Al Harrington's page

This tall blue woman is working intensely on her scribblings. She pauses briefly as the PCs appear.

"Welcome to Al Harrington's Scroll Emporium. Feel free to browse."

She does not otherwise address the party, and will provide aid in no way. She can not be attacked, damaged, or spelled. Every fifteen minutes, she digs through her pockets, producing ink vials and retipping her quill for a total of five minutes before resuming her work.

Any interaction with Al qualifies as combat for skill use.

How to do creatures/templates/races are pretty well explained in the first post. For race, take a race then add RP until you get to 20, for creature multiply CR by 1,5 to get how many levels it takes from one side only. You can also apply up to two templates with the same CR -> level conversion. A CR 8 creature would take 12 levels leaving you with 14+14+2 levels. I think you have to find a pathfinder version of the creature though.

Or a 3.X version, but you have to ask him the RP value of it; the ECL in this case is less important. However, in the character creation post, he says only that it must "fit within one side," to preclude picking a race with ECL greater than 14. The 3.5 (or 3.0 Savage Species) specifically point out that this equates 1-1 with character level. We aren't playing X14/Y14/Z14 characters, which would be level 42; we're still 14th level, with just X-Y-Z classes at character level 14.

We're clearly gunning for higher power, and it seemed obvious that he meant we are to apply the ECL of the monster to one fraction of our gestalt characters. Without RP, that would make me Wiz-Clr-Racial 8/Wiz-Clr-Bard 6. But I do want to make sure this is how he's allowing us to play, rather than the "true" way of Wiz-Clr-Bard 6 with a +8 level adjustment.

All of it is resolved if I (or he) makes an RP-valued Mercane, eliminating ECL altogether.

And he said multiple times no pregame crafting.

And I'm obviously not expecting double my starting wealth, which would practically make it quadruple if I crafted all my gear myself. Effective wealth of 800k at 14? No.

But she is a merchant, and a crafter, and since I have next-to-nothing on her profile, I thought I'd add a little fluff to the entry.

Behind every great party is a great merchant, and the greatest merchant of them all is Al Harrington.

Residing on the demiplane of Union, Al provides the equipment to turn an average adventurer into the savior of the cosmos! Al crafts everything to her own exacting standards, and to the discriminating specifications of her clients. As everyone is old friends here, Al would be more than willing to create the party's "starting" equipment, for only 75% market price! What player could argue an effective 50k GP at the start of this adventure (and what GM would deny this crafter character an additional starting gold of 50k/PC...)! She packs a wallop from the back-lines, too, always willing to lend aid. A live customer is a returning customer!

Before I can crunch her down, I'm unclear on the race aspect. If I were to roll with her as the standard 3.5 Mercane, she would have a +7 or 8 level adjustment. Does that mean that she would be a Bard-Wizard-Cleric 6, or a Cleric 14-Wizard 14-Bard 6-Mercane 8? If it's the former, then I'll have to use the option of creating my own race within Paizo's system; I really just want Mercane for the fluff, and am unwilling to sacrifice essentially 16 caster levels for it.