Cerberus Seven's page

Not sure where else this would fit, so I'll put it here, where ALL things are permissible.

One of the major devs at DSP is having some financial difficulty. Here's the GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/errantx.

Just spreading the word.

Here is it.

I'm having a hard time putting my finger on it, but something about this just looks...right. It seems like a bleak and desperate struggle set against the harshness of space and the darkness of man's capacity for evil in a high-sci-fantasy realm where something special pervades all existence. It feels like Star Wars. Well, guess time will tell if that feeling is delivered on.

Anyways, thoughts?

The Orv Vault of Ur-Athan

Swarm-strike Caster
Aura moderate conjuration; CL 12th
Slot none; Price 39,335 gp; Weight 10 lbs.

Description
This +2 seeking light crossbow, made of polished bronze and black oak, seems to hum and vibrate almost imperceptibly when held. Bolts fired from it shred apart in flight into compact swarms of miniscule black, buzzing darts that seek out their prey. Attacks made with this weapon do full damage to swarms of tiny creatures, half damage to swarms of smaller creatures, and ignore dodge bonuses to AC equal to or less than the weapon’s enhancement bonus. In all other ways, these attacks are still treated as a single projectile for purposes of feats, spells, and special abilities possessed by the attacker or defender. Magical bolts fired from this weapon are destroyed if the attack misses but still convey their full effects on a hit.

As a standard action three times per day, this weapon can be used to make a single ranged attack against one visible target within the weapon’s first range increment. The bolt launched by this attack expands into a dart storm that shears through all of the target's space, ignoring its Dexterity and dodge bonuses to AC. If the target is under the effect of mirror image or a similar spell or spell-like ability, a successful such attack can either bypass the effect entirely or automatically dispel it at the cost of inflicting no damage or other harm to the target.

Construction Requirements
Craft Magic Arms and Armor, summon swarm, true seeing, true strike; Cost 19,835 gp

Here's the question: How many times can a creature with the Arcane or Divine mythic simple template cast a mythic spell?

For example, lets take an arcane gargoyle with mage armor, invisibility, false life and fireball as once per day spells it can cast. As a creature with a mythic simple template, it doesn't have the mythic subtype and therefore doesn't get some of the bonuses that come with it, like mythic power and the surge ability. Since it technically doesn't have mythic power, it seems like it's not supposed to be able to use it's mythic magic ability at all.

This seems like a silly conclusion to draw, since there's no reason to give it this ability unless it was meant to be used. So, ruling as intended, apparently these templates should allow mythic magic to be used a certain number of times per day. But how many is it? Is it always just three or does it depend on the HD and, therefore, the pseudo-effective mythic rank? Using the gargoyle from above, it is treated as a mythic rank 1 creature "for the purposes of spells, abilities, and magic items". Does that mean it's only presumed to have enough pseudo-mythic power to charge this ability once, as would be the case for an actual rank 1 creature? Or, is the presumption of such a resource in error and the monster should be able to use mythic magic three times per day regardless of its pseudo-rank?

Sorry for the long read, but I wanted to lay out the logic behind asking which RAI interpretation is correct. There's potentially a very big difference in a creature like this getting to do a mega-magic whammy once per day versus thrice.

So, the game I'm running is going well, but it feels like it could use something extra. I'm thinking that something is battle music. I've got a lot of tracks to use for this, but I'm thinking of cutting up, extending, and mixing some of them together to make custom tracks. I'm wondering, those of you who make your own battle music in this manner, what software do you use to manipulate the source files?

So, tonight had perhaps the most absurd enemy death I've ever seen in a game I was in either as a player or a GM. The party was sneaking up on a duo of level 6 troglydyte barbarians leading a 12 HD trog troop. For those who aren't aware, troglydytes have a 30 ft. aura of stench that sickens you if you fail the Fortitude saving throw. As combat gets going, the bard NPC shuts down one of the two barbarians with a Cacophonous Call. The troglydyte is now blowing massive chunks of its prior meals all over the place. Whatever, it can still take move actions, so it activates both rage and it's Guarded Stance power to become a raging, dodging, upchucking troglydyte.

Cue the party's spell slinger wizard, who uses some alchemical power components to amp up a Fireball he chucks at the bad guys. Everyone fails their save, so they are now also on fire. I arbitrarily raised the DC of the troglydyte stench aura by 3 points just because, "Oh god, the smell, WHYYY???" So now, this a raging, dodging, flaming, upchucking troglydyte.

Now it's the ninja catfolk's turn. She decides it'd be funny to shut him down even more, because she HATES that these barbarians have been so resistant to her sneak attacks. Tanglefoot bag, in his face. Natural 5 on the save, he's immobilized. So, he now a raging, dodging, flaming, upchucking, entangled troglydyte who's glued to the floor.

Now here comes the frontline, the dwarven fighter and the lashuntan magus. Both sides of the enemy, because how often do you get to flank a barbarian? So now it's a raging, dodging, flaming, upchucking, entangled, flanked troglydyte who's glued to the floor. He's been hit for a decent amount of damage, too, so he's covered in blood and such at this point to boot. Cue the dwarf using greater trip to much success. As the trog goes down, somehow, both the PCs get AoOs. Great success, massive damage, his body is chopped clean through across his midsection twice.

So in the end, we had a blood and glue covered trolydyte who was raging and dodging as best he could despite blowing chunks everywhere and being on fire (which probably means the vomit was on fire too) get bisected twice while flanked after somehow being tripped when his feet were stuck to the stone floor. I have never seen a more gloriously ignoble death for a monster.

So, yeah, that happened. Anyways, what're your great stories for how monsters have died in your games?

This section from the PFSRD is what I'm wondering about:

An attack of opportunity "interrupts" the normal flow of actions in the round. If an attack of opportunity is provoked, immediately resolve the attack of opportunity, then continue with the next character's turn (or complete the current turn, if the attack of opportunity was provoked in the midst of a character's turn).

To me, this means that you can't make an AoO (Attack of Opportunity) against another such action. For example, let's say you move through a larger creature's threatened area and provoke an AoO. They attempt an untrained (no Improved <maneuver> feat) disarm/trip/sunder attempt against you in retaliation. By the way the rules, it seems you can't retaliate with an AoO like you could if they were doing this as part of a normal attack action against you in melee. The rules even seem to suggest you could be adjacent to the creature when provoking the AoO in this matter and you still couldn't retaliate against their AoO with one of your own.

Does this reading make sense and is it consistent with the game rules overall?

30' is the length in Pathfinder at which:

• All medium humanoids seem to move.
  
• Rogues can do a ranged sneak attack.
  
• Point-Blank Shot is effective.
  
• Multiple targets can be affected by numerous friendly or offensive spells.
  
• Many domain powers and witch hexes can reach.
  
• A colossal creature's face size maxes out.
  

I'm sure there's more I'm missing, but this is what comes to mind immediately. I'm also aware that, when it's not specifically 30', it's usually a multiple of that number. So, why 30 feet? Is it something Paizo simply adopted from 3.5 as mandatory holy writ, or is there a real-world reason behind the omnipresence of this distance? Anyone know?

Attacked While Flying

You are not considered flat-footed while flying. If you are flying using wings and you take damage while flying, you must make a DC 10 Fly check to avoid losing 10 feet of altitude. This descent does not provoke an attack of opportunity and does not count against a creature’s movement.

I'm trying to think about why it works this way. If an invisible rogue shoots you in the head with a gun from 30 ft. away and you didn't know they were there, by the rules you are immune to their sneak attack if you were flying. Even if they beat your AC by 10 or more points and you're simply hovering in place, you wouldn't be considered flat-footed by the way the Fly skill dictates things.

So, is there some kind of real-world rationale I'm missing? Because so far, it appears that even without any ranks in this skill, ANY flying creature has Spider Sense without even trying.

This class has quite possible THE strangest weapon proficiency list in the game. As far as I can tell, there's not much reason for it, either. Thematically and from a balance perspective, these choices are just bizarre.

• Of the 32 monk weapons I can find, they are proficient in only 9 of them. For comparison purposes, the full BAB classes get 14. That's right, fighters, barbarians, cavaliers, rangers, and paladins are proficient in half-again as many monk weapons as a monk. Because the paladin needing to patiently explain the proper use of wushu darts to a monk makes a lot of sense.
  
• You want stranger? Of the monk weapons I mentioned, 1/3 of those are simple weapons, the rest are ALL exotic, no martial weapons at all. So, shurikens yes, tonfa no. For some reason, the tonfa, a weapon so simple that peasants used it in China, just doesn't fit properly into a monk's hand in combat unless they devote a feat to it. Well, it's not like it's meant to used by a flurrying monk anyways, right?
  
• Oh, you want more oddness? How about monks are proficient with quarterstaves, but not the bo staff? Because, presumably, the weapon being 1 lb lighter, tapered slightly, and giving a +1 shield bonus when fighting defensively makes this the proper use of this stick alien as hell to a martial artist. I mean, that's gotta be incredibly awkward to use for a class that's all about insightful, defensive combat in the first place.
  
• What's that? You STILL want more? Get this: the use of punching daggers, maces, sickles, boar/long spears, darts, and blowguns are completely foreign concepts to monks. Shortspears and regular spears, clubs, crossbows, regular daggers, kamas, those very similar weapons all make perfect sense to a monk, though. Don't worry, they get how to use shortswords or handaxes just fine! Not sure why, but they do.

It seems to be a lot of money for a defensive measure that is almost guaranteed to fail. The cheapest you can buy is +2 enhancement for SR 13, which is worthless past the third module in most APs and half-way through most campaigns, which is when you're likely to have the money to afford this in the first place. The +5 version of the enchant is only SR 19, which most outsider and enemy casters will have to roll a 3 or 4, minimum, to pass against, provided they don't have anything like Spell Penetration. Magic armor enchants being an exponential cost curve, why is this enchant so expensive for something that becomes all but worthless late game? Just seems like something that might be better as a +gp value enchant.

I believe the formal definition here is that older products, like the original 3.x psionics or Book of Nine swords books, would work fine within the current framework. That sounds simple and easy in concept, but it makes one wonder why some things changed so drastically while other stayed the same. For example, the base classes all kept the same number of skill points per level, but many of the lists of class skills were modified. Also, BAB and save progression stayed the same across the board, but rogues, bards, and full arcane casters had their hit points per level changed. The way caster level is handled for purposes of concentration was changed pretty dramatically. Feats and ability score bonuses are more frequent. All that, and we haven't even touched the numerous spell, magic item, feat, and miscellaneous rule changes made.

So, that's a lot of changes made to the system, both in it's finer, situational points and in how some of the larger, universal matters work. Does this mean it's still really 'backwards compatible' with 3.5? When you require a spreadsheet to modify all the monster/NPC statistics and a small guidebook of fine-point rules changes to make sure things work appropriately, is that really what 'compatible' means? If so, what is necessary to break that degree of compatibility? Would it require complete rewrites of each class that add in a new ability per level? An entirely new magic / supernatural ability system? Or is it not anything specific that can be named and more an almost ephemeral 'feel' of how the game plays? Curious about people's attitude towards this, ESPECIALLY any developers who use this principle as a guide for developing new Pathfinder content.

Frankly, the potential of this skill is hilarious. It's great how in just a few days, when you level, you can potentially learn several new languages "just because". One of our recent games had three characters each nearly maxing out this skill by the end, with two of us having such high Int scores we were having trouble finding new languages to add to the list. "Will I ever actually use Cyclops? Meh, no more than I'll use Necril. Onto the list it goes!" The two of us also eventually substituted 'All Outsider' for Celestial, Infernal, Abyssal, and the elemental languages just to make room on the sheet. It is simultaneously hugely useful while also being just a hilariously unrealistic skill point investment. All that and making/detecting forgeries too!

So, I'm GMing a homebrew mythic game in which one of my players, an oracle, took the Lunar mystery. First revelation: primal companion, granting her an animal companion as a druid equal to her level. Because of campaign specific house-rules, she's also using her favored class bonus to give that specific revelation a +1/2 effective level per point. She also took mythic domain immediately at tier 1. So, at level 4, she has a large tiger with rake, pounce, and grab at an effective druid level of 10. I'm not sure of its precise stats, but it's a 9 HD creature with the best AC and attacks/damage in the party.

My question is this: how would you run a game, as GM, with a creature like this in it? I want to challenge this party but not through overwhelming numbers or through obvious targetting of that creature for no good in-game reason. Something to make the creatures power an asset to them but not something that makes fights too easy. Also, how would everyone handle effective druid level above 20? It's easy to extrapolate the various statistics of the creature above that point, but does it seem like a good idea allowing it to do so?

Title says it all. Bladebound replaces the 3rd level arcana, while Hexcrafter offers to let the magus replace ANY arcana with a hex. The archetype feature is even called 'Hex Arcana', which seems to suggest they're really the same class feature being modified.

For an FAQ question, I guess this could be summed up as asking, "Is an archetype that replaces or changes a class feature compatible with an archetypes that allows, but does not mandate, the replacement of a base class feature?"

On the round following a successful grapple check, when you successfully maintain the grapple, can you also use an attempt of this feat?

Stunning Fist forces a foe damaged by your unarmed attack to make a Fortitude saving throw (DC 10 + 1/2 your character level + your Wis modifier), in addition to dealing damage normally. A defender who fails this saving throw is stunned for 1 round (until just before your next turn).

Damage

You can inflict damage to your target equal to your unarmed strike, a natural attack, or an attack made with armor spikes or a light or one-handed weapon. This damage can be either lethal or nonlethal.

The language is a bit vague and I can definitely see this happening in a real fight, thematically. I'm still leaning towards no based on an incredibly strict interpretation of the wording, but it'd be nice to be surprised on this.

I'm wondering if there's really any need to differentiate extraordinary and supernatural abilities in Pathfinder. Aside from the fact that one works in an Anti-Magic Field and the other doesn't, are there really any appreciable, every-day differences between them in published Paizo material? It's just confusing at times because, technically, the former usually encompasses some form of non-codified magic (aka spells), according to the CRB. If we accept that, then how does the effect of the ninja trick Pressure Points show up under a Detect Magic? What do you see through Arcane Sight when a barbarian Spell Sunders something? Do they even show up at all?

I know our group has made use of the Improved Caster Level feat on a number of occasions. Wondering what other handy gems Paizo hasn't picked up yet.

Does using the Foe Biting legendary item property on a spell, such as Shocking Grasp, delivered via a magus' spellstrike double the spell damage as well as the weapon damage?

Since the other thread on this board is still locked, and might remain that way for a while, I figured I might as was do something marginally constructive regarding the most drastic change in yesterday's UC errata. With that in mind, post your vote on the latest change to Crane Wing.

-Change wasn't needed, it was balanced and acceptable
-Change was needed, but the feat is now too weak and needs revision
-Change was needed, it's now balanced and acceptable

For reference, here's the description of the feat, both pre- and post- change. Note that the d20pfsrd has acted with astonishing speed on this, already updating the description of the feat. As such, mywording might not be exactly as it is in your copies of UC:

Also, here's Crane Riposte:

Let's keep comments, if any, constructive. Vote away so Paizo can know how the community feels about this overall.

Just looking for people's experiences with this monk class feature. It seems, based on the small checklist of things that have to go right for it to take effect, to be one of those things that looks better on paper than in actual gameplay.

There are plenty of NG ones, plus a few LG ones, but no CG ones. The description of an angel says they can be of any good alignment, so how come Paizo hasn't published any Elysium-residing angels yet?

The rules say you can't trip a flying creature. As far as I can tell, jumping doesn't count as flying. So, if you're tripped while in the middle of a long jump, do you fall prone in the square the trip attack happened in? At your destination? How does this work?

I was looking at this again in the SRD and I'm just not sure who, if ANYONE, this is meant for. None of the low-BAB full casting classes would want it. Rangers and druids in Wild Shape don't focus on unarmed attacks, which is all this enchant applies to, they would have NATURAL attacks. The other medium-BAB classes are either incompatible with armor or aren't really given anything in the form of options to build towards any kind of worthwhile unarmed fighting focus. Virtually all the full-BAB classes and archetypes lack any sort of focus on unarmed strikes. It seems like the ONLY class or archetype that has any use for this is unarmed fighter archetype for, well, fighter. It's not like they NEED it, though, what with weapon training and full BAB.
What am I missing here? Paizo didn't put out an armor enchant whose intended focus was one single archetype of one single class, right?

Apologies if this has come up before, but this possibility has me wondering.

At 2nd tier, you gain a bonus on initiative checks equal to your mythic tier. In addition, as a free action on your turn, you can expend one use of mythic power to take an additional standard action during that turn. This additional standard action can't be used to cast a spell. You can't gain an extra action in this way more than once per round.

So, it's spelled out that this can't be used to cast another spell. Fair enough. But, what if we ready an action of some sort with it? Can that be done?

The ready action lets you prepare to take an action later, after your turn is over but before your next one has begun. Readying is a standard action. It does not provoke an attack of opportunity (though the action that you ready might do so).

Okay, so Amazing Initiative DOES let us ready an action of some kind. We can shoot the enemy cast in the face when he tries to death ray us. But can said shooting be done with a spell? Can this be used for, say, a readied Magic Missile?

You can ready a standard action, a move action, a swift action, or a free action. To do so, specify the action you will take and the conditions under which you will take it. Then, anytime before your next action, you may take the readied action in response to that condition. The action occurs just before the action that triggers it. If the triggered action is part of another character's activities, you interrupt the other character. Assuming he is still capable of doing so, he continues his actions once you complete your readied action. Your initiative result changes. For the rest of the encounter, your initiative result is the count on which you took the readied action, and you act immediately ahead of the character whose action triggered your readied action.

You can take a 5-foot step as part of your readied action, but only if you don't otherwise move any distance during the round.

Since most spells are standard actions to cast, it appears that we can, in fact, do this. So, if an Archmage or Hierophant used their swift action to cast a mythically-empowered spell, then cast a regular spell using their normal standard action, then readied an action with Amazing Initiative to use a spell for a fairly broad offensive purpose, it seems like it would be possible to get off 3 spells in a single round. My question is, should this be legal? You're not really using your standard action to cast a spell, since there's the possibility the triggering event might not occur, for whatever reason.

No creature can avoid your preternatural senses.

Prerequisite(s): Blind-Fight.

Benefit: As a swift action, you can expend one use of mythic power to ignore all miss chances due to concealment or total concealment for a number of rounds equal to your tier.

Normally, the Blind-Fight feats only affect melee attacks. However, the way this new Mythic feat is worded, it seems like it would apply to ALL attacks, be they melee or ranged. Is that the case or should this new feat option still only apply to melee attacks?

Incorporeal creatures typically take half damage from corporeal sources and have a 50% chance to completely resist all non-damaging corporeal effects. One of the notable exceptions to this rule is a cleric's Channel Energy ability, which gets through their 50% damage resistance when being used harm incorporeal creatures. Should other uses of Channel Energy from feats such as Turn Undead or Command Undead also ignore an incorporeal creature's 50% miss chance?

Also, while we're on the topic (and I do realize this might belong in another FAQ, but I'll try this anyways), should Ghostbane Dirge have a force descriptor or otherwise be designated as something that is not subject to an incorporeal creature's 50% miss chance?

Thank you.

Modify, not eliminate from play entirely. Just wondering what fixes people have decided to implement for spells that have proved problematic with their groups. For example, my group decided Mage's Disjunction shouldn't auto-dispel anything and instead made it apply a dispel check against all spells in the burst area.

So, we're starting a homebrew game soon where two players will be playing Lashunta. It's a cool race and as GM I figured, why not, I'll incorporate them. However, sadly, they lack the interesting options for alternate racial traits that other species have. So, I designed some and am looking for feedback. Here they are:

• Empathic Sensitivity: Some Lashunta have a variant form of telepathy that works along less concrete mental boundaries. These Lashunta gain a +4 racial bonus to Sense Motive when interacting with non-mindless beings within 30 feet and can reroll one Intimidate or Diplomacy check per day. They must take the result of this second roll, even if it’s lower than that first. This racial trait replaces Limited Telepathy.
• True Telepathy: The antennae of all Lashunta are very sensitive to numerous stimuli, but some channel the powers of the mind far more effectively than others. This racial trait extends the normal range of Lashunta telepathy to 60 feet and allows them to communicate as such with any creature that can speak or understand at least one language. This racial trait replaces Lashunta Magic and alters Limited Telepathy.
• Iron Ego: A Lashunta with this racial trait uses sheer force of will to become a bastion of mental fortitude. They gain Iron Will as a bonus feat and may reduce the penalty from fear effects to Will saves and any mental-based skills by 1. A Lashunta accomplishes this mental fortitude though an extreme sense of self-assurance that strikes many as arrogant, imposing a -1 penalty on their Charisma-based skill and ability checks. This racial trait replaces Lashunta Magic.
• Lore Mastery: With years of experience mastering the arcane and accumulating lore, the Lashunta race has perfected a diversified approach to collecting and utilizing knowledge. A Lashunta that spends a favored class bonus on a skill point in a mental-based skill gains an extra skill point that must be spent on an Intelligence-based skill. This racial trait replaces Knowledgeable.
• Mental Agility: Rather than touching the minds of others, a Lashunta can learn to focus their mental awareness and energy inward to enhance the speed, stability, and power of their cognitive processes. Once per day, a Lashunta with this trait can reroll a caster level or initiative check with a +2 racial bonus. They must take the result of this second roll, even if it’s lower than that first. This racial trait replaces Limited Telepathy.
• Collective Cognition: A Lashunta with this racial trait can sense and process the stimuli being experienced by other living things in the area to gain a better understanding of their surroundings. This grants them the ability to add their Intelligence modifier to Perception, Sense Motive, or Survival skill checks instead of their Wisdom modifier. The choice of which skill to use this with must be made at first level and cannot be changed later. This racial trait replaces Limited Telepathy.
• Dream Insight: While dreaming, a Lashunta gains some insight into the events of the next day. Twice per day after gaining a full nights rest, a Lashunta with this trait may take 10 on the Knowledge skill to which they applied their Knowledgeable racial trait. As long as they have at least one use of Dream Insight left that day, a Lashunta with this racial trait also doubles the bonus from Knowledgeable. This racial trait replaces Lashunta Magic.
• Arcane Attuned: The Lashunta have a long history with magic, leading to inherent familiarity with the arcane since childhood in some individuals. Lashunta that take this racial trait gain a +1 racial bonus Knowledge (Arcana), Spellcraft and Use Magic Device. This racial trait replace Knowledgeable.
• Force of Thought: The convergence of their race's innate mental and magical capacity allows some Lashunta to maximize the effectiveness of certain types of spells. The Lashunta gains a +2 racial bonus to the DC of any spells or spell-like abilities they use that have the Mind-Affecting descriptor. This racial trait replaces Lashunta Magic.
• Of One Mind: Sometimes pairs of Lashunta function on such compatible mental wavelengths that they are capable of a mental bond that goes beyond what is normally possible with their race. If two Lashunta have this racial trait and spend at least four hours each day in close proximity to one another, they gain several benefits. First, they gain the ability to use the aid another action to benefit their partner's AC, CMD, saving throw, or skill checks. This is an immediate action that may only be used once per minute per person. Second, both Lashunta may also take one class skill from their partner’s list of class skills and add it to their own. Third, as part of their initiative action, both Lashunta may take the lower of their two initiative rolls in order to each gain the benefits of Tactical Acumen as part of their initiative once per day. This benefit functions as a caster level equal to the lower of the two Lashunta’s total class levels. These benefits and actions only apply when both partners are conscious of, cooperative with, and within 30 feet of each other. This racial trait replaces the Knowledgeable and Lashunta Magic traits and reduces the range of the Limited Telepathy trait with anyone except their partner to 10 feet.

Should the Accuracy ability of this archetype apply to firearms as well? I know that RAW technically says no via omission but that's just silly when you consider that guns are held and used the same way as cross-bows. Also, the idea of a sniper only came about hundreds of years after guns were invented on Earth and is almost never applied to someone with a bow and arrow. So, I'm not sure why that wasn't updated in Ultimate Combat or with an FAQ since then.

Permanency is a 2 round cast time spell. If it's not on your class' spell list and you're trying to UMD it off a scroll, when do you roll the UMD check? Reason I ask is for purposes of boosting a UMD check with something like the Bit of Luck or Touch of Good domain powers. Currently, I'm thinking that by RAW there's no reason that you couldn't consume two uses of abilities like this to aid the UMD check for this particular spell.

So, an NPC wizard in our game took the True Name Research discovery and now has a planetar buddy to call in when needed. When printing out the character sheet for this ally, though, I noticed some oddities in how they're statted up. Namely, that for their listed BAB of +17 they only have 3 swings of their greatsword during full-attack. Also, for a level 16 cleric without domain spells and with a +7 WIS modifier, they're short a spell at levels 4 and 7 and heavy one spell at levels 1 and 2. Wondering if the devs can clarify if these are oversights and, if so, issue a correction, as planetars are pretty much the best possible option when it comes to things to take at level 15+ with this wizard discovery.

Was wondering precisely how this should work. It came up in the final battle of our Carrion Crown game and I can see it happening in our next campaign as well because there will be two rogues present. What the heck happens if the primary target of a Chain Lightning completely escapes the effect, either because of spell resistance or evasion or whatever? It says that it "strikes one object or creature initially, then arcs to other targets". Well, does hitting something protected by spell resistance count as striking? I'm pretty sure completely evading that initial bolt doesn't but I was curious how other people saw it.

The rules concerning temporary bonuses and penalties to ability scores appear to be in need of some clarification. All spells have their DCs affected by any temporary or permanent ability score boosts or damage, that's pretty universal. However, RAW states that a cleric who gets a boost to their Charisma, such as from Eagle's Splendor, gets a boost to the DC of their Channel Energy ability, despite it being supernatural in nature. The rules do NOT state that the same thing applies with other classes' supernatural or extraordinary abilities, such as the DCs of alchemist bombs, gunslinger deeds, or oracle revelations. It's not just the DC of some of these abilities that could be impacted either; some of them might last longer or affect more targets based on the relevant ability score modifier. Why, then, is only Channel Energy impacted by temporary modifications to an ability score? This seems like an oversight, as per the rules:

For every two points of increase to a single ability, apply a +1 bonus to the skills and statistics listed with the relevant ability. (emphasis mine)

Does 'listed' here just mean what's on the given list under ability score modifications? Or does it refer to anything listed in Pathfinder game material that is based on a characters DEX, INT, WIS or other ability score modifier? The discrepancy is really bugging me. I'm pretty sure most people would think that temporary bonuses or penalties would apply to these other type of DCs, my own group seems to think so. However, I've seen enough disagreements here on the board that have gotten me to wondering what everyone else thinks.

Wanted to get this boards take on a system I was thinking of introducing to an upcoming homebrew game. Essentially, it's just a way to introduce the called shot effects, which we've already dabbled in and started calling 'wounds', into critical hits to liven things up a bit. On every critical hit that's confirmed, a randomly targetted area of the body is hit and applies the corresponding call shot effect, or wound. For critical hits that do over 50 points of damage, a critical called shot effect will be applied; those that do over 100 points will apply a debilitating called shot effect. These wounds will otherwise be treated exactly as in the variant rules set I linked to on the SRD. The targetted part of body is determined by a d100 roll: 1-20 arms, 21-40 legs, 41-60 chest, 61-70 hands, 71-80 vitals, 81-90 head, 91-93 ears, 94-96 eyes, 97-99 throat, 100 heart.
Now, they're getting a customized resource similar to hero points as well at fairly early level. One of the default uses of this point system is to lessen the severity of a 'wound' received from a critical hit down one tier as an immediate action. Except in rare cases of certain 'boss' fights, enemy NPCs / monsters will not have such a resource to undo the severity of wounds dealt to them.
That's it. If people can let me know their opinion and if this seems unbalanced, I'd really appreciate it.

Here's the situation I'm pondering: two weapon fighting clearly seems to indicate that you should be using two weapons. So, going all the way up the two weapon fighting tree wouldn't grant you any extra unarmed attacks if you were in a fistfight. Now, gauntlets are treated as unarmed weapons effectively, a simple way of doing lethal damage with your fists. However, spiked gauntlets would be pretty much the same thing, just doing 1d4 instead of 1d3 and making it piercing damage instead of bludgeoning. RAW, since spiked gauntlets are listed as actual weapons and regular gauntlets aren't, that would mean you COULD get your 2-3 extra attacks with spiked gauntlets if you had greater two weapon fighting...but you wouldn't with regular gauntlets. Does that make sense to anyone else? Because it seems nonsensical that simply attaching some extra metal to your gloves is essential for getting the most out of unarmed combat with that feat chain.

I was wondering, how accurate is it when going BACK to the prime with this spell? As written, it's "From the Material Plane, you can reach any other plane, though you appear 5 to 500 miles (5d%) from your intended destination." That wording seems to imply that going back to the Prime is more (or possibly less!) accurate. I know that it's not necessarily possible to shift from one plane to ANY other plane based on prior 3.0/3.5 rules I think, so the prime material might be considered worthy of special status in some ways. However, I also may have missed a specification on how that general rule was not carried over into Pathfinder.