Ezzran's page

I was bored, and my friend pointed out that Snake Style lets you use a Sense Motive check in place of your AC.
Now, I'm playing a Paladin in a game right now, and her Diplo is +20 at level 5. So I got to thinking: "What if I could do something similar with Sense Motive? I could have one tanky Monk."

So I made a Monk at level 5. I've left a lot of the non-essential stuff blank in the build, but they could easily be adjusted.

To start with, I picked human for the extra feat. Definitely going to be useful with buffing that sense motive. I used a 25 point buy to get the stats, and decided on 14, 14, 10, 10, 17, 12. Then adding the human's +2 into Wisdom for a 19, there.

For traits, I grabbed the Survivor Regional Trait. It gives +1 to sense motive and +1 to initiative. I didn't actually pick up the second, because trait bonuses don't stack, so I figured I'd leave that one open for customization of play style / character personality. If your GM doesn't allow regional traits, there are definitely other traits available, such as World Traveler, for humans.

Starting on feats, I grabbed Improved Unarmed Strike (a prerequisite for Snake Style) and Alertness (+2 to sense motive and perception).

And lastly, skills. As a monk, you get 4 + int mod skill points. As it turns out, you only need 2 for this build: Acrobatics (a prerequisite in the Snake Style chain) and Sense Motive (duh). So I dropped points into those. I left the other two points available for character customization.

At level 2, there's not a lot specific to the build. Upgrade Acrobatics and Sense Motive.

At level 3, pick up Snake Style. This is the earliest you can get it, because you need to have 3 ranks in Sense Motive. Aaand upgrade Sense Motive and Acrobatics again.

At level 4, bump that Wisdom up to 20 and progress your skills.

And at level 5, I grabbed Uncanny Alertness, which gives +1 Sense Motive and Perception, and a +2 bonus to saves against sleep and charm effects.

I haven't done anything with items, yet, but that's in the works.

Possibilities:
--Dump Int to 7. I tend to dislike doing this as a rule, but since you only need 2 skills per level for the build to work, you could totally do that and use the points elsewhere. It would give you enough to bring that wisdom up to 20 at level 1. Personally, I don't think that's worth the lack of versatility in skills, but to each his own.

This is all done without any bonuses granted by any campaign events, btw.

Here's the sheet I used to build it:
http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=801677

Okay, so the growth subdomain of the plant Domain grants the spell Righteous Might, which gives some form of DR. What kind of DR it gives is as follows:

That FAQ at the above right it mentions says that Oracles choose theirs based on whether they chose to get free cure or inflict spells at level 1. But what does a Druid with the Growth Subdomain get? I'm tempted to say it's based on alignment, but then what does a True Neutral Druid get?

Denizens of the messageboards, I need to know what stuff is important for a new GM to keep in mind. This is for two reasons: I've just started running my own campaign for the first time (Carrion Crown, if you were curious), and one of my players is looking at running a small game for a small party. I'd like to keep this thread as being specifically for pathfinder, but obviously there's some overlap with other games.

I can start with a few things I've learned since starting:
1. Have EVERYTHING prepared before the session starts. Spend a day or so before the session just setting up your information, such as what's in stock at stores or whatever. Even things that you don't think your players will get to for several sessions, get that set up too, because players have a tendency to throw you for a loop.

I want to ask specifically for information when running modules for a small party (less than four players). The simplest reason for this is that some of the other players in our group are the type to try and break the game, so my friend wants to run her first game with just a handful of us that are a bit easier to work with. She'll probably be running a module (we're thinking Godsmouth Heresy to start with), and we're curious how thing will change if we only have three players. Should we Gestalt? Should we each make two characters? Should we see if we can find a 4th friend that doesn't do unusual things? Should she run a PC herself? We're all pretty good at avoiding meta-gaming (sometimes too good, actually), so that's not a huge issue.

Alright, so, I'm a player in a Jade Regent game, and we just got to near the end of the first book. We've encountered

Oracle Curse: Mute
The Oracle’s Curse renders her unable to speak. The Oracle casts all spells as if they have been modified with the Silent Spell feat, without changing their casting time or spell level.

5th level: The Oracle can communicate telepathically with anyone she is currently touching. This communication is language-dependent. She can use this ability to cast any language-dependent spell, but she must succeed on a Touch Attack against the target. She can only communicate this way with one person at a time.

10th level: The Oracle can, as a full round action, form a telepathic bond with one willing person. She can communicate with this person telepathically, at will, as if she was touching them. She can change the target of her bond once per day.

15th level: The Oracle can always understand and be understood when using her telepathic communications, as if under the effect of a Tongues spell. In addition, she can communicate telepathically with more than one person at a time, but she must be saying the same thing to all of them.

Dual-Cursed Oracles cannot take both this curse and the Tongues curse.

I'm considering a range limit on the level 10 bond ability, but other than that I think this is fairly well balanced. The ability to use language dependent spells with a touch attack is to get around the biggest weakness the idea of this curse had: It made it impossible for the Oracle to use language dependent spells, and for a caster that's pretty huge. The touch attack method makes it possible, while still making sure the curse is actually a curse.

The main difficulty comes from being almost unable to communicate properly (basically sign-language or writing stuff down) until level 5. But I kinda like it, anyway. :)

So my friend is running a small game for a couple of close friends (she's new to GMing and wants to work with a small group). There's only going to be 2 or 3 of us, so we're making Gestalt characters.

So I want to know what changes you'd make from here:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm

for a Pathfinder version of Gestalt. If any. I figure something might change, just most PF classes have more features than 3.5 classes.

As the title, really.

What classes do you have trouble seeing yourself playing, either because of mechanics or fluff. Note: This does NOT include mental exercises, like Pun-Pun or whatever. I mean actual play, not theory-crafting.

I have a few.
Magus I simply don't like. I don't think it does the Fighter / Caster thing well enough to bother with.

Druid I just can't get any interest in. Anything a druid can do, I can do as some other class with less restrictions.

Summoners take up too much time, and I think they're a bit too powerful for not enough work. Yes, Wizards can be more powerful, but you have to think ahead and stuff for that. Summoners don't have to do a lot of that. Just spam out Summon Monster. So playing a Summoner makes me feel cheesy.

So what're yours, and why?

So, I just bought Ultimate Campaign, and I really enjoy most of everything in it. The only thing that has me a bit off is the way the book suggests you create your character.

For those who don't have the book, the book suggests that you first roll your stats, then work out personality, name, etc.

I read that section and thought "Huh. Y'know I do it very differently from that." That line of thought got me thinking about how other people create characters.

So my question for you is: What is your character creation process?

Personally, I tend to get a general concept (naive paladin, alchemist desperately trying to cure a disease, friendly goblin, etc) first. Then, I narrow down on three "core" personality traits. Things that won't change much, if at all.

Then I build the character's personality from those. I ask my self what my character would do in various situations, and figure out how s/he would act in general.

After all that is done, I determine attributes based on the character's personality and class. My naive paladin has a low Wisdom score, because she's a bit oblivious at times; the alchemist has a higher wisdom score, because he has the focus to cure the disease; the goblin has an unusually good charisma score, because he works hard to prove he's trust worthy.

Next is traits, which are only rarely picked based on the stats they give me. They're usually picked based on background. In cases where none of the existing traits feel right for the character, my GM is usually nice enough to let me re-fluff something.

After that is feats, then skill points, then spells (if any), then equipment.

The name is probably the only thing in my character creation process that doesn't have a set place. Sometimes I know the character's name right away, other times I don't know until I'm halfway through equipping the character. I don't usually spend much time thinking about the name. I usually find the name by thinking about the character's personality, then realizing I've been using a name to refer to her in my thought process, and writing that on my character sheet.

For me, the character is built long before I ever get into the mechanics of it. Making a character based on the mechanics is weird for me.

But either way, I'm now curious how other people do it.

Okay, so I'm a relatively new DM (I've run a few one-shots of 3.5, but this is my first time running anything spanning multiple sessions), and I'm running Carrion Crown with some buddies. The problem I'm having right now is that one character is being, for lack of a better word, blatantly antagonistic.

The character is a fetchling, and, to put it nicely, a complete and utter jerk. However, she feels that people hate her because she's a fetchling, and that if they're going to treat her like a criminal, she's going to act like one. So she said something rude and confrontational, immediately alienated the rest of the party, and now feels that their reaction is unfair and if they're going to treat her like a problem, she'll be one. So she's now alienated most of the party, and refuses to spend more time with them than she has to. She's also one of the types that completely doesn't realize that the way she acts is generally frowned upon, and she won't listen to people who try to tell her that, because she assumes it's a race thing.

Talking to the player has yielded minimal results. He's mostly unwilling to budge on the character. Kicking the player himself from the group isn't an option either, as he lives with one of the other players, and I'm playing with him in a game run by another person in the group. Kicking him from the game would create a lot of drama that I'm completely unwilling to deal with.

So do any of you have advice on how to handle it? I'm kind of at my (limited) wit's end :/

So I'm reading through the Town Hall bit, with the fires, and the text says that the places the fires are supposed to start are labelled on the map on page 18. Now, I might just be blind, but I can't see any such labels on that map.

Am I just blind or am I missing something?

So I'm GMing a run-through of Carrion Crown with some friends, and one of them is playing a Paladin that Dual-Wields.

She'll probably take the Weapon Enhancement Divine Bond thing at level 5, and she's asked me: At level 8, when the bonus increases to +2 (or equivalent), can she instead put +1 on each weapon?

The rules are silent about this (they neither say that she can't nor that she can, specifically), so I'm asking here. What do you all think? Would that be crazy unbalancing or is it not really a big deal?

Personally, I'm inclined to allow it, because I like rewarding unusual character builds, but I'm unsure of how it would affect balance.