Ebon Hand's page

I picked up the Arcana Evolved book a little while ago, mostly for the alternate classes and spells. Still trying to get it to the table...
I'd love to see a Pathfinder-complaint version of the Greenbond.

EDIT: Looks like someone has already taken a crack at it:
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rq7u?Arcana-Unbound-Project

Your setting sounds really cool; I wish I could play in it. In particular I like the degree of separation you’ve introduced between the ability to use divine magic and the churches as human institutions and the fundamental uncertainty that introduces. I also really like that you’ve introduced witchcraft as a third flavor of spellcasting, albeit still divine in essence. Does druidic magic count as witchcraft then?

I've been working on a homebrew setting where magic wouldn't necessarily be less powerful, but magic items and powerful spellcasters would be extremely rare. To limit the need for magic items I'd like to try a system similar to this.

Know Direction -- worthless if anyone bothers to put a single point in Survival.

So it seems like half-elves were weak in the core rules and Paizo beefed them up by offering a lot of versatility like alternate race traits, racial feats, etc. in the supplements. I'll have to ask my DM which books he wants to allow.

Well, if you do go TWF and do want an exotic weapon, some nice double weapon like the two bladed sword is good.

Double weapons have the option to switch between 1handed/light and 2handed, which means you can just go for the big swing when you have to use standard action attacks or charges. The ability to bring decent damage when you have to move is one of the things that most TWF builds lack.

Yeah, two-bladed sword does seem pretty good, and it's not something I've tried before. I will certainly consider it. Anway, now that I've derailed my own thread into "Advise my paladin"...

The half-elves do have a lot going for them. Some of the good stuff isn't entirely obvious, though. One of the best ones is you count as both human and elf when it comes to things like racial feats. So you could, for example, take both Fast Learner (a human feat) and Attuned to the Wild (an elven feat). And there's a good selection of Half-Elf-only feats you can add to that list too. That can give you some interesting options for versatility.

That's actually pretty cool. It probably won't help me much for this campaign, however since we're starting at level 1 and it sounds like sessions will be pretty infrequent.

Keen Senses and Elven Immunities seem to be quite useful more frequently than you would think. They've cropped up quite a bit with the half-elf I play in my brother's campaign.

Keen Senses is definitely good. As for Elven Immunities, I am jealous. I have played at least a dozen campaigns of 3.X and never seen it come up.

Thanks for the responses, everybody.
What I'm getting from this generally is that half-elves are a lot stronger when you add the material from the Advanced Player's Guide.

I was thinking of having my paladin take TWF to take advantage of the crazy stats I rolled for him and probably go into shield bash stuff. So as cool as all of these options sound, I still feel like it's hard to justify giving up the stupid old human feat unless I want to go the exotic weapons route.

(To be clear: I don't want to min/max but I also don't want to take options that are obviously bad, if that makes sense. The rest of the party is pretty green and I want to help keep them alive, not outshine them.)

Alternate racial traits are strong on Half-Elves, giving Exotic Weapon Proficiency or bonus to will saves, etc. Most (if not all) of these can be found in the Advanced Race Guide.

Also, another important race factor is favored class bonuses. Not sure of any off the top of my head, but build boosting FCBs exist. Half-elves have access to their own, humans, and elves. A nice boost.

Thanks, Xethik, I'll have to ask our DM about that. So far all I've had a chance to look at is the Core Rules, Inner Sea Guide, and the Player's Guide for our module.

Specifically, I'm trying to build a paladin concept I've had in my back pocket for awhile and though I like the half-elf lore I'm finding it hard to justify giving up the extra feat for just going human.

I’ve always liked the lore for half-elves (shunned by two societies), but they have always been a fairly weak option mechanics-wise. I was under the impression they had gotten a boost in PF, and wanted to try them out for a new campaign. It looks like they are still pretty weak unless you are multiclassing, however. :/
Do you agree or am I missing something?