Infodump:Conceptualizing a Character

There is some pre-planning for this - consult your GM or other players for inspiration if you aren't familiar with the process. All of what I describe below is hopefully helpful, and makes it less scary even if I overexplain some concepts.

There's 2-3 schools of thought on creating characters, and a bazillion ways to do it and options to pursue. It can easily be analysis paralysis, especially when you consider choosing spells for caster classes.

Underlying assumptions

Coming up with ideas

When in doubt, shamelessly lift from established TV/movies/books/video games.

Mechanical Underpinnings

Remember to put your character's personality and motivations in the forefront, since you'll be piloting them during roleplaying sequences and using their motivations to decide their path forward.

But also be open to adapting the initial concept seeds to mesh with the mechanical choices you have to make. As much as the game has evolved and grown since the earliest inception decades ago, it still has lineage to it's dungeon-diving roots so combat and overcoming dungeon hazards still be a key aspect of your character.

The game and characters are best approached from the Indiana Jones perspective than 2001: A Space Odyssey.

A portion of what you will choose will have discrete and adjudicated effects or structured abilities that all plug together. The flexibility of character creation is the modular nature of stitching together the variety of things in cool ways.

There is always this push and pull at the genesis of character creation.

For the the Wild Tangents specifically

For our purposes with everything plugging into the baseline assumptions of the Paizo Organized Play/Pathfinder Society - your characters will need to have an allegiance to the Society in some way.

If I were running a different campaign (and believe me, many a good Game Master has been stewing on their yet-unrealized magnum opus for a decade or so), I'd leave allegiances and loyalties up to players and help wrap the campaign around it in a more bespoke presentation. Someday. Soon...

Your allegiance to the Society can take whatever form you wish! Your PC might have been rescued by them and feels they owe service, either in reverence or obligation, perhaps your PC has been working their whole life toward this after learning about the Society as a child, perhaps they drank the kool-aid and have a kind of blind-faith attachment, perhaps they were blackmailed in some fashion and begrudgingly act as an agent of the Society, maybe their deity directly commanded them to. Many other ideas abound - use these or come up with your own!

Schools of Thought in character conceptualizing

The school of "I have no idea what I'm doing"

One school of thought is to have zero plan. It's is wholly valid and can make some interesting characters. In reality, at each level of character advancement there will be maybe a half dozen choices to pick from (plus anything that came before). There will be plenty of playing happening between level-ups, so you'll have an idea of the things you like this PC to do and then choose an option that best suits that.

If there are things you'd like to change, there are in-universe and mechanical means to do so. If we all kind figure out the haphazard choices are not working together, the character can be scrapped and remade in their own image.

The school of "I know exactly what I'm doing"

Another school of thought is to meticulously plan out every single character choice from now til max level well in advance of actually getting there. You know precisely where this character is headed. This is tempting, this is fun, and this is a great way to optimize a character into some great gameplay cycles.

If you find there are things in the campaign your build is not good at doing, then the character can be benched for the right time to shine.

The "meh, this is cool" approach

This is basically a blend of the two - you have a vague handle on some stuff, but don't give a shit to look too closely at an optimized plan and just kinda go with what sounds neat. You might plan a few levels ahead, or plan out some key choices but infill the rest with other stuff.

Your perspective might be in the grand scheme of things it'll all work out. Plus, there's magic items and other silly player shenanigans that derail the best laid plans of mice and GMs anyways, so whatevs.

Regarding long-term character paths

PCs are meant to grow, develop and change with the world they adventure in. It's a good idea to look ahead at the type of feats and such at higher levels, but leave some wiggle room for your character to grow to meld with the setting/party/plot.

PCs are also meant to come and go. Character death is always a possibility or to be written out of the game. The main benefit of PFS scenarios and their modular repeatability, it it's a great environment to juggle multiple characters and/or testbed new character concepts. As we jump into higher level scenarios, we can jump into higher level characters as well. (I only want to start at low level scenarios to give new players time to acclimate to the basics.)