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The whole key on running sandbox games is to provide a set of options for the characters to choose from, and be ready to improvise a lot when they surprise you, THEN flesh out things between session when they turn left instead of the right you had wanted. I've been running a mostly sandbox game for over a year now (weekly 3-4 hours games) similar to Kingdom-Builder in style, custom world. There are overlaying plots going on, but if they go elsewhere, it just means a couple nights of plot writing between sessions.
The thing about sandbox games, it to plan things to happen where location doesn't really matter. That way, if they take the north valley instead of the south one, you can still use what is planned. Short form, sandbox sometimes takes more planning then an planned adventure.

Making a unique monster to flesh out plot on a dungeon crawl branch of a campaign. Mezoluth was an evil cleric who wanted immortality, but not as a lich. It tried transferring his spirit into an animated statue he had constructed. Unfortunately for him, his statue had already gained sentience on it's own (awakened gargoyle), and his spirit had been trapped in his dead body now for 300+ years, conscious and aware of his surroundings, but unable to move and having lost most of his powers. His purpose is not as a primary opponent, but as a moral choice of aiding an evil personage by finishing his ritual and transferring his body into a different animated statue and gain a benefit for this kingdom (a force of animated statues for their military), or keeping the higher moral ground and destroying him (or just leaving him behind). He, however, is not meant to just roll over and play dead. He's primarily a debuffer. What CR would you make him?

He is based of a Level 12 cleric:
He is an inanimate object/Undead, stuck in the skull of his body:
Senses: Life Sense 60', Normal vision
Alignment: N.E.
Str: --, Dex: --, Con: --
Int: 14, Wis: 19, Con: 18
AC: 16 (-5Dex, +3 Natural +8 deflection)
HP: 102 (12d8+48)
Saves: Fort+4 Will:+12 Ref:+4
Attack: by spell only,
Defenses: immune elemental damage (Acid, Fire, Cold, Acid)
DR: 10/Bludgeon, Protective aura (Wis+ChA bonus as Deflection to AC)
Weaknesses: Vulnerable sonic & positive energy
Feats: Reach Spell, (others are non-combat item creation feats)
Skills: (all non-combat skills)
Limited clerical spell-like abilities: (DC 14+ Spell level CL = 12.)
(all touch ranged spells are now close (60’))
At will: Bleed, Inflict light wounds, Bane, Death Knell, Darkness
7/day: Channel Negative Energy (6d6)
3/day: Contagion, Bestow Curse, Mass Inflict Light Wounds, Dispel Magic, Desecrate
1/day: Major curse, Animate Dead

Reading through Ultimate Magic's spells again and a few spells to me scream as being one that a Dread Necromancer should know. We have one in our current campaign.

Do the following spells unbalance the Dread Necromander as a class?
Decompose Corpse (1st)
Rejuvinate Corpse (1st)
Lesser Animate Dead (3rd)
Undead Anatomy 1-4 (multipel levels)

Did the players actually like playing a character they weren't allowed to personalize? That seems a tad draconic.

They have been enjoying it thus far... been playing for ~ 9 months or so (weekly games).

Only rough backgrounds were given for characters, personalities were entirely up to the players to play as desired. The events were mostly a group of "These things happened to you, most of which were beyond your control, kind of thing." Some characters had predefined initial likes and dislike of other characters... but players wer allowed to change those likes in the game. Adds to the story element... a character changing over the course of the story. It's a good ROLE playing group. Bonus XP were provided by people expainding on their backgrounds.

I went extreme on the prevention of bloat with my new campaign, all characters a pre-generated through level 16 by the DM with a pile of 50 characters available for the players to choose from. The campaign was written such that there were too many things happening at the same time so the same characters cannot do anything. They players assign other teams of adventurers to resolve the other problems from the pool. These other adventurers are optionally played by the players or I can just rule on the result based on the selections. This gives the players chances to play just about any character combination (not all, but 50 has a good wide selection). It is entirely possible for character to leave or join their adventuring guild, thus being removed or added to the pool. Levels advanced are given to players as "Suggested advances" allowing players to change things some if they want, but so far there have been only minor tweaks. Oh, and the preffered class bonuses were not put into the re-defined characters, allowing for some customazion.

I drew from all 3.5 and PF sources for the characters, but because I wanted to avoid power bloat, many are not as number-crunching optimal as they could have been, I have limits on the power bloat I follow.

My old rule to limit the bloat used to be very simple:
"All encounters will be designed limited to the PHB, & DMG, but any other book brought into play by the players will become fair game for the DM to use in creating encounters."

Sundering basics:
All items have hardness
Items hardness varies depending on hardness of the materials it is made of.

Looking at armors' hardness’s and ran into a question... What is the hardness of those composite armors... aka armors made of multiple materials.

Easy to figure out:
Leather, Studded leather, Hide: Hardness 2
various Chain armors: Hardness 10
Breastplates & various Plate armors: Hardness 10

Scale mail: Hardness 2, 10, or something in between?
(Scale mail is made of small metal plates riveted to a leather backing)

A rogue is caught stealing by the city guard. Four guards stand 20' away from with crossbows, ready to fire. How do you handle this under the rules?

They don't have surprise, since they were all aware of each other before the start of combat. The guards can't have a readied action yet, because they are not in initiative.

This, to me, is one of those "wing it and darn the rules" situations, that comes down to another question.

Is one side of a combat is not aware of the other (failed perception), can combat start before initiative is rolls?

Example: Let's say your party of adventurers are wandering through the woods of some xenophobic elves whom are experts in stealth hunting. The Elves see the adventurers from their hiding spots and have a choice to shoot, or move into better positions. 2 elves stay in their position and ready to fire at anyone who does something suspicous (like cast a spell) and the others go to move.

Now, do you make your players roll intiave then, destroying your surprise on them. ("If I just roll initiave, I'm going to start looking around harder than I was before.")

You can say that the elves have a surprise round...
Do you make the players make perception checks every single round the elves do something?

I had an encounter not too long ago where Orcs living in an abandoned castle knew there were "hostiles" coming at them (due to raw player stupidity), so they laid a trap, hiding on the battlements. When their spotter announced that they characters were crossing the drawbridge into the castle, they readied to drop the porticulus, trapping the characters in the courtyard, and shoot them with bows from the safety of the battlements. Players have no LOS to the orcs until their are inside the castle, so no perception check would help them see the trap. By the time the players saw the orcs, they had 50 arrows pointed at them.

According to some posts, even in this situation, initiative is rolled and players may act first... accord to some logic (and what I did) when the first player went to case a spell, the orcs fired, messing up the spell.

IMHO: everything is situational, and the plot line wins out to rules every time, and to quite a famous pirate or two "Their just guidelines."

Just burn the Exotic Weapon Prof. feat for Bastard Sword and live with the options of:

1. Normal weapon attack is 2-handed for 1.5x STR
2. Use one handed for Spell Combat or Spell Strike both @ 1x STR

Optional: Grab Power Attack, Furious Focus, and Arcane Strike
This way when you're not spell striking or spell combat, you can pump up the damage 2-handed.

This way it's all the same weapon, 1 or 2-handed and you get to have increased potential all the way.

ok, so it's a little feat hungry, but you should pay something for that kind of versatility.

P.S. If you don't mind a lesser die, AND larger 1-handed weapon can be used this way..you CAN wield a longsword or warhammer (for example) with 2 hands if you desire and save the feat.

The most optimum Mystic Therge I've come up with uses WotC 3.5 products (Races of Destiny & Heroes of Horror), specifically the Illumian running with Wizard 3/Archivist 3/Mystic Therge 10 at 16th level.
Caster level on both Arcane/Divine = 16 with only a 1 feat overhead (Powerful Runes).

Both clases are INT based casters and you can continue to improve some of the archivist's class ability as they are all based on Knowledge skills.

How many GMs out there have made their own character to use along with the rest of the party? For instance, if the party consists of one or two actual players, and most adventures are for 4 or more, the adventure has to be scaled down or hirelings hired. Granted, players control hirelings, but who, as GM, uses a character?

Obviously this could pose problems, as the Gm has all the info and will naturally be biased in the actions of that character no matter what he does, but it certainly seems plausible.

What does everyone think?

I have run "DM characters" in the past. Specifically party members, but not entirely NPC's. However they almost always end up designed to be horrible fighters with lots of knowledge skills, and assigned to a support only role in the party. It's they players purpose to be the heroes, not the DM character. That character existed solely as a source of plot devices as well as a source of hints when the players get stuck.

I'm one of those DM's who greatly dislike the fact that Dispel Magic is now unlimited uses/day. I was a players of a spellcaster first when Pathfinder came out, and I horribly abused the spell. I saw what I did and deicded to nerf the spell some.

My house rule Nerfed the spell down to a 5' range, still umlimited uses. If players want a 60' range detect magic, the Identify spell does that, and is a first level spell slot, limiting castings per day.

Someone commented earlier in the thread about a DM disliking using summons just to set off traps. I saw that one too, but I "fixed" it a different way. I made summons always summon the same being over again. This allowed them to gain experience for being in fights, but if they died, they caster got a new creature who started fresh with no experience. So they could sacrifice Fluffy's experience to set off a trap, but would lose his combat skills. Took 15 minutes to make a spreadsheet for teacking this, which also doubles as the player's stat blocks for their summons in an easy to read format. Will also allow for summons to gain personalities the longer they survive.

Longspear just confuses people more often than not.. it should be called what it really is, the PIKE.

it really depends on your fighting strategy here. Are you going bastard sword for 2 handed damage? If so, no spell combat. You do realise that you're either sticking with light armor or suffering spell failure chances for your magus spells? and I'm assuming your keeping your int down to about 14 or less so that's going to input your concentration checks.

There's nothing wrong with a magus using a bastard sword in my opinion. You can't spell combat every single round. On those rounds you aren't using spell combat, you use it two handed; on those round use use it with spell combat, switch to a one handed grip. It's a free action to change your grip. Adds more versitility to the character.

Another thing you could do is give everyone Experimental Wordcaster as a bonus feat, or allow them to take it when they could otherwise take a different feat.

The reason for using tomes is so I can take them away if we don't like them. Feats are supposed to be permanent.

Have an existing game, and want to be able to add words of power without people rewriting their characters, so I thought of adding tomes they might discover that contain some words and meta words.

Each tome contains a few words and meta words. It also contains XX blank pages. The user of the tome can prepare a word-spell on one of the blank pages. Then later in the day, they can sacrifice a spell of the same level to cast the spell on the prepared page of the tome. Doing so is similar to using a scroll and requires the tome in hand, and also takes a full round action. This expends the magic from the page and cannot be used again. Most tomes are discovered with a number of their "blank" pages already used.

Tomes are created attuned to a profession and cannot be used by another profession. As they are powered by the caster's own magical energies, Use Magic Device does not work with them.

(XX to be determined)

I have a player in my game who loves to take one or two skills per character that link directly to some background detail and not necessarily related to something for their class. This time it is Craft (painting) with the idea that his character can draw, sketch and create works of art.

So after looking over the skill description I am left wondering how Craft (painting) relates to the rules as provide. How does a die role reflect in the quality of the art item? What is the DC of say making a really great sketch of someone? What is the effect of making a masterwork painting?
Also the costs to me don't work as it is just canvas and paint, better paints and canvas isn't the same as making a weapon with special materials. Though I am not too concerned with that as I know the player won't abuse this as a money making scheme.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Per CRAFTING rules (as broke as they are) you set a value for the painting and work on it until it's done. Your rolls only state how fast the painting is accomplished, not how good the quality is.

Paiting would probably be better defined with "Profession-Painter", with rolls showing how much you in for various pieces of art (all common).

There are no rules in place for determining if something is a masterpiece or a dimestore poster.

Mostly, Craft or Profession Painter would simply be a tool to define your character for more interesting role playing than anything else.

I'm all ablush that everyone likes my idea. :)

Ok, maybe not everyone, but people liked it, and nobody flamed it, so I take that as a win. :)

Which level you switch over from one tier to the other is a personal preference, obviously, so some like 5/15, others like 5/11, others might like 8/18. The reason I picked 5/15 was that, to me, the most fun levels are 6 to 15. And the 16 to 20 are the really uber powerful levels where things can get broken, so I want to have time to adjust to each new level's powers and rebalance the game, so I don't get behind the curve.

I also designed my own advancement chart for the game I run which is Fast Track from 1-5, Med from 6-9, a slow from 10 and up.

I did this because it allows the characters to develop, and slow them down later to slow then the power creep that occurs at the higher levels. I as a DM also find it easier to plot out adventures for characters under 10th level (or so), and find it harder to balance encounters at the higher levels.

Okay, so the message would not work.

Might be interesting the brew a Message spell. The drinker doesn't send the message, but receives a message brewed into the potion long ago.

Wizards could leave secret messages to apprentices hidden in potions stashed in secret places.
Characters would have an adventure finding pieces of a puzzle hidden in vials of liquid.

Evil Wizard: "Thank you for drinking this potion of poison. Tell your friends that the rest of you shall die shortly."

We have a Dread Necromancer in our current game. She isn't evil in any paticular way, and tries to help people all of the time. She also will put her life first of it is someone else or her, if it comes to survival.

This same character decided that she would not animate the dead of sentiant creatures, no human, elf, goblin or orc skeletons. Considers it revolting. However this same person would hesitate in the slighted to animate that bull, deer, or bear into the undead. Her opinion is that, "Man, and others, enslave, and murder cows, sheep, deer, horses all the time. Isn't using a creatures bones less of a crime than killing it.

There is also a Cleric NPC around from an order that does not see skeletons and zombies as evil, believing their their souls have passed onto the next realm, but they have intelligent undead and seek to destroy them to release their souls to the next realm.

Are either of those people evil?
I don't think so... are their acts evil? That's a different in point-of-view.

Does the Simulacrum created from the alchemist's ability Doppleganger Simulacrum function at 1/2 the caster's abilities when posessed as per the Simulacrum spell, or at full abilities when posessed? Does the person posessing the Simulacrum gain XP while posessing his Simulacrum? (Per spell description, they do not improve.)

I am curious because this makes the ability perfect for the re-occuring villain who is maintaining plots in multiple locations by posessing his simulacrums as needed while he himself is in a safe location. Players can even kill the bad guy and the DM can still keep him.

I would like for us to brainstorm some of the best forms for the various polymorph spells.

Off of the top of my head, catoblepus wins hands down for the Beast Shape IV spell for its deadly breath weapon, trample, and good natural attack routine.

Any others?

The two I find useful for Beast Shape IV are Chimera and Gorgon.

Make sure the Illusionist casts the spell "Summon Monster IX" followed up by Illusions, and then another Summon Monster spell. That way the players don't know what's real and what isn't.

"I attempt to disbelieve the demon, he's an illusionist."
"The not-so-illusionary demon causes XXX damage to you."

I'm actually running a setting with a western monothestic style church in the setting, but in order to have some conflict I broke it down into 3 dieties. The Creator - The good one, all three good alignments guy. Ugarath (or any other nasty name) - The bad one, all three evil alignments guy. The Earth Goddess - the mother earth, pagan style lady. Also included a "we don't care about the gods" group, called them Imperialists for lack of any other names.

In the setting, all of the good clerics/oracles/paladins didn't get their spells from the Creator directly, but from his servants, the angels/Azatas/Archons. The servants all had differing points of views, and this each had different domains from a large selection of "good" domains. The Earth Goddess got all of the nature/elemental domains, but the priests of the Creator's chuch says she doesn't exist and those people must be "saved". The Ugarath got all of the "bad domains", but as I don't allow evil characters, I didn't care about their distribution.

Included "heretic orders" which were people who worshiped ideals instead of the Creator, and got handled like heretics.

One important note, I actually broke those who worship "the Creator" in the setting into two groups, whose who get 'miracles', and those who do not... so you have people preaching for him, but not actually blessed by him, allowing for "corrupt priest" story options.

So far my players like the setting... I can copy/paste the details of anyone cares.

So, with the release of Ultimate Magic, any absolute must adds?

Lesser Animate Dead should be considered on the DN spell list, but any other necromancy spell should be added through the Advanced Learning. DN's get access to all their known spells, adding more unbalanced the class. Lesser Animate dead with perfectly with their theme, and doesn't unbalance them.

Running a Campaign currently there the players were all members of a gang of kids, and all started with almost no cash and equipment. While the players have rectified this money shortage through adventuring through some ruins, it got me thinking about something. Whould it be balanced for a PC or NPC with no money, but plenty of time and either Craft or Profession skills to substitute results of those skill checks in place of the money required to make the item.

Example, the NPC alchemist Faerskori finds herself out of cash again, but wants to aid the PC's with a couple healing potions. She works long and hard finding and refining the herbs to make the potion (Craft-Alchemy) and after three weeks would have earned 25gp from three Craft checks. The first Cure light wounds potion is finished.

While this greatly extends the item creation time, does it break game balance for things happening during "adventuring downtime" that happens from time to time.

In 3.5, if you shot a ranged attack into melee and missed by 4 or less, you hit the other person in the melee (often an ally). This can no longer happen in Pathfinder. This makes Precise Shot optional instead of "required" for archers. (though I would still take it to avoid the -4).

When a Magus is using spell combat to cast a spell and ake a melee attack, WHEN in the round does the spell go off?

Is it after all melee attacks, or can it be before melee attacks?

I can see this mattering in many cases:

5th level Magus fighting monster -- If Spel can go firt, possible that 5d6 shocking grasp will kill the monster before he swings his 1d6+4 damage scimitar, letting him swing at other adjcent foe.

any level Magus casting True Strike, +20 to melee attack while spells hold out against hard to hit foe.
Similarly-- Bulls Strength/Enlarge/Cat's grace/Transformation -- All can effect the attacks in the same round if spells is first.

Use a scimitar, fluff it out as an elven blade.

He could always use the Elven Light Blade from Races of the Wild. Effectively a scimitar that allows weapon finesse. It's your game, Make up something if you have to, just try and keep it balanced. ;)

I have a bard who was supposed to be a circus freak, someone who juggles, firebreathing, non-magical magic tricks, sword-swallowing, etc. Came up with a new Perform skill: Side Show, encompassed those types of items. The versitile performance skills were acrobatics and slight of hand.

They had a will-o-wisp way back in 3.5 for a convention module I was DM'ing and the party of 3rd level characters survived one through lots of use of of Aid Other actions. 5 players would aid the fighter, giving him a +6 to +10 to hit (depending on their successes) and then the tank would do the damage. I remember it was a Living campaign module, so all the players were running around optimized.

I preffer running games with 5-6 players, so that every role is guaranteed, and everyone still get's to play what they want. I have no problems with encounters because I've NEVER used the CR system for anything other that determining XP awards, and I have no qualms throwing harder monsters at them. Mostly it is because I design my encounters with the number of monsters based on the number of players. Yes, it get's dangerous at time, but they seem to be having fun.

That said, I won't run more than 6, as it does bog down at that time. When I was GM'ing at Gencon those years, the tables with 7 always were a little farther behind in the plot when the time was up vs. the 6 people tables.

Is this a legitimate way to trip a ghost? :D

You are burning feats to get there, so I guess that evens it out and risks turning your caster into a one-trick pony. One of my players wanted to play a "magic missile specialist" in 3.x, using some of the 3pp and Dragon Mag rules that affected Force spells (I think one was a Force Mage PrC, maybe?) This will be right up her alley.

Hey, Force Missile Mage was a cool prestige class, especially if you slapped on Born of the Three Thunders on top of it. 7 opponents could be stunned and knocked prone from a single spell. Was especially helpful with a feat (who's name I can remember) that let you break down a higher level spell slot into multiple lower level spell slots. (Heros of Ruin Forgotten Realms book?)

When our gaming group was going through the Legacy of Fire Campaign, we overused the detect magic cantrip way too much, to the point I thought it was over powered. So, when it became my turn to DM, I made the Cantrip only have a 5' range and made a 1st level variation that was identical to the original spell. This was the area effect is back to a limited number of uses per day, but if they wanted to spent the time, they could, 5' at a time.

In 3.5, all creatures summoned from spells into an encounter wer worth 0 XP to the adventurers, because they are part of the class who summoned them. Same goes for undead.

Do Eidolon's also fall into this category?

An individual eidolon is easily the same CR, or CR-1 as the summoner they belong to, yet they need not even have the summoner present. (He could be in the next room). The same can be sead for that zombie created two days ago by a necro.

I've searched some threads (all 2010 or older), and I've seen arguments for undead being work XP, a a separate encounter, yet not if part of the encounter with the necromancer. I have trouble thinking that an undead worg is worthless if he's in the room with the necromancer (part of his class abilities), yet work XP as a separate encounter because he happens to have 3" of wood (closed door) between the adventurers and his creator.

Just looking for people's thoughts to the XP for Eidolons (and long term undead while we're at it) or not?

There are no good zombies, or good undead in general in the Pathfinder RPG.

I disagree with the "no good undead" comment.

Why not have fun with the worshipers of some good god whom were slaughtered in their temple by an evil cult raise up for justice.

Does anyone know of an index of all the materials that are available in 3.5 and PF. I know the core stuff like adamantine, mithril, and alchemical silver... does anyone know of any others and their special properties, if any?

Thanks

If you want a list of all special materials including 3.5, the d20pfsrd only has a few. A good number of special materials were included in the 3.5 Forgotten Realms setting books, but it's "closed content" I can't slap it up here. Lots of special metals for weapons and armor as well as a couple non-metal items.

2. The group consists of a Wizard, a Rogue/Pathfinder Delver, and a Cleric of Cayden Cailean who only uses rapiers.

3. For stats, the DM rolled me a set of: 18, 13, 13, 13, 12, 18.

Thanks for all the help so far!

Well, you will be the primary melee tank, so like the others said, you need to focus on damage output.

Also, some variance may come in of non-pathfinder books are allowed.

Still, with those rolls almost any race will do.

Str: 18
Dex: 13
Con: 13
Int: 13
Wis: 12
Cha: 18

Power Attack, Furious Focus, Cleave, Great Cleave will all aid in damage.
If Non-Pathfinder allowed, "Close Combat Fighting" would be a good choice.
Drop first two Ability score increases into Dex and Con (either order) for +1AC and +1hp/lvl, then boost Str or CHA as desired.

Weapon, take anything two-handed to optimise damage, though the weapon itself won't matter too much in the long run. Most of the damage you will deal will come from STR + power attack, not the weapon itself.
I'd carry around a sword and an Earth Breaker personally to bypass most DR's without relying on Smite Evil all of the time.
Divine Bond-Weapon is advised unless you expect to be outdoors on horse most of the time (possible with Kingbuilder)

I have a paladin who took "Exotic Weapon: Bastard Sword" and still wields it two-handed most of the time. Taking the feat allows the character to use it one handed so that he can carry things in the free hand, cast spells or lay of hands on allies without having to drop the weapon.

If I'm playing an illusionist, the shadow spells are a must, but I always keep an evocation spell or two in my lists, and a real summon monster spell as well. Mothing more fun then fasing enemies who shout, "don't believe whatever the illusionist throws at you", only to nuke them with real fireballs, or summon a real outsider to attack them.

I don't know if I messed them or they just don't exist. Does Piazo have templated for making common creatures into elemental versions?

In my new compaign setting for increased flavor and variety, I changed the summon monster spells slightly. There are now Divine versions and arcane versions. Celestial/fiendish creatures can only be summoned by divine spell casters. In contrast, arcane versions of the spells will summon elemental versions of creatures from the 4 primary elemental planes.

Right now I'm using the templates from the Manual of the Planes book, but was hoping there was something similar in a Pathfinder version.

I've seen lots of threat about a character's alignments in the boards, makes me want to spout off an opinion. There are three areas I see alignment come up, all too often. 1. "Is this person playing this alignment", 2. "player blames his action on his alignment", & 3, "Player blames his actions on someone else's alignment." Many issues I seen in posts about these boil down to a player being bad, either from bad day or plain lack of manners.

1. "Is this person playing this alignment?"
This is the most common threat I see, and it all boils down to one person's opinion over another's. In the long run, it is the DM's decision to make, people have agreed to him being the game's arbiter after call. However, the DM should not being using alignment as a club to penalize people. A action that strays from alignment is a tool for role-playing. In a recent thread, a LN monk pummeled a medusa slave who was surrendering. IMHO that action strayed from the alignment's ideas, but instead of penalizing the player, it should be a vehicle for role-playing. Does the character need to do some soul searching to regain his personal LN philosophy, or is this the first step into falling from his teaching's ideals. IMHO NEVER should a single act cause an alignment shift. That's some that should take time and is worthy of a story line. In any story, one of the key elements is that the main character must change in some way, and a change in ideology or effort to reaffirm their ideology are good example of changes in characters. (Anakin Skywalker is an example, changing from good to evil)

2. "Player blames his action on his alignment"
Every time I see this excuse, I get a feeling that it is either being used to cover up bad role-playing, or to cover action that actually aren't of the alignment of their character. These are fortunately, to me, the most obvious to spot, and require an out-of-game conversation to resolve. I think these action are more likely for me as a DM to inform a character of a pending alignment than Issue #1.

3. "Player blames his actions on someone else's alignment."
In many games, these action are dangerous grounds, and use more by people who don't want to spend the effort to consider their actions. Mostly from "good" characters killing "evil" character because, well they are evil. In my games, like the new campaign I started up, I dislike alignment of some being used as the player's reason for acting. That's why I decided to use some of the legal structure I read from the DragonStar setting. "A creature cannot be persecuted just because of their alignment." Basically, just because an orc wanders into town and the local paladin says that he's evil, no-one can just stride up to him and kill him. That would be as much murder as a thug knifing someone for their money pouch, and maybe even worse (a hate crime). Not all evil acts are even illegal. A landlord throwing someone into the sewage filled gutter because they couldn't pay rent could be seen as evil, but perfectly legal. Am I saying that a character can't act based of another person's alignment, definitely not. A paladin detecting a merchant as evil would be perfectly allowed to say, "Be careful dealing with him, he'll rob you blind given half a chance," and he would be a legal target for smiting, but attacking him just because he's evil would be a threat to the paladin's code of honor and sent the paladin to the local dungeon.

Just a few opinions that came to me while reading.

To use combat expertise/fight defensively you need to make an attack. To parry (as the Duelist PrC feature) you need to make a full attack and choose not to take one of your iterative attacks.

Say you're beset by a spring attacking shadow, but you've managed to get your touch AC high enough that it needs a 20 to hit you (assuming you can fight defensively and use combat expertise), but after every attack it simply moves through a wall.

1) Can you make a full-round attack at a likely empty square to gain these defensive bonuses.

::snip::

2) Can you parry a natural 20 on an attack roll with anything less than a natural 20 of your own?
::snip::

1) Why are you wasting your actions to up your AC? You should be holding your Full Round attack action for the Shadow enter an adjcent square before attaching you, then you can fight defensively to gain the AC bonus and claim your Combat Expertise bonus. By holding your full attack, you can then not take one of your attacks to use your parry ability.

2) If your Parry roll is higher than it's 20+attack bonus, it should be parried, at least that is what I would say on my table.

I'd have no problem with players marking an invisible creature with flour or marker dye to make it visible. Not only do some of the rules support this, as Happler commented, but I liked that old Jonny Quest episode where they used paint to make the electric beast visible.

I've gotten lots of adventures from this method, stealing from all sorts of books and movies. Current favorites were the Lord of the Isle series (David Drake) and Sword of Truth series (Terry Goodkind), NOT the TV show. Also borrowed plots from Anne McCaffery, and even characters from J.K. Rowling.

I even had a blast one day running a chapter from one of the above books, didn't even change character names, and no one knew. Even our heavy book reader who I knew had read the booked missed it, and everyone had fun. I got the "I can believe I missed that" comment after the game, but it was all smiles.

I personally have no qualms stealing storylines from anywhere for my personally game sessions, and it used to be suggested actions on many game books of many different publishers.

Being the Crusader in question, I would like to state:
1. My characters did not immediately attack, thinking hostage situation and negotiations possible.
2. Another character attempted to parley and his response was a greater bestow curse to 1 CON from the hostage.
3. Do to misunderstanding from comment from the DM (my fault) I thought that the prisoner in question was already dead. I passed two other efreet to harm the one I did.
4. The efreet's goal is nothing but our deaths. If we die the world goes into darkness and everyone will be enslaved. While they were under duress, the prisoners were still acting against us, by making wishes to harm us. By attacking us, are they truely innocients?
5. Someone was having fun quoting Speed, "Shoot the hostage."

Basically it comes down to Spock's comment, "The needs of the many out weigh the needs ot the few." Is harming one semi-innocient destructive to one's morals when the entire world will be harmed if I did not.

Rules wise: It does not specifically state that a Crusader looses class abilities if they vear from their tenants, unlike 3 other classes that specifically state so.

Unfortinately, a number of people posting in this thread brought over an argument about touch attacks being the source of the "ignoging DR". This is NOT the case. I'm really hoping that Stephen Radney-McFarland will make a post to clarify the issue. The original post in the thread quoted him as saying "Firearm attacks always ignore DR, regardless whether it is against Touch AC or normal AC."

This has NOTHING to do with touch attack and DR... It's FIREARM ATTACKS that ignore DR.

I personally dislike the entire touch attach rule on firearms, and a number of things asbout gunslingers, posted in other threads.

I'll hold all judgement until version 2.0 comes out.

My gaming group is nearly done with the Path of Fire campaign and I'm going to jump back into the GM chair at the table. One thing I always try to keep in any of my games is the sense of exploring the unknown. this is why I almost never use a predefined setting for my games.

Beyond changing the setting, it can still be challenging to keep things new and exciting. A cave filled with goblins feels the same no matter if it is on Ebberon, Gorion, or Oearth.

My conversation question to you is: What do you do to try and keep the sense of the unknown in your games?

Things I do are:
Custom world, custom cultures
Tweak rules some for the setting (written down before starting)
Pre-define only what is needed to get the players into the setting and their characters
Custom made monsters
edited existing monsters
steal ruthlessly from any book, movie, or TV show that might be appropriate and fun

How do touch attacks ignore DR? Only thing I can find:

PFSRD wrote:

Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury poison, a monk's stunning, and injury-based disease. Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks, energy damage dealt along with an attack, or energy drains. Nor does it affect poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact.

All that's saying is that it doesn't negate the special effects of a touch attack because the touch attack doesn't deal damage.

People who are trying to say that a firearm attack automatically ignores DR are taking the above sentence out of context.

It's not touch attacks that ignore DR, it is all firearm attacks that ignore DR, wether they are touch attacks or normal AC attacks. (see first post.)

EDIT: Name Violation, Read first post.

Ok, I confess that I'm just using the Tarrasque as an example. There are MANY monsters out there that are supposed to be difficult to hard because of various DR's and such. This comment from a designer besically blows all those monsters away.

Basically is says that any fine mundane object, given enough force, can ignore DR.

2. According to game designer Stephen Radney-McFarland, firearm attacks always ignore DR, regardless whether it is against Touch AC or normal AC.

Key points on the Tarrasque:

This means, arm some (~120) common soldiers (warrior 1) with Muskets and the Tarrasque will be dead in 3-4 rounds. Yes, you'll have some losses among the men, but he doesn't have a chance.

Forget the party of level 20 heroes who have a horrible battle against him, just pump some money into the town guard and the biggest fear in the realms is a lawn decoration.
So what if he raises from the dead in 3 rounds. Just keep the soldiers with a readied actions contantly pumping rounds into him whenever he starts to twitch.

Sorry guys, the rules for guns have me disliking them more and more. Won't find them anywhere in my games.

InfoStorm wrote:

Qik wrote:

Any help would be much appreciated.

Make Dex the primary skill (higher than INT).

Yes.

Quote:

Take Bonded Weapon - Composite Longbow

NO! It's a horrible, horrible idea, as you'll always be one successful Sunder attempt away from losing both your spellcasting and your primary weapon.

If you must have the bonded object, make it a ring. But I'd strongly consider the familiar instead.

If you're worried about your arcane item being sundered, you'll never get one. Even rings can be targeted, ask Sauron. I personally dislike familiars, they are a fast target to remove in countless ways. Your avatar found that out in strip #154. (OOTS is cool) The theme is an archer, one who should already be doing their best to stay out of melee range anyway, the AC will stink because of Arcane Spell Failure restrictions.