Tinalles's page

I direct your attention to the Pathfinder Wiki entry List of Works, which gives dozens of titles. Most have descriptions, and a few important ones have their own wiki articles (linked from the list of works page).

One of my favorite 3.5-to-Pathfinder changes was the modification of Dodge to remove the "declare dodge versus one opponent" mechanic in favor of making it a flat +1 dodge bonus. Doing that simplified combat. You no longer have to track one AC for one opponent, and a different AC for all other opponnents, nor do you have to take the time to figure out which opponent you're dodging this round.

So I dislike the "choose as a free action at the beginning of your turn" mechanic in the latest revision, purely because it complicates the process of managing my turn.

Making the feat give bonuses to attack and damage is okay, but seems like a lukewarm mechanical realization of the stated goal of making "combat expertise" live up to its name.

So how about something like this?

------------------------

Combat Expertise
Prereq: INT 13
Benefit: You gain a +1 insight bonus to your CMB and CMD. When your base attack bonus reaches +4, and every +4 thereafter, this bonus increases by +1, up to a maximum bonus equal to your intelligence bonus.

------------------------

That accomplishes several things:

1) It encourages combat maneuvers. An intelligent fighter knows that there is more to fighting than just "I walk up to the Big Bad and stand there full attacking until he's dead." The course of a difficult fight can be turned by a well-timed disarm, trip, bull rush, or other maneuver. More combat maneuvers is likely to lead to more dynamic combats, which are just generally more interesting than toe-to-toe slugfests.

2) It simultaneously addresses offense (CMB) and defense (CMD) without requiring a choice between the two at the beginning of a round, but also not granting a flat bonus to AC or all attacks. An intelligent fighter knows that combat is as much a head game as anything else -- all about anticipating the enemy's moves (CMD) while concealing your own intent until it's too late (CMB).

3) It ties Combat Expertise thematically and mechanically to the "Improved Combat Maneuver X" feats, which makes it a logical part of that feat chain rather than a feat tax.

4) It (partially) addresses the mechanical difficulty of using combat maneuvers against higher CR creatures who have ridiculously high CMDs due to their vastly increased STR/DEX.

I played in a 3.5 Eberron game where the DM evidently introduced a Deck at level 1. (I came in at level 3). I personally avoided it like the plague, but it went okay. In fact, at the end that deck saved the party. At the very end of the adventure, we had rescued this lady from a sacrificial altar, and she agreed to show the party how to get to the Big Bad. She was unarmored and (as far as we could tell) just a local commoner. I was worried about her surviving: I cast Mage Armor on her as we went into the final dungeon.

So naturally when we get to the sanctum of the Big Bad, the helpless sacrificial victim turns out to be a polymorphed ancient blue dragon whose AC I had just boosted by four.

The party ranged from level 8 to a single level 12, with the average about 9. We stood no chance. The dragon's breath weapon took out two of us in the surprise round, including me.

So then the bard who had the deck says "whelp, I might as well pull a card". And it comes up: three wishes. Specifically, three *unlimited* wishes. So she wished for the dragon to turn into a hundred small inanimate gold statues of itself, which it did, and then she wished the two dead PCs back to life. I think she saved the third wish.

So that deck saved the day, because I'm pretty sure the GM would cheerfully have killed the lot of us otherwise.

Bigtuna did an X-to-Y stat guide a while ago. Check that.

Good stuff. I especially like the hostage exchange idea -- that one's not something I could use immediately, but I'll definitely keep it in mind for future.

Good suggestions. Actually, I can see how a standoff could be combined with the villain helping the PCs in a session scheduled for this weekend, so yay!

The room full of children one makes me nervous, though. I can easily see that going badly.

So, as a GM, I try to work out interesting villains. They have definite goals, reasonably detailed backgrounds, and motivations beyond greed/bloodlust/power hunger.

But it's rare for any of that to actually come out in game, because there's rarely any good opportunity for the villain to role play with the PCs. If you put a group of PCs into a room with a villain, the villain is going to get dead or fled in short order.

Mostly, I'm okay with that. I don't need to recite backstory at them for no reason. But it does rather limit the dramatic repertoire when you can't get a good villainous monlogue in, much less a Palpatine-style "With each passing moment you make yourself more my servant" recruitment speech.

So ... any suggestions on how to foster PC-to-villain role play that doesn't instantly turn into a bloodbath?

That's reasonable, I guess. But a major bummer, since we spent half of a very long combat (14 rounds, almost 2 hours) maneuvering a peluda into position to get whomped on by some trees, only to discover the spell didn't work on dead trees.

Bleh!

Can the spell Wilderness Soldiers work with dead plants, or only living ones?

This came up last night in an area full of dead trees. The spell doesn't say itself. The GM ruled that it required living plants so that we could move on with the session, and suggested asking on here to see if anyone knows differently.

This would be handy.

Do you have suggestions for encounter types tied to the seven Thassilonian sin magics? I have a solo player in a homebrew campaign going into a series of sin-themed dungeons.

Lust and Wrath are fairly easy, but the player chose Pride first, and I'm kind of struggling with it. Since I'm also GM'ing Runelords at the moment, I went and read Sins of the Saviors to get some ideas. But the Pride dungeon was basically:

So that wasn't too helpful.

39. Beyond the Feasthall: a Guide to Manners for Uncultured Barbarians. This book is rather valuable, though not so much for its condescending and insipid advice. A tribe of Kellid barbarians has posted a bounty on all copies, while a book collector from Magnimar is desperately trying to acquire the few remaining copies as a rarity. Bidding wars: an adventuring party's best friend.

40. Seventh Dagger, Seventh Veil. A treatise on the nature of reality by a philosophically inclined arcane trickster and worshiper of Sivanah.

41. Tension, Torsion, and Traps. A lucid and well-illustrated discussion of common trap triggers. A PC who takes 1d6 minutes to consult this tome receives a +2 insight bonus on his next Disable Device or Craft (Traps) roll.

42. An Encomium on the Majestic Rulers of Imperial Cheliax. This genealogy was a rather transparent attempt to flatter a family of Chelaxian nobles by tracing their ancestry to Aroden. Unfortunately, the family it was aimed at held rule only for a year or so during the turbulent wars before House Thrune gained ascendancy. The author seems to have hand-written a retraction and plea for forgiveness into this copy in his own blood.

31. Vernal Rites, a short tome written on what appears to be thin slabs of birchwood bound loosely together with leather thongs through holes drilled along one edge. The text is written in druidic, and contains a discussion of the uses of the spell Plant Growth for agriculture, with particular emphasis on covering large areas. A druid who reads this book and makes a DC 18 Wisdom check may apply the benefits of the feat Widen Spell to Plant Growth once per day.

32. The Fall, a novel about political intrigue between Azlant and Thassilon in the years immediately prior to Earthfall. Of dubious historical value, but a pretty good read.

33. Hieroform Grammata, being a most concise and accurate introduction to Ancient Osiriani. This innocuous looking book bears a curse: Any PC who reads it must make a DC 16 Fortitude save to avoid contracting mummy rot (as per the mummy entry in the bestiary). If the PC succeeds on a DC 16 INT check, they gain Ancient Osiriani as a bonus language.

Awesome, thanks. I guess I'll just have to take up Arinellus' story after his departure from Sandpoint to include a journey to Crystalhurst and a brief liaison with a human woman there.

In a Rise of the Runelords game I'm GM'ing, it has emerged that one of the PCs -- a half-elf from Nirmathas of unknown parentage -- probably shares a father with Tsuto Kaijitsu. The PC and Ameiko plan to go over the Kaijitsu manor carefully in search of relevant info, e.g. hidden bundles of love letters between Atsuii and Monsieur Mystery Elf. Or similar.

As far as I know, Tsuto's father is never named or detailed anywhere. Is there any canon material on him, or am I free to let my creativity run wild?

Hide armor made of darkleaf cloth would fit the bill.

+4 AC
Max Dex +6
ACP 0
ASF 10%
weight 12.5 lbs

A bit pricey, though, at 1,515 gp. And note that you'll lose the AC bonus when wild shaping unless you want to blow a whole lot more gold to add the Wild armor property.

Cutting a deal for some mage armor with the party wizard might be a better option. The AC bonus is identical, and you get to keep that when wild shaping.

Beyond that -- Barkskin is good, and scales with level. Carry a shield -- druids are allowed the wooden kinds. Rings of Protection for deflection bonuses. Dodge if feel like blowing a feat on it.

@Kiltpiper -- nice maps of Thistletop. Wish I'd had those earlier. What's the size you're using? That is, how many pixels per square?

Yes, I'm running the original 3.5 AP.

I have the anniversary edition, and I'd really rather run that. But there are two group members who are ... hmm, let's say deeply committed to sticking with the 3.5 rule set. It was something of a struggle just to get them to agree to a game set in Golarion at all. They wanted to stay in Eberron.

Well actually, Aldern would probably do the deed personally using his Create Spawn ability, which would make her a dread ghast. Those get to retain class levels -- his create spawn ability doesn't say anything about losing abilities.

But taking away some of her warlock levels looks like a good solution anyway. Part of the character's backstory was that her warlock patron thingummy was actually a powerful fey creature rather than a devil. A fey might well want nothing to do with an undead critter, so she's have to start over with a new patron anyway.

The other thought I had was that I could keep all her warlock levels and swap her in for Rogors Craesby. The encounter at the farms might be a little tougher, but then again it's a fairly large group, so that wouldn't hurt too much.

We're just about to start book 2. I've been busily laying the groundwork for Aldern's obsession since the very first session. He latched onto a female PC -- Juron, from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings -- and wooed her with gifts of armor, weapons, and a portrait sitting. They had a lovely dinner at the White Stag. I cackled inside my head in anticipation of the "let us consummate our hunger, my love!" line.

Aaand ... the player just announced that he's not having fun with this PC, because she's a one-trick poney. We're on 3.5 rules, and he chose to play a warlock, which is about as one-trick as you can get. So I can see that. I allowed him to retire this character and come in as a new one. I'm not one to make somebody play a PC he's not having fun with, as long as he doesn't swap TOO often.

Anyway, he announced that Juron would head off into the world in pursuit of her own goals. And I instantly thought "No way is Aldern going to let the focus of his obsession just leave. He's going to intercept her and add her to his pack of ghouls."

Which basically means that the party is going to have to fight her. The logical place for her to show up is in the final encounter with Aldern. But I'm worried that if I throw a dread ghoul warlock 5 into the mix, I will totally murder the whole party. How can I do this in a reasonably balanced way?

TL;DR The PC Aldern Foxglove has obsessed over is leaving the party and getting replaced exactly at the beginning of book 2. I want to have the old PC show up in Aldern's pack of ghouls, but I'm worried that adding a dread ghoul warlock 5 (we're on 3.5 rules) to the final Misgivings encounter will unbalance it. Suggestions?

Note: I discussed it with the player (giving as few spoilers as possible) and he's okay with his former PC showing up as an undead villain.

Just to name another video game with some really good female characters -- The Longest Journey is chock full of them. The protagonist April Ryan is the top example from there, of course, but there were lots of others too.

When I worked at the local renaissance festival for a few summers, they gave us some improv training. The key takeaway was that if you say "no" to something, you're forcing the other person stop and come up with something new to say. That makes it a lot harder.

So they suggested that we try and lead our improvised responses with either "Yes, and ..." or "But if ..." or "What about". Phrases like that let you build upon whatever the last person said, rather than negating it and having to start over.

That's worked pretty well for me in GM'ing. Perhaps it'll help your player.

OOooo, and spells written with ink in the book can't be removed. maybe have them be required to craft a new book from scratch if they wish the spells to change.

In the morning, a wizard sits down for an hour and studies a spellbook. Studying the book lets the wizard prepare spells. A prepared spell is loaded into the wizard's memory, all but finished. When he wants to actually cast the spell, he makes the last few gestures, and intones the last few words, and the spell is discharged. It does its thing, and then it is gone from the wizard's mind until the next time he prepares spells.

So a wizard is almost never going to want to remove a spell from his spellbook. They are there as options for spells he could prepare if he wanted. Just leave them there permanently. If he doesn't need a particular spell very often, big deal -- it's there in the spellbook if the need pops up, and if not, no harm done. If the book gets full, start another.

And yes, you get 2 free spells per wizard level after first. If you want more, your wizard will need to buy scrolls of those spells and transcribe them into his spellbook.

Looking forward to sniping singles on the secondary market. (I've already got a bazillion goblins).

I know that it's not currently possible to send a gift order of a PDF to someone who lacks a Paizo account. Consider this a feature request, as I'm trying to seduce a 3.5 holdout to the Pathfinder side of the Force.[1]

I envision it working something like this:

A) I click the gift options checkbox during checkout.
B) I put in any email address as the recipient.
C) The recipient gets an email with a link to redeem their gift.
D) On arrival, they are prompted to create a Paizo account.
E) They get their PDF as normal.

Just something for you developers when you get a spare moment[2] in your undoubtedly busy schedules. Thanks!

.

.

.

[1] Whether the Paizo side of the Force is light, dark, plaid or "other" I leave as an exercise for the reader.

[2] Probably more like 2-8 weeks of full time work, depending on how much of the core Paizo site code would need to be touched, and accounting for testing and iteration.

Many maps made with Dundjinni (and similar programs) are made for use with virtual table top tools. Under those circumstances, it is assumed that the grid will be supplied by the VTT, allowing the grid to be shown or hidden as the players desire. That's probably why.

For example, here's a Map of Sevenarches Plaza I made in Photoshop for a homebrew game. A square is 50x50 pixels. I fed that info to MapTool when I set it up, and voila, grid.

If you just want to add a grid to an existing map, it's pretty easy to do. Here's how (assuming you're on Windows -- if not, you'll have to work out some other method).

1) Download Paint.net (kind of an annoying download page, click the download link under "Get it now" at top right, then click the big white "Download Now" button with the disk icon on it). This is a general graphics editor. It's free of charge, and open source.

2) Install Paint.net (straightforward, run the installer and keep clicking Next).

3) Download the Grid Maker plugin for Paint.net. The linked page has complete installation instructions (basically just dump the DLL in Paint.net's "effects" folder).

4) Open the map you want to add a grid to in Paint.net. You may want to work on a second copy of the file so that you'll have the original if you mess up somehow.

5) Click Effects -> Render -> Grid/Checkerboard Maker. The color of the grid will correspond to the foreground color currently selected in Paint.net.

6) Check the "Foreground only" option near the bottom to make it just add lines, not fill in the squares.

7) Set the size of the horizontal and vertical grid step to the correct scale. Commonly this is 50, 100, 150, or 200 pixels per square. If you don't know the exact size, just experiment a bit till it looks right to you.

8) Click OK to finalize the grid.

9) Save the file.

That will get you a basic grid. There are more advanced variants, of course -- I often render two grids, each on a separate layer above the main map. The top is black. Underneath that is a white grid, offest a couple of pixels so that it isn't hidden underneath the black grid. Then I merge those two layers into one, and change its opacity to about 40% so that the lines don't totally overwhelm the map itself. Here's my Sevenarches Plaza map with grid so you can see what this looks like.

A downside of adding a grid to a finished map is that it doesn't always make sense to overlay the grid on top of everything. The grid is supposed to be at "ground level". It doesn't make visual sense to have it on top of trees or buildings. In a map produced for print, this would have been done during production, the grid sandwiched in at the appropriate level. But if you need to do it after the fact, you can render the grid on a layer above the map and just erase the lines that don't make sense. It's a bit tedious and fiddly, but not hard. Here's a copy of my Sevenarches Plaza with grid lines going "under" houses and trees and such.

Printing it gets a little more complex, but you can either hand the file to somebody at a print shop, or you can use Posterazor to slice it into chunks suitable for printing on a standard home printer one page at a time.

Great!

Any chance of a bound copy of all six installments together at some point? I've opted for PDFs along the way, but for a print copy of the whole thing I'd happily cough up more cash. Especially if it came with a little bonus artwork.

I am male, and I find accounts of sexist workplaces both troubling and ... alien. I've never really seen that at any of places I've worked after graduating, because I'm a librarian. My profession is about 90% female -- 98% in public libraries, more like 85-90 in university libraries.

I have definitely noticed that men more often wind up as department heads and library directors, and that's troubling; but I've never once run across the outright in-your-face sexism described in the Save vs Sexism article. It may happen someplace, but if so, I haven't observed it. I hope that if I ever do come across it I'll have the nerve to speak up and call them on it.

You need high Dexterity for your attack bonus, a moderate-to-high Strength for damage. Beyond that, archery is mostly about the feat chain.

Psion-Psycho's build will indeed dish out massive quantities of damage. It'll hit often, and you'll be able to get in full attacks quite often due to not having to move close to the enemies to do so.

That said, there is such a thing as over-specialization. With a Wisdom modifier of -1 and a slow progression on Will saves, the above character is a time bomb. All it will take is an enchanter with Murderous Command or Dominate Person, and all that damage is going to be dished out on your party members rather than your opponents. And of course your Perception score will be lousy.

Consider a putting off a couple of those feats to slightly higher levels in order to pick up Iron Will and Improved Iron Will.

RISE, O Thread from Days Gone Past!

... since you mentioned what this is *NOT* where would I find an optimization guide to polymorphing?

Draxar published a good guide to forms a few days ago. See Polymorphamory - The Love of Changing Form: A guide to shapeshifting for a pretty thorough guide to forms based on all the available spells and quite a wide variety of sources (includes the AP bestiary sections as well as the main bestiary).

He doesn't discuss feats or choosing which ability scores to pump, but just having a guide to the available forms should help you work out that bit.

Tinalles wrote:

Honestly, I think a lot of PC deaths are due to ill-advised tactical decisions by the players.

Example: I'm GM'ing Rise of the Runelords at the moment, and our sole PC death so far resulted from the player deciding to bull rush a goblin off the edge of Thistletop. I allowed him a DC 13 reflex save to avoid falling over himself, which he failed,

As far as I know you don't even have to enter the square your opponent is in to bullrush him. Meaning the pc in this example didn't even have to go near the drop. So without knowing if there are special circumstances mentioned in this part of the AP for me it sounds as if this pc died due to ill-advised houseruling, not ill-advised tactical decisions by the player.

Not a house rule; an older rule. We're playing RotRL under the 3.5 rules because two members of the group are staunchly opposed to switching to PF.

The 3.5 Bull Rush rules explicitly say you must enter your opponent's square when doing this maneuver, then do opposed STR checks. The barbarian in question rolled high on his STR check, while the goblin dog he was bull rushing rolled very low.

Under those circumstances -- locked in close combat on the edge of a cliff with an enemy who didn't push back very hard -- falling off seemed a reasonable risk.

Honestly, I think a lot of PC deaths are due to ill-advised tactical decisions by the players.

Example: I'm GM'ing Rise of the Runelords at the moment, and our sole PC death so far resulted from the player deciding to bull rush a goblin off the edge of Thistletop. I allowed him a DC 13 reflex save to avoid falling over himself, which he failed, and the rest is history.

Another example: in the Kingmaker campaign I'm playing in, our wizard (Wandering Moon) flew up to the top of a mountain with a large, nasty roc on it, intent on hooking a grappling hook for the rest of the party to climb up. He neglected to go invisible, was instantly spotted by the roc (who was home), and died in 2 rounds. If he'd thought to go invisible, he'd probably still be with us. We renamed the place Moon's End Peak in his honor.

Of course, making sound tactical decisions depends heavily on how experienced the player is. A party of newbies is likely to have a much rougher time of it than a group of old hands.

More support articles would be good.

Another possibility: short, fairly generic encounters set in the same area as the AP. Some examples:

- In an outdoorsy adventure such as Kingmaker, a 1 page encounter in which a tearful six-year-old boy asks the PCs to rescue his cat from a tree it's gotten stuck in -- complicated by the fact that the tree is a treant taking a nap.

- In an urban adventure (I'm thinking Ashes at Dawn from Carrion Crown), a 2-3 page mini-adventure: local heiress Kirala Anjostou needs a security detail for her wedding festivities. Looks like a cakewalk, till the parents she poisoned show up as a revenants.

Stuff like that. Short. No maps, maybe a stat block if a stock one won't do. No direct tie to the main campaign plotline, but set in the same area so it can be thrown in as a side quest or just a fun stand-alone encounter.

I'm a librarian. I love reading. And I've been a subscriber since Carrion Crown.

But I've never actually read any of the fiction in my APs. Why would I?

For world information, the articles detailing areas/deities/etc are more concise.

For flavor ... well, I've read an awful lot of fantasy novels. Definitely hundreds, probably over a thousand. Between that and the two master's degrees in medieval literature, I've got flavor covered.

More maps would be awesome, but they would probably be expensive to produce.

Both interesting suggestions. Swapping the chain shirt would work assuming they can pull the charade off for a full day -- the rules say that you lose your druid abilities for 24 hours after putting on prohibited armor. The druid is part of the Green Faith, and so doesn't have a specific patron to appeal to for an exception. Otherwise that would be a good idea.

I think the fox may attempt to rejoin them -- not guaranteed that he'll get in, of course, but foxes are pretty sneaky, and of course as a familiar he's much smarter than usual. In fact, I think I may offer the player the opportunity to PLAY the fox trying to get into the prison. That'll be fun. Wouldn't work in a standard game, but since there's only one player, why not?

Some things I've thought of include:

1) The druid has an unusually good Bluff score and might just try tricking the guards. Perhaps the classic "my cellmate is actually a werewolf, oh god, get me out before she bites me" gig. Though that could backfire.

2) The cohort still has a few spells prepped. I don't know what exactly, but the player might be able to figure something out with one of those.

3) The grate is rusty. It might be possible for the cohort to fly up and surreptitiously jam some straw or cloth into the latch to keep the lock from fully engaging. I am assuming the Flight hex is a spell-like ability (and hence no verbal or somatic components required), which would make it easier to do unobtrusively. Later, during the night watch, she can then fly up, open the grate, and lower a ladder or rope to the druid. The sticking point of this plan would be that although the witch has an unusually good Stealth score, she doesn't have any ranks in Disable Device, so she'd have to roll really well to pull it off.

I'm GM'ing a solo campaign, and my player (an elf druid) has landed herself in jail in Sevenarches (which outlaws elves, for reasons the reigning Oakstewards don't advertise). I'm pretty sure she's going to try to escape, rather than go through the process of getting tried, convicted, branded, and deported.

But I'm not sure what avenues are open to her. So I'll ask you all: how would YOU get out of this situation?

Assume the following:

You are locked up in a 10x10 subterranean room with no doors or windows. Prisoners, food, and so on are brought into the room via a rusty grate in the ceiling -- there's a ladder up top that was pulled up after. The grate is about 10 feet up, and locked (DC 30). Food is provided at 9 AM, 2 PM, and 7 PM -- generally your basic porridge, nourishing but dull, and served in wooden bowls with wooden spoons which are lowered down on a wooden tray attached to a rope. The tray is hauled back up again after you've taken your food, leaving the utensils with you. A wooden bucket of fresh water is provided each morning by the same method. There is a small hole (approx 5 inches diameter) in one corner of the cell for disposal of urine and feces, and you can hear running water from down below.

You have two bunks, consisting of planks affixed to the wall and supported at either end with chains. There is some straw strewn about the floor. The walls are stone masonry.

There are two guards on duty up top at all times, with shift changes every 6 hours (8 AM, 2 PM, 8 PM, 2 AM). They've mostly left you alone, though there's one jerk in the 8 PM shift who thought it would be funny to pee into your cell. The night shifts tend to be less attentive than the day shifts.

You've been told it may be a few days before your case is brought to the magistrate.

As for your resources:

You are an elven druid 8.
- Your gear was taken when you were captured.
- Your boar companion was captured, but isn't in the cell with you.
- Your captors know you're a druid, and have forced you to wear a chain shirt to disable your druid abilities.

Your cohort (human witch 6) is imprisioned with you.
- Her gear was taken.
- She has the hedge witch archetype.
- She has Cauldron, Healing, Evil Eye and Flight hexes.
- Her fox familiar was NOT captured, and may try to rejoin her.
- Your captors mistakenly believe your cohort is a wizard.

So, it's a pretty grim situation. The penalty for entering Sevenarches while elven is to be branded and deported (first offense). Subsequent offenses are punished via execution. This is a first offense.

Given all that, what would you do?

A good piece. Very evocative.

Get your GM to let you invent a magic spell allowing you to slowly (but steadily) shrink his clothing, just a little bit at a time; then convince him he's getting fat.

Does he have a mount? Prestidigitation to color it purple, and feed it a tasty treat which will induce severe flatulence.

The cantrip message allows no saving throw, and vocal alteration will let you disguise your voice. Between these two, you ought to be able to persuade him that his sword has become an intelligent item with an evil agenda. Or that the next critter you encounter is actually enchanted royalty who needs just a single kiss to be restored to normal, and can only speak to the paladin due to his innate goodness.

Or, if you have a darker turn, you could use the message/vocal alteration combo to convince him that he's being haunted by the spirits of those he has slain in the course of his adventures. Bonus points for using the "faintly glowing, vaguely humanoid shape" variant of dancing lights (still no saving throw!)during his night watches to give these "spirits" a form. Bwa ha ha.

The full-time archer in our game has now lost three bows to Sunder, Warp Wood, and an unfortunate incident involving some green slime.

If this is at all likely to be a concern for you, I recommend two things:

1) Make your bow of greenwood, a special material from Ultimate Equipment. For a mere 150 gp over the price of a regular masterwork bow, your bow will be fire-resistant and able to heal itself if it gets broken. You're going to blowing a TON of gold on enchants for your bow; greenwood seems like a good insurance policy.

2) If that's not an option for some reason, carry a backup bow. A regular masterwork composite longbow with an appropriate STR rating is a comparatively cheap backup.

Pathfinder style sun:

Do it from the First World, where distance and size are more fluid, and reality tends to bend to the strong-willed. Presumably extinguishing (or stealing) the First World sun would ripple up the chain of dimensions.

Still not easy.

Real style sun:

Induce a supernova. Somehow. This would of course also wipe out the planet, but hey, nobody said there wouldn't be side effects.

Other than that -- and the good ideas from AndIMustAsk -- may I suggest a REALLY BIG set of hot pads?

Scenario: a barbarian gets engulfed by a Mud Man. His party mates want to kill the mud man. If they attack the mud man, does the barbarian take damage?

How about various permutations on this -- does a slashing weapon penetrate the mud better than a bludgeoning weapon? How about a Scorching Ray or Fireball?

I'm also surprised that this ability doesn't seem to allow the engulfed creature to make any kind of escape attempt.

Fluff Changes

- The tree was once sacred to Curchanus, and had been fondly looked over by Desna as a memento of her lost mentor. Desna left a stone marker saying, essentially, "don't cut this down" by the tree, but it was written in celestial.

- An agent of Lamashtu (Myrrhine, see below) persuaded the Glencross woodcutters to cut the tree down.

- Desna punished the villagers, with Myrrhine smirking from the shadows.

- Erastil stepped in to appease Desna, and the price she demanded was that the villagers (or their champions) remove the Coiled Beast.

- Myrrhine convinced a treant guardian of the forest (Cambios) that the PCs were responsible for the tree's demise.

- On confronting the PCs, Cambios prayed to Gozreh for aid and got the 2 savage grizzlies.

- The Coiled Beast itself became sacred to Lamashtu instead of Gozreh.

- Myrrhine lived with the coiled beast, using the Serpentfriend ability from her sorcerer bloodline to communicate with it.

Mechanically, everything worked identically to the presentation in the document.

Mechanical Changes

- Encounter 1: ditched the two snakes, gave the three ordinary wolves the Agile mythic template, and switched the dire wolf from Agile to Invincible.

- Encounter 2: as written.

- Encounter 3: gave the treant the advanced simple template and named him Cambios. Allowed Cambios to use his animate trees ability. Rain and bears as written.

- Encounter 4: changed the location to a swamp (shallow bog, per CRB 427) for more difficult terrain, and exempted the hydra from treating it as difficult terrain due to its swim speed.

- Encounter 4: added Myrrhine (MEER-in-ee), a medusa sorceress 3 (serpentine bloodline), with 3 mythic tiers (dual path Trickster/Champion). Here is her stat block. Doubtless it doesn't conform 100% to paizo spec, but all the info is there in case anyone is interested.

The Party

The party consisted of the following, including the mythic tiers gained after accepting Erastil's gift:

"Eh" -- male sylph bladebound magus 6. Took dual path Archmage/Champion.

Felonious -- male vanera gunslinger 6. Not sure which paths he took.

Manius Petronicus -- male human oracle of metal 6. Took Hierophant/Champion.

Sharp -- male catfolk knife master rogue 6. Took Trickster.

Encounter 1, A Village Attacked

The encounter wasn't terribly challenging. The lowest AC in the party was 25, and the wolves therefore had trouble hitting anyone who wasn't a villager.

We did have fun with a caber toss in which the oracle won first place (a prize pig).

Encounter 2, Ascension

For role playing reasons, half the party were strongly reluctant to take the arrows. But they eventually agreed.

Mythic build notes:

"Eh"
- Archmage 3
- Mythic Feat 1: Dual Path (Champion)
- Archmage Arcana: Wild Arcana
- Champion Strike: Sudden Attack
- Mythic Flaw: Cold Iron vulnerability
- Path Ability 1: Extra Mythic Power
- Path Ability 2: Extra Mythic Power
- Path Ability 3: Extra Mythic Power

Felonious
- I didn't get the details of his build, but his flaw was Hubris.

Manius Petronicus
- Hierophant 3
- Mythic Feat 1: Dual Path (Champion)
- Mythic Feat 2: Mythic Spells
- Mythic Flaw: Food dependency (spinach)
- Divine Surge: Inspired Spell
- Champion Strike: Sudden Attack
- Path Ability 1: Faith's Reach
- Path Ability 2: Water of Life
- Path Ability 3: Feat of Charisma
- Mythic Spell (feat): Cure Light Wounds
- Mythic Spell (feat): Cure Moderate Wounds
- Mythic Spell (feat): Cure Serious Wounds
- Mythic Spell (path): Heat Metal

Sharp
- Trickster 3
- Mythic Feat 1: Weapon Finesse
- Mythic Feat 2: Unsure
- Trickster Attack: Surprise Strike
- Path Ability 1: Improbable Prestidigitation
- Path Ability 2: Assured Skill
- Path Ability 3: Path Dabbling (Epic DR)

Encounter 3, Grove

As noted in the mechanical changes section, the treant (Cambios) got the advanced simple template and permission to animate trees. The two animated trees only got half hitpoints, and didn't use their power attack.

The bears went down fast.

The magus did incredible amounts of damage with frigid touch and scorching ray before finally getting pinned by one of the animated trees. After a few rounds he escaped the grapple and got pounded into negatives with AoOs. The oracle healed him, and he proceeded to take out the treant while lying prone.

After the fight the party healed up using Recuperation.

This was easily the most challenging encounter, but the party handled it with aplomb. I did a couple of things to ease the fight (one of the animated trees got confused and beat up the dead bears for a while), but I'm pretty sure that if I had eliminated the bears outright and just gone with 2 animated trees they could have handled it with no particular problem even if I hadn't pulled any punches.

For rewards, they all got Ambrosia, plus one item each:

- For "Eh", the Fire Goddess's Blade
- For Felonious, the Book of Perfect Jokes
- For Manius Petronicus, a Golden Holy Symbol of his deity (Gorum)
- For Sharp, the Dagger of a Thousand Bites

Sharp was the only one to make any use of his reward. "Eh" ignored the sword because his bound blade was better. Manius didn't wind up casting any spells with focus components. And Felonious just shot stuff for the rest of the adventure.

Encounter 4, the Bridge over the Howling Chasm

They were more or less stumped. They lowered a rope into the chasm, climbed down, and once they determined that they would get hit by lightning if they approached the far side, they hiked downstream for half a day till the chasm petered out into a swamp. Then they camped, got bitten by mosquitoes, and spent half the next day tromping back on the far side of the ravine.

Encounter 5, the Hydra

"Eh" rolled very high on his knowledge check and learned all its weaknesses in short order. Furthermore, the party had lots of fire and acid. They steamrolled it in 2 rounds.

Halfway through round 2, Myrrhine stepped in to protect her pet, and managed to petrify two party members (Felonious and Manius) before they finished killing the hydra. At that point she ran away. She could very likely have taken the two remaining party members by herself, but one of those two players had to leave anyway. So I had her run. Pity, I would have liked to see if she could have won against the magus and the rogue, both of whom where extremely effective.

Closing Thoughts: Competing Point Pools

The player of the magus commented that the mythic rules were frustrating because the magus mechanics and the mythic mechanics are identical. In both you get a pool of points that you can spend as a swift action -- but you only get one swift action per turn, so while the other characters could routinely fit a mythic ability use into their turn, the magus was constantly having to choose which pool to draw on. One possible adjustment to address this might be a feat or path ability which allows you to swap a move action for a swift action. Under core RAW, you can swap a standard for a move, but that's it. Some way to continue exchanging larger actions for smaller (give up a standard for a move, give up a move for a swift) would let a magus do something like spend an arcane pool point to recall a spell (swift action), cast it (standard action), then spend a mythic power point to make a Surprise Strke (swift action instead of a move action).

Hope this helps.

+1 on what Jiggy said.

Also note, you can add magic aura to the trap's construction requirements to conceal its aura and adjust the price accordingly. But unless the trap's description explicitly notes this, assume that it will ping on detect magic.

The Circlet does not affect spell DCs. Its sole effect is to modify skill checks based on CHA and raw CHA checks.

Intimidate, Diplomacy, Bluff, Use Magic Device and Perform are all CHA-based skills, so you'd get a +3 on all of those.

If you have cast Charm Person on someone, you need to win an opposed CHA check (d20 + CHA modifier) to persuade that person to do something they wouldn't ordinarily do. The circlet would apply to that.

Spell DCs, however, are not a "check". There is no random element, they're static based on your current CHA score. So the circlet does not apply.

To deal with the natural effects of rot, I recommend the spell Gentle Repose -- no rot, no smell, no muss, no fuss. It's a first level cleric spell, and it lasts a day per level. So you'll basically be giving up a spell slot at first level, but it gets progressively easier after that. If you pick up Extend Spell at third level (or a Lesser Metamagic Rod of Extend Spell) pretty soon you'll only need to cast it once in a long while, freeing up that spell slot the rest of the time.

For the evil aura -- angelskin armor or magic aura. Since you're high CHA you might invest in wand of it for 750 gp and put some ranks in Use Magic Device. One casting lasts 24 hours, and if you fail a UMD check on a wand it doesn't waste a charge, you just fail to activate it.

For the unsociable behavior, explain that your child is brain-damaged.

That said ... Pharasma would not put up with this sort of thing, as others have said.

... so it does.

*wipes egg from face*

TL;DR:

I'd like to make a plea for some way -- not necessarily at the outset, mind, but eventually! -- for users to create theme-park style dungeons for other players to run. Given adequate quality controls, a few dedicated users can produce a ton of rich content.

-------------------------------------

Long version:

For many years, I was an enthusiastic member of the Active Worlds community. Active Worlds was a very early shared world (circa 1997; I joined in '98 and kept at it for a decade).

User-created content was the primary attraction. You could stake out a claim in any of several virtual worlds and build anything you could imagine using the fairly flexible building tools. The largest open building world, Alphaworld, was a little larger than California.

Anyway! AW has been essentially moribund for years now, but what it taught me was that if you give users the tools to create their own environments, they can turn out some AMAZING work. The greatest limitation was the super-arcane, severely limited scripting language, which didn't even have any way to make an "if" statement.

User generated content is meant to be a large part of Pathfinder Online, but it so far sounds like nothing but pre-fab buildings. And I can see that -- if you had totally open building, you'd run into the same problems as Active Worlds or Second Life, namely many people would start vast projects with half-baked skills, get frustrated, and wander off, leaving the landscape littered with half-constructed buildings hanging in mid-air, roads that go nowhere for a very long time, and random sculptures of genitalia. That kind of thing is obviously incompatible with the level of quality control required in a project like PFO.

But, that said, please consider eventually working out some way to let your more intense users become dungeon builders. Pick a few people who have shown themselves upstanding members of the community and give them:

- a private space separate from the usual world for development
- a selection of fairly generic pre-made objects for building with, and the UI for building
- a moderately robust scripting language for adding interactivity
- documentation of the scripting language

Then sit back and see what they come up with. A few of them will knock your socks off, and those dungeons could then be joined to the usual game world, enriching it for everyone.

Take a look at Diane Duane's novel Omnitopia Dawn to see how this might play out in terms of community procedures. The corporate espionage and self-created AI-run-amok can be safely omitted.

If I understand correctly, "reputation" represents the collective judgement of other players about your behavior.

But so far I have seen only discussion of negative reputation. I would like to be able to give somebody positive reputation as well. Maybe somebody loans me some coin, or shares the location of a good dungeon, or explains how to craft a particular item. In that kind of situation, I should be able to give positive rep to the person who helped me.

Containing griefers is necessary; just bear in mind that rewarding good samaritans is the other side of that coin.

I had my table roll for it -- 1d8 to pick the flaw. If necessary a secondary roll, for example to pick a school of magic in the School Aversion flaw.

Fluff

I ran the adventure in the playtest document as written, with the following fluff changes:

- The tree was once sacred to Curchanus, and had been fondly looked over by Desna as a memento of her lost mentor. This explains the lack of a druid looking out for it and the general lack of indication of its sacredness.

- Erastil stepped in to appease Desna, and the price she demanded was that the villagers (or their champions) remove the Coiled Beast.

- The Coiled Beast itself became sacred to Lamashtu instead of Gozreh.

Mechanically, everything worked identically to the presentation in the document.

The Party

The party consisted of the following, including the mythic tiers gained after accepting Erastil's gift:

Genrad
- male dwarf monk 6
- drunken master archetype (APG)

Ichabod Leirann
- male elf wizard 6
- abjurer, prohibited schools necromancy and conjuration

Felani
- female half-elf rogue 6
- no archetypes, but fights with an Elven Curve Blade

Clairette Belle-Cheveaux
- female half-elf bard 6
- songhealer archetype (UM)
- archer
- GM PC added at the last minute because one player dropped out

To avoid metagaming with the GM PC, I re-used stats for a character I built for a different one-shot almost 2 years ago. The rest of this account is from memory, so I hope I don't forget anything important.

Encounter 1, A Village Attacked

I drew out a village square and set out 8 villagers in addition to the party. 1 villager was killed outright, 3 more taken to negatives.

The mythic wolf died fairly fast at the hands of the monk, as did two of the other wolves. The last wolf failed a reflex save against a lightning bolt.

One snake took a critical hit from a bow without dying, only to have its last few hit points crushed by the little boy's frantic, frail grandmother, who rolled a 19 on her attempt to smack it with her cane and then rolled max damage. The other snake suffered a sneak attack while it was grappling a local strumpet, only to actually die at the hands of the wizard (he shot it with a light crossbow, iirc).

The monk was the focus of the wolves for most of the 3-4 rounds of the combat, so he got fairly beaten up, and the wizard took one hit from a snake. Otherwise not too challenging.

The mythic wolf really needed some DR or something.

Encounter 2, Ascension

Went smoothly. When I told them that all the food and drink in the village spoiled, the monk asked if that applied to stuff inside his Handy Haversack. I said yes, and the monk wept has he poured out a HUNDRED bottles of spoiled beer. Everyone else sang "99 Bottles of Beer in the Sack".

On a whim, I told them they'd all learned Celestial as a bonus language. Ichabod protested, "But I already know Celestial!" So I told him that he now spoke it beautifully, and would receive a +10 circumstance bonus on bluff checks to convince people that he's from Heaven, or that he's an aasimar.

Notes on mythic builds:

Genrad
- Champion 3
- Mythic Quick Draw for purposes of drinking booze fast
- Fleet Charge
- Feat of Acrobatics path ability

I don't have this character sheet, and the player took the time to work out his build in advance, so I don't know the full details of what all he took.

Ichabod
- Guardian 3
- Mythic Feat 1: Dual Path (Archmage)
- Mythic Feat 2: Dual Focus (+3 uses)
- Mythic Flaw: Aversion to Necromancy
- Guardian's Call: Absorb Blow
- Archmage Arcana: Arcana Surge
- Path Ability: Epic DR (Guardian)
- Path Ability: Snatch Spell (Archmage)
- Path Ability: Enduring Armor (Archmage)

My own skepticism about Enduring Armor was covered in the thread I started on that topic. My player however appreciated it because Conjuration is a prohibited school for his PC. He opted to leave a first-level spell slot open for purposes of Enduring Armor, effectively making simply a permanent Mage Armor without sacrificing any higher level spell slots or using 2 slots for the effect.

He was sad to discover that none of the spells he knew had mythic variants.

Felani
- Trickster 3
- Mythic Feat 1: Mythic Toughness
- Mythic Feat 2: Mythic Weapon Finesse
- Mythic Flaw: Insanity
- Trickster Attack: Surprise Strike
- Path Ability 1: Defensive Move
- Path Ability 2: Path Dabbling (Champion, Stanch Wounds)
- Path Ability 3: Path Dabbling (Guardian, Epic DR)

Player was confused about Surprise Strike; he thought the "within 30 feet" part entitled him to move as a swift action as well as making an attack. That was pretty clearly not RAI, since that's what Fleet Charge does. He opted to retain Surprise Strike as an easy way of getting sneak attacks.

Clairette
- Archmage 3
- Mythic Feat 1: Dual Path (Champion)
- Mythic Feat 2: Mythic Spells
- Mythic Flaw: Insanity
- Archmage Arcana: Wild Arcana
- Champion Strike: Distant Barrage
- Path Ability 1: To the Death
- Path Ability 2: Extra Mythic Power
- Path Ability 3: Component Power
- Mythic Spell (feat): Cure Light Wounds
- Mythic Spell (feat): Cure Moderate Wounds
- Mythic Spell (feat): Sleep
- Mythic Spell (path): Invisibility

We were unclear on whether Component Power affected a component selected at the time the ability was chosen, or whether it allows you to choose which component you want to ignore each time you cast a spell. The second is much more flexible.

Either way, Component Power could be used to cast in full plate with no spell failure by just ignoring the somatic component of all your spells. Handy for EKs, and fairly cheap at the cost of just one path ability. Compare to Armor Master, which you must take twice if you want to cast in mithral full plate, or thrice for casting in mundane full plate.

Encounter 3, Grove

Ichabod tried to use Diplomacy to soothe the treant into not fighting the party. Fortunately for the sake of the playtest, he rolled terribly on his Diplomacy check.

The PCs, newly juiced up with Amazing Initiative, went first. They forgot about the ability to take extra turns per round (!) and we just played as normal mostly.

The bears did very little damage before getting taken out. One failed a will save against Deep Slumber, cast by Ichabod. The other failed a will save against Mythic Sleep, cast by Clairette. Both got coup-de-graced by Felani.

Ichabod's failed attempt at Diplomacy only made the treant angry, and so he started out by chucking a boulder at him, which hit for 29 damage. Ichabod put a mythic power use into Absorb Blow, and as a third-tier guardian he therefore ignored all the damage.

We were unclear on what to do with damage less than 10 for purposes of calculating Absorb Blow's effect. The first 20 points of damage obviously triggered the increase in DR/epic and resistances. But the ability specifies that you get additional DR and resistances "for every 10 points of damage prevented by this ability". Is that a running total? Should we keep track of points less than 10 and add them to damage prevented by the ability in subsequent turns for purposes of calculating when the DR goes up?

Also, the DR gained from Absorbing Blow persists for a while. Does damage prevented by that DR count as "prevented by this ability"? For example, suppose a 10th tier Guardian is fighting a dragon and a kobold:

Step 1: Dragon does exactly 100 damage to the Guardian;
Step 2: Guardian uses Absorb Blow to negate it, gains DR 10/epic;
Step 3: Kobold does exactly 10 damage to the Guardian, which is prevented by the DR he gained in step 2.

At that point, does the Guardian's DR go up to 11?

And how about energy resistances? If a Guardian gains acid resistance from Absorb Blow, do points of acid damage prevented by that resistance count as "damage prevented by this ability" and increase the DR and resistances further?

This was an awesome moment, by the way. Ichabod is fairly frail -- 34 hp at level 6. Ordinarily taking 29 damage would be a HUGE wound (85% of his hit points in one blow). But with Absorb Blow, he just shrugged it off. I described it as Ichabod casually back-handing a boulder as large as he was out of mid-air to plow a deep furrow in the forest loam.

So if the intent of this ability is to make a Guardian well-nigh indestructible, mission accomplished!

The treant took a while to chip down, but he eventually perished at the hands (literally) of the monk, whose Amulet of Mighty Fists (flaming) added quite a bit of damage. The player remarked on how nice it was for a monk to have more things to do with a swift action.

Clairette was mostly doing healer duty, but her Enhanced Healing ability from the Songhealer archetype gave me a moment of pause. It lets her use, say, a Wand of Cure Moderate Wounds at her own caster level (6) instead of the minimum needed to cast the spell (3). I swiftly came to the conclusion that the spell "recorded" in the wand would not be affected by her new knowledge of Mythic Cure Moderate Wounds, and would be only a normal one.

But ... if she had Craft Wand, could she craft wands of Mythic Cure spells? If so, would other characters be able to use them? How would that affect the price? And the cost?

The price of a normal wand of cure light wounds is 750 gp (crafting one costs 375 gp). A wand of mythic cure light wounds would do twice the healing of a regular one. Would the price be doubled? How about the cost? I think the cost needs to scale with the price. If the price doubles to 1,500, but the cost holds steady at 375, then a PC could sell at 750 (50% of the market price) and still make a 100% profit. And since it only takes 1 day to make wand of CLW, you could do it quite a lot until the market couldn't take any more wands of Mythic CLW.

But I digress.

For rewards, they all got Ambrosia, plus one item each:

- For Genrad, Cayden's Cup
- For Ichabod, the Dagger of a Thousand Bites
- For Felani, the Cloak of the Hunt
- For Clairette, the Cornucopia of Plenty

Encounter 4, the Bridge over the Howling Chasm

Genrad: jumped it with an acrobatics check of 33 despite rolling terribly. The +20 bonus from Feat of Acrobatics made it easy. I had a lightning bolt try for him half-way across, but he easily passed the reflex save, and his Evasion meant that he effectively dodged a spell effect aimed at him by a god. Very awesome.

He also tied a rope to himself first and secured it to a rock on the other end to provide a hand-rail for the others.

Ichabod: flew over the chasm, triggering Absorb Blow to shrug off most of the lightning despite failing his reflex save.

Clairette: insisted on walking across the bridge the hard way and failed an Acrobatics check badly half-way across. She would have fallen if she hadn't been holding the rope Genrad strung up. Ichabod flew back out, shrugging off another lightning bolt in the process, and carried her to the other side despite her insistence that she was frightened of flying and wanted to walk. In a fit of pique, she thereafter refused to heal him because he didn't put her back on the bridge. Her mythic flaw really should have been hubris instead of insanity.

Felani: walked across the bridge, did not fall, failed her reflex save against the lightning and just took the damage. Clairette healed her up.

At this point Clairette announced that they were going to have a picnic, and poured a hero's feast out of the cornucopia. It seemed epic to have a picnic on a barren mound surrounded by the bones of dozens of creatures, fully aware of the danger and disregarding it.

Encounter 5, the Hydra

Ichabod and Clairette were the only members of the party with Knowledge (Nature) and both rolled very low. They knew nothing about a hydra's vulnerabilities, head removal, or anything useful.

Felani had spent a mythic power use activating the Cloak of the Hunt, and so was invisible. She slipped around behind the hydra -- no AoO because she was invisible -- spent a standard action to cast Shield using her Major Magic rogue talent. Then she spent a mythic power use to make a Surprise Strike on the hydra.

The attack missed completely on a roll of 2, but she was still invisible thanks to the cloak's Greater Invisibility properties, so the hydra didn't notice her. This caused a problem later when the hydra tried to take a five-foot step backwards, and I had no idea how to handle it. Clearly the hydra would provoke an AoO for moving through her square, but would she get to move out of the way? Get to move with it? Have to make an Acrobatics check or similar? I just didn't know how to handle a creature moving through the space of another creature of whose presence it was unaware. In the end I decided Felani could move back five feet, but wouldn't get her AoO unless she made an Acrobatics check with a DC of the hydra's CMD.

Genrad took quite a beating from the hydra, dropping as low as 1 hit point. Clairette did what she could to keep him on his feet, snapping off Distant Barrage attacks as well.

Things got interesting when Ichabod cast Deep Slumber on the hydra, using Arcane Surge to make it roll twice on its save, which it failed. They wanted to coup-de-grace it, but how do you do that to a Huge creature with seven heads?

Then Ichabod pulled out his Dagger of a Thousand Bites and pointed out that:

1) A coup-de-grace is an attack which is an automatic critical hit;
2) A sunder attempt is an attack;
3) A dagger is a slashing weapon;
4) The Dagger of a Thousand Bites can hit any number of targets as long as it doesn't miss.

Since the hydra was helpless, there was no way he could miss. So he declared his intent to cut off all seven heads at one blow with a thrown dagger. That sounded MYTHIC, so we tried it. He got six of them in one go.

... and THEN I remembered that it has DR 5/epic, which negated all six successful sunder attempts because I'd forgotten to account for it, and left them with the hydra very much awake and pissed off.

Under those circumstances, I wasn't sure whether to have the hydra make a fort save to avoid death as it would in a usual coup-de-grace attempt. We got into a paralysis-by-analysis fugue, until finally it got very late and we decided to just kill the body and not worry about the heads, which took only 2 more rounds.

It's probably for the best anyway, since none of them knew they had to cauterize the neck stumps, and their only source of fire damage was the monk's flaming fists anyway. If they'd succeeded in severing all the heads they would shortly have had a very angry 14-headed hydra to deal with.

Going into this I was worried about Mythic Combat Reflexes, but it never came up. It got no AoO against Felani due to invisibility, and even if she'd been visible her Defensive Move ability made her immune. It got no AoO against Genrad because in round 1 he drank a potion of Enlarge Person, which gave him the same reach as the hydra and meant he never provoked for passing through its threatened area. Clairette shot it from far away, and Ichabod took to the air. It did get an AoO for a sunder attempt against one of its heads (at one point after the abortive Dagger of a Thousand Bites part), but I'm pretty sure that was its only AoO.

Arcane Surge and Dual Path

At one point, a question regarding Dual Path arose. Ichabod was a Dual Path Guardian/Archmage, with Guardian as his first path, and Archmage added via feat. What is his Archmage tier? For example, Arcane Surge lets you roll twice against spell resistance with a bonus equal to your Archmage tier. If you're dual path, and archmage is your seconday, does that mean the bonus is +0? Or would you get +3? Or would it vary according to what tier you were when you took the Dual Path feat?

The End

Whew.

I hope this is helpful.