GreyLord
Legend
Well, though my box (es) don't come in for a little while (got notice that Amazon just shipped them though!!), I did get to play with the Beginner Box today. Someone else got the box at retail. I actually rolled pretty well for a 4d6 character. I created a character via the rules for the Heroes Handbook out of the box. It took me 40 minutes trying to follow the directions from the book instead of simply doing it as I would with a normal character...seeing what seemed out of place and what fit extremely well.
My final character was a Lawful Good Male Dwarf Cleric.
S: 16
D: 11
C: 17
I: 13
W: 17
Ch: 11
I have his weapons as a Battle Axe and a Spear. This seems like a legit character as per the rules in the box. The skills I put ranks in were Heal, Sense Motive, and Knowledge Religion.
I took Extra channel as his feat, he has Scalemail, Heavy Steel Shiled, Adventurer's Kit, Wood Holy Symbol and 50 GP.
On character creation I really liked how it guided you through the story introducing roleplaying (only got to glance through it though, others were wanting to use the book to create their characters and waiting around was boring for them as they wanted me to hurry up. I wasn't the slowest, slowest took an hour to create their character and it was a Rogue. Quickest I think skipped through the book overall and also was the Fighter in the group. They took around 5-10 minutes).
I hated the fact that it didn't tell you to add bonuses when you were adding up points. For example, when you list your Hitpoints, you're told MUCH later in the character creation under a heading called finishing touches that you THEN need to add in your CONS bonus to the HP. This meant erasing and rewritng things on the character sheet.
I also disliked that you were told in a different section on where you add in your bonuses to Skill rank for INT and Race, rather than right in the section where you list your skill ranks initially.
It implies that you choose your Race and Class first before you choose ability scores. I disregarded that and rolled the dice first, then choose my Race and then my class. I think they should have introduced the ability score generation prior to having someone choose their race at the very minimum, but that's my own opinion.
I didn't like that they only included 1d6. I'd give up an entire sheet of tokens for 3 more six sided dice...as it were using only the stuff in the box we rolled that 1d6 every time till we rolled it 4 times and kept the 3 highest rolls. That was time consuming.
What made it worse was that I forgot my bag of dice at home today.
I thought the books themselves were EXTREMELY high quality for coming in a box. I mean impressively so. They are like the Pathfinder Adventure path modules in quality, and there are two books of such quality in the box.
The books are in full color, as are the tokens. The art on the tokens is really good, and they fit snugly into the plastic stands. I don't think you'll ever use more than the number of plastic stands provided for any one adventure, but it may be nice to have more plastic stands.
The playmat is also much nicer than I had anticipated. It's nice THICK cardstock...not like the token thickness...but it has a feel that it will at least be durable.
Overall, well done. I think this is an outstanding set. I probably think the sweet spot for a beginner would be level 3...so a set going from 1-3 I think is about the right amount. Then they can go up to the full game. This set goes up to level 5, so I think that will appease a LOT of PF gameplayers, but I don't think it gives true beginners to the game enough incentive to get the full PF experience. There's enough here that they could play this game...well...for a LONG time. If you're one that only plays low level adventures...then this really will be all you need to play PF. That's only personal ideas though...aka...that means this is a REALLY good deal for you the players...maybe not as outstanding for Paizo.
It shines quality though...and Paizo provides a product that really stands out.
My only gripes with the set that really would stick I think was that they had some rules for character creation separated. In otherwords something that deals with the same rule (such as saves...you don't find out about the modifiers in the section where it initially tells you to list all the information down on your character sheet in the first block on of each Class heading) are found in two different locations...with the latter modifying upon the original. This means that you'll list something initially on your sheet only to find you have to erase it and write down the new number down in it's place.
The next portion is harder to evaluate from a new perspective. I think the adventure would be awesome and exciting if I were a new Roleplayer or just learning the Roleplaying experience or the D&D 3.X/Pathfinder game.
It could be that this was the first adventure that our DM ever ran (he was also the one that owned the box...his call, I ran a short dungeon for 3.5 while others were creating their characters for his PF game). I found the introductory adventure rather slow and boring.
It was easy, fast, and not a lot of stuff occurring or even a lot of mystery...at least in my opinion. Probably perfect for new Roleplayers, not so perfect for those experienced in the genre.
From my flipping through it the GMG is perfect for anyone starting out as a GM. It covers all bases for different ideas of environment, and XP, covers a lot of ground with monsters and treasure and even has random monster tables!
I think this is a great introductory kit to Pathfinder. For D&D type Beginner/Basic boxes I'd say this is my third favorite thus far (sorry, it's not my first, but I do have some favoritism).
My first favorite would be the Basic Set from the BECMI set of D&D (sorry, B/X was nice, but I preferred Holmes over it...and BECMI's Basic replaced Holmes...BECMI's basic still holds the gold title).
My second would actually be D&D 3.X's Basic Set (Black Dragon cover...Blue Dragon cover was terrible). I think pathfinder actually covers Character creation BETTER...but something about the Black Dragon box made the game seem simpler, with MORE options overall (even if there were less feats and such).
But this set, PF BB is still great and beats out any other boxes like it other than the two listed above.
Just my thoughts thus far. Still can't believe they included levels 1-5! That's a LOT of game for a small amount of money.
In fact for many it's the ENTIRE Game!
My final character was a Lawful Good Male Dwarf Cleric.
S: 16
D: 11
C: 17
I: 13
W: 17
Ch: 11
I have his weapons as a Battle Axe and a Spear. This seems like a legit character as per the rules in the box. The skills I put ranks in were Heal, Sense Motive, and Knowledge Religion.
I took Extra channel as his feat, he has Scalemail, Heavy Steel Shiled, Adventurer's Kit, Wood Holy Symbol and 50 GP.
On character creation I really liked how it guided you through the story introducing roleplaying (only got to glance through it though, others were wanting to use the book to create their characters and waiting around was boring for them as they wanted me to hurry up. I wasn't the slowest, slowest took an hour to create their character and it was a Rogue. Quickest I think skipped through the book overall and also was the Fighter in the group. They took around 5-10 minutes).
I hated the fact that it didn't tell you to add bonuses when you were adding up points. For example, when you list your Hitpoints, you're told MUCH later in the character creation under a heading called finishing touches that you THEN need to add in your CONS bonus to the HP. This meant erasing and rewritng things on the character sheet.
I also disliked that you were told in a different section on where you add in your bonuses to Skill rank for INT and Race, rather than right in the section where you list your skill ranks initially.
It implies that you choose your Race and Class first before you choose ability scores. I disregarded that and rolled the dice first, then choose my Race and then my class. I think they should have introduced the ability score generation prior to having someone choose their race at the very minimum, but that's my own opinion.
I didn't like that they only included 1d6. I'd give up an entire sheet of tokens for 3 more six sided dice...as it were using only the stuff in the box we rolled that 1d6 every time till we rolled it 4 times and kept the 3 highest rolls. That was time consuming.
What made it worse was that I forgot my bag of dice at home today.
I thought the books themselves were EXTREMELY high quality for coming in a box. I mean impressively so. They are like the Pathfinder Adventure path modules in quality, and there are two books of such quality in the box.
The books are in full color, as are the tokens. The art on the tokens is really good, and they fit snugly into the plastic stands. I don't think you'll ever use more than the number of plastic stands provided for any one adventure, but it may be nice to have more plastic stands.
The playmat is also much nicer than I had anticipated. It's nice THICK cardstock...not like the token thickness...but it has a feel that it will at least be durable.
Overall, well done. I think this is an outstanding set. I probably think the sweet spot for a beginner would be level 3...so a set going from 1-3 I think is about the right amount. Then they can go up to the full game. This set goes up to level 5, so I think that will appease a LOT of PF gameplayers, but I don't think it gives true beginners to the game enough incentive to get the full PF experience. There's enough here that they could play this game...well...for a LONG time. If you're one that only plays low level adventures...then this really will be all you need to play PF. That's only personal ideas though...aka...that means this is a REALLY good deal for you the players...maybe not as outstanding for Paizo.
It shines quality though...and Paizo provides a product that really stands out.
My only gripes with the set that really would stick I think was that they had some rules for character creation separated. In otherwords something that deals with the same rule (such as saves...you don't find out about the modifiers in the section where it initially tells you to list all the information down on your character sheet in the first block on of each Class heading) are found in two different locations...with the latter modifying upon the original. This means that you'll list something initially on your sheet only to find you have to erase it and write down the new number down in it's place.
The next portion is harder to evaluate from a new perspective. I think the adventure would be awesome and exciting if I were a new Roleplayer or just learning the Roleplaying experience or the D&D 3.X/Pathfinder game.
It could be that this was the first adventure that our DM ever ran (he was also the one that owned the box...his call, I ran a short dungeon for 3.5 while others were creating their characters for his PF game). I found the introductory adventure rather slow and boring.
It was easy, fast, and not a lot of stuff occurring or even a lot of mystery...at least in my opinion. Probably perfect for new Roleplayers, not so perfect for those experienced in the genre.
From my flipping through it the GMG is perfect for anyone starting out as a GM. It covers all bases for different ideas of environment, and XP, covers a lot of ground with monsters and treasure and even has random monster tables!
I think this is a great introductory kit to Pathfinder. For D&D type Beginner/Basic boxes I'd say this is my third favorite thus far (sorry, it's not my first, but I do have some favoritism).
My first favorite would be the Basic Set from the BECMI set of D&D (sorry, B/X was nice, but I preferred Holmes over it...and BECMI's Basic replaced Holmes...BECMI's basic still holds the gold title).
My second would actually be D&D 3.X's Basic Set (Black Dragon cover...Blue Dragon cover was terrible). I think pathfinder actually covers Character creation BETTER...but something about the Black Dragon box made the game seem simpler, with MORE options overall (even if there were less feats and such).
But this set, PF BB is still great and beats out any other boxes like it other than the two listed above.
Just my thoughts thus far. Still can't believe they included levels 1-5! That's a LOT of game for a small amount of money.
In fact for many it's the ENTIRE Game!
