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So, a lot of people are looking at that Precise Strike deed that Swashbucklers (and others) get access to, and flipping out at how much of a huge damage boost it seems to be. Let's break down real quick how it isn't.

From the level at which it comes online, you're adding your level to damage on all your hits. On top of that you've got the base damage for the rapier you're basically forced to use, your strength bonus, and whatever feats and class features you have to stack on extra damage (weapon training, precise strike, etc.) Rapiers also have an 18-20 crit range, which is always nice.

Let's compare that now to someone using a good ol' two-handed falchion, which is also an 18-20 crit range, and say we have the same feats.

First off, we have the actual dice involved. 1d6 vs. 2d4. Those average out to 3.5 damage per hit, and 5 damage per hit respectively. So that's -1.5 damage to the rapier user so far.

Next comes strength. You add your str mod to the rapier, but 2x str mod to the falchion. -1 potential damage for every 4 points of strength.

Power attack works along the same principle. Assuming we've got a full BAB character and we're really chasing damage, it's a no brainer feat, and we have that same ratio. 2 damage per 4 BAB with the rapier, 3 with the falchion.

So here's how much str you need at each level to outperform the precise strike deed (by that half a point there) at each level, vs. someone with the same str, assuming you're power attacking:

1: 8 (Precise Strike has yet to kick in, dice alone are a huge deal, no power attack here)
2: 8
3: 14 (Precise Strike is now online, assume we're both power attacking now)
4: 14 (PA edge just jumped to +2)
5: 18 1.5 2 2
6: 22 1.5 3 2
7: 26 1.5 4 2
8: 26 (PA edge hits +3)
9: 30 1.5 5 3
10: 34 1.5 6 3
11: 38 1.5 7 3
12: 38 (PA edge hits +4)
13: 42
14: 46
15: 50
16: 50 (it's +5)
17: 54
18: 58
19: 62
20: 62 (and again)

Now, putting it in these terms makes it look like a huge deal. Nobody's ever going to get their str up that high. But again, this is just to establish the baseline. Let's look at it in more practical terms.

If we assume both the rapier user and falchion user have an 18 str and never upgrade it...
Level 1: Falchion's hitting for 4.5 extra damage on each attack.
Level 2: Falchion's hitting for 4.5 extra damage on each attack.
Level 3: Falchion's hitting for 1.5 extra damage on each attack.
Level 4: Falchion's hitting for 1.5 extra damage on each attack.
Level 5: Falchion's hitting for 0.5 extra.
Level 6: Rapier pulls ahead with 0.5 extra, and gains an extra 1 point lead 3 levels out of every 4.
Level 16: Rapier has a 7.5 point lead in the damage race. This is about where most APs end.

Again though, no real melee character is going to neglect their strength that much. Every time you upgrade that belt, cast that enlarge person, or bull's strength, or activate a barbarian rage, whatever, you're upping that lead. It's not unreasonable to consistently be walking around with a strength of 34 by level 16 if you're really pushing it. Do that and the falchion user is closing out a 16 level campaign doing only 3.5 less per hit than the rapier user, and if you're upgrading belts/activating buffs regularly enough (or starting with a 20 str), you keep the lead for a bigger chunk of the low end of the level spectrum.

It's worth keeping in mind that, doing 4.5 more damage per hit at level 1 is a way bigger deal than it is in the mid-teens. It's potentially the difference in dropping something with only 1 or 2 hits, and needing 4 or 5. At higher levels, when martial types can set themselves up to consistently pile up enough bonuses potentially hitting the triple digit range, any single digit edge is pretty trivial.

Then of course there's the precision damage issue. If something is immune, the rapier loses an amount of damage equal to its user's level off this curve, which makes a huge huge difference.

You also feel this difference any time you score a crit... which is going to be pretty often. 18+ crit ranges on the weapons we're talking about, double that and it's a 15+, or 30% of the time. Now true, if you have the Precise Strike deed, every time you score a crit, you can use the point of panache you gain from doing so to add that lost crit damage back in, but that's assuming that A- You don't need that swift action for anything else, B- you don't need that point of panache for anything else, and C- You aren't scoring multiple crits in a single round, and wasting panache by hitting your cap. Plus there's this weird offset where the extra damage gets added to your next hit, not the crit, which can get kinda screwy at times.

This point is particularly relevant if we're looking at a single rapier swashbuckler next to one with, say, paired sawtooth sabers. The latter's critting more often, already getting the full damage from doing so, and getting to keep the crit panache to spend elsewhere.

So really, it's not at all like having some sort of always-on smite bonus, like it looks at first glance. It's just a weird offset to the potential damage you're losing by fighting with one hand. It doesn't come close to compensating at low levels, but kinda makes up for it by catching up on the high end of things, but at the end of the day, your output is just being brought up to par with Timmy Two-Handed.

I have an odd little notion for a game I might run some time, largely centered around villains with nasty habits of not staying dead for a variety of reasons. Reincarnated druid, clone shenanigans, rakshasas (timescale permitting), maybe some old standby undead.

The idea would be to really push the theme, with lots of suicidal plans, and paranoia about old enemies turning up again in new forms, ultimately leading up to having to work out some unorthodox and possibly ethically dubious way to finally settle things (like, oh, dragging everyone off to stand trial in Galt).

A lot of the appeal here is in having the primary villain show up at various times, being outright defeated (or committing suicide in some spectacular fashion), only to crop back up later. The problem here is, PCs, inevitably, are going to treat this as a puzzle. Subduing the big ol' taunting archvillain through non-lethal means would derail the whole thing, so... I need to plan ahead for all the various ways that could happen.

Off-hand I can think of:

Non-lethal damage followed by imprisonment- Easily addressed in any number of ways.

Baleful polymorph/petrification/trap the soul- Ring of counterspells maybe?

Allying with some form of undead or daemon- I don't think there's any easy way for PCs to enlist one of the relevant creatures, but I could very easily be wrong.

So... brainstorming time. Any spells/magic items/other odd shenanigans I'm forgetting that could short out the premise here? Any better ideas for how to counter them?

~Chapter 1: The Brinewall Legacy~

The time has come friends, to embark on a magical journey, stretching all the way to the far side of the globe in the exotic land of Minkai! Naturally a saga so grand in scope must begin in suitably epic fashion!

*ahem*

So... you're all in a bar in some tiny little town. There's a notice nailed up by the bar offering a bounty to any brave adventurers willing to go clear out a bunch of goblins in the nearby swamp.

Wait wait wait... did I mix up my notes with someone's first ever attempt at running a game? No? ... Oh? Oh I see! Well then, where was I?

To be much more specific, you are presently seated in the main room of the Rusty Dragon Inn, a rather nice little establishment in the sleepy town of Sandpoint, run by a charming young woman of obvious Tien descent by the name of Ameiko Kaijitsu.

The notice calling for 'brave adventurers' seems to be at least partially a joke. While a fair number of goblins live in small tribes scattered throughout the hinterlands, they are generally regarded to be a nuisance at best, and were they to pose any real serious threat to the town, there are a number of individuals more than qualified to deal with them, some of whom are actually gathered around you, catching up with Ameiko and sharing stories from the road.

In particular, one Sandru Vhiski (clearly a native Varisian to judge by his dress and swarthy feaures, unlike the Chellish-descended majority of the town's population) has arrived fairly recently after traveling up the coast from Korvosa and Magnimar, trading various goods to make his living. While he clearly has a history of sorts with the proprietor, the main reason for his current visit is actually to check in on his elderly adoptive mother, Koya Mvashti.

Arriving on the same day from the elven village of Crying Leaf is Shalelu Andosana, a woman of no small reputation, having personally dealt with a number of threats to the region, and by some accounts a personal friend to the town's truly noted heroes, a ragtag group which four years earlier repelled an invasion of giants from the mountains far to the east.

To celebrate such a reunion with her old friends, the surprisingly generous Ameiko has provided a free round of ale for everyone present, and the atmosphere is quite gleeful.

Each of you has some degree of familiarity with at least one of those chatting at the bar if not each other, but as they're busy catching up, it's as good a time as any to mingle a bit yourselves.

Here is the great big link to the caravan tracking sheet.

Ask any question that comes to mind, talk out of character, etc. etc.

OK folks! It's time to start up a fresh iteration of the Jade Regent adventure path! I'm actually going to be going with just 4 PCs here, and I've already promised one of those seats to someone, so... I'm going to have some tough choices to make when I close recruitment in a week I'm sure.

That said, here's how things are generally going to go:

- 20 point buy, each level you can either roll your HP or take the high end of average. Take the average for your class on starting cash too.

- Two traits, one of which must be one of the campaign traits listed in the player's guide, which you can pick up right here.

- Races allowed include, of course, the standard seven, as well as Tengu, Kitsune, Nagaji, and Samsaran. There's enough historical immigration from Tian Xia in Varisia played up in the AP after all. I'd also be inclined to allow goblins, because there's plenty of those around Sandpoint, but given that things start off with a bit of goblin extermination and a prominent friendly NPC tends to have it out for them, there would be some awkwardness to overcome.

- Classes are restricted to first party sources. Summoners cause too many headaches for me to be too keen on them, and I'm not a fan of setting-dependent archetypes being taken by people who aren't properly playing it up (i.e. Razmiran Priests and Black Blooded Oracles who don't respectively hail from Razmiran and the deepest depths of the Shadowlands). I'm not one of those people who has an issue with Gunslingers, but if you run with one you're most likely to be stuck crafting your own weapons and advanced firearms are off the table.

- Worth keeping in mind: While Jade Regent is often thought of as The Minkai AP, that's really only true of the final third. For the most part, it's really more of a long road trip being taken by a fairly close-knit group of small towners from Sandpoint who have known each other for most of their lives. Keep that in mind for both character concepts and long-term expectations.

Oh, and feel free to ask any questions.

6 seems to be a rather popular number of PCs to cram into an AP. The math is usually fairly easy to swing, it's enough people that you can justify telling more that it's already a big group, but not so many you can split it in half and still have enough people, and honestly, a fair number of APs seem to subtly promote it (The Skinsaw Murders in particular).

Assuming it's a popular enough number that a lot of people shoot for it, one can further assume for any given AP at least one person has done a really fantastic job of scaling it up (me, I tend to be lazy, multiplying even monster counts and liberally applying advanced templates). I know there's a few good ones scattered around these forums, and I figure hey, why not try and compile a list? Might as well keep it in one place too so it's (hopefully) easy to find for anyone who is trying to pick an AP to run for a plus-sized group, or just to bookmark if you're some sort of serial AP-runner.

So yeah, link'em if you've got'em.

The Zen Archer archetype specifically adds Rapid Shot and Manyshot to the list of bonus feats a monk can select.

The Zen Archer archetype allows a monk to use flurry of blows with a bow.

The Zen Archer archetype specifically says those feats cannot be used as part of a flurry.

The benefit of these feats are exactly the same as the benefit of using flurry of blows, but with a relative cumulative penalty on the attack rolls at level 1 and every 4 levels thereafter (and fewer attacks made over all after level 10).

There is no situation where a Zen Archer could use Rapid Shot or Manyshot when they could not instead use flurry of blows.

So... why do they get access to bonus feats they literally cannot ever get any benefit from? Was there some last minute change and the original intent was that these could be stacked, and their inclusion on the bonus feat list was never fixed because it's not worth issuing errata over? Is the restriction itself an error? Is there some bizarre corner case I'm not seeing which makes these feats actually useful in some way?

A player in the game I'm running is really gung-ho about transformation based disguises (i.e. I'm going to turn into a bird and fly up this tree), and wants a way to share them with the rest of the party, via magic item/new spell/whatever.

After putting some thought into it, the easiest way to give him what he wanted that I could come up with was a new metamagic feat (single level increase): polymorph subschool spells with a range of personal may be cast as touch spells on willing recipients.

So, if you really need to pass the whole party off as half-orcs and don't want to give the charade up by casting light spells, blow a level 3 slot per party member of alter self boosted to alter other, and you're good to go. Same with monstrous physique, beast shape, etc.

Question is, is there some case I'm forgetting where one of these spells, even in a higher level slot, is obscenely broken when you can cast it on someone with full BAB?

It happens to everyone eventually. You have this big grandiose adventure planned out, all these maps, all these subtle hints, this big elaborate set piece battle all planned out... and the PCs somehow skip it all. All that hard work on stuff they're not going to see, and they're basically down a whole level's worth of XP and loot. Now what?

First off, it's worth bearing in mind that this sort of thing is, generally, totally on you. Pay attention to what spells and abilities the PCs are picking up as they level. If they have flight, teleportation, and the ability to disintegrate/burrow through/melt walls, expect them to use those abilities at every opportunity. If you don't want them doing that, make sure to start making any dungeons you're throwing at them spell-shielded underground complexes with indestructable walls... and make sure to let the players know you're going to do that so they don't waste slots on those spells.

That said, it's a tricky situation. Personally, as a GM, I try to approach things as a fan of the PCs (I am happy when they come up with clever ideas and outwit enemies), and an impartial arbiter (I don't fudge die-rolls or tweak monsters on the fly), so I'm fine with it. If you manage to bypass everything and cut directly to the end of the adventure, fine. They might fight the big bad boss at the end a level or two down, but they'll be at full strength, and presumably they can escape the way they snuck in if things get too rough. If that and maybe some plot token in a treasure wad is all they were there for, that's fine, I'll just end the session early. I find usually it's more just a question of wanting to deal with the biggest/most urgent threat first though, and groups I play with will usually work their way through the place backwards anyway.

Worst case scenario, if I'm running something I wrote myself, they skip the whole thing and never come back... I can just recycle elements here and there for future stuff. No big deal.

Worst case scenario for an AP, I've actually had come up. Book 5 of Legacy of Fire, party basically skipped the whole adventure, which is something of a prison break situation. No reason to backtrack, time pressure to move on, truckload of experience and loot left on the table. There, I roughed out how much XP they missed out on and just gave it to them as a lump sum to keep them on par, left the loot to rot (APs tend not to leave people hurting for cash, and there wasn't really a place to go shopping before the end of the campaign, so hey).

I'm somewhat curious how other people handle this though.

I've got an unwieldly herd of potential players here all excited for me to run Jade Regent. I just ended up running a Pathfinderized 7-player version of Legacy of Fire, only one person from that doesn't want in on this, and there's a good 5 or 6 more people who have been waiting in the wings for if I ever have an opening. Now, obviously, I'm not going to try and upscale everything for a 12 person party, but I'm looking at at least 6 if not more.

Upscaling LoF has taught me that my go-to method of doing so leaves something to be desired (and tends to create some really cramped fighting conditions) so... anyone out there feel like saving me the trouble?

It would be a huge weight off my shoulders if anyone happens to have a list of monsters/levels/treasure they added for a group of n players, or the head counts/treasure piles it left them with.

Barring that, any cautionary tales would be appreciated. "Don't just double the monster count in here, this fight tends to flow into a narrow hallway!" "Better add more caravan NPCs so everyone can pair off with someone in chapter 3!" "Giving 2 more levels to this boss lead to a TPK!" Stuff like that.

Thanks in advance.

Any other tips would be appreciated to. I seem to recall once hearing something about someone wishing they'd nudged their players towards certain exotic weapon proficiencies. I assume katanas, anything else?

I was somehow roped into running LoF (Pathfinder converted) for a group of 7 PCs. So far it's actually been running very smoothly. If it isn't a named NPC, double the number encountered. If it is a named NPC, max the HP and bring in more backup.

The Carrion King went fantastically, I just brought Thok Tal in as the fight was starting.

Coming up on the end of Jackal's Price and getting into End of Eternity though, this is looking real tricky. The whole warehouse encounter is nothing but a few complete canon fodder thugs, and a number of named NPCs. If I were expecting a big throw-down fight, I could just throw everyone at them at once, or, if it really came down to it, spend a full day statting out new high ranking members to fill things out. As it stands, I'm 95% sure that they'll take advantage of the situation at the end here, which allows for bypassing the climactic battle entirely. The run-up to that though is still tricky to bring up to par.

Plus, there's a chance that they'll go through door number 2 before door number 1. I don't want to beef things up with extra mooks, both because it ruins the A has B kill C setup if anyone else is around, and because quite frankly I can't think of anything that could possibly share a room with an emkrah.

And of course, once I finish up with that, it's on to the next book which is lousy with solo monsters early on. The ram and the dragon turtle in particular strike me as things that have to remain all on one fights, both of which are going to be tricky to beef up.

Anyone out there who's run this for a big group find a good solution for these? Or, any other nasty ones down the road? I don't recall anything else from my initial readthrough that'll cause major problems until the big fight at the end of the AP, but I'm sure I'm forgetting one or two.

Flowing Monks get the ability Elusive Target, which allows them to "attempt a Reflex save opposed by an attacker’s attack roll to halve damage from that attack."

Monks (flowing or otherwise) get evasion, which says "If a monk makes a successful Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, he instead takes no damage," along with improved evasion, which upgrades that to none/half from half/full.

I assume, since Elusive Target ups the effectiveness to working like Improved Evasion, that having evasion/improved evasion does not actually help with elusive target saves, however...

- Rules As Written it totally applies.

- Evasion has a restriction against wearing armor if you want the benefits, while Elusive Target does not.

I'm still assuming there's an unspoken exception, but I figure it's worth double checking.

One thing I was really hoping to see in the Advanced Race Guide was a modified version of the result chart for the Reincarnate spell. If all these new races are on the table for new PCs, it's only fair you should be able to come back as one after all. Since there wasn't, I went ahead and made my own:

Advanced Reincarnate Table

I'm fairly proud of it really. Every ARG race is now included, plus a few others, however, by breaking it into sub-tables and throwing in a 33% chance of using the same table your current race is found on, I was pretty much able to keep the odds of coming back as any given thing similar to what's on the original chart for most of the core 7 races, while at the same time weighing things so that someone playing, say, a goblin, has a good 40% or so chance of at least staying goblinoid.

Half-Elves and Half-Orcs come out pretty rarely, as there are a ton of other half-human races that needed to be crammed in, but again, with weighting, hybrids are likely to remain hybrids of some kind, and the odds of coming back as specifically a half-human half-elf on the original chart always struck me as weirdly high to begin with.

The Highly Unusual table is largely optional, no sense turning that 1% GM's choice result into a 0.2% chance, but as there's stats for centaurs and driders in the ARG's examples, I figured it wouldn't hurt to toss them in as a marginal thing.

As of first posting this, the stat adjustments for all this still need filling in, but odds wise, I'm pretty happy with it.

"These tight iron cuffs can fit over the wrists of any Large or smaller humanoid. When placed on a helpless humanoid, they make the captive more docile and compliant. The prisoner never attempts to escape of its own volition and agrees to any reasonable request unless it makes a DC 11 Will saving throw."

The way I would generally be inclined to read that strikes me as insanely overpowered for a 2000 GP item whose only spell requirement is Charm Person:

This can be used on anyone who, at any time, has the Helpless condition, which is comes along with being "paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent's mercy." Actually wait, side question there- "held?" You can't coup de grace someone your friend has grappled, can you?

Anyway, the important bit here- It is possible to get this manacles on someone if you manage to paralyze/pin/sleep them for... well, not even a whole round, just long enough for your friend to slap them on, which I believe would just be a standard action.

At that point, it seems 3 clauses activate:

A- "They make the captive more docile and compliant." Open to some interpretation, but at the very least, I'd figure that would instantly end a barbarian's rage if nothing else.

B- "The prisoner never attempts to escape of its own volition." Hugely open to interpretation. At the very least, this seems to clearly indicate that there is absolutely nothing you can do to get the manacles off. I could additionally see it covering: Escaping from any other form of bondage (rope around your legs, bodily strapped to a horse, etc.), attempting to flee, even without being otherwise prevented from doing so, or attempting to in any way harm the person who slapped you with the shackles or their allies. That much would seem to cover the basic intent of the item ("Is there some magic item we can use to get this guy back to town without having to deal with him constantly taking 20 on escape artist and making us knock him back out?") I could even see the argument made that you can't even say, use message to explain the situation to your friends if you really wanted a broad definition of escape.

C- "[The prisoner] agrees to any reasonable request unless it makes a DC 11 Will saving throw." I want to say this much is pretty clear cut, but... reasonable request actually is pretty vague under these conditions. If someone is your unwilling captive, the argument can be made that it isn't reasonable for them to go along with any suggestion you make. Particularly since said suggestions would most likely be along the lines of pressing them for information about their allies, or marching themselves off to face a higher authority. Especially considering they're powered by charm person, which, if cast by itself, would end immediately under basically any conditions that would lead to shackling someone.

B is the real sticking point here. This isn't really a low level magic item you can use to completely render someone a completely docile captive who will stay out of all combat, with no save other than the one to avoid whatever condition left them helpless enough to pop them on, is it?

At the start of the list'o'guns here, the description of advanced firearms in general specifies that "Advanced firearms do not misfire." The next page has a list of 3 different advanced firearms, with clearly listed misfire chances and explosion ranges. Am I missing something?

Also, does "They use metal cartridges as ammunition" mean they're the only guns which can be loaded with metal cartridges, or that they can ONLY be loaded with metal cartridges?

And for that matter, does the Secret Stash feat allow metal cartridges or pellets as free pulls, or is there a built-in incentive to stick with simpler guns with it for some reason?

The only thread I found mentioning this was for the round 1 beta, and it's still listed this way in the round two.

For my first feat, I take Secret Stash Deed.

For 1 grit point, I can now pull free ammo out of my boot I forgot I'd picked up somewhere. Hilarious.

For my second feat, I take Signature Deed (Secret Stash), reducing the cost of the above to 0.

Great! Now I don't ever have to worry about buying/crafting the pricy ammo for my weird non-standard weapon of mine.

Of course, were I a munchkin, I could make the argument that there's nothing in the rules as written keeping me from shaking out my little bandana of infinite ammo over the counter at the general store and sell what falls out.

Really, the exploitable bit here is all on Secret Stash, since being able to turn a theoretical profit off a feat that's really just about non-magical goofy fun is messed up, and frankly, having the ability to pull infinite ammo from behind your ear and saving yourself all the associated bookkeeping is the only way I really see it being worthwhile anyway.

Best fix I can see to keep the flavor and utility without the stupid exploit is to allow it to only be used "in desperation." Defined as being in combat, with an unloaded weapon, and not having enough ammo for a full round action's worth of firing. Or in the case of special ammo, being out of that flavor let's you convert what you have on you to it on the fly.