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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Santa delivered a Beginner Box for my 9-year-old son today and I thought I'd post my initial impressions and thoughts after having a chance to look through the physical product for the first time. I am planning on a much more extensive review in 2012 once we have had a chance to play a few sessions with the box and once I've observed how my son ends up using the contents. I did something similar with the 4E Starter Set in 2011. You can read my review here. Having just written that review, I can't help compare the two products and thus that's what you'll be reading about here.
The Box
It's heavy and very colorfully decorated - the art is fantastic if you happen to like Wayne Reynolds, like I do. The box is very well constructed as well (not chintzy cardstock). Opening the box, one immediately notices is that it's filled almost to the lip with contents. This is in sharp contrast with the 4E Starter Set, which is almost the same dimensions but filled mainly with air - most of its space is taken up by a cardboard filler.
The Contents
On top are a set of dice and a bag of stands for the cardboard "pawns". The dice are decent but nothing special (typical rounded off corners) - they're not different than you'd find in most sets including the 4E set. The stands are, well, plastic stands.
Beneath this is a sheet that says instructs the opener to start here and then directs them to which book to begin reading depending on what they're most interested in. It's a great touch for a beginner set.
Underneath this are two real books (as in bound) - one is a Hero's Handbook which has what looks like a very clear, systematic explanation of the game and all its critical rules. It's 64 pages long and just like the other Pathfinder books - full color on high-quality glossy paper. The outer back cover serves as a quick reference sheet including basic conditions.
The next book is the GM's Guide which includes an adventure, adventure ideas, GM advice, treasure, and plenty of monsters. It's 96-pages long and again in full-color. It looks spectacular at first glance. This blows the 4E version away.
Up next are character sheets (4 awesome portfolios for the iconic pregens, plus 4 double sided sheets for making your own characters). I am blown away by the portfolios - they're simply brilliant. My only quibble is that half of them are female which makes them useless for my son's little "group" - they're all boys and I highly doubt any of them are going to want to play "girls." I have a hunch that problem is going to be very common in the 10-16 age group the game is aimed at. The regular character sheets are printed in color too and pretty classy looking - so much so that it seems a shame to write on them.
Next are the punch-out card board pawns which are stand-up figures. All are very attractive and on high quality, thick cardstock. Very, very slick and much better than the tokens included in the 4E starter set b/c they're 3D (if one considers the base). A variety of pawns suitable for PCs (not just the iconics) are included. Based on what I'm looking at here, I will definitely be picking up the upcoming Bestiary set even though I don't play the PFRPG.
Finally there's a flip mat which, contrary to what I thought it would be (one of the standard blank ones), is actually custom made for the BB - it has a desert-like blank surface on one side and a cool cave complex on the other (which I'll bet connects to the adventure in the GM guide though I can't say so for sure). Again, this is a much better map than that which was included in the starter set since it's far more durable (critical for kids), reusable, and highly flexible in what it can be used for.
Final Initial Thoughts
Wow! You're getting tremendous bang-for-your-buck with this box as a starter set. Yes, it costs much more than the 4E version but the quality of the contents plus the fact that it's a real game makes it well worth the added cost.
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SJ Benoist
United States
Saint Charles
Missouri
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Adjusted for inflation, it is a similar price as the BECMI Red Box (US dollars, 1983 to 2010).
26$ to 35$
Great deal!
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paz AKA Matt Lewis
United Kingdom
Great Sutton
Cheshire
All hail Lord Fudge!
[PFRPG PBF Games] GMing: Crypt of the Everflame, 2x We Be Goblins! · Playing: Vestige's Margreve 'Hollow', Bearpaw's Pathfinder Society
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MJ Harnish wrote: Finally there's a flip mat which, contrary to what I thought it would be (one of the standard blank ones), is actually custom made for the BB - it has a desert-like blank surface on one side and a cool cave complex on the other (which I'll bet connects to the adventure in the GM guide though I can't say so for sure). Again, this is a much better map than that which was included in the starter set since it's far more durable (critical for kids), reusable, and highly flexible in what it can be used for.
The flip-mat is a custom one for the Beginner Box, but it contains no new art. One side of this flip-mat is the same as one side of GameMastery Flip-Mat: Haunted Dungeon, while the other side is from the basic flip-mat. As far as I know, it is the same quality as the GameMastery Flip-Mats. The dungeon side is indeed used in the adventure included in the Beginner Box.
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I don't like the cartoony illustrations. The same goes for dnd off course.
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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My son and I have made his first character, an elf cleric using the Hero Labs software (primarily because it prints out descriptions of the spells and such for ease of reference at the table) and he's very excited about our upcoming "game day" on New Year's day.
Overall I continue to be impressed by the box set though I question why they didn't roll all of the various skills like acrobatics, climb, and swim in to a single Athletics skill. I also really wish halflings had been included in the set though that's just me.
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Steven Robert
United States
Altadena
California
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MJ Harnish wrote: I also really wish halflings had been included in the set though that's just me.
FYI, they left halflings (and gnomes) out because they didn't want to introduce the size rules - all the races in there are size medium. In PF, small size affects speed, attack, AC, and, probably most significantly, weapon damage - would have needed a whole new table of weapons to deal with them. Small creatures do appear in the monster section, but all these factors are "under the hood" in the stat blocks.
That said, leaving halflings out is probably the biggest miss in terms of iconic fantasy tropes in the entire Beginner Box.
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DMSamuel
United States
Ithaca
New York
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vestige wrote: MJ Harnish wrote: I also really wish halflings had been included in the set though that's just me. FYI, they left halflings (and gnomes) out because they didn't want to introduce the size rules - all the races in there are size medium. In PF, small size affects speed, attack, AC, and, probably most significantly, weapon damage - would have needed a whole new table of weapons to deal with them. Small creatures do appear in the monster section, but all these factors are "under the hood" in the stat blocks. That said, leaving halflings out is probably the biggest miss in terms of iconic fantasy tropes in the entire Beginner Box.
Given that, it makes sense to leave it out. You wouldn't want to introduce the race without those rules, and then suddenly tell the halfling player that their PC has several new rules and must be revamped and played differently when the group switches from the basic set to the full rules.
But yes, I wish there was a way to have it in the box, completing the iconic set-up.
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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lorddillon wrote: Given that, it makes sense to leave it out. You wouldn't want to introduce the race without those rules, and then suddenly tell the halfling player that their PC has several new rules and must be revamped and played differently when the group switches from the basic set to the full rules.
WotC would have done that though. 
On a more serious note, that makes sense, especially since it's supposed to serve as a gateway to the full game. I still wish halflings were in there though and would be tempted to just make up my own BB version of a halfling but that seems like a waste of time. The size rules, as applied to PCs, are one more example of things I think are pretty ridiculous in 3.x onward - the focus on minutia that adds nothing to the game except combat complexity is dumb IMHO.
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Thomas Cackler
United States
West Des Moines
Iowa
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Well, I appreciate the review, MJ. My Beginner's Box is on a UPS truck - assuming my wife is actually home today to get it!
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MJ Harnish wrote: My only quibble is that half of them are female which makes them useless
All four characters in the board game HeroQuest were male, which sucked when we were starting out. Everway was much better. I'm glad that things are changing.
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I just read through this box. You can make your own characters which you couldn’t do in Hero Quest, where you had to hack or mod them. Which kinda felt like cheating…
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Posted Sun Dec 25, 2011 10:24 am
