Father Dagon's page

I just received Order 36347192, one case (16 boosters) of Darklands Rising figures. While it is to be expected that one or two figures may be warped or damaged in a group this size, more than half of the boosters in this case had damaged figures - mostly broken entirely off of bases. These are snapped stems as well, not just unglued pegs that could be reseated and glued back together securely. Included is a list of the damaged figures, along with a link to photos showing the damage.

Is there any way to get intact figures shipped to replace the damaged items? This case was over 500 dollars even with the subscription discount, and while the additional Huge figures are great, it seems the quality control dropped off significantly compared to prior shipments. Thanks for looking into this -

Bevan Johnson

3x Leng Spiders (all bases broken off, one with leg snapped off)
2x Skavelings (base broken off at the stem)
1x Leucrotta (all four legs snapped off at base, including one leg broken mid-foot)
1x Drow Abomination Fleshwarp (broken off of base)
1x Animate Dream (arm broken off, peg still in body)
1x Deep Gnome Warrior (arm broken off, peg still in body)
1x Drow Rogue (warped and folded nearly parallel to base)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GHYgBQnZHUw9R4me8 - Photo link to set of figures, and individual details (I can provide these in another format if needed, or additional shots)

So the overall shipment thread shows that a number of other folks have this same 'pending order' issue, and that it might be due to setting the order to 'ship as soon as possible' last week (which I believe I did when the order hadn't gone out yet on the 23rd)- "Please note: If you set your subscription to "ship as soon as possible" between now and when we begin generating December shipments (Mon 11/28), the case will most likely not generate. If your order gets stuck, please alert Customer Service."

Is that impacting this order, or is it still just normal warehouse backlog?

Ah, that's good news then. Thanks again!

Hello - I had a PF Battles subscription delivery along with a side-cart order that I made last week. I initiated the delivery, but the order has been sitting in a 'pending' state since last week (the 23rd). Is there an issue with the payment, or something else delaying the delivery? Thanks for checking!

"The spell has no effect on golems and other constructs that are imbued with magic during their creation process and are thereafter self-supporting (unless they have been summoned, in which case they are treated like any other summoned creatures). Elementals, undead, and outsider are likewise unaffected unless summoned. These creatures' spell-like or supernatural abilities may be temporarily nullified by the field."

This is an odd case.. the entire ability of most undead to be mobile at all is inherently 'Su' - an animated skeleton has no surrounding musculature to actually move any of its form. AMF states that undead are 'unaffected', so skeletons would conceivably not just collapse into piles of immobile bones. I'd say it's clearly not RAI that a 6th level spell would immediately defeat a CR14 creature with no save, as a disembodied skull clacking it's jaw to bounce across the floor is obviously just as supernatural as the skull flying away. Similarly, a water elemental wouldn't immediately be turned into a puddle due to its bodily coherence being supernatural.

Ranger: Deep Walker + Guide, for a megadungeon game. Super mega party initiative and perception checks ahoy! But no, had to settle on regular fav. terrain underground, and the ever so slightly less super mega party init and perception checks.

Well the RAW indicates that is the given state of affairs in a "normal" round:

"In a normal round, you can perform a standard action and a move action, or you can perform a full-round action. You can also perform one swift action and one or more free actions. You can always take a move action in place of a standard action.

In some situations (such as in a surprise round), you may be limited to taking only a single move action or standard action."

However the core rules don't indicate if being able to take a full-round action is based on having a move and standard available to you, or if it's contingent on having a 'normal' round (i.e. not a surprise round). Seeing as this is a rules issue that has divided people for a while now, is there a prior RAW precedent for "Move+Standard=Full Round Action", or is this a new standard of action economy?

So in perusing some of the bits in TG, I found this bit of rulecruft in the artifact 'Temporal Accelerator':

"For 1 minute, the wearer gains two sets of actions each turn—two move, two standard, and two swift actions—in any order desired. A standard and move action can be combined into a full-round action as normal, but actions with a duration of 1 round still take up the wearer's entire turn."

Now this is the first time I've seen it expressly spelled out that a person who has a move action and a standard action in a round (including a surprise round) can trade them out directly for a full-round action. The Bandit archetype contains this ability:

"Ambush (Ex): At 4th level, a bandit becomes fully practiced in the art of ambushing. When she acts in the surprise round, she can take a move action, standard action, and swift action during the surprise round, not just a move or standard action."

The Ambush ability seemed to avoid specifically saying that the Bandit has a full round's worth of actions in the surprise round, or could take things that count as full round actions (i.e. a full attack), and most discussions I've seen previously (like so) seem to be on the fence as to how the ability is intended to work. Is this new artifact inadvertently changing how action economy works, or is it clarifying something that was assumed to be clear from day one?

See also, Rune of Durability (Sorc/Wiz 3) from Dwarves of Golarion - permanent duration, "You inscribe an angular rune upon the surface of a weapon, increasing its hit points. A weapon that bears this rune multiplies its hit points by 2, as if it were one size category larger than it actually is. Placing more than one rune of this type on a weapon has no effect."

Should stack with all the other effects listed, doesn't have any restrictions on working with magic items.

So in one of my campaigns, my two players were playing a pair of tiefling rogue siblings and had been working through an ancient wizard's tomb investigating a local legend. Of course said tomb was full of all sorts of devious grimtoothy traps and such as befitted their roguely persuasions. At one point near the the bottom of the dungeon, after having cleared out everything above them, they come across a large room with a wide trough of bubbling hot tar flowing sluggishly through the middle, spanned by a long, ten foot wide arch of stone. I had planned a setpiece to take place here later involving the NPC they rescued turning traitor while flying devils port in and all sorts of three-way melee breaking out over the perilous expanse of deadly tar. However, player A takes one look at the room, says 'that TOTALLY looks like a trap' which was expected, and then instead of investigating/disabling/avoiding the break-away section of bridge in the middle and getting embroiled in the events which would follow, just pulls out a one-shot dimension door item I had forgotten about ages ago and ports the small group completely across the room and into the next area. Rats!

THEN, this same player has a flash of insight / paranoia about the NPC they had come across, and decides to move straight into murder mode and sneak attack this poor wizard before he has a chance do do anything even potentially nefarious. The other player says 'in for a penny, in for a pound' and lays in as well, both totally trumping the suddenly terrified NPC in init and gutting him like a fish. At this point the devils port in, having been looking for this same NPC to drag off to hell for an aeons-old debt, and lay out their hellish demands that the transgressor be yielded to their custody for eternal flaying. The players shrug, kick over the body and wash their hands of it, completely avoiding the climactic combat. The devils leave, the players loot the final chamber of spectacular goods and get ready to go, hauling chests and heaped with jewels.

"So, how do you get out of here?" I ask, innocently enough.
"Well, I'm pretty sure we've cleared everything out of here, so we just walk straight out" says Player A. Player B looks up briefly from their tabulation of loot and nods.
"You just.. walk straight out? Across the stone bridge over the tar and up to the stairs?"
"Yeah, sure, sounds good."
I fix Player A with a stare for a few solid seconds to make sure he's comfortable with this decision.
"Alllll right, you head out and across the bridge across the boiling-hot tar trough. Reflex save, please."
"Sure. Aw man, rolled a 2. Does a 19 do it? What happened?"
"The trap you clearly predicted a short while ago was, in fact, exactly where you expected, and as you walk across it the bridge gives way, plunging you and everything you are carrying into boiling tar. The agony is mercifully brief."

Enslaving people isn't always evil. You can have bad slave owners but that doesn't make all of them bad. If a kingdom invades another, often people are taken as slaves. Would you rather them be killed?

Me, I'd rather that they just have to face ridiculous false dichotomies for the duration of the occupation.

Oppression is evil as well but being a slave does not necessitate oppression.

It is impossible to describe the absolute totality of how completely you are wrong about this.

Going back to Sunday school a bit...

Oh, the text which advocates slavery mentions a fictionalized account of how slaves were totally fine with slavery? Do tell!

In more recent history, in the USA, there were good slave owners and bad just the same. There were also methods by which one could volunteer for slavery in return for several benefits or it could be used as a way to pay back services which you owe to someone and are in severe default for. This was called indentured servitude and you were practically a slave all the same. Without such a system, the law had no way to handle debts. If history teaches anything, such gaps in law usually lead to vigilantism which often leads to needless death, which, by the way, is evil.

Oh FFS. There are so many unsupported conclusions, false suppositions and ridiculous rose-tinted historical revisions here it's not worth breaking down point by point. You were raised in South Carolina or Missouri or something, weren't you?

Bit of thread-rez here, as I had a recent scenario similar to the OP's - an Animated Object with Hardness 10, that I'd like to upgrade with some Acid Resistance. Hardness isn't *quite* the same thing as ER, but it covers some of the same ground. Would this boost the overall effectiveness of the energy resistance a la different bonus types stacking, or would it overlap?

Not true. The spell 'Masterwork Transformation' is designed specifically to turn regular items into their masterwork equivalents. The question of 'upgrading' the bow into mighty is trickier - I'd allow it with an appropriate Craft Bows check (DC 15 + (2 x Str rating)), and a material cost of (difference in the price between Longbow and Mighty Longbow)/3 in materials.

**edit** and that's what I get for not previewing, heh.

You would have to do make mutiable rolls as an Item must be +1 before +2 and +2 before +3 ect. DC = caster level +5 add +5 if you don't have the caster level. Caster level for enchment bonus is 3x what ever the + is.

This is not true, nothing in the rules requires multiple checks to build up to an item. You make one roll, based on the final state of the item you're trying to create. If, later on, you wish to upgrade the item with new additional abilities, you then make another single check at the end of the necessary time. However, you can enchant a +5 weapon from scratch with a single check, and if you have a +2 sword to begin with, upgrade it to +5 with a single check.

No, the caster level of the item is NOT a requirement. Caster level of the creator is not relevant unless it specifically says "creator must be at least 6th level" or something similar in the Construction Requirements (example - Caster's Shield). And even then, it is still a requirement that can be bypassed by adding +5 to the crafting check DC.

Sirocco + Black Tentacles is pretty delicious, as they're both rd/lvl. Sirocco does fire damage every round, fatigues with no save, and has a chance to knock prone. Getting hit by the fire damage again moves it to exhaustion. Fatigue/Exhaustion and Prone both really screw with your CMB/CMD to deal with grappling from the tentacles.

The 'Pit' spells serve as handy 'drains' for a Cloudkill, which sinks to the lowest available space and makes life hellish for those in the hole... until the pit expires, whereupon the surface area is full of cloudkill again for several minutes, surprising anyone who was left up top and thought the cloud had gone away.

Wall of fire in a five foot radius circle, stuck down the bottom of a Pit spell. As if climbing out of those things needed to get any more aggravating!

The witch's Fortune hex and some judicious cackling will make Telekinesis a mage-wrecker for sure. Especially if the enemy mage being tele-grappled has Misfortune on as well, hehe..

Having known some people who had sugar gliders as pets, the missing thing from this write-up is "Vulnerabilities: Everything. Any and every change to the living environment of a Kopinao has an 85% chance of afflicting the beast with a fatal illness, causing death within d4 days. All energy types do 200% extra damage to a Kopinao. Any physical damage to the Kopinao will result in the beast's instant death (Fort save 25 negates). All breath attacks automatically have maximum effect on a Kopinao (no save allowed). Creatures without breath attacks can still cause severe damage to a Kopinao by exhaling heavily (Kopinao takes 3d6 Con damage, fort 25 for half)."

I've only played two paladins, but they were definitely the most fun to name. 'Kezemiah Burnham Graveglory' and 'Sir Enoch Branwyn Taargus'. All bombast, all the time!

The 'Archives of Nethys' treasure generator got a pretty hefty update to include all the UE charts, and gives a swath of different generation options to work with (city treasure, by encounter, by value, etc). Give it a shot! Also generates kingdom treasure for Kingmaker campaigns, which is a HUGE help.

Retraining takes all your attention for 8 hours per day for a number of days based on what you’re retraining. You can’t perform any other strenuous activities while retraining, such as marching, adventuring, or crafting magic items. You can retrain only one thing at a time; you must complete or abandon a particular training goal before starting another one. Abandoning unfinished training means you lose all progress toward that training’s goal and all costs associated with that training.

There is some discrepancy in how the time spent retraining a feature can and cannot be arranged. In the opening rules, it states that 'Abandoning unfinished training means you lose all progress toward that training’s goal and all costs', however it's not clear what qualifies as 'abandoning'.

Clearly starting a new retraining project while a prior one is unfinished causes the prior project to be lost. Several options say 'It takes 5 days to retrain one class feature' or the like. However, retraining a language states 'It takes 20 days of training to gain a bonus language, and these days need not be consecutive.' This seems to imply that unless otherwise noted, training days must be consecutive or progress is lost. If you have a five day project and cannot train on day four due to monster attacks or whatnot, then all progress (and cost) is lost and it's back to day one. Is this correct?

Lastly, the edge case - Racial trait retraining. This one says 'This takes 20 nonconsecutive days and requires a trainer with the racial trait you want.' Is that meant to be read as 'This takes 20 days, which need not be consecutive', or is it saying that the training CAN'T take place on consecutive days? That would mean training would require a minimum of 39 days, only actually training every other day.

It appears that only Language and Racial Trait have text that specifies non-consecutive training schedules - it'd be nice if there was a clarification in the beginning that just said 'All days spent retraining a feature must be consecutive or progress is lost, unless otherwise noted.'

One single attack, specifically - in the case of "Melee 2 claws +6 (1d6+4 plus grab), sting +6 (1d6+4 plus poison)", a standard action would allow either the single sting attack or *one* claw attack at +6 (or any of the other things that could be attempted with a standard action).

Re: Geas - find a good way to set it up BEFORE you pull the big reveal. Like - "Hey, If I Geas the party ahead of time to 'take no hostile action against (Party Member Name A, Name B, Name C, Yourself)', then we don't have to worry about charms /dominates tricking us into fighting each other!" Lock everyone up with that, then turn and get rude all over them a little while later. In a sense of fairness you could specifically not mention a clause about trying to remove the Geas itself, so they could start frantically trying to get it dispelled when the fight breaks out and mooks swarm them.

You could even put the Geas on yourself as well to keep up appearances... since it's dismissable, just turn it back off when no one is looking.

Technically Gentle Repose wouldn't work, since it targets a corpse as an object, not an undead creature. Else, just about every magically inclined undead beastie would walk around looking totally fresh (if pale) and just making a mess of things in town, since 'true seeing' wouldn't reveal them.

"The spell ends if the subject attacks any creature. For purposes of this spell, an attack includes any spell targeting a foe or whose area or effect includes a foe."

The action doesn't become an attack until it actively targets / affects an enemy. You can set up to cast and hold the charge without breaking invis, and then make the actual attack at a later point (which would end the invisibility).

Except you can't Vital Strike on a charge...

Based on the new ruling, your character ISN'T charging, just their mount. So the character gets the +2 to hit / -2 to AC etc mods of charging, without actually committing the charge action themselves. All this, just to squirm out of the way of allowing mounted pouncing... but now it opens the door to Vital Strike, or any of the other attack actions not normally allowed during a charge maneuver, along with breaking the rules language of everything else related to mounted combat prior to that ruling.

Honestly, the simpler thing would just be to rewrite pounce to explicitly say 'not while mounted, you crazy kids!'. Then everything else can continue to function as normal, and barbarians can weep a single tear for the loss. Wizards will shrug and continue to make and unmake the universe with a wave of the hand.

In my game, I've had Bluehood serve as a point of contact for the PCs who'd like to try and get information through some of the less public channels of Westcrown, as well as a black-market connect for trying to deal with antiquities that shouldn't be sold on the open market.

Mule back chords.

Is that a bardic ability?

But seriously, even tho they often have a low strength, they may likely be in better general shape than standard modern office employee due to a career path that involves travelling all over the place on foot, and very frequent bursts of high-impact physical activity. Carrying a well-adjusted pack with 10-15 pounds of gear in it gets to be second nature very quickly, and distributing that weight around your person in smaller amounts makes it even easier. The iconic wizard Ezren has a strength of 10 and a con of 13 - both average or better. Many point-buy characters may dump str to 7, but con is the representation of general health and endurance... and dropping a wizard's con below average is a quick recipe for getting turned into dungeon gravy.

Robbery is absolutely an evil act. "I think I deserve your stuff more than you do, so I'm going to take it" is advancing your self-interest over others, to their direct detriment. If you later do something nice with the stuff you took, you can claim that second act is good, and hope that the good outweighs the evil (or at least comes to a neutral wash), but that doesn't change the fact that the endeavor started with an evil act.

A big portion of the Robin Hood mythos is also that he was specifically robbing, not just *rich* people, but people who had become rich by exploiting the poor through an oppressive power structure.. and then he gave the wealth he liberated back to those previously abused poor folks. Just robbing people who you think have more than enough to comfortably miss a few coins is rationalization to justify greed.

Another consideration is need - is it an evil act to steal a loaf of bread to feed a starving child, etc etc? Yes, it is a small evil - the baker definitely had something taken from him that he worked for, that *his* livelihood depends on selling. However, just about anyone would agree that it is a much greater good to feed the starving child (unless the child was a real jerk).

Basically, what it comes down to is - how you acquire your wealth is one act, how you apply it is another. Whether you find yourself more on the good or evil side of the scale all depends on if the ends justify the needs.

I actually built something remarkably similar in Kingmaker as a crafting mage - a Huge Animated Object comes with 4 Construction Points. Spend 1 point for 'Stone' which ups the hardness and Natural AC, one or two points for faster movement, and one for the 'extra space' on the inside. Sub out the slam attack for something else if you want, or replace it with trample, it's pretty flexible at that point. Market price for that is 25k, with some adjustments depending on if you want to add/subtract features.

Keep in mind that when statted up, a huge construct is a pretty punchy beast for a character to have on their side. Unless you come up with some caveats to how it can/can't be piloted, the player will have a hefty new tool in their kit with some potentially unexpected ramifications. If it can self-pilot, then you now have a travel device that can move at a x4 run speed 24 hours a day if it sticks to the roads / open fields, just as one example. Also a pack beast that can haul a shade over 3000 pounds before leaving 'light load'.. and that's before people think to drop 'Ant Haul' on it, and the like.

Not sure if that's 100% legal (never exactly been clear on skill ranks vs skill bonuses being used for Feats, we generally houserule that the whole bonus applies because it rarely breaks anything...so this may be one of the few times)

To be clear, this is not legal. Feat requirements specifically require x number of RANKS in a skill, not a total bonus. A feat with a requirement of 12 ranks in a skill means it shouldn't be available until the character has at least 12 levels / HD. Just getting a +12 total bonus to a skill is a fairly short reach for a first level character.

Which is not to say that you can't houserule it as you fit, but it's definitely not RAW/RAI.

Get a cohort / party member to play a cleric with the Arcane subdomain of the Magic domain, and have them throw down 'Arcane Beacon' right before you cast Dispel, and use the CL boost effect.

Yeah, the 'oscillating' text is flavor, just means they're sort of bobbing and floating there. RG is a nasty spell in that there's often no save allowed at all, and unless the afflicted have methods of flight on-hand they're kind of boned. The spell doesn't mention anything about attack penalties for the targeted creatures, should they try to shoot bows or something - I'd ad hoc it as something at least as much as levitate's last sentence, if not with an additional -2 to start with due to trying to attack through two differently-oriented gravitational fields.

Seems like a good fit... for some of my toons, at least, heh. Sign me up!

Why do I have a suspicion that this is a Kingmaker post? The recommendation at 1st level for handling Wisps / Mounds / the invariable time you roll max trolls on the random encounters is... have backup characters ready. The wandering monsters are ruthless at low levels.

Keep in mind that you don't pick the target until the spell is done being cast. If the troll you were going to dominate scampers off or gets killed, you can still target that ogre that happens to be in range...

I've been running this campaign from book one, and the players caught me off-guard with a continuity error after discovering Goren's body at the pesh shop. The writeup says that the body has been altered specifically so as to remove the possibility of someone casting 'speak with dead' on the corpse and having access to the piles of info he supposedly knows. All fine and good.. until player A says 'that's all right, Make Whole is on my list. We can fix the body up good as new!' and then player B follows up with 'and hey, if that doesn't work, we still have one of the Grave Candles from book 3 left over - we don't need an intact body at all.' Whooooops...

Now I could just cheese it with the candle and say 'oop, target made the will save (even with the -4 penalty), try again in a week', since with the timeline of events as is (they're already chasing after Dog Tongue to plunge into the forest) it may be moot until after the dust settles. However, if they persist, is there anyplace that details what the 'new and important info' is that Goren had? It's obviously not the reveal that

Any outline of what should be communicated there? I can buy a week via 'successful Will save' if they try, but persisting along those lines will pretty obviously just be me calling 'GM Fiat' to their otherwise solid plan, which I'd like to avoid doing... at least, in a way that they'd recognize, heh.

When I ran it, I had the players wearing costumes - the party alchemist had some lacquered cloth plate mail to portray the bumbling pal-o-dine, etc. The costuming for stage productions like this is supposed to be broad-stroke and somewhat caricatured - it doesn't need to be 'real' plate mail, or even particularly realistic... it's gestural costuming. I had the stage manager save his illusion concentration for when he'd really need it - covering up if an actor 'forgot his line' (was too mutilated to speak), etc.

As far as the manor party goes, illusions aren't really necessary - the mayor is celebrating the actors, not the characters they were portraying. The players wore their stage costumes for a bit when the first showed for the meet and greet, then shed them before the feast and debauch.. both for comfort, and ease of creeping around later.

Traditionally, when tracking seperate XP per characters (which has fallen out of vogue lately), a character who died still was awarded the XP for the conflict that they died in, and would add it to their total upon being rez'd. Pathfinder has put more of a focus on not dicking people out of levels or XP as a penalty, so that's been more of a moot point in recent years.

The perform checks work the same way as the dress rehearsal - that's why it's a dress rehearsal. The players can figure out before the live performance if there's anything they'd like to work on / buff in order to make the line readings and performance more believable, and then find those plans dashed to the ground when they start puking up demons everywhere while rot grubs chew their guts, hehe.

See also Emergency Force Sphere - immediate action, with text noting "Normally this spell is used to buy time for dealing with avalanches, floods, and rock-slides, though it is also handy in dealing with ambushes."

This seems to indicate specifically that you can use it flat footed. While immediate actions as a whole are not available when flat footed, there are a number of immediate action spells that seem designed specifically FOR use when flat footed.

Don't forget the 'Arcane Reinforcement' spell from the Faction Guide - you can add your Spellcraft ranks (just the ranks themselves) as a typeless bonus to your craft check. At lv20, that's another +20 right there.

What I've wondered about TR is how the self-wounding part of the spell works, action-wise. It seems remarkably close to the text for self-wounding in the Confusion spell -

Now, if the spell is seeming to duplicate that one Confusion effect, then it would imply that self-wounding is all the target does on a round that it fails the TR save, losing all other actions. However, this isn't spelled out specifically, so it's only speculation. On the other hand, if it's just an action taken on the target's round, does the self-wounding take the place of an attack action? That would make it either spend a standard on the effect, or use it as part of a full attack action if one was available... otherwise it would be nearing a bizarre edge case where it's possible to get extra attacks in a round stacking with haste/speed/etc, even if one has to target yourself. (begins looking into damage reflecting builds to exploit bizarre scenario where attacking yourself is a good idea)

If you ever spend 25k to only get 17.5k you're bad at business.

Precisely. It's already less of a profit for a store that spends 25k to make an item that only sells for 35k... when a player crafts the item, they still have to spend 25k to make it and only get half of market price to sell it back, which is 17.5k. Which is why it's a terrible idea to try and make the item you craft all kinds of restricted to get a 'discount'.

"Item Requires Skill to Use: Some items require a specific skill to get them to function. This factor should reduce the cost about 10%.

Item Requires Specific Class or Alignment to Use: Even more restrictive than requiring a skill, this limitation cuts the price by 30%."

Note the key difference in wording there - class/alignment/etc restrictions cut the *PRICE* of the item, the resale value, not the crafting cost. Why? Because they're just as hard to make, but a lot harder to move at the shop since so many people can't use them. If I specced to craft a 50k base cost weapon that can only be weilded by Chaotic Groovy Noodlemancers named Father Dagon, it would still cost me 25k in materials to make myself (or have another PC craft)... it'd just be treated as a 35k market price item should I ever want to sell it (meaning it'd only get me 17.5k tops, provided I could even find another store catering to Noodlemancers with the initials FD).

You just need to equal the CMD, not exceed it - so that fighter with a +9 CMB would only need to roll a 6 to hit CMD 15. From there, it basically looks like this entire thing is a trip maneuver with a circumstance bonus added in for the attacker also ending up prone after the action is resolved (successful or not). As a DM I'd say sure to a +2 modifier on the check, along with another +2 if you're charging... You can already make a trip attempt as the attack at the end of a charge with a +2 by default. Physically, the only advantage a 'tackle' type attack has over a standard 'trip' (momentum of the charge aside) is that your reach is a bit extended. Tactically, ending up sprawled on your face after attempting an attack is a Very Bad Idea, unless you're a Drunken Master or something, heh.

If you were grappling the opponent, I'd allow the 'move' action of a successful grapple check to be used to drop you both prone and still grappling. That's a bit more involved in the action economy, however.

Reading comprehension is an issue here. You'll note that there is no specific requirement that you have a caster level of 1 right?

Yeah, I definitely agree that you have some reading comprehension issues if you can try and make the statement that no caster level requirement exists despite the core text clearly stating that caster level is a requirement. Your crusade to make 'no caster level' the same as 'caster level 0' the same as 'you are a caster' through some bizarre malformation of the transitive property is refuted pretty clearly by a dev saying 'nope, that's not how it works at all', so you might want to find a way out of that hole that doesn't involve a shovel.

The thing with something like this is that it's like proving the Earth is round when everyone insist its flat. There's been probably a decade of people who have inserted a caster level requirement into scroll use where none exists.

1. Caster level is not a requirement to use scroll. So whether having caster levels is necessary to be a spell caster is irrelevant for whether or not you can use a scroll. Here, let me repeat the requirement to use scrolls and you tell me where it says you have to be able to cast spells or "be a spell caster"

"To have any chance of activating a scroll spell, the scroll user must meet the following requirements.

The spell must be of the correct type (arcane or divine). Arcane spellcasters (wizards, sorcerers, and bards) can only use scrolls containing arcane spells, and divine spellcasters (clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers) can only use scrolls containing divine spells. (The type of scroll a character creates is also determined by his class.)
The user must have the spell on her class list.
The user must have the requisite ability score."

You're... kidding, right? The very next paragraph after the section you pasted, CRB p490 or right here under activation it very clearly and explicitly lays out how and when the caster level requirements and checks come in to play.

Yes, True Seeing penetrates Darkness and Deeper Darkness.

A wizard can add additional magic abilities to his bonded object as if he has the required Item Creation Feats and if he meets the level prerequisites of the feat.

Some feats have prerequisites. Your character must have the indicated ability score, class feature, feat, skill, base attack bonus, or other quality designated in order to select or use that feat. A character can gain a feat at the same level at which he gains the prerequisite.

A character can't use a feat if he loses a prerequisite, but he does not lose the feat itself. If, at a later time, he regains the lost prerequisite, he immediately regains full use of the feat that prerequisite enables.

Does the phantom Item Creation Feat granted for an arcane bond item satisfy the pre-reqs for other feats that would chain from there, as long as the wizard maintains that same type of bonded item? i.e. - Wizard takes a staff as a bonded item, and is treated as having Craft Staff for the purpose of improving that one staff. Are they also treated as having Craft Staff if he wants to take Staff-Like Wand? Can the wizard take Arcane Builder and select Craft Staff as the focus to reduce crafting times by 25% for that staff (and other staves as well, should he later take the actual Craft Staff feat)?

The major difference between the two that I see is that Staff-Like Wand has Craft Staff as a listed pre-req, whereas Arcane Builder just has you select a type of Craft feat and gives you a bonus when crafting.. theoretically you could take the Arcane Builder feat long before the actual crafting feat, and just not get to use the benefit until you acquire the crafting ability itself.