Pathfinder 1E New to Pathfinder

[Eradan]

Hello, all.

I'll be playing Pathfinder for the first time this coming weekend and joining an on-going homebrew campaign in a few weeks.

I've played RPGs since the early 80s but only played D&D 3.x a few times. I'm very comfortable with the D&D 4E game. The Pathfinder Core rulebook is gorgeous and I'm enjoying reading it. I'm looking for some online resources that might help me learn the game, make my first few characters, and prepare myself for my upcoming games.

Any tips, suggestions, thoughts, links you have to share would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Soramain]

Any tips, suggestions, thoughts, links you have to share would be much appreciated.

This site has all the information you need with handy hyperlinks.

As for pointers, I really like most of what Paizo did. The fighting classes got a nice overhaul and some options, and the things they did with casters are less of a power increase and more of a flavor increase.

The only things that I don't particularly like are the new concentration rules. It's not a skill check now, it's a caster level check plus your stat modifier on your casting stat. They raised the DC to 15 + 2x the spell level, which means you have very high failure rates at low levels, and they've made it virtually impossible for a spellcaster to do anything at all if they are grappled by either a large monster or a dedicated grappler, with virtually no chance to escape or to cast a spell.

I don't mind that it's a caster level check and not a skill, and it probably was too easy in 3.5 with DC 15 + spell level, but there should be a way to smooth out the difficulty so that it's not really hard at low levels and easy at high levels, and also to make grappling an effective tactic against casters without being an auto-win with a very unhappy player sitting on his or her hands.

 

[Cor_Malek]

You might find this character generator quite useful: 3.75 Pathfinder RPG Character Generator

And don't take 3.x habits/tropes for granted! Monks actually manage to (sometimes) hit; with cantrips, magic users never run out of all spells; paladins are more than clerics pushovers... If you think something will/wont work because that's how it was in 3e - re-check, just to be sure.

 

[Eradan]

Thanks, guys, for the links and comments. I've read through much of the Pathfinder rules today and I think I'm in love. There's a lot of detail and old D&D flavor that I've been missing. Wow.

One of the things that helped me learn 4E was the series of videos where Chris Perkins DM'd a game for the Robot Chicken writers. It was nice to be able to see the rules as written come alive at the game table. Does anything similar to this exist for Pathfinder? I searched YouTube but didn't find much of significance.

Also, are there any other online communities that are good for Pathfinder besides this one and Paizo forum?

Thanks again.

 

[Xyxox]

One of the things that helped me learn 4E was the series of videos where Chris Perkins DM'd a game for the Robot Chicken writers. It was nice to be able to see the rules as written come alive at the game table. Does anything similar to this exist for Pathfinder? I searched YouTube but didn't find much of significance.

I think that Paizo should do a series of Youtube videos for this. It would be great for me to introduce the game to new players.

 

[IronWolf]

One of the things that helped me learn 4E was the series of videos where Chris Perkins DM'd a game for the Robot Chicken writers. It was nice to be able to see the rules as written come alive at the game table. Does anything similar to this exist for Pathfinder? I searched YouTube but didn't find much of significance.

I am not aware of such a thing for Pathfinder. I wonder if there are any live session podcasts of Pathfinder games out there?

In either case, it would be cool to have some intro videos posted.

Also, are there any other online communities that are good for Pathfinder besides this one and Paizo forum?

Here and Paizo are the two main forums I hang out on for Pathfinder discussion.

 

[baconcow]

The closest thing that I have seen to a live session for Pathfinder RPG are these 4 "planning" videos. There may be other actually playing from this guy, since it says 1 of 10, but these are all I found from his list of videos.

Part 1:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhArQ4AQFi0&feature=related]YouTube - Actual game play from yesterday's session....Planning stage(1 of 10)[/ame]

Part 2:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgZSZI6Eank&feature=related]YouTube - Live session (2) more planning by sean connors[/ame]

Part 3:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-5as-OU-AI&feature=related]YouTube - Live session stuff (3) by sean connors[/ame]

Part 4:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ_F8MT4huY]YouTube - Live session at the camp (4) by sean connors[/ame]


Note: These are not my youtube videos. They belong to the user "TheOutsiders68" (Sean Conners).

 

[Shisumo]

I haven't listened to any of them, so don't consider this a recommendation, but I did a quick bit of Googling and came up with this site for Pathfinder Actual Play podcasts...

 

[IronWolf]

I haven't listened to any of them, so don't consider this a recommendation, but I did a quick bit of Googling and came up with this site for Pathfinder Actual Play podcasts...

Oh cool! I might have to check some of those out.

 

[Darynal]

Oh wow! I hadn't heard much of Pathfinder before, but took a look at this forum and the links -- Awesome.

Loved the overall structure of 3e before. This looks cool as hell, I'm glad this thread got posted =)