Hey there. I'm not sure how set you are on precisely that build, but I have a similar character that works I think rather more smoothly. Mine uses VMC from Unchained, but it's easy enough to adapt out of it.
Half Elf Paladin 2 / Oracle of Life 1 / Paladin 2 / Oracle 2 / Paladin x
Str 16 (+2 from)
Dex 12
Con 14
Int 8
Wis 8
Cha 15
Use the Elvish FCB for + 1/2 level to Lay on of Hands healing
Grab Life Link in Oracle, then Channel later on. Hospitaler archetype if you want to get into battle channeling. If not, only dip one level into Oracle of Life for Life Link.
It's a decently simple set-up and makes you an effective battle healer, which is something most people don't see much of. Your healing all takes place as a swift action, your Strength (with a +2 belt later) will help you be a mid-line fighter of sorts, like a support cleric. Otherwise just ramp up your Cha, Str, and Con and make the Supernatural abilities of the Paladin a force to be reckoned with.
One of the issues is that we don't really have a mechanical explanation for how a being is capable of granting a domain. A witch's patron essentially just grants knowledge and enchants a familiar, but domains grant powers above and beyond heavenly knowledge.
Quite honestly, I think it's fine so long as you have a clear explanation for your character's concept of 'atheism' - as disbelieving the existence of the PF 'gods' is workable for a joke character at best. For a serious character, it would have to do more with a rejection of worship (because they don't deserve it) or just an awareness that they're not the only forces of the universe. One way or another, deities are granted control over domains, and in their own way, clerics could potentially do that too, perhaps by tapping into the planes from which such powers originate.
And the reason I say that is largely due to the fact that good, evil, law, and chaos, among other things, are physical forces in the PF universe, unlike ours. Which potentially means that one could control them without the aid of a deity. I don't think the gods have to hand it to you for you to gain it.
Yeeaaahhh let's get off of the theist-athiest morality issue real quick and try and return to what we're here for: Pathfinder.
The overarching villain of my D&D universe is a cleric who realized that there was nothing that allowed the gods to rule other creatures except greater power, and therefore set about trying to destroy them all. Through some special rituals and such he became unbound by the gods and began to receive his domain powers directly from the universe.
And to a certain degree, I don't think that's a bad way to take them. Either because they've chosen to forsake the gods or don't believe they have the right to rule, or whatever (it's hard to debate Sarenrae exists, after all), allow athiest clerics to either choose a Philosophy (real or imagined), as well as suitable domains. If they simply wish to revere the universe or 'the natural order' (as I've seen druids do), treat them as having to stay within one step of TN, and grant them domains that are suitable. For my above cleric villain, I granted him Repose and Community as it supported his philosophies.
This tangent is a little off the topic but it seems a decent point to respond to.
Yes, at higher levels, PCs can always flee very, very effectively and hide. But unless they're really focusing on camping and anti-detection magic, CR-appropriate creatures ought to have a way to handle that and intrude on it. If the party wants to start creating an impenetrable fortress, then that can add to the game as well as create encounters. If they're creating dimensional pockets, perhaps an outsider is bothered by them.
If this is just happening with, like, random encounters, then yeah, the 15 minute day happens when you're just traveling around and scouting, because those aren't days where combat is the main challenge.
The main thing to keep in mind is that as the party becomes better at things, so should their enemies. And, in particular, they should become increasingly famous/infamous, which should cause more people to be hunting them in return. If it doesn't make sense exactly for other creatures, there are plenty of planes and deities playing their own games that the PCs may have upset. Demonic lawyers collecting on debts that can't be paid because you killed their debtee. Grievances and other consequences. By level 11, you're not just killing a cave system filled with goblins and rodents that nobody will miss.
One thing I think worth checking is simply how the classes are constructed, and the sort of assumptions made from the very beginning of D&D.
And I'm just going to mention Saving Throws. Even in 1e, fighters and rogues had terrible saving throw bonuses, while classes like the cleric had significantly superior ones because they were expected to resist.
However, in some other games I've seen, classes/races that are non-magical are inherently more magically resistant, like the dwarves of Dragon Age.
I think one of the important things to change, just on a mathematical level, is that non-magical classes get better bonuses. For the instance of the fighter, entirely non-magical, grant him 3 good saving throws. This would be further boosted by his inherent dependence on ability scores that increase resistances (Con and Dex).
I also think tying spellcasting not only to its spellcasting stat, but to an associated skill as previously mentioned is a great idea. Perhaps also requiring spellcasting trees, so that martials and casters alike get the sensation of increased specialization over time. Spell trees creating spell taxes, just like feat trees creating feat taxes.
I also do think directly expanding the capabilities of martial classes, and modifying spells so that they tie more into skill usage that can thus be duplicated to a certain degree by rogues, bards, and other skill-versatile classes.
TL;DR: Martial classes are more magic-resistant, magical classes are more spell-vulnerable (except for counterspelling). Spellcasting dependent on skills to make skills more important and require 'spell tax' tree progressions. Make spells impact skills more directly, so that skills can act a little more like magic.
Ah yes, every wizard sits in envy as that optimized superstitious barbarian pounces while evading fireballs. Then he remembers that he can just drop 1d3+2 succubi, or, you know, something seriously impactful and take a dump on those that Barbarian. In one full round. Then do it again.
I have designed and played in a party of all witches. d6 HD, one good save withes. And, you know what? Once we hit about level . . . I don't know, 3? It became apparent that they could destroy anything CR appropriate simply through the creative combination of class abilities and spells with minimal teamwork.
I have also designed and played in a party of all halfling martials. We tried hard. We used stealth and diplomacy, careful dungeoneering, and all around just tried to play the game right. And it was /hard/. Really hard. It was flavorful and fun, but it was also a struggle regardless of how effective our tactics were because the game was not designed with a 'rounded party' being necessary, or even effective after a certain point.
And it makes sense. Magic defeats reality, sort of by definition. But it's clear that casters wipe the floor with martials throughout almost every step of the game, unless the casters and trying very hard to fail and the martials are optimizing every step of the way, and even then.
However, a sense of accomplishment is not what is really being discussed. It's about legitimate impact within the world, and how a class system can help balance that out. In fact, Soilent, that really is just a simple demonstration of the problem: even at low levels, a spellcaster can completely negate a significant challenge, and as a class feature no less.
Like you seem to, I play (not entirely by choice) almost exclusively in low-magic, low-level worlds. The gaming focus really is, at this point, casters supporting heroic fighters and their ilk. But that's before significant summoning magic, and with a lot of nerfs placed on casters.
But let's scale it down all the way to level one. The party is summoned to the queen to assist in some task, and the PCs would like to influence themselves favorably within the kingdom. The swashbuckler attempts a diplomacy check and some excellent roleplaying to curry favor with the queen. The wizard, however, finds this to be somewhat of a nuisance, and drops sow thought. The playable environment could be hugely impacted by that, and there's pretty few repercussions for it. To achieve a remotely similar idea, you have to look at something like the Kitsune rogue talent chain allowing you to insert information without being identified, requiring multiple bluff checks and multiple class features. Nevermind the racial restriction . . .
The fact is that, rapidly, it becomes apparent that casters affect the scope of the game, with whatever degree of effort, infinitely more than the fighter does. Not as an extension of roleplaying, but simply as a product of being a caster.
And while in the similar but not quite the same thread about 'nice things', there is the suggestion of Badass Powers and the like, I don't think it is a terrible idea to grant abilities we might not think to drop on something as simple as a Fighter. But most fighters we think of, the kind that can slay something like a minotaur and make off with its loot, are not simple soldiers anymore. Whether or not its magic, those characters are exceeding humanity, and that is a concept that should be embraced by Pathfinder, and, like with classes like the alchemist, should be capitalized on creatively.
One of my favorite homebrewed mechanics for a fighter was to grant them Heroics, things that identify them to their enemies, to the population, and noticeably separate them from common soldiers. One such example came with a fair bit of flavor, so bear with me:
The fighter, having given so many souls to death and having prevented so many other souls from reaching it, becomes branded by death and thereby linked to the Boneyard. While this might prompt fear, awe, or anything else, the connection of the fighter to the Boneyard allows him to summon a creature to test his valor (a random creature of a CR equal to his character level +1): if he can defeat it, he may return a soul from the Boneyard (as per Raise Dead, then Resurrection, then True Resurrection, with the CRs scaling over time).
Things like that A) Impact the world B) Diversify characters beyond combat styles, which people like Barbarians and Fighters should be mastering anyway and C) Creates massive flavor for the character as well as the world that can be capitalized on by the DM. And while some people may consider that faux-magic, the simple fact is that a lot of Dev resources have been poured into magic as the only superhuman resource of the universe, and thereby thinking in its mechanical terms, if not necessarily its flavor, is pretty necessary.
I really try to look at epic tales and things like that to get an idea of what Fighters and other heroes should be capable of. And one of the most important things in fantasy worlds is to remember that everyone should bend reality to an extent for the sake of the narrative. It doesn't make sense to bring down a dragon with a single well-placed arrow, especially in RPG terms. It doesn't make sense to fight your way through hell to retrieve a lost love, or other such things common in Greek tales and other epics. But I don't think wizards and other casters get to not make sense in a fantasy role playing game.
I picked up quite a bit of stuff from Unchained and a few DMs I've played with have liked it quite a bit.
Variant Multiclassing is actually something I've got a lot of mileage from already. A straight wizard with VMC Rogue has proven to make a very easy entry into Arcane Trickster, for example, as well as a Cavalier VMC Bard making an easy Battle Herald. A cleric of fire VMCing into wizard for the Evocation (Admixture) school for the school powers, familiar, and True Name for an HD 18 outsider!
As for the classes, I no longer feel terrible when somebody asks to play a rogue and I try and divert them to something like a vivisectionist or an urban ranger, as the Unchained Rogue is a substantial (if still . . . lackluster) improvement. I straight prefer the new Summoner, as I had and several other local DMs had already house-ruled that you choose an Outsider to mimic as part of the class, and the theme seems a lot more coherent.
The monk and barbarian . . . have really come down to personal preference.
I've gotten no mileage out of the alternate magic, action economy, or sliding scale alignments. I did quickly just pick up the idea of removing alignment from the game, but that was hardly a whole new Unchained idea.
Scaling items seems like a very good idea. I support it. However, I don't think sticking to the Paizo math on it is a great idea, and if it's an item purchased by the PC during down-time as is sort of expected in a metropolis setting, I find it easier to use the original enhancement items.
I think going into Mythic is a can of worms that requires too much oversight and just another book, especially one that I've found to be unpopular around my DMs . . . and myself.
I don't think we'll ever see casters and non-casters nearing each other in power and effectiveness. Magic is a force of overwhelming power, and in the world of Pathfinder, it has relatively few consequences. It's magic.
One of the most important things, I think, is to try and make martial characters (the rogue, monk, fighter are those who mainly come to mind) capable of things that a wizard cannot simply duplicate, and one of the main ways to do that is to make them unlike martial monsters.\
Similar to that badass system, I created something for fighters to make them seem relevant and flexible. I re-titled them Heroes, and at third level and every three levels thereafter, gave them a new Feat of Heroics, similar to the class features that alchemists and magi pick up. However, I made the fighter ones hugely versatile, and encouraged them to be campaign-fitting. Mounts, bound items, damage negation, contact with a deity: relatively common things among other classes. For rogues, I just gave a significant boost in power to a lot of rogue talents. Monks . . . monks required a lot of re-working.
But I think PF is a game where magic simply outstrips non-magic to a degree that cannot hope to be accounted for. While I really like concepts like Shadowrun's magic-or-mech essence, the Pathfinder universe so far does not have a force of the universe that benefits people without magic or with less magic. If you were to turn something like Heroism into a fundamental component of the game and grant it disproportionately to non-magical classes, perhaps they could gain the power and versatility to stand beside magical classes, but it's not going to happen in this current Pathfinder game.
Whee, okay, sorry, I had not previously seen this thread and now I'm excited specifically due to the harsh views of trans people I've seen on other threads.
This is great and exciting. I find it incredibly difficult to find media that portrays queer people in a positive light, especially anything that isn't gritty, nihilistic dramas. And gaming has been the absolute worst community for me to find anything positive. Due to the omnipresence of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia in previous gaming communities, I've started playing almost exclusively Pathfinder and almost entirely with other queer players.
And I am interested in this Gracefully Grayson.
Narcissism:
And, ah, on the slight tangent of narcissism, I've been a psychology student for the past four years and I've always been taught that narcissism is linked to extremely high self esteem coupled with aggression in response to ego threats.
I've seen players do stuff like this sort of out of nowhere. Once, five months into a Warlock session, the guy playing the cleric, after we'd all been wiped out, coup de graced us all to death, took our stuff, and the campaign ended like that.
People get pissed off during games, especially during stagnant periods. I know I've sat out of games for hours or sessions due to whatever circumstances and in the hot, stuffy rooms that d&d always seems to occur in, you get pissed off. But your player . . . well, he just seems like an a*!~&#! for approaching it that way, no matter how he felt. New players can be agitating: experienced players should learn to deal with that, or not play in games with new players.
If it's the first session, fine, the player is out, everyone can learn a valuable lesson in teamwork, and your wizard can know a /lot/ about spell descriptions from the get-go.
You're not to blame: your game actually sounds pretty cool, and terribly similar to a Hero Guild my PCs formed in a campaign some years back. Not everyone controls their temper, and thus, they don't belong in that sort of game (or any game, if you can't tolerate dicks in your game, which is fair).
As for sitting on information, though, I have to admit that my whole group is actually really based on subterfuge against one another, and debt, lying, betrayal, and secrecy are very much apart of the game's fiber for us, but that might be because we're also Vampire the Masquerade players. If that's not part of your game though, and it's not what your PCs want, it's not acceptable.
However, it's been a while since we've heard from the OP. Most of us seem to have varying feelings about Player A and Player T, but, unfortunately, a lot of that is going to be projection about how we feel about people /like/ them, so I don't think it's really helpful to the OP.
As a DM/friend, I think the most they can really do is get them to talk to each other, create a resolution for how they're going to act, and kick either/both of them out if they can't keep it up. For the actual issues of Player A's new behavior and Player T's persistent behavior, that boils down to a more personal level that we can't really make qualifications for.
I don't know how personally involved your players other than A and T are so I can't really tell if T's behavior would be considered appropriate to the rest of the group. I've had groups who specifically wanted campaigns for escapism and personal frustration and they were wonderful. I've also seen plenty of games and gaming groups that cannot effectively cope with outside conflicts coming into them.
So, OP: Are any of these tidbits from us helpful to you? Or can you give us any more information/background on your group so we can be more specific and therefore less likely to project our feelings onto them? Like, personally, it's really easy for me to sympathize with T and be angry at A, but with a step back I can realize the reason for A's behavior and even his harshness, and I can see how inappropriate some of T's actions are, especially generalizing a former friend in the way of 'Cis scum' because that can be . . . easy to do when you're hurt.
It might ultimately be the best decision to end the game, and try to involve your friends differently, or in different groups.
Yoooo so I'm very late to this conversation, but I had a similar, if less intense scenario (two, actually) at my table a few months back. And while in my case transphobia really was the cause of the breakdown of a game, as previously mentioned, this isn't that.
I've had friends like Player A, that feel a philosophical change that causes them to distance themselves and break ties with people. While I vehemently disagree with his views and the things he said, he does have the right to request that game time be dedicated to game time.
THAT BEING SAID, the degradation of a friendship is so much more important than the game, and they've handled it shitty so far. Which is what close friends do at points like this: the same thing happened between me and my DM over feminism, environmentalism, and transness. If their friendship is over, invite them both over to talk to you (so you don't appear to be playing favorites) and let them talk it out without the other players. Like, this part you honestly shouldn't be involved in so much but it's your game and that puts you in a strange authority position.
If their friendship is over, then fine. But if you and your players are fine with Player T talking about her personal life, and you folks are friends, then let her talk. Player A's philosophical views do /not/ give him the right to drag down a friend. If his views no longer let him accept the plight of marginalized populations, fine. I'm trans and I play with people who won't accept feminists, vegans, or trans people because they have the respect to keep it out of the game.
In return, Player A is not going to go after Player T. That's starting shit and it's no good. I get it. A lot of what she's said, actually, I see it and I live it. But this argument will damage this whole social support she's got going.
If your other players and you aren't comfortable with her sharing during the game, you as the DM have to talk to her about it. But if it's just Player A, he needs to be quiet because transwomen are often very short on social resources.
And @blackbloodtroll - I've seen your opinion throughout the thread, no need to re-iterate your adamant stance against the mixing of personal life and game life, but a lot of us lack resources to differentiate the two. Groups that can always keep it separate are great: I have one like that now. But it isn't always like that. Friends are friends, and playing a game doesn't change that.
Sorry for the wall of text, I've just seen this happen, especially in groups where someone is a minority. If either of them or both of them refuse to cooperate, kick them out and salvage your individual friendships with them if you have them. If they'll play by your rules and show each other some respect, your game can go on fine.
Personal:
(and on a more personal note, my heart goes out to Miz Player T, even if you find her behavior inappropriate, but that doesn't help your game so it's in parentheses.)
