Astral Wanderer's page

I have no idea if it has been said already, I just read the preview and came to comment: it sounds an awful lot like D&D 4E, which is honestly disheartening and terrifying.

The terminology itself causes goosebumps... "encounter mode", "exploration mode"... well, I have 8 Gb ram, can I run it?

That, aside from the fact that an entire new game with a new set of rules would have been perfectly fine. But another edition of Pathfinder should have never passed through people's mind. There would be a lot to say about this, but I guess it was said already and will be said again (a quick and minor example: the unchained rules when the system was already nearing the end of its life cycle... it's like "hey', come buy this book to correct how you played till now, nevermind that shortly we'll make you dump it along with all the others"); and if the developers want to take this route anyway, I guess this kind of let down is only natural in any company.

"Nowhere do the rules say that a dead creature cannot act, speak, and more."

Common sense at its finest.

at this point Roll20 is really quite powerful, and has some advantages over MapTool.

What are they?

Specialized Wizards. Starting as kids.

Personally, I'd keep the skill list pretty much as it is, but divide it into some categories (mere examples, which could be changed to anything): athletic skills (Acrobatics, Climb, Swim, etc.), lore skills (Knowledges, maybe Spellcraft, etc.), professional skills (Craft, Profession), social skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, Sense Motive, etc.), utility skills (Heal, Survival, etc.), and so on.
Theny, each class and creature type would gain a number of skill points for each category.
Fighter would gain a good amount of athletics points, a decent amount of utility points, and low lore, social, and anything else.
Wizard would gain high lore points and low anything else.
Things like these.
So you can dedicate to spending your points on each category without worrying too much that your character needs a social skill to back up his background but has low points and you can't forego other skills.
Without giving too many points to spend boundlessly at the same time.

here's the easy out on tech advancement: WIZARDS, ELVES, TARRASQUES!

disbelief is already suspended. moving on.

The point wasn't about disbelief, but in the fact that many people seem convinced the course progress took in this world is the one it should take in every imaginable world. Which is terribly narrow-minded, even without fantastic elements.

I've seen a reference to Cheliax resembling Italy(not sure if it's accurate)

As an italian: we do have devil-worshippers in the ruling caste, are currently governed by people who imposed themselves as rulers without any actual right, and host a diabolical church that goes out of its way to appear angelic.

I'm considering starting up an online campaign, how do you guys handle the maps? I know there's a lot of different ways but I just want to find a (free) system so everyone can move around their icons or whatever, and isn't too hard for me to craft.

Thanks.

MapTool is what you want.

The map functions are actually its "smallest" feature.
At its very basic, you can use MapTool to just drop a map background, drop players' tokens on it and play with simple rolls (like: /r 1d20+5).
Then you can start using fog of war, visual block and lights.
And after that, you can download someone's (free) framework to have properly coded commands to automate a lot of nice things (like attacks and skill checks).

Further beyond, you can make your own macros (and build a framework, maybe), and a universe opens. Random generators of any kind, to say the least. This takes effort, but well worth it, and anyway it's totally optional... you can use MapTool without ever writing even the simplest macro.

More than removing the penalties, I would make one of the two bonuses one floating and the other half-floating.

Elves as an example: you have two +2; one must go to either Dex or Int; the other can go to any ability that didn't already receive the previous +2 (Dex or Int) or the -2 (Con).

This way, you can maintain the feel while having far more opportunities to be good at more classes.
You'd think Elves are good as Druids, Fighters or dual wielding Rangers. With a +2 to Wis or Str, they could be more on par with other races.
At the same time, the demi-human races could elect to have an additional half-floating +2 and an half-floating -2 (Half-Orc example: +2 to either Str or Con, -2 to any one mental stat).

Or the limitation to the full-floating +2 could be removed entirely, so you can put it on Con for a total of +0 and have a more resilent Elven Fighter, or even to Dex/Int, for a total of +4, which would make them much more appealing for certain classes (and would stand up to the "great elven magic" trope, in case of Wizards).

Nethys. Dunno, something about the music itself, plus the feeling that Nethys would sell the world for more magic power and knowledge... and the black and white picture.

Angel Meat (It's gloomy, beware if you're particularly sensitive about this.)

Unless more has been said by Paizo staff, the quoted post doesn't say anything about "glowy" things.

For those spells that don't inherently produce visible effects (like a Wall of Fire or a Phantom Steed), I've always considered flashy effects to be present only if the caster wishes (if the choice has to be made once per casting or just the first moment that spell becomes available, is another matter I won't go into, now).
Rather, for those spells that are spells in a more literal way than others, relying mostly on the sound you produce with your mouth, I consider the way of speaking itself the recognizable element of the spell, and the spell itself being "in that component" (the fact that Bard spells can't be made silent also supports this view, and actually I think it should be extended to all spells that rely on speaking/emitting vocal sounds or spells with just a verbal component, but this too is a different matter). Apart from the fact that "to provide a verbal component, you must be able to speak in a strong voice" (CRB) a pratictioner of magic (or better, anyone with ranks in Spellcraft) can recognize you're casting something from your voice being conveyed in a certain manner (a Suggestion has a different tone than a harsh Dictum).
Now, if a Sorcerer (Eschew Materials) casts a silent Suggestion, I'd personally make it possible but very hard (like DC 10 + CL) to notice the casting at all with Perception, since only some sort of moment of concentration or what could be interpreted as hesitation could be noticed in the spellcaster. And the Spellcraft check at the moment of casting would be outright impossible unless an observer is using some ability or magic item that lets her perceive magic auras or stuff like that. One could still get a check to recognize the spell when the target starts behaving in an unusual way, or in other cases.

That said, if you cast a (normal) Suggestion in the middle of battle on the enemy Fighter, of course the enemy Wizard will be able to recognize it, but if you cast it when no one else around has Spellcraft, there's no problem, even if the target has it himself. provided the spell doesn't fail due to SR or save, Suggestion relies on a reasonable request and compels (= forces) the target to do it, so it's irrelevant if the target is an expert spellcaster who used Suggestion everyday the last twenty years and is normally fully aware of how it works... the moment he fails the save, the words sound reasonable in his head, so, at best, he'll more or less think: "Well, I know it's a Suggestion spell, but what that guy said is actually reasonable, I really have to do it... I would even if he asked me normally, because it's really good/my responsibility/whatever."

So, in short, be sure there are no (other) people with ranks on Spellcraft around (the target doesn't matter), and you're good.

If you paste text on Google translator, you can have use the listen tool to have it read for you.

It's somewhat nice to do it with RPG books.

In the whole "easy resurrection" argument there is most often a fundamental assumption that is totally WRONG and makes all further elucubrations pointless.
It's the fact that having money = getting the required diamond at your local grocery store.
An equation with not even a single inch of solid ground.

This is also the answer to "why isn't the murdered king resurrected the day after?". As long as the material component has insignificant cost, it's granted that characters can resupply regularly and effortlessly (unless they stay for a very long time in places where there is no access to any shop or whatnot that may allow them to resupply), but things with actual costs are a different matter.
The spells that require them do so because they tend to be more powerful than other spells of the same level, so characters need to spend extra effort and resources to get those components.
Then, going into specific case, getting a 100 gp opal may be easy, but a 5000 or 10000 gp diamond (let alone a 25000 gp one) is on a totally different scale. Diamonds are already rare on their own; more so the big diamonds with such extreme value; and more yet in a multiverse where you can bring people back from death with them. Anyone who has them would hardly sell them (which also means that those who have those diamonds probably acquired them in different ways than merely buying), and many would try to steal the diamonds from those who have them.
Getting your hands on such gems should be in itself the focus of an adventure. And when you finally get them, assuming you don't immediately burn them in a casting, you don't want to go around adventuring with them in your pockets. Along with the risk of losing them at any moment (random example: you get caught and imprisoned by someone, your possessions taken away), you'd attract all sorts of scryers, thieves, assassins and monsters.

But yeah, those who just like a hack & slash game can buy any thing they fancy from the most common of street vendors. Or even from thin air, just burning their coins.

Otherwise, yet, death IS still scary.

I had done something like that myself, years ago, but I had a problem with calculating years before 0 AR (right now my mind isn't on it, and I can't recall if it was just too exhausting or outright beyond my abilities).
I hoped this one could go before 0 AR, but looks like there was the same difficulty. :D

A dumb paladin that will say: "what is wrong with you, why did you bind an angel?"

"I didn't bind him; I called by the only means I know and immediately freed him from the trap. I just wanted to ask for assistance for a common goal."

Problem solved.
If dumb persists, treat with careful stabbing in the guts until the average intelligence of the room returns to acceptable levels.

You're trying to apply reason to magic. That never ends well. Just remember, it's magic. It doesn't have to make sense.

But the best part is that it does make sense.

For a very short answer to the "hampered technology" matter: different factors make for different results. We should stop assuming that the course our world took is the obvious and only course for any other world. Especially for worlds which have about a billion factors that don't even exist in this one.

Hell why not make Pathfinder 2.0 Paizo's revision of WotC's 4E?

I like to have nightmares, but this one goes too far even for me.

Leave D20 entirely and transcend to the Godhood that is D10/Percentile where suddenly every roll makes sense because it functions on the BASE TEN number system we all employ most in real life.

Uhm, what?

If they have to do something, I hope it'll be an entirely new game, not another re-heated soup. It's time we quit it with the "new edition" thinking. Not just for Pathfinder.
Worse, in the case of Pathfinder, there is too much that would need to be updated, and there's no way I'd fall again in the trap of a new edition, so I'd largely prefer to not have it at all. Especially since I don't have any of all the issues people complain about with the current system.

Please give the new dragon type at least a page of background. There's so much stat block that usually the new dragons have zero personality, and I never end up using them. What makes these new dragons different besides a few combat tricks and alternate spell like abilities? The last batch in bestiary four was particularly frustrating: I loved the idea of Outer Dragons but all I got was more monsters with the dragon label. I would rather have had the same amount of space dedicated to background on these guys and just had a page or two reskinning old dragons to fit this great new idea.

I have every confidence Paizo can blow me away; your single-page guides to outsider types do this job brilliantly. I'd just would like dragons to get the same love, so they're worth more than a second glance.

This.

I'd prefer books with half the monsters but enough lore about each of them, rather than loads over loads of almost dull stat blocks.
More monsters are always nice, but there is already more than enough of them, and adding templates too, their number becomes nearly infinite.
Better to have more lore and nice suggestions on how to use the creatures. Especially if many creatures are just another Undead born from cold, another terrain-named Giant, another Fey who loves pranks, another Dragon (with not even that bit of personality), or other such overused themes or dull stuff.

I really don't see it in combat. At least with characters capable of doing damage if they hit. If you're in a situation with an enemy with really high DR that only one PC can bypass, I suppose that makes sense.

Otherwise, even if you only hit on a 20, is just adding +2 to someone else's attack really better than rolling for the 20 on yours? Even worse with multiple attacks, since you still only get to add one +2.

And sending the squishies to the front line to (maybe) add the +2 puts them at risk for very little reward. That applies to things like familiars as well.

When you're at an APL where characters get iterative attacks, there are probably many better options than both aiding another or hoping to roll a 20 by yourself.

It's not selfishness as much as it's awareness of the fact that sacrificing a Standard action (possibly a full attack) to grant a +2 to a single roll is a terrible idea.

Again, that is if you do have better options. You know, even a full attack that hits with 2+ is a terrible idea, if you have better options.

Part of what makes it awful is the fact that it's too situational. It also kills action economy and gives a minuscule bonus.

It's something you can do without wasting feats and such, cumulative, and it allows you to overcome problems that would otherwise require either expendable resources or retreat. Awful is really not a word I'd use.

Doubtful. They can attack, feint, intimidate, use items, cast spells, use their class features, etc.

I've never seen a support character so incredibly weak that they had no chance to hit the opponent and couldn't do anything better than spending their standard action to grant a +2 to/against a single attack roll.

As said, if you're at a level where you have more options in your character sheet than you can keep track of, it's obvious that aid another is probably the last thing you'll do. But that doesn't mean it's your worst option.

I've literally never seen this happen. Never seen DR that only one party member can overcome.

That's nice. I've literally seen that happen dozens of times (only one character having a weapon of the proper material/enhancement bonus, only one dealing relatively high damage, etc.), so...

My current group still hasn't learned to use it, and honestly I'm amazed at how people (in many other groups too), despite all my suggestions to use it, never think about it or always prefer to waste their turns.
Apparently, it's better to make useless attacks that miss or don't overcome DR, rather than help someone else who could use a little bonus to save the day.
And I also had people who complained "that monster was too hard", after ten rounds of useless attacks from every character, when it could have ended in two or three rounds.

I guess it's a reflection of how people are in real life: selfish to the marrow.

In short: Asmodeus decides to expand his territory, his legions have grown in strength and numbers over many eons and they stand ready for a major invasion. But where to start? Invading any of the good or neutral realms seems a risky proposition, no doubt they would all aid each other and he could end up fighting a war on three or more fronts at once. But the Abyss has no allies, demons are hated by everyone, they are disorganised and their territory is vast, possibly infinite in extent. Asmodeus shores up his defences by signing non-aggression pacts with Abaddon, and the neutral and good realms and then marches his forces into the Abyss.

I think one like Asmodeus wouldn't keep things so straightforward as making a couple pacts here and there, and then have his own legions take the open road.

well to be honest, I don't see this as a problem with the fiends. The Qlippoth and Sakhil are pretty damn alien, and the Sakhil that was previewed I think is the only one that is rather "human-ish". Demons also have some pretty bizarre creatures. Devils are really the only outsiders with a mostly conservative morphology, which makes sense in the context of their boss and the fact they are sort of made in the image of good outsiders.

I said some.

I, for one, would very much like a Puginal. Especially as a familiar.

Take a dog and add the Celestial template. No need to put inbred-puppy Celestials in the books, unless Pathfinder's staff is so out of ideas that they need to steer the game on the rail of blatant ridiculousness.

Speaking of dogs, I'd LOVE to see variations on breeds for animals, though I'm not sure what form that'd take in a PF bestiary.

Beside the fact that dogs aren't surely the most used creatures in the game, why would you need more stats for the same creature? There are Dog and Riding Dog already, and you can have more with templates like Young. What's the need for a differentiation between german shepherds and labradors? Having one point more in an ability score and one less in another? That's GM's job, if they really feel that level of detail is "needed" (which is not).

Not all good things are pretty and being too close to paragons should be bad for your health.

Who said they have to be pretty? I said they have to not be dull (or worse, just ridiculous).

Also, maybe because I'm not an OCD person, I don't really see the need to cover each and every combination of everything, thus producing an Agathion for every possible animal, an [insert any Outsider family] for every single CR, and so on.

Who is the omniscient spirit mentioned by the Hidden Truth? Is it truly omniscient and able to tell any secret, including Aroden's death, the real creation story, or why/how the jyoti keep the gods out of the positive energy plane? Can it tell us what Nyarlathoteps plans really are?

Yes, but for that you have to draw an unlisted card: the Business Card of James Jacobs, with his phone number.

Order is no less personal than good or evil, if you put it under that light.

Been there, and I'm afraid there's no solution you'd like.
I had to drop the group, and there was some friction, but there was nothing else to do.
Also, I too had lots of material that relied on the players' investment, and it went to waste. Actually, I could have recycled it with other people, with some work, and I'm sure you could too, but as time and games went on, I got into other things and lost interest in that previous material. Maybe one day I'll want to use it again, but for now, yes, it went to waste.

Can't give you better advice, when the only good solution lies in the hands of people who don't care about it, I have no idea what else can be done.

Well, at least the Trolls are already statted.

It's not a Frequently Asked Question. It's an Almost Never Asked Question, only asked in thought experiments on how to misinterpret the rules.

This.

There's really nothing to be clarified here, beyond the level where some people "need" to have a written line stating that dead characters can't move/act/perceive/etc.

Two things about Wish:
1) It's a 9th level spell, not a 255th level almighty spell. It can do anything a 9th level spell can do. It can do more, with proportionally unpleasant side effects.
2) It's a wish, not a contract. Writing a 320-pages essay to use as a wish guarantees that you won't get what you want. Just say "I wish this", not "I wish this, but without that, and when daisies are blooming, then this, and if someone hurts my feelings, then that, and the tip of my toe must be blue, etc."

That said, the best a Wish can do without breaking stuff is probably cast a Form of the Dragon Spell along with Permanency (which means bye-bye at the first Dispel Magic).

Earthshine, by Summoning.

I think it should be self-evident why this was a really terrible idea. As a GM, you want your players to have a great time. If you want to throw in a little hate, it has to be hate they love, in other words, a villain they love to hate. The creature who took all of their loot, without them really being able to do anything about it, had absolutely nothing fun about it. It was pure hatred, partially at the beast, but mostly at me for being such a troll (we were teens).

Granted in a group of teens it's normal that things end working out exactly in that way, but I'd play a bit as the devil's advocate, in regard to matters like these.

But.
If the group, as said, is solid, a player knows the GM isn't just a cheap bastard who wants to make her suffer and keep her contantly in check. The challenge of a thief taking what's yours can be a fun arc which will normally end with the character testing her own abilities in unfavorable circumstances, growing, and retrieving her things and probably other loot that. And even in the event where your character end up with dust in her hands, you can trust that's just part of a greater arc and the GM will bring you back to glory, in full fairness.

Personally, I've thrown an immeasurable amount of s**t at my players, but what I took with one hand, I gave with the other. For a really quick example, ask them if they're ooc-mad for a thief stealing a few thousand GPs, when a patron armed the PCs for free with a ten times equivalent in magic weapons and trinkets...

This to say that what you can or cannot do largely depends on a given group's dynamics. If you aren't just trolling and the players know it, you can build their good hate for the villain even with things that would otherwise cause the bad hate for you.

Ha, elves are mushrooms. They have no flavor of their own, but they pick up the flavor of what's around them!

Same as Humans.

In regards to the lack of tech advancement...

What's the use of, for example, finding out precise gravity acceleration, in a world where you can ignore it through magic, with no need to know anything technical about gravity itself and what physical laws you can counter it with? Or why should one strive to build an uber complex device that needs extremely careful maintenance to take a very long journey to another planet, when you can travel there more quickly, safely, easily and probably cheaply with magic?

Of course there will always be some curious mind doing scientific research (where by scientific here I mean real world scientific disciplines, but in the game world, magic is a science in its own right: something that can be verified and replicated). But it's only natural that those minds will always be in comparatively insignificant numbers, when you can manipulate the environment by knowing a different set of rules than the ones we attribute to technology, thus slowing tech progress down by a huge lot.

Also, four other things:
1) Reality+. There is a fundamental thing about fantasy settings: they (are supposed to) have all the laws and inner workings of our reality, plus the addition of magic and similar forces, which expand the total horizon of possible knowledge by ten times at the very minimum.
This means there are both a million more topics and less specialists dedicated to each single topic. For example, in our world, now in 2015, what do we know about all the planets of our solar system? A great deal of stuff, from a certain point of view, but from a pragmatic one, we know really little to nothing. In Golarion, instead, there is much more to know about them (since many of them are teeming with life and have active cultures), and a great deal of that is actually known. You see, maybe in Golarion not a single person has a remote grasp of quantum physics (actually, some do, but take the example for its purpose), but there are plenty of books filled with knowledge about other planets.

2) Gods+. In Golarion, in Middle-Earth, and in many other fantasy settings, the Divine is not only real, but overtly proven. This brings up so many issues that I wouldn't know where to begin, but I'll make an example regrding a tiny fraction of all that.
Galileo Galilei made observations that threw from the window everything the Church belived and wanted people to believe. That sparked a change that led to tech improvement. But that's because before that, no one knew the truth (well, let's not go into egyptian astronomy and other such things, here... fact is that those were left behind by western history and became sadly irrelevant). But in Golarion (and Middle-Earth) it is known already how the solar system works, that the Gods actually built it (unless they lie or have been deceived themselves, but that's another matter entirely), and so on. Because the Gods already revealed that. So, usually, there is no curiosity and no need to do certain kinds of research about it and (adding magic too, as written above) to develop certain techs.

3) Danger+. In our world, apart from random natural disasters, the only danger we have (or, for most of us, had) to face is wild beasts with little intelligence. Even when we had no better tools than a bone spear, a minimum of intellect allowed us to best wolves, lions and any other threat. That allowed us to build relatively safe roads (the biggest threat on them was Humans themselves), which then evolved to railroads and further. In Golarion and such, between two cities you tipically have the territory of at least one other species intelligent enough to cause many troubles, if they don't like you. For example, we could even assume that various techs for building trains have been discovered, but they just aren't applicable from a pragmatic point of view. It would be a huge waste of resources to build railroads, when Orcs/Goblins/Lizardfolk/[insert another thousand races, or any other fantasy horror] block them at some point and make all of your trains crash, even if surviving guards stop them from plundering the goods.

4) Out-of-the-box+. Apart from the fact that the sets of laws introduced by magic add a staggering amount of possibilities for thinking out of the box, even if we were discussing of non-magic alternate realities we should take away a fundamental flaw: the idea that our historical progression is more or less the only possible and natural one.
Go back in time several million years and move a rock one inch to the right. Maybe when you get back to the present, you'll have evolved intelligent grasshoppers driving flying cars.
Or, to be less hyperbolic, maybe if an ancestor of Newton died at young age rather than surviving to reproduce, today the world would be much different.
This to say that, as a small thing now can cause a big thing later, a whole set of different conditions can make for extremely more dramatic differences. By what kind of imaginary insight can we assume and give for granted that it is natural that a few millennia of history will absolutely lead to the same situation we have in our world? In some cases it may lead to far greater advancement, in others to far less. And if you add all the fantasy stuff to the equation, the result can be unbelievably wilder. Other than inherent effects due to the mere presence of the added variables, what do you know what kind of thinking people in such a setting might develop? They may be totally alien for one who lives in a non-magic world, leading to a totally different historical development.

So, in the end, no; the lack of tech advancement beyond a certain point over the course of extended periods of time doesn't bother me at all. It wouldn't for a non-fantasy alternate Earth, surely it won't for a fantasy world.

Paladins are human. Humans are imperfect, even the chosen warriors of the gods; therefore, paladins must be capable of falling.

That's it. They must be capable of falling, not utterly condemned to sooner or later fall.

Even less suffering an extreme where they're constantly being put on a torture wheel by a GM till they lose all their powers. While perhaps there's also a double standard where other characters face minor drama at best, and don't even shift alignments after significant choices.

As in the opening message example of the Paladin attacking non-lethally, I've seen many more Paladins fall for dumb and petty reasons than for barely reasonable ones.
Provided a Paladin's player is not a mere roll-player who wants to keep his powers just to play hack & slash, but one who actually behaves like a Paladin, the fall should be somewhat agreed between player and GM to build a nice story; or at least the player must be able to trust that the GM made him fall for a good story arc of redemption, not just because he's being a jerk. I remember a guide to short and quick character backstory/concept creation through a series of questions; one of them was more or less "write down three or more things you want your character to go through or achieve". That's where a Paladin's player would put "fall and redemption", and there would be much less frustration and table arguments.
But anyway, the fact tha Paladins may fall doesn't mean every last one of them should. Nothing imposes that each Paladin one day faces a challenge that seriously puts her at risk of falling, and it's not written in stone that a fall makes a good story for every Paladin either.

In short, don't be a jerk, and don't be real-life-lawful-stupid, forcing a Paladin to fall for any minor deed.
As in many other cases, most of the problems come from people refusing to take off their blinkers, rather than from the simple rules they so fierily blame.

The greatest trick of the Devil is making you believe that he wants you to believe that he is making you believe that he wants you to believe that he is making you believe that he wants you to believe that he is making you believe that he wants you to believe that [on and on it goes]...

Ask for a pair of girly panties, before some evil dude asks for world domination!

Because that would make elves and humans more powerful than other races?

I suppose he was implying all other races would get an additional +2 too.

I, however, think they would all be too powerful, with a further +2.
Every mere peasant would end up with stats higher than average, thus establishing a new, higher average. An higher one than what tries to be a consistent representation of real world people.

I think all the races with fixed-bonuses/penalties to ability scores should have a floating bonus like Humans and Half-Human things.
For example, Elves may have +2 Dex and -2 Con fixed and then another +2 to a stat of choice, thus maintaining a fundamental difference with Humans, but also having a bit more range to move in.

Add to that the swappable racial traits, and you can have better Elven Druids, or Fighters, or Sorcerers. As well as better Dwarven Wizards, Gnome Druids (Gnomes are supposed to be the most nature-themed guys, but their basic racial stuff doesn't reflect that at all), and so on.
With also at least a slight reduction on the "I'd like to play race X with class Y, but that combination sucks/doesn't feel that good, so I'll play something else".

Since Inner Sea Gods was made, and it is nasically the enhanced version of the old Gods and Magic, I was wondering if anything was said about an analogue for the old The Great Beyond.
I love the Planes, so...

How about the BBEG Rogue doesn't wait to be confronted in his throne room, but rather sneaks in his enemies' camp and slits their sleeping throats?

If adamantine can cut through rock like butter, what can it do to people? Isn't it unrealistic that it cuts rock and steel as if they were skin, but doesn't cut skin any better? Maybe it should deal like +2d6 or more damage.

3. Be super harsh and argue that for realism's sake, you wouldn't be able to cast something like Resurrection if you do not happen to own a diamond worth 10.000gp. And how, in the middle of the forest, will you procure this diamond? This approach was my initial reaction to the question, but I realise this makes the whole spellcasting-schtick a whole lot more tedious and difficult.

It's not super harsh, it's the rules, and also the answer to "why isn't the murdered king resurrected the day after?". As long as the material component has insignificant cost, it's granted that characters can resupply regularly and effortlessly (unless they stay for a very long time in places where there is no access to any shop or whatnot that may allow them to resupply), but things with actual costs are a different matter.

But yeah, those who just like a hack & slash game can buy any thing they fancy from the most common of street vendors. Or even from thin air, just burning their coins.

This has "bothered" me for years, I don't know why I didn't write about this earlier.
We have two subrules for essentially the same thing. The only differences between Regeneration and Fast Healing are that the first can be halted by some attacks and the second can't regrow or reattach body parts.

This could easily be made in a single subrule, under Regeneration.
Just change the format in stat blocks as following:

Regeneration 5/fire/R

What does it mean? It means 5 points of Regeneration per round (if it was per minute, just add "/minute"), stopped by fire, and the R means a type of Regeneration that can regrow or reattach body parts.
Basically, it's an example of normal Regeneration, like that of a Troll.

Want a Fast Healing like that of a Vampire?

Regeneration 5/-

Meaning it's a type of Regeneration that can't be stopped (just as for Damage Reduction, same format and same meaning) and can't regrow or reattach.
As a side note, this brings my mind to wonder what happens if you sever a Vampire's limb, given its gaseous transformation upon physical destruction, but that's another matter.

It also makes for special Regenerations like that of the Tarrasque, which can't be suppressed but at the same time can regrow or reattach:

Regeneration 40/-/R

And of course that would cover other possible special cases, as for a creature whose Regeneration can be suppressed, but can't regrow or reattach.

If we want to go further, we can differentiate regrowth and reattachment with RG and RA respectively.
In the format, a simple R would mean the creature can do both, while only RG or RA would mean it can do only the specified one.
Think for example of Piccolo (from Dragon Ball Z): he can regrow but not reattach; the T-1000 (from Terminator 2), on the other hand, has a finite mass and can reattach lost parts but can't regrow them.

Also, it would be nice to have specific rules for "how much can a creature regrow or reattach", but I won't do that here.
I mean, if I sever a Troll's head, will it die or both parts will still be alive and reform the normal Troll if put together? Or will the head regrow a body and the body a head, thus forming two Trolls? How much do you have to reduce it to poultice to definitively suppress its Regeneration?
There has been much discussion about this, and that's why clear rules would be nice.

Reconcile? Why?

I'm so glad that you are a rare case of persons in this.

And that is never going to happen anyway, Paizo's staff love them mythology.

I hope the 5th book is so crowded with them, that you don't even want to buy it. >:-D

What are you, 6 years old?

I love mythology too, but I'm not so blind as to not see that those endless lists are 99% composed by uninteresting garbage.

"Oh, look, the Sbrlxfts, a cannibal giant with four arms and three eyes! We absolutely need that, it's something totally new! Wow, the Drugtflk-Hlhhrrrtkk, a beast with horns and a serpent tail, how come this marvel wasn't added in previous bestiaries?"
Please.
There are far more interesting things than the countless unelaborate mixes of human and animal traits conceived by all possible primitive folklore that manifested on this planet. Especially if they have to be added exactly for the mere reason that they come from folklore, despite being actually worthless.

My interpretation is that alignment wastes time and effort.

The idea that we need a thread like this one to explain what should be clear enough on the page; that means there's a problem.

There is a problem, but it's in the people who don't understand those concepts in general, not in them being represented in a game.

The example format for Fear Aura (in universal monster rules) presents a standard of 30 ft., so 30 might be the correct one. Since it's in the example and not actually given as the standard range, it's not 100% reliable to determine this case, but at least it points in a direction.

Since then, the elf has fought tooth and nail in the arena and learned to become a lvl 1 brawler.

That kind of backstory is a problem for any race. If we're starting a level 1 campaign, it's unreasonable to have in your backstory things that would imply the PC to be more advanced. A few significant encounters/situations/whatever are alright, they contributed in making you a 1st level PC class rather than a Commoner, but years of arena fighting, surviving trips across Hell and Abyss, working as an assassin for a powerful lord, and whatnot, are just ridiculous.

This seems to be a heavily player-oriented wishlist thread, but since I think there's already an overflow of toys for players to play with, and at the same time a low amount of fluff/story-enhancing rules, I hope to see rules that will help in building occult, ghostly and otherworldly atmospheres.
Also, things like places that empower incorporeal Undead, locations where great tragedies took place, leaving residual psychic energy from strong negative emotions (such as mansions where a murderer butchered his whole family, temples where brutal sacrifices where practiced, halls of torture, etc.). And ancient Ghosts grown by relinquishing in those feelings, perhaps born and bond to that same kind of places.

In an interview once, Gary Gygax discussed some of the questions he's been asked about 1E:

Why is there a dungeon with different monsters in each room? Why doesn't the vampire down the hall kill the orcs and bugbears a few corridors over? Why doesn't the goblin chief use the magic sword and armor in the treasure chest he's guarding? Great questions, and there are no answers.

There is an answer: very, very bad design/writing.

Back on topic...
As someone who never had all the problems people keep crying about with Monks, Rogues, etc., I just hope the redesigned classes end up being balanced and not just crazy like the ones from Advanced Classes Guide.