| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I know it's not quite as cute as having an ABC character system (Ancestry, Background, Class), but virtually anyone with any experience in nearly any RPG will advise their players to pick a class first instead of an ancestry. Sure, ABC makes sense in terms of chronological order of events - you're born, you go through life, and then you become a level 1 adventurer - but in terms of making life much easier for new players, most should be picking a class that looks fun/cool and then]/i] picking an ancestry and background.
This puts the most mechanically impactful decision first and lets a new player use that Key Ability to guide all their other decisions, without needing to go back and redo certain steps because oh it turns out this background doesn't gel with the class I picked or the ancestry feat I picked out like that first step told me to is kinda redundant considering my class or I should have gone for the variant boosts because the ancestry I liked has a penalty to my class's Key Ability.
I know it won't ever really be changed in PF2e, but maybe by PF3e we could make that small change to set players up for success, especially those that really need a step-by-step list to learn. Obviously anyone can do any of the steps out of order, but that requires a certain level of confidence that a player not used to very crunchy RPG's might not yet have, and since they are unlikely to have any set preferences about the "right" way to make a character that's a prime opportunity to nudge them closer to what seems to work for [i]most people.
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
I argue that for the majority of players they either:
A. Have system knowledge enough to not be hindered.
B. Are so new they are probably better off choosing an ancestry and then background before class, because both help form the idea of a character for a new player.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
Not to mention If I recall the first actual step is concept, which would/should vaguely include what kind of stuff you vaguely want to do.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I argue that for the majority of players they either:
A. Have system knowledge enough to not be hindered.
B. Are so new they are probably better off choosing an ancestry and then background before class, because both help form the idea of a character for a new player.
I mean, I'd say a class also helps form the idea of a character for a new player. It just also has the advantage of working out more smoothly and more naturally resulting in a reasonably functioning character if someone is learning the system step by step, since knowing what a Key Ability is and what yours is more naturally guides even brand new players to getting that 18 in their attack, rather than the kinda common sight of a new player picking attributes that are irrelevant to their class because at the time they didn't know what that class would be.
The class entries in general have useful build advice for novices to know which attributes to prioritize, so then when they go to pick their ancestry they might know to opt for the variant boosts without having to backtrack and redo any steps, and might have a better picture of what ancestry feat will complement their class. And then leaving the background for last lets that step do its job of being flexible, filling in the gaps from the prior two steps rather than a player investing in a lot of INT before they notice their class's advice says that INT isn't very useful for their class.
I'd say that starting with ancestry + background is actually better left as more of an advanced thing, something a player might want to do if they've got a picture in their head already or are already familiar enough with the system to go looking for a class that might work well with it, or are otherwise experienced enough that they can handle their attributes not being quite as optimized as they should be without struggling too much during 2e's more difficult early levels.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There should be general guidelines at the beginning of the chapter for boosts :
1. Get your attack modifier to max-1 at least.
2. Get your DEX to your armor's DEX cap.
3. Max your saves, except for REF if you go Heavy armor.
Maxing your saves is a very good advice, but only for level 10+. At low level, you can live without maxed out saves.
As for the DEX cap, it depends on what you play. If you're playing a second line character you can also live with a lower dex than your cap. On the frontline, on the other hand, I agree that it's important.Advice 1 on the other hand is a no-brainer.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Not to mention If I recall the first actual step is concept, which would/should vaguely include what kind of stuff you vaguely want to do.
Yeah, that was my first thought too. Concept is what you should be starting your character build with.
Starting with Class first makes sense if you are theorycrafting a mechanically powerful and optimized stat block.
Its weird because I don't really think of a lot of concepts were the ancestry is important enough to pick first.
It depends on if the concept is based on the class, or if the concept exists first and is trying to find a class that matches.
I'm a Gnome wanderer who talks to the dead. That's the concept.
So Ancestry is pretty much set.
Started as a Medium in PF1.
In PF2 I have been theorycrafted and rebuilt repeatedly.
For Background, since Secrets of Magic came out, Seer of the Dead was top pick. But once Book of the Dead released, Willing Host replaced it.
As for class... Well, Animist isn't even fully released yet. Before the playtest not quite a month ago, I have used anything from Psychic with Exorcist archetype, to Ancestors Oracle. Sometimes Thaumaturge.
Also with the release of Animist Playtest, I have more freedom of choice in background and can use that for more of the 'wanderer' mechanics instead of having to use background to try and get the 'speaks to the dead' mechanics going.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Not to mention If I recall the first actual step is concept, which would/should vaguely include what kind of stuff you vaguely want to do.Yeah, that was my first thought too. Concept is what you should be starting your character build with.
Starting with Class first makes sense if you are theorycrafting a mechanically powerful and optimized stat block.
As The Gleeful Grognard said, experienced players have their own ways of building their characters. During Session Zero, I give the following advice to new players, "Imagine your character as a fictional person from a fantasy novel with humans, elves, dwarves, and other species along with enchanted swords and magic spells. What do you want to do during combat? What do you want to do in town dealing with people? Once you have that figured out, I and the experienced players will help you fit that fictional character into the rules for Pathfinder."
The best way to start a character is as a fictional person. The Ancestry, Background, Class, feats, and gear are merely tools to create that person in Golarion.
|
Not to mention If I recall the first actual step is concept, which would/should vaguely include what kind of stuff you vaguely want to do.Yeah, that was my first thought too. Concept is what you should be starting your character build with.
Starting with Class first makes sense if you are theorycrafting a mechanically powerful and optimized stat block.
As The Gleeful Grognard said, experienced players have their own ways of building their characters. During Session Zero, I give the following advice to new players, "Imagine your character as a fictional person from a fantasy novel with humans, elves, dwarves, and other species along with enchanted swords and magic spells. What do you want to do during combat? What do you want to do in town dealing with people? Once you have that figured out, I and the experienced players will help you fit that fictional character into the rules for Pathfinder."
The best way to start a character is as a fictional person. The Ancestry, Background, Class, feats, and gear are merely tools to create that person in Golarion.
For people who do not have system mastery, a few guidelines to build a viable PC that fits their concept seems valuable to me.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The ABC ordering is most useful to someone who doesn't know anything about the game, which is also the person who needs advice the most. For people unfamiliar with Pathfinder's systems it's common to know what kind of character you want to play before you know what class that character would be.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
It only matters for new players, and for new players Class alone is an overwhelming choice, which asks questions of them they will have no idea how to answer, and doing Ancestry and Background first can set them up to start answering.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I would be fine with players riding a CAB (Class, Ancestry, Background) through character creation. Additionally, if I were making these changes I would also include the iconic character's build for that class on the page opposite the page that introduces the class. This would give very new players an example of what the PF2 classes are and what a character of that class might look like. Then they can backfill the details about who their [class] really is.
|
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
My main advice would be "you aren't locked into your choices when you flip to the next chapter". Making a character should be a process of going back and forth. After looking at classes you might have a new take on ancestries. After looking at ancestries you might want to revisit your class choice.
Put me in the "it really depends on the character concept" camp.
Yes, there are some concepts (e.g., unarmed combat) that are harder to successfully implement without a specific class (monk). However, there are (especially now, several years in) still options that can work with a bit of system mastery that might suit the concept better (e.g., playtest exemplar reflavoring the mind weapon from mind smith archetype as a Titan Breaker glowing fist; or just an Animal/Ape instinct barbarian with the martial artist archetype).
In most cases, the concept could be realized with several different classes depending on the specific flavor the player wants and/or how it integrates with the rest of the character choices and campaign expectations.
The "choose your class first" camp often seems to have a narrower view of "class roles" being "hard-coded" (usually in pursuit of some "optimal" result) instead of taking a more holistic approach.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The ABC ordering is most useful to someone who doesn't know anything about the game, which is also the person who needs advice the most.
I'm not really sure that's the case. When I introduce new players to PF2, the focus tends to be on what cool things they can do and how to do it, not what species they are or what job they had before they became an adventurer.
Those are important for fleshing out a character idea, but a new player isn't usually always at that point yet. They need to understand what the system can offer them and what they can do within it.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
When I've introduced new players to TTRPGs, sometimes I don't even give them sheets for the first session or two. I just ask them to tell me what kind of character they'd like to play and have them tell me what they're doing in combat. After that session, I build a character that fits what they were already doing naturally.
If they're new to the system but not TTRPGs I just run a longer session 0 and make sure that they have at least a rough build down on paper before I start planning session 1.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Its weird because I don't really think of a lot of concepts were the ancestry is important enough to pick first.
I can't think of any concepts that don't already have an Ancestry.
How are you picturing a character and have no idea whether they're a goblin or a plant?Anyway, when you're building a character you probably have both settled before you start to build. You choose then together, but I usually start building ancestry-first.
I try always to write the character's bio before I get into nitty-gritty details like things that go on the character sheet.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Its weird because I don't really think of a lot of concepts were the ancestry is important enough to pick first.I can't think of any concepts that don't already have an Ancestry.
How are you picturing a character and have no idea whether they're a goblin or a plant?Anyway, when you're building a character you probably have both settled before you start to build. You choose then together, but I usually start building ancestry-first.
I have made a whole bunch of characters where ancestry is one of the last things I decide on
I have made a whole bunch of characters where ancestry is one of the last things I decide on
Well, sure. So have I. Especially when theorycrafting characters rather than building one that I intend to play in an actual game.
But how does that have anything to do with what the proper and correct order the rules present the options should be in? The rulebook has to list them out in some order - they can't be printed one on top of the other on the page, that would be unreadable.
Picking ancestry first makes sense from a character envisioning perspective. Even if not from a crafting a character for a mechanical purpose perspective.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Let me reminisce about the characters I created in Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder to see whether I started with ancestry, class, or concept. I am skipping other game systems because they have different options about species and class. For example, in the Serenity Roleplaying Game, based on the Firefly television show, human was the only species and classes were merely skill sets.
In Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in college in 1980, I created a human monk. Next, a human druid. The class was important to me, the race was not. In D&D 2nd Edition in 1993, I made a human cleric. Next, a halfling rogue. I was starting to branch out on race.
My first Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition character was a gnome paladin. The human-only restriction on paladins was removed, so I wanted to try a non-human paladin. The next one was a pregenerated character, Ember the human monk, in a boxed game with my daughter and her friends. The third one was in a long-playing game that started as D&D 3.0 but switched over to D&D 3.5. I decided to play a cleric, but did not want to a heavily armored healbot, so I made an archer cleric. I chose elven race for the proficiency in longbow. The next D&D game was a demonstration campaign in my church's gaming group, where I made a human cleric to be conventional. And my younger daughter ran a one-shot D&D module, so to be silly I played an ogre-mage sorcerer.
In the Kingdoms of Kalamar variant of D&D I made a dwarven bard to be unconventional. In the Iron Kingdoms variant of D&D I played a human cleric/ranger because my family insisted I play a cleric of their god of mathematics Cyriss. In D&D 4th edition, I played a dwarven paladin.
Then came Pathfinder. My wife and elder daughter returned from a demo game at the Family Game Store, where they had liked the game enough to purchase the rulebook, but their characters had been defeated by orcs and could I please make a character to rescue them? I had a human ranger because ranger seemed like a good class to track down missing people.
My wife decided to run the Rise of the Runelords adventure path at the game store. I thought that the Pathfinder design on the gnome was worth trying out. I looked over the Golarion lore, decided that he was a young gnome following the faith of Desna who had decided to explore. Ranger seemed a good class for wandering the world, so he became a gnome ranger: What to do with a Gnome Ranger Monk?
After that I was mostly a forever GM. However, my elder daughter had played a gnome barbarian in a Pathfinder game with my wife. When she moved to Seattle, she left her character sheet with us. A few months later my wife persuaded me to join the game. Instead of inventing a new character, I played the gnome barbarian returning to the party.
Thus, in my beginner days I skipped the choice of ancestry by defaulting to human. My choice was all about class. My first non-human, the halfling rogue, was a homage to Bilbo Baggins the hobbit burglar, so the halfling ancestry came along with the character concept.
If new players default to human like I had done, then the order of choice of ancestry does not matter.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Because somehow Ancestries don't have Feats or sub-Ancestries (Heritage) like Classes do...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
While I personally start with class, and it seems many others do so as well, for new players it's not necessarily the best first option. Personally, having a character concept first is best, and for some concepts picking a class next would be easiest but there's plenty of people who having an idea of their ancestry and background would help make the decision on their finally class easier.
A 'character who swings a sword' could be soooooo many different classes, but then maybe chosing a goblin that worked occult relics would help them realize they ultimately want to be a thaumagturge instead of say a fighter or barbarian.
Ultimately, there needed to be an order to decisions and for players who know what their doing the order in the book really doesn't make that much of a difference, where as using the framework of it being an ABC to character creation helps make it seem simple vs. a convoluted or complex thing that would scare off some prospective players and, personally, flows alot better than CAB or CBA.
Because somehow Ancestries don't have Feats or sub-Ancestries (Heritage) like Classes do...
Looking back at my comment #27 in which I said, "I thought that the Pathfinder design on the gnome was worth trying out," I think that breithauptclan's point about the feats and heritages of the ancestries is a key point. Paizo has put a lot of design effort into making the different ancestries interesting.
Their goblins are zany rather than pathetic. Their gnomes are whimsical. Their dwarves have culture. Their humans try to squeeze accomplishments into their short lifespans. Their leshies and poppets are charming. Etc.
In the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, a non-human race boosted particular stats, gave a few proficiencies, and had better vision. For the culture and heritage of a race, we mostly borrowed from the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Having different intelligent species made the setting feel fantastic, but the other civilized people were essentially humans with pointy ears or tusks or odd skin colors who were stronger or smaller or more agile or more magical than average.
Now that PF2 has loaded the ancestries with flavor, I can argue that starting with flavor can make character building more playful. One of the players in my Iron Gods campaign wanted to play an exotic character, so she made a strix skald. A human skald would not have been as unusual. My wife in the same campaign wanted to play a dwarf gadgeteer. Gadgeteer is not offered as a PF1 class, so she made a Gunslinger with the gnome-based Experimental Gunsmith archetype. The dwarf smith can first and the class was selected to be as much of a toolmaker as possible. It is all about flavor.
Not to mention If I recall the first actual step is concept, which would/should vaguely include what kind of stuff you vaguely want to do.
The issue is that, for a player who is reliant on the order of steps because they're reading the book for the first time and don't know anything about Pathfinder, they *can't* really form a meaningful concept because they have no context for what the system will permit. It's still a good first step to alert more experienced players that it's unimportant which you actually do first, but it's not really a relevant step for someone that is trying to, line by line, learn how to make a character for the first time (possibly in any RPG ever) and then play their first game. After all, anyone with enough GM experience has probably ran into new players who do in fact start with a concept only to get really, really frustrated when a system doesn't actually *support* that concept. You can't conceptualize being an angry little cactus person with a tiny wooden battleaxe until you are at least aware Leshys are an option and that Barbarians are a class, and if you conceptualize without browsing any options you might get really attached to an idea of a necromancer summoning an army of undead without realizing that's not an option in this game. For someone that can conceptualize and build along that plan, the order of the steps is irrelevant.
And besides, even if they *do* start with a concept, they're still gonna need to pick one of the three things first - so it's still helpful to suggest picking the class first for the reasons I'm laying out.
It's pretty explicit that there is no one way to develop a character. A 'suggestion' is not a 'rule'.
Sure, but I don't think anyone's implying that it's a rule. I'm talking about making it more ergonomic, changing the suggestion to make the process a bit faster and easier so that from the earliest possible step they've got a build guide helping them make the rest of their choices. A lot of people learn things by going down a list and sticking to it, building their character like one would build a Lego model from the instruction book, so ordering things in a way that makes that easier helps that kind of player.
My main advice would be "you aren't locked into your choices when you flip to the next chapter". Making a character should be a process of going back and forth. After looking at classes you might have a new take on ancestries. After looking at ancestries you might want to revisit your class choice.
That is indeed very good advice and worth reiterating. However, I don't think the issue is that most new players aren't able to intuit they're allowed to do this, my concern is rather that having to redo steps is likely frustrating and annoying to new players, if they even know that they should (because their attribute array ends up being really bad because they picked at random because they didn't know what they all did or have that class guide to inform them of a reasonable build plan).
That is, it's likely faster and easier for a new player, with fewer instances of backtracking, if they start with their class. Think of how many times a new player's got fewer boosts than they're supposed to have because they forgot they didn't add their attributes from the prior step yet but then changed their mind and took them away anyways (basically giving themselves a penalty) to respec it, needing you to spot their mistake. That's easier to avoid if we order things to mitigate the need to go back a step.
Another benefit of starting with class is that if it's the first step, then even during a session zero where everyone is making their characters together where some people will be faster at it than others, it means that class choice is more likely to be a collaborative decision. Everyone is picking their class at the same time, so it's easier for the group to sort of coordinate if they wish - even if they're new to 2e, they likely have the basic idea of what a balanced party in an RPG looks like and can at least avoid stepping on one another's mechanical toes too much. That might not be important for all tables, but I find that most groups I've played with naturally tend to want to do this anyways, or at least one player is really concerned about "being what the party needs" and would benefit from knowing what everyone's picking up front. It's also an opportunity for more experienced players to share information on the available choices when they aren't already busy focusing on their own character.
It's pretty explicit that there is no one way to develop a character. A 'suggestion' is not a 'rule'.Sure, but I don't think anyone's implying that it's a rule. I'm talking about making it more ergonomic, changing the suggestion to make the process a bit faster and easier so that from the earliest possible step they've got a build guide helping them make the rest of their choices. A lot of people learn things by going down a list and sticking to it, building their character like one would build a Lego model from the instruction book, so ordering things in a way that makes that easier helps that kind of player.
Well, then the order should be from least amount of subsequent choices to most. Start with Background since there is only one freely chosen ability boost, and one partially chosen ability boost - and that is all. Then move to Ancestry that has a Heritage and an Ancestry feat to pick. Then finally Class.
-----
The entire premise of Class is to determine how your character fights. Teaching new players that fighting things is the most important part of your character's design is counterintuitive to the goals of PF2 and its exploration mode and downtime, and skill feats. PF2, more than any other TTRPG system that I have personally ever played, tries to steer players away from doing nothing but combat.
So putting the build order with Class first seems like a bad decision for that.
If it were me making my first ttrpg character I'd most likely go for class first because I think that's where most of the concept of a character lies. Sure, you can easily equate a character's class with how they fight and that would be most definitely true but it's not just about the fighting it's also about how the character interacts with their environment.
Which, granted, the most common "Environment" to be interacted with is monsters and the most common way of "Interracting" with them is "Fisticuffs". But that's not the only thing it's about. If it were, we probably wouldn't have "few" non-combat oriented class feats or features, we'd have none.
Last time I helped a new player make their character, with them being entirely unaware of how PF2e works, it went CABFI : Class, Ancestry, Background, Feats, Inventory. Which seemed to work fine (but it's not as good looking as ABC).
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I agree with the OP: in an ideal world, the player should be able to start building their character from whichever angle they like, but in practice, class is the most important facet of a PF2e character, because said class's key attribute will define the rest of their starting choices. Thanks to the addition of variant rules for ancestry boosts allowing players to boost whichever attributes they like, it's possible to pick almost any ancestry or background and pair it up with any class, but the player still needs to know their key attribute so that they can pick the right boosts.
With a bit of experience and genre savviness, it's easy to do this even with the ABCD order of character creation, but let's be honest, most experienced players start with a class anyway when they make a new character. A newer player, by contrast, may not be aware of the importance of key attributes, and once they get to that at the class stage and learn about it (if they do), they're going to have to go back and rejig a couple of their attribute boosts. It's not a huge annoyance, but it's an annoyance nonetheless.
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
When I build a character on Pathbuilder, I always go class first, because I base my concept for a character on what I want to do when playing them. And Class is where you find this. And the Class tells me what my attack stat is, which is the thing I will get to max, or max-1 at worse if there is a significant reason for me to invest heavily in another stat.
I then choose Background because I usually know which Skill feat I want. Obviously I choose a Background with a boost in either my primary (attack) stat or one of my secondary stats (save stats usually).
I then choose Ancestry, with Human being the default unless either I want something specific from another Ancestry (say Ancient Elf to get the Psychic's amped cantrips from level 1) or something in my concept inspired me to try another Ancestry or the additional boost/flaw of the Ancestry have a good synergy with my needs.
When I've introduced new players to TTRPGs, sometimes I don't even give them sheets for the first session or two. I just ask them to tell me what kind of character they'd like to play and have them tell me what they're doing in combat. After that session, I build a character that fits what they were already doing naturally.That worked for my kid in his first game when he was 8. The GM did a great job of it for the entire group. But by the time he was 11, he was poring over PH to see what abilities each class offered, with species and background options distinctly secondary. So I think you're right about the 'new to ttrpgs' distinction. Even so, that sort of very open first session is something a practiced GM can do, not a self-starting newbie group can do.
I ran a game for 3 girls 5 - 11 and the older two had sheets and did their own math. The youngest had a sheet but most just described her robot (Warforged) hitting things with a sword, crushing heads, and stealing eyeballs from the fallen.
The game I actually ran sheetless was for adults who were on the fence about TTRPGs. Ultimately they had fun but it wasn't something that hooked them enough for more sessions.
|
|
ABC works just fine just so long as you extend the alphabet and don't just end with C.
A - Select your Ancestry & Heritage
B - Select your Background
C - Select your Class
D - Select your Description info (Height/Weight/Physical characteristics)
E - Select your Extra Ability Score Bonuses/Boosts/Flaws
F - Select your Feats
G - Select your Gear
Follow that order and you should be able to end up with as optimized a character as you could ever need even if you don't know what you're going to select on the next step.
It may not work for everyone, but as someone who works better in mechanics than storytelling and is obsessed with PF2e's variety of Ancestries, I follow what I call an ACDC system (in part because lol-references). Ancestry, Class, Details (Background, Feats, Gear, Skills, etc), Completion (Name, Token, other minor details like that). Ancestry defines who they are, Class defines what they do, then I basically flop between the various Details in whatever order (usually around here is where I actually attach a story to the build), then finish with the finishing details like a name (usually the last thing I add).
ETA: Also I say Token falls under Completion, but as someone who does online games, I have an entire folder of character art that is often enough part of what defines an Ancestry for a character.
K - plan your character out to at least level 15.
L - Start playing at Level 1.
M - Modify character build planned for level 8 to improve the synergies between characters.
N - Negotiate retraining a skill proficiency to handle the demands of the campaign.
One thing I rarely see on character sheets is consumables. When I first started building characters, I grabbed a class kit maybe, or an adventurer's kit, and made sure I had some decent armor I was qualified to wear and a weapon. Maybe a shield. Often I had to "go back to the store" because I forgot that medics need healer's tools and alchemists need alchemist's tools and thieves need thieves' tools or whatever.
Nowadays, in planning a build I try to go for some 'everybody should have one of these' things in the plan. If I know where we're going next, I plan for that (as best I can, anyway).
O - Organically integrate your character into the group.
P - Peruse new rulebooks for interesting retraining options.
Q - Queue up a solid playlist for your character's big debut.
R - Retrain your character between sessions one and two.
S - Save your character sheet to the cloud so it's never hard to find.
T - Tell your GM about your aspirations for your character in the future.
U - Understand what your role in the group is.
One thing I rarely see on character sheets is consumables.with the 15 starting gold it's hard to justify consumables.
If you have spare a health potion/elixir is always good to have on hand! But, yeah, otherwise you're probably not buying much with that 15
|
|
V - Verify your numbers and check the math.
W - Where did I put my pencil?
X - X off any consumable items you use during a game.
Y - You're not actually allowed to know what this step is, it's a secret.
Z - Memorialize your PC because they got crit twice before you or your healer could take any Actions.