Drogan Tome's page

I am building a religious order for my campaign and it got me thinking that to make them more unique they would have sworn a sacred oath toward their goal (ridding a region of demonic influence and cleansing the land of taint).

This got me thinking that while I could give them an oath or two for flavor reasons I would like to have that mechanic in my game for future character and NPC options. Organized religion is templated from the Middle Ages Catholic Church with clerical variety coming from the patron saints that a cleric swears to.

I have been looking online and for Pathfinder all I can find are the monk vows which I could retool for my needs but I was hoping maybe some of you have already done work in this area and wouldn't mind weighing in.

I like the spirit of 3.5 exalted handbook feats but find them clunky mechanically.

Have any of you come up with something that works well in your game?

I have a player who wants to be a soulknife (Ultimate Psionics) but would like their weapon to be a spiked chain with the intent of taking the spiked chain feat chain.

the rules are slightly ambiguous with how the mind blade is treated for weapon related feats, what are your thoughts?

would it be game breaking or OP to allow the player this option?

So I am running a game with a bunch of my wiccan friends and while building out the fluff and framework for the world I wanted to use real world occult and magical themes as a guide post for various aspects of the game.

Right now I have set up a complex magical system in the empire where magic is practices with an elemental focus and thus 4 great arcane schools dominate the landscape each to one element. drawing inspiration from the Tarot I assigned the traditional arcane focus for each school to their corresponding tarot suite:

fire-wand/staff
water- chalice/cups (a scepter cup design)
air- swords
earth- pentacle/coins (amulet form)

To further make tie ins for my players (most of them have some form of magical character) I am also working on trying to assign secondary schools of magic that also correspond to the symbolic meaning of the 4 suites.

Water/cups is primarily about emotions so I felt that the enchantment school was a good fit. earth/pentacles is about not only wealth but also material things so I though that transmutation with its focus on the material world works. For air/swords I had to go with divination as it focuses on information, communication, thinking, and logic.

I'm having trouble with fire/wands. This suite is all about energy, passion, and motivation; the flame that provides energy to new ventures. On the surface evocation comes to mind but I'm worried that this is too concentrated. Not only do the majority of the spells with fire descriptors already come from that school, making the affiliation evocation just implies they are heavily geared towards blasting. My goal with the school affiliation is to further flesh out the magical disciplines and provide another dimension to them beyond the elemental spells they tend to choose.

What do you think would be a good school?

I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate evil deities in society, how to explain how and why they fit in. the good aligned gods are the main gods that are openly worshiped but there are people who discreetly worship the dark gods.

so far society is structured in a classic feudal empire with a strong focus on the military. I;m having trouble thinking of a convincing way to explain how and why people are worshiping the dark. The way I want it to fit is that people aren't inherently good or evil (average person registers as neutral with detect spells). People have real motivations for what they do so no stereotypical worshiping the dark gods because they are all twisted and evil.

How do you all incorporate dark and less savory gods?

I have been thinking of different ways that classes interact with the world around them and have been a little stuck on the Druid.

The fluff around druids is that they are almost always found out in the wilds away from civilization, shunning it in favor of nature. while this is all fine and dandy I was thinking of how the druid could fit in other capacities like a local wisewoman who supports a village or town with their farming, herbal medicines, guidance, etc.; helping communities to better live in harmony with nature instead.

how do you all treat druids in your games?

I am making a campaign world where the dominate magical organization is Psionic. There is a strong central church modeled after the Catholic church.

What I am trying to make is the Psionic group has an active public image and operates clinics all over the empire that service the common man with psionically enhanced doctors.

what I'm trying to do now is make the fluffy explanation as to why it is this way without making the church seem like greedy bastards who are withholding healing from the masses.

so far I have that since clerics spontaneously cast their domain spells and not cure/inflict spells and only one patron saint has the healing domain it makes an immediate reduction.

I have been toying with the idea that magical healing converts to non lethal damage instead of "poof its all better" but that applies equally to psionics and magic.

any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

So I was thinking about adding elemental magic into my game, more so then is standardly done in pathfinder. I wanted to add wind, earth and water elemental damage for various monsters, spells, and effects. I know that this doesn't jive well logistically speaking since if is hard to conceptualize how wind deals "wind damage" and so on.

What I have come up with is that the mortal form has a balance of elemental forces within that all come together in certain proportions to create sentient living things. Thus far I have fire, water, earth, air, holy, and darkness as the six needed energies to create living things (the last two are basically positive and negative energy). The way in which a spell deals elemental damage to a person is by changing the balance of these energies in the body with harms the target.

What I'm not sure about is how to go about structuring these new features of the world to mesh with the pathfinder game and I was hope you all could share idea's with me.

Sorry to call you out specifically but I don't know of any other way of getting in contact with other board members. In a thread recently you gave outlines for your take on the warlock. I was wondering you would be willing to share your class? I like the idea of swearing pacts with otherworldly beings for power. If you can let me know! Thanks a bunch!

Okay so I just wanted to be sure about something with this archtype. when you that this archtype you fully replace bombs with sneak attack correct?

Also if this is correct does anyone know why paizo lists a variety of bomb related discoveries in the suggested list??

Any feedback or opinions are greatly appreciated.

Can you please share your house rules with me? I am trying to make a list for my new campaign and I would greatly appreciate some examples. Also if your so inclined feel free to explain why you think that your house rule is needed so that we all can better understand your reasoning. Thanks a million.

So I am starting a Gestalt game soon and one of the character ideas that i was thinking of is a monk + sorcerer/ (any spell caster) that focuses on stealth, shadow, and ability damage over direct attack spells.

I am figuring that monk provides some combat hardening to the build while providing a slew of neat capabilities and the other spell casting class provides the bulk of the magical options. I am able to use pretty much anything I like that was in 3.5 and pathfinder. My D&D is being very liberal with character creation basically saying that if I want to change something about the mechanics of a class then I am free to do so as long as it makes sense. An example of this is that I changed the casting stat for the sorcerer to Wisdom so that it matches this build better.

Any and all input would be greatly appreciated as I would love this character to be fun and unique and I would really like for him to approach combat in a different way that I have never tried before. Thanks a million!

EDIT: My choice of class is variable and can be changed if anyone has other ideas.

Hello this is my first post on the Paizo boards but I have been reading them for weeks now. I have a home made world that I have been working on for about 3 years. I'm having trouble with how I want the divine system to work. I am unsatisfied with a run of the mill polytheistic pantheon of gods like in the core book. I would like to just remove gods altogether. Here are some of my ideas and I would love any and all constructive feedback you all can provide. Thanks!!

I was thinking of just having clerics only use the no god option for selecting domains. In my world clerics do not spontaneously cure/inflict they instead spontaneously cast their domain spell lists. Also since cleric lack a capstone ability like the other classes I have slated the class to gain a third domain at 10th level and maybe a 4th domain at 20th.

Furthermore I allow pretty much anything from 3.0/3.5 after review so there is an issue with certain prestige classes.

Lastly one thing that I'm not sure about and would like some input on is how a godless society would run in a iron age/medieval setting that pathfinder and subsequently my world runs in.

Thanks you all for your input!!!