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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?

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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?

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?

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.

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!

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?

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

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.

During one of my previous encounters, labled as a hard one, I failed with my plan to soften up my group's paladin by sending his 7th level husk against few large water elementals and water mephits in a sinkig ship.

I desgined the encouter so that lightly armored characters could shine more than usual.

The paladin despite going up against touch spells, non-evil enemies in an greatly unfavourable terrain he just steamrolled what should be impossible for him to do alone and he did this solely with the use of Hero's defiance.

How do I deal with this spell? Is there any errata which limits its use or raises its cost because I can't imagine paizo letting it be this cheese O_o

I have a paladin in my group. She is a very rare paladin of Sheylyn charisma who sticks well with both her elven ways and the code of conduct from the Faiths of balance companion. Now thanks to the srd we now have all the feats and rules available and this elven paladin choose the obscure osyluth guile feat as a means to implement elven tactics into knightly combat style. Unfortunatly for me I have the Cheliax splat book and I know what is the origin of the feat. Should I let the player just revrite the fluff of the feat so that she doesn't suffer the scorn for learning how to do battle from the devil itself or should I be adamant and say that these are not the feats you should be looking at Sir Knight. What would you do?

I know that the topic sounds a little bit controversial but I am at the point where I can no longer tolerate the lack of character consistency.

I have two players who, despite being very smart both during gameplay and roleplay elements, more or less fail at staying 'in character' or follow what they told me about their characters.

Here are what problems Ive encountered.
Here we have a dwarf whos on a quest to die Glorious Death in order to redeem the little bit of honour he has left. From the rulebook he read that dwarf are very grim people who only lighten up after geting drunk and they put huge stress on the matter of grudges and honour. Recently the player playd a tieflieng and a dwarf from the pathfinder setting and preformd well, butI don't know why his new character started acting like he is drunk all the time doing things that put him on his suicidal self exile in the first place.

The second player is the biggest issue . He started as a tounge & cheek bard and preformed well but after changing his character to a masculine northen hunter with more brawns than brains he stayed sly and unmanly most of the time. His third character was and continious to destroy any dignity his character's background had.

At the beginig of the game I stated that wood elves are a very non relatable race who dwell in the forest, don't understand or abhore the way the rest of the world live and behave simillar to the wilderness they live in: capricious and dangerous. I made sure the player understands what his background is and how elves should behave focusing on ezoteric and mysterious manner of their upbringing and they kin. The player was concerned with this and I proposed that if he doesn't like the idea of this very de-attached character type he could play a halfling or a human but he chose to be an elf. This player always plays a sly flamboyant drunk man whoever he picks firing jokes from right to left. and even after I reminded him during the game about his character he played as if he wasn't able to play any different.

I put reference material, novels for reading, we had discussions about their characters. Non of the above worked. I hate this but I am thinking now on soem penalty system for bad roleplaying.

Could you give me some advice how do you work with your players on roleplaying their characters?

Hi

Recently I've been playing with a newcomer to rpg's. He proved to be very good at roleplay but when it came to character sheet and mechanic he falls flat. My job is teaching so I'm trying to tutor him on how the game is played because the good old method of "learn by playing" didn't work and he had to stop playing his bard in favour of something less complicated.

Just now I started writing him daily small chunks on what is a Base Attack Bonus, Abilities, Feats, Ac etc.

When I finish with the absolute basics, which i named A1 level, I will go into combat maneuvers and specific feats.

I believe that if he gets something specificly from GM to read he might take it more serious.

If you developed some other method of teaching Pathfinder/D&D please share it.

Or maybe opinion about this method?

Hi

Me and my group started our first high level campaing. I don't particulary hate high level although it might get a little bit complicated but with this campaing I'm really puzzled.

The rule of our game was:
"We play who we want."

Which means all options are available and we dont have a set amount of starting money for the equipment.

One of the players who I don't know very well but apparently he researched a lot about this game made a Drow Noble Ninja 20 lvl with +60 sneak and a set of two very deadly close combat weapons and AC which reaches 50 or 60.

I skimmed through Beastiary 1 and 2, looked at the SRD. I didnt find anything which would be able to fight with him on a even ground. I tried to reason with him but it would mean that I dont allow him to play what he wants. I also tried to get deep into details about how sneak actually works in combat but I lost it. Is it possible to hide after an attack if the fight takes place in the dark/smoke/mist or if the attacker is invisible?

Please help

Hi

Im looking for a book from the pathfinder line that could give me some good compatible prestige classess and adventures in a swashbuckling style of gameplay. Do you have any suggestions which book would conaine some fencing classess or describe places from this genre?

Hi

me and my groupe want to return to pathfinder by doing a very difficult(not enteirly combat focused) dungeon there is. I've never been fond of dungeon crawling but inspired by the D&D based movie "GOLD" I might give it a try now, thus Im asking about advice on some of the best dungeons that pathfinder/D&D 3.5 has to offer. These kinds of dungeons in which you must think a lot, solve puzzles and be prepred for the unpredictible while not having any gamebreaking skills/spells at your disposal.

Recently I steped into a problem including "take 20". The problem wasn't very hard but having read the rule of reapeting skill tests I started to wonder if having big amaunt of time, quiet , good source of light and tools could you do anything. For example if a good of thieves would make the most advance type of trap with DC 100+ and would present it with a speech: "Anyone who disarms it will be granted a wish" would every person with minimal knowledge abut disarming could have succed with take 20 like it was a natural 20??? For me its little absurd and I didnt find any rules for critical failure or that take 20 is not a natural 20. So is it broken or just people with little knowledge can do a natural 20 with only more time and effort?

Does the paladin need components to use detect evil? The rule says "At will, a paladin can use detect evil, as
the spell.". So is it an unlimited use of detect evil spell with all components needed or should I treat it like a normal spell like ability with no components needed, thinking this way I was wondering if the detecting is obvious because of all the components needed to use detect evil?

Today my player asked my if he could change a wizard Arcane Bond into a additional feat. I asked him why he would do that, the arcane bond is like wizard trade mark and its natural that you would like to have it. Then he said that the familiar is a useless , pain in the but type of creature and the bonded item is an major flaw and a excuse for the DM to take away or tramp his casters ability. When I said no he declared killing his familiar. Did you guys experience this kind of behaviour from you wizards?

Does anyone find Andoran history surreal? I mean its based mainly of USA history but in the end its bizzare that this country exist's. There are some really illogical events that occured like why this new ideology wasn't twisted by the common folk of Andoran territory. I can understand tha nobels surrendered without a fight but if you give a choice to every lumberjack and farmer in the land who knows only things that travelers, priests and ocasionaly herolds of the realm tell them how can you expect from them to have a political education. Maybe a gentel push from the merchants , beaten nobels, churches of Adbar maybe even a miracle bestowed from some really funny god who tought "Giving the common folk some wisdom about politics might be fun!". The best chice would be that the leader of the revolt would have such a big backing from the people that he was ellected but if i recall most of the young democraces in Europa have been twisted into things like Authoritarianism, Fascism , Nazism, why didnt Andoran twisted like that? Dont know. The second thing. Very modern system of trade based on Venice. Ok i can understand that most of the merchants turned their shops into banks and somehow managed to pull it off. But if we add a very assaulting, agresivly spread and imperialistic ideology that this country stands for, it should crumble like a house build from cards. This post might offend some people because Andoran is so close in history to the USA, i didnt mean to hurt anyones feelings but thats how i feel about Andoran, and I question the existence of this country. How much o a fairytale it is?

Hi my player is a paladin of Iomedae form the Cathedrall of light, he swore his aligence to the church when he became a knight, but later on as an Andorian he choose to join the ranks of Andoran's finest , the Eagel knights. Thats all in his background. My main problem, he is a patriot and he spreads the ideals of democracy , but he also is a knight of a god. What if he had to choose between aligence to Andoran or to the Iomedae. This could make him betreying one of the side he swore loyalty to and thus lose honor like choosing whom to help in time of great peril, your god or your nation. So why there is so much paladins of Iomedae in ranks of Falcon knights? She is in fack a very agressive and active goddess , so crusades to distant realms are common probably for her worshipers and are they unaware that if there is a for example war with Taldor they might be rallied by the Cathiedrall of light or even the godess herself for a more (in worship perspective) important task like crusade against undead, deamons not some political affairs of Taldor and Andoran?