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I've got a group that has played together for about 10 years. There are 4 of us that have been around since that first year and we have always had 2 or 3 other players to fill out the table. It seams like we lose about 1 player every year or so, but we have always been able to recruit someone to keep a full table.

One of our original players has always been a bit off putting. Let's just say he likes stirring the pot and this tendency has grown over the years. Let's call him Bob.

A couple months back one of our players that has been with us a few years dropped out. He didn't say it directly, but indicated that he just isn't having fun anymore because of Bob always stirring the pot.

We got a replacement player, but the new guy has very directly indicated that he is not sure he can deal with Bob and may have to quit.

Recently another player that has been with us for a couple years has informed me that he doesn't enjoy playing with Bob. He hasn't officially quit but has started finding other things to do on game nights and is missing sessions regularly.

I'm worried that this group is falling apart. I don't think it's feasible to kick Bob out but I'm worried about being able to recruit more players with Bob around. Not sure what to do.

Has anyone had a similar experience? What did you do? Any advice?

I have a medium sized dex based character. I'm planning on using reduce person for the various benefits.

Can I also use the long arm spell to get 10 foot reach?

Is there some rule about stacking transformative spells?

I know that for spells that require a caster level check you can pay to get spellcasting services at a higher than minimal level, such as with the remove curse spell.

I have always assumed that all other spell casting services were done at the minimum caster level, but after hours of searching I can't find anything definitive either way.

Is there an officially ruling? Can I pay a 12th level wizard 360 gold to get Greater Magic Weapon cast on my sword and get a +3 sword for the next 12 hours?

I'm doing an all day marathon speed run. We have lined up a set of modules and are seeing how much we can get through as fast as we can.

I'm not looking for build advice. What I want is tactics and strategies to increase the real time speed in which we can clear rooms and floors of a dungeon. I want tips to increase my personal play speed, and strategies for making the team as a whole act as quickly as possible.

We are sticking strictly to PFS 1st Edition rules. We will be starting at 1st level. I expect to progress to 10th level or beyond over the course of the day.

Any tips or tricks to increase play speed would be appreciated.

Are characters supposed to make subsistence checks in exploration mode?

Subsist activity says that it can be done after 8 hours of exploration, but you take a -5 penalty on the check.

I was looking at the Godless Healing feat. It requires that you do not have a Patron Diety.

I have a rogue character that worships a god. He doesn't get spells or any other game benefits, but he does definitely worship.

Does that count as a patron Diety?

The Cayden Calian Tankard style lets you take a drink do a dirty trick with your mug hand 2hen TWF. What happens during a Brawlers flurry when you are technically TWF but can take all those attacks with a single hand?

At 10th level, a Brawler gets 4 attacks. Would using the tankard's ability eat up one attack or two?

Is there a way to extend the Fear condition from an Intimidation attempt? I have a fourth level rogue and have just started using intimate in combat. It's pretty powerful, but it would be really nice if I could get it to last more than a round or was able to intimidate someone more than once.

I'm probably going to be running a few scenarios for PFS in the near future. This particular group tends to like a good story with heavy doses of hack and slash.

Could anybody recomend a few scenarios that had lots of combat, but wasn't just a slog? Something with multiple intense combats, but enough of a plot that the players feel motivated and that they are distributing mayhem with a purpose.

In a campaign I am running, there is an NPC that has become a fallen paladin.

I mean, he didn't fall a little. He fell hard.

He has had a complete crisis of faith, but wants to still do good in the world.

He has become a bit of a favorite character for the party, so I am trying to think of a way he can continue in the world in a meaningful way. Any advice for a direction to go with a character like that? Any gods that make a habit of rehabilitating broken people? Any good classes I should transition him to, or should he stay as a fallen paladin, keeping only his BAB, feats, and armor/weapon proficiencies?

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Everything after this is just background info. Feel free to ignore.
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I was running a home brew version of a high level pathfinder scenario. The scenario gave the option of drinking a demon lord's blood to gain power, or even eating the demon lord's heart and gaining a small level of divinity, including granting spells and powers to followers.

Long story short. Desperate paladin sacrifices his soul to gain enough power to help the party defeat a great evil. He drinks the demon blood to gain power which is an evil act that causes him to become fallen. He then offers himself to worship and serve the party member that ate the demon's heart and becomes restored as a (semi-)dark paladin.

He is just an NPC that was supposed to die heroically. I ran him most of the time, but several players in the group have taken turns running him and making decisions for him. He has now become a party favorite. They went to significant lengths to save him, support him, and get him through the adventure alive.

In the end, the fallen paladin helped the party defeat a great evil, but in doing so he committed many acts that would be considered evil. The paladin won't do an atonement, partly because of a backstory self loathing thing, but also because he doesn't regret doing it. Atonement requires remorse and regret for the the deeds done. He doesn't regret it because it allowed him to defeat a great evil. He believes damning his soul was a worth while trade off for the good accomplished.

I'm looking for some good character pictures that show a hero that barely survived a battle. Most pictures show characters in their shining glory or like some sort of bad @$$.

I want pictures of a hero that just barely made it out alive. I want the fantasy equivalent of John McClane at the end of every Die Hard movie.

Anybody have any good idea where to find something like that?

Grapple someone and they become flatfooted.
Knock someone down and they are flatfooted.
Flank someone and they are flatfooted.

Flank someone, knock them down, and then grapple them, still just flatfooted.

And flatfooted really isn't all that bad. Sure, a rogue can now sneak attack you and you take a hit to AC, but it doesn't make you any easier to trip or grapple.

I'm having trouble coming to grips with the fact that a downed foe that is grappled and surrounded by enemies is only mildly inconvenienced.

Why do none of these things stack?
Are there any conditions that make maneuvers easier to pull off?

A flanked target has a flat footed -2 penalty to melee attacks. Does a flat footed target take a penalty vs maneuvers?

A rogue thief gets Dex to attack and damage for melee attacks. What about things like grapple that use an athletics check instead of a melee attack?

A number of years ago I played in a scenario that had what was essentially a nuclear reactor that melted down and just about killed everyone.

For the life of me, I can't remember which scenario it was. Anybody know what I'm talking about?

That's it. Can the exemplar use this magic item.

The Exemplar gets an ability like bardic performance, but it does not use music. It does say that feats and effects that effect bardic performance effect the exemplar's ability.

Three Reasons to Live is a musical instrument that gives a significant bonus to bardic performance.

My gaming group ran the first few sections of Plunder and Peril in Campaign Mode. It was fun for a while, but we stopped part way through to start a different adventure path with different characters.

We have decided that we will not be going back to finish Plunder and Peril. The rules for campaign mode say that you hand out all the chronicles after you have completed the adventure path. Do you really need to finish the entire thing first? Can we just get the chronicles for the sections we completed?

My gaming group ran the first few sections of Plunder and Peril in Campaign Mode. It was fun for a while, but we stopped part way through to start a different adventure path with different characters.

We have decided that we will not be going back to finish Plunder and Peril. The rules for campaign mode say that you hand out all the chronicles after you have completed the adventure path. Do you really need to finish the entire thing first? Can we just get the chronicles for the sections we completed?

Sorry for the wall of text. I just wanted to give context.

I am GMing a group of pretty competent players. The characters are all well built, and the players are very good at running them. Each knows their roll and their strengths and weaknesses. In combat they are like a well oiled machine and can destroy threats waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay above their pay grade. But that is only when they are together. Individually each character is deeply flawed. When one or two characters are missing from the group, they become much, much weaker.

This is all fine. Everyone knows this dynamic and it is part of the fun.

Now here is the problem. Several times now, they have mowed through an adventure as a group, but right before running into a BIG EPIC ENCOUNTER that I have designed to truly test the group, THEY SPLIT THE PARTY!!!

One or two party members go off to do something else, and suddenly the encounter that would truly challenge the entire group becomes an encounter that will kill every character present. Instead of slaughtering over half the party I end up dumbing down the bad guys and making an "eh" encounter.

Well, it happened again last session. The party has a flying ship that is very conspicuous and well known. The party is aware of the fact that a political faction has hired assassins to kill them. What they don't know is that the assassins have staked out the ship and plan to strike the next time the ship leaves port.

This will be a difficult encounter. In fact, I decided that it was so deadly, I should help them out. I set things up so that an former enemy, I'll call him Bill, would borrow the party's ship and the party would have the opportunity to go with him.

This way, if the party went with, I would have the assassins attack Bill first, giving the party a round to ready themselves. Or, if the party did not go with on the trip, the assassins would kill Bill and a couple NPC crew members. The party would find the ship a few days later with dead bodies strewn everywhere and this would raise the tension and excitement.

Instead, ONE AND ONLY ONE party member goes with Bill on the trip. They know highly paid assassins are looking for them. They also don't really trust Bill and expect him to turn on them at any moment. And they still only had one party member go with.

FACEPALM

So, do I gimp the encounter again, or do I run the encounter and probably slaughter the PC.

I am running a home game that is mostly comprised of a mishmash of scenarios and modules slightly altered to fit the story. When the players/characters take the game in a direction, I do a quick search of modules and scenarios I know and use that as the base for that arc if the story.

Currently the party is planning on starting a duel at a wedding party. Does anyone know any good scenarios that involve duels? Does anyone know any good scenario with a wedding or other large party? I've already done Blakros Wedding, so that is out. Any suggestions?

Here is the situation:

A character is blind and adjacent to an attacker.

The attacker does a full attack and takes a 5 foot step into another square.

What does the character need to do to determine what square the attacker moved to?

This is a long post, and I apologize for that. I just wanted to fill in some background to give a better idea what I am looking for.

I have a party of high powered butt kickers. They are all about to hit 14th or 15th level and each have nearly a quarter million gold worth of gear. In combat they work together like a well oiled machine of destruction. While mostly combat focused, they are a pretty well balanced group. One covers magical support. The gunslinger is a ranged murder machine. They have a fighter with a maxed out CMB and defensive skills that keeps anyone from approaching within 20 feet. And they have a heavy hitter with great mobility that throws out damage with the best of them.

The party really only has one major weakness. They appear to be entirely unable to turn down the offer of a duel. In a one-on-one fight, the individual parts of that well oiled machine turn info flawed characters that, more often than not, end up taking a beat down.

That said, the campaign has a high profile duelist operating in the background. The party has heard about him and briefly met him, but he is about to be thrown directly in their path.

I built the duelist at 15th level with a slurry of classes and the Duelist prestige class. The concept is a crazy high touch AC and annoying attacks that don't do much damage but are demoralizing.

With a monk dip and Duelist he gets both INT and WIS to AC and gets a +8 to AC from Full Defense. When not engaging and going full defense his Touch AC is about 37 and Basic AC is about 45. When attacking he will both Fight Defensively and use Combat Expertise which will put his touch AC around 39. When moving he gets another +8 vs attacks of opportunity. Defensively he should be very hard to hit. Not impossible, but will require a good roll.

Offensively he will rely on feinting to get people flat footed and dirty tricks to de-buff. He is able to use two style feats at the same time. I'm using the Cloak and Dagger chain of feats to get free Dirty Tricks and Steal maneuvers. I'm also using Diabolic Style to periodically lay out a demoralizing slap to the face.

My hope for the NPC is that he will survive one or two or maybe even three encounters with the party and that when they finally put him down, it will be with a great sense of satisfaction. Even if he gets put down in the first combat encounter, I want him to make a good showing of himself so the party feels like they took out a real and unique threat and not just a monster with a big bag of hit points.

Now to what I am looking for:(Once again, I am sorry it is taking so long to get to my point)

1. I want to keep the NPC's gear under 50,000 gold. I'm looking for gear that works with the build and possibly offers a unique challenge for the players.

2. I could possibly shoehorn in one or two more feats. Any good ideas for feats that work with the theme.

3. Ideas for ways to play the character. He is supposed to be a charming sociopath. A Patrick Bateman or Alex Delarge kind of guy. Any good phrases or one liners you could give me to use in the game to help convey the character to the players. I recently re-watched, Spiderman: Homecoming. The scene where Micheal Keaton's character has a polite but deadly conversation with Peter Parker keeps coming to mind.

4. Any other advice or ideas to help make this a memorable and enjoyable story point for my players.

Thank you for you time and patience with my rambling post. I would appreciate any ideas you could give.

Thought I would throw this question to the the masses.

Is the First Mother's Fang cavalier archetype restricted to Nagaji characters?

If a character is dominated by an intelligent item, is there any way to break the domination?

Per the rules, if an intelligent item wins the battle of wills, it becomes dominant and can command it's wielder to perform various actions. This is supposed to last for 1 day.

Is there any way to end the domination, or do you just need to wait a day and try to win the battle of wills on your next try?

This is just me grumbling about a session from a while back.

I'm playing in a long running game. We are all friends. The players are all fun and the GM is usually pretty good, but he can get a bit heavy handed when something happens he is not prepared for.

We were in an encounter against a group of soldiers. They were pretty much an overwhelming force and our party had been instructed not to engage in open combat with them anyway. Basically they were blocking the road and we were going to have to find another way around.

The GM was playing the leader of the guards as especially antagonistic. He is hurling insults, accusations and generally derisive comments at us. I'm playing a knight like character that is obsessed with honor and image. On top of that, in the previous session we all had to deal with some negative consequences after someone impugned the honor of our party. I figure there is no way my character would just let it go, so he challenges the leader of the guards to an honor duel. I figure this could go bad, but didn't see another way I could play it.

The GM has the guard instantly attack. The GM tells me how the Guard Captain launches his attack and I tell the GM how I plan to counter. It was a pretty good counter.

The GM stops and says that the guard didn't really attack me that way.

After a few moments the GM says the Guard Captain attacks my character with a different tactic. I say OK, and tell him my response to that attack. Once again, it was a decent counter.

The GM stops again and says that the Guard captain didn't really attack that way either.

He calls a five minute halt to the game and pages through a couple books and picks out the most powerful magic item he can find. When we start the game back up, the Guard Captain is now armed with a weapon capable of incapacitating a character with nonlethal damage in a single blow.

Coincidentally, my character is immune to that particular magic item. When I inform the GM of this, the GM declares that this is a different version of the item that will bypass my character's immunity. In addition, he has the item do lethal damage instead and kills my character.

Now, we were able to raise the character from the dead, but there are repercussions. There is a permanent loss of stats and some system specific penalties that will put my character behind the curve for probably a few months of gaming.

Am I wrong to consider this a rather egregious abuse of GM power?

I didn't want to make a big deal about it during the game, but I talked to him about it outside of the game. He didn't think it was a big deal. He said he just didn't have anything planned so it was a "spur of the moment decision".

Now, during games, he regularly says he has to make encounters easy because "Some people get upset when characters get killed."

I finally called him out last session and informed him that there is a big difference between having a difficult scenario where a character might die, and intentionally killing a character.

Am I wrong to be annoyed by this? I know it's not a bid deal, but it irritates the heck out of me.

I've wondered about this with a bard character of mine and now I have a guiding blade swashbuckler that is making me wonder again.

The guiding blade can hand out teamwork feats like candy on Halloween. He can do it as a standard action for the first six levels, and at seventh level it becomes a swift action.

The ability says you now "can" do it as a swift action. My question is: "Must" you do it as a swift action? Could you instead choose to use the ability the old fashioned slow standard action way? There are a lot of things that use swift actions and the action economy of the swift action can get pretty precious. I know that in general you can't swap out a move or standard action for a swift action, but this seems like a possible exception.

The next question I have: If you can use either a swift or standard action to activate the ability, can you activate it more than once in a round. The guiding blade ability states that it can be activated multiple times to hand out multiple feats. So, could a 7th level guiding blade start by handing out a teamwork feat with a standard action, and then hand out another as a swift action?

Invigorating poison looks cool and is apparently pathfinder society legal.

The gist is, while under the effects of the spell, if you take a poison that would do ability damage, you instead get a +4 alchemist bonus to that ability. Cool, right? The next part is what I am unsure of. "The bonus lasts for a number of minutes equal to the amount of ability damage the poison would have caused."

What about a poison that causes damage over the course of several rounds? If a poison could do 1d2 STR damage a round for 6 rounds, do you take into account the damage it would have done on rounds 2-6 or just the 1d2 of the initial contact with the poison? I would assume you would just consider the first round. Am I right?

What kind of action is the Shadow Door ability? It appears to imply that it is part of your move action, but it also says it functions like dimension door, which is a standard action.

What would happen if a medium sized person used beastshape 3 to turn into a huge creature and then tried to reach into and antimagic field?

I've had something come up in a game I am running that I could use some help with.

The party is in a conflict with a strong barbarian tribe. The barbarian chief has been corrupted and is now evil. He has had the tribe's warriors raiding every village and small town within 30 miles. If any of the warriors are reluctant to follow orders the chief gives them an attitude adjustment via blunt force trauma.

The chief's mother is the wise old woman of the tribe and a neutral good high level priestess of Eristil. She doesn't openly defy her son, but she refuses to do his dirty work. Her age, power and standing in the tribe keeps her safe. She can't stop her son, but sticks around to try to keep the other members of the tribe safe. She regularly attends her son, but generally just follows him around and stands quietly in the background.

The party doesn't know who she is. They have just seen an old woman that follows the chief around. They have decided she is the Real Big Bad Evil Guy. They made no effort to figure out who she really was. They ambushed the chief while he was alone with his mother and two bodyguards. They focused fire on the old woman and killed her before anyone else had a chance to act.

That is when we ran out of time and ended it for the session.

Should there be repercussions for this act?

Was the old woman guilty by association with her evil son?

Did she have this coming?

A number of characters are supposedly good and at least one gets divine spells from a lawful good God. The character that actually killed the woman aspires to be a paladin and the player was hoping to start taking Paladin levels.

Would this cause an alignment shift?

If the divine casters take a hit, do they lose their powers immediately?

Thanks for any feedback you can give.

I don't understand steath and sneaking up on people very well.

Could a big cat animal companion sneak up on someone and get an attack against a flatfooted enemy? Do you need you sneak right up to them?

Could you sneak up to 30 feat away and then charge? Is the foe flat footed then?

If the foe had a reach weapon and combat reflexes, would it get an AoO?

Any info on this would help. Thanks

I know there are rules regarding "appropriate" weapons for damaging objects. I'm wondering if a gun would be considered appropriate for breaking down a heavy wooden door with iron bands for reinforcement. It's a barred door, so you can't just shoot out the lock.

Any ideas what is allowed in such a situation?

I bought an adventure a few months back that looked promising, but then managed to misplace it after just giving it a cursory read through. It looked interesting enough that I would like to buy it again (and hopefully keep track of it this time), but I don't remember the name.

The key part of it that I remember is a castle siege, where the PC's had a choice about which side they fought on.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? If someone could help me out, I would greatly appreciate it.

Just for fun and for flavor, I want to dish out a little charisma damage to players that take a particularly bad beating. I seem to recall that there were some feats that allowed you to deal charisma damage, but now that I'm looking, all I can find is the Wolf style feat chain.

Anybody know about any others?

I am running a game and the party is pretty murder-hobo. While none of them are fully evil, I've informed them recently that an attempt at Smite Evil has a 50% chance of working.

In the party there is an Inquisitor of Torag. Torag is a lawful good diety.

I know Inquisitors have a bit more leeway in follow the edicts of their church, but I think there must be limits.

Last session the character assisted in killing about a half dozen lawful good pilgrimages in an unprovoked attack. They stole the body of the groups leader to prevent a raise dead attempt.

The following session the character promised to take items from a dungeon and return the items to a local Baron. He had made a vow to the baron. When time came to give the items to the baron, he hid the items and lied to the baron about what they had found.

The party accepted accepted food, lodging, and hospitality from the Baron. During their stay they discovered he may be a BBEG. They decided not to confront him, but instead ambushed him in his library and tried to kill him.

For most of the party this just the way they are, but for the follower of Torag I'm beginning to think there may be consequences. Possibly a loss of spellcasting ability and or some other class features.

Is this too heavy handed? Should I just let it go?

In the spell Order's Wrath, what is meant by Chaotic Outsider?
Is this any outsider that happens to have a chaotic alignment, or is it some particular type of outsider?

I've found ways for a medium creature to use large two handed weapons. Is there a way for a medium creature to use a large one-handed weapon?

I'm looking for stuff for PFS.

Ok, I have put on my face mask and protective padding in preparation for all the rotten fruit that will be thrown at me. It's inevitable, considering the topic, but here I go.

What about allowing replays after a certain number of years?

Let's start with 3 years. Maybe it should be 4. Originally I was thinking 5, but that felt a bit much. Anyway, I was pondering recently the concerns about replay. Most had to do with people "farming" scenarios over and over, or ruining the experience for others by knowing what was going to happen. It was really that second part that got me thinking along these lines. After 2 or 3 years the scenarios start to run together for me and after five years I'd be surprised if I could reliably recall more than a few details.

So that thought led to my next thought. It would be pretty hard to farm a scenario if you could only do it once every 5 years. But it sure would throw a bone to those hard core dedicated players that have been at it since the first few seasons.

I'm sure there are those who would always balk at any replay for any reason. Some have been seriously burned by replay in other game systems. It's a touchy subject. But this idea seemed simple and to have limited downside. I've only been playing for 3 or so years, so this wouldn't impact me yet. Maybe there are repercussions I haven't thought of.

Just a thought. Figured I'd kick it out there. Might give some people some more opportunities to have fun with the hobby.

Sorry for the noob question, but I guess I've never seen in come up in play.

If you sunder an item, particularly a magic item, is it permanently and irrevocably destroyed?

Does the silence spell need line of effect?

In my last game my players took out a group of spell casters by one of the characters casting silence on himself and then positioning himself against the ceiling of the room below the casters. Seemed ingenious, but now I'm not sure if it should have worked.

Does anybody know any good scenarios, modules or adventure paths that take place in hell? Something for higher level characters, preferably level 10 or higher?

This would be a big help for a game I am running.

I have a player with Furious Finish and the Oracle Lame Curse.

Furious Finish allows you to maximize vital strike, but then your rage ends and you are fatigued, even if you wouldn't normally be.

The Oracle Lame Curse makes a character immune to fatigue.

I'm not sure how to rule on this. Should he become fatigued or not?

On one hand Furious Finish says he should be fatigued even if he wouldn't normally be. But with the Lame Curse he is immune. It's not just that he normally isn't fatigued, he is immune to the condition.

Is there a standard ruling on this?

My players have gotten themselves in a situation where they are probably going to get a bunch of stuff stolen. I've tried to subtly warn them and last session had a few items get stolen, but let the party catch the thieves.

This session I'm letting the LBEGs (Little Bitty Evil Guys) have at the party. They probably are going to lose a bunch of stuff. I don't want to screw the party too hard, but I also want to let the bad guys do their thing.

The books say the DC to steal something with slight of hand is 20. But that's a pretty easy to hit DC. It doesn't look like there are any official modifiers out there, so I'm looking for ideas. What can be stolen and what should the DCs be?

I have a group I am running a bit of a sandbox campaign for. When the group decides on a direction, I just grab some module or scenario that approximates what they are doing and adjust it as needed. This has worked well so far. Now the group is starting a long overland journey. At that point I realized that I don't know any good modules or scenarios built around a long overland trip.

Does anyone know a good adventure I can use? The characters are 10th level and super highly optimized. Any ideas?

I just stumbled across the Leveraging weapon quality. It doubles a weapon's enhancement bonus when performing a few combat maneuvers.

I have a high level magus character that has been using and abusing the Dueling weapon property from the Pathfinder Field Guide. The Dueling property gives a weapon a luck bonus equal to double the enhancement bonus when performing most combat maneuvers.

So what I have been doing is using my magus's arcane pool power to boost his weapon's enhancement bonus up to +4. Combined with the Dueling enhancement, I get a +8 Luck bonus on combat maneuvers.

If I give my weapon the Leveraging quality, it looks like my +4 enhancement would turn into a +8 enhancement bonus with a +16 luck bonus when performing maneuvers. (Well, not all maneuvers. Only a few are on the list for both qualities.)

That is a combined +24 bonus on maneuver attempts. Is that right? I keep thinking this can't work, but it looks like it does.

A slate spider is a a figurine of wondrous power. When it is active it counts as an attended object with one hit point.

What happens if it gets caught in a fire ball?

Nothing?
Destroyed?
Something else?

The Goblin Fire Drum has an ever increasing ability to make explody things go BOOM.

Would this work on a gunslinger's alchemical cartridges? And, if so, what would happen?