Inquisitor with the Sanctified slayer archetype would be good. Gets the slayer's studied target ability for more hit and damage.

Also a spell list with some pretty decent buff spells,

If inquisitor isn't your cup of tea, you can't really go wrong with ranger. Lots of skillpoints and faovered enemy is still really good.

especially with the instant enemy spell.

Both are good options on account of utilising both your dex and wis stat. There are more options but these just happen to be my favourites.

very much true. Forgot too mention it because it hardly comes up in my games.

People in my group tend not to multiclass Casters with Casters.

most likely it's not listed as a skill because only casters benefit from it.

And as a skill it would take resources.

now it just scales of your caster level so it just scales without needing to spend anything on it.

Basically you Always have it in it's current form and it scales of your casting stat no matter which stat that actually is

(It's just not a class skill)

The alchemist's extracts will function as long as he has his kit and a source of fire, so at least those should not be a big problem.

Actually brewing potions using brew potion can be a bit tricky, but the same can be said for scribing scrolls or any other craft check involving a gold cost.

You can ofcourse let them scavenge the wilderness or shipwrecks for certain requirements. (maybe balance out the costs somewhere else)

an other solution is to let him use his starting gold to preempetively buy some crafting materials.

There is also a chance it will not be a problem at all considering extracts will get you through the first levels without any real problems. (At least to the point where you get off the Island)

in the later parts the PC's should have a caravan able to provide most of the materials at market price

Hope this helps a bit.

Have fun with Serpent skull it's quite a good AP but it does need some work.

While not helping you make it faster this should provide an extra boost to the heal skill.

Although I'm not sure if it's available to you campaign/setting wise

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/r-z/vest- of-surgery

or a weapon with the dueling property

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/magic-weapon-special-abil ities/dueling

I believe getting bonus initiative Without getting into specific classes can be a bit tricky.

But there is this
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/h-l/ioun- stones/dusty-rose-prism-ioun-stone

and then use the cracked version.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/oni/oni-ogre-ma ge

you mean this guy?

probably not really a caster enemy. I agree with Kalridan scarred witchdoctor seems just about right.

I would advise running runelords for the reasons stated above. A very classic campaign wich serves as a good introduction to both the world of golarion and the pathfinder rules (this goes double with the anneversary edition which has the added bonus of being somewhat cheaper then 6 other AP books).

However if your players are into lord of the rings there is the jade regent path. It has that feel of an epic journey accros the world and a very focused group of NPC's for roleplaying. (it has some flawed sub-systems though, mostly the caravan combat is a nightmare if you go by RAW.)

Don't have first hand experience with RoW but friends who played it found it to be slightly dissapointing. Their main argument was that it was a pretty big railroad with little time to do stuff not related to the story. (could be a DM issue though).

I just keep a small list of houserules

-Hp per level you get half the hit die + modifiers and then roll half a hit die. So a barbarian would normally roll a d12. in this way he gets 6 + any modifiers from con or feats/class and then rolls an additional d6. Because my standard barbarian player has consistently managed to get less hp then our party casters XD. So this gives everyone above average hp and should ensure that martials actually end up in front of most casters.

-Core races only (maybe some extra depending on the campaign) and any non-3rd party class is allowed with exception of the gunslinger and master/synthesist summoner.

some more which are mostly dependent on which group I play with

ah good to know. not all that familair with mythic stuff yet.

Need to learn to double check stuff before I comment.

Mythic power attack does not have the 50% increase listed. So going purely by RAW it would just be a flat +3 damage per increment.

in this form it would arguably be nicer for the sword and board crowd. Although extreme crits are nice to have aswell.

Seems like a good build. covers all the basics for ranged combat.

Another option (if your DM allows it) is to buy charisma down to 7 and go with

Str 13
Dex 18 (15+2+1)
con 10
int 10
wis 16 (15+1)
cha 7

Now there is 2 points left to either increase your con or int to 12. Depending on your preference you could take the extra hp (and save) or an extra skillpoint (and better monster knowledges)

The 13 str is nice for carrying capacity. if your Dm does not enforce eencumbrance that's another point to spend somewhere.

Feats should be a relatively simple thing. archery being very feat heavy.

if you have a feat to spare the inquisitor has a few nice and fluffy options.

extended bane/extra bane
improved monster lore
judgement surge

if you expect really low wealth it might be worth it to look into the protection domain aswell.

even with normal wealth it could be usefull. I mean the standard cloak of resistance does get boring in comparison to for example the cape of the mountebank

In my experience the inquisitor is a very efficient class even with low wealth.

between judgements bane and the divine favor spell you should have little trouble hitting stuff at lower level. it does take some resource managment though.

The level 3 spells are where youu really start to shine

-magic vestment basically gives you magic armor for an adventuring day. at the cost of a single spell slot.

-heroism is another long lasting buff spell which will keep your hit chances decent.

-proper use of judgements and bane should allow you to deal with the more common damage reductions without relying on magic weaponry. (also silver/cold iron/adamantite arrows are nice for this purpose.)

not really sure on domains as it is largely dependant on which church. although the travel domain is very useful for just about any inquisitor build. animal domain is nice if animal companions are your thing.

using common sense there really isn't a terrible choice in domains. have not really looked into inquisitions beyond the conversion one. a personal choice since my inquisitor is also the party face.

Long story short - with proper resource managment the inquisitor can be a perfectly acceptable combatant even in low wealth settings. it does struggle on a longer adventure day a bit but no more then say a wizard.

Depending on the dragon's attitude and general unlikeability... (is that even a thing?) I would go for the following

1- A huge marble statue of the dragon himself, don't forget to add a little cage containing the charred remains of the master sculptors who made it for him.

2- A collection of nicely posed adventurers still holding on to their +1 dragon bane weaponry. Apparently you still need skill to kill a dragon even with the proper tools... who knew?

3- A book casually mentioning where the dragon has stashed his phylactery.. (oooh dragon liches)

4- Fancy Dragon shaped and sized chainmail. No reason for him to actually wear it but it looks impressive!

Not sure how this will work. Now for added hilarity make the halflings dualwield something aswell. ;)

As a player I can confirm what wu nakita said.

There are parts where the mount will shine. And with that I mean dominate the battlefield and leave the footsloggers in awe....

(we had a mounted samurai)

And then you reach indoor areas/dungeons/buildings/crowded cities. Probably the bigger part of my play experience so far (your mileage may vary).

And we are close to ending the 3rd book or so the DM has told me.

I think it has a lot to do with different classes and playstyles needing different types of items. And of course the general idea of having to keep the big six somewhat up to date.

So if such a guide would be made it would have to be tailored to classes in general.

Although a few very nice generic items exist which benefit almost everyone equally.

3/5 of my party members died last session due to a string of horrible rolls. (and a little bit due to impatience on the summoners part :P)
The party was swimming towards one of the wrecks. The druid,summoner and bard had swim speeds thanks to touch of the sea spells. Our friends the ranger and barbarian lagged a considerable distance behind.

The summoner arrived first and started exploring the ship solo, only to get jumped by 2 lacedons. I know not a normal encounter for these things but I upscaled things a bit for my party to account for the 5 members, 20-point buy and decent amount of optimisation happening.

Name: ?? (forgot this one)
Race: Human Classes/levels: Synthesist summoner 1/heretic inquisitor 1
Adventure: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv
Location: One of the many wrecks surrounding the shiv.
Catalyst: Arriving on the ship first and exploring solo. Woke up 2 lacedons.
The Gory Details: While singlehandedly Exploring the wreck this guy woke up the lacedons and procedeed to take a beating before before his friends arrived. Managed to take down down a lacedon with the help of the bard. looked fine untill a ghoul got a nice streak of hits in coupled with a failed save.

Name: Mug Ruith
Race: Human Class/Levels: Druid 2
Adventure: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv
Location: The same ship
Catalyst: The same lacedons
The Gory Details: Arriving on the ship just in time to wath the lacedons attack his friend he prepped his spells and went to town. One failed Fort save later he got knocked down.

Name: Colt Harrison
Race: Human Class/Levels: Archivist bard 1
Adventure: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv
Location: The same ship
Catalyst: The same lacedons
The Gory Details: Arriving last he joined the fray and helped the summoner kill a lacedon. Extremely bad luck for the summoner and the druid made him abandon ship. Whip wielding bard VS Lacedon in aquatic combat. Need I say more?

I truly dread the mother thrunefang encounter now.

This all happened during a pretty severe storm aswell. So probably going to have some more people wash up in the following days.

So, the GM was supposed to put a cool minor item for each character at the end of Part 1. Also, you should have Whispering Shrike (+1 wakizashi that can shield other) and the extremely femininely cut but rather interesting Shozoku of the Night Wind (2 extra vanishing tricks, 1 invisibility in low illumination, +5 stealth, +2 armor) at BARE MINIMUM and possibly Suishin depending on your build and other team members. Our group ninja, Kagi, dual wields shrike and Suishin (usually, sometimes someone else uses Suishin and he uses a MW Wakizashi), the Shozoku, and then +1 Amulet, +1 Ring, +1 Cloak of Resist, and +2 Dex belt round out the rest of his gear. He just hit level 8.

Well that's a dissapointment then. All we got was 2 +1 flaming shuriken and a cloak of resistance. (ande the warding box and it's contents obviously)

I had whispering shrike but it got lost the one time my character died. Suishen went to ameiko as no one in the party was really any good with it. pretty sad considering how awesome suishen actually is.

Shozoku of the night winds got a make-over as far as I can tell. Basically the GM has made it a chain shirt for monks.

and I made exactly that suggestion to the GM after the first round of caravan combat captain yesterday. Really no fun in watching one player roll a dice all evening and then hearing how many people.wagons on your side have died/shattered this round.

I actually really like the roleplaying aspects of the campaign. So far the GM has been excellent in those areas.

However as soon as combat starts I'm not at all usefull. My max damage output with sneak attack is equal to the fighters minimum damage, and his secondary attack has the hit chances of my main attack.

Caravan combat is even worse. Almost every enemy attack wipes out a wagon and their crew :S. The GM has added a few villages along the way otherwise there was no way we could have taken enough provisions to get anywhere.

I will (attempt to) discuss these issues with the GM one more time. And if that doesn't work I'will jump on the bandwagon and just let my character die. Inquisitor with average level 9 loot sounds good to me just about now.

And try to get the party to help out with the caravan costs for once.

This is pretty much one of the better AP's to allow evil or greedy neutral characters.

Having an evil party member is fine as long as he sticks to the points Shimnimnim made.

Having an evil/neutral party might even open up some of the normally avoided factions like the red mantis or aspis consortium.

Or at least get you away from the pathfinders which seem to be pretty much the go to faction for all the players I have spoken to.

And thanks for the replies everybody

I get the feeling that the DM is changing encounters to stop sneak attacks.

(we have had some prior discussion in which he made it pretty clear he considers sneak attack something terribly overpowered. he has even argued to limit it to once per round. Even actual damage calculations from our party have not convinced him he is wrong)

I has to be said that the rest of the party is in a similair situation wealth wise. The only meaningfull gear in the party ahs been gained by characters dying and bringing in a character on WBL :(

Yeah lot's of creatures gaining concealment through dust, fog, spells or other abilities. Picked up the shadow strike feat to deal with that.

headband of ninjitsu is a no go. No acces to a crafter and the DM has made it pretty clear that we can't in fact buy specific magic items.

thigs we can buy is basically just +1 +2 armor/weapons (no special abilities). So basically I'm dependent on good stuff dropping from opponents. Which so far hasn't been working all that well.

I currently own
+1 chain shirt
+1 Wakazashi
+ Amulet of natural armor +1
and a ring of protection +1

the rest of the loot has been pretty much caster gear or useless for our group setup.

But hoping for some decent loot on enemies soon. we killed a dragon last session and we still need to find it's hoard. (should be around since we killed it in it's lair)

Forgot the level 8 stat bump dex would be 19.

we have only really been running into ghosts. or people summoning/creating incorpereal creatures/undead.

Already have TWF but hardly have the chance to use it due to abominable hit chances. Flanking hardly applies since whatever he charges tends to get one shotted. Including the dragon in the crevass (It was a crit but still).

The rest of the party consists of
-A fighter/barbarian not sure on build/levels wielding a elven curved blade
-A zen archer monk
-A undead lord cleric (pretty strange build if I recall)

Now I know I'm a great deal behind on the WBL table. due to me not making a new character after dying. Means I got to pay for allmost all of the caravan expenses :(.

have brought this up with the DM but he tells me I should not worry about gear so much. That's basically why I'm hoping something good shows up when we're finally done with the frozen wasteland we're in.
(would really like some opinions on upcomming ninja loot from players who made it further into this AP.) just good,bad or okay will do :P

The vanishing trick worked amazingly well for the first few levels but hitting to many enemies who simply ignore invisibility due to true sight or blindsense. (or fly and toss explosives and other big AoE's at us)

Another player has jokingly told me I should just let my character die and make something that works. But a party without any original member seems odd to me (in this AP at least) especially with a ressurection device in the pocket.

Strap a load of waterskins in/on/to an adventurer's satchel.

Fill these with your beverage of choice.

Now just add straws XD.

In all seriousness, I'm not sure about options in the magic item departement. But a quiver/bandolier/satchel of magical brew would be pretty awesome XD

Just quickly read over what I wrote. It wasn't my intention to sound so negative.

Just really hoping to get some insight in some decent options to salvage this characters combat abillity. (or if the sneak attack situation gets better so I can stick to Ninja).

I really want to make this work since this character is the last remaining original party member. But struggling a bit to make this work (died once but got revived by the seal).

Also I know it's not the most optimal stats but it's what I had to work with.

Hello all

I am facing a dillema with my ninja in the AP. My ninja is now 200XP away from level 9. So far every encounter we have faced in book 3 has been a huge disaster for me. I'm running into the following.

-Just about everything we run into is either in some way incorpereal or immune to sneak attacks. Lots of enemies with concealment up to this point means I picked up shadow strike. Is this is continuing trend ion the later books or is it something that gets better in later books?

-Also struggling with gear. So far all my extra money had to go into keeping the caravan running as it get's wrecked at every turn. The DM is not allowing us to buy any magic gear not listed for a settlement. Not a lot of meaningfull settlements around near the northpole. And if they have something it is out of my price range or not at all usefull to me. Is there any decent ninja loot to look out for? (dex based ninja)

Would it be better to start taking a ranger levels for the last part of the AP? Or something else dex-based. My main worry is combat capability as I find myself being completely useless once combat starts.

Stats are

STR -12
Dex - 18
con- 10
int- 12
wis- 10
cha- 14

So far this AP has been a blast. My party has been taking their time finding their way around the island and probably want to explore/finish it completely before moving on.

And I was curious if this would this create any real "problems" in the XP totals at the end?

The npc's as presented have been a blast to play. My party took an instant liking to Jask and befriended him as soon as possible.
Sasha and her constant upbeat attitude and violent outburst, fondness of deadly/venomous/otherwise dangerous animals has been a hit. Starting out at unfriendly it took some effort on their part to get her to friendly.

Aerys Mavato has been labeled the local drunk and they are currently trying to get her of the booze.

I have had Ishirou run of in search of an escape after a massive streak of failed willsaves with the party not trying to interact with him in any meaningfull way. Going to have him be a captive in the cannibal camp.

The party has a strong dislike (burning hatred is more like it) for Ghelik and his antics. They turned him hostile in the blink of an eye.
Continous arguments and incidents let him to leave the camp after throwing a fit over camp roles.

I actually plan to have Ghelik be captured by the cannibals and unlike Ishirou I will keep track of the time they take to save him. Take to long and he will be sacrificed to the mother, who will then chew up a few bits and pieces of meat here and there (an arm and some fingers most likely. Maybe an eye) and leave him in the caves leading up to her fighting of ghoul fever.

This to serve as a heads-up for what is comming and to use him as a potential antagonist in the next part of the AP.

Nothing says antagonist to my party like a gnome with a eyepatch a prostetic arm and have him join up with their rival faction.

Ghelik is going to end up way different from what the AP assumes, but I can't help but play on the instant dislike and animosity the little guy received from the start.

Got this AP started a few weeks back as the DM. Now on our 5th session.
Lots of close calls and people in negative hitpoints.

Diseases and poisons are running rampant through the party and a whole lot of stat damage to be healed.

My party

Zisto - Varisian Human ranger (switchhitter Bow and Greatsword)
Mug Ruith - Native Human Druid (weather domain)
D'Mokotjo - Human Barbarian native (Greatsword powerhouse/beatstick
Colt Harrison - Chelish Human Archeologist bard
??? - Half Elf rogue (forgot the name as the player is only present occasionally and I don't keep copies of their sheets)

So far my players seem to be enjoying themselves even with me upping the difficulty considerably. We use a 20-point buy and there is a pretty high amount of optimisation going around.