Pathfinder 2nd Edition (PF2e), by Paizo, is my RPG of choice for this entry in the #CharacterCreationChallenge. I present Calliope, a human witch of the Silence in the Snow patron.

As a young girl, Calliope would exhibit strange behavior that confounded her parents – claims of hearing voices and being told to do things that didn’t align with her parents’ wishes. Eventually their conflicts resulted in unexpected magical outbursts that caused fear within the community.

Claiming they sent her off to a foreign school, her parents actually abandoned her in the wilderness, hoping nature would take her.

It did, but not in the way that they imagined. In the quiet of the cold forest, Calliope could hear the voice of her Patron clearly, finally realizing her calling and purpose. She is now accompanied by the Patron’s voice in the form of a rat she has named Flake.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition

When I grew tired of D&D 5e, a friend nudged me over to Pathfinder. I remembered the 1st edition from ages ago and understood it to be more D&D like than many other RPGs.

Character building – all the choices! – was intimidating, but I dove into it anyway. While I have yet to find a character builder as easy to use as Roll20’s Charactermancer for Dungeons & Dragons, I did find that Pathbuilder and Demiplane’s Pathfinder Nexus were… not bad. I still had to spend a lot of time studying the rules before I knew what to select.

For this challenge, I did want to challenge myself, and so I chose the Witch. I also decided to use the official Pathfinder character sheet. I’m pretty sure it’s pre-Remaster, while I invested in the Remaster books, having come to Pathfinder late.

Let’s just say the build process was still difficult. The sheet doesn’t have room for a Patron. The source books suggest some additional Feat that I couldn’t find in Pathbuilder and wasn’t sure where it would go on the sheet.

And then you look at the sheet and it’s 4 pages long.

(sigh)

I’ve been playing PF2e with my Thursday night group now for a few sessions, as I’ve been GMing Abomination Vaults on Foundry VTT. I like it. A lot. I’m willing to put up with a tough build process. Oh, and Foundry VTT also has a pretty good drag and drop build process, so once the PC is built, it’s plenty of fun. So, as long as you can put up with a bit of work on the front end deciding on your character build, it’s definitely worth your while.