Ernest Mueller's page

Well, my point is that RAW says "a circle centered on you" and it has a duration, so my inclination is that RAW would mean it does move with you. Looking for a clarification related to a ruling on CW or related circle spells... "I think it should" and "I think it shouldn't" are fine but don't really help me.

If the rogue's imagination is limited to "stand there and trade blows," then their sneak attack deserves to be negated by a feat. All that feat does is prevent SA via flank and only from someone you hit the previous round. I'm fighting ninjas all the time in Jade Regent right now and I'm still not tempted to take it.

A quick look across pregnancy sites indicate there's a 2.5% chance of conception from any one given act. You probably don't want to bother with this unless the player thinks it's an interesting plot, as medieval ship life would result in probably a 50% miscarriage rate and there are further options if she didn't want to stay pregnant.

In my pirate game, our first mate is desperately trying to get his wife pregnant. She's a serpentfolk in disguise, though, so that's hard.

Sex, pregnancy, etc. can be a good part of a mature game, it doesn't have to be "creepy" any more than going to an R-rated movie is.

I like it! Needs weather and lighting factors so that you get the thrill of noticing that ship that's only a mile away as the sun rises. And sighting of non-ship things (icebergs, critters) - even whales under the surface. GET TO WORK! :-)

We use Profession (Siege Engineer) to run the cannon.

Yes, great work guys!

The S&S Player's Guide notes that Control Winds doesn't move with you; its area is "a cylinder." Control Weather is "a circle, centered on you." Does it move with you? Most other things that move with you are called emanations, like antimagic field - the only other spell I can find that uses "circle centered on you" is locate object and neither spell clarifies whether it moves with you or not. The S&S PG is silent on the subject. So does Control Weather move with the caster?

I've been running a long term pirate campaign (Reavers on the Seas of Fate) and the PCs have a ship with 30 named NPCs, some of which are high-ish level and notable from other APs (Lavender Lil, Samaritha Beldusk, Jaren the Jinx, Bojask) and one of which is an ex-PC. Before they had their own ship they worked on one for another captain. It can work out great - they form real relationships with them. If you are a DM who considers relationships and interpersonal interaction to be a "distraction from the action," then it's probably not positive. But our PC captain and his mates spend a lot of time worrying about personnel management. Is Slasher Jim really a serial killer? How do we manage having women aboard a ship (everyone knows that's unlucky...)? How do we keep the crew busy enough that the ex-slaves and captured pirates don't get at each others' throats again? They are especially affected when someone they know and has known for a year dies...

IMC, pirates with a flair for advancement sure as heck try to steal the spotlight from the PCs... It makes them up their game and try to be even more infamous.

Ernest Mueller wrote:

There are bits spread about. I did research for my own "Reavers on the Seas of Fate" pirate campaign, and I summed up relevant bits into my Player's Guide. Hopefully it's helpful.

Ernest, your efforts are very valuable and I'd like to use parts of this for an upcoming running of Skull and Shackles, with proper credit to you of course! Thanks for posting !!

Sure enough man. I encourage anyone to steal liberally from anything I post.

My guide was of course before the recent piracy and Shackles products but it's pretty consistent I've found. Wondering if I should plug in some later S&S chapters into my campaign - the PCs are only level 6 and running two pirate campaigns back to back would probably be lame anyway...

We've always used single weapon flurry, and I don't think it ever occurred to any of us that it could be treated differently. Seems clear enough when they say flurries are from any variety of hands, feet, etc. We'll continue to do that regardless of subsequent "ruling" (I bought a game book from Paizo, I didn't become their thrall).

But the point of a map is to find things on it, not just be pretty art of an archipelago. Like I say, I can understand that on the islands, but the mainland is a big lump of green, the other coastal cities couldn't go on there?

Thanks, great work!

Hey, so what's the deal with the map in Isles? It doesn't have a lot of the locations on it. Like Port Peril is the only one of a bunch of listed coastland locales that is even on the map.

I can understand minor locations not being on the little islands on the map, but what looks to be "capitals only" on the map makes it of little use. Did those get left off accidentally (in which case a pdf update would be nice)?

I was surprised to see that Nick would be a guest at Paizocon for the Runelords anniversary.

Ha, he'd better bring his anti-tomato aura. Or finished print copies of RC to sell.

In the Pathfinder pirate campaign I'm running, it's core only, plus specific other stuff I've added from Paizo and 3rd parties (Adamant/Sinister). APG stuff considered on request.

In our Jade Regent game, it's Core + APG only with samurai/ninja from UC. We're not real big fans of the power and complexity creep of the Ultimates.

I do like this book's Firearms rules better than those in UC, things feel more authentic.

Agreed on that. The UC gun rules are deliberately watered down to fit the Gunslinger - the Freeport guns are way better for a pirate "gun every once in a while" kind of feel (as opposed to "multiple shots a round, because this is the Wild West").

Whatever's in there, just please review the rules more carefully. I was sorely disappointed in Adventurer's Armory, and many of the most crucial FAQ's from that book have never been addressed (especially all the monk/unarmed stuff). Whatever goes in here, please give it more of a game mechanics pass-over than previous.

I think this is a great product line idea and would certainly get one for any AP I run! The value to me would be way higher than the map packs. My group already self-manufactures paper standups for our PC and uses generic ones from other manufacturers, because getting say "a dozen pirate minis" is otherwise a ridiculously expensive and difficult undertaking.

In fact I'll probably get these and augment with bunches of mook pawns - I think it wouldn't cannibalize your sales to sell DIY paper pawn kits (like the LoF ones) as PDF alongside these. I buy minis, pawns, and DIY pawns and use all of them. But it sounds like you're comfortable with that already since you're doing pawns and minis.

They don't have to cover the same things from the AP - if there was a DIY paper pawn kit PDF - or maybe even something more editable - with e.g. all the people/art from the NPC guide, GMG, other sources, so I could for example print out a page full of misc pirate looking folks using the great Paizo art... Now that would be a great product.

One question on the bases, we can get them separately and not just with the Bestiary kit I'm hoping? Or they're probably compatible with the similar bases other folks sell?

I plan on reading all of these summaries eventually, but which ones are the Stormwrack encounters in so we can look them up more quickly?

Sure. Season One, Session Three is the Sable Drake (they meet some of the goblins in the previous session, and the captain comes back later in Riddleport), combined with Water Stop from En Route II. Season Two, Session Thirteen and Fourteen is Shatterhull Island.

Here's what I've been using over the last 2 years for my pirate campaign.

1. Everything Freeport! Biobeast, you may be interested in knowing that they published stats for Buccaneers of Freeport and Cults of Freeport as Web enhancements. See here. Buccaneers and the Pirate's Guide to Freeport and the Pathfinder Freeport Companion are great, but so are the Death in Freeport and other adventures and all the other books, there are many. Tales of, Denizens of, Creatures of, Treasures of...

2. Ice Titan, you're not alone on Stormwrack. I use it for a bunch of sailing and weather rules and have used several encounters - Shatterhull Island and the Sable Drake. You can see how those went in our session summaries.

3. Sinister Adventures' "Indulgences" are good for encounters and rules, not sure if you can buy them any more. Razor Coast is clearly never coming out, more's the pity - syncing that up with S&S would be beautiful.

4. I looked at a *lot* of ship and sailing rules. I hate the "silly fantasy" kinds (gnomish paddlewheelers!). I liked two 3e bopoks from Living Imagination, Broadsides! Naval Adventure and Pirates!.

5. For NPCs (not statted for D&D), also "The Pirate Nations" for 7th Sea.

6. There's a whole game with loads of stuff for it (15 adventures!) called Pirates. Set on Earth but mineable for plots and stuff.

7. I used some of Adamant Adventures' Tome of Secrets (swashbuckler class, etc.) for my pirate game.

8. I like my old Citybook II: Port O'Call From Flying Buffalo for seaside town locations, NPCs, and some ships.

9. I like Atlas Games' En Route II: By Land or by Sea for encounters and adventures.

10. Zak's Wavecrawl Kit and associated "Today at Sea" random generator on Abulafia.

11. Paizo's From Shore to Sea module and its sister product Sunken Civilizations from Open Design.

12. Black Powder Weaponry from LPJ Design, to replace the lame guns in the APG.

Fourth Session (13 page pdf) – We hit Brinewall Castle and it’s full of dire corbies. As if those aren’t bad enough, then there’s mutant ogrekin and a hellclown! The hellclown that killed V’lk’s family! Run away! Run away! [blog post]

To add on to a more rail-ey AP, consider Zak from D&Dw/PS's Wavecrawl Kit, he links to some other saltbox setups too. I use it in my pirate campaign which I balance between plot and sandbox.

In the 3.5e Stormwrack supplement, there's an encounter with the Sable Drake, a goblin pirate ship (the captain is actually a wererat, hence them not just running aground all the time). I used it in my game but had to weird it up a little bit to reflect the more disorganized nature of Golarion's goblins, but they have fully statted up officers and stuff if it'd be helpful.

In case this helps anyone, I've been running a pirate game for years and here's my rules and player's guide. Yes to guns and cannon, core only (APG by request, no ultimates) plus the Swashbuckler and Shaman classes from Adamant's Tome of Secrets and dueling stuff from Art of the Duel by Sinister Adventures. I created a bunch of fitting campaign traits detailed in the player's guide linked off that site and did a "player's guide to piracy" that collates and expands on the various sea/trade route/port info available.

Not technically S&S, but I've been running a Pathfinder piracy game in Golarion for a while and my PCs are scouting the Sallow Coast for towns to raid. I figured it would be a good resource for all and sundry to list some good resources for random towns to use in this circumstance!

I'm lazy, so I thought I'd take advantage of the RPG tendency to always put a fully detailed village in half the extant adventures. What are some good premade towns (and what are they from) that I or others could use as a detailed source for our PCs to hit when they are feeling reaverlicious all of a sudden? Doesn't have to be from a PF product, just anything people are likely to have at hand (popular 3/3.5e modules lines, whatever).

My specific need is for one that 6th-level PCs and a crew full of L2 pirates can hit, but feel free and list more with likely magnitude ("Here's a coastal city described in LC2 Loons of the Coast, but you'd want to have leve l 10 PCs and at least 5 ships to do it.")

Previously they raided a town that was in a 3.5e module ("Mansions of Shadow" by Green Ronin) and having a fully detailed town made it a lot of fun for them (let's steal that colorful inn sign!).

Third Session (9 page pdf) – We travel across Varisia and see the sights, until we reach Brinewall. Ameiko falls mysteriously ill and we go recon the town, which is mostly intact but abandoned. What caused its sudden abandonment? We mean to find out. [blog post]

Been a while. Stopped posting since no one ever said anything. We've been going strong since, though, playing through From Shore To Sea among others! Come check out the best session summaries you'll ever read. I mash up Riddleport with Freeport in some rollicking pirate fun that you'll want to study to prepare for Skull and Shackles!

Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Two

Eleventh Session (13 page pdf) – “Teeth of Araska” – A Shackles pirate ship led by the infamous Captain Grudge decides the PCs look like tasty prey. Will they be victims or victors? [blog post]

Twelfth Session (12 page pdf) – “Water Stop 2″ – In our first sequel, the PCs need crew for their new ship, and remember the island of freed slaves from Water Stop (Season One, Third Session). They head there to recruit! Naturally, it’s not that easy. [blog post]

Thirteenth Session (16 page pdf) – “Shatterhull Island” – The PCs follow a treasure map to the wreck of the Sandspider. But who will plunder who’s booty? Only time will tell… [blog post]

Fourteenth Session (11 page pdf) – “Return to Riddleport” – Extracting the Teeth of Araska from its precarious harbor at Shatterhull Island is difficult, and becomes more difficult when some merrow show up to the party. [blog post]

Fifteenth Session (13 page pdf) – “Shadows Over Riddleport” – The PCs get back to Riddleport at long last with their new ship and spoils, but it’s not all booze and broads – the phantoms from the Devil’s Elbow are here too! [blog post]

Sixteenth Session (14 page pdf) – “The Cypher Lodge” – Looks like the phantoms have taken over the Cypher Lodge, and the PCs have to throw down with Thorgrim and some old friends. [blog post]

Seventeenth Session (15 page pdf) – “Press Gang” – As usual, a little bit of time in port results in the PCs really tearing it up. A whole long session, and no real fights, but it’s not slow, with two beatings, several sexual escapades, organized crime activity, shopping, drinking, jail time… [blog post]

Eighteenth Session (12 page pdf) – “The Fishwife’s Lament” – The motley crew of the Teeth of Araska heads to sea, and immediately decides that they are on a search and destroy mission for every random encounter ever! And then, they meet the dreaded fishwife. [blog post]

Nineteenth Session (27 page pdf) – “A Pirate’s Life For Me” – More time at sea; the crew gets into the pirate spirit and wavecrawls the hell out of the region. Vikings! Whales! Dead Vikings! Dead whales! Mass hysteria! [blog post]

Twentieth Session (18 page pdf) – “From Shore To Sea” – The crew drops into the village of Blackcove to check in on their old buddy Jaren the Jinx. Apparently his jinxiness has gone nuclear as tentacle horror erupts. [blog post]

Twenty-First Session (18 page pdf) – “Monster Island” – Their ship missing in action, the crew heads to the nearby island of Nal-Kashel, which bears Azlanti ruins of the “demented World of Warcraft” design school. Then the mutation comes. [blog post]

Twenty-Second Session (19 page pdf) – “Monster Island, Part 2″ – It goes from bad to worse on the ruined Azlanti islands; the number of living pirates is going down while the mutations and insanities of the survivors increase. And then a huge spiderlike monstrosity appears standing right next to you. [blog post]

Second Session (13 page pdf) – We unearth a lot of beached ships in the swamp, and then best a samurai skeleton warrior! We put a caravan together to go check out the lost Kaijitsu secrets in Brinewall. [blog post]

First Session (14 page pdf) – We meet our intrepid crew of adventurers, and are immediately dispatched to the swamp to fight goblins. Oh, joy. We run right into the Licktoad Goblin village and carnage erupts. [blog post]

My gaming group in Austin is going through Jade Regent currently. We write up extensive session summaries for each session - like 10+ page PDFs full of adventure and hilarity. Give them a try, you'll never go back to boring summaries again!

Here are our doughty PCs (character sheets posted on our blog):

• Yoshihiro Kaijitsu, the reckless Tian archer-knight (Ernest) - a samurai
  
• Harwynian Fallingleaf, the elegant elven transmuter (Bruce) - a wizard
  
• Jacob Frostfang, the ale-loving Kellid battle mage (Matt) - a sorcerer
  
• V’lk, the feral mute elf (Chris) - a rogue/oracle
  
• Gobo Samarillian, the blind gnomish fortuneteller (Patrick) - an oracle
  
• Bjorn the Unlucky, the hapless Ulfen woodsman (Tim) - a spirit ranger
  

Yes, we make sure and put the blind guy and the mute guy in a fire-team together as much as possible.

I agree. I'd like to read it, but as it is all interspersed with the blog, I end up reading neither the fiction nor the real blog posts.

I loved 2e as well. I liked the core mechanics changes in 3e but in retrospect it has grown way too large. 2e had all kinda of wonky stuff, but we never played it RAW, we just elided over the little crufty parts. It was probably the best balance of rules weight of all the editions - I'd like to see Pathfinder cut back to that level - improved, but not so complex.

I think feats could be saved if you got rid of the ones that just de facto limit everyone else from trying cool stuff.

Our PC group referred to Sial and his crew as "The Boner Squad" in honor of his tower of bone, and our interaction with him was mainly limited to daily queries of "So, are you betraying us now? How about now?"

Boy, I was wondering; I was a patron and haven't heard anything about it for more than six months...

I loved playing in CoCT but chapters 4 and 5, especially History of Ashes, were wearying. It just seemed like too many artificial hoops to jump through. At the time I described it as:

"To find out about the relics in the Queen’s crown, you need Guy #1 to tell you, but to do that you need to perform Heroic Task 1, but to do that you need Guy #2, but to do that you need to perform Heroic Task 2, but for that you need Guy #3, but for that you need to perform Heroic Task 3."

We seriously considered alternate means of persuasion on Guy #1, if you know what I mean.

If I were to run CoCT today I would rewrite that entire chapter to be less contrived and chain-questy. For an AP that has otherwise been pretty focused and, though having a strong plot, allowing the PCs a lot of latitude in how to scurry around Korvosa and get stuff done, it was weak - even omitting the "leave the place you've spent 3 chapters investing in" and all that.

And Scarwall... Also a little contrived. My "video game senses" kicked in the second I saw the main boss and I realized what had to be done.

Still my favorite AP, but really that's on the back of 1-3 and 6. We did enjoy making fun of the Boner Squad in 4-5 though.

It doesn't have to slavishly use all the PF mechanics - but if it doesn't generally use the PF classes, and races, and iconic kinds of spells and whatnot, it'll be kind of pointless. If my character has different stats from the "big six," or there's complex ability trees not familiar-feeling to the game, it makes me a lot less interested.

With a fantasy gaming world like this, a lot of things about the world are kinda outgrowths of the game system. All I'm saying is that from an in game perspective, the MMO Golarion should look and act like the RPG Golarion, which prescribes a certain amount - but certainly not all that much of the details - mechanical similarity.

FAQs aren't law. And certainly aren't something that you can use in a courtroom. What you can use is the license, and it is unclear on the matter.

And again, marking out OGC in a computer game would be *horribly* messy. Especially in a MMO, where most of the data is server-side. How do you designate that as open content?

Remember, like I wrote earlier, a lawsuit can kill you before even you will have a chance to present your case. Even doubly so with a MMO, because a temporary injunction that says "stop running your game until the court rules on the matter" is a death sentence.

Although I appreciate your ardor to not have the MMO use the Pathfinder rules,

1. You most certainly could use the clarifications that Wizards publishes on their own site about what the OGL means in court. About 1/100 of what's brought up in a civil trial is black-letter law.

2. It's actually fairly easy. It's complicated if you have *new* OGC in your game. But if you're using existing, just link to the SRD and say "this!".

But let me not interrupt the "it's impossible!" riff...

Uleaum wrote:

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

The OGL does not extend to electronic entertainment. Pathfinder is based on the OGL. thus...

OGL does not prohibit use for video games.

It does not prohibit and it does not explicitly allow. "Translation into other computer languages" is a horribly unclear term. ...

Actually, it's pretty cut and dried.

Per the OGL FAQ:

Q: I want to distribute computer software using the OGL. Is that possible?

A: Yes, it's certainly possible. The most significant thing that will impact your effort is that you have to give all the recipients the right to extract and use any Open Game Content you've included in your application, and you have to clearly identify what part of the software is Open Game Content.

One way is to design your application so that all the Open Game Content resides in files that are human-readable (that is, in a format that can be opened and understood by a reasonable person). Another is to have all the data used by the program viewable somehow while the program runs.

Distributing the source code not an acceptable method of compliance. First off, most programming languages are not easy to understand if the user hasn't studied the language. Second, the source code is a separate entity from the executable file. The user must have access to the actual Open Content used.

See the Software FAQ for more information.

And that OGL software FAQ says in part:

Q: So I could make a game?

A: Sure. Remember though, you cannot use any Product Identity with the OGL or claim compatibility with anything. So you can't say your game is a d20 System game or uses D&D rules or call it Elminster's Undermountain Crawl.

IANAL but I can read...

My group is getting set to head out a'caravanning, any conclusions on best practices for rules mods?

I'd like to see:

1. Vikings headed across the sea, stopping in Azlant, ending up in Arcadia, making use of cool Native American style mythology there. Should end with everyone dying a glorious death.

2. A military campaign, maybe in the Worldwound - a new crusade out of Mendev. Probably ends up in a bit of planar travel. Get to highlight the Kellids too.

3. A noir-y, mostly urban campaign in Geb and Nex. Cold war espionage and an opportunity to show off some of the more exotic parts of the world.

Flag/headshot art reuse is fine.

I like three kinds of art.

1. Art which illustrates something otherwise hard to picture exactly - like a country's flag.

2. Art which I'd use as a player handout or NPC illustration. The "straight up" NPCs illustrations so common in Paizo works are great.

3. Art depicting a setting or similar that the PCs will interact with a lot. The pics of Riddleport from afar are great; the one of the prow of the Teeth of Araska was helpful (as my PCs took the ship, though I wish it had shown more of the ship).

Art that's "action shots" and whatnot are not useful to me. I don't mind that on the cover, but then that's about it.

So like in Faiths of Corruption, let's go through the utility of the art.
Cover action shot - great.
Deity symbols - fine (though they seem a little more detailed than the average wooden/silver holy symbol; I'd almost like to see the more common stylized version).
Shot of the Boner Squad on p.2 - Hmmm. This is the kind of art that it's hard for me to use as a player handout, though I might chop it up into 3 and I like seeing the bone tower.
Most of the rest of the art is serviceable holy symbols and NPCs suitable for use on standups.
I feel like it could have used more art especially on p 16-21 to depict the various deities (and what is that generic diabolism icon? For a generic diabolist? wtf?)
I don't know how I'd every use the "Kyra being transformed" art, and some of the latter NPCs could use a caption; "Paladin of Rovagug."

Let's do Humans of Golarion too.
Cover action shot - great.
Reused bikini human - not helpful; well, maybe I can use it as a npc standup for a hooker or something.
Action shot on p.2 - that's the kind of art that I just can't use for anything. No context where I'd show it to a player. It has humans in it, but otherwise doesn't demonstrate anything important from the book.
Fencer chick - uyseful as standup
Map on p. 7 - very helpful in illustrating a complex concept! Could use a little Tufte-ification to reflect time in the lines perhaps.
Race headshots - good, they illustrate what people look like; more would be better to see how typical/atypical they are (do ALL taldans look like big ol' ponces, or just him?).
Weapons - weapons always need pics. It would be better to have B&W line art rather than nothing.
And more solo NPCs, great, add 'em to my NPC rosters and clip their faces for Hero Lab.

So in general good, actionable, could be more. It's not the high quality art of the main lines but that's OK, gotta save $$ somewhere, and Reynolds' gotta sleep.

I have to say, the companions don't speak to me that much. I get them, I leaf through them, then that's about it. Sometimes my players ask to borrow one relevant to them but I often find they didn't read it afterwards.

To me, they just don't give you much good actionable player information. The Cheliax book was a good example. It was mainly stuff you already knew if you had read any other relevant materials, and didn't really give much good specific grist to players for their PCs. It tended to say over and over again in many different ways "You like slavery!" and "Asmodeus, at least kinda!" But in terms of "I want to make a character who has more Chelaxian about him that those 2-3 major traits," or even "as a GM I want to run an adventure set in Cheliax, what makes things look/feel different from everywhere else?" (again, besides Asmodeus and slaves). Perform this exercise - go through a PC and cross out every sentence that does not add something new (is a restatement of something already said, or is blazingly obvious and doesn't need to be said) or isn't really useful to a player and see what you have left. Much of that is really more GM-focused than PC-focused.

They are also not written in an engaging tone, by and large. I would think the point of a 32 pg players guide is to be extremely gripping; to fire people's imagination with ideas and images and not just be a fake textbook. More Vornheim and less Britannica. Maybe use some fiction; I got a lot more gameable fluff out of 32 pages of Prince of Wolves setting-wise than the 32-page Cheliax book despite it being "for reference".

The "You" stuff is OK but is often being used to seemingly command the player, which is a problem. An example from Faiths of Corruption - "As a Kuthite, you want only to increase the suffering in
the world, starting with yourself. Your sense of honor is
atrophied and alien, though you protect your toys from
others, and will extract revenge if anyone harms those you
consider yours. You work to establish new outposts in taste
and feeling,..." Well, maybe "I" don't, maybe "I" vary from whatever this platonic Kuthite you're describing is. It comes across as grating in those cases, not because of its informality but because of its overbearing prescriptiveness.

How does OGL and OGC work for something like Detect Magic?

Say I want to build a game world to play in and decide to move Detect Magic back to first level. I thought I read somewhere that changing rules from the OGC of Pathfinder would violate the use of the Pathfinder logo. Maybe I was mistaken, but could someone clear up the confusion for me?

Also, how does offering a product with a rule change for free be different from charging people for the product in regards to publishing rights?

1. You can change what you want under the OGL; you may be thinking of the new 4e GSL which does not allow changing things and using the same name for them.

2. As far as the OGL goes there is no difference between free and charging; Paris' note to that effect is incorrect.

It generally takes us about three six-hour sessions per AP chapter. You can visit the links for full chapter by chapter breakdowns and session summaries, but we did Rise of the Runelords in 26 sessions and Curse of the Crimson Throne in only 18. RotR was 3.5 and using normal XP rules; CotCT was Pathfinder Beta and using "level as we need to", so we were a) more bad ass and b) not having to scrape dumpsters for XP. Plus we were mostly only 3 PCs for CoCT and 5 for RotR, which has an effect. Those are both for just straight playing through an AP; I have been running one campaign where it took like 40 sessions to get through the first two chapters of Second Darkness, but with about a dozen or so other adventures added in.

You'll basically get mounted archery for free as a samurai, which is the big one for you. I wouldn't worry too much about mounted feats. Just keep...

Which is fine, but my mount gets a lot of feats, I want to make sure I'm making use of a major part of my class - without the horse, I may as well be a fighter and get more feats. I'm confused as to who takes what feat- trample would be me, but IO and GO and CT is the mount the way I read it...

I think you should give some thought to taking improved precise shot at 11th level. If you are familiar with the cover rules, archers have -4 to hit (which is negated by improved precise shot) whenever their target has cover.

Yeah, maybe. I think I'll wait and see how much that comes up in play before committing. If I am in melee a lot, point blank master, if I'm having trouble hitting folks due to cover, IPS. This GM hasn't thrown a lot of cover at us (and tends to disregard it when we take it) so i t may not come up.

Thus, a 4th level Samurai can take Weapon Specialization without multiclassing.

That's how I'm interpreting it and Hero Lab agrees with me, so it's true for our game.

Well, got my samurai archer nailed down for Jade Regent, thought I'd ask for review and I have two specific questions. Here he is - switch hittery, but I want to focus more and more on archery as I level. With PA/DA/RS enabled since I plan to always use 'em! No clever gearing, as I'll be at the mercy of the AP there.

1. What's the best order to take the archery feats in? I know what I want eventually, but I'm a bit feat started, is it more important to get in there with the deadly aim fast, or the rapid shot/multishot thing first, or weapon focus/weapon spec first... Also, I fretted over starting with 17 str/16 dex or 18 str/15 dex.

For the feats I was thinking as an order maybe power attack, pbs, rapid shot, deadly aim, weapon focus, weapon spec, multishot, point blank master, greater weapon focus, greater weapon spec.

2. My horse. Mounted feats are so confusing... So if the horse takes improved overrun and greater overrun and charge through, then I can run over some poor bastard on the way to my real target, have the horse kick him, and do an AoO of my own on him, right, without me needing any mounted feats? I was looking at that, and even mounted combat doesn't seem to great because his AC will be above my Ride most of the time.

Got my GM's permission to go samurai. Comments on this samurai archer build? And question - challenge only works on melee damage not missile right? Hero Lab applies it to both, which would be great but unless I'm missing something that's a bug...

On the bow, with manyshot/rapid shot/deadly aim activated, he's +12(x2)/+12/+7/+2 for 1d8+14, and with power attack on is +12/+7/+2 for 1d10+17 with the glaive. Again, not bothering with magic item tricks here; items would add on top of course.