Koujow's page

An Adventure Path actually set in Tian Xia. A bit of spoilers for Jade Regent (An 8 year old story at this point), but you spend the first few books just traveling to Tian Xia, then you kind of bounce around a few places like a tourist on holiday, then arrive at Not Japan in the last book just in time for the grand finale.

Honestly, while I loved Jade Regent, it would be like if the Mummy's Mask spent 5 books trying to get to Not Egypt and you arrived just in time to see some big scary mummy dude doing... mummy things...? (I haven't actually played Mummy's Mask. :O )

Alkenstar is a cool city, so long as you don't mind a steampunk-y Western theme town with guns and mutants.

While I did notice that there are references to Goblin's love of fire, tendency to sing and the use of the Dogslicer, with the change to Goblins becoming more civilized, have Goblins given up on some of their old beliefs? Namely, that writing steals words from your head or that a horse's hooves will steal your soul? One of my favorite details from the We Be Goblins series is that the Goblin Alchemist's formula book uses pictographs rather than words.

I have been working on a campaign set in Alkenstar and this has given me a lot of ideas on how to implement guns into my new campaign. Because one of the issues I have seen while preparing this campaign is that the art depicting characters in Alkenstar, especially the Shield Marshals, often shows them using revolvers rather than flintlock pistols. There are some exceptions.

Maybe because the campaign will have a more 'wild west' theme to it, the idea of giving the players weapons that can fire multiple times per round isn't as sacrilegious as some people. I will have to mess with the numbers, but the idea of 1 action = 1 bullet, 2 actions = 3 bullets seems like it could work.

Just to toss an idea out there:
What about making guns have smaller but more numerous dice? 2d4 for a pistol or 3d4 for a rifle? I have neither flavor or mechanical reason to suggest this. Simply an idea to make the weapons more unique compared to other weapons.

Because I cannot wait until August to find out the answers, I wanted to speculate and question the details of the Gap. An undisclosed period of time where the entire universe has amnesia and something went down. While I won't debate what happened (yet), I wonder what the initial events following the Gap were.

For instance, was the Gap a total and complete amnesiac event? Did people forget their spouses, their jobs, even their names? Did entire political landscape have to be rewritten right then and there because no one could remember what it was like before? Is it possible that some person awoke to find themselves Kings because their clothes were the best in the group? Did wizards (technomagi) have to learn spells from scratch, scientist rediscover the laws of the universe and more? Were languages suddenly forgotten?

Or did people still have a vague idea? Maybe they knew how to fly a ship but no knowledge of when they learned. A dozen alien languages rattling in their heads. A connection to the person in the room with them.

Or is it just a loss of history. Full knowledge of their skills, capabilities and relations but a total lack of knowledge how they arrived in their current situation?

Charismatic Envoy? Is there a diplomat class?! I find that crazy exciting!

I know a lot of people dislike prestige classes for different reasons. Either they weren't worth it mechanically or their bonuses didn't compare with going 20 levels in a single class or that archetypes for the most part get rid of needing to wait 7+ levels for the benefits a prestige class might offer. But I still think they are really cool and I'm sad that they haven't had any support in what seems like forever.

Especially if it had some really great flavor behind it, like the Hellknights, Riftwardens or any of the Pathfinder prestige classes, or if they had a really awesome theme, like Dragon Disciple (I do still see a Dragon Disciple on occassion in PFS, although they have mostly been replaced with Bloodragers). It was just kind of fun to me to work towards some kind of goal or to see a player get really invested in an organization and get access to special training. I understand why they are no longer popular (Archetypes are much better in nearly every way) but still.

There is nothing stopping a player from taking a prestige class, but very, very rarely do you see it happen.

Tomorrow, my core group of players and I are gathering to discuss a new campaign and I was going to propose a setting that I have been working on for a while that I can only describe as Victorian Fantasy. Not to be confused with Steampunk, which gets a lot of its themes and motifs from the Victorian era, but a setting that I imagine as 'if Lord of the Rings continued for a few hundred more years'. I have been working on it for a bit and several of the players I have mentioned it to seem to like the idea.

This would almost certainly be a 'Firearms Everywhere' setting and while Paizo did an awesome job, I just generally dislike the rules for Firearms. I even posted a few weeks back asking for alternative rules and while I got a few suggestions, I wasn't that pleased and decided to go about making something else. I wanted to post them here and get some opinions on them and tweak them, should this campaign come to pass.

Penetration
While it would change the dynamic of the game, Firearms completely negating an entire aspect of your AC in combat (armor) seems kind of silly. It also annoys me that a derringer could blow through the armor of a dragon just as well as an elephant gun. So I thought of a simple mechanic called Penetration. It is an additional stat on all guns that reduces a targets Armor (either natural or crafted) by its Penetration. Certain high power guns and/or bullets have higher penetration, making them useful for hunting down heavily armored monsters and the like.

I could have sworn there was an armor enchantment that protected against bullets, but I can not locate it. If there really isn't, then I would add an armor enchantment that either either gives the armor a minimum armor bonus (As in, even if a character is using an elephant gun with armor piercing rounds, this armor can not be reduced below X) and/or an armor that can not be reduced at all.

(Note: I am still researching generally era appropriate firearms, so the examples used are just generic 'Old west' weapons. Also, the numbers are going to change as I do more research and find out how powerful these weapons were. For instance, the Penetration of the Colt .45 is based entirely on that one scene in a Fistful of Dollars where the badguy can't shoot through Clint Eastwood's breastplate. Although, in retrospect, I can't remember what gun the badguy used.)
Examples:
Derringer - Penetration (1)
Winchester Rifle - Penetration (6)
Colt .45 - Penetration (4)
Elephant Gun - Penetration (9)

If Character 1 is wearing a Breastplate and Character 2 shoots him with a Colt .45, Character 1 only gets a +2 to his AC rather than the normal +6. If a moment later, Character 3 shows up wearing only studded leather (a duster, of course), he loses the +3 bonus to his AC, but no more since the Penetration can not reduce armor below 0.

Reload
I dislike the base reload rules because it assumes that in a period of six seconds (1 round), you can reach into your pocket, pull out six bullets and slide them into the chamber of a revolver with ease while bullets, magic and other threats happen around you. If you have rapid reload, you can even do this and then fire back. This one might be a bit nickpicky, but I wanted to spice it up and make it different. So it now takes a Full Round Action that provokes to reload a firearm (of any type). You can load a number of bullets equal to your Wisdom mod (minimum 1) (keeping your cool), up to a weapons max capacity. Rapid Reload lets you use Dex. mod instead. It just shakes things up and I think it can help create those classic scenes from movies where a character has to take cover so that they can reload in the middle of a gun fight or a scene where a character who is an excellent shot must face a melee combatant because he can't just reload nonstop. (Pathfinder has a lot of power fantasy, but this isn't a John Woo movie) Also, as far as I can tell, weapon cartridges hadn't been invented yet, but they could be something invented by an NPC or PC during the campaign. This is something I am still looking at. If they are, then I would allow a PC to reload with a cartridge as a Move action.

Gunslinger
Gunslinger needs only a mild tweak. While anyone can use a firearm in a 'Guns Everywhere' setting (they are simple weapons), Gunslingers would still be the 'best' when it comes to be a badass with a gun. The tweaks are just to reflect the above changes.

Deadeye (Ex): At 1st level, the gunslinger can resolve an attack against touch AC instead of normal AC. Performing this deed costs 1 grit point per range increment beyond the first. The gunslinger still takes the –2 penalty on attack rolls for each range increment beyond the first when she performs this deed. (Because firearms no longer completely negate armor, the Gunslinger can spend a grit to complete ignore an enemies armor for one attack.)

Lightning Reload (Ex): At 11th level, as long as the gunslinger has at least 1 grit point, she can reload a single firearm as a move action once per round. If she is using a cartridge, she can reload a single firearm of the weapon as a swift action each round instead. Furthermore, using this deed does not provoke attacks of opportunity. (Because I wanted to keep reloading as a Full Action, the Gunslinger would be the only class that could reload faster than a full round.)

If that title doesn't grab your attention, I don't know what will. Yeah, but no, this thread will be discussing very sensitive topics such as race and racism in gaming. I hope that we can all be mature adults and have a discussion about this topic without without it devolving into a cesspool.

I am happy to say that in terms of pathfinder, I believe there is little in the ways of racism. Elves and Dwarves share pints at taverns, Tieflings join crusaders alongside Aasimar and no one bats an eye when a Linnorn Kingdom Viking ends up in Tian Xia. This might be my own view, having run a large number of pathfinder society adventures and adventure paths, but the circumstances of your birth are rarely, if ever, a factor. And on the rare occasion when it is, the character being openly racist is always the villain. I haven't read every PFS adventure or adventure path, but this has been my general experience.

But this has not always been the case. In classical fantasy, the races usually dislike each other at best, openly hate each other at worst. The Elves and Dwarves always have an ancient feud, halflings are distrustful of the big folk and humans and orcs both seem to think "they aren't us, so they are bad." In some fantasies, the races might get together for the greater good (Lord of the Rings is a great example, where working together led to the defeat of Sauron and a new golden age) while in others, even in the face of almost assured destruction, they will fight each other (Warhammer seems like this, although, I know they sometimes team up).

So, my question is this: which is better? Of course, a significant part of that relies on your table and their own maturity about such things. But assuming all is equal, which table would you prefer to play at? The table where racial equality is a thing might seem like they obvious choice, but it might seem silly and contrived. After all, people in the real world often find minor reasons to hate others, such as supporting the wrong local team or being born on the wrong side of what is basically an imaginary line that we have invented. If those people are also longer lived, were magically inclined or one of the other many fantastical reasons to be jealous of, then it might seem strange that everyone gets along.

As compared to the alternative, it certainly seems better. But at the same time, it is a conflict that players can not overcome with weapons and spells. Conflict is what can create interesting stories and players and even educate people about prejudice. I have even seen this in one game, where a white player created an African American character during a world war 2 campaign. Both the GM and another player helped emphasize the mistreatment of African Americans during this period and while the player later admitted that he learned a lot, he stopped playing that character because the situation made him uncomfortable and frequently upset.

Another situation, I had three of my regular players (all female) turn down joining a campaign set in the 1920s because they felt bring female characters in this time period would be terrible. A situation that I never thought about while designing a game with zoot suits and magical mobsters. In fact, the entirety of this thread could replace race with gender, but "fun with gender slurs" didn't have the same catchy title.

I find it interesting that in our hobby, we often craft these vast magical worlds full of fantastical locations, brilliant histories and powerful magics, yet these worlds are always populated by humans. Humans with pointy ears, short humans with beards, humans with horns or a halo, human humans. Of course, many settings have unique historical and cultural differences between Dwarves, Orcs, Tieflings or Halflings, etc., but when you boil it all down, the world is run by humanoids and everything else is just a monster.

For a long while now, I have wanted to run a campaign that, while still having humans as one of the selectable races, would replace the other standard fantasy races with totally unique choices. For example, take Middle Earth. It isn't just populated by Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Orcs. In addition to Ents (which still follows the "Humans with Blank" formula, this being Humans with trees for limbs), Middle Earth is also populated by the Eagles and Spiders. Because of the movies, most people either don't know or have forgotten that the Eagles were a sentient race with their own ruler (Gwaihir the Windlord) and lands where they dwell. They weren't just Summoned Monster VII. They didn't just fly the Fellowship into Mordor because they feared the Mordor archers and siege weapons, just like they feared Gondor's. They weren't mindless beasts, but people.

Now imagine the dynamic shift for a game if one of the players was a sentient eagle as tall as a man. Imagine how that world might have evolved differently if Humans, Eagles and Spiders commingled in such a way as standard fantasy settings might have Humans, Elves and Orcs mingle. The change in mechanics and setting seem very exciting to me. There are already creatures in the various bestiaries that are sentient races, capable of taking class levels if a GM customizes them.

What I would like to see is a book, similar to the Advanced Race Guide, that introduces a series of very non-standard and unique races to the game. While it might have common monster types in it (such as a more balanced Centaur PC race), add other races and options. It would need a section dedicated things like magic item slots or how certain race might interact with certain items (To use the Eagles as an example again, they lack hands and can only grasp with their talons. Many items designed for humans might be totally useless to them and even simple things like a quill and paper might be outside their abilities.)

"But Koujow, why not just use the race creator in the Advanced Race Guide or just post something in the Homebrew section to make them?" Well, mostly because not only am I terrible at building balanced homebrew material but I also don't feel myself terrible original. (See how I used only Eagles as an example for proof of that) Paizo has created a lot of interesting and fun stuff that is more balanced than something I might come up with. I am also uncertain how to approach some of the grander mechanics (see magic item slots or interaction between items not designed for your race).

I also hope that others might see an interest in this as well and give their own opinion or views. If enough people think it is interesting, you never know, in a few years, there might be a new book. (I await your call, Paizo. ;D )

TL;DR -Less humanoid races, please

Conversation got a bit off track, it seems, but I will still say that even if there racial abilities don't match, NPCs don't minmax like players do. There are Halfling Fighters and Dwarven Bards and every other combination of every class out there. Even the terrible ones. But there are still plenty of NPCs (and adventurous PCs) who do things that are in character. A halfling society can't exist entirely on rogues and bards, despite that being what they are best at.

Even if the Elves don't get some kind of bonus to doing nature stuff doesn't mean they don't actually like nature.

This thread may contain minor spoilers. I am going to be generally vague about my spoilers and not mention any specific scenarios, but others might.

When I first started playing PFS, the guy who introduced me to the game described the Pathfinders as "A Guild of Indiana Joneses". That sounds pretty cool! I like Indiana Jones! Punching Nazis in the face, finding ancient treasures and rescuing villages from evil cults? Sign me up! But after a year and a half of Pathfinering, I feel like if Indiana Jones was in Golarion, we would be the nameless henchmen that he fights. I think the Pathfinder Society are the bad guys of this story.

This isn't "well, it is a matter of perspective" or "The Pathfinders are morally ambiguous". This isn't even me being/playing a Lawful Stupid person. I have a variety of characters that have seen, partaken in or been told about straight up villainous activities. In my PFS career, I have been an accomplice to or at least been told about:

-Kidnapping nobility (on several occasions)
-Selling children into slavery (The players were pretending to be Aspis Consortium agents for the scenario, but it does not change what they did. I was not a part of this scenario, so who knows, maybe they were 'evil' children...)
-Protecting a necromancer
-Broke the Laws of Man...
-...then killed the guards sent to arrest us.
-Breaking and Entering into a dead man's home...
-...and then stealing the guys stuff
-Desecrated tombs (Not loot on an archeological dig, but desecrated)
-Extortion (on several occasions)
-Assassination
-Cut out a guys freaking tongue

I feel like if I go through my chronicle sheets, I could find a dozen more horrible, terrible things that we have done that I am opposed to.

"But Koujow, you could have chosen to not do those things or stopped the players who did!" You would think, if I wasn't being blocked by the players, if not the GM. Take the 'Protecting the Necromancer' scenario above. According to the GM, this Necromancer bought slaves, murdered them, then reanimates them for the purpose of selling undead slaves. I was playing my Paladin at the time, but I find that horrifying as anyone not a sociopath should. So even though the Necromancer had something the Pathfinder Society wanted, I suggested to the party that we terminate his business. At the very least turn the guy in. The players were generally up for it, until the GM said "Oh, well he has to survive the scenario to fulfill the secondary condition. You need to make sure these other guys don't kill him."

Afterwards, I told the GM that I needed to spend my prestige on an atonement spell because I had obviously done something that opposes both my characters and my beliefs and the GM brushed it off and told me not to worry about it.

I wanted to play PFS because I wanted to be a hero. I don't necessarily mean I wanted to be Superman and the bad guy is a mustache twirling psychopath. But for every village I saved from bandits in Tian Xia, I have committed a dozen other crimes. Funnily enough, when I wrote that last sentence, I had to stop and think for several minutes about good things that I actually have done. And the only reason we helped the peasants in Tian Xia was, surprise! They had a magic artifact that we needed. Not because it was right or because it is something a group of heroic people should do. Because it benefited the Pathfinders. (And one player in the group still suggested we just force the peasants to do it and leave).

I joked with some friends that when I go to Ohayocon and play Shadowrun Missions, a game about being shady criminals who do questionable things for money, I feel like more a hero than I do when I play Pathfinder. In Shadowrun, I have rescued people from murderous gangs, gave children medicine and took a bullet for a man who was legitimately trying to help people. And the worst thing I have done in my (admittedly limited) Shadowrun career? I took down the internet. In an empty waste land. For 10 minutes. But in six Shadowrun scenarios, I have done more good than I have in 50+ Pathfinder scenarios.

First thought, might want to start with levels in fighter first. Gets you more starting HP and your armor/weapon prof. without having to wait 5 levels on your current plan.

Second, you seem to be trying to wear a lot of hats. You cast spells, hammer things, shield bash. Maybe try to trim it down some. You are basically dual wielding with the BAB of almost a Wizard. At lvl 12, your BAB will be +9, 3 lower than a full Fighter (which translates into hitting ~15% less often.) Dual wielding reduces it to +7, which means you hit ~25% less often than a typical Fighter. You can pick up a shield and use it for defense, but I don't recommend using it offensively with this type of character.

I would actually suggest having your Int be you 16 stat. Why TWF? take advantage of reach 2handed weapons.

Build the equivalent of a Reach Cleric, but as an Eldritch Knight? That would be kind of cool. Use your normal actions to cast spells and use the weapons reach and Combat Reflexes to AoO people who get close. It could be interesting.

Do I shut up, let him learn his lesson...

If you are saying this about a player, in a game, then you are doing something wrong. People don't play games to be punished. Maybe you guys need to evaluate how you play more than condemn how he wants to.

There is a lot to that question. One of my players made a monk that used a lot of her early level feats to not only get a griffin companion and was very happy with it. (She said she wanted to be like Aang from Avatar) But we don't play optimized at all, so spending all of her feats to obtain one objective didn't throw off the game nor was she 'holding back' the party.

I'm the only player in our group who reads the forums and looks over a lot of these optimization builds and discussions, but I tailor my game to them because they just want to play. If your group is a bunch of optimization junkies or you have a GM who likes to start throwing out Elder Wyrms at you around level 2, then maybe not.

Personally, I think if a player wants to do that, then let them. Don't punish them for investing into something they want to do, even if other players/forum goers shout yay or nay. Such talk is why I barely ever see a Rogue when I play PFS, yet everyone b@$&!es about not having one when a trap or two shows up in a module.

Interesting. The page says cleric, but the shopping list says fighter. I'm trying to explain that to myself. Any feedback would be great.

You... don't understand the point of the Reach Cleric, do you? Cast spells and use reach weapons for AoO's. It isn't the run of the mill "stand around and channel energy" every turn types of clerics.

My first suggestion to try to get your moneys is to be very picky with what you play and look for unique chronicle sheets. I do not know if it was a boon sheet or something from an adventure, but there was a gentleman at a convention I GM'd at that had a treasure map chronicle sheet. In place of a day job, every couple of sessions, he gets a huge chunk of gold based on his level. It was pretty nifty and I forgot to ask where he got it. Probably a convention boon, but you never know.

Or you could play in a higher tier module with higher level players, then taking the out of tier money. You just have to be much more defensive and careful. Older season adventures are also usually easier, so maybe try to find a game a few seasons old and reduce the danger while generally still receiving decent loot and cash.

Don't forget that you can spend prestige for a limited amount of money too. Assuming you weren't forced to use it all on bringing yourself back to life, you can trade 2 prestige for something up to 750g. You could buy some Master craft weapons and armors for a couple prestige and sure, they aren't big fancy fire spears or anything, they should do for a while.
Edit: Looking back, I noticed that you did indeed know this, but you only thought about using it for the wand. You could also trade in 2 prestige for that Masterwork, Cold Iron spear.

I know my suggestions aren't exactly "OMG, I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT" but honestly, I don't think you have to super worry. After a few more games, you will have a ton of gold and will be better off. A lot of my friends and I have more gold and prestige than we would ever need. But then again, there are also those who despite being seasoned adventurers, can't scrape two copper together, so who knows.

There is a druid archetype called the Tempest Druid that is kind of cool and does things with storms.

Having to focus in two mental stats makes it difficult to fill a wide range of party roles. Starting off character creation, there aren't any core races that would naturally fit as talented psychics.

Maybe Paizo wanted to release a caster class that wasn't "Invest everything in your spell stat and dump everything else." Maybe make the class a little bit harder to twink.

You have, purportedly, 54 spirits in total. Every spirit has 4 abilities.

That's TWO-HUNDRED EIGHT different abilities to read through, to decide what you're going to take and how they'll mix and match. IN THE FIRST BOOK.

This. I feel like this class is going to be a logistical nightmare. I am the type of player who plays with a 12 page character sheet... (I get kind of OCD with my character sheets) What the heck am I going to do with a character with access to a large number of skills and abilities that rotate in and out on a daily basis? I really do like the idea, but I am intimidated... and therefore suffer -2 to most of my rolls.

Any patron still works, really. Either A) because a witch gains her powers from some outside source, whether she knows it or not or B) she gains her power from her mythic origin.

If you go with B problem solved. If you go with A, then you can choose to be ignorant that the Devil/Cthulhu/Bob gives you powers OR you can be aware of this and take advantage of the relationship. Stupid god/elder thing thinks it is in control, when I am secretly plotting against it! Bwahahaha!

While I haven't played one, Magus are very popular in my PFS group. I once sat at a table with 4 Magus at it! From my experience watching (and sometimes, being jealous of) them, they almost exclusively do nothing but Spell Strike with a touch attack (usually Shocking Grasp) over anything else. Doing the Spell Combat thing is cool, but being a 3/4 BAB class, they sometimes have trouble hitting things and prefer to just do the single attack over the dual wielding magic thing.

That being said, yes, the Accuaracy thing comes up pretty regularly. One of the better Magus players used his Arcane Pool pretty much exclusively for the Arcane Accuracy. It helps a ton.

BTW- Love the mental image. +1 for Dwarvenkind!

I feel the Summon Monster spells need updated. Besides a handful of additional options added by some adventure paths, everything summoned via SM I-X is still in the first bestiary. The same for Summon Nature's Ally.

Fascinating. The longer this thread goes, the fewer things the GM actually got wrong; if the posted references the stats/tactics/etc are to be believed, then the players have made far more errors than the GM did, and all because they chose to make their declarations without fact-checking first.

I agree. Despite the fact that people have verified that he used the wrong stats, ignored the rules about criticals and sneak attacks on robots, didn't tell us what the monster was with a successful knowledge check and stun locked pcs for multiple rounds because he didn't know the rules for fascination and gaze attacks... We were at fault.

Hmm.. seems to be a lot of conflicting ideas. Honestly, I really hope that somebody builds a shaman guide soon, because it's so much easier to build a good character from one of the "older" classes, just because they have guides.

Or, OR, maybe you can just dive in and try it out yourself! :D Rather than wait for all the new and exciting to be cut away in favor of boring cookie cutter builds. Because honestly, nothing grinds my gears more than when I sit down to a PFS table and players start telling someone "Oh, you shouldn't use X, you should have taken Y instead. X isn't optimized."

Well, at level 7, you will be able to turn into all kinds of fancy things. Then you could be a bear that rides a mantis. So you could have that going for you...

The true reason armor takes so long to put on in Pathfinder? ALL OF THOSE BELTS! She has like 15 on her arm alone.

So much anger. Come on, guys! Look on the bright side! Griffons and Hippogriffs and Wargs as Animal Companions/Mounts in PFS! How cool is that? Assuming, it is PFS legal, which I would hope! :D

I posted this exact thing about a month ago and I have been waiting for this book since someone mentioned it might have rules for it! Now my fiance and I can roll up some Sable Company marines or something and it will be totes be the bee's knees! Who cares about the feat tax or whatever. Hippogriffs!

My own two cents: I hate dumping Int. If I ever have to dump a stat, I always try to avoid Int, especially in PFS. PFS has a lot of skill rolls and dumping Int severely reduces how useful you are at that. Depending on your group, you might end up like one of my first games where we had no clue what was going on because no one could pass the skill rolls needed to figure out the plot. We ended up bumbling around for 3.5 hours before the BBEG showed and was like "HEY! I'M THE BAD GUY!" Majority of the reason my current character is more skill monkey than anything else (and a major reason why I feel more useful in our games than some other players...)

Besides, do you really want to RP the "I pick things up and put them down" character? Or in your case, "I cast pretty spells and they fall down" cleric? :D

Before I begin, I wanted to give a brief intro. I really love Pathfinder and Paizo and I think they did an awesome job providing one of my favorite games out there. I also really loved all the new classes from the Advanced Players Guide and I am kind of sad that the Advanced Class Guide only adds hybrid classes rather than, as far as I am aware, any new ones. Therefore, I wanted to test out my creative mind and try to craft a few unique and interesting classes, the first of which is below. I do still have a lot to do and would love any input. Also, as the name implies, this is only the first of (potentially) many and if people approve, I will try to post more.

Design Mantra

Unfinished

The Chirurgeon
For wealthy nobles and skilled adventurers, wounds, disease and poison can be fixed with a few magic words and often a donation of gold. However, this is not so for the rest of the population who must rely on traditional medicines and healing. This is where the Chirurgeon comes in. Usually feared and hated, the Chirurgeon's job is often unpleasant, yet it saves lives.

Role: Chirurgeons are usually a supportive class. Their abilities can heal the party, turn lethal wounds into minor ones and provide benefits to their allies. Alternatively, they can also be a dangerous foe, wielding poison and diseased ridden weapons with deadly accuracy.

Alignment: Any

Hit Die: d8

Class skills: Craft, Diplomacy, Heal, Knowledge: Nature, Perception, Profession, Sense Motive and Use Magic Device

Skill Ranks per level: 4 + Int. Modifier

Bonuses
Medium BAB
Fortitude Good
Reflex Bad
Will Bad

Class Features
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Chirurgeons are proficient in light armor and all simple weapons, plus scalpels, saws and syringes. (New rules for these items after the class)

Surgery
Chirurgeons are able to provide field surgery to a creature to reduce the severity of their wounds, often by quickly stitching a cut, popping bones back into socket or cauterizing a wound. While this does not heal the wound, it can otherwise turn a lethal wound into a minor one. Choose a creature type (Such as Humanoid or Animal). You may only use Surgery on these creature types. The Chirurgeon must be able to touch the target he intends to perform Surgery on and then use a full round action that provokes an attack of opportunity. Using Surgery allows the Chirurgeon to convert a number of points of damage into nonlethal damage up to 1d8. This increases by 1d8 at level 3 and by an additional d8 every two levels thereafter.

Oath
Every Chirurgeon takes an Oath and while not everyone takes the same Oath, it nonetheless changes how he approaches healing and unites him with other Chirurgeons who have taken a similar Oath. A Chirurgeon must select an Oath from those listed below. Oaths grant a Chirurgeon a number of bonuses, a new class skill and special abilities. Oaths require a Chirurgeon to act in a certain way and violating the tenets of their oath causes the Chirurgeon to lose any benefit granted by their Oath for 24 hours. Finally, changing ones oath is a difficult process. Upon changing their Oath, the Chirurgeon loses all benefits of their previous Oath and must follow the tenets of their new Oath, but gain no benefits from its abilities, until they gain a new level of Chirurgeon.

Hippocratic Oath

Nightengale's Oath

The Ripper's Oath

Helsing’s Oath

More Oaths needed

Fields
Fields are abilities that represent medical techniques. Starting at level 2, a Chirurgeon gains one Field. He gains an additional Field for every 2 levels of Chirurgeon attained after 2nd level. A Chirurgeon cannot select an individual talent more than once.

List of fields (List needs expanded)

Injection
Using a syringe, the Chirurgeon is able to inject potions directly into the bloodstream of patients. This works just like injecting poisons using a syringe, (See below). Delivering a potion in this way is much stronger. Saving Throws against such potions are treated as if the Chirurgeon’s Intelligence was 4 higher and the effects are treated as if he had +2 Caster levels.

Craft Chemical
Starting at level 3, the Chirurgeon gains the ability to craft various medicines, poisons and chemicals. The Chirurgeon is considered to have the Brew Potion feat, as well as required spells (even if he does not), to brew potions. The potions a Chirurgeon may create must come from the clerics spell list and his Cleric level is equal to his Chirurgeon -2. Any potion with a save now instead requires a Fortitude save against a DC 10 + the Chirurgeon’s Int. Modifier + the Spells level.

Strong Stomach
At level 5, the Chirurgeon has seen the worst of injuries and sometimes, had to perform some terrible operations to save lives. The Chirurgeon is now immune to the nauseated and sickened conditions.

New Equipment:
Scalpel
Light Exotic Weapon
A scalpel is really a very small knife that medical practioners use for cutting into skin. Its small size generally makes it unsuited for use as a weapon, but its sharp blade can be very dangerous.
1d3 Slashing, Crit 18-20, 2 gold.

Saw
One handed Exotic Weapon
Typically, saws are used for cutting through wood and lumber or cutting through limbs on a medical table. While the blades are sharp, it is not a sturdy weapon and rarely useful on the battlfield.
1d4 Piercing, Crit 20, 1 Gold

Syringe
Light Exotic Weapon
The Syringe is a recent invention used for delivering medicines directly into the bloodstream. While people worldwide seem to fear them, they are almost never a deadly weapon and very fragile. A syringe can be filled with poisons and skilled practioneers can fill them with medicines. This requires a move action to preform. Whenever a creature takes damage from a Syringe, the wielder can inject the creature with whatever is in the Syringe as a free action. Because it is injected directly into the blood stream, it is almost always more effective, increase DCs to resist by +2.
1 Piercing, Crit 20, 2 gold, Fragile

When I see a build like this, I look at my character sheets, sigh, and then go "I will cower back behind you and wait for you to need a skill check of some sort. Also, have I told you how pretty you are? Please don't murder me. q.q "

I dislike the notion that you have to be some sort of powergamed, super optimized build to be any use in your game (both organized play and home games) and I rally against anyone saying otherwise. You can be useful, no matter what you play and you shouldn't be forced to sacrifice a concept over playing the numbers game.

I just got back from a game where I am playing a new character with my fiance. We are both new to PFS, but not to role playing in general and I have played in various other RPGs organized play. We sat down at a table with a player who has been playing PFS since season 1 and he had some crazy combat build with a insane attack bonus and untouchable ACs and every archetype and feat allowable to make him super amazing. When he asked what I was playing, I told him I was a rogue (which got an eye roll) that would eventually be taking the Arcane trickster PrC (which got a second, even more powerful eye roll). Thing was, the module we played barely had any combat in it. The entire night, we spent 3 rounds in combat. And not because of his uber leet number skills (ironically, he kept rolling super low and I don't think hit once). The rest of the night was spent investigating ancient ruins, speaking to NPCs and doing a variety of other things. How exactly does his massive combat skills help when we spent nearly an hour talking to some priest? What helped were the skill checks (taken care of by myself and the religious types who had knowledge: religion to help a roll I couldn't make). Those were the checks needed to complete the module and optional missions. And when combat broke out, my +3 attack roll did just the same, if not more than, his +1,000 did.

Of course, there will be plenty of times when I will wish I had a much higher damage roll or my attacks could get through the enemies AC. I'm not saying combat is something to brush off. But I feel like my character will be useful in more circumstances than smashy mcsmashface. When he has to go on a mission where he has to speak pretty to some noble or identify some ancient artifact or not get murdered by the murder trap, his crazy epic build might be slightly less useful. (And I can generally go "not the face, not the face" when combat gets out of hand. :P)

I hope that doesn't sound conceded or rude and if your characters concept is 'Bruce Lee' and you want to roflstomp faces, go for it. I have played the roflstomp character before and its a blast. But also understand the roflstomp character can't get very far without support.

Unique and different character concepts are important too. They make things fun and different. If I wanted to play the most perfect character, I would play WoW and grind raids for my loot. I'm playing a character damn it and characters need to be interesting. Besides, maybe the gunslinging summoner in your example would have the unique skill set needed to pull of some crazy and unique way of bypassing a hazard that the gunslinger and the summoner would not have.

I have been debating on what to play for my first Pathfinder Societies game and one of the ideas was basically, most stereotypical cowboy gunslinger imaginable. (Even thought about doing the Clint Eastwood voice) And of course, what is one of those quintessential things a cowboy does? Toss a lasso around something, wrangle it up, then hog tie it. So, I started searching the rules on how to do it and was surprised to locate that it is actually a feat in the PFS field guild book.

So, I got excited until I realized the requirements to do so. Equipment Trick (Rope) is the feat that lets you do fancy things with rope. Within the feat, it says if you meet the requirements, you can do the trick. Ok, requirements for Hogtie? Improved Grapple! Oh... for a Gunslinger, that doesn't seem like a terribly useful feat... and Improved Grapple requires Improved Unarmed Strike... which is super not useful for a Gunslinger... But whatevs, its for flavor! What else? Well, to throw the lasso, you can use the Rope Trick Tangle... but that requires the Throw Anything feat. Also, I don't think you lasso them. I think you literally throw a rope and they get all tangled up in it.

So to do that thing that happens in a majority of all western movies and books and people do in real life all the time requires 4 different feats? Wow. I never realized how hard it was to be a cowboy. I found that rather funny.

(To be fair, the hogtie thing only makes it easier to tied them up and isn't required to perform.)

So what I have decided to do was drop the "at the end of the 1000 years, we raise an undead army" and replace it with "if you ever stop sacrificing to us, we raise an undead army". For the reasons stated above, so that the players see this big evil cult, murder them, then while giving each other high fives and breaking out kegs of ale, hidden ziggurats full of sacrificed bodies begin to stir...

What the PCs would have assumed to be the climax of the campaign leads into a war between the fledgling nation and an army of thousands, maybe even millions of undead. Players have to gather their armies (remember, inspired by kingmaker, so players will have a kingdom and armies) and defeat this massive foe. They can try to gather their allies (there is a bit of political stuff happening in addition to evil blood cults) to help them out.

Things I am considering adding to this;
* The undead armies raising doesn't happen until the monthly sacrifice is due (debating the day of the Full Moon, to tie in with the lycanthropic elite warriors). This way, players actually go back home to their cities and believe all is well and the only things they have to worry about are those pesky foreigners try to game of thrones them.

* As I mentioned earlier, I am thinking about having an NPC or group of NPCs defect from the cult and come to the players (so the players can have a bit of exposition to explain things, in case they are being dense...). But the twist is they aren't defecting out of guilt. They are there to betray their people and bring about zompocalypse. I haven't settled on a reason yet, but possibly demonic influence, rougue blood god who wants to end the world or maybe even Joker "wants to watch the world burn" mentality (although that option is least desirable...) The NPCs will assist the PCs in undermining the cult, by giving them tidbits of information about the cults, locations of some (but not all) of their hidden temples and cities and other such things.

* The Elite Warriors are lycanthropes of their totems. Upon reaching the highest rank of Cuahchicqueh, they willingly allow themselves to be bit by one of their elders and they transform into their appropriate were-creature. As of right now, I have grown the orders to 4;
-Jaguar Warriors act as light infantry and being composed of mostly Rangers/Fighters, typically equipped with Terbutje and Tepoztopilli. Their Cuahchicqueh are Werejaguars (either using the stats for Weretiger or just building a new lycan form)
-Eagle Warriors act as ranged infantry and are also mostly Rangers/Fighers (albeit, focused on ranged combat, of course) and are equipped with bows and obsidian arrows, as well as Atlatl. Their Cuahchicqueh are Wereeagles (which I will have to create).
-Crocodile Warriors are the least numerous, because their fighting style typically does not work well in jungle environments. They are the heaviest infantry, wearing armors made from crocodiles, dinosaurs and other scaled creatures. They are typically Barbarians/Fighters wielding Tepoztopilli. Their Cuahchicqueh are Werecrocodiles (which are in... MM4?)
-Snake Warriors occupy the role of stealthy infiltrators. Their fraternity is composed mostly of Rogues and a few Alchemist and they wield obsidian daggers. Their Cuahchicqueh are Werepythons and Werevipers (neither of which I believe exist)

*Since there are a great deal of Lycans in my campaign, chances are at least one player will get infected with some form of it during the campaign. While they may be able to cure it (I think 2 of the 4 players can rid characters of curses), some players may wish to keep the curse (especially if it compliments their class, like becoming a Wereeagle as a ranged Ranger). I am thinking the various Cuahchicqueh warriors would be wearing armors that will make transforming into their totems easier, as well as provide armor bonuses in all forms, such as armors with Wild (although, I believe that only works on Druid's wild shape and not lycan curses).
(On a side note, should keeping the curse affect the PC's kingdom in anyway? I think people might be freaked out if their find out of the members of their ruling elite or gods forbid, their ruler is actually a Werecrocodile!)

* Finally, debating on if the priest of the cult should be Clerics or Druids? Or a combination of both?

I'm seeking a bit of advice and/or suggestions on the campaign I am designing. It was originally inspired by the Kingmaker AP, with players being chartered to explore and then settle a vast wilderness, but I decided to take it in a different direction. Rather than a vast wilderness below another country, my players are exploring a near mythical island inspired by Central American peoples and geography during the Age of Exploration (AKA - Aztec and Mayan people).

So I have a few ideas on how to handle certain aspects of their culture and I thought maybe you fine folks could weigh in on it and give me your opinions. The one I need the most help is first.

The BBEG (Big Bad Evil GODS)

Jaguar and Eagle Warriors (To shapeshift or not to shapeshift. That is the question.)

A funny thing attacked me on the way through the jungle

I wonder if there will be a way to play a bounty hunter type and still remain neutral or good? The blog says killing the target, but I wonder if maybe you could do something else, like arrest the target or something? Or does killing a target outside of a city (or outside the 'law' zone) not count against you?

I really like the idea of being a bounty hunter who chases 'criminals' down, not because of the money (added bonus) but because those players need brought to justice. JUSTICE!

And another thing, even if not accepting bounties, wouldn't a Paladin striking down evil eventually lead to their downfall? I have never really thought of the Paladin as a "we are going to work things out." I think of them more as "I WILL STRIKE YOU DOWN IN THE NAME OF MY GOD YOU UNHOLY HEATHEN!"

...that might be my own personal view of them, though... XD