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Hello,

So, I wanted to modify some aspects of item creation, and I was wondering what the community thinks of these ideas:

Cost of adding additional powers to an existing item.

Typically, if I want to create a magic item that occupies a specific spot on the character's body, but combines the abilities of two items, then the cost of the additional power is 1.5 times the base price, right? So if I want to add the power of boots of speed to my boots of the winterlands, I pay 1.5x the base cost of boots of speed. The problem is, which power gets this cost penalty? If it is always the second power added to the item that gets the penalty, then it would often be cheaper to make the item from scratch than it would be to add a high cost power to a low cost item.

Instead, how about paying 1.25x the base cost of both magical abilities, removing the cost of the existing enchantment at the end, so that adding abilities always works consistently? It is a smaller penalty, but is assessed to all previous enchantments. This also scales up nicely, so that further added abilities become punishingly costly. (since you would then be paying the 1.25 penalty on the two previous enchantments, then three, then four, etc.) It makes the math a little bit more complicated, but I think it works well.

Item Creation Feats.

I've never really liked the item creation feat system. The difference between a ring and a wonderous item seems really arbitrary to me. The relative merits of Craft Wonderous and Brew Potion seem absurdly unbalanced, with the first being necessary, and the latter being not worth the feat.

I propose a different system, based on caster level. Create Item Caster Level (N) would be the item creation tree. The first feat would be caster level 1, and would enable the creation of scrolls, potions, items and wands with a caster level of 1. The next feat would enable the creation of items up to caster level 3, and would have the first as a prerequisite. Each subsequent feat would be available in three level increments, 6,9,12,15 etc., similar to the progression on magic arms and armor creation. As long as you had enough feats to create an item of that caster level, it could be done, whether it was a rod, wand, scroll, sword, or whatever.

The only real problem that I forsee would be that the 18th and 20th level ones would probably not come up very much, so it is a small reduction on the total number of feats that would be needed to make most items.

Cool, it bleeped my swear word!

Hmmm, if I understand what you're asking, I may have a character that does something similar.

My Fighter/Cleric typically fights with a Bastard Sword 2-handed. I chose this largely for aesthetic reasons; I didn't feel that it was realistic to do 2-handed power attack damage with a longsword, or to use a greatsword from horseback.

Technically, I suppose I don't always fight with it 2-handed, I use a shield on horseback.

If you are asking if there are any character builds designed to use a free off hand, none that come to mind; or at least that I have used. A few ideas:

Fighter monk, free of hand used to grab, catch arrows, punch? technically two-handed weapon fighting, but cool in that you can use monk abilities. Downside: Why not just be a monk, or use two weapons?

Perhaps somebody who throws splash weapons with the off hand? I guess that's a second weapon...

Character does a lot of grappling, so needs a free hand? This idea I really like, actually. A good grappler could use a dagger or shortsword as their primary weapon, get into a lot of grapples using the free hand, and just stab the shit out of his opponents once they are grappled. This one actually sounds like it might work mechanically, and confer an advantage of sorts. Never tried it though.

cibet44 wrote:

Will it give the stats for the UC and UM items in the book or will it say "see UM pg. 41".

It gives the complete text of the item; it does not refer you to the other book for an item's description.

And this is why I love Paizo!

You guys can't be serious, can you?

The way you are interpreting these rules, the Monk is a vastly better sword fighter than the Fighter is. You're basically giving the Monk a 2-Handed weapon rapid shot. This is hugely unbalancing.

Flurry of Blows is clearly intended to be for multiple weapon fighting, not for multiple rapid strikes with one weapon. Most "Monk" weapons are one handed weapons specifically intended to be used in pairs, or double weapons like the Quarterstaff. You'll note that you aren't allowed 3:1 conversion from power attack with double weapons, why would they make so glaring an exception for the monk, and only with this one silly weapon?

Paizo was trying to give monks a sword option, not break the game.

Do you want mine? I sort of saw the same problem you did, and wrote up my own. Don't know how I could get it to you though, I don't recomend you post your e-mail address.

I love ranged combat. with point blank master the only penalty to using pointblank at all times is not being able to flank.

honestly between that and clusterd shots removing the only penalties to using bows I dont see why any one ever uses melee any more.

Swords are cool, that's why. In all seriousness, how do you carry enough ammo? Probably a silly question, but nevertheless... My old compound bow had a quiver for 6 arrows.

The spell description specifically mentions running water as being treated as normal ground while the spell is in effect, so no, there is no conveyor belt effect. I don't know if anyone here played Final Fantasy, but in some of its iterations there was a spell called Float. It essentially allowed you to ignore anything on the floor. This is essentially the same spell. It just arbitrairily requires you to be able to claim some sort of fluid dynamic is involved to get the benefit.

Great question. I have a lot of trouble with this one myself. At higher levels, it seems like things can go so terribly wrong, or so outrageously right, that it is difficult to get the corrrect amount of drama. The party I run for killed of the dragon big bad guy really easily through a combination of dumb luck and clever use of resources, but had a lot of trouble with the frost giants that were wandering around the valley.

Truth be told, I am overly reluctant to kill of the players, because I don't like getting killed as a player. My DMing suffers as a result.

The best games I have aver played as a player have been run by my borther, who will inevitably leave you in abject terror of your character's imminent death. The only down side of this is that, I die a lot in his games. I AM really involved in the danger of it, and spend a lot of time worrying about my character when I play, which is exciting.

Recently, it caught up with him, and our party got wiped out. He had his villains accept the surrender of the remaining players, and now we're locked up. I expect that when next we play, we will have an exciting time trying to escape. It is possible to make even TPK pretty exciting, so I would recommend that you try to put the fear into your players.

I've seen enough hentai to know where this thread is going.

Darn! Beat me to it...

I'm with you in that I prefer the fighter. The Brabarian may have many advantages, but I can't shake the feeling that they're illiterate thugs. I like the professionalism and versatility of the fighter.

I think the cavalier was a completely unnecessary class to add. If you want to play a knight, take mounted combat feats. (Admittedly, I always houserule that fighters can take knowledge nobility as a class skill.)

If I have access to high enough scores, I also love to play a fighter/cleric. You don't lose much in terms of BAB, but you get to do some other cool things as well. Makes me think of a knight from the crusades.

Paladins are also very cool, although I prefer fighters.

Magic is akin to the Matrix. Physical laws can be tweaked. Int casters can pull at the source code, Wis casters can channel power from an outside source (they're the USB port, the spell is an external ap focused through them) and Cha casters just beat the code in submission. (Think Int = dex, Wis = Con, Cha = Str)

Love it. That's more or less how I tend to think of it. I also tend to assume that there is some sort of power source, neither a particle nor a wave, but with properties of both, that is involved in some sort of way. This is emtied by some sort of mineral, or by certain types of creatures, or by the gods, what have you.

Murphy, I want to play in one of your games so badly after reading your post.

I'm not sure that unbalanced parties are supposed to be punished. They picked the kind of characters they wanted to play, right? Sure, you want it to be challenging, but you also want to provide the sort of adventure they want to have, and clearly they want to beat things with sticks. I can sympathize, that's the sort of game I like to play. I wouldn't necesarily always tool the encounters to their strengths, but it isn't as though they're doing something wrong by choosing the classes they did. (I'm not too sure about the fighter shield bash dude, but it sounds like he's having fun!)

As has been stated, there are magical means for the party to compensate for poor saves. And hordes of pinatas for the party to beat on can still be dangerous if there are enough of them, and they are big enough.

DMs may not believe that it is there job to make it easy for the party, but it is also not there job to enforce upon their players their own ideas about what players should be. A DM can always kill a party, that's easy. The challenge is to create scenarios in which the players feel like the heroes they want to be.

Ranged Weapons and Ammunition: The enhancement
bonus from a ranged weapon does not stack with the
enhancement bonus from ammunition. Only the higher of
the two enhancement bonuses applies.
Ammunition fired from a projectile weapon with an
enhancement bonus of +1 or higher is treated as a magic
weapon for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.
Similarly, ammunition fired from a projectile weapon with
an alignment gains the alignment of that projectile weapon.

So that's the RAW. They're kinda stupid, though. Why pay for enchanted ammo that gets used up, when you can enchant the bow and it lasts forever. It hasn't come up mouch, but I'd houserule that enchanted ammo adds a damage bonus that stacks with the bow's enhancement bonus, but there may be some reason to disallow this. I can imagine rich rangers with +5 bows firing +5 ammo for a total of +10 to damage.

Otherwise, I'd rule that enchanted ammo doesn't have to first be +1 before it can be given a special ability. Flaming arrows, not +1 flaming arrows for example. Otherwise, enchanted ammo is just silly.

Lastly this is one reason why APL is a horrid way to 'simply' scale things. In one living campaign I recall JOINING a table to LOWER their APL. Now the rest of the table was BETTER off with me net, let alone when the challenges were lowered because of it.

-James

LOL

That's why I started enjoying DMing a lot more when I removed APL from my vocabulary.

It's been a long time since 2nd edition, but I think the impression that an illusion dissapears if attacked comes from then, where I believe that was the case. I think that attacking it is proof that the object isn't real. Generally, attacking a giant fire breathing lizard ineffectively is due to hard scales and thick hide. This is noticably different from passing harmlessly through it.

There should be some sort of significant advantage to using illusions of diaphinous enemies, attacking them would not be as obvious an indication that something was amok.

Just because you have so many PCs, doesn't necessarily mean that I would throw a CR 7 bad guy at them. If they only have about 1K gp in gear on them, and are 2nd level, a CR 7 monster will kill several of them before they bring it down, assuming they can at all. I'd stick to larger numbers of mid-CR badies, or you'll be looking at significant casualties.

Don't hesitate to run through some battles with their characters on your own time to test out a confrontation. Playing D&D by yourself might be a poor commentary on your social life, but it can lead to better adventures in the long run. Can't do that anymore myself; baby and job, you know how it is.

there ?

http://www.pathfinderdb.com/

Wow, that look pretty perfect. I'll check it out. Thanks.

There's actually something called a Beastmorph Vivisectionist? Facepalm!

Hello,

I would like to know if there is some sort of website or community bulletinboard that acts as a clearing house for fan generated campaigns, modules, classes, etc. I have drawn up a lot of adventures, and I wonder if there isn't somewhere I could submit them for others to enjoy. Now that I've played them, it seems a shame for all that work to go to waste. Also, it would be a good place to go for new ideas for the next game.

Hiya!

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm a fan of Pathfinder in large part because I wanted to play D&D. About ten pages into the 4e book, I didn't know if it was a good game or not, but I knew it wasn't D&D. When you change a great many iconic characteristics of the game system, it ceases to be what it once was, and becomes something else. The Alignment system is a huge part of that. I can understand that not everyone likes it, and that's fine. Why do you want to ruin it for everyone else?

As for the post that states that all characters devolve into Chaotic Neutral.... There are thousands, if not tens of thousands of people playing this game. How do you justify this conclusion? I have never seen this occur in a game. I have seen some interesting alignment issues crop up, but I have never observed every single character turn CN. I think you need to ask yourself why this is happening when you play. Or not; just drop alignment.

Paladins love law because they fear anarchy. Anarchy is terrifying, bringing more suffering down upon the people than whatever small ills societies restrictions might impose. For that reason, a paladin cna and should defend property laws, the basis of almost all civil order. This isn't top say that the paladin shouldn't do so compasionatley, in the case of the widow woman.

There are possible situations in which the sanctioned evil in a society can outwiegh the need to maintain order, or render the lawful obligation irrelevant. Most people find the idea of ownership of people as chattel distasteful, and for good reason. Some slave-holding societies have better systems in place than others, however.

That said, there are some things to consider. Are the laws in the slave holder's municipality the same as in the paladin's? He likely has no obligation to enforce foreign laws upon someone in his own jurisdiction. If they are, he may have some obligation to the slave owner. If laws exist that protect the slave's rights, and they have been followed, well, there may be some legitimacy to slavery. It has sometimes been used to punish criminals, for example.

Ultimately, though, D&D isn't supposed to be a courtroom drama. If the situations involvced get to mired down in legal details, it can just lead the game off track. Conflicts of that sort should be more clear cut in the game setting. The slave owner cuts off everyone's feet to insure none run away. Clearly he's an ass, go ahead and kill him and free his slaves. Or, whatever passees for legal in your kingdom.

I still can't come up with a name for the class that I like. Well, unless I do even more blatant stealing from Genius Girl that I intend to and call them "Spark".

Love that comic. I know what you mean about the name. I had a class somewhat like that in a game I ran. I couldn't decide if I wanted to call them a Tinker, Engineer, or Technologist. I went with the latter, but always felt like I should have used tinker. Admittedly, there would have been that element of theft from Ultima...

Anyway, it doesn't matter to me if they add anymore classes. Lord knows, I want them to keep making money, and creating new material is one way open to them. Honestly though, I don't think any of the new classes have ever really added anything that I wanted to see at my table come game night. I reallize that I'm a bit of a stick in the mud, but if you can't come up with a chracter concept based on the ideas in the core rulebook, you're really not trying hard enough. For example, why do we need a swashbuckler? There is fighter, there is rogue, and there is multiclassing. As I said though, go ahead and publish, no one else should lose out just because I'm a traditionalist.

I put in shotguns in a game I GM'd, and this is the system I used. I thought it worked better, the cone thing is really very silly.

I don't remember the exact system, but what I did was change the properties of the weapon. Say you have a smoothbore musket, does 1d10 or something. I used the one in the 3.5 DM's guide, don't really remember what it did. It had a range increment of 100 feet, say.

Loaded with buckshot, the weapon acts a bit differently. The range increment is reduced, I think I halved it, but I might not have penalized it that much. The clever part was, the range increment penalized the attack differently. At point blank range, the shot did more damage, 1d12. As it got further from the target, it became less damaging. At each range increment, instead of taking -2 to hit, I dropped the die size one category. Because the range increment was narrow, this meant that pretty soon you were only doing 1d4 damage, to reperesnt a highly dispersed and low-energy cloud of shot, but you could still hit something.

Come to think of it, it may have been 1/3 or 1/4 the range increment, whatever made sense at the time.

This is why shot is good for duck hunting at great range. Ducks have very few hit points. (c:

At most, a useful field of shot has only dispersed to about 2 feet in diameter, and that is at something like 200'. A 15' cone is just ridiculous, I'm sorry to have to say. Even a blunderbus doesn't disperse shot that much. Most attachments for shotguns are designed to minimize dispersal patterns, not increase them.

Or, setting up a fireball wand at one end of a room, then using speaking as a free action to unleash a fireball as a free action once per round, while casting a spell of your own. Not sure if it has to be on your person though. I know, spellotape it to your hat!

Charging is in desperate need of house rules, that's all I'm going to say.

In case it's relevant, I believe ride-by-attack does effect this in some way. Since you need to draw a line that is straight, but passes the creature, I beleive that you can more or less draw any reasonable straight line that manages this. You aren't forced to overrun the target.

I have a related question. An unarmed attack can be a kick, right? Does that mean I can use TWF and a 2-handed weapon? Chop with Axe, kick with iron boot?

I looked it up, and you're right, it isn't written properly. I beleive in 3.5 it was more explicit that it allows BAB extra attacks with the off hand.

Even so, the 2-weapon fighting entrie states specifically that the penalty is to the specific one attack granted by attacking with the off hand. "You suffer a –6 penalty with your regular attack or attacks with your primary hand and a –10 penalty to the attack with your off hand when you fight this way." You'll see that it says THE attack with your off hand, while specifying attack or attacks above.

As written, there is no penalty. This is still clearly an oversight, and some sort of errata aught to address it in future editions. As intended, however, the -2 is to all attacks made. You would be correct in your assertion that no text can prove this, however. At least, I can't find one.

Oooooh, toughy.

The swallow whole rule specifies that the creature must be grappled by the mouth, so no, he can't freely swallow whole whenever he is grappling someone.

However, he still has an advantage, because natural weapons can be used freely in a grapple, so next round he bites the dude and makes a free grapple attempt as per the grab feature. Now the victim is in the mouth.

Next round, round three I guess, poor adventurer is swallowed. Oh wait, this monster is a good guy, right. Poor goblin is swallowed. In the event that the goblin could survive this amount of abuse, that is to say.

That is how I would do it, anyway.

Actually, I don't have the rules in front of me, but the flurry table is correct.

The Imrpoved and greater 2-weapon fighting feats just allow you to take extra attacks from BAB with you off-hand weapon. In other words, without those feats, you would have whatever number of attacks with you primary at -2, -7, and -12. You would have only one attack with your off-hand at -2. With those feats, you get the -2, -7, & -12 with your off hand as well, giving you 6 attacks instead of 4.

Think about it. The way you have it written out, the character would be MORE skilled with his off-hand than his on-hand; which doesn't make that much sense.

an item that casts Mount?

There's also this item.

That seems cool and affordable. Thanks a lot.

Figurine of wonderous power. Not that expensive and serves a good purpose.

serpentine owl (9,100 gp)
bronze griffon (10,000 gp)
ebony fly (10,000 gp)
marble elephant (17,000 gp)
invory goats (21,000 gp)
obsidian steed (28,500 gp)

Master Arminas

Yeah, I looked at those. But, my DM is cheap, so I don't have that much loot. More importantly, doesn't the obsidian steed periodically cackle evily and take you to some alternate plane where monsters eat your bones? I guess I could ride the griffin, but I'll admit I was hoping for something a bit more... horsey.

As fo the rest, thank you guys so much for your thoughts. I do think that I'm going to have to research the spell, or more accurately ask the wizard to. In the meantime, phantom steed it is. Or the 3.5 clockwork horse...

A horse is a horse, of course of course, can anyone summon a horse, to course?

Seriously, I like charging people from horseback. The problem is, horses don't like to go underground, and are difficult to get to the top of mountains, etc.

Can you fight as normal from the top of a phantom steed? Are summoned horses "Combat trained?" I realize that you would need to sadle them, but a battle ready summoned horse would be handy.

Is there a magic item that reliably summons a useful horse? The bag of tricks only seems to make one when you don't need it.

Cause, if I can't get the party wizard to make me one, or the cleric to summon one, I'm gonna have to use my leadership feat and talk to those winter wolves we just fought...

Not sure if this is what you have in mind, but I have a recommendation for those who use those dry erase mats. Washable markers, particularly Rose Art brand, are key. They don't stain the mat, they come in a variety of colors, and the rose art ones don't smear too badly. They Crayola ones smear, but are okay if you give them time to dry.

When I say they dont's stain, I don't mean to leave them on there for weeks though. Just a suggestion.

I think these posts need to be split up on an annual basis.

I just read the Griffin's Daughter trilogy. I'll admit I picked them up because they were cheap for Kindle, but I really enjoyed them. Nothing earth shattering, mind, but a nice fantasy romance. Pick them up if that's your thing.

Daroob wrote:

For example, the code of chivalry promotes order by placing a restriction a powerful group of people, preveneting them from running amok. As a result of promoting order, it is lawful. I didn't have to define it as lawful in order to demonstrate that it promotes order.

...and being self-disciplined makes me less reliant on the established order to take care of me, and also enables me to work harder at subverting traditional authority -- and therefore promotes disorder. But it gets defined it as "lawful" anyway.

Being self disciplined means that you have the capacity to control your own behavior and impulses, therefore making you more ordered, therefore promoting order. The fact that this order is subsequently used to create an instability elselwhere doesn't nullify the order it initially created that established it as a lawful characterisitic.

The latter fact mearly demonstrate that neutral characters can exist. Persons with lawful characteristics that promote chaotic ends are a good example of neutrality.

I would further argue that the traditional authority that is being opposed in the example provided may not even be an issue of law vs. chaos. It may be a question of where that scale intersects with good vs. evil. A lwaful person can oppose tradditions and established orders in order to promote good if necessary. It can be argued that evil traditions create disorder by creating restrictions to which people instinctively rebel. As a result, both good and law can be best served by opposing order in the short term.

Daroob wrote:

They are related in that they promote order, either personally or for society as a whole.

Circular reasoning -- first define "Lawful" as traits X, Y, and Z, and then claim that XYZ are all related because they're all Lawful.

I didn't do this. I stated that they promote order. For example, the code of chivalry promotes order by placing a restriction a powerful group of people, preveneting them from running amok. As a result of promoting order, it is lawful. I didn't have to define it as lawful in order to demonstrate that it promotes order.

Daroob wrote:

They can model real people quite well, provided that you bear it mind that the model isn't the person.

It's about as useful as lumping pro-life laws and financial deregulation together as "conservative."

"Lawful" is a catch-all for a number of totally independent, unrelated character traits.

They are related in that they promote order, either personally or for society as a whole.

Whether or not you deem such modeling useful or not is, I admit, entirely up to you. In the example you cited, lumping such disparate characteristics together as conservative is very useful. It enables republicans to secure votes from they very people that are harmed by their economic policies.

See we have already had extensive discussion of what the following things mean.....

Other threads too numerous to mention....

respect legitimate auhority....

Does that mean following the law of the land regardless of the nature of that land?
....examples
1) a land were it is not illegal to murder, but you are punished for being caught.....
2) a land where thieves are hanged

OR

Does that mean following the tenets of the pallys diety?

OR

Does that mean persons above the Pally within his/her order?

Can a pally spring a thief from the local jail (against all manner of illegitimate authority) to save a person from a death sentence?

Who is making the determination the authority is legitimate or not?

Authority is legitimate if it establishes order to the benefit of the general good. A paladin doesn't have to follow orders from policemen in Mordor.

That said, there will be grey areas. Innocent persons arrested erroneously, draconian punishments, etc. In the event that the society in question is legitimate, the paladin will generally confront such issues within the scope of the legal system. Paladins recognize the great importance that law and order have in safeguarding the well-being of people, and seldom are willing to destabalize it.

Legitimate authority includes societies laws, the laws of the paladin's deity, and should the paladin belong to an order, that order's laws. The paladin must respect them all, provided they remain legitimate.

I'm highly self-disciplined. I also have very little respect for traditional authority. What alignment am I? Or do I not exist?

... or is the D&D alignment system just not really useful for modeling realistic people, as opposed to 2-D fantasy archetypes?

I think the problem is that people don't realize that it is a sliding scale. Everyone is going to have some chaotic inclinations and some lawful inclinations. If you character and personality are principally lawful in nature, you are lawful. If you are generally chaotic, there you are. If you're balanced in the middle somewhere, you're neutral.

They can model real people quite well, provided that you bear it mind that the model isn't the person. It just describes them.

So here are some that we have used:

Charge is a standard action. This way, melee characters can do something in a surprise round, and the dude who spent three feats on mounted combat to get spirited charge can usually line up a decent charge with his horse.

I've done the "no weapon finesse" thing before. I'm not married to the idea yet. It seems to me that precision weapons like the rapier may require more instruction to use properly. Then again, I don't really like penalizing rogues and dex based fighters.

I've been thinking about the item creation feats. I feel like there are too many. I think that all casters should get scribe scroll for free, that potions should be made with the alchemy skill with no feat required, forge ring should be part of craft wonderous item, and Rods, Staffs, and Wands should be one feat. Since Crafting feats allow the chracters to break the Wealth By Level rules though, I'm not sure if this is overpowered. Then again, my experience is the DMs don't give out enough loot to meet those wealth levels anyway.

I usually allow players to role HP, but average results are the minimum. So if they roll a d10, the lowest they can get is a 6.

I like the idea of more expensive horses being available. Especially since the pathfinder horse was gutted for some odd reason.

Swords can pierce as well as slash, and vice versa. They're pointy.

Hobgoblins are a core race, at least in my setting.

You can stand up from prone as a full round action without provoking an attack of opportunity.

I have also been toying with the idea of using the point buy per level thing. I haven't decided on that one yet either. My wife played a middle aged wizard just to get the age bonus to Int. Her character, at level 10, has something like a 28 Int. It's a bit crazy, and I don't think it would have happened with point buy per level.

An Ioun Torch is going to be part of my loadout from now own, nevermind the character. Sure, just about everyone has [i]light[/i) as a zero level spell, but the thing is so damn nifty anyway. Never having to carry a torch, always keeping a light source handy. Love it.

I always have some sort of continual flame spell cast on somethiong mounted on my helmet, something like a miner's helmet.

I don't know much about non-core classes. Don't really care for them. That said, Pathfinder has done a lot to make playing a fighter balance better with the spell casting classes. (Although I do miss 3.5 Cleave.)They do awesome damage, have great AC, etc.

They aren't a match for high-level wizards, that is true. Why should they be? Wizards aren't a match for low-level fighters. Slogging through first level, the wizard pings off their magic missle, and then hangs around trying to figure out how to hit something with their light crossbow. Meanwhile, the fighter will need to bathe for a week to clean the orc guts off of them.

Anyway, who wants to be a wizard anyway? Buncha' Panzies.

I think TWF is primarily for multiclass fighter/rogues. Sure, it is underpowered compared to 2H weapons, but when you're doing 4d6 points of sneak attack damage, and have four attacks per round...

I don't really like any of the non-core classes. I might be set in my ways though, I've been playing this game for a long time; well D&D at any rate. I just don't think that they add much that isn't already handled by the core classes; isn't a witch just an evil druid? Isn't a cavalier just an annoying and underpowered mounted fighter build?

I actually really like some of the rules for the variant or archtype classes, but I have yet to see one I'd preffer over a core class.

The domain powers in pathfinder seem poorly balanced and often either not as cool as 3.5, or far too cool. I like that they build as you level though. I suppose that the balance is supposed to come from the spell lists.

Templates: Why do I have to rebuild the horse using a template if I want to buy a damn heavy war-horse? For that matter, why is the Pathfinder HVY warhorse so crappy compared to 3.5, or did I just do the math wrong? Why do I have to use the template to build a ghast? These things should be off-the-shelf models. Otherwise, they're cool, although I admit to finding their use a bit, complicated. Still handy as an option.

Probably what I dislike most of all about Pathfinder is the strange decision to mush the DM's guide and the player's handbook together. How did anyone ever think this was a good idea? Why does the average player need a DM's guide? Why do I need to cary around a player's guide that weighs twice what it should? It isn't even good for the binding. 1 DM's guide is enough for the table. Then I bought the dungeon mastery guide, which I ultimately didn't think contributed much of anything, although I enjoyed reading it.

On the other hand, I really love Pathfinder. I like the novels and campaigns, I like that my fighter is cooler, that paladins are cooler, and that my Cleric has some fancy new abilities. I like that characters get perks for single classing. I like that there are no penalties for multi-classing or magic item creation. Some things are sort of broken, but I find it more fun to play. House rules can fix anything else. I really like Paizo's support and promotion of 3rd edition, which is D&D for me now. I guess what I am trying to say is, Mr. Ironskull there has a point.

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but I have a different question about this spell.

Anyway, my wife is playing a middle aged wizardress, with augmented intelligence and an age bonus. Long and the short of which is, her character is suppernaturally intelligent. (+8 bonus) Anyway, she likes to throttle creatures with her mind, sort of remeniscent of Darth Vader's Force choke. To this end, she grapples them.

What I want to know is:

"Can be used once per round" does that mean that she doesn't get the normal multiple attacks per round of grapple? With a caster level of 10, shouldn't she get a grapple at 18, and a secondary grapple at 13?

How is damage adjudicated? If she is beating this dude up with her mind, does she get an intelligence bonus to damage? I know that you can use grapple to damage a creature. If it is generally 1d3+STR, would she get 1d3+INT? This is nonleathal damage, though right? Can she take -4 and kill the guy to death as per unarmed attack? This effect seems to just kill people really easily, which is fine, it is a 5th level spell after all.

The target gets the grappled condition, right? So, the rest of the party can just run up and wallop the bastard?

Violent thrust:
So adjuticating this effect seems to be a reall pain in the ass. Is it assumed that there will be shit lying around to throw at people? That works if you're on a scree lined moutain slope, but isn't it useless in a corridor? Am I supposed to figure out how much damage the tapestry does? Or is it the fighter's job to carry around ten Lage sized greataxes for when the wizard wants to do 30d6 points of damage with this spell?

I wouldn't ask, but the wife really loves this spell, and I don't want to short change her. All the same, I don't really want her to deactivate every monster by mind hugging them either.