Makhno's page

sigh

Let's not fight.

While there is something to what you say, Makhno, it's a bit more complicated. A lot of Pathfinder issues, such as multiclassing, are inherited from 3e, and not of Paizo design. Fixing them would likely require significant revisions to the system, and given Paizo's long-standing commitment to backwards compatibility, that's not likely to happen.

Well, this is true to an extent, but multiclassing is objectively stronger in 3.5 than it is in Pathfinder. It's not as if this is an accident; Jason Bulmahn has commented more than once that he doesn't think multiclassing should even exist (nor prestige classes, either), and that "archetypes as multiclassing" is deliberate. I was at a panel at GenCon at one point where he and Sean K Reynolds talked about this at some length, in fact.

(By the way, please do not take the above as some sort of claim in the vein of "See, it really is an evil plot!!!". As I said, there may be all sorts of game design reasons for this sort of approach.)

It's hard to deny that combining classes in arbitrary ways was quite commonplace in 3.5, and isn't in Pathfinder. (And 3.5 isn't a paragon of multiclassing systems either, by the way! Far from it. Wizards of the Coast, after all, also had financial incentives...) So, in fact, the weakness of multiclassing, and the fact that there is not a flexible and robust way to mix-and-match classes in Pathfinder is far from being a legacy of 3rd edition; rather, it's an innovation of Pathfinder (and a deliberate one, as I mention above).

In addition, people designing their own content is still very much part of the system - the ARG and ACG each contain sections discussing how to do just that. People can buy the books if they want a professionally-designed version. Or just use the PRD.

The idea that "you have to buy the book to do what you want" is undermined somewhat by the existence of the various SRDs, in fact. ^_^

Well, this is certainly true. People do buy the books, though, don't they? The SRDs are a great thing, but let's be fair: they're no substitute for a good PDF or a physical book or, especially, the combo of those two things. (And this is fine! Why shouldn't Paizo make money off the content they create?)

And so there are patterns to which books sell better and which sell worse. Empirically, people who want to use new content will buy the books. Many GMs in fact allow content only from books that either they or their players physically own (a sensible policy, imo). So what I said does, after all, still hold, SRDs notwithstanding...

Makhno wrote:

In other words: you don't actually have any support for your claim. Ok, cool. That's basically what I expected. (Throwing up your hands and saying "ugh, it's ***obvious***!!!", and "it's totally seriously an unwritten rule, for real, trust me" is tantamount to admitting that nowhere in the text does it say anything like what you claimed.)

For what it's worth, I have indeed read the book. I've read it quite a few times. (3.5, too, and other versions, and other games — useful for comparison and context.) And I've read the comments of the game's developers, here and elsewhere. And the impression I got — and the way I've always played the game, and the way that it very much seems is the way that the devs themselves play the game — is diametrically opposed to what you describe. So I was curious just where you got this strange notion of yours (which does indeed seem to be popular around here, little as that does to make it any less wrong).

The idea is popular among both the community and developers of this game.

That puts the burden of proof upon you. Please, find me something from a DEVELOPER (James Jacobs is not a developer) that contradicts me. Pay special attention to posts from Sean K Reynolds, Jason Buhlman, and Mark Seifter, since the first and last were/are very active on the boards, and the middle is the lead developer.

I do not have the time to hold you by your little hands and trawl through old forum posts for you, or teach you reading comprehension. If you're so curious, educate yourself.

You're not going to find in almost any game a clear piece of text that says "And here's the design principles we're working under" any more than when reading a novel you're going to find a line that says "This is an allegory to help my political agenda" even when both are pretty damn obvious on reading them if either is present.

If you make a positive claim about how the game is, the burden of proof is on you. "The idea is popular around here" is nothing. You say many people play Pathfinder as a restrictive-ruleset game; fair enough; I'm sure they do indeed. But the claim that it just is that sort of game, somehow, by default, or by dint of the actual rules — that is a claim that needs defending, which is why I challenged it (and also because I simply disagree with it). (And PossibleCabbage makes some excellent points, in his posts, about why it really doesn't make sense for Pathfinder to be a restrictive-ruleset kind of game.)

However, and although you've been nothing but rude to me, I think it's only reasonable for me to at least try to fulfill your request. The designers' posting history is long, so this is by no means exhaustive — just some things that jump out at me as I peruse the archives.

{Does having a blanket give you a bonus to Survival checks?}

No, it's just nice to have if you want to sleep. Not everything in the game has to have rules text (though "has straps so it can be rolled up and tied" may be useful if for some reason you need to steal a strap, or justify how you're carrying it). Remember, we got a lot of flak for the CR not saying how much a backpack can hold (because it's a backpack), and this book added more should-be-obvious descriptions to common gear that didn't have descriptions in the CR.

{Do I need an animal harness to use Handle Animal?}

No. Like the blanket, knowing that your animal has a harness may come in handy at some point in the game, but the GM is not a robot and the books shouldn't try to explain every single possibility for every single item in the game. "Your guard dog has fallen into the icy river, how are you getting him out?" "He has a harness! Do I get a bonus for that?" "Sure, GM's best friend rule, I'll give you a +2 on your roll!"

{Does [item] give a bonus to [something] or [have a specific game effect]?}

Much of the equipment in this book is based on real Earth equipment. If you could use it for that purpose on Earth, you should be able to use it for that purpose in the game. AA is not the place to codify how long a drill lasts before it wears out, or what temperature a firework burns at, or the chances of breaking a shovel on hard gravel, or how much damage a bundle of burning rice paper causes. The item works as expected for its intended purpose; if the players or the GM are getting too bogged down in round-by-round analysis of hp, hardness, break DCs, and fatigue, they need to take a step back, hand-wave the specifics because it doesn't matter for the adventure, and let the PCs get back on track doing some adventuring.

(From http://paizo.com/products/btpy8dmf/discuss&page=8?Pathfinder-Player-Com panion-Adventurers-Armory#363. Bolded emphasis is mine.)

I don't think the spell needs that, that sounds like a no-brainer property of ice, falling under the category of "some energy types might be particularly effective against certain objects" rule (Core Rulebook page 173). The wall of ice spell mentioning that is just the rulebook being redundant (which is fine for a core rulebook where you want to reiterate rules, but shouldn't be held as a precedent that every later rule supplement spells out obvious and redundant things).

(from http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2m8o8&page=7?Ultimate-Magic-Errata#318)

You can't grapple a gaseous creature, that's obvious and we shouldn't need to state that in the rules. If a gaseous creature can slip through any crack because it's gaseous, it can easily slip through the gaps between your fingers or arms.

(from http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kc70?Grappling-VS-Gaseous-Form#32)

I think the pattern is fairly clear. Do you disagree? I suppose I can dig up more posts, if need be. You did say "find me SOMETHING", though, and this is clearly something.

Yeppers. This is a permissive ruleset. That means anything you are said to be able to do, you can do. Anything you do not have a specific reference for doing is not within the rules, and by default disallowed.

Your GM can change this, but that will obviously vary wildly form person to person.

First of all, that sort of rule set is "restrictive", not "permissive" — i.e. "everything is forbidden, except that which is is permitted". ("Permissive" would be "everything is permitted, except that which is forbidden".)

But more importantly: can you cite where in the rules it is stated that only those things are permitted which have specific rules defining them?

I have a nervous breakdown from being unable to pare the list down to just three. I fail to deliver any work. Paizo fires me. :(

Darn, I thought this thread was going to be about the titular classic adventure module. I am disappointed :(

(It's an excellent adventure, by the way. I converted it to Pathfinder more or less on the fly and ran it for my friends a while ago — it was a blast!)

I've got an idea for one for my homebrew campaign, but I have no idea where to start. Any suggestions welcome!

There is a psionic lich template in Bruce Cordell's excellent adventure module If Thoughts Could Kill. It's for 3.5, but it shouldn't be hard to adapt it for Pathfinder and Dreamscarred Press's psionics rules.

The Bloodrager is strong because he always eats his Cheerios with Protein.

Um, guys, the point is not that you use rope trick to regain spells more than once a day. That's crazy; no one is suggesting that (except you two, apparently), it's never been considered legal, and it's certainly not the source of rope trick's brokenness.

The reason the spell is broken is because you regain spells, go out and nova things for 15 minutes, and then spend the rest of the day just hanging out. And then when it comes time to sleep, or if anything threatening comes your way, you climb into the rope trick and sleep / relax in there.

To go back to my previous Ravenloft example, one of the things that are supposed to make that adventure scary is that spending the night in the castle is anywhere from spooky to terrifying; all manner of things roam the halls of Ravenloft at night, and they will come upon you while you sleep, quietly subdue whoever's on watch, and feast on your delicious blood / life energy / etc.

But if you've got rope trick, then all of that is moot. Anytime you feel like not exploring anymore, you just plop yourself down wherever you are and hang out, and when it's time to sleep, you all climb into the extradimensional space and sleep soundly, knowing that you're immune to anything and everything that might walk by. Heck, you can prepare three rope tricks (or make some scrolls) and have 24 hours of coverage at level 8! You are exposed to the dangers of the scary world of adventuring for exactly as many minutes in a day as you choose to be, and not one second more.

This whole business with regaining spells twice a day or what have you is one colossal red herring.

In the campaign I run, one of the players created this item:

Wand Bandolier/Staff Holster

Originally engineered by Cherkess battle sorcerers, a Wand Bandolier/Staff Holster is a leather and cloth construction designed to make storing and retrieving wands/staves as simple as using a weapon sheath or sling. Each Wand Bandolier/Staff Holster has space for 10 wands/staves. Drawing or sheathing a wand/staff is a move action, just as it is for a weapon. One can wear two such bandolier/holsters, slung both ways across the chest.

Market Price: 1,000 gp.

And its magical version:

Wand Bandolier/Staff Holster of Swift Retrieval

Designed by the Wizard Nikolai of the Spellkeepers of Odin, this appears to be a normal bandolier/holster, but it is enchanted with subtle magic similar to an efficient quiver. When drawing a particular wand/staff, it will seem to spring into the wielder's hands, taking but a free action. Similarly, sheathing a wand/staff takes only a free action.

Moderate Conjuration; CL 9th; Craft Wondrous Item, secret chest; Price 6,000 gp.

It's not a stretch to make it work with rods also. You might convince your DM to let you have such a thing.

How to make a campaign imaginative? Find the most rule-crunchy element in your game (that's usually the map) and try eliminating it.

Doing that will probably force the players to stop making boring moves like:
"I move oveeeerrr.... Here, and hit the ork with a sword with a standard action, oh and I use power attack."
And turn them into moves like:
"I sweep around the battlefield and smash the orks face with everything I've got!"

But that's not actually any more imaginative. That's just as plain-vanilla as the second thing, except less specific (which for some reason is supposed to be better?). Your character is still taking the exact same action.

I've seen players who take the latter approach. The problem is that if you actually want to determine the results of the character's actions, using the game rules, you have to then translate the player's flowery description into actual game-mechanical terms. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth:

Player: I do <elaborate, idiosyncratic description of action>!
DM: ... uh... so... what does that actually... mean.
Player, sighing: I cast spell so-and-so on targets this-and-such.
DM: <now knowing what's going on, rolls some dice> Ok, the results are blah.

I guess the "cinematic", flowery-description style is great if you don't actually want to use the game rules to determine what the results of actions are. But then, why are you playing Pathfinder?

It's easy to go more narratitive and cinematic. You just have to let the players know you will be play loose and fast with the rules system. Sometimes using rules or just going with the flow.

Running the game in this way though can drive a rules lawyer insane. Game systems were there are no rules for situation X leave the rules lawyer with nothing to argue. In pathfinder if you narrate through something that has a rule it makes the rules lawyer squirm. Thing is it's often not that important to roll for everything. As well you can narrate based on the players skills. No need for chance if you can take 10 and 20 to accomplish even when take 10 or 20 technically would be allowed.

It's not just a rules lawyer that's driven mad by playing loose and fast with the rules and being "cinematic" and "narrative" — it's any player who likes knowing how the world works.

If the DM just narrates things, ignoring the rules, the game mechanics, etc., then the events in the game are not predictable. It's just — whatever the DM happens to decide. In other words: if I attempt/perform action X, what happens? Pathfinder gives you the answer. That answer may be of the form "you succeed with X probability, fail with 1-X probability", but it's an answer which you can know.

With a "cinematic", "narrative" game — who knows what will happen! Maybe the DM happened to see a certain motive poster and that got his thoughts going in a certain direction. Maybe he ate a bad pizza and is not inclined to narrate in your favor. Who knows? Anything could affect his narration! You have no way to predict what will happen when your characters do things. Reality dissolves into chaos.

Don't get me wrong, if you like playing narrative/cinematic, that's cool. I'm not here to tell you it's badwrongfun (although, to be sure, Pathfinder's probably not the ideal system for it). I just object to the idea that it's only those pesky, stolid rules lawyers who could possibly ever object.

As a DM, I love it when my PCs (evil) have big plans and make efforts to bring those plans to fruition.

Establishing kickass party bases is a good one. The party in my game have several: one is a city-sized iron cube floating in the void of Acheron; another's a tremendous, legendary airship that can fly between planes of existence...

One of the PCs had, as a long-term goal, becoming the new god of magic (to take the place of Odin, who was killed during Ragnarok). Goal: achieved. (Creative modification of the Deities & Demigods divine rank rules allow the campaign to continue without horrible imbalance.)

Crafting custom magic items and researching unique spells is almost too trivial to mention, but there's certainly lots of that.

I think one of the keys to allowing this sort of thing is to turn it into plot. The player has some ambitious goal in mind? Great! Rather than going "oh man, if I let them do that, it'll totally derail the plot", say instead "Hey, thanks! Free plot!" and turn the accomplishment of the goal into a quest, or series of quests. Of course you'll want to intertwine it into adventures that interest the other players, so it doesn't feel like a one-man show.

Fighter is the obvious battle tank; Cleric is your heal-bot; Wizard is your battlefield controller; and Rogue is your ambusher...

I would have to say a solid fifth character would be a ranged Ranger

If the cleric is a heal-bot then you're doing it completely wrong. The fifth PC should thus be another cleric, but a good one this time, to show the first cleric how to play his class.

A second cleric.

But make it a different cleric build. Different domains, different focus (first one's a support cleric? make the second an archer cleric, etc.).

But yeah, more cleric = more better.

Speaking as a usually-DM, sometimes-player:

Seems like unnecessary gotcha-ism on your part, Ravingdork. You did nothing wrong rules-wise, but I wouldn't call it best DM practice.

As a DM, in such a situation, I point out the possibility of failure to the player, like: "Hey, you know that has a chance of failure, right?", and in response get either a "Ah damn, forgot about that, thanks" or a "Still going ahead with it!".

Players are human; they can't be expected to remember every rule. So are DMs, of course; in my group, we all, players and DM, remind each other of rules in cases like this. My players remind me of rules I've forgotten even when the rule is detrimental to their characters. I show them the same courtesy.

If I were a player, I'd be a bit upset with the DM in this case, and I'd talk to him in the hopes of persuading him to be more helpful in the future.

That said, the tantrum and threat of ragequitting is definitely excessive. In his place I'd go for the "sell the thing to some schmucks" solution and move on with life.

And then the next step would be to test it.

And frankly (and this isn't to you), if you have a problem with balance in your game, you should fix it rather than coming to the boards to tell everyone who doesn't have a problem they are doing it wrong.

Yeah.

That said, there's basically two reasons why coming to the boards and talking about a thing that's broken could be useful:

1. It could be useful to the complainer because other forum posters might be like "Ah yes, indeed this is a thing that could be problematic. Here is how I fixed it" (i.e. practical advice on dealing with the matter).

2. Conversely, the complainer could post saying "I found a problem with balance in my game, and here is how I then fixed it" (i.e. reporting your own experience for the edification of anyone who has similar issues in the future and can then search the forums for how it's been handled by others).

(Also, on a less practical note, some people just like discussing game mechanics and game design in theoretical terms, and what people find to be "broken" can be interesting data for such conversations.)

Also, if you see 10 different posts from 10 different people, each saying "thing X is broken!", and X is a different thing in each of the 10 cases...

... then what you're seeing is 10 different people saying "My group thinks Pathfinder is fine, except for this one thing, which is broken!"

So when YOUR group plays, you might well find one thing that feels broken, or actually, in fact, does not work for your group.

You can then fix or remove that one thing, and move on to using the rest of the non-broken game.

(If you saw EVERYONE saying "thing X is broken!", and they're all talking about the same X, then you would be right to think that something is up.)

Hmmm, in an evil game, I'd kind of expect such kind of shenanigans unless there was a more powerful reason not to engage in intra-party conflict.

As a DM, I'd be happy with it if the players of both characters were happy with the situation, and accepting of the likely death of one or both of their PCs.

Of course, as a DM, I might not expect such a campaign to go very far, although I do believe an evil(ish) campaign could have potential with mature role players and a strong goal to bind a party together. That kind of thing is pretty hard to pull off though.

At the same time when it's okay in a group of good or neutral characters:

When the players of both the intended killer and intended victim have expressly agreed to it, or agreed that it is an acceptable thing to do.

On the other hand, I don't allow evil characters in-game. Most of my regular players wouldn't want to play them, and I find the few times I've allowed it with newer players, it's often been used as an excuse to act sexist and racist and expect to get away with it.
(In that regard it's been useful to weed out people we don't want to hang around with anyway, though).

An evil campaign has a tendency to romantizise horrible things, or sometimes even frame them as good, so I stay far away from that.

I want to offer my campaign as a case study in how an evil party can work.

This is a campaign I've been DMing for over five years; the party is now 19th level. The PCs are all evil, running the gamut from CE to LE. One of them is a largely amoral assassin who treats killing like a job (though he takes professional satisfaction in doing it well). Another is a ruthless warrior who takes pleasure in torturing people. Another is a cheerfully Chaotic Evil worshipper of Loki, who doesn't really concern himself with morality and will go along with almost anything as long as lols are involved.

There is little intra-party conflict, and none that has ever escalated to violence. The PCs are not linked by a single shared goal, nor by any rigid command hierarchy; they each have their own goals, some of them linked to each other; but more importantly: they are friends and comrades.

Why wouldn't they be? They've spent years adventuring together, helping each other achieve their goals, learning each other's ambitions and desires, saving each other's lives. At the beginning of their careers, they banded together out of necessity; now, when they are some of the most powerful people in the campaign world, they are each other's most critical allies. There is real trust between them, which took time to grow and develop (roleplayed excellently by their players, I might add).

And yet they're unquestionably evil. They have no qualms about killing innocents if it serves their purposes (though they never engaged in needless slaughter or arbitrary atrocities), nor about torture, kidnapping, blackmail, burglary, etc. On the other hand, they've helped save the world on several occasions (can't rule a destroyed world, right?). Some of their allies are Good-aligned (some of those allies know the party is evil, while others don't care)! What's more, the evil acts of the PCs are not romanticized or portrayed as anything but Evil. And roleplaying Evil has not resulted in the players acting like jerks (we're all friends IRL).

Evil can be VERY interesting to roleplay. The thing to remember is that many of the most interesting real-life historical figures have been, at best, flawed people, and some have been, by the standards of modern morality, definitely evil. But history is almost entirely lacking in real-life caricatures. Everyone is the hero of their own story.

YOU choose if you want to play Darth Vader-evil. It's also very possible to play Dexter-evil, or any other variant that doesn't kick every puppy she sees.

Honestly, evil characters feel much more real and believable when they have friends that they genuinely care about, and/or when they have morals, just bad morals.

Indeed.

Here is how I imagine a civil conversation between a highly invested custom-world building GM and a highly invested Rules-lawyer player might go:

GM: "I don't allow gunslingers in my world."
Player: "Hmm... I like gunslingers, in fact I spent three days working on this awesome gunslinger concept that I was planning on playing in your upcoming campaign."

Alternate version of the rest of the conversation:

GM: Why did you spend three days working on your character concept without first asking whether the class it's based on is even allowed? Didn't I tell you to check with me when making characters? Whose fault is it that you didn't do that?
Player: Uh... well, I really want to play a gunslinger. Actually, I spent a lot of effort on making this character before you even mentioned your campaign. It's just a character concept that I really, really want to play.
GM: Well, it's not appropriate for the campaign world. All the other players have managed to make characters that don't violate my rules. You can do it too! I believe in you.
Player: But I wanna!
GM: Too bad.

OR:

Player: "OK, so let's not play in your world."

GM: Ok, don't. When I said "Hey, I'm starting a campaign, want to roll a PC and play?", that was an invitation, not an ultimatum. I won't kidnap your dog or anything if you decide not to join.

In either case, either the player makes an acceptable character (and the problem is fixed), or decides not to play in the campaign (and the problem is fixed).

But then, what Cranefist said about "player budget" is probably the key issue here.

Makhno wrote:

I don't think it's terribly game-breaking. . . .

Really? A rogue is a pretty weak melee fighter, and you want to make them even worse?

If you want your combatant to be able to deny a rogue sneak attack there's already a feat for that - Flanking Foil. Fighters get a lot of feats, so asking them to at least pay the price of one feat for this ability doesn't seem too much to ask. And even then they have to succeed in hitting their opponent during their previous attack (not really unlikely for a typical melee combatant, admittedly, but still).

I should have mentioned that this is a house rule I use in my 3.5 campaign (a campaign already filled with house rules). I figured it might be of use to the OP since he seemed like the sort of DM who might run a not-entirely-by-the-book game. (Which is fine. I do that myself. House rules are not evil.)

Look, here's what I'm not saying:

"In Pathfinder, rogues are OP, what with their sneak attacks and their full attacks! I will change nothing else about the system, only introduce this one solitary house rule which nerfs rogues. There, that's better. All is balanced now."

I'm not saying that. You will note that I was arguing quite strenuously for the correct interpretation of the sneak attack rules - the ones that let rogues sneak attack as many times per round as they like.

But in my campaign, with my specific set of PCs, my specific list of allowed materials, and my specific homebrew magic items, the rogue in the party (actually a rogue/ranger/assassin) has the highest single-target damage output of all the PCs. He gets to sneak attack, including sneak attacking on full attacks, quite often (though not all the time). When he does, the damage is often enough to take out the enemy in one round. Sometimes he achieves this by flanking with one of the party fighters (actually a fighter/blackguard and a fighter/hexblade/occult slayer/blackguard/disciple of Dispater). The monsters rarely even live long enough to attempt the "ignore the fighter" tactic! And other times the rogue simply casts greater invisibility on himself, thus obviating the need for flanking.

What this house rule prevents, basically, is "I use my wand of summon monster I to summon a rat; then I flank with the rat and sneak attack the enemy into oblivion". This massive, horrible nerf has not, contrary to expectations, resulted in a rogue who cries himself to sleep every night because he can't contribute in combat. The rogue in question still does more single-target damage than anyone else.

Am I advocating that this house rule be instituted as a change to the Pathfinder rules? God no. Am I saying that every DM should use this house rule in their games? Nope. That's why it's a house rule. In my campaign, I find it to be effective and non-game-breaking. I mentioned it here because I thought the OP might get some mileage out of it.

Finally, let me just say that I perfectly understand the attitude of "ugh, why are you nerfing things unnecessarily??". In this case, it just isn't that big a nerf, and I don't think it's game-breaking, for the reasons I listed in my previous post.

In fact, let me just put this "wasn't it like this in 3.0/3.5...?" thing to rest by quoting from the official 3.5 FAQ:

If a rogue gets multiple attacks in a round (such as from a high base attack bonus or the Rapid Shot feat), can she make sneak attacks for all of them?

Yes, but only if each attack meets a requirement to be a sneak attack. For instance, a rogue who flanks an enemy can deliver a sneak attack with every melee attack she makes. A rogue under the effect of a greater invisibility spell treats every attack as a sneak attack, since she remains invisible despite attacking. If later attacks in a round no longer meet any requirement to be a sneak attack, they aren’t sneak attacks. For example, a rogue under the effect of an invisibility spell would deal sneak attack damage only with her first attack in a round, because she turns visible as soon as she makes the attack.

Also:

Technically, the rules for flanking say you can do it "when making a melee attack", which is not the same as "when making a full attack". Per the actions table, a full attack is not the same as a series of melee attacks (the first is a full-round action while each melee attack is a standard action).

This is totally false. Evidence:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/combat#TOC-Actions-In-Combat

See footnote 6 to Table: Actions in Combat; as well as Editor's Note: Multiple Sunder Attempts (which leads to an FAQ entry from Jason Bulmahn).

There is a standard action (action type) called attack (specific action) which lets you make a single melee attack (not itself an action of any sort, given that you can also make a melee attack on an attack of opportunity).

There is also a full-round action (action type) called full attack (specific action) which lets you make multiple melee attacks.

You can sneak attack when making a melee attack, which means that you can sneak attack on the one melee attack you get when you take the attack action (a standard action), or on any of the several melee attacks you get when you take the full attack action (a full-round action), or on the melee attack you get when you take an attack of opportunity.

Thanks for the quick replies, but I am still requesting an official response. I've seen these answers before, and they do not satisfy.

Bill, in particular, the "anytime" argument would apply only to flat-footed opponents, not flanking after combat starts. The rules for "flanking" say you only get it when making a "melee attack", not a "full attack", and although that may sound like an odd distinction, it appears to be more in line with the initial spirit of sneak attacks (pre-PFRPG). You can't keep surpising an opponent all round.

I want to hear what the official PFRPG stance is on this, and if possible, why. The barrage attacks make sense. What I've seen in posts on multiple attack modes in close combat does not.

By "pre-PFRPG" do you mean... D&D 3.5? You could definitely sneak attack as many times as you liked per round in 3.5, assuming each attack met at least one of the conditions required for sneak attack.

Also, what the heck does flanking have to do with "surprising an opponent"? What the heck does sneak attack in general have to do with surprising an opponent?

Sneak attack says:

If a rogue can catch an opponent when he is unable to defend himself effectively from her attack, she can strike a vital spot for extra damage.

Nothing about surprise in there.

The rogue's attack deals extra damage (called "precision damage") anytime her target would be denied a Dexterity bonus to AC (whether the target actually has a Dexterity bonus or not), or when the rogue flanks her target.

(Emphasis mine.) Nothing about surprise in there either! In fact, the "or" makes it clear that flanking a target lets a rogue sneak attack independent of even denying the target their Dex bonus to AC, much less "surprising" them.

The majority of the D&D games I've run (across all editions) have been without magic users. Note that this is not because I banned them or anything, but simply because the majority of my players had no interest in them (generally because vancian magic is tedious, mechanically).

I've had a decent number of psionic classes in 3rd, as well as Warlocks and Binders, but true spellcasters? In 20 years, I've run games for only two:

1) An evil cleric that eventually requested a rebuild to ditch her spells because vancian magic is tedious

2) A hexblade in 3.5 who pretty much never cast any spells anyway (because Vancian magic is tedious)

Interesting thread, but this caught my eye.

Do you really mean to tell us that all your players in all the games you've run just haven't had the inclination to play by far the most powerful classes in the game (prepared spellcasters) because preparing spells is tedious??

I'll ask that you forgive me for assuming that there was something else going on — some other reason (perhaps a house rule, perhaps a feature of your campaign worlds, perhaps some feature of your adventures that prevented character power from being rewarded in general) why all your players shied away from playing wizards, clerics, and druids. "Bleh, I have to pick my spells for the day? Too much work :(" does not strike me as anything resembling a believable motivation for giving up on THAT much power. I'm genuinely curious what the actual deal here is...

I try to GM in a way that uses common sense and rule on things based on the "smell test" and this spell stinks!

Wow does this sentence ever ring alarm bells for me. "Common sense" and "smell test" sound an awful lot like code for "I make arbitrary rulings which are not based on any sort of logic, consistency, or well-reasoned considerations of balance".

Other people have laid out a lot of good arguments in favor of blessing of fervor; I'm just going to say that basing your rulings on what's allowed and what isn't on a gut feeling about whether a thing is balanced, makes for arbitrary, unpredictable rulings, an inevitable patchwork of allowed/banned material, and unhappy players.

One of the great sources of fun in D&D/PF is being able to plan your character advancement, and having justified expectations of what your character can do. This is a special case of a much broader psychological principle: a feeling of control over one's future leads to satisfaction; a feeling of a lack of control, of unpredictability, leads to dissatisfaction.

If I'm playing in a game where I have no idea what spells are going to be available to me, because maybe I level up, start casting a spell, and out of nowhere this spell happens to fail the DM's "smell test" for no good reason that the DM can articulate to me... then I simply won't be as invested in my character.

Don't let this happen to you!

he has been beating me over the head with this spell!

The answer to this is usually playing smarter, having your monsters/NPCs counter the tactic, etc., rather than banning/nerfing the spell. I'm not saying bans/nerfs are never warranted, only that they rarely are (and certainly not in the case of blessing of fervor).

Incidentally, as a player I find nerfs to my favorite spells/abilities/tactics to be far more insulting than bans. A ban, I can live with; you limit my array of options, I reformulate my tactics to deal with the options I have left. But a nerf — it feels like the DM saying "I'll allow you to use this tactic that you've discovered or come up with, but only on MY terms. Because I'm in control here."

"It doesn't work in my game"

What doesn't work, precisely?

Astral projection describes how it works. If you say that applying game mechanics to a certain situation "doesn't work", or "doesn't work like that", you need to say just how it does work.

Or, in other words:

Player: I do X.
DM: That doesn't work.
Player: You mean it doesn't result in the outcome I want? Fair enough. So then what does happen when I try to do this?

You've got to have an answer, or else your game world dissolves into nonsense. All verisimilitude, all sense that your characters are inhabiting a self-consistent universe, goes out the window.

ETA: And your answer ought to be consistent across different situations, or else, once again, nonsense ensues. Some people are OK with that, of course, as long as the game is balanced. Simulationist vs. gamist sensibilities, I suppose?