Pathfinder Beginner Box: Session 4

Last weekend we played our fourth session of PFBB. We finished off the a modified version of the free downloadable adventure “Hollows Last Hope”. My players really enjoyed it and starting next session (which should be next saturday) we will continue on to “Crown of the Kobold King”. I'm excited in part because I've been wanting to run this for a while, but also because I really like the whole series of adventures that revolve around the dungeon below the Dwarven monastery and Falcons Hollow.

I made some more changes to the rules. This time it was based on hit points and healing.

First off I've changed the hit dice characters receive. Wizards now get a d6, rogues a d8, clerics a d10, and fighters a d12. Since those are the only classes available in the Beginner Box, I didn’t need to worry about any of the other classes. Every level the characters get max hp plus their Constitution bonus or penalty as the case might be.

Lastly for healing, I handed out three poker chips to each player. They could turn in a chip at any time to heal themselves to full. Of course this turned magical healing on its head. I didn’t have enough time to look into a proper solution for that, so I told the cleric to not worry about healing spells and instead focus on some of the other spells available. I hate that clerics are combat medics, and I'd much rather see them focus on things like demon hunters, or undead slayers, or whatever. In practice it didn’t work out the way I liked. Going forward I think I'm going to adapt the healing surges from the 13^th Age RPG.

While theres a lot I like about Pathfinder, the rules are just too dense at this point for the level of my kids to grasp. I know the two dad's I play with would like to get more gritty with feats and class options, but for now I've just had leave all that behind. No one seems to notice, and everyone seems to have fun. The more we play the more I keep thinking I should just move wholesale into Swords & Wizardry, which is probably a lot closer to what where playing right now anyway.

All in all it's been a nice experience to teach the game to a whole new generation of gamers. I even had one girl who asked her mom if she could skip skiing lessons so she could game, and has been harassing her to buy her dice!