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Someone with inside knowledge on Zarta Dralneen's diary was under a compulsion to reveal its contents to us during the fight. Having someone scream the Paracountess's dark secrets to you while trying to kill you is both hilarious and terrifying.

Extra props to the GM for running that scenario cold!

I love my occultist but wasn't really sure how the "fixated on items" aspect of the flavor really fit with my concept. After reading this Iconic I think I understand my own character better.

Tongues has been a lot of fun to roleplay. I actually switch into another language while playing my character (no one in my gaming circle speaks Ukrainian) and I have had some very frustrating experiences of not being able to communicate during combat.

I'm not going to be very helpful in this discussion because I enjoy the damaging aspect of the oracle curses. They're suppose to be flavorful detriments that ease as you level up.

I think the GM made a really bad decision and reflects a bad perspective on the game. If "participation" is only based on dealing damage and killing things then it wipes out a lot of game play. Some people are buffers or faces or skill monkeys and combat isn't always something they contribute to. That was an extremely inappropriate decision to ignore the contributions of the rest of that group in that encounter that began upon finding the well.

Get a new GM if conversation doesn't appear to be working.

I do want to take a moment to compliment you on your GM skills. Creating alternate encounter expectations from simply "kill everything" to a more dynamic goal is exactly what I would have suggested. I'm sorry to hear it's still not working. I'll agree with everyone else that you may need to sit down one on one with the player and then possibly the whole group to calmly and politely address the matter.

If a character is reducing the fun of the group as a whole then changes need to be made. You need to figure out what is the goal of each person. Some people want to bring the character with the highest damage per round or the craziest character concept or they don't really care just as long as they get a good story out of the deal.

Graves has the troops subtype. Troops are swarms for Medium or Small creatures.

I was paging* through the Familiar Folio and discovered the Leshy Warden Druid Archetype and knew I had to buy the book. I freakin' love Leshies and am now trying to build one for Pathfinder Society play. I am trying to figure out how to make my desires at least decently viable for play. If you think Leshy Warden is stupid and should be changed then I do please ask you to leave the thread and PM me your tirade against my choices instead.

Basic Premise
Oread Druid (Yes I have the race boon)
Leshy Warden Archetype (Growth Subdomain)
Leaf or eventually Gourd Leshy
Mauler Archetype Familiar

I am not 100% sure if Leshy familiars can take archetypes, but if I can I want to make a ridiculous cute battle leshy to fight alongside my melee druid. I'm looking for suggestions on feat, tactics, traits, items etc. If you've got a compelling reason to alter any of the Basic Premise but the Druid archetype I am certainly happy to look at alternate solutions to the idea of Leshy Druid.

*I initially was going to write "leafing" but thought better of it.

Hereh (pronounced as an exhale of air and a grow) is a Kitsune Shapeshifter/Witch Guard Ranger. He was raised by the witches of Irrisen as basically a pet. He's now escaped and joined the Pathfinder Society. I haven't gotten to play him yet, but he will be incredibly submissive to magic users. He also has a hierarchy of who he will follow. He follows the most powerful arcane caster. If there's no arcane then he follows the divine casters that are more powerful casters. Should the group only have divine casters at a lower caster level than himself. Hereh is in charge, clearly.

Eliot is my halfling occultist. He has the Childlike racial feat and focused on disguise and bluff so he can masquerade as a human child. One of his implements is a doll named Mrs. Rackleshack who frequently comes to life for scouting and oddjobs. My opening line when I sit down at a PFS table (in a higher pitched very childish voice) "Hi! My name's Eliot, and this is Mrs. Rackleshack! Will you be our new friend?" It is played very psychotic cheerful with a hint of creepy since he casts evocation and necromancy spells. I love him very much.

Any rules produced by Paizo can be overridden by a GM in their home games. This really only affects society play. I don't know if you're talking about ignoring the rules in society but if not then I think you're free to use the version of the rules you like and your players can handle.

Personally I have no problem with the change.

I want Absolom Sign Language as a legal language in PFS!!!!!

I love the diversity Pathfinder brings to its story telling, but this is a disconnect from that diversity and the rules for society.

I have to say even changing the language to "I will" or "I manifest" didn't help for me. It still felt like I was just playing a type of Magic User rather than a unique and different class.

but.... you are playing a type of Magic User. A Psychic magic user who manifests spells through thought and emotion. I like using different language but the way they introduced the Occult classes is that they are another type of magic on par with divine or arcane.

So I really like the occultist and enjoy the variety of things I was able to do with my level 1. With all of my Pathfinder Society characters I sketch out what I will probably do for 12 levels and have some concern for poor Eliot the Occultist.

With an Intelligence of 16 Eliot has 7 Mental focus points at level 1. These are typically going to be used with the Intense Focus and Soulbound Puppet resonant powers for Evocation and Necromancy. The max points required to keep both full is 3 leaving me four points to use on Energy rays, spell shaping, and Mind Fear. This is great for a level one adventurer and felt equal to the casters I've built before.

At second level my MFP goes up to 8 but the options for abilities goes up much higher. Intense focus goes from needing 2 to maintain max to needing 4 points. The soulbound familiar still only needs one, but if I were to use the Spirit Shroud instead I would need 2. I'll be adding Illusion implements and the Distortion ability needs 2 to max out. So I'll have either 1 or no mental focus points to use freely before I start depleting my resonant powers. So I'll trade my four points to spend as I wish for a 10% miss chance, +1 to evocation damage and one free point. That feels like a weird jump.

At 5th level I'll have 11 MFPs. Intense Focus can max out at 6 points, my Soulbound puppet would need 3 to function at full capacity or my Spirit Shroud would need 5, and the Distortion would need 3. So I'm at -1 or -3 MFPs. Let's say I'd have 5 Intense focus, 3 familiar, and 3 distortion. That gives me a +2 to evocation damage (the same as level 2), level 5 familiar, and 15% miss chance with no free points to spend.

I understand that the class requires choosing between full implement resonant power and my focus powers, but I feel like there's just too little points to go around to make it compelling to play. I have all these neat toys, but they break very quickly. Level 6 will see a fourth implement added to the mix but only one more point that can be placed into it which the needs of the others go up. This problem just gets worse the more I get into the class.

At 12th level I would have FIVE implements that desire mental focus with only 19 points to give them. Intense Focus will take 8 points for a +4 to evocation spell damage, Distortion will have 5 points for a %25 miss chance, and my Necromancy implement and Transmutation implement will have to share the remaining 6 points. My fifth implement (I will take evocation twice) is just going to remain depowered. I'm not really sure how this compares to other level 12s but I know the reaction is that I have a lot of neat toys that can't be used.

Currently my only way to address this problem is to increase my Intelligence. I do plan on using 4th and 8th level to boost my Int, but the reason I didn't go higher at level 1 was because I did need bonus to other abilities to make sure my character could do other things. I'm sure the actual book will have a feat to added more, but I'm not sure 3 extra points or whatever it will be is enough to fix what feels like slow suffocation, and then even if it did it would feel like a Feat Tax to make the class functional.

I like the occultist and the flexibility it has, but looking at the future of my character does not make me excited to play him more. I love the feel of 1st level and want to keep more of that at higher level.

Can I say that I love how we're having an intelligent conversation about the language used to describe the game? Also it's very difficult to fully describe a game that does not yet exist, but I think it's a conversation that needs to happen in order to help people draw their friends and others into the experience.

I like Cooperative Competition as a description.

Perhaps I've got it all wrong in my enthusiasm, but I have high hopes.

The game needs to ensure players are making interesting choices to a high frequency and ideally social interaction to a high quality. Possibly this system helps with both those outcomes? I hope so and solo-ing may be something exciting to do to specialize in, but don't expect to be taking half the kingdom back home with you!?

For me it's not an interesting choice. I would rather my decisions about items be dictated only by space in my bags and not include the weight. Reducing my movement speed has such a hugely negative impact on other aspects of game play while not having room in my bag just prevents me from gaining more items. I suppose it's dependent on what level of realism you want for different things.

I'm perfectly happy to wait until the game actually comes out and I can play it to form a solid opinion. Maybe it won't be as bad as I'm imagining. Maybe it will be even worse and the developers will fix it.

This whole "Schrodinger's Game" that I'm playing right now is starting to get boring and I've only been playing it for a week. My heart goes out to those of you who have been waiting for years.

I've never role played in an MMORPG before. I look forward to creating a character I'd want to portray for hours on end while I discover the game.

I really enjoyed prepping and running this encounter. It was a challenge for me since I'm a new GM (The Confirmation was my 3rd adventure running in Society and 4th overall) made both harder and easier by my table composition. I had my Venture Captain, his Lieutenant, and three other veteran players/GMs. I rolled for encounters days ahead of time to read up on unfamiliar rules, but I think after running it a couple of times I'd rather have the players roll for those choices.

My seasoned veterans rolled through the battle encounters easily, but enjoyed the puzzle of the cave drawings and the interaction with Uori. They did choose to run into the cave and I'm pretty sure had they not I would have dropped one of them. This adventure could easily be very harsh to brand new players if the GM doesn't recognize that this should be a learning scenario for newbies.

I did throw in some fun props and visuals. I seeped computer paper in warm tea water to color it and create parchment paper to hand out instead of the provided half sheet pictures. I also made actual pictures to represent the cave drawings. On one side was a vague picture with colors and shapes and if they made their skill check I flipped it over to reveal a stick figure picture of the Aspect of Aroden. The actual image helped to clue them in on what to do since I kept tight lipped about explaining the ritual mechanics.

Overall a good scenario with lots of potential for replay and creativity.