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Hello, as a GM I've been having serious problems with hidden strike to the point my players morale is dropping and lurking trough the hidden strike threads hadn't produced any anwsers.

From what I read Hidden strike is a weaker version of sneak attack that can only shine when the enemy is unaware of the vigilane presence,

Question 1: does it also mean, during first round of combat to enemies that are flatfooted and it was their first encounter against the vigilante in question?

Question 2: For a 5th level ability startling appearance seems very weak. You can make people flatfooted, but they would be flatfooted during a suprise round so why bother? Is it only -4 to hit that matters.

Overall during Council of thieves campaign Vigilante had to be given special protection from the DM not to feel like an npc rather than a PC. It is very troubling to see it especially as Council seems like Vigilante's native enviorment.

The issue I had with my Jade Regent campaign caught up with me. My party's summoner casualy summoned without any notice, 4 devils during negotiations with local paladins as a counterspy measure. He did that a lot before but this time I called for smite.

My stance was always that RAW nothing happens to your character as far as the game mechanic goes but people around you will be displeased with the demon summoning. I also added that using higher level demons will automatically bar you from any good oriented places in the afterlife unless you atone.

I'm afraid this demon summoning will result in greatly derailing the whole campaign and other good aligned PC aren't very responsive or inclined to do anything against the summoner. The cleric of sarenrae basicly only gave him a pinch in the ear and a no-no gesture.

How do I save this?

I had the same trainer issue in my thread. It seems strange to me that they added a rule for retraining archetypes while there is a more specific one about class features.

As in the topic

I found it quite strange that you need a trainer for class features but not for archetypes which replace class features.

With this a Fighter needs a martial master with a proper facility who is a higher level to exchange weapon training Swords for Axes but a simillar fighter can go from an Archer to Phalanx solider without any assistance.

Hello

Can a rogue with low magic talent could make a sneak attack using Magic Missile?

My greates worry is that the player will think nothing of the adventure. I have heard opinions of fellow players that he didn't seem to care when I got his father commit suicide due to the paladin political decisions. Or when she paniced and sentenced her cousin who came to rescue her to die horribly eaten by gnolls.

I fear that seeing her mentor's journey into sin and finally confronting her won't have any impact on her character, just another day of doing the Lady's work.

I know that for a zealot type the thing she only cares about is Sarenrae but I have a strickt rule of not striping divine casters of their powers unless there is a clear violation of they allignment or code.

I will work it out somehow with the player. See how he approaches the subject.

Thank you for you opinion.

I will look at the subplot thrice and think how to improve it to give the player more legwork. Maybe I limitted her options because she failed miserably at her leadership role. I intended to give her the whole church as a reward, and I did that, wanting to see what the player could do with some world changing power in hand.

It turned out pretty bad as if suddently the paladin stopped following his heart and looked at the bigger picture and destroying everything he worked by herself in just one session. It was trully horrible how it plummeted down from a in game reward to a penalty but on the other hand was very entertaining.

I think the last chapter was designed as a T-intersection where the only bad sollution is turning back was because I wanted to protect the player from his own bad choices. I won't say anything about the nature of the ending because this is what I felt as a fitting end to that plot-hook.

I think I will give her a memento of the journey and later I will make her a saint.

If I may ask how should you change the story to better suit the paladin?

Paladins of Shelyn are rare, far rarer than those who revere no single deity, but there have been some, such as Saint Marcus Odeber son of Arn Odeber, first of the Odeber line.

Taken from Pathfinder wiki.

I think saints are a thing in golarion. When I read trough the first AP of legacy of fire there were mentions of Sarenrae saints.

Since getting into pathfinder I tried to everything religion related because I wanted to be fair to my players, especially to my paladins. I think all of the old religions like Pharasma, Sarenrae, Shelyn and Desna, who are very ancient have different shifts of allingment trought golarion. Some sects are very codified full of traditions, others the opposite. I have an avistan cleric of sarenrae in my second campaing and I let him do what he wants, he is communing with angels and servants of the emphyreal lords making packts with them while still retaining his clerical powers. He is afraid because he thinks they might be evil spirits in disguise but if he went to Quadira. They would probably trail him for heresy.

There's no material or 'power up' reward for this that wouldn't seem tasteless in comparison to the ordeal these paladins have suffered. What you've done is created a scenario that would lead to possible canonization, if saints were a thing in Golarion. Since they're not, what you've got a sad tale that will be popular and often-read entry in various Books of Light and Truth.

Hopefully your players are fully on board with this grim tale and find catharsis in its resolution.

But saints are a thing. I once run a game for a paladin of Shelyn and she had a saint patron of her paladin order. But I think I found a reward for my paladin. Thank you sir.

Here is where I draw the line, while we talk about thing like birthing dog monsters, prostitutes and gleeful murder as part of the fantasy game it's specifically rape that is taboo for me and many other people. Especially as how you presented it. Once consent has been removed from the equation, it's no longer mature themed it's just obscene.

What you are trying to do is basically discuss a rape fantasy. I do not believe this is an appropriate place for it. Neither is he discussion on why sexual violence is wrong when murder, burglary and random violence are a-ok.

Yeah but I never said anything about showing rape or roleplaying rape. The whole bloody setting of katapesh is about drugs and slavery. You would have to be pretty short sighted that the slavers sell intelligent beings of both sexes as pleasure slaves. Using pesh to intoxicate people to make them do or say things without consent is also rape yet there exists a whole cast of spellcasters and pesh peddlers doing just that!

I don't go to a game with a mindset "now I'm going to show my players how good/bad rape is, nor how slavery good/bad is.

For example my newest player a cleric of Cayden had a pretty weak/lazy story and I had to approach it from different angles to make it somehow work. He was an orphan who was in a Orphanage supported by the church of Cayden, later he became a thief finally ending as cleric of cayden blessed by the god himself. I left the bad parts. I quickly made him realize that those orphanages funded by church of Cayden are probably places where bastards of "traveling adventurers" are being taken care of. He also hates slavery with a passion.

Later they will meet a hellknight with his small party who is all for slavery. He was a former slave. He buys little children to raise them and teach them the ways of the order of the chain. To show them the lawful path of obediance. He is Lawful Good, and when confronted by the priest he will mock him that all he did was take bastards of drunks such as the PC and make them into productive members of chelish societies. This is still a rough draft but I want to see some good reaction from the character and introduce an eagle knight to push the cleric towards the confrontation with the hell knight.

Slavery, child labour, rape. Real life exaples are horrible and should but this is a game. I and my players don't draw the line when it comes to boardgames because a card implied slavery, rape or murder. It's just fiction and nobody is getting hurt.

Why do paladins have difficulty staying on the path without "clerics guiding wisdom"? Paladins can be every bit as wise as clerics. Who keeps clerics from falling from grace if the world is just so very dark and grim?

Seriously, this makes no sense to me.

Allowe me to turn that statement around saying that clerics can be as bloodthirsty and haughty as paladins. Holy warrior has a nice ring to it doesn't it. I basicly looked at NPC codex and accepted that paladins are not, and shouldn't be cookiecutter concepts. Those low level npc codex paladins are not the type of people you would like to meet in a dark alley. Paladins should be the right hand of their god. Protectors, destroyers of evil, venturing into the dark abyss, yet they are denide the power of miracles given to the clerics the true mouth and eyes of dieties. It is folly to say that paladin can't attain the same secrets of faith and loyalty as a cleric who is in constant connection to her god. I am in fact very lennient to paladins of any religion except for Torag and the Old dead eye, but I crack down on clerics very hard as they represent their diety much more intimatly.

The best reward would be a transfer to a different game where the GM didn't hate paladins.

I can understand if you enjoy the trials and tribulations of a paladin in a less than good world, but I expect to hear from your paladin player on these forums rather soon complaining about the DM who gave her a no-win scenario.

I understand that Paladins have a big red button on people that is a big temptation for people who are less than comfortable with what they represent.

I would however remind you that you can have challenging Paladin stories that are not centered on the Big Red Button.

Everything about your post makes me feel uncomfortable.

I find the whole concept of your focus to be incredibly inappropriate for this forum and your question asking very little, as if you just wanted to brag on how creepy you can be.

Your campaign idea is super low and really belongs on a forum like 4chan where user not only expect pointless debauchery, but specifically go there to partake in such troll baited debates.

There is a line between acknowledging the darker aspects of a fantasy world rife with evil and ----ing with the paladin.

Allowe me to explain. I never intended to ruin my paladin game nor to rob him of his powers. I have run games for more than a dozen paladins for 14 years straight and I realize that taking away their powers should be only used when there is a clear cut situation of numerous breaches in the code of conduct. It's not something I would ever tell my players, I only subtly remind them that the code is there for a reason. Some of them wear the phylactery of faithfulness and sometimes approach me about the eerie silence of the phylacterie when most DMs would point out that they are a step from losing their paladin's blessing. I don't do a red button storylines because they are simply boring. You play, you lose, you die or return to the gods grace. But I do like when the paladins squirm when their code pushes them into a difficult situation in the middle of a tight spot, not that I deliberatly push them into those situations.

In fact many of my players enjoy a little spicing up in my stories but to be honest I never go into a campaing saying that I am going to grim the hell out of some peoples concepts. I only do that if the roleplaying aspect is killing the mood at every opportunity!. The story I presented to you is the last chapter of a character hook spanning a half year worth of games. I started reading about solku and Lady cynore. The Katapesh guide states her as very pacifistic avistan paladin, very opposed to quadiran sarenite rule of "the desert gives only one chance so will I", who since the last attack on Solku turned to full militarry agression while having a political conflict between the goverment and the local chaple of Iomedae. Yet her sect remains very true to the healing, redemption domains of sarenrae.

Her pupil my paladin is not much better. While true to the sect teachings she is very full of herself, being a pupil of a famous and powerful paladin, having silver hair and being constantly pampered by her mentor as the choosen child. Quoting our party wizard: "arrogant, self-rightous brat." I decided to go with that. Doing a sort of mending quest. Having the pupil be the teacher. Helping heal friendship between two religions and fighting the bloodthirsty side of her mentor.

In my games I try to show a religion from a lot of different angles. I included the sarenrae inquisition who were people not afraid to get their hands dirty in order to help the church spread their message faster. For the greater good was their motto. I decided that as a paladin lady cynore would allowe the inquisition to be independent while looking for guidence in the goddess favour which she didn't lose so everything must've been A-OK! Untill my PC paladin found out that it wasn't as part of a nice little plot hook of an another PC, a very very bloodthirsty inquisitor of Sarenrae who when it comes to "For sun and fury" was much more into the fury part rather than sun. It would all be cool if he didn't do that in front of the party cleric of sarenrae.

This was the part where me and my players really started getting into the whole religion thing. After uncovering unlawful behaviour of the inquisition Lady Cynore stepped down from the position of the leader, gave her title, armor and ceremonial blades to her pupil and went on a penance crusade to fight gnolls and the Carrion King she so much talked about.

In truth she was extremly frightened about the church loosing peoples trust and taking the blame for not putting a strong leash on the inquistion who were her most useful tools in political struggle against city leader Lord Kel-Kalar. Sarenrae robbed her of her powers as she crossed the city gates

The pupil who was the effective leader of a large church responsible for the training of the city's militia not an hour after taking power started a very vocal struggle over political power against the city council and the native merchants. Wanting to quickly execute all the inquisitors and put the laws of her sect over the city laws. it ended horribly where the elder priests spared the life of all the inquisitors (obviously we are Sarenrae not Abadar!), the paladin got found redhanded while she helped one of the inqisitors (a murderer) escape while fighting city guards. She was demoted in her own sect, trailed by the joint city council. I first wanted to give her 50 lashes but I figured out Solku is a peaceful city so I stripped her naked, cut her hair, paraded her trough the city from dawn to dusk and banished her to a border town for a year as a protector. I even protected her from excommunication because the new church leader was her combat trainer and made few deals to let her stay within the sect.

Her companions who tried to defend her against the "evil" city law would soon curse her zealotry during their next adventure because she became just like her mentor. A bloodthirsty loner who thinks about cleansing the sect from corruption and doesn't see any grey areas of life. She got the "desert gives only one chance" part very well I think.

Here I wanted to make her mentor an anti paladin but I very quickly scrapped the project. They would fight and the paladin would win? Boring. I want her to look back at what she acomplished and who she is. I think that when she meets her broken mentor she might reflect that they are both only human susceptible to failure and that the core of Sarenrae is to accept that and forgive whatever transgressions she might have comitted or pain people had given her. The first step to forgivness is to forgive yourself for not being perfect. Of course she might say no to that while chanting "The desert gives only one chance" then mercy kill her mentor who failed her self imposed penance horribly and go back to rotting out weakness and corruption within the sect. The only option when she would lose her power is when she abandons her former mentor to her horrible fate.

All I did was read the articles on religion and region and fill the blanks with grey. Aside from being heroes and icons of justice characters of my PCs are still mortals with their own flaws. I only show them the darkness in light and light in darkness to flesh their characters and it always worked wonders for the story and enjoyment of the stories.

As an end note, I never would have believed that my ideas would be found disgusting when the games most famous adventure path features a fallen from grace villaness with a lot of serious personal drama who gave birth to two mutated demon dogs. Seriously people.

Also how did you change "redemption is trying to heal and accept her broken mentor" into a bad ending? Isn't that something an iconic cleric of Sarenrae is supposed to strive for?

I've been a big fan of corruption themes when running games for my paladins. In my games when paladins stay too long away from clerics guiding wisdom the grey areas of Golarion consume them and eventually rob them of their divine blessings if one is not a fanatic zealot.

One such storyline I am now spinning is of a young sarenite who looks for her idol - lady Cynore from Solku, and is guided to her by a treacherous angel who wants to see her suffer by destroying every pure thing she holds in her heart.

I plan to end the search by finding a broken ex-paladin robbed of every inch of dignity, honour and wits, mostly by her own fault, serving as a pleasure slave for the mightiest of Okeno slave traders which she used to battle in the past.

The end of the adventure is for the paladin to follow either redemption or cleansing flame, where redemption is trying to heal and accept her broken mentor for everything she did and what she has become while the fire path pushes her toward mercy killing her and telling people she died fighting gnolls in the Pale mountain region.

I also anticipate that the paladin might just ignore the situation in which case I will strip her from her paladin powers as she turned her back on a very pressing matter.

My question is how should I reward the paladin as she completed a rather difficult and personal trail towards becoming closer with her god? I don't think it should be a magic item or a large bag of XP but something more poetic.

As far as I know the players welcome a spicy conflict such as this. My problem is that I don't know how to respond to some very serious problems that spawned in time of two game sessions.

From my perspective all parties were correct but overzealous in their actions

The city wanted to retain independence from the church, a very peculiar position they fought out in the aftermath of the last gnoll siege. They didn't want any conflict with the church due to the fact that the Paladins are responsible for training and preparing SOlku's militiamen.

The Church higher ups wanted to help the poor but would lose a lot of supporters and contributors if the people knew they did something more than that, like spying and sabotage.

The PC paladin was horribly focused on his faith's status in the city. He wanted to shield the church from prosecution, keep it strong to protect Solku and the still help the poor.

Even the inquisitors were mostly martyrs and anti heroes. One of them even suggested putting a death sentence on himself and his collegues so that nobody would spill the beans outside of the church

Now looking at that the divine patrons have to decide who to support or if they should even pick a side. Each party did their best and the only thing that failed was the Stubborness of the PC paladin in following his code of conduct and protecting temple's influence.

Thats why no one lost their powers aside from the PC inquisitor who commited murder and did heinous acts of blasphemy.

As of now they are at 6th level.

I have a significant problem on my hands in my current campaign due to some player errors and how I decided to run things

We are playing in Katapesh's city Solku, a small yet very fortified town devoted to worship of Sarenrae. More than a half of the party are faith based classes who worship the sun goddess and they were returning to Solku from their latest mission which was a complete success but revealed some pretty nasty stuff about the Dwarven inqisitor/synthesist who was very eager to kill and burn people in the name of the faith. While he directed his wrath towards foes and did some bad puns to his comrades he was quite bloodthirsty. On numerous occasions he killed monsters who didn't want to fight and got himself dominated by a Daemon and nearly killed the whole party. He even got himself infested with some kind of weird parasite and preached his arcane synthethic powers come from god. The party priest ordered the paladin to escort him back to town with a letter describing his worries about the good inqisitors and askd for further examination by the priesthood.

We decided that the inquisitor was learning a variation of false divine magic so his synthesist powers looked like divine powers, at least when his master did it. Unfortunatlly the inqisition was full of shady people who were commited to helping the church of sarenrae using every means neccessary. The didn't want to give any doubt to the top bras about things they didn't need to know and wanted to create a distraction from the PC inqisitor trail so that he could complete his training or go on another longer quest. The Iomedae - Sarenrae church conflict was choosen. In Solku the head priestess of Iomedae has an old feud with the Sarenrae church over the slaughtered paladins who came to the city's rescue and she won't send any help no matter how Lady Cynore the current Sarenrae church leader asks her for forgivness. The plan was easy

-Slip away during the night
-Change into pre prepared skinsaw men costumes
-Break into the relatively small Iomedae chapple
-Desecrate it
-Help the Iomedae preistess by finding a small group of Norgreb cultists, frame them and kill before they can attests to their innocence

What went wrong
-the PC inqisitor locked the priestess in her room and lit the damn thing on fire burning the whole chapple
-while running away he killed a young guard by THROWING HIS FAMILY'S HEIRLOOM AXE
- Priestess was saved by the PC paladin and he was latter given by his fellow guardsmen his companion's HEIRLOOM AXE as the suspects weapon.

While the two religions were on a brinck of peace the PC paladin walked to his superior and said he had an idea who the killer was and when questioned by the guard Lieutenant he told her to keep her nose out of the Temple jurisdiction stating its their business and they have nothing to say about it. His superior was so flabbergasted by all those events she agreed with her best student: the PC paladin.

This went downhill fast. Dwarven PC inqisitor and the whole inqisition sect was imprisoned. The next morrning the head of the church abdicated and made the PC paladin the new temporary/permament leader and she herself went/escaped to fight the gnols, leaveaning everything, as part of her penance. The PC paladin ordered a quick trail of the PC inqisitor herself as the prosecutor. During the trail the temple was surrounded with an angry mob of merchants, middle and higher class city representatives led by the city leader Lord Kel Kalar. They were angry about the church's unlawful actions and bossy attitude towards the city council reminiscent of times before the creation of the city council. Lord Kel Kalar demanded the release of the culprit to him and a fair trail. The PC paladin stubborn and afraid of the secrets the PC inqisitor or his masters might tell the goverment about the temple ordered the trail to continue under the temple siege. He even imprisoned the iomedae prestess who wanted to join the mob after recovering from her injuries. I think the PC paladin wanted to execute the PC inqisitor but the penalty for his crimes was excommunication and banishment instead. The PC paladin sneaked out of the temple with the PC inqisitor and released him outside the city walls while being chased by Lord Kel Kalar and his city guards and later caught redhanded.

Today I trailed the PC paladin for helping the murderer escape, opposing the law enforcers and imprisoning the Iomedae priestess. He was found guilty and instead of giving him 50 lashes the judge was convinced (by the new head of the church) to a lesser punishment. I stripped the PC paladin naked, cut her bald and paraded her around the city on a leash while people threw all kinds of things at her. After that her father had comitted suicide as he couldn't do his job as a merchant no more. The PC paladin was ordered to go immediatly on a penance crusade to a local town and protect it for few years as a part of the deal with the city.

Now the PC paladin is broken yet still retains her paladin powers. She thinks the Solku church is corrupt to the core and wants to create an opposed sect which would dispose of the old corrupt one or contact her divine providers to ask for help against her seniors.

I think the whole situation is getting really out of hand. I consulted the gods of golarion but I still don't know how I should react to those ideas or how divine servants should react. I only remember that gods were OK when it came to religious divisions in their churches. Any ideas how should I present react to this?

Well he is an amazing roleplayer. I sometimes struggle with keeping up with his acting skills. He also taught me a lot of about creating characters for movies to make them more interesting and believable. In spite of that he really reallys like gritty, on the edge stories where preperation is the line between success and failure.

From our conversations I could figure out that the whole tax deal is just a means to get people thinking about survival (in a very blunt and awkward manner) but also somehow retaining the ability to invest gold in holdings and seting up an area of operations later on. All of this to make the job of an adventurer more realistic.

I himself taught him that the job of a DM is to make everybody himself included happy. He wanted to run modules but obviously also make them darker but despite that we still had pretty good understanding that it will be a high fantasy pathfinder adventure.

After the first session (a very good one) something snapped and he started working on this downtime tax thing with a malicious calm manner. I don't know if we did something bad. Roleplaying was enjoyable, characters are low optimized.

One thing to note this is his first pathfinder game that he is DMing and I ran him some games in the past so obviously he wants to do something different than his predecessor.

On a bright note I did manage to convince him to say that if this downtime tax will become a hassle and destroy the game he will remove it. Most of the guys don't want to discourage him, because having a second person that can DM is a blessing.

I will consider showing him this thread but I'm afraid he might get angry and quit DMing, on top of that I did translate and post his work online without his aproval(because when I suggested it he told me that he did it on 4chan /tg/ and they gave him a thumbs up with little reservation - my sense motive check was tingling) so this could hurt our friendship

You should point your GM at this excellent blogpost. It shows how the economy in the core rules actually works quite well for common people.

From there, if he wants you to be dirt poor, just give out less gold.

I send him this article, maybe it will make him rework things. I am ok with low wealth games but I don't want Paypers and Paychecks: the accounting during my free time.

Horrible, horrible

I had a long talk with the DM and used my words very carefully not to demotivate him from running the game. I didn't try to convince him that my idea is better than his, rather pointing out the flaws and consequences they could have outside of his predictions.

He explained to me that this system is to make players plan how to survive downtime between adventures, produce situations and roleplaying elements, in otherwords grit.

The players have two options. Think how to reduce the costs of living or give a big chunk of their adventure rewards. My character and probably a big chunk of the party has a personal stake in here because its like saying: "you can disregard this mechanic and abandon you motivation for adventuring, you still get experiance and some treasure right?".

Equipment maintance is imperfect for mundane items making purchases of expensive (50gp + ) without any in-game effect its like renting them paying 50% of their market price each month. Of course players can deposit their gear in their household (if they buy one of course) but they won't be using it.

Living and Food expenses are high because the DM raised some professions. A commoner growing vegetables earns 100gp/month. This was done due to the fact that he wouldn't be able to buy any tools earning only 5sp/day or something while an accountant earned 3gp/day (pfsrd).

Taxes is something he put only because it was there. This was to, maybe, take the players gold or so I think because he handwaved that issue by saying: "Ask paizo why did they put it there".

The DM accused me of prefering casual gaming (hack & slash) instead of realism. I proposed that he could divide the rewards by 10 and we could roleplay all that surviving if it wouldn't get in the way of high fantasy feel of the game. His anwser was that roleplay is an equal part of the game as the mechanics and I am a fool thinking otherwise.

I will see what he has to offer but the future looks dim

This mid-game houseruling makes my character concept idea destined to doom. My monks backstory was based on the life featured in 'A Bride's Story' manga by Kaoru Mori. He was a 4th son of an extended middle class family with military traditions who was considered a underachiver and got educated by women instead of men and be wed as soon as possible. Instead, a tragedy occured and he became a sole male member of his family. His new task was to repair their masterwork wooden household from fire damage (~2000-3000gp), pay for dowry and wedding expenses (~100gp/person) for his eleven sisters, fraternal nieces and sisters-in-law before they become too old to marry.

I had a time limit of maximum 5 years to get the house repaired and marry my oldest relatives before they become fed up with the situation and decide to force the family to marrying them off and depleting scarce family resources. Cut this time limit by 2 years of travel that took me to get to the area where the adventure takes place where I could find job as a sellsword. Add an extra 1000gp for teleportation spells to get in time before the time limit expires.

I don't know what to do now. I don't want to become a criminal and rob people on the road like some common bandit.

My group consist of a knight, a rogue?, a wizard and me who is basicly a fencer in training.

OK, after a night-long sleep I looked at the spreadsheet once more. From that I think, there are three kind of taxes (black)

1. Equipment Maintance
2. Food and Lodging Expenses
3. Taxes

which all are summed in the green table

What it means. During downtime which will last 3 months of winter

The cost of maintace of mundane equipment is 150% of the market price because everything from trail rations and cows to wheatstones gets destroyed or is consumed in two months time or "gets damaged"

Weapons cost only 10% per month or 2% if you have a corresponding crafting skill and pass a check each month. I think that those warriors who have to pay 150gp per month for maintaining their full plate mail and large quantity of weapons (not to mention masterwork stuff) will see red.

Magic items maintance costs 10% but because my human subrace has a build in magic resistance my presence naturally damges magical gear over time rising the bar to 20%. Enchanting your gear or wearing a magical ring gets you from 100 to 200 gp tax for paying mages or priests to repair it every month

Now if you aren't a Rogue, Urban Ranger living in the city is not for you. Hell if you aren't one of the wilderness oriented classes living in the woods or in the mountains is also not for you. Classes who have no idea how to survive in the city (fighters, monks, wizards, sorcerers) have to pay a lot during winter or maybe every season.

Renting a simple house and eating like an average person costs 120gp/month.

Finally we have the tax collectors who I tought had the decency not to appear after, all the craftsmen, merchants and barkeeps robbed me blind during winter. I don't know what are the numbers for it but it is based on this http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/taxation

To sum up, if my character gets to the second lvl (Falcons Hollow module) sells all the loot found there and keeps only his starting equipment and rents a descent house, after winter he will be 822gp poorer.

I don't know if I said it correctly. The taxation isn't done by a goverment official that you can rob to get back your money or others valuables but the cost of maintaining your equipment.

For example if your total equipment gold value is 100 gold you will multiply this number by your lvl lets say lvl 3. Each month you will have to pay 300 gold on repairs and replacement of your equipment or it becomes broken or is depleted.

Unless your idea was that I should just rob people out of their new equipment than yes.

The problem here is that even though I have weapon crafting and I reduce cost of repairing and maintaining my weapons by 25% and have little to no equipment compared to my party members. We will be paying amazingly high sums for staying in towns during winter.

This system counts maintaining trail rations, clothes and materials used for repairing clothes, mirrors. Basicly imagine doing nothing and having replace all your equipment every month for the market price times your level.

This will be used to rise difficulty level and introduce new roleplaying elements.

Hello,

Recently I have been playing with a new DM who recently was my player. While I enjoy his games his recent ideas on how to get rid of "gold inflation" and force players into investing money for lodging , item repair and other things.

Here is a breakdown of what he intends to do:

Taxation based on equipment

Equipment taxation based on lvl x equipment cost - lvl x 100gp per month
Lodging taxation
poor 100gp/month (diseases, discomfort, thieves)
average 300gp/month (thieves)

Extra costs
medicine for diseases during winter for low constitution characters
thieves on all levels

He calculated that when we complete our first module I will have to pay 1312 gp for getting trough winter. Mind you I am a monk with a sword and equpment worth 30gp.

I don't know how will it turn out but I don't want to go back to DMing and yet I am very anxious about his draconian methods of resolving things. Can you give me some ideas how should I confront him if things went too far or became unpleasant? Any arguments I could use or less ruthless methods?

Hello,

I am finally been able to get play as a player rather than a DM and I want to show my group some fighter options they've been missing out during character creation and promote various dueling traditions that pathfinder has.

The idea was to create a master duelist true to Baron Aldori spirit of being the words best fighter of his generation.

I decided to combine some master of many styles levels and sword lord ffighter levels to get all needed feats at 4th level (human monk 2/fighter 2)
crane style and crane wing for parrying (2nd)
aldori dueling mastery (4th)

The idea is to get at 7th lvl spring attack. Use it to jump more than 15-20 feet from the target and parry his charge/assault with crane wing leaving him with none or only one attack if he's dual wielding.

My questions are:
Does crane wing work against disarm/sunder and other actions that might target the blade?
If by gaining: two weapon fighting, master craftsman and craft magical w&a would I be able create a magical Defending gauntlet that would boost my AC and still get away with having the off hand free?
Could armor bracers work stack with a defending weapon such as magical shield stacks with a magical armor?
Is this broken? I don't want to get on the DM's nerve because I wanted to show off something new. I know that Aldori Swordlords aren't very well received because they don't hold up to the rest very well but I believe that such high AC from defensive fighting and near impenetrable defence when dueling against an armed opponent could be quite a nerve wracking experiance for the DM.

For me it would undoubtly be lamashtu in various incarnations from the most known clerics pregnant with something horrific and unholy to the very core to the caretakers and upbringers of monsters. There is something really scary about the birth of evil and perverting the birth of life into something sinister.

I'm especially fond of hunting packs of a priestess and her 'offsprings', this really sick idea that you are fighting a brood of creatures that share one mother who treats them as own children. The best threats tha I delivered to the group were about keeping the PCs alive for harvesting their organs for the priestess's or her offspring's use in the future as a transplant or just a canibalisting pleasure to teach the children the taste of human flesh, fear and desperation in face of unimaginable pain.

I once had an NPC who was captured by the lamashtu cult during combat. They put him in the belly of a creepy goat-ogre and they mutated his heart so much that his body became like a large heart organ and when the PCs released him they felt it was a merciful thing to do to shorten his anguish

Hi, I was reading trough elves of golarion and I couldn't put my finger on how do elves perceive love and romance. After a few brainstorms I came up with a theory that elves just as with friendship, honor and religion have a special standard.

A typical chaotic elf, prone to mood switching, living in the present/past but not with both at the same time, is quite eager to flirt with character he likes or those that invoke pleasant feelings (memories) even though he probably doesn't realise, at the moment, what memories were being summoned by those feelings.

In addition, the teachings of Calistra, who is considered to carry the pure core of elven spirit, state that those who worship her and follow her tennents should avoid long term commitment and lto live only for the pleasures of the present time without planning for the future, therefor it would be logical to consider elven lovers, not very committed to the relationship.

I would also consider that they quickly go with the mood of their emotions rather than figure out the consequences of falling for their new partner.

But going back to the 2 most stable and adamant aspects of elven culture which are honor and friendship, it would be wise to see true love, with a partner you will never leave, as equal to those big two.

Please discuss.

Hello

For the first time I am dabbling into some summoner archetypes. I wanted to get a metal armor like eidolon with a repeating crossbow but I am curious if the eidolon can use my repeating crossbow and the exotic weapon proficiency feat or my other feats.

Please help and thank you for your kind help good Sirs and Madams

Can you combine rapid shot and Man-shot in one full round action.

Helaman wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

The samsaran entry in the ARG is disappointingly brief, which is a real shame since they seem like an absolutely fascinating race!

I was hoping someone could give me a few more details about them and their culture. I'm sure they come from some module or supplement I don't have access to. The ARG doesn't even really say what actually happens when they die, just vague allusions to them being "reborn." Does there body snap awake? Does it reform? Does the samsaran spontaneously appear in another place and time as a new being when it dies?

I also want to know more about their place in Golarion and their role within it.

I think SKR had a thread here where he did Q&A on some of the races background etc when someone asked about reincarnation. It was good stuff

Darn I must have missed that. Any chance someone could post a link? Or suggest some search terms that could lead me to it?

Seconded

Grandmikus wrote:

We decided upon Nidal. As a Fetchling orphaned to a human parent. It would be difficult to roleplay a person from an entierly different dimmension.

[blinks] Isn't that what you're doing anyway?

Well not exactly. Fetchlings are said to be born from human parents sometimes so he probably never seen the shadow plane.

We decided upon Nidal. As a Fetchling orphaned to a human parent. It would be difficult to roleplay a person from an entierly different dimmension.

Dear Paizo community

One player asked me whether he could play a fetchling. I didn't object but I'm hard pressed to find any suitable place in golarion from where the fetchling community could establish their society. Any ideas on that?

Thank you,

It worked wonders for me yesterday, I only hope that they won't think of smelting the broosh before giving it back

I didn't want to create a second topic so I will post it here:

Dear people at paizo messageboard.

I'm in a pinch regarding advancing the story in COCT

How can I make the PCs meet the queen and earn her trust?

And what about feet? it sounds fishy but can a monk keep his spear two-handed, strike once with his first flurry attack without any penalty for fighting with a two handed weapon with one hand and then hail kicks?

Hello

My player asked me whether he could make a flurry attack using his spear and elbows with max str bonus. I think by what he meant he wanted to select some of the flurry rolls with his spear and some with his unarmed strike. Is it legit?

Thank you very much, I wasn't aware of that.

Im starting to run Curse of the crimson throne and I have this wierd dillema obut some of the encounters there.

Pcs go into a room and see a character intimidating some children to fight the PCs with forks. Now you have this group of children who are forced to attack these 4 guys and a small aligator like dinosaur.

Now our druid took the Companion boon feat and his dinosaur has 5th level and imagine how an animal would react to a group of goblins trying to stick a pointy stick at him. Probably the PCs don't want to be labled as children murderers and will try to inflict leathal damage but what about the aniamal companion?

How can the druid stop him with the use of Handle Animal and what the DC should be?

Setting building is never final, every player contributes to how Golarion is build. I have no complaints about Taldor, Cheliax, Kyonin, Riverkingdoms. They are all fine, but if we really want to rip-off grand historical settings, lets do it right. becuase people will build upon it after you create it.

Imagine you being a Paizo writer. CEO gives you a job.: Galt Companion or Bachuan companion. You read about it, agree then you start researching and you just found yourself writing an expansion in a setting that makes little sense. Why nobody wants to do Galt? Is it not interesting enough? Or an Andoran adventure path? Is it because Cheliax molicoddled Andoran up to this point for one of the greatest secessions since the one Cheliax did to Taldor.

On top of that there is something called 'suspension of disbelief'. I can believe that there is a country with extensive arcane knowledge led by a giant gorilla or that the biggest most expansive country in the world changed its religion to diabolism because its fantasy. but communis, capitalism, french revolution. These are things people are taught extensivly in schools, you know about french revolution, capitalism, communis, how it developed and what impact it had, its not that kind of knowledge you just make up.

I have a game called Deadlands, now Im not American but I was taught about the Civil War between South and North. What the writers of Deadlands wrote was that just after the war poeple from the South realized that the value of the person is not about their skin but about abilities and courage they posess. Remember that you are writing about people who were willing to go to war and die to defend their right to own slaves just few years ago. Now this is just offensive and pathfinder never stroke me as offensive and I hope it never will but this is how I see the idea of lazy written rip-offs

Good Sirs and Madams

This post of mine was simply to highlight some of the less stellar aspects of how Golarion is being build trough the pages of books that we are buying.

What I believe is the process of setting building in some cases looks like this:

Galt
Idea: Revolution- peasants on top off barricades THE END
We are given information that peasants in Galt got angry and rebelled against the nobles. Yes indeed its a rip-off from French revolution but lacking logic and vital informations. In France the peasants were aggited by the bourgeis or the middle class if you will because they got frustrated that nobility had better laws than they did and were not able to rise in power if the 'ancient regime' was still used.

The same is with other countries across golarion who have 1-4 pages at best covering them and thats it. The problem here lies not in how this could happen. The problem is that we do not know how this happened, the book just says it happens and it happens. Thisidea of setting building leads to making the world look like a ragged doll, sewed with a lot of loose ideas, set into motion by the wills of its creators rather than a living breathing organism which can stand on its two legs.

As for countries in Tien Xia. We are talking about a 67 page book where each country got 1 page worth of text. We are bound to get mistakes and I hope this are mistakes because mistakes can be corrected with companions but thats not the case with lazy writing.

Capitalism as we know it is not mercantilism, however mercantilism is part of the aspect of capitalism. Mercantilism in Venice strongly focused on goverment regulating and influencing the market which basicly made Venice a poor trading partner as the time went by, as free market did not exist at that time. Capitalism on the other hand, after XIX century focuses on people making their own decisions and therefor a lot of self-conciousness and knowledge, from all of the people not just a group, is needed. Capitalism as we know it is mostly the product of the industrial age when you were able to produce large amounts of good therefor creating the concept of supply and demand. If Goka is based on Singapur 1920 then please tell us how did it happen because Singapur and Hongkong was build mostly by the English. I think that paizo writers made a bad decision when they wrote the word Capitalistic becuase its a very loose term. Merchant's republic of Goka would be much better as its not based on Singapur 1920 but Venice 1602.

I also apologize for my statement as Goka is "Randian Utopia". I was very agitated at that time and I am sorry that I missled some people.

As for Bachuan I do not deny its a great place to have adventures but it shares similar problems as the other two above. The origins are poorly written. Peasants and their knowledge was very poor in Europe, their lifestyle was lowest of low in some countries even worse than the slaves in Rome. When you compare western peasants and eastern peasants, the european ones were Wizards compared to Chinese or Japanese ones. Life as an Chinese or Japanese peasant focused on 3 things: sleeping, breeding and rice gathering. Now take this guy and convince him to take up a very controversive idea of freedom and equality. Europe needed the enlightment age to introduce this type of thinking. Can Tien Xia people do that? I dont know. Before communism spread there were people who took Marks works and read them to the working class, mostly because they didn't know how to read. Slowly the conciousness of the working class was being build this way and it took 100 year to achieve change but even with the fameous speech made by Lenin in Moscow(5th May, 1990) communism was still not fully embraced by the people. It took millions of deaths and forced conscription to the army for people to feel betrayed. Not to mention hyper inflation, starvation etc. The same was with germany after WWI. So now we get this guy, Grandfather Pei, a 20th level Monk who got enlightened and build communism in 1-2 years just wow. He basicly with one qucik swoop pushed the intellectual development of Bachuan people hundred years forward. Truly he is Aroden reborn.

As I end my very long post, please do not use this topic to dicuss what is capitalism, mercantilism or communism. There are a lot of very good economic oriented forums out there. I am no economist or a student of economics just a curious nerd like most of you Golarion players and I like to play in Golarion despite its flaws but I want to make it better not worse. So please if you really want to know more about various political and economical systems out there use wiki because here we should talk about Golarion and how it can get better.

Dear Paizo and fellow Golarion fans

This is a post in place of one of my players who just recently took the mantel of the GM and came up with his own campaign on Golarion in Tien Xia of all things.

We both loved Jade Regent but never really peeked into Tien Xia after that up to this point. Most of the stuff in there is fine but as with Andoran I believe we will be needing some PF chronicles/companions to just fill some really nasty blanks that I think were left off for very important reasons because some kingdoms there don't really make sense.

Like Bachuan, Goka, Jinin.
Me and my player both respected writers that sat and thought that both Garund and Avistan are still too young for capitalism and thats saying something because I still think that the history of Andoran with its geographical placement is very farfetched, but thats apparently not the case with people from Tien Xia because they do not need industrialism and factories and can just skip that and go straight to capitalism and randian utopia.

For a year I run a campaign with an elven paladin born and raised in kyonin and we very carefuly threaded trough Elves of Golarion and any elven lore because elves there were so unique and interesting in comparison to what you usually get in fantasy settings. As I now run Second Darkness I am thrilled to show my two new elven players how elven society differs from their vision of dancing faeries in the sun and thats why I cannot understand how ancient elves since Age of Darkness could so easily intermix with human society and culture. On top of that that elves are chaotic in nature and samurai are bound by human interpretation of honour, which differs from the elven one, on top of being lawful. One of my players joked that if a winter court member would explore Jinin and spoke about what he saw his peers would not believe him and had to see it for themselves. They could just build a giant crystal ball and show the Jinin land and its people in the royal chamber and there wouldn't be any talk about too extreme actions against such behaviour.

Finally Bachuan. I have nothing to say about Bachuan. I just want to hear how exactly this communistic vision was born and why the hell did they battle the clergy because we are both dying to hear that.

Please if someone would anwser these plead and contribute we and other people playing in Tien Xia would be very greatful for this contribution.

Someone had a build here using the Rakshasa bloodline sorcerer.

The bluff bonuses they were reaching, even at relatively low levels, should enable a character built like that to at least interest her.

How do you use bluff to woo women? I always tought it was a charisma roll?

I started running "Second Darkness" adventure path and me and my group are pretty excited at what is to come. I don't own all the adventures only the first 3 but I saw that in the last one you get to spend some time with the queen of Kyonin.

How do I enable my band of dirty not entierly elven group to romance with a queen of one of the most xenophobic kingdoms in Golarion?

Help me achive this dream pathfinders!

I once had a very simillar situation. I've received an invitation for a game which consisted of a veteran GM and 2 new players. We started at 5th level which was quite strange considering that 2/3 of the party didn't knew the rules very well to properly utilise their abilities even with GM and my help. My cleric despite being only above avarage was overwhelmingly good. He was Jesus, Hulk and Zhuge Liang in a single body. After few sessions when it was cleary that I will probably end up as a messiah I had a talk with my GM that I need to focus on my primary goal which was supporting my fellow players rather than doing stuff for them. And I started to multiclass into a Sorccerer and it really helped because with time I started to be less and less of a badass and allowed others to shine.

But not every player will be so generous and downgrade his character to let others take the glory and you shouldn't force anyone to do it. Most logical way is as others said to requier that the characters stats shoudl be backed up with their background, plot hooks etc. Most of the really bizzare and powerful combinations can be avoided this way and if the player is bold enough to give you some lame excuse just send him home. You aren't obliged to agree on a character if you don;t like it but it might be seen as impolite if you don't like it due to stats.

Hi

I decided to make my new adventure in the great city of alkenstar. Yet I found myself curious what kind of denezines aside from human gunslingers could linger in that highly advanced area. Any ideas?

I can sorta see it both ways.

I mean as a DM it'd seem like giving out freebie info.

But from a Paladin point of view, i mean.. you are say 10th level. You've presumably been swinging that sword a long time. You know what happens when you hit something with it. You alsso know what usually happens when you smite. You'd also know (assuming it happened before) what happens if it hits with one of the special critter types.

so you would know, just from your own experience:
my hit wasn't normal- it didn't do enough damage.
My hit was normal- nothing special happened.
My hit was normal for a smite- that dude was evil.
My hit was a holy smite home run! woohoo look at the rent that made in that things flesh! Wow!

If you take a hammer, in your hand, and hit a concrete floor. Then take it and hit a metal door, then a standard red brick, and then a glass mug.
You generally know what you should expect. If you smash the concrete floor and it shatters like glass- somethng is up.
if you smash the glass and your hammer rebounds without a scratch to it, you know whats up.
You may not know the exact damage done or why- but you know something is different. And thats without even being an expert.

I guess TL;DR would be: if you can hit something and know whether or not it has DR based on knowing what your hits usually do, then a paladin should also know if he got normal, smite, or super smite damage.

-S

I believe they don't teach undead or outsider physiology in convents. Its a little harder to get living or unliving speciments rather than a floor & a hammer.

It seems that my player failed to provide enough data to properly describe what was happening so I will clarify so we can all focus the discussion on the primary concern that we had during the game.

I DMed this session and this particular encounter started in a tight but still dark tomb chamber with an altar at the end of it. The light of the torch gave enough light to cover 4/5 of the tomb but not the altar. The previous chambers wheere infested by lesser shadows which I described as dark creatures strolling in the darkness. This one was a prison for a shadow daemon who apeard before the party as a floating veil which started forminga humanoid form with horn and wings (I omitted the claws and facial expression due to poor light). Before the combat the paladin used detect evil and I informed him that he emits a strong aura of evil, not as strong as an evil dragon which the party encountered but more than any man the paladin has ever faced.

The paladin charges, he hits, he rolls all his DMG - TH sword + Power Attack + Smite and he asks if he gets double smite dmg. I said no, and tried to describe the damage he dealt "The shadow creature seems badly hurt, the blow pushed him to the wall of the chamber..." I would probably describe more if not for the arguing, which I tried to postpone untill the game ends for the benefit of all.

I did that because I wanted to be more narrative and rid myself of this lazy flaw of describing everything in absolutes not naming the creature only describing it to give the players a higher level of immersion. A the player stated I never before conceald any of these informations from him and I didn't point out at the begining of the game that I will be doing that because I didn't see any harm in that, but this is off-topic

To sum up, the problem is whether the DM is obligated, or is it in good taste to hide this informations, about whether the paladin does extra dmg due to TYPE. Form my perspective I would never omited informations such as efffects of a DR or SR as they usually negate a lot and people can see much clearer if something is not effective, where the matter of effectivness is a different thing. Something can effective or super effective, you wont know unless you observe closely and study it up to the point when the final blow is dealt. In the case of a paladin I doubt that the sword gets longer as you plow trough the dragon scales or that the sheer force of the blow matches thors hammer and sends the foe flying. Undead don't bleed, outsiders might not bleed, dragons requier a lot of handywork to make the bleed therefore a puny sword needs something divine to make the DMG it makes. It can destabilize the link that makes the undead move, It can disturb the physicall form of an outsider working as a banish spell, as for the dragons the power of "goodness" can just hurt them more than it looks on the outside e.g. You slash him on the tail but he felt it as if it was in the head or in the heart, its just a theory tough but I would not consider thinking about smite evil as - 'lightsaber on' and double DMG as 'insert theme song'- paladins are cheesy but not on power rangers level, at least in my campaign.

Its my first time looking at the witch class, and it looks a lot like unfamilliar territory to me.

I wanted to make this stereotipical bewildering and deceiving witch character focused on controling monsters.

Could please you suggest some combinations regarding this type of play

Gentelmen

I will try to visualize a few particular situations that happend or that I prevented from happening due my error checking.

The Bad:
Player: Ok I make full attack (rolls)
GM: Good your 2nd attack had slain the lizard.
Player: Fine then I cleave the second lizard.
GM: Wait, you did'nt said it was a cleave action and on top that you used a full attack. CLeave doesn't wqork that way.
Player: What no way, show me this.
10 minutes later
Player: Damn, my character isn't good at utilizing standard actions i need to change it fast.

The Worst:

Player: (after using divine bond 7th level on a +2 sword.) Ok I slash the ogre. Lets see power attack , smite, holy. XX dmg
GM: Wait how did you get Holy there?
PLayer: Well With divine bond my sword is now +3 so I reshaped it into +1 Holy.
This took 30 minutes out of a session to explain how this actually works.

The Good:
The player made a mid level rogue with a lot of AC enchancing items. I calculated everything he bought , checked if the bonuses all stacked up. After that I came with the following.
GM: Ok I saw 3 items that don't give you AC because they stack and did you know that there exists a Feint Manouver which could rended you're riddiculously high AC useless?
After 2 hours of online arguing.
Player: Why did you said that? If I came with that character you would totally drop a bomb at me.

As you can see, not only, do the mistakes of my player rob my group from our precious play time but also me form, my time which I could spend on adding content to my campaign. Sometimes I even feel that they dilibretly make mistakes to present no legal , more powerful versions of their characters. They even refused to roll for Atributes or Hit points which would be so good if they did because I wouldn't need to calculate how many points did they spend.

One thing to add, we are all adults and these two players tend to be more rules heavy than the rest of the party. I only recently made them go to me if there is some ambiguity with the rules or post their questions in the 'rules question messageboard' but still it takes a lot of my play time to double-check or correct the errors during the game.

I often encounter a very irritating problem during my games, especially at the begining or at the middle of a game of 5th level or higher usually.

One or two of my players are working on their new characters, then their start braging what nice combos they can do with feats and spells. I check these feats and I point them they are wrong with how they interpret or read the rules. They start over again and again. Its easy with low level but once I got 15th level and it was horror. I lost so much time to just check if all the feats met their previous prequisits at the correct time, when they got their stats advancment.

I would like to find a sollution because I'm pretty much fed up with the stress I'm getting when the player thinks that he is right rather than carefouly rereading the rule word by word.

I tried to send them electronic messages with advice to give the rules a closer look, I tried to talk to them that we all make mistakes and there is nothing bad with admiting to one, I expressed my displeasure for their lack of research but I'm still forced to double check.

I don't really see a problem. The prime adventuring career is really that of the young. It's that time of life where you make your metoric ascend to the plateau you'll occupy in middle age.

Ezren would not agree with you. 40 year old 1st level Wizard at your service sir.

One thing to note. You have to remember about the age bonuses and penalties. Epic for spellcasters but a drag for militant classes although a great RP experiance to roleplay aching back.