Beowulfe's page

With the Nature spirit, your familar can be an animal companion as per Druid class. So the question I have is, does the shaman get the +4 to handle animal with regards to the AC as Druid and Ranger?

With the change so that the favored weapon now does the damage from the chart, does that change the type of damage in anyway?
i.e. Whip does non-lethal and does not affect +1 or greater armor. Does a warpriest with deity that has favored weapon: whip now do lethal damage? And does it do damage to +1 or greater armor?

Does it change to a 'sacred' damage or just still standard weapon damage as far as DR is concerned?

If you drop to use your mount as cover and then before your next turn where you can recover, can you use the Mounted Combat ability to make a Ride check to prevent the hit?

Using mount for cover says you cannot make attacks or cast spells, but does not mention this.

If a PC has defiant bonus on both the armor and shield, does the DR stack so they'd have DR/4- versus the creature type?

How does grappling a mounted opponent work? Presume monster A is attempting to grapple PC B who is atop his mount. Does the PC get any bonuses? Does it automatically unseat him from the mount? If not, if PC orders mount to move away, does that give a bonus?

Now throw a wrinkle in this. Say the PC has the Equestrian Belt. This says he "automatically succeeds at any check to guide with the knees, stay in the saddle, fight with a combat-trained mount, control a mount in battle". Does this mean the PC cannot be removed from the saddle? Does the mount join the grapple?

I want to get my eidolon which is also a mount the climb evolution. What are the game mechanics for the PC while the eidolon is climbing? How does he keep from falling out of the saddle?

If an eidolon has the Push and Trip evolutions, on a successful bite attack does he get both a push and trip check?

I played LG so I know the look and feel of that campaign. I see some posts about healing being abundant. So my question is what is PFS like?
What is a good starter character?
Are the modules combat heavy/optimized?
Any skills/feats that are more useful/less useful than others?
Any gotchas to watch out for?

I like to play interesting characters but I want to be useful and effective to the group.

Any help is appreciated.