Adam Olsen's page

Is Life Sight a free action to activate? Swift maybe? Also, is it continuous or non-continuous?

Change Shape, Elemental Wall, and Aura of Despair also don't mention what's required to activate them.

Quickdraw's Normal section says "or (if your base attack bonus is +1 or higher) as a free action as part of movement". This implies a Charge allows it.

The Combat chapter says "If you have a base attack bonus of +1 or higher, you may draw a weapon as a free action combined with a regular move." This implies only a normal Move, not a Charge.

Besides making the terminology consistent, explicitly stating that charge is or is not allowed would help.

Nobody? :/

[Not sure if this is the right forum or not. It clearly says to post in the rules forums, yet there is no appropriate rules forum. Hopefully I'm not supposed to go away and check back in 6 months for new forums. x_x]

Given that both get the "grappled" condition and various other bits of wording I thought that once you started a grapple, you and your target are both grappling each other. However, this interpretation leads to some very confusing problems (if they fail a grapple check they get booted out of the grapple?) I now suspect that the intent is for grappling to be one-sided, ie a grappler and grapplee. Which is it?

Assuming it's one-sided, the wording on a failed roll isn't explicit enough. It'd be better to say something like "After the initial round you must make a check to maintain the grapple, as a standard action. ... Success allows you to do one of the following actions (as part of the standard action), while failure (or inability to make the check) releases your opponent and ends the grapple."

Again assuming it's one-sided, renaming Grapple to Grab would help make it clearer.

Escaping a grapple should explicitly say "grapple or pin", if it does escape a pin. Actually, it should also say if you need to escape the pin as one action, then the grapple as a second, or if you get both with a single action. Perhaps append "If you are pinned a single check allows you to break both the grapple and the pin."

Armour and shield spikes seem useless defensively, yet that's where I'd want them the most. I'd expect them to be triggered any time someone grapples me (or improved grab, or swallow).

For those of us who use Celsius exclusively it's pretty painful to understand rules that use Fahrenheit — I don't know what -40°F or 140°F means, so I have to go find a program or website to convert for me. It's be really nice (and minimal impact) to put °C forms in parenthesis for weather, Endure Elements, and whatever other little tidbits of the rules refer to them.

<cue inevitable thread about converting rest of the system to metric/>

There's a lot of overlap here.. sorcerer has a clear concept and bloodlines build on it well, adding a lot of interest. Wizards however, despite having an underlying concept, don't build on it. For the sake of brainstorming ideas, here's some things I associate with wizards and not sorcerers:

• scrolls
  
• books
  
• intelligence (but no personality)
  
• knowledge
  
• studying
  
• creating items, or other great forms of crafting
  

One prestige class in particular fits this theme: Loremaster. I'd like to see its concept merged into Wizard, with choice over what powers to pick at a given level (like barbarian or rogue). Some thoughts for powers:

• Several free ranks in Linguistics. Maybe 1/3 levels, giving more as you level up?
  
• Skill Focus in one knowledge skill
  
• Form Specialization (aka specialist wizard, bonus spells for not prepping opposed schools). A chain here might be nice, to keep specialization important
  
• Signature spell. Specific bonus spell. Uses/day should increase as you level up, so it doesn't become useless. Alternatively let you swap it out every few levels.
  
• Free Heighten for one signature spell, again so it doesn't become useless. Other metamagics are possible, but harder to balance.
  
• Item creation feat, can be taken multiple times
  
• Metamagic feat.. it's not really specific to Wizards, so my gut is against it, but I'm probably wrong
  
• Arcane Bond
  
• Extra cantrips (hey, I'd take it!)
  
• Various things copied from the current school powers. Maybe as chains. Would Summoning Master be overpowered for, say, 12th level?
  

I wonder about adding more alternates to form specialization, like cold or fire, but maybe those should be left to prestige classes.. depends on the flavour I suppose.