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The APs and the fact that everyone in our group knows the rules and between us we own all the books.
We've been playing PF for a while though so when we finish Skull & Shackles we're considering going to White Wolf's Scion system for a bit.

The Sword Saint HAS to strike first in combat so you want traits that boost initiative. I'd go for Reactionary first and then maybe double up with Adopted/Warrior Born.

Also I'd go with the Order of the Warrior instead of the dragon. It will massively increase your crit chances, especially if you keen your katana.

36. Poorly worded wish spell.

If you're running an AP I'd suggest getting the bestiaries that it references as well. You'll save a lot of time and frustration by having the book at the table over having to wait for the SRD to load webpages.

enchant an item of permanent darkness? If you don't have dark vision then you'll need another item of permanent darkvision.

I limit my players to a single archetype in each class. I don't know if that's an official rule (I've seen a few builds on these boards that combine several archetypes from the same class)
As far as I'm concerned, an archetype represents an uncommon background or specialist training that gives a specific advantage in certain situations.
In the words of the great teacher 'The hunter who chases two rabbits will catch neither'

Archimedes
Sir Isaac Newton
Charles Darwin
Albert Einstein

Youtube - The Atheist Experience #763

This jumped out at me as well. I harks back to earlier editions of Shadowrun where a sniper character would have a hard time seeing anything because there was no perception skill and spot checks based straight off the Intelligence stat.
Most shooty characters took high Quickness and Body and didn't invest in Intelligence resulting in every sniper requiring a Mage spotter to locate targets for them because the greatest shots in the world were chronically short-sighted.

The lack of skills in D&D Next is going to cause the same thing. aging priests who spent their whole life in a temple will be inherently better at spotting ambushes than trained military scouts. Hopefully there will be a skill system added later to balance this out.

Rope, a dagger and a flask of alchemists fire. After that it all depends on what class you're playing.

It depends on your interpretation of the word 'Lawful'. I've always maintained that paladins should be any lawful alignment because a paladin is a holy warrior who strictly follows the tenants of a their specific god. It should be theoretically possibly to play a lawful paladin of a chaotic god because you are sticking very strictly to the teachings of that (otherwise chaotic) god.

Basically, lawful characters don't have to follow the laws of the land. A very religious character like a paladin should consider the rules of his god to take precedence over any temporal laws of man.

It'd be a real shame for The Seventh Veil if bards were cut from the PFO line-up. It seems like the go-to class.

I love this idea, I'm currently unemployed and have time on my hands and nothing to occupy it but my Skull and Shackles campaign. How to join up and what can I do to help?

Is it wrong that I immediately though of a concept for a halfing who wishes he was an elf so he calls himself be and elf name and keeps turning up at your base with proof of his 'pro-elf' deeds trying to get you guys to let him join.

I think that this edition of D&D is just going to split the player base further apart.
4E players will feel betrayed that WOTC are ditching they're precious game that they've been defending for years. They'll stick to they're 4E books and write they're own material.
Pathfinder players won't switch to the new system because they have a well supported game that will be valid for years to come and because many of us have been burned by WOTC before whilst Piazo have consistently shown that they care about their fans.
D&D Next is going to scoop up a few players from the groups currently playing games like OSRIC and 3.X who want new published material because they are short on prep time. It will fail to hit its targets and Hasbro will drop the D&D licences.

The interesting question is what will happen next. fast forward a few years and do you think we'll see Piazo buy the D&D licences and release PF2 as the next D&D?

ps.... the GM might consider an interpretation of this : The quality of items made by this spell is commensurate with the quality of material used as the basis for the new fabrication : to mean... if you eschew with nothing, you get nothing ... ahhh... sweet perfect nothing.

So you could use Fabricate to create areas of total vacuum? combined with wall of force to stop the air rushing back in and you can suffocate entire rooms full of enemies instantly.

ps.... the GM might consider an interpretation of this : The quality of items made by this spell is commensurate with the quality of material used as the basis for the new fabrication : to mean... if you eschew with nothing, you get nothing ... ahhh... sweet perfect nothing.

So a wizard could use fabricate to create literally nothing, ie. a vacuum.

In my game the rum ration is watered to 'Grog' which only does a single point of con damage. Anyone who wishes can ask for their ration unwatered and Heave is always played with unwatered rum. I made a point of showing Tilly always drinking her ration straight and gave her a bonus feat to boost her fort save to cover her from the ill-effects.

Or a Ranger? I have a ranger in my S&S group and his favored enemy (human) bonus has been a literal life saver for them in the early fights.

The only way to do damage as the summoner is to take the Synthesist archetype. Otherwise the summoner acts as a support/buff character for their Eidelon. When the Eidelon isn't around they buff the party and summon monsters to support combat.

Essentially the summoner is a Conjuration specialist sorcerer with the addition of a supercharged druid animal companion.

Another one bites the dust, fleeing through the illusionary, non-existent arena walls. Could it be that this whole thing is an illusion? If the wall is an illusion, what is the Emporer sitting on? Is he actually flying? Or is he an illusion too? The plot keeps thickening.

No but seriously, fear should just cause you to keep running around the arena until it wares off.

The latest one didn't lose to Cause Fear, he lost to Command. The command could have been 'Surrender' or 'Yield'

This argument is why I prefer the spellcasting system from games like Dark Heresy/WFRP to D&D/Pathfinder.
Casters can use their powers at will but every time they cast there is the chance of something awful happening (up to and including hordes of demons appearing and attacking the caster)
In that sort of system the caster has the I WIN button but he has to think carefully before pressing it.

quote]Spoiler alert for those waiting: Next is almost entirely 3.5.

That's wierd. I was reading though it thinking it was an unwelcome return to 1E.

Which AP to choose really depends on the play style of your group. Kingmaker is sandboxy and open but requires a lot of backup work from the GM. Rise of the Runelords is a lot more linear and self contained with some good dungeon crawls but if you want to run RotRL you might want to wait a couple of months and get the SE hardcover edition when its released.

Master Spy? Gives you sneak attack and a bunch of stealth powers that compliment the ninja abilities.

Int will give you more skills.

Wis will wige you more perception and a better will save(a very important save)- This is maybe the stat more optimized for combat.

Char will make you good at social skills and UMD.

CHA also has good synergy with the paladin and bard for multiclassing. You can build some interesting melee based sorcerers that way.

Given that we live in a world of Holocaust denial, Young Earth Creationism and Lunar Landing Conspiricies I think that Golarion should be allowed its whack-job atheists.

Let the player be a hard line atheist that insists there is no such thing as gods and make it clear to him that you will pelt him with evidence to the contrary and expect him to come up with semi-rational arguments to allow him to hold on to his atheism in the face of a physical manifestation of Serenrae commanding him to repent his wickedness.

You don't need two weapon fighting if you're going with a sword and board build. my advice would be to drop TWF and take Toughness, Dodge or Iron Will instead.

You don't throw it with 2 hands. You use both hands in melee. The spear is probably about 6-7 feet long which gives it a 5ft reach. A greatsword is upwards of 6 feet long as well but that only has a 5ft reach as well.

I've been considering a Magus/Alchemist with a vestigial limb so I can use spellcombat/strike and still use a two-handed weapon.

Agreed. I'm concerned about the Boarding pike of repelling in the hands of my groups Ranger with favoured enemy: Human.

Zul is powerful but I don't think its a game breaker for my group. It'll give them a scare when its used against them and then they'll probably sell it because it doesn't fit any of their fighting styles.
In a campaign with a pole-arm fighter I'd be concerned though.

Character submitted.
Minmax the unstoppable warrior will destroy you all!

I'd go with evil and law if he's going to be a barrister of Asmodeus.

Summon Natures Ally III has a constrictor snake. Its not quite as cool as a squid but its a superior grappler and can breathe our of water.
My advice is go with the snake launcher instead, then you can always switch to the venomous snakes for a ranged poison attack if your fighting something with a high CMD.

With the right feats Intimidate and Bluff can both be extremely useful in combat. Particularly to Rogues.

but at this kind of level, the penalties for longer range brackets won't make a lot of difference. The fighter has something like a +25 on his to-hit rolls. If the monk wants to get far enough away to be safe from the daggers then he'll have to be outside the range where his spring attack will allow him to attack and stay safe from reprisal by the fighter next turn.

What if the kukri fight build traded his kukri's for a bandolier of a few dozen daggers and traded Power Attack for Deadly Aim? Then his overall damage might go down but his AC would stay very high and he would be able to throw daggers at the monk in return for the crossbow bolts. The damage of each dagger with Deadly Aim would still be in the high 20s with a 30% chance of a 3x crit.

If the monk gets fed up of the one sided shot trading game he closes on the fighter who has a dagger in each hand and be ready with a full attack.
I realize that this brings us back to the spring attack, and who can score their 'I Win' move first but this build gives the fighter a way to deal with the shot on the run trick.

I'll give you a hint, Easter Island heads.

don't forget that an arrow id diminutive which will be another +8. Now the AC is 35.
Overall he's better off taking cover of going total defense (or just manning up and taking the hit so he can smack the archer next turn).

I was a council spectre. Then I took an ending to the soul.

Personally, I find the first 5 levels of play to be the most fun but I also enjoy the sense of accomplishment I get from taking a character all the way through a campaign to 20th level. I wouldn't want Paizo to drop the early levels from the APs but I'd support expanding the paths to 8 books so they could accommodate the full run from 1-20.

Skull and Shackles is a prime candidate for an evil campaign and Kingmaker would work as well. I think you could make Council of Thieves work as an evil campaign quite easily to. All you have to do is change the aims of the Children of Westcrown from freedom fighters to a rival thieves guild or maybe ally the players with the Order of the Rack.

This seems largely a problem the OP has with his GM. In the kingmaker game I played in, our group included a paladin of Serenrae and we went out of its way to offer redemption to the bandits. We ended up with almost a dozen friendly bandits living with us at Olegs trading post and a local tribe of Kobolds happily worshiping the Dawnflower.
I've read posts from another Kingmaker group who actually redeemed the Staglord and made him a minor noble in their kingdom.

I've just started running Skull and Shackles and its made clear the text that just about the whole crew apart from the officers are potential friends to the PCs if they work hard enough at it and find the right buttons to push. All the APs have ample opportunity for redemtion themed PCs and parties if the GM is aware that that is the players goal and is willing to work with them.

Kingmaker and Council of Thieves are both fairly non-linear after the first session. CoT has a lot of long dungeon crawls though so that may trun you off to it. If your players really want an open world campaign you're probably better off writing your own game than trying to run a published adventure. Even the most sandboxy module will feel restrictive to a some kinds of player.

Try multiclassing with Druid instead of Monk. 4 levels of Druid and you can take Natural Spell to allow you cast without hands. Boon Companion will let you Eidalon keep up with you in terms of levels and the levels of druid will give you access to domain powers and the druid spell list (Bark Skin will be handy)
Additionally, some of the shamanic archetypes of druid get bonuses when they summon a particular type of creature. I haven't read the lists thoroughly but there might be some overlap between what bonuses are available and what can be summoned with a summoners innate powers.

I have a gunslinger in my Skull and Shackles campaign and I'm worried about the number of possible ways for him to get his ammunition destroyed by water damage.

At least half the combat encounters in the first book happen on or around large bodies of water just waiting to be fallen into rendering any firearms user useless for at least 1 full turn whilst they reload their dampened weapon.

Its perfectly possible. I've seen live demonstrations of Iaido masters cutting arrows in half in mid-air. It requires extreme skill and concentration. If I were your GM Id give you a chance and set an extremely high AC to hit an unattended object. If you hit and destroyed it in a single blow then the arrow doesn't hit you, otherwise you take damage as normal.

So...
Today I ran the first session of my Skull and Shackles campaign and already I have a situation I've never encountered before in almost 20 years of GMing games.

One of my players is running a female gnome alchemist who spent her first day on the Wormwood running away from rats she was supposed to be hunting (a natural 1 on her Survival roll) and then challenged Conchobhar to a game of dice without any money.
She wanted to try and win his hat and as he's described as a serial womanizer I had him suggest playing for a night in her hammock, expecting her to turn him down. She accepted and then lost horribly and willing fulfilled her part of the agreement...

Does anyone know where I can find a copy of the Book of Erotic Fantasy? I know that had rules for conception and pregnancy

The AP does actually detail how Mr Plugg has been toadying to Harrigan so that the captain thinks he's completely trustworthy. That's how he managed to become first mate in less than a year.
The problem I saw with the 'Capturing a second ship' sequence is that Harrigan unloads almost his entire crew onto the new ship and leaves himself with just the senior officers and his newly captured prisoners who would mutiny against him at the first opportunity. The way the adventure is written, Harrigan doesn't leave himself with enough crew to work his own ship.

As to the possibility of dealing with Mr Plugg or Master Scourge early in the AP, I saw a bunch of possibilities for that as well. I think the biggest oversight in this publication is the lack of stats for Harrigan and the other senior officers as they might factor into some of those plans.

anything by Alestorm