Damon Griffin's page

screenrant described it as "...an authentic, modern-day reboot of the 1972 series starring David Carradine."

indiewire called it "CW's update of a classic..."

cbr.com claimed "The classic martial arts television series Kung Fu gets updated for a new generation on The CW."

They're all wrong. The CW's show has nothing in common with the 70's series except the title. Justified or not, CW takes a lot of flak for transforming what should be familiar properties into something...less recognizable. But at least Riverdale, Nancy Drew and the various superhero shows have recognizable roots. Not so with Kung Fu.

Kwai Chang Caine was the orphaned son of an American man and a Chinese woman, raised in a Shaolin monastery from a young age. He was forced to flee China after killing the Emperor's nephew in a rage when the nephew shot and killed blind Master Po during an altercation with royal guards. He wandered the American West alone searching for his half-brother Daniel, evading bounty hunters and helping people along the way.

Nicky Shen is a Chinese-American pre-law student on her way to Harvard. She has a white boyfriend, something he mother doesn't approve of. Mom sends Nicky on a "cultural tour" of China, which turns out to be part of a plot to get her a Chinese husband. As soon as Nicky realizes this, she runs out of a speed date, hides in the back of a random pickup truck loaded with produce, and gets taken to a Shaolin monastery run and populated entirely by women. She more or less ghosts her entire family and boyfriend and studies at the monastery for the next three years. This brings us up to the beginning of the series.

The monastery is attacked by raiders, the shifu (head of the monastery, Nicky's mentor and the person who had been driving the pickup truck three years earlier) is killed and an ancient magical sword is stolen from the monastery, which is burned down in the attack. The raiders are led by a woman named Zhilan. Nicky engages Zhilan but is wounded and Zhilan escapes with the sword. Nicky feels it's her duty to find Zhilan and recover the sword but has no idea where to begin, so she returns home to San Francisco's Chinatown. (Because of course that's where Chinese-Americans live.)

Her parents run a restaurant in Chinatown (because of course they do), and they are having money troubles with a Chinese gang lord (because of course they are) who totally controls Chinatown and the cops in the district (because of course he does.) By the end of the pilot episode, gang lord Tony Kang is no longer anyone's problem, thanks entirely to Nicky and her awesome support team:

Her sister Althea is for some reason an incredible hacker of all things.

Her brother Ryan is a doctor/intern/medical student working at a Chinatown clinic, who sees a lot of Tony Kang's victims.

Her old boyfriend is now an ADA.

And pretty much the day she gets back from China Ryan introduces her to Henry Yan, the cute Chinese guy who teaches Cantonese down the hall from the clinic, and happens to be working on his Masters in ancient Chinese art, so he's super instrumental in finding out what the sword is, why Zhilan likely wants it, why it would be terrible if she were to be able to collect all eight ancient magic swords, long protected by eight different Chinese families including the shifu's, etc. etc. Oh, and he also knows kung fu, so he's able to help her once when she got outnumbered in a street fight.

If the accrual of allies and resources had been a little more spread out and organic, I'd say I could probably enjoy the show on its own, I just wouldn't credit it with any connection to the David Carradine series. As it is, it felt both rushed and maybe a bit heavy on stereotypes.

I haven't watched the third episode yet, but just off the first two they've introduced Blue Devil (well, actor/stuntman Dan Cassidy...so far Blue Devil has only appeared as a movie poster and as laptop wallpaper) and not-yet-floronic Jason Woodrue, along with other supporting cast members who will be familiar to comics fans.

I was never more than an occasional reader of Swamp Thing -- and that in the 70's -- so I have no particular expectations the show needs to live up to. I didn't watch the 80's movies or the first series in the 90's.

It's early yet, but so far so good.

No thread for this show. Perhaps no one is watching it.

I was pleased to see that Adam Strange finally got his jetpack, and we're apparently going to see some of the Rann-Thanagar War as well.

Gotta say I am really not happy with the ongoing subplot this season involving Gryphons & Gargoyles (G&G to its players), a sort of hybrid board game/tabletop RPG/LARP. Just reading the player's manual apparently turns people into obsessive gamers who will gladly commit ritual murder or suicide in order to "ascend to the next level" in service of the Gargoyle Kind.

It's worse than Jack Chick's "Dark Dungeons."

Saw it on Friday. It's a fun movie, but has a few problems with scale (size, time, distance.)

The whole timeline for Atlantis is seriously unclear. There’s a line in the movie about how the Atlanteans had discovered an unlimited energy source while the rest of us were in the Stone Age or something, but greed and foolish overuse of that energy is what caused Atlantis to sink. Somehow the same energy that destroyed Atlantis allowed them all to breathe water – that part was seriously glossed over – and the residents of the seven kingdoms began to evolve (or in at least one case, devolve) in radically different ways.

Later they talk about one of the seven kingdoms of Atlantis

Various outsize sea creatures exist including over sized great white sharks, giant sea turtles, and there are some mosasaur-like creatures as well. Inexplicably, the blue whales were smaller in comparison to Atlanteans, dolphins and such than they should have been.

With these and other issues of scale, I had assumed that the movie’s depiction of

I wasn't quick enough to catch the fight cards for the arena battle between Arthur and Orm. Each combatant had pros and cons listed and all the pros were on Orm's side. If anyone does catch that full list, let me know.

Anyone watch the first episode? Does it feel like a rehash of The 4400, or it is just me?

I will give pretty much anything quirky a hot, but fully expected to hate this show and drop it after the first episode.

Bizarre and stupid basic premise...check.

Tiresome, overused trope...check.

But I found I did like the interplay between Kevin, his sister and her daughter. I'm going to stick it out for a bit to see if their character arcs actually go anywhere.

Over the course of the summer I have sent no less than six (6) inquiries regarding an apparent oddity in my Order History and Downloads, and not received a response to any of them. Dates of the emails were June 17th, July 2nd, July 7th, July 20th, August 5th and August 16th. Only the last is understandable, due to the GenCon schedule.

I've just now emailed Customer Service regarding a separate issue, and mentioned the above as well. However, given the lack of response all summer, the only possible explanation is that somehow -- no idea how -- Paizo' excellent CS team never received any of the previous emails.

Perhaps my ISP triggers Paizo's spam filter? In any event, here is the query I've sent repeatedly:

I was looking for a PDF copy of Cerulean Seas on my PC, couldn’t find it, and went to check Paizo to confirm I’d bought it there.

This link says I bought it on May 1, 2013: Cerulean Seas

View Order (2561201) lists 76 (!) items, including 63 digital purchases that are no longer available. It also notes that I saved $381.48 off the list price (a 100% savings.)

Every item on that order page is listed as Returned May 6, 2013. I checked several of the items that order lists as Returned and none are in My Downloads.

I can’t make sense out of any of this. I…bought 76 items in a single order… at a 100% discount…then returned them all five days later?

Help?!?

Our GM has been telling us twice per session that he's playing Renchurch as detailed in the book, adding nothing. We believe him, but it's been really deadly so far. He assures us there's a lot left to go, and some encounters are specifically designed to drain our resources. He's even let it slip that at some point we'll be facing a werewolf lich; no idea why he'd give us that information.

Anyway, I'm curious about a couple of things regarding the potential XP in our near future:

1a) Is there any prospect of getting XP off the Tyrant's Whispers? GM told us they reset after one minute and can only be permanently destroyed by freeing Tar-Baphon. We're told the Whispers are worth a lot of XP, but the high XP reward seems excessive for suppressing a haunt for only one minute, and yet we're never going to try to shut them down permanently, given the required condition.

1b) If we are supposed to get XP from shutting down the Whispers for a mere minute, how do we even do that? There's no visible target, it's just voices coming from all around. Sending positive energy into the open air feels like attacking the darkness with a magic missile.

2) Ignoring all appearances of the Whispers, what's the remaining XP total for the first level of the Cathedral and its grounds? I don't want any idea of what's waiting for us, only the total XP still available to us, given what we've already faced:

We have had no encounters on the grounds and haven't examined any of the exterior buildings; we snuck around the back of the Cathedral and entered through a hole in a side wall.

Inside the Cathedral we've already dealt with:
* 1 athach,
* 1 barbed devil (we think he came down from the belfry, be we didn't enter the belfry)
* 16 corpulent ghouls (three separate groups incl. one that came in from the cloister area),
* 1 meladaemon,
* 1 haunt (taxidermied heads),
* 4 spectres

We also encountered 1 vampire with the spectres, and didn't defeat it. Count that vampire as still available.

We'd initially bypassed the exterior buildings to conserve resources, but we're now thinking that the more areas we skip, the more chance we have to miss some vital piece of information or pick up an item that will help us later on; we had to retreat outside the walls at the end of our last session anyway, so we're thinking of checking out some of the places we skipped the first time.

Thanks in advance.

I'm asking this outside the Carrion Crown AP forum to avoid possible spoilers.

Our group is about to head into a Stronghold of Evil. We presume some individual rooms will be protected using unhallow and/or desecrate. We have two Clerics in our party but given the casting time, hallow is not really an option for countering unhallow on the fly. What's our best bet for countering the effects of the spell, since we can't counter the spell itself?

Divine illumination negates channel resistance. Would it also negate the -4 DC adjustment to save vs. positive energy granted by unhallow? If so, are there other spells besides divine illumination that negate channel resistance?

I think we can prepare enough consecrate spells to have desecrated areas covered. If there are more of those than we expect, is there a way to buff ourselves to overcome the +3 DC to resist negative channeled energy (effectively giving the PCs channel resistance?)

I know this has come up before, but was unable to find a thread on it.

My list of downloads -- 838 items, if I counted correctly -- is unmanageably long, especially when some products now come in as many as four versions (Single File, Single File-Lite, One File per Chapter, and One File per Chapter—Lite.)

Of those four versions, there is a 99.999% certainty I will *never* use three of them, and I'd really like the option of suppressing their display in the list. Just by suppressing the alternate versions -- again, if I counted correctly -- my list would immediately shrink from 838 to 623 listed items, a reduction of more than 25%.

Ideally, "Unhide" would not remove the hidden status from all products but would work like see invisibility, revealing what's hidden as a divination without negating the illusion in place; and allowing individual items to be returned to the main list selectively.

Doable?

Trickster Attack: Surprise Strike (Ex): As a swift action, you can expend one use of mythic power to make a melee attack or ranged attack against a target within 30 feet, in addition to any other attacks you make this round. When you make a surprise strike, the target is considered flat-footed regardless of any class features or abilities it might have , and you add your tier to the attack roll. Damage from this attack bypasses damage reduction.

Our group is divided on a question here: Two members insist that the phrase "class features or abilities" must be read as "class features or class abilities"; that "abilities" as used here cannot be interpreted to include universal monster abilities, supernatural abilities, etc.

The rest of the group thinks there is at least some ambiguity there. Who's right?

Apologies if this is in the wrong place. I couldn't find a "marketplace" forum.

I've long since run out of shelf space and need to sell some of the unplayed adventure paths I will never get around to running.

I believe all are in NM condition. None of these have been played, the maps are unopened in their original shrinkwrap, etc. The earlier ones may also include the printed Player's Guides, so I'll have to do a full inventory before I describe the sets in detail, but I think it'll probably be something like $75 for each set of six books + map + player's guide if I have it. No promises just yet but that price may include shipping to US addresses.

I plan to offer at least these:

Second Darkness
Skull & Shackles
Kingmaker
Reign of Winter
Wrath of the Righteous

and possibly

Curse of the Crimson Throne
Legacy of Fire
Jade Regent
Shattered Star

I'd really rather not deal with international shipping, so if you have a US shipping address and are interested, let me know.

EDIT: I should clarify I do NOT want to sell individual parts of the AP's, I want to sell them as sets only.

Has anyone used this metamagic feat from Player's Companion: Blood of Angels?

How it works is perfectly straightforward, but I'm wondering about its utility. For 13th level Cleric, a maximized flame strike would dish out a nice reliable 78 hp damage, but as a 7th level spell; meanwhile a 6th level harm spell does 130 hp. (Yes, the flame strike will affect multiple targets if they stand obligingly close together.)

For a lot of damage-dealing spells I'm not sure if it would be worth the two-level increase. One that I do like is admonishing ray which if consecrated would allow walloping someone with 72 points of non-lethal damage. Ha! Make THAT Concentration check, be-yatch!

Are there enough spells that would significantly benefit from consecration to make the feat worthwhile? If it matters, this character is one of two clerics in the party, but the only one who'd qualify to take the feat. Her feats up to this point have been:

Additional Traits
Improved Channel
Channel Smite
Guided Hand
Selective Channeling
Extra Channeling

She's a Rage domain "battle cleric" (no archetype) for the group and the group face of both Diplomacy and Intimidation.

So, alchemical silver: A complex process involving metallurgy and alchemy can bond silver to a weapon made of steel so that it bypasses the damage reduction of creatures such as lycanthropes.

On a successful attack with a silvered slashing or piercing weapon, the wielder takes a –1 penalty on the damage roll (with a minimum of 1 point of damage). The alchemical silvering process can't be applied to nonmetal items, and it doesn't work on rare metals such as adamantine, cold iron, and mithral.

Cost ranges from +2gp for a single piece of ammunition up to +180gp for a two-handed or double-headed weapon. Nothing in the description above suggests the effect created is temporary and nothing specifies the process has to be applied during the crafting of the weapon. Based on what's written above you can take a regular steel sword to someone familiar with the alchemical bonding process and permanently "silver coat" the weapon.

Now, silversheen (as defined in Qadira, Gateway to the East): Blades made of this special metal count as alchemical silver weapons and are immune to rust, including that of rust monsters, the rusting grasp spell, and so on.

Blades made of silversheen are always masterwork items as well; the masterwork cost is included in the price given. A blade made of silversheen has its price increased by 750 gp. Crafting a silversheen blade requires Craft (alchemy) 5 ranks and Craft (weaponsmithing) 5 ranks.

For some reason this has a flat cost of +750 instead of being based on individual ammunition or weapon size, not sure why. The language here does indicate the weapon needs to have been crafted from silversheen originally, and the added cost makes sense: the weapon now counts as masterwork and has antirust protection.

Finally, silversheen (as a Wondrous Item): This shimmering paste-like substance can be applied to a weapon as a standard action. It gives the weapon the properties of alchemical silver for 1 hour, replacing the properties of any other special material it might have. One vial coats a single melee weapon or 20 units of ammunition. Price: 250gp

Why would anyone pay 250gp for paste that lasts only an hour, when for less cost you can apply the aftermarket alchemical silver process to as many as 12 light weapons, 2 one-handed weapons or a single two-handed or double-headed weapon?

Why is silversheen both a special material and a wondrous item?

Why does the wondrous item work like a different special material? (It acts like alchemical silver, which has only some of the properties of the silversheen special material.)

I find a number of references to death effects in the rules, but cannot seem to find a definition. Does any spell with the [death] descriptor count as a death effect? The assassin's death attack ability? Where is this spelled out?

When casting a spell "live" the save DC is 10 + spell level + relevant ability modifier.

When casting a spell from a scroll, is there no ability modfier to the DC? Do you use your own, even if you didn't scribe the scroll? You can't otherwise use the scriber's relevant ability modifier because you have no way of knowing what that is.

Damon

My wife and I are playing a pair of Ratfolk, which allow us to occupy the same square and count as flanking an adjacent opponent; we also have Outflank and Precise Strike as teamwork feats.

She's a Rogue 11/Monk 1 who uses natural attacks almost exclusively. As a Rogue she can sneak attack any time her opponent is flanked, so we're in the same square as often as we can be, but sometimes it's just not possible.

As compared to flanking with me, when I'm not there she will lose a +4 attack bonus and +1d6 precision damage, and unless she can meet conditions some other way, may also lose +6d6 sneak attack damage -- for more than one attack per round.

She wants to find as many ways as possible to retain her Sneak Attack ability when my PC isn't around. What ways are there to count as flanking someone when you aren't, or to deny a target his DEX bonus to AC -- preferably for more than one round -- which would have the same effect?

She's got a ring of invisibilty (good for one attack) and can attempt stunning fist three times a day (good for one round each), but she's had poor luck with opponents making the DC 19 Fort save.

It's not like she can force an opponent to climb during melee; she doesn't melee with running targets; she can't easily blind them.

She doesn't have ranks in Bluff, so she can't feint (and if she did, that's a standard action that would benefit her next single attack, at a cost of an attack this round.)

My Rage-domain cleric of Ragathiel is already using a Large bastard sword. A Medium bastard sword weighs 6# and is about 4' in overall length with a blade not more than 2" wide (probably a little less.)

A Large bastard sword weighs 12# and assuming it retains the proportions of the Medium version, is about 5' in length as well as being correspondingly wider (2.5") and thicker.

I'm considering having her sorceress cohort pick up the 3rd party spell overcompensation, which "causes the weapon touched to grow to the next smallest size that would normally make it impossible to wield. The damage dealt by the weapon increases as though it were one size category larger, but the weapon can be wielded as though it were its original size." This would bring the weapon's base damage up to 3d8, with bonus damage from its enhancement bonus, from the cleric's rage-boosted STR and from the destructive smite domain ability.

Do Huge weapons weigh twice as much as Large ones, or should there be a greater multiplier, like 4x? If 2x, then a Huge bastard sword weighs 24# and would run about 6'4" long, with a 3.15" wide blade.

Seems like they should be bigger/heavier. A Huge creature -- say 16' tall with a 15' reach -- would be wielding a weapon less than half its height, which isn't usual for bastard swords.

We have a large party (6 PCs, one cohort and a Large wolf animal compansion) and even with two arcane casters -- one of which is the cohort -- we're currently at a point where we can't move everyone via dimension door. That will change once we hit 12th, but we've already had a pair of really nasty fights in an area we had to access via DD, and so had to leave the animal companion behind each time.

Apart from using two feats (Spell Focus: Conjuration and Spell Specialization: Dimension Door), is there any way to boost the number of creatures a single caster can dimension door or teleport?

A magic item (to boost a caster's existing capacity, not replace it with, say, a CL 12 wand of dimenson door), a metamagic feat or even a spell that boosts it for a few rounds?

I'm currently a player in Carrion Crown, and we'll be starting Ashes At Dawn in a week or two, so no spoilers please!

The DM running this for us has good experience with D&D 3.x in a homebrew setting, but this AP is his first time behind the Pathfinder screen, and by his own admission he's not always good about catching details in the background/flavor text in the AP volumes.

Our party includes no Paladins, but we do have a Ranger with undead as a favored enemy and more problematically, a Pharasmin Cleric. The ad copy for Ashes At Dawn suggests the party will have to ally with undead in order to oppose the Whispering Way.

That Cleric's player takes roleplaying very seriously and if Pharasma's attitude toward undead is "Kill 'em all, let Me sort 'em out" then she's going to feel like she can't participate in any such alliance.

So, your personal opinions about alignment aside, can anyone...

...cite a general reference showing that Pharasma might be okay with this given the extreme circumstance?

...point our GM to anything in Ashes At Dawn (maybe just a page number, so I get no hints) that gives Paladins or (preferably) Pharasmins this latitude?

...assure me that there's a viable alternative to allying with undead and still accomplishing our goal? (don't tell me what the alternative is)

Thanks.

One of my cousins, the oldest son of my mom’s twin sister, was diagnosed with Stage 4 esophageal cancer on December 15th; ten days later he had a heart attack. The cancer is inoperable but he has now started radiation and will shortly begin chemo. He and his wife are having trouble with their insurance covering parts of the treatment and his sister-in-law has started a GoFundMe page to help them raise money. So far they’ve raised $850 of a needed $50,000.

If you can't send money, send prayers; if you don't pray, please send well wishes, positive vibes or whatever feels right.

Thanks.

Is there a feat out there (even 3rd party) which allows a ranged attacker to forego his iterative attacks when using the full attack action in order to gain an attack bonus on his primary attack?

Additional attacks from rapid shot, haste and other sources should still be available, but someone with BAB +16 would be making one attack at +x (where X > 16) instead of four at +16/+11/+6/+1, and then anything from rapid shot, haste, etc. would be made at +16 -- the highest BAB, unmodified by the above bonus.

Our party of six newly leveled 9th level PCs (plus Sorceress cohort and badger animal companion) arrived in Feldgrau near the end of Book 3, and got our butts handed to us.

We circled around the town and went to the tower first. Animal companion fell victim to a circle of death almost as soon as we entered. Over the course of the battle that followed, the Sorceress cohort was killed, half the PCs were blinded, and as a group we were down 20 or more CON points.

We hadn't achieved our objective, so we had to go back the next day. Better protected against certain forms of attack, we nevertheless lost our Fighter and our Wizard. One of the two clerics had lost 8 STR points, the Rogue had been infected with lycanthopy, and although by this time we'd achieved our known objective, it was now clear we'd need to go back a third time in order to obtain a clue as to our next destination. But not before we get two PC's and a cohort raised.

This AP has been a big drain on diamond dust, plus we had no whole diamonds for the raise dead spells, so now we're looking at a four day trek back to Ardis to buy the necessary materials, then back to Feldgrau just to find out where we were supposed to go from there. Definitely a low point in our performance.

Some members of our group are unhappy with the way social interaction is handled mechanically. Where combat is generally a whole series of steps with back and forth before arriving at an eventual conclusion to the “conflict”, diplomacy/bluff/intimidate is generally a single opposed roll.

If social skills are really going to be about coercion – at least of NPCs – then there ought to be a more involved system than the equivalent of “I roll my attack. If the target to defend, it dies.” We do make an effort to roleplay the situations, we don't just roll dice, but ultimately the resolution comes down to a single die roll.

What we'd like is something more like a haggling system, where the "back and forth" could be better modeled, especially for players who don't have the same social skills as their PCs are supposed to.

One of our group members has an annoying tendency, when he GMs, to run NPCs that will smile and say nothing when captured and questioned, no matter what we do. When it came around to his turn to GM again, I decided to optimize my character for social interaction to counter this. At 9th level, my aasimar cleric has +24 to Intimidate and close to that in Diplomacy and Sense Motive. Few NPCs are built to withstand that, so either she gets her way in almost every interaction, or the GM decides not to allow a skill check. This isn't really satisfactory for anyone.

Anyone know of any 3pp systems we might take a look at? I haven't seen Paizo's Social Combat cards, except for the two sample images, but my impression is that you play cards to affect the final result, not necessarily that it allows for back and forth play. Let me know if I'm wrong about that.

Is it just me, or does it seem odd that Two-Weapon Rend always does an additional 1d10 (plus 1.5 STR bonus) regardless of the specific weapon or weapon size involved?

A Small character wielding Small kukris normally does 1-3 points with each weapon, so adding a d10 to that seems like a lot.

Please note that I'm posting to Rules Questions, not to Advice, or Suggestions/House Rules/Homebrew. As far as the title topic is concerned, I really only want RAW/RAI. I will gladly accept suggestions on alternative ways of shifting a massive creature to another plane when he's incapable of expressing any opinion about making the trip.

Following the end of a certain AP, our party has the opportunity to bring about the death of a god. Doing so requires that we drag the body of his [currently mindless] avatar to another plane and perform a specific ritual. The avatar in question is 20' tall and weighs over 10 tons.

The mindless trait effectively removes the avatar's INT score and makes it immune to mind-affecting effects; we can't compel it to do anything. The trait says nothing about reducing/eliminating WIS and thus affecting Will saves.

Plane shift can transport up to eight willing creatures to another plane.

Does a "willing" creature have to be able to act on its own volition, or is a "willing" creature also any one that fails the Will save that plane shift allows? (And if the former, then what is the purpose of the Will save in plane shift?)

What I'm trying to establish here, one way or the other, would serve as a general case for any number of spells that reference "willing" creatures; I'm focusing on plane shift because it's likely to be the only way we might be able to transport a Huge creature of that weight. It's an outsider in the shape of a monstrous humanoid; reduce person won't work; as the avatar of a god it can't be killed except in very specific circumstances such as the ritual I mentioned, so we can't kill it here, take advantage of the corpse-as-object rule and manipulate its dimensions that way.

EDIT: An iron flask has almost no chance of working as a method of transport, since the avatar can only fail a DC 19 Will save with a natural 1.

Trap the soul is a theoretical possibility. Our sole arcane caster (a witch) doesn't currently know the spell, and 8th level scrolls are hard to come by, as is the 28,000gp gemstone we'd need.

So....

Venomous Bolt
School necromancy [poison]; Level ranger 3
Casting Time 1 swift action
Components V, S
Range 0 ft.
Targets one arrow or bolt
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw Fortitude negates; see text; Spell Resistance yes

You infuse a single arrow or crossbow bolt with natural venom as you fire it. In addition to its normal damage, anyone struck by this arrow or bolt is affected as if by the poison spell. If the arrow is not fired immediately, the spell ends with no effect.

Several wands of venomous bolt appear in the Serpent's Skull AP. It's not clear to me how this spell would work via a wand.

(1) The spell's casting time is a swift action, which means even during a full-attack action you could envenom one bolt or arrow; but it takes a standard action to activate a spell-trigger item, so you can't use a wand and make an attack in the same round.

(2) The spell effect ends if the bolt/arrow isn't used "immediately"...not "before your next turn" or "within one round", but immediately, so is it even possible to use the wand one round and fire the bolt/arrow the next?

(3) The spell specifies the infusion of "natural venom." A natural attack is one you make with your own body; a human swinging a dragon's severed claw at someone is using an improvised weapon, not making a natural attack. Does that apply to natural venom as well; does that mean only a 'caster with a natural venom attack can use the spell?

A bag of holding is described as follows:

This appears to be a common cloth sack about 2 feet by 4 feet in size.

Only two dimensions are given. Obviously it has thickness, even if it's only a fraction of an inch. The exact thickness isn't listed because it isn't important, but...

Does an empty bag of holding appear to be a flat, empty sack?

Regardless of what is put into the bag, it weighs a fixed Amount. This weight, and the limits in weight and volume of the bag's contents, depend on the bag's type, as shown on the table below.

Does a partially filled bag of holding still appear to be a flat, empty sack or it it obvious that it contains objects (of a size that would be noticed?) The weight remains constant but does the exterior volume change? And if not...

If a bag of holding is overloaded...the bag immediately ruptures and is ruined, and all contents are lost forever.

If both the weight and [apparent, exterior] volume remain constant, how are you supposed to tell when a bag is close to being overloaded?

Also, why have an interior volume limit at all? Volume stats are only given for containers; for anything else you might put into a bag of holding, you'd have to estimate and then track the volume of a wide variety of differently sized objects, which would bring encumbrance tracking to a whole new level of PITA.

EDIT: This grew out of a question in our most recent session, about whether a bag of holding could be folded up and placed into a normal backpack. If the bag always remains flat regardless of contents, then it can. If the bag is like Santa's toy sack, always appearing full, then it's probably got too much [apparent, exterior] volume to be stuffed into a backpack, especially if the backpack has other items in it already. It turned out that different people in the group had been imagining different things about what the bag looked like when in use.

Does anyone know the nature of Ailson Kinder's "strong disagreements with the Society?" Haven't found relevant references in Ustalav - Rule of Fear or Classic Horrors Revisited (which doesn't mean they aren't there.)

"Unless stated otherwise, retraining costs gp equal to 10 × your level × the number of days required to retrain."

"Retraining hit points takes 3 days and requires you to spend time at a martial academy, monk monastery, or with some kind of master of combat who is at least one level higher than you. At the end of the training period, increase your hit points by 1."

A 2nd level character with 20hp could spend 60gp to increase his hp total by +1 (+5%); a 10th level character with 100hp would spend 300gp to increase his increase his hp total by +1 (+1%). Paying increasingly large amounts for increasingly small benefits makes little sense, (I'd say none, except as a way to ensure all characters don't just routinely buy their way to maximum hit points -- and if they put in the time and money, why is that an issue?)

Is there (or should there be) errata that either:

- charges a flat rate for +1hp increase, by removing character level from the equation?

- grants +1hp per character level at the end of the training, again keeping the cost per hit point flat?

Pack Wild Shape:
Whenever you use the wild shape class feature, you can also transform allies when you change shape. When you use wild shape, you can expend one use of mythic power to select a number of willing allies equal to your tier. These allies take the same animal form as you do, with the same abilities as yours. Divide the duration of that use of wild shape evenly (rounded down) among yourself and the affected allies.
The transformation ends for everyone when you return to your normal form or use wild shape again. An ally can end its own transformation early as a standard action without affecting the duration for you or other allies. You must have the wild shape class feature to select this ability.

What abilities does that refer to? If a Druid with Natural Spell includes her Wizard buddy in a Pack Wild Shape, can the Wizard cast his spells in animal form?

Both the bodywraps and the amulet include this restriction: "...can grant melee weapon special abilities, so long as they can be applied to unarmed attacks. See Table: Melee Weapon Special Abilities for a list of abilities."

First, I found no weapon quality descriptions that explicitly say "can be applied to unarmed attacks." Some say "can only be applied to a melee weapon", but according to CRB "An unarmed strike is always considered a light weapon" -- so does "melee weapon only" really mean "can't be applied to a ranged weapon?"

Second, the character in question is a ratfolk with the Sharpclaw feat, which grants her two primary natural attacks, so she doesn't make unarmed attacks.

We're trying to figure out whether she can get either an AoMF with Menacing in lieu of a +1 enhancement bonus, or +2 equivalent bodywraps that are +1 Menacing:

This special ability can only be placed on melee weapons.

A menacing weapon helps allies deal with flanked foes. When the wielder is adjacent to a creature that is being flanked by an ally, the flanking bonus on attack rolls for all flanking allies increases by +2. This ability works even if the wielder is not one of the characters flanking the creature.

We just finished Trial of the Beast, apparently deviating from the expected sequence of events near the end:

So my questions are: was the party seriously expected to face that thing toe to toe, and what the heck was its CR? I asked our GM afterward and he said the module gave two options and yes, one was fighting it head on. I keep thinking there must be something in the book he missed (it's happened several times in this AP already.)

We have a party of six running through Carrion Crown:

LN Aasimar Cleric of Ragathiel (Leadership & Rage domains)
NG Human Cleric of Pharasma (Knowledge & Repose domains)
Ratfolk Beastmaster Ranger, w/badger animal companion
Ratfolk Rogue
Half-Elf Wizard
Half-orc Fighter

We're close to 6th level now. At 8th level the Cleric of Ragathiel will gain Leadership as a domain power. I'm not sure whether to attract an NPC with class levels (and if so, what kind) or a creature of some sort.

Best guess as to her Leadership score at 8th level should be around 15 or 16, so the limiting factor will be her own level; she can't attract a cohort above 6th level.

She probably will not try to collect followers during the campaign; just don't need dozens of 1st levels trailing along. If it makes any difference to the type of cohort you might suggest, she's optimized for influencing people: high CHA, plus trait/racial/feat bonuses give her Diplomacy +17, Intimidate +20 at 5th level.

Suggestions?

I've lost the ability to Hide threads on the Paizo boards when in Internet Explorer 8. At home, I use Firefox, and there's no problem. At work, MSIE is what I'm stuck with, and it worked there until...I'm not sure, a few weeks ago?

I've mentioned before, I have this odd curse on my email: No email to Paizo Customer Service is ever received the first time I send it. I have to ask for things twice.

(Seriously, I don't know what's up, but it is the email, not the excellent CS staff...they've checked this more than once and found no record of the initial email on their end, but receive it when forwarded as part of a second message.)

Anyway, I have sent two emails now, and still no response. I'd like to cancel my subscription of both the Pathfinder and Goblins comics.

How impractical would it be to split off Mythic products into a separate subscription line?

I'm not talking about future core products that have a few sidebars along the lines of "to make this bit Mythic, you can add this...", just those products wholly devoted to that style of gaming many of us may choose not to adopt.

With my current subscriber status, I'm going to end up with Mythic Adventures, Realms, Origins, and an unknown number of future products solely devoted to a play style my group will not adopt. I wonder if it's practical to recognize those products as a separate class.

I theory I can unsubscribe to a product line for a month in order to opt out of an individual product, but don't some months have more than one product shipping now? I don't want to opt out of, for example:

Mythic Realms, and miss Towns of the Inner Sea
Mythic Origins, and miss Blood of the Moon
Mythic Adventures, and miss Bestiary 4

(Those specific examples may not be good since I don't know the expected shipping dates.)

Perhaps there could be a different way to mark individual items to opt out, rather than doing it by unsubscribig to the product line?

".. get a chance to be the good guy with the Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Path!"

Shouldn't that be the default assumption for most adventure paths? Yes, neutral alignments are common. Yes, personal profit and glory motivates many PCs. But it's been said before that there aren't hordes of high level good guys in the campaign world because the PCs are intended to be the heroes.

Reading the boards here I sometimes get the sense that there are more orc or half-orc scarred witch doctor PCs running around than there are good aligned human clerics. And yeah, evil alignment isn't a prerequisite for the archetype, but note the more powerful hexes that complement it: agony, cook people, infected wounds, nightmare, death curse, dire prophecy, natural disaster. Not your typical heroes.

I'm a player in this AP, and our party has just explored the area in the Agricultural District where we found portal crystals marked with the rune of abundance.

I'm supposed to be writing up the adventure log but the last bit isn't clear to us (including the GM, who's chalking up the following description to someone on the writing/editing staff perhaps not understanding how water levels work.)

There's a tunnel leaving the room with the pool where we found the crystals, gold nuggets and other treasure. The tunnel winds for a long way and apparently comes out at the bottom of the large central lake? Does the tunnel gradually slope downward? If one end of it is open to the lake, then the lower part of the tunnel should be flooded and the flooding should terminate at whatever point in the upper part of the tunnel matches the surface level of the lake.

Apparently the description of the tunnel doesn't indicate water anywhere along its length, you just follow it for "some distance" and then find that the far end of it is underwater.

Can someone explain how this tunnel is supposed to be set up (and please explain nothing else as I'm not fishing for spoilers or hints.)

TIA.

"A potion or oil can duplicate the effect of a spell of up to 3rd level that has a casting time of less than 1 minute and targets one or more creatures or objects."

Fine. Some spells that meet those criteria seem...odd...as potions. In theory you might use a melee attack to apply an oil to a target. Or you might trick someone into drinking a potion and becoming the target of its effect.

My witch knows these spells which qualify to be brewed into potion/oil form but which might make some people scratch their heads, if for example a spell that normally has Close range is made into an oil that now requires a melee touch attack:

bestow curse
charm person
diagnose disease
ear-piercing scream
hold person
ill omen
touch of idiocy

Is the offensive use of potions clarified anywhere? Is there anything that explicitly states that any spell made into a potion or oil has its range changed to Personal or Touch as appropriate; and Target modified so that multiple creatures cannot be affected?

You sure that's the interior?

My normal movement is 30'; lacking any feats, class abilities or items that would modify my Climb rate, I can get up that cliff at 7.5' per Move action (15'/round using two Move actions.)

The DC for the 75' cliff is 20, and my Climb skill isn't high enough to make this an automatic success.

How many Climb checks to I have to make to see if I fall, make no progress or continue to ascend? One per Move action (7.5' of movement: 10 checks) or one per round (15' of movement: 5 checks?)

PCs: Paladin, Wizard, Ranger, Rogue, and two Clerics.

One of the clerics will be a LN Aasimar Cleric of Ragathiel with the Leadership and Rage domains, and will use a combination of stat bonuses, traits, feats and skill points to have a high Intimiate score.

At 8th L, that character will automatically gain the Leadership feat and can attract a cohort. I'm curious to see what people would recommend in terms of race/class/archetype for that cohort, given the Carrion Crown campaign and the party composition.

It's possible the GM may allow 3pp classes such as the Hellion or Archon from Super Genius Games, but that's not guaranteed. In any case the cohort should be humaniform rather than monstrous, a mount, etc.

I haven't read through the entire story yet (I'm waiting for Book 6 so I can do a straight read-through, and we won't be ready to start playing this for several months) but just flipping through some parts I've noticed places where the PCs are expected to make short-term alliances with Chaotic Evil creatures.

My group of players are not hack-and-slash maniacs; they do roleplay and are happy to entertain non-combat solutions to problems. However, they tend to skew very heavily toward Good themselves and paladins tend to be very comfortable in their company.

I'm concerned that the expectation of cooperation with "Eeevil" (there are at least a couple of these in Book 5, and at least one of those offers something like 16,000 XP more for cooperation than for combat) may produce some congnitive dissonance within the group.

As a general rule I'm in favor of non-combat solutions being worth more XP, but I don't like sending the message to players that the best way to succeed is to compromise their characters' principles regarding alignment.

There was a certain amount of this in Rise of the Runelords as well, but as that played out, the party never [knowingly] allied with any evil creatures: