Humphey Boggard's page

Gilman the Dog wrote:

I find it hilarious that communism is being demonized in this thread. Sorry, it's not the 1950's anymore, Ayn Rand was as poor a philosopher as she was a novelist, and a communist nation currently owns 10 trillion or our nation's 13 trillion dollar debt.

I know, I'm a dirty, dirty communist (or a terrorist, or whatever sensationalist word you want to choose to belittle my position without actually addressing it) for disagreeing with the practice of charging teammates for providing services for them. Within reason. If everyone agrees with that.

Good God, there are a lot of people in this thread I'm glad I've never played D&D with.

I know, the feeling is mutual. And I'm a communist.

The funny part was someone was called a Fascist communist which is an oxymoron because fascist aren't communist (more like extreme capitalist).

Fascist believe in private ownership, Nationalism, Paramilitarism, Economic self-sufficiency, etc that are contrary to communism.

That was beej67 - I've been much more civilized and have been referring to Selgard as Khmer Rouge-like but only for his willingness to force the players of fee-based crafters out of his gaming group. WHICH IS SOMETHING THE KHMER ROUGE WOULD TOTALLY DO!!!

It works for other situations too.

Cindy: "My name is Cindy Cleric, and I worship the God of Love. I can charm things."

Group: "STOP CHARMING THINGS AND BE MY HEALBOT."

Cindy: "...."

next session:

Cindy's Player: "I have dumped Cindy and rolled up a Barbarian. I demand that you guys heal me for a change."

I unapologetically dropped my conjurer for a samurai because I wasn't having fun with it (more an indictment on me than on the class) and our healer cleric is now a ranger for the exact same reason. Our group is now sans healing except for a druid and a witch and I'm completely fine with it - the point of the game is to have fun and for us that doesn't necessarily mean "winning" the scenario every time. For other people fun involves running an optimized party or distributing wealth exactly equally. That's fine too.

Although I will still refer to those people as communist pinkos so that we can keep this thread aggro-ed until we reach at least 2000 posts. 10000 if we're all lucky and have nothing better to do.

Sorry I missed the 1000th post everyone, I was at work.

Congratulations to everyone that has made this possible.

Now it's time for my customary post on different people playing different ways (group of friends vs single-minded collective) and that if you don't want to buy something from a crafter (PC or NPC) you don't have to. I'll wait with baited breath for the post arguing that a crafter should give his services to free to his fellow PCs or else he's a thief and he should be banned from the party.

Then I'll write my post saying that type of gameplay mentality doesn't appeal to me and then we're all back to pretty much where we were during the first ten comments of the thread except for a detailed analysis of the WBL rules and SKR's interpretation of those rules and the interpretation of SKR's interpretation.

Its not costing you any extra time. But I've been over that before. Scroll up or go back a few pages.

You are either:
a member of the party.

or

Not a member of the party.

You choose.

You think the party should stand for you charging htem so you make a profit from the party off your feat? I think the party should leave the thief behind and recruit someone else. Maybe another crafter, maybe a non crafter. But someone who is a team player.

The group does have options aside from "pay full price or let the group mate rob them". Its called "evict the thief from the group, and proceed without them."

You are with the group. Or you aren't. Stealing from the group means you aren't with it.

-S

Right. This is where I usually point out that I find the extreme collectivist approach an unappealing way to spend my fantasy life. We're caught in an infinite loop.

Humphrey Boggard wrote:

Just did a quick calculation: if we keep up this pace this thread can have 80K posts by Christmas.

Also, if a fellow PC takes a crafting feat and you don't want to pay crafting fees then don't ask that PC to make items for you. If you both can agree on a fee then have that PC make items for you.

80k friendly non-bannable posts would be awesome.

And I'd counter by saying: if the PC is going to take a feat to profit from the group rather than help it, he should avoid the feat and that temptation altogether and select something else.

If you just can't help but try to steal from the party when you take feat X, take feat Y. Get maximize or quicken (or whatever) and contribute in a fashion that doesn't require you to stick your hands into your friends pockets and relieve them of their share of the loot.

-S

Nobody is requiring you to buy items in house. If you don't want to buy items from a PC then don't.

Also, not that it's anyone else's decision what feats to take but even if that crafter only crafts for himself he's going to be much more effective (because he's gotten more from his WBL) than he would be with most other feats anyways.

The real disconnect is that Selgard and company prefer to play in parties that are more or less equivalent to MMO guilds. Hence the Khmer Rouge like expectation absolute cooperation at all times. The other camp prefers to play in parties that more closely resemble a group of friends in real life but given heroic powers and tasks.

In Selgard's Khmer Rouge fantasy game a crafter refusing to give his 100% in and out combat is an enemy of the Party and ends up dead in a rice paddy somewhere.

In my party the time a crafter spends crafting is time he doesn't get to spend with his family, running his estate and pursuing his non-adventuring goals.

I'm never going to be happy paying another character in the group 10% for something. I will be happy to leave his self serving character behind and find someone else who's more group oriented.

This Game Is Not About Any One Character.

I can Not stress that enough.
If your sole reason for taking anything is for your own person sole use then get the heck out of my game, don't sit at my table. If you aren't in it for the group, get out. Just get out. Self serving characters don't belong in a cooperative game.

You guys who are for them stealing from the party have an entirely self centered perspective that is essentially "I took this feat and this means I get to steal your money if you expect me to use it"

The more I think about it, the more I'd just IC ditch the character and leave him at his temple to Abadar, wish him luck and move on without him. Which is exactly what would happen to the Thief, assuming the DM had a "no pvp" rule.. (in which case they would die, for becoming an enemy to the party. for the thief anyway, not necesarily applicable to the cleric here)

Then you, the wizard, will be left behind the next time we go adventuring because you lack the requisite team mentality.

I'm still going with the Khmer Rouge analogy except to say that I was wrong to say that online MMO guilds were like that.

The real disconnect is that Selgard and company prefer to play in parties that are more or less equivalent to MMO guilds. Hence the Khmer Rouge like expectation absolute cooperation at all times. The other camp prefers to play in parties that more closely resemble a group of friends in real life but given heroic powers and tasks.

In Selgard's Khmer Rouge fantasy game a crafter refusing to give his 100% in and out combat is an enemy of the Party and ends up dead in a rice paddy somewhere.

In my party the time a crafter spends crafting is time he doesn't get to spend with his family, running his estate and pursuing his non-adventuring goals.

OilHorse wrote:

TO THE OP: I am not sure if you are reading but I urge you against many other posters advice. If you choose to not charge for crafting do not apologize for wanting to. You did nothing wrong. You did not go aground on some imaginary rule of thumb.

Yep i still read, even if i'm a little deluded by the drop of quality of the thread after a very good start.

Thanks for your advice and don't worry, i didn't apologize in any way.

Since i'm here i'll take the occasion to post my last 2 cents on the latest part of this thread.

1-I'm surprised by reaction of some people, seeing them talking one can think i'm trying to rape their mother's or something similar, i will be offendend by some of them basically labelling me a jerk and even worse in direct or non direct way, but the fact that this kind of people take a certain position in the argoument just prove my point, i don't wont people like that to agree with me. I think that these people are bad players and bad dms.

2-Adamantine i'm still waiting your answer to my (long) post, but i doubt it'll ever come in a meanigful way

3-Till now nobody has posted a single rational reasion against the 10% but one. The fact that this unbalance the party wealth, it's true, it's totally true and it was one of the factor that made me take my decision; i think that this aspect could have been designed better.

But i want to add a thing, player and pc have the same rights but they are not equal. It's not right to punish someone for finding a way to have more money or power (bouded by good sense of course, everthing can be exagerated) and reward player to do notthing but to wait for the next loot.

4-Just because you always play a party where the members never disagree with each others and never have interest outside the group's one that doesn't mean this it the only way to play, in fact is a rather boring ad unpersonal way of play in my opinion. And just because your friends are ok with crafting at 0 cost (notthing wrong here) this doesn't mean that anyone have to agree with it, in fact you are discouraging all but the totally-altriustic-pious-saint player to be a crafter. The fact that you are ok with them not crafting and not ok with the crafting, make you save money but having some share of it is just hypocrital as a pg and as a player.

As a final tought, as someone said to me:

-Always talk about this before doing the pg

-Always talk yo your friends, you'll solve any problem talking, if they don't want to talk but just obly senselesly you to do things, quit the group.

Couldn't agree with you more. The first ten posts or so of this thread have more or less all of the major points of view and the rest has been a slow descent into madness. Well, maybe not that slow.

I'll refer you to the 500+ post thread of people bickering over whether or not PCs that take the crafting feat should spend all their downtime creating items for their fellow party members at cost. Seems like a lot of people are pretty maladjusted when it comes to dealing with a crafter in their party.

I would discuss, in detail, with your GM and fellow PCs what exactly they're expecting from someone with the 'crafter' label before creating that character. Seriously, consider yourself warned.

Apparently there are two kinds of groups: "Band of Brothers" where the crafter never charges his fellow adventurers because they're like family and the "Band of Co-workers" where the PCs have each other's backs absolutely when out adventuring but don't feel beholden to spend their personal lives optimizing each other's builds for combat.

Different groups play different ways, neither is an indictment on your character and if you don't know how your group feels about crafting you should ask before taking the feat.

The OP mentioned that his character is married with a child.

IMHO he should spend what little free downtime he has crafting his own gear and spend the rest of his downtime with his wife and kid. The other PCs, who seem to have nothing but time on their hands, can take their own crafting feats or ranks in profession to craft or earn money on the side. Or they could role play having some sort of life when their not out solving crimes and killing monsters.

As a general rule, I think that if you want to be impose on someone else's down time between adventuring you should be willing to at least pay them a token sum for their time or at the very least be willing to spend your downtime doing stuff for them. I'm sure the wizard has a patio that could use refinishing or a stone wall that should be rebuilt. Honestly, if one of my co-workers started asking me to spend days or weeks of my free time building stuff for him I'd probably burst out laughing before telling him to get lost.

1-My pg is married, i'm accutally married with the png witch we met in one of the very fist session (the one who ask you the components for a potions), we don't have baby but i plan to have at least a couple.

Since kingmaker is a long-term campaign i like the idea of "settling" my pg, also i spent time and money courting the witch.

2-While half of the party just let the day pass by i and another guy are creating a net of commercial activity that benefit mostly the kingdom.

So yes, time has a value for me.

You have a family to provide for and spending time crafting is time away from your wife and child. I say aside from the crafting that you'll do for yourself (hopefully minimal) you should, for now, only craft each member of your group one item and then on the understanding that they make a healthy contribution to your child's college savings account (and thank Adabar for the benefits of compound interest). If they can't come up with the cash to contribute then they can spend an equal amount of time playing diaperbot for you at home (hopefully the GM will really make them role play it out, I know I would).

So, i have a crafting wizard and we're playing kingmaker, we just hitted lvl 5 and started building the kingdom.

I'm a LN mage follower of Abadar, the other party member are a paladin a LG oracle, a NG inquisitor and a N druid.

I just realized that every single other member of your party can potentially craft as well. I would politely apologize to them for causing such a stir, admit that your character is too selfish to be trusted with this power and ask the GM to allow you to take another feat instead. Let one of the less selfish characters spend a feat to take on the charity crafting mantle.

*Grabs bucket of popcorn and waits eagerly*

In most groups there is an, usually unspoken, idea that PCs don,t charge each other for services rendered unto the party. This is why they compared what you were doing to charging for cures etc. Now it might be In Character for you to add a fee, Abadar is all about commerce after all, but trying to charge the party crosses a line that you might not have known was there.

With this in mind, PCs considering crafting should discuss this before taking the feat. While I'd agree that in combat characters should always have each other's backs IMO this doesn't automatically apply to things outside of the combat and healing. I wouldn't let the other deadbeats in my party ride my cool samurai mount around town to pick up chicks (the horse is *that* cool) and the party thief isn't splitting his pick-pocketing proceeds with the rest of us (assuming he's doing that, I wouldn't know).

Our witch has also started crafting, originally wanting to charge 15%. My samurai insists on paying 30%.

I would have another go at discussing this with your fellow PCs in game - IMO a 10% crafting fee is more than reasonable, especially for a follower of Adabar (personally, I would be developing arcane financial instruments like stocks, crafting futures and crafting default swaps). If they don't want to pay 10% then you can come to an arrangement where their character spends an equivalent amount of time doing stuff for you (belt of str +2 = two days of your labor, so they can spend those two days gathering spell components, doing shopping, scrubbing floors in your tower, whatever).

If that fails I would content myself with only crafting to meet my own needs. If this is still causes friction going forward, talk to your GM about retraining the feat to something else.

I've been playing a samurai in Rise of the Runelords and have been having a lot of fun. He's Tian Min but there's no reason you can't reskin the samurai class to be a specific order of Western knights, etc.

Here's what my samurai looks like:

Two-handed melee, weapon expertise katana (samurai class feature). I've taken fighter feats with the katana (weapon focus, weapon specialization) and generally only take feats that are useful every round (power attack, furious focus, dodge, toughness) and except for power attack I wouldn't consider any of them mandatory. Iron will is also helpful but greater iron will is probably redundant. I haven't taken any mounted feats but still fight well from horseback (especially with a lance). He's flexible in that he can start fights with a reach weapon (I go with guisarme because I enjoy tripping things) or long bow and immediately switch to a katana if I want to immediately do a lot of damage or find myself in close combat*.

IMO The only two stats that really matter for an Order of the Warrior Samurai are STR and CON (STR > CON, especially since you can take toughness and already your FORT save is already respectable). A DEX bonus of one is nice (so you can get the most out of full plate, 13 if you want dodge) and you're better off dumping INT and CHA than WIS. If you don't like having a man-eating murder horse for a mount then go with the Sword Saint Archetype. Skill-wise ride and handle animal are handy, perception is a must and a small investment in climb and swim goes a long way.

* While I haven't done much to optimize my samurai they tend to be mechanically strong right out of the box. The other PCs in my party aren't optimized (e.g., without challenge I'm still doing as much or more damage than the barbarian) so I usually only bust out the katana for the really challenging encounters.

LoreKeeper wrote:

Don't forget Deadly Aim. That'll make the coup-de-grace DC sufficient to be lethal.

Slightly more, but a horrible coup de grace regardless. You couldn't find a worse weapon, actually. A dagger adds STR, so it's better (it can have power attack as well)

With low BAB, it's 2d4+4. 9 damage with deadly aim, 5 without (was misscalculated before). DC 19 or DC 15 saves. If the character have a gauntlet, he might get a better coup de grace with a punch. Or using the hand crossbow as an improvised club.

The point was that the poison does the damage for you. The character is a barbarian and can splatter the walls with blood and gore by Coup de Grace-ing with his axe or whatever. I like the image of the barbarian suppressing his rage to kill his nemesis in cold blood, leaving no obvious wound but a poisoned dart as a calling card.

Samurai's 20th level ability is terrible. Very poorly executed. The other guys can still beat you down, they just have to leave the finishing blow for their master to deliver, and you can't even fight back against them. Would've been better if it worked like... "You gain DR 20/-- (DR = class level)and SR 30 (10 + class level) against any attacks or harmful spells not from the foe you challenged. You may not attack anyone but the foe you chalenged on your turn or with normal AoOs, however, any creature other than your challenge that attacks you provokes an attack from you, resolved before his. These attacks do not count as AoOs."

Something like that to actually make you an undaunting, unstoppable force out to take down your hated foe. Instead...we got what is in UC.

The main point of the capstone isn't that the minions can't kill you - it's that all their attacks do minimum damage unless they crit (which as a samurai you can spend a use of resolve to ignore). I like the picture of the samurai wading through battle and all of the minions only able to nick and scratch him. If you do couple it with any sort of damage resistance then it becomes really mechanically effective.

I'm partial to the Samurai myself and I think the capstone is ubercinematic, especially if there's a huge battle going on around you while you face off against your hated foe.

Of course for me, half the fun of playing a one off is making the character in the first place so put together something fun and colorful to play because no one is going to care if some other class could do an extra 5% damage per round or whatever.

@Gnojko - Sounds like an awesome campaign idea (I'm kind of jealous actually). In addition to throwing different terrain and monsters at them there is a ton of great thematic source material.

For a jungle campaign I would definitely build around a demon that has been worshipped by the local tribes for millennia. Perhaps the demon isn't currently in this plane of existence but rather manifests by possessing voluntary mediums at the height of dark rituals. Feral, frothing at the mouth madness should be a constant threat as should unusual rotting diseases (maybe the PCs could run into previous explorer, the last of his band, rotting away in an abandoned hut).

Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) - Fits perfectly with your exploration narrative, you could put in an early explorer who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Apocalypse Now - A modern remake of Heart of Darkness in movie form, if you haven't seen it already.
Beyond Survival with Les Stroud - Survivorman's new series. Check out the Demon Dancing and jungle lifestyle of the Sri Lankan tribesmen in episode one.

For more inspiration on the dark cult aspects you can also look to BPRD's later books (with a distinctive Lovecraftian spin). You can re-skin boggards to look like Mike Mignola's frogs and you'll have a lot of artwork to use as well.

The character is a barbarian. He has no business spending precious rounds in combat attempting ranged combat except as a last resort or a roleplaying opportunity. For this character the hand crossbow wins on both accounts:

last resort: Use a (too expensive for normal use) poisoned bolt. Yes, you can do more damage with a light crossbow or whatever but the main point would be the poison anyways.

roleplaying: Uber-thematic for a drow. Looks and feels like a pistol, awesome for a Coup de Grace. I can see it now:

[Enemy on knees begging for mercy] "Killing me won't bring her back."
[Drow barbarian, holding hand crossbow] "Ain't that a shame."
[thunk. Barbarian walks away without looking back as villain writhes in the throes of terrible dark elf poison.]

Gamer's Guide to Pathfinder did a podcast on Player Types and how to handle them. I'd recommend checking it out (episode 8, I think).

http://www.35privatesanctuary.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=cat egory&id=53&Itemid=65

@TarkXT - A quick suggestion:

The Order of the Dragon 'Aid Another' ability is much stronger if it doesn't require a standard action. The body guard feat allows you to use an AoO to boost an adjacent ally's AC and the Honor Guard archetype gets an improved version of this feat.

e.g., a 3rd level Honor Guard (Order of the Dragon) can spend an AoO to boost his friend's AC by +4 (+5 at 8th, etc) against a single attack and he still get his usual full attack. With combat reflexes (and/or the halfling racial trait that gives another +2 to aid another) this is a pretty killer combination that only costs one feat (combat reflexes).

I would probably keep the coloring of the ability in the guide to be yellow but it would be appropriate to add a caveat ("Blue if you are an Honor Guard or use the Body Guard or Swift Aid to improve the action economy of Aid Another").

My Opinion on Bestiary 2
...
2)Witchfire Will-O-Wisps on steroids. Trading off magic immunity for being incorporeal and possessing a host of spell-likes is pretty even, but the Witchflame ability can make it so that the hags can burn through Protection from Energy spells with a couple attacks, and at range. Extremely dangerous considering the damage ouput its capable of. In multiples (like a coven), its easy for them to gang up and char the PCs one by one.
...

Our (admittedly melee-heavy, 5th lvl at the time) party was caught by a Witchfire in constrained area and it nearly wiped us all out. Didn't help that we had no idea what it was and that the only characters that had magic weapons were caught out of position. Then it summoned Will-O-Wisps to block our way out and keep us from fleeing, leaving the poor barbarian for dead* but dragging the unconscious druid (in bear form) with us.

* Managed to survive, barely.

I also love cavaliers, but I HATE mounted combat.

I mean, come on, cavaliers don't need mounts to be effective. Between sharing teamwork feats, group buffs, and the AMAZING abilities granted by their Oaths, I'd take a cavalier in my group over almost any other dedicated "fighter-type" any day of the week (except paladins, because they're just better than everything).

All of the above is IMO.

I'm a big fan of the cavalier as well - concept-wise he's a much better medieval knight/leader of men than the paladin and mechanically I really dig the (non-magical) buffer/tank. I've been wanting to put together an Order of the Dragon Honorguard Cavalier - a heavy armor frontline fighter that does good damage and helps the other frontline guys stay on their feet or keeps his squishy friends from getting squished once the enemies have closed ranks.

Humphey Boggard wrote:

Personally, I'd have the proper authorities imprison him for tax evasion and confiscate everything he owns. Player gets to keep the character (assuming he can be busted out of prison) but doesn't get to play kingpin any more.

As a GM? Sure. Assuming you don't just tell him to quit being a dick.

But this post was clearly from a player, who has no such recourse.

The tax evasion arrest, etc, should only come after the group gathering to discuss this out-of-character. I figured everyone else had covered the Voice of Reason angle pretty well and didn't think to repeat it.

Personally, I'd have the proper authorities imprison him for tax evasion and confiscate everything he owns. Player gets to keep the character (assuming he can be busted out of prison) but doesn't get to play kingpin any more.

There are some Cavalier options that work nicely as battlefield control tanks:

Order of the Shield - has a much better version of the Stand Still feat at 8th level, can convert lethal to nonlethal damage and gets bonus to AT against challenged foes that attack the rest of the party.

Order of the Dragon + Honorguard (Cavalier archetype) - a bit of cheese but you can *slightly* abuse the action economy (converts AoO to +4 (or more) AC bonus to adjacent allies against individual attacks via Aid Another) to make a strong bodyguard type that still gets full attacks each round.

Frau Hilda - A hulking barbarian-ess, originally from an Amazon dimension where men are seen and not heard and massive women warriors do battle for honor. We'd roll into a village and ask to speak to whom was in charge. The mayor would come out and Frau Hilda would say, "No. We want to talk to the mayor, go get your wife (intimidating barbarian stare)".

(Opponent misses with thrown spear) "Ha! You throw like a tiny manling!"
(Appraising an enemy warrior) "Hmmm barely strong enough to do the dishes and clean my sheets. Come back when you can hold a sword big enough for a woman."

Human Fighter. Mechanically effective and appeals to my personality.

I love the work-a-day, blue collar work ethic of the fighter. He's out there on the battle field all day and when faced with a second shifts shrugs, spits on his hands and gets back to work. The PF human is a race I can relate to - nothing fancy, no frills, just effective. Humans don't get better vision, situational bonuses or weapon familiarity. Humans get the job done.

I have a bard that does Aid Another frequently. What generally happens is the melee types charge (2x move distance plus attack) while the bard begins a performance and makes only a single move. In the following round, the bard is often close enough to make a full attack with the whip but the whip wouldn't actually be able to hurt the other guys (they have too much armor). Rather than have to switch weapons and then get a single attack, the bard will opt to just aid whoever's in reach.

For two feats (Combat Reflexes and Bodyguard) your bard can be adding +2 AC for your frontline guys at the cost of only AoOs (assuming you can hit AC 10 consistently). If he had the helpful racial trait it could be +4 AC.

For a high dex character Combat Reflexes + Bodyguard might be worth it. For the same character with 'helpful' or some other bonus to Aid Another it becomes a really good deal because AoOs go largely unused on a round-by-round basis.

@Stream and Rainy - Is the 'helpful' trait for halflings only? It doesn't specify on the linked page.

@Rainy - How did the 'helpful' halfling work out? Did it annoy the GM to have you rolling for Aid Another all the time? I was thinking that I'd roll everything in advance and hand the sheet of random numbers to the GM, having him check off each used roll. At mid-levels it should hardly be necessary since you'll be auto-confirming almost every time.

* Edited for grammatical correctness

In my game I've yet to see anyone use Aid Another in combat (fairly common for skill checks out of combat though) largely, I believe, because of the action economy of it. It never makes sense to spend your standard action helping someone else get a +2 to AT or AC.

However, reading through the APG the Bodyguard feat allows a PC to spend attacks of opportunity (AoOs) instead. UC has a feat, Swift Aid, that allows a PC to grant a +1 to AC or AT as a swift action. Also, in the APG the Cavalier class has an Order (of the Dragon) that grants another +1 to Aid Another (plus another every six levels after second) and an archetype (Honor Guard) that gives another +1 when used to boost someone else's AC.

So I'm thinking of putting together a human Honor Guard Cavalier (Order of the Dragon) with the following feats:

1 Combat Reflexes
1C Tactician -> Precise Strike
1H Iron Will
3 Power Attack
3C Honor Guard -> Bodyguard
5 Furious Focus
6C Swift Aid
7 Gr Iron Will

With a 14 DEX he's looking at giving a +4 bonus to AC to an adjacent ally against a specific attack three times a round using AoOs (+5 at 8th level) and giving a +2 to AT as a swift action to an ally for their first attack in addition to his usual full attack. He should do solid if not spectacular damage with his glaive or great sword while buffing his fellow melee-ers in ways that are complementary to those of a bard or cleric.

* All of this was inspired by the fact that we have a barbarian with tons and tons of HP but an AC so low that enemies have trouble not hitting him so after a certain point he becomes a huge draw of in combat healing (no bueno!). I got to thinking about what an ideal cohort for him would look like and decided that this might be a fun character to play.

I'm going to go with whatever people feel like playing. Iterate until characters stop dying regularly.

I joined a party and rolled up an elven wizard because I thought the party needed an arcane utility caster. Hated it. Fortunately the wizard's soul got eaten ("Ow! My hopes and dreams!"), I rolled up a melee class (just like pretty much everyone else in the party) and have been having a blast smashing the crap out of things ever since.

In addition to all the useful advice given by the other commenters I suggest you give the defective players computer RPG style side quests:

"Go collect 30 wolf pelts. Here are stats for the wolves, roll some dice and tell me when you're done."

Regular Fighter is the way to go if you plan to wear armor for your concept.

That said, swap the Dex and Con; you're a front-liner (I assume) and you'll get plenty of AC from armor. Meanwhile, you need HP. Favored Class bonus should go to HP as well.

Bump. There are far more ways to increase your AC than HP, especially for a fighter. I'm building a TH (regular) fighter myself and came across a lot of the same design issues. We rolled for stats and I ended up with the following:

str 18 (incl racial bonus)
dex 13 (planning on 4th lvl advancement -> 14)
con 14
int 13
wis 13
cha 12

With the higher INT I've gone with combat expertise (and improved trip) and with the relatively low CON toughness becomes a must. I'll have an additional +1 to AC at 4th level due to armor mastery but I'd rather have DEX=12, CON=16 any day of the week.

Human Fighter (Two-Handed Fighter)
Str - 16 (+2 racial bonus)
Dex - 13
Con - 16
Int - 13
Wis - 13 (+1 at 4th level)
Cha - 7

Feats:
Human - Power Attack
1st - Cleave
1st - Dodge
2nd - Mobility
3rd - Combat Expertise
4th - Spring Attack
[Retrain Cleave to Whirlwind Attack]
5th - Improved Sunder
6th - Lunge

I really like the fighter build you put together. Looks very effective in combat while allowing interesting tactical options. I do have a rules question though.

The text for Whirlwind Attack reads:

When you use the Whirlwind Attack feat, you also forfeit any bonus or extra attacks granted by other feats, spells, or abilities.

Do they mean that any feat granting a bonus to attacks doesn't stack (i.e., Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization or Power Attack) or do they mean to say that any feat granting bonus attacks doesn't stack (i.e., Two Weapon Fighting)? I imagine the RAI is the latter but would prefer to be on sound footing before putting together a build that features Whirlwind attack.

I think it would be fun to put together a short one-shot where the players take on characters from a historical event important to the campaign. Maybe one in which everyone knows that the temporary characters have zero chance of survival. I'm thinking Alamo type situation. Maybe they touch an artifact that pulls there consciousnesses back in time to ancient battle that figures prominently in the campaign.

It gives you a chance to give background flavor and possibly plot bits while putting the campaign temporarily on hold. Personally, I would award the PCs experience for their time in the ancient past and possibly award them with some small trait (1/2 feat) that stays with their permanent character if they manage to meet certain objectives (survive, die saving the princess, seal up the gateway to hell getting trapped on the wrong side). Maybe the official story is incorrect and someone who history has remembered as a cad died heroically knowing how things would look to future generations. Also, you'll probably have lots of alternate NPCs to have the PCs take over if they die before everyone else.

How cool would it be to play a 4th level fighter facing down the hordes of Hell?

Before you have the group run the absent player's character you should ask yourself a few questions:

What are the odds the character will die under the control of the other players?
Do the other players tend to not act in good faith?
How crucial is it that the character be there?
How would the player react to his character dying?
How would you work a new character into the game?
Will there be significant time on the sidelines and will the new character be more or less caught up with the old one in terms of equipment, experience and plot involvement?
Are the PCs at a level for which death is only a minor inconvenience?

Personally, I don't mind my character being played without me since the other players tend to act in good faith, I have other characters I'd like to play and the GM is very good about bringing in new characters on the double quick with level appropriate equipment (even if it stretches the bounds of believability sometimes).

If I had to reroll at a lower level or with a significant disadvantage in equipment there's no way I'd let the other PCs touch my character sheet.

Kudos to RD for asking a such a tough question of his players.

I don't think the the characters were railroaded and neither do I think they made the wrong choice. Maybe a braver, smarter, abler group of adventurers could have 'won' the scenario but life isn't always about winning. Having proven to be lacking the PCs will have to live in a world that knows them to be failures, at least until they can prove themselves worthy.

Following Mort:

Paizo has crafted Pathfinder so that players have a lot of flexibility in crafting their characters but the cost is that the further you go from the 'iconic' role of the class the less effective you tend to be. The Dervish Dancer build you suggested sounds fun and playable but after all that optimization work it strikes me as somewhat mechanically weaker than an equivalent fighter.

Probably bard is not the class you're wanting to play. I ended up with my character the same way (started off building a bard, wanted more combat focus, rebuilt, rebuilt, rebuilt, hey I've got a fighter!).

Looks like a pretty cool build, I'm a big fan of deadly stroke. I'll be moving sooner than later and will have to leave our campaign around level 9 so I built to be optimal around level 8.

I do have a question - how much CHA do you buy with that build? Also, which Order? Finally, at higher levels how well does your mount do in combat?

How will Samurai be adressed? Or are they going to be shunted off to the side?

In case you're interested I ran the numbers for a completely vanilla Order of the Warrior Samurai in the DPR olympics thread* as a way of illustrating how a default human Samurai build plays compared to an equivalent Fighter (Freddy Falchion). I crafted the build ignoring entirely the mount, a powerful but situational class feature.

The two-handed Samurai keeps up with the two-handed Fighter in raw damage when he's challenging but otherwise falls a bit behind in a way comparable to the Paladin. In exchange for the decrease in all-the-time offensive output the Samurai is a more survivable character and has a fair bit of flexibility owing to the quick draw feature of his chosen weapon. Interestingly enough, the Samurai favors a standard attack (in retrospect, common to any build that gets large damage bonus rather than AT bonus). Finally, the Fighter is more mobile in heavy armor. This is mitigated by the fact that outside of cramped dungeon environments the Samurai can ride his mount.

* I'm not a huge fan of the DPR Olympics but it serves a purpose in convincing players a tangible metric to understand certain trade-offs in building a striker-ing character. IMHO the Cavalier and Samurai suffer from the incorrect notion that they can only be effective as a mounted chargers.

@TarkXT - Would you be interested in adding an appendix to your guide with a few words on the Samurai along with a guidelines for a few specific builds (pole-arm switch hitter (Order of the Shield Defender type and Order of the Warrior Striker flavor), Sword Saint)? If you're interested I'll gladly share what notes I have.

The Alchemist can use the wand of cure light wounds (a spell-trigger device that is on his list of spells ... I mean formulae) so your healing problem is solved.

Since I haven't seen a proper treatment of the Samurai when not mounted I present

If he uses Way of the Samurai to roll x3 for his first attack he gets 34.70 (47.33 Challenge) or for the second attack 25.69 (35.03 Challenge). If he goes Sword Saint his Iaijutsu strike looks like 54.14 (61.21 if he uses Way of the Samurai) in a single attack (which is all he gets since Iaijutsu is a standard action at 10th level). So with this in mind we see that when using his Challenge the Samurai is comparable in DPR to Falchion Fred, but is skewed more towards his primary attack and does somewhat better than Fred when given just a standard action. This is even more apparent when using class features like Way of the Samurai and Iaijutsu Strike.

Defensively, his AC is one point lower than Falchion Fred and his will save is one less. However, against his Challenge enemy he gets 3/- damage reduction and he can use Honor in All Things (+4) or a use of Resolve (roll save x2) when faced with will saves so more than a bit better than Fred in this regard.

So in summary, the Samurai when not Challenging is looking better than the non-smiting Falchion Paladin owing to the Fighter Feats allowed by Weapon Expertise (class feature, not feat) and when Challenging is a bit better than the Pally smiting against team Jerk (not team Evil Outsider). The challenge is a bit more flexible since it can be done against any alignment. Samurai Sam does less DPR than Falchion Fred when he isn't challenging and is comparable DPR-wise when he is.

All of this assumes that the Samurai's man-eating killer warhorse is off doing something else. So I think we can safely say that you put together a credible build that isn't based around the mount.

Edited to turn '\' to '/' to make formatting work.

Build whatever damn character you want to play. After everyone is at the table you guys can figure out if you guys have any weaknesses and work to mitigate them as a group. Considering that you'll be playing at lower levels the bard will be just as much of a boon to the party as a wizard would be.

@Christopher Rowe - If I were your GM I'd approve it (basically I was going to write the same comment as Kievel). Talk to your GM, if he/she decides that this is something mechanically that fits with their game then you can work on figuring out exactly how to skin the appearance/backstory of your character.

Speaking of mechanics, I am kind of curious to know how the Sword Saint Gendarme would work. Sword Saint forfeits the mount class ability and gendarme seems to be a mount-focused character. Are you thinking of dipping some other class that provides a mount and using companion boon? Otherwise it seems like you'll either be maxing out the ride skill or going through an endless line of disposable horses.

@Muser - would have to be against an enemy besides the one that you want to use Iaijutsu against. Also, with the Weapon Expertise class feature (gives Quick Draw for favored weapon among other things) you can wield a naginata to strike out against one of the boss's goons then next turn drop it as a free action and Iaijutsu the crap out of the boss the next turn.

@dnjscott - Order of the Warrior -> Way of the Samurai

"Way of the Samurai (Ex): At 8th level, the order of the warrior samurai's sense of honor and loyalty drives him to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks. The samurai can, as a standard action, focus his mind and will. Once during the next minute, he can choose to roll an attack roll, skill check, or saving throw three times and take the best result. He must decide to use this ability before the roll is made. Using this ability expends one daily use of his resolve."

Virtually guarantees a critical hit if you're using a katana.

At levels below 8th I would look to the tactic I suggested to Muser (you don't need to be Mr Awesomesauce with a magical naginata to hit the boss's cronies and do good damage, considering your full BAB and all).

I'd love to see how the Cavalier based archers stack up to the others. I'll suggest two builds:

1) Small (halfling?) mounted archer built using Luring Cavalier and possibly Order of the Sword (challenge has +1 to AT when astride his mount plus another +1 for every four levels).

2) A combination Musketeer/Luring Cavalier (still haven't figured out which order is best with this one).

Also, how does the latter build stack up against the Gunslinger?

I'm thinking that the Cavalier builds are going to behave a lot like Paladin archer builds (ho-hum when not challenging but rockstar when he goes nova).