Newcomer PF2 start up costs

[Captain Momo]

I am playing virtually (just like the rest of the world) and am sick of roll20. I have heard good things about Fantasy Grounds, and it has one of my two campaigns available for purchase (Age of Ashes). But I'm a little unclear about what the total costs are to get started. So what's the bare minimum I should expect to spend? Below is my understanding of the cheapest options.

Ultimate Subscription cost: $9.99 a month. My understanding is that if I as GM pay for either FGC or FGU's "Ultimate" subscription, that I can host games for players who only have the demo subscription. Does this mean I am the only one who needs a subscription in my entire group?

PF2 CRB: $60 one time purchase. So buying the subscription basically gets me a "ruleset" but doesn't get me any of the actual content. I can fill a blank character sheet in by hand from scratch, but I don't have any of the info on, say, elves, rangers, feats, etc. But buying this gives me all that information and lets me just drag and drop it into the character sheets, saving me a lot of time from filling it in by hand.

Adventure Path books: $25 a pop. On top of this, I'd be paying for any individual Adventure Path books I wanted to run. But this would get me maps, encounters, loot, and more.

I think I can live with these costs if all that is correct. I think the biggest question mark for me is how a "demo" player will be able to interact with the game and their character sheet.

Thanks y'all!

[Komm Suesser Tod]

In my limited experience, you'll have to do some work for them, I had to build all my pc's characters from scratch for them, and do adjustments at level up, but players should also be able to load your core book if you make it available to them to do it themselves, I just haven't quite gotten it to work, but once they take ownership of a character, they can completely control it. Also, use FGC. FGU has some nice new features but is very much still a beta, and its cloud-based hosting means it is prone to crashes and disconnects during heavy gaming times. You host the FGC game, so you might have to forward a port, but as long as your internet is stable, the game is stable. They can see all the maps, images, and such that I share with them in Age of Ashes, and we've found that once we put the work in to make the characters and have all their spells and attacks properly loaded into the action tab of the character sheet, combat moves really quickly.

[ShadeRaven]

Welcome Captain Momo!

Unlike Komm, the new Tracker feature in Pathfinder 2 has really made creating characters much easier for my "demo" players. And demo players will be 100% good coming into your ultimate subscription. Just make sure that they open the CRB for themselves so they have access to all the information they'll need. Beyond that, it's never a bad idea to double-check character sheets and if you're players are new to PF2, some guiding through the creation process is necessary. PF2 offers enough customization and options to make creating the first character a bit daunting. Truly, though, the Tracker is a gift from the Trenloe Heavens and if they read the tracker text to see what they need to do themselves and remember that the real goal is to just pick options that sound interesting, fun, or in line with what they imagine their character to be, it'll be an easy enough process.

Honestly, if you think this will be a long term deal (not just for the pandemic), I'd consider paying for 1-time Ultimate. That said, I wouldn't do it until Unity is out of beta and is released full-feature. It will be worth the wait.

Beyond that, as GM, feel free to come out and seek advice, hunt down some videos on GMing FG that give great insight into playing, and allow yourself to grow with them. In a relatively short time, you'll find yourself loving what FG offers and in the groove.

Enjoy!

[danman71]

Keep in mind if you have a Paizo account and already own the PDF, you get the price of a PDF as a discount if you link your account. You can pick up the Adventure Path books for around $7 because of that.

[ShadeRaven]

Keep in mind if you have a Paizo account and already own the PDF, you get the price of a PDF as a discount if you link your account. You can pick up the Adventure Path books for around $7 because of that.So true! This is a significant savings if you like to own the PDFs or Hardbacks, purchasing them from Paizo directly, or invest in any of the ongoing subscriptions from Paizo.

[Komm Suesser Tod]

Welcome Captain Momo!

Unlike Komm, the new Tracker feature in Pathfinder 2 has really made creating characters much easier for my "demo" players. And demo players will be 100% good coming into your ultimate subscription. Just make sure that they open the CRB for themselves so they have access to all the information they'll need. Beyond that, it's never a bad idea to double-check character sheets and if you're players are new to PF2, some guiding through the creation process is necessary. PF2 offers enough customization and options to make creating the first character a bit daunting. Truly, though, the Tracker is a gift from the Trenloe Heavens and if they read the tracker text to see what they need to do themselves and remember that the real goal is to just pick options that sound interesting, fun, or in line with what they imagine their character to be, it'll be an easy enough process.

Honestly, if you think this will be a long term deal (not just for the pandemic), I'd consider paying for 1-time Ultimate. That said, I wouldn't do it until Unity is out of beta and is released full-feature. It will be worth the wait.

Beyond that, as GM, feel free to come out and seek advice, hunt down some videos on GMing FG that give great insight into playing, and allow yourself to grow with them. In a relatively short time, you'll find yourself loving what FG offers and in the groove.

Enjoy!

When my players load the CRB they say the book icon stays closed for them. Is there something either they or I have to do to open it? Also, yes, the tracker makes creating characters fairly easy, and your modules have been super helpful in getting spells loaded into the action tab. I did not mean to give the impression that I adjust everything manually, I use the tracker for adding pretty much every feat, but I've had to do that for my players as they haven't been able to get my CRB to load for them.

[Captain Momo]

Thanks for the replies y'all. I'm pretty active in most of my player's character building anyway, so I'm not too worried as long as the automation is easy. I want to minimize my time spent wherever possible. As an essential worker I don't have a lot of time.

Also, I mostly own hard copies, but I did order my CRB from Paizo. Does that get me a discount too?

[Komm Suesser Tod]

Thanks for the replies y'all. I'm pretty active in most of my player's character building anyway, so I'm not too worried as long as the automation is easy. I want to minimize my time spent wherever possible. As an essential worker I don't have a lot of time.

Also, I mostly own hard copies, but I did order my CRB from Paizo. Does that get me a discount too?

It does, just link your Paizo account and sync your purchases. The discount will be applied at checkout, so don't worry about the full price being shown when you're looking at it in the store.

[Captain Momo]

I see no indication that hard copies ordered from Paizo get you a discount, and several threads indicating otherwise. Syncing my Paizo account yields no results. It says no fantasy ground products purchased from Paizo. Went all the way to checkout on the CRB, up to authorizing it from paypal, no discount.

[Komm Suesser Tod]

I see no indication that hard copies ordered from Paizo get you a discount, and several threads indicating otherwise. Syncing my Paizo account yields no results. It says no fantasy ground products purchased from Paizo. Went all the way to checkout on the CRB, up to authorizing it from paypal, no discount.

Sorry, I thought you meant you got the CRB as a PDF from Paizo, my bad. You get the discount for any PDF you already own.

[Captain Momo]

Sorry, I thought you meant you got the CRB as a PDF from Paizo, my bad. You get the discount for any PDF you already own.

Cool cool cool, just making sure I'm not missing something. Shade Raven's comment made me think it applies to hardcovers, but I didn't see any other indication of it.

[Captain Momo]

Follow up question: are campaign backgrounds from player's guides a thing? If so, how do I access them?

[Komm Suesser Tod]

If you buy the first book of the AP, the player's guide gets loaded too.

[ShadeRaven]

It does apply to hardcovers. When you buy a hardcover book from Paizo, you get the PDF for free. I've only bought the hardcovers. If you sync your accounts correctly, you'll get a PDF value discount for the product. So if it's a $20 PDF, you get that off your cost here at FG Store. You'll see when you sync it correctly, the PZ-numeric-id-code show as having been applied. This let's you know that when you go to checkout, the correct discount will be applied.

[ShadeRaven]

When you're sync right, it will look similar to this:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=33502

[Captain Momo]

Oooooh, wait, are you a Paizo subscriber? Because I think that is what gets you the PDFs for free from them. I am not a subscriber and just buy the hardcovers that strike my fancy. So Paizo doesn't give me PDFs, and Fantasy Ground doesn't give me a discount.

[Trenloe]

Let's clear some miscommunication up here:

1) You only get the PDF discount off the same FG product purchase if you already own the PDF - i.e. you see the PDF in your Paizo downloads page.
2) If you don't own the PDF, and the PDF isn't on sale on Paizo, then please purchase the whole product from the FG store - you'll get the PDF included in your FG purchase. Doing it this way gives more commission to SmiteWorks and the community dev who did the FG conversion.
3) Re purchasing the physical product from Paizo: you only get a free PDF with a physical product if you bought that product via subscription. You don't get a PDF with a non-subscription purchase.

[ShadeRaven]

Ack! Oops. lol. Guess I just did the subscription and I thought it was naturally part of it. My bad!

So, yes, as Trenloe says... the PDF comes with getting the item here.. in fact, if you want a PDF for any product, it makes sense to just get it here in FG as part of buying the product for FG! It's more $ but you get the PDF and you get a wonderful, fully supported product for Fantasy Grounds that'll update as things change over time and kill two bloodseekers with one stone! You might even level up! :p

Remind me to put a skill point to "Perceiving Agreement Print" if those bloodseekers actually do level me on my next purchase. ;)

Enjoy!

[Captain Momo]

No worries friendo.

Changing gears, I took the plunge and bought a subscription and the PF2 core rules... but I am having trouble figuring out how to actually build a character in it. For example, on this monk I haven't been able to figure out how to add the unarmed strikes, get the item bonus to show up in his skills, or how to equip +2 resilient explorer's clothes. Is there some sort of game specific tutorial I can watch for PF2, or an similarly specific FAQ? I don't want to come bother folks on the message boards every time I have a problem, but a time saving purchase that doesn't save me time is no bueno.

[ShadeRaven]

Hey Captain, check DM if you don't mind :) Hoping I can help out.

[Captain Momo]

Thanks bud! ShadeRaven just spent a couple hours walking me through stuff on Discord. It was verrrrrry helpful. :)

[rpope]

Hi. I'm also a newcomer to FG and PF2. My group went through this exact discussion about three weeks ago. I just started running a game this past weekend for them using the Age of Ashes path. However, we're using Unity instead of Classic but have been debating if that was the correct choice. The biggest problem we've been having is not enough guides to help that definitively apply to PF2 and certainly not any videos. Would this problem be easier solved if we did flip over to Classic or would we have the same problem over there as well since it's a relatively new system.

[Trenloe]

The biggest problem we've been having is not enough guides to help that definitively apply to PF2 and certainly not any videos.
See the Pathfinder Second Edition playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/user/smiteworksprez/playlists The playtest videos towards the end of the list are still very relevant.


Would this problem be easier solved if we did flip over to Classic or would we have the same problem over there as well since it's a relatively new system.
The videos listed above will 95% apply to Classic or Unity. The main difference between FG Unity and FG Classic, in terms of functionality, is the mapping functionality. Classic works very well - has masking, tokens, targeting, etc. but it doesn't have line of sight, layers, tiling, etc. available in Unity. For many this won't be an issue - especially if you're running an adventure already converted to FG with all the maps, etc..

But, Unity is in beta test, and still has some issues. If you just want to play without issues, then go with FG classic. You won't be wasting your time getting to know FG Classic and then if you want to switch to Unity at some point in the future.

[steveonzakon]

I've picked up my FGU Ultimate license and debating using the rule set available online and doing everything manually in FG vs shelling out another $60 to be able to populate the PF2 Core rules in FG. My business is shut down so I have more time than money. Is the Core Rule set really that life changing?

[Trenloe]

Is the Core Rule set really that life changing?
You’d have to enter a lot of data if you don’t have it.

As you have a license already, load up a PFRPG2 campaign and see what you’d have to enter to start to use the system to actually play. There’s some community produced modules available to help you get going: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?50274-Pathfinder-Second-Edition-community-modules

Then consider buying the core rules DLC. There’s a 30 days no questions asked refund policy. I don’t think you’d want to go back to not using the core rules after you’ve used them, but only you can make that determination.

[steveonzakon]

Watched the videos. Convinced and purchased, lol.