Damien_DM's page

Hey!

I'm planning on running a Pathfinder adventure on Saturday during and after the banquet, probably starting at 8 pm or so. I've got a couple players lined up already but will be wanting a few more! The scenario is for 8th level PCs (pregens provided), and involves exploring a temple of Sarenrae to destroy a fell artifact. If interested, post here to let me know!

I've signed up for this game at this time! What play will depend on what pregens are available...they WILL be available, right??

Vs. beholders I've found that antimagic field is the best battlefield control spell, centered on the party. Their only option to attack you directly is to engage in direct melee, and your fighter types should be at nearly full strength in the zone. The low-hp guys should focus on withdrawing and full defense actions though! Maybe put a flaming weapon type spell on some arrows, so that they do additional damage once they leave the field if the beholders are keeping their distance.

Sadly, antimagic field is not a druid spell, but if you have a wizard or cleric in the party they may be able to cast it.

Not Pathfinder or a battlefield control, but in the Spell Compendium there's the ray deflection spell, which renders you immune to ray attacks for several minutes. Again, not a druid spell, but perhaps your DM will allow you to research something like that.

In a non-spell-oriented means of BC, how about luring the beholders/flying critters into an environment where their mobility will be restricted, like underground in a cramped dungeon area, or into dense forest? The dense forest option is best for the druid, since their superior mobility will allow them to significantly outmaneuver their opponents.

I totally agree with regard to the drawbacks people face wearing heavier armors. Swimming in particular...there's a reason sailors, pirates, etc. aren't depicted going around clad in full plate. You may have the AC of a god, but if you slip off the deck and fall into the briny deep, be ready to roll up a new PC.

Don't forget the penalties associated with sleeping in heavier armors too, along with the time it takes to put on and take off heavier armors. Full plate-wearing fighter types face either lack of restful sleep if they refuse to remove their gear at night, or the potential for dealing with nighttime encounters in their PJs.

Even wearing light or no armor, I think there are enough means to get one's AC up to a decent level that the tradeoff in mobility, skill use, etc. adequately compensates for the defensive penalty.

I guess if I had to impose a house rule, it would either be (1) trading off ever gaining armor proficiency for the monk AC progression, or (2) trading each level of armor proficiency for a +1 dodge bonus, both as mentioned by previous posters. I'm always leery of adding a barrage of house rules, new feats, etc., so I would keep any modifications such as these simple and straightforward.

Just be glad that the last plot twist card played wasn't "It was all just a dream..."

I've heard a lot about this event from players, participating spectators, and the GM, and have to say it did indeed sound like one of the highlights of PaizoCon! Sorry I missed it...maybe next year, when the new deck "Plot Twist Cards 2: GM Bribery" is released!

Hey! I've friend requested you. That said, be aware I don't go on Facebook that much!

I was Orange Julius, aka Agent Orange, aka the horrible orange grappling frothy thing that was strong, durable, and surprisingly tasty!

At PaizoCon I picked up the Invisible Character Pack (PZOLTK0001) and the Torch Bearer Pack (PZOLTK0002). I have not been able to find them listed online anywhere! Are these just brand new, and not officially released or posted, or am I missing something?

They did mention at PaizoCon that although the summoner cannot summon monsters while the eidolon is present, the limitation on # of times per day the eidolon can be summoned has been removed, so you can dismiss it and resummon it as often as you want.

Pencils were mentioned; I'd also advise you to bring a pen or two. I was told last year that you should use pen, not pencil, when filling out Pathfinder Society Chronicle sheets. Needless to say, a pen was nowhere to be found at at least one scenario I partcipated in.

I (and my brother) got into Fight Club 2 on Friday and Suicidal Strikeforce on Saturday--both probably ranked 1-2, so none of our 3s or 4s. Filled the remaining slots with PS events (Among the Living Friday, master of the fallen fortress Saturday a.m., and darkest vengeance on Sunday).

Where exactly will the events you got be listed? Off the event list screen via a link, or in some other area?

Stupid is as stupid does. If you have your character do enough dumb things, he won't really be bluffing after all! :)

Bear in mind that with social interactions like this, die rolls almost always take a backseat to good roleplay. If you can convincingly portray your character's deceit, and be entertaining in the process, the GM is far more likely to let you get away with it without even requiring a roll (or perhaps only vs. especially suspicious types). It would be a good idea to have some ranks in Bluff, though, just in case.

So in short, I would say it is primarily roleplay, with Bluff checks secondary or in specific cases. It does depend on your GM though to a large degree, and his style of game running.

I learned my lesson last year--there was more time for signup, but I was sick for most of a month and kept putting it off, and by the time I got around to it the lottery had just closed! This year I was sure to coerce my brother (my buddy for the Con) to pick events with me, and we locked in our selections Wednesday. Fingers crossed...

I ran RHOD for a group online over a period of about two years. Lots of fun!

From what I remember of part 1, I thought the toughest encounter was actually the manticore. Those tail spike volleys are brutal, especially if they are targeted against lightly armored PCs (easy to do for a flying critter).

As for the Skull Gorge encounter itself, it sounds like you have two issues:

1. Getting the PCs to the encounter.
One way to play it is to step up raids against the town. While the PCs may have little trouble against a scouting party or two, they may not be around for every raid, or able to get there in time to avoid significant damage and death of villagers.

If this does not motivate them to go north on their own, you might have the council of DF decide to evacuate anyway...but in the process, have them task the PCs with scouting the enemy army (with a promise of reward from Brindol if they succeed). After all, if the Red Hand army is as large as the PCs seem to think, knowing specifics about the force will be invaluable in days to come.

2. The encounter difficulty.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Skull Gorge encounter, while tough, allows for a significant PC advantage. Primarily, the PCs will likely be able to observe and scout the forces there, and when they attack, they can do so with surprise, a full spell load, and specifically prepped against what they will likely face. An advantage like this could easily reduce the effective EL by 2 or more. For example, my group prepped a wind wall spell to be used as a readied action to negate at least one breath from the dragon. I also found that the hobgoblins and hell hounds were pretty insignificant as a threat against the characters; the dragon was the only real challenge. Finally, the forest gives the PCs the option to retreat if the battle goes against them, especially since, as the Red Hand force are tasked with guarding the bridge, they can ill afford a lengthy pursuit against fleeing foes.

It's worth noting too that although your dragon is higher CR and somewhat tougher than that in the adventure, the PCs as Pathfinder characters are generally a bit tougher too--more feats for the fighter, more hit points generally and particularly for the arcane casters, etc.

Heck, last year I endured 11 hours of Lou's pickup game and survived. I'm definitely up to the challenge of the Spire of Nex!

Bringing my brother this year; here's hoping we get into some killer events like this.

I'd be tempted to make all three lead to doom, and have the dungeon entrance hidden behind a secret door or something. Teach credulous PCs to trust things chiseled into dungeon walls!

Out of curiosity, is there a reason this riddle is here, other than to challenge the players? IE, did the builder of the doors, statuary, riddle, etc. have a reason to put a riddle here, and give explorers a chance to avoid dooming themselves? Taken at face value, it would seem the riddle weeds out only the stupid and unlucky. If it was designed by someone trying to test potential intruders, and wanting the best of the best to succeed, then I'd accept it at face value perhaps. On the other hand, if the builder's intent was to keep everyone out of his tomb, then I would assume all three knights are spies, no matter what the words say. If I had to go through the doors, I'd use summoned monsters or controlled undead or something to explore each branch for a ways before I went down any of them.

Not a knock against the riddle itself--just thought I'd add an additional perspective to the riddle as a whole.

Actually, from the perspective of a builder wanting his tomb safeguarded from intruders, I'd be tempted to have the three knight doors lead to traps, a fourth cleverly hidden secret door lead to a really bad trap, and the actual entrance sealed and buried under the floor, requiring considerable physical labor to unearth. THAT will keep out the riffraff! If you don't want people entering your tomb, why leave a door leading into it?

When doing it on the fly, the simplest solution for an NPC wizard is spellbook found = spells memorized, and assume he was toting around his traveling spellbook. If you find additional spells are needed for the NPC wizard to make him interesting in subsequent encounters, just add them in! I tend to be flexible in determining what might be in an NPC wizard's spellbook. This gives them an advantage over PCs, I suppose (but note I am not advocating changing spells MEMORIZED on the fly); their reward is the additional spells in the book if they acquire it.

If you need to do something more extensive, like the personal library of a wizard who has spent many years learning spells, I take one of two approaches:

1. I prepare extensively ahead of time, including the use of magical traps, secret pages, etc.

2. I just come up with it on the fly, starting with any spells I already know about (like the ones the wizard memorized), and following up with spells chosen by me looking through the wizard spell list.

I prefer option #1 if possible, and not only when dealing with spellbooks, to make treasure hauls more interesting and fun.

It is interesting to me that you almost forgot the spellbooks, simply because when I build NPC wizards, the spellbook is the FIRST thing I consider!

With your next wizard, have him carry a book titled "spells," and make it a vacuous grimoire! If the players whine, tell 'em I put you up to it! :)

Yeah, that cloudy vision thing is one of the most crippling curses Oracles have, since it severely curtails your combat options.

With it, I'd concur with focusing on buff and close range spells. You might also build the Oracle as more of a melee fighter type, though in that case Battle might be the better area to focus on. Not sure how easy it would be offhand to build a melee fighter Oracle with Wind.

Summoning might be another good area to focus on. The close range of the spell means you'll likely be able to see where you want to place them, and they won't be hindered by your visual problems.

TECHNICALLY, you cannot take Daring Outlaw and the Arcane Stunt class feature, because Grace is required for the Daring Outlaw feat. So, swapping it out means that you can no longer take the feat. I was very sad when I found this out, but I still wanted to play a Tiefling Swashbuckler/Rogue, I'd just have to settle for the stupid bonus to reflex... I still don't know why they didn't give that class a good reflex save instead of that stupid class feature

Perhaps, but I had no trouble convincing my DM that subbing out Grace for Arcane Stunt wouldn't prevent me from taking Daring Outlaw. It's worth asking your DM, at least. Arcane Stunt is 1000% better than Grace.

Some big differences between swashbuckler and duelist:

1. Swashbucklers get proficiency in all simple and martial weapons, which is better than rogues.

2. With the Daring Outlaw feat, swashbuckler levels stack with rogue levels for their sneak attack damage dice determination and the swashbuckler's grace class feature. This means that multiclassing between the two leaves you with a full SA bonus, potentially.

3. There's an alternate class feature called Arcane Stunt that replaces Grace (which is a lame Reflex save bonus), granting you the ability to use one of a few spells as a spell like ability a few times a day, such as swift expeditious retreat. I've found this invaluable for getting the character into position early in a fight for flanking and the like, even with movement penalties from Acrobatics or difficult terrain.

4. Swashbucklers get their Int bonus to damage rolls, which stacks with sneak attack, and applies even without needing to flank or attack a flat-footed target. The bonus damage is very nice, though it is not as good as a duelist's sadly (one place where the duelist has an advantage).

5. Swashbucklers get good Fort and Reflex saves, whereas duelists only get good Reflex saves.

Of course, swashbuckler is 3.5, not Pathfinder, so taking it (and Daring Outlaw and Arcane Stunt) are entirely up to your DM to allow. And there's no reason you couldn't do Rogue/Swashbuckler/Duelist.

I'd be inclined to go with a bard. A good support character, mirroring your role supporting them in coming to terms with Pathfinder rules. And by buffing them, you keep the spotlight more on them and off you in combat. Since it's only a low-level PC, have fun with the character background, creating a PC that would be fun to roleplay! Bards are good for that too.

If your DM allows Swashbuckler + the Daring Outlaw feat, I'd definitely take a look at that. It provides +Int bonus as precision damage on all attacks at level 3 (whether or not you are flanking, etc.), and Daring Outlaw allows you to treat Swash levels as Rogue levels for the purposes of determining Sneak Attack damage dice. Also, Swash fits in nicely with the Duelist theme.

I definitely agree that Weapon Finesse should have been your first feat, rather than Toughness (though that 10 Con also hurts pretty badly). So definitely take it as your next feat. Alternately, go the ranged attack route, by taking feats like Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot, especially if you have allies who can keep the ruffians at bay. With your low Strength I think an archery build would be suboptimal for you, at least unless you boost your Strength somehow and get an appropriate bow.

I would also maximize Acrobatics. The ability to tumble about and evade damage is nice, and having 3+ ranks gives you an AC bonus when fighting defensively or taking the total defense action.

"Stepping up" is pretty vague; it could refer simply to your character's participation in combat, or your overall participation as a player in the game.

It can sound mean-spirited, but I've seen and run groups as a DM where one or more players invested far less attention and effort into the game than others, resulting in frustration on everyone's part. For example, in one campaign, whenever there was significant roleplay or negotiation, I had a player who not only not contribute, but would start doing other things--even heading off and taking a nap "until combat begins." In such cases, it's better to talk things out as a group, and it could be that your other players/DM are afraid to approach you for fear of offending you or pissing you off or something. Hard to say, not knowing more about the situation.

Plenty of good advice given above. Here's my contribution to how one might be more effective as a character in a game and a player at the table.

1. You don't have to be optimized up the wazoo, but your character should be at least competent at what he does regularly. For example, if you spend a lot of time shooting a bow in battle, you should probably have some archery-related feats. If you have a Dexterity of 18 and a Strength of 10, and like to get into melee, you should probably take Weapon Finesse.

2. Give your character options in and out of battle. The more things you are at least decent at, the better you will be at making a useful contribution. For example, say you build a character who's great at flanking, sneak attacking with two weapons, etc. What if you run into monsters which are immune to sneak attack? Or ones that have DR that you can barely penetrate? Or ones that you cannot reach because they fly or are otherwise unreachable? By planning for various contingencies in advance, you have a better chance of being useful in a variety of combat situations.

2a. As a corollary, also consider things you might be doing outside of combat. Rogues usually excel at this sort of thing, being skill-based characters. Obvious activities include diplomacy and roleplay, searching for traps, loot, and secret things, keeping an eye out for trouble, and scouting.

3. If you don't already, develop a firm grasp of combat rules and maneuvers. Rogue types especially benefit from fighting smarter, not harder. Understanding tactical movement, difficult terrain, flanking, delaying, readying, and doing combat maneuvers like grappling and tripping opens up more possibilities for what you can do in battle, and also perhaps what you should steer clear of doing.

4. Know what your fellow players' characters are capable of, and try to plot tactics and maneuvers that work well with theirs. If the party has an archer, for example, then try to keep his line of sight clear for his shots. If the party arcanist likes blasting enemies with fireballs, then consider delaying until he gets a blast off before rushing in to do battle. This works both ways; spellcasters in particular have many spells that can be of immense benefit to a rogue, like greater invisibility or longstrider; if you go to them and request these spells, then you show you are participating more in your group's overall tactics, while at the same time running a more effective character.

5. Tied to 2a. above, if you haven't done so, try to invest an interest in the game outside of combat. It can be frustrating for DMs and fellow players if your character sits around and does nothing, especially in roleplaying situations. The best way to be more proactive here is to develop an interest in your character. What's his backstory? What are his interests? What are his goals? If you were in a particular character's situation, what would you be doing? It's impossible to cover the breadth of options available when it comes to character design and interaction. One good rule of thumb though: be wary of building characters who by their nature are isolative and shun social interaction. Sure, your druid raised in the deep woods may have a distrust of communities and prefer to spend her time in the park while everyone else is at the inn carousing, but what fun is that from a roleplaying perspective?

6. Another thing that might help: if you are not doing so already, consider taking on one of the mundane out-of-game tasks, like mapping, tracking loot, etc. You could also be of assistance to the DM, such as by keeping track of initiative, what spells and effects are active and when they wear off, etc.

I'd go with the mithral. The rhino hide might be slightly better in the short term (note however that for the cost of the rhino hide you could have a +1 mithral breastplate, with a +7 total AC bonus). However, as you progress, the breastplate will be cheaper to continue to enchant, so your AC should be consistently better, especially if you have or plan on having a decent Dexterity score.

I would only consider the rhino hide if you have a build focused on charging, and plan on doing it a lot. Even so, in most battles you'll probably charge once, so you are looking at maybe +7 damage on average on zero to two attacks versus +1 to +2 bonus to your AC. I'd take the AC bonus.

Drat! Frost rescinded his earlier ruling...which makes sense to me, actually. So no huge hamsters, unless you play in a game he's running, in which case, Large Tarrasque here I come! :)

There's an interesting discussion/clarification about beast shape type spells in a neighboring thread (http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinder RPG/rules/beastshapeMakingPuppys).

In short, Frost is clarifying that the actual animal you choose is irrelevant, so long as it conforms size-wise. So you could use Beast Shape II (or the equivalent wild shape ability) to become a Large hamster, or Beast Shape III to become a Medium tarrasque.

Assuming that is correct, I would think it potentially opens up more options to the druid in particular. I'm wondering if there are any particularly useful animals, plants, etc. that would be worthy transformations.

The main advantage this would grant is that some formerly presumably banned creatures might have more attacks, or unusually large damage dice for their size. Plus, how cool would it be to run around as Tarrasque, Jr.?

Cleric is still a good choice, with many useful buff spells at all levels. Wizard is also excellent--I'd probably go transmuter specialist if you want to focus on buffing. Druid would also be a decent choice, I think, though not as good as the first two.

Bards are by their nature a support class, and make decent buffers, although they don't have the breadth of spells that primary caster classes do.

The Advanced Player's Guide Classes are, to my mind, not as optimized for buffing. They tend to have much more limited spellcasting (smaller spell lists, fewer spells/day, limited spells known, etc.) compared to the core classes.

If there were a Pathfinder equivalent to the Archivist, I'd put that at the top of the list also.

Augment Summoning is an awesome feat, and well worth taking at 3rd level if you can. It's like having bear's endurance AND bull's strength pre-cast on all your summons for free.

Besides just hit points and the bonus to hit and damage, note that the Str and Con enhancements have other effects, including:

- Bonus to CMD and CMB, which can make a difference when you summon something with improved grab or trip.

- Bonus to Fort save is always nice.

- Bonus to certain skill checks, admittedly probably not ones they'll need making often.

- Bonus to Constitution-based save DCs on certain attacks, like poison.

Even at level 3, the bonuses can make a big difference, particularly the strength bonus. At higher levels, the constitution/hit point bonus does become more of a factor.

But if you plan on doing much summoning, it's an ESSENTIAL feat to take. In your build, I'd take it over Improved Initiative or Toughness, definitely (depending on how many allies I have and the character's hit points without Toughness).

How about Mounted Combat? You can ride your eidolon around, and potentially negate one attack against it per round. You might switch the eidolon to quadruped form, but I don't think there's any rule that says you can't ride it in biped form, MasterBlaster style.

I think Teamwork Feats might be most useful for classes that have sturdy companions--notably the druid and the summoner; possibly the paladin as well. Both the character and his companion take the same Teamwork Feat to enhance their abilities, since they are generally fighting together anyway.

I'm not sure how well they fit thematically with the Cavalier and Inquisitor, though; both classes seem a bit individualistic for something like this. Fighters, paladins, and rogues seem like a better fit thematically for them.

It would be nice if there was some cumulative benefit for taking multiple Teamwork Feats; e.g., the bonuses scale if you have multiple feats of this type. Otherwise, I agree that there's only one or two that are really worth taking, given the plethora of other good feats to choose from.

You could just buy hide armor barding for your druid's wildshaped form, and have your allies strap it on after you wild shape.

I certainly would not allow shield bonuses from shields merged into the wildshaped form to provide their bonus.

An interesting idea would be to base a summoner off Dr. Morbius from Forbidden Planet. Remember him? In this case, the summoner would be a highly intellectual but pacifistic man, and the eidolon would represent a manifestation of his id, which lurks and follows him around, coming forward and attacking when the summoner feels threatened. Having the eidolon start as largly uncontrolled, and slowly reconciling oneself with its existence, would be an intriguing character path to follow.

...

I would assume in the instance of a weapon, the Eidolon would posess it, but do items then travel back to wherever the Eidolon is from with it?

...

The text on eidolons says that they generally function as summoned creatures, and none of the exceptions (e.g., being able to attack creatures warded by magic circle type spells) exclude this. Thus I would assume that any equipment you put on your eidolon remains when it vanishes, and when you re-summon it, you'll have to re-equip it.

Since you are presumably summoning it outside of battle at the start of the day, equipping it should not be a problem. However, it is possible that having it die in an inconvenient location could make retrieving its gear difficult, if not impossible.

Though really, if you have ANY other divine casters in the party, or casters with CLW on their spell list, you could just lend the wand to them post battle to do the healing for you. Having UMD maxed is a good backup, but I wouldn't waste feats on it unless you plan on heavily using non-class scrolls, wands, and the like.

Selgard wrote:

If you ask your DM to remove the oddity of the equipment nerf, then the Summoner should be perfectly playable and fun.

With that equipment nerf in place, you should have alot of fun and useful lower levels but the higher you get either 1) you will die too easily because the eidolon has all your gear or 2) your Eidolon will die because you have all of its gear. So it will really depend on just how high your group is wanting to level up.

-S

Just out of curiosity what equipment nerf are you talking about?

From the Advanced Player's Guide playtest PDF, page 34, under Link:

"In addition, magic items interfere with the summoner's connection to his eidolon. As a result, the summoner and his eidolon share magic item slots. For example, if the summoner is wearing a ring, his eidolon can wear no more than one ring. In case of a conflict, the items worn by the summoner remain active, and those used by the eidolon become dormant. The eidolon must possess the appropriate appendages to utilize a magic item."

I have always wanted to play a summoner type class. My GM is planning on running Rise of the Runelords. I'm not worried about specifics to the modules, just wondering if the Summoner is a big waste of my time. I have read through it several times, and it seems kinda cool, especially for roleplaying, but it also seems a little underpowered. I like the idea of being able to control 2 summoned creatures (Eidolon and your ummoned monster) in a fight, but the limited number of spells makes themreally limited. I am leaning toward it, but just wanted some feedback from people who played one.

Thanks guys.

It's worth noting that if you want more flexibility and spellcasting as a summoning type caster, you might take a look at the Oracle with the Nature mystery. This allows you to have both summon nature's ally I-IX as well as summon monster I-IX on your spell list; I think it's the only class in Pathfinder right now to allow this. You won't have the eidolon or the summoning SLA that summoners get, but you'll be casting spells far more than with a summoner.

If you want scenic and time is not pressing, then on the way over (or back) take the Highway 101 along the coast. It should be beautiful in June, weather permitting (and even in bad weather can be nice). Won't be nearly as fast as the I5, though!

You could probably win outright with an imprisonment spell. You wouldn't even need to worry about the death throes (since it's not dead).

Your goal would be to jack up the Will save vs. the spell to 41. You'd also want the balor's name and some information about it (to apply the -4 penalty to its save). And you'd want to jack up your caster level/ability to overcome SR to overcome that as well. For a 21st level character both should be feasible, resulting in a low likelihood that the balor would pass both checks.

(Increasing the Will save via: starting Cha 20, putting all bonuses toward Cha advancement, +5 inherent bonus to Cha, +6 enhancement bonus to Cha, Spell Focus/Greater Spell Focus (abjuration), just off the top of my head, should get you in the mid 30s on the save.)

(Increasing SR penetration would involve using items to jack up your caster level, like a strand of prayer beads' karma bead; taking Spell Penetration/Greater Spell Penetration, etc.; not sure if there's an SR-lowering spell in Core Pathfinder.)

To further hedge your bets, use a greater quickening rod to do two imprisonment spells in the same round.

Oh, and have your familiar throw dust of sneezing and choking at it. It will pretty much auto-stun it for 5d4 rounds, and that assumes it DOES make a DC 15 Fort save, which requires it to roll a 2 or better. Unless balors are immune to being stunned?

Yeah, there are so many ways you could build a 21st level sorcerer that it's impossible to give any specific tactical advice. Feats, spells, special abilities, and gear are all hugely important.

However, one tactic that you might try is: roleplay. Try talking with the balor first, perhaps bluffing it or negotiating a truce with it somehow, or even cowing it (maybe by convincing it you are a polymorphed demon lord yourself or something).

Is the only solution to this scenario the death of you or the balor? Or is merely escaping with your hide intact enough?

Off the top of my head, I'd suggest using time stop every round and gating in lots of solars or the like to fight the balor for you while time is paused, maybe burning charges off a rod of maximize spell (greater) to get the maximum time stop duration each time.

Okay, here's a level 20 eidolon I built. It's hardly optimized for combat, but I'd like to think it is optimized for AWESOME. Hope I got the math right!

Kingmaker is the newest adventure path from Paizo, following on the heels of Council of Thieves. It's advertised as a campaign where you will acquire and consolidate a kingdom in the Low Kingdoms area of Golarion. I believe mention was made of mass combat rules, which might explain the change in duration of summoning spells (so you can summon hordes of minions and throw them at enemy armies).

I imagine there's about 6 books in the AP, so expect 5-6 breaks between scenarios.

At least you won't have to worry about your undead aging between scenarios! Unless Pathfinder has introduced new undead-aging rules I don't know about.

Unfortunately, on the one hand you'll be missing out on a lot of great undead crafting feats and abilities by the restriction to Pathfinder only. On the other, my understanding of the campaign is that having a necromancer with an undead army would be a real advantage. So I would definitely looking into whatever you can for crafting, animating, and commanding undead that you have available to you. And be sure to take the fear spell when you reach the appropriate level; a cone that blasts masses of enemies which your undead are immune to is an AWESOME spell on a battlefield.

I'm not sure how aasimar and tiefling are in Pathfinder, but I'd probably stick with human in any event for the bonus feat and boost to Intelligence.

Aside from necromancer, I'd think that a summoner/summoning specialist and druid would both be excellent choices for this campaign. A warrior type with Leadership would also be great. An evoker might also be useful, since blasty spells (while often considered inferior compared to other casting strategies) will do a real number on hordes of enemy troops. Really though, just about any character concept should be able to fit. The default alignment should make things easier for you as well.

Maybe there should be a special jury prize this year for the most entertaining table. Or everybody at the WORST table gets an "I came to PaizoCon and got stumped by McFrosty" T-shirt.

(I was at the Boomer's Tumors table in 2009, enjoying the experience vicariously; I had originally been at another table but was consolidated because the original table only had about four people. This year I'm bringing my brother who knows even less than me about Pathfinder, so hopefully I'll feel knowledgeable by comparison! :))

Well thanks again Malisteen i very much appreciate it, but one thing i mention was what about a cleric, because he gets the animate dead spell a lot earlier and is slightly based on charisma?

Also another thing is fluff wise i might be able to take the death domain as well as the knowledge domain saying that in my studies i have found that death is a "perfection" and i begin to pursue it in a less direct way or something like that.

But with the wizard it is nice because just from what i am reading the wizard is much more to the point which being a first time spell caster it might be nice and easier on me then the cleric but i don't know for sure.

And last it seems that the cost of animating dead can get pretty lofty at higher levels so taking wizard might help me not spend so much GP.

So I'm trying to decide between cleric and wizard, tough choice to me, tell me what you think.

Cleric and wizard are both viable choices; either will make a decent PC.

If you go wizard, your focus should be more on directly targeted spells vs. your enemies, and less on commanding swarms of undead, so getting animate dead a little later won't be a huge deal. If you go cleric and channel negative energy, then although you won't be spontaneously converting spells to cure spells for your PC allies, you will be spontaneously converting to inflict spells, which is handy for spot healing of your undead companions.

Which way you go should really depend on (a) what you want your primary focus to be (scourging enemies with your magic or commanding undead legions); and (b) what your fellow PCs and DM will let you get away with.

This would be my assessment of first-level cleric spells. Ratings are based on each spell's worthiness for being memorized, not their overall utility. Many good spells you are better off having on scrolls or wands, and need not waste spell slots memorizing. As always, circumstances in your adventures and campaigns may skew the values of these considerably.

Four-Star Spells
Bless: At low levels, one of the best 1st-level cleric spells to take. The bonus is small, but should affect your entire group, and that +1 to hit will probably make a difference at least one in any fight.
Shield of Faith: The deflection bonus is not huge, but I find it tends to scale ahead of any magical rings granting deflection bonuses you or your allies might have, and an extra two or three points of deflection bonus can have a significant impact for most melee fighting types.

Three-Star Spells
Command: If you plan on coming up against intelligent foes, this spell can be blue; if against any of the many creatures immune to enchantments like this (such as investigating a tomb with undead, vermin, and the like) it is red.
Divine Favor: If you plan on being in melee, this is not a bad spell to have, and the bonus does scale up as you advance in level.
Obscuring Mist: A decent battlefield control spell, useful if you need to escape from an overwhelming encounter, or close with enemies with stronger ranged support. Its biggest weakness is that it surrounds you, so it also hinders the ranged spellcasting and attacks of you and your allies.
Sanctuary: A nice protective spell for you to allow you to reposition yourself and cast buff spells, healing, etc. in battle. Especially considering how much higher Concentration check DCs are in Pathfinder, anything to avoid having to roll them is a boon.

Two-Star Spells
Bane: The reverse of bless, unfortunately while this spell affects a large number of creatures, it allows a fairly easy Will save, and the effect is relatively minor.
Cause Fear: At low levels only this spell can be decent, especially if your group is designed to work together to stack fear effects (e.g., you have someone with maxed out Intimidate). After a few levels, though, the hit die cap turn this spell red.
Hide from Undead: Circumstantially useful. If you do plan on going against undead, you'll want it memorized rather than on a scroll, since intelligent undead do get a save.
Protection from Chaos/Evil/Good/Law: These spells give a decent array of perks, though not as good as in 3.5 ed. The short duration is a big weakness, especially compared to the magic circle spells. It is a decent spell to have on a scroll, or even a wand, if you do end up with a charmed ally, or running up against a summoner.

One-Star Spells
Bless Water: Strictly for downtime between adventures.
Comprehend Languages: Get this on a scroll; don’t waste spell slots memorizing it.
Cure Light Wounds: You should never need to memorize it, since you can spontaneously convert to it and as soon as you can you should have wands of cure light wounds available in your group.
Curse Water: Another downtime spell, for the evil caster.
Deathwatch: The information this spell gives is not precise enough to be worth the spell slot. Just use visual cues to determine how injured someone is. (Is your fighter lying on the ground gushing blood from a throat wound? He's probably not at 50% health.)
Detect Chaos/Evil/Good/Law: Circumstantially useful, but just get it on a scroll instead.
Detect Undead: Another decent spell to have on a scroll, but probably not memorized.
Doom: A single-target save or suck mildly spell with a save allowed. Generally not worth it.
Endure Elements: If you need this spell you'll likely know about it well in advance. You probably won’t even need it on a scroll.
Entropic Shield: The miss chance granted by this is low enough that you definitely cannot count on it, and certainly shouldn’t waste a spell slot praying for it.
Inflict Light Wounds: Your melee attack likely does more damage than this, or it should, and doesn’t leave you empty-handed afterward.
Magic Stone: Again, you are better off simply making a ranged attack than wasting a slot on this spell.
Magic Weapon: At low levels this spell might be memorized if you plan on fighting creatures with DR, or as a minor boost to you or an ally. Otherwise not worth it, especially since by level 2-3 pretty much anyone who attacks regularly in combat likely has a magical weapon anyway.
Remove Fear: Just take a few on scrolls and leave it at that.
Summon Monster I: While many of the summoning spells can be useful, at low levels the duration of this is too short, and by the time it becomes usable the creatures it summons are too weak to be viable in combat.

It's long out of print, but the "Mother of All Encounter Tables" (written by yours truly, via Necromancer Games) is a 3e hardback of encounter tables. It included monster encounters for five different climate types and all different terrain types, and distinguished between day and night; however, it also included extensive non-monster encounters, a caravan generator, a quick NPC party generator, weather based encounters, etc. Most of it should be easily adaptable to Pathfinder. I imagine it should still be findable with a little Google-Fu.

As a first time spellcaster player, all of the above may be a bit much to absorb. To keep things simple, here's my recommendation:

1. Play a Necromancer wizard. Intelligence should be your best stat, so go human or elf unless there's a particular race you are dying to play.

2. Take enchantment and either evocation or divination as banned schools (it's easier to do without divination if you have another caster in the group like a cleric).

3. For feats, look towards Spell Focus (necromancy) and Greater Spell Focus (necromancy). You want to boost the DCs of your spells. Improved Initiative and Toughness are also good feats for any caster to take.

4. For skills, be sure to keep Knowledge (religion) maxed out, since it deals with undead. You'll also want ranks in Knowledge (arcana) and Spellcraft, at the very least.

5. For spells, take at least one necromantic spell per spell level that targets enemies, such as: cause fear, ray of enfeeblement, blindness/deafness, scare, ray of exhaustion, enervation, fear, waves of fatigue, and the like.

6. Be sure to also take non-necromancy spells to cover situations when they are not called for. Check Treantmonk's Wizard Guide link I posted above for a detailed analysis of all the core pathfinder spells for ideas. Ideally it's a good idea to have a mix at each level of offensive, defensive, buff and utility spells.

7. Don't worry right off the bat about undead minions. You won't have them right away anyway. By the time you get access to animate dead, you should have a good feel in your campaign for how they fit in, and hopefully will have done some research at that time on what you might have available to you.

8. Be wary of touch-range necromancy spells, like touch of fatigue, ghoul touch, and vampiric touch. You can get away with some of these if you take the spectral hand spell (allowing you to deliver them at range); you definitely do NOT want to be at touch range with your enemies!

9. Take note of fear-based spells. Fear conditions (shaken, frightened, panicked) stack cumulatively, so if you do something that causes a shaken creature to be shaken, it will become frightened. The core fear-based necromantic spells (cause fear, scare, and fear) cause enemies who save to still be shaken for one round. Thus if you or an ally can make them shaken in some other way, you'll get them to run even if they make their save. This is where having an ally with maxed out Intimidate comes in handy. Fear is a powerful weapon--use it!

Lots of great posts up there. Don't know if it was mentioned, but another good thread to check for the beginning wizard is Treantmonk's optimization guide for wizards, also to be found in this part of the forum. Here's the thread link:

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderR PG/general/treantmonksGuideToWizardsOptimization

It's been mentioned above, but one thing just to make clear: Necromancy can really be divided into two subschools. On the one hand we have spells that create and augment undead minions to do your bidding, and on the other we have necromancy spells that directly affect enemies, debuffing them (e.g., waves of fatigue, enervation) or killing them outright. Ideally, you'll want some ability in both areas, but focus primarily on one.

As a simple rule of thumb, if you want to focus on necromancy that directly affects enemies by debuffing, etc., you'll probably want to go wizard, since most of the best spells in this vein are arcane. If you want to instead command a legion of undead servitors, cleric is probably the better choice.

The necromancer who attacks enemies with negative energy type spells will be more inclined to take feats like Spell Focus (necromancy) to boost save DCs, metamagic feats, etc. Undead servants are still useful as blockers (always great fun to blast an area with a fear spell that your undead are immune to), but they won't be as powerful as if you focused on creating the toughest undead possible.

If you are restricted to Pathfinder material, I would definitely go in this direction, since the best undead-creating feats and abilities are things like the Corpsecrafter chain of feats from Libris Mortis.

Another (non-Pathfinder) class worth mention, also from Heroes of Horror, is the Archivist. It is basically the divine equivalent of a wizard, with a prayerbook from which they memorize spells. They also have a cool lore ability that grants allies bonuses when fighting certain types of creatures (like undead). From an optimization standpoint wizard and cleric are both better, but thematically archivists definitely fit the bill, since they are all about researching hidden and forgotten lore. They also have a perk over clerics in that they can learn non-cleric divine spells (such as druid spells) which grant them access to buff spells and the like that no other single spellcaster can easily duplicate.

I suppose you could get around the Ranger restriction by taking that one-level dip into druid, to be a Druid 1/Ranger X. Have the feat modify your druid level, and you've effectively offset the ranger penalty, even at Druid 1/Ranger 19. It fits thematically too.

It's worth noting that the importance of caster levels is dependent on your character's role in your game.

If you are looking at a primary spellcaster, then of course your character should be bent toward being the best spellcaster possible. And the best way to do that is to cast at as high a level you can. Anytime you trade off a caster level, you are taking a big hit in performance, and there had better be some pretty major benefits to offset this.

On the other hand, maybe you just want to run a character that does some spellcasting on the side, like a fighter type who can do a bit of healing or maybe a true strike on himself when the occasion demands. In that case, caster level becomes much less important--generally one to three or so is all you'll need.

Caster level is also rather less important in classes where spellcasting is not a primary feature, notably rangers and paladins. In those cases, the spellcasting is again an added perk, not the main purpose of the class, so losing some or even all of your caster levels is not necessarily crippling.

Use gnomes! Give 'em the pseudonatural template and some cosmetic changes and you're good to go.

Gnomes...creepy, creepy gnomes.... *shudder*