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Congrats! You’re dead! It happens even to the best of us at some point. I know that I have had 9 character deaths over the course of my Pathfinder Society play time, and even if you build really good characters and play them really well, natural 20’s happen and crits can hurt. It does behoove everyone to learn how raising a dead character works, especially once you start hitting level 5 and above where you can come back from death more often. So, how does coming back from death work?

To start off with, most deaths are going to require you to get a raise dead. Raise dead has some limitations on it though. You need not to have been by a death effect or something with the death descriptor, you need to not have had your body turned into undead, and you need to have your full body available. If your body is potentially recoverable, but your party wasn’t able to bring it back for some reason, then you can pay for a body recovery with 5 Prestige. You can’t pay for this with money, only with favors. If your body is inaccessible for other reasons, or you suffered from one of the earlier problems, you’re going to need to pay for a resurrection instead of a raise dead.

Even with those restrictions, the vast majority of deaths only need raise dead. The problem is that you’re going to have to pay for it. Here’s the ways to pay for a raise dead:

• Pay with gold. Raise dead is a 5th level cleric spell, which means a spellcasting service costs 5*9*10+5,000 (for the diamond) = 5,450gp.
• Party member casts it. Any 9th level cleric can prepare raise dead, while 10th level oracles might have it as a spell known and 11th level witches might have it in their familiar. This will save the 450 you would have to pay for getting someone to cast it for you, but still requires you to find a 5,000gp diamond somewhere.
• Prestige! All those favors you’ve done for people and those times you’ve proven yourself to be an exemplary Pathfinder are finally paying off in the form of a ticket back to the Material Plane. However, unlike the previous two examples, you must spend you’re own prestige and only your prestige. Other people can’t chip in to help you. If you wish to pay this way, it will cost you 16 prestige.

All of these options you can either do in between sessions, or during the session if you have access to a town of greater than 5,000 people (or a high level caster and the 5,000gp diamond for the second option). Either way, your character has suddenly recovered and is back in the land of the living and scot-free!

Well… close. Walking through Pharasma’s revolving door is a harrowing experience. When your character gets raised, he gets 2 negative levels. These can be taken care of with restoration. The choices you have mimic the raise dead choices above. For each negative level, either you pay 1280gp, or a character can cast restoration and you only need to pay 1,000gp, or you pay 4 Prestige. Also, you can only recover from 1 permanent negative level a week, which means that if you die in-game, unless you are doing a massive amount of travel in-game, you’re going to be stuck with a permanent negative level for the rest of the session. If you’re recovering between sessions, then you are assumed to spend enough time recovering that you can remove all your permanent negative levels.

Pharasma in her Boneyard

The last important thing to know about raising is that you can’t leave your character dead at the end of a session and raise him later. You must resolve the dead condition that session or your character is reported as dead and can no longer be played. Negative levels on the other hand you don’t need to worry about paying for right away if you don’t have the money or the prestige to pay for them. (Guide to Society Organized Play 22)

Especially at low levels, if someone dies in your party, considering pitching in to help them out. Raising someone and removing the negative levels at low levels can cost someone most of the money they have, which is incredibly crippling for a character. You are never forced to help someone out, but it is polite, especially if that person’s death is no fault of their own. It’s a lot easier for 5 people to give up 1,000gp than for one person to give up 5,000gp.

Okay, so you’ve just died, been raised and cleared all your negative levels. It was expensive, but you’re still able to play your character. You’re all done, right? Nope. You’ve just done everything that the game requires you to do, but you’re still missing one step. After the game, you need to think about what happened and why your character died. After all, we would like to prevent that experience from happening again, and only with reflection can you figure out what went wrong. Allow me to share you some examples of my own character deaths and how I changed characters based on the deaths:

Komana Higgenstrom is my Master of Many Styles Lore Warden. She wears light armor and uses Crane Style/Wing/Riposte to give her a good AC while she tries to combat maneuver things to death. Her major weakness was revealed when I had to fight a pair of huge fire elementals + a caster on the Ethereal Plane. Both of the fire elementals beat her in initiative, and slammed Komana enough that she died from the burn damage on her turn. Most of the elementals’ attacks wouldn’t have hit me if I had beaten them in initiative, but it turns out that when you get around +9 AC when you fight defensively + combat expertise, your AC is drastically lower than normal before you get to go. The problem is that her Dex wasn’t high and I hadn’t invested anything into initiative. I changed that when I leveled her up. I dipped diviner (foresight) wizard, got her a rabbit familiar, and took Improved Initiative as a feat, giving her a +9 bonus to initiative. While an enemy or two has beaten her in initiative since then, she has never lost initiative to all of the monsters and gotten in the same trouble since then.

Of course, changes don’t have to be as drastic. Getting hit by 2 shadow evocations revealed that my witch’s saves weren’t great and I prioritized cloaks of resistance after that. Getting a bunch of giant scorpions surrounding me helped me realize that my skill monkey’s AC wasn’t that great, so I bought him better armor with the leftover money from that scenario. And of course, sometimes you run across situations that you’re not prepared for. Deeper darkness and flight are 2 problems that frequently come up and that can be really deadly if you aren’t prepared for them, but can be solved with a simple consumable.

And sometimes, the dice just aren’t with you or you’re in a really bad situation. My halfling cavalier went up and tanked a bunch of thugs who needed an 18 on the die to hit him, and proceed to fall unconscious from multiple attacks, despite good hit points and healing him in the middle. My skill monkey got hit by a slay living and failed his save. My bard went into Bonekeep 2. Sometimes your death isn’t your fault, and that’s okay. Just as long as you recognize that and don’t let it discourage you.

After all, what’s the fun if there’s not a little risk?

One thing I’ve noticed recently is that we’ve had a streak of scenarios where the players have failed at getting the secondary success condition. While us old geezers in the campaign know what the in-game society expects out of its agents, this isn’t always clear to new players to the campaign. So if you’re lost as to how to complete your secondary success conditions, here’s some tips as to what the society expects of its agents.

The Society defends its own. Agents are more useful to the Society alive than dead. If you have the opportunity to keep an agent alive over the course of the adventure, keeping them alive helps the Society a great deal. Dead agents aren’t useless to the Society though. Recovering dead bodies and bringing them back to the Society to be raised or at least given a proper burial makes you great within the Society. Even recovering keepsakes of agents for their next of kin means a lot emotionally to other agents – especially if that keepsake is a wayfinder.

Is the Society supposed to be here? As much as the Society is a knowledge-gathering and an adventurous organization, it is also a political organization. As an agent, you aren’t just expected to navigate vast swaths of wilderness or localized dungeons, but also political climates. One thing to ask yourself before every mission is if the Pathfinder Society is allowed go where you’re going. If yes, be on your best behavior and help to improve and maintain the reputation and good name of the Society. If no, then be as sneaky as possible so that they won’t know that you’re there. And if they do find out – try to blame it on the Aspis Consortium. Speaking about the Aspis Consortium…

Try to discover intelligence about the Society’s enemies. You don’t get to be an organization as big as the Society without making a few enemies. There are a number of enemies out there, the most famous of which is the Aspis Consortium. Any information you happen to gain about our enemies as you do your missions for the Society will be helpful to the organization. We’d rather strike before these agents lash out than clean up the mess they leave. Any information you can gain helps us do that.

Preserve and record the environment you’re in. As an agent of the Society, you’re going to explore many exotic and interesting locales. The Society would prefer if you weren’t the only group to explore that locale. Maintaining the environment so that other people can study it and find things you missed would be most advantageous. Of course, we would also prefer that it was safe for our sages and other scholarly types to explore and catalog. You may be well-adjusted to jumping head-first into danger, but not everyone in our Society shares those same traits. It’s not good, for instance, if there are traps lying around that you didn’t find or at least trigger. That said, you may come across locales where it will be impossible for anyone besides yourselves to explore due to magical or extraordinary circumstances. In that case, accurate and detailed notes will be key if the Society is to learn anything from your exploration.

Do the job you’ve been sent to do in a more heroic fashion. One of the wonderful products of our Society is the Pathfinder Chronicles, a collection of journals, notes and essays by various members of our field agents detailing the work they have done in the Society’s name. Getting published in the Chronicles is an easy way of earning fame in our Society, but not every story can qualify to be published. The more heroic your story, the better chances it has of getting published. Sure, you could try to bypass that door by pulling out your adamantine pick and hacking through, but wouldn’t learning the secret behind how that arcane door works and publishing that riddle and the genius of how you bypassed it be a much more entertaining read?

Do the obvious secondary success condition. Sometimes, there’s literally a second objective you can do as you go. Sure, you were sent into the Tomb of the Ferrous Nagaji to recover the Iron Snake Tail, but when you get in there you find that not only does the Tomb contain the Iron Snake Tail but also the Ring of Parseltongue Speaking. You should get that too if you can. No reason to send a second team of Pathfinders out to get what you could’ve easily retrieved while you were out there.

There might be multiple secondary success conditions. There may not be just one thing that helps the Society in any given circumstance. In some cases, there are multiple things you can do. The Society understands that not all agents are equal, and some teams are going to be left with holes in their capabilities. Be on the lookout for multiple things you can do. Many of the recent secondary success conditions involve doing X of a list of items.

Hopefully, this provides more context as to what the Society expects of its agents and what to be on the look out for as you complete your missions. And remember, you shouldn’t expect to get your secondary success every time. They are supposed to be hard, and if you manage to get 6 prestige points a level, you will have earned it!

Did I miss something? Got any (spoiler-free) suggestions related to the above? Feel-free to share it in the comments below!

As your character gains levels, they will become more specialized. Your character has a couple things that they are really good at, and they will certainly try to spend most combats following that one strategy, whether it be summoning monsters, full attack power attack with a greatsword, or yelling insults at enemies to get them to attack your super high AC instead of squishy party members. The problem is, your enemies also have some things that they are very good at and sometimes their strategy trumps yours. A lot of these are things you can prepare for if you know they exist. However, if this is your first higher level character, you may not be aware of the effects and strategies at these levels. Here are some things you can expect.

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PFS Characters start out with 150 gold, which really limits martial characters while giving spellcasters more money than they know what to do with. This article should help you stretch that money for martial characters while giving those who don’t know what to do with their money some ideas.

Basic Gear – There is a lot of basic gear in the Equipment chapter of the Core Rulebook, and there’s a lot more if you own Ultimate Equipment or Adventurer’s Armory. If you wanted to, you could spend a lot of time going through the chapter and guessing at exactly what you’ll need to bring while trying to keep the weight and cost to as low as possible. For those of us who don’t want to do that, Ultimate Equipment gave us gear kits that contain a bunch of basic gear all wrapped up in one package. Check them out and pick up one that fits your needs. (Although if it doesn’t have rope, you’ll need to pick up some rope.)

Armor – If you are an armor wearer, you’re probably going to have crappy armor for your first mission. Light armored people probably aren’t going to go above studded leather, medium armor wearers aren’t probably going above scale mail and most likely sticking to hide armor, and heavy armor wearers are probably sticking with medium armor for the time being. You’ll be getting much better armor after your first scenario. Shields, on the other hand, are pretty cheap. Pick up wooden shields for now – you can pick up steel ones later if that’s your eventual goal, but there’s no point in spending that extra money.

Melee Weapon – Even the 7 Strength character should have some sort of melee weapon. Fortunately, everyone is proficient with a club, and they are free! Granted, you may not deal a lot of damage with it, but it is at least something. For melee characters, you want to make sure that you have all 3 damage types covered (bludgeoning, piercing and slashing). There are plenty of cheap options in the simple weapons. Slashing users especially can pick up the morningstar to have the other two types taken care of in one weapon. You should also look at having a cold iron weapon early in the game. Cold iron doubles the cost of the weapon, which is very little gold if you pick the right weapon, and DR/cold iron generally tends to be on annoying creatures (like dretches).

Ranged Weapon – Every PFS character should have the ability to attack at range. Every PFS character should have the ability to attack at range. Every PFS character should have the ability to attack at range. Every PFS character should have the ability to attack at range. Hopefully by repeating it 4 times you get the picture. At low levels, even if you’re rolling a flat d20 vs. AC, you’re still hitting around 40% of the time, and there’s plenty of examples where either you can’t get into combat because of terrain features or because the creature is really nasty. (Xtabays are a wonderful example of creatures you don’t really want to stand next to, along with 1st level halfling barbarians.) While not having enough money is a limiting factor for a lot of equipment for this list, slings are free and sling bullets are a silver piece for 10. You have room in your equipment to spend a silver piece on a sling and 10 bullets. Slings are especially good for melee characters since they add your Strength modifier to damage.

A note for archers – it may be really tempting to buy a longbow or a shortbow for your brand new level 1 archer. It’s a trap. You’re going to be upgrading to a masterwork composite longbow or a masterwork composite shortbow after a scenario or two anyway, and a 75gp item or a 30gp item for a moderate damage increase (or maybe not depending on what your strength modifier is) isn’t worth it. Use the sling for an adventure or two, then go get your appropriate masterwork composite bow and spend the money you save initially on other things to help keep you alive.

Method to Deal WIth Swarms – Paizo sure does love their swarms. They were very prominent in the early seasons, and while they’ve toned down on putting swarms in low-level scenarios in recent seasons, they have by no means stopped doing so. While swarms made of Tiny creatures can be attacked by weapons, swarms made of Fine or Diminutive creatures need area of effect attacks to harm them. (source) If you are an arcane caster, Burning Hands is an effective option.  For everyone else, alchemical equipment is your best option. An alchemist fire or two give you a good bang for your buck. Many low level swarms can be destroyed by a single alchemist fire and a good damage roll, and if everyone has an alchemist fire or acid flask, generally that will be enough to destroy the swarm.

Method to Heal Downed Party Members – 1st level characters don’t have a lot of hit points. There are of course outliers (aka the Human Barbarian build with 27 hp and 20 Con), but most 1st level characters have somewhere between 7 and 14 hit points. Even a single cure light wounds is very helpful. Most players buy a wand of cure light wounds at some point after their first scenario, but it’s a really good idea to have a potion of cure light wounds available if you can’t use a wand so that you can bring up someone who is close to death. This becomes more important the more brand new 1st level characters you have in the party with you, since there are probably less and less people with lots of healing resources available. If you can cast cure light wounds, a scroll of it might not be a bad idea until you can get access to a wand. A scroll of cure light wounds costs 25gp, and a potion costs 50gp.

Method to Deal With Incorporeal Creatures – Paizo has had a tendency to put shadows as low level fights. While they aren’t common, when they do show up they are brutal. Shadows are incorporeal, which means they take no damage from regular weapons and half damage from magic weapons. Usually if Paizo puts an incorporeal creature into a low-level module or scenario, they provide a way in the game of dealing with it, but a scroll or oil of magic weapon can make the fight much easier for your party. This advice is more important for sanctioned modules than it is for scenarios seeing as shadows seem to show up more often in sanctioned modules. A scroll of magic weapon costs 25gp, and an oil of magic weapon costs 50gp.

This article suggests a lot of gear, especially recommending a bunch of consumables that are going to eat into your budget at character creation. Low level survival is all about budgeting what tools you need and making sure you have the basics covered before you go onto more expensive gear like a chain shirt or an expensive weapon. Low level characters tend to be versatile since they don’t have a lot of class features that pidgeonhole them into certain fighting styles yet. Use that versatility to your advantage and get gear that will help you and your party members anything that the scenario throws at you! And if you’re really worried about your character dying at 1st level, GM a scenario and apply the credit to the character. There’s 500 extra gold to purchase all the equipment you need! No risk involved!