Astral Wanderer's page

If a creature is being kept pinned in a grapple, or tied with ropes or chains, and uses a change shape ability or a spell or spell-like ability to polymorph into something larger, how would you rule it?

The Polymorph subschool description in the CRB doesn't mention anything about that.

Unless there are some other relevant rules somewhere, I'd say the ability/spell simply fails; lacking necessary free space, the effect is cancelled to prevent the creature from suffering damage from whatever is squeezing it. In case the creature was going to turn smaller, it'd work because there is no intrinsic potential harm in doing so.

There's plenty of threads about the other case, the creature getting smaller, but I couldn't find any about larger.
Some argued about the ropes or chain being considered the creature's gear because they're being worn, but like others in those same threads pointed out, it's quite a huge stretch and it would lead to all kinds of issues.
In the case of being grappled, someone noted there's no rule about size change breaking a grapple, and by extension a pin, and I'd couple that with the effect just failing as mentioned above.

Does anyone remember some other rule that would be relevant?

Mh, as a group we're not fans of adding more and more systems or anyway make the game more complex than it already is...
Given the lack of simple and straightforward rules, I guess the GM will either keep the line of "cursed items are failed items, and that's just how it'll stay" or use some specific narrative solution, like a side quest to plunge the weapon in a sacred lake, using it to kill some particular monster to "redeem" it, or something like that.

Thanks for the directions.

Can't find rules or FAQs about this.

We found a magic cursed weapon, and the GM also can't find anything about removing the curse from the weapon itself and making it a normal magic item.

Remove Curse can only remove the curse from a character wielding it (or just enable them to let go of the weapon and get rid of it), but specifically cannot remove the curse from a cursed shield, weapon, or suit of armor.

Break Enchantment doesn't work on items at all.

So, is there a way at all, as per the rules (short of Miracle/Wish)?

I was trying to find a free initiative-tracking Android app to use at the table, but I can't really find any at all on the store, not even for D&D, not even priced, which seems rather strange.

Add that the store randomly throws in a f**kton of crappy mobile games in the results pile, and every search I try is just a hellish trip.

Anyone using one already and can tell its exact name (hoping it's still available for download, if you've gotten it years ago).

The ideal at my table, just for the sake of saying it, would be an app that:
#1 keeps in memory the names you ask it to memorize (typically, the PCs), their Dex score and further initiative modifiers, and lets you exclude some of them (in case someone isn't participating), and add others (typically, the enemies and temporary allies);
#2 for each name participating, it rolls initiative, resolving ties with whoever has the highest total initiative modifier goes first (if it's further tied, whoever has the highest Dex, and if further tied, just go random) and sort them;
#3 has a button to advance the turn and round;
#4 allows you to add notes for effects, to set their durations, and to set on whose turn (at start or end) they take effect and/or have their durations reduced.

I could just throw at him a Meteor Shower, why didn't I think about it before?

It amuses me that people clearly don't even read half the post, looking at just a couple of random sentences (which don't even include the very first one) but love to spend twice the time writing random replies, including the metagaming blabber.

Party level is 4, and I'm a Witch.

I have the following hexes (two taken with the Extra Hex feat):
Healing
Slumber
Evil Eye
Flight
Water Lungs

Int 20, so the DCs for Slumber and Evil Eye are now 17.

And the following level 2 spells (on level 1, the only relevant ones I'd mention are Enlarge Person and Reduce Person), 3/day usable:
Alter Self
See Invisibility
Invisibility
Blinfness/Deafness
Feast of Ashes
Vomit Swarm

The situation is that there is this Wizard (not confirmed that he's an actual Wizard, but that's where the current informations point) from the Aspis Consortium with a lair in a broken lighthouse.
If you don't want all the other details, skip to #3.

#1
This dude is a real bastard, on one of our first encounters he killed a kid for no discernible reasons and ran away invisible.
Shortly after, he tortured a slave that I had freed, after I paid her on a boat towards a safer city; he happened to be on the same boat, and he did that to get informations on us.
Plus he has ties with a shitty merchant guild that spans the nation (Sargava), but what he's actually interested in is to get to certain ruins (which we already have been at, but didn't explore them because there were some incorporeal undead and we had no means to fight them) and a certain manufact used inside the ruins (we have most parts of the manufact, but he doesn't know).

#2
Now we're in the "safer" city caught between that shitty guild from before and another that is just as bad, plus government officials (who seem to be the only decent people) who want to topple both guilds.
The lighthouse is in a part of the city controlled by the first guild, which won't attack us openly but definitely wants us dead.
We visited this lighthouse after gathering some intel, and there were two Scarecrows (constructs) guarding it. After fighting them, we entered and found that it was definitely his lair, there was Aspis stuff everywhere.
He wasn't there at first, but before we could fully explore the upper floors, he came back with a Wood Golem (far beyond our fighting abilities) and forced us into a deal: helping him to steal a part of the manufact from the second guild.
We stopped at this point for now (well, after we gave info to the government agents, who can't help in that part of the city).

I don't know if I should mention this, but the GM isn't too expert, and I don't know where he breaks rules knowingly and where unknowingly, and whatnot, but even if the evil bastard has a Wood Golem (which requires CL 12th to make, but could have been gifted to him) from various details we *might* assume the dude is not an excessively powerful Wizard.
So, assuming the dude can be brought down with good tactics alone (and quite some luck), here I am asking for advice.

#3
My current plan would be, regardless of what we'll do in group (since we have to retrieve the manufact part and topple the guilds anyway), to try to attack him solo. Not immediately, of course, but soon.
Having Water lungs and 40 minutes of Invisibility, I can just enter water from any point, swim to the back of the lighthouse (which the GM specifically said has only a few rocks separating it from the water) and peek from a window. If he's home (we don't know his habits or whatever, since the lighthouse is in that hostile part of town that we can't really roam freely, nor entrust someone with keeping an eye, we already tried), I could use Alter Self to become a Locathah (which would give me 30 ft. swim for 4 minutes, and moreover, if I get spotted, I won't look like myself and instead look like a believable "threat" from the sea), break the window and use Evil Eye, then either Blindness, Deafness, or Feast of Ashes on him (so, Invisibility, Alter Self, plus this last spell would exhaust all my 2nd level spells).
I had also thought of setting fire to the lighthouse with Alchemist's Fires, but that wouldn't harm him directly, would make him flee somewhere, and wouldn't let us discover his other secrets, so this is out of the picture.

Problems with this are:
1) The GM might easily "punish" me with an aquatic encounter while I'm in the sea, especially after breaking Invisibility by attacking the dude. I could partially escape that using Levitate (from the Flight Hex), but that only lasts 4 minutes and I'd be stuck in the air, and depending on the encounter, the enemy could not go away and/or have ranged attacks.
(I say punish because I understand he may not take it well, especially since apparently he loves to always have the upper edge and con us in various ways; I'm acting totally in character, though, I've been wanting this dude dead for about an in-game month, and I'm thinking on doing it solo merely because I don't have invisibility and disguises for the whole group, or even just one other person.)
2) Magic wards and traps. Supposedly there are none, if the GM doesn't decide to put them there just because he suddenly has to protect the dude from an unexpected type of attack. There was a ward on the front door, if my memory serves, but our Rogue disabled it, and there were a couple of traps inside, but there's good chance that there isn't anything dangerous on the back and the windows (which I don't have to enter anyway, only break to have line of effect).
3) The fact that even if everything goes smoothly, I'll have made him either blind, deaf or temporarily cursed (8 days of Feast of Ashes), but I won't be able to push the attack further (if everything else goes really as desired, I may use Slumber on him, and end it there if he fails the save, but it's a Will save against a supposed Wizard, so chances are dim, and that's assuming he doesn't immediately react). So, he *might* not be able to remove the curse and be forced to starve, but that would only weaken him temporarily; we'd have to break in again as a group within the 8th day where he'll be most weakened (assuming he won't have removed it) and hope to land a blow before the Golem (or even the dude himself) breaks us. And with blindness and deafness he'd have an even easier time; they're permanent, but one Dispel Magic and they're gone. Even making him deaf only gives a 50% chance to fail casting it.

In light of all of this, any other suggestions?

The end goal would be capturing him, keeping his mouth open, and vomiting a swarm of spiders inside him.

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.

Sources for the ones that aren't in the core Bestiaries?

I agree that the group is having some issues that should be resolved with either a constructive talk or parting, and the GM is really harsh in imposing a -2 level penalty for a new character, in accountance of many things out and in game (a level 1 in a level 3 group is the first to fall, and the drag of the party).

On the matter of other players pushing aside, though, I have to bring an alternative point of view.
Of course I don't know if this applies to the group in question, but here's how it goes in mine:
In terms of rule-knowledge, I'm the expert of the group, then there's another player a bit behind, and then the others varying, but all much more behind (including GM). And then there's the latest addition to the party, who is totally new to Pathfinder and he's playing a Wizard. Suffice to say that he initially built a character over a total misunderstanding of ranged combat rules, and when I offered insight on that, we had to rebuild it from scratch.
Now, he always gets spell descriptions wrong, and his spellbook is in fact full of useless spells, which he uses even worse, and often I have to throw in a suggestion that feels like I'm playing his character for him, to avoid making him feel useless.
At the same time, he always brings out some ideas that look creative at first, but are terrible rule-wise, and actually they'd be terrible even if the game world was the real world. He's the kind of guy who'd organize a drilling from the surface straight to the underground lair of the Lich, so "we won't have to fight his minions".
Well, all this to say that, while I feel bad at always going "against" him and pushing him aside, his lack of rules-knowledge, coupled with his lust to always find creative ideas without considering how bad they really are, leaves me little choice. So, consider the event that the players in this group *might* find themselves in a similar position, and maybe they aren't just stealing the scene thoughtlessly (or maybe yes, as said, I can't know, of course).

Go MapTool.
Less eyecandy, more potential than Roll20, Fantasy Grounds and so on will ever offer you.
All for free.

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

Common sense at its finest.

My group has always been happy with this: 4d6 drop lowest die; do this seven times, and keep the highest 6.
Repeat this all three times, and pick the array you prefer among the three.
If none of them is good for you, you may roll the seven 4d6 to produce one more array, but you'll lose one point from the highest result. If you're still unsatisfied, you may reroll "indefinitely", losing one more point each time you create a new array.

As a GM, I always liked stronger PCs so I could throw more powerful things to them. And since I don't play monsters dumbly (unless they are dumb), CR has always been on par, except in peculiar exceptions, of course.

* Easier to get working with random players. They just go to a website and it's done. They don't have to worry about downloading Java, downloading MapTool, running MapTool, putting in the right URL.

* Roll20 has a full Pathfinder character sheet which is really quite powerful. I liked the token attributes of MapTool, and they did a lot of what I wanted, but the sheets on Roll20 are much more comprehensive.

* Network effects. Everybody I've run into runs Roll20. I used to have to convince people to download MapTool to play with me. It eventually just wasn't worth the hassle. Related to this:
---* People seem to find Roll20 easier to learn. If you run PFS games with random people, rather than just playing every week with the same people, this can make a difference.
---* Roll20 is what online conventions I've seen have used. This doesn't mean it's better, but it does mean that using Roll20 is just the path of least resistance.

There are probably more -- since it's been 2 years since I used MapTool, I don't remember things that it had or didn't have. Is it possible for different players to be on different pages? Does MapTool understand measurements on the map? (I remember being able to move tokens to wherever, but I don't remember if I could measure the distance (using game rules for diagonals, etc.) between two spots.) Can a player move his token along a specific multi-segmented path, measuring the distance along the...

1) Java is on any pc, and if it isn't it takes a minute more than the ten seconds to download and launch MapTool.

2) I don't know what you mean here, since MapTool is like clay and you can make it far more comprehensive than what Roll20 will ever be, especially if you don't want to waste your money on it, while MapTool is fully free and fully customizable.

3) That's a huge lot into the eyecandy, fad & co. area. When you have your MapTool framework, the only things players have to learn are how to connect to the server (3 clicks), how to move their tokens (drag & drop), how to add states/light/other stuff (right click on token and choose) and how to use their attacks/saves/skills/etc (click on the related button and input data if prompted).
I have no idea what's actually difficult for even the most random of players.

4) Yes, you can do all of that in MapTool. Move freely, move by squares, move by hexes, have the one-two diagonal counter, and so on.
Not to mention fog of war, vision blocking, lights, and a lot other features of the map alone, keeping in mind that the map itself is really the least interesting feature of MapTool.
As I said, beyond the eyecandy part, I have yet to see any VTT come even close to MapTool. And they even charge you, where MapTool is free.
I don't mean to offend anyone, but watching people running to Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds is really like watching moths throw themselves in the fire.
I'm personally very glad to have brought my own online group away from Roll20 and into MapTool, and now that they tasted it, they love it.

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

What are they?

As said. They do meditate and such, and they are immune to sleep, but by game rules it works exactly like having to sleep for 8 hours.
You may want to rule that they don't need beds (well, no one "needs" beds, anyway you get the meaning), but can do it in any place and position they find comfortable. Yet, all the rest is the same as sleeping.

If there is something 4th edition did right, at the time, it was adding to monsters' pages the degrees of lore characters receive based on their Knowledge results.

For whoever may not know what I'm talking about, a sketchy example using the Mummy: CR 5, Knowledge (Religion) DC 15.

Knowledge (Religion) 15: Mummies are undead formed by the dead bodies of ancient people, usually kings or priests, upon which certain burial rites were performed.
Knowledge (Religion) 20: Seeing a Mummy in too close proximity seems to drain all hope and courage from the living, leaving them frozen in terror. The putrescence of their corpses also spread a horrible disease through injuries.
Knowledge (Religion) 25: Being often covered in bandages or other wrappings, and due to the essiccated state of their bodies, Mummies are particularly susceptible to fire. At the same time, their bodies are hardened and are damaged only by powerful strikes, when using weapons against them, even magic ones.

So, with 15, you know it's an Undead, and you're aware it has the common Undead abilities and weaknesses.
With 20, you know what you knew at 15 plus that they have a Despair Aura.
With 25, you know even more.

Is there any supplement, web page or whatever that does it for Pathfinder? I know there's no official book, but maybe some 3rd party product?

I'm playing with a GM who just runs it loosely. DC is 10 + CR; you rolled much higher? Here's the link to the monster's page, you know everything. Which is very ugly, but after all he lacks a tool like the one I'm asking for here, and doesn't want to waste time on picking what characters get to know or not.

___________________________

Also, a question. the description of Knowledge skills gives these entries for DCs:

Identify a creature's planar origin: Knowledge (Planes), DC 20
Identify a monster's abilities and weaknesses: Knowledge (Varies), DC 10 + monster's CR

So, what if a planar creature's CR is less than 10, making its DC 19 or less for abilities and weaknesses?
Say I have an Efreeti: CR 8, Knowledge (Planes) DC 18. At first sight, how can character know it has certain abilities if they fail to recognize it has planar origins (and thus, its specific kind, because if they knew it was an Efreeti, of course they'd know it is planar)?
Does it mean the check to identify abilities and weaknesses can only be done if those abilities and weaknesses are actually interacted with? In that case, that should be applied to all creatures, and one may never come to know certain weaknesses. For example, how would you get the check to know that you need silver weapons to harm a Werewolf, if you don't hit it with silver first? Also, knowledges are supposed to be had beforehand, not as reactions, so that can't be.
Then how should one handle the planar creature matter?

1) Not bad per se; bad if you consider that there are better weapons, the Falchion being one one the best. Actually, I can't say because there is no two-handed mace with that name, so I'm not sure which exact weapon you chose.
2) No. Even Clerics don't gain any inherent bonus from using their Deity's favored weapons, they just have proficiency on it in addition to their normal class proficiencies. Paladins don't gain such additional proficiency, so the Deity's weapon has to either be simple/martial or they'll have to take the Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat (provided they want to use it, but, as mentioned, they have no obligation and get no bonus from doing so).
3) It is good, yes. Lowest critical range with two-handed weapons is always nice. The base damage is not the best, but the critical range may overcompensate. Especially if using Smite Evil (the added damage gets multiplied on criticals).

Specialized Wizards. Starting as kids.

Astral Wanderer wrote:

I wanted to add after my last sentence: likewise, if the invisible creature is trying to be sneaky, logic demands that you account for that and add the Stealth result to the normal 20 for the hunch. That 20 is for an active creature, but if the activity is trying its best to not move a grain of dust and not let out a breath, the DC *has* to be increased by the Stealth result.

Logic also dictates that knowing "something is there" is a lower DC than pinpointing the invisible creature.

Where did I say it isn't?

I sneak by a dude with a 30 on my stealth roll and he doesn't notice anything.

I sneak by a dude invisibly with a 30 on my stealth roll and he notices something is there.

Answered above.

I think you guys are making it overcomplicated where it's really simple.

I wanted to add after my last sentence: likewise, if the invisible creature is trying to be sneaky, logic demands that you account for that and add the Stealth result to the normal 20 for the hunch. That 20 is for an active creature, but if the activity is trying its best to not move a grain of dust and not let out a breath, the DC *has* to be increased by the Stealth result.

Astral Wanderer wrote:

:

Target is within 30 ft. and moves/acts: DC 20 (+ Stealth result, if using Stealth) to get the hunch.
If, and only if you got the hunch, DC 0 + 20 (+ Stealth result, if using Stealth) to pinpoint the location.

What is the difference between "DC 20" and "DC 0+20"

As I said at the end of the post:

Meaning that 0 is the base DC, but it will rarely be truly 0. Most times it will have at least one modifier (usually, from distance).
This to pinpoint the square, whereas the basic 20 to get the hunch doesn't care for distance and stuff. You just feel that something is nearby. Obviously, if the invisible creature does something that blatantly reveals its presence, such as talking, you automatically have far more than a hunch.

I know this is way after the fact of the original post. However this is something to add, in order to prevent pc death, and make sense for GM's in the future. If the boss is dead...why did the henchmen hang around and fight to the death? Does that make sense?

We talk about players playing "in character" but as GM's we need to play as the NPC's would act as well. If five orcs (or what have you - henchmen) and a Bugbear (Big bad) decide to fight the PC's, and after 3 rounds only 2 Orcs are left...those 2 guys just watched the party MURDER 3 of their buddies and the guy THEY THOUGHT WAS BADASS in a matter of 18 seconds...what the hell are they still trying to fight the PC's for? Those 2 punks would be running for their lives.

Just something to think about. It is kind of the default for GM's to have ALL Npc's fight until they drop (I mean come on, if they are getting XP they should have to EARN it!). For some scenarios this makes sense (they work for the assassins guild...failure means death at the hands of the organization, etc.) However SOMETIMES, Npc's don't have a reason to stick around. They were just trying to make a quick buck, or were the thralls of the BBEG. If success doesn't look imminent, why wouldn't they cut their losses? This could help stop (as other posters have called it) a "mook" from luck killing PC's in the future. I mean come on. The PC's still technically defeated those NPC's and therefore earned the total XP you had planned for that scenario. Throw the players a bone. Not everyone is dedicated beyond reasonable doubt to a cause. Even a cultist might be like "Man, I'm really doubting the strength of my God after watching everyone else die", or simply have the npc's live to fight another day and be a recurring npc.

In fact, most minions *should* stop fighting and surrender, when their employer is down.

Anyway, I want to remind that the weakest of resurrections requires a 5000 GP diamond. And you don't get those at your local grocery shop, so no, just finding a Cleric and throwing money at him doesn't work. You have to find a rare prized diamond (which anyone would want for themselves, with all the consequences of that).

A creature can generally notice the presence of an active invisible creature within 30 feet with a DC 20 Perception check. The observer gains a hunch that "something's there" but can't see it or target it accurately with an attack. It's practically impossible (+20 DC) to pinpoint an invisible creature's location with a Perception check.

Uhm, it's not obscure, to me. The way I read it:

Target is within 30 ft. and moves/acts: DC 20 (+ Stealth result, if using Stealth) to get the hunch.
If, and only if you got the hunch, DC 0 + 20 (+ Stealth result, if using Stealth) to pinpoint the location.

Target is beyond 30 ft. and does whatever: no Perception check allowed at all.
Target is beyond 30 ft. and there are proper conditions for a check (it steps on a puddle, there is rain/snow falling on it, smoke, etc.): DC 0 + 20 if acting, DC 0 + 40 if stationary (in both cases, add Stealth result, if using Stealth) to pinpoint.
Of course, add any other relevant modifier (such as the -20 if the creature is speaking).

All the base DC 0s are of course modified by distance, distraction (of the perceiving creature) and so on.

1) The mundane levels magic has reached and give back to spells, magic items and such the wondrous feel they should have.

2) The thousands of different weapons (I'd group them all into categories and give simple rules to add a number of qualities to the specific weapon you choose, and some examples; then, creating a new kind of weapon would fall into those rules, without having wasted supplements' pages on list of either dull/useless or overpowered new weapons).

3) Remove hit points and change with health levels and damage-soaking, with certain attacks ignoring certain soaks (a coup de grace with a dagger to the troath would ignore soaking from armor, unless it grants a force effect or whatever).

I like this idea, but working out the numbers with points to spend in each category would be cumbersome to say the least. Don't have a solution though.

Well, whose task would it be? I think it wouldn't be much harder than what game designers do when they create a class and decide its base skill points. Once you have the categories defined, you're just left with "how good is this class at these skills, archetypally speaking?"

I suppose this rule could reasonably be applied to creature abilities as well (and on any confirmed critical threat, not just natural 20s):

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/coreRulebook/magicItems/weapons.html#wea pons
"Magic Weapons and Critical Hits: Some weapon special abilities and some specific weapons have an extra effect on a critical hit. This special effect also functions against creatures not normally subject to critical hits. On a successful critical roll, apply the special effect, but do not multiply the weapon's regular damage."

I thought I remembered a different rule, saying that if you can't score critical damage (due to attack rolls or target's critical immunity), no additional critical effect would be applied. But I can't find it, and found that other, instead.

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.

Astral Wanderer wrote:

Also, who knows if a God can truly, actually die permanently?

Everyone.

Lamashtu killed one to ascend, two died during Starfall, Ydersius can be killed after Serpent's Skull, etc. Gods dying isn't super common, but isn't unheard of.

Except you might get any day an adventure where some dude is trying to revive a dead God and must be stopped because otherwise it might actually happen.

There is no word anywhere about dead Gods being truly, actually dead permanently.

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.

There is also a secondary reason why Gods don't have a CR. Apart from the fact that, as we all know, the more CR goes up, the more inaccurate it becomes, it's utterly impossible to define a CR for beings who, beyond their own immense personal powers and intellects, have been around for aeons and may have all sort of protections, traps and contingencies (I'm not talking about the Contingency spell), and hosts of powerful minions with the same wards (though in lower scale/scope/power).
Think that any single Deity has to keep itself protected against *at least* all the evil deities (including the evil ones themselves, since there are no friends in the darkness of the Spiritual Pit... convenient alliances, at best).
What level and what kind of resources do you think a mortal character should have to surpass the power of the alliance of Gods that would be required to break through the wards of any single God? Mortals would probably need to get the favor of other Gods themselves, practically being elevated to Gods on their own right... at which point CR loses significance (which it didn't have already) in a different way...
Not talking about the multiversal war that would be sparkled by some deities fostering a new one just to unleash it against an older one.

As said above this post, the murder of a God can happen. But it's something else entirely than slapping a CR on a stat-block and moving minis on the board.
Also, who knows if a God can truly, actually die permanently?

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).

Theorycrafting is usually just forced exploitation of what everyone knows is not an intended use of something.
Besides, in cases such as this, if any GM was willing to make Contingency omniscient for the PCs, he'd also be doing that for all NPCs. And the players wouldn't like it.

Something about Zon-Kuthon and the dark entity that possessed him. Something dark about loss and grief.

Something about Treerazer and Kyonin.

An adventure fully (or at least fully from book 4 to 6) inside of the Cathedral of the Starstone.
With a secret twist in the end (PCs have to duel because only one can become a God; the Starstone has exhausted its divine power and only remains as an artifact; becoming a God through the Starstone requires subjugating to the unscrutable will of Aboleth masters -with all the implications this brings with the three major Gods who did it-; anything else).

I mean, heroes with no special magical powers but boundless grit, determination and an iron will? Who's ever heard of that.

Courage, determination and iron will are things related to Wisdom and Charisma, so...

I'm aware some people play their characters as if their mental stats weren't even written, but in case we're talking about reasonable players... if you dumped a 7 on those stats, don't play like you're the big leader and fearless hero (well, unless you're fearless because you have 1 Wis and don't understand danger at all), and don't assume you should be protected by what you lack.

Also, Half-Dragons don't have the ability to use the variant breath of the related Dragons.

Which is a bless, in the case of the Void Dragon, since its variant breath is a mechanical mess.

So...what other options might a 12th-level cleric have? (She possesses the charm and trickery domains.)

For anyone not-obtuse (or not-stereotyped), face-to-face combat is the last option. The one that requires putting life at direct stake.

1) Prepare traps and curses. Use the average adventurer greed to own advantage.
2) Spread rumors.
3) Sow mistrust.
3) Not fighting in person.
4) Allies to do the above and more.
5) Planar allies to do the above and more.
6) Hire Red Mantis or whatever other assassins are available in your campaign.
7) Stage a false submission (if sure that the PCs don't kill surrendered foes) and have minions/allies attack at a pre-determined moment.
8) Copies, doppelgangers, illusion-covered minions/allies and whatnot, possibly to stage the submission too.
9) Challenge PCs to a game.
10) Hostages.
11) Blackmailing, aided by divination spells of sort to uncover some dark secret of any PC.

It has been mentioned before, but always worth remembering:

http://incompetech.com/

More free music than you can use, and a wide variety to use in many adventure/horror/anything-RPG-related situations.

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.)

For future doubts about spells, look at their subschools (if any), like "polymorph" in this case, and remember read it up in the Magic chapter of the Core Rulebook; it lists the common rules for spells of the same kind, which aren't listed in the single spells' description.
If nothing is mentioned about a specific matter, it means there are no effects in regard to that matter.

Apart from personal inclinations and preferences, for the average campaign, if we want a balance between keeping track and not wasting time on it, the first sentence in OP's link says it all. Frodo and Sam had to keep close track of their lembas because they were in a hostile land with little to no natural sources of food. This translates into a simple: unless there are reasons for which you should keep close track of stuff (carrying a noticeably heavy load, being far from communities where you could resupply, just broke free of a prison with nothing but your pants on, etc.), just don't waste time. Spend a few gp now and then to resupply consumables, buy a donkey/horse with saddlebags, and you're good.

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.

Hmm. Well, I guess there is really no mathematical reason why it couldn't go to years before 0 A.R., but I think the issue there is that technically it's a different calendar system.

Well, it's like our calendar... we don't say "year N of that other calendar" for everything before year zero; we say "year N before [year zero] of this calendar".

Of course, if PCs travel back in time before year zero, they won't hear people telling them "we're in year 2589 before Absalom" (or even after year zero, because who knows if Absalom Reckoning was created the same day Aroden lifted the Starstone or centuries after that?), but scholars of the present time surely refer to those times as such, as we do our world.

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.

MapTool, totally free, has all the tools you want immediately ready, and you can make far greater wonders with it than the mere basic features, if you ever decide to take the time to learn how to write macros. Random examples include one-click attack buttons, random treasure generators, and a lot other invaluable tools for both GMs and players.

Uhm, I just came to know about Realm Works through this thread, but to me it seems far, far excessive to have that price for what to my understanding is basically an offline wiki dedicated to your campaign with the option of keeping an amount of info hidden for players (that can be done online, just a little less pretty, maybe).
What am I missing?

I'm trying to expand my knowledge about programming, and I was considering making some RPG-related tool.

With all the stuff out there, though, I have no idea what could be useful that hasn't been done yet, so I'm looking for suggestions.
I can't guarantee I'll get anything done, but I'm willing to try, if any idea seems within the realm of my possibilities.

Of course, don't ask me for something huge like a VTT (go get MapTool, you can't ask for anything better... except newer versions of it) or a character generator. Just something "small".

My first idea was dismissed as soon as it came, because it was a simple set of random generators based on what's on Pathfinder books (such as the treasure generators in Ultimate Equipment, the background generator on Ultimate Campaign, and many others), but that would mean inserting copyrighted content, and I can't do it.

So, is there some relatively simple tool you think would be useful and cool (and which has not been made yet)?

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.

Since the CRB doesn't seem to specify it (maybe some other book, like Undead Slayer Handbook or others, say more about the matter, but I don't have them), am I supposed to treat a cloudy day (the avreage grey day) as if light is normal, rather than bright? Same for shadows, like the shadow of a big building on a clear day.

And for things like a Vampire's weaknesses or a monsters' Light Blindness/Sensitivity, are they safe, as long they don't have line of sight (basically) with Sun? This would allow a Vampire to walk the streets by day, as long as it avoids open spaces where there aren't shadows big enough.
Or are they affected anyway, so long as they're under the open sky by day, regardless of clouds or shadows?

Since the spell doesn't specify you need to see a target... you don't need it.

Also, if you required sight, how would you detect the magic aura of an enemy under the effects of Invisibility (against which Detect Magic or other Detect effects such as the Paladin's Detect Evil are used regularly, in games)?
Or even the aura of a spell affecting an area but not specifically an item or creature, such as Desecrate; would you need to "see the air"?

Detect Magic (and Chaos/Evil/Good/Law and the like) acts as a sixth sense, it doesn't rely on the others. You just feel it.

In context, I didn't read the demo, but unless there are other effects at work (whether by adventure design or GM's own decision) and the item is just invisible (and not beyond a barrier like the specified ones), Detect Magic should reveal its aura. Of course, it'll take some time, given the spell's limited radius, but perfectly feasible.

Beware that Detect Magic won't reveal Undead creatures; they aren't considered magical. But if any of them is under the effects of some spell or is carrying a magic item, you will perceive the spell's or item's aura. And if you're at the third round of concentration, perceiving locations, you'll feel if they move and where (as long as they remain within the spell's cone; if they move out, even if you redirect the cone, you have to go through the three rounds again, to locate).