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My second favorite character was my dervish dancing Teifling Magus. I decided his father was an Ice Devil, so he had blue skin, antennae instead of horns, and bulbous eyes. I fully dumped CHA, but my INT was fantastic; so, naturally, I played him as autistic. No social skills at all; but I maxed out every Knowledge skill before anything else, so I could tell the party something about absolutely everything we encountered. He pretty much ONLY spoke when he had information to share and then he would have a lot of it. Otherwise, he was actually min/maxed to the hilt (something I normally avoid) and held his own really well.

But my personal favorite was a Goblin Paladin of Sarenrae who used a crossbow and rode a boar. His CHA was abysmal, but he only used simple buff spells. It was a tough build early on, but he was actually the second highest damage-dealer in the group by about 10th level.

He was an absolute blast to play. He loved fire, obviously. He loved Sarenrae because fire. He saw himself as a noble knight with a noble steed who didn't smell badly at all. He was *almost* oblivious to how people viewed him as a monster. He would try to help people and they would freak out and he would pretend not to notice as he moved on to his next great deed. Deep down, though, it hurt his feelings that he could never be a true, heroic knight. But he kept at it.

He died heroically Smiting a monster at point blank range instead of running away and letting someone else take the brunt of the attack. The rest of the party made a point to bury him with his crossbow (which they could have sold for a hefty sum) and watched as his boar gradually turned back to a normal boar and wandered off.

The magus is a total rock star class. For me, the lure of the magus was the difficulty of building an effective one and using all their weird rules. Two-weapon fighting with a spell and knowing how to most effectively and creatively combo and chain your spells and attacks can be very challenging.

I've played every class and they are all more consistently effective overall, but nobody looks as cool or inspires as many "whoa" moments as the magus. Your party cannot *depend* on your magus for damage, battlefield control, buffs/de-buffs, or whatever compared to a class that specializes. But if you're creative, you can fill all those rolls a little bit in every fight and always walk away having done something awesome that really helped the group.

Yeah, they are MAD as hell, but that always inspires the RPing aspects to me. With one magus, I dumped CHA to keep my physical scores decent and (naturally) loaded up on INT, so I played the character as a know-it-all autistic savant with no social skills. I put points into every Knowledge skill and, quite literally, ended up knowing something about everything we encountered. It was a lot of fun. That was one of my favorite characters.

As a GM, I always allow players to make reasonable modifications to their characters provided they can come up with a good RP reason for it. I've seen what happens when someone ends up feeling "stuck" with a character they just don't like. It can lead to "suicidal" PCs or even players getting disruptive as they try to keep themselves entertained.

I like the idea of your character deciding he has a drinking problem, but I would make you work for it a little. I'd make you go through detox with a bunch of Fort saves and throw in Will saves on your character any time they are in a tavern or something.

I've played a Magus before and made it to level 16 before finishing the adventure. I'm normally averse to stat dumping, but I fully dumped Strength and Charisma even with a 25 pt buy. (I played him as a scrawny, scrappy, annoying, arrogant, bookish know-it-all.) A Magus is a challenging class to play and has to be slightly optimized to live up to their potential. It was the most difficult class I've ever played, but also the most rewarding.

Everyone is giving good advice, but the most important thing is this: use Spell Blending and pick up Calcific Touch as soon as possible. It is invaluable against big beasties (the bigger, the more invaluable it becomes). I killed a dragon in two hits with this thanks to Spellstrike and a high crit range. If a class was ever intended to make a DM cry, it was the Magus.

Make a bumbling, bookish gnome summoner with an Undead-type, small, bipedal eidolon that looks like a gnome skeleton. This eidolon is actually a close relative or friend that has fallen prey to the Bleaching and your entire goal of this adventure is to cure your friend. Your eidolon/brother/friend/whatever has the general attitude of Eeyore and hates adventures of any kind and you have to spend a great deal of energy getting him amped up to do ANYTHING. (Everyone heads into a cave, Eeyore mopes and complains that it'll be too damp and musty and will spoil his books. You have to argue and entice him with candy or something. If you do that, actually spend money on candy and make a big point of buying candy at every town.) You get the idea.

@UltimaGabe: If you don't use Cpt Jack, someone else will. And by "someone else", I mean "I".

My favorite character was from my favorite little homebrew campaign where our party was highly religious: Gob Quixote the goblin paladin of Sarenrae. Gob had tried to raid a temple of Sarenrae a few years earlier and had unwittingly set a whole world-shattering series of events into motion. The old cleric and paladin couple who ran the temple took pity on him when he was ditched by the rest of his raiding party and turned his life around. He ended up joining a party consisting of a Monk, a flame mystery Oracle, an Inquisitor, and a greatsword-wielding paladin who had the most ungodly (sorry) stats due to rolling more 6's than I've ever seen during character creation (seriously, I memorized them: 18, 17, 17, 16, 14, 12).

Gob rode a boar named Rocksteady and used a crossbow. Gob was pretty weak at first and was mostly comic relief; but by level 10, his raw damage output was second only to the superhero paladin. I played him as filled with child-like enthusiasm for spreading the good word and righting wrongs (both great and small). He lacked Intelligence and would throw himself into danger for a good cause without hesitation. He viewed himself as a legendary hero in-the-making and seemed almost oblivious to the suspicion and fear of others for his goblin-ness. He also had a gigantic crush on the flame mystery oracle. Unfortunately for Gob, the oracle was a snooty nobleman's daughter who was cursed directly because of Gob's mess-up and resented having to go on this quest and give up her frilly lifestyle. The monk was the oracle's bodyguard and had taken to writing a book based on our adventures, so she loved the drama that Gob Quixote inadvertently caused.

I had so much fun with that character that I'm seriously considering playing him again.

The funniest character which I didn't play was while I was DMing. This 6' 6" 300 lb guy played a female halfling arcane trickster of some sort who always pretended to be a little girl while in public to throw off suspicion. That would have been fun enough, but his character believed that human little girls all wanted to be fairy princesses and would act accordingly. He was just WAY too good at it.

If you're mostly just looking to be a dick, make a Pack Lord Druid and put your 18 in Intelligence. Make each animal something nearly worthless and get a new one with each Druid level so that you have a small zoo of 1st level Companions. Call the small group your "students" and do nothing but direct them and buff them to keep them alive while they contribute next to nothing. Clutter the battlefield with a ton of useless little characters that make your turn last for 20 minutes. Of course, that might result in your being force-fed your own dice...

An epic Magus or just multi-class something weird.

Some of us are into RPing because we have vivid imaginations. Some of you just have highly destructive OCD and want to share your torment like a plague. Those with OCD can never be happy; they can just have moments of reprieve from the voices in their head that shout math equations. I used to think I was OCD, then I got into D&D and I felt like the one-eyed man in the valley of the blind.

When I was a kid, you just liked fantasy and sci-fi and read anything you could. D&D was supposed to be a way to actually PLAY the story and it was fun. Then all the damn OCDivas come along and start dividing everything into sub-sub-sub-sub-genres and picking fights about it. Take your nerd gangs somewhere else. I can enjoy Star Trek right along side Star Wars, I can read about John Carter and then read about Aslan, and I can have cowboys vs ninjas in my Pathfinder if I want to.

If you set any limit on fantasy, you are missing the point of fantasy.

I have additional thoughts, because my thoughts are sometimes additional.

What about selecting the type of Naga from which they are descended? It could alter their look a little and give a benefit/drawback for each Naga type or maybe some flavor-rific SLAs.

And what about the poison? All Naga have poison. Maybe a race-specific feat that allows you add poison to your tail attack?

Nicely balanced and the flavor is really cool. I like the idea of a Naga-fied human. I'm actually interested in more of their backstory.

I'm curious: how do other DMs usually handle this? Is it a common practice to give injured PCs some HP back when they level?

When I began DMing my own group, I followed the advice of my first DM and leveled everyone between adventures. They weren't keen on it at first, but after a few sessions, the arguing over game mechanics went away. Players switched from fighting over XP rights to kill count competitions *in character*, skill-monkey players felt just as useful and stopped falling behind, and players stopped going "meta" in the middle of the game when they knew a level-up was imminent ("Let me kill that goblin! 5 more XP and I'll learn Fireball!").

I had my group step through a strange mirror to enter a weird, backwards reality for a fairly straight-forward quest complete with a fairly mundane BBEG. They go back through the mirror only to find that it created twisted versions of themselves that got loose in the real world and had been soiling their good names with some incredibly wicked deeds. (I had copied their character sheets the week before.) To make it more challenging, their dopplegangers were quick to use bystanders as shields and would even target innocent people to get the heroes off their backs. It was one of the craziest fights ever.

This only works if you are really familiar with their characters.

Deadly Aim is the feat you're looking for.

Love it! I like the flavor and I really like having different tree types. Only problem I have is the Willow Viridi is overpowered with a 40 foot base speed. They need a bigger penalty to even that out.

I've made a concerted effort to play classes I dislike until I figured out the build (even if it's just flavor) that I enjoyed, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the Bard. I even found a tasty Paladin build that was crunchy and flavorful which I never thought was possible.

But I still don't really like Wizards as I just plain prefer spontaneous casting. It feels like gambling when I prep spells and the house always won.

Me: "I gots my fireballs all ready to go!"
DM: "Solve this murder mystery in a town where magic is punishable by instant castration."
Me: "DAMMIT! I like my junk!"

Me: "I prepped lots of utility spells for the bank heist."
DM: "As you reach the bank, wave after wave of low-level Goblins attack in clumped-up groups! They're holding signs that say: 'Fireball THIS!'"
Me: "!#@$#*%@!"

That's what it feels like, anyway.

I still need to try out the Witch and one of my three Ninja builds (reachy trip monkey of trickiness, poisonous smoke-bombing frog, and Backstabby McVanishalot). Paizo may say Ninja's are just an alternate Rogue class, but I do not agree so far. We'll see how they play.

I don't think I'm going to like the Witch for some reason.

My group has always allowed retraining weapon-specific feats only if there is a decent amount of time in-game to represent training time with your new weapon, and you are only switching those feats over to a weapon that is in the same Fighter's Weapon Group. So we would have no problem with switching your axe-specific feats to your hammer, but you couldn't switch, say, Improved Trip to Point-Blank Shot because you decided to switch from a halberd to a bow.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that an experienced fighter would be able to adjust his fighting style to a similar weapon.

I've seen a lot of attempts at a PF Warlock, but most of them just plain suck. This one is excellent. I have a friend who has been dying to be a (non-sucky) Warlock in PF and he may want to have your babies after I show him this.

Likes:
1. Customization. We have played games where everyone was the same class, but we were all so different that we all had different roles in and out of combat. Great selection of feats, menu talents, pool powers, archetypes, and even prestige classes and you can pretty much do whatever you want.
2. Power. A 15th level PF class feels like a 20th level 3.5 class.
3. CMB and CMD. Whoever came up with that is my hero.
4. The new classes. PF has covered pretty much every legendary type of hero and made them effective and customizable.
5. The artwork. The atmosphere. The "feel" of Pathfinder. It's unique and the first thing that got me to look at the CRB at the bookstore.
6. Support. Open-playtesting? Actively answering questions? It's almost like Paizo is made of *gasp* real people who *gasp* love RP games.
7. PDFs. I want my book now and I want it for a fraction of the cost of a hardback. This is the only reason I own every book.
8. The Magus. I would make babies with this class if I could.
9. Animal Companions and Familiars were finally done right.
10. That excellent D20 compatibility. If I see some splat that I like, by gods I can use it.

Dislikes:
1. Death in Pathfinder. Dying is rare. Staying dead is actually more challenging than any other aspect of the game. We house-rule the HELL out of this.
2. Animal Companions - Big Cats. Is this just a test to spot the min-maxers? If so, it works.
3. Worthless stuff in the books. I sometimes get the feeling that they just want to fill up space. Still, I only pay $10 for the PDF, so I feel like I get my money's worth. I'd feel cheated if I paid $40 for the hardback.
4. Races. Many will disagree, but this is the only thing that 4th Ed does better, IMO. At the very least, give me more races and more race-specific feats. Hopefully, this will be addressed soon in Ultimate Races, but I'm not holding my breath... (although, I can hold my breath for like, 60 rounds.)

Personally, I like when the players do things I never expected. My quests are generally just outlines and I'll often write-up a problem and not have any clue how it should be solved. I just follow the cues of the players. I've even gone so far as to completely free-style a quest off the top of my head. But that's me - I like to build sandboxes with a semi-optional main quest (like an Elder Scrolls game or an MMO).

On the other hand, I played in a group with a DM who had a great deal of trouble dealing with player creativity. He would try to think on his feet and goad us back on track, but this resulted in more than a few TPKs. We thought he sucked. He finally just came clean and said he hated how badly his adventures would go just as much as we did. So, we all decided to play as LG characters working for a religious order. We were given a mission, we did it. If someone asked for help, we wouldn't act suspicious because we weren't allowed to pass up an opportunity to help someone even if it put us in danger (and it often did). And we found that his stories were actually really awesome when we just played along. That was how we always played when he DMd. His adventures were totally on rails, but they were full of challenging fights, had great stories with well-developed characters, and were lots of fun (like a Japanese RPG).

There's lots of ways to DM, but everyone kind of has to be onboard.

I agree. In our games, we dropped Animal Companion tricks a long time ago. It was slowing down the game and made companions feel more like a punishment than a benefit. We just assumed the magic link was enough to communicate with the animal and pretended tricks didn't exist. Everyone rejoiced.

Paladins make great tanks (though they make even better mounted archers). They can use Lay On Hands as a swift action to heal themselves. A cleric and a wizard can potentially clear out a room or at least lay down some control spells that could funnel some de-buffed enemies to you while the rogue flanks. You potentially have a very effective group. The nice thing about Pathfinder is that you can really customize your builds to work as a team. There's no need for that typical tank-cannon-utility-healer group dynamic.

I've played in groups where everyone was a rogue and we had to set up some elaborate ambushes for every fight and often just avoided fighting altogether; another group where everyone was a fighter (aka - the best defense is a bloody, violent, sickening offense of sweet, sweet death); and I've even played a group where everyone was a spellcaster of some sort (though there was a lot of summoning). You can make anything work, really.

Just remind him that rays are technically weapons, so he can take weapon-related feats for it including Weapon Focus, Point Blank, Improved Crit, and Precise Shot. If he's willing to burn the few feats that he has, I say let him go for it. And he could always grab a Belt of Dex which is fairly cheap and raises his ranged touch along with his Initiative, Reflex saves, AC, etc.

I would definitely tell him no, but I'd also suggest all the other cool ways that he could boost his character so he doesn't get too pouty.

I decided with Lawful Netural for the Monk Class.

What other more stories that you guys think of fit to the story?

Once again thank you for the begaining part. To help out a little bit of the story. Baxter has also a twin Sister and Her name is Pat-Taz.

Please input more to the Background story.

This is what hit me:

A Paladin 20/Cleric 20 was sent by Torag himself to stop the summoning of the Black Hand of Horror. The Paladin and his Monk sidekick burst in and stop the ritual to summon the Black Hand of Horror just as it was getting started. Near the end of the fight, the Paladin/Cleric casts Joyful Rapture to cure the Wisdom drain on his Monk chum. The altar happened to be within range and the spell interacts strangely with the dark magic of the ritual causing a new Black Hand of Horror to appear. This one, however, is the exact opposite of the original right down to being a female (though still at 1% of the power of the original BHH). After the battle, the Monk felt pity on the two little creatures and dropped them off at a monastery on the way back home.

If Pat-Taz is also in the party, I would remember that siblings will bicker and outright fight at pretty much every opportunity even/especially when they are fiercely protective of each other. Pat should always refer to Baxter as The Black Hand of Horror in a mocking way and love to play jokes on him while he is extremely serious and full of himself. I would even check with the DM about letting them have their own secret twin language as one of their bonus languages. And she should totally be a religious class like a cleric or oracle. Maybe even *gasp* a paladin (much to her brother's dismay).

KestlerGunner wins at internets. That's such an awesome story, that I'm tempted to revisit a possible kobold NPC build that I deemed too pathetic even for its comedic value. Hell, I'm turning that into an adventure.

But I would personally make "The BHH" fully aware of who he is and give him an insufferable god complex.

Salarain, you either go with KG's idea or live with the unbearable guilt.

Seriously, all of you suggesting spellcasting classes are just out of touch with reality. Do you just not have friends outside of RPing? If someone had trouble understanding basic attack mechanics, you don't give them spells. Geez, you guys. Pathfinder was clearly not designed with beginners in mind - that's why it's awesome.

I was in a similar situation with a friend of mine, so I made him a Warrior that focused on archery. One of the guys took Leadership so we could keep his character even if he decided he didn't like playing. His job was to stay back and shoot stuff. Understanding line-of-sight wasn't too difficult when using miniatures. He gradually got the hang of things and never felt too much pressure since he was a secondary character. It let him learn at his own pace until he graduated to a real Fighter.

I was running an adventure where a player had a CE Summoner who just wasn't fitting in with the party because they had all gradually made the move towards Good alignment. We decided to turn his character into the BBEG and let him make a new Sorcerer character.

In the story, several years had passed and the whole group had settled down and had been doing their own thing only to be brought back together by a new threat: their old Summoner comrade who had been advancing in level while they raised families and resented their turn away from the dark side. His new Sorcerer character was to be one of her prisoners.

One of the players decided to meta-game (juuuusst a little) and decided that the new guy was actually the Summoner in disguise. How he arrived at that conclusion was totally beyond me. He was a fighter and took all three attacks. The Sorcerer was slaughtered.

Keep in mind: this was in the middle of fighting a friggin' colossal scorpion and everyone (including the scorpion) was down to less than 10 HP. Everyone got killed by the scorpion in the next round. When he killed the Sorcerer he looked at me like he'd just solved a puzzle or something. He tried to explain his decision, but it just boiled down to him getting this idea for a story twist that I just HAD to be pulling on them. Sad. He never lived that down.

I really, really like the flavor, but I would rate this as overpowered. And not like the Tieflings or Aasimar who are only overpowered for the early levels and then gradually have their bonuses out-powered by their class features and equipment. Your Sentians would be overpowered well into high levels, in my opinion, mostly because they have only one real drawback and many of their traits stack and synergize in exploitable ways. Have you considered making some of these bonuses into race-specific feats, at the very least?

Also, what if they could change their copied race every time they leveled up?

If they weigh more, wouldn't that slow them down? I'd make them Slow and Steady like a Dwarf while also giving them a negative to Swimming, cuz, ya know, heavy and metal and not shaped properly for buoyancy.

Why Darkvision? How's that fit the metal theme? I just don't see the point of it.

I really like choosing what type of metal you are, but Energy Resistance, +1 to AC, stackable DR 1, and a 25% chance of ignoring crits and sneaks? Ouch. At first level, who could hurt them with all that defense? Maybe the metal type should grant you a couple little SLAs or something. I see how you're trying to tie the resistances into the unique properties of the metal (possibly), but I still don't like it.

Metal Based is barely a drawback, but Conductive is nice.

I like Adapted Skill. It's self-balancing and fittingly flavorful. But then, you factor in my opinion on Admiration and it kind of screws things up.

On the other hand, Admiration kind of bugs me. I think it would make more sense that a Sentian would be viewed as a creepy copycat with ulterior motives and get penalties aplenty to Bluff, Disguise, Diplomacy, etc when dealing with flesh and blood races. And animals should be freaked out by them. Or maybe just not notice them because to a dog, a Sentian is just a rock. Maybe that's going to far. I've had very little sleep.

And maybe copying someone should give the copied person a negative level and require them to be willing or do a Will save. Maybe make it vaguely sexual (similar to how vampires are portrayed in that it can be damaging but there are plenty of willing participants). Like, the act itself is very intimate to the Sentian. I can see some fun/moral quandaries in that.

Regardless, being a mistrusted outsider would also make them more interesting to role play, in my opinion. Flawless races are only interesting to the person making them.

And what's with the metal feces? In the world of Pathfinder, nobody poops. :)

On the Assassin, I was thinking about blending some of the Shadowdancer's abilities and Rogue talents to create a menu-choice driven version of the class, similar to how the Pathfinder Rogue, Barbarian, and Paladin are done. What would you think of that instead of, or an addition to, spellcasting?

That sounds perfect, if you ask me. I love menus.

And I have to second TOZ's request for a good shape-shifting base class sans spells.

A mounted archer is the best kind of archer. Any other companion will just get in the way.

I am currently playing a mounted archer Goblin Paladin who rides a boar. It's the most fun I've ever had. Aside from the RP fun, my damage output is impressive since I'm always taking full attacks, the smaller size means I can go anywhere, and the speed of the boar means I'm usually out of serious danger (which is good cuz my HPs suck).

All of our house rules were decided democratically. These are our big ones.

All rolls during combat are done in full view (including the DM's).

Death is much more final in our game. Everyone just finds it more exciting. Any spell that brings someone back to life is twice as expensive and must be used within a very short time frame. This mainly leads to the PCs owing a cleric a huge favor.

On that note: If you roll a natural 20 to hit and then a 20 to confirm, whatever you were attacking is killed if it has fewer HD than you. If it has more HD than you, it takes additional damage and gains some sort of condition at the DM's discretion.

But that also goes both ways. An enemy that rolls two 20's instantly kills the PC as well.

For skills: no taking 10s. A 1 is total failure while a 20 is awesome success. The player gets to describe the awesomeness of their success or is forced to describe the hilariousness of their failure. This mostly keeps the DMs on their toes as it hands over a bit of the story-telling to the PCs.

In a few months, we will be starting a new campaign and I had been considering playing a Druid or a Magus.

However, I downloaded the Super Genius New Magus Arcana PDF and was intrigued by the Cabalist archetype since I generally prefer spontaneous casters. The Cabalist gains a Sorcerer's bloodline arcana and powers at 7th level using his Magus level as his Sorcerer level. And then I remembered the Sylvan bloodline from UM which grants you an animal companion.

So now I'm thinking I get the best of all three worlds: I get a spontaneous-casting Gish with an animal companion. Possibly not what the Super Geniuses were intending, but it seems fun and workable.

I'm picturing a whip Magus being a controller (tripping someone repeatedly with Calcific Touch channeled through a whip just seems... mean) while a Tiger companion does the actual damage or helps keep foes at bay. I could trip guys and have the Tiger pounce on them, do whip/ray combos on multiple enemies, maybe pick up Spiked Pit for trip/pit combo, etc, etc.

I also really like the Dervish Magus concept, but I'm completely at a loss as to what animal would compliment this build.

Any suggestions for a companion for either build? Any strategies pop into your head?

Aaaaaaaaaanyway...

I try to make little balance adjustments throughout the game, but I no longer make ridiculous adjustments to an encounter that the party just plain screws up. I also don't "deus ex machina" an encounter where the DM rolls well and the party doesn't.

I used to do that a lot when I was relatively new to DMing (mostly to make up for bad adventure building on my part), but I noticed that the players began to assume that I would bail them out of a bad situation and stopped putting real effort into the game. No matter how hard you try to hide it, the players can tell if you're coddling them and it kills the sense of accomplishment.

How about shields too?

I'm looking at bringing in a cool magical shield.... and all I see are +1s.... REALLY??

Has anyone come up with some cool Shield abilities? Awesome but not munchkiny?

I gave a guy a +1 Shield of Ram that worked just like the ring version except it had a limited number of charges per day.

Another time I introduced these weird electric snapping turtle things for some reason. After the fight, the druid in the group got the idea to take one of the shells and turn it into a shield. I liked his creativity and decided that it functioned as a typical large shield except it gave Electricity Resistance 5 and the armor check penalty didn't count against swimming.

I consider it a serious form of repression for the government to tell people what they can and can't name a child - even if it's a stupid name. Really, how is Aiden functionally less ridiculous than Aragorn? They both sound like something you'd call an elf. The only difference is that 99% of boys under 5 are named Aiden right now.

And for the record, I have always hated my name as, unfortunately, the name became more popular as a girl's name when I was a kid which led to me getting picked on mercilessly (children are pure evil, after all). I can't blame my parents since they were naming me after a friend and it was considered a boy's name at the time.

The harmless name you painstakingly chose for you kid might be the name of a famous serial killer in five years and everyone will accuse you of naming your kid after him on purpose and Child Protective Services will show up and taze you. Or maybe you'll end up moving to a new country and your kid's name will mean "toilet seat"... and people will taze you. You just don't know.

But you can change your name or go by a nickname or even a completely different name if it bothers you so much. My aunt Wendy is legally named Hattie May (that side of the family was originally from Arkansas), but she decided to switch her name when she was still a kid. She started telling everyone her name was Wendy and eventually everyone went along with it. Even if you hate your name, it's not the end of the world.

Could someone please just get it over with and scream out, "They didn't have guns back then!" Please? It's going to happen. Just get it out of the way. Somebody? Anybody?

But seriously, I wouldn't still be gaming if not for this "modernizing". If I wanted historical accuracy to specific time periods in my roleplaying... I would be a dull person with a lack of imagination.

I know this is completely pointless, but there is a mystical, magical way to get your books instantly, avoid delays and hassles, save loads of money, AND let Paizo make more money per book...

We like the randomness and used the 4D6 method with the allowance that you could attempt to roll again one time, but you had to keep that rerolled score. Generally, this has worked out fine as everyone averages to something similar to a 20 point buy.

However, in our last character generation session, one guy rolled this: 18, 17, 17, 15, 14, 11

No lie. I wrote it down because I couldn't believe it. I even checked his dice to make sure he wasn't cheating (completely unnecessary because they were the same dice everyone else used, but it made me feel better). I've never seen so many sixes in my life. When he rolled that 18, he rolled all sixes and yelled, "Yahtzee!" The worst part was that everyone else rolled well below average.

Needless to say, his Paladin is an absolute beast with a greatsword. But I have to admit, it has created an interesting role playing dynamic. Still, I think that might be what convinces everyone to switch to the point buy.

I encounter the exact same thing every week. I'm willing to be he just doesn't know how to handle more complicated spells. A guy I play with declares that everything is crap if he doesn't know how to use it and he puts no effort into trying to figure something out.

I'm currently playing a LG Goblin Paladin (and he's awesome), so I think a LG character trying to help a goblin become civilized and heroic is a great idea. Just remember that goblins adore fire, hate dogs of any kind, and will generally get a very bad reaction from pretty much everyone. That could be lots of fun to play out.

A class doesn't really need to be what it was made to represent as long as you can use its abilities to represent what you want.

+1

I'm going to work on version 2 of this and I plan on fleshing this out quite a bit. Definitely needs more benefits.

The first thing that comes to mind is what would happen if you rolled a 1? You lose all six attacks? Nuh-uh. Don't like it.

We use different colored D20s and roll them together.

I have a player who wanted a Stigmata curse for his Oracle. This is what we came up with:

1st level - Every time the PC casts a spell, he bleeds 1 HP per round for as many rounds as he has Oracle levels. This can be stopped with a healing spell or heal check. This does not stack with itself. Each time a new spell is cast, the bleed duration restarts.

5th level - The Oracle is immune to any other form of bleed damage.

10th level - The Oracle automatically stabilizes after going below 0 HP.

15th level - While bleeding from the Stigmata, any creature of opposite alignment that touches, grapples, or strikes the Oracle with a natural attack takes D3 damage from the holy blood.

Any ideas, variations, criticisms, insults, or threats?

I know of someone who annoyed his DM endlessly by making a half-orc Battle Oracle that used a flailpole for reaching, tripping goodness. He wasn't the tank, though. He assisted the tank with flanking, tripping, and then toss out some spells as needed. Don't know his specific build, though.

Other than that, the Battle Oracle just seems like everything the 3.5 cleric could be.

There are no dumb questions. There are, however, dumb people who ask questions. It doesn't seem to matter what the actual question is; they find a way to make it stupid.

I've had several people ask me about the Satan worshipping aspects of D&D, but I was raised in a very religious environment so I generally learned to ignore it.

I do remember this one guy who was the little brother of one of the guys in our group. He had grown up watching his highly religious parents freak out over his older brother's role-playing "addiction" and had high hopes of evil shenanigans. He became really disappointed and left after two sessions. He went back to torturing cats or whatever.

What about Zen Archer for the Monk?

If you're going for the challenge of being a melee character with low Con, I'd be a trip monkey and make the tank in your group look good. Since you're starting level 1, I'd probably go for Spring Attack feats first, then take Combat Expertise just to get to Imp Trip as you level up. I'd use a Temple Sword, Hanbo, or a Monk weapon that has Trip, so you can drop it and punch (or cower in fear) in an emergency. Plus, any enchantments you get on the weapon stack if used for the CMB.

I think your Summoner is all wrong, though. I would switch your Dex and Int scores for sure. I don't know how Skill-heavy your campaigns are, but I found I could augment a lot of that with spells and equipment. You'll be needing to use that bow a lot. Put some money into it. You're a secondary spellcaster that is really only good at buffs and control spells, so you will often find times when you just don't have a good spell or you run out. Get Spell Focus Conjuration next as it improves the saves of most of your good spells.

Also, I got a little too married to the idea of an Eidolon early on. About half the time, the Eidolon wasn't as useful as a Summoned Monster with Aug Summon. Plus, you don't have to worry about healing a Summoned Monster.

I don't think this discussion needs to be included in any errata or FAQ. Seems common sense to others and myself.

+1

That's why you get creative, you can talk with your whole body if you need, a silent language doesn't have to be exclusively hand signals.

+1 Really, non-verbal communication is the simplest of communication. It's reasonable to assume that your party would be paying attention to body language and positioning at the least. If the rogue suddenly dives for cover, you aren't going to stand there and yell, "USE YOUR WORDS!"

Our rule was, if you can communicate it non-verbally at the table, you succeed in-game. It takes surprisingly little effort. Follow, stop, two bad guys ahead, don't touch that, go fornicate yourself; everyone gets that right away.

Edit: I should add that we have always kept Drow Sign Language as a learnable language as long as it is in common use or you can find a Drow to teach it to you. Sometimes you just want the latest gossip while you sneak around.

I don't know (here's me going off on a tangent). I don't see why there is a hard and fast rule that says, every problem that is magic *must* be solved by magical means (be it with spell or enchanted weapon/item). We currently have exactly this problem in game, a Wizard who has cast Fly and Stoneskin on himself (this was after going invisible and summoning a demon for us to mess with). Bottom line, either we take out the Wizard or he's just going to keep throwing the underworld at us all day. None of us has the kind of weapons needed to get through the Stoneskin (though we have a Wand of Flying) for any more but 1 or 2 damage on a good roll and we're iffy on spells because of the demon (and an until recently possessed Captain, but who's counting). Ergo, we need to start thinking outside the box.

HH

We had a similar situation a few months ago. Our solution: a rope with a grappling hook and a fighter with a good CMB. Wizards have terrible CMD.