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I'm running the Shattered Star Adventure Path, and one of the players has just come back do the game (after having his archer die) with a Synthesis Summoner.

We're at level 10. He's got 35 AC, so nothing hits him. He's got 5 attacks doing about 90 HP of damage a round. He's got all good saves, so it's iffy to land a spell on him.

I'm reading through the rest of this book in the Adventure Path, and there's basically nothing in the book that has any serious chance of affecting him.

Are my only options to tell him to roll a different character, rewrite the entire Adventure Path specifically around his character, or cancel the game?

I trusted that Paizo playtested and balanced their rules; I'm really disappointed at how badly designed most of this stuff is.

Is anyone else disappointed by the number of combats in the Adventure Path that end up being a single mage standing in the middle of the room?

My group just reached Luonim, and after talking to him through the doorway for a couple rounds, the monk charged him. Here's the rounds:

1) Luonim won initiative, and cast invisibility.
2) The monk reached the ziggurat, rolled to successfully grapple, and made his 50% miss chance.
3) The bard cast glitterdust, revealing the bloatmage.
4) The bloatmage flipped the switch to rotate the room, as a move action. The monk does not get pushed back.
5) The bloatmage casts Cone of Cold, doing 40 points of damage.
6) The monk pins the bloatmage.

Total time in combat: 2 minutes. Who designed the tactics for the bloatmage, and expected him to get to do anything?

I'm just now starting to run some Pathfinder Society events for friends (and train some new GMs so they can run PFS as well). Now that Faction Missions have been eliminated, should I bother to run them in earlier modules? I'm concerned for two reasons:

First, they're an added bit of complexity, and explaining to new players and GMs what they are, and were, and why they don't exist any more is something I'd rather not get into right now.

Second, I always thought they were an interesting feature of PFS, and I'm worried people are going to really like them and get disappointed playing through the new scenarios without them. Hence, avoiding them entirely.

Can they be cut entirely from earlier scenarios? Should they be?

I played a handful of scenarios in Season 0, and haven't played anything since. I'm looking at starting up some Pathfinder Society in my neck of the woods, and I'd like to use that character again.

The main problem is that I've long lost the chronicle sheets for those first five sessions. What can I do about getting them replaced?

Also, for some reason, my character has 5 prestige for Taldor, and 1 prestige for Cheliax. The Cheliax prestige is wrong. How can I correct it?

I was considering running Dawn of the Scarlet Sun after Curse of the Lady's Light, but then I noticed it's designed for 5th level heroes. The party's supposed to be 8th level when they return to Magnamar. Isn't that grossly underleveled for them?

So I'm just finishing up Curse of the Lady's Light, and I'm having a terrible time making the combats interesting. They're either extremely deadly (the Glass Golem, the Seugathi) or they're pushovers (Quenelle Page, Oriana).

I'm seeing two significant problems with the party. First, there's a Tetori monk in the group. He's currently got a +16 CMB to grapple. Just as a reference, the Cave Giant in the adventure path has a 23 CMD. Because of Snapping Turtle stance, if someone attacks the monk and misses, the monk gets a free grapple check against it, and after the monk has a creature grappled he gets two chances to pin it on his turn because grapple checks are a move action for him now with greater grapple. Solo monsters are really boring to run now, since combats are just the monk running up to creatures and pinning them in two rounds.

The problem with large groups of monsters is the alchemist. He took the Stink Bomb discovery, so any time there's a bunch of foes he'll just throw a stink bomb and nauseate them, typically incapacitating half of them for 3 rounds. There was a fight with Quenelle Page and 7 Grey Maidens, and within two turns all of the Grey Maidens were nauseated, and the party just beat them to death while they tried to retreat up the stairs. It wasn't very fun.

I don't want to rewrite all the encounters. Are the class abilities just that horribly broken?

I'm running an Adventure Path, and one of my players decided to play a Tetori Monk. Frankly, I'm disgusted Paizo allowed this class into print, it's horribly designed and sucks the fun out of every encounter.

Every combat involves the Monk running into the room at the most powerful creature and rolling a ridiculously high grapple check against middling CMDs. 90% of the time, he succeeds and the creature he's grappling is effectively out of the fight. At this point, my options are:

• Attack the monk. I might hit, or might not (negatives to hit while grappled) but then on the next round the monk will simply pin the monster, and then there's no chance to escape.

• Escape the grapple. Uses my standard action, and then the monk just grapples again on the next round. Useless.

• Cast a spell. With the changes to concentration I have a pretty good chance to just lose the spell. Even if it goes off, if it doesn't incapacitate the monk then the monk just pins the creature the next round.
  

Since I'm running an adventure path, I don't want to redesign every single encounter because of a single player. But as it stands, every encounter that features a "boss" monster is over within a single round.

Are there tactics I'm missing to deal with this?

Improved Familiar says you can take "any type" of small elemental. Does that include a Lightning Elemental? A Crysmal? An Ice Elemental?

I'm building an Oracle for the Reign of Winter AP, and I've decided to be a Half-Elf with the Winter mystery. This qualifies me for Ancient Lorekeeper, but as I was going through the build I was a little disappointed.

I figured I wasn't going to be losing much, since I'm expecting to face a lot of cold resistant creatures (thus the bonus Winter mystery spells aren't likely to be all that valuable) but the fact that they come in at a higher level (first level spells take up a second level slot) made me feel they weren't a great choice.

Is it really that powerful? Are there must have spells on that list?

I've got a synthesist summoner in my game, whose eidolon is a giant wolf. She's taken "Mage Armor" as one of her spells, but I'm having trouble figuring out how she would cast it on her eidolon. In fact, I'm having trouble figuring out how she would cast anything on her eidolon.

She can't cast spells while the eidolon is summoned, since it doesn't have hands. When it's not summoned, she can't target it with anything. And if she casts the spell on herself, it doesn't have any effect when the eidolon is summoned.

Is this all correct, or am I missing something?

I've got a player who wants to play a Barbarian with an animal companion. I'm not sure what builds to suggest for this. Barbarian/Druid? Barbarian/Ranger? Straight ranger and give up barbarian?

Are there any feats or prestige classes to think about?

I'm considering running this soon, but I'm going to have a large number of players. I understand the encounters are balanced for 4 players, and I'm much more likely to have 6 or 7.

Do I need to do anything to scale up the encounters? Is it as simple as doubling the monsters involved in most cases? Or is it the case that the party will just level slower than average, and will balance themselves by running through the adventure at a slightly lower level with more players?

I thought I'd take advantage of the lull between Superstar 1 and 2 to pimp my project.

I'm part of a team working on Harvestlands, a community-driven setting Campaign Path designed for 4e. It's a darker setting: demons and devils are fighting a proxy war on the surface, many of the dwarves have been enslaved by the duergar while the elves have disappeared completely, and the gnomes have begun conducting arcane experiments on humans.

There's a lot more information about the project up at http://www.harvestlands.com. We're looking for anyone who's interested in helping: writers, editors, illustrators, designers. If it sounds like something you'd be interested in, check out the site.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Superstar postmortem.

I heard the new Rogue Preview was up so I went to check it out. Really disappointing. I mean, really disappointing. Everything's wrong with it.

To start: proficient with all simple weapons? Great--I guess rogues are too dumb to use anything complicated. Forget about being effective in combat. And "light" armor? Found a really cool set of dragon leather? Maybe a chain shirt? Tough luck--you can only wear "light" armor. And no shields, either, that's too complicated.

And how about those skills? Want to ride a horse? Too bad, Ride isn't a class skill. Want to be an expert dungeon-crawler? Too bad, Knowledge: Dungeoneering isn't a class skill. What to be a linguist? Too bad, Speak Language isn't a class skill. I guess that's not what rogues do. But hey--you get Perform, Tumble, and Balance to make up for it. Because rogues are supposed to prance and caper around, right?

And the class abilities are also kind of lame. Remember carefully sneaking around the evil boss and backstabbing him? Too hard. Now you have to "deny them their Dexterity bonus" (I assume with spells) or flank them. and forget doubling or tripling your damage, now you just roll a couple extra dice.

And how about Evasion? Right--a wizard lobs a fireball right at you and you're just "magically" unharmed. Super cheesy. I'll pass.

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The rogue preview's posted on www.d20srd.org, right?

I'm in the preliminary design stages of an RPG project, and given the talent and fervent interest in RPG design on this forum, I thought I'd invite people here to join. I'm reluctant to share more information publicly until we get more details nailed down, but if you're curious you can email d20rpgproject@gmail.com and we'll fill you in.

There will likely be a more public (and less secretive) call for designers in a month or so. Of course, the sooner you join the more chance you have to make your mark, so if you're at least curious, drop us a line.

And, of course, RPG Superstars are always welcome.

I have to contact a few posters privately, but there doesn't seem to be a way to send them a private message.

Is there, and I've just missed it? Can anyone suggest some workarounds, if not?