Hey all, new poster here!

I have some minimal roleplaying/Pathfinder experience, and I'm planning on buying some Pathfinder books so I can GM in the future. However, buying the core rulebook, the bestiary, and the GM guide as physical books will set me back quite a bit.

I was wondering if I could get away with only buying the PDFs of the bestiary and the GM guide. I want the physical book for the core rulebook because you need to reference it sometimes while playing, but the other two struck me as something that you don't need to reference during play. So, my question is, do you need to flip through those books while playing, or can you just write down stats for monsters you plan to use beforehand, and study the GM guide outside of play?

I have the bestiaries on pdf and they serve me well as such for reference. As for the GMG, I have the book, it is a good bedtime read and I don't particularly like reading from pdfs. As for the monster stats:

http://paizo.com/prd/

Quote from: Zarnium;657848So, my question is, do you need to flip through those books while playing, or can you just write down stats for monsters you plan to use beforehand, and study the GM guide outside of play?

Welcome, Zarnium!

To answer your question: the bestiary in particular might be useful to handle physically while running the game, depending on how you like to reference monsters, whether you have a laptop at the game table, etc. The GMG should not be needed at all, however.

Quote from: Benoist;657869Welcome, Zarnium!

To answer your question: the bestiary in particular might be useful to handle physically while running the game. The GMG should not be needed at all, however.

The PF GMG is a fairly decent book if you're newish to GMing something like PF.

Quote from: Piestrio;657870The PF GMG is a fairly decent book if you're newish to GMing something like PF.

It can be useful, but I don't see it as needed as much as referring to a monster stat block on the fly might be. Different strokes, I guess.

Quote from: Benoist;657872It can be useful, but I don't see it as needed as much as referring to a monster stat block on the fly might be. Different strokes, I guess.

For sure.

It also depends on what you use to display the books.  The pfsrd is actually better formatted for use at a gaming table (hyperlinks, single column layout) relative to the books.  If you are using a laptop it is likely that the display will be too small (as the laptop screen is rotated the wrong way for an 8.5 x 11 page).  I have seen some very good results from using a full size tablet.  


The PDFs do have advantages for searching.  Using a find command can sometimes be really effective (sometimes not, depends on how common the search word is).  

But I would consider what I expect to have at the table . . .

Thanks for the response!

What I really want to know is whether I need to reference either book during play or not. If it's something I'd have to look through during a session, I'll spring for the physical book. With the bestiary, I think I can just plan ahead which monsters to use, and print out their stats beforehand. The GM guide struck me as something that you'd read for advice, but wouldn't need to reference, as the actual rules are in the core rulebook. However, I'm fairly inexperienced, so I don't know if this plan is feasible.