Creating characters for noob players who mainly want to roleplay. Advice?

I've been running a few games of Pathfinder with a few friends who have never played a tabletop RPG before. I chose Pathfinder because 1.) I had previous experience with it and 2.) because it's all online for free.

Our first session was completely random and I just kind of quickly created skeletons of the characters they wanted for them to play but they loved every second of it and had a blast. So the second session, I tried to get them to make their own character sheets but it was like pulling teeth and none of them seemed interested in doing the work or trying to understand the system or navigating the website - they just wanted to play.So I'm really not wanting to go through the level up proces

I've decided I want to just make them static characters with powers and not really have them level up, but rather give them artifacts and new spells or abilities every once in a while since they seem more into just roleplaying heroes and telling a story than anything else.

Anyone done something similar? Or is this just gonna be a big headache?

>they seem more into just roleplaying heroes and telling a story than anything else
>I chose Pathfinder
>is this just gonna be a big headache

I hope my choice of greentext makes my feelings on this matter clear, but if you're willing to do the heavy lifting of worrying about all the rules, then I'm glad everyone seems to be having fun!

They understand the rules and rolling and skill check s and etc., it's just like their eyes glaze over when they go to level up and look at the feats and spells and etc. It's too much info for them, I think.

PF is way too much crunch for beginners.

Use a simple system like Risus to get them to understand the importance of ranks and dice rolling. After a few months they may want to increase the complexity of their character and then you can slowly ease them into PF.

it's what I learned on, but I can see that. I just figured from my own experience it would be convenient since it's all available free.

I'll look at Risus. I also had heard about Dungeon World.

Dude. DUDE. Think of the math. All that fucking math.

>I have experience with it
Then your experience should tell you that it's not a good system for what you plan to do.

>it's all online for free
You can find simpler rulesets for free, man. You learn them quickly, your players learn them quickly, everyone has fun. I mean, they don't even want to go through character creation and leveling up right now. I'm not telling you to not use Pathfinder because I hate it, but because your players have already rejected it.

Run something simpler, user. Maybe one of those one page systems, even.
If, after a while, they want to try a more dense system, then you introduce them to Pathfinder. But if they just want to roleplay and have no previous RPG experience, you're a lot better off with a rules-light fantasy that will liberate you to create fun characters and situations instead of going through all the system wankery of PF.

It's not soooo much math. During the game they get playing and what to roll for and etc. Like I said, I think it's mainly the feats.

>it's just like their eyes glaze over when they go to level up and look at the feats and spells and etc. It's too much info for them, I think.

To be honest, I played AD&D for ten years before someone introduced me to 3.5, and that was my reaction as well.

>I want to be a fighter!
>Nah, fighters are no good
>But I want to be a fighter...
>OK, but you'll want to take Monkey Grip
>But I don't want that feat...

And so on and so on until I got to combat and realized how boring it was.

Now I play Barbarians of Lemuria and I'm much happier for it.

It sounds like you just want to run a GURPS game.

While this might be diliked a lot, I will say I would suggest 5e d&d, it took me 20 minutes to teach player to play it and it's less of a pain in the back to run.

Longtime GM and fanboy of 5e here. 5e is actually weirdly hard to teach some people. I've had so much trouble getting my players to remember even the basics it's unreal. And they've played PF no problem so it's not like they have mental disorders or something.

>I also had heard about Dungeon World.
Don't. It's moderately useful for getting people away from D&D/PF, but other than that, it does more harm than good.

Maybe PF gave them mental disorders.

>And they've played PF no problem
Well, there's the problem.

good lord why do you guys hate PF so much

Experience.

Can you elaborate?

I've never really had a problem with playing it.

Did you find it fun to stand still and full attack until a monster died?

The three campaigns I played, I was a Bard, a Wizard, and a Druid, so I didn't really have that experience.

Sounds like you have a DM that doesn't use surroundings or terrain as part of combat.

I wouldn't leave the fun value of a player class up to GM homebrewing, but I'm not a professional game designer, so what do I know.

Also, anyone can use those, including spellcasters, who coincidentally don't even need them to have varied and fun gameplay.

>Also, anyone can use those, including spellcasters

I'm not sure what your argument is here.

Play something other than pathfinder. Pathfinder is not built for roleplay, its built for competitive rollplay. Thats why Pathfinder Society exists.

That non-spellcasters are boring to play as, and "use the environment" is not an argument.

Another convert to the best fantasy ttrpg currently on the market!

"Using surrounding or terrain as part of combat" is not the magic bullet that fixes combat in Pathfinder, it's a meme. You can only put so many enemies on the edge of cliffs or under precariously hanging giant chandeliers before the the Quick Time Events to use environmental hazards against them become as rote and boring as standing in one spot and full-attacking are.

>"Using surrounding or terrain as part of combat" is not the magic bullet that fixes combat in Pathfinder, it's a meme.

It's also something that mages can interact with too, not just martials so it's not really a magic martial helping solution.

Start them on a better system

>who mainly want to roleplay.
Or at least a system that doesn't play against their desires

First game, all beginners.
Half of the group accidentally obsoleted the other half just by playing the characters they wanted, no optimization involved.

>since they seem more into just roleplaying heroes and telling a story than anything else.

>I've decided I want to just make them static characters with powers and not really have them level up

Risus, user. World of Dungeons, user. Barebones Fantasy, user. Barbarians of Lemuria, user.

Literally anything but PF, user.

Just play dungeon world or something, find a game that's super rules light and do that.

whats wrong with Dungeon World?

You know Apocalypse World?
It's exactly like that, except all of the parts that make it work have been ripped out to make space for completely incompatible D&Disms.