The Pathfinder roleplaying game is a tabletop roleplaying game for a group of around five players. Most players are responsible for controlling a unique character of their own creation, an avatar to interact with the larger fictional world around them. The other player takes on the role of the Game Master (GM), who controls the rest of the world, the monsters, and the other people the player characters (PCs) interact with. This is a shared story telling experience when the PCs and GM work together to tell exciting stories and play through harrowing adventures.
It’s set in the high fantasy world of Golarion, a world of ancient mysteries, lost empires, and mighty heroes. Golarion has had its share of upheaval and tribulations, and PCs have a wealth of options of adventures and ideas to explore and interact with the world around them. Pathfinder provides a vast array of options for creating compelling characters and telling fun stories.
The system it uses is a variation of the D20 system. What that means to a new player is that most actions will be determined by the roll of a 20 sided die; attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks to name a few. Each check has a set Difficulty Class (DC) that determines whether or not the action is successful (sometimes the PC will know the number he’s trying to hit, but this is not always the case and adds some risk to living the adventurer’s dream).
Character Creation
The character creation process for Pathfinder has several steps. A character will need statistics, a race, a class, skills, feats, an alignment, and equipment. Some characters will have spells, but these are options derived from a choice of class.
Pathfinder uses a tried and true method of character creation with optional variety for spicing things up. A character has six primary statistics that are rolled for, assigned from an array of fixed values, or point bought from a pool of points, (higher stats in this variant cost more points, meaning a character has to spend more points to specialize in a statistic). These serve as primary values, and many other numeric values are derived from these initial six statistics, or stats (They, by the way, are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma). The higher the statistical value, the better the character in question is going to perform in tasks related to that stat; a character with a high strength has a better chance of pulling his/her self up a cliff face, or a character with a high intelligence has a better chance of deciphering an ancient scroll.
Statistics, (depending on how you built your character) are either the beginning of your character creation process or they are the last step in finalizing what you want your character to do. If you came up with statistics first, (in that you rolled them, or assigned an array) you can look at your statistics and see what characters work well with those stats. All character classes have at least one primary statistic that they run off of, and some run off of multiples. Choosing a character class that runs off of statistics that your character has high values in is a reasonable way to make a character, though it is sometimes an interesting exercise in role-playing to play a character who is bad at their character class. (I wouldn’t recommend this all the time, but for a change of pace a low charisma bard or low dexterity ranged weapon fighter can be interesting)
Another key component of building a character is the choice of Race. Race determines a lot of starting culture of a character and can give ideas and directions on how to play a character. Pathfinder has a wide (and i do mean WIDE) array of choices for Racial options. Options include but are not limited to Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Half-Orc, Half-Elf, Human, and a host of other options. Should the choices available in the Core Rulebook and the Advanced Races Guide not provide enough choices, each of the Bestiaries (The large books full of monsters) feature several playable humanoid races. Each race has statistic modifiers (usually two increases and one decrease), racial abilities, and some basic cultural information that should help a new player figure out what that particular race is about.
Class is the next major character defining choice that a player will make when creating a character. What is that character’s occupation and role? Are they a dashing fighter, a clever rogue, a pious cleric, or a charismatic sorcerer? Class in the context of the Pathfinder game represents the combined skills, knowledges, and abilities that enable class to operate. Fighters tend to be good at wearing armor and hitting things with a variety of weapons. Rogues excel at sneaking around and opening up doors, stealing things from the unaware, and in some cases, committing a bloody murderous sneak attack. The choice of character class that a player makes shapes the style of interactions that player will have during the game. Each class plays a little differently from the rest, and those differences can be extremely interesting when put together in an adventuring party.
Each of Pathfinder’s character classes offers several different choices for character development, based around the class’s strengths. Barbarians, for example, have differing abilities that tie into their Rage class ability, and the choice of Deity that a cleric opts for will give them a variety of choices for special cleric abilities. Further augmenting these class ability choices are class archtypes, which substitute out class abilities for thematic variations. This level of character customization is one of the things that the pathfinder system does very very well.
Two other sets of choices await the player constructing the character. First, based off of their class choice, they have an assortment of skill points to assign. Each class has a list of skills that are typical of their class, and a character that puts points into their class skills, they get a bonus to skill checks with those skills. They can select other skills as they choose, but they don’t receive this bonus to checks. Skill selection helps to shape the character’s capabilities in a variety of situations, in and out of combat.
The second set of choices that a character has access to are feats. Feats represent special quirks that either add new capabilities or enhance existing ones. Every character begins the game with one feat, and more are acquired as characters level up.
Alignment represents where a character falls on a grid representing both moral and ethical concerns. It can be used in many different ways, though the method this author thinks is most appropriate is to use it as a guide for helping a character make decisions. Alignment is the way that a character typically reacts to situations that develop and occur.
The character creation process rounds out with equipment and some details about your character. Equipment ranges from weapons and armor to buckets, backpacks, marbles and a myriad of other potential tools that a character may need to adventure. As a character grows more powerful and spends more time exploring the world, they gain access to magical treasures that improve their capabilities and options.
The personality of the character being played can be anything it’s creator wants it to be. It can be as alike or as different from its creator as desired. When thinking about a character’s personality, there are a myriad of choices that can help the player shape who their character is going to be, and this is one of the things that i like about roleplaying games. Two otherwise identical characters will rarely ever be played the same way because of the difference in the way their players choose to run them.
From the start, the player has been gearing up to create an avatar that will let them interact with a fantastical world of high adventure, and the Pathfinder setting does an excellent job of meeting that challenge. With an in game universe that has history spanning cataclysmic events, Golarion, (the Pathfinder campaign setting) is rich with vibrant cultures, interesting places to visit, and unspeakably dangerous evil lurking below the surface.
Characters, once they’ve been created, embark on adventures and pursue a variety of choices towards goals. As they encounter monsters and complete quests, they will gain experience points and level up. Levelling up is basically the game’s system for improving a character and gaining power. Higher level characters are more powerful than lower level ones, and can embark on more daring adventures and face deadlier foes.
In summation, the Pathfinder roleplaying game offers a fantastic setting full of monsters and adventures for a group of player created (and controlled) characters to quest for and overcome. The system’s buzzword is options, and Pathfinder is overstuffed with options. that is one of the primary criticisms that i have with the game.
A new player exposed to the complete pathfinder system is very likely to be overwhelmed with an overabundance of choices, and it can adversely affect the speed with which they make a character, and their choices can affect the fun that they have in the game. Not all choices in the Pathfinder system are equal, and learning to sort them out can have a steep learning curve for a new player.
The other criticism that i have of the game is not with the system itself, but with the method information is scattered across books. In order to have the full range of options available for a character, a player will need to invest in a wide assortment of books beyond the core rule book. Financially, this could be a deal breaker for some players. This is mitigated by the online System Reference Document (SRD) for pathfinder that collates the myriad options a player has available and stores them in a single place. However, players without internet access at their location are limited in the options that they can successfully reference without purchasing books.
I have had a lot of fun with the Pathfinder system, and the world of Golarion is appealing to me as a gamer. I can always find something to look at, read up on, or consider building a character for. In that regard, Pathfinder is an excellent fantasy roleplaying game.
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