't a crit. There are still quite a few different (and transitory) bonuses and penalties flying around.

[Edge93]

pauljathome wrote:

Naquotar wrote:

We played for 6+ hours today and got through two encounters...so much rules checking, ability checking, dice rolling.

I did really enjoy the character though, but it is becoming more and more obvious that I will not be able to play this game regularly without a character management program that remembers all of the abilities and modifiers and conditions and etc for me.

We managed to get through 3 encounters in "only" 5 1/4 hours. NOT including the hour we spent on figuring out who got what magic, characters exploring, etc.

A significant portion of that was looking up rules and everybody being unfamiliar with their characters.

But a lot of it (probably most, certainly at least 1/2) was the fact that the rules are still pretty darn complicated and fiddly. And, of course, combat by design takes longer.

One of the stated goals of PF2 was to significantly simplify play. I think that currently they're failing in that goal. I'm not sure if it is a little more complicated, a little less complicated or about the same. But what it is NOT is SIGNIFICANTLY less complicated.

The tight math slows things down a fair bit at times. While in PF1 one could often go "Hit" without worrying about how much, now one very often has to do the math to make sure that it isn't a crit. There are still quite a few different (and transitory) bonuses and penalties flying around.

Honestly my group has been having 1-2 hour combats too but that's actually quite a bit shorter than what we've historically had in PF1, with PF2 fights lasting for more rounds on top of it. We've personally been finding the rules much less complex. I feel like a lot of the issue isn't complicated rules but new rules. A lot of us here know PF1 like the back of our hands. We don't have to look stuff up as much not because it's simpler but because we know it by heart.

Just to give an example, "Oh, you're stunned, well you lose your Dex mod to AC (Which also means you lose dodge bonuses). You also drop held items and take another -4 to AC". This is by no means a simple condition, but we know it by rote from experience. Admittedly this is more complex than some PF1 conditions but not all. Heck, even to this day I sometimes have to look up the grappled condition to remember certain things it allows and disallows.

So while there may be some stuff that needs fine tuning still I think it's far more a matter of experience than complexity. For my group our PF2 looking stuff up battles are quicker than our PF1 not looking stuff up battles and FAR quicker than our PF1 looking stuff up battles (Despite what I said about experience there are still spells I've never heard of and when someone plays a Psionic or Path of War class it's even slower because I'm less familiar with them. I do know those two are 3rd party content but still. There are still slowdowns in PF1 within Paizo content that exceed anything I've seen in PF2).

Just an alternate take to consider, that the newness of the rules could be an equal or greater factor than the complexity. I for one find most of the conditions quite simple for example but I have yet to commit them all to memory. So far I just have the basic Enfeebled-Sluggish-Drained-Stupefied-Frightened-Sick-Enervated set down.

[Dasrak]

pauljathome wrote:

We managed to get through 3 encounters in "only" 5 1/4 hours. NOT including the hour we spent on figuring out who got what magic, characters exploring, etc.

We managed to get through five encounters over the course of two sessions totaling 8 hours. We're still going strong (everyone is standing, none of the casters have touched their 6th level slots yet, healer still has more than half of his healing power left, spell point reserves are plentiful, etc) so it's unlikely the party is going doing any time soon.

Heroes of Undarin is definitely a marathon, and at this rate it's easily shooting to be twice as long as any of the previous chapters in order to run it.