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In a the thread Can we please have bigger bestiaries I shared an idea I had on a
different take on bestiaries. I was hoping to hear other peoples opinions on if this approach to bestiaries would work or not.

From the other thread:
"Perhaps instead of larger in general, bestiaries could be more focused on certain level ranges. The default bestiary has monsters with CRs ranger from fractions to 20+.
Usually the GM is only interested in monsters that are a sufficient challenge to the pcs, so in game prep they only need a small portion of those monsters.
How about having the bestiaries be focused to say CR up to 6, in the say heroic bestiary, CR 7-13 in the paragon bestiary, CR 14 to 20 in a Epic bestiary,
CR 20+ in another bestiary. Since they are more focused on their CRs you can have the same number of monsters per book, but the monsters will be more relevant to the
GM when they prepare for a game, since there will be more choices in the CR range relevant to the game they are preparing for."

Now I'm sure this approach has both benefits and drawbacks, so I'll list as many of both that I can think of:

Benefits:
More monsters in the desired CR range, assuming that each bestiary is the size of a normal bestiary.
Less issue with bindings since each book is normal sized.
Takes less bag space
More intuitive IMO, GMs just pick the book with monsters that challenge the PCs

Drawbacks:
Keeping track of the inventory of 3 different books would be more complicated, I'd assume
the up front cost of printing high CR bestiaries, since they may not sell as fast
PCs that are near the transition between books may require GMs carry/buy both books, although there is probably ways to minimize this

Hello everyone, I'm brainstorming on how to create a character based on the character Igor from Persona 3/4 . This is just a mental exercise, so there's no looming deadline to deal with. 20 point buy, 2 traits, preferably no 3pp. I've never played a full arcane caster, so I'll probably need advice with spell selection, which would probably be based on party composition and campaign.

Igor is an important character in the Persona video game frachise, although he's not fleshed out too fully. In short he has the ability to foresee the future with tarroh cards, and often advises others, helping them achieve their true potential. He is very polite, yet has a rather unseemly appearance with a long nose and bulging eyes. He is very well dressed though in a black suit with white gloves.

Igor human Tarroh Student Arcanist 1
St 10, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 18, wis 12 cha 8
Traits: Student of philosophy or clever wordplay (diplomacy), reactionary

Feats: skill focus (Sense motive), Spell focus Conjuration

Skills: diplomacy, sense motive, perception, kn (arc, planes, religion), spellcraft

Spell book: all 0 level, L1: mage armor, grease, snowball, burning hands, enlarge person, shadow trap, vanish

Psychic reader, Tarroh reservoir

In most of the games that I’ve played in there have been some streamlining of things to help martial classes run smoother, I wonder how other players/GM have handled this. I’ll give several examples, but I’m also curious about other topics too.

Climbing in combat: basically in every game I’ve been in your character can climb, even if say your character is “sword and board” and has both hands full at the time. Otherwise it would take a full round to put everything away, then at least a move action the next round to do the climbing and another full round to get everything out again. Enforcing the climbing rules is OK if that’s your thing, I guess it would add a lot of strategic depth to battles.

All these weapons, where do they go? I’m no expert on medieval weaponry, but how does some of this stuff get carried around? Notably reach weapons like long spears, and large weapons like greatswords. Does your character have to hold them all the time? Can you sheath a greatsword, do reach weapons have some kind of “holder”? Considering the climbing question above, how would you climb if there was no way to stow these weapons? Basically in the games I’ve played in your characters have some way of putting all of their weapons away, that greatsword, it’s strapped to their back … along with their backpack, sleeping bag, bow and the other golf bag of weapons. >.>

The arrow counting game: that’s right you have to keep track of arrows, especially those archer focused martials. If you have no arrows you can’t shoot your bow martial man, only logical after all.

Verisimilitude unfairly holding your martial characters back, it’s more likely than you think. ;P

My response: I can’t hear you call for verisimilitude over the complete absurdity that is the spell component pouch. Let’s make a comparison, you say bows require arrows to function on the other hand many spells require material components to be cast. Then again that only seems to be the case since in the material component section in the magic section of the CRB basically says “don’t bother to keep track of material components with negligible cost, it’s in your spell component pouch.” Strange thing, guess what also quickly becomes a negligible cost, arrows they’re 5 coppers apiece. Let’s consider the spell comprehend languages it has a pinch of soot and salt, this doesn’t seem that big of a deal during our current day and age, but from what I’ve heard salt used to be a very valuable commodity. The spell component pouch has an unlimited supply of it. As a note Ultimate Equipment has salt being worth 5 gold a pound in the trade goods section.

Let’s use fireball as an example, it has a material components of “a ball of bat guano and sulfur”. Now then apparently the spell component pouch has an unlimited amount of bat guano balls and pinches of sulfur. >.> Also all of this bat guano and sulfur weighs less than 2 lb., which is how much a spell pouch weighs, wow unlimited stuff weighs a LOT LESS THAN I THOUGHT! >.> Another thing every time you learn a spell with a new material component your spell component pouch automatically grows a new pouch full of an infinite amount of the stuff. >.>

In short keeping track of mundane things is for MARTIALS ONLY, all casters are exempt as per the spell component pouch! /end rant ;P

As a note, even though I’m not running this game in Pathfinder the advice that I’m after is really game system independent. Thank you in advance for any advice given.

Hello everyone, I’m currently working on starting a Mutants and Masterminds 2nd edition game set in the anime Bleach. I suppose that here I’ll look for ways to bring the themes of the anime to life, rather than an extensive discussion about the anime setting. In general I would describe the premise of a Bleach inspired setting would be “good ghosts VS evil ghosts”.

There are plenty of excellent sites for additional information concerning Bleach, but most of them contain images probably protected by copyright so I will chose not to link to them in this thread, also some of them have advertisements that may not be work or child friendly.
A more detailed analysis of this is that there are evil ghosts that in many ways are like vampires, in that their “condition”, if you will, can be spread and that when done so they gain control over their

victims. As for these evil ghosts, they generally come about in 3 ways:
1. They are spirits of evil people.
2. They are the spirits of people who have been “eaten” by evil spirits.
3. They are spirits that have stayed to long in the world of the living without “passing on” or going to the Soul Society, the place where souls go.

The good ghost not only fight these evil ghost, but also guide souls to the Soul Society, and maintain the balance of souls between the world of the living and the Soul Society. The balance of souls is important because if it’s not maintained the two worlds will crash into each other and destroy each other.

In addition to all of this there will be another element, in that the good ghosts have human allies, one organization that they will know of and another that they will not. There will be a conflict between the good ghosts and one of these, since this human group uses a method that destroys the soul of the evil soul monsters. The destruction of souls threatens to balance of souls, so it threatens to destroy two worlds. To complicate things, the soul of these humans differs from the souls of other people in that they cannot become evil ghosts, instead they are destroyed when eaten. This means that when an evil ghost attacks one of these humans and a good ghost in not there to intervene then a soul will be destroyed.

The conflict between good souls and evil souls will be simple black and white, which will give a break to more complex moral dilemmas involving the human group. Handling this aspect will probably be rather challenging, I would like the PCs to have a chance to stop a possible war between these factions while still having a chance at failing to prevent it as well.

One of the easiest solutions would be for the good ghost to teach the technique of not destroying souls to the humans. This isn’t as easy as it seems, since it took the good ghost, from what I can tell, about 1000 years to perfect it and it would probably not work for humans. They would need their own method of soul purification that might take just as long to develop and with the rate the human group is growing and destroying souls that’s not permissible. Helping develop this could be a way to diffuse the situation, but it shouldn’t be done with a few good die rolls IMO. Perhaps multiple magical devices would need to be constructed, each requiring quests for rare and exotic materials and research into new magical spells.

Other methods to end the hostilities could be used too, for example since these humans can basically cast spells, maybe they could learn magic that restrains the evil ghosts until the good ghosts can arrive to purify it. There was a group of these people who basically suggested this in the anime. This could also bridge the gap while their soul cleansing technique can be perfected.

One roadblock to a peaceful resolution to the conflict would be humans who have had family and loved ones souls destroyed by evil ghosts having a vengeful attitude, seeing the destruction of evil ghost with an eye for an eye style of justice who might not even use soul purification methods even if they became available. I’m interest in hearing other ways to highlight this conflict and ways to resolve it mechanically and otherwise.

I recently purchased this product (monster summoning cards) and I'm having problems downloading it from Paizo downloads. I'm not saying it's 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming's fault, it's probably something on my end, but some advice would be appreciated.

To be more specific as to what the problem is, when I click to download the PDF the option to save the file comes up. When I click to save I get the message of "x" couldn't be downloaded.

Hello everyone, I’m going to be GMing a game in a few weeks using the Legacy of Fire adventure path. I have been thinking about the method that the PCs will use to generate their ability scores. I gave the players the option to choose between the “standard” method roll 4d6 drop lowest and 20 point purchase (both from the Core Rulebook pg. 15 ) for their group. I know that many players have a strong preference for one method over the others, I know that one player strongly prefers the standard method for example.

I would imagine that whatever ability score generation method used would work best if everyone used the same method, but would it be unwise to allow each PC to choose between standard and 20 pt. buy individually? Has anyone played in a game that did this and if so how did it turn out?