bishop083's page

I have a new video game problem to blame Cosmo for. I've been playing Monster Hunter World, and it's been great. The problem I'm having is that I can't figure out how to unlock soft soil in the botanical research center. From what little I have seen online, story progression is not a requirement, beyond needing to get to high rank. Which I did. I know that I need to complete a delivery request. I know the name of the request. I even know who I get the request from. And I know it can be done because my gf did it with her character.

What I don't know is how I get the request to be made available. And neither does ANYONE ELSE ON THE INTERNET!!!

I've checked. There are like 20 articles about unlocking more slots, but not one that talks about unlocking the various fertilizers. And my gf and I follow three different youtubers that are basically MH pros, and not one of them had a video about it, either. It's driving me insane.

I blame Cosmo, because I cannot conceive of any other force that could possibly explain it. Why are you so cruel? I just want to fertilize all my plants in a point efficient manner. Is that too much to ask?

bishop083 wrote:

Good news! I found those missing shrines!

Unfortunately, my despair drove me to the breaking point, and I looked them up. One was a shrine quest that wouldn't have pinged, so I don't feel too bad. The other one made me sad. I am SO MAD AT MYSELF over it. It was at the bottom of a cliff that was too tall for the shrine detector to catch, or maybe I had the detector focused on something else at the time. But it was so close to places I had been to repeatedly, and I cannot believe I forgot to head over there and look. I even had a regular side quest to do that would have pinged that shrine for me if I had just done it.

Clearly, Cosmo must have done something, because I never thought I would have broken that way. DARN YOU COSMO!!!

Now I just have the Trial of the Sword from the DLC. Which is INSANELY difficult. It's amazing how much you rely on your armor in that game without realizing it. I might not finish that thing. Although actually finishing it would probably give an amazing sense of accomplishment.

Just remember, you have more defences during Trial of the Sword than a section of the second DLC.

If you are talking about what I think you are, then that is technically true, but you still had all your stuff. Including all the arrows, and the really good bows. This is like starting the game over, and then trying to beat combat shrines with a pile of wooden sticks. And no pants.

EDIT: Forgot to add, I blame Cosmo for this. Especially given what he blamed himself for, I absolutely blame Cosmo for this.

Double Edit: BTW, I also want to say thank you, Cosmo. I know this whole thread is all in good fun, but part of that is because you chose to allow it to be that way. It's nice to have a completely silly way to vent about things, and I appreciate that you allowed this thread to form rather than crushing it.

I really wish they had responded to that, because I was thinking of using teleportation mastery to qualify for the dimensional line as a fighter.

A wizard in an anti-magic field is a scrawny man with no con and no strength. A dragon in an anti-magic field is still a dragon. And if the field covers the wizard before he casts disjunction, he is screwed. Summons won't save him. Contingency spells won't go off. Just one scrawny, probably old man against an extremely large, very strong, pissed off dragon. And if you think that dragon didn't use its money and power to investigate the wizard so it could counter all of his tricks, you are lying to yourself. Remember, wizards aren't the only ones with all those nice tools.

Good news! I found those missing shrines!

Unfortunately, my despair drove me to the breaking point, and I looked them up. One was a shrine quest that wouldn't have pinged, so I don't feel too bad. The other one made me sad. I am SO MAD AT MYSELF over it. It was at the bottom of a cliff that was too tall for the shrine detector to catch, or maybe I had the detector focused on something else at the time. But it was so close to places I had been to repeatedly, and I cannot believe I forgot to head over there and look. I even had a regular side quest to do that would have pinged that shrine for me if I had just done it.

Clearly, Cosmo must have done something, because I never thought I would have broken that way. DARN YOU COSMO!!!

Now I just have the Trial of the Sword from the DLC. Which is INSANELY difficult. It's amazing how much you rely on your armor in that game without realizing it. I might not finish that thing. Although actually finishing it would probably give an amazing sense of accomplishment.

I have one shrine in BOTW whose location I need to figure out. I have 2 left, but I know where one of them is.

Slight spoiler, but the one in the castle is not on the way to anything. It is basically the end of a path. And it is definitely worth viewing before you face CG. Adds a final piece of the story you want first.

*drops a bunch of gear in the water*

I need to scavenge? Okay!

*Picks up the gear from the water*

And that is the story of how I cleared Eventide Island without sacrificing my desire to do as much as possible with magitech options. Also, Urbosa's Fury was useful.

...

That works? How does that work? And why have I never heard that solution before? What happens to the stuff when you finish the island?

That is genius! And Urbosa's Fury was definitely useful. Just like always because Urbosa is the best. Mipha is my favorite, but Urbosa is the best.

Oh right, I'm supposed to be blaming Cosmo for something, not just having a BOTW chat. Umm...
I also blame Cosmo for Eventide Island, and for not having heard of that trick and doing it the hard way twice.

Also, invest at least half your first lvl Paladin spells in hero's defiance. It will save your bacon if you have any lay on hands left.

Our network drives and applications have been down all day. I have been unable to work on several important reports my VP asked for as a direct result. This has been a problem since at least 8:30AM. I'm not sure how I had even a slightly productive day.
I blame Cosmo for the server issues. I also blame Cosmo for the server issues being bad enough to severely impact work, but not bad enough to justify just going home, thus giving us the worst of both worlds.

I'm dotting this, because this is super useful.

I am going to need time and a larger screen than my phone to answer this. Replying so I don't lose the thread.

I blame cosmo for my lack of earbuds which will cause me to go to bed before my three hours of zelda tonight.

Thus giving me extra sleep...
...
...
Ok, so it isn't awful, but... But...
It was breath of the wild, ok? So... Still evil!!

I know right?

I was reading some threads today, and I realized something about my play history. To the best of my knowledge, I've played almost no games with magical macguffins. I'm not sure if my GMs just chose to go a different way, or if the macguffin was hidden well enough that i didn't realize it, but that leads me to my question. Do you have any memorable experiences to share involving campaigns or adventures that had a macguffin of some kind as a central plot element?
For those in need of an explanation, a macguffin is an object that is important mostly because the plot says so. If you could swap it for a different object with no more effort than a find-replace on the text of the story in question, and have exactly zero impact on that story, then you have a macguffin. The macguffin can have powers, but they should have no relevance to the plot. (Note: the one ring from LotR is not a macguffin, because the ring's corrupting influence is central to its nature and important to the plot. The arkenstone from the Hobbit is a macguffin, because we could have replaced it with a necklace or crown or statuette and had the same plot.)
So with that out of the way, who's up for story time?

I am all in on both of these. I will point out that if you pray to the right deity, your weapon may already double as a holy symbol. Hammers for Torag and long swords for iomedae can skip the sacred weapon ability. Can probably justify a few others, but those are the first two that come to mind.

Speaking of gunslinger, you could build a singing cowboy. One level of mysterious stranger gunslinger, the rest as an arcane duelist bard. You get a pile of free feats, can get charisma to damage, at bard 5 you get arcane bond on a weapon (which is the gun you own), and starting at bard 6 you can use bard rounds to increase your enhancement/apply weapon enhancements. It's pretty awesome.

The only issue I'm having is that, for reasons that i swear made sense at the time, I dumped my con to 8. I am a glass cannon. Oh, and make sure to take jury rig and abundant ammunition as some of your spells. Your wallet will thank you. As will your face if you ever roll a misfire.

There’s this proverb I’ve heard used on these boards before. It goes like this:

“A failed Reflex save hurts you.
A failed Fortitude save kills you.
A failed Will save kills your party.”

And to add to that thought, the proverb gets more true the higher level you reach. On the other hand, if your party knows about the problem, there are ways to compensate. For example, all protection from <alignment> spells make you immune to mind control for the duration, and can potentially suppress existing ones. There are other spells that can help depending on what spells are involved.

John Mechalas wrote:

Thank you. If I were to get just one of the books, which one would you suggest? I am partial to the second one because Paizo's description lists a gazetteer.

Understood that there isn't precise placement but if the AP mentions distances or travel times that would be useful.

While it'd still be rad if you picked up the Adventure Path, I do go into detail about the rough location of the region in Pathfinder #122.

Here's the most relevant bit of information that I think you're looking for:

Ruins of Azlant Regional Gazetteer wrote:

The region mapped here is only the eastern edge of the shattered continent. After sailing for 1,000 miles due west from Mediogalti Isle, this is the first region one comes across. At roughly 30° N latitude, Ancorato and nearby islands have a humid subtropical climate.

Thanks for the globe, by the way. That really helped me zero in on my distance.

This post has made my day. The fact that one of the devs actually took all of this work into account and openly acknowledged it is super cool.

Thank you for the suggestions! Just spent some time googling, and I've hit on one or two options from Greek mythology that sound verbally appealing for him.

I am putting this in General Discussion because we do not have a Starfinder Campaign Setting area, but I will understand if the mods move this to advice instead. Having got that out of the way, on to the actual post!

I am trying to come up with a name for my character in a Starfinder Campaign our group is running. I have an overall idea for what I want to do as a character, but I am REALLY stuck on coming up with an actual name. I am putting together a Vesk soldier with the Sharpshooter style. I know that I am going with "<First Name> Long-gunner" as the name, because it fits with the overall theme, but I have no clue what to do for the first name. I have plenty of references for coming up with names for most fantasy races, but how the heck do I approach this for someone from the scaly proud-warrior-race people?

Do I just suck it up and pick one of the sample names from the CRB, or can anyone help me?

I am playing a barbarian, and I am trying to build him into a CAGM barbarian. The problem I have is that, due to the stat generation method we used, my dex is currently 14 I am trying to figure out how I can increase the number of attacks of opportunity. Here's the list I have right now, but can other people think of other ways I have missed?

• Combat Reflexes feat
• Incease dexterity (requires Combat Refelxes)
• Quick Reflexes rage power

Are those my only options?

Two things about the polearm master archetype. First, you completely replace weapon training, so you do not qualify for advanced weapon training, at all. Examples of archetypes that do not replace the weapon training are Dragoon and Two Handed Fighter. second, because you gave up weapon training, you do NOT get the +2 increase to weapon training from Gloves of Dueling.

Keep that in mind when looking at archetypes, your build plan, and the campaign's expected end level. If you are not going to reach a level at which gloves become affordable, that is not an issue, but it is something to consider.

I love these posts. They have been super informative when going through the app version of the game. They would also have been helpful when playing the physical version, but we finished that a while ago. They have made me a better player, and have actually improved my play style.

The delay between the posts can be frustrating, but they are always worth the weight. Thanks for putting these together, and please keep them coming!

My suggestion is to sit this player down for an intervention. Explain to him the problems his behavior is causing, and how it is impacting everyone else's group. Let him know that you aren't expecting min maxing, but that having a character focused enough to handle its role in the party would help you all have more fun.

Also let him know that you feel he is disrespecting the rest of you by willfully playing a character that is not capable of being good at anything. He is making the rest of the party take up the slack and expend a lot of resources to deal with it.

The righ kind of character or build can make a suboptimal weapon work. And honestly he doesn't need to be stupidly strong, anyway. But by trying to be good at everything, he has created someone that is good at nothing and makes everyone suffer for it.

Hopefully he is a mature enough individual to handle this discussion and make changes. If he refuses to, then maybe you need to consider changing your group around. I don't know how easily you could replace him or game without him, but I wouldn't want to game with someone that couldn't understand the above points and come to some kind of compromise.

Of course, I wouldn't be caught dead in combat as a melee combatant with anything under a 16 in my attack stat, so I'm having trouble understanding where he is coming from. Heck, our party ran into a COMMONER that had better melee stats than that.

Grandlounge, that idea is perfect. I am TOTALLY picking one up in game on general principle now.

BNW, call animal probably works since I most likely have the only wolf in that city. At least I hope so. Of course, I didn't prep it that day and have no idea how good he would be at navigating the city.

I have discovered a few other options that could work in theory, but run up against their own duration. Animal life link and animal mind link would do the job, except the have a duration of 1 minute/level and require I touch the animal companion, which wouldn't have worked in this scenario. Also I can't cast mind link yet.

To be honest, I think I am looking at an impossible situation to resolve, at least based on how I defined it. I still think this is all good info to have.

Well, I'm playing as a ranger, so I'm not sure sending plus speak with animal would work. Although sending might work since I could remotely give it the come or heel command. It has scent so it should be able to come find me even with minimal survival ranks. Have to keep that in mind since I would not be concerned about causing a problem with city guards if i had to go that route. And we have a bard to make it right later.

As for Carry Companion, I only have one 2nd lvl spell right now and that's reserved for bark skin. Once I get my next slot next level I will probably leave it open in case this comes up again, but I didn't have that option just yet.

Well, my question fell to page 2 without a response, so I am bumping my own post. Hopefully someone sees it this time around and can chime in. If it falls to page 2 a second time I will call this a lost cause and accept my fate. And also bring my wolf everywhere no matter what.

As of the time of this post, I have 9275 unread entries in the Ask James Jacobs all your questions thread. Should I read all of those posts, should I skip all of them, or should I only read some of them? If I should only read some, do I just read JJ's replies, or is there some other metric I should use in selecting which to read?

Given that I would have to dump something to play with that array, the only thing that comes to mind is "a major liability to the party". You either have no HP, no will save, or play a caster that is good for absolutely nothing once the spells are done. And cleric would be bad because you either have no channeling or have no hp, and those are bad options either way.

This is a weird challenge.

Is there a way to call your animal companion to you from a long way away? As in across a city. I don't mean summon it. I mean contact it so I can tell it to come to me. Spells or magic items only.

Rysky wrote:

Christopher Anthony wrote:

Sara Marie: tea is probably better for me than more sad

Fact!

Also, *offers hugs*

It's ok. Thanks.

** spoiler omitted **

Is it bad that my brain decided to read "sad" as "salad"? It changed the quote and confused me when rysky replied with a hug.

Cosmo wrote:

bishop083 wrote:

I blame cosmo for giving me the idea to play as a mysterious stranger/arcane duelist singing cowboy.

...this bit needs an extra favorite.

{stuffs extra cotton into ears as precaution against "Indian Love Call" sonic attack]

Be still my aching heart (which I blame Cosmo for) he noticed!

I will supply an update post once we get farther into the campaign, so I can notify everyone of Quentin's descent into madness, and if he gets killed, blows himself up, or goes insane first.

And so I can properly allocate blame where it is due: the Great and Powerful Cosmo. This is especially topical since the only reason for those terrible things to happen is if I or others in the group roll bad enough on our dice, and we all know who to blame for bad dice rolls.

First, I love that this conversation started on Tuesday of this week and is already at page 14. The passion this conversation topic has invoked is great.

It also means I haven't had time to read all 14 pages, since I just discovered this now and I want to post my thoughts today. Huzzah for impatience!

In my opinion, the occasional fudge on the part of the GM is ok, especially if it makes the whole group have a better time. There is a fine line on when the fudging has gone too far and crossed over into cheating. Being too obvious about it is on the wrong side of that line, but I don't GM enough to say when we have officially crossed it.

I will say that a player fudging dice is cheating. Besides, the players shouldn't fudge the dice rolls, anyway. The GM should fudge the DC, assuming it's necessary. After all, sometimes the DC in published material can be absurdly high, and getting close enough let's the party have more fun.

I was not going to presume he was playing an AP. And since he was professing some unfamiliarity with the traits system as a whole and others were referring to them, I wanted to get that point out there. Actually, what I probably should have said is that, per the rules on traits, he should only allow campaign traits if he is running that specific campaign. The fact that all campaign traits have the same type does mean they can't mix and match campaign traits (unless you are crazy like my one GM) but it's worth pointing out they need to be tied to the campaign you are actually running.

Along that line, it is totally possible to create your own traits for your homebrew campaign for your players to choose from if you want. It's probably not a good idea to do that until you are more familiar with traits, but it is an option.

The thing about traits is that they should, technically, feed into your character's backstory and can shape how they are played. In other words, if you are taking a trait, you should have a backstory that justifies it. This isn't necessarily a requirement, but if you are the GM, then you can MAKE it a requirement. If your players can't justify it with their backstory and/or how they are going to role play their characters, don't let them take it.

Also, don't let them take campaign traits unless you are running the campaign they were created for. They can definitely be more powerful than other traits, but they are also designed to tie directly into their respective campaigns and sometimes have story reasons that tie directly in and can balance or justify the power.

The nice thing about a 2 hander is that it's actually pretty hard to screw it up.

I do have two things for you to consider. First, have you looked at the two handed fighter archetype? It has a lot of very nice things for a two handed weapon build, enough that losing armor training is actually worth it. Second have you looked at Advanced Weapon Training? The nice thing about the two handed archetype is that you still have weapon training, so you still qualify for AWT. And one of the AWT options is called Versatile training and lets you use your BAB as the skill points for two skills, makes them class skills, AND lets you retrain any points you had in those skills.

Oh, and make sure to bring a bow, regardless of what build you make. You'll need it.

I'm from Wisconsin, and while I'm always tempted to sneer at how the Seattle area panics whenever there's snow, there actually are some factors which make it a lot safer to stay in -- generally no salt because they don't want it getting into Puget Sound, tons of hills, and very little equipment for dealing with snow.

Ok, so I can understand the reason for not salting and the potential ice difficulties inherent in a hilly region. But Seattle really doesn't have enough equipment for dealing with the snow? Really? That just seems silly to me.

I live in a suburb of Philadelphia, which puts me at a latitude of approximately 39.5 degrees North. That is roughly 8 degrees SOUTH of Seattle, which means I am somewhere around 550 south of you all. I know we get those nasty Atlantic-powered snow storms over here, but how could a city that much closer to Canada be ill-prepared for snow?

Have you also just tried talking to your GM, period? The divine bond says you typically have a horse, but that other more exotic mounts could be allowed. I know it lists some options, but those could be considered examples. And having a lizardfolk riding a reptile or dinosaur as it's mount is iconic enough to argue for allowing it, even without a custom feat. I would certainly keep the idea of a custom feat in mind if you need it. But why burn a feat before you need to?

I don't have a whole build for you, but how important is it for your first 3 levels to be unchained rogue? Based on my reading of finesse training, you need to have bladed brush on or before you get to UR 3 in order to have it be an allowable choice, and the UR can't do it because weapon focus requires bab +1. If, on the other hand, your first level is fighter and you play a human, you can be fully functional immediately and get dex to damage with a glaive at level 4. Weapon focus as the human feat, bladed brush as the first level feat, and weapon finesse as the fighter bonus feat. Then, when you finally reach fighter level 4 (which should be character level 7), you retrain weapon finesse for any other combat feat per fighter bonus feat rules.

Now, if you are starting at 10 instead of asking for how to evolve it up through to 10, then I would change two things. First, don't bother with that taking finesse as the fighter bonus feat thing. Second, you no longer NEED to play as a human. I mean, if the character is already at 10, you can hand wave away some of the issues with the early levels by saying you didn't go adventuring until level 2, or possibly even later.

My thoughts on this is that if you want to go "grid shopping" to get an array that can fit a concept, you'll need to do readings with the rest of your gaming group and find someone to swap with.

I swapped with someone that had a near perfect build for a barbarian. In fact, since I talked about it earlier, let me provide the grid and what I have so far on the character.

Nature: The Demon's Lantern
Spirit: The Rakshasa
Body: The Hidden Truth
Mind: The Waxworks
Nurture: The Cyclone
And the abilities. The first value is what the grid started at, followed by the pluses and minuses I applied. The value in parentheses is what I had before purchasing, and is followed by the minuses and pluses from the shifts caused by stat purchasing. Finally, the bolded value is what I ended up with.
Str: The Theater 12 (12) 16
Dex: The Big Sky 0 +1+2 (3 +2=5) 13
Con: The Avalanche 12 -1 (11 -2=9) 15
Int: The Inquisitor 9 (9) 15
Wis: The Brass Dwarf 4 -2 (2) 10
Cha: The Marriage 0 (0) 8

I'm still working through this one and working on a connection with someone else in the party, but meet our party's barbarian. And our party's smartest character. And the party's trap monkey. Hurray for a mummy's mask trait that gives you disable device as a class skill AND the ability to disable magical traps!

This entire grid tells the story of someone that was enslaved in one form or another for most of his adult life. He has clearly been under physical, mental, and magical enslavement at various points, usually under more than one, and he was probably forced to do terrible things in that time. He was trapped that way for years, until some special truth was revealed that helped snap him out of it.

I dare anyone to read the full descriptions of the 5 core cards and tell me that does not SCREAM "I am the Winder Soldier". That was the first reaction for myself and my gf. And now I am trying REALLY hard not to call him Bucky.

pulseoptional wrote:

finally sat down and knocked out a few turns. did them all under the heroic set, or whatever the higher point array way is called.

** spoiler omitted **...

Whoops; you forgot to buy your stats up to 10 first from 8, so they'd be quite a bit lower (it should be equivalent of 30 point buy, suitable for groups accustomed to using 25.)

Hey Bishop; sorry about that - I work in the steel industry, and it's always bonkers right at the beginning of the year. I really need to get on it, though.

In other news, though, I should actually be getting my deck sometime this week, so I've been looking forward to sharing some readings and results with everyone (at which point I'll *make* time to getting around to adding in lakeside's version if I haven't already.)

No worries man. While I did not know what you did, I can totally understand having a completely insane January. I'm not trying to pressure you or anything. I was mostly just making a "Did Gulthor die/abandon the forums?" check, is all. Deal with real life; we'll all still be here when you're done.

On a related note, my group recently did a 5-man harrow generation using the "only shuffle once at the end to pull that fifth person's 11th card" method. It turned out very interestingly. Draco18s is in the group, and he was the only person not really satisfied with his grid. On the other hand, he was the only person whose previous character had actually survived the otherwise total party wipe, and he was trying to back-in to his high-charisma character, which is why he was not happy with the end result. We also determined that it was one card in his grid that screwed the whole thing up, as almost literally any other card from the remaining 43 in that slot would have given him the charisma he was looking for. Once we have met up for our new session 1 this week, I will encourage everyone to post their grids, their final stats (we used the shift 3 before buying stats option), and how they tied the cards into their backstory.

We also tested out the lot system against the normal system before we generated. What we realized is that, unless you unlock at least three of the lots under that system, the grids you end up with seem to be painfully average all around. In other words, unless you are going to unlock 4 or more lots, you may have been better off going with the default grid and then move 3 points before buying up. I am not trying to knock the lots system since I have only been able to run it 4 times so far, but three of those attempts came out average, while one came out with a focused enough array to suggest potential options. I would want to see a full 30-run sample set before I was willing to make a judgement on the lots versus the normal method, but I am slightly less enthusiastic about it then I was before.

In case anyone was wondering, I said a 30-run sample set because statisticians have determined that a randomly selected sample set of 30 or more can be used to get a surprisingly reliable sample of a population. Since we are talking about a population of roughly 3.82*10^18 grid layouts before we start adding human selection with the lots system to it, I thought it might apply. Hurray B.S. in Mathematics!

Something else to keep in mind is that you should look at what comes in the combat training trick list and really read those tricks. They only look limiting at first glance, but do allow a pretty solid level of freedom to control the animal. Not everything (like that flanking thing) but a lot nonetheless.

Other thing to note are that if you are riding an animal companion, you use your ride skill to control it instead of your handle animal. You don't get the link bonus to the check, but the dcs to control it are lower. Also, if an AC has a special ability like take or grab, you don't need to command it to use them. They will just do so when possible as part of attacking. Animal companions will still grant and gain flanking bonuses; losing out on the flank trick just means that they won't go out of their way to set it up, so your players will need to do the maneuvering until then. Or find ways to maneuver the tiger first before launching the attack.

The attack trick has a limiter in it you all should be aware of. Unless you teach it the attack trick a second time, it will require a push to attack certain creatures. The attack trick lists what the limits are. (That means they are really limited to 7 tricks)

Aasimar with the Scion of Humanity alternate trait count as both Outsider (Native) and Humanoid (Human).

And this is why option 3 is your best bet. Pick the dominant type, add the Augmented subtype, and add a special quality that says the creature also counts as the second type for the purposes of all spells and abilities that target specific types or subtypes.

Unless you are mixing two things that were actually the same type and different subtypes. Then you just give it both subtypes and move on.

Don't interrupt the GM; Your clever idea can wait until after they have finished talking.

This is basically what I was saying.

One thing to remember is that for anything short of a magical trap, anyone can disable them if they have tools and are trained in the skill. In other words, just make sure you have disable device as a class skill and that you don't dump dex. I've done it as a fighter once for goodness sake.

With that in mind, have you considered barbarian? Best hit die, class ability that gives bonus on saves against traps, and you are actually allowed to stealth as one except when raging. Oh, and their is a trait that fixes that. Not sure if that last one is PFS legal, but it's there.

From what I have seen, there are 4 ways to get a companion creature as a class that does not get one. I am not including multi classing because that requires you take a class that gets one. I am also skipping archetypes because Thanis's post from 2013 covers a lot of options and I am unfamiliar with the newer ones (I just started to get into the idea of having an animal companion myself).

• Leadership: I am also including all variants on the leadership feat. Gives you a cohort, and also maybe followers. The cohort can be a person, or a monster taken from a list
  
• Animal Ally: This is from faiths and philosophies and basically give you the ranger animal companion, including both the viable options and the effective Druid level at character minus 3. Requires another feat from that book, Nature Soul (+2 to two skills, increases to +4 when you get 10 ranks).
  
• Eldritch Heritage Arcane: Gives you a familiar at character level minus 2. Requires Skill Focus in a knowledge skill of your choice.
  
• Familiar Bond: gives you a familiar. Needs improved familiar bond to get full functionality, but it's an option and it gives you the familiar at your full character level. Requires Iron Will. Thanks for the reminder on this one, Gisher!

Eldritch Heritage Sylvan may be able to get you an animal companion at character level minus 5, but there are questions as to if mutated bloodlines are valid selections for Eldritch Heritage in the first place, and further questions as to if Sylvan itself would be valid since the animal companion ability's wording may mean the ability is both a bloodline power and a bloodline arcana. I am not listing an argument here either way, and I beg everyone to not turn this thread into that discussion, especially since there is another method to get an ac that take the same number of feats, has zero questions on if it works, and uses 2 more of your HD when calculating your Druid level.

I think those cover the ways for a non-companion class to get a companion, although I have not looked at things related to the occult classes and their stuff.

I blame cosmo for me not having the time or energy to properly catch up on this thread, leading to me skipping roughly 60 pages and two years of blaming cosmo. I may also have to skip the over 9000 "new" entries in the ask James Jacobs thread, and if so then that is probably cosmo's fault.

I blame cosmo for giving me the idea to play as a mysterious stranger/arcane duelist singing cowboy. I further blame him for the fact that my first opportunity to play said character is in a strange aeons campaign. To add to his fault, I must further blame cosmo that I had to choose between dropping my wisdom or my constitution in order to have enough strength to carry my gear. To compound his fault, I must additionally blame cosmo for the fact that my singing cowboy now has an 8 constitution, and has rolled badly enough on his HD that he only has 15 hp at lvl 3, even with the bard FC bonus on hp. There is a familiar in our party who almost has that much hp.

Finally, I blame cosmo for me responding to this thread on my cell phone, making it super tedious to type out and annoying enough to tag that I did not even bother this time. Which is a shame because there are several places where I would/should have used italics and/or bolding for emphasis.

Edit: I blame cosmo for making write that number of messages in ask JJ thread wrong, and for having to add a blame entry after had already written finally in the previous paragraph.

There's a feat from faiths and philosophies you should check out. Look up Animal Ally. It has a feat tax that is one of those +2 to two skills feats, but it gives you a ranger AC (limited list, level-3 effective Druid level). That makes both the Dragoon and Roughrider archetypes much more viable, and is honestly just plain good, period.

On a related note, you may want to mention that there are animal companion archetypes, and since fighters don't have spells to share the archetypes might actually be worth it.

One thing to keep in mind is to look VERY carefully at which archetypes actually replace weapon training versus just modifying it, because it matters where AWT and gloves of dueling are concerned. Two examples are the Dragoon and the Two Handed Fighter. The THF weapon training modifies it so the weapon training only works on two handed weapons, but otherwise work as normal. The Dragoon still gets weapon training 1 that must be a specific group, even though the damage bonus is slightly modified AND they don't get WT 2 through 4. That means the Dragoon qualifies for the AWT feat even though they don't get to get other weapon groups to replace with AWT. The implementation of AWT has had a major impact on how good the archetypes are. I suppose someone could argue the same is true for Advanced Armor Training, but the benefits from AAT are not quite as good as AWT, so you lose less in the bargain.

Note: I would link directly to the Animal Ally feat, but I'm typing this on my phone. Sorry.

I was in a campaign where the GM had a basic idea and n the world setting, and had a one shot 20th lvl session against a BBEG. The events of that session were used to establish some important background events around the BBEG and a mcguffin.

The rest of the campaign was set decades in the future, with all new characters that started MUCH slower in level. Possibly at lvl 1, although I had (sadly) joined this world mid campaign.

Let the GM finish the room description before you start doing things.

Published adventures seem to have a tendency to put the list of occupants after the room description. It can be very awkward to walk into what initially sounds like a treasure vault and start taking things because you didn't let the GM tell you, "Oh by the way, there is an Ancient Red Dragon sitting in the middle of the room."

Related note, always ask if the word large is describing the size category or being used in a more flavorful manner. The difference between six large scarabs and six scarabs that are large sized can be a matter of life and death.