KutuluKultist's page

We are in book four now and it's just tiring. The endless, boring repetitive fights in the siege situation really were rock bottom. Adventure Paths commonly had way too many fights but at least in the old days, it was possible to build characters strong enough to get through many of them really fast. My enjoyment is now basically gone.

A few remarks on guides for PF2, from a reader's perspective.

1) Stick to the point.
Given how PF2 feats fall into various categories, going through all of them in a class guide is a lot of pointless work. It is better to focus on class feats and only mention ancestral, feat and general feats that are specifically relevant to the class in question.

2) Mention what feats and features do.
When you discuss a feat (or class feature) make sure your reader is on the same page as you. For a guide to be useful to someone who knows the system less well than you (and why would you write a guide, if that is not your intended audience), you need to provide some of that knowledge. You don't need to quote the whole crunch, but at least say what it is for and how it works.

3) Make your reasoning clear.
This connects to the second point. A guide is more useful, if the reader learns something about why options are good, bad or ok. Writing on an option should contain more information than what is already present in the rating. "(red test) this is useless" is just stating the same opinion twice.

4) Give example partial builds and explain combos and interactions.
Doing this will help the reader to see how your reasoning applies to actual character building and to understand how various feats and features work together. Here too, it would be helpful to give more information than just listing the feats/features involved and stating an evaluation.

Maybe a game like Hero System by Hero Games or The Dark Eye by Ulysses might better support the style of play you are after. They both do away with the class and level structure that you find limiting and are not focused on balanced gameplay. TDE in particular takes get care to fit the rules to the game world.

Somewhere on these forums someone posted a while ago his bemusement at the idea that Mary the Master Seamstress down the street can craft a magic sword that requires Master in crafting, even though she's never made a sword and knows nothing about making them, while Joe the Expert Swordsmith can't do it. I'm with him.

Of course she can't. She also does not have master profciency, nor does the swordsmith have expert. These are rules for PCs, meant to regulate and define their actions and options, they should not be taken to be descriptive of the world beyond them. After all, a smith does not have to do quests and murder monsters in order to get better at smithing and goodness gracious will not be a grat warrior just because he is a goos smith.

I find it a bit irritating that Pathfinder never bothered to correct the old 3E error of having bucklers not use a hand.
In general, a shield is a weapon, something you need to actively use to defend yourself. A hard thing you wear on your arm is called a vambrace.

To make my irritation worse, larger shields, that you actually do strap to you arm allow you to much more easily grip and even use something else in you shield hand, since a leather strip is not very thick.

It's all backwards and topsy turvy :(

Is there any advantage to fighting mounted? Am I missing anything? It seems that the rules on page 478 list only a disadvantage (-2 reflex).

This may ewxplain the downfall of Taldor, though.

Every day earlier that a book comes out is one day earlier that money starts to come in. If one assumes that total lifetime sales are independent from release date, any publisher has reason to release as early as possible, that is as soon as the product is in a state that will not seriously impact sales. The money to make it has mostly been spend after all and profit is a function of time.

Paizo has been following a successful sales oriented strategy for many years now, continually testing out how many books their audience will.

They will not switch to a quality first strategy. And honestly, for a system designed for bloat, Pathfinder quality tends to be fine.

It's really simple. Golarion obeys the rules of pathfinder only localy, that is where ever you are currently playing. As soon as something comes into play, it necessarily fits into the rules (how else could it be in play?). But when it is not featured, the rules do not apply to it.
Being level 20 and all of the powers and options that characters Have within the rules are meaningless when not part of a game.
That which is outside the current game appears from within the game as background narrative and while PCs never get weaker in the game, they may be much weaker when the appear again, being just at the right level for whatever the game currently needs.

Because really, how else would it be plausible that encounters tend to be level appropriate, 200 year old elves can be level one, someone can go from dying to a dagger stab to surviving being chewed on by a dragon in the scope of a few months. And so on and so on.

No, Golarion clearly is a Kantian world where what appears is determined by who is being played.

So, it's like a killer chain yoyo.

The entry on bloodline spells and the bloodline listing does in fact add confusion as now the term "bloodline spell" refers to focus spells and the new term for what was called bloodline spell is now "granted spell" (this is probably an artefact of the term "bloodline spell" in 1st edition).

But, your focus spells are independent of your spell slots and have a very different structure. Thus they cannot possibly satisfy the condition that your spell repertoire is to mirror your spell slots.

The "spells granted" are the only viable candidates for what was originaly, in the entry on spell repertoire, called "bloodline spells".
This is further supported by the likely explanation that the author was confused by the change in terminology from first to second edition.

Signature spells are picked from among your repertoire. This could have been stated more clearly, but the explicit reference to "spells you have learned at a higher level than its minimum" implies that signature spells are spells you have learned.

I think it's pretty clear.

At 1st level, you learn two 1st-level spells of

your choice and four cantrips of your choice, as well as
an additional spell and cantrip from your bloodline

Note that you have 5 cantrip slots and 3 1st level spell slots at first level. So your number of "spells known" mirrors your spell slots.

Then:

Each time you get a spell slot (see Table 3–17), you add a

spell of the same level to your spell repertoire. When you
gain access to a new level of spells, your first new spell is
always your bloodline spell, but you can choose the other
spells you gain.

So with every new spell slot gained, you add a spell of that level to your repertoire. IF that slot is the first of its level that you gain, that spell is determined by your bloodline, if not, you get to chose.

So for any level of spells you have access to, you always have the bloodline spell of that level in your repertoire as well as a number of spells chosen by you equal to your spell slots of that level minus one.

Behind this "Historical Accuracy" fallacy as described lies the fact that the image most people have of the (European) middle ages and by extension of "fantasy fantasy" settings is informed not by actual historical research but the long shadow of nationalist romantic fiction of the 19th century. As these writings attempted to both construct a golden past and a historical justification for their own societies, the result is an idealized "past" for white, industrial age European people, including racial exclusion and the absence of anything reminding people of industrial age technology.

So the fallacy is double: Once taking the fiction for the real thing and secondly accepting the fiction as an authority without reflecting on its origins.

Naderi is strangely growing closer to the goddess of undeath, Urgathoa, due to Naderi's belief that love lasts beyond death, a position that Urgathoa can support.

This my new favorite sentence.

Oddly enough, since a Homunculist's homunculus is not technically an improved familiar, it does seem to gain speak with animals of it's kind, opening it up for archetypes. Furthermore, though a homunculus cannot speak, a Homunculist's homunculus gains speak with master, which clearly is a language - though one with only two speakers. It should thus be able to use spell trigger items.

Three words: Spirit Guide Oracle

The ability to switch to a new set of spirit spells as spells known is very powerful. Furthermore, there are rarely more than 2-3 revelations that are actually worth picking in a mystery.

But ultimately, it comes down to whether you prefer spontaneous or prepared casting. I for one vastly prefer spontaneous casting since I hate having had the right option but not having picked it in the morning. And to be honest, when I play prepared casters, I almost always have a standard set of prepared spells anyway.

"RumpinRufus" "1 standard attack + 1 full attack" instead of just one full attack (except in the case of archers.) [/QUOTE wrote:

It doesn't so that because you break the simplicity of the tool. You can see that even with your simple change you already need a qualifying statement. What about thrown weapon specialist? Should they get two full rounds? Will their numbers look artifically high compared to a melee combatant when in actuality they will pale in comparison? What about vital strike builds? Do they get to chose regular or vital attack? Are you actually giving a full round and a standard action? Or in the case of the archers 2 full round actions? Could I instead use that standard action to cast a self buff that wouldn't be allowed in regular DPR? What about stealth characters? Shouldn't the sneaky guy get 2 full rounds also because he can sneak up on the other guy before combat?

One might include both Damage Per Attack and Damage Per Round if one is interested in the difference. DPA would represent the effect of Vital Strike et al better than DPR. Any measure is valid if it gives you deeper information about the character (and thus the game).

Yes.
Maybe this is a way to put it that everyone will understand:

Accuracy has effects that are not captured by commonly used DPR calculations. This is precisely what I mean when I say that DPR undervalues accuracy.

This does not make those calculations useless, nor should it motivate a crusade against DPR. It also does not mean that DPR fails to consider accuracy.

Nor should anyone draw the conclusion that power attack is a bad feat or that it's never a good idea to push damage. In fact, I intended no hands on advice at all, but to point out some mathematical facts about the combat rule mechanism. My goal is understanding, rather than application. That is not to say that no practical application can be made, just that I am not terribly interested in those practical applications.

Since there is a current discussion going on about Power Attack being a trap, I would like to offer some considerations on the common practice of DPR calculations and how the miss out on some important aspects. I shall assume that the reader is familiar with the common DPR formula and will discuss it in depth.

tl;dr
Ceteris paribus, high accuracy is better than high damage, because a) lower chance of doing nothing, b) faster kill rate and c) the advantage of smaller slices.

General assumptions
DPR is generally calculated by multiplying to hit chance with average damage per hit, with some extra apparatus for crits etc.
By thus taking the average over an infinite number of hits, one important aspect gets left out: The relationship between frequency of hits and duration of combat. For simplicities sake, I will ignore iterative attacks. Figuring them in is left for the critics.

Let's compared two extreme cases with similar DPR but different dsitribution of raw damage and accuracy.
a) High Accuracy: Hits 90% of the time, does 10 points of damage on one hit.
b) High Damage: Hits 30% of the time, does 30 points of damage per hit.

1) The chance of doing nothing
Now, if we consider the probability of hitting at least once during one combat vs. the probability of always missing, we have a comulative Bernouli sequence with n = number of rounds and p = 0,3 or 0,9. We are interested in the probability of getting no hits, thus not contributing anything during an entire combat.

With some rounding, we can read the data from one of many readily available tables

The HD case: P(n,p=0.3,x=0)
n ::: P
1 ::: .7
2 ::: .49
3 ::: .34
4 ::: .24
5 ::: .17
6 ::: .12

The HA case: P(n,p=0.9,x=0)
1 ::: 0,1
2 ::: 0,01
3 ::: 0,001
...

As we can see, the difference shrinks, the longer the combat lasts, but is rather impressive for short fights. If over all combats are shorter rather than longer the case gets worse for HD. This is a jarring observation if you consider that shorter combats are generally considered desirable.

2: Accuracy kills faster
Next consider an enemy of 30 hit points, a one hit kill for HD, a three hit kill for HA. What are the probabilities for such an enemy to last into round 4 vs HA and HD respectively?

For HD the case is simple. It is identical to the "all misses" case above: 0.34, so roughly a third.

For HA, instead of just wanting to know the probability of not hitting at all, we need the inverse probability of hitting three times out of three. This is simply 1-0.9*0.9*0.9=1-0.73=0.27, roughly a fourth.

3: The Advantage of Smaller Slices
If the enemy has a less fitting amount of hit points, HA is better off still, since for any enemy of 30-40 HP, both HA and HD need one more hit, which is much easier to do for HA. As with combat duration, the difference generally shrinks as hit points grow, yet the Smaller Slices advantage still favours HA over HD every time an enemy has just a bit more hit points that HD can to in x hits and less than HA can do in 3x+2 hits.

I conclude: All else being equal, it is always preferable to have higher accuracy over higher damage. Furthermore, the experience of missing a lot makes playing HD over HA less enjoyable for many players, in particular because combat tends to be short and no one likes never hitting.
Addendum: The advantage of smaller slices also speaks in favozr of many attacks vs. powerful attacks e.g. TWF vs. THW.

Caveat: This does not consider further factors, in particular damage reduction which affects HA much more strongly than HD or miss chance, which affects HD worse than HA.

Golarion is not the historical past of earth.

Golarion is not the historical past of earth.

Golarion is not the...

and fantasy RPGs own much more to Hollywood and pulp than to history books.

The only thing I really hated about the infinity engine games was the hectic and chaotic combat system. I've always felt more at war with my characters, trying to get them to do what I want and not commit horribly stupid acts of self-sabotage on the one hand or getting annoyed with having to give orders all the time with a very simple battle where scripting would have worked easily.

The NWN games certainly improved on this, as did dragon age, by allowing you to have different perspectives, chain commands, better feedback and slower combat, but all in all, real time combat just feels hectic and uncontrolled to me.

Divinity: Original Sin worked very well in that regard and so did, using a very different approach Might & Magic Legacy. And ToEE for all its many, many faults did get the feeling of DnD combat right and was the game which was closest to the tabletop rule set. If anything, this is what I would want from a Pathfinder single player game: to stay very true to the rule set. And that would mean turn based combat imho.

But, to be realistic, we will get real time combat. Because BG and NWN and the whole record of Obsidian/Black Isle doing that kind of thing successfully.

Obtain Familiar feat? Would be about time.

- A Mage/Rogue.

Archetypes cover the subsets of this.

Arcane Trickster
Beguiler
Spellthief
Illusionist/Shadow Rogue.

All of these options (as well as the bard) come with a particular specialisation and their own problems.

-SteelDraco and KutuluKultist want a martial Bard/Cavalier leader type, but there already is one. It's the Battle Herald and it is very good. It's a bit complicated though and only uses one weapon (Longspear). I'm not sure about this, I think between Cavalier, Bard, and a Paladin with good Diplomacy, this concept can already be done.

Not strictly. You certainly lose BAB and gain spell casting one way or another. You will also have to deal with the dead weight of the original classes, such as the animal companion. It would be better to have an option that does not come with all that baggage.

- A non-caster shapeshifter.
Archetypes include the big bruiser Bear/Barbarian, the sneaky Assassin/Snake, the scouty Ranger/Eagle etc. can be flavoured as Manimal, Lycanthropes, fey mysteries, Native American spirit animals, plenty of possibilities.

Is that an endorsement? ;)

- I absolutely never want to see a class builder in Pathfinder.

Total agreement.

Slavery as such might well be neutral on the good-evil axis of Golarionian moral metaphysics, being instead associated with law on the law-chaos axis.

And let us look at Sarenraes portfolio. She is a goddess of healing, honesty, redemption and the sun. Nowhere does it say "freedom" or "liberty". Healing, whether of the body or the soul, while itself a good act, ceteris paribus, does not suggest an anti-slavery stance. At most one of caring, but healing is not kindness, though it may be a kindness. Honesty is merely the practice and commitment not to lie. At most it might imply a forthright openness that might well be considered inconsiderate and unkind. Redemption is an odd concept that requires further context to make sense of. Just be the meaning of the term, in a world of concrete and equal moral powers, one might well be redeemed of good deeds, back into the fold of evil. At best, redemption resonates with healing and represents a reintegration into community, a healing of the social bonds or a healing of the soul, if one is willing to accept that evil represents a wound of the soul, which the aforementioned Golarionian moral metaphysics make unlikely. Finally the sun, while often a beneficent force, is also a harsh fire that burns crops in droughts and men in the desert.

It might well be that, while Sarenrae is possessed of a kind nature, her portfolio is not one of kindness. And what ultimately connects to Golarion qua her being a goddess is her portfolio. For Golarionians, she is first and foremost a sungoddess, a goddess of healing, honesty and redemption.

I found Serpent Skull to be very bad. The first adventure is quite good and offers an intersting hook to get the PCs into the rest of the thing, but everything after that seemed thrown together with many things that could have been cool like discovering the history and secrets of a lost city (which you get to do twice) turning into repetitive, uninspired combat encounters against non-threats (in both cases). What bugged me most was that for an AP seemingly invested in discovery, the main turning point comes in the shape of an all knowing NPC who has everything figured out and tells the PCs whats going on and what to do with it. Instead of all the cleaning of ruined cities block by block, the AP should have given us the real adventure instead of sending Eador Kline (?) on it.

Second Darkness was cool, but suffers from first adventure dissociation syndrom. Everything you get involved in and attached to in the first adventure plays no part in the rest of the AP (and there is no way to bring it back it either). All in all, I liked it much better than Serpent Skull as it manages to have a lot more variation, tell an interesting story with cool twists and actual have the PCs involved in the actual adventure ;).

Wrath of the Righteous seems quite good so far. Starting to GM the second book this sunday. Let's see how the mythic stuff works.

P.s.
It's the only spell you can use to attack the darkness.

I would advise to see the sex change as something similar to a high level healing spell. Anevia was suffering from the mismatch between her inner self - soul if you will - and her physical body. To alleviate this suffering is an act of healing and healing the ones you love is not a selfish act. It may be less altruistic than healing strangers, but the alternative - not helping your loved ones when you could - would not be morally sound.

The issue might have been different if the sword was really a holy sword or holy avenger even or if Irabeth had actually sold it knowingly to cultists, but neither is the case.

KutuluKultist wrote:

Why should whether or not someone actually takes offence at misrepresentation not be the arbiter of its moral value?

I look at the Jyllands-Posten affair a few years back and immediately see very strong reasons why an offended party is the least reliable of all possible arbiters.

While the absence of offence does not make something acceptable or good, the presence of offence does at least constitute some kind of evil. Though, I would argue, that if the offence is not justified, it constitutes a very minor evil and if it is justified than the real problem is not the offence but what was taken offence at. The offence then mostly signals the presence of a more substantial evil. And furthermore, one might argue that if taking offence is justified, than it is also mandatory. That is: If I was right to take offence at what you did, everyone who didn't take offence at it, should have.

But of course, the parties taking offence are as entitled as everyone to participate in moral discourse. At best one might say that strong feelings of being offended might cloud the judgement.

But my point was not about who should decide, it was about what should count as reasons and evidence for a moral judgement.

I guess it's the hubris of starting with the assumption of one's own moral infallability that bugs me here.

Making and stating a moral judgement is not an implicit assumption of infallibility. Any such judgement should always be open to argument.

Here's own in support of my stated position:

Why should whether or not someone actually takes offence at misrepresentation not be the arbiter of its moral value?
Two main reasons:
a) Social factors - group pressure, cultural taken-for-grantedness, fear or repression, ... - can influence the behaviour of a person, even without that person realizing it.
b) Minimizing misconception and false beliefs is itself good and valuable, making behaviour that engenders or reinforces false beliefs and misconceptions morally reprehensible, even if that behaviour only immediately affects the persons behaving in that way.

Both of these reason can of course be subject of argument themselves.

Along similar lines: Denying subjectivism (necessary for reasons of practical consistency) does not equal the assertion of one's own moral infallibility, it is merely denying subjectivism.

But is that a problem?
If no-one in the group is from that 'exotic' culture, who is being offended?

Whether or not someone is offended is immaterial to the issue. The reinforcement of the faulty stereotype is a problem for the holders of the stereotype as well as for its target. A homophobic culture is not any better, if there is no homosexual behaviour. If it were, the perfect answer to homophobia would be to get rid of all homosexuals.

"I will now ask you a question" Morgu'ul the Malefactorial Manipulator shouted, the serrated blade of his sacrificial dagger poised at the young man's throat. "And you will answer with a lie. If you do not, I will cut this fool's pretty throat!"
Pally knew that she couldn't make it to Murgu'ul in time, he was clearly out of charging range and even if she could have made it, she couldn't have taken him out in one blow. But she also wouldn't lie. To play the twisted games of minds malicious and criminal was a slippery slope. It was admitting, in actions if not in words, that they were right. That the world was just as horrible as the wanted it to be, in order to justify their own wickedness. But how could she refuse and risk the live of an innocent and lovely young man?
She remembered a lesson her mentor Sir Stickarse had taught her - If in doubt, go on the offensive! Truth be told it was more like "If in doubt, detect evil and proceed to smite!" but she believed that there was a just a little more to it than that.
"Let her go," she shouted across the battle field, strewn with the corpses of many an evil henchmen, "and I will lay down my sword and hand myself over to you. I swear it by my honor as a paladin!"
Morgu'ul's malefactorial face twisted as he considered this. If the paladin was unarmed and in his power he could sacrifice her to the Mz'zzglzzkltrrpklptz the Elevenheaded Eater of the Shackled and Father of Foulness. A much more worthy sacrifice than one meager peasant virgin. And if the paladin broke her oath, he could easily overcome her with a spell, for then the divine grace of Lawfullian the Good, her despicable god would protect her no longer. Fickle and arbitrary where those gods of good, ever willing to let their servants fall like a hot potato at the first sign of dishonorable behavior.
So Mogu'ul let go of the young man, who stumbled away in a very virginal way.
"By your oath, you are bound, you stupid paladin! Drop your sword and surrender yourself to me!" He shouted, his voice raw with excitement.
Pally dropped her sword of righteous reckoning and, raising her hands high, she walked slowly towards the evil wizard. As she reached him, she said: "I am now in your hands."
"Yes," Morgu'uls voice rose several octaves "you are in my hands at last!" He laughed nefariously.
But Pally said calmly. "In that case, I hereby smite thee, evil one!" and punched him in the face repeatedly.

The first thing you have to realize is that what matters is not the structure of the adventure, but the experience of the players. Something is a railroad only if perceived as such. Even if there is really only one path to take, as long as that path is accepted by the players as the logical and appropriate path, there will be no experience of railroading.

But as soon as players feel that they are supposed to do this or that and feel that they have no reasons for it, or do not identify with that choice or find it inappropriate for their characters, the experience of being railroaded can appear.

Therefore an adventure needs to provide a context for player choices to make them meaningful and if the context is right for your group of players and their characters, no amount of "structural railroading" will be a problem. By structural railroading, I mean to what degree the adventure text itself does not allow for deviations from a particular sequence of events, something which, btw. is highly encouraged by the level/CR subsystem.

Similarly, if the players have no indications for theirs choices, they can feel left out of the scenario. That is a pitfall for sandbox games: you still need to provide a context for player choices, to make them meaningful. A good sandbox game is basically a railroad of forking paths: You still need to provide a meaningful context for player choices so as to allow them to make those choices their own, even if they are moving within a preset of options.

Be a free-will individualist: Anyone who comes to you seeking redemption shall be redeemed, no matter their past deeds. But those who do not seek redemption need not be spared if they commit deeds of evil (such as attacking a true servant of light, goodness and forgiveness).

Ignoring high AC opponents in favour of others requires a high level of tactical thinking, willpower and situational awareness. For most combatants, a present threat cannot be ignored, that is were the awareness of the combatant is focussed, after all.
So here is what I do as a DM

• Dumb combatants attack the nearest target and never look for an easier target, but might try to run if hurt severely.
  
• Combat savy opponents try to select their targets in a smart way, e.g try to geek the mage first, but once engaged will not break of the engagement unless hurt. Than they might run or look for an easier target, depending on morale.
  
• Soldiers under effective command, that is under command of someone who keeps high situational awareness can and will ignore hard to hurt targets for softer ones, if commanded too.
  
• Powerful single creatures such as dragons typically are combat savy, but some of them, in particular ones that are feeling confident, will freely accept allowing hard to hurt targets to hurt them while going after easier prey.
  

A laser cleric is one focused on summoning Lantern Archons. Admittedly that is not much of a specialisation, but you it takes a few tweaks to make it really nice.

The obvious approach is the evangelist cleric archetype, which adds inspire courage to your repertoire and provides some minor augmentation to your heavenly laser drones' laser drones as well as improving to hit.

The feats Superior Summons and Sacred Summons are pretty obvious, too. The first gives you extra laser drones, the second standard action summons, allowing you to get off some inspirational sermoning right off the bat.

But from here on out, it gets thin. Does Discordant Voice work? Probably not. It only works on "weapon attacks", which seems to exclude glorious laser rays.

If you stay within 30 ft. of your target, you can use a destruction domain power, but that's a) quite close and b) good luck finding a lawful good deity with the destruction domain.

There are some ways to increase to hit though: prayer/bless, the heroism aura from the glory domain.

In any case, do you have ideas on how to improve on the performance of the little lantern laser drone squad?

Mostly the kitchen sink - a country for each theme - approach, that makes the various regions seem disconnected, with clear borders between the orc and monster federation, the gothic horror people, the high tech robots and the medieval Russians and so on...

It's gets a bit better further south, where there are actual relationships detailed between the various - clearly political - entities, including a history and all that.

This extends to throwing in the Cthulhu Mythos and other such inclusions, it makes it all feel inorganic and unfocused, a patchwork without a real history and net of relationships to hold it all together.

Killing Goblin infants is like sorching Xenomorph egg sacks. Easy to do now and saves you a whole lot of trouble later.

Here is some things to keep in mind:

Vary combat: different terrain, enemies, goals.

Offer several choices to the players, which all lead to the goals you have in mind. If you need them to do several things, arrange it such that they can pick the sequence.

If you want them to find something out, place at least three independently accessible clues for them to find.

Keep NPCs in line. Don't let them overshadow the PCs, don't make them do the things the PC should be doing (in particular, don't do all exposition via one NPC, let the Players figure out stuff for themselves.) A prime offender in this regard is the Serpent Skull AP, where late in the campaign, an NPC appears and suddenly bringts the plot around by telling the PCs exactly what is going on and what they have to do about it.

Keep enemies at a manageable level. If you need some to survive, use failsaves rather then making them unbeatable.

Prepare some enemies with basic outlines of personalities such that if one of them should survive an encounter with the PCs, you can use them again but are still willing and able to let them die, if actual play makes that the outcome.

Look to include some opportunity to shine with they particular strength or special features for each PC. This can be based on the abilities (such as an otherwise powerful enemy that can be brought down with an ability) or the story background (e.g. the PCs are admitted into so place or group due to background, status or connections) of the character. Try to include at least one such opportunity per character and Main Part your adventure has. They don't all need to be big.

Consider the pacing of your adventure. To begin with a good and easy structure is:
1. Introductory Action Scene (easy-moderate combat), ideally containing a first pointer (Why are the dead rising? Why did the thieves guild try to assassinate that old man? ...)
2. Role-playing and Investigation Scene Here the players figure out the meaning of the first pointer and what to do next, they also get to meet important NPCs, maybe hear about or meet the final villain without realizing it. (Little Timmy was playing in the old crypt and hear odd chanting but the priest of the sun god scolds him and forbids entry, the town is preparing for the wedding of the duke's daughter)
3. First Main Part. Some action, maybe overland movement, maybe a short dungeon. Typically you want to pressure the PCs now, put on some tension, make the thread become more threatening (While asking around about the crypt, the PCs are attacked by thugs with a skull tattoo, One of them carries a key to the crypt, in the crypt, the PCs are fighting more thugs, then undead and finally a necromancer with more undead)
4. Plot Point, the PCs are lead into a new direction. If this is a short adventure, this could already be the final plot point. (The necromancer reveals that the priest of the sun god is the head of a necromantic cult and wants to sacrifice the duke's daugther in order to summon the bigbad)
5. Role-playing/Investigation/Preparation scene. This leads into a second main part and mainly serves to provide information and power to the PCs that they will need. (The PCs investige the priest and learn that he will bless the duke's daughter in private soon, they also learn about a secret cavern under the sun god's temple. They buy holy water.)
6. Second main part. The big dungeon. (The players fight their way through the secret necrotemple.)
7. Finale. The confrontation with the main villain. Something usually hangs in the balance in order to imcrease tension. (The priest is about to perform the sacrifice. Can the PCs rescue the duke's daughter and prevent the summoning?)
8. Aftermath/Roleplaying. Here the PCs get rewarded, some loose story threads get resolved and hints for future adventures can be seeded. (The PCs are made honorary citizens for saving the city from the bigbad. The duke's daughter gets married. During the wedding, the PCs notice that little timmy is missing.)

Have actually tried any of the things you recommend in play?

I cannot believe that some people complain about dipping from a point of realism and story telling. The very moment you get a class and level system, realism and story telling has been excluded from the system itself, relegated to non-rule areas of the game.
There is nothing which justifies why there are a handful of more or less rigidly defined developmental paths, geared towards a linear progression, with certain features only available to those stuck with it long enough, even if, by all accounts it has not all that much to do with other features of the development package. Do I need to have a favored enemy to get Hide In Plain Sight? Heavy Armor Proficiency to inspire people with my Banner?

It's a rules abstraction, there because the game is a game, a rule based interaction with the goal of being fun and enjoyable and not a simulation. If it was, what exactly would it be a simulation of anyway?

And if the rules say I can dip crossblooded sorcerer to get +2 damage per die on all my damage spells, then that's what I can do, if I play that game. I don't need to make up any narrative explanation for it, my character would certainly never think of himself as a sorcerer/wizard multiclass, but maybe understand that he improved his innate magical talents by hard work and study and that there is something in him, that empowers his burning hands beyond what his co-students at Wizard U could do. But mainly he will think of himself as a Wizard.

There might be an issue with the rules, that such a thing is possible, but it is not an issue to employ it in character creation, once it has been agreed upon that it is a legal option. And if it turns out to be problematic while actually playing the game, there is nothing wrong with house ruling it. It's your game, you're supposed to enjoy it.

But to claim that, in effect, using dip options that gimp your character is fine and using ones that empower him is not I find problematic. Power gaming is not a weird fetish of evil men, but a simple result of the fact that some choices make it more probable and others less probable to succeed in the game's mechanics of conflict resolution. Live with it or improved the rules, but do not blame people simply because they chose to look left and right before crossing the street while you are a fan of running blindly with scissors.

Premise: Evil and good (and neutrality) are actual spiritual forces, battling it out in a total war for the fate of the multiverse and everything else, not moral concepts. Creatures, actions, social systems, ... are evil insofar they contain or further the power of the evil spiritual force(s), good insofar they contain of further the power of the good spiritual force(s).

1. The altar and temple of an evil god serves to empower or spread evil.
2. Fighting or destroying or preventing evil is always good, though other goods might weight heavier.

Example: If destroying the temple would be certain to unleash the vile plague of evil death upon the twin towns of Mostly Good and In Large Parts Innocent, doing so might not be a good act overall, because the good of large numbers of mostly good and in large parts innocent people not dying from evil's might could weigh heavier than destroying the temple.
This is different if the people killed were themselves evil or at least neutral. The killing of evil people is always a good act. The congregation of a an evil priest is clearly evil as they further, by their acts of worship, the power of the evil spiritual force(s).

Good and evil are not parts of the vague arena of moral judgement, but clear cut lines between two opposing forces. It's us and them. Keep in mind that a worshipper of an evil deity gets equally rewarded for their actions as a worshipper of a good deity. Sure, different deities reward and punish different actions, but that is true even within the alignments. Sarenrae, Cayden and Iomedae will all have different opinions on the appropriateness of certain actions. Furthermore, "did no know" is a very lame escuse in a world where first level characters can detect evil with 100% accuracy.

So, given the (very reasonable) assumption that good and evil in Pathfinder are not moral categories, but spiritual ones and that morality is relative to the specific spiritual category one is aligned with, it is in general not the type of action that ranks something as good or evil (desecrating a temple) but whether or not the action is in favor of the good or evil powers (targeting an evil temple).

Make enhancement bonuses to weapons and armor a lot cheaper and non-magical. Treat is as different degrees of workmanship, with +5 representing true masterwork and masterwork representing skilled, but not not masterful workmanship.

That way, in a low items/crafting setting, the fighting men can still have their most essential gear, while the spellcasters have to deal with the more expensive magical stuff. In fact, if you just cut down the cost of armor and weapon enhancements to 1/5 and accordingly cut down wealth per level to 1/2 or 1/4, you suddenly shift the balance towards men of more mundane means.

I'd like to offer my guide on animal companions for non-druids for inclusion in the guide to the guides.

Discussion: http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz694r?Abusing-Animals-A-Guide-To-Sharing-Spells- With#1

Guides:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1ucWfFId04lNYLrJTh_E_keRTk3X-Ouchgy SE--2udr4
or
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/24085032/AbusingAnimals.pdf

Well met,

I've expanded a little treatise on the sylvan sorcerer and how it redeems polymorph spells into a full-blown guide on nice things you can do with an animal companion if you're not a druid.

The guide is to be found here:

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1ucWfFId04lNYLrJTh_E_keRTk3X-Ouchgy SE--2udr4

And a pdf version can be obtained from

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/24085032/AbusingAnimals.pdf

Looking forward to comments, critique and improvements.

In my campaign, the party let Yarzoth escape and she killed and impersonated one of the shipwrecked npcs and hitched a ride back to Eleder. Once there, she stole many relevant parts of her notes and disappeared. The characters are not aware that this has happened.

From here on, I want to replace most race to ruin with a "research race" in Eleder.
Durin the research, the PCs will have to consult with various scholars and authorities, meaning that information is going to leak out. Other factions begin to try and court them or steal their notes and, in one case, try to abduct their resident scholar.
In the end, it will become clear where Saventh Yi lies and the PCs will outfit their expedition. Tazion will be a stop on the way to Saventh Yi and the whole Pillars of Light stuff will not be necessary to find the City of Seven Spears, but merely serve to give and advantage to whoever gets the whole thing to work first.

As a side note, Racing to Ruin is written in such a way as to suggest that the PCs are the first ones to the Pillars of Light and due to the nature of the whole thing, it seems highly unlikely that anyone but the first party there will ever get to us it. The crystals are easily stolen, dumped in a river or just destroyed. Not to mention the rest of the assemblage. So it seems to me that this part alone is sufficient to make the whole exploration competition of CoSS impossible.

Anyway, the way to Saventh Yi will of course feature natives friendly and unfriendly, great beasts and tiny poisonous buggers.
Once in Saventh Yi, I will drop Eando Kline and his team. Since discovery is the main theme of the whole damn AP, putting in a Pathfinder, who actually was there before and already figured everything out that was there to find out, leaving the PCs to carry out his quest and little more seems like the worst piece of adventure writing I've seen in quite some time.

Hence, a rival agent will stumble into the vaults of madness, pointing the PCs towards the underground without actually giving them the truth of what is conspiring beneath them.
In Saventh Yi, they will also encounter Yarzoth as first climatic encounter and from her, the will learn something about what lurks below and that there are further Serpentfolk hidden among the expeditions that they have already found a way below early on during the exploration of Saventh Yi.
And indeed, if the PCs talk to the factions they are at least of talking terms with, it turns out that several of their members had disappeared during the first couple of days in the city.
On their way below, there are ample opportunities (the morlocks, the urfedhan, serpentfolk, and writings on walls) to help the PCs figure out what the serpent folk are after.

Do you think that this would work?