Goblin Guard's page

1) Seel, Goddess of War and Writing

Edict: Seek the Seel Rune, Prove yourself in battle
Anathema: Despoil or disrespect the dead, burn books
Divine Font: Heal or Harm
Favoured weapon: Guisarme
Domain: Freedom, Repose, Vigil, Destruction, Might

Divine Skill: Athletics
Divine Attribute: Strength, Intelligence
Spells: Sure Strike (1) Weapon Storm (4), Contingency (7)

History:
Seel emerged during the largest war the world had ever seen, gently guiding the souls of the departed from the battlefield. Soon after, eleven heroes were given something called a Sei Rune - these eleven heroes were then able to stave off the armies of the South.

Worshippers:
Due to her relative recency and the mystery surrounding the Seel Rune, Seel is primarily worshipped by orders of specialists rather than the general population. These orders pursue diverse and contradictory approaches, yet all are blessed by the goddess - perhaps she yearns for the conflict itself.

The Valkyries of the south believe in emulating heroism and giving repose to the dead. These Paladins patrol the land, serving as a protective shield for the weak.

The Librarians of Streben believe that fragments of the Seel Rune must be contained in some ancient text or other, and thus gather and catalogue tomes in vast libraries. They count many wizards among their ranks.

Finally, the monks of the curve believe that the Seel Rune must be carved into flesh tempered by combat, and pursue increasingly exotic acts of fleshwarping in their gleaming white temples.

Legends also claim that the great Khan obtained a Seel Rune of sorts before embarking on his conquest ahead of an army of undead - this is disturbing if true, given Seels edicts of respecting the dead.

Meta: Bits of Sigrun, bits of Athena, with a unique rune-artifact-thing inspired by the Elden Ring.

And alchemist automatically gets to use their class DC on all modified alchemical items (or even just all alchemical items for simplicity)

What if the alchemist was able to expend regents on modifying existing alchemical items instead of having to make them from scratch?

Eg. Spend a regent to give an alchemists fire an extra damage die (or a more interesting effect) but this modification is unstable and fades after a minute or smth (so limited ability to stock up ahead of time)

Arm wrestling is very clearly not just pure strength. I'd resolve it as opposing athletics checks.

If someone has ranks in Armwrestling Lore (which I'd take to mean specific knowledge about Armwrestling) I'd give them some sort of advantage.

Pathfinder doesn't really let one specialize in niche non-combat applications of a skill, so that's where I'd use lore to plug the hole.

The Repeating heavy crossbow seems to be largely outdone by Crossbow Crack Shot, you need to spend a feat on Crossbow Crack Shot in order to boost your damage...
Are you better off going Repeating Heavy and taking another 1st level feat (Many of which seem very fun), or investing in Crack Shot with a simple crossbow?
Is the playstyle viable overall?

Sounds like you're right, Unicore.
I personally am totally fine with Expanding Spell-strike being a very niche thing that the Magus can opt to do beyond their regular spell-strike routine.

I have never really understood the whole "spoiler" culture around RPG releases. To me, it's not like a narrative, where ruining the surprise can spoil some of the fun.

Instead, these new RPG mechanics seem more like releases of say, a new phone or (non-story heavy) video game, where the interest is in the function rather than the story.

Of course, if it hurts Paizo's sales that's a different matter.

For even more melee-centric bard play, Warrior Muse + some dedication which gets you armour is actually fairly solid, I've been playing one at level two and it's going really well.

You're squishy, but not terribly so, and bard song + magic weapon let you be decent - usually striking only once per turn, so accuracy isn't terrible either.

And if melee is looking too risky, the bard always has the option of leaning back and relying on their occult spells, which will be under less strain with a less caster-centric play style.

More importantly, you're providing flanking for the monk (Can be a very big bonus!) and taking some of the immediate melee heat off of him.

Generally, encounters are most fun when the amount of monsters is similar to the amount of PCs.
An encounter that's not too tough to set up and fairly easy to run could be, say, 6 level 2 monsters.

Recall knowledge is also fun in RP encounters.

There was one scene in a game I ran where the PCs encountered a big strong lizard guy, who was heir to the throne of a lizard tribe. He had been sent to capture the PCs.

A medicine check allowed them to understand that he was some sort of mutant.

A society check allowed them to understand that a lizard his age would normally be chief already. (His responses also suggested that this was a sore spot for him).

A perception check to sense motif revealed that he wasn't really all that gung-ho about capturing the PCs.

Some diplomacy, seduction and persuasion later, and they're working together with him to overthrow his father.

Would giving the Witch Sorceror/Wizard level casting be an easy fix?
Or would that make the class too powerful in comparison, due to better focus spells.

Given the nature of a pommel - far less lethal, not really intended for combat, less reach, etc.
I think you could always go with resolving a pommel attack as an unarmed strike.

Prethen, maybe it has something to do with the mentality required to maintain an invisibility spell -
The intent to directly harm disrupts the casting

It could also be that spells which target allies are somehow inherently different - patching someone together is different from trying to seize control of someone's mind or sending out a huge blast of fire.

For me, that sort of explanation is up to the DM

In a campaign I am currently GMing, one of the main characters is a cavalier. As there will be quite a bit of dungeon-crawling coming up, his mounted abilities will be limited in their use for a while.

I am planning to compensate for this by having a later side-plot to the main quest feature mounted combat far more heavily, in order to let the cavalier really make the most of his abilities.
Thus, I was wondering - what monsters lend themselves best to encounters against mounted characters?
How do I run mounted-combat heavy encounters while giving the rest of the group their time to shine as well?

The characters will be about lv.6 at the time of this encounter.

Hi guys!
I've been playing Pathfinder for a while now, but I got my start through my Dad buying me the beginners box.

So now I'd like to pose a challenge to all the optimization afficionados - using only the material in the beginners box, what is the most optimized build you can make?

Is it possible to create something truly broken using such a small ruleset?