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Courtly Hunter is an archetype in Ultimate Intrigue. It has a class feature, Subtle Companion, that reads:

Subtle Companion (Su): At 2nd level, a courtly hunter can transform her animal companion into a similar Tiny animal to allow it hide easily or even blend in and act as a spy. For instance, a tiger could be transformed into a housecat, a wolf could be transformed into a Tiny dog, a dire bat could be transformed into a Tiny flying fox, and so on. This functions as a polymorph effect, and the animal companion gains a +2 size bonus to Dexterity and a –4 size penalty to Strength (use the polymorph table on page 212 of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook to adjust its ability score if the animal companion is larger than Medium). As a standard action, the courtly hunter can touch her animal companion to transform it.
This ability replaces precise companion.

A strict interpretation of this ability would mean that, once the courtly hunter polymorphs their animal companion with this ability, that they cannot reverse it (at least at least until level 7 when the Courtly Hunter gains the alternate form class feature). Is that how the ability is supposed to work?

Adam Mogyorodi wrote:

To clarify then, an oracle who chooses spiritual weapon or ally as a spell known must use his or her wisdom modifier, but an oracle that learns it from the mystery class feature can use his or her charisma modifier instead?

This is the case. The intention is not to create a blanket rule of "spiritual ally uses whatever stat you want." Rather, it's to allow select characters make use of class features that they had no direct choice over. Otherwise an ancestors mystery oracle has "wasted" her 2nd- and 4th-level bonus spells.

Two things stand out at me.

The first is that this ruling never made it into the PFS FAQ, Clarifications Document, or another compiled rules reference.

It is understandable you do not want to make a blanket PFS houserule allowing these spells to use the spellcaster's spellcasting ability score modifier, while still allowing characters that have 'no choice' in the matter of taking this spell not lose out. However this creatures problems with the consistency and immersion of your campaign setting when having a choice means using WIS, and not having a choice means using the caster's spellcasting ability score modifier. This leads to situations where an Ancestor oracle with Spiritual Weapon uses their CHA modifier, whereas another oracle with Spiritual Weapon uses their WIS modifier. I find it difficult to think of an in-universe justification for this.

While this document is primarily for softcover books, there is a houserule that is strongly encouraged by the APG that could be brought into the campaign at the same time if PFS leadership thought it makes sense to (and it would make players of Oracles [and now Fractured Mind Spiritualists too] quite happy!). Specifically, cleric spells that reference only using WIS instead of casting modifier on CHA based spellcasting classes.

It would be a happy present to see this brought into PFS :)

You might think that you need to pour through various obscure sourcebooks to build a broken character that causes nobody else at your table to have fun, but that isn't true! You can do this just with the Pathfinder RPG line of products (and not even that many books in it really). You're probably going to want to make a wizard, because they consistently have spells that are allowed in PFS that can immediatly shut down a combat in the first round. If you combine spells like these with a really high initiative modifier, then you are very likely to go first and end combat before any other player can act.

The example level 1 build I have below has an initiative modifier of +17 at level 1. It reaches this with: 18 DEX (+4), Improved Initiative (+4), Greensting scorpion familiar (+4), Reactionary trait (+2), forewarned class feature (+1), Fleet-Footed alternate racial trait (+2). Even if you roll a 1 when rolling initiative, you are still pretty likely to go before every other character in combat. You do not even need to be worried about surprise rounds, because the Diviner School's Forewarned class feature also ensures you always act in surprise rounds.

The spells you will be using will be ones that can disable, incapacitate or seriously hamper multiple enemies at once. Some examples of good spells to be using for this purpose at some of the spell levels in your PFS career are:
1st: Color Spray, Grease
2nd: Glitterdust, Web
3rd: Slow, Stinking Cloud
4th: Black Tentacles, Confusion
5th: Icy Prison (Ultimate Magic; while this spell doesn't disable multiple enemies, it deserves mention for how it wins bossfights even when saved against)

While using a build like this, with spells that are mostly from the Core Rulebook, you can make combat unfun for everybody else (including the GM). However, there is also another part of Pathfinder Society you can perform reasonably well in at no expense to your combat ability; social encounters. While it is not a book in the RPG line, Pathfinder Society Primer is related enough to this campaign to be included here I feel. The trait "Clever Wordplay" allows you to use your Intelligence modifier instead of your Charisma modifier for a Charisma based skill; in our case we will take Diplomacy.

So how does this relate to power creep in new sourcebooks? While new options in new sourcebooks might be more powerful than some other existing options, they are generally not anywhere close to being broken like already legal options in the Core Rulebook (and the RPG line). Unless more Master Summoners are printed, new character options that may or may not be legalized for play are not going to be as powerful as what is already legal from the core line of products.

Example Build:
Elfy “I Go First” Elfington
Male Elf Diviner 1
N Medium humanoid (elf)
Init +17; Senses low-light vision; Perception -1

DEFENSE

AC 14, touch 14, flat-footed 10 (+4 Dex)
hp 7 (1d6+1)
Fort +1, Ref +4, Will +0; +2 vs. enchantments
Immune sleep

OFFENSE

Spd 30 ft.
Melee Quarterstaff -2 (1d6-2)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 1st; concentration +6)
8/day—diviner’s fortune (+1)
Diviner Spells Prepared (CL 1st; concentration +6)
1st—true strike, x2 color spray (DC 16), grease (DC 17)
0 (at will)—dancing lights, ghost sound (DC 15), detect magic, read magic
Opposition Schools abjuration, necromancy

STATISTICS

Str 7, Dex 18, Con 12, Int 20, Wis 7, Cha 7
Base Atk +0; CMB -2; CMD 12
Feats Run (Bonus), Spell Focus (conjuration) (Bonus), Improved Initiative
Traits Reactionary (Advanced Player’s Guide), Clever Wordplay (Diplomacy; Pathfinder Society Primer)
Skills Diplomacy +5, Knowledge (Arcana, Dungeoneering, Local, Nature, Planes, Religion) +9, Spellcraft +9
Languages Common, Elven, Celestial, Sylvan, Draconic, Goblin, Orc
SQ: Fleet-Footed (Advanced Race Guide), arcane bond (greensting scorpion (Ultimate Magic)), forewarned +1
Combat Gear quarterstaff; Gear spellbook (cantrips, grease, color spray, true strike, 5 other 1st level spells go here; they honestly don't matter), spell components pouch, 145gp

On page 19 of the Hell's Vengeance player's guide, Urgraz (the duergar antipaladin) is mentioned as poisoning members of his family. However, duergar are, as a race, immune to poison.

It would be nice to actually be able to download and read this. That would be a nice thing to be able to do.

Player here (no spoilers please, unless they are Star Wars related). My group and our GM are perplexed by what exactly some of the officer roles are supposed to do for the Silver Ravens rebellion group. The player's guide details their mechanical benefits pretty well, but completely fails to do say what exactly these roles do for the organization roleplay-wise.

Recruiter, Spymaster and Strategist seem self-explanatory enough for what they do for the organization, but what do the Demagogue, Partisan, and Sentinel actually do for their jobs?

Oceanshieldwolf wrote:

I agree with General Spoon - she doesn't seem personally evil to me. Just another righteous zealot.

And yet she detects as evil when divinatory magic is used to determine the truth of her alignment. Weird.

Well then your writer really dropped the ball when writing her motivation as protecting innocents.

General Spoon wrote:

Nothing about her background really suggests that she is evil.

Ratting out her parents and then feeling no remorse as they're viciously tortured to death, signing on to inflict further torture in the name of law and order, cold-bloodedly executing her own brother on what amounts to hearsay?

None of this, uh, none of this says "evil" to you?

"Three days later, when her parents finally succumbed to their tortures and died, Linxia made a decision: she would become a Hellknight herself. Her parents' crime was not their own—they had been misled by a friend, and paid the price. As a member of the Order of the Rack, however, she could help protect other innocents from such dangerous whispers and prevent them from suffering the same fate."

Answers! (mostly)

A) All of the villains we're presenting for Hell's Vengeance have the letter "E" in their alignment.

If that's the case, then this iconic's background story does a very poor job of presenting her as evil. If anything, it presents a very strongly LN character, and an argument for playing a LN character. Nothing about her background really suggests that she is evil.

General Spoon wrote:

Sin of Asmodeus wrote:

Eldritch Archer needs to be banned. Its just way too over powered. Sorry, but it is.

Can you explain why you have this opinion? Just saying it is overpowered is not going to convince anybody to agree with you, and it also prevents people from making an argument against your position.

Read Cyrad's post above... he pretty much spellls it out. One of the limiting factors for the magus is that he had to put his bod up front to do his mega single target damage.

The Eldritch Archer does away with that and brings in all the advantages of archery. Melee magi may just as well quit the Society now, and take up knitting.

The poster I was replying to did not make any references to other posters in the thread and their arguments, not even so much as "for reasons already mentioned." You, however, are doing it right ;)

Eldritch Archer needs to be banned. Its just way too over powered. Sorry, but it is.

Can you explain why you have this opinion? Just saying it is overpowered is not going to convince anybody to agree with you, and it also prevents people from making an argument against your position.

Fitz and Nighteyes! I am now 100% sold on Hunter fitting into a niche fluff-wise.

So how do I get it working offline? (Please assume that I know absolutely nothing and may well need to be walked through it.)

You will need Python on your machine, which I am assuming is Windows. If it isn't, then download for your OS as appropriate. I suggest version 2.7.8, if only because I use a version of 2.7 when I wrote this. I believe that it should have a setup that handles setup for you when run.

You will also need to save the script as a python file; you can just copy paste the script into a notepad and save it with the ".py" extension. If notepad chops up the indentation, you may need to get a more powerful text editor like Notepad++ to paste into. I am getting a syntactical error when I simply paste it into notepad that would be a pain in the butt to fix manually, but if you paste it into Notepad++ and select all, edit, indent, decrease line indent. This should fix the syntax up right quick.

Again, I am making an assumption that you are using a Windows OS. Open the command prompt, and navigate to the folder containing the python file you just saved. To change directory, the command is "cd X" where X the directory you are moving to. To move up a directory, you can use "cd ..". To see the contents of your current directory, you can use "dir".

I believe that this should be what you need, but if it doesn't work feel free to use Googlefu to muscle past a problem instead of waiting on me.

General Spoon wrote:

Here's a python script I put together today for determining if the results of a dice roll can be used to make any of the prime constants for an effective spell level: Sacred Geometry Python Script

It has been tested a bit, but not extensively. I am confident enough in it to drop it here though for people to have fun with. It has consistently had a runtime of only a few moments during testing, though I haven't done any complexity analysis of it.

Note, however, that it doesn't remove unnecessary parenthesis. If it doesn't find a solution, the script simply doesn't return anything.

Have fun!

Would you give an example of a command line input? I'm not sure exactly what I should be putting in, or how.

The format this script is expecting is "[a, b, c, d...]"

As for crashing the browser with a large input: I have experienced no problems when testing in command line (requires python on your end for this), and much faster speeds than online interpreters.

For someone who doesn't know a damn thing about python script...how do I even begin to use it?

There's no buttons or form fields to fill or anything. Just a foreign code.

If you don't want to get python on your machine for this one task, an option is to use an online Python interpreter like this one I just found and executed the script in. Code goes in the left box, hit the arrow, then enter input when prompted.

Here's a python script I put together today for determining if the results of a dice roll can be used to make any of the prime constants for an effective spell level: Sacred Geometry Python Script

It has been tested a bit, but not extensively. I am confident enough in it to drop it here though for people to have fun with. It has consistently had a runtime of only a few moments during testing, though I haven't done any complexity analysis of it.

Note, however, that it doesn't remove unnecessary parenthesis. If it doesn't find a solution, the script simply doesn't return anything.

Have fun!

I talked with oru GM and told hm "this is making us all notcomfortable please don't do tihs anymore" becauese our session wsa today but then he just wsa upset and said shamira came and killed the unkidnapped pregnant (n)pc and she also killed like irabeth but we just used raise dead on irabeth. So Irabeth is alive again but i am concerned we will b attacked again? we fought shamara off which is how irabeth did, but our gm said we think she might be an enemy we see again many times so what should we do we almost died the first time we were attacked by her?

Okay so its like this. My GM had the shadow demon in book 2 kdinapp another player's pc and we learned later she was the slave of shamira but not really a slave more like a pampered pet or something? anyways we rescued her somehow 6 weeks later ingame but now she is pregenant whit shamira's demon child. this character has been mindraped or something and as a result is now loving shamira, her child, and her ex-lover a ratfolk who is another pc. she hasnt told shamira about the child and our gm said that demonchilds are different so it grows quickly and will kill her when born like the baby killed bella. also the pregnant (n)pc is now CE and doesnt want to be good so what should we do?

Can not a prepared caster use their intelligence, which the gods also gave them? Why should THEY be unable to use their gifts, while sorcerers are allowed to use theirs? Further, abjurerers are very very anti-mage. Though they are a prepared arcane caster, and are persecuted for using their god-given gifts.

Elf and Faerie Dragon
Human (Varisian)
Half-Orc (no longer played)
Human (Osiriani; married to below)
Elf (Married to above)
Aasimar
Half-Elf
Tiefling
Aasimar (never played)
Credit Baby

I am going to plug a different option than Robes of Arcane Heritage for the body slot. The Mnemonic Vestment from UE costs only 5,000gp. Once a day, you may use it to cast a spell from a written source (spellbook or scroll) that you have on you as if it was a spell that you knew, consuming an appropriate level spell slot and setting the CL and DCs to your own. You can even apply metamagic feats to it on the fly, as well as other feats that affect the spell.

Buy a spellbook, and before you know it you'll be spending money to get spells scribed into it. And because of the relatively cheap cost of Mnemonic Vestment, you might find yourself buying more than one over your career, swapping out the one you are wearing after each use.

Wait, so you're telling me that there are GMs that remember if players have diseases to resolve? Sorry, but I don't buy it.

I am no longer allowed to waste brave Riddlywipple's sacrifice by completing the tpk a few rounds later.

Five crits in a row on my players. Welcome to the ownzone.

Thanks to all for playing, and to Jesse for organizing.

Haha, I heard about that Huge Black Dragon getting off like 5 crits in one round, from my GM, who had a tone of disbelief in his voice.

I'm going to plug the Periscope from UE. Use its size modifier to stealth (+12) when looking around corners instead of your own. It is only 20gp, and there are countless situations where you want to take a look around a corner.

I am no longer allowed to kill Vermlek Clerics in the surprise round through AoO's.

I am no longer allowed to put a saddle on a huge zombie spider, and pass it off as an exotic pet in broad daylight as we march to the BBEG's house.

I am no longer allowed to kill surrendered cultists by biting their heads off, even if they are evil.

I am no longer allowed to successfully convince Glabrezu that we will release him if he doesn't kill somebody's animal companion, only to renege on the promise after the dumb mutt is safe.

I am no longer allowed to convince the Paladin that she should totally jump down to the BBEG, as I have Feather Fall; the BBEG always has Dispel Magic.

Must also drop out after reviewing my course schedule.

I have several characters in tier, including a sorcerer 5, a bard 4, a barbarian 1/alchemist 2, a rogue 3/evoker 1, and a druid 2. I am interested in playing.

Name: Seldlon
Race: Elf
Classes/levels: Urban Barbarian 1/Rogue 2
Adventure: The Haunting of Harrowstone
Location: The Oubliette
Catalyst: The Lopper

Name: Marina
Race: Aasimar
Classes/levels: Cleric 2/Sorcerer 1
Adventure: The Haunting of Harrowstone
Location: The Oubliette
Catalyst: The Lopper

The Gory Details: After the party's dhampir archery paladin quickly dispatched the Burning Skeletal Champion Fighter 3, the party healed the damage they took before she could destroy it. Healed up, they decided to investigate the deranged laughter from the pit to the north, and were met by the Lopper climbing up the rope and through the grate.

The party's witch ran back around a corner almost immediately, and the Lopper spent a few rounds chopping at the other three party members. First taking a swipe at the dhampir, he quickly realized he wouldn't do much to her, and changed tactics to ignore her (easy enough to do, as she wasn't able to hit him with a single arrow during the fight). After a few rounds of causing people to bleed, Marina is doing a decent enough job of stopping the bleeding.

So the Lopper decides to chase after that nice not-bleeding witch that fled him, and is immediately struck by her burning hands when he turns the corner, staggering him. The rest of the party gives chase, and not happy, the Lopper drops Seldlon into negatives. He is brought conscious again by Marina, but is dropped again by the Lopper, and bleeds to death on his turn.

Exhilarated, the Lopper chases the witch who has fled him again, and is struck by another Burning Hands from a readied action. The Lopper is unhappy to be staggered again, and stumbled over to the witch, who slaps him with a third burning hands on her next turn. At this point really fearful of her, he runs back and begins to chop at Marina. The witch flees while he eventually drops Marina to negatives, and she bleeds to death a few rounds later.

What followed was the dhampir paladin grabbing Marina's wand of CLW, and beginning to try and poke the Lopper with it in a long stalemate, that was broken maybe two dozen rounds later when the Lopper started to roll good bleed damage and low negative energy damage, forcing the dhampir paladin to also flee Harrowstone.

It is likely the witch will prepare nothing but fire spells the next day.

Really, for me, it just takes being part of the story.

Example, my namesake character is a rogue, and as such, seems to be often outclassed in everything (save perhaps actual disabling devices, usually!) However, in a certain recent scenario, two members of his party rushed forward while going through a trapladened dungeon, and both got hit with a trap. That is the only trap out of probably 10 that we triggered, thanks to Silbeg and his "magic fingers".

Or, it could be Angelo, who last night was the third of three wizards in his adventuring party (third by level, that is). He managed to keep himself useful... in one encounter he set up a pack of rabid dogs with a Grease spell and a Color Spray. Good use of 2 first level spells, I'd say!

Just being able to have those things that you can talk about, and feel proud about. If all you do is follow the others... never landing a hit, never getting to speak, never solving a puzzle; well, that can get boring, as in, why did I spend 5 hours for that freak of a gunslinger alchemist with 3 arms to blast everything into a pulp in the first action of combat?

The third arm is not required in any way; one can simply put weapon cords on their pistols, which do not interfere with reloading.

I would like to be there, with either a Rogue 3/Evoker 1 or a Barbarian 1/Alchemist 2.