Pathfinder: Kingmaker

[peacedog]

@Dejin

Thanks @peacedog. I forgot about that change to favored enemies in 3.5 where you had more flexibility on where your bonuses went when leveling up. That was a really great change that made your initial choice of favored enemy much less important (and I think it also made role-playing sense).

Don’t forget this is Pathfinder! 3.5 is similar. . . but Pathfinder has a surprising amount of differences. I mentioned classes having more powers baked in (alternately, some of their powers just overall get stronger e.g. Paladin Smite Evil designates a target for the entirety of combat, the bonuses to hit/damage/ac/saves beingt present for the Paladin until one or the other dies. It’s massively powerful). I don’t mean to belabor this point but it is worth driving home for people with experience in 3.5 but not in Pathfinder. Not sure where your experiences lie.

Other examples:

• PF characters get more feats over all.

• PF Feat Chains don’t work the same way as 3.5. Later feats tend to be different. E .g. Iron Will → Improved Iron will (+2 bonuses for both in 3.5; in Pathfinder the former is a +2 bonus to save the latter is basically advantage on a save - with a caveat - once a day).

• No cross class skills. Pathfinder characters get +3 in class skills as soon as they allocate a skill point. I think this bonus double sto +6 at level 10 or something.

• Everyone can choose between +1 skill point and +1 hp at levelup as a bonus. But each race/class combo also gets other options and some of these are quite potent. E.g. Human spontaneous spell casters can take bonus spells.

• Some differences in skills to boot (there’s a single perception skill for lots of stuff, one stealth skill, etc). And many classes get level/2 (rounded down) bonuses to to “class based skill checks”. E.g. thief and mechanics.

You got me to dig out my 3.5 Player Handbook :-)

You can reference anything and everything Patfhinder at the online SRD.

I think human is always a “useful” choice. However, while I’m not seeing this in the handbook, but I seem to recall that you’re only supposed to do that if your alignment is “evil” (maybe that’s a 3.0 rule that they dumped for 3.5 — it kind of makes sense for role playing, but as a counter argument, you could imagine something like a Bounty Hunter or for that matter “the Mounties always get their man”). And either way, I’m not sure if makes sense for the type of ranger I would want to role-play.

That rule definitely does not apply in Pathfinder. I do not recall it from 3.5 but shrugs. But it’s absurd. D&D is and has always been filled with evil humans. I’m talking bandits in the wilderness, cultists, slavers, pirates, and such (never mind evil rulers and the like). There’s all sorts of cool stuff you can infer abouit the world in Gygax’s head just reading the entries for humans in the monster manual (Gygaxian society was basically pockets of civilization spread out between extremely dangerous, might makes right, wilderness).