PhelanArcetus's page

After a few sessions of "well, I prepped entirely the wrong set of spells", I like spontaneous casters quite a bit (though I also like the giant bag of brains that my wizard is). But the tradeoff, of course, is that you need to put a ton of thought into your spell selection.

In this case, I think his best options are probably a combination of a few steps:

1. Assuming it's available in PFS, take the Fast Study discovery as soon as possible. Take advantage of this by leaving some spell slots open every day. (Fast Study isn't essential, but stopping for 1 minute is easier than stopping for 15.) And it can be used both to prep an obscure spell, or to replenish combat spells that have been used up already. With Fast Study, I think it's no big deal to convince a party to wait a minute or two after combat (while they loot the corpses, he flips open a spellbook).

2. Invest in a couple of combat wands; magic missile, scorching ray, so on; relatively big bang for their buck spells. Control spells are often not ideal for wands due to the lower DC. Likewise invest in some scrolls and a couple of pearls of power; basically, anything to extend his spells per day. This reduces the need to prepare the same spells multiple times per day.

3. Invest, to the degree feasible, in both knowledge skills and information-gathering skills. Aside from knowledge, this isn't going to be amazing, but just making a point of asking questions during the briefing phase, and asking other party members to use their skills can help.

I haven't got any real experience with the witch, but I wonder if another possible solution for him would be a spontaneous caster. That way, while his per-level choices matter a lot, he doesn't have to worry about picking the wrong spells for a given day. And it's much easier to advise the player on sensible (and flexible) spells known choices than on good spells to prepare for today without breaking immersion.

Other possible steps are to have some more information as to what might be coming today, so as to prep more correctly for the day (though this is awkward in most cases), or to acquire some items that extend his flexibility; these being largely wands, scrolls, and even pearls of power.

At a fast skim, I don't see a lot of offensive variety on the hex list. Seems like he'd be using the same couple very heavily, and some of those are easily shut off by enemy types.

I rarely do much in-depth, specific research for a specific setting, region, or time period.

What I do instead is read a fairly broad selection of historical fiction, the occasional actual history book, and a lot of speculative fiction with clear links to what real historical societies inspired the setting.

This gives me a great deal of broad general information. I can then dig down for a bit more detail where I need it, and it keeps me from spending too much time on pure research, which can too easily get dense and boring.

Fair points.

I guess, I was seeing adventures that seemed more than twice as long, in twice the pagecount (though it's more like 2.25x), and worrying that they would end up being less completely fleshed out because of it.

I would still like to see some smaller-scope adventures despite the larger page count; that's because I do also like the smaller-scope adventures as well as the larger ones. Especially with the amount of scheduling problems my groups are running into currently. Not to the exclusion of the larger adventures, I would like to continue to see adventures in the adventure length of the "typical" 32-pager, rather than replacing them entirely with longer adventures.

I like the notion of the adventure having more room to flesh things out.

My biggest concern, reading the summaries I've seen, is that while the 32-pagers were essentially 1 level adventures, generally, the 64 pagers seem to be 3-4 level adventures in general. That implies less word count per encounter and area.

PFS scenarios are good for the very quick drop-ins, but I would definitely like to see, among the 64-page adventures, some that are about the same length as a 32-pager in terms of number of encounters and expected game time, but just have much more detail.

I feel like I could get people over, build characters, and run a PFS scenario pretty easily in one session. I also feel like, with some work, I could probably drop in a PFS scenario in a campaign (though the faction missions, which I think are necessary to flesh out the feel of it) are much harder to insert. A 32-page module can be rushed through in one session (depending on the module; Fangwood Keep seems like I could run it in a day, whereas others feel like they need a couple of days).

I'm a very novice GM, and I find myself doing a lot of prep work filling in the gaps I see within most 32-page modules. (I'm not comfortable doing this on the fly.)

So I would definitely like to see some 32-page scope modules in the 64-page line... whether the extra space is taken up with more encounter detail, or a bigger gazetteer, or a few more monsters. Or even GMing tips & tricks and advice for the adventure. I'd also like to continue to see some of these longer ones; adventures that feel like they can comfortably make a short campaign.

Everybody is a clown. How do you expect to win the war with an army of clowns?

Altan

Edit re: alignment: I figured on CE largely to reflect the particular taste for cruelty, but I'm quite flexible on what alignment is needed to represent that behavior; I can see it under NE quite easily.

I'm looking at creating an afflicted lycanthrope alchemist. He (probably) would view the lycanthropy as a blessing in disguise, and be experimenting with alchemy to gain better control and, functionally, become a natural lycanthrope.

Obviously, the affliction itself, and more than that, the reaction to it, effectively isolated him from civilized or polite society, in the end driving him to the open arms of Dagor, who has the resources to handle such a minion, and more importantly, the willingness to put up with such a minion.

I'll work on crunch during the day (mostly evening, I suspect) and also work out a name and the details of that background. In the meantime, any preferences on the animal type? More importantly, any you would veto? I would assume the options are those I see listed on d20pfsrd (werebat, werebear, wereboar, wererat, weretiger, werewolf); but if any are unacceptable, I'd rather know before I happen to pick that one.

I greatly enjoyed Realm of the Fellnight Queen, though if you're going to run that with ample time (as it sounds like you have), I would suggest digging up the podcast in which Neil Spicer discusses some of what got cut from the adventure.
There's an enhanced encounter, and a major encounter which were cut.

That's a level 7, level up to 8 adventure, which sounds pretty suitable either way.

This is more a new system thing, which I originally took from when I was working on rewriting Tome of Battle:

Give a secondary mental stat to each martial class.
Tome of Battle essentially already had this; Crusaders had class features based off of Charisma, Swordsages off of Wisdom, and Warblades off of Intelligence.

So in this sense you would modify existing class features (or add new ones on top) to utilize a mental stat the class otherwise cares little or nothing for (paladins are pretty well there already), and probably add a couple more class skills that use that stat. (Possibly also add more skill points to help them access that skill.)

Speaking of skills, one of the caster/martial disparities tends to be the caster's ability to handle non-combat encounters through magic, in a way that the martials can't... often in ways at least as good as a skill-based character can't at all. So having more skill ranks available (for the 2+Int, non-Int characters), and making sure that skills are adequate to the tasks in the adventure will help a lot. This would be a mix of how you build the adventures, and of expanding the scope of what skills can do.

In other words, you want to make it so that the party's attitude to a situation is "use skills", not "use spells". Pick the lock, don't cast knock; climb the tower wall instead of casting fly on everyone, and so on. Removing some of the spells that allow a caster to bypass traditionally skill-based challenges may help here.

In a low magic game, magical equipment should be pretty rare.

One step towards doing this could be to reflavor simple enhancement bonuses into higher quality materials & craftsmanship - this allows you to not worry about adjusting some numbers; when the fighter needs a +3 sword, that's just a sword made of a particular flavor of unobtanium. That works decently for weapons, armor, and shields; perhaps for resistance items. It doesn't really work for stat boosting items, though. Still, it's a way to address some of them via flavor rather than eliminating them.
(A flaming sword would still be magical... but only the flaming aspect would be magical.)

Or you could just leave out all the big six, and adjust encounters as necessary. A low magic game will likely have a lot more encounters with humanoids anyway, which means more encounters with enemies who function like the PCs... those are easier to rebuild (remove items), but on the flip side, they have to be built from scratch normally.

One of my GMs apocalypsed the setting for the switch from 3.0 to 3.5. It was a pretty big change in the world itself, and heralded a transition from relatively low-magic, beat the evil wizards, to plane-hopping stargate.

A crossbow bolt (or arrow, etc.; basically any ammunition) that hits its target is destroyed. Which effectively ends the spell cast on the object.

Now, if you were to cast darkness on a rock, and toss it near someone, that would effectively move them into the area of the spell, forcing them to make a save or become entangled.
You are immune because it is your own spell modified by Shadow Grasp. Your party members, on the other hand, are not, meaning they would need to keep their distance or risk being entangled by you.

Magical Lineage is not required, though it does reduce the cost of metamagicing the spell.

As always, check with your GM.

As these are tests for wizards, I would have a few types of tests.

Some pure academic types; these would be best covered by Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana), possibly with some other knowledges in there. You want to make sure your students are good on theory.

But I would also want to see that my students could perform under pressure, make sensible choices, and adapt their spells to the situation. The first of these would be simple casting under pressure (Concentration checks). So far, we're at boring "roll the d20 I told you to" tests, though.

The suggestion above about providing an encounter description and a chance to prepare spells, I like. That shows you can pick suitable spells (assuming you then pass the encounter).

I also like the suggestion of incorporating the character's personality & background into this; instead of just challenging them to cast while being poked & prodded, or in a windstorm, challenge them to cast through reminders of emotional trauma. Or to conserve their spell slots in the face of anger.

For more of a test of their wizarding, I would have them prepare a specific list of spells, and then face a series of challenges. Some of those challenges would be clearly and obviously addressed by the provided spells, while others would require creative application of the spells. Some spells in the prep would not be needed.

I've generally treated breath of life (and revivify back in 3.5) as retaining all spells.

This is for a few reasons:

• Limitations; in addition to not working on death effects, it also must be cast within 1 round and can fail to heal enough damage to restore the character to life. Even then the character can end up unconscious.
  
• Flavor: my understanding of why the spell worked has always been, essentially, "the soul has not yet left the body"; that's the 1 round limit, effectively.
  
• Ease of play: If it loses all spells, the caster brought back up is possibly useless for the rest of the fight (and at risk). If it works like raise dead, suddenly you need to stop, mid-combat, to see what spells the character still has. That's a big pain in the neck.
  

It's fair to note that there is an NPC in this adventure who is actually mixing spells and brain surgery. This seems to be the angle we would want to investigate to keep on theme.

(Side note: the detail of what he does is relevant background that should be less hidden than the module makes it by default.)

In a purely real-world situation I would think that a mix of drugs, hypnosis / similar, and, generally, maximum control of the victim's surroundings, plus a lot of time. Drugs are used to make the person more susceptible to the various suggestions that you're trying to worm into their head.
I think the root method is to break them, and then rebuild them in the new mentality.

Really, the Enchantment school is not your primary tool for getting long-term, non-magical brainwashing in place. It's a helping tool. You could, however, use powerful Enchantment effects to get the person to do things they'll regret, and use this in a tool towards breaking them.

Magic is going to help the drugs in this; anything from charm person to suggestion to charm person is going to help make the victim be more willing to listen to your suggestions. Illusion spells will help with that total environmental control; you want everything the victim experiences to be chosen by you. Detect thoughts will help with monitoring what the victim is thinking, and the illusions also allow you to counteract those thoughts, provide sympathetic ears, and so on. At high level, slap them with insanity for the duration of the brainwashing (heal it later). Or just show them illusions until their mind breaks under the strain (horror, or reconciling the illusions with their actual memories).

Now what would the brain surgery be? It's not implanting a magic item that controls the subject. It could be that, with magical assistance, it permits eliminating or suppressing certain memories or personality traits. Maybe putting pressure in the right spot makes the victim unable to distinguish between his/her own thoughts and words being spoken to him/her. Maybe detect thoughts or a similar spell allows you to pinpoint where in the brain specific memories are, so you can snip those memories out without causing major trauma.

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

oEmperorBob wrote:

Hey Jason, thanks for answering all of our inane questions! Of all the villains you've run, who was your favorite and what was their crowning moment of villainy?

I had a necromancer in an old campaign named Zenith who killed off the entire party at the end of one session. At the start of the next one, I had all the players play undead versions of themselves, under his control! Good times...

I have wanted to do a campaign like this for forever.

I'd suggest making sure the players have some awareness of this. That happened as, essentially, an adventure in one game I played, and it made me very angry.

Specifically, an antagonistic character far beyond our capabilities, who had previously bullied us into working for her, showed up (in an apparently impossible way), killed us, and then brought us back as enslaved undead. To the extent where if she had told us "do not think about betraying me", we could not have thought about it. This was not, at all, what I had signed up to play, and I was considering quitting over it. A few sessions later, we got out of that... at the cost of being in debt to a different powerful NPC. Fortunately the campaign ended there for other reasons.

I'm loving these.
I can't draw worth a damn, but I've got a browser window at home devoted to these tutorials as I try to make a halfway decent prototype map for a world in progress.

They make a huge difference; I can't draw, but these are all the components of the map style I want. Along with the maps essay you wrote in the Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, I feel like I can make a map that shows a sensible and plausible geography, and the right illustrative style. Even with my total lack of art skills.

Thank you so much.

Strawman all you want, but no one makes a wizard that can't cast spells...

I actually had to point out to a fellow player once that, in fact, he should not multi-class to wizard for 3 levels, because it would not actually meet the prestige class prerequisites. He didn't have a high enough intelligence to cast 2nd level spells; in fact I believe he has a -1 modifier. Unfortunately, he had to spend four levels on sorcerer to make the prerequisite. We knew for some time he wouldn't be able to cast anything; I just hadn't realized that the prestige class prerequisite was explicitly "ability to cast 2nd-level arcane spells".

I think just about any level of optimization is fine, as long as it is reasonably consistent across the party and with the GM's expectations. If I put a build I've optimized hard in a party with characters created, unassisted, by some people I have played with, my character would dominate. To describe an extreme, a game with Pun-Pun and three commoners with Skill Focus (craft: underwater basket weaving) will not go very well. A party of Pun-Puns going through an adventure built for commoners would not go well. Nor will a band of commoners trying to survive an adventure built expecting Pun-Puns.

What I would probably use for a baseline effectiveness level to aim for is to pull up the Bestiary table with expected values by CR, and aim for certain likelihoods on chance to hit, not be hit, and have the enemy fail a save against your spells, as appropriate to what the character does, for at-level encounters. What likelihoods exactly, I'm not sure, I haven't thought about it in-depth. That, at least, should be reasonably consistent with the expectations of the published modules.

I enjoy optimizing for its own sake, first off. I'll just do builds sometimes, whether or not I expect to be able to play the character anytime soon. Sometimes those are purely mechanical concepts, sometimes they are full character concepts where the personality and/or background influence the mechanics.

But the other thing I do is try to get a feel for the optimization level in the party, and avoid massively overshadowing the party. Being awesome is great and all, but that doesn't mean I'll enjoy making the rest of the party feel redundant, or sticking the GM in those situations where he can challenge the optimizer (and wipe out the rest) or challenge the rest (but the optimizer will wipe the floor with the threat, so there's no challenge).

So at the moment I'm playing:
- A high-charisma fighter with insane saves (too much of his offense is tied up in an extremely valuable weapon)
- A blaster wizard (without the crossblooded sorcerer dip) with a history of accidentally destroying his masters' labs
- A James Bond wannabe bladebound magus (2 levels of rogue)

By a wide margin, the fighter is the most optimized, which is actually necessary for that campaign. In his case every level, feat, and even skill point was planned in advance.
The wizard I have a partial plan; I've got a solid list of what feats he wants, and key spells, but I don't have them arranged for when I'll get them, and I work out skill points each level (after spellcraft and the big knowledges, I distribute leftover skill points semi-randomly in Intelligence skills).
The magus, really all I have planned is a short list of desired feats. I often struggle with spell selection every level on him.

I think that, with more going on in my life, I do have less time to invest in fully detailed builds, which may be why I'm not getting the builds as completely specified anymore. (Also, the material for the latter two characters isn't fixed; new material coming out is available, while for the fighter the list is totally fixed.)

I would expect that the game would not progress a very long time after hitting the cap. A while, sure. A few feats certainly. Really, to me, it's a matter of completing a campaign arc and the primary stories of the characters, and then starting a new campaign.

As far as players who are too focused on the full level 20 build... really, this is something you discuss first. Your players should know when you're planning the campaign that it will be E6 or E8, and plan their builds accordingly. Or choose not to play the campaign, if a level 20 build (whether they'll reach it or not) is that important to them.

For those who think a wizard who can't cast save or suck spells is useless... there are save or suck spells at all levels. Sure, the higher level ones make you suck more, but that doesn't mean sleep, deep slumber, hold person, blindness/deafness, color spray and a whole bunch more don't exist. Yes scope is less, and effect is less, but that doesn't make the entire concept nonexistent.

For running an AP, it wold require a lot of rewriting. Conceptually doable, but a lot of the AP content I have read assumes access to spells and equipment you will not have in E6. (Well, you may have the spells as time-consuming rituals, rather than standard actions.) Every encounter past a certain point will need rewriting to fit the appropriate CR. And plots often hinge on those high-level abilities. I've got interest in doing Serpent's Skull as E8, but it's a lot of work. (I'd rather do Reign of Winter using E8+Mythic to start off; that should need less rewriting.) Remember, ritual magic is your friend in this case.

I agree it should be mostly mundane equipment. Nothing too expensive, unless these caches are well concealed at the shrines.

Here's the big question, actually: are the item caches at these shrines intended for clerics of Desna only, or for any travelers? You could have both, in fact.

Items intended for all travelers are simple, mundane equipment; rope, maps, simple tools. Food in a compartment enchanted to preserve what's inside. The understanding is that you either replace what you take, or you make an offering to a temple of Desna (and the temples replenish these caches). It's mostly food, items that will help you set up a shelter, tools and parts to repair carts and wagons, that sort of thing. And the maps & firewood. And holy symbols, candles, and minor items associated with Desna's rituals.

Items intended only for Desna's clergy should be behind some sort of protection; ideally something more than just "channel positive energy". Possibly something that requires a (non-standard) use of a domain power from her domains. These would include holy symbols and minor magical items, mostly consumables.

In both cases, the nearby temples would periodically check & replenish the caches. And in both cases, the purpose of these caches is just to ease travel and aid in worship.

As you get to higher levels, the chances of dropping from conscious to dead (unsummoned in the case of an eidolon) increase. That's because damage per hit scales up a lot faster than the Con score.

Basically, the harder the thing attacking the eidolon hits, the more likely it is that it will bypass unconscious and go straight to unsummoned, which means Life Link becomes more valuable at higher levels. But Diehard is a good option; so is dismissing the eidolon; in this case, you can resummon the eidolon immediately after combat, though it will require healing (which you presumably have time for). But if you unsummon it by doing more damage, you can't bring it back until the next day.

Another thing you might do, instead of Magus, if you want the flavor that Azlant used magic more, is make fighter/wizards, and just make them only prepare spells that don't have somatic components.
I had a list somewhere, from some design work done on this sort of concept before the Magus was published.
Unfortunately, I seem to have lost that list. The reason it might appeal is that soldiers seem most likely to be in medium armor, but the magus doesn't get that until 7th level. Of course, chain shirts and some description work for that. It also can permit the use of a shield (though so can the Skirnir archetype).

So I think in this setup I would suggest Skirnir Magus. With suitable feats it should give a good feel of heavy infantry with magical capabilities.

I was looking at the Moonlight Stalker feats; concealment is pretty easy to get (blur does it, even).

I don't think there's a way to avoid the feat tax of Shadowdancer; instead it makes more sense to take advantage of those feats.

You need to spend Combat Reflexes, Dodge, and Mobility. Well there's nothing wrong with Combat Reflexes, especially if you can afford a good Dex. Dodge isn't great, but it's far better than in 3.5, no longer being single-opponent-bound. Mobility... yeah, that one's likely something you'll mostly ignore. So really, taking advantage amounts to going for a decent Dexterity, which you probably wanted anyway.

You could defray the cost somewhat with moves like being human, or taking some levels of fighter for the bonus feats. But that gives up more rage progression.

You've got to have Perform (dance)... so use that as a way to build the character's background and personality. If going with a single one-hander made any sense, I'd say to take Dervish Dance to take advantage of the skill prerequisite synergy. But it doesn't.

I've been thinking of it with Ranger instead, but a lot of things are similar in this setup. And I'm now thinking of a big, hulking guy, surrounded by wispy tendrils of shadow, which is a nice mental image.

I loved the book. There's a bit of repetition, but mostly on things that clearly need hammering into my head.

After all, when designing an explicitly post-apocalyptic setting, it pays to put more thought into the state of the world now than into the previous 1,000 years of pre-apocalypse history. But is that what I did before reading the book? Nope! Now? Yes.

Whether the cartographer won just because his essay had pretty pictures in it, or because it was in some ways the most practical (it was basically an essay with a demonstration project embedded in it, as I recall)... hard to say for sure. I certainly don't recall it being my personal favorite.

I posted on this a while ago; I don't think I ever saw any official ruling.

My gut is the same as what Artanthos; RAI does not intend for you to use dimension door at the start of Spell Combat and still attack (at the end is unambiguously fine). But due to what I think are unintended vagaries of the wording, it appears that it does work, by a technical reading.

I would check with your GM; I think it's a loophole that was not intended, and I would disallow it, requiring the character to have Dimensional Agility to pull this off. But I would be very annoyed if a player simply pulled this out without discussing it with me first, out of game, as I would with any thorny or questionably-legal action.

Congratulations!

If Loremaster is available, a high-intelligence wizard, going into Loremaster, possibly an Elf with the Breadth of Knowledge feat, and then just focus on buffing spells. That gets you a rather beefy knowledge check.

I tend to ask it myself, every time. Just because I'm not willing to trust that the GM will remember the list (especially for infrequently-played games).
Or else I'll roll, and say something like "27; 29 if this is mind-affecting". That one really only works when there's very few conditionals available.

Fortunately, this sorcerer apparently does not know fireball, but instead knows haste. His scorching ray is going to be deadly, though, with a solid Dex, 4d6+4 damage, and tons of slots. Though actually it looks like he's been built to fight in melee, not as a caster.

Still, he's a CR 6 opponent, and his numbers look reasonably in-line with a CR 6 monster without buffs (fully buffed, his AC reaches CR 12 levels, while his damage remains about in line with CR 6). For a level 3 party of normal size, that's considered epic; a very hard fight, especially if their resources have been whittled down by the rest of the kobolds. And if he's encountered along with any other kobolds, it's going to be a very hard fight even for a level 4 party.

For the level 1 kobolds, don't bother building anything, just use them right out of the Bestiary. Maybe swap some weapons out for variety, but that's all. Mooks are not worth unnecessary effort. Also, if I recall, 0-HD humanoids in the Bestiary, like kobolds, are already presented as level 1 warriors.

In general, unless specified, there is no action needed to continue the ability. You instead spend an action to end it (or let the daily duration run out). That action to end it would also be a standard action, similar to dismissing a spell.

So standard action to start, standard action to end, no action to maintain.

Skills are still an issue, just for raw number of skills. It's not a matter of the +3 bonus for the skill being a class skill, it's a matter of having enough skill points without having to put an incredible score in Intelligence.

He's got Stealth, Climb, Swim, Survival Perception, at an absolute minimum. At least some investment in Acrobatics, Ride, Linguistics, and at least one or two Knowledges (unless he can get a Lore feature sensibly). Likely knowledges are nature, geography, history, and local.

Barbarian I lean against because the PF barbarian is all about rage, and Conan is not about rage; mostly he's just that strong and that good; most of the mentions of primal, animal nature, are more in the sense of his personality than a wild rage he flies into. Ranger, however, is still suited to wilderness, has 6+Int skill points per level, and seems to work quite nicely.

To me the big distinction is in tone rather than scientific plausibility. Science fiction is about looking to the future, to progress and more progress, and the notion that the future will be better than the past (though we may have to make it be that way). Science fantasy (which is just fantasy IN SPAAAACE, generally), is more about things like recovering the glories of the past.

I've been working on a few settings at once (probably a bad idea) for a while now. And I recently decided to make a change in my approach.

Specifically, for the one that uses Pathfinder rules, I'm going to adapt a module or two or three to the setting, and then I'm going to use my friends to crowdsource some setting development. I'll be prepared to veto things that simply do not fit the setting at all (I see no way to comfortably incorporate gunslingers into the high-magic, pre-roman Mediterranean), but mostly, I want to find how to make whatever idea they have work. I especially want this in working out how the various races other than human fit into the setting.

In essence, exactly what Adamantine Dragon is describing just a couple of posts above. Except that I may also be asking them to help. If someone wants to play a catfolk in the setting... well, I'll be inclined against it; it's too unusual, at least to be common. But for a one-shot? Let's sit down and figure out where such a character would come from. Egypt is likely, off the top of my head. I don't think I'd be likely to allow a catfolk in a full campaign in the setting, but for a one-shot I can be more flexible; perhaps this character was rescued from an ancient pharaoh's tomb, and might be the last of his kind. Might have to deal with unpleasant NPC reactions, as they've never seen a cat-person before.

Less than a year ago, I was prepared to put a hard ban on any race but human in the setting. I was planning to just have human subraces, using normal human rules, except with a specific +2/+2/-2 stat modifier array, and one skill always being class. Some discussions, primarily with my fiance, led me to realize that this would alienate quite a few potential players, who prefer to not play as humans. (Perhaps not many of my most-likely players, who tend to play human because it's the most powerful. In fact, one of them is running a game where human is the only available race, and most of the other core races don't exist at all.)

Edit:
Just to add... no guns in my Atlantis setting? No, definitely not. Guns in my Clan Holds setting? No. Guns in my pseudo-Dark Sun setting? Yes. Definitely guns there. Chances are, one of my three settings will accommodate most any concept. (Not that I know what rules I want to use for the Dark Sun-ish setting, or have the rules ready for the Clan Holds one.)

Spells Copied from Another's Spellbook or a Scroll

A wizard can also add a spell to his book whenever he encounters one on a magic scroll or in another wizard's spellbook. No matter what the spell's source, the wizard must first decipher the magical writing (see Arcane Magical Writings). Next, he must spend 1 hour studying the spell. At the end of the hour, he must make a Spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell's level). A wizard who has specialized in a school of spells gains a +2 bonus on the Spellcraft check if the new spell is from his specialty school. If the check succeeds, the wizard understands the spell and can copy it into his spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook). The process leaves a spellbook that was copied from unharmed, but a spell successfully copied from a magic scroll disappears from the parchment.

Emphasis mine.

Edit: I would not allow the wizard to use the wand to learn the spell. If for some reason you require him to have become familiar with the spell to add it at level up, the wand qualifies for that. But it's a matter of the form of the magical item; a wand is a spell trigger item, while a scroll is a spell completion item. Basically, what this means is that a wand contains a pre-cast spell; it just requires a spellcaster to trigger that. But a scroll contains a half-cast spell; it requires the spellcaster to complete the casting. The important part really is more implicit; the scroll contains enough information to understand how to prepare the spell, while the wand doesn't; the wand really just contains potential energy.

Definitely sounds like this is more a matter of "I have one power gamer and seven casual gamers" than a class-specific problem.

Most of the classic responses to that apply, but in this case it might be good to play, somewhat, to the weaknesses of the class to compensate. In this case, lots of enemies is a good option; as has been pointed out, the thing the magus is best at is burst damage on a single target. Nothing's stopping them from throwing fireball around a few levels later, but it's still a step. Likewise, making sure to have plenty of encounters per day will force a magus to husband his limited resources.

At the same time, you don't want to make that player feel like he's been victimized or denied his chance to shine... at least not too much. It might be wise to sit down with the player and discuss the difference in playstyles; in some cases it's a matter of players not fitting in, in others, it's about assumptions as to the table style.

I normally optimize pretty hard, but in some cases I've felt that it would overshadow the group and make the GM's job harder, so I intentionally did not optimize as much... or chose to optimize something less impactful... or a concept that's less combat-focused. For example, I have a blaster wizard, who does not have a sorcerer dip. He's pretty optimized for a straight wizard blaster, but he's a blaster, and he hasn't gotten that extra 2 damage per die from a crossblooded sorcerer dip.

I'm actually working to file off serial numbers from the 4e default setting for one of my settings. That one doesn't happen to be Pathfinder, but I'm intending to keep a chunk of 4e flavor in it:

• The simplified planar scheme (basically, the world axis, though I'm de-emphasizing the Elemental Chaos and Astral Sea, especially as adventuring locations; I've also toned down the Far Realm and associated it more closely with the main three planes.
  
• The notion of the Feywild & Shadowfell (and my toned down Far Realm) as twisted mirrors of the World, especially, is something I've been keeping.
  
• The Abyss backstory has been in, but I think it's drifting away as I rework my deities to split between the Old Gods and a newer pantheon, rather than Gods & Primordials. (I am definitely retaining a Chained God among my Old Gods.)
  
• The ancient empires are very much in... though I've dropped Dragonborn (to avoid having two serpentine races, as serpentfolk / Yuan-Ti are to be a major antagonist). Bael Turath and Arkhosia are now dwarven & elven, I think, and Nerath remains (I've been working hardest to find a similar name).
  
• The primal spirits are the main inspiration for my Old Gods.
  
• The points-of-light approach (though I have a different setting where this is more emphasized). That is, most of the world is dark and scary, and settlements are points of light in the darkness. This includes an emphasis on smaller populations and a world dotted with the ruins of ancient empires.
  
• The flavor of the gnolls as, essentially, the zerg; evil, fast-breeding, and vicious - everybody treats them as kill on sight.
  
• The willingness to just have fantastic locations in the world, not restricted to the other planes.
  
• The notion of the elves as woodsmen only, not as both forest dwellers and masters of magic in crystalline cities. (Though I think the eladrin-analogue are just ancient elves from before the fall of the Arkhosia-analogue, probably functionally extinct).
  
• That human concept art, of the armored rider... that's just about exactly how the military of my Nerath-analogue looks, and I've wanted a nation built on that sort of soldier for years.
  

At one point the setting was, in fact, explicitly a 4th edition setting. Actually I was working on that during the 4e run-up, and the abortive gleemax launch, and someone liked one of the blog posts I did enough to net me a box of minis. I archived them all somewhere.

I was very taken by the work of the 4e story team. It was just their mechanics team that really turned me off.

Due to Spellstrike, he should be able to deliver the frostbite charge on a normal melee attack as part of the full attack within spell combat. Once he casts shocking grasp, the frostbite dissipates, regardless of his level, since casting a spell wipes out any existing held charge.

But he's not getting a free attack for the frostbite charges except in the round he casts it, wherein the attack is free because it's part of the action of casting the spell. After that, it's a held charge, much as though he had cast any other touch spell the round before and not used the charge.

I'm used to "only you can save the world" notion, so I would quite possibly not have a problem with it. But I think it makes sense and works fine, so long as the GM doesn't use it as a hammer.

Also I would suggest that the GM might want to pause the game for a few minutes to explain how the geas will be used; i.e. to reassure his players that this is not to hurt them or force them to play a certain way.

A few lines of dialogue from the Black Rider can help a lot here too; have him explain he's bequeathing what remains of his power on the party, while also commanding that they rescue his (and now their) mistress. Let him signal that this also will allow them to bypass certain (deadly) wards (and be prepared to insert indications of them if the writers of subsequent adventures do not).

But basically, tailor the presentation to your party. If you don't think they need the geas, just ignore it. If you think they do, include it... but explain it in whatever way will best suit your group. If going out of character and metagame is what will help best, then do that.

Wow! Thank you so much for the responses everyone, this is some great advice. I'm feeling kind of stupid for buying the Kobold Guide to Game Design now (not really, it's actually a pretty cool book).

A few things I am hearing consistently -

- Avoid railroading (I'm trying to go as sandbox as possible while still having it be investigation-focused)

- Let the players be in the spotlight, and let them feel rewarded (I do get attached to my NPC's, but yes, absolutely)

- Don't let back-story dominate the text (another personal pitfall of mine, I love Rise of the Runelords for it's attention to detail and atmosphere, but I see that there are lines to be drawn)

Here's something I'm hung up on. Some people are saying that in a "mystery-style adventure", you shouldn't place impassable brick walls in front of the players, in the form of tough skill checks or obscure clues. Other people are saying that you shouldn't hold the players hands as they work through the story, and that they should feel like they're accomplishing something. It's honestly a tough balance to strike, for me anyway. Right now I'm considering just having a fail-safe event occur after a period of time that points the investigators toward the final dungeon, where all questions will be answered. If they solved any previous mysteries, they will be better prepared and better informed about what they are facing, but they still get to go fight the Big Bad. Does that reduce the importance of their investigations to mere side quests? Am I being too nice here!?

There's a few ideas in the part you're hung up on.

Making the mystery impossible to solve unless the PCs make a DC 30 Perception check (assuming that's non-trivial) is not a good approach because they may fail it. That doesn't mean that you should make that a DC 10 Perception check (that would be holding their hands, essentially). The big thing is to have multiple ways the PCs can get to the target point. Multiple clues, from different areas, are a big way to avoid that impassable brick wall. (Also the wall where the party misinterprets the clues they do find.)

Depending on the fail-safe event, it can be a problem, or it can be not a problem. I would put it more in the vein of "If you solve the mystery before time X, great work. But if you haven't solved it (and taken action against the Big Bad) by then, he performs the next step in his plan, but is sloppy, and leaves more blatant clues. Unfortunately, this means more bad things happen before you solve the mystery."

A bad failsafe would be where Sherlock Holmes shows up, deduces the villain's identity after 5 minutes examining the areas, and tells the party. A better failsafe would be, say, if the Big Bad sends a couple of minions to kill the PCs because he thinks they're further along than they are, and they're able to interrogate the minions and/or find instructions on their bodies. Basically, the fail-safe is ok if it feels organic to the adventure and centered on the PCs.

Once you're in mop-up, you probably want to either use cantrips, or just delay so that you can react to any unexpected developments, such as new threats arriving, immediately. Don't feel bad about not contributing during those rounds. It can be frustrating, but that's the price you pay for being a resource-limited class in a campaign that actually plays enough encounters per day to expend those resources.

Wands and scrolls are great things to have in your pocket in general, as are pearls of power, though it sounds like magical gear isn't exactly flowing.

Since you mentioned investigation, there's a couple of links I need to dig up.
Don't Prep Plots, Prep Situations

Three Clue Rule

These basically amount to "assume that your players will not follow the plot you designed, and miss or misinterpret most of the clues you provide".

Improved Unarmed Strike is a must.

For my "inspired by" character, I threw together a 25-point stat array yesterday.
Str 18 (16+2), Dex 14, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 12

The only thing I'm seeing that adds a bardic knowledge feature, aside from Bard itself, is Pathfinder Chronicler, and that does not fit Conan.

Conan is, probably, a little too good to fit into most games.

Based on what I recall from the stories (all of which I've read, but some more than others), honestly, fighter with a couple of levels of rogue and perhaps one of barbarian is what I would say.

He's smart; a couple of feats (Iron Will & Alertness) can substitute for a beefed up Wisdom score, but he needs a good Intelligence.

The one level of barbarian could represent the occasional rage, but those could also be represented by something more like hero points; it's more in the vein of a surge of strength than a barbarian rage. The rogue levels are mostly in the sense of a way to get the breadth of skills; a trait covers his skill at stealth, but Conan has a lot of scattered knowledge; something I'd say is actually best represented by Bardic Knowledge.

Really, skill-wise, he has the big physical skills: Climb, Swim, Stealth, Acrobatics (moreso in the Jump sense than the rest but all of it), some Disable Device, lots of Perception, Survival, and a feature that lets him make Knowledge & Linguistics checks untrained.

Off the top of my head I can't think of a source for that last one, and it's still a lot of skills, which is partially compensated for by a good Intelligence. And, of course, a ton of Strength.

EDIT: I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier, since I'm actively working on a PF version of a Tome of Battle character who was inspired by reading the Conan stories. Ranger (skirmisher) makes a great chassis instead of Fighter & Rogue. He loses his free feats when wearing heavy armor, but except for The Black Colossus, The Scarlet Citadel, and Hour of the Dragon, he really isn't going above medium armor. Skirmisher gives up spellcasting, and he can just take the companion bond (this could even be a model for how he inspires allies).

I still don't know how to get that bardic knowledge proxy.

I've been in a few "you should run away" encounters. And generally, it hasn't been apparent to me that I should run away.

In the one that stands out, ok, I hadn't bothered to memorize things like the CR of a cryohydra. So I had a sense that this was a tough or impossible fight, but no certainty. And the DM certainly had no intention of saying "yeah you guys aren't going to win". We were supposed to realize we needed to abandon the ship.

Of course, abandoning the ship in half-plate when most of our gear is below decks... doesn't sound like a winning proposition. And I didn't think the DM would put an encounter in front of us that would force us to abandon our equipment, flee, and probably drown in the river because I was a 2nd level character in half plate with no ranks in Swim (and it was 3.5, so double ACP was the Swim penalty). So rather than drowning (I could not make a DC 10 Swim check even taking 20), I hit the hydra. And went from full hp to dead in a single round. Fortunately the replacement character was, well, just better.

Basically, between the expectations of winnable combat set up by the rules, the pigheadedness of players who don't want to run away, and lack of clarity that it's feasible and advisable to run, fleeing is very rare. (About the best our knowledge checks could get us on that cryohydra were "it has 5 heads and breathes cold", which were clearly apparent by looking at it, and its first action. CR something that DM would never give out.)

Actually, that brings up a potentially useful idea. Provide a reference point. One of my DMs (the same one above) often involves custom monsters. And our knowledge checks will tell us something about them; perhaps history, weaknesses, strengths... but what they never give is a reference point as to the threat level of the creature. Which leaves us sometimes massively overestimating the capabilities of a monster. I recall one creature we thought was going to be a real fight. I destroyed it with one (x2) crit. If you're describing monsters or foes with the benefit of a knowledge check, provide some sort of reference point as to how dangerous they are. Not the out-of-character information of CR (unless you have no choice), but in some other, in-character context. Perhaps the bard has heard of when one of these demons killed an entire squad of the elite guard (and the party has a feel for the elite guard's capabilities).

Often I see people saying they've hinted that it's ok and smart to run. But players are notoriously obtuse, and possibly even skilled at not picking up on hints. Explicitly suggesting to run away may be the thing. Very low DC Wisdom or Intelligence checks (or knowledge checks) (that you call for, not on player request) to help that come from the characters, not the GM on high.

Another thing you could do is not do a proper map, but a graph of nodes.

I'm playing in a Ravenloft one-shot at the moment (it's a 2-3 session game, looks like), and what was suggested for mapping was not to try and get an accurate map, but simply to denote rooms and connections between rooms. This sort of approach can ignore twisting, winding tunnels with nothing in them, and leave more to the points of interest.

But mostly, I think, emphasis on the atmosphere, or just entirely handwaving the exploration to the extent of "after an hour, you run into a point of interest". No detail on what you saw during that hour of exploring. That's the Kingmaker approach, at least as handled by my Kingmaker GM; we say we're exploring a hex, we get a one sentence description of the terrain, and then whatever point of interest is in the hex shows up.

Clark wrote:

Imagine you are a movie director and envision the action scene from your adventure filmed by Michael Bay.

Encounter starts with someone casting fireball, ends with someone casting fireball. In between, several more fireballs are cast. Encounter should take place at sunset for cinematic lighting.

Clark, with much love as a judge who was kind to my wondrous item and archetype, but surely our superstars can find better directors for their cinematic inspiration! :-)

As for Steven, you had me at naga.

Slow might also be cast... how better to run in slow motion?

(edit: added quote for clarity)

Agreed.

If all I do is add one mythic tier in place of that boon, well, I'd probably just delay regular leveling a little.

The problem is the notion that the world is an epic 8th one; i.e. no character, PC or NPC, has more than 8 levels of classes. To accommodate that, mythic or not, a lot of content needs to be adjusted. In theory, assuming that the mythic system works out a particular way, I could just end up with level 8 / tier 10 characters and be equivalent to level 18 characters... so as long as I applied the mythic as a replacement for levels, I could probably leave almost every encounter alone. (Except for anything that relies on the assumption that the PCs have higher level spells... or if I want to make sure that there aren't enemies casting spells that PCs can never get.)

I'm reasonably sure I could find suitable events for further mythic tiers throughout the AP; for example, activating the Hut for the first time, and probably a good few points during the latter couple of adventures. Figuring out how to travel worlds (and times, in my Atlantis setting), would qualify.

So it's not the use of mythic that would force me to rebuild encounters; it's the use of a level cap of 8 that would do it.

I'm strongly debating how to handle this.

On the one hand, I see some excellent opportunities to work this into a custom, Epic 8th setting of mine; using mythic rules to compensate for the level cap. And the Black Rider's mantle being the moment of epicness (and probably replacing a regular level as well) seems perfect.

On the other hand... first off, I want the full mythic rules, for obvious reasons. Secondly, I'm concerned by the risk for a novice GM in needing to adapt so much of the AP to account for a switch from regular levels to mythic. (Just subbing a mythic tier for the +2 stat bonus and maybe for a single class level doesn't sound too bad, but that's not what I'd be doing.) And finally, the AP goes so far afield from the core of the setting that it's barely worth putting it in the setting. But then, that also gives me flexibility to break the rules of the setting if necessary.

Either way I'm planning to run some shorter stuff first, which means that I have plenty of ability to wait on the mythic rules. Maybe because they spend so much time outside of the core of my setting, they can ignore the Epic 8th setup. But then, are the features of ley line tie-ins, real world history tie-ins, and replacing travel to Earth with travel to the future worth all the additional work with so little payoff to the core of the setting? I'm not sure.

EDIT: Something just occurred to me. My setting, based to a degree on the myths of Atlantis, and a lot of sorcerers, is actually largely meant to take place after some unspecified cataclysm sank Atlantis beneath the waves. A lot of the intended concept is people and nations adapting to the loss of that central (if often distant and corrupt) government... and the loss of much of the magical support that government provided society.

The thing is, I haven't worked out what the cataclysm is. I know the basic effect, I know how I want Atlantis to be afterwards, and I have some rough ideas. But now look at Reign of Winter: we've got portals opening up along ley lines (and I already declared Atlantis to be at a nexus of ley lines in my campaign document), and we've got the imprisonment & neutralization of a mythic character. If this doesn't cause the cataclysm, it can definitely help lead to it, with this much big magic destabilizing the ley line nexus or the font of power that's likely at the heart of the island.