AspectVoid's page

In all honesty, it really depends on your players. In my group, we have two players who are very fast and take only about 30 seconds to complete their turn each round. We also have 2 players who are quite slow at figuring out what they want to do, but are fairly fast once the decision is made. Finally, we have a player who is weak at math, and so is fairly quick at deciding what to do, but slow when it comes to working out her dice rolls.

Over all, each round lasts between 5 and 10 minutes for my five person group, depending on whether one of the fast players or one of the slow players is the DM and how many foes we are facing.

Admittedly, this isn't a pure spellcasting Arcane, but I'm currently in a Gestalt game and am running a Paladin/Alchemist. It gives you best saves across the board, lots of immunities, full BAB along with Mutagens to boost saves. I went with Rage Chemist (since Poison is against the Paladin code) for the additional Natural Armor and stat bonuses and because making a DC15/DC20 save when you have a +7 Will Save at level 4 isn't too worrisome.

You also have a massive amount of Self-Buffing ability thanks to extracts (which can be used in Heavy armor), Mutagen, Smite, and Paladin spells. You do need to be runnning with a higher level point build, though, since you need 4 good stats (STR, CON, INT, and CHA) for it to work. With a 25-point build, I went with:

STR - 14 (16 with the Half-Elf racial +2)
DEX - 10
CON - 14
INT - 15
WIS - 8
CHA - 16

I also took the Indomitable Faith trait to make up for the -1 Will saves, and took my INT from 15 to 16 at level 4 so I could use all levels of Extracts.

It really depends on the DM. I ran a 1-20 campaign in about a year, because I decided that that was how I wanted to run the campaign ahead of time. I made sure to throw constant challenges against the players that would allow them to get the XP that they needed.

Honestly, it depends. A person being tortured is likely to say anything to get the torture to stop. If you want to give some negative reinforcement, have the guy being tortured point the party to some completely innocent people in order to get the torture to stop. The guy being tortured may not have any idea who did the looting, but he'll direct the party to anyone to get the torture to stop.

Personally, this is what I would do. Mechanically for it, I would roll some secret Bluff checks away from the table, with the thing being tortured getting a bonus since the party obviously thinks that torture is effective (probably a +2 or +3 bonus). Then, if the party takes his lies at face value, then the lies are taken at face value. If the party requests a Sense Motive check, then they roll against those secret Bluff checks you made.

A medium creature wielding a lance has a reach of 10 feet.

Under the effects of enlarge person, he threatens 15 or 20 feet away.

If the same creature has the powerful build adjustment, and is wielding a large lance, do the reach values change? I would suspect that a medium creature wielding a large lance threatens 15 or 20 feet away, and when enlarged threatens 30 to 40 feet away. But I am not finding any rules along those lines.

Powerful Build states: However, his space and reach remain those of a creature of his actual size.

This means that a medium HalfGiant only threatens 5ft naturally. Reach weapons double your natural reach. Size category of the weapon does not factor in. Thus, a medium Powerful Build creature with a large reach weapon will still only hit foes 10ft away.

As I will be playing a Paladin in my next Pathfinder game, I've been working out the question of "How does my Paladin align on Good vs Lawful" for myself lately. I like using simple questions to figure out the alignment. For example, and the way I see it:

An orphan child steals a loaf of bread from a baker to feed his younger sister. How does my Paladin respond?

The way I see it, my Paladin would stop the theft and return the bread to the baker. He would then take the orphan to the local branch of his church to get the orphan an easy job (perhaps cleaning up the stables that the local paladins use) that would at first serve as penance for the theft, but would then allow the orphan to help himself and his sister without having to resort the thievery. This satisfies both lawful and good without sacrificing one for the other or becoming just a crazy crusader.

out of curiosity... I assume the anti-pally is CE, what are the aligns of the other two? If playing true to alignment, theres no reason for the anti not to kill the other two party members or vise versa the second they get something worth taking... that was always the issue for evil campaigns that we ran...

I would suggest either some kind of specific binding magic contract, break it and have fun in abbadon, etc. or have that devil/demon offer the other two either something they want just as bad or vengance if they turn on his new anti-champion.

PS if you have the book of the damned vols I,II,III I think those could be very helpful.

I ran a Pathfinder Homebrew Evil campaign from 2011 through 2012, successfully ending it at level 19. The way I had it was have Asmodeus directly confront the evil PCs in the first session and offer them power to work for him. They took it, of course, and he promptly bound all of them together so that if any of them betrayed the others, the Betrayer would become his meat puppet, losing all free will.

This lasted until level 19 when the players had taken over most of the world, at which point Asmodeus dragged them all to his arena in hell and forced them to fight each other, letting only the victor ascend to level 20 and rule the world. It worked out pretty damn well.

On a side note, in a few weeks we will begin the counter good campaign (which the winner of the last campaign is DMing) to take back the world from evil. It should be a good time.

Thalandar wrote:

They would have not been there had they not been "possesed" by evil brain things", the paladin had already said they were evil, and " but it felt hostile at first, so I just reacted" is a very CN action.

And the paladin has to take accountability for the fact he told everyone the creatures in the room are evil. You don't know the rocks were harmless, they could have been a serious threat to the party (considering any Pathfinder world, were anything is posible with magic).

I don't condone the killing of innocents, but this situation has a lot of circumstances that scream "fog of war".

"Fog of war" is not a license to kill innocent children by the roomful. And you are still, deliberately I believe, ignoring the stated attitude of the OP that his character doesn't really care much about all the innocent bodies she's leaving behind.

As I said, play as you like. You SAY you "don't condone the killing of innocents" but as far as I can tell, that's exactly what you are doing.

The character has definitely slid into Evil, but its not for the killing of innocents. Tragedy and mistakes happen. Its terrible, but its true. Someone makes a bad call, misjudges what is going on, and innocent people pay the price. A mistake does not make someone evil. What makes the character evil is the fact that the character doesn't really seem to care about it.

A good aligned character would have something of a mental breakdown if they just fried a room full of children, maybe even going so far as to swear off magic from then on (maybe symbolize this by taking fighter levels from now on) and do whatever they could to make amends.

A neutral character would still be racked with guilt and would probably change their ways, maybe even shifting to a Good alignment, in order to make up for this tragedy.

An evil, non-sociopathic character would just go "Whoops!" and go on their way, as this character has seemed to do given they've done this twice now.

You'll need DM approval for this, because the build is not legal. Specifically, in regards to your Elven Curved Blade. The Black Blade sidebar in Ultimate Magic (page 48) specifically states "A black blade is always a one-handed slashing weapon, a rapier, or a sword cane (see the Advanced Player’s Guide)."

An Elven Curved Blade, while able to be used with Weapon Finesse, is still a 2-handed weapon. Your feat does not change the weapon category of the Elven Curved Blade, and as such is not legal by the rules to be a Black Blade.

Still, with DM approval, anything goes. As a DM, I would allow it, though I would impose a penalty to balance it. I'd probably increase the Ego by 2, making the Black Blade's intelligence more arrogant and forceful since its unique even among its own kind.