EWHM's page

Parties in a simulationist game can frequently get away with the nearly-all ranged approach up to 8th level or so. The key is you get to choose your targets most of the time and where you're going to fight. You're not typically locked into an adventure path or anything, you're setting your objectives and deciding what to do based on what information you can gather and what your values are.
To make it work, you need at least one scout with really high stealth and really high perception (to see your target before your target sees you). Your scout finds the enemy and then attempts to draw the enemy into the prepared kill zone of your artillery section. Pulling them 'salami-style' is ideal if you can do it to prevent a massed charge. Do this and you can actually get good use out of the long ranged increments of bows and crossbows and you might even discover that in the right circumstances that far shot doesn't suck. You also need to ensure that everyone in your party is fast and can mount up quickly, because if your initial barrage doesn't work, you're going to have to beat feet, or do a 'strategic retreat'.
Foes you fight after that level tend to have combined arms and/or be underground and in dungeons (anything without substantial ranged capability, very fast movement, fly or teleport is dead meat against a flying party unless they can cover for their lacking areas through terrain/dungeon/etc---when I run games in simulationist style, any foes over CR8 or so get radically reduced treasure if they don't either have combined arms or operate in areas where that disadvantage is largely muted).

Frequently ALL of the members of parties I run carry spell component pouches, sometimes more than one, often holy symbols too. It's all part of obscuring the 'where is the wizard or priest' game. Sometimes low level illusions are part of it too---when the wizard appears to be wearing full plate and the big strong fighter looks like a skinny clerk.

Reach plus enlarge plus whirlwind attack or great cleave and sometimes lunge is the go to trick for a fair number of fighters. Add this to combat reflexes and lots of attacks of opportunity and you can be an AE attacker primarily. This has a strong synergy with blasters or other 'street sweeper' builds like you own.

As a GM, I don't particularly mind a PC having followers. What I'm utterly unwilling to tolerate is gaining them through a feat or any other sort of metagame resource. Instead, you're free to hire henchmen, cultivate groupies (let's face it, you become almost by default the equivalent of a 'rock star' as a fighter or bard or the like by 4th level or so, even if you're not trying to do so, and by 8th level in almost any case), build organizations, etc if you're looking for minions. But you don't get to build them or directly control them (unless you've had them as top tier minions for years and built their loyalty to you to pretty much fanatical). Think the Conan books for a good example of this sort of thing.

Hugo, there's no reason you need to have criticals for spells, other than ray spells. Fumbles for spells are pretty easy, how about this:
Roll d6
1. Spell lost with no effect
2. Minor magical disconnect, you can't cast spells next round
3. Spell is maliciously mistargeted if relevant to the spell type, otherwise as (1)
4. Magical disconnect, you can't cast spells for d6 rounds
5. Spell affects caster (if relevant), otherwise caster is stunned for a round
6. Major magical disconnect, you can't cast spells for an hour, spell is lost

It's not really a whole lot of work relative to a weapon fumble system to make one up for casters.

Somehow I suspect that most who favor fumbles would scream bloody murder if it was suggested that:
Because we know that significant fumbles by trained combatants, and PARTICULARLY, heroic (4th-6th level) combatants and superheroic (beyond 6th level) combatants are vanishingly rare...but,
We know absolutely nothing about how often spell casters fumble...
How about we spare the non-casters and simply inflict a 5% chance to fumble on every single spell, not just the ones with attack rolls. Spell fumbles could include mistargeting, loss of the spell cast, loss of the spell cast and several others, and maybe even loss of all your spells for a day or two. That'd be fun...right?

Here's the fundamental problem with fumbles. Every single system I've seen published is a horrific sin against verisimilitude, even if your game is incredibly low powered and ordinary conscripts---what 1st edition called zero-levels---are your heroes. Any system that DIDN'T sin thusly would just be a useless pain in the neck, because it would require additional rolls to actually get up to the probability of any fumble that wasn't just---that particular attack misses, especially if you're talking about even medium level fighters.

News flash, a 5th or 6th level fighter is about as competent as any fighter in the real world WHO HAS EVER LIVED. Did guys like the author of the Book of Five Rings fumble? Yeah, but probably less than 1 in 10,000 attacks or so. And guess what? That 'sweet spot' level 8 fighter in your game is BETTER THAN THAT. Do you see the problem?
To get to any practical probability that is actually worth rolling on (I mean, does anybody roll randomly to see if the players happen to be in an area where a random interstellar bombardment like that big meteor that exploded over Russia some weeks back occured?)

There is a pretty large segment of the player base and GM base (I'm mostly a GM and always have been) that needs a reasonable degree of verisimilitude to suspend disbelief. Getting the small things reasonable, at least at the aesthetic level, really helps the big things (like, oh, fire breathing dragons, mages that cast spells that actually work, etc) a lot easier to swallow. If even one of your players fits this description, best to stick by RAW on 'fumbles'.

Ok, imagine this---you'll have to seriously suspend some disbelief.
Imagine a guy like the Westboro Baptist guys that seriously piss off pretty much everyone when they show up to protest funerals and so forth. There's your seriously low charisma.

Now imagine that in your game world, that same guy is incredibly perceptive and happens to be right, at least insofar as his lower-case g god happens to be concerned. For extra fun, make that lower-case g an upper case, some sort of overgod that is known only to an extreme few and theorized by a few out-there extreme researchers.

A lot of GMs have a real issue with PCs being able to do anything without a roll or being able to 'count on' being able to do something. Predictably, they hate take-10, take-20, and similar mechanics and really like critical failures and so forth.
As a simulationist, this terribly offends my sense of aesthetics and verisimilitude. Real people don't fumble anywhere near 5% of the time. Very competent people, which even 1st level adventurers fall into the category of, being typically at least in the top 5% of competence in whatever their main area of expertise happens to be, fumble so rarely as to be extremely noteworthy when it happens.
Drive down a freeway some time. You see all those cars around you? 99% of them are 'taking 10'. You see that guy weaving and driving like a maniac? He's NOT taking 10. Most people at work every day take 10. Pretty much only people learning a new skill, trying to develop something totally new, or a few researchers take 20.
My suggestion is to find out if your sentiment is shared, and if it is, to determine if it's a dealbreaker. If it is, just explain the issue and that if not addressed adequately it calls for what amounts to a 'vote of no confidence'. If he's otherwise a good GM, just adapt by moving your PCs quietly over to less roll/fumble dependent character types WITHOUT telling him why unless he asks explicitly.

Simulacrum gets a body of house rules surrounding it normally the first time someone starts using it frequently.
In a very real sense, a simulacrum of you IS you, although to a lesser extent than, say, a clone of you. Of course not all, or even most, simulacra are of the caster, but that is the most common use case in my games (this is partially due to the fact that I only let you make simulacrums of originals less than or equal to your level, and well, you are your level). It would be really hard to spoof that connection which is at the soul or spirit level. That would be further difficult if you're asking it to do something that is out of character.

DrDeth,
Your succubus will be much more effective if most of the damsels you rescue aren't succubi. Ditto the obligatory traitorous NPCs. You just have to, as a GM, make the PCs get somewhat more from their relationships than the aggravation and investment they put into them. This is realistic after all, the whole reason we form societies.

Send a simulacrum of the villian to do such monologue or negotiation. Holy ground is another popular trope, at low levels, simply a neutral city that has the resources to seriously frown on mayhem inside its walls works too. It helps if a reasonably fraction of your villians are evil rather than EVIL, with some even neutral but with objectives that are opposed to those of the party. You can also have him visit them in dreams a la 'The Golden Child'.

Oh, just one note. A Strength of 14 corresponds to a military press of 175 pounds where rules for form and such are pretty loose (you just have to be able to lift it over your head). It's not ridiculously uncommon---probably the top 5% or so of men in their 20s can do that, especially guys in the >6' and around 200 pound set who go to the gym regularly. A lot of NFL players are past 20 via the same chart.

Step 1, talk to your GM about your predicament. Step 2, become familiar with this question to your GM:
What do I know about X?---where the GM is fully aware of your knowledge skills and INT score and pre-game background.

In my mind, I've always seen Elven as the most 'Romance' of the Romance languages and Dwarven as the most Nordic of the Germanic languages. So maybe start with some long and flowery French name and take a cut down diminuative also?

x4 crit multiple weapons also have a significant niche. You give them to your mooks that do pack attacks against much, much stronger opposition. Borderlander defense forces often include squads like this, and they're treated a lot like 'wild weasel' mission flyers in our world.

I'll point this out for the benefit of a lot of GMs and players.
I'm a reasonably strong person with merely moderate proficiency with two-handed implements of destruction or construction. I know people who are ACTUALLY twice as strong as me if you look at the lift chart, and I know of folks who are around 50% stronger than that.
But pretty much no doors in a typical house would survive my full attack. Most walls wouldn't either. Granted your typical dungeon is considerably stronger in its construction (for instance, in my house, the only thing that MIGHT be bulletproof is my hot water heater, but only because it has a lot of water in it), but your typical monster or adventurer has a lot more damage-inflicting capacity than I do with a sledgehammer or other implement). Doors and interior walls are highly destructible, far moreso than your intuition would probably indicate. A lot of the 'reality police' calling something unrealistic (e.g., how fast an archer can shoot or 'nobody could survive a fall that long'), is based on a lack of familiarity with actual reality, at least at the level of expertise in question.

In most of the dungeons I run---those controlled by one or more active factions, this is how things usually go down.
The party, having done preliminary scouting via stealth and magic enters the dungeon. They attempt, typically incorporating things like silence 15' radius and similar magics to prevent an alarm from being raised. As long as an alarm isn't raised, you can continue to pick off sentries and little room garrisons without any organized response other than the guys you're fighting. As soon as the bell goes off though, you're in for a running fight until one side wins, loses, or retreats. It's during these epic battles that your short duration buffs really shine. Also, the main use of traps is NOT to kill your opponents. The main uses are controlling their movement, delaying them (giving more time to martial forces), and insuring that an alarm is raised. A large fraction of your rogue's contribution during an adventure is delaying the onset of the enemy's defensive response.
For a good example of a published adventure with a coherent response by the defenders, check out the 'Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun'. It had a reinforcement schedule and everything for once the alarm was raised.

The most common combat manuevers I see my players do are bull-rushes attached to shield slams. If you've got greater bullrush you can grant your fellow melees attacks of opportunity when you force them to move. You can also make them prone if there's a wall handy, contributing to yet more attacks of opportunity when they try to get up.

This is in fact where a large fraction of the DPR of a good weapon/shield TWF fighter comes from. He sets up his buddies the two-handed or reach weapon fighters for lots of attacks at their highest bonus. Needless to say, they'd better be paying for combat reflexes.

A character like this could make a decent general, but not a DPR-focused front line combatant or even a satisfactory defensive tank. If you're super lucky, your GM does what I do and gives +1 point towards raising stats per level instead of +1 to a stat per 4 levels---for instance in my game you could raise strength from 10 to 11 at 1st, to 12 at 2nd, 13 at 3rd (so you could get power attack) and to 14 by 5th level. You could also raise your charisma to 19 at 4th level by spending 4 such points if you saved them. This makes the level advancement attribute bonus a bit more equitable for MAD classes and suboptimal characters like this one.
But looking at what you CAN do---I'd track along the dazzling display to deadly stroke line. You can't qualify yet for anything on the power attack line, or anything on the archer line or two weapon line. You probably want to do the weapon-shield non TWF approach since 2handed isn't going to raise your DPR much anyway and you will desperately need the defense. So max out your intimidation and diplomacy and work mostly as a debuffer in combat.

Sometimes a tactical retreat is a good move even when a fight is fairly winnable as is. You might want to:
Separate the fast moving types from the slower ones (the classic for this is Scipio's tactic for separating the war elephants from their infantry support) or
disrupt a prepared advantageous position (e.g., the foes in the room have overturned tables and established cover and maybe set spears against your charge) or
Move the engagement to a location more advantageous to you or lure them into a trap or ambush.

Remember, just as a GM can train PCs, so too can PCs train a GM. If he always recklessly pursues you when you run, you can run a few times when doing so isn't objectively necessary and give his minions a seriously bloody nose with a preplanned ambush.

If that's your concern, I suggest giving arrays rather than a point buy budget. You can give even fairly high value arrays and have less of a min-maxed feel than even a typical 15 point buy. For instance, consider this array
16,16,14,12,12,10
That's a 29 point equivalent, but it is less in terms of raw power than a lot of 20 point and even some 15 point builds. Or this one
16,14,14,13,12,10, which is a 25 point equivalent.

Piccolo,
The white wolf mechanics for social skills were a lot better balanced and developed (which is really amusing when you think about it, since balance was NOT a WW strong suit). I actually ran Vampire for quite a while.
Normally what we do in pathfinder is just pigeonhole each range of bonuses into a virtual person---like Bill Clinton, Reagan, or the like. Then we decide whether that person could walk the persuasion/diplomacy/intimidation (and honestly, all 3 of those are more of a continuum than a binary thing, most diplomacy incorporates some implicit intimidation). Only rarely do we roll.

I don't know any GMs who use diplomacy/bluff/intimidate as written. It's even more universally loathed than leadership as written.

Pretty much the strongest social power level most of us are willing to grant ANYONE is the equivalent of a real life Reagan, Bill Clinton, or Hitler or Napoleon. That's it, even if you've got +30 or more. Diplomancy gets old really really fast---the first player who really maxes everything out and tries to get you to play RAW on it usually leaves a seriously bad taste in the mouth.

There's only one good reason at these levels NOT to go just with the high plus weapon.
Do you expect to regularly have a greater magic weapon cast on your weapon by a friendly spellcaster?---at your level I believe that'd give you +4 or so. If you do, you might go with a +1 weapon with special abilities.

Around my neck of the woods, we use this protocol for social skills.

We take the net bonuses and break them down into various pigeonholes, with each spot represented by an actual person or historical figure that we're all familiar with (e.g., Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan are up the the very high ranges). Your net bonus determines which figure we use for determination.

Then you say what you want to say, but the GM runs it through a filter akin to the one used by Ransom in translating Weston at the end of CS Lewis' novel 'Out of the Silent Planet'. Then we ask, could your figure walk that line past his audience? If the answer is yes, it just works, if it's a no, then it doesn't. Only when the answer is---maybe...if he was having a REALLY great speaking day, AND the weather cooperated with the Sun bursting forth right down on him when he reached his crescendo...(shades of 'Morning in America') do we roll. The native social system in pathfinder just isn't one that we're willing to allow anything meaningful to hinge on.

Ok, these guys are built on 15 points. Were football war, and major colleges had 'war' teams of about the same size as their football teams, this is about the level of talent that they probably have on their 1st team. NFL starter equivalents would probably be 4th level and 20 pointers. The charisma is oddly low, although I know why you dumped it---it's just the natural optimized place to stuff that array. These guys should probably be mounted, simply for travel if nothing else, as they are elite. Here's a suggestion if you want their stats to be a bit more organic---elite companies like this tend to be drawn out of a larger military like the musketeers were.
Str 14, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 10 Ws 12 Ch 11

Happens one in every 8000 attacks. Depending on your campaign style, that can happen with a fair amount of frequency.

I generally use the approximation 2 points of attribute equals one standard deviation. Back in the old days of 1st-2nd edition, I used the compressed bell curve created by 3d6 (which had pictures in the 1st edition DMG). An 18 back in the old days was only 1 in 216, which is only about 2 and a half sigmas or so. Now I treat it as 4 sigmas, which is a lot rarer (in 10,000 people you'll see 2 or 3 at 4 sigma if it is a random population in the attribute you're looking for).

So a 7 now is about negative 2 sigmas. That's about 1 in 50. If you have a social circle of 150 people, AND that circle is a random one (frankly in modern western countries, your social circles are extremely nonrandom these days, unless you live in a tiny town or something where everyone is included due to sheer geography), someone with a 7 is probably one of the 5 least intelligent people in that group. How stupid is that? Pretty stupid but frequently more or less functional, especially if the culture they're in has lots of bright line rules to keep them out of trouble and strong taboos against sharp dealing with the dim.

Many years have taught me that you should never allow things like flaws to offset additional combat advantages. If you want to let them take flaws and receive something in compensation, make the compensation in a similar domain that the flaw resides in. This is, unless you decide---everyone gets a bonus feat, whatever you want, at 1st level and everyone must take at least 2 minor flaws or one major one, with no implied connection or fungibility between the two.

Thejeff,
My experience is that once you get them going initially, they'll supply their own motivations to continue. Maybe they'll decide they want to establish an exceptionally lucrative international trading company--perhaps even interplanar. Maybe they'll decide they want something they and their fathers have never known: a nation of their own. Maybe they'll decide that their coethnics need more lebensraum. Maybe they'll just become addicted to the rock-star treatment afforded to SUCCESSFUL and well regarded adventurers. I've seen all of the above in my games. Maybe they'll decide that something one of your npc factions is doing is...worrisome. That's another key element in my opinion for a simulationist game---other factions want things and work with bounded rationality towards achieving those things.

Thejeff,
You can dangle opportunities in front of your PCs, or threaten things they value to some degree. Sometimes they'll bite, other times they won't. Everything depends on your particular players. Some of them give their PCs more unusual motivations than the typical desire for 'the main chance'. But there's nothing wrong with adventurers after 'the main chance', such has a profound amount of historical resonance. Sometimes at the opening game, I'll let you spend into the negatives on gold up to 500-1000 gp with the proviso that you've got a character hook or debt initially that is at least that amount to absolve. One I've used before is that your father or similar figure needs a fairly high level curative magic, like a regenerate spell or the like, or you have a brother who needs a ransom paid.

I pretty much exclusively run sandbox these days, with the only exceptions being when I run a miniseries or oneshot, in which case I bend more towards the narrativist/gamist. Here's how a session usually goes:
At the end of the previous session, after the PCs have attempted, failed or succeeded in their previous objective.
The PCs go to their respective intelligence networks, which after a few levels are a lot more than just diplomacy:gather information and look to see what's out there that they might profitably attempt. Sometimes that is a follow-on to what they've already been doing. Sometimes it might be an offer from one faction or another. Sometimes its just a particular ax to grind by one or more of the players. Every so often it'll be a 'red cell', where some faction they've annoyed tries to 'do unto them'. Normally there are a fair number of basic possibilities.
For instance:
There's a tribe of orcs that has been harrassing supply caravans lately through the hills to the south. They're considered annoying enough by the local satrap that he's offering to waive half of the usual salvage tax on any treasures taken from them. They're considered fairly ordinary as orcs go.
There's a family of ogres that is believed to have moved into the foothills to the southwest. They've been capturing trappers, farmers, and children for their stewpots. They're considered KOS (kill on sight) and the local satrap is offering 20 gp for each ogrish head on a pike that you deliver AND is waiving all of the usual salvage tax if you bring back at least 3 such decorated polearms.
There is talk that a small red dragon has moved into a cave complex that was cleared out by some adventurers a couple of years ago. Evidence is spotty, just some missing cattle and some very odd spoor.
and so on...

The PCs pick the objective that they're going to pursue based on what they can obtain insofar as the risk and reward and what their other objectives might be. Then, between then and the next session, I fill in the gaps and make preparations. If the objective isn't terribly involved and I'm well prepared in the particular area already, sometimes it can just be run on the spot. But if you're planning an intercontinental or extraplanar trip, some prep is going to be needed.

Ideally you kill your enemies in order of their ratio of offense to defense, and you focus fire them down N at a time where N is determined by your AE or multiattack capability (e.g., if your main hitters all have, say, cleave, you might try to set up to kill 2 foes at a time). Your job is to prevent your enemy from doing the same to you. So yes, that means you kill glass cannons first and shield tanks last, if you can help it.

Divination, enchantment, and illusion are all three massively dependent on your GM for how good of a school they are.
Clerics have the best divinations, but the arcane versions are still extremely powerful---there's a reason why the ancients never did anything without consulting a diviner, and their divinations mostly didn't even work.
Enchantment depends heavily on your GM in terms of what he'll let you get away with using say, a charm person. Hint, not all GMs assume that all or even most of all monsters encountered together actually like each other that much. Imagine a set of orcs, for instance, where a wizard successfully charms one during the surprise round. The charmed orc might well decide, on his own initiative, that the wizard is the NEW boss-man, and that by helping him overthrow the old boss-man he can improve his status. He might even try to convince some of the orcs that he dislikes less that they should 'jump on the bandwagon'.
Now, if the monsters are more akin to a 'band of brothers', it's likely to be a lot less useful.
And, my God, illusion. Does there exist a pair of GMs anywhere who handle them identically?

Guys like Wesley are extremely high point build equivalents. But what they're NOT is highly optimized. Wesley honestly reminds me a lot of a former student I had who was fresh out of the Marines force recon---even had quite a bit of physical resemblance.
I'm a stingy bastard when it comes to assigning stats, using the equivalence of 2 points being a standard deviation and using the strength lift chart (military press, NOT bench press---most guys only military about 2/3 or so of what they can bench).
Strength:14 (I know because we spotted for each other a few times in the campus gym)
Dexterity:16 (Very fast, star on his campus' track team)
Constitution:14 (Very good long distance runner, really quick recoveries in the weight room, I'm probably selling him short)
Intelligence:16 (Yes, 3 sigmas, his test scores and general performance were all congruent to this)
Wisdom:12 (I am likely selling him short here, to NOT be dysfunctional given all the temptation he was under requires at least this, IMO. Think about this the next time you are inclined to criticize a major sports figure or the like--NFL pros probably need a 14 for the same).
Charisma:14 (he was a total chick magnet and NOT a <fill in your favorite derogatory here> )
So in terms of points, assuming he took the +2 in Int or dexterity, he is
5+5+5+10+2+5
32 points---7 more than an 'epic' 25 point build

But notice---would any min-maxer, or even most players, build a character like that if they were given 32 points? Frankly, no. If we assume Wesley is a rogue/fighter, or maybe a ranger, this build is extremely unlikely. He doesn't have a 20 dexterity or strength, or even an 18. This is one of the serious pitfalls of point-based generation in my opinion, you see a serious shortage of characters like this because they cost too much relative to what you get.

Pendegast,
Let's not malign Loki so much. For much of Norse mythology, he was just a dangerous loose cannon and trickster. He actually got a lot of useful stuff done for the Norse Gods. Most of their best treasure came about through his efforts. Yes, he ultimately made the crossover from trickster/loose cannon to out and out traitor, but he actually was a passable party member for a good while (Thor adventured with him a lot).
Bugbears are a lot worse, they're just weaker.

Yes, KOS is Kill on Sight. Includes mind flayers, drow in most worlds, kuo toa in nearly all worlds. Generally includes trolls and ogres and probably half of orcish tribes as well as a few human cultures.
Apparently I overestimated how pervasive the acronym was.

If you want to get an idea how evil and disturbing a KOS culture is, and you've a strong stomach, google General Butt Naked sometime. Their 'antics' are a somewhat toned down version of what a KOS culture does when it goes a raiding.

Most cultures are going to consider bugbears KOS. KOS Cultures are ones that pretty much everyone who isn't KOS or explicitly allied to wants to exterminate. They tend to do things like heap up huge mounds of skulls into pyramids. They also generally don't abide by norms of prisoner exchange or ransom or even the proper methods ethnic cleansing or conquest.
Get conquered by a non-KOS but evil culture and it means you're probably (if you're lucky) paying a 20% additional tribute to them every year until you throw off their yoke, with some of you sold into slavery and a normal, by historical standards, amount of rapine and looting in the process. A KOS culture on the other hand makes Nazis look rather humanitarian in its conquests and occupations.

You could take a leaf from Babylon V and greet everyone in some sort of an encounter suit. Add a few lines like 'the avalanche has begun, it is too late for the pebbles to vote'.

Kyrt-ryder,
I'd given him credit for level 5-6. He is, after all, one of the great captains of history and had likely been fighting and training for same since he could walk.

Yes, Leonidas lives in a low-magic world, possibly even an E6. He's probably 5th or 6th level with a very balanced but high set of stats. Here's my guess
Strength:16 he's a strong guy but nothing over the top. Strength 16 is what I interpret as being about 3 sigmas from the mean.
Dexterity:14 he's quick but probably not as quick as he is strong
Constitution:14 giving him credit for about 98th percentile
Intelligence:14 (dragging in the portrayal from 'Gates of Fire' here, he's a very smart guy and started laying the preparation for the struggle a long time in advance).
Wisdom:14 Very strong willed
Charisma:16 This is his strongest suit, as he is able to inspire not just the 300 but some of his allies as well to greatness
So if we assume he takes his racial in strength, he costs out to
5+5+5+5+5+10---a 35 point character. This by the way is one of the things I loathe about point buy. I'm way more willing as a gm to let you have stats like this Leonidas than I am an optimized 25 or even 20 point build.

Proley,
It's also a good idea to assume a lot of your extremely high INT extraplanars/dragons/etc have a fair bit of their mental stats loaded out that way---i.e. a very high stat magically augmented. Otherwise its nearly impossible to do them any sort of justice. An organic 30 INT, for instance, boggles the imagination.

Proley,

People have embedded what we call stats into the language. For instance, that guy with a 12 INT is called 'smart'.
The guy with the 14 is called 'very smart'. At 16 he starts getting called brilliant or other superlatives, as a 16 is often the highest stat ordinary people have any direct experience with.

In cyberpunk settings, skill chips/skillwires are pretty common. Essentially they give you the skill but without the scaffolding that someone who learned the skill organically probably would have gotten. So you can use Skill X, but because it's not totally integrated into your mind, you can't use it as a default for Skill Y, which is somewhat related to skill X. Insofar as the extra memory is concerned, imagine having a google glass on steroids. Look at someone and everything you have recorded about that person is right there on your heads-up display,including all things you owe him or vice versa. Also imagine being able to have nearly perfect recall of anything you'd ever read. That's how extra RAM conceptualizes in a magical society (note, a very very small fraction of society has this already in full blown form, with a larger small fraction having 'really good memories').
Somebody with a 20 INT + 6 for an item would act like a 20 intelligence person with 3 chipped skills and radically enhanced memory capabilities (and a somewhat enhanced ability to channel magic if that person is a wizard). An 'organic' 26 intelligence would be a different beast, although identical for most game purposes they'd be roleplayed a lot differently.

My recommendation on +stat items, particularly +mental stat items is to view them a lot like the skill wires/ chipped skills in Shadowrun and similar cyberpunk games.
Note that the int headband doesn't give you skill points, it actually gives you fixed skills at full rank. This supports the 'chipped skills' interpretation. It probably also gives you a pretty good sized external memory 'cache'.

Well, a careful examination of the strength lift chart will show you that the strongest human ever in the real world is around STR 23-24 or so. The equivalency I use in most of my games is that every 2 points in an attribute maps to a standard deviation. So like 2% of the population has an attribute of 14 or better, and an 18 is between the one in 1000 to one in 10000 level.

Nobody is a pure simulationist, narrativist, or gamist. Even simulationist extremists like myself are probably only 80% S, 10% N, 10%G. And we deliberately pick environments and conflicts likely to produce interesting stories after the fact and where actions by small groups or individuals can have historically decisive impact. In addition, there's generally a covenant between the GM and the PLayers---I'll give you all the rope you want. You can choose how and whether to hang yourselves. But for the love of God, please do something interesting. Nobody wants to roleplay in the Era of Good Feelings.

EWHM wrote:

PCs in games I run nearly always have veto authority over any new PCs that want to join their party. Most don't even require a majority for said veto, a fraternity/sorority-style blackball is all it takes.

This doesn't even make sense. I see why an OOC -player- should be able to blackball a brand new -player- from joining your group, but having them in-character blackball another character from joining the group seems lame as hell.

You invite John to your group. John asks if he can play Shiloh, a half-orc barbarian. Yeah, of course you can, you say. He spends a while making his character, and then shows up on game day. You quickly introduce his character to the rest of the party who is in town and work up a reason that he would join the group.
Peter, playing a human figher named Edal, says "No, sorry. Shiloh, you can't join us in our quest for the temple of elemental evil." Peter says that in is character's backstory, orcs killed his parents, so now he hates all things orcish and would NEVER, ever team up with a half-orc. His character (not the actual player behind it though), vetos the character (but not the actual player behind the character) from joining the group.
You: Ok, sorry john. You might as well go home since you're not joining the adventure. Maybe you can spend the next 2 hours building a brand new character from scratch while we all adventure. Perhaps we can work you in for the last 30 minutes IF your character is successfully integrated to the party this time. Best of luck!

EDIT: Maybe I'm just kind of sensitive to this issue since something similar happened to me once in a game. I joined an ongoing group with a Ranger, and I never felt like a full part of the group or that I had an equal vote in decision making. Every time I wanted to put in my opinion or say that maybe we should "go through a different door" (metaphorically) than someone else int he group suggested, they'd literally pull a "Well, [Ranger] is a brand new addition to this group, and we...

If you're joining an established group of adventurers, they're going to be pretty picky. Sensible players generally pre-vet their character choices with the other players before making them. What I'm NOT going to do for you as a GM is contrive something to force the other players to accept your character. Think of a group of adventurers as something akin to a mercenary band like Blackwater on steroids. Think they'd hire you on as a full partner if you didn't look like a good fit?

Would the other PCs voluntarily pick the evil PC as a companion entitled to an equal share of the loot were PC not stamped visibly on her forehead?
If so, no worries. If not, she's committing one of the most serious metagame sins in my holy book. PCs in games I run nearly always have veto authority over any new PCs that want to join their party. Most don't even require a majority for said veto, a fraternity/sorority-style blackball is all it takes.