Races and Classes in Freehold
Alignments
Young and Old PCs
Secondary PC Applications
The Crunchy Stuff (Rules for Character Creation)
Freehold uses the Pathfinder game system, overlaying the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Don't worry, though—for anyone who doesn't own the Pathfinder rulebooks or otherwise have access to them, you can find a link to the unofficial references. The website should have just about everything you need to know!

If you are not up on the Pathfinder rules, please review them via the reference link and make sure you've got them down before getting into serious character design, or even requesting to join.

The only thing we actively recommend against for new applicants is creating a "loner" character. In our experience, "lone wolf"-type PCs tend to have less fun, overall, because they gradually get pushed to the side as play progresses. It's not truly deliberate or malicious on the part of the community; it's just that Freehold is all about town- and society-building, which means characters who are specifically designed and built to go solo or who have personalities that strongly feature a "lone wolf" component are naturally going to go looking for things to do on their own, away from established groups and projects. That sort of runs counter to the idea behind the whole game.

Since the GMs' job is to provide adventure and engagement for everyone, as a whole, we can't always reasonably come up with a satisfying adventure for just one character (and sometimes, for plot or environmental reasons, we can't actually allow such). Because of that, we can advise with significant supporting evidence that players will have more fun and a better play experience if they're willing to create characters who are, in turn, willing to engage the settlement. This doesn't mean "lone wolf" characters are disallowed, and we have admitted them before, but be warned that it is from those admissions that our data on this subject originates! Concepts centered on loner PCs are, therefore, a lot less likely to be accepted.

Permitted and Restricted Content, in Brief:
Any official Paizo or Forgotten Realms content/material is valid, except for:
  • The gunslinger base class (and similar variants, like the holy gun, spellslinger, etc. (the bolt ace archetype is permitted)
  • Hybrid classes from the Advanced Class Guide and most associated rules and material
  • Occult classes from Occult Adventures and most associated rules and material
  • Advanced or alien technological content from sourcebooks such as the Technology Guide, Numeria: Land of Fallen Stars, and the Iron Gods Adventure Path
  • Most variant and optional rules from Pathfinder Unchained (the optional eidolon archetypes for summoners are permitted)

No 3rd-party material will be allowed unless otherwise announced by the GMs. Other 3.5 material will be announced as available by the GM staff as appropriate, but is otherwise disallowed to players; visitors looking to join should not request extraneous 3.5 or 3rd-party content. Reasonable alterations or substitutions to existing material may be permitted on a case-by-case basis.

For this game, ifrits, oreads, sylphs, and undines replace genasi of their respective elements.