Intro to Pathfinder

[Mike]

My son Jacob is starting a new Pathfinder game with himself as the GM. He has four friends to play with him, only one of whom has some D&D experience. He asked my advice for an intro game to get them into Pathfinder and get them familiar with the basic concepts. This may wind up being a one-off, but if the players get attached to the characters, maybe some or all of them move on to an ongoing campaign.

My first advice, have them stick mostly to the core rulebook for the first game (no crazy races or classes right off). Have them build their characters together with some minor amount of shared background. Shoot for a relatively balanced party. Make sure they all give themselves personalities, even if they're just one-dimensional stereotypes to start off.

The adventure we worked out together: They are all in some little village to attend the wedding of an old friend. There's talk of recent goblin raids that have been annoying, but not deadly or serious so far. Until just now... The day before the wedding, the goblins stole a wagon that was loaded with foodstuffs and a MacGuffin that were intended for the wedding. The food can be replaced, but the MacGuffin is irreplaceable. If it isn't found, the couple will take it as an omen that they shouldn't be married.

I recommended that he develop a at least a dozen or so personalities for the villages, so that when they go to the obvious places (sheriff, blacksmith, priest, inn, etc) he'll have names and personalities ready to make the village come alive.

When they finally put a couple clues together, they'll have the starting point they need to track the goblins to their lair.

The lair is a ruined (fort/castle/whatever) that has been almost completely leveled, but when they find the entrance to the lower level, they find the old basement expanded and fortified as a goblin lair. There are only three major encounters:

1) Huge main room where they first enter. Lots of space to fight. A dozen or so goblins. Lots of furniture and obstacles and miscellaneous features and junk about the room. In this battle, anything goes. There should be lots of slapstick from the goblins, and pretty much any maneuver or swashbuckling the players want to try should have a chance to be awesome. The players will be mostly new, so they don't have a concept of what they can't do. Hopefully, they'll be willing to try all sorts of stuff, and will be thrilled to see that it can work.

2) An unusual run-in with a magic-using goblin (prolly sorcerer), riding an abnormally large mutant goblin. Just weirdness to let them know that things can be weird.

3) The boss-goblin. A cleric who stays behind his "elite" warriors and their vicious goblin dogs. Once they finish off the boss-person, they find the MacGuffin, along with a bunch of minor coins, some ruined food, and a couple of treasure items that can be sold for a little gold. Maybe throw in a scroll and a potion or something.

Along the way, there will be some minor goblin traps as well. Nothing deadly, but they might result in being sickened or maybe someone ending up with broken fingers that can't be repaired right away. Nothing permanent, but enough to teach them the value of a rogue.

Now return for an awesome wedding bash.

Suggestions for additions/changes?

[Mike]

Depending on how much he wants to put in, there's a great mini-adventure from an old Dungeon magazine that has a wedding celebration disrupted by a satyr. That one had a great section of various wedding games and competitions that give the characters fun ways of showing off their skills. Might be a good module to adapt for the opening here.

[Eliahad]

What is the general level of gaming experience of the group? Beyond just tabletop, I mean, what other games have they played and what was the complexity level of those games?

If it is low, I would recommend that Jacob ask them to stick to the four 'base' classes: Fighter, Cleric, Rogue and Wizard. And if he has time write up a short list of feats for each class to consider, and a short list of spells for the cleric and wizard. Smaller than the normal list, but potentially useful for the adventure at hand. This would give the players some choice and the ability to try out some of the game mechanics without getting overwhelmed. It might be wise to make a smaller list of equipment as well.

Yes! Still have character creation! But I think simplifying this portion of the process will give new players a shot at the mechanics without getting completely overwhelmed. The rule book is huge after all!

It is easy to forget what was hard for you when you were first starting out. Remember! You didn't get it right the first time, and they're not going to either. Mistakes are going to happen, and that's good! It means you have something to learn from. You don't know what you don't know until you screw it up! The trick is to gracefully move on and then address the mistake at a moment that doesn't steal from the drama or the story. And s---, the rulebook is huge! Even seasoned Pathfinder players might have to double check the way they've been using flight for the last two years. Again, (some) mistakes are okay, (some) mistakes are great! It's what you do with them and how you move on that is important.

[Kyle]

When Gabe was starting a group with kids that didn't know how to play- I told him to run Rise of the Runelords- it's one of the best "natural" intros to the game. It has a good reason for the group to come together, and isn't super weird or niche.

[El Jefe]

Help show natural progression for the players. If there isn't a great deal of gaming experience in the group, he'll need to walk them through the idea of becoming a murder-hobo. Goblins attack the wedding, and they fend them off, save the wedding. But the big boss turns out to be a hobgoblin leading the goblins. This will lead them down the path to get introduced to the larger tribe of hobgoblins with plans on the whole area. As well as start to expand the focus outside of just the small town. Gradual steps, but necessary ones as well.

[Gygax]

[Phoebe]

I am trying to get my kids to play RoTR with me so they can have a first experience at an RPG, and I wrote some random pieces that are meant to supplement those early days in Sandpoint. I wanted a variety of challenges that could be added in to extend the duration of in-game time the characters spend there, getting established as problem-solvers and proto-adventurers, as well as things I could substitute in place of some of the weirder bits with Nualia and the skinsaw murders. I don't really think my younger two will be into that stuff, so other kinds of problems will happen instead.

It occurs to me that I should have posted some of that here, maybe. I figured I was doing enough damage with weird side stories in pathfinder, not to mention that I didn't want to take excessive liberties with re-writing someone else's intellectual product. It also seems a little silly to me because it's basically Sandpoint for 5 year old adventurers as opposed to 15 or 55 year olds, and stepping back for a moment I think, okay, an idiot wrote this. But whatever.

[El Jefe]

Here's the really important thing, especially as a first-time GM. Don't set plans. See, plans imply that you know where this is heading. That you have an endpoint. You don't. You're there to tell a story WITH the characters (not around them). Think in terms of story arcs. "I've got a vague idea of what I want to do with a goblin tribe disrupting this town." Think of specific scenes you'd like to fit in, and ideally, you can find a place where they fit naturally without needing a set path to get from A to G. "So I have this great idea for a cliff-side fight to protect a caravan of wedding guests, as goblins swarm up the mountain side, down from the peak, and out of caves all around." Pieces are the key here, not whole plans. Little bits of prepared material that you can reject or use as needed. If the players inevitably go veering happily away from that path, sure, you can try to subtly point out the path again (never steer them anywhere, just give some indicator lights). Once or twice. Then, if they are still wildly veering towards the horizon, smile to yourself, grab a good seat, and watch where adventure takes you.

Outside of that, on a more practical front. Throw NPC stats out the window. Just toss them aside, and never look back. You'll get to a point where you are killing yourself to figure out the really specific nature of stats in Pathfinder. Don't. Write down their six ability scores, not as stats, but just the modifiers. Figure out a really rough BAB and AC based on the creature's CR. When the flow of combat seems boringly easy, adjust their stats by situational modifiers ("the goblin music inspires them, and is really pissing off the players, so the goblins all get +2 to checks") or even easier...use the CR itself as a modifier to all rolls. I'm learned the hard way that PF is far easier if you just get the six core stats, and assume that something has skill ranks equal to CR to get a skill check. It'll save you headaches and pain when players totally ignore your painstakingly built encounter, as well as keep you more focused on the story in front of you.

[Mike]

[El Jefe]

[El Jefe]

Now remembering this is on roll20, I've got a slew of suggestions for helping to GM on there specifically. I'm prepping for a game myself right now, so putting this down to remind me to get back here soon.

Edit: Gygax, I'll get an info dump style post up sometime tomorrow. There's a LOT of things I can help give support for on the GMing side, so it'll take me some time to get my thoughts organized and clear. But let me just be the first to say that roll20, once you get accustomed to the style, can save you an insane amount of time. And you are getting in when the prior work is paying off. The Compendium is a huge addition, and will let you pull up monsters, items, and spells on the fly, adding them directly into character sheets. In fact, if the monster is listed in the Compendium (a list that keeps growing), you can literally create an entire NPC sheet on the fly by searching out the name and dragging it into one spot on a character sheet. All of the automation, none of the work.

Also, if you have access to Herolabs, there are now ways to import data from there, but I can't help you on that side. I don't own that software.

[El Jefe]

I'll try to do this in multiple posts, as there is a lot to cover. Let's start with character sheets and the Compendium, because that will be your new best friend.

NPC Sheets
When you add a new sheet for an NPC, particularly your general mobs and non-named NPCs, you can save yourself a great deal of time by letting the Compendium work for you. So you create a new character sheet, and then click the settings button at the top of the page. In there are five settings worth using on every NPC sheet. Click the checkboxes for "IS NPC", "Use buff bonus types and stacking", "Adjust damage based on size", and "Auto-calc hp". After you click that last one, you'll also see options for Avg hp (50, 75, or 100%) and Use max hp for first level/HD pop up. I'd suggest going with 50% and use max HP. This way, you don't need to roll HP for NPCs, but they'll also be just a tiny bit hardier. The rest of those options will come into play later, and I'll cover them each in detail.

Using the IS NPC checkbox is going to add in a new tab on the character sheet when you click the setting button again at the top (which makes the settings page hidden again). Go to that NPC tab that show up now, and the first thing you'll see is "Monster statblock import." This is the big time-saver for you. Off to the right, in the main client window, just over top of the chat box (over where your journal and other buttons are), you'll see an "i" in a circle. That's the compendium. Click on that. Here you can pull from roll20's built-in compendium (ever growing) of items, monsters, spells, and more. So type in goblin in that search box. You should get results for various things, including goblin, goblin dogs, and hobgoblins. Each of those entries is drag and drop. So you drag and drop goblin directly into that monster import area on the character sheet. It will auto-fill a bunch of stats, then you click on the Parse button. This will add those stats directly into the NPC sheet and auto-calculate the relevant formulas and macros. Boom, you have a completed goblin sheet and no need to fill anything in. Click on the little triangle next to the monster import statblock title, and you'll minimize that section (as it isn't needed anymore). Welcome to the fastest way to build mob-style NPCs, so long as they are already in the compendium. You can also do this to drag and drop spells and items into the relevant sections on character sheets.

[Mike]

Damn Jeff knows a lot of stuff. Definitely the right person to bring in on this.

[El Jefe]

Attacks and sizing
So earlier, we used that "adjust damage based on size" option in settings. Let's cover why that it is important. On the NPC sheet (or under the attacks you will build on the attacks tab, when you are building a PC), you'll see two drop-downs that say "Default size" and "Size." Leave default size alone. So your goblin has a shaman cast enlarge person on him. And you don't want to reconfigure all your stats? Change the size drop-down from small to medium, and all of your attacks will have their damage dice moved up, along with the relevant stat boosts coming into play. Big time-saver, especially for PCs, considering how many different magic weapon abilities, feats, and spells allow for size changes.

Buffs
Outside of the compendium, this is probably your second biggest way to save time. So up in the top right, you'll see link that says "Set Buffs", just underneath of "Current Buffs". Click on that, and the Set Buffs box will enlarge. So you click on the plus sign to add a new buff (buff is used universally here, as it could very well be penalties as well). This lets you build very complex modifications in a simple way that adjust values on the entire character sheet. And once they are set up, you simply activate/deactivate them by using the checkbox for that buff. But even better, the design team for the character sheets recently started adding in a list of common buffs that are pre-built for you. So let's start there.

That Common Buff dropdown on the right corner is what we're talking about here. Use the dropdown to select Divine Favor, then hit the plus sign just to the right. A new buff is added, and already enabled. You'll notice that the buff spells out what the bonus impacts (Attacks), what type of bonus (Luck), and there is already a calculation in place. (If you were building your own buff, you can just as easily put a straight number in there, until you become comfortable learning the macro language to build your own formulas.) Simple, easy to use, and a HUGE time-saver.

On buffs in general? I recommend all your mob NPCs have any relevant frequent buffs. I always like to add one for flanking (as it is common enough), along with buffs for any spells that may affect the group (like bless, haste, etc.).

[El Jefe]

The Big Bad
So you're getting your named goblin warchief and accompanying shaman ready. And the normal goblin stats just won't do? No problem. Use the same method as before, just don't import anything into the monster stat blocks (but still do use the IS NPC checkbox like previously mentioned). When you close the settings page, just minimize the monster import area on the NPC page (to make it easier the NPC sheet), and click over to your Core tab. Now just go through, and start building your villain as if they were a normal PC being created. When you are all finished, you can click back over to the NPC tab, and see all the fields are auto-populated, based off the rest of the character sheet. Side note: You can also use this to upgrade imported monsters. Import a goblin, then go add some class levels to them to make them tougher.

IMPORTANT NOTE (that will save you major headaches in looking for it) - When you click that IS NPC checkbox, the sheets will auto-disable the class levels section on the core tab. No clue why, but it does. So you'll be looking for a little checkbox with grayed out text that says Add Class Levels. Just click that, and now you can add your class info like a regular PC.

Now, I realize this doesn't explain how to fill out everything on the character sheet. That's a much longer post, and one I'm not sure I can cover fully, as I learned most of it through trial and error. Some of it is self-explanatory. So here's what I recommend. There are some wikis and walkthroughs on roll20 that will walk you through parts of that. Additionally, if you have specific questions, get them up here. It is easier to answer specific questions, rather than just guess in the dark what you need covered. If you'd like a more detailed walkthrough of building a character sheet from scratch, let me know. You can set up the campaign, add me as a PC, and create a test sheet for me to use. Then you (as GM) can be looking at the sheet the same time me (as a PC) is building it. Throw in using our mics and Skype or Hangouts (because roll20's audio and video is complete crap), and we can talk right as we walk through using and building a sheet.

Oh, another important note: When you're during a live game session? Announce to players before you enter their sheet. Because otherwise, they're going to be confused when they are on the Spells tab, and you flip to the their Attacks tab. And then a weird tug of war starts. What I tend to do, if I need to see a player's sheet (but not actively edit it), is to create back-up copies each time they level up (or when they finish creation). That way, they can have their sheet, but I can still look at their sheet.

Edit: That's the major stuff I can think of right off the top of my head. I have some more thoughts on how to organize your game and actual play, but I need to put some more time into getting those organized. Hope this helps!