Darwin's page

The wife has a question on metamagic, sorcerors, and how they learn spells.

hypothetical:

Sorceror has the Enlarge Spell metamagic feat, which adds 1 to the spell level. Magic missile is 1st level, enlarged is 2nd. Could a sorcerer 'learn' Enlarged Magic Missile for a 2nd level spell? Thus it would be a standard casting action instead of full round.

I don't see any problem with this, learning a metamagic'd spell as the standard version to cast. Obviously, the sorceror can't use the standard version of the spell, and it's a higher level, balancing it out. What do folks think about this?

As far as I can tell, there's no way of assuming the shape of a monstrous humanoid with the Pathfinder rules. Polymorph covers animal, humanoid, or elemental. Greater Polymorph adds dragon and plant. Beast Shape gets animal and magical beast forms. Alter Self just gets humanoid.

I also find it weird that druids don't get Beast Shape. I was thinking that Monstrous Humanoid would make a decent Wild Shape ability, but there's no possibility of that anywhere in the roles that I can see. (Why
restrict druids from becoming centaurs, for example?) While druids do get, essentially, Beast Shape in their wild shape ability, I don't see any particular reason to restrict the spell from them--or even from rangers.

What do folks here think?

So importing some 3.5 classes here, and I want to see how the Factotum will slot in. Has anyone else looked at this? It's also a great opportunity to fix anything that was wonly with the Factotum as it was originally written.

Okay well first thing, the Factotum has all skills as class skills. With Pathfinder's change to class skills this may be overkill. I'm not sure how to fix this.

obviously channeling positive energy will be the same as a cleric doing that, which is a bit of a buff any way you look at it.

Spears and other polearms were the kings of the battlefield up until there were practical battle firearms. The sword was a trusty sidearm for those who could afford it, but the primary implement of war for all, from peasant to king has been the spear. Why are they always so poorly represented in RPGs?

So I ask, how can the spear be improved, without overcomplicating its use? 3.5 and previous editions have always given the spear it a lackluster back seat to other more glamorous weapons like the sword and the axe, when it should really be the first choice of anyone who takes up arms for a living.