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There are a few classes and equipment combinations that can make this work out of the box. Prosthetics are a thing too, but that may or may not work with the aesthetic you're going for.

Swashbucklers of course want to be holding a one-handed weapon and keep a hand free anyway, so that works great if you're fine with a dex build.

Strength builds are a little tougher since their big draw is the two-handed multiplier, but you can pull off a mean TWF Slayer or Ranger with a one-handed weapon and armor spikes for your secondary attacks.

Most magicians are likely fine too, though things like staves and wands can complicate things. Having a little familiar to valet your equipment to help keep your hands free can help.

Psychic casters don't even care about hands, mostly.

Once you can afford +1 weapons, consider springing for a wand of Mirror Image. You can juice your UMD up, maybe snagging Skill Focus: Use Magic Device and the Dangerously Curious trait if it's not on your class skill list. If CHA isn't your thing, but you have plenty of INT, Pragmatic Activator can help, too.

Guns can pierce armor well enough, but they have to deal with miss chances the same as everyone else.

Hey, question to you folks to gauge how I should rule something. So, let's pretend for a minute that one of your players has decided to play a medium, and they're rolling with the archmage spirit. They accrue a fifth point of influence and hand over their character sheet to you, the GM.

If a spirit ever attains 5 or more points of influence over the medium, the medium completely loses control to the spirit. He effectively becomes an NPC under the GM’s control until after he awakens the next day with the spirit gone.

Now, the archmage, perhaps being influenced by the party's face via NPC diplomacy and RP, decides to tag along in exchange for some time to stretch their legs and flex their magical muscles in the living world for a while. The archmage doesn't get a new character sheet, instead using the medium's skillset. Among their various tools is an ability that lets them gain influence in exchange for not consuming spell slots: Arcane Surge.

You can allow the archmage spirit to gain 1 point of inf luence over you in order to cast one of your medium spells known without expending a spell slot. When you do so, the caster level and DC of the spell increase by 1, and you can’t apply metamagic to the spell.

For the medium, this is a clearly limited resource - if they ever hit that 5th point, they get NPC'ified. But for the archmage, this doesn't actually seem to matter at all. There's no upper limit to the amount of influence they accrue, and there are no further downsides past 5. Would you, as the GM, be within the rules to just... cast all of the medium's spells with arcane surge every round forever, only ever touching your medium's spell slots for Wild Arcana to pull wizard spells they didn't prepare? Surely you could raise the drama by being a rogue powerhouse, but am I missing something? Does this work like i'm thinking?

One thing Paizo really didn't expand too much on was Legendary Spirits. They're the pokemon-like collectable power sets that the medium can collect by going on quests. We got a few from an adventure, some baddies, and a few historically significant dudes floating around, but we could've gotten loads more. If we could've gotten the harrow legends or a few more sets of funky odd-balls from old golarion lore, I think that class would've felt *complete*.

you could go the silly route and just call Shoonies Rougaru.

I'd like to be greedy and hope for a *fully overhauled* rage. As-is, it's just an action tax to get damage numbers up, and frankly that's boring and no longer unique amongst the classes. Thaumaturge, Ranger, Inventor, Psychic, Swashbuckler, Summoner, and Magus *all* have rage. It's not called rage for them, but we all know it's rage.

So make rage different!

There are loads of examples in media of rage as a super-mode rather than an always-on thing, and I think the remastered barbarian should lean closer to that instead of a compulsory turn-this-on-or-you're-just-a-worse-fighter thing.

Devil Trigger (and Sin DT too, while I'm at it) from Devil May Cry, God Rage from God of War, Dragon Install from Guilty Gear, the Duviri Courtiers' emotional meltdowns from Warframe, that thing shounen anime protagonists do where they get their asses beat and become god. These are what I'd like rage to be more like.

I want a second phase, not an obligation.

The Celebrity archetype adds the Upstage reaction, which is as follows

Activate reaction; Trigger: A foe attempts a skill check and doesn't get a critical success; Effect After your foe has tried their best, you show everyone how it's really done. Attempt a check using the same skill that triggered this reaction.

So like... what does the celebrity actually *do* here? If an enemy goblin does an adequate long jump, does the reaction allow the celebrity to follow suit with a Long Jump of their own? Does the celebrity just sort of pose athletically? Can the celebrity instead do a high jump?

I'm of the opinion that it *should* let the celebrity do a jump of their own, but the reaction doesn't read that permissively - it just says to check with the same skill. I don't like the fiction of someone being upstaged by someone basically accomplishing nothing, though. And at the same time, if the rules are read "creatively" enough to allow the celebrity to do a jump, there's no accompanying limits beyond using the same skill. If the goblin from before does that sick hop, nothing in-text would prevent the celebrity from grappling a nearby foe.

Thoughts?

Yeah that's kind of the same conclusion i'm currently at. Dex is just too important, even if I would rather have higher wis. The ki spells i'm gunning for are more or less all self-facing so I *can* just ignore DCs, I just want to be greedy.

I'm putting together a level 3 character for an ongoing campaign that concludes at lv 10, and i'm waffling between a few choices. One of them is, as the title might give away, a monk.

Only, I'm having trouble finding the perfect balance for the features I want.

I really want to use a Temple Sword and a shield of some description, but I want also make Focus Spells my primary specialization. If I go with a DEX build, I'll have enough WIS to turn my (expert at 9) ki spell proficiency into offensive cantrips via archetypes for that sweet Flurry->MAPless spell combo, but I'd have to give up the temple sword. If I go with a STR build, i'll either have pitiful AC or pitiful spell DCs. I could dip into Sentinel to mitigate the AC, but i'd lose out on cantrips and class features. If I accept the poor wis instead, i'd be able to throw agile shuriken around after a flurry, but that's not quite as appealing as a nice MAP-free followup attack.

Anyone have any experience with finaggling monks to make something like what I want work? I'm really racking my brains here but it looks kind of doomed to me. Are there any items that work to offset a dex-dumping monk? I'm aware of mountain stance, but it locks in a specific strike which I'm not interested in.

This seems like the only intended purpose of Supressing Wood, I would say. There's no use case for deleting saplings, and man-made wooden objects aren't valid targets for base kinesis, so magical lumberjacking is all that remains.

Since the bulk limits are kind of tight, and wood is pretty heavy, I'd put the "rate of timber" to about that of a chainsaw at level 1 where you're only deleting an L of bulk per activation. After hitting 1 Bulk, that's probably enough to down a large tree in a specific direction.

I would use "Falling Objects" rules for offensive purposes, which means that unfortunately it'll just not be viable after level 1, but considering the sheer amount of options available to a magic instantaneous lumberjack/carpenter/treemaker, i think they'll manage. For bridging gaps, destroying structures, this seems like a powerful but reasonable use of the ability.

There's an entire archetype of item that I'm disappointed never made it into 1e, and looks like it won't make it into 2e either; Cursed Items that are exceptional in some way, but at a high cost. Soul Edge is cool as hell, can you imagine if it just turned Siegfried incompetent instead turning him into Nightmare? Because that's kind of all we've got in terms of cursed gear.

I'd be frothing at the mouth for a wisdom draining book that boosts necromancy spell DCs, or sacred armor that makes you nigh immune to evil magic at the cost of always receiving a bleed DoT at the start of combat. Stuff like that.

What in the heck is Darolnyr?

A typo, eheh. What I meant to write was "Daronlyr", who is one of the grand princes of Taldor, reigned in the 3500's. You can check out some of his lore here. More relevantly, he's one of the legendary spirits a medium can channel who grants possession powers, useful for using monster abilities in conjunction with Improved Possession.

Usurp (Supreme, Su): Once per day, when a creature fails a Will save against one of your spell effects, you can forfeit the spell’s normal effects to instead affect the target creature as if you had cast greater possession.

Sneak attack, of course, is one of the best around. Find a way to always target flat-footed AC (greater invisibility is good), and you'll do loads of extra damage.

Seance Boon gives a day-long buff to non-spell or spell damage, depending on which spirit you or your teammate channels. This can be scaled up by various FCB options like halfling's or shabti's.

Because It's the object of my obsession at the moment, I'll go ahead and plug the Medium. The Medium has access to the Control Undead spell, the Animate & Create undead spells, Desecrate, Possession at lv 8 to give yourself an undead body, and Channel Negative Energy that you can install the Command Undead feat into via Legendary influence.

There are some downsides to this wide breadth of power, it doesn't progress as quickly as either a necro wizard or necro cleric, and the options aren't always on.

As for a Gestalt pairing, I think Fractured Mind Spiritualist would work pretty well, supplementing your bone boys and undead shell of choice with an ectoplasmic vanguard that can deliver spells like Stricken Heart.

Are you familiar with the Cavalier? It's almost exactly what you're describing, though charisma matters less for them than a paladin and their will could be better. Order of the Lion might be a good place to start, and I personally like the Daring Champion archetype for getting rid of the mount.

https://aonprd.com/ClassDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Cavalier

If talking to them doesn't work, then the thing to do is cheat. As a GM you are trying to tell a cooperative story along with your players. If one of them wants to disrupt the game/story in this manner, then it must be brought into check. Once the player understands that he "can't win them all", the story will be more enjoyable for everyone.

Why bother continuing with a player after they've made it clear that they're only interested in disruptive play? Like, you can just... give 'em the boot and find a player who isn't insufferable. Trying to bring them in line is just going to be miserable for everyone involved.

The first and simplest suggestion is to talk to the player:

+1 on this. You can try all sorts of tricks or strategies to counter it, but the absolute best way to handle it is to raise your concerns with this player that it's disruptive to the game and work with them to fix it. It's very easy to trivialize the parts of the game that your teammates find fun, and if you don't address that this is the issue, you're just going to come across it again in another shape or form. It might not be Icy prison next time, but a +99 stealth or an infinite money generator instead.

...it might seem like you are simply swapping feats immediately on a mechanical level, in the actual world, you won't be starting play with that companion each time you 'retrain' that feat.

Were it a persistent feature that was active throughout the medium's career, I'd be inclined to agree. But as the medium doesn't actually have the Animal Ally feat, they gain the following benefit at the end of the seance as if they had just gained the feat:

Benefit: You gain an animal companion as if you were a druid of your character level –3 from the following list: badger, bird, camel, cat (small), dire rat, dog, horse, pony, snake (viper), or wolf.

They don't start play with the animal of course. Play presumably started before the session you decided to channel a spirit. But they do *gain* the animal, then and there, which is the same benefit of doing the 24 hour ritual.

In fiction? I like to think of it as similar to the Call Animal spell, or maybe a sort of funky psychic manifestation - like an imaginary friend shaped from a channeled spirits's memories of their own animal companion.

Maybe swerving a bit off topic, but have you ever run a ranger who gained the Hunter's Bond feature at lv 4 and needed to spend 24 hours to gain your first companion? IIRC, they can choose from a list when they get the feature, but never explicitly gain the creature as part of the process. I've pretty much always run it that they also gain the companion as soon as they gain the feature, but do other tables run that differently?

The Medium class, introduced in the Occult Adventures book, has a pretty wide selection of skills and abilities, but hasn't been well supported since release. Only 4 feats interacting with the class at all - Legendary Influence (& it's improved version), Spirit Focus, and Channel Spirit. I certainly like it, but there are a few aspects of it that are pretty much universally disregarded as unusably bad, that probably could've used some buffs and extra features to support it.

Like the Guardian spirit.

The guardian spirit is two of twelve spirits a medium can potentially channel on a given day (One base Guardian, and one Legendary Guardian, of which 3 have been published... none of which are particularly noteworthy). These spirits focus your Spirit Bonus into your AC, Con checks, your Fort & Reflex saves, and thaaaaat's it. Nothing active, only passive defenses. The Seance boon bosts your CMD... Which again, not something that helps you interact with the world. Your lesser spirit power grants Armor and Shield proficiency. Who has enough money to buy a second fully enchanted suit of armor they don't wear most of the time? And you don't need shield proficiency if you find a shield with no ACP.

To summarize, it's not a great foundation. Barely better than not channeling a spirit at all.

So what if you're hanging out in a castle and it's your only option for the day? Just give up and go to sleep? No, that's silly. You've got a world to save or something similar, so let's make the most of this spirit with as little investment as possible, because I *KNOW* you'd much rather put the rest of your build towards support the other spirits.

To start, I would ask that you dedicated precisely ONE feat exclusively to the guardian spirit. This is a tough ask, but I think it's worth it. That feat is Nature Soul. That's right, the +2 Survival and Knowledge (Nature) feat solves the Guardian's issues and it is now a completely viable spirit! Thanks for coming to my post.

I kid, it's just a pre-requisite for your Legendary Influence feats. When you hit Lv 4, you qualify for Animal Ally, so retrain your Legendary Influence to Legendary Influence, replacing whatever you picked initially for an Animal Companion that only exists when you're Guardian'd up.

Since you don't have the feat and don't gain it until you Seance up, you can "prepare" a new companion as if you were gaining the feat for the first time every time you channel. Horses, Birds, and Wolves are my main 3 recommendations. Horse with the Bodyguard archetype is a good "Default" pick, but on days you know you'll be delving indoors, prepare a Wolf. On days you know you'll need an aerial scout, prepare a bird. Easy!

At lv 9, you gain access to Improved Legendary Influence. Prepare "Blades Above & Below" as your Guardian feat, acquire a Horsemaster's Saddle, a pair of Training Spiked Gauntlets attuned to Outflank & Paired Opportunists. You might not have a spirit bonus to anything worthwhile, but now when you ride your temporary ally, you have an always-on +5 to hit medium or large enemies, and whenever you crit, you provoke an attack for yourself and gain a +4 bonus to that swing!

Your ally can come with the feat "Intercept Blow," letting it sponge 50% of incoming damage as an AoO-equivalent. It's unclear if you can proc Paired Opportunists off of this, but what you can do for sure is make much greater use of that DR and ER that comes from Guardian's Intermediate Power.

If an enemy wises up to your companions tricks and targets them, great! That's actually ideal. You have effectively "pulled aggro" off your team an onto what amounts to a summon. Remember that you do not have Animal Ally on days you don't prepare the guardian, so it doesn't matter as much to you as it would a ranger or druid if your buddy makes it the whole day or dies. You gain a new companion every time, as if you were gaining the feature for the first time. You can use Paladin's Sacrifice to protect them if you want to preserve them for another encounter, too.

You don't end up ever really needing to spirit surge on a Guardian, so you can Propitiate from Influence 3 to 2 at the start of the day and just never touch the Influence Penalty, enjoying the benefits of having this bonus buddy instead.

This is a lot of words to say "Get yourself a guardian for your Guardian". I hope this might be helpful to anyone who just doesn't know what to do with their weakest spirit.

Since it's pretty stacked as a 1 lv dip, it might be worth implementing a hard requirement to never multiclass into the lv 1 features. Beyond that... It seems okay. Loads of raw numbers aren't exciting, but it should be workable. Since it gets so few abilities to affect the world around it (besides getting huge), I would consider juicing the baseline skills/lv to 4 or even 6.

A Medium can mimic the abilities of other classes, and have some support for possessing monsters they either encounter, summon, or create themselves. Whenever you see a cool spell, channel one of your 4 spell lists (Wizard, Cleric, Druid, and Medium) the next day and bam, you have it. You don't technically need to see a spell to learn it, so the blue mage mechanic of "learning" doesn't *really* apply. But with the sheer *amount* of options available to you, you the player might have to "Learn" to make use of them!

Actually, there is a limited amount of in-character "learning" that can occur. Legendary Spirits must be contacted and earned before they can be used, which is where your Druid spell list comes from.

Beyond spells, you can "learn" monster abilities too, but this is a costly endeavor. You'll need the Improved Possession feat, requiring an enourmous expenditure of 3 feats (Planar Heritage: Nabasu or Half-Fiend, Demonic Possession, and Improved Possesion), 25 charisma, and 17 wisdom. If you can get past the grueling early game with those lopsided stats, you can possess any monsters you come across or create and use their spells and abilities. One trick is to channel Abrogail Thrune and Call an outsider whose abilities you want, and another is to use Darolnyr to retroactively turn any of your will save spells into Greater Possession.

*Terra Caelum hangs over the world below. The floating island is home to an ancient and prestigious adventurer's academy free of any political bonds to the chaotic and warring city-states of the world. Here in Caelum, neutral warriors train to protect the people of the world from terrible monsters, otherworldly threats, and land-shattering calamaties. Your people may have selected you as a candidate to become a student here, or perhaps a storied and famous hero has sponsored you to the academy. In time, you may become a great hero yourself, but for now, you've got a lot to learn!*

If you are unfamiliar with a living server, it is a collection of players and GMs that co-write the world and story’s in it. You can RP your character 24 hours a day, with GM’s that will run games with a story at set times.

We're currently modestly sized with about a dozen regular players and a handful of GMs, so we're now recruiting once more to bolster our playerbase. If you're interested in RP, One-shots, and character development, there's a lot of fun to be had here!

We're currently planning our first big event, a cultural festival celebrating the diverse origins of the students, the staff, and Terra Caelum itself.

To Join the discord for the world, https://discord.com/invite/gjZkHsNKEu

(The project lead has built a bit about the world on World Anvil as well, if you wish to learn more https://www.worldanvil.com/w/mystria-lilspoon2327)

So I was building a character for a Way of the Wicked Campaign, and since that campaign was balls off the wall ridiculous at times (I'm looking at you, Castle Balentyne)our GM gave us free reign on our characters. As in, we could choose any race, any class, any archetype, and so on.

After a near TPK, I chose to create a Kobold Gunslinger. Well, the Halfdragon kobold Bolt Ace, but mostly for the extra mobility and availability of crossbow bolts.

The idea of this kobold was to be an absolute gatling gun of ranged attacks. So far I've managed to get him up to 9 shots in a full round action and was wondering how I could get more out of him. To achieve such a number of attacks, he wields 2 hand crossbows. Now, you might be thinking "How does kobold shot bolt with no reloading hand?" Well he uses 4 items to help him out: A wand of Unseen Servant wielded by his magical buddies, two rings of Unseen Servant, and an amulet of Unseen Servant. Doesn't cost too much, especially since he only has to dish out 1000g every 5 levels or so.

Level 6 Kobold Gunslinger (Bolt Ace Archetype)
Abilities: S: 11 D: 21 C: 13 I: 9 W: 18 Ch: 15
Feat Progression
- Level 1: Precise Shot
- Level 3: Two Weapon Fighting
- Level 4 Bonus Feat: Weapon Focus: Hand Crossbow
- Level 5: Point Blank Shot
= Level 7: Imp. TWF
= Level 8 Bonus Feat: Dazzling Display
= Level 9: Shatter Defenses
= Level 11: Rapid Shot
= Level 12 Bonus Feat: Multishot
= Level 13: Deadly Aim
= Level 15: Greater Two Weapon Fighting

At this point, the kobold will be doing his 9 shots against flat-foot AC, though at a -6 on each attack. With the Gunslinger deed "Deadeye" though, the lower to-hits will be against FFtouch which is a great and terrible thing. Additionally, the party will have a buffer who can cast reduce person and cat's grace, which will soften the penalty to -2.

I'm wondering how viable this build is, and if anyone's ever tried something like it before.