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Dotting this. Very lovely work.

For a Grippli, I have always wanted to make a Grippli Maneuver Master Monk with the Jumper and Glider alternate racial traits and the Agile Tongue feat to perform Disarm and Steal maneuvers from 10 feet away while on the walls or ceiling. Sounds hilarious in my mind.

Alternatively, a creepy touch-spell-based caster who delivers touch attacks through his tongue...

Oops! Boon roll. Day job is in discussion 1d20 ⇒ 10

I've always had a soft spot for the Grippli race, and I am happy they are in Pathfinder. Their latest incarnation has this feat called Agile Tongue, which allows them to use Sleight of Hand, Steal, and Disarm maneuvers at a range of 10ft, and deliver touch attacks with it. This struck me as particularly amusing.

So what do Grippli have going for them? +2 Dex and +2 Wis, -2 Str. Small size, 30ft speed and a 20ft Climb speed, +4 to Stealth in Forest or Swamp terrain, Swamp Stride - ignore difficult terrain in Swamps, proficiency with nets, Darkvision.

Now I'm not keen on the stealth bonus or the Swamp Stride, but luckily there are some alternate racial traits. Glider (you can glide) replaces Swamp Stride, Jumper (always considered to have a running start when jumping) replaces the Stealth bonus. Toxic Skin (1/day Dex-based poison) replaces both. Princely (+2 Intimidate and Diplomacy, gain Rapier proficiency) replaces Swamp Stride and the Net proficiency.

The first thing that came to mind was a Maneuver Master Monk called Master Frog that focussed on Disarm and Steal, and to a lesser extent Sleight of Hand (using a trait to gain it as a class skill). Now this is not particularly powerful, but is funny. The Glider and Jumper traits seem good choices, though the Princely one can help make him a Face character. Agile Tongue is the level 1 feat, and Improved Disarm the Monk Bonus. Stats something like: S 12, D 16, Co 13, I 12, W 16, Ch 10. Agile Maneuvers is something to pick soon as his CMB is not going to be good. Damage is going to be quite weak, but Stunning Fist may be decent. AC will be okay, and mobility is excellent with the Climb speed. Going with some sort of ranged Monk may be best.

The next thing that occurs to me is a touch spell focused mage, which sounds weird when you consider he's delivering it at 10ft range - with his tongue. While on a wall or ceiling.

Any other Grippli fans out there with thoughts on these concepts or other fun Grippli builds?

"No... way!" Kalistrine exclaims. "No. She really is a Princess? You've got to be kidding me!" She slams her shield against the wall and stomps back up the stairs.

The bustle of the evening didn't touch one corner of the room. A brown-haired Dwarvish maiden, braids descending to her waist, one of which she was absently tugging on, stood statue-still. Clutched to her chest was a large book wrapped in goatskin. Her golden eyes were wide as she watched the assembled mourners in their assorted celebrations, growing more rowdy as the evening progressed. Her dress was fine - quite fine in fact, and decorated with Dwarven runes of ancient type. Golds and purples mixed with browns and bronze tones in gold thread, linen, fur and silk down the bodice and the skirt. Incongruously, an archaic-looking Greataxe of impressive make was strung across her back.

"Get out there girl! You made the book, so go add it to the gifts!"

The young woman gulped and yanked on her braid one more time before stepping out into the pandemonium. She strode purposefully, yet with several halts to avoid stumbling revelers, to the pile of gifts in the center of the room. She stood, noting with admiration a very fine shield and a number of other gifts, before unwrapping the book in her arms and placing it on the top, her hand resting on it for a moment before she steps back.

Bound in dark brown leather, the book's cover features an inlay in gold of the Skuldafn Clan's Runic arms. Amber and lapis decorations form more runes on front, back, and spine.

Moll searches the fallen creature for the Katana, and stands menacingly over his fallen body thereafter while the others recover from its magic. "What to make of this?" she says softly, looking down at the creature before returning her gaze to the Kobolds.

Knowledge: Local to identify Humanoids 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (17) + 6 = 23

In my game he lasted maybe 12-18 seconds.

I'm so bad at running Wizards... I didn't start him off with his nastiest spell. Opted for Glitterdust instead. Barbarian grappled him and essentially noogied him to death...

Vomit Swarm always makes me giggle. My Witch characters always take it when they get the chance. Also, it has no verbal component. It'd be pretty hilarious Stilled too.

"I have you grappled, Witch! What will you do now? Hahaha... wait, why are you smiling? AAAAAAH SPIDERS!"

I see why Shrink Item is awesome... I'll have to keep that in mind.

I'm in an All-Sorceror game starting soon. Think X-Men in a fantasy setting.

A friend of mine is working on a homebrew Dwarven campaign where the players are dispatched to establish a new Dwarven Hold. Think Kingmaker meets Dwarf Fortress. :D

Hello everyone. My friends and I are starting a game where all the PCs are Sorcerors. Are we insane? Well, I won't rule that out. But I think it's possible to make a pretty awesome party with only Sorcerors.

Benefits: So much Charisma (Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, Use Magic Device all over the place)! Knowing we're all Sorcerors we can choose our spells to not have much overlap and therefore increase our overall utility as a group. There are enough different builds to make this diverse enough to be viable.

Drawbacks: Looooooow HP. No Int or Wis-based skills.

My thoughts on party makeup: We have four players, and I plan to suggest that we have 1 Blasty type (Half-Orc Draconic/Primal Crossblooded? ALL THE FIRE!), 1 Enchantment-focused (Kitsune Fey (Sylvan), with animal companion for added awesome), 1 Summoning-focused (Abyssal. Pitblooded Tiefling?), and 1 Melee (??? Bloodline with Claws plus Toothy Half-Orc? 2-Handed Weapons (Half-Orc again)? Race with a Natural weapon (Changeling? Tiefling?))

Can four Sorcerors make a go of it in this crazy world... and then dominate it?

Questions I hope to have answered: Does anyone have any information on good builds along the lines of the ones I mentioned above? Any other builds I should consider? Is it worth it to have someone go Sage for Int-based skills, and/or 1 go Empyreal for Wis-based skills?

Edit: No multiclassing (Prestige Classes are okay), and we're starting at Level 4

I'm going over Feldgrau for my session tonight, and when I come to Vrood's spellbook, I see that (as usual) I have to add up the value of it myself. A time-consuming task, to say the least. (I wish Paizo had time to add this up so we DMs don't have to.) Now I'm all done, and a little alarmed at the value of the thing. Please tell me I did this wrong... or right... maybe it won't matter.

I had to split it into two books, as the page count went well over the 100 pages a Spellbook holds. In the rulebook it says a spellbook has a value of 1/2 the cost to buy and scribe all the spells in the book.

Book 1: Level 0-3. A total cost of 5612gp for a sell value of 2806gp
Book 2: Level 4-6. A total cost of... 25115gp... for a sell value of 12557gp.
That's 15363gp for JUST THE SPELLBOOKS. This value will change depending on what you roll on the +1d6 spells of random levels 1-5... wait, is that 1d6 spells total, or 1d6 spells per level? I calculated this with the latter.

Now this is about three times the expected wealth gain for an encounter of its CR, not counting his other gear. I haven't added up what the rest of Feldgrau gives, so it may be intentional to make up for deficiencies in other areas. We don't have a Wizard or Alchemist in our party either, so it will not get scribed. Of course, where are they going to sell it? Caliphas seems like the only place, so maybe it won't matter until book 5, if ever - finding a Wizard who will pay 15000gp for two spellbooks is probably unlikely.

Aaaaaaaanyway... wacky.

The question isn't a matter of preparing a specific villain for a specific party. It is somewhat a reaction to prior experience as a DM, and noting threads that pop up from time to time, most recently one about a flying, invisible party destroying an encounter. But it goes a little more to the general assumptions about the world in which the game takes place. Magic and the supernatural are a fact. They're part of the assumption that all characters must operate under. Invisibility, divination, flight, teleportation, are all, if not common knowledge, knowable with even the littlest amount of any knowledge skill (In fact, that DC 10 knowledge check that anyone can attempt will probably reveal the existence of any number of supernatural abilities).

I started thinking about this when I was reading the description of a fortress in an AP. It was a typical medieval-style fortification. But this was the headquarters of a very powerful Wizard. Why that same old fortification? Any enemy powerful enough to threaten a villain that powerful would find such a fortification trivial. This got me thinking about how different Golarion must actually look from a medieval society based on the prevalence of magic and the supernatural.

Back on topic. A hypothetical villain, will (barring extreme arrogance or other personality disorder) have a sense of self-preservation, and want to prevent their schemes from being ruined by interference from the (probably quite common) groups of meddling do-gooders. They usually have the same, if not usually more, resources than are available to PCs. The ways that their enemies might attack, apart from the frontal assault, are probably fairly well known.

Buffing of AC, saves, stats and hit points, as well as healing, I think can be assumed in most cases, but what about:
- Stealth (of the mundane variety). Not much to be done except sentries and barriers to entry. Good Perception checks and alarms and traps are the easiest way to deal with this.
- Invisibility. (Basically another level of stealth, but people don't always combine the two.) Potions or scrolls of see invisibility work when they are aware of an invisible foe. Having minions with True Seeing, See Invisibility, Tremorsense or Blindsense, are excellent ways to deal with this. Also, having magical defenses that cast Dispel Magic on people crossing a certain threshold, or a permanent Invisibility Purge set on an area observed by sentries, are possible for higher-level enemies.
- Teleportation. This is really tough to deal with, but it usually only works when the enemy has a good idea of where they're teleporting to. Dimensional Anchor effects notwithstanding, the best way might be reinforcing their defenses against Divination.
- Divination. Okay, this is tricky, because often it depends on DM interpretation. Pure divination in the sense of the dictionary definition (i.e. appeal to supernatural powers for information beyond what can be acquired with the senses), like Augury or Commune or the like are super-dependent on DM fiat. Scrying, and other more Arcane means at least have some internally consistent rules to follow. Detect Scrying is to me the most obvious defense. But what about scrying on objects? Locate Creature? Using extraplanar creatures as sources of information? Many scrying-type effects are dependent on familiarity with the target. A good behind-the-scenes villain will make this extraordinary difficult, but that can make for some excellent play - tracking down the identity of the villain.
- Alternate movement types. There are several types that merit being dealt with separately.
1. Flying. Fly yourself, fly better. Dispel enemy flight, whether through magic or mundane means (nets or other entangling effects). Ranged superiority. Terrain (underground dungeons make sense in this instance, but prevent you from using it against your enemies as well). Environment (Wind & Weather).
2. Burrowing. Depending on the source, your building materials can make this impossible. At higher levels, Force walls are your friend, but earlier on selecting the types of rock you build with, using Iron in construction, or creative architecture might do.
3. Intangibility. Not terribly common coming from a group of PCs, but you may have had to consider defending yourself from that Lich down the block who keeps letting his zombie dog crap on your lawn. Force. That's about it. Or creative architecture again, since intangible creatures have to stay within a certain distance of the surface of a wall or floor or such, you can at least create choke points where incorporeal invaders must pass, and maybe then be forced into the open if your Force Wall budget is low.

Okay, it will likely be impossible to prepare for everything on this list, especially at lower levels.

"Blasted... Spider..." Kalistrine gasps, her face twisted with fury, but a spark of fear shines in her eyes. She begins to slump against the wall and tries to twist away from Lina to keep her face hidden.

Rage 4/8. Save vs. Poison 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (20) + 5 = 25

Oh thank goodness for lucky rolls! That poison had the capacity to kill me otherwise...

She sighs and collapses to the floor. Her face returns to normal for the most part, though a sheen of sweat has spread across her brow, now hornless save for a pair of small bruises."I think... I need a minute..." she says, resting her back against the stone, her head between her knees.

A mid to high level villain must have lived that long for a reason, and reached their exalted status on the graves of rivals and would-be heroes. They must have encountered many strategies and heard about others, and seeing as they aren't fools, they prepare for future enemies. What if they therefore assembled a kit of needed items and consumables for the purpose of confronting dangers? What, in your experience, would a villain with wit, intellect, or even just experience, include in such a kit, knowing the tactics and strategies employed in a world like Golarion where divination, flying, invisibility and teleportation are common enough at the levels of power that they have achieved?

What potions, wondrous items, or other items mundane or magical, might a non-spellcaster keep in their kit?

What scrolls, wands or other item types above might a spellcaster keep close at hand?

It really looks like he doesn't want to be there.

Kalistrine does the dirty deed of ear collection after pulling her dagger from the last Goblin's neck. She tallies her total then looks towards the Goblin children. "Reckon we get the same price for littler ears?" she asks.

I don't think anybody needs that much makeup, unless you're going for the Teen Beauty Queen prestige class or want to take levels in Clown.

Kalistrine frowns, and her pale cheeks start to grow pink which serves to make the scars on her face stand out all the more. "What do you mean, 'nicely built female'?" she asks in response to Jorland. "Yeah, Sandru, I'll take care of this." she mutters angrily. Sandru knows Kalistrine's temper...

She follows Jorland to the Rusty Dragon in icy silence. Upon entering, she looks around the room at the other patrons, her gaze challenging. Kalistrine is an imposing woman, close to six foor four in height with long black hair. Dressed in scuffed leather armor, she carries an array of well-used weapons on her person including a battleaxe, dagger, a set of Chakrams and a shortbow. Her appearance is all the more striking for the fact of her face, which is marked by terrible-looking scars which appear to have been carved into her flesh with some nasty hooked implement. Her eyes are also notable, one being brown and the other a vivid sea green. Finally, with the arsenal of weaponry she carries, somewhat overlooked for all that, you notice her fingers, strong and calloused, end in blackened nails that curl like claws.

Kalistrine looks at Takeshi. A dandy to go along with the rude Dwarf. She snickers to herself. With Liu Na's declaration, she snorts.

"The swamps are no place for little girls." she says condescendingly.