Aziraya Zhwan's page

So uh... hey guys... think we could stay on topic about Monks and not make this another alignment thread?

I'm going to echo what Curghann said in regards to the cost of the weapon. Firstly, the guideline is that no single item should be more than half of a character's WBL. Just looking at 5th level (where it's the cost equivalent of +2 adamantine and not counting the free feat), the sword has a cost of 11,000 and the normal WBL for a character is 10,500. You're already heavily smashing the game's assumed wealth with the single item.

Also keep in mind that a weapon is usually a martial character's biggest money sink. By making them never have to spend money on a weapon you're giving him the ability to spend all of his money on other things such as consumables, armor, and wondrous items so be careful about what you might need to change about your combats to reflect this drastic change in strength. I would consider gating off the bonuses not only by level, but by his devotion to Tyr. This may include money donations to the church or forgoing rewards for good deeds. Heck, you could even give each of your players solo-missions occasionally so that everyone can get extra money/power, and have this character's solo-missions revolve around Tyr to get the upgrades to the weapon. This requires him to at least give some of his assumed wealth/power in order to get higher bonuses to keep him in line with the others.

If you're doing this for one character, make sure you're doing something similar for all of the characters or it will seem like that one player is the "main character". Although it may seem cool for a person's backstory, I see it as a bad idea if he's the only one favored by a god or similarly important entity in this way. As gamers, readers, and other fictional media purveyors we've been programmed to be able to single out which characters are important and/or which ones have the most "presence" in the world. If this is the only boon of this magnitude being given out you've essentially singled out this one character as having the most "presence" and have therefore designated them as the main character in everyone's mind whether you wanted to or not.

Aziraya Zhwan wrote:

Alcohol: My group has now run into two creatures that is weakened in some way by strong alcohol and we didn't have any, almost leading to two player deaths. I mean, come on. What kind of adventurer doesn't have an extra bottle of booze for the road? Our group now officially considers a bottle of alcohol official adventuring gear.

Blood pudding? We were an all-dwarf party. We had alcohol. :)

Alcohol: My group has now run into two creatures that is weakened in some way by strong alcohol and we didn't have any, almost leading to two player deaths. I mean, come on. What kind of adventurer doesn't have an extra bottle of booze for the road? Our group now officially considers a bottle of alcohol official adventuring gear.

For me personally, I've gone many years going through the underdog stories where characters pull seemingly-impossible victories out of nowhere so seeing the main character win for actual reasons other than "They're the main character so they have to win" appeals to me greatly now. Really the only "OP main character" anime I didn't like was Danmachi, but that was turned around in the last one or two episodes of the first season. Although he honestly isn't that intensely overpowered due to his lack of experience. Either way though I couldn't seem to get past the idea of his ability.

Others like Overlord or One Punch Man who are so intensely overpowered still have something else going for them. Overlord, as was described, has other things going through his head and it's still interesting to see exactly what OP thing he does to win. One Punch Man has the humor aspect to go along with the moment he wins. Danmachi though? I know that's the only overpowered thing he does so I know that's exactly what's going to happen to win and it doesn't have any humor in that action to make it interesting in my opinion.

Aziraya Zhwan wrote:

By the way, does anyone have any recommendations for series with the main protagonist being tastefully and/or playfully overpowered? Things like One Punch Man, Boku no Hero Academia, or Problem Children are Coming From Another World?

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Overlord.

I quite enjoyed Overlord. I'm sad that it was only a single season. On the site that I watch it on, someone kept leaving posts in the comments telling people stuff that was left out of the anime from the manga. It was mainly explanation stuff about how the game mechanics crossed over into the new world and other really interesting (although ultimately unneeded) background information. It really helped flesh out Overlord for me.

Aziraya Zhwan wrote:

By the way, does anyone have any recommendations for series with the main protagonist being tastefully and/or playfully overpowered? Things like One Punch Man, Boku no Hero Academia, or Problem Children are Coming From Another World?

Hmm... Dog Days? The protagonist is a summoned Hero (not the best in the world he's summoned to, but immensely better than the rank-and-file), and the series as a whole is generally optimistic and fun, particularly from Season 2 onwards. The first two seasons are up on Crunchyroll.

Thanks, I'll put it in my bookmarks to watch soon.

Ah, I see. Kind of an annoying mislabeling to someone who hasn't seen much of the game itself (like myself), but I can appreciate a tongue-in-cheek joke for the ones who know what they're looking for.

By the way, does anyone have any recommendations for series with the main protagonist being tastefully and/or playfully overpowered? Things like One Punch Man, Boku no Hero Academia, or Problem Children are Coming From Another World?

Just did a quick google search and I can't find any anime adaptations for Asura's Wrath, although there are a couple links of playthroughs of the game that people are calling the "anime" of it for some reason.

I'm one of those people who binge watch entire seasons at a time after the season ends, so right now a lot of things on my watch-list are annoying me a bit with their non-standard season lengths. Things like the latest season of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Rakshasa Street, and Re:Zero are throwing me for a loop.

I'm also waiting for the latest season of D.Gray-Man, Mob Psycho 100, and Tales of Zestiria to finish up.

As this is my first post in here I guess I'll post a couple things that I consider hidden gems that I haven't heard talk of much at all.

Disable Device and Sleight of Hand checks have a DC depending on the action. The Arcane Trickster has a tougher time doing this at range. The Kineticist does not.

As an example:
Opening a simple lock with appropriate tools is listed as a DC20 Disable Device check. That is the "normal skill check DC" referenced. An Arcane Trickster, if attempting this at range, has to do a DC25 Disable Device check because its ability says to increase the normal DC by 5. A Kineticist has no such wording in their ability and so would only have to make a DC20 check like normal.

My personal take is that Boots of the Cat is one of my favorite pieces of footwear. Being a Ninja it's extra flavorful for you because you can jump out of windows or from rooftops, land perfectly(taking a maximum of 20 damage), then sprinting off into the night or into the crowd. That sounds like something a ninja would absolutely do.

However, in terms of actual use to your character, the Daredevil Softpaw Boots makes you much more effective. So basically: Boots of the Cat if you want to go for style, but Daredevil Softpaw Boots for actual effectiveness.

As Zwordsman said a bit further up, two levels of Bounty Hunter archetype for Slayer will essentially give you Sneaky Maneuver... but better. The dip gives full BAB progression, you get a bonus to your CMB instead of a -2 penalty to your attack, and it's a free action instead of using your swift action to pull off the dirty trick. The only downside is that it only works on a studied target which means you would need to give up a move action to activate at the start of the fight.

My favorite? Prestidigitation. While not powerful in it's own regard, so much fun can be done with this spell and its wide range of "minor effects".

*pokes head in*
Yep, thread still going strong.
*ducks back out*

It wouldn't surprise me to see many of the armors in Starfinder to be treated to protect against laser damage as well as kinetic damage, with maybe a give/take between them. I could see higher base damage for laser weapons but many armors simply subtracting some of the base damage kind of like Energy Resistance but for lasers. An enemy may have a lot of laser resistance but not much kinetic resistance. This means that weapons that have more physical "oomph" to them such as arrows fired from futuristic bows may very well be advantageous to use over laser weaponry in some situations.

This also seems like a very flavorful way to give your sneaky/not-nice-guy a ranged attack without using a bow. This reeks of the Assassin's Creed hidden gun. Too bad it needs a full-round action to reload but it still seems great for catching an enemy off-guard while closing distance or to stealthily poison an enemy at a party.

I hit the FAQ button for you since this stuff would be nice to know.

I would say that they do stack. Otherwise there would be no reason to have the "In addition, you ignore the still mind class feature prerequisite for the Monastic Legacy feat" stuff at the bottom of the Ascetic Strike feat. If they didn't stack, then why would one of the feats specifically point you toward taking the other?

There's still the potential RAW "no" answer due to things from the same source not stacking (in this case you're getting effective levels in Monk due to overall character level from both feats), but I feel that RAI is very clear in this regard.

Iterative attacks aren't taken into consideration when only using Natural Attacks. You still only get two claw attacks, both at +6 (not counting bonuses from Str or Dex).

Yep, you got it.

I would say that Dazzling Trail and Frightening would certainly stack. If the creature is demoralized, it's for (regular duration) + 1d4 + 1 rounds and if the total of that is 4 or more, then they can instead become frightened for a round.

There's a way to make a Monk that revolves entirely on provoking AoO and smashing face doing so. Go Drunken Master archetype and Panther Style. Take a swig of alcohol (standard action) to gain a point of ki, use it to boost your AC (swift action), and then just swerve through enemies (move action) and provoke all of the AoO you can so that you can hit them with Panther Claw. Rinse and repeat each round. What's nice is that Monks get Fast Movement so you have plenty of movement to provoke from as many enemies as possible, or just exit/enter a single enemy's threatened space over and over to soak up all of the AoO.

It comes online pretty early too. If you're Human you can get the main lineup as early as first. Generally though it would look like this:

1st: Panther Style, Combat Reflexes (Bonus)
3rd: Panther Claw

You can also go Master of Many Styles (which gives up Flurry of Blows which will hurt a bit if you're not fighting very many things) which would make it look like this:

1st: Combat Reflexes, Panther Style (Bonus)
2nd: Some style feat that synergizes well or patches weaknesses, like Tiger Style
3rd: Panther Claw.

Just because he's a Kitsune doesn't add any extra restrictions to his bloodline power. Does a regular human, elf, dwarf, etc need to be in a special shifted form to use the claws? Nope, they don't, and this restriction doesn't come into existence just because they're a Kitsune. In fact there is specific wording to support (at least RAI) that someone can grow the claws no matter what form they're in:

You also lose any class features that depend upon form, but those that allow you to add features (such as sorcerers that can grow claws) still function.

And as Byakko mentioned, the Kitsune's Natural Weapon is a bite and not claws so there's no conflict at all between them.

Basically it goes like this:
Human Form: Can grow claws that do 1d4 damage each.
Natural Form: Always has 1d4 bite and can grow claws that do 1d4 damage each, and can be used in conjunction with each other like any other natural attacks.

Fox Form is a bit murkier. You always have a 1d3 bite but the rules on the claws are a bit gray. Strict RAW reading says that even though you're sized Tiny, your claws would be 1d4 since the only change in damage for claws specified is if you're small and doesn't have the wording "does damage appropriate for your size". RAI though would say that the claws do 1d2 damage each.

Stuff about the hyrdokineticist...

Start using some stuff that has SR. Considering the other feat investment she's had she probably doesn't have Spell Penetration. That will throw a bit of a wrench in her strategy of being able to dump her accuracy and rely on touch attacks to carry her through. It'll essentially make her about as accurate, if not a bit less so, than other martials at the table.

The eye test tells me the Kineticist class is fatally flawed, particularly when you're in melee with so few hp because you're using burn. However, I haven't tried one yet so I don't know. Do they have trouble hitting with their iterative attacks? Does burn drain your hp to the point where you can't stay in melee?

As was shown before, they're fine when it comes to accuracy (insanely so if you're using energy blasts for touch-ac targeting). You have zero problems hitting with your iteratives in melee if using energy blasts.

Consider other 3/4 BAB classes at 12 Con, level 6. That's giving you 9hp (max) each level for 54hp. As a Kineticist you should have at least 16 Con which puts you at 66hp. You want to have 3 points of burn to have your Elemental Overflow going, so take away 18 health (seems like it hurts) which puts you at 48hp. But Elemental Overflow will most likely be giving you a Con bonus giving you back 1hp a level, so now it's 54hp (the same as the 3/4 class).

Extending this to 11th level. The general 3/4 BAB with 12 Con is sitting at 99 health. With a base Con of 16, a +4 belt (maybe even +6 since you're not buying many other things), and then +4 from Overflow gives you 24 Con. That puts you at a nice 165 HP. You need 5 burn to activate your maximum Overflow so that's 55 HP down putting you at just a bit over the other 3/4 BAB class with 110HP. You'll pull a bit more ahead if you have the +6 belt. If you roll for your health then you're almost always going to pull out ahead due to how much of your health is based on static bonuses and not on luck.

And that's not even considering what defense talents you may be pumping up. If you're Aether or Geo, then your effective HP pool is even larger due to DR or a special regenerating force field. Keeping with our 11th level comparison, a Geokineticist would give themselves DR10/adamantine. If you're Aether, then your force field is a regenerating 36hp health pool.

As you can see you're pretty much always neck-and-neck with other 3/4 BAB classes that have 12 Con based purely on health. Depending on your defense talent, your effective health pool is much larger. In fact, you're much better off even after that since their "death" threshold is nowhere near as big as yours. They go down at 0hp and then they have 12 more health before being dead. That's a buffer of 12hp between "out of the fight" and "dead". You, on the other hand, have a ton of non-lethal damage. Your buffer between "out of the fight" and "dead" is 79hp (55 non-lethal + 24 con). That's more than 4 times their buffer zone before you even need to start making stabilization checks, and 6 times the buffer zone than other characters get total. Let's not forget that your stabilization check is easily made since it's a Con-based check which you have in spades.

For those saying that the class is complicated:

Yeah, it certainly reads pretty complicated. Once you play just a little bit though you quickly get the hang of it. Three of the most complicated bits to it is that you have bonuses changing around depending on how much burn you have, keeping track of how much burn a combination of infusions will cost after your various reductions, and remembering your overall options.

The first one quickly becomes streamlined when you're just boosting your defense talent until you activate your desired level of Overflow at the start of the day. In my case, I'll be one or two points below my wanted threshold at the start of the day and then take burn to cast Haste on everyone in the party for the entire fight.

The second one becomes streamlined just through practice. You know you take away X cost based on Infusion Specialization and Y based on how long you gather power for (if you do). It just becomes basic algebra on par with any other mathematics you have to do for Pathfinder: Burn = Infusion costs - (X+Y) and there you go. Not really any more complicated than keeping track differing bonuses based on Power Attack, Arcane Strike, whether the bard is buffing or not, etc.

The third one is, once again, based on simple practice. You know what your favorite combos are and you'll generally stick to them.

Case in point, right off the top of my head I know that I can Kinetic Blade for free after moving and can Empower it for free too if I don't use a move action for something. It's no more difficult than remembering that you don't get your iteratives if you use your move action on something else.

I love the class. Flat out love it.

I don't think I can ever play it, as it seems by 7th level I'm behind the curve on attack and damage no matter what I do.

What am I missing?

I honestly don't see where people are coming from when they say that the Kineticist severely lags behind in accuracy/damage. Sure, there's not many options to optimize the Kineticist to the point of what some other classes could reach, but the floor is high enough that you really don't need to put much into optimizing to do well.

I second the idea that the race shouldn't get a bonus in Dexterity since I don't see wolf races being particularly dextrous. Almost all of the animal races already currently have bonuses to Dexterity too so giving them something different would be nice. Either Con or Str would be a good physical bonus to have.

For Enlarged Canines, getting a -2 Cha but a +2 to Intimidate ends up being only a +1 to intimidate because Intimidate is a Cha-based skill, just to make sure you're aware. I would just say to have it replace Keen Ears, Strong Nose or Expert Rider instead of giving a -2 to Cha.

General thoughts on Natural Attacks: Natural Attacks are extremely strong when built around them so I would be careful of letting a player stack them. You should also specify whether the claws and bite are primary or secondary natural attacks. My recommendation would be that if they replace the same trait then make them primary attacks. If they replace two separate traits then make one of them a secondary attack.

One thing you can always say is that Pathfinder is primarily a permissive system saying "You can do X" instead of "You can't do X". What this means is that unless it's written that something happens, it doesn't happen by RAW. Granted, that's where GMs come in to give circumstance bonuses and other such adjudications, but the RAW answer is that "The rules don't say getting shot with arrows does anything to the invisibility... so they don't".

As you said though you don't want to be that kind of GM (invoking Rule 0), so I would possibly go with Jiggy's idea. Until the person spends some kind of action to either tuck away the arrows or knock them loose from himself then other players know where he's at but the miss chance is still very much active for the reasons outlined by others above me.

I absolutely love the idea of a Mutagenic Mauler Brawler dip, but I already have one character lined up that does that and I don't want every one of my characters pulling the same trick.

Hmm, with that errata saying that bloodline powers increase then I can discuss a bit of give-and-take with my GM of how Primalist would interact with a Dragon Disciple's bloodline progression and would set a bit of precedent for the Robe of Arcane Heritage working for Bloodrager.

Considering how long games tend to go, delaying/never getting Greater Bloodrage and Indomitable Will certainly hurts.

Thanks everyone for the input, I'll keep it in mind if/when the opportunity to play this guy arises.

Hello everyone, I got a random itch to think up a Draconic Bloodrager (Rageshaper, Primalist) that focused on Natural Attacks. My question comes down to whether I want to stick with levels of Bloodrager or if I wanted to switch over to Dragon Disciple for four levels? Dragon Disciple gets a lot of goodies (Str bonus, Natural armor, amazing bite attack, decent saves, etc), but my already stunted spellcasting becomes even slightly more stunted.

Any thoughts?

Domains are a specific class feature that crops up mostly with Clerics and Druids. Warpriests get the class feature called "Blessings". You get nothing other than what the Blessings class feature says you get which means no Domain spells.

Supernatural abilities tend to be things that you instinctively know how to do just as much as jumping or hitting something. You don't have to do any incantations or special movements or focus to use Supernatural abilities. That's why they tend to not provoke attacks of opportunity. You just simply do them. So I would say that yes, you can use them while raging.

Kitsune, Skinwalker, Vishkanya, and Nagaji. Basically animal races. I would put Catfolk on there too but if I wanted to play a Catfolk I would just go with a Skinwalker. The poison of the Vishkanya and Nagaji can be pretty effective considering the fact that it scales.

Considering you're using the name of a city from Final Fantasy, you could always try to look at lifting some Final Fantasy plots. It looks like you have a decent way to plug in some Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 10.

7 could be ripped from with the whole dual-tiered city and magical energies of the world. It just so happens that the biggest sources of this energy is being guarded by the dragons. Make the elite use this energy to make their lives easier, uncaring that it's making the world slowly die. Since it's essentially a pocket-dimension created by a wizard it's easy to say that it only has a limited amount of magical energy that's being used up. Midgard is also basically the most developed city technology-wise than any other in that world so you can use it in order to kind of develop the idea of the mega-corporation having a central seat of power and having its influence lessen as you go further out.

8 could be ripped from by having your players part of a private military academy (the equivalent of S.E.E.D.) that is commonly hired by these higher-ups. They get hired to do some mission where they find out some kind of secret that pits them against the government/other supernatural things.

10 because it does the whole "find out a secret that the government has been hiding and so now it's time to fight the power" transition rather well. Maybe have very specific members of the elite cast know that this powerful wizard is manipulating the top members of the government, or maybe they know of a way to get back to the material plane which is why they're milking this plane of existence for all it's worth before getting ready to just jump ship.

I can actually see a bit of the plot coming along from this. The players are part of the military academy. Take very heavy dystopian vibes from FF7. They get sent on a few missions to kill monsters/put down rebellions and secure these special sites where large quantities of this energy can be extracted from. They find out somehow that these energies are limited which the government has been hiding from the world. At this point they have two choices: continue on helping the government (Choice A), going full anti-establishment on their asses (Choice B), or act as spies/inside men that try and sabotage the government (Choice C). Either way they find out that the plane can be left at any time. It's just that the gate for doing so is extremely well-guarded. If the government is stopped then the plane can sustain itself for a very, VERY long time (aka, the world is saved). If the elites aren't stopped then the world has a couple-thousand years of energy left.

Choice A:
They continue to be sent on missions similar to what they've been having, eventually ending the campaign with killing the dragons to harvest the last of the world's energies. The players are now rich and can live a life of luxury.

Choice B:
They are tasked by these dragons themselves or maybe come across a group of people who are in-tune with the "feelings" of the plane and can either rally the people against the elites (Kingmaker could possibly be a nice pre-written thing for this) or do more terrorist-style strikes before eventually killing the current leaders of the elites who are running the show to stop the world from dying.

Choice C:
This one would be a bit harder to come up with things correctly but could end up being a lot of fun. Have them continue doing jobs for the government but only to build their trust. While doing these jobs and building the trust of the people in charge they're gaining intel to tell the rebels discussed in Choice B and doing things to sabotage major reactors/power extractors. This one culminates in a coup d'etat of the current government while the players place a less corrupt group on the seat of power.

The problem with this though is that you would have to get the players to agree to have characters that would all have reasons to go down one of these main paths together. It would kind of leave bad feelings if one or two players had to bench characters they had become attached to because the characters can't agree on what to do. A good way to do this is to create a ring of six circles. A is the top circle, B is the lower right, and C is the lower left (but don't mark them as such). Instead label them 1-6 and fill them with these phrases, starting at the top and going clockwise: 1."Absolute loyalty to the government" 2."Stability in the region must be achieved" 3."People shouldn't mess with the natural order" 4."I just want to help the most amount of people" 5."I don't mind getting my hands a bit dirty" 6."I'll just do whatever earns me money". Tell them that their characters don't have to be entirely based around those ideals, but they must at least be important concepts to them. Each character must be no more than two steps away from another and will help steer the story. This means that if one person is on Circle 1, everyone would have to be on Circles 6, 1, or 2.

This is my thought process for this: 1 is the main embodiment of A, 3 is the main embodiment of B, and 5 is the main embodiment of C. If the players remain within these steps of each other then you should be able to steer the campaign to one direction or another without completely leaving a player in the cold.

As an example: the players are on circles 1, 2, and 3. Oh no, we have some heavily leaning toward A and B! Well here's the thing: all of those could see the merits of siding with the government. "Absolute loyalty" would go with the government (duh), "Stability in the region" could want these rebels to stop so that chaos doesn't keep going on and "Don't fight the natural order" would see that the elites have been in power all this time and so that shouldn't change. In that same token, circles 2, 3, and 4 could all be pulled to Choice B. Stopping the plane's collapse would obviously be important to "I just want to save people", "Don't fight the natural order" could think that using the plane's energy to live in luxury is a perversion of that energy and should be stopped, and if they help the rebels become a kind alternative government then rebel attacks would stop meaning more stability in the long run.

I don't see the point in saying a weapon can't be better than X. A heavy crossbow does more damage and has a higher range increment than the composite long bow.

Heavy crossbow is a simple weapon - 1d10 120ft 19-20 X2 50gp
Composite longbow is a martial weapon - 1d8 110ft 20 x3 100gp
The greatbow could be exotic - 1d8 130ft 20 x3 150gp

The thing is though is that a Heavy Crossbow needs an extra feat to use (Rapid Reload) and even then can't be used to full-attack since it still needs a move action to reload. It's really not any better than the Composite Longbow. I would argue it's actually much worse. Burning a feat as well as not being able to full-attack are much greater drawbacks than the bonuses of a tiny bit of added damage (which doesn't really even exist considering strength enhancements) and a little extra range give you. That means that a Composite Longbow really is right there at the top of ranged weaponry which means that purposefully designing something that's outright better than it in nearly all categories should be done very warily. Hence the drawbacks and other stipulations I've been trying to place on the Greatbow so it doesn't become the obvious choice that every archer should use.

I was thinking of making the Greatbow Exotic with a Range of somewhere around 100.

So with stats like: Exotic, 1d10, 100ft, 20x3, having to mount it and it requiring a minimum of a +2 strength rating, does that give us enough play to get us some Vital Strike love? Or should I just go Martial with the above stats and forget about Vital Strike stuff?

With the above Strength rating requirement, my previous suggestion for how mounting works, and a 1d10 damage dice, you could get away with making this a martial weapon.

Remember when designing this weapon that a composite longbow is one of the best mundane weapons in the game. Your weapon should never be more powerful than a composite bow. Not even close.

I'm honestly kind of intrigued by N. Jolly's little hook of making the bow meant to be used with Vital Strike. If I drop the minimum strength requirement but make it require a minimum strength enhancement, make it 1d10 with the ability to add strength enhancements at the same rate as a Composite Longbow (which makes it do at least a bit more damage than the Composite Longbow so now we're back on track), and have the mounting aspect to it but yet make it Exotic, do you think that would be enough to fit in some kind of special bonuses for Vital Strike? It fits thematically to have it be one big shot instead of a lot of smaller shots and Vital Strike is already known to be... sub-optimal.

Should we all try and brainstorm some ways to give Vital Strike a bit of love?

Oh god, this is what happens when I'm trying to type something fast right before I have to meet someone...
"over the Brawler counterpart"*
"and it will fit your concept"*

Take a look at the Bounty Hunter archetype for Slayer if you were considering focusing more on the Dirty Trick route than the Trip route. It basically does what the Skulking Slayer Rogue does except the Bounty Hunter Slayer gets a few more feats and a full BAB which is important to compete against CMD. I actually have a Level 5 Dirty Trick/Disarm character that I'm waiting to play. I can pull him up for you to reference. He's a Mutagenic Mauler Brawler(2)/Bounty Hunter Slayer(x, currently 3). Not exactly optimized but he's dex-based like you wanted. I'll post his build.

You can replace the Brawler with Ninja to level 2 or 3. You'll lose a point of BAB but make it back up because you'll have an extra Sneak Attack dice or two over the Brawler Counterpart that you can trade out as bonuses to a Dirty Trick Attempt. Unfortunately you can't get the massive bonus from Dirty Fighting on your trip attempts with the Kusarigama without using a feat somewhere to get Improved Trip (kind of disappointing that the tripping end can't reach, otherwise it would work). Other than switching Brawler to Ninja, shuffling a level or two and squeezing in a feat somewhere you can almost straight copy my character over and it will fight your concept somewhat well.

The action economy is more complicated than it should be and goes against the rules in a lot of ways. Just keep it simple: It takes a move action to mount the bow and free action to unmount it. If you fire the bow while not mounted, you take a -4 penalty to attack rolls.

That definitely makes things a lot less wordy and makes things come to just about the same place as how I have it currently written: "If you try to move with this weapon, life becomes difficult for you". Nice and streamlined and to the point. Sounds good to me.

Do not consider the double hackbut as comparable. The hackbut is a firearm that has to be put on a cart and requires two feats to make usable. It's on a different class than your weapon.

I assume you mean Exotic Weapon Proficiency and Rapid Reload are the feats. Considering point #5 as well, I take it I should at least make the weapon Exotic? I was certainly on the fence between being Martial and Exotic so I would be fine with making it Exotic if people think it fits better.

I'd make the damage be 1d10. I don't think it should do more damage than a heavy crossbow, especially when it doesn't require any feats to use and all of its drawbacks are easily mitigated by having a backup bow.

I would just like to re-iterate that the entire purpose of the Greatbow is to have a bigger punch on a hit than the Composite Longbow and in return have some drawbacks. What you propose makes it weaker than a Composite Longbow in terms of damage on a hit due to strength enhancements. Taking away the damage as well as the stagger just makes the Composite Longbow better in every and all categories from Action Economy to Range to Damage. If you think it needs more drawbacks or resources to use in order to outweigh some aspects, have those aspects tweaked, or have those aspects changed to something entirely different I'm all ears and absolutely welcome that kind of feedback. However, please don't take away everything it's meant to represent thematically and make it objectively worse than a weapon that is practically considered basic adventuring gear for many characters. It's ok to be worse in some regards but it needs to be better in at least something.

Give it additional effects with vital strike, such as the possible stagger/trip. Most ranged builds are firing an intense level of ammo a round, so maybe this can use vital strike as a full round action to some extra effect.

That's certainly an idea I haven't thought of. How do you think I should go about that? "If you use Vital Strike with it you gain X, Improved Vital Strike makes it gain X or Y (your choice), and Greater Vital Strike makes it gain X, Y, or Z. The effect lasts for one round" or something along those lines seems like a decent way to do it. Possible conditions I could think of for those are Shaken (I would be scared if someone shot me with a giant arrow), Staggered, Dazed, Prone, or make enemies using non-magical flight to start falling (you would almost take a wing right off with this thing. Also queue the mental image of flying paladins suddenly losing their class abilities because they got hit with a giant arrow). The questions then become which ones to use, and what kind of check to make those conditions stick? As for which ones, I kind of like the progression of Shaken (general debuff) -> Staggered (reduces their action economy) -> Prone. Shaken is odd to attach to something that's not really mentally-based though. Perhaps Sickened since they do (almost) the same thing but it seems more physical? Some kind of CMB check, or maybe a Fortitude save of 10 + BAB + Bow's Strength Enhancement? Actually, I really like incorporating the bow's Strength Enhancement into it since it gives a character an incentive to increase their strength over the base 14 needed. Besides, it simply makes sense that if the bow is hitting you harder it makes the effect harder to resist. Using 10 + BAB + Str Enhancement against their Fort save generally gives creatures about a 50% chance to save going by the average creature stats if you're a full BAB class.

Not only that but with nudging the player character a bit more on the MAD side it strikes a balancing point between "Do you want to hit reliably, or do you want to do more damage and try to make those conditions stick?" I would certainly just get the 14 str and leave it at that personally, but at least it gives the player some choice.

Alright, so Staggered over Prone. That definitely sounds quite a bit better.

Well a full attack is already a full round action, so unless you have some magic that lets you move as a swift or immediate action most of what you've written is redundant anyways.

How should I write it to not be redundant? With a normal bow if someone comes in close you could still 5-foot step and full-attack, or do a move action and launch a single arrow if they simply need to reposition themselves on the battlefield. With how I have it written now I'm saying that you lose your full-attack if you make a 5-foot step (instead only getting a single attack) and you don't get to attack at all if you take an actual move action (unless under the effect of Haste). The stuff about Vital Strike can be taken out though now that I look at it.

Are you sure that 2d8 is too much though? At the 14 Strength needed to even qualify to use this weapon, a Composite Longbow would be sitting at 1d8+2 for damage (average 6.5, min 3, max 10) and with 2d6 the Greatbow would be sitting at an average of 7, min 2, max 12. 2d8 gives an average of 9, min 2, max 16. I may be wrong, but it feels like 2.5 damage average isn't terribly over-balancing considering how reduced your action-economy is using the bow and it at least makes it feel like it punches harder. Also when rolling two dice then you start to normalize to a bell-curve which makes it difficult to swing low but also difficult to swing high. On the surface, yeah, it looks like double damage (1d8 Composite Longbow vs 2d8 Greatbow) but when you consider the static bonuses that the Composite Longbow gets a head-start on then the gap is much smaller than it initially looks.

So this is what it looks like now:

Well, darkness spells can be powerful debuffs if used against the right creatures, namely humans and halflings.

It's actually a debuff to more things than that. Every Core Race other than Dwarves and Half-orcs can be messed with using darkness effects. Even things with Low-Light Vision aren't immune to the concealment-granting. Low-Light Vision is just defined as "Can see twice as far as humans in dim light" and then defines that as saying that the radius of light sources are doubled. Having low-light vision doesn't really let you see anything better in dim light per se, it just extends the distance at which you can sort of make things out. If there's no actual ambient source giving off a source of Bright Light nearby, an Elf is still going to see the light level as Normal which is then lowered to Dim in a Darkness effect, leading to the aggressor (who I assume will have Darkvision somehow) getting 20% concealment. Sure, if you're near the cave entrance or something then the distance that you would normally see is extended further in, but the light is still going to seem Normal and then Dim to you at some point in there even without magic making things darker. If you're in a house that has curtains drawn (or even just outside on an overcast day), being an Elf isn't going to help you against a darkness effect any more than being a Human is.

Mainly because making things darker can benefit someone more than making things lighter.

The only problem with making something lighter is that it may cause some issues for the few creatures that have light sensitivity, but Dancing Lights and Light (0-level spells) never bring light up above normal light which still isn't bright enough to mess with Light Sensitive creatures. Essentially, all it does is allow for creatures to bring themselves up to their normal fighting potential.

On the other hand, making things Darker can give some significant buffs/effects. If you have Darkvision and these spells as cantrips, you now have 20% concealment from anything that doesn't also have Darkvision as long as the ambient light is at Normal. Keep in mind that if it isn't direct sunlight, then the highest light level you're in is probably Normal. At the entrance of a cave, under a canopy, in a house, etc all have ambient light levels of Normal so you can essentially get 20% concealment very often. If the Ambient is at Low (commonly things like caves or at night) then it's as if the enemy is blind to you.

It basically boils down to "It's almost impossible to give yourself an advantage by making things lighter, but it's very easy to give yourself an advantage for making things darker". This makes Darkness and it's brothers much more useful/stronger than their Light-spell cousins. Thus, making these spells cantrips can open them to abuse.

I was talking to the GM about a hypothetical character that revolved around being stationary but making up for it in large damage, kind of like stationary artillery. There is some iconography in fantasy of this (in Dark Souls we have the Silver Knight archers with their greatbows). Since there's nothing like that in official materials I decided to think one up and I was hoping for input from the community about it.

Some conceptual starting points:
-It's heavy and has a large draw strength, so a minimum Str should be needed so not every archer could use it.
-It's not a mobile weapon.
-It should have a decent range increment as well as pretty good damage.
-It should be scary to see someone pointing this thing at you.

I originally looked into the weapon creation guidelines but it seems like a very commonly used weapon, the Composite Longbow, already kind of blows past the weapon creation guidelines so I decided to just use the Composite Longbow as a starting point. I initially erred on the side of caution to make sure it didn't get over-powered before getting input.

So, here's the stats and features I brainstormed:

My main concern is that, as it is now, there isn't much use for the Greatbow over the Composite Longbow at all. Consider if you had the base 14 Strength needed. At 14 Strength a Composite Longbow would be doing 1d8+2 for an average of 6.5 damage with the Greatbow doing an average of 7 damage. Considering the enhanced weight and needing a feat in order to bypass the normal "less movement" restrictions, a difference of .5 damage on average just doesn't seem to cut it.

Ideas:
1. The Double Hackbut firearm has 2d12 on the damage with a somewhat similar premise of lower mobility for more firepower. Should I just increase the damage? If so, to what? 2d8 gives an average of 9, 2d10 gives 11, and 2d12 gives 13.

2. Much of the inspiration for this weapon comes from Dark Souls, and one of the main things about the Greatbow in Dark Souls is that it knocks you right on your ass because of the force of the bow. Should I make the user of the Greatbow get some kind of free CMB check to knock a target prone that it hits? I wouldn't want it to just use a Trip attempt because I feel like something like a mermaid that doesn't have any legs would still have a good chance of being knocked over. Should I put in a generic CMB vs CMD check (max 1 size category larger using Dex or Str, whichever higher) to knock the target prone?

3. How about some cover-piercing properties? My initial thought would be the cover would have to be an inch thick or less with a maximum hardness of 5 (aka wood) for the Greatbow to pierce through, with each +1 magical enhancement allowing it to bypass an extra 2 hardness. This might also have the side-effect of allowing the Greatbow to ignore Shield Bonuses to AC of wooden shields of equal or lesser enhancement bonus, very hard to bypass AC of metal shields, and never through adamantine (unless also using adamantine arrows). I'm much more reluctant about this one than the other two ideas because it basically has all the headaches of a Sunder character for the GM, having to keep track of Hardness and keeping in mind different armor stats just because I'm attacking but it's fairly flavorful.

What do people think? If I add only one of the ideas above, my gut is to say to 2d12 damage or the prone idea. If both, go with 2d8 damage + potential prone.

From how I understand it, when you do a regular move, you're actively breaking away from the other person and focusing on moving a large distance. This can be seen as either turning your back and high-tailing it or back-peddling very fast to put as much distance as possible which would naturally put you a bit off-balance leaving you open to an AoO. Considering each round is equivalent to 6 seconds and a normal movement speed is 30 feet, that means you're going 5 ft/s. That's actually fairly fast so a character is having to really commit to the movement which would compromise their defenses in one way or another.

A 5-foot step is more akin to the natural flow of combat while remaining engaged and wary of your foe(s). To answer the original question, the Giant Crab is fully intelligent enough to take a 5-foot step because the only intelligence such a movement needs is a basic sense of self-preservation. After all, a Giant Crab doesn't move around with both claws wide to the side. If engaged in combat it would be probably be holding one or both claws somewhat protectively in front of itself unless it was moving a fair distance to attack someone, in which case it would probably do something akin to a charge with holding it's claws up and at the ready to hit at the end of movement. It may not be smart enough to 5-foot step with the intent to flank with another unless it's specifically written in their tactics, but it can certainly 5-foot step for whatever reason to not provoke an AoO.

Edit:
If you want to see how a crab doing a 5-foot step looks like, take a look at this video. If you ignore the crazy flipping of the character to get behind the crab, the crab is always trying to circle and pivot at an optimal distance with a claw usually held in front in order to protect itself. During this pivoting/shuffling movement the player never attacks because he knows that the crab could attack at any moment/is protecting itself, meaning he isn't getting any AoOs because it would leave him too open to attack. When they're both circling/strafing each other is a perfect example of two enemies in combat with each other both taking 5-foot steps in a round since in the mind's theater both combatants should be doing their actions at roughly the same time during the 6 seconds (turns are only an abstraction needed to make the combat system work).

There's always the Discovery called Infuse Mutagen. It allows you to have multiple mutagens prepared. Sure, it costs some gold (somewhat negligible at higher levels) and does a bit of intelligence damage, but if you have just a bit of downtime then make a couple of them as your emergency reserve and heal away the intelligence damage.

If your GM is poking you to not play a monk, go Barbarian (maybe Brutal Pugilist archetype) with maybe a dip in Mutagenic Mauler Brawler for that sweet Mutagen boost and a free Improved Unarmed Strike needed to qualify for a lot of feats. Alternatively, you can just take Dirty Fighting to bypass the Improved Unarmed Strike prerequisite. Rage + Mutagen with natural weapons means the enemy will be hurting big time (especially at lower levels) since assuming a 16 in Strength at character creation you would have 24 Strength while raging with Mutagen, meaning 2(1d4+7) both at a +9 to hit at level 2. The reasons for Barbarian is that there are Rage Powers that let you do what you're looking to do and raging and/or mutagen can give a good bonus to your grapple. I would maybe bypass style feats since you already have your hands mostly tied with the grapple chain of feats. You're also probably going to do the Natural Attack route from the sounds of it, which Barbarian helps you with. The rage powers you're looking for are:

1. Lesser Beast Totem: Gain Claws. It technically doesn't give you anything if you started with the Cat's Claws trait (just do a quick search about claws going on feet and you'll see a lot of threads explaining why), but see if your GM will allow you to gain a Rake attack to go with your flavor or some other bonus like an increased crit range on your claws (with the bonus only active while raging) for taking this rage power with the racial trait.

2. Greater Beast Totem: Gain Pounce. Kind of obvious why you would want this and the Nimble Striker racial feat synergizes well with trying to charge/pounce everything.

3. Animal Fury: Gain a Bite Attack. Kind of sucks that it's basically classified as a secondary natural attack but it's still a natural attack and it dovetails nicely into...

4. Savage Jaw: Your bite gets the Grab ability. As written it only works once a rage and I'm assuming you have to call out using it before the attack roll. This makes it pretty easy to whiff and waste since you're making it at a -5 if you're full-attacking. Ask your GM if you can Free Action activate after the bite connects or have it last longer than just a single round so you don't waste it, or just use the Bite and nothing else on the round you're trying to use it with.

5. Strength Surge: Give yourself a bonus equal to your Barbarian level to a CMB check. Great to land that grapple check.

There are a couple other Rage Powers that are overall useful as well but don't directly improve the "Natural Attack + Grapple" playstyle you're going for.

Kitsune Style is practically just a feat tax for Kitsune Tricks, and Kitsune Vengeance I'm not too fond of either unless you have a lot of ways to generate AoOs. Crane Wing gives you tons of AC but Kitsune Tricks might end up being the difference between an enemy thinking they're good enough to try and swing and one who takes their turn to get rid of a condition.

I'm also not entirely sure myself how much Superior Dirty Trick is needed. Greater Dirty Trick already makes them take their standard action meaning they're giving up attacking that turn already. Sure, they can still move, but without Quick Dirty Trick and/or Slayer giving you extra action economy in a round for full-attacking it doesn't make much of a difference. If they're going to get rid of the condition then they're going to do it either way, and having to use your move action first before re-applying a condition they wipe off doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things in your current build. Basically what I'm saying is that you're not giving yourself any significant bonuses for full-attacking currently that Quick Dirty Trick (use Dirty Trick for first attack but still be able to do your iteratives) or Slayer would give you, so losing your full attack isn't anything to fuss too much about.

As you said yourself, Crane Riposte is a somewhat weak feat overall in your lineup but lowering the attack penalty is still good enough to not completely disregard. If you had Kitsune Vengeance then it would be pretty good because then you could try to slap a Dirty Trick on the AoO, but as it is, it may not be the best choice. I would consider Quick Dirty Trick place of Crane Riposte because then you get at least a little synergy going on with Superior Dirty Trick making them stay still so you can full-attack, or trade out Superior Dirty Trick for something else.

Ah, if it's for PFS then the Slayer may not be quite as good for you since it ends at level 12. The Slayer Sneak Attack->Dirty Trick really gets good when you get Dirty Trick Master which doesn't happen until a character is about to retire. Dirty Trick Master makes it so that you can make a condition worsen by landing another Dirty Trick which is incredibly interesting considering you can go Sickened->Nauseated. Nauseated makes it so you can't use any standard actions which is what's needed to get rid of any conditions caused by Dirty Tricks (due to Greater Dirty Trick).

Essentially, you use Quick Dirty Trick (if you don't have a flanking buddy ready) and Kitsune Tricks to give Blinded and Sickened your first attack in a round. Now they're flat-footed against you so your next iterative attack (which has a decent chance of connecting between the Blinded and Sickened) would get Sneak Attack damage as well even without an ally helping you flank. Since you're getting Sneak Attack damage, you can trade out that extra damage in order to attempt another Dirty Trick. If that second one sticks you give them Nauseated which they simply can't get rid of. After a single full-attack the enemy is Nauseated, Blinded, and some other third condition as well (I like entangled for that since it means they can't even try to move away). As you said, getting that extra Sneak Attack damage would technically help to bring down the enemy faster, but who cares how much damage you're dealing when enemies can't do anything except puke in place?

Like I said though, going for that but ending at level 12 is a bit of a bummer and so having a bit more diversity with the Sensei Monk would probably serve you better (and be more fun in the long run) than the Bounty Hunter Slayer.

And at Godferret, yes, I meant the Bounty Hunter.

I just recently came up with a character that currently has a rather bad Will save. In the background to account for this, I had him fall prey to Dominate and Charm quite often as a kid being forced to work for a mob boss. Being Chaotic Good he's entirely about individual freedom and has an intense fear/hatred of any kind of mind-affecting spells and effects (other than illusions since that isn't directly attacking the mind). Quite honestly, even if it would cause problems for the party, he would go out of his way to make life miserable for anyone that he knows is casting those kinds of spells and/or coercing others into doing things against their will.

To make up for this shortcoming in his Will save though, he purchases a lot of things like a Shining Wayfinder (which allows him to cast Protection from Evil once a day). Every fiber of my being says "Just buy a Cloak of Resistance and Ring of Protection", but no, my character would rather spend money on trinkets that would stop the effect after it happens and little stones that spin around his head because he thinks they look cool.

As a sidenote, I was wondering if there was a section I could post a character background/bio/story and have people critique it? Would that be in the Gamer Talk section?

I've never seen an ability written to have such a low DC, especially considering all it does is give you 20% concealment. That's basically an auto-succeed on the will save for the mean/median creature statistics at level 10. I would definitely think that's a typo, so I'll throw an FAQ on there for you.