Quick early game tips for those who are new to pathfinder

[dfedwards2001]

Some tips based on past PnP experience and my first few hours with the game (edits add some commentary for lots of hours with the game).

- Main Character

Stats

Generally, don't dump (drop to 7) con or wis. Hp and will saves are important for everyone.

Int and cha are generally safe dumps for classes that don't rely on those stats. Its been confirmed multiple times that your main doesn't specifically need high cha to be an effective ruler. Of course if you want more skill points / a higher persuasion you do you.

Do note that int only gives you half the bonus in terms of skill points that you get from the PnP version given that there are less skills overall. At the same time the skill bonus you get from being a human / half-orc isn't halved, making those races just a little bit better for skill users.

For a frontliner/archer try to have at least an 18 in str/dex respectively (after racial modifiers) so you can hit things more reliably. You can build a purely dex based frontliner but its certainly tricker to build and you may want to consult a guide.

Similarly for a dedicated caster try and have at least an 18 in your casting stat. This will increase the number of spells you can cast per day and your spell DCs (how hard it is to resist your spells). A hybrid caster can generally get away with something lower.

Arrow damage (via a composite bow) is based on str. Crossbows deal flat damage and may seem better than bows (particularly for a low str character) but note you can't use multiple attacks with them (without feats that haven't made it into the game). Edit: Actually the game does away with PnP rules about reloading crossbows so they are a viable option for low strength characters.

Feats

Early on, try and focus on taking offensive feats like weapon focus (provided you know what weapon you will be using) and spell focus (provided you know what kind of spells you want to specialise in) over defensive feats like dodge and toughness. Note certain feats (like weapon focus) can only be taken when you have at least a +1 BAB so a minimum 2nd level for some classes.

Don't go down the archery feat line (point blank shot, precise shot etc.) unless you are a dedicated ranged combatant. Feats are precious. Recreational archers can make do.

If you want to dual wield (and still hit anything) you need to put a light weapon in your off-hand. A light shield is light. A longsword is not light. You need to take the two weapon fighting feat (and shield bash if you want to dual wield weapon and shield).

Two-handing a weapon gives you a higher damage bonus from str and more damage from the power attack feat. Its an easy way to build a high damage frontliner without requiring a lot of feats. Of course your AC will be lower without a shield.

Other key choices

For clerics/inquisitors check carefully which free weapon proficiency you get with each deity as well as the domains they offer. Some weapons are good ie. Shelyn (glaive), Gorum (greatsword). Some weapons you will already be proficient in. Also note the domains a deity offers are based on flavour not necessarily balance (looking at you Desna). So some deities are just mechanically better than others. Edit: Some domains (like war) are still not working right.

Druids get to pick between a domain and an animal companion. The companion will certainly give your group more of a boost during the lower levels (though its yet to be seen how effective it will be at high levels). Edit: Pet scaling is actually crazy good, I'd look for it to be tweaked in future. For the moment though take the pet.

Wizards who choose to specialise in an arcane school have to pick two opposition schools. Note you can still cast spells from an opposition school you just need to use two spell slots instead of one. The archetype specialist does prevent you from casting from opposition schools.

For a ranger, taking humanoid (human) as your first favored enemy seems like a reliable option. Edit: Humans remain a frequent enemy for most of the game, monstrous humanoids feature prominently in chapter 2 but not much after. Other common enemies are fey, undead and magical beasts. Its a good idea to pick one enemy and max it as far as possible due to the existence of the instant enemy spell (3rd lvl ranger spell).

Don't multi-class without a specific plan. All classes are fine to go all the way to level 20 and some of their most powerful abilities are gained late. Prestige classes aren't necessarily better than base classes (and some are traps for the unwary imho).

- Companions

Valerie

As soon as you can, replace her tower shield with a heavy shield. She takes a -2 to hit with the former until level 5 and she has enough trouble hitting things as it is with her mediocre strength. Give her tower shield back then.

Send Valerie into combat first so that enemies focus on her rather than your other lower AC characters.

Consider buying full plate for her as your first big purchase.

Amiri

Don't stress if she seems to do a lot of damage but goes down frequently. That’s what barbarians tend to do. I suggest you don't overreact by spending her feats to get single points of AC. Later on you can use spells like blur and displacement and her own DR to keep her up.

She can only use one stance rage power at a time so only take one. Lethal stance doesn't stack with Linzi's inspire courage so if you want both companions in your group take reckless stance instead.

Enlarge person (a 1st lvl wiz/sorc spell) is fantastic on her given her oversized bastard sword. Enlarge increases the die of damage as well as str and reach.

Note her rage ability is toggled. She can't rage if she's fatigued.

Linzi

Sing, sing a lot. But don't forget she can do other things while singing.

She might look like a decent archer but with only 8 str her arrow damage will be low. I suggest concentrating on her spells/buffing/skills.

She is likely your go to for thievery skill very early on but she will quickly be supplanted by Octavia as the latter has skill focus and rogue bonuses.

Hideous laughter (1st lvl spell) is great on humanoids.

Heroism (a 2nd lvl spell) is an amazing long duration buff at early levels.

Harrim

Harrim is likely your first real healer (unless you main a cleric). If he doesn't start out in your group after the prologue then follow your quest tips first thing to pick him up again.

Note channeling positive energy in combat heals your opponents in range unless you have selective channel which in turn requires a 13 cha (which he doesn't have).

If you click on the icon at the top of one of his spells you get the option to convert the spell to an equivalent level heal.

Note his destructive smite ability is toggled.

He starts with the 1st lvl bless spell which is a solid starting group buff. Cast this before combat when you spot an enemy.

Lesser restoration (which clerics gets at lvl 3) cures fatigue and ability damage. Resting should heal a little bit of the latter as well. Remove blindness comes at lvl 5. You can buy potions and scrolls from Oleg's if someone gets blinded before then.

Jaethal

Positive energy hurts her. Negative energy heals her. Unless you have a negative energy channeling main, she will pretty much use all her spell slots healing herself. I suggest waiting for enemies to engage on other characters before sending her in to clean up.

I've not yet tested, but her rapid healing judgement should still work as it doesn't do positive energy.

Tristian

You retrieve Tristian from the temple of the elk.

Tristian is a fantastic healer (and he starts with selective channel which really opens up in-combat healing) but he can't wear armour or carry a shield and accordingly he has all the defense of a wet noodle. Firmly take away his scimitar and never let him play with it again.

Note in addition to channel/healing spells Tristian also has a special camp ability that increases your rate of natural healing.

Octavia

You retrieve Octavia after you experience the technic league random encounter and find their camp (think you need to be lvl 3 for this). Edit: I experienced this at lvl 2 wandering in the forest east of Oleg's.

Octavia starts with a level of rogue and a level of wizard and can go either way (although with the former you may want to keep her ranged given her low con). She can also take lvls in the arcane trickster prestige class in which case you will want to take the accomplished sneak attacker feat at lvl 3. Also note the minimum skill requirements.

Regongar

You find him with Octavia.

Regongar is a melee combatant who starts with light armour and a not especially high con. Just charging him into battle will get him killed repeatedly. Note also that magus are designed around mixing melee touch spells with melee combat. Accordingly, he needs a lot of micro to be effective.

Casting shield (1st lvl spell) and mirror image (2nd lvl spell) before combat will help his defense a lot.

- Skills

The difficulty of skill checks increases as the game proceeds.

Accordingly, for most skills, it seems better to have one specialist than a bunch of generalists. The exceptions seem to be perception (everybody get a skill check) and use magic device and mobility (each character makes their own check).

All characters with high wis or perception as a class skill will probably benefit from taking perception (unless they are really hurting for skill points and you want something else). Edit: Many areas/items are hidden behind high perception checks. Its important to have at least one character with as high a perception as possible.

Use magic device is a long term investment for most but it's very effective to be able to use non-class buffs and it should pay off at later levels. Edit: Yes, it does there are wands for spells like shield, good hope, mirror image and displacement which are great to be able to use on a UMD character. Its also great to be able to use a raise dead scroll if your cleric dies.

From the tooltip, it seems you need arcane knowledge on the specific character to learn new spells from scrolls (important for wizards, magus, alchemists). This could be wrong but wouldn't want to chance it. Edit: You also need a character with high arcane knowledge in your party to identify magic items.

- Magic

Orisons/cantrips are free but most will quickly be out-classed. Use them extensively at low levels while they still have value.

For spontaneous casters (bards, inquisitors, sorcerers) with limited spells known, each and every spell you take is a precious, precious resource. Try and take spells which seem like they will have value throughout the game (i.e those that scale with caster level) rather than those that do not. For example, sleep looks like a great spell and it is at low levels. But you won't cast it at all from the mid-levels on. Leave those kind of spells to the wizard.

Copying a scroll into a wizard's spell book will use up the scroll.

- Combat

Formations make a big difference and you will need to manually change them every time you get a new companion or change your party composition.

There is a huge difference in combat effectiveness between a buffed and unbuffed party. Note which buffs are long duration (longer than 1 min/lvl) and can be cast when you start a map and those which are short duration and should be cast immediately before combat.

Bear in mind how easy it is to flank and be flanked (two melee enemies adjacent). That’s a free +2 to hit and activates sneak attacks. Currently, sneak attack is also being applied to ranged attacks if the target is flanked in melee (this might be unintended).

Drinking a potion gives your adjacent melee opponent(s) a free attack of opportunity (Edit: This is not occurring at present although its likely a bug) . Getting up from prone does the same. Try and heal before combat rather than during.

Shooting into melee attracts a -4 penalty to hit. Ranged specialists should take the precise shot feat to remove this. Recreational archers should generally try a different target.

Damage resistance (DR) is a thing that some enemies have. It may be quite frustrating to some to hit something but deal limited or no damage. While it may take some time to learn what creatures are resistant to what attacks there are a few things you can do. First, pause and check your detailed combat log, it will show what is happening. Second, have your characters pack different weapons. Just because your fighter is really good with a longsword doesn't mean that you shouldn't also give him a masterwork mace and a cold iron spear.

Use energy attacks/spells for swarms. They have high DR to weapons by design. You can buy fire/acid flasks at Oleg's. Edit: You do encounter swarms at higher levels but energy damage weapons make them much easier to fight.

Touch special attacks (either melee or ranged) target a creature's touch AC rather than regular AC. Touch AC includes certain bonuses like dex and dodge bonuses but excludes armour and shield bonuses. Accordingly, it is usually much easier (but not automatic) to hit something's touch AC and the touch AC of monsters tends not to scale up nearly as much as regular AC. Note a ranged touch attack still takes a -4 to hit when firing into melee. Precise shot removes that penalty as normal. Edit: This all remains true but some (mostly fey) enemies have the unearthly grace ability which adds cha bonus to touch AC. Try to use spells which automatically hit for these.

I adverted to it above, but different types of bonuses don't stack except for dodge and untyped bonuses. For example, a ring of protection won't stack with a shield of faith spell as they are both deflection bonuses. Consider this carefully when applying buffs, choosing abilities etc.

- General

Pause options give a huge amount of flexibility. Want the game to play more like a turn-based game? Set the game to pause at the end of each combat round. I also recommend setting pauses for handy to know events like more enemies entering combat.

Difficulty levels add substantial customisation as well. Do note that the challenging / "core" difficulty does grant enemies +2 to hit and +2 to AC by default so I would not hesitate to tune the enemy power down to no bonuses if you want the true "core" experience. As well, normal difficulty seems to present plenty of challenge for someone just starting out.

Lastly, there is a pathfinder srd you can google for the full PnP rules. Obviously not everything is exactly the same but the implementation of the PnP rules is very faithful.

[Stella Volpe]

Read my mind! Great post.

[Monkee]

Really useful for a newbie like me-thank you for taking the time to write this up.

[Stella Volpe]

You can buy remove blindness scrolls and potions from Bokken at Oleg's.

[Majber]

Does ranged touch attack into melee also attracts a -4 penalty to hit?

[matthew]

Going Human pally,

I done

str 17
dex 12
con 14
int 10
wis 8
cha 17

Should I have knocked cha to 16 or 15 and boosted wis to 10?

still early, so I could restart, just don't want to handicap my char from the get go.

[Stella Volpe]

It does in the Pathfinder ruleset, and I believe it does in game also. The counter to that, is both point blank shot and precise shot *should* affect rays and ranged touch as well.

[Stella Volpe]

Wisdom is important for will saves... But at Paladin level 2 you'll get Divine Grace, which will add your charisma bonus to all saves, so it's a decent choice for a dump stat.

[BeelzeBob]

I think this is one of the things that is probably making the game feel so hard for some. A lot of people just don't know how to build characters using the PF rules. Also the starting NPC's are not made equal at all lol.

[Cutlass Jack]

Lots of good info here.

Does anyone know what abilites the Duelist has over the PnP version? Trying to decide on my build and unsure if I should plan for a decent intelligence (if canny defense is there) or if its better to go single wield (with empty offhand) or dual wield.

I wish the game would at least let you look at the stats of Prestigue classes before you qualify for them. would make figuring this stuff out much easier.

[matthew]

Originally posted by Starkad:

Wisdom is important for will saves... But at Paladin level 2 you'll get Divine Grace, which will add your charisma bonus to all saves, so it's a decent choice for a dump stat.

So my stats are fine? and not worth it to start over then?

thanks

[General Hawk]

great post thank you!

[Zerathule]

Originally posted by ;1734340257882498610:

Going Human pally,

I done

str 17
dex 12
con 14
int 10
wis 8
cha 17

Should I have knocked cha to 16 or 15 and boosted wis to 10?

still early, so I could restart, just don't want to handicap my char from the get go.

I would switch wis and INT.
Skills are overrated, and a paladin will never be a skill monkey.
Also, might consider going aasimar variant with +2 cha and +2 str. I play a paladin and am str 18 dex 12 con 14 int 8 wis 10 cha 18. You only need power attack to be good in melee. The second feat from being human is good ... but won't change that much.

[Stella Volpe]

Originally posted by matthew:

Originally posted by Starkad:

Wisdom is important for will saves... But at Paladin level 2 you'll get Divine Grace, which will add your charisma bonus to all saves, so it's a decent choice for a dump stat.

So my stats are fine? and not worth it to start over then?

thanks

You should be fine, honestly. At level 3 Paladins become immune to fear (and give nearby allies a bonus to fear saves), and that's been a big thorn in my side.

[Stella Volpe]

Originally posted by Zerathule:

Originally posted by ;1734340257882498610:

Going Human pally,

I done

str 17
dex 12
con 14
int 10
wis 8
cha 17

Should I have knocked cha to 16 or 15 and boosted wis to 10?

still early, so I could restart, just don't want to handicap my char from the get go.

I would switch wis and INT.
Skills are overrated, and a paladin will never be a skill monkey.
Also, might consider going aasimar variant with +2 cha and +2 str. I play a paladin and am str 18 dex 12 con 14 int 8 wis 10 cha 18. You only need power attack to be good in melee. The second feat from being human is good ... but won't change that much.

To piggyback on this, because I agree 100%... If you pick Angelkin Aasimar, you can cast lesser restoration once a day - which is very handy.

[MACIORELLA]

I would like to have some kind of monk / alchemist (without mutliclassing), I noticed that alchemist can use stone fists + mutagens - so it seems like interesting stuff for me. I was also thinking about monk but monk does not have mutagens...
The choice is obvious: alchemist monk, throwing grenades etc around and fisting everyone with stone fists being enhanced by mutagens.

Now I need: distribution points (on strength, wisdom, charisma etc) + skills that I would need to use (also alchemist sub class if grenadier is not good enough for this).

Basically I would like to be fighting alchemist but without range weapons - in the middle of the battle - grenades will be always thrown from the close range, as I want to be in first line....