Growlly's page

I have a group of players getting ready to do their first character creations soon, and I was wondering how you handle helping players pick feats. There is an absolute ocean of feats available at this point... where do you even tell them to start? Do you just pick a handful of 1st level feats (say, from the iconics) and let them pick from that? I'm afraid if I just send them to https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/ I may never hear from them again!

I'm a new-ish GM prepping to run Hollow's Last Hope (a level 1 adventure) for some friends, including new players and one player who has never played a tabletop RPG. It's a group of 6 players, so I've been converting it to the Pathfinder monsters and increasing CR by 1 for group size. But there's one CR2 monster that attacks when the PCs disturb a room that has a quest mcguffin in it:

14 AC
31 HP
Hardness 5
Bite +2 (1d8+1)
Improved Grab (Grapple CMB +2 I guess)
Swallow Whole - 1d4 nonlethal/turn, escape with 10 damage, hardness 5.

It does have the morale-ish condition that it will only chase the PCs inside this 120-foot area, but they have no way of knowing that, and I'm sure they're not just going to abandon a swallowed teammate.

My concerns that this could cause a bunch of kills on new Level 1 players are:
- It has hardness 5, so really only power attacks from the 2-handed fighter are going to be able touch it with average damage rolls--everyone else will be praying for max damage. Level 0 and 1 damage spells are useless and I'm sure will get wasted on it.
- If a PC gets swallowed in the first 3 turns, it seems like they're basically screwed. I don't see how a swallowed PC can deal 10 damage against hardness 5 with a light weapon at this level. They have daggers.
- It's pretty early in the adventure, so they're not going to be in a groove in terms of their teamwork and their characters' abilities.

Am I missing something? This is without any enhancements or extra baddies to up the CR for 6 players. Do I need to nerf this?

I'm prepping to start GMing some sessions set in the Inner Sea, and I'm building a gazetteer to help the players get in the mood and as a useful quick resource that isn't omniscient. But it has raised an interesting question: what would a gazetteer about Golarion look like in Golarion? I assume that the gazetteer's creators would have above average access to information but not access to all knowledge.

I think it would contain things like:
- Days of the week, months of the year
- List of countries and major cities in the Inner Sea with basic information
- Major deities
- A full map of the Inner Sea
- General history of the last 20 years
- Ongoing conflicts/disputes (does anyone have a list of these?)
- Something about Earthfall (unsure how much detail)
- Something about the Starstone and Aroden founding Absalom (unsure how much detail)
- Something about the Worldwound (unsure how much detail)
- Something about the Whispering Tyrant (unsure how much detail)
- The Ages with 1 or 2 sentences about what happened during each

But would it contain these?
- Other major events that people on Golarion might know about?
- A full planet map of Golarion
- Minor deities
- A list of planets in the solar system
- Planes of the Inner and Outer Spheres
- Detailed history since -5300 AR (is that when "recorded history" starts?)

Anything else I left out that might be useful? Thanks.

Hello, y'all. So I'm a new GM with a group of new players. One of my players is a Drow barbarian (abducted during childhood by human barbarians), so she's racially proficient with the hand crossbow. She really wants to use one, probably because it's unique to her character, but I'm having a hard time understanding their usefulness relative to light crossbows.

+ Weighs half as much (2 lbs lighter).
+ Can fire it one-handed, but it takes two hands to load.
- 3 times as expensive (100 GP instead of 35 GP).
- Half the damage (1d4 vs 1d8).
- Less than half the range (30 ft vs 80 ft).
- Requires an exotic or racial proficiency.

1) Is there something I'm missing here? What's the point of being able to fire one-handed if it takes two hands to load it? To use it with her heavy shield, wouldn't she have to stow the shield, load it, then pull the shield back out?
2) If she wants to keep the shield for tanking purposes in a ranged situation, wouldn't she be better off with javelins?