This is a one time offer of aid, right? They helped him out and now he's returning the favor. What's wrong with the party getting a one-shot boon? Is this the best way to cash in their favor? Doesn't matter. They earned it and are spending it now.

Feel free to make the dungeon a little bit tougher so that they're glad that they called this marker, but that it's.

If you significantly upgrade the dungeon; then the party will (perhaps rightly) feel that calling in this favor was useless. Actually, less than useless as they could have kept the favor for future use when it would have actually had some impact.

If the party cakewalks part of the dungeon with his aid; cool. Well spent boon. The party isn't going to feel cheated, because they're the ones that 'called in the big guns'.

After he helps them with this one task, he has to go to fulfill other oaths, obligations or family commitments. Seek vengeance or information or atonement or whatever. Maybe he's off looking for a way to give that warlock a suitable replacement arm.
Then once the PC's are closer to him in level/power he can be called in as a recurring NPC. A cohort or such.

The one thing you want to avoid is to make a major sacrifice pointless.

I'm with Hrothdane on the Aegis of Recovery. The +2 vs. on-going effects is nice, but it's a Resistance bonus. That's the easiest bonus to get and I like not having the initial bad thing stick on me. Having a flat +1 save bonus will do you way more good. Just think of aalllll those saves to not fall into pits, get roasted by fireballs, gaze attacks, charm person, or have your gear melt/get stuck to bad guys.

It also takes up the Neck slot, which is a pretty nifty slot and shouldn't just be plugged up without some consideration.

Finally, you're a paladin with very good saves to start with. And don't forget that at 4th level you can start taking the awesome Hero's Defiance.
_____________________

Alchemical Silver is cheap. +20 gp for a light weapon, +90 for a one handed and +180 for a two handed or double weapon. Just remember that if the weapon isn't blunt, it will do -1 damage (giving Everything DR1/- vs. you!)

So for back-up silvered weapons I tend more towards a mace or hammer. If you've got the gold to spare, then for sure a Mithril sharp weapon is nice. Plenty of good choices, but for the discount option check out the Mithril Bayonet. One pound (so just 500 gp) to turn your firearm or crossbow into a simple, silver damage dealing, masterwork, two handed weapon. That's for those with high strengths and/or power attack.

I've also been known to have one cold iron spiked gauntlet and have a silvered cestus on the other hand. Or drop the 500 gp and go with a pair of spiked gauntlets; one cold iron the other mithril.

But once again, you're a paladin with access to smite, so this sort of DR isn't as big a drawback for you. And eventually you'll be able to buy a +3 weapon, and almost say goodbye to this issue.
If you go with sacred bond to your weapon, a +2 can be augmented at 5th level into a +3.

Even if you're not playing PFS (where you can spend 2PP for a 'free' 750gc item) these are all still well worth it;

Snapleaf (Immediate action for a one-shot 5 rounds of Feather Fall and Invisibility)

Campfire Bead (maybe. Handy, but you can work around it)

Darkwood Mighty Masterwork Composite Longbow (up to +3 Str)

Wand of many 1st level spells like-
Bless Weapon
Divine Favor
Cure Light Wounds
Pro v. Evil and/or Chaos
Veil of Heaven (better duration, but doesn't stop mental commands)
Veil of Positive Energy (if fighting lots of undead)
Endure Elements (when you need one, you need five)
Honeyed Tongue
Bed of Iron/Keep Watch (if you're getting jumped at night)
Lucky Number (lasts 24 hrs)

(if good UMD)
as above mentioned Shield
Monkey Fish (Swim and Climb speed of 10)
Disguise Self
Expeditious Retreat
Long Arm

(if good UMD or a caster willing to use on you)
as above mentioned Mage Armor
Infernal Healing (icky, not actually "evil")
Longstrider
Air Bubble
Abundant Ammo (if you're a shooter, then make sure to also check out the weapon blanches)
Enlarge Person
Ant Haul
Floating Disk
Touch of the Sea

There are tons of things which don't cost about 750gc and are very cool...
Travelers' Any Tool was mentioned and gets my strongest endorsement.

Sleeves of Many Garments

Pirates Eye Patch or Deathwatch Eyes

Cloak of the Hedge Wizard (Abjuration and Trans is my favorites. I often skip the Cloak of Resistances and rely on Pro v. Evil and Circle v. Evil's for a Resistance bonus, and your saves are already pretty awesome)

Featherstep Slippers!

Gloves of Reconnaissance

Hat of Disguise or Circlet of Persuasion

Both a Golembane Scarab and Swarmbane Clasp so that you can actually hurt the suckers.

___

That should give you some food for thought. Bon appetit.
~Kirk

Two bits of rule fragments immediately spring to mind. Firstly;
If you add 5 to the crafting DC you can cut the time to build the magic item in half.

Secondly;
The downtime Spending Limits are specifically for Goods, Influence and Labour... not Magic.

So feel free to try and find a caster in the thorp capable of crafting your 100,000 gc item and bury him under the pile of Magic capital you've hoarded. He's doubtless eager to lock himself into a four month crafting gig. Retired archmages gotta eat too. =)

The above wasn't snark. I'm just amusing myself with that mental image. I suspect that the real answer is simply that magic item crafting has it's own built in limit of how much you can craft per day. Plus it's often a party member doing the crafting, so they're the "real" bottleneck (assuming you've got the cash).
~ Kirk

1. Office provides a workplace appropriate for that kind of work. Without such a place, you halve your results.

2. Lodgings provide typical traveller accomodations. Bedrooms are generally nicer/more private, such as you would use for a brothel, (or simply seducing influential people yourselves, or just showing off an opulent bedroom!) Bunks are suitable for live-in workers, such as a team of soldiers or lumberjacks, who perform 'labor' tasks.

3. The only advantage I see here is the ability to produce any kind of capital beyond what the building can already produce, i.e. a building that otherwise only has gold or labor could add a scriptorium to generate magic or goods.

4. Lackeys generally don't partake jobs that generate money-they are used for busywork and impressing guests.

These are the best explanations I can come up with.

To be frank, I was hoping for something more along the lines of 'this was answered here' or 'that was an oversight' or 'this was on purpose' rather than general speculation about possible justifications.

1) There are a couple of rooms that I could see paper shufflers working out of. My thought was that the lack of Earnings on Offices was errata fodder.
Again, the Artisan's Workshop reads in part, "This specialists's workshop provides... for a particular art form, such as glassworking, gemcutting, or sculpting." This seems like the sort of place that you would want qualified Craftspeople working out of, rather than totally unskilled slobs. But the building produces at +10 on it's own. Craftspeople are +4. I'm sure that they require the workshop to avoid the 50% earnings.

2) Lodgings are nicer bunks. Small private rooms. You have them at quality Inns and Military Academy's. Can I not provide more than "flophouse" style housing for my employees without them then refusing to contribute to Labour?

3) Under Earnings, Pg. 92 reads, "If the room or team's Earnings entry says "capital" and a number, it can contribute a bonus on the building's or organizations's skilled work check for any type of capital (gp, Goods, Influence, Labor, or Magic). If the Earnings entry lists specific types of capital, it can contribute... only for capital of those types."
All the other rooms and teams follow this. Hence; errata.

4) Every other team can generate gold for you. Every other one. This includes troops, sailors, acolytes and cutpurses. Are Robbers and Cutpurses more honest about sharing their earnings? Your typical Lackey is a highly skilled individual. And if totally unskilled Laborers can earn gold, why shouldn't they? Think of them as the staff at an Inn or restaurant. Service personnel without whom the service industry is a lot more like the DMV.

But this is all idle speculation on my part. Maybe I enjoy the debate too much. Sorry to ramble. =)
~ Kirk

I just noticed that the Office stats do not have an earnings section. It seems wrong to me. Was that intentional or a mistake?

Our group has just begun using the Downtime rules so I've been trying to get a few things straight in my head.

The above was the first questions that I too had come up with.
Wouldn't an Office generate a bit of some sort of income when staffed by makeweights, or maybe give a bonus when teams like Bureaucrats or Sages work from it? Sort of like how Craftspeople might work out of an Artisan's Workshop, Forge, Leather Workshop or Printer. All of those can generate Capital on their own or let skilled workers work. Mind you, they're all about three times what an office costs and have room for three people. So perhaps only a third of income? Have an income kick in when you build them in clusters?

Second oddity;
While both can produce gold, Bedrooms can also produce Influence while Bunks can produce Labor. Lodgings however, can only produce gold. Was that intentional?

Thirdly;
Scriptorium is the only room I can find that lists each type of capital as possible earnings, rather than just say "Capital +5".

Lastly;
Lackeys are the only team which don't include gold as something that they can earn you. Are you saying that all maids steal? Perhaps Bluff and Slight of Hand should be added to their skills known and let them upgrade to Robbers. =)

My search-fu is very weak. I've spent hours just trying to find if these questions were asked and where the freakin' errata might lurk! I am far from convinced that I've found anything like half the information and apologize in advance if I'm now in the wrong spot, saying the wrong things, or in the wrong fashion.
I'm just an analog man in a digital world.

Thank you for your time,
~ Kirk

We have to compare apples to apples, and I suspect we might be going off on a tangerine here...

To my eyes the DC being "equal to the distance to be crossed" is clear as can be.

I could start bringing up things like what it really means to cross a street (step onto the curb), or a river (not be in water), or the finishing line (to go from one side to the other). But that is imprecise language and there will be people out there who can/will find ways to pretzel the clear meanings and muddy the waters. So instead I'll go with this:

Matthew Downie beat me to the punch by bringing up diagonal movement. I cannot fathom an assertion that 'when jumping over a circular 5 foot pit, if you're going diagonally the DC goes up by 50%.'

A B C D
E F G H
I J K L
M N O P

Let's assume that we get a running start and that F is a circular five foot wide pit. Therefore
if Joe jumped from E to G the DC would be 10, but
if Joe jumped from A to K the DC would be 15?!

It's the same circular 5' pit, right? Why is it so much harder to leap over the sucker if Joe approaches from the northwest instead of the north or the west?
___________________________________

Now lets talk about reverse compatibility. Obviously the Jump skill from 3.5 has been rolled into Acrobatics, but it is still where most of the jumping information comes from. There it reads,

"Long Jump: A long jump is a horizontal jump, made across a gap like a chasm or stream. At the midpoint of the jump, you attain a vertical height equal to one-quarter of the horizontal distance. The DC for the jump is equal to the distance jumped (in feet). For example, a 10-food-wide pit requires a DC 10 Jump check to cross."

Obviously some things changed, but I think that the gist of this particular point is valid.

given the following example ...

GGGG---GG where G is the ground and - is empty
123456789

assuming a running start

1) is the DC based on the gap jumped over [5,6,7] (DC15) or the distance to the next Box of ground [5,6,7,8] (DC20)?

2) when determining movement, does the jumped distance count against a characters total movement? moving from 1to9 equal 40' movement?

3) does landing at the end of a long jump end your move action or can you continue provided you have movement available?

4) using acrobatics happens during a move action so if a double move is required to jump a distance, does it need 2 checks?

The following is obviously just my opinion =)

2) Yes.

3) Continue moving. I've never seen anything like 'finishing a jump ends your move' or such.

4) No.
____________________

Now on to the realm of whimsy...
I feel that the DC calculation method is clearly set out and straight forward. Moreover, it's plenty harsh enough for the regular Joe's who couldn't devote a lot towards Acrobatics.

Take for example average Joe in full plate. Dex 11, no skill ranks or gear towards Acrobatics. He gets the double whammy of -6 ACP and -4 for speed 20, giving him a -10 net on those jump checks.
Now imagine him, from a sanding start and in a calm (ie non-combat) setting, attempting the death defying feat of leaping six inches!!
DC= 0.5 (*2 for the standing start) = DC 1!
He takes 10 (-10 for the armor and speed) and... Fails.
Finding he can never calmly jump six inches, he rolls the dice instead.
Half the time he makes it!
A quarter of the time he can attempt the DC 20 reflex save to struggle on.
And a whopping quarter of the time he falls flat on his face.

Now are you the kind of guy that looks at this and says; "Hmmmm, too easy. Make it a DC 11 (for that square he has to enter), so that way he fails each and every time, even on a natural 20!" ???

Do you know what else leaping over a six inch gap is known as?
Walking.

Howdy,
A group has been running at The Sentry Box for a couple of months now.
It's an open session PFS of a couple/few tables on the first and third Saturdays of every month at 11:00 a.m. (DM's show up earlier).
With two or three different modules being run, you should be able to find one to suit you.

PFS Calgary on Facebook

Sorry for not finding this thread sooner. I'm kind of an... analog man in a digital world.

Anyway, to my sure and certain knowledge (for the last several months anyway), there has been a monthly PFS event at Myth Games on the second Saturday of the month. There is a session starting at lunchtime with a second when time permits afterwards.

I had heard that this information was posted on-line, but haven't stumbled across it yet. This interweb thingy sure is big.

I've run into a different interpretation of this rule with my party. Some feel that we should be measuring from the edge of one square to the far side of the other.
They say that two adjacent characters are 5 ft. apart (so that one can reach the far end of the other one's square for game effects).

And therefore "30 ft. apart" is twenty to twenty-five ft. of distance between them, depending on if you have to pay the extra diagonal to reach the back of one of the squares.

My explanation is lacking, so perhaps just plot it out on a piece of graph paper or bit of map to see what they're getting at.

Some are also looking to apply the same logic in other areas, such as jumping... so jumping from your current square past a 5' pit to the square beyond is a 10' leap... 15' if you have to go diagonally.

This isn't a slam, just me not being fully in agreement. Thoughts?

So many facets and nuances of the language are lost through such a crude implement. You could at least have thrown in a few key phrases such as;
"Double double", "Back bacon", "King Ralph", "Poutine", "Chinook", or "Hoser".

Distilling all the rich and varied cultures of a land larger than the entire US, down to two letters?
**sigh** indeed.

Rather irksome actually. In fact almost infuriating. This sort of thing makes us want to march down there and burn the white house... again.

If only we weren't so gosh darn polite and apathetic.

=)

That seems a touch overly literal in interpretation. Perhaps thinking of it as being created in front of you, and then going wherever needed would help. If the Shield only applied to attacks from a single direction, we would have facing rules so you would know where a characters "front" was at all times (as in Battletech etc). And frankly the spell would be a whole lot more specific about what attacks it did and did not help with.

I also don't recall reading anything in recent editions about flankers getting their +2 as well as nullifying your shield. (Was it first or second ed that had a limit about how many foes you could apply your shield bonus to?)

An unconditional bonus is an unconditional bonus, imho.

There is an issue that I feel obligated to bring up. Some campaigns have limited access to magic items. There just isn't a reliable magic item shop in every town. While in theory every class is equally hampered by limited item access, the fighter can be almost crippled by it. Sure you're OK in a 10' wide corridor and a 5' wide tunnel presents few problems, something as "devastatingly" difficult as a 20' pit you can't jump over or a wall you can't climb can stymie you. If your foes can fly, swim, ride or go invisible (truly earth shatteringly difficult accomplishments as 11th level) and things get much worse.

Heck, just being up against monsters that use their noggins can generate the same effect. Antimagic or dispels = fighter dusting off that sling he got at 2nd level and trying to quickly figure out what his to hit with it is.

You may be one fine armored combatant, but a single large fire elemental with reach and spring attack will toast you.

Being an archer is only a limited answer unless you don't mind granting AoO's every shot. I miss the days of Sword & Fist (never thought I'd say that) when you could at least take a prestige class to duck the issue.
Here's another problem; ammo. If you actually keep track you are going to run dry well before the dungeon is cleared. An 11th level fighter can easily pump out 4 or 5 arrows a round. You empty two or three quivers a fight and only recover half.

Secondly, someone has to stand in the front line to at least try and keep the nasties off of the squishy guys. A fighter that constantly 5' steps away from the foe doesn't help all that much.