PATHFINDER 2ND EDITION CHARACTER CREATION BASICS! (Easy to Follow Guide)

howdy my name is no nad and today I'll be showing you the basics of Pathfinder 2nd edition character creation Pathfinder is a little different from a lot of other roleplay systems in many games there's some element of randomness and character creation you often rolled dice to emulate this randomness and create a character using the stats you're given however in Pathfinder 2e you'll be gaining a plethora of stat bonuses from your race class and even your background with these stat bonuses you'll carefully craft your character we'll be constructing a simple character today so you should be able to follow along with whatever character you decide to make just note that your stats and abilities will most likely look quite a bit different from mine for today's tutorial we'll be constructing Hugo slip toes the Nome rogue he's a slippery little fella who hides in the shadows of city alleys preys on the greedy to feed himself but has a soft spot for the downtrodden now before we get started I highly recommend this character sheet I'll leave a link in the description this sheet will Auto calculate and auto apply various bonuses as you fill it in it'll make your life so much easier as Pathfinder to eat tends to have you write and erase numbers quite often I'll also be adding timestamps in the description to each separate part of this guide so if you're looking for something in particular check down there to be taken to that section of the video ancestry to begin you'll want to write tens into your six attributes strength dexterity Constitution intelligence wisdom and charisma if you are unfamiliar with pathfinders six ability scores there are in-depth descriptions on page 19 of your core rulebook every two points added to an ability increases its modifier by +1 so if an attribute is increased from 10 to 12 its modifier goes from 0 to +1 the same is true for if the stat goes down if a stat changes from 10 to 8 the modifier goes from 0 to negative 1 we want to play an ohm so we'll go to page 43 in the core rulebook here we can see that gnomes receive ability boosts to Constitution charisma and one free boost this means we add +2 to those scores so Constitution and charisma increased to 12 and we get to choose any of our six scores to increase as well since we plan to make a rogue let's add it to our dexterity because that's our character's key ability score more on that later along with our ability boosts gnomes also have an ability flaw in strength this means we subtract two from our strength score making it eight along with these stat changes we can see our little gnome will have both the gnome and humanoid traits we can add those to the top of our character sheet while we're up there we can add chaotic good under the alignment section this means he's an overall good guy but he doesn't mind getting a little dirty for a good reason you can also put any deity your character may worship here along with your sized gnomes are classified as small along with picking our ancestry we must pick a heritage our heritage helps specify exactly what type of gnome we are most ancestries will have three to five choices for their heritage each granting their own boons since Hugo will be keeping to the shadows and sneaking through the darkness let's take the umbral gnome heritage while all gnomes gain low-light vision this heritage gives us full dark vision allowing us to see in darkness as though it were daylight albeit in black and white finally to finish off our ancestry we get to take one level one ancestry feat these are bonuses and abilities that are related to our upbringing and genetics typically ancestry feats can only be taken by characters with those ancestries however feel free to talk to your dungeon master about some extra options perhaps your Goblin Ranger was raised by dwarves so him having the Dwarven weapon familiarity feet wouldn't be too far-fetched but to keep things easy to follow we'll stick to gnome feats perhaps Hugo made friends with a small rat who aids him in his sneaky endeavors we'll take the animal accomplice gnome ancestry feat which gives us a small animal familiar I'll cover familiars and animal companions in a future video so for now this feat doesn't change anything in character creation we're going to move on to the next step but keep an eye on what page your ancestry is on we'll be coming back to this page later background [Music] next we can pick our background backgrounds are simple and effective ways to build out your character's backstory as well as gain a few extra stats and a bonus feat you can typically pick whatever background you want but always clear it with your DM to make sure it makes sense in the context of the campaign since Hugo seems to be a bit of a pickpocket street urchin would be the perfect fit found on page 64 like we said Hugo knows his way around city alleys so the bonus is conferred by this background make perfect sense since we took the street urchin background we gained two more ability boosts one of them has to be applied to dexterity or Constitution and the other one can go to any attribute so let's increase our dexterity again raising it to 14 and put the free 1 into charisma just because our little gnome is a thief doesn't mean he can't talk his way to success our background also gives us the pickpocket skill feet allowing us to swipe small objects off somebody's person without taking the usual minus 5 penalty class now we're moving on to the meat and potatoes of character creation our class your class will tell you exactly what your character can do and will give you multiple different choices allowing you to specialize your character however you like on page 180 we have the rogue class page first let's check out our class key ability boost your key ability is used for a multitude of things and is often the most important attribute for your character most classes can pick from one of two choices of key abilities such as Rangers being able to choose from dexterity or strength rogues are a bit different from other classes typically their key ability would be dexterity but they have a feature called rogues racket this lets you pick what kind of rogue you want to be and changes your key ability depending on what you pick this is a lot of information but allow me to simplify it a ruffian whose key ability is strength can perform sneak attacks with more weapons and can use medium armor a scoundrel whose key ability is charisma can more effectively throw enemies off balance in combat and are trained in social skills or a thief whose key ability is dexterity can deal more damage with lightweight weapons and is trained in thievery we'll be picking the thief option and thus increasing our dexterity by another +2 now 16 all classes get a number of features automatically when creating the character on top of our rogues racket all rogues also receives sneak attack and surprise attack very helpful combat abilities that give rogues great potential at the start of combat and the ability to take advantage of enemy openings rogues also tend to be more skilled than other classes so at first level they also acquire an additional skill feet this only applies to rogues as most classes only gain skill feats on even levels I'll be covering skills and skill feats in a future video so don't worry about that for now finally at level one you will always be able to pick from any level 1 class feet rogues have four options at level 1 and we'll pick trap finder this gives Hugo an array of bonuses against finding disabled and reacting to traps since he knows a thing or two about the subject free boosts and hit points all characters during creation on top of their race ancestry and background ability boosts are given for ability boosts that you are free to assign to any stats you want it's worth noting that no stat can be increased over 18 during character creation currently our attributes look like this adding four more bonuses we will raise our dexterity charisma Constitution and finally we'll raise our strength to get rid of that negative modifier now that we have our stats fully finalized we can finish a few other aspects of our character your hit points at level 1 are determined by taking the hit points gained from your ancestry and adding them to the points gained from your class in our case we would add 8 from our gnome ancestry plus 8 from our rogue class plus 2 from our Constitution modifier giving us a starting hit point value of 18 now your ancestry hit points apply only to character creation so if we were to reach level 2 we would only gain 8 plus 2 hit points increasing the value to 28 class DC and proficiency below your ability scores you'll see something called your class DC this is the number that is typically used when somebody tries to roll a saving throw against one of your abilities if they roll that number or higher your ability will have a reduced effect or maybe no effect at all you simply add the modifier of your key ability in our case dexterity which is +4 to the key box and tick the little T box next to it indicating you have the trained proficiency in your class in Pathfinder 2nd edition proficiency only has four levels indicated on your character sheet by the letters T e m and L these stand for trained expert master and legendary if you are trained in something you gain a bonus of two plus your level to it for example because we are trained in our rogue class DC we add an extra plus 3 to it plus 2 from the trained proficiency level and +1 from our character level this brings our total class DC to 10 plus 4 plus 3 or 17 if our proficiency ever increases to expert or master the bonus increases from plus 2 to plus 4 for expert or 2 plus 6 for master the same proficiency bonus applies to anything on your character sheet with those four letters next to it these include your class DC your armor weapons saving throws skills and spells rogues typically don't have access to any spells so we don't need to worry about those right now skills your class determines which skills and how many skills you get to start proficient with rogues have the highest number of starting skill proficiencies in the game will be starting with stealth thievery and seven more plus our intelligence modifier which happens to be zero so along with stealth and thievery we can pick seven more skills for Hugo to be trained in so pick any seven skills that catch your eyes there's really no wrong choice as they all have their uses I'll be covering skills more in depth in a future video as well but there's a detailed list of skills starting on page 240 of your core rulebook and before you ask no you can't pick the same skill twice to become expert typically becoming an expert in something involves some kind of training and improvement during the campaign the exception to this rule is typically perception and saving throws our rogue begins with trained and fortitude saves but expert in reflex and will saves we even get expert in perception because rogues got to stay sharp so nobody stabs him in the butt gear at this point you've got a functioning living breathing character now they may be naked but that can be easily fixed by purchasing equipment I'll go into more detail on equipment in another video but all characters are given 15 gold pieces to buy their starting gear this includes weapons armor and gear like rations and bed rolls keep in mind your class is only proficient in certain weapons and armor those proficiencies can all be found right on the first page of your class if you want a simple guide on what to pick up there are class packs detailed on page 289 that give a prebuilt selection of items for each class and that's about it aside from personal information and backstory your character is ready to go put a blade in their hand and a quest in their head and you're off to the races I hope I was able to clarify some of the more obscure aspects of second edition character creation or if you're new to the system I hope I was able to lead you clearly through the character creation step by step look forward to videos detailing more of the basic aspects of Pathfinder 2nd edition in the near future I'll be covering such topics as gearing up your character skills and actions soon if you want to know right when those go live consider subscribing and ringing the bell to get a notification right when the video goes live thanks for watching and until next time known at one's

Channel: Nonat1s

Views: 26,596

Rating: 4.9882927 out of 5

Keywords: pathfinder, 2e, 2nd, edition, RPG, Role, Game, Tabletop, character, creation, guide, class, race, ancestry, heritage, skills, gear, feats, skill, proficiency, expert, master, legendary, Pathfinder 2e, Pathfinder 2e Character Creation, Pathfinder 2e Basics, Pathfinder 2e Ancesty, Pathfinder 2e Skills, Pathfinder 2e Heritage, Pathfinder 2e Character Creation Basics, Easy to Follow, Pathfinder 2e Class, Pathfinder 2e Class DC, Pathfinder 2e Proficiency, Pathfinder 2nd Edition, Pathfinder Second Edition

Id: xFFcizyTx8c

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/FyrelordeOmega]

This post has more upvotes than the video has likes

[u/Extract]

Very nice video! I might even get my friends who currently play 5E to try Pathfinder if you make a few more of those.

[u/Dogs_Not_Gods]

Just got your YT username. Nice

[u/Spiegelmann]

Some of the best editing out there. Straight to the point. I’ll share it with my group.