I came accross the Pathfinder Stater Box in a local book shop on sale for 25 and was wondering if anyone had any experience or thoughts in general with the Pathinder line..I have played table top D&D or Warhammer 40k however many moons ago when I was in school I did play Star Wars table top rpg for a while so I have a basic understanding of basic rolls and dice game rules..However I know rules and even dice use vary from game to game..Any comments or helpful suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thnx for reading..
Pathfinder is like playing D&D 3.5 but with a greater emphasis on balancing spellcasting and melee at high levels. It also simplifies a bunch of stuff like combat maneuvers (tripping, disarming, grappling, etc.) so that it's a lot less complicated, making a combat maneuver another specific stat.
Basically, if you enjoy the Dungeons & Dragons dice-rolling and you enjoy the fantasy aesthetic it brings to the table, you should find a lot to like about Pathfinder. It's very much like an alternate 3.5.
I suggest checking out
http://www.d20pfsrd.com for all the Pathfinder you could ever desire. It gets pretty much everything posted to it shortly after the new books release and is an excellent tool when building characters.
The other thing I will say about Pathfinder is that it's very big on base classes versus prestige classes. Prestige classes are designed typically to be really synergistic with specific base classes, but you can also find a lot of really interesting archetypes of base classes, where you still play a class (like Fighter) levels 1 to 20, but the archetype changes specific things about the class. It adds a ton of variety and makes it much less likely that people will build an identical fighter to yours.
Pathfinder is really custom-heavy in allowing you to do what you want with characters while still balancing fairly well in the greater world. It's my preferred role-playing experience.
Pathfinder is basically what people mean when they say "I play D&D" nowadays. (It outsold D&D 4th edition by a healthy bit, too.)
You said you're already familiar with RPGs -- If you're looking to buy product, I'd skip the box and go straight to the books.
Irish's post is otherwise helpful (especially "use the SRD").
My two cents echoes the posters above. Pathfinder is fun to play and refines the d20 system, making it even better. It is relatively stable, meaning that there isn't a flood of new core(ish) books monthly that contribute to power creep.
That said, be careful with referencing d20PFSRD. They list everything as soon as they can, and in my opinion could use some good filtering. To get a good sense of the system without having to wade through too much, I recommend Paizo's own PRD at
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/.
Additionally, Pathfinder has a very active Pathfinder Society (PFS), which hosts games around the world. You can make a character and play it in any PFS game.
I would agree with skipping the beginner box now that I've read up on it. My gaming group has the Core Rulebook as opposed to a Player's Handbook and a Game Mastery Guide. It sounds to me like the Core combines the two.
One thing of note about Pathfinder: When they updated spellcasting to make it a bit more balanced in end-game with melee and gish roles, they started to remove or alter the biggest, baddest spells so that their detrimental effects weren't quite so detrimental. There are still save or die spells, but there's typically modifiers on when and how they can be used for that.