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from the description the user throws the weapon, not the duplicate.

What? I'm not sure what you mean. The user does not throw the weapon; where are you getting that from?

The duplicate flies off "as if" thrown by the user. There's a fine difference between the two but that fact kills off most of this speculation.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. How is that relevant?

Secondly the first line limits this to melee and thrown weapons. It will not work with Improvised weapons.

Improvised weapons are not some sort of alternate category of weapon mutually exclusive to thrown or melee, they are an additional quality on certain weapons. Improvised weapons are still thrown/melee weapons. What's more is that Gloves of Improvised Might's whole purpose is to apply special ability enhancements (and flat bonuses) to improvised weapons. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, by your logic you'd seem to be saying that no enhancement whatsoever would function with the GoIM.

I'm really confused as to how you think things are supposed to work, or what you specifically think would not function.

Ask him what the source is for the statement that he is making. Obviously what you quoted makes no mention of that. It also doesn't make any sense.

It seems that what the PCs are doing with those PoPs is against RAI/RAW, but it reminds me of a completely RAW-legal abuse of a whole party sharing "boots of the earth" for infinite free party-wide healing (at the cost of time). In my opinion the item's description was not written properly. It should have specified that it only heals wounds that were dealt while the wearer was wearing the boots. That is how other items like the ring of regeneration work (and it's hella-more expensive than boots, too).

Even though there's no rule basis against it, I dislike when a character has enough pearls to make a necklace.

One could make a necklace with a single object. Are you talking 5? 10? 20?

Picking him up would be at least a move action if he was willing. For unwilling target I'd rule that they'd need to be pinned first (or else unable to act and picked up)

While goblins are small, they're still probably the size and weight of a large 2 handed weapon, meaning it would be impossible for a medium sized character to throw, but would be possible for a large character to do so. The creature would be used as an improvised weapon, meaning one would need to find a weapon of comparable size and weight.

Depending how far the ships are separated, throwing it could be difficult, as the maximum range is 50 feet, and at a -10 to hit penalty (meaning potentially missing the targeted location resulting in misdirection roll which will result in it landing 25 feet away from the intended location (kind of ridiculous, especially if it happens to maintain the direction that it was thrown).

I Suppose I'd also say that for anyone to throw anything it should be no more than half of their light load (which I think wouldn't be any issue at all compared to the size issue)

For figuring damage, both the target(if any) and the thrown object should take damage equal to the improvised weapon's damage (in this case a large greatclub I suppose). The creature thrown could get a reflex save I guess although I have no idea what DC should be (maybe DC 10 plus the number of squares traveled plus thrower's strength modifier)

I'd say that confused would definitely be considered mind-effecting. As you said, that's just a personal interpretation though, since no conditions specifically cover it.

Regarding dazed, I personally consider anything that is both immune to stunning and immune to mind-affecting to also be immune to dazed. This would be a more contentious ruling, but one which I personally think is quite appropriate, especially considering how overpowered dazed is otherwise.

If somehow the nausea didn't require a fortitude save, I'd say that anything that was immune to effects that require a fortitude save to be immune to it. I wouldn't really call it mind-affecting personally, but it's interesting since I can see how it could be considered such.

"Mind" is not defined.

Mind-affecting is mentioned in spells. Only in spells though as far as I'm aware. Or at least mostly so. That's where the problem lies. In my opinion it should carry forward to anything that a GM also rules to directly affect a person's mind tough.

On a side note, few things give me more pleasure than to see a Shadow throw down a confirmed critical hit on a STR-dumped

Except you don't even need to be str dumped to get 1 shot by a shadow or 2. A single shadow could remove 12 strength in a single hit on a critical.

I recall a post some guy made a while ago in PFS who I think had around 15 strength but died to 2 greater shadows hitting him (without critical).

WTF? That is so nonsensical. Anyone who used alcohol onboard a ship would be dead for even the shortest of typical boat trips.

It's just like taking arsenic every day or something... absurd. Also why in the world would that stuff be addictive if it's effects are probably undesireable, taste seems to be bad, and it isn't magical?

I think it would make a lot more sense if it required making a fort save against something like sickened and/or dazzled and/or dex/wis penalty.
Con damage is absurd.

Make the effect be 1d4 penalty to Wisdom for 24 hours instead of Constitution damage.

Yeah that makes sense. I'd add a dex penalty as well though, and have to make a fort save against sickness. It would be strange though since I don't think any drug requires a user to make a fort save aside from addiction.

That brings up the fact that drugs and poisons are two separate things when they shouldn't be. They should be linked together better. Because as it is now being able to weaponize drugs is too strong compared to poisons due to their lack of saving throw.

WOW! SO MANY REPLIES in just a few days! Such a simple topic, but so much to talk about! (or at least so many people contributing opinion)

I never thought about interpreting it any other way than DC10 = ft foot gap jump, but the other rulings do make sense.

Despite the fact that they make sense, they aren't really the simplest options, and I think at least in this case that simple prevails. One Barely needs to jump any further at all than 10 feet to jump over a 10 foot gap. It would round down to 10 feet still. Sure one is moving 3 squares, and the appropriate movement points should be available to make the jump, but that aside they're not jumping from the middle of the 5 foot square to the other middle of the 5 foot square,they're moving to the edge of the square, jumping 10 feet, then moving to the middle of the corresponding finish square.

In my opinion self spells (target: you) are assumed to be cast on a willing creature. Because Skinsend is dismissible, it also implies that one would need to be willing for the action to occur at all, since from a realism point of view it would be dismissed as soon as —or before— the skin starts separating, requiring in either no action taken, or his standard being used up on his next turn (I know by RAW he wouldn't be able to cancel it until his turn comes up).

While on this subject, there's also the issue of Polypurpose Panacea and Fire Sneeze (although polypurpose panacea seems to imply that the target may get to decide the effect). Fire Sneeze is not dismissable either, but that wouldn't really change my ruling that it wouldn't work on unwilling creatures.

Handy haversacks do not look like backpacks. They're like large purses, and I could see all sorts of higher class people wearing them, especially if they were fancier-looking ones (which would probably only cost 50-100g to "fancify", although GM could charge more if he wanted).

They wouldn't wear them to like formal events or anything, but I don't see why they wouldn't wear them in some other cases.

The boots cost more than 6 wands of CLW and take much longer to restore hp. That makes those wands situationally better than the boots in many situations. Furthermore, after you've restored effectively 1650 hps worth of damage from the 6 wands, you should be high enough level that the consumable cost of another wand is negligible.

People make this argument, but it doesn't fly when one is playing a campaign where characters are high level and/or are playing for very long periods of time (long campaigns).

In a single day a high level group of adventurers could easily encounter hundreds of points of damage; easily enough to burn out multiple wands of CLW in a day. One single pair of these boots shared across the whole party could save them thousands of gold per day.
A single fireball cast on a party of 5 would cost the party 480 gold (assuming the damage was average and they all got no reductions which I know is probably unlikely)
It'd be over triple that cost if only potions were used (not to say that it's a common scenario; another balance problem). With an item like Boots of the Earth that has no limitation on it's use, all that lost gold is completely negated. Sure it might be somewhat minor for them, but it adds up over the days, and the gain in time isn't major

I really suspect that the designer of this item —along with various other things in ISG like Potion Glutton— was not looking at all possibilities with regards to balance. Namely, if one looks at items that grant continual healing such as the Ring of Regeneration or Pearly white spindle ioun stone they specify that they only heal damage that was inflicted whilst wearing the item.

I would say that the item would be useful and balanced (albeit inefficient for short campaigns) if used with the limitation that it only heals damage that was inflicted whilst wearing it, but far too imbalanced otherwise. For long campaigns a character would still come out ahead money-wise over constantly buying potions or wands.

What is with a few people grasping at straws here? It seems to me like trying to build an argument on nothing. It's OK for Paizo to have made a mistake sometimes, people!
The only reasonable point anyone made was that your animal has to be a horse, camel, pony, dog, or wolf, and that one sorcerer level seems pointless (at least without the 16 000 g robe, and probably even with it too).

Please note this is invalid as written.

Animal Ally wrote:

Animal Ally:
Your respect for nature is so great that you can form a
deep and lasting friendship with an animal.
Prerequisites: Nature Soul, character level 4th, must not
have an animal companion or mount that advances as an
animal companion.
Benefit: You gain an animal companion as if you were
a druid of your character level –3 from the following
list: badger, bird, camel, cat (small), dire rat, dog, horse,
pony, snake (viper), or wolf. If you later gain an animal
companion through another source (such as the Animal
domain, divine bond, hunter’s bond, mount, or nature
bond class features), the effective druid level granted by
this feat stacks with that granted by other sources.

The problem is the bolded part.

Sean K Reynolds (Designer) wrote:

Here's the official word:

1. The game differentiates between permanent ability score bonuses (such as +1 every 4 character levels and wearing a +2 belt of giant strength for 24 hours) and temporary ability score bonuses (such as from barbarian rage, an alchemist mutagen, or a bull's strength spell).

2. Permanent ability score bonuses do count for the purpose of qualifying for feats.

3. If you lose a permanent ability score bonus, you still have the feat, you just can't use it until your ability score qualifies again.

Just like qualifying for Combat Reflexes by using a belt of dexterity, or qualifying for Combat Expertise by using a head band, if you lose said qualification, you still have the feat, you simply can't use it.

So, in this case, you have lost the qualification of 'not having an animal companion' with the referenced build, and thus lose the benefit of the feat until you get rid of the animal companion in question. At which point you attract a new animal ally. Who leaves when you get your animal companion back after the ritual.

That's stupid. By your reasoning, as soon as you gain the animal companion indicated in the feat you'll lose the animal companion granted by the feat, which makes no sense.

Also, I don't know why you bring up the whole ability prerequisite thing (and something SKR says which is not RAW) when you can just link the rule

A character can't use a feat if he loses a prerequisite, but he does not lose the feat itself. If, at a later time, he regains the lost prerequisite, he immediately regains full use of the feat that prerequisite enables.

At least realistically speaking acid is not particularly effective vs metal. (and I don't see why D&D acid would follow separate rules particularly since it's not magical)

Acid is effective against biological materials and/or ones with substantial amounts of water in them (and even then, bases react better to dissolve stuff like that). For many other substances, acid is slow-acting, very slow-acting, or doesn't really act at all; That applies to even the strongest acids.
In fact even against biological compounds, acids are RELATIVELY slow-acting (like if you got splashed), and act more as a poison (particularly HF) and/or cause intense pain from skin damage rather than core/frame/muscle damage (i.e. somewhat nonlethal damage).

Are you guys referring to somewhere in the rules that states that acid is particularly effective against metal or something?

I have once (as a thought experiment) made a level 1 sorc build who could deal 1d3+7 damage with his ray of frost. It would have been somewhat less with acid splash.

Be it here, or perhaps more preferably in a PM, can you tell me how? No using twinked gear? Only using Paizo rules? I couldn't fathom how that's possible for a level 1.

What about making an infusion of Polypurpose Panacea with the "Sleep" effect already selected and handing it to my witch friend, who casts Beguiling Gift to get an enemy to drink it. Would that work?

FAQ:

This implies to me that the effect is chosen by the target, and as such the targets would generally not choose to sleep (although I suppose in some cases they may not be intelligent enough to understand the available options, or simply may not care enough, and hence get a random roll for the effect they get).

While off-topic, my previous argument still applies for Skinsend; I think it should have a saving throw to negate. It's not there for the sole reason of a lack of foresight.

1. I don't think sovereign glue is allowed to be thrown as a weapon in order to release the glue effectively. If it was useable as a weapon RAW, it would have to say so. If GM wants to interpret it as being used as a weapon, then that's their own choice. Aside from that, realistically speaking, the sovereign glue item consists also of salve of slipperiness and glass/container-material, which when broken would likely interfere with the glue's action.

2. Surprise rounds allow for a move or a standard, not both, so the golem couldn't grapple the devil after running towards it. This maybe isn't RAW, but one could also say that because of that, the suprise round is only technically half a round when it comes to time, enabling an additional move or standard action to be performed the following round before the glue would set.

3. I'd sat that unless target was pinned or otherwise helpless, glue could not be forced on the target for a whole round. Grapple is a give-and-take scenario where generally one person is not in any more control than the other. Over the course of a round, I presume various contact points have joined and broken, and that it's very unlikely any point wouldn't have broken contact at at least 1 point of time during that round. As per the rules of Sovereign Glue, breaking contact results in the glue being ineffectual.

4. It makes sense that the glue needs to be applied on a surface that will come into contact with another surface. Applying glue to the feet will not stick his feet to the ground as long as the surface(s) between his feet and the ground (the bottom of his feet) were coated in glue. In the same way, throwing glue at armor will only glue the outer surface of the armor to whatever would contact it; it wouldn't stick the armor to himself.

5. The 50 pounds teleport thing sounds strange and probably a mistake/oversight of some sort. I doubt the creator's intention was to say he couldn't teleport away without his items, and the chainmail and morningstar alone weigh 92 pounds. They probably assumed his items weighed 46 pounds. You wouldn't even need glue to prevent him from teleporting away, since it takes 1 minute to remove chainmail. Either the increased weight of items for large size should be ignored for him, or the fact that he's only limited to 50 lbs for the teleport.

5-minute turns? WTF are you talking about?
How in the world could you get anything done at all if some of your turns are near or surpass 5 minutes and you have 12 people‽ That would be 1 hour for just one round if everyone used their time limit!

I've played games with only like 5-7 PCs and people have been proposing to add like 30-second time limits to turns or something (because combat is really slow, generally takes an hour or more).

A good idea to save a bit of time (don't know how much) is have the DM pre-roll all his D20 rolls for the session (like 40 or 100 rolls or something) and have them written down on paper, so that he just needs to cross them off when used.

I'd say the most important thing is to have players plan what their characters are going to do whilst other players are executing their turns. Unless something significant happens, their planned action wouldn't likely change much, and even if that significant thing does happen, they'd still have x number of other players' turns to re-plan unless that event occurred directly before his turn. Even then, the player should try to plan ahead an expect likely things to happen such as "my planned target dies","someone critically damages me/someone","allies/enemies are retreating", and have contingencies laid out so that he can act accordingly to those things

Finally, while difficult to enact sometimes (abilities that only apply certain buffs in certain instances, not all the time), it's good to have all bonuses to attack(/DC) and damage already written down for what that character is going to do; that way after the rolls occur it's a simple addition.

Many DMs may allow players to Pre-roll their dice for their turn for that round (only that round) to save time. This way the player essentially just asks the DM if his X hits, and if it does than X effect/damage occurs — no rolling, and no addition performed at all during the turn, which can reduce turn times to mere seconds!
There's a minor concern of cheating here, but if you have trusted players then that's no problem. Also, and perhaps more importantly, you can have adjacent players monitor other players' rolls if you find it's necessary.

When I had a group where the party split often and was usually very large, we usually ended up delegating the task of Co-DM to someone. Got peoples eyes off games that included meta-game knowledge and let us get a lot done faster.

And of course this, but I don't need to repeat what's already been said.

No summoning dolphins on land

Source? While I don't see why someone would want to do this, I don't see why it shouldn't be allowed for some evil experimentalist character.

The thing you don't seem to understand is that in order to get double distance of both dim and normal sight ranges, the overall visible area must increase, meaning that darkness becomes non-darkness (even to double only the normal light range, the dim range either needs to be upgraded to normal or else get pushed to darkness and upgrade the darkness area). Otherwise it's impossible to see further.
Do you understand? It's pretty simple.

This is technically one of the least-creative since it's taking place in Katapesh, but that's why I'm mentioning it, since it's suitable/fitting: try to lace his food/drink with Pesh.

WTF is a pearl of power supposed to do if not effectively increase your spells per day limit? (acknowledging of course the caveat that it must be for [a] spell[s] previously expended that day)

Did you ask your GM that? because I don't see any use for that item in a scenario where it doesn't do what it quite clearly says it does (re-prepare a spell as if it hadn't been cast).

Would you all say the same about the Magus spell recall ability? And, if you would please, hit the FAQ button. What if we're wrong?

Related to the question I just asked: How could we be wrong? What is the alternative? This is the only functionality possible based off the wording (at least that I can imagine)

This is for the other resonant method, but I still think that mentioning this is relevant:
"1 If the stone's normal power gives the same kind of bonus, these effects stack. For example, a deep red sphere (+2 enhancement bonus to Dexterity) that has the resonant power of “+2 enhancement bonus to Dexterity” gives a +4 enhancement bonus to Dexterity."

That said, it seems like they didn't realize (or possibly intend?) +1 AC would give +1 to CMD.

Dammit, I made a huge post and it didn't post when I pressed submit (probably took too long), and lost the whole damn thing.

Essentially What I was saying was that I don't have any experience with custom poisons, and that people should post their own experience with them, such as balance issues an stuff.

I also talked about how the guy in the website made some huge mistakes:
1. poison DC cost modifiers were terribly done
2. Poison types weren't factored in; poison types are directly linked to onset times and frequency
3. Decided that 1 minute frequency was more expensive than round frequency (even though he knew that makes no sense); this is probably just a coincidence due to all the expensive contact/ingest poisons, and is a result of not factoring in #2.
4. didn't distinguish between 1 round onset and 1 minute onset

So because of this, I decided to make my own formula:

DC:
(DC/12)^3 = cost multiplier (or base cost, whatever)

Poison type:
— Ingested or contact with 1|10 minute onset and minutes frequency cost 1x multiplier
— contact with 1 minute onset and rounds frequency, or 0|1 rounds onset and minutes frequency cost 1.5x multiplier
— injury or contact with no onset and rounds frequency cost 2x multiplier
— inhaled (no onset, rounds frequency) cost 3x multiplier

Consecutive saves:
1 save = 1x multiplier
2 saves = 3x multiplier (maybe 2.5x)

Damage:
For quantifiable damage, multiply the duration by the maximum possible damage.

Damage type:
1.5x for Dex & Str; 3x for Con, 1x for Int and Wis (?), 0.75x for Cha (?), 1x for HP (?)

Conditions:
Currently incomplete. As an example, unconscious for a long period of time would be +40

So that leaves the formula:

(DC/12)^3 * [1..3] * [1..3] * ([max damage] * [0.5..3] + [conditions])

The thing gives some interesting results. Many/Most poisons are a lot cheaper (2-3x I think), but some like purple worm poison really suffers and is nearly twice as much.

Rat poison can be dirt cheap (lets say 1 Cha damage DC 10), at 4 sp, which makes good sense.

This is just something I threw together now, so if others have recommendations to improve it (such as bringing it closer to PF poisons normal prices if you think it's necessary), feel free to mention it.

I'm maybe a bit worried about ability damage being too cheap. particularly Charisma. Thing about ability damage is that it's not useful at lower levels, but much more powerful at higher levels, so it's hard to balance (I balanced more for lower level)