Deriku Stands on the Spiral's page

The Ritualist prestige class from the Player Companion: Chronicle of Legends is really cool, as I've been wanting to play an occult ritual-focused character for a while. Its fifth level ability, expedited rituals, reads thusly:

The confusion that I'm having comes from the fact that the level of the ritual is equal to the number of checks required, and the casting time is equal to 10 minutes, or 1 hour, times the ritual level.

If you have to make one skill check per time period, what benefit does the expedited rituals class ability give? Do we just assume that the very last skill check is performed at the very beginning of its 10-minute casting block and you get to shave off those last 10 minutes?

Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere, but I didn't find clear answers after combing the boards.

A question about permanent and temporary ability score bonuses of a non-stacking type (say, enhancement bonuses) and odd ability scores:

If a creature with an odd-numbered ability score has an odd-numbered permanent bonus to that ability score (resulting in an even-numbered ability score and a higher ability score modifier), and then gains a higher, even-numbered temporary bonus of the same (non-stacking) type to that ability score, "For every two points of increase to a single ability," does the creature "apply a +1 bonus to the skills and statistics listed with the relevant ability", or does the fact that the permanent enhancement bonus is already providing an overall numeric increase override the "+1 bonus to skills and statistics" that the temporary enhancement bonus would normally give?

(note: I am aware that enhancement bonuses should normally be an even amount, but I'm trying to write a formula in a custom character spreadsheet that can handle uncommon situations)

Example:

Strength score 11 (+0 modifier) +1 permanent enhancement bonus =

Strength score 12 (+1 modifier) +2 temporary enhancement bonus (which does not stack with the permanent +1 enhancement bonus, but as it is a higher bonus, it would then supersede it) =

Strength score 12 (+1 modifier), with a +1 bonus to Strength-based skills and statistics

or is it just:

Strength score 12 (+1 modifier)?

To further clarify what it is that I am trying to puzzle out here, if:

Strength score 10 (+0 modifier) +1 permanent enhancement bonus =

Strength score 11 (+0 modifier) +2 temporary enhancement bonus (which does not stack with the permanent +1 enhancement bonus, but as it is a higher bonus, it would then supersede it) =

Strength score 11 (+0 modifier), with a +1 bonus to Strength-based skills and statistics

not:

Strength score 11 (+0 modifier)

So, I signed up for and won a lottery event (Night of the Crimson Moon) without realizing that it is a game system with which I am completely unfamiliar (Call of Cthulhu), and experience required is veteran (The quickstart rules are 50 pages long so I couldn't even fake it). I thought I had it sorted to only Pathfinder RPG games. I've put up a trade for it, so far with no takers, and no one else has created a trade looking for it. Worst case scenario, is there a way to drop the event to free it up, or give it to someone else who really wanted to win it in the lottery?

Paladins, which are champions of good and law, have access to Knowledge (religion), which covers their good, but not Knowledge (local) which covers laws? Here's a link to the skill description:

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/skills/knowledge.html#_knowledge

Wouldn't it make a whole lot of sense is paladins were trained in the laws of the society they are operating in, in order to distinguish between legitimate rulership and, say, corrupt policemanship?

Hello, all. I made this holy symbol of Ragathiel for a peri-blooded aasimar paladin of Ragathiel I'll be playing in Council of Thieves (Yes, I know that this is a terrible idea).

He is described very little (he has "five fiery wings"), and his holy symbol even less (his followers wear "a fiery holy symbol"). Since he is the child of Dispater and an unnamed goddess of the plane of fire, I saw him as a sort of reverse fallen angel. And since seraphs are angels with six wings, in my imaginings he had six but lost one doing something suitably epic, like beating up one of those creepy fez-guys with the dancing monkey and the organ-grinder.

So, the idea of this holy symbol is to represent his six wings, with one of them missing, and instead of outright fiery, I went with just red (because I made it in MS Paint and am not good at it). So, with no further distractions, here are the two versions I came up with:

Star of Ragathiel

Star of Ragathiel with Flourish

Sorry I can't figure out how to display them directly. The second one kind of makes me think of a Gothic stained glass window.

What do you think?

Hello, all. I’ve been working on a magus version of monk vows, and would appreciate an unbiased opinion. The restriction is to a specific school of magic, as though the magus had a wizard’s specialized school (or, closer, the thassilonian wizard’s prohibited school). I did not remove a magus class ability as a monk with vows loses the still mind class feature.

I counted the amount of magus spells, per school, from all books, and tallied them up. Based on the amount of spells a magus would no longer be able to access by picking one of those schools as taboo, I increased the amount of points to their arcane pool. I don't know how to make a nifty table on here, so I will list my number haphazardly below:

School: 0th/1st/2nd/3rd/4th/5th/6th - total - percentage
Abjuration: 0/4/0/2/3/0/1 - 10 - 5%
Conjuration: 1/7/9/4/5/6/3 - 35 - 17%
Divination: 2/1/1/2/0/0/1 - 7 - 3%
Enchantment: 1/1/2/0/0/0/0 - 4 - 2%
Evocation: 5/6/11/9/12/4/5 - 52 - 26%
Illusion: 1/4/4/2/2/1/1 - 15 - 7%
Necromancy: 1/1/1/2/0/0/0 - 5 - 2%
Transmutation: 2/15/13/15/7/10/12 - 74 - 37%

Based on this nonsense, I humbly developed the following rules for your review:

Magus Taboos
A magus can eschew knowledge of spellcasting in order to expand their arcane pool. By selecting a school of magic as taboo, the magus’ arcane pool is increased by the amount listed in the taboo school’s description.

A taboo magus can never prepare a spell that is in a taboo school—he treats these spells as if they were not on the magus spell list. A magus must attempt to save against spells and spell effects from his taboo school, even if those effects are harmless or beneficial. A taboo magus that makes a successful save against a spell takes reduced or secondary effects as normal. If using a spell trigger or spell completion item to cast a spell from a taboo school, he must use the Use Magic Device skill to do so.

As an immediate action, when targeted by a spell from one of their taboo schools, a magus can expend 1 point from their arcane pool to gain a bonus on that save equal to their Intelligence modifier (based on other magus arcana, this seemed too weak to make into its own arcana, so I made it a base ability).

A magus may have multiple taboos. Their effects and increase to their arcane pool stack.

Abjuration Taboo: A magus with this taboo increases his arcane pool by 1 point for every 6 magus levels (minimum +0).
Conjuration Taboo: A magus with this taboo increases his arcane pool by 1 point for every 3 magus levels (minimum +0).
Divination Taboo: A magus with this taboo increases his arcane pool by 1 point for every 7 magus levels (minimum +0).
Enchantment Taboo: A magus with this taboo increases his arcane pool by 1 point for every 8 magus levels (minimum +0).
Evocation Taboo: A magus with this taboo increases his arcane pool by 1 point for every 2 magus levels (minimum +0).
Illusion Taboo: A magus with this taboo increases his arcane pool by 1 point for every 6 magus levels (minimum +0).
Necromancy Taboo: A magus with this taboo increases his arcane pool by 1 point for every 8 magus levels (minimum +0).
Transmutation Taboo: A magus with this taboo increases his arcane pool by 1 arcane point for every magus level he possesses.

The taboos that give points every 8 levels were originally every 11 levels, but i figured no one would take them. Anyway. I would appreciate your thoughts, even if they are mean or stupid.

Thanks