Joachim's page

Late to the party, although I have been following it with interest from the beginning. Put me down in master arminas' camp...+1 to basically all of his points.

While the point has already been made, this situation does bring up a question with Paizo's internal organization. Either:

1) There are two sides of the office, one that makes the product (AP's, accessories, etc.) and the other that makes the rules. Obviously, based on the stat blocks provided in the AP's and the GMG (as well as archetypes like the Zen Archer and Sohei that CLEARLY do no work with the clarification), the assumption by Paizo's own staff was that they interpreted it similarly to how arminas (and the group that I have been playing with) has. This would indicate a lack of review and or communication between the two groups.

and/or,

2) SKR gave a quick response to a long series of questions regarding the AoMF and monk attacks, and then JB sided with that interpretation to prevent his co-worker from looking bad. To his credit, JB indicated their plans to review and make a final ruling on the issue, and this shows a commitment on his part to customer service.

I will say that some of SKR's responses were somewhat troublesome. I would not expect such a tone being directed at one's customers, even in the midst of a contentious debate such as this.

I was one of the players in the first group that came up with this idea (Hidden Treasure Trove, linked above). We as players all knew that getting that kind of money was completely out of line with the spirit of the game, and why would you continue adventure if you come across such a ridiculous sum of gold? I mean, you're already rich!

We ended up selling the location and rights to the new 'mine'
to Dervil Ironeater, one of the local dwarf mine-managers. I was bored one night, and actually ran through a CAD-simulated take-off based on the actual size of the balls, modeling the overlap, and considering the unit weight of iron (you can find ANYTHING on the web if you know how to look).

End result was that the trove was actually worth just under 500,000 gold. Dervil paid us 1/10th in a finders fee up front. It ended up being on the order of 7,000 to 8,000 per player (the exact amount escapes me), which is a nice little fee for 3rd level (at that time) PCs. In addition, Dervil agreed to secure the deed to the old manor house outside the Cairn and then he paid for all of the repairs to it, giving us a permanent base (found to be semi-permanent based on future events, but that's another story).

So, our DM rewarded us for a well-laid plan, and the reward made us 'powerful' for our level, because we were able to outfit ourselves with +1 weapons, +1 armour, +1 shields, +1 cloaks, etc. For a short time, game balance was shifted in the PCs favor slightly, but this faded after a level or two.

If I were a DM in a similar situation, I would approach it rationally, as our DM did. I would not punish the PCs for trying to think outside the box. Some poster recommendations from earlier threads actually recommended that the DMs let the PCs spend significant time, energy, and money trying to take advantage of the situation, and then once the balls were removed from the Cairn, they were 'magically transmuted' into clay, or stone, or lead, or doo-doo, or whatever, resulting in the PCs either being embarrassed in town and/or being stripped of the small amount of cash they came about 'legitimately'. DMs who become irritated when their players try to better themselves creatively need to get a grip.

As they say down here in the South, "There is more than one way to skin a cat."