Class Options
I saw this meme just a few too many times. I finally decided to make the attempt. That’s the origin story of today’s comic anyway. So with apologies to Yakko Warner…
And now, the classes of Pathfinder
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Collegiate Arcanist, Veiled Illusionist
Bloodrager, Devoted Muse
Walker of Horizons, Champ of the Enlightened,
Then Magus, and Commoner too
Golden Legionnaire, Summoner, Dragon Disciple,
Inquisitor, Ninja and on!
Group Leader, and Brawler then Pathfinder Chronicler
And Dissident of the Dawn
Liberator, Cleric, Master Chymist
Pit Fighter, Exalted, Stargazer, Sam’rai,
Sentinel, Oracle, Harrower
Sleepless Detective, Mage of the Third Eye
Chevalier, Arcanist, Duelist, Diabolist
Paladins, who are so brave!
Alchemist, Gray Warden, Enchanting Courtesan
Warrior, Agent of Graves
Slayer, Justiciar, Hunter, Guild Poisoner
Darechaser, Monk, Steel Falcon
Evangelist, Natural Alchemist, Sorcerer
Rogue and Crimson Assassin
There’s Spherewalker, Anchorite, Master Spy, Eldritch Knight
Wardens: Rose, Nature and Soul
Ashavic Dancers, Rangers, Technomancers and
Templars both Crimson and Low.
Cyphermage, Swashbuckler, Bloodmage, Inheritor’s
Crusader, Druid and Bard
Tattooed Mystic, Pain Taster, then Hell Knight Commander,
And Witch, Winter Witch, and Wizard
Gunslinger, Sphere Singer, and Envoy of Balance
Demoniac, Noble Scion,
Barbarian, Furious Guardian,
Heritor Knight, Lion Blade, and Shaman!
Assassin, Sun Seeker, Souleater, Brewkeeper
False Priest, Coastal Pirate, Lore Master
Grand Marshal, Rage Prophet, Skald, Darkfire Adept
Aristocrat, and Dark Delver
Vigilante, Warpriest, Deep Sea Pirate, Adept
And Seekers both Brightness and Scar!
Kineticist, Mesmerist, Daivrat, Guild Agent
Divine Scion, Student of War!
Living Monolith, Runeguard, and Swordlord and Expert
Fighter and Mystery Cultist
Celestial Knight, Green Faith Acolyte, Field Agent
Halfling Opportunist
Sacred Sentinel, Sanctified Prophet, Planes Walker,
Purity Legion Enforcer
Stalwart Defender and Hell Knight Enforcer and…
Investigator, Holy Vindicator, then
Mystic Theurge, Arcane Archer-Trickster-Savant,
Divine Assessor, Antipaladin
And now, today’s discussion.
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When you’re introducing a new player to a complex game, how do you go about presenting options without overwhelming the poor noob? Sound off with all your best guidance for first timers down in the comments!
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*clap clap*
Did you use exclusively Pathfinder’s list, or D&D too?
I’ll add to the list: Magus, Kensai and the Gingerbread witch.
Magus is there, end of the first verse, just before Commoner.
Doesn’t seem to feature D&D 3x classes, though, or there would be quite a few more: Archivist, Ardent, Artificer, Battle Dancer, Beguiler, Binder, Death Master, Divine Mind, Dragon Shaman, Dragonfire Adept, Dread Necromancer, Duskblade, Erudite, Factotum, Favored Soul, Healer, Hexblade, Incarnate, Jester, Knight, Lurk, Mariner, Marshal, Master, Mountebank, Mystic, Nightstalker, Noble, Psion, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Samurai, Savant, Scout, Sha’ir, Shadowcaster, Shugenja, Sohei, Soulborn, Soulknife, Spellthief, Spirit Shaman, Swordsage, Totemist, Truenamer, Urban Druid, Warblade, Warlock, Warmage, Wilder, and Wu Jen.
And those are just the base classes, and probably not an exhaustive list either, I just used srd.dndtools.org for a quick reference.
One could note also that the options for player races are just as much ludicrous when you compile all the source books out there, and even if you stay with one HD humanoids of Medium or Small size so there’s no racial HD or ECL/LA stuff to deal with.
Like the hover text says, even using JUST the Paizo-official classes and prestige classes, you run out of syllables in Yakko’s World.
You’d have to do “second verse, same as the first” to even approach 3.X.
It’s just Pathfinder 1e. I used this page to populate my list:
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/classes
Just the Paizo official stuff, including prestige classes. I didn’t touch on arcetypes, which is why kensai and gingerbread witch aren’t in there.
Due to the kids coloration and Cleric’s collection of implements, I thought for a moment the kid was a lost soul about to be divinely exorcised.
A soul about to be conjured into existence. 😀
Have we seen that… Spindly, spiky and twisty deity statue before? Or is it foreshadowing?
Yeah we have. It’s been around in Priest’s temple since 2016:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/mandatory-medical-coverage
It’s me. I’m Cleric today.
Don’t get me started on *archetypes*, bless Pathfinder ♥
Yakko’s World would need A LOT more verses to cover the archetypes, lol.
/taps pipe out on ground, points at list with stem
That there’s the second part of reason number one on why I dinnae like D&D.
“When you’re introducing a new player to a complex game, how do you go about presenting options without overwhelming the poor noob?”
By limiting their options. Do this one of two ways, either A) ask them what they’d like to play, say by asking if they have a character from media they’d like to emulate, and then showing them the options that best fit that. Or B) if they’re already used to rpgs, just maybe not this rpg, you can give them a curated list of options. If they express interest in things off the list (say by talking about a favorite media character who is nothing like the options presented) you can either work to help them make that character using options not on the list, or my preferred method, tell them to “stick to the list for now, once you’r more familiar with the system you can start making your choices form the bigger list of options”.
I don’t know if it’s just me only half remembering how the song goes or if the syllables actually line up in a way that can actually be _sung_.
I’m going to need to see a video of this.
It was a lot easy as a beginning player to decide between fighter/magic user/thief.
Starting as a new player today it would take weeks of reading and days of considering every feat/power available to each class just to make that first level 1 character you ever had and watch it get eaten by a Grue in the first ten minutes.
I see it as every minmaxer getting jeralous of some other classes special abilities and wanting them for their ‘uber’ character because nobody else should have anything they can’t.
I’d jump at the chance to start a party of new but enthusiastic players in original D&D or maybe AD&D and give them just a few character option,.
I’d go with Fighter/Mage/Rogue(not #$%^&!! ‘rouge’, that’s drives me crazy)/Cleric/and maybe, just maybe, Bard if someone could handle it.
Sometimes going back to the basics is more fun than taking forever to sort through all the esoteric feats (or just spam the same one over and over) put the story first and just go with it.
90% of the classes are just excuses to sell ‘class manuals’ anyway.
A backstory doesn’t need all that, just a story.
I’m imagining a sequel song based off Wakko’s 50 state song but for races.
That is a very…monochrome child?
For D&Derivatives or other games with plenty of splatbooks: Core only. Don’t even tell the new player that other options exist, and if they find out, discourage them from going down that rabbit-hole until they’ve mastered the basics.
Beyond that…explain things as they come up. If you try to dump all the rules on someone at once (like my brother is wont to do), the poor newbie probably won’t understand what’s relevant to the current situation or remember that other stuff when it comes up.
Ask them what they see their character being and then make that idea work using core rules. Once they have the basics down, expand their options into additional rule books. Always talk with the player. Work with them. And help them set up their character sheet. Finally, patience; patience; patience!
When I’m helping a new player make a character, I start with a basic description of the attributes (Strength/Dexterity/Constitution/Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma) so they can start thinking about that. Then I ask which they prefer of “Magic, Martial or Mixed”. That basic divide narrows things down a lot. If they want some magic, I might go into the differences between magic types (arcane, divine, alchemy, psychic, etc). Then I pull up the relevant classes (which at this point is probably six or less) and give the player one/two sentence descriptions. (“A Barbarian uses battle rage to gain high Strength and durability.”) At that point, things are pretty simple, and I can focus on more roleplay options like race and weapon of choice, then offer relevant feats and archetypes. I always try to give them a couple of mechanical options to pick from so it’s still their character.
Pathfinder is great but need more classes 🙁
So little to pick 😛
Holy shit! Claire, you got the hover text in the right box the first time here! Is this the beginning of a trend?
Wait, there’s a Cavalier *and* a Chevalier? I’m sure that never gets confusing.
Anyway, my campaign is an open table that’s nominally for beginners (although it’s mostly the same crew every week), and I recently reorganized and restarted it to make it more open and beginner-friendly. My main question is warrior or spellcaster, then get into the different types of each. I try to get people to come up with a concept for a person, then interpret that in terms of the rules, rather than inventing a personality and history to match a build. It’s a hard shift in mindset, and I’ve been getting a bit of pushback from my experienced players. But I think ultimately it will make the characters and setting feel more real and encourage roleplaying.
The 7±2 rule says that people can only hold about that many items in mind at once, so at any given step in character creation there should be at most ~7 options to choose from. 13 classes is too many, but splitting them makes it 7 casters or 6 warriors, which is right in the sweet spot.
There’s also a lot of merit to rolling stats in order, and picking whatever class fits your stats. That makes all the hard decisions for you, has a fun horoscope kind of feel to it, and can break players out of a habit or preconceived notions that might not fit your campaign. Matt Colville extolled the virtues of doing this for his Chain of Acheron campaign.
The way I like to do these things is ask them what they want to do with their character, and then from there I can trim down the classes to the ones that will help them do that. Even the most basic “I just wanna hit people with my sword really hard” rules out all the casters, easily cutting out 1/2 to 2/3 of the classes
First of all: Bravo for the song
Second: process for corrupting the youth
1) Elevator pitch, a short description of the game setting, premise and maybe what an rpg is if they don’t know. About 30 seconds, more than 1 min is too long.
2) Limit their options to those in the core rulebook, once they’ve found their feet, they can expand their horizons. Maybe let them rejigger their character if they find something better.
3) Be on hand to answer questions, show them where in the book to find the answer. This reinforces the idea to read the rules if you need answers while not just abandoning them with a reading assignment.
Also, advanced challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2cfju6GTNs
For complete newbies, I recommend what I always do with a new rules system: play the most generic melee-type Fighter until you figure out the basics.
To a somewhat-experienced player who just joined our 3.X game, I gave the following advice: all 3.5 books are on the table (except for Oriental Adventures–80% of the races/classes don’t mesh well with Western concepts–unless you want to play a Monk, then the revision is an improvement); it’s a fresh campaign at 3rd level, so if you can somehow min/max with only 3 HD to play with, then follow your bliss!
Ah, Pathfinder. One of my biggest gripes with the system is the sheer number of highly specialised classes for every single career or slight variant, rather than just having a few broader ones that can cover them just as easily. I feel it discourages unconventional takes on the classic classes (for instance, the whole existence of the investigator class fills a role that Lawful-leaning rogues or more urban rangers could fill too), along with just overcomplicating things. Granted, a good bit of it was inherited from 3.X, which was no slouch in the “specific classes for everything” field either.
With that aside, I think it’s best to introduce new players to core materials first, then add in supplements when they’re ready to try something new. In my 3.5 days, I avoided a lot of the system’s complexities by just using the PHB, DMG and Monster Manual, and only started bringing in supplements when I felt comfortable with what I had. In a good system, the core options give a good taste of what’s available without being overwhelming.
I’ll give my example in WFRP terms, since i know that better than PF. “So what kind of thing do you want to do? There are way too many professions to easily just list them all. OK, you want to be a fiery warrior who runs into danger regardless of your own safety? Well, obviously any of the fight-y careers could work for that, but there are a few that fit better than others. Shall I list those off, and then if you don’t like them we can go through some other options.
If you wanted to go down the religious-zealot road, a Flagellant could work… they have pretty severe self-harm themes though, so you might instead want to go for the Ulrican version, the Wolfkin. There are several different options for being a Knight of various orders, but the Knights of the White Wolf might fit best. They consider strength a great virtue and despise cowardice, and give you enough armour that you might actually survive long-term. They’re ulricans again, so if you don’t like winter or wolves then maybe not… another explicitly religious option would be to play a Warrior Priest, who if you go for Myrmidia or Sigmar can literally be fiery as they call on the divine wrath of their god.
If you want to avoid religious themes, the Dwarf Slayers are warriors who seek out a glorious death in battle to expunge the shame of old oaths broken. And if you don’t want to be a Dwarf or religious, Pit Fighters earn their pay by hopping into an enclosed space and fighting monsters or other pit fighters, sometimes to the death, so they’d likely fit well though they’re rather more mercenary than the other options I’ve listed.”
Then let them read through the entries in the book for each of those. The key, I think, is asking questions about what they want to narrow it down to five-ish options at each stage of chargen.
Or, in earlier editions: “ok, what kind of character do you want to play? Too bad, it’s all randomly rolled for. What, you don’t think that’s fair? Too bad, life ain’t fair, enjoy your dung collector.”
I mean, this does also avoid analysis paralysis!
I break the classes in to broader categories, Martials, Casters, and Skilled, generally I ask them to pick 2, then from there I ask more questions and help the player establish a concept. Once we have a mechanical concept for the character, we can find the right class, features, and feats to fit together to help them get what they were looking for.
Mostly we ask what sort of classes they like in other games, to get a better idea of what class(es) they might enjoy in Pathfinder…