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Long story short, I'm making a character for a Discord server and settled on making a grapple-focused build. Character is starting at level 5, using a custom race for the server (serpent person, main selling point for why I picked it is that they have a tail slap for 1d10 and constrict). The server is using Elephant In The Room so prerequisites aren't as much of an issue as they would normally be, and I was able to pick up a couple of bonus feats at level 1 in exchange for flaws.

I wanted to aim for multiple grapple checks a round with things like Greater Grapple and Rapid Grapple, and with Strangler thrown in for extra sneak attack on each grapple check. The recommendation I was given was to go with Rogue for more sneak attack dice, building into Sap Adept/Master.

For the moment my build is:
1) Brawler (Strangler/Snakebite Striker) 1 - Unarmed Combatant, Agile Combatant, Sap Adept, Unfair Grip
2) Brawler 2 - Weapon Focus (natural weapons)
3) U. Rogue (Bekyar Kidnapper) 1 - Surprise Maneuver
4) U. Rogue 2 - Rogue Talent (Distracting Attack)
5) U. Rogue 3 - Sap Master

Current plan for level 6 is U. Rogue 4 for Debilitating Injury and a second Rogue Talent (not sure which one yet...).

It was recommended to me to go 2 more levels in Brawler and then straight U. Rogue beyond that, but I'm wary of investing that much into a 3/4 BAB class just for extra sneak attack dice, so I'm trying to find alternatives, as well as advice for what to pick up for Talents and feats.

I was looking into necromancer builds and came across the Frostfallen template. Interesting, but the fire weakness seems to be a pretty big drawback since fire is so common.

What I'm wondering is how this template works if you apply it to a creature that has the (fire) subtype. I vaguely recall reading something before about how a creature can't have opposing elemental subtypes, but it was almost 10 years ago now and I can't find where it was that I saw that bit of information, so I'm looking to confirm whether that's actually the case or not.

TL;DR: Can a creature have two opposing subtypes due to the effects of a spell or template? Or does the base creature's subtype get overwritten by the spell/template being applied?

I couldn't find any mention of it elsewhere, so I figured that I would ask here:
Is there a limit on how many people can use the Cooperative Crafting feat on the same crafting project? Or is it a flat x2 speed increase no matter what?

For example, I know that if I had a Valet familiar I could make a bag of holding at double speed, but what if I were to hire a mage with Cooperative Crafting and Craft Wondrous Item? Would I then be crafting at triple speed (assuming that it follows the usual rules for stacking "doubled" effects)?

I'm using a piece of art I found as inspiration for a character for a "Living World" Discord server, with the art in question giving off very strong vibes of a tiefling dancer (hesitant to post the image itself here since I'm not sure if it would be considered "inappropriate", sadly).
With that vibe, I decided I wanted to make her someone who goes unarmored and nimbly ducks and weaves her way across the battlefield.

So, basically, I'm looking to make her as un-freaking-touchable as humanly possible.

My first thought was to go with Water Dancer due to it seeming to apply Charisma to AC twice (dodge bonus up to your level from the archetype, then the base unarmored AC since it isn't removed by Water Dancer and the archetype explicitly says "He uses his Charisma score instead of his Wisdom score to determine the size of his ki pool and the DC and effects of monk class features."), as well as going into Crane Style for a defensive fighting build, but I'm wondering if there are any possibilities that I'm missing.
Maximizing AC is the primary goal, but if at all possible I'd like to be able to make her a solid damage-dealer as well.

Any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated!

Some caveats:
Point buy is 25
Race is non-negotiable, the character will be a tiefling no matter what.
The following server house rules/homebrew are in effect:

• * Multiclass archetypes are allowed
  
• * Elephant in the Room feat taxes are in play (I confirmed with one of the GMs that Combat Expertise also covers having 13 Int for feat prerequisites)
  
• * Unchained Classes may take archetypes from their chained counterparts as long as they have the replaced or equivalent features.
  
• * We're allowed to move ability score modifiers around, as long as they stay in the same category (example: a +2 to Dex can be moved to Str or Con, but not Int/Wis/Cha)
  
• * Any character can take Human/Elf/Half-Elf Favored Class Bonuses regardless of their race
  
• * I might be able to get the character to count as a halfling for the purposes of feat prerequisites without resorting to taking Pass For Human+Racial Heritage, but I'm waiting for confirmation from a GM about it.
  

Running a game where the players are being thrown into a high-security prison (they let themselves get captured in order to infiltrate the place, knowing mostly what sort of thing they'd be dealing with once inside), but I'm not sure how to handle part of it.

As part of the facility's method of keeping its inmates under control, every prisoner is put into a straitjacket, which applies the Grappled condition to the wearer with an Escape Artist DC 28 to get out. One of the players in the party had taken Still Spell as a throwaway bonus feat earlier on, which I know would allow him to still attempt to cast spells while in the straitjacket...
but I don't know how the concentration check would work. The only rules I can find regarding spellcasting while grappled say that the DC is based on the CMB of the one controlling the grapple, which doesn't apply to an inanimate object. But I'm also wondering if there would even need to be a concentration check if he's ignoring the somatic components entirely, as the jacket isn't exactly yanking him around or doing anything to disrupt his concentration beyond binding his arms in place.

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated!

I'm currently in an online Wrath of the Righteous campaign that has made it to Drezen (finally... after five years...). We're Level 6/Tier 1, and haven't fought Soltengrebbe or attempted to breach the citadel itself yet. My current character is a half-orc geokineticist, but... frankly I've lost interest in the character due to several factors. How long the game's dragged on, issues with my character's input largely being ignored or shot down with extreme prejudice by one of the other party members...
and discovering that that I'd overlooked a line of the Kineticist's burn feature that makes it so that they do not, in fact, get any real benefit out of the Flagellant feat T.T

As a result, I've been toying around with ideas for a backup character (considered a Good-leaning Hellknight but I don't think the DM would appreciate that kind of drama), and a piece of art I stumbled across while looking up unrelated topics gave me one I wanted to try: the Sacred Fist Warpriest. Specifically, a worshiper of Irori who's picked up Jabbing Style and Pummeling Style for some good old-fashioned Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs. I'm not looking to make the character into an utter game-breaker, but I do want her to be good at what she does, namely buffing and punching.

Right now I'm looking at doing a Human Master of Many Styles 2/Sacred Fist X (not usually a fan of multiclassing but this is one of the situations where I'm fine with doing so), but I'm kinda at a loss for specifics outside of the feats required for the Jabbing/Pummeling Style chains.

The rules I'd be working with are:
- Point Buy - 25 points
- Restricted to the Guardian, Marshal, or Trickster mythic path. The DM had required that we each take a different campaign trait and that we go into the path listed for that trait; Champion, Channel/Heal Bot Hierophant, and Archmage are already spoken for.
- I'd prefer to dip as little as possible.

Apologies if this has already been answered somewhere, but I searched and couldn't find anything mentioning it.

I'm looking into making an alchemist that focuses on using the touch injection spell with the Tainted Infusions of detonate in combat. However, there's something that isn't quite clear in the spell's wording...

"If you hit, the substance takes effect immediately, despite any onset period, and that opponent receives the normal saving throw (if any) against the substance."

...Which is seemingly contradicted by the very next sentence:

"In the case of a personal infused extract, the opponent receives both a Fortitude save and spell resistance."

I'm assuming that "personal" here means a range of "Personal". Does this mean that an infusion of detonate would allow the injected person a Fortitude save to negate it, even though the spell normally doesn't allow a save for the person who's exploding? Or does it mean that the target only gets a save and spell resistance if the extract being injected would normally allow for them?

I'm curious as to how exactly the accelerated crafting would stack between the wizard's Arcane Builder discovery (25% less time) and the Master Smith ability of the Soul Forger/Forgemaster archetypes (Soul Forger says "requires only half the normal amount of time to enchant magical arms and armor" and Forgemaster says "can craft magical metal items in half the normal amount of time", so 50% less time).

Would it be "reduce the base crafting time by 50%, then reduce that result by 25%"?

I'm currently working on a Fighter who's going to be using a longbow and a longsword, focusing on both so that they can reliably perform with either of them at a moment's notice (the specific weapons function similarly to the Shadowshot and Daybreak Super abilities from Destiny 2). However, I'm running into an issue with managing the number of feats necessary to pull it off...

At first I was looking at the Martial Mastery feat as a late-game solution, but I didn't notice until just now that it only applies to a specific weapon group. I can't use the Weapon Specialist advanced weapon training option for the same reason.

Is there a way, through either a fighter archetype or a feat, that would allow someone to apply feats like Weapon Focus to both a longsword and a longbow?

Looking over the Jinkin, it says that its attacks with the shortsword are magical, but it's listed as having an ordinary shortsword in its items... is this a typo? Or did I overlook something?

A while back while playing Hearthstone, I was messing around with the Kobolds & Catacombs board and, out of habit, I activated the board's secret feature of revealing a key in the board's bottom-left corner that, when clicked, will turn the treasure chest in the top-right corner into a Mimic.

It gave me an idea. A paranoid mage wants to protect all of his secrets, so he creates a magical key that will turn anything you use it on into a mimic that is loyal to the key's bearer, and the mimic absorbs the properties of the container it was made from (i.e., an adamantine lockbox would make a mimic that's hard to injure with physical damage).

Unbeknownst to the mage, the absorption also applies to whatever is inside the container. So when he uses the key on the lockbox he keeps one of his spellbooks and various Intelligence-boosting items in, he inadvertently creates a highly intelligent mimic with knowledge of many of his spells. The mimic kills him in his sleep, takes the key for itself, and starts creating an army of mimics under its service.

I'm looking for suggestions on what could feasibly be turned into mimics using this key. Chests and doorways are obvious candidates, but that doesn't leave much variety. Or should I simply have the mimic king alter the key so that it can be used on any object?

The new Totem Channeler Skald from Disciple's Doctrine gave me a gestalt idea I'm eager to try out: Primalist Spell Eater Bloodrager/Totem Channeler Skald.

I'm fully aware that bloodrage and raging song don't stack, which is why I'm digging around to find out if there are any items, feats, or additional class features that would allow the character to spend rounds of bloodrage on other abilities, since they're probably only going to use their inspired rage in combat.

I'm considering building a Dex-based Fighter who takes advantage of Bladed Brush Combat, Slashing Grace, and Spear Dancing Style all at once, but I'm not entirely sure how they'd interact together.

On one hand, Spear Dancing Style says that you treat the polearm/spear weapon in question as a double weapon, meaning that it would involve two-weapon fighting and thus negate the "can't have anything in your off-hand" clause of Slashing Grace.

On the other hand:

When wielding a glaive, you can treat it as a one-handed piercing or slashing melee weapon and as if you were not making attacks with your off-hand for all feats and class abilities that require such a weapon

Does Bladed Brush Combat overcome the fact that using a double weapon wouldn't allow you to use abilities that require a free off-hand? Or would Spear Dancing Style negate the benefits of using Slashing Grace? In either case, I'm assuming that the "light mace" part of the glaive wouldn't benefit from Slashing Grace despite technically being part of a weapon being modified by the feat.

Apologies if this has already been answered; I searched but didn't spot any threads that looked like they answered this particular question.

The game I'm currently running is reaching its final stretch. The party has succeeded in eliminating most of the threats in the cultist lair hidden below the city, and I'm planning to have a final massive assault on the town before the BBEG steps in to face the party.

Three of the cult's high priests remain, all three of them gestalted at level 20: a mesmerist/court bard, a warpriest/inquisitor (infiltrator/preacher archetypes), and a master summoner/brown-fur transmuter arcanist.

The issue I'm running into right now is... the party never fails their saves. The group dynamic's gradually shifted from almost exclusively martial to almost exclusively spellcasters of some kind, so Will saves aren't really an option at this point since the only ones with any real chance of failing would be either the gunslinger or the ranger in the party. I haven't used many Fortitude save effects, but that doesn't seem likely to work either considering the group's class choices (ranger, warpriest, druid, gunslinger, summoner, witch, sorcerer, and cleric).

Without changing classes, are there any specific spells that I should look at to get around their absurdly high save bonuses? Or should I just settle for making them roll Reflex saves multiple times a round and take the half damage when they pass the save?

I was browsing the Antihero's Handbook, looking at the new archetypes, and something struck me as odd about the Planar Extremist druid's replacement for wild shape.

Planar Aspect (Su): At 4th level, as a standard action, a planar extremist can gain the benefits of the bloodrager bloodline associated with her alignment (choosing from Abyssal, Celestial, or Infernal), as if she were a bloodrager of her druid level. She can gain these benefits for 1 minute per druid level as if she were bloodraging (but she gains no other benefits or penalties of bloodrage) or until she dismisses it as a swift action; this duration need not be used consecutively but must be spent in 1-minute increments.

Okay, so it's like a Hunter's animal focus power. Sounds decent.

But literally the next sentence contradicts this:

She can use this ability an additional time per day at 6th level and every 4 levels thereafter, for a total of five times per day at 18th level.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how this ability was intended to work. Is it supposed to be 1 minute/level that you can use up however you want? Or was it actually supposed to have a set number of activations per day with a maximum of 1 minute/level that's shared between each activation?

At the moment I have the party in one of my games running through a "maze" of sorts (really just a set of rooms connected by portals with each portal taking them to one of the 8 other rooms at random), with each room having a specific theme.

The room I'm working on right now is a hive, after looking over options for hive-themed creatures to put inside I decided that a Worm That Walks would make a suitable "boss" for the room. But then I stumbled across something I'd missed in the Worm That Walks template: The template can be applied to any creature as long as it's an evil spellcaster. So the gears start turning, and I realize... What else is absurdly evil and associated with hives and swarms?

Vescavors!

So now I've got a Vescavor Queen Worm That Walks in the room, with her spellcasting coming from 10 warpriest levels (for the Control Madness greater blessing). She's going to be accompanied by 4 vescavor swarms (debating giving them the Advanced template).

For the most part she's done, but I'm having a hard time choosing feats and equipment. At the moment I've tweaked her default feats to give her Power Attack, Dodge, Hover, Flyby Attack, Imp. Natural Attack (slam), and Toughness, and she's getting Weapon Focus (slam) and Diehard from Worm That Walks and her first Warpriest level. No other feats at the moment.

Rather than giving her standard equipment, I was considering giving her a unique item that would:
* Give her +9 natural armor to cover what she lost from the Worm That Walks template
* Allow her controlled swarms to share her fast healing and ability DCs rather than using their own
* Remain equipped on her if she were to discorporate
* Allow her racial HD to stack with her warpriest level for the purposes of calculating her fervor, blessings, sacred armor, and sacred weapon abilities. So 7d6 fervor 13/day, +5 sacred armor, +5 3d8 sacred weapon, and a +10 bonus from her minor Destruction blessing instead of +5
* Maybe function as a conductive amulet of mighty fists?

Any tips or pointers on building this creature?

Couldn't find an answer to this anywhere, so I thought I'd ask. I'm unsure of what the wording is supposed to imply here:

One participant can provide a form infusion appropriate for the composite blast, and the other can provide an appropriate substance infusion. Each participant accepts the burn cost for the infusion she provided. The participant who didn’t take the special ready action can apply a metakinesis to the blast, and she is the only one who can gather power to reduce the blast’s cost (since only she has a move action to take prior to the blast). However, whatever metakinesis she applies affects the entire composite blast.

Say you have two kineticists, one at 8th level and one at 4th level. Would the 8th level kineticist still benefit from their infusion specialization and reduce the burn cost of their chosen infusion by 2? Or are the participating kineticists forced to accept the burn regardless of any abilities they have that would reduce it?

I'm working on building an alchemist as an NPC for the party to fight, and I got an idea: since most alchemist NPCs end up having numerous extracts that never get used in/before combat, why not have all of the extras be tainted infusions?

The issue is that one of the party members is a high-level alchemist.

My question is: can an alchemist's infusions (tainted or regular) be identified as such?

I'm currently running a Majora's Mask-themed campaign every other week. The campaign is nearing its end; the party has freed the four giants of Termina and are currently going up against a cult of Majora that cropped up under Clock Town. Thanks to a power boost they got by completing a set of sacred trials, they were able to defeat one of the high priests - a gestalt Slayer/Warden using a sniper build.

The party has just entered a secret exit to the cultists' lair and confronted a trio of bards paired with a small pack of Wolfos. I had the group set up so that the Wolfos skald would buff his packmates with his raging song (also giving them the benefits of the beast totem rage power chain) and two of the bards would buff them using a combination of their inspire courage performance (plus the Counterpoint to Inspiration teamwork feat) and magic. The other bard was a court bard who would debuff the PCs with his performances and spells. Of the other four Wolfos, three were rogues, and their Alpha was a barbarian with all seven of the Linnorm Death Curse rage powers. I thought it would be an interesting fight that would give the party a decent challenge.

As it turns out, the hours I spent building the Wolfos pack would have been better spent just designing a bunch of pinatas hanging over a sign reading "Free lootz and XP!", because the party steamrolled over the entire encounter.

You see, throughout most of the campaign, the closest thing the party has had to a caster was the group's ragechemist, so I've had to build things while keeping a martial-exclusive party in mind. After some recent PC deaths/changes, there is now an oracle, a witch, and a druid in the party, all at level 16. Because this change happened so recently, I wasn't expecting the entire enemy party to be neutered by a combination of reverse gravity and silence spells.

At this point I'm in a serious bind, because the cultists had little to no way of challenging the PCs before aside from sheer numbers even during the party's last attempt to infiltrate their lair. Now, I'm beginning to question whether even the high priests (who are all level 20, equipped as PCs, and gestalted through artifact masks given to them by Majora) are strong enough to be any kind of challenge, especially since only one of them has anything usable against caster PCs (which he only has because of the Myth-Weavers mishap a few weeks back).

At the moment, the cultists I have are:

The high priests aren't 100% done, but the basic gists of them are:
* The Fist of Majora, a human Brawler/Esoteric Magus built for sheer damage and shenanigans with combining Awesome Blow with either reach or with the Dimensional Assault feat chain
* The Voice of Majora, a drow Inquisitor (Infiltrator/Preacher))/Warpriest built for survival and for harassing the party by disarming and tripping with his whip
* The Guile of Majora, a half-elf Court Bart/Mesmerist built for debuffing the party with enchantment spells. Also the Voice's daughter
* The Caller of Majora, a half-orc Master Summoner/Transmuter who focuses on whittling the party down with hordes of buffed summoned creatures before buffing herself and attacking. Her panic button is to cast time stop, then buff herself and her familiar with form of the dragon III, transformation, and other spells.

The current party makeup is:
* A fighter built around Vanguard Style. No ranged weapons (player spent the last session throwing a passive-aggressive fit about being useless due to the reverse gravity shenanigans), and may be switching out to pursue his current flight of fancy in the form of a Brewmaster from Paths of the Righteous
* A lashunta ragechemist, easily one of the scariest members of the party
* A ranger, chosen combat style is two-weapon but he's been shoehorned into being an archer for most of the campaign because everybody else built melee-exclusive characters at the start.
* A druid, usually wild shapes and casts spells from a safe distance
* An oracle, not sure what his build is other than having the blindness curse and knowing silence as one of his spells
* A half-orc scarred witch doctor, built with good AC and an interesting array of hexes and spells.
* A swashbuckler, player is inexperienced but has amazing Stealth and can do decent damage
These players are present as well, but they don't show up often because of real life issues like work scheduling
* A rogue/shadowdancer; not sure of the exact build, but the player is known among our circle as "The Nat 1 King" for good reason
* A maneuver master monk with absurdly high AC
* A ki mystic/sensei built to be a support character
* A diviner wizard with a pseudodragon familiar

At the moment I'm debating the idea of giving the remaining cultists some kind of template (probably half-fiend, or making a Majora-flavored variant), but are there any tips that you might have to offer?

I'm starting a Curse of the Crimson Throne game with a friend online, with an added twist: every character will have a special ability to make them stand out.

Most of the party has been figured out:
The Card Caster Magus is going to have bonus feats like a fighter.
The Feral Shifter Druid has traded all of his druid class features other than wild shape and animal focus for abilities from the Tetori monk archetype.
The Phantom Thief Rogue is gaining an investigator's inspiration ability.

What I'm running into trouble with is the Paladin. I'm not sure what to give her to help make her stand out that's in line with what the other three characters are getting... any suggestions?

I"m building an incubus with 10 levels in magus to serve as a bodyguard of sorts for a high-level wizard, and to help alleviate the fact that NPCs have low amounts of gear I'd intended to make him a Bladebound/Kensai. Right now I'm figuring out his feat and spell selections.

With the 10 magus levels he has 7 additional feats to work with (two have to be combat, metamagic, or item crafting); he already has Weapon Focus (scimitar) from being a kensai, and I'm looking at giving him Improved Critical (scimitar) to take advantage of his Pain Redoubled ability. Are there any recommended feats for a Magus to take? And are monsters with class levels able to take traits, or is that something exclusive to PC races?

If it helps, after the adjustments for adding class levels and the extra 2 ability score points, his ability scores are:
Str 24, Dex 17, Con 20, Int 22, Wis 15, Cha 19

I'm currently running a game and the PCs have gotten to the main lair of the cult who worships the BBEG. Among the cultists are necromancers who have each built a set of necrocrafts to support their allies, plus an extra one to act as a bodyguard.

The issue I'm running into is that I'd like to get them some embalming thread to use on their bodyguard necrocrafts to give them DR/slashing and adamantine, but I'm not sure whether the thread should be counted against the necromancers' equipment cost. It would cost 10,000g per thimble of thread, which is enough to cover 2 of the bodyguard necrocrafts so one thimble could be split between two of them.
When equipping an NPC with single-use items that have to be used well in advance of combat, such as embalming thread or the onyx gems used for animate dead, should these be counted toward the NPC's equipment totals since they're things that the NPC is going to use? Or are you not supposed to include any items that the party has no way of getting their hands on?

Before anybody brings it up: Yes, I'm aware that embalming thread specifies zombies and flesh golems, but necrocrafts weren't introduced until Bestiary 4 came out in 2013, whereas embalming thread came out in Ultimate Equipment in 2012. Since necrocrafts weren't a thing at the time embalming thread was created and since you can build a necrocraft with the "Mostly Zombies" trait to give them DR 5/slashing, I personally don't think it's too much of a stretch to allow it to be used on a necrocraft that has the Mostly Zombies trait.

The 'Recall Intrigues' option for Knowledge checks is one of the best skill changes I've seen, and it's fleshed out enough that there's not a lot of room for misinterpretation.

The only question I have at this point is... how does this work for archetype class features that are traditionally the main ability of another class?

For instance, a Hex Crafter Magus. When you make a Knowledge check to identify one of their hexes as it's being used, do you automatically know that it's a Hex Crafter's class feature? Or do you only identify that it's the hex class feature and that it's available to <insert all classes/archetypes that get hexes here>?