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Hello! I had a player use Temporal Pulse during a fight that resulted in quite a few Slowed conditions and Quickened conditions being handed out. The wording for this gift is a little unclear, and I wanted to confirm what was maybe RAI:

Activate [two-actions] (concentrate); Frequency once per day; Effect You make time shudder around you, stealing it from enemies and granting it to allies. Creatures of your choice within 30 feet must attempt a Will save. For each creature you render slowed with this gift, you can render one ally within 30 feet, including you, quickened for 1 round.

Success The creature is unaffected.
Failure The creature is slowed 1.
Critical Failure The creature is slowed 2.

The quickened condition granted to allies is defined as 1 round, but the slowed condition doesn't have a duration listed. As slowed is not like Stunned where it decays when it removes the actions, this is as written to state that the Slowed condition is permanent. Which can't be right!

So what's the duration for the Slowed condition? I think RAI, this is intended to last only 1 round like the quickened condition. Was curious if there was an official determination on this, and customer service pointed me this direction to ask. Thanks in advance!

Hey folks, just ran into a question that I either can't find an answer for or didn't dig heard enough on.

Since the Balor Lord is a balor plus 5 levels of barbarian, the balor lord gets improved uncanny dodge.

This defense denies another rogue the ability to sneak attack the character by flanking her, unless the attacker has at least four more rogue levels than the target does.

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, a character who has at minimum 9 levels of rogue could sneak attack the Balor Lord? Simply because of the 5 levels of barbarian? Or does the HD play into that level, and thus it is impossible for a rogue to sneak attack the balor lord if a flank is presented?

Hello there! (Hopefully I'm in the right forum category for this)

First off, my experience with Pathfinder is recently new. I have been playing in two custom campaigns where a fair amount of the rules are waived, and I am playing in one DnD 4e module where I have understand on the potential of my character or classes. I have more interested in the Pathfinder campaign, since I have been able to read through mechanics online during my free time. I am also DM’ing for the first time, and I wanted to DM an Adventure Path. Wanting to do the adventure paths in order, I started with the Rise of the Runelords, and just bumped it up to the anniversary edition for good measure. I am been DMing for about 3 months now, and I fear with the way things are going, I’m losing control on certain campaign aspects, and would like some insight on how to repair it.

For starters, I have a total of 8 possible players. 5 try to make it every week (but I haven’t been able to get all 5 to the table as of late), the other 3 make it when they can (which is very rarely). It was totally my fault on this, as I have a hard time telling people who are interested in trying the game, “No.” 5 out of the 8 people are new to the system, and the other three have varying experience with other campaigns.

Now onto the thing I want some opinions on:

I really wanted to follow the experience system that is detailed in the gamemastering section in the CRB. Due to the size of the main party being 5, and including some custom made NPCs here and there for character backstory, I generally have 6 or more people technically in the active party regardless of who is actually at the table. Also, to not penalize the player who can and can’t make it, I end up NPCing those who are not able to make it and are in the main party. I originally had plans to end this around level 10, but may bring that cut off level here sooner.

It seems that, because of this, I have jipped my players of experience because they get lower values. Now, I understand the mechanics of increasing the encounters CR rating and adding more mobs or beefing them up. I did this for a bit, however it seemingly leveled the PCs too quickly, so I only did it for important fights like Tsuto, Erylium, Nualia, etc. It was working out well, as some of the beefing up ended up meaning better loot for my players. However, my concern is that I’m now just after the Habe’s Sanatorium section of The Skinsaw Murders and the party is still level 4. According to the book, they were supposed to be level 5 by now, and really soon here to be level 6 shortly after the beginning of the Misgivings.
To me, the answer is partially clear; just do a few custom combat sessions with enemies dealing with the character backstory stuff to catch back up. However, I fear we have quite a few to do to get caught back up to where the party should be, so I’m not sure if this is the appropriate solution. Should I make the players work for the experience? Or just say, “Hey whoops, I messed up. Here’s all of the missing exp you guys should have gotten. Sorry about that.”? Seems to take the hard work out of it, but then again it’s my bad for their current progression.

Thoughts?