Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Pathfinder Iconics Minis

Seoni and Feiya look like they are up to no good!
Around a year ago, I made LEGO minifigures to represent the iconic characters for the 11 classes found in the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook (whose stat blocks appear in the NPC Codex). I take these to every Pathfinder Society event that I attend, in case anyone needs to (or chooses to) play one of the official pregenerated characters. They have also proven useful for representing other PCs or NPCs of the same class, or who have similar equipment, or when we just need random pawns.

I have not yet attempted to build all of the other iconic pregens from other books, because that would require 3-4 times as many miniatures. By my count, including alternate classes but not unchained or prestige classes, there are now 40 classes for Pathfinder! (And I still don't own the books for two of them.) 

I did, however, build a couple of the iconics from the Advanced Player's Guide at the same time as the core characters, because I had recently tried them out for myself. Since then, I have built the other four.

Core Rulebook Iconics


Amiri (barbarian), Lem (bard), Kyra (cleric)

Lini (druid) with Droogami (animal companion), Valeros (fighter)

Sajan (monk), Seelah (paladin), Harsk (ranger)

Merisiel (rogue), Seoni (sorcerer) with Dragon (lizard familiar), Ezren (wizard)

Advanced Player's Handbook Iconics

Damiel (alchemist), Alain (cavalier) with Donahan (mount), Imrijka (inquisitor)

Alahazra (oracle), Balazar (summoner) and Padrig (eidolon), Feiya (witch) and Daji (fox familiar) 

Advanced Class Handbook Iconics

Finally, I have also built the bloodrager and investigator and bloodrager from the Advanced Class Guide. The latter is the ultimate skill monkey class, so is a favorite among our local PFS community. However, I often find that the hybrid classes are confusing for new players (and the occult classes from Occult Adventures even more so), so I feel no pressing need to build all of them anytime soon.

Crowe (bloodrager) and Quinn (investigator)
I strongly encourage people who are still learning Pathfinder to stick to the core class pregens, or at least to core plus APG. Save the hybrid, occult, and Ultimate pregens for later, after you have a solid grasp of the basics and are ready for something more unusual or challenging. Part of the GM's role is to help teach new players, but not all GMs are experts on every supplement. If your GM isn't well-versed on the class you want to play, then the burden falls squarely on you to know how the class works well enough to minimize delays to consult rules. If you're not up to that challenge, then it will be kinder to the rest of the table to choose one of the old staples, and wait for a better time to explore that shiny new toy.

Similarly, if I'm GMing a table that needs a pregen to use as a virtual fourth player, I insist that the choices be limited to classes that at least one person at the table knows well enough to run without help, because I already have plenty to juggle on my side of the screen--as do they, with one less brain to put together to solve the mission's problems.

A lot of this advice about classes applies to your own personal, custom-built characters as well, but it's even more important for characters that you haven't been playing and learning since 1st level.

2 comments:

  1. These are really fun. Feiya and Seoni are two of my favorites, so you made attention with them together. Your Kyra, Alahazra and Valeros look spot on too.

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    1. Thanks! Your request to see them together made for a perfect "cover photo" for this column.

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