We had our first session a couple weeks ago. I bought the Pathfinder Core rulebook and advanced player guide so I read through them before the first session. I thought I had a good idea of how things would go. I had played lots of RPGs on consoles and PC. I have watched other people play it and I am immersed in a world where people talk about it pretty frequently. Dash, our DM, planned this session to be part character creation and part campaign. We ended up spending a lot more time than any of us expected on creation. I imagine a lot of that was my fault. I decided to play a wizard but didn’t really understand what I was doing.
We rolled for our starting attributes and did pretty well. Thanks to my prior study, I knew where to put the points. What really got me were skills and feats. The feat I took was one that was supposed to be free since I was a half-elf wizard. I played the first session without that extra feat! That isn’t as bad as my next mistake. I didn’t add my modifier to any of my untrained skills. Perception checks were done based on my roll without modifiers. Oops!
I was also not very confident with spells. I did more attacks with my light crossbow than I did with my magic. N00b mistake I guess but still embarrassing. I didn’t quite understand how many spells I got or how many times I could cast them. Cantrip? Huh?
Even with my mistakes, we still have a pretty successful campaign. No one died but we had terrible luck with the dice. No one could hit and there were some points where we were close to dead. Dash came up with a good story and we all enjoyed it. I was hooked.
After we played, the campaign was stuck in my head. I spent the next couple weeks figuring out my mistakes and planning what I would do during the next session. I realized fairly quickly that I majorly screwed up my skills. The points were wrong and modifiers were non-existent. I picked got my feats sorted out and did more reading of the core rule book and APG. Then things began to get really nerdy. I didn’t feel like I had enough dice. So I bought a pound from Chessex. Also I didn’t like how I did spells in our first session. Writing them down didn’t work for me. Instead I printed out every spell onto postcard sized paper and laminated them. Yes I laminated every one of them. Now I can write right on the card with a dry erase marker and wipe it off when I’m done. Yeah I know it is overkill but I wouldn’t be a nerd if I didn’t go that extra step beyond what is necessary. Just look at the TV built into the bunk bed in the Road2PAX RV!
In the next day or two, I’ll post the short backstory I wrote for my character. It was quite a bit out of my comfort zone but still a hell of a lot of fun to write.
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