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I play a one-shot yesterday in which their was an incurable disease that was certainly fatal and delivered by monster melee attacks. I was the party fighter and the recipient of said attacks. I could fail only on a 1....and rolled the 1. Then long slow heroic death.

I've always struggled with this outcome: in RA, in one shots and in home games. I get raising the intensity of threat attempt by raising the stakes, but mechanically, some combats cannot be avoided or fought so that the melee can actually avoid melee.

I feel like there are rarely alternatives that target other classes, like a fatal spellplague if you cast a spell in a certain area.

Anyone else have similar experiences?

Howdy all,

I'm looking at these two feats for a RA campaign MS. I like the broad list expansion of SNM, but I'm curious about the Silvanshee's Cat's Luck, which would be a +5 luck save bonus to any team member, which is incredible.

Anyone have experiences with Guardian Spirit?

I'm late to the ASM discussion, as I didn't notice the spell. Not sure how it interacts with the summoner SLA. Feedback?

Howdy all,

Just stumbled on this item. I'm running a 6th level Master Summoner and at 7, I'm tempted to pick up SMIV in one of my spell slots, along with a RoGS.

Even with a full round casting time, the access to huge creatures and significant damage boosts from size buffing little guys seems awesome.

How has this worked out for those of you who have used it?

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary/crocodile.html

Bab +2 plus 4 str bonus should be bite +6, tail +1?

Is this just a balance for deathroll?

I'm looking at level 7 on my Master Summoner and I see improved invisibility as a spell option. Most suggestion lists say not to take it, because the Summoner class doesn't need it.

I spend most of my time dealing out buffs to other PC's and I feel like it is a massive buff for melee characters.

As a buff for other PC's during the 6-11 level range, how do you folks feel it is powerwise?

I generally DM, but recently got the chance to play in Rappan Athuk. I've been working consistently to build an interesting set of behaviors for my character.

I play a master summoner. Our last session ended in a cliffhanger in which we may or may not be about to get into trouble with something that got brought to the material plane by bad guys and subsequently broke free and mauled them all. I was grumpy to end the session right at the exciting part, but later was chatting with other players when I had a great RP breakthrough.

What if I played my master summoner as someone who was dedicated to helping creatures get back to their home planes? Seems really fun to work out and you could easily spin most conjuration magic as essence calling instead of soul calling.

For those of you who PC often, how frequently do you get RP ah ha's in the middle of a campaign?

tl;dr: A. Who has a legit RP standpoint to sell or use irredemably evil items? B. From a meta game standpoint, how do you deal with the loss of treasure from wrecking these items, as oft should be done?

So, my party recently commando entered an old keep and stumbled on an item of significant power. We haven't ID'ed it yet, and don't know if it's good or bad. We are likely about to fight a big evil group of clerics, so it may be bad.

This brought back up for me something I've thought of in the past, but never had a chance to play through with a PC: how do characters deal with very evil, very powerful items, via RP and meta?

From an RP standpoint, it seems like most of the alignments have a very strong incentive to destroy or hide unredeemable items. The good alignments should want it destroyed or unrecoverable (D&U) almost automatically. But most of the neutral and evil alignments would also want it D&U.

Ex.1) I play a NN Master Summoner who worships Abadar. I am a crafter and greedy, but also quite faithful. Most evil items are pretty bad for the stability of cities, despite their possible cash value to me; cities saved my life. Despite there being no in game consequences for my non-divine character, I'm certain I'll try to destroy evil artifacts we find because they are too dangerous.
Ex.2) A hypothetical cleric of evil god 1 finds an item of evil god two. Outside of giving it to my church to mess with evil god 2, why would I want it to be found?

From a meta standpoint, how do you balance the crushing loss of resources trashing big bad items brings?

This is a spell from the ACG.

COMPANION LIFE LINK
School necromancy; Level druid 2, ranger 2, sorcerer/wizard 2, witch 2
Casting Time 1 standard action
Component V, S, M/DF (a drop of eidolon ichor)
Range touch
Target one of your animal companions or your familiar
Duration 1 minute/level (see text)
Saving Throw Fortitude negates (harmless); Spell Resistance yes (harmless)
You create a life link between yourself and the target. You sense whenever the target is wounded and are made immediately aware if the target is slain. If you are wounded or slain, the target is made aware. As a free action, you can call out to the target, causing it to return to you (if able and willing); doing this ends the spell.

Unless I'm misreading it, it seems to have no boundary or distance limitations. How are folks adjudicating this?

I've been looking at fun to run 15pb characters and think that a Lizardfolk Archeologist would make a decent party helper and stay combat relevant with the 3 NA + luck.

Level 1 stats would be: 16/10/15/12/10/14
First feat: lingering permormance
Traits: Fate's Favored and Trap Finder.

Questions:
1.) Lizardfolk bards can slowly gain weapon proficiency instead of skill points at level up. Are there any weapons that suit a 3/4BAB character that's pretty reliant on 3-4 natural attacks until above level 10?

2.) How do other players experience the melee archaeologist?

Our party keeps encountering:
1.) poop rooms
2.) poop monsters
3.) rooms filled with feet of garbage
4.) etc.

How can we negate our sense of smell and along with it, the nausea of these encounters?

I am comfortable with the mid-level spells and items like the necklace of adaptation, but I'm curious if less expensive or more party oriented methods exist.

Hey all,

Our party just hit 6th level and our druid started some earthglide adventures. We had already been using summoned elementals, but despite the restrictions and risks, have a PC with so many forms is pretty sweet utility.

How have other people experiences been?

It's been a while since I posted about the darkness monsters that my party was trying to bypass after the Gut in what we thought was Rappan Athuk.

Long story short: my 5th level party is about to try to take on Saracek, the darkness monsters and possibly a Babau all at the same time. Wish us luck!

To get to this point, we left through the Gut, sold some loot, and entered through the front door of RA. After dealing with some traps and a horrid poop mimic, we discovered that Saracek's floor is only a couple down from the surface. We only know of a couple of other ways into the complex and they all seem worse, so the party has voted to take on the BBEG.

For those who forgot how we ended up here or know about Saracek:

After fighting Marthek and lugging him back to town for a rescue, our party engaged some creatures in impenetrable darkness on the same level. We built a giant wooden barricade on rails and used it to press the darkness creatures back while we flailed at hitting them. During this escapade, one of the monsters went and got Saracek, who along with a babau, came to visit invisibly.

There was a flurry of party butchery, desperate spells and knowledge checks, mainly punctuated by failed fear saves. We fled, recovered and the scared players voted to enter the main door of RA.

We have a clean read on the Babau, a good idea that Saracek is both a skeleton warrior and an anti-paladin of 10ish level and suspect that the darkness monsters are Black Skeletons.

What can a 5th level party do to engage remote viewing?

After a series of encounters with a BBEG and his pet Babau, my 5th level party just got robbed by the same Babau many miles away from the site of our combats.

The demon was aware of when we had barely stepped away from our stuff for an underwater fight and popped in and started robbing us.

Due to a freak event in which a column of my water elementals whisked the party barbarian back out of the water, the demon only got his choice of 1 item, for which he selected my Handy Haversack full of loot, leaving the Paladin's sentient sword thankfully.

His pinpoint knowledge of our stepping away, coupled with some mysterious perception checks "where we feel like we're being watched" has led to our supposition that we are being remote viewed.

Does the smite work? It's seems like a negative energy effect, but I could see a case for it being some other kind of god power.

With 5th level arcane, divine and bardic magic available, what's the best stack of buffs you can think of putting on a 5th level barbarian for a tough melee combat?

I am enjoying RA a ton.

I feel like RA functions as a difficult dungeon less by "breaking the rules" and more by constantly subdividing party actions and options to reduce effectiveness. This creates many overlapping spaces with very narrow methods for success. All Pathfinder does this, but RA seems very ramped up.

Having seen several encounters now that stack severe disabilities on player output, I was wondering what others thought.

Examples:
1.) Enter combat, DC 20+ will save. All who fail are out of combat and will imminently die. Those who succeed must fight in a tight space with a creature that does high damage and has strong spell resistance and immunity to mental control.

meta: Break party formation, thin party actions, remove spell caster control options.

2.) combat starts with a heightened deeper darkness effect, blinding all party members. enemies are immune and have high + complex DR, fear effects, strength damage and great acrobatics.

Meta: Break party formation, lower action efficiency, eliminate skill checks for ID, cripple all combat options other than AoE spellcasting and single strike DPS.

3.) Fight is in a fully toxic environment, forcing significant rolls again both poison and disease. Primary enemies have complex DR, SR can teleport, go invisible, stack additional debuffs and fly at will. additional enemies are summoned at random rounds in great numbers.

Meta: Break party formation, lower AoE effectiveness, debuff, overwhelm.

4.) BBEG. Has many elemental immunities, High DR, SR, massive fear aura, deadly close AoE, extra deadly melee, can go invisible.

Meta: Break the party formation, hard to harm, requires heavy action output just to manage the battlefield.

Hey folks,

We've got a session coming up in a couple of days and have to deal with a wierd darkness combat. We have time to prep and 5kish funds and are level 5. The party will be a cleric, barbarian, druid, ranger and a master summoner. All have darkvision.

Here's the situation:

My untethered eidolon was out scouting when he was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of darkness and then attacked many times for minor damage and serious strength damage. I then unsummoned him. The cloud of darkness rolled out into a long hallway and right over a zone of Daylight (cl5), which had no effect on the darkness, despite our darkvision. The darkness didn't penetrate a door and didn't block sound.

We fled after the sounds of something chopping at the door. We couldn't get any information on the darkness via checks like Spellcraft.

My meta-suspicion is that there were monsters inside a heightened Deeper Darkness. We have fought an undead before that attacked similarly but without the darkness.

Assuming that we cannot predict what level of darkness effect is in place and thus cannot simply prepare a light spell of sufficient level, how would you creatively deal with this darkness?

It must be thoroughly defanged, as we will travel though this area often.

I am considering echolocation on the Druid and Elixir's of Darksight, but the latter will fail if this isn't a deeper darkness spell effect.

So, my party recently fought this big dude. He was described as having muscles that have their own muscles. Despite being medium sized, he effortlessly grapped a large PC and shoved her onto a spike repeatedly until she was almost dead.

Long story short, the dude didn't die, turned out to be cursed, we healed him with much expensive itemage and now he's joined our party. Due to character # balance restraints, he is effectively a swap character PC that any player can try if they want a break from their other OP character.

Here's the interesting part. He's a human barbarian with base stats of 27/16/20/10/11/10. Those are simply ridiculous stats. 100 point buy? 150?

What funny things can you do in Pathfinder with strength like that? Back in 3.5, there was a "throw mountains" build with War Hulk.

The party is fine as it is, but this is sort of a fantasy play.

I thought I would continue updating our progress, as we plod through the Gut at lv. 5.

After a session that was very uneventful, our party reconvened to try to investigate a runed cavern. At the end of the previous session, my untethered eidolon, Eli, found some bodies spiked to the wall. While investigating, he dropped out of contact and when I blipped him back to the party, he was still catatonic.

At the start of this session, our druid commander requested that we investigate the occurrence, so we proceeded to the spiked bodies.

Spikes Round 1:

Yeah...TPK time. Therein lay a room. As the party booked into the room, we heard "everyone make a will save!" Several people and pets failed, and proceeded to shamble over and await...

Becoming more staked bodies for a gaunt dude with a hammer and a giant spike.

Three party members made their saves, including the archer paladin, who quickly had to put his new shiny magic sword to use. It was a brief tough fight. Our party sucks at combat healing and the "spiker" was a heavy damage dealer.

After finding a lot of boots, we decided that the runed caverns were just to unstable to continue exploring.

We continued down the gut for a while and then, of all things, daylight! And mushrooms! Lots of Mushrooms. Fortunately, we recently added a ranger to the party, and he identified some shriekers and yellow? brown? mold. The commander requested a pile of fire elementals to burn everything to the ground.

So, 10 elementals went in, the shriekers went off and 1 round later, 1 elemental came back to report that the other 9 had almost instantly perished.

My master summoner, recently recovered from the realm of the dead, was a little shaken by this. Our Duergar though, was unperturbed and proceed to waltz into the room and get surrounded by a pile of "shriekers" with four 15 foot tentacles apiece. That was not a good dungeoneering roll.

Fortunately, Duergar are immune to horrid gross rotting death and barbarians have damage reduction, so we began shooting and poking at the Violet Fungii.

The drow cleric, who is in love with the duergar barbarian, used shield other on her to mitigate some damage. This was a brilliant play until some crazy dude with a pile of spears came running into the other side of the cavern.

Described as having muscles on top of his muscles' muscles, Sir Musclesalot starting pegging the barbarian for 30 points a spear, at 2 spears a round...which killed the cleric through the 'shield other'. Though a magical DM intervention delivered a save, we dutifully filled out our obituary, for casualty number 2.

Many blows were exchanged, Sir musclesalot fled, a huge pack of ghouls joined the combat and eventually, the conscious party members won through.

Design note: The duergar is a very powerful race for being 9rp.
Design note 2: this was the most fun, deadly mushroom encounter I've ever faced. A party caught mid-room would certainly die in 1 round.

Spikes Round 2:

The master summoner, upset at losing an entire day's worth of summons to cooking vegetables requested that the party hunt down the badly damaged sir musclesalot, because "we can heal and he probably can't."

The party agreed and quickly tracked the fellow down, into...A scary dungeon! Has the party finally discovered RA?

Combat was quickly joined as Sir Musclesalot proceeded to grapple the 1200 pound enlarged barbarian and slam her over and over again onto a spike set in the floor. Holy Cow! That's a musclely man!

Then he doused the archer paladin with green slime, nearly dissolving him, and wrecking much of his equipment, including his bow.

Finally, Sir Musclesalot, spiker of barbarians, thower of nasty crap was reduced to exactly 0 hp and in his rage, put himself to -1.

After some study of various dm hints, it was deduced that the muscly dude is under the effect of cursey magic. This created a rescue/kill debate between the Paladin and Ranger (LG&CG) vs the Druid and Barbarian (NN & CN) with the summoner and cleric (NN&LN) abstaining.

Eventually, it was agreed to go back through the Gut and try to heal Sir Musclesalot. So now we are towing a crazy muscley dude with 6 coils of rope tied around him back through the Gut, using non-lethal damage and spells to keep him down and alive.

RA death count:2

So a wizard in Gaseous Form gets based by an air elemental in Whirlwind Form. What exactly happens in the next couple of rounds?

So, I posted earlier about my hopes to not die in Rappan Athuk. Here's a little update for everyone.

Sadly, this last session, the DM got his first casualty, my Master Summoner. Although I have been raised from the dead at great cost by my faithful companions, my character is scarred forever, for I was sacrificed by priests of Tsathogga to summon an awful monster to batter my would be rescuers.

Long story short, we were plodding through The Gut, and after not staying at a suspicious inn, we found a secret passage leading to a "secret" Tsathoggaian temple. Here, we used a fireball item to toast a room of priests and then got bled dry of resources battling our mirror opposites (two barbarians and a master summoner).

We pushed through some minimally trapped doors to discover another group of evil priests, who subsequently murdered a companion to summon a wraith monster.

We were chased off, but in the confusion, our Druid and Paladin ran a different way, into a dead end. The wraith monster and priests pursued the remaining 3 party members through The Gut for miles until we ended at a Mexican standoff at the sketchy inn.

Sadly, the high priestess got a count on our split party and sent back an underling to eliminate the Druid and Paladin.

Knowing this, I explained to the Cleric and Barbarian, who along with myself had been badly drained by the wraith monster, that we could probably hole up and rest, making our survival likely, but then the Paladin and Druid would likely get murdered.

We decided we either had to fight now to rescue them, or risk them getting murdered in the 15 hours until we could get back. we bribed the inn keeper to poison the priests, and when that failed we attacked. We banked everything on the invisible barbarian rolling above 3 on a leap over a Create Pit to lock down the priestess. She rolled a 3, fell in, the priestess summon a dire bear, and we all got dropped.

Not ones to look a gift sacrifice in the mouth, we were all savagely beaten and trundled up and carried back to the temple.

MEANWHILE: The Paladin and the Druid managed to find a secret door in the deadend and avoided getting caught. Despite getting repeatedly paralyzed by some invisible creature or force, they managed to spend a miserable night among some geysers and successfully blitz out of the temple, not knowing we had been captured and brought back in.

They met a Ranger outside (a new player) who had seen our fight, and opted to flee from the dungeon and walk to our newly purchased farm to try and garner support from our guild for a rescue.

Remembering that there was an enclave of Devils nearby, things took a turn for the sinister, and the party offered some souls (not the Paladin's, despite the Devils' interest) as collateral for a beatdown and rescue mission.

Long story short, as the bad guy army invaded, my Master Summoner was the second sacrifice. Helpless and beaten, I was stabbed until dead. Now we have to contractually deliver a severe blow to Orcus or several souls will be forfeit.

Truly, this is why I love RPG's, despite having my first ever character death in 25 years of playing.

So, via getting lost in a teleportation dungeon, my 5 person, low level party ended up out front of Rappan Athuk this past weekend, with no intention of going in yet. We promptly booked it away and wandered back to Zelkor's Ferry.

However, when we continued back to the Mouth of Doom, the party commander decided to "finish mapping the teleportation dungeon", which of course led us right back to Rappan Athuk.

The Paladin was bored and wanted to go down the well, despite multiple warnings not to. When other party members seemed hesitant, he looked at me and suggested that I send my Eidolon instead. Having just picked up Unfetter, I thought that seemed like a fair idea.

We proceeded to flee while the Eidolon grumblingly plowed down the well. I am a Master Summoner, so I cannot see through my Eidolon's eyes, and this began a hilarious exchange, wherein the DM played my eidolon wandering through the caves beneath the well, very sneakily and with rather terse communication. Eventually, the poor guy was ambushed by a horde of Black Skeletons and I unsummoned him.

I'm sharing this mostly as a really fun way to get a "teaser trailer" of what was down the well, without much game-breaking actual information.

Hey all,

I need some opinions on feat value. Our Rappan Athuk party's 4th level cleric approached me for feat advice for when she hits level 5. She currently has:
1-lingering performance
3-selective channeling

She is a LN evangelist of Ra and using Rulership to daze targets (currently only living targets). She is fully committed to Charisma boosting (wis 16/cha 19). She is looking to retrain lingering performance at 5th.

Her next several desired feats include:

Divine Protection
Versatile Channeler
Quick Channel
Improved Channel
Divine Interference later on

Questions:
1.) Which two of those feats make the strongest pairing at level 5?
2.) How would you guys assign value to Divine Protection. It's seems really strong but in this case slows down the offensive power of channel feats.

My personal take is that Versatile Channeler is pretty clearly a pick at 5 (we are weak against undead). However, I'm not sure what I think the best second feat is. DP seems strong defensively, IC makes any particular daze attempt significantly stronger and QC allows for smoother turn efficiency and best chances to stun on a nova/two channel turn.

Moved from General.

Our party barbarian asked me to post that we managed to level to 4th level in Rappan Athuk and to defeat the boss room in the Mouth of Doom with no deaths. It was a near thing several times and my poor poor eidolon is still ruined.

That certainly redefined being in the bowels of a dungeon!

Altogether, I would say that RA is a very challenging module for low level play and people should expect deaths. There are several death traps in the early stages and the random encounters are outrageously powerful.

I would give the following advice:
1.) run often and fast.
2.) think outside the box.

Mechanically, it functions as a difficult adventure because of several design approaches:
1.) Near total embargo of purchasable goods.
2.) At level CR+4 to CR+8 encounters sprinkled in on each level.
3.) Lack of grindable areas if the stuff you find is too tough.

Good stuff.

Our party barbarian asked me to post that we managed to reach 4th level in Rappan Athuk and defeat the boss room in the Mouth of Doom with no deaths. It was a near thing several times and my poor poor eidolon is still ruined.

That certainly redefined being in the bowels of a dungeon!

Altogether, I would say that RA is a very challenging module for low level play and people should expect deaths. There are several death traps in the early stages and the random encounters are outrageously powerful.

I would give the following advice:
1.) run often and fast.
2.) think outside the box.

Mechanically, it functions as a difficult adventure because of several design approaches:
1.) Near total embargo of purchasable goods.
2.) At level CR+4 to CR+8 encounters sprinkled in on each level.
3.) Lack of grindable areas.

Good stuff.

Had a really interesting encounter this weekend and want to talk about it/ tell the story. I'm not really looking for advice and the discussion will include spoilers. Is there a good section of the forums to do this?

So our Paladin struck a foe with his sword (standard) and then lept some other foes at low hp (move). During the leap, he was zeroed into staggered by an AoO.

Question: does the staggered action limitation start when the character is staggered or does it count earlier round actions?

Case 1: Paladin spends standard. Paladin attempts move. Move triggers AoO. Paladin is staggered. Staggered action restriction not filled. Paladin moves and doesn't go to -1hp.

Case 2: Paladin spends standard. Paladin attempts move. Move triggers AoO. Paladin is staggered. Staggered action restriction filled. Paladin moves and does go to -1hp.

Now that Quicken SLA has been clarified for non-imitative SLAs, has anyone ran with clerics that specialize in a few powerful ones?

For example, with a retrain at level 10, a Desna cleric could move to an ally, swift action Bit of Luck and then Standard for Touch of Good, allowing the cannon of the team to roll twice and add 5 to hit.

There seems to be an even stronger synergy with Eldritch Heritage (Orc) and Touch of Luck or Law and Good.

Any other interesting ideas? I like that this adds a depth of buffing that isn't spell dependent.

I'm building replacement characters for a campaign and am considering a THF Tiefling Sacred Servant, because they are so implacable.

What do people like for the domain?

Heroism + Community Minded seems superb at level 8.

Travel and Repose are both interesting.

Has anyone taken a look at:

link

The Zuishin at 7th-level has range fired Breath of Life and the Toshigami at 9th has Time Stop among many deadly effects.

These seem like fantastic summons for the SNA lists, and really the Toshigami seems to be the best summon possible for either list.

What do others think?

I'm looking for confirmation, as I've seen a spate of posts lately that refer to using summons to summon monsters and with costly SLA's and then using said SLA's like Raise Dead or Restoration.

My understanding was that these, summons and teleportation effects were inactive on summons.

quote: A summoned monster cannot summon or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities. Creatures cannot be summoned into an environment that cannot support them. Creatures summoned using this spell cannot use spells or spell-like abilities that duplicate spells with expensive material components (such as wish).

Did this rule get changed recently?

Had a cool encounter last night wherein I summoned an air elemental into a beetle swarm and had it go whirlwind. No one anticipated the combination and we ruled that due to the unique traits of a swarm when compared to a single large creature, that the swarm could get trapped in the whirlwind. Cool visual.

I wanted other people's thoughts on this, both RAW and RAI. Swarms function as a mass of creatures that you don't really kill as much as break up, with each component being little.

There are three of us in the party I'm currently in that have a deeply entwined backstory. Two of our characters are essentially a team that is relationally codependent. We're still at low enough level that a Raise Dead and Reincarnation are likely out of reach.

We've had several conversations irl about the likely behaviors of the 3 characters if any should die. The conclusion is that certain death combinations would likely cause the remaining member(s) to NPC out, due to heartbreak, sense of failure or lack of interest in adventuring.

My question is: has anyone ever NPC'd a character purely for RP purposes, despite enjoying the character? How'd it play out?

A level 20 Paladin smites a giant demon with a full attack. On their first attack, they hit. There is a banishment effect that fails. Do they:

1.) lose smite for all remaining attacks that round?
2.) lose smite after the full attack is resolved?

I just read this ability for the first time and am confused by it. Instinctively, I would play it option 1.

So I was fleshing out character builds to 20 and read 'Holy Champion'. I searched a few threads and did not see a clarification on how the banishment effect removes the smite effect. As a capstone, this is terrible. My original intention was Pal(OoV)20.

Seems like it needs to be dipped away. But with what and when? The OoV build seems to need level 4 as soon as possible. People suggested Oracle for melee builds, but Nature and Lore add nothing I could see to an 18 Dex, 18 Cha Paladin.

Fighter adds a bonus feat.

Keep in mind this is a live character currently sitting at level 3.

Suggestions?

So, I'm starting to make replacement characters for our Rappan Athuk campaign, due to the request of players who fear they are not long for this world.

I've been spending a lot of time looking at reactive protection abilities like great saves and immunities.

Can anyone think of a better set of low level immunities that a Duergar Paladin 3? I realize the charisma penalty makes this a kind of humorous build, but immune disease, fear, paralysis, phantasms, and poison is nothing to scoff at. Add in the Clear Spindle Ioun/Wayfinder combo and you're getting really impressive.

I had the opportunity to play a Ranger this weekend for the first time at a game convention in a big multi-party PVP-ish adventure. It was fun, simple character (I perceive! I shoot stuff!), so I looked up Ranger today and did some work on FE.

From a single target dps perspective, is it best to put all of your stacking FE bonus boosts into a single common enemy and then pick rarely encountered and weak FE options for all of the other options, so that Instant Enemy can be applied to whatever target you prefer?

A +10/+10 untyped seems Boss wrecking at level 20 and really solid as +6/+6 at 10.

Specifically, how strong of a choice is using Summoner Aspect to take Immunity Fire or Greater Aspect to grab Fire, Acid, Ice?

Pathfinder seems to have eliminated immunity as an item ability and I recall it being about 200k in 3.5 per type.

Flight also seems strong, but cheaper to get and much more available through race or feats.

It seems frankly awesome.

Hi all,

First time poster. This is a meta-heavy post. Feel free to skip to the questions.

Background:

I am a longtime DM who hasn't played in years and has agree to play in a campaign with 3-5 brand new players in Rappan Athuk, starting at level 1 (currently lv. 2). This is my first Pathfinder campaign ever, although I have many years of playtime in 3.x and 4th. My roles, assigned by the other players, are: rules teacher, character designer and "don't let us die"'er.

Our party consists of: An Aasimar master summoner (me), A Drow evangelist hangover cleric, a variant Aasimar menhir druid, a Sylph alchemist, a Duergar mounted fury barbarian and a variant Aasimar Vengance paladin archer.

We have a very powerful party if everyone shows up. The MS, Cleric and Barb are always present with 1d3 additional players.

With that said, RA is proving to have wild swings in CR at level. We fled from a single target CR 5 and 7 at 1st level, nearly getting wiped. Last session, we had a tense, awesome game of cat and mouse with a gargoyle we couldn't harm as he ripped through doors, barricades and summons to kill us. My eidolon has 22 points of ability damage and is permanently blind. Everything is pretty much poisoned, diseased and cursed.

The DM has warned us that we will be getting mugged by creatures with +8 to 10 CR advantages. While I fully intend to give up my wallet when that happens, sooner or later, I'm going to have to take the wallet back.

We do not have access to a magic mart of any kind. We cannot go to an easier area to level. We are assembling a revenge list. We manage big combats with lots of targets really well.

Q's:

1.) How does a 1st level party kill a CR 5-7 target, assuming it 1 round kills multiple targets, has reach and also has a climb speed? A dire bear is a fine example.
2.) How does a 4th level party deal with a CR 10 monster that brings SR, powerful SLA's, superior movement and complex DR to the table? Think Vrock.
3.) What's the lowest level anyone has killed a CR 14-16 dragon? A Balor? A carpet of hundreds of highly poisonous medium creatures with climb speeds?