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If it were that broadly interpreted, that would include every Enchantment (charm) or Enchantment (compulsion). All of the example spells allow the caster to choose actions that the target can take. Think of it like this: Protection from Evil doesn't prevent the spell from working. It merely makes it where the protected person doesn't have to obey commands. Most of the language-dependent spells happen to be ones where the caster is issuing a command to the target and the command has to be understood before it can be followed. That's why I mentioned that most of them would count. Not all of the spells it protects against are language-dependent though. Dominate, for example, issues commands through a telepathic link that doesn't require a shared language.
I've always run it as 2. It only helps against spells that allow the caster to dictate the subjects actions. Most of language-dependent enchantments fall under that category. I.e. if the spell requires the subject to understand an order given to it, the spell is allowing the caster to exercise the level of mental control that Protection from Evil defends against.
I'm having a little trouble finding this verbiage. Where do the rules say that the drone can use your skill ranks while it is under direct control? It's in the description of Skill Unit instead of under Master Control: Additionally, whenever you are directly controlling your drone, it can use any of your skill ranks if you wish, assuming it has the appropriate tools to do so (a drone without manipulator arms cannot use Engineering to disable a device, for example).
You still have to follow the Universal Monster Rules for natural attacks:
Creatures with natural attacks and attacks made with weapons can use both as part of a full attack action (although often a creature must forgo one natural attack for each weapon clutched in that limb, be it a claw, tentacle, or slam). Such creatures attack with their weapons normally but treat all of their available natural attacks as secondary attacks during that attack, regardless of the attack’s original type. and Secondary attacks are made using the creature’s base attack bonus –5 and add only 1/2 the creature’s Strength bonus on damage rolls. As soon as you add a manufactured weapon attack to your routine, it makes all the natural attacks much worse. Generally you either do one or the other.
I understand why the parenthetical would be confusing, but if you read on, you'll see that I use hacking as an example and even call out how hacking and shooting would be more than a full round of actions. I get it. To do anything that takes multiple round to accomplish it uses a full round action on each of your turns until you've completed the action in question. If you don't have full round actions to give, how do you adjudicate that? Does it take twice as long? Also, how do you feel about stealth drones using their Limited AI to snipe with their standard actions? It's not using any more action economy, but it does violate the "standard action to attack" of the limited AI.
Your interpretation would mean that there's no reason to take Direct Control in combat... And your interpretation means there's no reason to ever take Skill Unit Computers or Engineering. All the checks with those skills are full actions. If you have to be using Master Control for the drone to get full actions it uses your skill ranks anyway and has no need for a Skill Unit to select that skill.
Computers and Engineering are options and there are tool arm mods available, so it's clear that making a repair drone was intended to be possible. The Skill Unit says that the skill can be used "when not under your direct control". If the drone doesn't have the actions to use that skill because of the limits of its AI, it implies that for them to actually use the skill, the Skill Unit has to be an exception to AI's limitations. Otherwise the skills can only actually be used under True AI at 20th level. I believe it was intended that the AI was just supposed to limit actions in combat. It's like the AI panics in those situations and can't figure out what it should do without direction and ends up wasting a good portion of its time being indecisive. If the Skill Unit is an exception to the AI's limitations, it might clear up one of the complaints brought up in a different thread about the hover drone. Since the hover drone has Skill Unit (Acrobatics), allowing it to make Acrobatics checks to hover on its own independent of the actions the Limited AI is doing would allow it to hover and shoot with a Limited AI.
There are three states of command for your drone: No Control, Basic Control, and Direct Control... That's how I believe it's supposed to be, but this system is built on general rules and exceptions. If the general rule is that a drone can only do the things outlined in its level of AI and the Skill Unit is an exception to that general rule, it would allow you to assign a drone a task that it could keep working on when you leave. If it can "use this skill when not under your direct control", that would cover the first two states, you listed.
It's unclear how the various levels of drone AI and the Skill Unit ability work. I can read it a couple of ways: 1. Does the Skill Unit is only specify a skill that can be used under Limited, Expert, or True AI? If so, you can't tell a drone to "fix the ship" and go off on an away mission since it would stop working once you go out of range unless it has True AI. 2. Does the Skill Unit specify a skill that the drone can use completely without direction? If so, it can fix stuff while you're on away missions. That also implies that it can take actions on its own related to those skills.
Starship combat doesn't have standard/move/swift actions like regular combat. You can't be giving your drone orders each round and still do something yourself. Once the drone gets True AI, it can act completely independently of its owner. The Skill Unit specifically says it can use the skill when not under your direct control. As for the "It's a class feature so it can't be used argument", it's only ones that affect (i.e. modify) crew actions that are banned. We're talking about a NPC follower capable of taking independent actions in certain circumstances. It's not modifying a crew action, it's giving you another member of the crew. The way the starship DCs scale though, it will be completely unable to make the easiest checks by 14th level.
Once a drone gets True AI at level 20, it can operate completely independently. Prior to that, it can only use the skill in it's Skill Unit when not under your direct control. It's unclear if the Skill Subroutine mods are also able to be used unsupervised, but I would tend to think so. If you take the mod twice, you'll get the drone's Int up to 10 and it would be halfway decent with Computers or Engineering. I wouldn't count on it being able to do much in starship combat though given the high DCs.
There's a precedent with Vital Strike and Spring Attack:
Can I use this with Spring Attack, or on a charge? No. Vital Strike can only be used as part of an attack action, which is a specific kind of standard action. Spring Attack is a special kind of full-round action that includes the ability to make one melee attack, not one attack action. Charging uses similar language and can also not be used in combination with Vital Strike. Likewise you can Whirlwind Attack "When you use the full-attack action", which is a specific kind of full-round action. Spell Combat is used "As a full-round action", implying that it's its own specific type of full-round action. You can use feats that aren't an action to use such as Power Attack, or ones that replace a melee attack such as Quick Dirty Trick.
He'd only lose the ability to dominate new people. The dominate effect is on the target. If a wizard cast dominate person on someone and then died, that person would still be dominated and performing whatever they were last instructed to do. The dominate would drop a day later when the wizard wasn't around to spend a standard action to maintain control.
3-Our house rule is you can only take a weaker caster cohorts, are built on 15 rather than 20 points and must generally be of the same race. I think a lot of people overlook the fact that Cohorts are NPCs and should follow the Heroic NPC rules for character creation. That includes such things as a lower point buy, less starting equipment, and no traits without taking the Additional Traits feat. If you really want to implement a house rule to discourage taking the feat, you could further limit it to non-heroic NPCs. You'd have even fewer points and only NPC classes. Even an Adept cohort is better than pretty much any other feat.
The "while wielding a light or one-handed melee weapon in the other hand" is what stops you. It doesn't matter if you're only weilding the weapon in one hand. It's still a two-handed weapon. The Jotungrip ability of the Titan Mauler Barbarian archetype is the only way I know around that restriction since Jotungrip says "it is treated as one-handed when determining the effect of Power Attack, Strength bonus to damage, and the like".
I'm pretty sure you summon the eidolon the same way with a synthesist as with a regular summoner. It's a 1 minute ritual that summons it with the same HP it had when it was dismissed. If it's killed, it comes back at 1/2 HP when summoned the next day and you have to cast Rejuvenate Eidolon to bring it back to full health.
I was looking at doing something similar and the only official thing I found was a two level dip into the erratta'd Titan Mauler barbarian archetype. Jotungrip: The weapon must be appropriately sized for her, and it is treated as one-handed when determining the effect of Power Attack, Strength bonus to damage, and the like. I'd assume that the "and the like" would let it work with Spell Combat.
You can add natural armor to an existing Amulet of Mighty fists. The enchantment would cost 50% extra. If the item is one that occupies a specific place on a character's body, the cost of adding any additional ability to that item increases by 50%. For example, if a character adds the power to confer invisibility to her ring of protection 2, the cost of adding this ability is the same as for creating a ring of invisibility multiplied by 1.5.
For that combo, be sure to check out the Inspired Blade swashbuckler archetype. You'll be getting Int, Wis, and 2x Cha for your pool. Most of the guides recommend taking no more than 5 levels of Gunslinger. You can take 4 levels of Investigator and only be behind on your BAB by 1. Then you can take Swashbuckler for the rest of your career and have nearly a full BAB progression.
SLAs in general work like spells except they don't have verbal, somatic or material components. That's it. So they're still just as identifiable as a silent, still, eschew materialed spell. If it doesn't have components, what basis do you have to identify the spell? I know that there was a recent FAQ saying that all spells have visible effects that make casting them obvious, but I know I'm not going to follow that in games I run. If that is true, then Invisibility is useless for casters because they'll throw off sparks and rainbows with everything they cast. For me, if you have to use a component that can be perceived, you can't do it subtly, but if you're invisible and casting a silent-metamagiced spell, you're fine.You are still going to have to deal with the fact that the target knows when they've succeeded on a save, so if they make their save they're alerted to the fact that something's up.
Spell-like abilities are much less noticeable. If someone goes through the effort and gets Charm Person as an SLA with Minor Spell Expertise or Spell Hex, I'll let them cast it without being noticed.
The only disadvantage to the weapon bond is that it's capped at a +10 effective bonus. Radiance eventually ends up being a +7 equivalent on it's own, so by the end game you'll only have +3 you can add to it. For the paladin I'm playing, I went with a two-weapon fighting build wielding the longsword and a shield. I use Dual Enhancement to put the leftover bonuses on the shield.
Since RotR takes place in Varisa, you're probably going to be either Varisian, Shoanti, or Chelaxian. If you're Varisian, the Arcane bloodline with the Tattooed Sorcerer archetype, and the Harrowed bloodline stand out as being particularly appropriate. If you're Chelaxian, the Infernal bloodline is the obvious choice. If you're Shoanti, the Dreamspun and Destined seem most appropriate. Also, you'll be near Kaer Maga, so Bloatmage is an eventual option if you're into that sort of thing.
Magical Knack just boosts the caster levels of spells you cast. It doesn't help your spells per day or what level spell you can cast. You'll be capping yourself at 5th level spells where a full druid would have 6th level spells. If that's not important to you, I'd take 4 levels of Barbarian and Shaping Focus.
You're allowed to make spellcraft checks if you can perceive them casting a spell. That's pretty much if it has any component. If they're casting a spell with a verbal or somatic component, it's a DC:5 perception check to notice while being distracted by combat so that's very unlikely to work. If you use Silent Spell, you could cast from stealth or while invisible without being easily noticed. If the party is distracted, I'd probably allow a stealth check to hide the somatic component of a spell. Spell-like abilities are really the way to go though. Since they don't have components there's nothing really to give you away. Since they normally provoke an AoO, that does mean that they require a certain amount of attention. For casting any spell without components, I'd go with a DC 15 sense motive check to notice or a DC 20 if the caster casts defensively (i.e. doesn't focus all their attention on the spell).
You can multiclass sorcerer and bloodrager. If you do, you have to pick the same bloodline. Their powers don't stack and you end up with redundant abilities. If you make a draconic bloodline bloodrager, you can go into dragon disciple, but you'll start getting redundant sorcerer bloodline powers.
The second level of Titan Mauler gives Jotungrip. That's the approach I'd take. See if your GM will allow a Jotungrip feat, or just take the 2-level dip. It's not like Barbarian is that out of character for an orc. Other than that, I can see allowing a house rule that you can Spell Combat spells without somatic components with a two-hander. You could then Still Spell (Metamagic) and Still Magic (Magus Arcana) to cast.
You mean "Evan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion"? The tentacles already scale with caster level. Ascendant Spell lets you use the Mythic version of the spell. Spell Specialization and Spell Perfection would increase the caster level by 4, and therefore the CMB/CMD. Spell Perfection would also allow you to apply the Ascendant Spell metamagic for free.
I did not see anything mentioning that was only targetted spells in the ring description. Only that the spell is cast upon the wearer, usually if it does not work on an area it is called out. Though admittedly the ring of counterspell is an older pre-Paizo item. There was a FAQ about it.
The Claws evolution can only be applied to legs once. For quadruped eidolons, the Rake evolution represents usable claws on the back legs. They're "claws" in flavor only though. Grab (Claws), Weapon Focus (Claws) and Improved Damage (Claws) doesn't do anything for Rakes.
Remember that you can "push" an animal to perform a trick that it doesn't know. There is no good reason to assume that a summoned animal knows any tricks. The spell says "If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions as you command." If it were an animal companion, and you could speak with it, you could only give it commands for tricks it knows. You'd have to push it for anything it hadn't been trained to do. By saying that communication is enough to get the animal to do a task, that implies that the animal already knows how to perform that task.
This is the way my group has always played it: Summoned creatures are summoned with the knowledge of who your enemies and allies are. They also have no sense of self-preservation since they return to where they were summoned from upon death. Without any means of communicating with their summoner, they will attack the closest enemy to the best of their ability. If you want the creature to do anything other than attack the nearest enemy, you need to be able to communicate your wishes in some way. You can do that for free if you can speak to it. For convenience we say that summoned animals know all tricks so you can make a Handle Animal check as a move action to get it to do something else.
Keep in mind that it's pretty easy to spot a dominated person with Sense Motive. The fact that a party member is dominated wouldn't likely go unnoticed for long. "You can tell that someone's behavior is being influenced by an enchantment effect even if that person isn't aware of it. The usual DC is 25, but if the target is dominated (see dominate person), the DC is only 15 because of the limited range of the target's activities."
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