How many expansion books are allowed?

[BillyN831]

First game tonight. May have to ask the game master, but how many expansion books are allowed in addition to the core rule book in creating a character? Thankee.

[aobst128]

Any and all typically. All common options anyways. Most of what's in Guns and Gears is uncommon for instance and you should ask your gm about those options.

[NielsenE]

Ifs its a home game, ask the GM.

If its a PFS game, check the Character Options. In general most books are allowed, but various character options are more restricted. There's no 'only N books at once" rule though.

[BillyN831]

Thank you.

[BillyN831]

I would go bonkers and jump on my bed given the choice to make a murdered villager with his village. Only to raise from the dead with a vengeance against the antagonist ha.

[Leon Aquilla]

If it's developed and published by Paizo under the Pathfinder 2e (NOT Pathfinder Infinite) brand: all of them unless the GM says you can't use something.

Things that are flagged with the Uncommon/Rare tag means "Ask your GM first"

[SaveVersus]

Common: You're Good.
Uncommon/Rare: Check with your GM

If your GM doesn't have the book: CHECK WITH YOUR GM (no matter the rarity)... and send them the Archives of Nethys link.

For Example: Your GM doesn't have the Book of the Dead and you want to take the Skeleton ancestry. https://2e.aonprd.com/Ancestries.aspx?ID=50

[Ascalaphus]

There's no game rule saying how many books you're allowed to use.

In a home game, it's always up to the GM. Quite a few GMs aren't thrilled about players picking stuff from books they've never read themselves for example. Or might decide that all of this guns stuff isn't really the flavor they want for their campaign. Stuff like that.

The game uses Common/Uncommon/Rare as a bit of a starting assumption. If a book is allowed then you can normally expect the Common stuff to be allowed no questions asked, Uncommon means ask GM and maybe yes, and Rare is reserved for like quest rewards. All of that can be changed of course, but you need some kind of starting assumption to begin with.

[Blake's Tiger]

If it's not a PFS game where the Character Options page tells you what is and isn't allowed, then the answer should always be, "Talk to your GM."

None of us know what your GM has in mind for his campaign, and they may be prepared to do character creation with you at the first all using only the CRB for all we know.

[PossibleCabbage]

The rarity system is roughly what follows:

Common: You can just take/have this for whatever it costs (a feat, some money) without asking anybody.

Uncommon: It's a 50/50 balance between "you can just have it" and "the GM needs to work it into the story somehow" (this doesn't have to be a big thing, it just could be "the blacksmith in this small village doesn't know how to make a katana." There are many uncommon things where access is granted by various rules (e.g. "being from a specific place.")

Rare: You never get this just based on your choices. This is always something that GM has to allow specifically. There are many reasons something can be rare and some of them can be easily rubber-stamped (e.g. these types of people are mostly in one place, which is not this place, but you can be one who traveled, sure.) and some of them are bigger choices (e.g. it's impossible to run a "whodunnit" when magically you can tell who is lying).