Colten McMickens's page

For my games:
- The party get free teamwork feats at the 4th level and every 4 levels thereafter. They all have to agree on the feat to take.
- Everything has a save.
- If you roll a natural 20 out of combat on a skill that you are more than likely going to succeed at (goblin rogue rolling stealth for instance) you can "bank" one 20 a night to cash in later. All banked 20's go away after 1 session.
- 1 re-roll per session.
- armor as damage reduction. We use our own variation, not the Paizo published one.

As far as bestiary 5 goes, I'm curious to see more from Arcadia or touch on southern Garund or central Casmaron. I appreciate smaller supplements, such as distant worlds, but I think they've only gone into detail with about 30% of Golarion itself. I feel like the home planet should be detailed before we get into too much extra-planetary or extra-planar exploration.

I think that mythic encounters should be consolidated to mythic bestiaries, and that creatures that are CR 30, such as demon lords, emphyrial lords, archdevils, the 4 horsemen, etc. should be covered in their own supplement similar to Deities and Demigods from 3.5.

Ideally for me (just my opinion), I'd like to see the Dragon Empires guide (similar to Inner Sea World Guide) and a Primer to Arcadia within the next year to a year-and-a-half. There's not much discussed about Casmaron, Souther Garund, or the Crown of the World, so these are places of great interest to me. I'd like to see them get their own books as well, but that is perhaps a bit much to ask; perhaps having them covered in a Beyond the Inner Sea guide?

I digress, my point is I'd like to see more creatures from these other areas. More kami, more oni, more div, more rakshasa, more aberations, more garuda, more peri (I assume there's more than just the base creature since aasimar have those racial variants). Basically, more denizens of the material plane to peak are interest about what Golarion has to offer.

Pirate of the High Seas
Base class: cavalier
- Weapons and armor proficiency: pirates of the high sea are not proficient with medium or heavy armor or shields. Pirates of the High Sea gain exotic weapon proficiency with the harpoon and net.
- Pirate’s code:
o Replaces: order
o At level 1, a Pirate of the High Seas swears an oath to the Pirate’s code. The Pirate’s Code features many “guidelines” that are more flexible than the edicts of a cavalier’s orders, but a pirate can still be stripped of his post and power if he fails to follow the code to the intent, if not to the letter. A pirate who violates the Pirate’s Code ceases to gain abilities that the Code grants him and cannot rejoin his pirate brethren until he has made reparations to the pirate lords by paying a tax of 1000 gold pieces times his current HD.
 Guidelines: the Pirate’s Code dictates that the pirate of the high seas swears an oath of loyalty to himself and his crew. His crew can include the party he joins for the purposes of this feature. A Pirate cannot take any action that endangers his own well-being without there being reasonable profit from which it can be won. This speaks nothing of the conduct a pirate must keep with his crew. So long as he is a part of the crew, he cannot take any unprovoked acts of violence against his fellows, he must agree to split any spoils equally with his allies, and he cannot abandon his allies unless it would put the rest of his crew (NPC or otherwise) in danger.
 Challenge: against the target of his challenge, a Pirate of the High Seas gains a +1 dodge bonus against the subject of his challenge. This bonus increases by +1 for every 4 levels the pirate possesses.
 Skills: a pirate of the high seas adds acrobatics and appraise to his list of class skills. When making an acrobatics check, a pirate of the high seas gains a bonus equal to half his level to the check (minimum of 1).
 Order abilities:
• Pirate’s Savvy: at level 2, a pirate can spend a swift action to gain a +2 competence bonus on all attack and damage rolls, to his AC, to all skill checks, or to all his saves. The pirate chooses which to affect when he uses this ability, and can alter which affects he is under by spending another swift action.
• Sneak attack: at level 8, the pirate gains sneak attack as per the rogue. He treats his effective rogue level as his current level- 3 to determine the damage bonus he receives from this ability.
• Thwart authority: at level 15, the damage from a pirate’s challenge ability is doubled against an agent or representative of the law. This includes lawfully aligned creatures, creatures with the lawful subtype, and creatures that represent authority such as soldiers, police, politicians, enemy leaders, etc.
- Ship
o Replaces: mount
o The Pirate of the High Seas starts play with a sailing ship worth 10000 gold pieces. When on board his ship, the pirate suffers no armor check penalties for climb or acrobatics checks, and any additional penalties he would take from rough sea and weather conditions are halved.
o The pirate receives a portion of gold to spend on upgrading his ship at every level after the first. This amount is equal to the level he just attained, times 1000 gold pieces. The pirate need not spend all this gold at once, and he may remove certain upgrades in exchange for the monetary cost of the upgrades. In this way, the pirate has a pool of gold that he can use to upgrade his ship as he sees fit. This gold can only be spent to upgrade his ship.
o The ship grants the pirate of the high seas the Leadership feat, even if they do not meet the prerequisites. It also functions a base of operations for determining the pirate’s leadership score.
- Daring charge
o Replaces: cavalier’s charge, mighty charge, and supreme charge
o Starting at 3rd level, a pirate gains a +4 bonus to attack rolls when making an attack as part of a charge (instead of a normal +2).
o At level 7, the pirate can charge through difficult terrain with no penalty
o At level 11, a pirate doubles damage done by an attack made at the end of a charge when wielding a one handed or light weapon.
o At level 20, a pirate now triples damage done by an attack made at the end of a charge when wielding a one handed or light weapon.
- Dread pirate:
o Replaces: nothing, because I feel that the cavalier doesn’t really have capstone abilities in the way of some other classes.
o At level 20, a Pirate of the High Seas possesses a fearsome reputation. He gains an aura of fear with a radius of 30 ft. Any enemy affected by a fear effect within this aura has the intensity of that fear increase by 1 step (shaken becomes frightened and frightened becomes panicked. Panicked creatures must make a fortitude save (DC=10+ ½ the pirate’s HD+ the pirate’s charisma modifier) or die of fright). In addition, a pirate can take 10 on any intimidate check and gains a bonus to intimidate checks equal to ½ his HD, and can make an intimidate check as a free action once per round after successfully striking an opponent in melee.

Hi, just trying to shed some light here. These quotes are taken from http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9r95, and some of them are relatively new.

- first,

Spell-Like Abilities, Casting, and Prerequisites: Does a creature with a spell-like ability count as being able to cast that spell for the purpose of prerequisites or requirements?
Yes.
For example, the Dimensional Agility feat (Ultimate Combat) has "ability to use the abundant step class feature or cast dimension door" as a prerequisite; a barghest has dimension door as a spell-like ability, so the barghest meets the "able to cast dimension door prerequisite for that feat.

Edit 7/12/13: The design team is aware that the above answer means that certain races can gain access to some spellcaster prestige classes earlier than the default minimum (character level 6). Given that prestige classes are usually a sub-optimal character choice (especially for spellcasters), the design team is allowing this FAQ ruling for prestige classes. If there is in-play evidence that this ruling is creating characters that are too powerful, the design team may revisit whether or not to allow spell-like abilities to count for prestige class requirements.

—Pathfinder Design Team, 06/06/13

- second,

Spell-Like Abilities: How do I know whether a spell-like ability is arcane or divine?
The universal monster rules for spell-like abilities states: "Some spell-like abilities duplicate spells that work differently when cast by characters of different classes. A monster's spell-like abilities are presumed to be the sorcerer/wizard versions. If the spell in question is not a sorcerer/wizard spell, then default to cleric, druid, bard, paladin, and ranger, in that order."

For spell-like abilities gained from a creature's race or type (including PC races), the same rule should apply: the creature's spell-like abilities are presumed to be the sorcerer/wizard versions. If the spell in question is not a sorcerer/wizard spell, then default to cleric, druid, bard, paladin, and ranger, in that order.

For spell-like abiities gained from a class, use the spell type (arcane or divine) of that class to determine whether the spell-like ability is arcane or divine. If the class doesn't cast spells, use the above rule for spell-like abilities from race or type.

Edit 7/15/13: Wording changed match the precedent in the universal monster rules for spell-like abilities.

Edit 9/23/13: Wording updated to clarify racial/type SLAs vs. class SLAs.

—Pathfinder Design Team, 07/09/13

- third,

Prestige Class Requirements: If a prestige class requires 5 ranks in a skill and I have 6 ranks in that skill, do I still meet the requirements?
Yes, because skill ranks are inclusive: if you have 6 ranks in a skill, then you have 5 ranks in that skill, and therefore meet the "have 5 ranks in [this] skill" requirement.

In the same way, if you have a BAB of +6, then you have a BAB of +5, and therefore meet the "have BAB +5" requirement.

In the same way, if you have Str 15, then you have Str 13, and therefore meet the "Str 13" feat prerequisite for Power Attack.

However, spellcasting ability is not inclusive: it is possible (mainly through the use of spell-like abilities) to be able to cast 3rd-level spells but not 2nd-level spells. If you can only cast 3rd-level spells, that does not meet the requirement of "able to cast 2nd-level spells."

Likewise, feat prerequisites are not inclusive, as it is possible for a creature to have a feat without meeting that feat's prerequisites. For example, a ranger can select Precise Shot as a ranger bonus feat without having the Point Blank Shot feat; he does not meet the prerequisites for Far Shot (which has Point Blank Shot as a prerequisite) because he doesn't actually have the Point Blank Shot feat, even though he has a feat that lists Point Blank Shot as a prerequisite.

—Pathfinder Design Team, 10/15/13

Sorry for the wall of text. The way I read these rules is that any spell-like ability of the appropriate level counts for the prestige class's prerequisite, and default SLA's are arcane, then the pixie's SLA's count toward the prerequisite. I couldn't find anything that would say how a creature would advance through the casting levels given by a prestige class without having any casting levels to begin with. In theory, you could just choose a base class's spell progression and go from there. This means low-level entry for several prestige classes, such as an Aasimar fighter, ranger, paladin, magus, or barbarian being able to take their 2nd level in Eldritch knight, for example. I also couldn't find anything that defined SLA's as spontaneous or prepared for prerequisites for classes like the dragon disciple. Although, I lean toward them being counted as spontaneous, because you don't prepare them, you just do them a certain number of times per day and then run out. I hope this was helpful.