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I'm actually playing an Enchanter Wizard in a game right now. Yeah, sometimes your Enchantment spells won't work. So what? You're a Wizard, you can easily prepare a variety of spells while still having Enchantment at your fingertips for when it does work. When Enchantment does work, it does more than just win combats; it can completely change the course of the narrative.

and the exact verbiage is far less important than the intent.

Now this is where I would disagree, because you don't have a direct link into the author's mind. You cannot know their intention was unless you had the opportunity to speak with them, you can only take a guess at it. The specific verbiage they have chosen for their rules text is how they expressed those intentions, so it's a very high bar to convince me that the specific verbiage is not what the author intended. If the rules work and don't have any obvious contradictions, then that is the intent.

Some GMs seem to think that the way to challenge players is to nerf their abilities, or say they don't work because reasons. To me this is how you aggravate players, not how you challenge them.

I'd agree, you don't go about nerfing your PC's with rulings. That just breeds resentment. It should be reserved for cases where something is really truly game-breaking.

Something that is impossible in the real-world isn't necessarily magical in the Pathfinder world. Many (Ex) abilities are quite impossible by realistic standards, but are still non-magical in game terms. Don't overthink it, this is quite literally a fantasy.

to make it harder to teleport past the adventure or defeat the enemy boss in one round.

Counter-intuitively I think the solution to that problem is actually a spellcasting buff. I feel that once you're in the level 10+ range you should be able to trivialize overland travel through the material plane, and the current version of Teleport is about right for this purpose. Teleportation is a useful narrative device for when the scope of the adventure starts to broaden and you don't want your heroes wasting weeks or months traveling from point A to point B, and I wouldn't want it any weaker than it is. If you know where you're going, you should be able to pop over there.

The problem is the lack of level-appropriate countermeasures when it comes to using teleportation to infiltrate a villain's stronghold. If you were to buff some niche defensive spells to include anti-teleportation utility (just off the top of my head, Cursed Terrain would work perfectly in this context) that would put a stop to this kind of behavior. If anti-teleportation magic was a dime a dozen such that even a mid-level NPC underling Wizard could ward a fortress it would be foolhardy to teleport directly into a high-level villain's domain.

I wasn't a huge fan of Strange Aeons book 4

Book 4 is the most traditional-feeling of the AP, which makes it a bit of a come-down.

I think the issue with book 4 is that it's literally in the shadow of an incredible chapter. In and of itself it's fine, as good as books 5 and 6.

I think the biggest issue with book 4 is that in principle it's a free-form horror investigation but it was implemented as a railroad. This creates a problem because the PC's have enough information at the outset of this adventure to deduce any of the three cities as possible avenues of investigation. Since the cities are meant to be tackled in a specific order this means that the moment the PC's skip any section of the AP they will have no reason to return to it. A clever party could potentially skip almost the entire book.

Although it's currently on hold, I have started a conversion of Age of Ages to 1E. Book 1 is fully converted and book 2 has been sitting on the backburner for the past few months. I do plan on finishing the project eventually, but right now I've got too many other things going on and it's not something I'll half-ass.

The manifestation of fireball is both from the caster and where it lands. It's not unreasonable to assume that teleport spells would also have an emanation at both points of the teleport. But without spellcraft, you'd just know that some magic thing happened in a place. You'd need a successful spellcraft check to know which magic thing happened there.

The key point here is invisibility; while the FAQ did establish that there are emanations, it doesn't address how they interact with other effects like invisibility. To this day there is no resolution on whether an invisibility spell makes your spell emanations invisible as well. Expect table variations on that one.

The pronoun they used is based on the gender of the iconic character corresponding to the class in question. The iconic Barbarian is a women therefor when discussing Barbarian content the pronoun used is "she" while the iconic Fighter is a man therefor when discussing Fighter content the pronoun used is "he". Feats and spells, on the other hand, typically use the pronoun "you" instead.

The main issue in doing a reverse conversion is that PF1 does not have proper "targets" and even if it did, expectations vary way too much to have a satisfying result all the time, at least in term of monsters.

There are explicit monster creation guidelines. I statted all the monsters to be relatively close to guidelines. Where there is a great deal of subjectivity is in abilities, and I feel all these abilities are CR-appropriate. There has been power creep in terms of abilities (if you compare Bestiary 1 monsters with Bestiary 6 monsters you'll find that their raw stats are about the same at any given CR, but the quantity and potency of abilities is much higher) but the converted monsters are very much in line with expectations in the later bestiaries.

There will always be substantial table variation in PF1 due to the huge differences between optimization levels, but that's ultimately up to the GM to understand the needs of their own table. I kept to typical adventure path difficulty with generally low difficulty, allowing GM's to easily scale up by adding more enemies. You can and should tweak encounters to meet the needs of your specific table.

As for the items, a PF1 lesser talisman (1 use) of freedom of movement lasts for 3 seconds, triggers when you become movement impaired, and cost 900 gp. The Feather Step Stone is a swift action 1 round freedom of movement, but costs 50 gp. So the item should actually cost something like 300 gp.

A potion of Feather Step costs 50 gp and provides 10 minutes of effect. The feather step stone provides 1 round for 50 gp, but can be activated as a swift. Honestly, now that I'm looking at it, I think 50 gp might be overpriced if anything.

I didnt notice the Jade Cat was a consumable. But still the cost ends up too cheap since the cost would be at least 100 gp due to being made from a 2nd level spell. Btw you are still having 3 effects for that price which isnt bad.

How is this equivalent to a 2nd level spell? The falling effect is essentially a vastly inferior version of feather fall, and the other effects are rather specific (I'm not aware of any spell that have specifically this effect). Certainly it's not comparable to the 2nd level Air Step spell.

Going from 15,000 gp to 500 gp just doesnt work no matter how you put it. You are pricing a command word 1/week item as a single use item. Specially considering that cheapest Figurine, the Silver Raven, is priced at 3,800 gp CL 6; Even dividing the CL of the Silver Raven by half leaves the price at 1,900 gp not 500. Also, all Figurines use Animate Objects to craft them.

Alternately, a trained guard dog costs 25 gp. The Onyx dog does have a convenience factor over a trained guard dog in that you can pocket it in figurine form and don't need to actually have a dog following you, and that's why it costs 20 times as much.

That is a fair point on the Animate Object spell component and I have changed that.

The Talisman is a single-use item that can only be activated when you roll very specific numbers and is completely wasted if you do not confirm your critical threat. This makes it very janky and unreliable. It's significantly weaker than a strong 1st level buff potion, such as a potion of Enlarge Person. Frankly I think it might overpriced even at 50 gp.

Jade Cat is a single-use item that lasts one minute; Feather Step Slippers are 10 minutes per day. Permanent items are vastly more expensive than single-use ones.

As for the Onyx dog, it's a combination of this onyx dog being significantly worse and lacking the main advantages of the more expensive one, and the more expensive one being brutally overpriced.

I'm almost always stuck in GM'ing duty (not that I necessarily object) so most of my building is for NPC's. I've gotta say that I really love the flexibility of the Fighter in the "complete" Pathfinder with all splatbooks, and how it serves as a beautiful tabula rasa for a combat-focused NPC that can be taken in any direction you choose. It's effective, versatile, and can be used for a wide variety of concepts.

I have to admit I have a soft spot for Wizards. While they aren't my favorite class from a purely mechanical perspective (Sorcerer takes that distinction) they really allow me a degree of control over the flow of combat. After all, if a Wizard sets up a Wall of Force to separate a specific party member it looks a legitimate combat strategy, when in fact it was a narrative ploy on the party of the GM to create a specific 1 on 1 scenario between a party member and an NPC antagonist. Wizards can carry a single copy of a wide range of spells that allow me to determine not only the flow of combat, but also the events leading up to it. The one thing is that you absolutely need to pull your punches with NPC Wizards, since if played too well they can completely foreclose the party's options and put them in no-win situations, and that's just not fun.

So when creating/modifying monsters how much do things like immunity and resistance etc., affect CR?

This is a purely subjective, and are things the GM needs to consider in the overall balance of the monster. In general a monster's offensive capabilities are more impactful than defensive ones, and the only defensive abilities you should be mindful of are those that render a monster completely impervious to common tactics.

He's been trying to combine the various types of golems with the hopeful (though likely not entirely fulfilled) end goal of creating a golem with all of the benefits of multiple golem types without any of their weaknesses. The idea would be to combine say Clay, Iron and Stone golems to get their advantages (and any healing from certain damage types) without suffering the susceptibility to slow and the like.

Not at all; golem weaknesses are too specific and circumstantial for removing them to be worth an increase in CR. Since you're keeping all the other stats the same, the CR shouldn't change. CR is only a rough ballpark estimate in how challenging a monster is to defeat; depending on party composition or situation it could be much easier or harder. Obscure or situational weaknesses therefor should not factor in.

A good way to think about this is through CR equivalencies: two CR 14 monsters should be roughly as challenging as three CR 13 monsters, since both are CR 16 encounters. Does the removal of weaknesses make two Iron Golems as challenging as three standard Iron Golems with their weaknesses? In almost all cases the answer is obviously "no", the loss of one body drastically cuts the HP and damage output of this mob and renders them much easier to brute force regardless of any weaknesses.

You can’t do that the rules won’t let you… Blood Rager is a mix of barbarian and sorcerer

You cannot multi class as a Barb or a sorcerer

This is untrue. This was a rule in the original beta test of the ACG, but it was removed from the final printing. There is no restriction on multiclassing Bloodrager/Barbarian/Sorcerer.

We're pretty much all pedantic nerds here, which means we do, in fact, pay attention to fine details. Fine details such as the fact that you just marked your own post as a favorite ;-)

Unfortunately you can't choose not to take class features. This is an unusual circumstance, and the best you could do is pick an archetype that trades away Monster Lore and Cunning Initiative.

1) Inconsistent, but potentially powerful. The Consume Life ability doesn't work if you (or an ally) knock an enemy straight from above 0 to dead in a single hit, doesn't work if they're a construct, swarm, or undead, and doesn't work if you're in a social situation that doesn't strictly involve combat, and doesn't work when you need to capture enemies alive or (since you're non-evil) it would be immoral to execute them. That's a long list of caveats. However, when it does work you can have virtually limitless arcane reservoir which is very cool. Note that Necromantic Focus doesn't prevent you from replacing necromancy spells using Quick Study, so it's not as limiting as it first appears.

2) Put the 18 in intelligence, preferably with a racial bonus to back it up, the 15's in Dexterity and Constitution, and the others don't really matter. Putting the 8 in strength will mean bad carrying capacity, putting it in wisdom will mean bad will saves, and putting it in charisma will mean bad social skills.

blahpers wrote:

Wait, are we talking gender or biological sex? Changing gender is a bit more complicated.

Biological. If a spell can change a human into a dragon or elemental, just changing their gender should be easy.

You're conflating "gender" and "sex". They're two different things that are commonly mistaken as synonyms. It's generally understood that the Girdle of Opposite Gender just swaps your sex and nothing else gender-related (which is a nuanced subject, so I'll just link a Wikipedia article rather than going into detail of gender here). blahpers was pointing out that if it actually swapped gender it would be drastically more complicated.

Given the plethora of half-breeds implicit in the Pathfinder rules, I tend to think that "life finds a way" is a good rule of thumb to go with. Exactly how is best left unmentioned.

I've been working on and off on a Age of Ashes Conversion Guide which, of course, converts all PF2 monsters to an equivalent PF1 statblock. I've finished converting book 1 and have already converted all the monsters for book (although nothing else as of yet; working on the NPC's currently, then I'll get around to specific conversion notes for events and areas in the adventure).

I'm doubtful that anything like this would be a viable commercial endeavor, and it's much more realistic as just something that fans can do and post conversions. The conversion process itself isn't too hard if you have the system mastery to know how to do it, but it is time consuming if you want to do a good job of it).

I figured "tome eater" was a joke about consuming knowledge. But nope. Literally eats books.

My first introduction to that archetype was in an AP. Three glorious words: Otyugh Tome Eater.

How is Vital Strike, already a mediocre feat, even useful to any sort of Wizard? Seems like a poor idea from the start. High BaB requirement feats are supposed to be inaccessible to Wizards ...

It's almost certainly a polymorph build that uses a natural attack that has a huge number of damage dice to begin with. Normally these kinds of builds are done with the Druid, but there's no reason you couldn't do it as a Wizard, provided you go into EK to actually meet the feat prerequisites.

It's a 3.5 feat that never got converted to Pathfinder, sadly. Magical Knack is the closest we have.

Tangentially related, we have the Prestigious Spellcaster feat. It only works on prestige classes with "dead" spellcasting levels, and is only gives back one level, but it gives you spells known and spell slots and not just caster level.

Are your players racist, or do you suspect them to be so? If not then I don't really see how this is a problem. If so then you might want to find new players anyway.

If you wait until you've already made your players uncomfortable with the content or presentation of your campaign, then you waited too long. It's not that Captain Morgan is intentionally including racist caricatures in his game (because it seems very clear to me from what he's said that he would never do that, and his players doubtlessly know him better than I do), but rather that the presentation of the charau-ka veers close enough to an existing caricature that real-world racists use. Even though it's not the intended interpretation, that connection could make the experience very uncomfortable for one or more players, which is the kind of intrusion we don't want to seep into our escapism.

Claxon covered the big issues.

It's worth noting that at these levels that the Shadow Enhancement for armor is really affordable at these levels. +5 competence bonus to stealth for 3750 gp and effectively being a slotless augmentation of your armor is a really sweet deal. Improved and Greater are also incredible, but those get very pricey very fast.

Always remember to apply bonuses and penalties! Enemies making opposed perception checks take a -1 penalty for every 10 feet of distance between you. If you're sneaking past at a 30 ft distance, that's a free -3 to their perception. Bad lighting and conditions can also help you.

The big problem with stealth is party dynamics. Unless the entire party is built for stealth, some people will be left out of stealthy shenanigans and that can cause friction. If your party is open to stealthy tactics, however, it's a great option that can frequently be part of your overall solutions.

2. I've not actually chosen a race for this build, but I was considering human yes, and the FCB for it wasn't quite the consideration but it might be for this.

It's worth noting that the Human subtype is sufficient to meet the prerequisites in this case. That means that half-elves and half-orcs qualify, and there are alternative racial traits for many outsider races (like Ifrit or Aasimar) that give them the human subtype and qualify for this FCB.

Mobile Bulwark Style. The feat line is superior to the archetype and many benefits don't stack, so I'd not take the archetype.

Too many feats out there to keep track of. Good that someone remembered that one.

Also, I recalled that there's is a feat called the Tower Shield Specialist that lets you apply your armor training bonus to tower shields.

No; the loss of spells known is absolutely crippling and not worthwhile. If you want to have access to the healing spells and still do some blasting, just take Blood Havoc as a Unicorn Sorcerer; you won't be a specialized blaster without taking the appropriate bloodline, but you'll still be decent.

I don't think you can take a bloodline mutation with crossblooded.

Crossblooded Sorcerers can only take bloodline mutations in the place of bloodline feats, so it is substantially delayed but you can get all three of them.

Stormborn isn't a mutation that I'm aware of, Avr. Unless we're talking about a different bloodline. But I could just do that.

avr is presuming (and I am, for that matter) that if you're taking the Stormborn bloodline you intend to use blasting spells of the lightning or sonic damage type. Ordinarily you would use the Blood Havoc bloodline mutation in this case, which allows you to trade away your 1st level bloodline power in exchange to deal +1 damage per damage die rolled. However, bloodline mutations cannot be swapped out in this manner if an archetype has modified your bloodline... which crossblooded does.

Other question in relation, would taking White Mage archetype arcanist still allow me to take School Understanding exploit so I could get admixture school from evocation or not?

The White Mage is eligible for the School Understanding exploit just like any other Arcanist, and Admixture is a valid choice. So yes, you could do this.

I did not find Roderic's Cove to be anything special on read through, but the rest ends up feeling pretty epic.

I think one thing we can agree upon, if nothing else, is that Roderic's Cove does not fit in tone or style with the rest of the AP. It's an open sandbox focused on the immediate problems of a small rural town, with a strong focus on the personal connections your party builds with that town and its inhabitants. Then the rest of the AP is an extremely linear series of escalating conflicts, with the PC's never staying in one place for long and where the only NPC's with names worth remembering are the handful of characters of legendary proportions.

By book 2 it is reasonably clear where things are going, but still leaves plenty of mystery.

That's sort of where I see the problem; book 2 tells you where it's going... and then that plot hook is summarily ignored for the next three volumes as it throws a breadcrumb trail of tangentially-related adversaries in your general direction. It's not until book 5 that you actually pick up on the trail of Alaznist, and even then you don't really find out anything of substance until the massive exposition dump at the start of book 6.

Animal Domain or the Animal Ally feat will do it. The Boon Companion feat can help bring the progression up to match that of a Cavalier or Druid.

Just increase the loot drops in combat encounters. Find an NPC that would otherwise have masterwork weaponry and give him a +1 weapon instead. Or put a wand in another NPC's back pocket. Or maybe that NPC wizard the party defeated had like 50 spells transcribed into his spellbook and it's worth around 2000 gp. This is believable treasure that these kinds of adversaries might reasonably own, and it doesn't take long for generous drops like these to bring up the party's overall wealth level.

I created a Random Spellbook Generator a few years back that could help tremendously with filling out spell lists. This makes it really easy to get a baseline selection of spells, and then you can just swap out a few to personalize the list. This really takes the edge off the most time-consuming part of producing wizard NPC's.

In terms of 4th-8th level wizards, I actually do have a 6th one on-hand that I statted up recently and have in a presentable form:

The Antipaladin code of conduct actually has a nice out: "An antipaladin’s code requires that he place his own interests and desires above all else" Antipaladins are allowed to do nice things, so long as it's for a selfish reason.

The Combined Spells class feature isn't very relevant. It's very rare that you'll want to spend a 4th level spell slot with your arcane class to cast a 3rd level divine spell or vice-versa, and even less so since you're spontaneous on both sides. I've run Mystic Theurge NPC's a few times, and have never had occasion to use the Combined Spells. However, the very delayed spell level progression is a substantial issue. I'm not sure from the context of this thread whether you're starting at higher levels or playing through the intervening levels, but it bears repeating that Sorc/Oracle Theurge is just plain nasty to play at low levels.

Scrolls are not useful for blasting. They're expensive and use minimum caster level and DC, so they tend to deal far less damage. If you want to blast, make sure the spells are on your list of spells known. Scrolls are much better when reserved for utility spells.

The spell doesn't address whether the grease is visible, which leads me to believe that it is visible. Being transparent and difficult to spot would be a very noteworthy property, and I would expect to see a mention to perception DC's if that were the case.

I wish I was running this AP in the near future now so I could use it... sadly, my groups will likely stick with 1st edition for years (especially as it will TAKE years to finish Hell's Rebels with one 4-hour session every 2-4 weeks, and my RoW game being every other week) so by then I'll probably sadly forget. :/

I don't know if it'll be useful to you given your group is currently preoccupied, but I did do a 1st edition Conversion guide for Hellknight Hill (direct google doc link), and plan to convert the entire AP in time.

A) At high levels this will work. At low levels it will be utter maoschism. As avr points out it's well into its groove by 13th, but at something like 9th level you'll still be on 2nd level spells while a Wizard has 5th levle spells.

B) If you're going with the Stormborne bloodline, then the Stormsoul is the obvious choice. It literally gets a bonus for having that bloodline!

That and +1 to electrical attacks.

Unfortunately the Stormborn bloodline only improves your spell DC's, not damage, and damage is your problem. Your unfavorable multiclassing really hurts you in this regard. To rectify that I recommend taking the Blood Havoc bloodline mutation and the Spell Specialization feat to help compensate for this. Empower Spell would be very helpful as well.

At high levels, using Magical Lineage and Spell Perfection on Chain Lighting would allow you to cast Quickened Chain Lightning as a swift action using only standard 6th level slots. Very nice for electric blasters, letting you blast while casting another spell on the same turn. You can take the Exemplar of Mystic Secrets trait, along with the Additional Traits feat, to take both Magical Knack and Magical Lineage.

A recent thread got me thinking about doing conversions from Pathfinder 2nd edition back to Pathfinder 1st edition, and I decided to take a stab at Hellknight Hill to see how much work it would be to convert. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't too bad. I may very well convert the rest of the AP.

>> Link the Conversion Guide <<

I haven't had a chance to run this yet (and when I do it will probably be a solitaire mock run because my players are in the middle of another campaign) but I think this is sufficient to run it. I'm interested to hear any feedback people have.

Monsters and magical items were converted to their PF1 equivalents, and where ones didn't exist I statted them up. XP awards were a little harder, but based on the party's expected APL it was able to ballpark it. I've done a more thorough pass the XP totals and it holds pretty close to the APL expectations set forth in the adventure overview (if you fully-explore the dungeon and solve most of the challenges, you will reach the expected levels). I only eye-balled loot; it looks fine, I'll go over it with a fine-toothed comb later.

Skill checks are mostly unchanged, just mapping each skill to its context- appropriate PF1 counterpart. Since PF1 and PF2 skill checks are pretty close at low levels the DC's didn't need to change in most cases. Since we have more obscure skills in PF1, I did lower the DC of more obscure skill checks, and a few checks I changed to better comport with PF1 guidelines. I did consider raising the DC's for things that we can take 20 on with no risk of failure, but in the end I only did that with a couple Disable Device checks. Saving throw DC's, where called for, are reduced since PF1 saves are significantly lower than PF2 saves.

The one thing that really bothers me is that Mephit encounter. I absolutely love that encounter, but when converted back to 1st edition it's a CR 5 encounter that occurs when the party is still 1st level. The combination of DR/magic, fast healing, an SLA that deals just enough damage to 1-shot a 1st level character, and a very deadly environmental hazard (smoke is way more dangerous in PF1 than it is in PF2) make this encounter incredibly deadly. I've made some modifications to hopefully make it less deadly, but I'm still afraid because... well, it's still a nasty encounter. I'd love any feedback or opinions other people have on this one.

Just a few other thoughts on the various conversions:

Phalanx Fighting is a single Class Ability: no Feat Tax. When it comes to cost, 1 is better than 2.

Losing Weapon Training is vastly worse than paying 2 feats. Fighters have no shortage of bonus feats. What they need are strong options to spend them on, and Weapon Training is a prerequisite for some of Fighter's best options. Heck, taking a 2-level alchemist dip for a vestigial arm is less expensive than losing Weapon Training.

Shield Brace lets you fight with a pole arm while using a shield, but Pike and Shield lets you 2 weapon fight with Pole Arm and Shield (or Armor Spikes).

If you're using a reach weapon then this doesn't work without some way to shorten the haft, since reach weapons and shields don't have overlapping threat range. A spiked shield is still nice so you have an option for enemies that close in tightly, but you wouldn't two-weapon fight with it.

Plus, using shield Brace comes with an Attack Penalty = the Armor Check Penalty of the Shield: -1 for a Light Shield, -2 for a Heavy Shield.

Masterwork eliminates the penalty for the light shield, and personally I don't find heavy shields worth using. They completely occupy your hand, and if your other hand is occupied by a weapon this leaves you without any free hands to do things like open doors, manipulate/grab objects, drink a potion, etc. I find that loss of flexibility isn't worth a mere 1 extra point of AC over what the light shield offers. (edit, and as Wonderstell notes you can use unusual materials to eliminate the heavy shield ACP too)

Here's a build that uses Phalanx Solder, uses a Pole Arm, and gets Attacks of Opportunity, and uses Tripping.

...Halberd...

Why even use the Phalanx Soldier archetype in the first place if you're just going to use a halberd? The entire point of the archetype is using reach weapons in one hand. It's completely pointless for anything else since you could have just used a one-handed weapon instead.

How's that?

Characters with the armor training class feature can ignore the Shield Focus feat as a prerequisite for shield mastery feats. Armor Training, Weapon Training, and Bravery have all been stealth-buffed with successive releases because there are very powerful options that take them as prerequisites or give additional bonuses for having them. Most old Fighter archetypes are just straight downgrades now because they lock you out of your best options.

I'm not aware of this. Which Feat?

Armed Bravery. It's an Advanced Weapon Training option, but Fighters can take that as a bonus feat once they have Weapon Training. At the levels we're talking about it's not any better than Iron Will, but at higher levels +4 or +5 to all will saves is so good as to be basically mandatory, and is a huge loss for any Fighter archetypes that trade off Bravery or Weapon Training.

Someone posted a few years back and I'm cuirous how they have so many attacks at 5th lvl

They can't. Whoever posted this misunderstood how Double-Barreled pistols work.

For skill feats, the Pf1 prerequisites would be x number of ranks in the skill. It should just be a matter of looking at when expert, master, etc kick in for Pf2 and assigning them to a similar level.

That's not quite the case, though; in PF2 the proficiency bumps don't apply automatically when you reach that level, and you must increase each skill individually when you get skill increases every second level. With the exception of rogues (who get more skill proficiency advancements) most characters only get 3 skills with higher proficiency than trained over the course of their career. This is a significant build consideration, and I feel simply tying proficiency grades to skill ranks loses this nuance.

Actually, coming up with a completely original effect might be the best way to go.

Fair enough; it's not so much a conversion as a new take, but I'll bite. I decided to make it a half-powered version of the Eldritch Heritage feat. It limits you to selecting only active-use powers (which are inferior to the passive ones) and reduces the number of uses per day.

Dragon Scholar
You gain Draconic as a bonus language. Select one Sorcerer bloodline that has a 1st level power that can be used 3+Cha times per day (or 3+Cha rounds per day). You can use this power 3 times per day, using your character level as your Sorcerer class level. This counts as having the Eldritch Heritage feat in this bloodline for the purposes of meeting prerequisites. If you are a Sorcerer or later take class levels in Sorcerer, you instead treat your Sorcerer level as 2 levels higher when determining the effects of your bloodline powers.

The [Evil] descriptor has historically been applied rather inconsistently. I pay little heed to alignment descriptors, myself, and I'd advise GM's to simply apply their own judgement in these sorts of cases.

Did you look at converting the Campaign background into traits?

More generally, I've been thinking of how to best convert the skill feats. This is a bit tricky since we don't have proficiency grades or degrees of success so many of them don't convert back cleanly. I'm very interested in doing it right.

If you just want quick-and-dirty conversions, I think I can whip something out for you:

Finished the last of the monster conversions

For the Hellcrown, I decided to use its PF2 constitution score as its PF1 charisma (which is a more faithful conversion for undead creatures). Its low PF2 strength score meant its damage output was much too low when converted back to PF1, so I raised its strength and the damage die of the nail attack to compensate, as well as gave it the Rapid Shot feat as a bonus feat so it could make multiple attacks when full attacking.

The Tixitog converted surprisingly well. It gets more attacks per round from PF1's more generous rule for natural attacks, but the attacks deal less damage due to PF1 having lower damage dice for natural attacks. When converting over the tongue, I decided to just make it grab the target. Overall the Tixitog is a little on the fragile side so a little bit more offensive punch was merited.

Moving on to the Grauladon, this one proved pretty easy. At first I was concerned because a large-sized dragon is going to have pretty solid stats and could be too much for CR 2, but it turned out fine. Sickened doesn't quite work the same way in PF1 as it does in PF2, so I just gave it a flat 1 minute duration.

The Gravesshell has too many natural attacks, so I removed its claw. Otherwise it converted surprisingly well for a large-sized CR 1 monster.

I did a couple conversions to get you started. The stats aren't too hard; you just convert over what you can (+6 strength modifier in PF2 is equal to 22 strength in PF1), cross-reference with PF1 monster creation guidelines, and recalculate other stats from there. The abilities are a little trickier, but I think I kept with the spirit of the creations.

For the Doorwarden I removed the redundant reactions and changed the others to better comport with PF1. After doing a faithful conversion, I added 2 points of Intelligence so it could be invested in two skills (Intimidate and Perception) to better fit with the abilities of its PF2 counterpart. It's overall above-average for a CR 5 monster, so I decided against adding the SR a construct would normally have (it's still got regular construct immunities, however).

Emperor Bird was a pretty effortless conversion. The only question was how to handle the degrees of success. In the end, I decided to cut to go with a weaker version of its critical failure effect.

The fastest way to qualify is really cheeky, but can be done at 5th level. You qualify using the Teleportation Mastery feat. A Weapon Master Fighter 4 / Barbarian 1 (you can substitute any class with strong fortitude saves) can use their Fighter bonus feat on Advanced Weapon Training and use that to select an Item Mastery feat. This leaves your regular 5th level feat available for Dimensional Agility.

Other than that, 7th is the earliest it's possible to get Dimensional Agility, and even then most builds are waiting until 9th. The combination of high prerequisites and a long feat chain severely limits what kinds of builds can realistically go for the Dimensional Dervish approach. It comes so late that just stopping at Dimensional Agility and using Quickened Dimension Door is a much more appealing alternative, one that doesn't incur a tight range limit on you (although it does consume your swift action economy, which can be a big deal for some builds). If you had some way of getting Dimension Door as a SLA you could qualify earlier, but I don't believe anything other than the Item Mastery route is possible. The Shift power of the Teleportation subschool wizard is sometimes mentioned, but it's a supernatural ability that works like Dimension Door rather than a spell-like ability proper so it doesn't qualify you for the feat (it does benefit from the feat, however)

7th level is the earliest you can conventionally qualify. Summoner, Travel Domain Cleric, Witch, and Wizard can all qualify. The Summoner isn't conventionally a melee attacker, but he's a 3/4 BAB 6-level caster who doesn't care about spell DC's or require much in the way of feat investment so you can definitely build him that way if you want. Cleric is well-suited to pulling this off, although you'll need to invest even more feats to get around the limit on domain slots so you can cast ddoor more than once per day. Witch is the interesting one, since Strength patron Witches usually delay their entry into Eldritch Knight until after they have 8 levels of Witch to get their 4th level patron spell, which means you could take Dimensional Agility as your 7th level feat and start the feat chain early. For a Wizard, though, if you're aiming for EK then you really don't want to delay.

In terms of 9th level entry you have Eldritch Knight builds, Horizon Walkers, and Unchained Monks. Magus and other 6-level casters qualify at 11th level.

Flicking Step I think is intended to allow non-caster martial types access to the chain. But you can't take it until 9th level. There's also teleportation mastery which can be picked up as early as 4th level (based on the skill pre-req) but you'd only be able to use it once per day. Not sure useful it is having multiple feats, much less an entire build that hinges on a once per day ability. :/

Keep in mind that Teleportation Mastery is not a combat feat, and can't be taken as a Fighter bonus feat as a result. So although you can qualify at 4th you can't take it until 5th.

Flickering Step has the interesting property of allowing you to treat the Dimensional Agility feat chain as combat feats, but the fact that it takes up your 9th level feat slot and requires you to have Fighter levels to benefit from that means I can't see a good way of using that.

It looks like you've got a very ranged-focused party, so why not take the Plant patron to get access to the Entangle spell? This is an absolutely lovely spell to have if you've got lots of ranged attackers in the party.

She escaped her unlife which was her whole goal. Which is something for PCs to think about. Their sacrifice might permanently destroy Tar-Baphon without needing to destroy his phylactery. Of course it actually leaves it vague if it does destroy her permanently but still.

The PC's don't know that she was intentionally trying to destroy herself permanently. All they see is someone who was attempting to combat the Whispering Tyrant, and now the only person they know who was both willing and powerful enough to actually rival him is gone.

Two shards are required for Radiant Fire to be used, and it's entirely possibly that it needed the "main one" in his hand to even function in the first place.

Based on how the AP is written I would agree that this is the case, that the Whispering Tyrant requires the specific shard that's in his hand. However, the point is that the PC's have no way of knowing that this is the case.

This squarely falls into "easier said than done", no one knows where the remaining shards are, and even if they did that doesn't stop Tar-baphon's advance on Absalom.

In other words, a level-appropriate challenge for 16+ adventurers. They presumably have access to powerful divination magic, have a readily available focus (their obols) for such divination spells to locate the shards, and a level of power appropriate to seek out and confront whatever powerful minions Tar-Baphon has entrusted the shards to.

And if destroying all the remaining shards doesn't stop the Whispering Tyrant's advance on Absolom, then neither will the "heroic sacrifice", as he's still got his conventional undead forces and mythic power in either event.

If. The more likely outcome is they kill the Daemon and get him down to 250 hp. Which is more likely since the party doesn't have any time to prep for the fight.

I'd completely disagree. The daemon is a complete schmuck compared to Tar-Baphon and wasting your time attacking it is utterly foolish. Put bluntly, if the Daemon is actually a threat to your party then Tar-Baphon is probably going to TPK you in no more than 2 rounds.

Destroying his body does nothing to free the shard. It's as bound to him as the obols are to the PCs; that bond is the only thing that allows him to even use the Radiant Fire in the first place. After all, he's a lich, and the thing is described as causing him continual pain - don't you think he's tried to remove it?

He presumably never tried destroying himself, but it is true that this isn't addressed by the AP.

-The Heroic Final Sacrifice is an established trope that resonates with a lot of people. Properly set up, I believe the ending can be very satisfying to a group.

I would argue that's the key problem with book 6: this heroic sacrifice was not well set up. It's not that a heroic sacrifices are necessarily unsatisfying, it's that this heroic sacrifice is unsatisfying.

First, the AP does a very poor job of telegraphing its own direction. The whole heroic sacrifice thing comes out of left field in book 5, and is strongly undermined by Arazni's sacrifice in book 4. While it may have been the author's intent for Arazni's sacrifice to foreshadow the PC's own and serve as an example to follow, in reality she achieved nothing of consequence. As a result it feels much more like a parable of foolishness than an example to follow.

Second, the PC's actually don't have enough information to commit to the sacrifice, since they have no reason to believe that the Whispering Tyrant needs the specific shard in his hand to act as a focus. The Whispering Tyrant still has 4-5 shards remaining after the sacrifice, and if he can use one of them as a replacement focus then - just like Arazni - they'll have achieved nothing of consequence.

Thirdly, there's a fairly obvious non-suicidal course of action for the PC's to take: finding and destroying the 6 remaining shards. A heroic sacrifice just becomes parody fodder when there's a non-suicidal course of action that makes just as much sense.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I would say the PC's are too powerful by the end of this AP for the heroic sacrifice to work. You can say that an 18th level party "won't cut it", but the fact is that if you can get him down to 150 then you can get him down to 0. His phylactery is well and thoroughly beyond the PC's grasp, but they can destroy his current form and - by extension - relieve him of the shard in his hand.

Question. I've realized ... a solution to the conundrum regarding the Pcs fate, and i've noticed it's not been proposed yet.

Basically, to get a good ending you just need to ...

The AP simply doesn't address what happens if the PC's do this. Given the kind of power an 18th level party can wield, especially when they've made specific preparations for a particular foe, it seems fairly likely this could happen. He may be mythic, but he still only gets one immediate action per round and could be easily overwhelmed by sheer action economy - provided the players have enough power to follow through. A single optimized blast spell or full attack from a martial could easily deal 150 if it hits cleanly.

The AP also doesn't address other obvious courses of action the players might take:

His statblock doesn't list any contingencies declared, but he can cast the spell, so he might have some to protect him from being one shot.

We know what his Contingency is from book 4; it's to teleport away when the Radiant Fire is activated while he's within its area of effect. He already pulled this stunt once on Arazni, no reason he wouldn't have the same Contingency prepped this time around.

Why not take the Healer's Hands feat instead of multiclassing? It's a pretty solid option for a character who wants to blend a little healing into their character. If you're willing to consider classes other than the Summoner, other options might be the Unicorn Bloodline Sorcerer with some summon-focused feats, or the Monster Tactician Inquisitor. Those are characters that can do both summoning and healing effectively.