character-creationpathfinder-1eskills
I remember when creating my level 1 rogue many moons ago – for my first Pathfinder game ever – that our GM told us there was a max. number of skill points we could put into each skill.
I don't remember the reason for this, what the limit was or whether any of our group had seen this in the rules. I've not been able to find anything so far. Is anyone able to fill me in?
I've also looked at the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box GM Kit but I can't tell if that's a complete adventure, or just tools for creating my own.
This contains a similar one-shot adventure that you can use, but mostly contains more gear/creatures that are compatible with the Beginner Box rules. It also contains 2 pages of details/advice for using prewritten adventures.
Further, I've found Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box Transitions, but I don't understand how I'm supposed to use it. Are the characters we created "throw away?" Will this be enough for us to keep going? Where do we go next?
The Beginner Box Transitions are to guide you from using the Beginner Box rules to using the full rule set (more detail on how to cast, attacks of opportunity etc.). Your beginner box characters are not throwaway, especially not if you and the group have grown into them, if you want to carry on with them and want to use the full rules, do you best to convert the characters from the beginner box character sheet to the full character sheet
I have ideas for campaigns, but I still feel too inexperienced for that.
Look at the structure of the Black Fang adventure, it's a mixture of combat, puzzle, RP encounters on a map with flavour text written for each area and scant dialogue for NPCs. It doesn't have a fully realised world or detailed plot.
You can build adventures without having to write an awful lot.
The analogy of a television series is very strong (campaign = series, adventure = episode, encounter = scene). You can think of your campaign ideas as potential story arcs; because as you play the group won't necessarily follow the stories in your head and each adventure, they will have their own ideas and all of that will feed into a collaborative story that you can continue to build on and change as you go.
If you listen to the Penny Arcade Dungeons and Dragons podcasts, it starts off without much to any of the characters, over the course of several adventures, Chris Perkins eventually writes adventures based around each of the characters. No-one could expect him to write an entire adventure about the characters, without first playing with them and learning about the characters, the players, what they like and how they play.
When it comes to creating adventures be as brave as you like, the GM book from the the Beginner box has a pre-drawn map and details of how to build encounters. There's plenty of formulas to build a balanced combat encounter, and you can uses your ideas to build story encounters.
I am still a relatively new GM and only halfway through playing my first home made adventure (using the map from the Beginner Box GM Guide), the group I play with are really keen, are all learning as well. More than anything they're grateful that I'm putting in the effort to try new things and write an adventure for them. As all of your group are thinking "what next?" they should be happy to try new things with you and hopefully should have plenty of patience with you learning as you go.
Sergut's suggestion of using prewritten adventures is good, this will give you a chance to continue playing without having to build adventures and get confidence and experience of what the group enjoys so you can tailor your homemade adventures to the group. When it comes to your homemades, don't be afraid that you'll make mistakes; you'll all be too busy playing and having fun to notice.
The exact break down of Perform subskills is largely up to the table. Most players just pick one Perform skill and stick with it, because that saves skill points; the different subskills are just so you can pick exactly what you are doing. Some players pick more than one for a few reasons, which I’ll get to, but the short answer is, “the rules pretty much assume you’re only using one Perform subskill at a time, because the rules don’t really care that much about Perform.”
The uses of the skill are for making money and earning a name for yourself performing. However, most D&D characters are adventurers, who will have little opportunity to use Perform in such a fashion, and regardless, adventuring pays far better and is much more likely to result in power and influence (assuming you don’t die, of course).
Furthermore, bards don’t actually need to do well on their Perform checks to use Bardic Music. They need a minimum number of ranks (more on that in a bit), but once they have those it doesn’t matter how well they do on their actual check. And since Inspire Courage is by-far the most important Bardic Music effect, and only requires 3 ranks, depending on what you do with your career (i.e. maybe you multiclass or take a prestige class and don’t get the higher-level Bardic Music effects), you may not actually need more than that.
Thus, having ranks in Perform is almost more of a “backstory” tax – if you want to claim that you are an excellent performer, you need to spend the skill points backing that up. Since it’s a matter of who you are and what your backstory is like, the choice of Perform skill(s) is very much tied to your character and up to you. As such,
The rules themselves occasionally reference Perform subskills – a magic harp that requires Perform (strings) perhaps, or a prestige class with ranks in Perform (dance) as a prerequisite. They can occasionally get very specific (there’s at least one book that has special rules for Perform (weapon drill), and a certain notorious third-party book includes rules for Perform (sexual act) – no, I am not joking). But for the most part, the rules don’t really care which Perform skill you have, and never lists any kind of canonical set.
Since there aren’t any official Perform skills, and it doesn’t really matter, most tables are fine with you defining your Perform skill however you want it, so long as you state what instrument(s) you use to perform it. A masterwork instrument provides a +2 bonus, but since you can only get the bonus once, it’s usually best to stick to a single instrument rather than have something like Perform (one man band) that requires a whole set, but you can if you want (and your table agrees; in my experience it’s not a problem).
A lot of players just pick Perform (sing) or Perform (dance) just so they can never be stripped of their ability to perform by the loss of an instrument (but see summon instrument for an easy fix to that). A masterwork tambourine (or similar) is sometimes used to get a +2 bonus on Perform (dance), and to qualify for the requirement that allies be able to hear your performance for Bardic Music, but talk to your DM about that before using it.
Now, redundancy can be a good thing. For example, if you lose your instruments but someone lends you a flute, it would be nice if you have Perform (wind instrument) as well as Perform (strings). Plus, as I mentioned, sometimes magic items want a particular subskill, so if you want to use both a magic flute and a magic drum you need both Perform (wind instrument) and Perform (percussion instrument).
But unfortunately, the rules also see multiple Perform subskills as a redundancy. There are no rules, to my knowledge, for one person using multiple Perform subskills as a part of a single performance, even though that is a really common thing for musicians, e.g. Perform (guitar), Perform (sing), and Perform (dance) for your average frontman.
As a result, there’s not really a lot of reward for having more than one Perform skill unless you think you’re likely to find yourself required to use a particular instrument that isn’t your top choice. Most people pick just one for that reason.1
But if someone did take several Perform skills, personally, I would rule that the lower rolls were Aid Another (...Aid Yourself?) attempts on the highest roll, so you get a +2 bonus for every additional Perform subskill you integrate into the performance and roll at least a 10 on. Alternatively, you could be ruled as making three separate checks at once, thereby potentially multiplying your monetary reward as well as your chances to be noticed by important people. But the rules don’t specify either of these.
Bards must have at least one skill with the minimum number of ranks listed in Bardic Music effect in order to use it. So yes, you need at least one Perform subskill with 3 ranks in order to use Inspire Courage; having one rank in each of three Perform subskills will not be sufficient.
Note that none of the Bardic Music effects actually involve rolling a Perform check; you probably will for the sake of determining how nice it sounds, but even if you do terribly the magic still works.2 As a result, strange as it may sound, Perform isn’t actually that important to the bard, beyond having the requisite ranks. Using Perform as a skill is very rarely critical; you can earn much more fame and fortune adventuring in most games than you can Performing, and probably will unless the entire table wants to do a theater game (and even then, I’d argue that D&D is very much the wrong system to use for that).
1 In my experience. Most of the games I’ve played in have challenged the PCs quite stringently, and therefore required reasonably careful choices made in allocating character resources, including skill points. Other tables may find it more common to “waste” lots of skill points on “redundant” Perform skill ranks.
2 I once played a game with a Cha 5 orc bard3 who regularly rolled negatives on his Perform checks despite the requisite 3 ranks, thanks to a couple of Perform-weakening flaws; he managed to get like a −4 modifier or something. We had great fun with his singing being terrible and all of our characters trying to get him to stop singing.
3 Yes I did just put a footnote in my footnote, nyah! Anyway, the orc wasn’t actually a “bard” per se, but rather a homebrew class that got Bardic Music like bards do. I mention this because a Cha 5 bard would be a really terrible choice, considering how nice the spellcasting they get is.
Best Answer
You can never have more ranks in a skill than your total number of Hit Dice.
This means that, at level 1, you can only put one rank in each skill.
If, at later levels, you want to add a bunch of skill points in the same skill at once, you can, unless that would break the aforementioned rule.
The reason for this is to avoid having people put all their skill points in a single skill, automatically passing every DC out there way earlier than it would otherwise be possible. If you want to catch up with a skill you left behind, however, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to: in-game, skill points represent the time your training gives you to get better at skills. Getting a little better at many skills or incredibly better at a single one just depends on how you spend your time.