Last night we played our first few hours of Pathfinder.  Overall I really enjoyed it and it looks like a great system. Very similar to Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 but expanded and refined. I’m hoping Paizo continues on it’s current path with revision as necessary to keep the system balanced and entertaining and avoids the major-revision treadmill that so many manufacturers get on to generate new core rulebook money every five years. I haven’t spent enough time with it to develop more than one critique but it was a fairly major one, which I will elaborate on below.

The one major flaw we experienced was generating characters. It was not as accessible or bullet proof as it should be for a new player. I can see some players running for D&D 4.0 or some other streamlined system if they don’t have other people encouraging them to stick with it.

The core rulebook provides all the data you need, it’s just spread to and fro and there are so many options that character generation becomes crippled rather than empowering for a new player. Paizo provided a section stating that you should perform steps A, B and C in a particular order but once you dig in a bit deeper you find that when they say “Select your feats” that is about as much guidance as you are going to get in selecting them from the long list. I’m only using Feats as a example, this goes for everything from figuring out how much starting gold you get to selecting your equipment. You find yourself flipping from one end of the book to the other digesting large chunks of text in order to identify exactly what you should do or select.

Under D&D 3.5 in the Players Handbook if you looked at a character class it provided a starter build; something that gave you guidance as to how to quickly arm a new character, what skills and feats you needed and what basic supplies to purchase. With Pathfinder it’s green field – you know you have 6 skill points, 2 feats and light armor proficiency – go and pick out your stuff. The problem with that approach is it is daunting when presented with a massive list of options.

Accessibility is a huge part of success in a gaming system. In my opinion D&D 4.0 took it too far in that I think they removed much of the creativity and put people into a World of Warcraft “punch the button” mentality. In the opposite corner Pathfinder needs to include a jumpstart method in the next revision of the core rulebook or issue a intro supplement so that folks who don’t want to use software and are new have a guided path to entering the game. That one change would have dramatically changed our first experience (and probably shortened our first character generation time from 2.5 hours to 1 hour).

The good news is Pathfinder is clearly a loved system and there are various computer-based tools of different types available for those who want assistance.

Based around my Googling and experimenting today here are some of your options…

Full Character Management – Will give you guidance on what to do next while building or leveling a character:

PCGen – Free (Donate!) - Supports the Core Rulebook and Alpha versions of the Advanced Players Guide are available as of this writing.

Hero Lab - $30-$100 depending on modules - Supports a wide assortment of the Pathfinder modules and is pretty intuitive.

Character Sheet Generation – This assumes you already know how to build your character:

Venture Captain Online Generator – Core Rulebook based generation at this time.

Trove Tokens Character Sheet Generator - Includes the Advanced Players Guide characters.

Hero Forge Based Spreadsheets - A different way of approaching it through a Excel spreadsheet.

The Only Sheet - A second spreadsheet character generation spreadsheet.

I should include the disclaimer for the spreadsheet based solutions that I only took a quick look. After opening the files I decided that a 8 and 15MB spreadsheet wasn’t the way I wanted to manage characters.

Reference Guides:

Pathfinder System Reference Document Online.

Pathfinder Reference Documentation at Paizo’s website.

Paizo - The group who makes Pathfinder.

The one follow-on statement I will make is this: If you are new, stick with it. It’s appears to be a great system and my first impressions are very positive. If you are generating your first characters get the correct tools (PCGen and Hero Lab above both will do the job) or work with someone who understands how the classes work to guide you through the process.

Since it is that time of year when people start asking what you want for Xmas/Yule/Birthdays/Groundhog Day I am putting my list online. This is really just a extension of a list I maintain of "Stuff Alan Wants" so many of the items are far out of gift price range, but this is a easy way to keep the list up to date. At least this list doesn't include the Shelby Mustang with 600HP :^).

Motorized Bicycle Kit
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Freeloader Solar Charger
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Aluminum Hard-Side Wallet
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Exposed Flip Clock
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A T-Shirt that says "Paddle Faster, I hear Banjos".
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Dead Space Xbox 360 Game
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Settlers of Catan board game with any random expansions.
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Any Carcassonne expansions I don't have.
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Xbox Elite
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Mac Mini
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Cool or Nifty Watches
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Sunglasses that won't look like garbage on me :^)
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The 30% my 401k has lost during 2008..
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Gift Cards from:
Wal-Mart
Fred Meyer
Bestbuy
Gamestop
Kit's Cameras
Gotschalks
Costco :^)
Amazon.com
Thinkgeek.com
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A set of good quality Binoculars
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Cool LED-based lights... Mathmos is one example of a manufacturer.
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Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens - ~330
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Canon Speedlite 430EX II Flash  ~270
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Chumby ~180
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MyKey RFID Door Lock - ~350
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Mathmos Light - ~90
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Neat Receipts Scanner for Mac - ~180
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Drobo 2nd Generation Storage Appliance ~400
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Canon EF 28MM f/1.8 USM Lens ~400
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Surveillence Camera Kit w/ network support - ~400 through ~800
Examples:
Costco Site 1
or
Costco Site 2

Superbrace Fork Brace

What it does: It is a aluminum plate that bridges your two front forks in the middle holding them in place. It’s goal is to stabilize the front end of the motorcycle, providing better tracking and less flexing in the fork.

Installation: Easy and quick. 10-15 minutes from pulling it out of the package to having it installed.

Why did I pick it up?: I was skeptical of this product but after reading other people’s reviews and finding a good deal I decided to try it, especially with the addition of more weight on the back of my bike in the form of panniers since people had reported that their front ends in some cases would start to get squirrely after adding panniers.

My opinion: This is now my single highest regarded modification.  The handling difference is pronounced and immediate. The front end of the bike feels much more substantial, like it wants to track straight now. It reacts faster, tighter and stays going in the direction I point it. Amazing how a small piece of aluminum can make such a difference.

A Tank Slapper is when your front handlebars on a bike start to oscillate back and forth with an increasing level of force each time. If it sounds dangerous, it is. While looking for information on other topics I ran acrossthis website in a forum post over on the Stromtrooper forums. The website linked not only describes the situation, but also links to a video where you can see it occurring. Scary stuff.

While searching around for economical motorcycles I ran across this blog entry, it has a list of motorcycles of model year 2008 that are <$9000. There is a pretty big selection available.