Finding the Path: A Class Act

Pathfinder has a lot of classes to choose from. Some would say there are too many. When running a campaign, I have to decide which classes I am going to let people use. Some I leave out because they make little sense in the setting (such as monks or gunslingers) whilst others I ban due to them being far too powerful (cough-summoner-cough). I have come up with a list of twenty one classes that I am always fine with people playing. Here is a brief summary of each one.

Core Classes

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Barbarian
Full Attack * Strength, Constitution
If you want to deal stupidly vast amounts of damage with a very large weapon, and be useless at virtually everything else, then the barbarian is your class. For a small number of rounds per day, the barbarian can go into a berserker-like rage, vastly increasing their strength and constitution, allowing them to wreck everything. Sadly, barbarians are fueled by math, as rage changes so many stats, and you will also be charging and power attacking which changes stuff even more. So be prepared for a lot of addition and subtraction.

Finding the Path: Lessons from a new GM

I know there are some people out there thinking of being a GM (that's gamesmaster to those who don't know the lingo, the person that creates and runs a ropeplaying game campaign). But it can be a scary thing to do. So here are ten lessons I have learnt during my first campaign (which I am still running) called Pathfinders of Zendikar. Hopefully they will be useful, and maybe encourage you to take the leap into running your own.

Here are my players:
Sir Elessar - human cavalier (Richard)
Gwahir - loyal apex hawk
Ler Mimir - merfolk cleric of Ula (Dhamiran)
Tic-Tac - goblin rogue (Andrew)
Atlas - mul-daya elf sorcerer (George)
Lithios - human paladin (Matt)

Illustration by Tim Kings-Lynne

1. The players never do what they are supposed to.

It became incredibly apparent in the very first session that my players were not going to follow the carefully laid out progress in the adventure book I was using. They were supposed to hang around in the town of Stoneforge and help the residents with a number of annoying problems, from goblin raids to giant crab attacks. Instead, they immediately rushed off to Emeria (which was pointless) and wanted to go raid the main goblin base (which would have gotten them killed). They ignored every in-game attempt on my part to get them to stay in the town, until I had to out-of-game say 'please stay in the town guys'. Which is not the best way to GM.

The Loremaster: Nahiri, the Lithomancer

The colours of magic each have a staple creature type: Green has elves, Red has goblins, Black has vampires, Blue has merfolk, and White has soldiers. One of these is not the same as the others.

The powers that be have tried to fix the soldiers-are-not-a-race a number of times. One of the more successful attempts is the kor, a slender, agile, pointy-eared race with pale blue skin, white hair, and a strong sense of wanderlust.

Many roam the plains of Zendikar and Dominaria, driven to explore (or as they prefer to call it, returning to lands forgotten). They are excellent rockclimbers, skilled in the use of hooks and ropes. They are also considered to be excellent blacksmiths, though their methods of forging weapons are unusual.So are thier choices of weapons - they are as likely to fight with their rock climbing gear as they are with swords. A kor wielding hooks and rope in battle is surprisingly effective.

The Loremaster: The Nightwalker

You may have noticed I've said a lot about Leshrac lately. The reason is, I had made a custom commanderwalker card of him to hand out at the ICON by the Sea Commander game, as a sort of promotional come-play-Commander-at-the-Unseen-Shoppe sort of thing. He is obviously, not a real card (it says so), has no actual value, and can only be played at the casual Commander games I host at the Unseen Shoppe.

Sadly, the printed Leshrac cards were not as good quality as I was hoping due to various circumstances. But hey, there's always next year.

Why Leshrac though? I wanted a planeswalker I could link to the Unseen Shop that made sense. Leshrac is the Nightwalker, the background unseen force behind Lim-Dûl's rise to power and has links to a sort of dimension called the Nether Void, which has associations with the shadow mechanic. I patterned him after Freyalise and company and tried to give him abilities that both worked well in commander and made sense based on his character. Thus, he will give everyone power (for a price), can make creatures 'unseen', and will unleash great destruction in the pursuit of power.