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According to James Jacobs, flying creatures can't be knocked prone. Link I know that isn't official, but it is as close to an official answer as I have ever seen, so my group goes with it.

I forgot to say thanks Joe. I might not go with your idea, but I appreciate that you offered it.

Thanks Lau. I had forgotten that season 0-3 I could do a 5-9 and still do the tier 5-6 game.

I think I am going to go with No Plunder, No Pay. It doesn't seem that hard and my players have twice broken someone out of a Chelish Prison and twice seemed to enjoy it, so it seems likely that they would enjoy it a third time :-)

Joe, yeah I thought about that, but since their are five players and their APL is 7 they would be playing the level 8-9 tier with the four player adjustment and if they are having trouble with level 7-8 tier I didn't want to try and have them play 8-9 (even with the four player adjustment).

Thanks Leg O' LAMB! I will look into them.

PS. Thanks Leg o' Lamp for the forum flag. That was my bad.

PFRPGrognard, they did start at level one. They have worked their way up to level 7 since then.

Leg o' Lamb, that is some good advice. I will try shooting for the early stuff. Any particular one you can recommend?

I just finished running my work group through Vengeance at Sundered Crag and it was kind of messy. One PC died and they almost had a TPK. They don't have the most optimized PCs (a couple of them were new players before we started doing this) and I want to give them a break in the next game. The problem is that they are all level 7 except for one level 8 player so I have to do tier 7-11 games ... and those are hard for a non-optimized party. Can any of you recommend an easy Tier 7-11 game?

*raises eyebrow* Xenocrat, you are trying to convince me of something, remember?

You are welcome to your own head-canon, but as I have provided reference to actual Paizo material and you have chosen to insult me instead of providing anything to defend your assertion, I feel rather confident in dismissing your argument.

I am going to move forward with telling my players that The Gap just didn’t affect the Kish. It seems like the simplest answer that keeps the story moving.

Thanks G-Prime. I forgot that Disable Device and Hack checks were supposed to be rolled by the GM (because we usually don’t do it that way). I like the idea of rolling for them and then using how many checks it took them to reach the DC to determine how long it would take them to pick the lock. Then I can slowly escalate time and see how long they are willing to wait for that one PC to try and pick the lock. I will say things like, “20 minutes pass and he still can’t pick it, are you going to keep trying?” If they are willing to wait as long as it would take to the PC to pick the lock, then they can get in … but depending on how well I rolled, they might encounter a Kish patrol or something before then. I might even throw in some bogus perception checks periodically to see if I can build an air of tension and danger.

Xenocrat, please provide references. I am not saying you are wrong, but you are making a rather large assertion and I am not finding anything that supports your view of The Gap.

From page 424 of the core rulebook: “While these people retained all the knowledge, skills, and interpersonal connections from their lives, specific memories became difficult or impossible to retrieve”.

All memories were affected. It is highly unlikely you would remember the Roman Empire existed at all because all of your specific memories about it would be “difficult or impossible to retrieve”. You might be able to find out that the Roman Empire existed by reading about it in history books because it says later on page 424 that historical records “becoming reliable again only when referring to the dim and misty ages of the ancient past”, but you almost certainly wouldn’t remember it.

The Hellknights exist because The Gap did not interfere with either their skill at stabbing or their relationship to chaotic people (which is to stab them) :-p

The Starfinders only exist because of The Gap! Accordingly to the Starfinder Society Guild Guide the Starfinders were formed after The Gap and their “first mission was to map out the edges of the Gap in order to discover how the event happened and what occurred during its uncounted years”.

The Guild Guide does mention “incomplete tales of the Pathfinder Society”, so it is possible that some memories of the Pathfinder Society remain, but the use of the word “incomplete” always made me think that those memories were spotty at best and quite possibly the result of old Pathfinder Chronicles that were still lying around.

I understand how the Gap works. I have read everything I can find that Paizo has officially said about it. But while people might remember their passwords, they don’t seem to know things like “my people used to have a great space empire before it crumbled”. As such, I have no really good explanation for why the Kish know so much about their ancestors. The book specifically says that the story of Lord’s Folly has changed over the centuries, but how can they still have this kind of story if they lost all of their historical memories and don’t know a written language. How do they even know their ancestors built the city (as opposed to found it)?

More and more I am starting to think that Jason Keeley either forgot about The Gap or intestinally didn’t make mention of it because it muddled the story he was trying to tell. In the spirit of that second theory, I am thinking of telling my players that these people just didn’t experience The Gap and leave it at that. The Gap is already mysterious and one planet not being affected by it would probably just add to that mystery.

So you can’t literally take 20 on a disable device check … but if there isn’t a countermeasure on the lock then the players can just keep trying until they succeed, effectively taking 20. I guess what I am asking is what are some good countermeasures for this lock. I was thinking maybe an alarm that alerts all of the Kish inside of the building and maybe if my players still stick around after the alarm goes off, the Kish start coming outside to fight them in two waves (essentially replicating the two fights inside) … but then I realized that those fights are already hard and putting them back to back might cause a TPK. Then I was thinking the locks stop working for a day to give the PCs time to explore the city before they come back … but it doesn’t make much sense for a military research area’s locks to have such a week deterrent against unauthorized access. What ideas do you guys have?

Nice story G-Prime

So something came up when our group met with the Kish. They asked how the Kish handled The Gap and why they thought so highly of their ancestors, if they couldn’t remember any of them … and I didn’t know what to tell them. One of my previous GMs had implied that The Gap only applied to races that had some contact with Golarion, but I don’t know if that is actually true or not. At the time, I told my players, “she gives your characters a satisfactory answer that your GM doesn’t have” and moved on, but I would actually like to give them an answer.

My players are very direct and believe they are under a time crunch so I suspect they will go straight to the Temple Found and try to pick the lock (thus bypassing half of the content). The Temple Found lock DC is really high … but this is the same group that got the DC 40 to disarm the Azlanti ship’s self-destruct so I know they can do it. I don’t mind if they roll really high and pick the lock, but I want to do something to stop them from just taking a 20. Does anyone have any ideas? I could just tell them that they only get one chance to pick it, but Starfinder tends to let people retry checks a couple of times and then something bad happens (like after two failed attempts to hack a computer the data is wiped) and I was hoping for something that matches that feel. Any ideas?

He snots angrily and spits again. Defending The Beast are ya? Well if you want to hear my story … you can hear it in your fancy court like everyone else. With this he walks past you, bumping your shoulder as he does so.

He points down the road at one of the huts on stilts. As you leave he gives you one last remark, Don’ expect a warm welcome. He like your kind even less than I do.

As you near the hut in question, you see a grizzled middle-aged man with dirty gray hair and ashen colored skin is standing in the doorway. He chew on a foul-smelling swamp weed and mutters, What you wan’ furriner? He punctuates this remark by spitting weed-juice into the swamp below.

The villagers don’t seem threatening to you at all, but you also get the distinct impression that they are warry of you and intend to keep their distance.

There is an awkward silence for a minute before one of the younger adults (late teens or early twenties at oldest) finally responds to you. He is gutting a fish and dumping the guts into a bucket and he speaks without stopping or even slowing his work. With a thick backwoods accent he answers you, You right, city boy, we don’t get kind ‘round here. We had some nasty murders, true, but they over and done with some time ago. Is good you came when we called for help, but YOU A YEAR LATE!

He seems to pause to gather control of his temper before adding, Elder Lazne gathered men and women and struck back at the monster. Thought we killed it until some of your lot started saying they had caught it and were putting it on trial.

As a longtime resident of Lepidstadt, you have heard of the remote village of Morast and how to get there. The swampers of Morast are a curious group. Local rumor claims that somewhere in their somewhat inbred ancestry, they mingled with strange swamp creatures, tainting their blood and marking them with queer countenances. No one knows how or why, but the people of Morast have legendary constitutions—sickness is rare among the swampers, and the villagers live long, healthy lives. While admired for this fact, they are also shunned for their strange appearance.

A narrow trail leads you to Morast and you are able to arrive there by three in the afternoon. The last leg of your journey needs to be done by canoe (or gondola as its owner calls it) because the village is a collection of 20 or so wattle-and-daub hovels built on stilts in the middle of the swamp. These hovels are connected by soggy wooden boardwalks and you can see dangling from many of these boardwalks are drying fish, tortious, and occasionally something that looks like a miniature (but still decent sized) alligator with a red scaled head.

The ashen skinned locals give you a wide berth, but none of them seem to object to your presence. In fact, several of them seem to be observing you with interest, but it is more the interest you would expect from someone observing a new and interesting wild animal.

He thinks for a moment, but then shakes his head left to right.

He is still observing you, but his eyes soften and his muscles seem to relax slightly. He then opens his mouth and a deep pitched rumble comes out. Ssssssaaaaaaammmmmmeeeeee He looks at you expectantly and you get the distinct feeling that he meant his word as a question.

After you ask The Beast, “may I ask your name?” there is a long silence and just as you are about to ask your second question, The Beast shakes its head left to right.

When you ask it, “Do you know who made you?” it shakes its head up and down.

When you ask it, “Have you been to the village of Morast? The farming community of Hergstag? The Sanctuary on Karb Isle?” it shakes its head left to right. You are about to continue when it shakes its head left to right again and then finally shakes its head up and down.

When you ask it “What do you know of creating fire?” it just stares at you blankly.

Likewise, when you ask it “What do you know of the stolen statue?” it also just stares at you blankly.

Gustav seems annoyed by this and rolls his eyes. The rest of your walk to the court house is in awkward silence.

When you finally arrive you find a large, squat building that is dominated by an enormous clock that overlooks the town square. A huge figure of wood, roughly man-shaped, is being assembled in the square in front of the building. Gustav will lead you to a small simple office with two chairs, a desk, and a cot. He drops off all of his books and papers there, and then leads you downstairs to where the prisoners are kept. He leads you past multiple empty cells until you are standing before the prison’s largest cell.

Obviously meant to hold groups of prisoners, this cell is currently home to just one guest, a monstrously large creature that seems to be a hideous combination of body parts that were stitched together with string, wire, and staples. The Beast is bound with 12 sets of manacles and each of those sets of manacles is locked to a huge iron chair bolted to the floor.

The Beast has a number of cuts and bruises on it that it didn’t have when you saw it being paraded through the university; a fact which seems to not be lost on Gustav. He finds the nearby guards and begins angrily yelling about excessive force punishments and, at least for the moment, you are left alone with The Beast. As you stand there observing it, you can’t help but notice that it seems to be similarly observing you.

So you gave Gustav an order, started walking towards The Beast, and then started whispering to him. Did you assume that the two of you were walking in the same direction? Otherwise, I am confused on how you are having a whispered conversation.

Gustav looks startled and begins looking around suspiciously, but then after a moment he seems to calm down. I highly doubt the prosecutor would have someone spying on us. Not only is that a serious offense that could lose him his license … why would he? He thinks that he has already won.

Gustav is flabbergasted by you suddenly taking over and directing him … but you set off before he has a chance to come up with some kind of rebuttal and, apparently not having any better ideas, starts walking towards the University. As you whisper to him (I am assuming you mean the spell Whisper), he whispers back, What game are you playing? Who are “them”?

Unless there was something you wanted to do at Gustav’s office, he leads you to the county clerk, who forces you to file a seemingly unnecessary amount of paperwork (in triplicate), and then he takes you to the prosecutor’s office. There a happy and excited clerk gladly hands you a folder of papers, stating that you had “saved him a trip”. Many of the people in the prosecutor’s office seem similarly excited and you overhear someone mentioning that Otto has already hired a painter to paint his triumphant victory in court.

The papers given to both of you show that the prosecution is using three recent crimes attributed to The Beast to convict the creature of murder: the murder of ten citizens of the village of Morast a year ago; the slaying of six children in the farming community of Hergstag seven months ago; and the arson attack four months ago at the Sanctuary on Karb Isle, which resulted in the deaths of Doctor Brada and his patients and the blinding of the doctor’s assistant, Karl.

The prosecutor hasn’t provided a list of charges yet … but if we are already swinging by the country clerk, I could stop in and ask him. From what I have seen, Otto seems rather intent on moving this thing along as quickly as possible, so he probably has a list already, and he will need to provide me that list before he can formally charge The Beast.

Gustav seems like a man beaten, but not broken … yet. You can tell that he has suffered a number of major setbacks recently and probably at least one life shattering event and the result is a man who has little to no hope for the future. He is bitter, but unlike most bitter people, he is more sad than angry. You get the feeling that he will do his job, but that he will do it more out of a sense of duty to the legal system than because he believes that his client is actually innocent.

As soon as we finish the paperwork, he will be OUR client. If you want to interview him right away, help me carry some of this stuff. He fills your arms with books and collections of legal papers. They always give the prosecutor and the defense the two side rooms at the court house (where The Beast currently is) and I want to set up shop there as soon as I can.

He looks at you flabbergasted for a moment before stepping aside and saying, your funeral, kid.

He walks towards a nearby table and puts down the books and papers, which he immediately begins sorting. Looking at you over his shoulder (while still sorting the books) he adds, I am still trying to figure out who I pissed off to get assigned his case. Best case scenario, I lose and sooner or later the town forgets that I defended a monster. Worst case scenario, I win, and then for the rest of my life I am that guy who literally kept a monster from being destroyed. He shrugs and continues, but if lost causes are a hobby of yours, I could certainly use the help.

We will have to have you swing by the county clerk and register as a ‘volunteer defender’, but that is more a formality. I don’t mind discussing my defense with you in the meantime … but that is mostly because I don’t have much of a defense. From what I hear, The Beast either can’t talk or wont and while there are scattered stories of The Beast helping lost travelers and children, I doubt I can get any of those people to speak out in his defense during the trial (not that I won’t try, mind you).

He sighs hopelessly. Do you have any bright ideas on where we should begin?

A moment later the door opens and a middle aged man stands on the other side of the door frame. His hair is retreating, but it is not the disciplined retreat of any a losing army so much as it is a desperate retreat of a broken force whose soldiers have dropped their weapons and are scattering in all directions. His head also seems to have too much skin, which always seems to leave some part of his face with a fold of skin. He it carrying several books and stacks of papers, wedged between an army and his chest, and he says curtly, sorry, I am not taking any new clients at the moment, I have just been assigned something that will consume all of my time. I suggest you check with Benson or Pulmeir, third and forth buildings down the road to the west.

She nods but only slightly. It is a gesture that is obvious to you, but not the gawking students beside you. I would like you to look into this. Specifically, I would like you to aid Barrister Gustav Kaple in the defense of The Beast. She puts up a hand to forestall any angry response from you. It is not that I want to have The Beast found not-guilty mind you, but while I am convinced that the prosecution will do an excellent job, I worry that Gustav will be in over his head with all of this arcane business and if we are sending something … or someone to the punishing man, I want to make damn sure they were responsible for their actions.

She quickly glances back and forth to make sure that none of the students are ease dropping before adding, … plus … the missing statuette makes me worry that there is more to this than meets the eye.

Below you the creature again tries to break its bonds and again fails and once again there are corresponding gasps and cheers from the students. The sheriff is clearly taking his time escorting this creature and enjoying the measure of celebrity it is giving him. As you watch, he gives a wink to a nearby female student who swoons.

She sighs and adds, and yes, you are correct that I can not be involved in supporting the defense, even if by only asking a competent person to aid in it. Not only did this conversation not happen, but when we are done here, you and I will not be able to meet until this business is over.

She shrugs. He will be charged with murder at least a dozen times over. Maybe two or three dozens times, depending on what Otto can put together. After all, The Beast has been active for a couple of decades and in that time every murder in and around town has been attributed to him. Some of them are definitely his work ... but, as i said, probably not all.

She is hard to read, but you get the impression that this ins't a conversation. If anything, this is a mission briefing.

She shakes her head. No, we do not know who its creator is, but if it does have a controller, they are likely one and the same.

The sheriff and his men will do their part, but most of figuring out who he has or hasn’t killed will be up to the prosecutor. While it is not official, I suspect that Otto Heiger will be appointed to the task. He is a decent enough sort, but he is overzealous and I worry he might be too busy bringing The Beast "to justice" to dig deeper into all of this.

Seeming to ignore your first question (she often does things like that), she answers your second question by saying, It is definitely a flesh golem, but even a cursory examination has shown me that it is not mindless. That should be impossible, of course, but it wouldn’t be the first time I have had to deal with the impossible.

That of course doesn’t mean it does not have controller. There could very easily be someone else who is partially or completely responsible for the beast’s actions.

As you follow the sound of raucous students, you eventually make your way to the second story of the entry chamber, where a balcony allows you to look down on the ground floor below you. A number of student have gathered here and you can see that they are looking down on ... something and seem to be cheerfully discussing it. When you glance down you see almost a parade. The town's sheriff seems to be triumphantly leading a procession of deputies towards the college's main door and between them, heavily bound and floating on a giant magic disk, is a gigantic creature. It appears to have the vague shape of a man, but it far far larger than any man you have ever seen and seems to be the result of someone crudely stitching together the pieces of other bodies (some of the wiring and staples are obviously visible). As you watch, the creature makes a growling sound and feebly tries to break its bonds, but luckily whoever bound it knew what they were doing and all it manages to do is cause a jangling sound of chains grinding on chains. You hear a gasp and then a cheer from the students as it tries and fails to break its bonds, but you also hear a quiet voice come from behind you. It is seemly lost to the nearby students, but you hear the familiar voice of Judge Embreth Daramid say, "This is going to be a lot of work for us." She walks towards you and stands beside you, leaning on the banister as though she was any other observer. She speaks quietly, not quite a whisper, but clearing now wanting others to overhear. "Over the years, dozens of murders have been attributed to the beast, but it is going to be hard to determine which murders are this creatures sins and which are other people using it as a scapegoat. Whats more I worry that more is going on than we know. I just spoke with Dr. Crowl and he said that a seemingly non-valuable statue was stolen by the beast, but was not found on the beast's person."

You can still remember the last time you had seen the book. He was sitting on a rock, looking at the dozen dead ghouls, and writing fastidious notes. Just when you had snuck to an angle where you could see what he was writing, he had slammed the book closed and looked unnervingly directly at you. “One day,” you said shaking your head. “One day you are going to have to show me what is in that book of yours.” He just smiled and said, “tell you what: I will leave it for you in my will.” At that moment you couldn’t wait for Professor Lorrimor to be dead, but now that you look down at your desk and his book, you would gladly burn it if it would bring him back.

The adventurers that brought you his book (and the other books) had told you of his death at the hands of the damnedable Whispering Way and you were sure you would find a way to make them pay for what they had done, but for now you were more interested in finally reading his book. You opened the cover and just as you got to the first page you were interrupted by the unusual sound of boots running to your office. An undergrad student, that you vaguely remember seeing before, sticks his head in and shouts, “They got ‘em! They got ‘em!” before running off in the opposite direction. Whatever he is running towards seems to be generating an ever louder racket.

After the birth of my son I don't get to play a lot of pathfinder anymore, but I always make time for two conventions. Gencon and Ucon. Ucon has never failed to be fun :-)

I have one more question about this. My player wants to know if he has a ghost touch gauntlet if he could deliver touch spells with the gauntlet without doing the strength damage. I am not 100% on the rules for this, but I inclined to say no.

Can one of your wise knowers of rules advise me either way?

I like your idea Rednal, but I am worried that if I let my blood obsessed player get a bonus like that, that all my other players with spells will start trying to steal blood or keep trying to get some of the blood my blood obsessed player has collected, and that ruins the unique feel his PC is starting to develop. Likewise I am worried about having it used up when he casts the spell because ... I didn't actually give him a definitive amount of blood to begin with and I would have to start keeping track of that kind of thing like a resource.

I might just offer him a feat like spell focus (blood) which would give him a +1 to DC and +2 to spell penetration if he has someone's blood. That would encourage him to keep getting blood, but wouldn't be that much more powerful than existing feats.

Thanks Lorewalker.

I am sort of ok with him doing it. I don't want to outright tell him he can't do stuff, especially if he just found an NPC trying to do it. But I also don't want him to be able to get a minion who is nearly as powerful as a PC (I banned the leadership feat for that exact reason). The books says if you make a DC 25 knowledge religion check (which my players will do easily) you know he was trying to raise a sea Bonze, but I kind of do like your idea that he could just have been wrong about being able to make it work. That or I could just change what he is trying to raise, you are correct that I am heavily in the realm of GM fiat at this point.

I love your idea Misroi :-) Especially since the book mentions at one point giving the rebellion a negative if it uses undead or bound devils as guard. My players are more than willing to push that chaotic neutral line ... until there is a game mechanics penalty for it ;-)

So I am looking for recommendations for game mechanics on using the Drowned Eye to create undead. The reason I ask is that one of my players loves undead and has literally build a crypt/storeroom to hold the bodies of notable NPC spell casters until he can use the spell Create Undead to make intelligent spellcasting juju zombies and skeletal lords. I predict that instead of destroying the rune in the Drowned Eye, he will want to restore the wards that had previously been around the place and try to harness the power of the place to help him make undead. Whats more, since he is a charismatic store-born half-elf with the water breathing spell so I could see him convincing the party to do just that, and returning to the place periodically to make undead. So the question is what kind of game mechanics should I give the place? My first assumption is that I should make it function like an unmoveable scroll of create undead (which I know he would love) that regenerates periodically (like once a month or so). The module has the Aboleth working to create a Sea Bonze, but I worry that giving him anything powerful enough to do that would unbalance the campaign. What do you guys think I should use?

So my current group has found the joys of creating intelligent undead, but a bit of an issue came up. They wanted to bring back an evil cleric as a skeletal champion (so it could cast spells to help them), but only thought of this idea after they had fed said cleric to their pet Otyughs. Since it was weeks ago that they fed the Otyughs the cleric, I said all they could find in the Otyughs poop was a single piece of one of the cleric's bones and that wasn't enough to bring him back as a skeletal champion with. One of the characters offered to use marvelous pigments to recreate the rest of the skeleton with (since marvelous pigments specifically says you can make bones). The question however is, would that actually work for making a skeletal champion? Usually when you make an intelligent undead that involves a template, you need the body of a specific creature, whose class abilities and/or racial hit die determine the power of the undead being created, but does this body mostly made from marvelous pigments could as a body for such purposes? Part of me wants to say no because the vast majority of the skeleton didn't belong to anyone and therefore couldn't inherit any class abilities from that person, but part of me wants to say yes because the spell would latch onto the small amount of an actual person that is in the body when the spell is cast and bring that person back in control of the undead. Not knowing the answer I decided to ask you guys what you thought?

Thanks for all the advice guys :-) I usually don't like to tell my players outright that they can't do stuff, instead I will try to make it increasing difficult. Between not being able to touch people to deliver a lot of his spells, not being able to carry or touch any gear, and occasional paladins and clerics of Pharasma trying to attack him (bwahahahaha), I think I can deter him from using it ... at least all of the time. And if he is willing to endure all of that to get his spell on him all the time ... I feel like he probably deserves it.

Plus I have mostly given up on giving these powergaming min/maxers good combat, now I just try to give them good roleplaying and this seems like this could lead to some fun rolplaying.

It might not come up very much anyway. He is now talking about casting the spell on his familiar instead. Would a creature being tiny sized affect the strength damage that it would deal while under Shadow Projection?

One of my players has been running around for a while now getting blood samples (usually without their permission) from both PCs and notable NPCs (antagonists and allies). At first this was just so that he could give them negatives if he ever had to scry on them, but he has invested so much effort in this that he now wants to do more with it. I wont let him get Ganji Dolls (I don't like the idea of him being able to kill people half a city away), but I do want to give him something to do with the blood. So I created the following metamagic ... but I wanted to know what other people thought before I offered it to him as an option.

Bloody Spell (Metamagic)
You have learned how to use discarded parts of a target’s body to form a link between yourself and a target.
Benefit: When you cast a bloody spell you must have a small piece of the target’s body, either a hair, some skin, or some blood. A bloody spell cast in this way has a DC 2 higher than usual, gains a +5 bonus to spell penetration checks, and can be cast as a range of close, even if the spell is usually only deliverable at range touch. A bloody spell can only effect one creature, even if the spell would normally affect multiple creatures. If the target of a bloody spell manages to make the will save against it, any effect that they avoid by succeeding at the save (either the entire spell's effect or half the spells effect) is then reflected back at the original target (who can make any saves normally allowed by the spell to negate or reduce the effect).
Level Increase: +1 (a bloody spell uses up a spell slot one levels higher than the spell’s actual level.)

Thanks Drahliana. I already thought about keeping him from casting spells but all of his spells are silent (deaf oracle curse), he has eschew materials from the sorcerer side, and the still metamagic feat (he has been planning on doing this for a while apparently). I kind of feel like it is hard to tell the guy he cant cast spells if they don't have any components. Plus I don't think of him as invulnerable because a lot of the things he is likely to fight have magic weapons, at which point he is taking half damage which is effectively what Displacement ends up being.

In a home game, I have a player who wants to use Shadow Projection (which essentially makes you into a version of the monster Shadow) to make himself harder to kill. The problem is that he is a buffing mystic theurge and I am not sure if he would do strength damage to the other players if he delivered a range touch spell on them. The Shadow's strength drain ability is marked as a Supernatural Ability. Can SU be turned off?

Thanks Guys. This went off over the weekend and I used a couple of your guys ideas. Specifically I took TimD's idea of making them do impossible tasks in an anti-magic field which made some of the non-spellcasters feel more useful (they have been feeling less useful at higher levels) and made them think a lot. Also, since they usually go into any dungeon with 10 to 20 buff spells each, I took Dosgamer's idea about a monster that absorbs buff spells. Unlike Dosgamer's idea though it didn't explode, it just got the benefits of all of their buff spells and one way to defeat it was to cast bebuff spells on themselves and willingly fail the save, knowing the monster would take the debuff from them. Thanks again for your good ideas guys :-)

Thanks Dosgamer. This went off over the weekend and I ended up using a modified version of your B) concept. Thanks for the help.

Nothing says they have to do it in a way no other mortal has done it. That said, I do have some shenanigans planned for that.

I just finished doing a PFS legal campaign to level 19 (I let them level to 20) and everyone thought it would be a good idea to end it by doing a homebrew version of the Starstone Cathedral. I wanted to have a lot of rooms that weren't just a monster and/or a trap, but instead presented the players with difficult tests with no single answer. How the players each answered the test would determine what domains that received when/if they became a god. The problem is that I am having trouble coming up with these tests. Below is one that I came up with.

The PCs enter a jungle environment and see a Rabbit eating, and with their crazy high perceptions will probably see the fox getting ready to pounce on it. The PCs each have a chance to act and their actions each resolve with a different rabbit and fox than the other PCs. Then their guide asks them why they did what they did. If the PC saved the animal because he doesn't like those who live by hurting others they are more likely to get the Good domain (and crap from the rest of the table if they are not a vegetarian). If they let the fox kill the rabbit because that how nature works, they are more likely to get the Nature domain. If they saved the rabbit because they like rabbits, I may make a custom Cute Animals domain. If they mind control both animals to obey them and serve (one PC probably will), I will probably give them the Tyranny domain and/or Magic domain.

Please share if you have any tests you think would be good too.

I just finished doing a PFS legal campaign to 19th level and everyone thought it would it be fun to end it by doing the test of the Starstone Cathedral (I let them level to 20). I am having a bit of trouble with the traps however. One of the players is a skill monkey Rogue and I want to put in a lot of traps for his sake, but I want them to be clever and/or interesting. Not just "save or take a bunch of damage". The problem is that any ideas I can come up with or find online don't work for super high level PCs. They can all fly and have necklaces of adaptation (or another similar item). Does anyone have an good ideas for high level traps? Stuff that would really challenge them and maybe even kill a PC (since at this level death is a minor inconvenience).

Both of the gunslingers lived, but one was at 8 hp and one was at half hitpoints.

Next, we are doing a homebrew Test of the Starstone to see if they can become gods. Expect a post about possible ideas soon :-)

Thanks for all the help guys! It went great!

Karzoug dropped Control Winds and Anti-Tech field to seriously hamper the gunslingers, but I let them attack the non-Karzoug minions at point blank range (who were away from Karzoug at the time), so they were still able to participate. I also used a Wall of Suppression to get rid of the gunslingers' crazy powerful collection of magic items. The Cleric's Source Severance was dangerous but Karzoug was able to use stone wall to encase him in a stone cube (15ft by 15ft so it was beyond the range of Source Severance) at the start of the fight. Later, once the cleric got out, he had one of his giants grapple the cleric and jump into the lava with him. I killed the poor guy, but it was the most epic death I can think of.

Also, I don't think Anti-Tech field was that powerful. I just saw it doing for bullets but Repel Wood does for arrows and crossbow bolts.

It was a very hard fight, but not unwinnable. And they did win ... but with 3 dead and 1 unconscious. Most importantly a lot of them (including Toxic_Cure) were really happy with it.

Anti-Tech Field it is! Thanks Zin! I know my gunslingers will hate it, but I think the rest of the party will like being able to do damage for once. :-)

They also have Goz Masks to see in fog and a Spectral Shrouds to see invisible.