Interest Check - D&D 4E/Pathfinder

Pathfinders better.

Defenitely interested. I'm a huge tabletop rper. Started with D&D 3.5, did a tiny bit of 4E, before moving onto GURPS. I still have the rulebook for 4E and been playing a campaign with some friends but I've never done Pathfinders despite hearing about how good it is. Should I download a PDF file for Pathfinders to play? If so, which book?

Okay. It's going to take more time to go through that site and familiarize myself with Pathfinders but I can already tell that the basics are the same as regular D&D (races, classes, feats, skills, attributes, ect). My main point of concern here is with the Gesalt mechanics.

First off, when you say that it's possible to have custom humanoid races, does that also mean that you can combine races? One idea I have in mind is that of a Half-orc, Half-elf who would be a Barbarian/Wizard. His mother was part of a coven that was then attacked by a roving band of raiders. The warchief took the elf added her among his "spoils" - the resulting terrible treatment and rape eventually caused her death. The son prior had to fight with other bastards to get his father's attention - learning how to fight in the clan in the process. However, his mother's death is the snapping point and he murders his captain and then flees. He is then taken in by a group who knew of his mother ... possibly survivors from that original attack and they began to teach him magic. However another turning point (perhaps another attack by the band?) leads him to being alone - and seeking revenge against the clan and his father. Basically his goal for whatever campaign ensues would be to hunt down this band and slay the warchief.

While I like the backstory the main concern I have is that I never played a Wizard, or a spell caster at all, and I think jumping into this class in the Gesalt system may be difficult. In that regard, a Fighter/Ranger combination may be better (given that I've played both those classes, separately, in D&D before), and perhaps a human one for that additional feat. But I have no idea what the backstory would be for this one. The only idea in mind would be a retired or demoted soldier that is then stationed as a ranger at a fort in some frontier borderland. In which case the "fighter" class would be the skills he used as a soldier, and the "ranger" class would be the archery he mastered while stationed in the fort in the woods.

So basically:

Can I combine the Half-elf and Half-orc as a custom race and what would that require? Any suggestions for playing a Wizard outside of reading up on it on the site given?

Any tips for the backstory of the human fighter/ranger? Any war or nation he can be involved in your setting?

Perhaps quite a bit of this can be answered with a bit more reading, but until then thanks for taking the time to go through these ideas.

TLT

Edit: haha spent a while typing this up and then Immortal comes and steals my thunder oh well here it is. Just ignore the parts about needing Immortal's approval/opinion/input I guess

The Setting

I can't exactly approve the half-elf/half-orc hybrid idea seeing as I won't be DMing, but I can at least prime you a little bit on the Forgotten Realms [accompanying wiki linked here]. If you're familiar at all with Drizzt Do'Urden or the Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, or Neverwinter Nights series of games, they all take place in the same continent, that of Faerun. Most of these stories also take place in the same general region of the continent, the Sword Coast.

Having spoken with Immortal, we will evidently be starting in the same region, which is up there but not quite ridiculously far north, and is so named because it's something of a hotbed for pirates and sellswords who hunt said pirates. There are a number of major trading cities along the Sword Coast, and we'll apparently be beginning near the city of Baldur's Gate.

We'll also be setting our RP in the year 1378 DR, which predates some of the material in the series. There is, however, a timeline of major events leading up to this point; just ignore anything afterwards. Each of the years listed, I believe, is also a link to a more detailed page, so that'll tell you pretty much everything you'll need to know in terms of the timeline.

I didn't want to go too in-depth because at some point I'd eventually just start repeating what the wiki said (and ended up doing so a little bit anyway).

The Barbarian/Wizard Barbarizard

Your half-elf half-orc (pending Immortal's feedback on the mechanics of combining the races) backstory sounds pretty solid. You'd probably want to be from a region a bit further north than where Baldur's Gate is located, like Icewind Dale or anywhere close to the Spine of the World - orc attacks are more common, there, but anywhere not in a large city would plausibly work.

As far as gameplay goes - if you want to stick by the bizard idea, I can coach you through the mechanics just fine. It's not hard, once you grasp it. You didn't specify if you were familiar with the mechanics or not, so there's a rough example of spell preparation below.

Say you're Gromph Baenre, first-level wizard. You can prepare one first-level spells per day and three level-zero spells per day. At the end of your rest period (say you were waking up for the morning), you sit down and decide which spells to commit to memory, to be forgotten when you cast them. You pick Burning Hands (a level-one spell), and prepare Flare three times (the only level-zero spell I could think of of the top of my head). You get in a fight, and you cast Burning Hands your one time and Flare twice. The only spell you have available to you for the rest of the day, until you rest. regain your magical energies and prepare more spells, is thus that third instance of Flare you'd previously prepared.

It just requires a lot of managing your skill choices, especially at earlier levels, and a bit of forethought - but it's not necessarily a difficult system to get used to. You'll be a pretty shoddy caster early on and will be heavily relying on your barbarian talents until you can cast more spells per day, but by tenth level or so (if not earlier) your wizardry will most likely be either the first or second most useful element of our party depending on how much we need healing.

While it's normally wiser to be a support-type spellcaster and use spells that benefit your team instead of hurt enemies (because everyone can do damage; not everyone can increase your teammates' armor class or damage output or anything), sometimes it's just fun to straight-up maul people with a fireball or lightning bolt or a spell that directly benefits your barbarian talents, such as Tenser's Transformation.

It's up to you how you'd want to play, but juggling stats would be difficult - to maximize your talents and be truly effective as both barbarian and wizard, you'd need to prioritize Intelligence, Dexterity, Strength, and Constitution, and you wouldn't realistically be expected to roll well enough or have enough points (depending on if we do point-buy or roll for our stats) to maximize all four. So, barring tremendous luck or a differing method of choosing stats, you'd have to pick if you wanted to specialize in combat or spellcasting; or if you wanted to be relatively mediocre, but still competent, in both.

The FighteRanger

Another solid idea here. I'd recommend the Cormanthor or Twilight Wars (the Wiki linked above has more information on these) if you don't want to go with the Barbarizard. I guarantee there are more conflicts that aren't quite so recent, if you're looking to make a grizzled veteran-type character; those were simply the two that immediately sprung to mind. Both take place in Cormanthor, which is rather close to the Sword Coast - you could conceivably find yourself in Baldur's Gate.

Either or, depending if you take the Half-Orc race or a custom Half-Orc race. I really don't care either way. You could go Half Human Fourth Orc Fourth Elf for all I care. For the most part I'll help you along, but for things like these you'll need to make your own decisions. Take a look at the races and custom race creation sections on d20pfsrd and take whatever you want. As long as you're staying humanoid without anything crazy like 'dies in direct sunlight' you should be fine

Which reminds me, you'll need to be able to move through cities and what not without hinderence, so direct undead races are probably a bad choice. Sorry Zen, no being a full on vampire.

So In.

Having not played him in a long time, I think it's time for his triumphant return to the tabletop. While not a spellcaster (leaving the caster roles to the rest of the party), the Hero of Mankind should be a great ally to have backing you all up...

I present to you all here, Captain Roy Valiant, Knight of the Purple Dragons:

Race: Human
Class: Warlord//Order of the Dragon Standard Bearing Strategist Cavalier