[PF and BFRPG] Basic Finding?

[alchemyprime]

So I was perusing the BFRPG and thinking "Man, I do like Basic Fantasy, but I also love all the options of Pathfinder! What to do... what to do..."

So I am trying to think - how would someone go about making a "Basic Pathfinder"? Like, not the Beginner Box, but what would it be like to have a version of Pathfinder that funtioned more closely to BFRPG or earlier D&D versions - you have 20 mins to make your character, and honestly 10 of those minutes are waiting for the wizard and cleric to pick their spells before we play tonight.

What can be cut out to make that feasible? Part of me wants to say "feats" and maybe condensing the skills, but I'm not 100% sure.

I don't know, I'm just kicking around ideas and rambling. Anyone have any ideas they'd want to add?

[ComaVision]

There was an intro module to D&D 3.5 with extremely stripped down rules. It was made to showcase new features like how the skill checks work. Probably somebody on here will know what it was actually called.

EDIT: It's called Caves of Shadow.

[alchemyprime]

There was an intro module to D&D 3.5 with extremely stripped down rules. It was made to showcase new features like how the skill checks work. Probably somebody on here will know what it was actually called.

Was it the one with the goblins, or the one with the Black Dragon that came in the box?

[T.G. Oskar]

Take a cue from the Basic Rules in D&D 5th Edition.

Races are Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling. Maybe Half-Orc for a monstrous/STR-boosting race.'

Classes are Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard. Cleric gets a small list of domains, no sub-domains. Fighter gets a small list of weapon groups to play with (mostly those groups from which you'd condensate the best weapons - weapon bloat doesn't help a lot). Rogue gets a handful of easy to use/useful special abilities. Wizard gets the item bond, and no school benefit (that kinda complicates things). No archetypes or special options, even if that mostly hinders Fighters and Rogues. Carefully consider if multiclassing is allowed.

Leave skills as-is. They're already condensed a lot compared to 3.5. Also, reduce some of the feat clutter - Power Attack and Combat Expertise are good, the Improved [Combat Maneuver] feats work to add some diversity to Fighters but are somewhat complex to build upon, metamagic can be hard to understand, and +skill bonus feats are simple but ineffective.

Weapon and armor lists should be somewhat stripped down. Get the most used simple weapons (dagger, quarterstaff, heavy crossbow as "crossbow", longspear, maybe the morningstar and heavy mace as "mace") and martial weapons (longsword, greatsword, battleaxe, warhammer, longbow, maybe the glaive or guisarme), a handful of armor choices (studded leather and chain shirt for light, chain mail and breastplate for medium, banded mail and full plate for heavy). That teaches people to work with the good stuff from the get-go.

Work with the spell lists. You only get two spell lists, but that gives you an excuse to check on the problem spells and take them out. Pay special attention to conjuration, illusion and transmutation spells - summoning spells should be further restricted to the most effective summons per spell, calling spells should be taken out (that includes Gate!), teleportation spells...well, use discretion; "X Image" spells should be written in a way they're useful but not game-breaking (I know, right?), and the line of polymorph spells should be carefully reconsidered.

In the end, you're getting a game that's not entirely different from 3.5, since you're going straight to Core and then stripping down to basics. On the other hand, there will be enough differences in content (CMB/CMD which shouldn't be so difficult to calculate; differences in feats; favored class bonuses applying mostly to the core races; new class stuff; condensed skill lists) to make it different enough. The difference is in language - simple English, not so legalistic, with each skill explaining what you can do in simple terms. Usually, simple language does more to understand the game than simple mechanics.

[Gallowglass]

Great advice from T.G. Oskar.

To build on it: When i did something similar, I treated it like the very first release of D&D 3.0 with the player handbook.

I culled out 12 spells of each level for the wizard and 8 spells of each level for the Cleric and gave them that as their list of spells to pick from.

I picked out, I think, 8 "feat trains" (i.e. ranged bowman feat train, reach tipper feat train, power attack intimidate feat train, etc.) and made them "example packages" for the fighter so they could think about how to build as they leveled. I only included the feats from those 8 trains and a handful of other combat feats. Each player just picked a package, no one tried to customize their own.

For the rogue, the list of rogue talents is already small enough to be parsed, but I limited it anyway to about 8 talents and 8 advanced talents.

Then I DMed them for a few adventures (1-4th level) before I started expanding it. The wizard found a spellbook in a treasure hoard with NEW spells outside the list. The cleric (in an adventure) helped free a monastary from monsters and they rewarded him with teaching him domain powers. The fighter fought someone who used a neat trick against him and he discovered some new feats. That kind of thing. Let them learn new rules IN the game. d