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IRL an bastard sword is way more like a great sword so it's confusing that this is this way here.

questions don't go old and googld doesn't filter on "that was a long time ago".

But I was going to delete this after the re-read, but now if I do the thread looks broken.

From the text describing the Bastard Sword:

A bastard sword is about 4 feet in length, making it too large to use in one hand without special training; thus, it is an exotic weapon. You can use a bastard sword two-handed as a martial weapon.

So you (anybody) can use a bastard sword two-handed (presuming you're proficient with two-handed weapons]), so by default it's a two handed weapon.

It can (only) be used one-handed with special [exotic] training.

By my reading two-handed martial weapons can transform into a bastard sword, and bastard sword can transform into two-handed martial weapons; but a bastard sword can _not_ transform into a one handed sword (such as longsword) or vice-versa. (because it's too heavy etc). No other reading makes sense IMHO.

I've noticed that it's been moved to "One-Handed Melee Weapons" in the PRD but this makes no sense given the text (and if you've ever picked one up in real life you'd likely agree it's two-handed by default).

FAQ!

I've seen the faq comment. I'd do it differently given the context and the way "other things usually work".

I would call this "The Jackie Chan Talent". You are using your sneak attack to turn your target into an unwitting and unwilling meat shield.

The one bonus from one source rule is questionable since a two-weapon fighter can get sneak dice on more than one target etc. and "using up" multiple attacks for a momentary safety edge is not unreasonable.

So how I would run this feat:

(1) the bonus would stack; if you can get multiple attacks with sneak then you earned the stack in your build and play.

(2) the bonus would work against all attackers, not just the target.

(3) the bonus -ends- if the target providing the bonus dies no matter when or why.

(4) the bonus -ends- if the rogue and the target providing the bonus are separated by one or more squares no matter when or why.

-- If I were rewriting this from scratch I would have the rogue -trade- dice for AC maybe. Or maybe have a low-talent that trades and an advanced talent that doesn't require the trade.

I know this feat sounds a little insane but in terms of play balance it actually works. And the banter and play would be outstanding. Rogue gets in and uses meat-shield tactic to use minion as buff against big-bad. Rogue accidentally, or big-bad deliberately, kills minion and whoops, there you are. Alternately the rogue has to keep finding ways to flank-n-stab minions to survive proximity to big bad, thus distributing his attacks or dealing with being cornered etc.

Given that a ninja can use a ki point to walk through walls and suh this talent isn't that unbalanced as described above. Given the number of things you would have to stack into the character to make this truly abusive it ends up being as fair as any of the many other stacked feat corner-cases in the system.

I consider it good practice to encourage players to treat physical positioning etc as a very rewarding but very risky game of chess.

Plus I like theatrics from players and getting the rogue to step into a position where he could flank or gang-up, and in so doing probably opening himself to flank etc., just to do his sneak attack in hopes of -not- killing a guy so that he can be safe to take his secondary attack against a big-bad is just glorious theater. 8-)

Background: So I am new to Pathfinder, and while I date back to D&D first ed, I kinda skipped over all of 3rd ed cause my group was into GURPS at the time....

So with lots of experience but "new eyes" on the Pathfinder et al, I have come to realize that the "character skills" matrix on the first page of the character sheet template (and all it's brethren) is broken for the lack of an "armor check penalty" column.

For the three months I have been playing nobody, including myself, has been properly applying their ACP. Someone says "roll your acrobatics" etc, and they roll-and-add, the end.

I think people would not forget, or "forget" if you know what I mean, to take this penalty if it were spelled out in the matrix.

In my heavily modified google docs spreadsheet I use five columns:

total = ability_mod + ranks + class_trained + misc - ACP

(misc is from traits and whatnot)

As it is, far too many people just are not applying the ACP in the heat of play.

Just wondering, are there any rules for multiple people riding a single mount. Realistically, two people can fit on a single horse. ...

My guess would be 2^size-class-difference is a max.

A human can ride a human piggy back.

Two people can ride a horse.

Four people can ride an elephant.

Eight people can probably ride a Dragon/giant.

The limits would be encumbrance and saddling. For instance, you could get four gnomes on a horse if the horse had a palanquin style saddle (as in 4 people on an elephant).

So without a saddle it'd get reduced to 2^(size-class difference - 1).

After all, it's not so much a matter of how many pixies you could fit on the back of a leviathan, as it is a question of where they would sit...

The more encumbered the animal, the greater the minuses would be on the _riders_ as they are crowded and the animal is acting "atypically" due to the loading.

[Disclaimer: this isn't Pathfinder per-se; It's general observations of real life as have been applied in prior gaming groups I've played with, in other rules systems, projected into Pathfinder... if you get my drift.]

Here's where we get tripped up by the game definition of "effect." Do we mean the standard-English effects of the spell, or do we mean all mind-affecting capabilities that emulate spells without being spells themselves, such as a Spell-Like Ability?

I'd say neither. The Feeblemind isn't "mind affecting" phenomenon (like a hallucination) it's a "brain affecting" phenomenon (like a knife to the pre-frontal cortex).

Basically the target has "taken a fireball to the brain" and had his personality killed off. The outcome isn't cured like disease nor healed via rest etc, but it is subject to the Heal spell and things with greater massive-healing effects such as limited wish etc.

Since it cannot be "dispelled" nor overcome by normal means the Feeblemind spell could be named "lobotomize" or "induce very specific stroke".

Basically something has to regrow or regenerate the scrambled or killed brain bits.

Since nothing in the game deals with the idea of "organ damage". In GURPS, where organ damage and limb loss are normal things, this would be in the realm of "regrow" effects, the spell becomes a one-off in the lore of damage. But since it goes all the way back to the first edition of D&D we are stuck with its semantics.

Where I the lord of this gaming system, I _would_ say that a regeneration effect, including a ring of regeneration etc, _should_ also undo a feeblemind. A ring of regeneration would heal at one _modifier_ point per two rounds, alternating between int and cha, e.g. (int,cha) => (1,1) (3,1) (3,3) (5,3) until the character were "healed". This would match cardinality of one hp per round in constitution-vs-modifier-to-HP effect projected into one HP healed per round as described in the ring definition.

In short, feeblemind is brain damage by every reading I can find.

So I am new to pathfinder and pathfinder society.

There was a rule that a pathfinder character cannot have a ability score lower than 7. This rule is also implicit in the point-buy table not going to 6.

The question is, is this _really_ a limit intended to be applied before or after Race modifiers? For instance if I buy CHA down to 7 and then go Dwarf, I have a 5.

If the limit is after-race then the table should go down to five (5) with a asterisk (*) on the 6 and 5 rows that requires the race to be one with the pluses necessary to get the score up to seven.

This would, if someone were to want to play "a really dumb Elf" with an effective INT of 7, allow them to get four ability points to spend elsewhere for the buy-down to before-race-applied 5.

The post-race limiting with the extended chart would let a human character to effectively "spread out" his plus two to any attribute, by having something bought down to 5, applying his plus 2 there, and then getting four points to splash around (if the chart were symmetric around 10 etc).

(I ask because the rules lawyer in me wants to know, and because I am "poking around" with the idea of an automated character sheet for Android devices and such limits and questions come to mind as I look at the numbers etc.)

[No, I am not personally _this_ kind of min-max weasel, since I don't like low scores and prefer a "uniformly slightly above average", as opposed to a one-feature-wonder as an interesting character basis.]