So, following the review of the D&D beginners
set a day or so back, I’m now looking at the Pathfinder box set to see if the
young pretender has what it takes to take on the crown prince.
First thing to consider is that it’s more
expensive than the D&D set, accounting for free delivery on both, you’re
still seven quid more to pick up the pathfinder set, so the question is, is the
additional cost justified.
First impressions are that the box is a
lot heavier, the box itself is heavier card than the D&D set and better
construction. Then it’s on to the
contents...
A small page at the top of the box that
asks you what you’d like to do straight away, so the first thing you’ve got in
your mind is that immediately you’re being asked what you want to do with the
game, there’s a number of options from running straight in and playing solo to making
characters to just running in with characters that have already been prepared
for you.
The production values are excellent, everything
is good stock, glossy covers, clean printing, proof read well, the characters have
a front page that gives you an immediate indication of what each type of
character is about.
It’s simplistic if
you’ve been playing the games forever, but for those who’ve never touched on
it, it’s a fantastic addition, letting you throw the characters down on the
table and have brand new players immediately get a handle on what the
characters can do and why they’d want to play that character.
You get a normal set of dice, but the
difference between this and the D&D set is that the D&D set asks you to
throw the D10 twice for the percentile, this set gives you the percentile, it’s
not much, but in the eyes of at least one of the beginners I handed the set off
to, it made a lot of difference in the outlook, they’re not asking you to
stretch to anything else, you literally have everything you need to play right off the bat.
There’s a battleboard, double sided, dry
wipe compatible, measuring three feet by two, dungeon map on one side, plain grid
format on the other, folds neatly down to fit in the box.
There’s a ton of stand up pieces to be
used on the board, ranging from characters and larger monsters.
To a variety of smaller monsters...
The insides of the books are well laid
out and clear in their presentation, there’s never any suggestion that you should know something, everything is explained
and made clear so that anyone unfamiliar will have no problem picking up the
game and running it.
There are character generation rules
included in the box, no need to go looking anything up, and they’re equally
clear and colourful, it’s clearly designed to suck you in to the game and the
system and it does a really good job of doing that.
There are three books included with the
set, the first is the Hero’s Handbook, with all the details in it required to
create heroes, the rules of playing the game, and not a single thing about
running it or anything that’s unessential for you to know as a player. It also includes a choose your own adventure
game at the front that allows you to jump straight in and get an idea of the
rules before you’ve even showed the box to everyone else.
It’s nothing complex, merely a swift
dungeon crawl, but it doesn’t pull any punches, it’s reasonably easy to get
killed if you’re reckless, but it sets the scene nicely, puts points in where
people who have read the scenario and the background will do better than those
who haven’t, and gives you an idea that this isn’t one of those games where you
endlessly respawn when you die...
Then there’s the transition guide, which
gives you the details of what to expect when you go from the beginners set
(which will get you to around 6th level) to the worlds beyond as
detailed by the main rule book. The book
is pitched towards reassuring beginners that the enormous main rule book isn’t
something to be scared of, and that they don’t have to read the whole damn
thing, just the bits they need at the time.
Final book is the Games masters guide,
with all the details to run the dungeon adventure on the dry wipe map and then
the details of how to provide a fun environment to the players, it doesn’t
sugar coat things, and to my cheerful surprise, provided a whole set of
instructions that outlined what is expected of a good GM, most of which echoed
my thoughts from a few posts back.
In all, it’s excellent, there’s a clear
sense that the producers of this box want you to play the game, they’ve given
you enough in the box for a whole bunch of adventures before you ever have to
go and buy any other books, and that includes free download links to other
products on the website should you not feel ready to run things just yet.
I’ll post the commentary from the
beginners regarding both this and the D&D starter set tomorrow, but for
anyone thinking of introducing people to a fantasy roleplaying game, they
really can’t go wrong with this set.
