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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6346267" data-attributes="member: 37579">While the review was certainly biased, this thread honestly isn't much better. Someone dared to say Paizo's newbie product was more appealing to brand new players and tested this by actually getting new players to compare, and people have to bash the review and praise the Starter Set, going as far as giving it good reviews on amazon. That the Beginner Box *might* potentially do a better job is just irrelevant to the outrage.Yes, the price of the Beginner Box is much, much higher than the Starter Set. But both products are aimed at roughly the same audience and demographics. The fact that one company thought the best way to make an impression was a big expensive products and the other felt the best way to reach that same audience was a cheap disposable product. That was a choice, and one that should be a factor in the review. WotC decided to price their current starter box at the exact same MSRP as their products 14 years ago (I've heard the first 3e starter set, the one without miniatures, was priced at $20 back in 2000).(I'm still hunting for the original price of the 2e starter sets, and the 1e boxes.) What else should we compare the Starter Set to if not the similar product some by its immediate competitor? The Star Wars starter sets? DragonAge? WotC's past efforts?Yes, a fair review should limit itself to the comparable content. The flip-mat and tokens and character gen should not be dwelled on. But just looking at the overlap between the two products shows some differences in style and design. The Starter Set looks very much like the other 5th Edition products and there are great walls of text in most places. The character sheets are crammed with rules and boxes of information. There's no colour or cross referencing or iconography. The Beginner Box's layout is very slick, and it's character sheet is cross referenced with the Rulebook. They're very well done. Everything is clean and colorful and looks fairly different than other Pathfinder products because this is aimed at newbies first. Everything is meant to be easy and precise. I like the Starter Set. I paid money for it. I don't regret my purchase. Dunno if I'll run the adventure but I plan on saving it as a product to use with my son, or give to him as a leg up on being a DM and running the game. Because 5e seems like a really solid edition I'll still be playing in five or six years when my kid is old enough to try. Pathfinder... isn't as friendly to new players and I don't think I'll still being using the current system that far in advance, so the Beginner Box is not a product I wanted to invest in.I like it the Starter Set. It's the best Starter Set WotC has put out in ten or so years. But it isn't this amazing revolutionary product. It doesn't raise the bar. It's safe and takes no risks. But... it could be much better. The Pathfinder Beginner Box set out to not only be a newbies kit but the best newbie kit and every part of it shows the effort that was out in. The D&D Starter Set is an edited version of the core rule with an adventure written by a freelancer. It seems like it was an effort to make a product that was better than the last set, but not raise the bar or do anything really different. They certainly didn't just phone-in the product, but neither was it a labour of love and that shows. The Starter Set is, at best, above average.</blockquote>

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