L. A. DuBois's page

For almost as long as I've been running tabletop campaigns, I've had the idea of running combat against a monster so big that even Colossal is too small to properly encapsulate it (though, honestly, I feel like Colossal monsters are already big enough that you could probably run them this way). Of course, I've always had the vague notion of running it as essentially terrain or a small dungeon with its various limbs and the like basically functioning as monsters, traps, or other hazards, themselves, but I'm wondering if anyone else has actually taken a stab at this sort of thing, or perhaps even if there's been some supplement that details a strategy for it.

(Incidentally, the earliest envisioning of this idea was for an apocalyptic Eberron campaign particularly inspired by the kaorti. It would eventually culminate in the PCs traveling to the Far Realm and having to fight creatures that I described as being of unfathomable size and alien dimensions such that many could be as incomprehensible to the PCs of even be creatures as the PCs would be unnoticeable to them, swimming through a multidimensional space that would cause them to even appear to be crawling through each other. Amusingly, despite this being the mid-2000s and so before Pathfinder even got off the ground, my imagination mostly rendered these things as pretty much city-sized keketar.)

One of the things that keeps me practically married to 3.5e/PF is the comparative freedom you have with your ability scores. Sure, clerics want to have good Wisdom, and barbarians want a healthy Con score, but just about every class can get something out of any of their ability scores.

The gold star of this is the rogue who can have builds centered around just about any of the six ability scores. Strength and Constitution rogues are your brutish thugs, bouncers, and other urban muscle who don't give one whit about propriety and civil tactics. Intelligence rogues are your skill monkeys and masterminds (at least until the investigator class came along). Wisdom rogues are sleuths, gamblers, and other shady characters who rely on their wits. And Charisma rogues are your charming rakes and suave charlatans. Now, sure, you could make a brutish thug who's a fighter or barbarian, or a charming rake who's a bard, but those would be very different characters from a rogue built around those stats. And, notably, unlike certain other versions of D&D and its spin-offs, can make use of them.

So, without further ado, have you made any characters built around unusual ability scores? Unusually high scores a class doesn't normally focus on, or unusually low scores that are normally that class's focus both count. For MAD classes, it's generally got to be a score that either isn't part of its normal MAD scores, or is built around only one of its MAD stats to the veritable exclusion of others (a monk with high Charisma as an example of the former, or a paladin with with high Wisdom but low - as in no more than say 13 - Charisma and Strength as an example of the former).

I've been kicking around some worldbuilding ideas, and one idea that I've really been avoiding for a while despite really wanting to use it is setting without the usual full spectrum of deities. When you've got an animistic world or one without any concrete divine influences (but still want to have clerics), it's a simple enough matter to just let clerics pick domains ad hoc (I always go back and forth on the matter of favoured weapons, though... Although just now I realized that assigning a weapon to each domain could probably work well enough - the cleric then choosing which one will be their favoured weapon - and I'm kicking myself). And there are ways of effectively getting a standard pantheon structure out of a single all-powerful deity by either having saints/angels or aspects/avatars to divide things up between. But what about if your setting only has one deity with a fairly narrow portfolio, comparable to those of standard deities, or just two or three deities (again, with similarly limited portfolios). I hate restricting options (especially core ones) if it's at all possible to avoid, but would this just have to be one of those situations where I'll have to bite the bullet? Or can you think of non-divine explanations/sources for domains and divine magic?

I'm thinking that in my current campaign, I'd like to not require Item Creation feats in order to create magic items. Instead, they'd just use the Craft skill. My players won't have full access to just craft any item they want (and have the skill for), of course. Some will require going out to find rare materials and components, or learning/discovering how to make the item in question, but with that in mind... What might some of the repercussions and things I should account or watch out for be, if I decide to do this? Of course, I'm going to be quite clear and up-front about what a given Craft skill can and can't make, and there won't be a perfect 1:1 translation between skills and feats. For example, leatherworking, armorsmithing, and weaponsmithing will split up what used to be Craft Arms and Armor. On the other hand, what I think I'm just going to call "enchanting" will cover wands and rods. Oh, and since part of my reason for doing this is so non-casters can also make their own magic items, I'm not going to retain spell requirements for magic items (though I may grant a circumstance bonus or something for characters with access to a given spell).

Pretty straight-forward question. What would a level 1 commoner ghost's CR be? And do you think its effective CR might actually be a bit lower than whatever its RAW CR is?

Pretty much since I started playing D&D back when 3.5e was first released, I've been building specific and often unusual character concepts. And just now, an interesting idea came to mind: could you make an effective assassin using a full-caster class, and if so how? I mean, in theory, full-progression spellcasters are the most versatile and arguably powerful characters in the game, but to be a proper assassin requires a very specific set of skills that don't immediately spring to mind for full casters.

Now, I'm gonna go monkey around with this myself (possibly in the morning since it's 1:00am right now), but in the meantime I thought I'd pose the question here as well. So here's the rules for this challenge:
1) Create a PFS-legal 12th level character using only a single full-progression spellcasting class.
2) Ignore equipment, aside from an optional weapon. Since magic items are pretty much equally accessible to all classes, including them would just clutter things up when the goal is just to see how the class would perform on its own merits.
3) In order to be a proper assassin, one must be able to reliably kill a specific given target before they are able to react much. At the very least, without being able to alert others or get help. An assassin should also be capable of doing this with no collateral damage (including extra killings) or witnesses.

Personally, I think I'm going to try for three different flavours with this to build:
A) Boring, But Practical: This type of assassin is simply reliable. Given ideal but typical circumstances (at night while the victim sleeps alone in their room or something, not while bound and unconscious in a private demiplane), they are most guaranteed to be able to off as wide a variety of targets as possible.
B) Beyond the Impossible: This type of assassin is able to kill someone and get away with it in an incredibly difficult situation, like while the target is surrounded by guards or is on a different continent. The entire assassination need not occur entirely under those circumstances, but it must start under them, and whatever remains may exist must be returned to wherever the target had been at that start before the assassin can escape. Don't know if this one will actually be possible to do, but I want to at least give it a shot.
C) Smoke and Shadows: This kind of assassin must be impossible to catch. They may not be able to kill any target, they may not be able to kill in any situation, but they cannot be tracked or discovered. No one knows who they are or how they do what they do. For bonus points, the Nameless One feat is off limits.

I've got a campaign setting that I'm building, and the shaman and witch classes are both really perfect fits for the setting, but familiars aren't. Any ideas for what I could replace them with? Or perhaps, do you think the feature might be minor enough that I could just cut it entirely without disrupting things too much? If you think it matters, the campaign will be E8 with no lean.

To my surprise, I have been unable to find a rule index for Pathfinder that collects all of the various character options and the like together and shows which books they are in. So I've finally decided to start compiling one myself. Partly because it's such a big project, and partly because I don't (yet) own every Pathfinder book, I've set it up in Google Docs so anyone can add to it. So far, I've finished the Core Rulebook, and am almost done adding in the APG.

Anyway, here it is: Pathfinder Rules Index

P.S. I hope Paizo doesn't mind this on copyright grounds or anything. The intent is for this to just be a directory of the various rules to make finding them easier, and it won't contain any meaningful rules text. While it will at times contain proper names and the like which may count as product identity, given that including these would be necessary for this to function properly as an accurate and complete index, and that, as stated, no actual rules text will be included, rendering it useless without the appropriate book, I hope this can be overlooked.

I'm working on a long-term E6/E8 (probably E8) campaign and long story short, I'm planning to implement some ideas from a boardgame called Gloomhaven (if you haven't heard of it, check it out, it's pretty cool). In it, when you pick a character to play, you also get a special quest to complete, and if you complete it you unlock something like a new character to play as.

The closest analogy to this that I can see working in a d20 game is gaining access to a prestige class. Except that even being E8, there's little use to prestige classes. So to facilitate this, I'm thinking of having prestige class levels being granted as sort of retroactive gestalt class levels. In an effort to keep things from getting too complicated, I kind of want to allow taking these prestige gestalt levels following the same rules as post-6th-level feats. Obviously, a prestige class level would often be better than a mere feat, but I figure this will probably be evened out to at least acceptably unbalanced levels considering the typically stricter requirements for entering prestige classes as well as the need to quest to unlock them, akin to questing for powerful magic items in a typical game. In fact, I'm considering loosening or even removing the prestige class requirements given the difficulty in unlocking them in the first place - would really suck to gain access to, say, the Horizon Walker or Shadow Dancer class after a long period of questing only to realize that no one in the party has put ranks into Knowledge (geography) or Perform (dance).

Thoughts?

So my players have goaded me into making Sun Wukong as a recurring antagonist for them. However, it seems to me that it would be far more enjoyable - for everyone involved - if he isn't already SUN WUKONG when they first meet him. And if he's not already SUN WUKONG, then why not have the players be unwitting instruments in turning him into SUN WUKONG?

And so, has anyone got any ideas for how I can set up a scenario where my party unwittingly helps a mischievous monkey unwittingly become immortal?

I'm starting up an E6 Gestalt game, and I'd like a little feedback on the particulars of how I'm planning to do this. First a few notes on the group independent of rules:
1) I've done gestalt games. I've done E6 games. I've yet to do the two in tandem.
2) I am extremely loathe to ever ban things for mechanical reasons. Ideally, the only reason I would ever say a player absolutely cannot play something is because it simply does not exist in the setting. As far as class combinations are concerned, I only intend to ban gestalt full casters that use the same casting stat. And that's just because of how easy I imagine it would be to accidentally break the game in such a case.
3) There are no powergamers in my group. There's one or two what I would call "optimizers", however. The distinction I make is that optimizers do tend to put mechanical consideration to options over fluff, but aren't concerned about making the absolute best character they can.
So basically of this is to say that my concern is more just to minimize the chance of someone accidentally making a game breaking character than purposefully doing so.

So one of the things I'm trying out for the first time is partial advancement to 8th-level. First off, the way I'm doing XP is kind of like in PFS, but instead of 3 XP to advance each level, it costs a number of XP equal to your current level. Then after hitting 6th, you can start using "purchase" feats as normal for E6 at 3 XP per feat, or you can save it up and buy the class features (and improve scaling class features) as if you reached 7th level (this costs 6 and then 7 XP, just as if you were to continue advancing levels normally using my XP system). BAB, hp, saves, etc. do not increase, of course. This also requires that you haven't multiclassed outside of your original gestalt pair.

Anyway, my conundrum is how this class feature-only advancement does mess with the typical balance a little. Fighters, for example, only gain a bonus feat at 8th level, which could be also be acquired with just 3 XP. Granted, it only seems natural that I allow feats that have 8th-level fighter or the like as a requirement to be taken with this bonus feat, but I'm not convinced that's enough to make it worth it, so I'm also considering making it so fighters (and fighters alone) also get to advance to +8 BAB when purchasing 7th and 8th level. Archetypes that swap out the 7th or 8th level class features also take that level's +1 BAB along with them.

The other thing is that I'm hesitant about granting access to 4th level spells... But some classes like the cleric pretty much have an empty level aside from gaining those extra spells. So I'm not quite sure what to do about that...

Just a thought that occurred to me. Would they (knowingly) accept someone who is AMAB but identifies as female into their order?

The default favoured class options that anyone can pick are +1 hp or +1 skill point. Some racial favoured class options exist like the gnome rogue's +1/2 to Disable Device and Use Magic Device checks related to glyphs, symbols, scrolls, and other magical writing. How was it missed that in the two levels it would take to get a conditional +1 bonus to two skills, you'd be able to instead take the default +1 bonus to each of those skills under any circumstances. And that's in addition to the +1 skill bonus option being applicable to any skill, while the racial option preselects which skills you can add it to.

Why weren't these racial options made to be a full +1 bonus? This would make it so that they weren't demonstrably inferior options, without letting them completely eclipse the default +1 skill rank (due to being circumstantial, and not counting for feat and prestige class prereqs).

I mean, I've been using that as a gouse rule for ages, but it really boggles my mind that this would have been let through in the first place, so it makes me feel like I'm just missing something.

In short, is there a particular reason that mythic monsters' ranks should be directly related to their CR? Relatedly, can a mythic party be expected to take on a creature with a higher mythic rank than them? If not, what if you're designing an encounter for an 8th-level MR 2 party using a CR 8 monster that, according to the mythic monster creation rules, should be MR 4?

All right, I'm gonna whirlwind through this: I'm preparing for a huge World of Warcraft campaign (will last about 4 years worth of weekly meetings), and I've got mostly everything figured out. It'll be using E6 (with levels granted for a certain number of sessions rather than by using XP), some variant rules like armor as DR, and will have each expansion be treated as its own campaign.

The one thing I haven't quite settled on is that I want players to have a choice between keeping their character from one expansion/campaign to the next, or to roll new ones. Each campaign is designed to take characters from 1st level to beyond 6th (how far beyond varies some, though always at least two post-6th feats), however I've got "heroic" stat blocks prepared if pretty much the whole party keeps their old characters.

Obviously, the benefits of keeping your old character are that you have a more powerful character at the beginning, but I'd like there to be an incentive for "trading" in your character and rolling a new one, and the two ideas I've come up with are, as the title implies, granting the new character a "legacy" (mythic tier) or "heirloom" (legendary item... probably). Of course, because of the difference in power between a non-mythic character and even the 1st mythic tier, if I go that route, I'll go ahead and give all characters from the start a mythic tier - possibly without the path, however, so they just have the basic mythic abilities. The paths would be offset by one tier, so when you get your 2nd mythic tier, you also pick a path at that point. There are some other alterations I might could make, as well, like perhaps having the path abilities the character gets be based on the character they're retiring (so a character playing a wizard who then rolls a rogue then gets an archmage path ability, and if they then retire that rogue to roll a barbarian they get to add a trickster ability - though I'd have to study the mythic rules closer to make sure this is remotely viable).

The other option I'm considering is to grant the new character a legendary item (Mythic Adventures, page 169). This has the advantage of also potentially allowing for a distinction between trading in multiple characters or "saving up" a character to trade in. Of course, I'm just kind of spit-balling ideas at the moment so this may be terribly unbalanced in one way or another, but I feel there's potential in it. To clarify, a character retired after one campaign grants a typical, baseline legendary item (with three legendary abilities). Retiring them after two campaigns instead grants a legendary minor artifact (granting six abilities), and after three campaigns grants a legendary major artifact (granting ten abilities). And, of course, multiple retired characters each grant their own individual heirloom.

In either case, the ultimate goal is to keep the new player from being too weak early on, but by the time they hit 6th level, being roughly on par with characters who have been 6th the whole time (and so have about 5 or more extra feats).

All right, I'm gonna whirlwind through this: I'm preparing for a huge World of Warcraft campaign (will last about 4 years worth of weekly meetings), and I've got mostly everything figured out. It'll be using E6 (with levels granted for a certain number of sessions rather than by using XP), some variant rules like armor as DR, and will have each expansion be treated as its own campaign.

The one thing I haven't quite settled on is that I want players to have a choice between keeping their character from one expansion/campaign to the next, or to roll new ones. Each campaign is designed to take characters from 1st level to beyond 6th (how far beyond varies some, though always at least two post-6th feats), however I've got "heroic" stat blocks prepared if pretty much the whole party keeps their old characters.

Obviously, the benefits of keeping your old character are that you have a more powerful character at the beginning, but I'd like there to be an incentive for "trading" in your character and rolling a new one, and the two ideas I've come up with are, as the title implies, granting the new character a "legacy" (mythic tier) or "heirloom" (legendary item... probably). Of course, because of the difference in power between a non-mythic character and even the 1st mythic tier, if I go that route, I'll go ahead and give all characters from the start a mythic tier - possibly without the path, however, so they just have the basic mythic abilities. The paths would be offset by one tier, so when you get your 2nd mythic tier, you also pick a path at that point. There are some other alterations I might could make, as well, like perhaps having the path abilities the character gets be based on the character they're retiring (so a character playing a wizard who then rolls a rogue then gets an archmage path ability, and if they then retire that rogue to roll a barbarian they get to add a trickster ability - though I'd have to study the mythic rules closer to make sure this is remotely viable).

The other option I'm considering is to grant the new character a legendary item (Mythic Adventures, page 169). This has the advantage of also potentially allowing for a distinction between trading in multiple characters or "saving up" a character to trade in. Of course, I'm just kind of spit-balling ideas at the moment so this may be terribly unbalanced in one way or another, but I feel there's potential in it. To clarify, a character retired after one campaign grants a typical, baseline legendary item (with three legendary abilities). Retiring them after two campaigns instead grants a legendary minor artifact (granting six abilities), and after three campaigns grants a legendary major artifact (granting ten abilities). And, of course, multiple retired characters each grant their own individual heirloom.

Heirlooms and legacies may or may not be related to the expansions that grant them; I haven't quite decided. I'd like to do it that way, but... I've done so much homebrewing, already... ^^;

For the longest time I've been mulling over an overhaul/expansion (depending on point of view) of the Craft skill. I grew up as a Revolutionary War reenactor, so have always been aware of the wide variety and often extreme specialization of crafts and professions, and while I totally get why they did (in short, because this isn't GURPS), it's always kind of bugged me how simple and... hand-wavey the Craft and Profession skills are. So over the years I've been mucking about with a homebrew/house rule system that essentially itemizes all of the various/possible occupations one might have in a typical D&D world, and... well it's easiest to show with an example: if you choose Craft (woodworking), you basically follow the normal assumptions of the crafting rules, but can't even attempt to make items above a certain DC with improvised tools. However, if you choose Craft (joinery), you gain a +2 bonus when crafting boxes, benches, cabinets, and other items that use joints to hold the object together, and a -2 penalty when crafting wooden items above a certain DC, like those that would be made by, say, Craft (woodcarving). Craft (cabinetry) would grant a +4 bonus on making cabinets, no bonus or penalty on items that would fall under Craft (joinery), and is too specialized to be used to use for Craft (woodcarving). Each of these bonuses and penalties increases by 1 for every 5 ranks you have in the skill. Furthermore, virtually all items above a certain DC have an associated specialization, and some items are ruled as being too complex for a "generalist" to be able to craft, and can only be made by a specialized craftsman.

But that's just part one. It's basically what led me to this next train of thought, by way of the Profession skill, and wondering if that might be handled similarly (I've ultimately decided either flat-out no, or that it simply isn't worth it). Mulling over the various types of non-Craft professions there are, it occurred to me that a few things don't quite... work right - or at least not intuitively - using the basic rules. Namely, that using the rules as written an architect, for example, would need to put ranks into Profession (architect) in order to make money, and that these ranks would have absolutely nothing to do with his skill in Knowledge (architecture & engineering). Same for an animal trainer and the Handle Animal skill, a chirurgeon and Heal, a lecturer and Knowledge (while this does involve oration, I'd say Knowledge is more important than Perform, here), or even a guttersnipe and Sleight of Hand. Additionally, while a bookbinder, scribe, or printer could easily fit under Craft, the origonal author of a book, it would seem, would be better to rely on Knowledge (at least for non-fiction).

So... I guess what I'm looking for is something of a review, as well as some advice on finishing it. I've been working on this for the last couple of days (that is, this specific adventure - it's been at least a year and a half since I started this whole project), and intend to spend the next two or so finishing it up before I shelf the project for another few months (it's how I work on long projects).

Introduction: I am, slowly but surely, adapting World of Warcraft to a Pathfinder campaign. Several campaigns, actually - one (sort of) for each expansion* - but that's beside the point. I've decided to make it E6, and have levels awarded - in short - based on sessions attended. Now that pretty much all of the planning (at least, as far as is needed to get through Burning Crusade, not counting bestiaries), I've decided to start working on adventures. For various reasons, I have decided to start with the first dungeon in the Human campaign*, The Deadmines, to get back into the groove of adventure design. I haven't made a homebrew adventure since 3.5e, and since then (mostly due to moving) haven't been able to hold together a group for more than an adventure or two, so I'm not 100% comfortable in how things actually run in Pathfinder, compared to theory.

Aaanyway, since I'm adapting an existing thing with its own fluff and maps, I'm ignoring that for now, and just focusing on stat blocks and mechanics (though I have graph-ified the zone maps, so I know how much room there is to manoeuvre and what-not). Also, as of posting this, I have only finished it up through the Defias Hideout (Rhahk'zor) area - the stat blocks after that point are all placeholders. Of course, I do intend to update the linked file as I finish each following section (I intend to be done by Tuesday at the latest). Oh, and to clarify this is based on the pre-Cata version of this dungeon.

So, what with one thing and another, the things I'd like feedback on include:

• Balance: Could a 3rd-level group conceivably last through this adventure? Note that I intend for this to last two sessions, setting a break point after the Mast Room (Sneed) fight. During this break, I intend to let the party rest as far as spells, daily uses, and so on are concerned but without in-game time actually passing (to allow for more challenging encounters without having to explain why no reinforcements have arrived while they were sleeping). Lastly, I'm hoping to have the VanCleef encounter be EL 7, though I haven't decided exactly how it will go, including how many combatants it will involve.
  
• Time: How long do you think it would take for a party of four or five adventurers to get through the Mast Room? To the end? (Obviously, this will involve speculation as long as I haven't finished all the sections, so feel free to wait until I have before answering - although even a ballpark guess would be appreciated).
  
• Flavour: For those who have run the original Deadmines dungeon in pre-Cata WoW, I'd like to hear your thoughts on how I adapted things to be appropriate for a tabletop adventure. I did, indeed, try to work in unnecessary shoutouts to the original (like the sacks of copper ore - which also serve to reduce the effective treasure that can be looted for encounters that I predict will be a little easier than their CR would indicate). To be quite honest, I didn't start playing WoW until halfway through Cataclysm, so I never actually ran the original version (many thanks to Bradygames' guides and WoWpedia for their help in this), so the feedback from anyone who actually did get to run it will be particularly appreciated.

That's all I can think to say right now... I'd be happy to answer any questions.

The Deadmines

I'm working on a huge, effectively-sandbox sort of campaign (that I've been working on for a couple of years and fully expect to log a couple more before it's ready - though I've made enough progress that it is seeming completable), and decided that factions would be a great way to flesh out the world through mechanics. Anyway, there are tons of factions in this world, and few if any have influence across all of it, so making players stick to one faction the way that the faction rules in PFS have them do is both a shameful waste for this game, and a problem either mechanically or narratively (either with some players not having access to their faction benefits for portions of the campaign, or allowing small, regional powers to grant boons to players on the other side of the globe).

So here are my initial thoughts on how to do this: players can gain fame with multiple factions (possibly up to a maximum number, possibly not) at once, but must choose one to be their main faction at a given time. All other factions with which they have fame are treated as having half the fame rank the player actually has with that faction. Rewards from non-main factions might also cost one extra PP. Switching main factions requires a certain amount of time (a week? a month?) during which no faction counts as the player's main faction (and so all are treated as having half the fame rank), and may require some small task for the new main faction (although I'm hesitant about this since it could cut into the focus of the party's main adventure). As mentioned above, there may be a maximum on how many "active" factions a player may have, given that there are literally dozens already planned out. Not sure about what sort of rules I should set up for switching out active (non-main) factions, though... I certainly don't want to keep them locked-in, either, since the limit would probably be five or so. Even if every player has five different factions, that's not even a sixth of all the factions I've planned out.

Additionally/alternatively, the Affiliation rules from D&D's PHB2 always intrigued me, but I never got a chance to test drive them since I was introduced/switched over to Pathfinder not long after getting that book. I might consider blending the two rulesets since they don't quite do the same thing, and each has some gaps that the other fills quite nicely.

Yes, preparing all of this would be a ton of work, and managing it all wouldn't be a walk in the park either (part of why I'm considering a limit on the number of active factions), but I have a very bizarre ...love, almost (even I don't understand it), of data-entry and assembling mechanics, so I'm almost salivating at the opportunity to detail all these stats.

So, thoughts? Suggestions? Advice? Experience to share?

There was lively discussion about E6 and its variants in a couple of other current threads that weren't actually devoted to the topic, so to help keep those threads on topic and also carry on the conversation, I've set up this thread for all sorts of E6/E7/E8 discussion.

Some quick basics for those who are new:

What is E6?
E6, short for Epic 6, is a variant of d20 systems (particularly D&D and Pathfinder) that puts a cap on character advancement at 6th level. After that point, characters are simply given extra feats every few thousand XP or so. There are as many ways to run this variant as there are GMs using it, including setting the cap at other levels (usually 8th, though 7th is fairly common in Pathfinder games, and some go into the low teens). These variants are referred to as E8, E7, and so on, with the number being whatever level you're stopping level growth at.

Why E6?
Well, the answer to this varies from group to group, but there are two main, recurring reasons for this - one fluff-based, and one crunch-based, though there is some overlap.

On the fluff side, E6 helps establish a low-magic world that can be very useful for running games with a classic Lord of the Rings style of fantasy, or Game of Thrones level of grittiness. It also cuts out a lot of high level spells that can be difficult for GMs to design satisfying adventures around without contriving some reason that every Big Bad Evil Guy has their entire fortress warded against scrying, teleportation, and similar abilities.

Mechanically, the range between 6th and 8th levels are also when the various classes are on the most even footing with each other. You're probably familiar with the concept of "linear warriors, quadratic wizards" - that is, early on, warrior-type classes are decidedly sturdier and more robust than mages who often have to nurse single-digit hit points for a couple levels, and have to be judicious about their limited spells per day, but warriors grow linearly in power while mages grow quadratically and around the mid-point, mages' spellcasting easily overtakes martial classes' abilities. 6th to 8th level is roughly the point at which this cross-over happens so every class can bring their A-game without anyone feeling eclipsed.

Blending the two, there are many spells that can end combat in just a couple of rounds regardless of how tough you've made your boss creature, leading to rather anti-climactic combat. Additionally, players' access to magic items is greatly restricted, allowing for only a few of the "best in slot" items that players are practically guaranteed to have at high levels, so characters are more likely to have varied equipment with interesting effects rather than all being decked out in standard stat-boosting gear.

Personally, something I particularly appreciate about E6 is the fact that a 6th-level character is decidedly more powerful than a 1st-level one, but a 1st-level character is still capable of helping out an otherwise 6th-level party. This allows for a number of things like players having alternate characters that can grow independently, and being able to quickly and easily introduce new players to an ongoing game without having to hand them a sheet with dozens of abilities they need to learn.

So how does this work, exactly?
Well, as I said, the basics are simply to stop characters from leveling up at whichever level you've decided is best, and award bonus feats instead at regular intervals (say, every 5000 XP or so), but for ideas on how you can alter this basic concept, check out the (sadly incomplete) P6 Codex. Note that this is a fan-made document, and that the only official rules of E6 are those I've already stated, and whatever else your table decides.

I'm posting this on my phone, so I'll skip the usual preamble I make (also, sorry for any GSP errors I make due to the tiny keyboard). In short, I want to make magic items much more special. I want to make it worth delving a dungeon or following a lengthy quest in order to find a magic sword or ring that the player can use for most if not all of the rest of their adventuring career without having to resort to artifacts or periodically upgrading the item to match their curremt power level, pretending it's the same thing all along. For one, it matches the feel of classic myths and fantasy much better.

What would be the best way to implement this? I'm aware of e6 and things like that, but I'm not wanting to go low magic - I want players to grow through all the usual 20 levels in their classes, and face all tfhe same powerful monsters, just to have masterwork or +1 weapons/armor be the default throughout. I believe saves, attack bonuses, and AC will take the biggest hits from this. Should I givve PCs an extra inheent boost to these, or nerf monsters, or something else entirely? Are there non-numerical repercussions from removing magic items that I should be aware of?

This is an (incomplete) project that I've been working on since about mid-Mists of Pandaria. It is, as it appears, a World of Warcraft campaign setting for Pathfinder. While I never fully shelved it, I've decided to resume working on it. While I have made a few changes this past week, I've learned of or noticed quite a lot I needed to change or fix, not to mention fill out.
Obviously, this is nowhere near a finished product at the moment, but in order to end up with something decent, I decided I would look to MW for assistance and advice.

I used the earlier Sword & Sorcery Warcraft RPG books made for D&D 3.5e as a starting point for various things (particularly feats and spells), but there are several aspects of that system I dislike, not to mention its being incomplete, non-canon, and (moreso in the revision than the original) not entirely compatible with Pathfinder.
I intend to fill this setting out as much as possible as a - likely life-long - side project, including adapting each zone in the game into an adventure. As such, my intent is to balance accuracy to the game with compatibility to Pathfinder, erring on the side of compatibility however, given that this is a campaign setting and not a subsystem or variant like the original Warcraft RPG.
I have attached a pair of PDFs that represent my work so far. One (“wow core”) holds the majority of the rules, and the other (“wow spells”) is where I'm working on all of the new spells.

--Overview of Core PDF--

wow core.pdf
wow spells.pdf

Simple topic. The Oenopion researcher replaces poison use with experimental mutagen, and swift alchemy with acid resistance. However, this means that it keeps swift poisoning even while it loses poison use to prevent accidental poisoning while applying it swiftly. Is it at all possible that acid resistance was supposed to replace swift poisoning (and also be granted at 6th level rather than 3rd, I would assume)? This is doubly odd since they still get instant alchemy later on. Of course, the swift and instant alchemy abilities still reduce the time it takes to apply poisons, but surely the removal of that half of the ability can be included in the text, too, should it be warranted.

Pretty much the one thing that really bugs me about d20/Pathfinder is spell save DCs. There is a logic to how they work, but it's not a logic that I like as much as an alternative.

The first of the two main problems I have is that save DCs don't scale much at all, particularly not compared to save bonuses. At high level play, you'll be using pretty much only your high level spells not just because they're powerful, but because your lower level spells will be having an excessively hard time breaking DC 20, while having a save bonus of +20 is child's play. Even a class's poor save should make that at least half the time. If you're min-maxing, you probably won't even bother with spells that allow saves at any level.

The second is more of a flavour discrepancy. Namely that, because high level spells have both stronger effects and are harder to resist, you might run into a situation where you can outright kill a creature with finger of death, but attempts to simply subdue the creature with something like ray of enfeeblement have absolutely no effect. Now, sure, it also makes sense for powerful creatures to be able to shrug off the effects of low-level spells, but because low-level spells have low-level effects, a couple -2 penalties can still be easily ignored by them, even when they are inflicted.

Additionally, it makes sense (at least to me) for mages to grow more familiar with spells that they've used for longer, and so be able to make them harder to resist. Yes, there are feats like Spell Focus that exist to represent this, but that seems like relying on fighters to take Weapon Focus in order to increase their BAB.

Now, of course, the obvious counter to this is that spellcasters are already notoriously more powerful than non-spellcasters, however A) this seems to rely more on self-transmutation and other indirect spells rather than save spells - again, save spells seem to be pretty much avoided by min-maxers, and B) I'm kind of drawn to the idea of more-or-less reversing the standard save DC curve. That is to say, lower level spells have higher save DCs than higher level spells. True, this warps the game's balance assumptions pretty drastically, but is it possible that it may actually correct some for the Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards problem, without inverting it completely?

This has been one of my pet projects for a couple of years, now. I've been adopting the World of Warcraft setting to Pathfinder (mostly by way of adventures and such - Pathfinder's grown enough that reasonable facsimiles for all the iconic classes, spells, and other abilities can be drawn together using just Paizo books), and now that I have most of the framework figured out, it's time start working on the adventures themselves.

First off, I'm going to be rewriting chunks of the canon story, particularly the earlier stuff, to both make it resemble a tabletop campaign more (so, for example, each zone is boiled down to a single plotline that strings together the more important and iconic quest chains) and to - in my eyes - fix some of the ...less well-planned/written plot points (so most of the overarching plot of Outland, for example).

But all of this is just background stuff for the advice I'd like to ask which, in short, is how would you construct and handle an adventure for 20 players? You see, I'm basically working on two versions of this plan: the first is simply constructing it as would be played by your typical 4-6 player group, nothing particularly out of the ordinary as far as campaigns are normally run. This is the version that I am actually planning to run. But, as a sort of thought-experiment, I guess, I'm also working on an idealized version of the campaign. The one that I'd run in a perfect world where I could find a reliable group of enough players, could devote as much time and resources to it as I want, and so on. Key to this version is having four simultaneous groups of players, each consisting of five players. Two groups would be Horde, two would be Alliance, and one group of each would start in Kalimdor and one of each in the Eastern Kingdoms. To simplify things a bit, I'd probably also start them a couple levels higher and in Darkshore, the Barrens, Westfall/Loch Modan (this one doesn't get resolved so easily), and Silverpine Forest so that I don't have to worry about which city to start them in.

But I digress. So, obviously, this would - again, in an idealized world - allow things like including the PvP battlegrounds where the Alliance and Horde parties get to fight each other, but also - theoretically - truly epic raids. Most of the time, the same-faction parties would team up to take on 10-man raids, but for the major ones - generally those that end the expansion like Icecrown Citadel and Siege of Orgrimmar - all four groups would join forces for a cross-faction 20-man extravaganza.

Obviously, Pathfinder really isn't designed to handle so many simultaneous players, and as I've said this is pretty much doomed to remain a daydream, but I thought it would be something fun to at least try to figure out. Of course, I should also note that I have no qualms with giving NPCs (particularly bosses) abilities that go beyond what the rules would strictly allow, much like bosses in WoW have. This is primarily to prevent tabletop players from horribly breaking encounters due to having access to actions and abilities completely alien to MMOs in general, let alone WoW specifically, and as often as possible won't simply be some nondescript blanket immunity. In theory, there will generally be some way around any of these defensive (or offensive) abilities I grant to NPCs, however it's also likely that most of these weak points will be meaningless to try exploiting. For example, (WoD SPOILER WARNING) to use the current final raid encounter, Gul'dan will have an immunity (throughout the Draenor section of the campaign) to charms, compulsions, and other mind-affecting abilities which is granted to him by Archimonde. Defeating Archimonde removes these protections, however it doesn't matter since as he's dying, Archimonde immediately turns on Gul'dan and banishes him to the Nether. (SPOILER DONE)

Still, this sort of thing is a very basic defense that's just to counter some of the inherent flexibility of a tabletop game, (although I should also mention that I will be encouraging flexibility in many other cases - I won't be forcing players to simply kill a dozen demons or collect twenty bear pelts the whole time, and any time that it wouldn't drastically rewrite the overall continuity, I'll be trying to figure out diplomatic and other non-combat solutions that players can make use of to resolve encounters that, in WoW, can only be solved by violence. In fact, it's likely that only the major raids will need to stick to standard killing of guys) and won't really mean much when trying to make an appropriately challenging encounter for twenty players.

TL;DR
Sorry, this sort of got away from me in length. How would you set up and run an adventure for 20 simultaneous players?
Also, in retrospect, I should've named this thread something like "Warcraft Campaign and Adventures With Huge Parties". If admins have the ability to rename threads, could one do that for me, please?

Obviously, RP is only a rough estimation of a race's power, so it isn't necessarily indicative of how much a race will break a campaign. The suli, for example, does disrupt a campaign nearly as much as a syrinx would, despite them having the same RP cost (16). Likewise, gathlain (RP 12) are far more disruptive to most campaigns (unfortunately for my illustrative purpose, due primarily to the same reason) than a wyrwood (RP 20).

Now, this in mind, I have a player who wants to play a trox. This race has a hefty RP cost of 28, but it's really all in brutish strength (both from a +6 Str, as well as abilities like frenzy and grappling arms). These don't strike me as especially unbalancing, but 28 is just way too high to ignore (as well as that +6 Str, even with a -2 to just about everything else).

I'd like to at least consider the player's character so what would you think about making him start with a NPC class for a level or two before getting to take PC classes? I may also drop a couple of the abilities like burrow or reducing the Str bonus to +4 (which together account for 7 RP).

This is something that's been on my mind for some time, but now that I've about finished an index of every Paizo feat, trait, and spell (the ones on places like d20pfsrd are actually missing a few, even from books I'd consider somewhat core-ish), it's really been bugging me.

One of the things that really sparked my love for tabletop roleplaying was when I first got the 3.5e Dungeon Master's Guide and was reading through it (I just might be one of the few people to have read that thing cover-to-cover, simply because it was my introduction to tabletop and I didn't know anything about it before). Somewhere in there, relatively early on was an attempt to describe how tabletop roleplaying let you do anything you can imagine by describing how you might adjudicate something ridiculous like a monk jumping over a banister, grabbing a chandelier, and swinging across to kick someone in the face. (IIRC, I believe it suggested a Jump check to reach the chandelier, a touch attack to grab it, possibly with a Reflex save in there somewhere, followed by a charge attack). After reading that, I was sold. I could go on about how much that one paragraph shaped me as a GM and my preferences and opinions on various systems, but let's go ahead and fast-forward to now.

It was something I started to notice in 3.5e, but either it wasn't as pronounced, or I simply didn't have as large a sample of splatbooks, but there are a lot of feats, spells, quite a few class features, and I think one or two traits that - thanks, if nothing else, to RAI, severely limit that sort of freedom. Normally, RAI seems to me to be something that allows things beyond the written rules. For example, if you can regularly chuck balls of fire, then being able to create a lighter-sized flame to light a candle or perhaps even a torch seems like it would be a negligible use of your ability that you could do any time.

First off, let me say that in general I kind of love rule bloat (with only mild exaggeration). I love having more spells, classes, and feats to pick between since it gives me more ideas and more accurate ways of representing the characters in my head. But sometimes, these new rules actually end up limiting what a player can do rather than expand their capabilities. Prime examples for me are things like the feats Antagonize, Call Out, Warning Shot, especially Blinding Flash, and perhaps even Kinetic Leap and Kinetic Counter. These are all actions that had there not been these feats, I would have considered perfectly reasonable actions for characters to attempt. I may not have used the exact same rules, but it would have been close enough to render the feat useless. For example, the basic effect of Xenoglossy - being able to communicate without a shared language - is something I would have thought would practically be the main purpose of the Linguistics skill (along with deciphering ancient text or coded messages). The actions of Dazzling Display I would have allowed, but probably to provide a bonus to the usual Intimidate check instead. By the way, this is not an extensive list, just the ones I was able to remember easily.

But since there are these explicit rules, it strongly implies that characters without these feats are not able to do these things at all. For example, I used a house rule for years that if you're proficient with a weapon, you can take a non-proficiency penalty for an attack to deal different damage with it. Using a spear like a quarterstaff to deal bludgeoning damage, or stabbing with a longsword to deal piercing damage. It seemed reasonable to me, having taken fencing and a few other weapon-focused martial arts to expect someone who actually used weapons on a daily basis to be able to do these sorts of things with minimal effort, and the non-proficiency penalty was really just a token attempt at maintaining the game's original balance. But Weapon Versatility has a very similar effect, implicitly locking that ability away.

One of my players is playing a swashbuckler and they want to have a hat enchanted so that when they take it off with a flourish (like when bowing/saluting before a duel or the like), it creates a flurry of rose petals because apparently this is Ouran Host Club. I kid, it's a wonderful bit of characterization which I always approve of, HOWEVER!

Silent image can obviously do that, but it kind of seems like overkill to me to use a 1st-level spell for such a minor effect. However the closest option among 0-level spells would certainly be prestidigitation which states that objects it creates look "crude and artificial" and if you're the sort of person who wants a hanafubuki every time you sweep off your hat, you're probably going to want exquisite rose petals.

Now, obviously, Rule #0 if nothing else means that there are plenty of solutions to this. I could house rule that the effect is within prestidigitation's capabilities or I could create a 0-level illusion spell that only creates minor special effect-type illusions, and so on, but I wanted to see what you guys had to say on the subject. Where, exactly, do you draw the line on prestidigitation's utility?

The Spirit Summoner archetype replaces the Summoner's aspect ability at 10th level, but doesn't say anything about greater aspect. Does the Spirit Summoner still get greater aspect as normal, or do they get the 10th-level aspect ability then?

So your player decides to purchase a flaming weapon made of frost-forged steel and a frost weapon of fire-forged steel. Would you allow them to strike the two weapons against each other activates the fire/frost-forged steel's abilities? Would make them have to actually deal damage to each other? Would you do something else entirely?

Basic explanation of the fire/frost-forged abilities: when the weapon is exposed to fire damage, a fire-forged weapon deals fire damage to enemies for two rounds. Frost-forged does the same with cold damage. Holding a fire-forged weapon in a campfire is explicitly said to trigger the ability, but it just seems a bit exploitative, particularly since each weapon would deal both fire and cold damage. Cool exploitative rather than game-breaking exploitative, but still.

So this is a pretty basic question, but I just never thought about it until now. I never really got to high-level play in a party with any TWF characters.
Reading over the TWF rules and feats, I've come up with a few ambiguities that I just always assumed I knew the answer to simply because I never thought about them. I think I can figure out the answers with RAI, but it's a bit awkward given that I can't really find anything resembling (explicit) RAW on the subject.

First, I always assumed that a typical, standard-action attack allowed the off-hand attack. I'd like to make sure I'm not wrong on that, first. So I guess it would follow that with Greater TWF a standard attack lets you attack once with your main hand and thrice with your off-hand. Is that so? Or do you have to make a full attack in order to use TWF?

Then, if your a 20th-level fighter and you have Greater TWF, does that mean you get a total of 7 attacks when you make a full attack? Or do the extra off-hand attacks usurp your usual extra attacks.

Honestly, the 7 attacks solution seems to make the most sense given that you can get TWF before your BAB allows a second attack, I just never thought you'd be able to make so many in one turn before, so it's surprising me.

I've been working on an engineer variant for a while, and I finally have something semi-finalized and ready for review.

First, a quick overview of my logic in building the class. If you're not interested, it should be obvious where the class mechanics begin. It should be noted that I've abbreviated most of the class feature entries, stripping them of fluff and often not mentioning rules that are identical to the original equivalent ability.

1) This is for my group's upcoming campaign which is (probably) going to include a new skill, Use Technological Device. It's essentially Use Magic Device for tech-y things as was an early addition. Now that I have the Technology Guide, I may be removing it.
2) Replacing extracts are gadgets. They work mostly the same way, mechanically, except that they are not limited to being used on the engineer, himself. To balance this, a fair number of the transformative and major buffs have been removed making the engineer more of a blaster and debuffer than the alchemist. Additionally, there is no equivalent to the infusion discovery, so only the engineer whose gadget it is may ever use it.
3) Most choices of spells and abilities were done for fluff reasons. I removed abilities that were more potion-like or clearly alchemy-based (bombs aside), and kept/replaced them with spells and abilities that could conceivably be created by some sort of semi-magical gizmo. Vestigial arm, for example, represents an advanced mechanical prosthetic implanted into the engineer's body rather than a cultivated mutation.
4) An engineering equivalent of instant alchemy to carry on from swift engineering struck me as both beyond the reach of suspended disbelief and definitely overpowered, given the much broader applications it would have, in comparison. I decided not to replace it with anything partially as a safeguard to keep from risking the engineer becoming overpowered, and also because I just couldn't think of anything.

HD: d8
BAB: Average
Saves: Fort, Ref

CLASS SKILLS
The engineer's class skills are Appraise (Int), Craft (any) (Int), Disable Device (Dex), Fly (Dex), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (engineering) (Int), Perception (Wis), Profession (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Spellcraft (Int), Use Magic Device (Cha), Use Technological Device (Int).
Skill Ranks per Level: 4 + Int modifier

CLASS FEATURES
The following are class features of the engineer.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Engineers are proficient with all simple weapons, firearms, and bombs. They are also proficient with light armor, but not with shields.
Gadgetry (Su): Engineers prepare their spells by crafting a number of gadgets out of their collections of spare parts, and then “casts” his spells by triggering the gadget.
When using Craft (mechanical) to create a technological item, an engineer gains a competence bonus equal to his class level on the Craft (mechanical) check. In addition, an engineer can use Craft (mechanical) to identify technological items as if using technomancy. He must hold the item for 1 round to make such a check.
A gadget immediately becomes inert if it leaves the engineer's possession, reactivating as soon as it returns to his keeping—an engineer cannot pass out his gadgets for allies to use.
Formulae are renamed to schematics.
An engineer may qualify for the technomancer prestige class as if he could cast arcane spells equal to the highest level of gadgets he can use.
Bomb (Su): As the alchemist ability.
Cognatogen (Su): At 1st level, an engineer learns how to create a cognatogen, as per the cognatogen discovery.
Technologist (Ex): At 1st level, engineers receive Technologist (from Technology Guide) as a bonus feat.
Throw Anything (Ex): All engineers gain the Throw Anything feat as a bonus feat at 1st level. An engineer adds his Intelligence modifier to damage done with splash weapons, including the splash damage if any. This bonus damage is already included in the bomb class feature.
Discovery (Su): As the alchemist ability.
An engineer may choose from the following discoveries: acid bomb*, alchemical simulacrum (UM), blinding bomb (UM), concussive bomb*, confusion bomb*, delayed bomb, demolition charge* (DHB), dispelling bomb, directed bomb (MM), doppelganger simulacrum (UM), elemental mutagen (MM), explosive bomb*, fast bombs, fire brand (ARG), force bomb*, frost bomb*, grand cognatogen (UM), grand mutagen, greater alchemical simulacrum (UM), greater cognatogen (UM), greater mutagen, inferno bomb*, madness bomb, mutagen (UM), precise bombs, rocket bomb (ARG), scrap bomb (ARG), shock bomb*, smoke bomb*, spontaneous healing (UM), sticky bomb, stink bomb*, strafe bomb (UM), sunlight bomb* (UM), tanglefoot bomb* (UM), vestigial arm (UM), wings (UM)
Bonus Feat: An engineer may select Skill Focus (Craft [mechanical], Disable Device, Knowledge [engineering], or Use Technological Device), or any technological feat. This discovery may be selected multiple times, selecting a different feat each time.
Combat Inspiration (Ex): When an engineer uses inspiration on an attack roll or saving throw, he expends one use of inspiration instead of two. An engineer must be at least 9th level to select this talent.
Combine Gadgets: When the engineer creates a gadget, he can place two schematics into one gadget. When the gadget is consumed, both schematics take effect. This gadget has a level two levels higher than the highest-level schematics placed in the gadget. An engineer must be at least 8th level before selecting this discovery.
Eidetic Recollection (Su): An engineer can always choose to take 10 on any of his Knowledge checks, even if he's in immediate danger or distracted. An engineer may expend one use of inspiration to take 20 on a Knowledge skill check even if he's in immediate danger or distracted. An engineer must be at least 11th level to select this talent.
Grit (Ex): An engineer with this talent gains the Amateur Gunslinger feat and one grit feat of his choice. He must fulfill the prerequisites of the grit feat in order to choose it.
Inspiration (Ex): An engineer with this discovery gains a small inspiration pool. This inspiration is similar to an investigator's inspiration pool, except that he can only use his inspiration ability when attempting Craft (mechanical), Disable Device, Knowledge (engineering), or Use Technological Device checks without expending uses of inspiration, provided he's trained in the skill. The engineer gains a number of inspiration points equal to his Intelligence modifier (minimum 1). These inspiration points replenish at the start of each day. If he already has an inspiration pool, or gains an inspiration pool later, he gains half his Intelligence bonus (minimum 1) as bonus inspiration points to his inspiration pool.
Lucky Glitch (Ex): Whenever an engineer triggers a glitch when using a technological item, he rolls twice and can choose which of the two glitch effects actually occurs. An engineer always adds his level to rolls to determine what kind of glitch occurs, and treats rolls of over 100 as l00.
Parachute (Ex): The engineer creates a reusable parachute pack. As a standard action, the engineer may deploy this parachute to slow his falling (as the feather fall spell, but lasting until he lands). Upon landing, the parachute automatically winds back up into its pack. For one round after landing, the engineer is treated as flat-footed and his movement speed is halved.
Nimble (Ex): Starting at 2nd level, as the gunslinger ability.
Trapfinding (Ex): At 2nd level, as the rogue ability.
Swift Engineering (Ex): At 3rd level, an engineer can create technological items with astounding speed. It takes an engineer half the normal amount of time to create technological items.
Jury-Rig (Ex): At 6th level, as a standard action, an engineer can remove the broken condition from a single technological device he is currently holding. The broken condition returns after a number of charges (including shots of a firearm) have been spent equal to the engineer's Intelligence modifier, or twice that number of rounds have passed, whichever occurs first (minimum 1 round or charge).
Persistent Cognatogen (Su): At 14th level, the effects of a cognatogen last for 1 hour per level.
Grand Discovery (Su): I haven't yet come up with a lot of options for the engineer's equivalent of this ability.
Awakened Intellect: The engineer's constant exposure to strange chemicals has expanded his mind. His Intelligence score permanently increases by 2 points.
True Inspiration: The engineer can use inspiration on all skill checks – even ones he isn't trained in – and all ability checks without spending inspiration.
In addition, whenever he expends inspiration on an ability check, attack roll, saving throw, or skill check, he adds 2d6 rather than 1d6 to the result. An engineer must possess the inspiration discovery before selecting this discovery.
True Cognatogen: The engineer's cognatogen now grants a +8 natural armor bonus and a +8 alchemical bonus to Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. The engineer takes a –2 penalty to his Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution as long as the cognatogen persists. An engineer must possess the grand cognatogen discovery before selecting this discovery.

ENGINEER GADGETS
Engineers gain access to the following gadgets. While most of these spells are found in the Core Rulebook, those with superscripts are drawn from other sources.

1st-Level Engineer Gadgets: alarm, ant haulAPG, anticipate perilUM, blurred movementACG, body capacitanceACG, bomber's eyeAPG, breakAPG, burning hands, chill touch, color spray, corrosive touchUM, crafter's fortuneAPG, cure light wounds, dancing lantern, detect radiationTG, detect secret doors, detect undead, disguise self, ear-piercing screamUM, endure elements, enlarge person, expeditious excavationAPG, expeditious retreat, firebellyISG, flare burstAPG, floating disc, gravity bowAPG, grease, heightened awarenessACG, hold portal, hydraulic pushAPG, hypnotism, identify, interrogationUM, invisibility alarmACG, jump, jury-rigUC, keen sensesAPG, long armACG, longshotUC, mage armor, magic missile, memory lapseAPG, monkey fishACG, negate aromaAPG, obscuring mist, polypurpose panaceaUM, ray of sickeningUM, ray of enfeeblement, reduce person, shield, shock shieldUC, shocking grasp, silent image, sleep, snapdragon fireworksUM, stunning barrierACG, targeted bomb admixtureUC, technomancyTG, thunderstompACG, touch of gracelessnessAPG, touch of the seaAPG, true strike, unseen servant, vanishAPG, ventriloquism, vocal alterationUM
2nd-Level Engineer Gadgets: ablative barrierUC, acid arrow, acute sensesUM, aid, air stepACG, ant haul (communal)UC, arrow eruptionAPG, barkskin, bestow weapon proficiencyUC, blood armorACG, blood transcriptionUM, blur, bullet shieldUC, bullet wardACG, buoyancyACG, burning gazeAPG, certain gripUC, continual flame, cure moderate wounds, darkness, darkvision, daze monster, defensive shockUM, delay poison, detect thoughts, elemental touchAPG, euphoric cloudACG, fire breathAPG, flaming sphere, focused scrutinyACG, fog cloud, frigid touchUM, frost fallUC, glideAPG, glitterdust, gust of wind, haunting mistsUM, hypnotic pattern, invisibility, kinetic reverberationUC, knock, levitate, light prisonISG, magic siege engineUC, make whole, mirror image, molten orbACG, protection from arrows, pyrotechnics, reloading handsUC, resist energy, returning weaponUC, ricochet shotUC, scorching ray, see invisibility, shadow bomb admixtureUC, shatter, sonic screamACG, spider climb, time shudderACG, touch injectionUC, twisted spaceUC, undetectable alignment, web
3rd-Level Engineer Gadgets: anchored stepACG, arcane sight, aura sightACG, burrowUM, burst of speedUC, cure serious wounds, darkvision (communal)UC, daylight, deep slumber, delay poison (communal)UC, disable constructACG, dischargeTG, dispel magic, displacement, draconic reservoirAPG, elemental auraAPG, endure elements (communal)UC, fireball, flame arrow, fly, force punchUM, haste, hold person, hydraulic torrentAPG, invisibility sphere, irradiateTG, keen edge, lightning bolt, lightning lash bomb admixtureUC, locate weaknessUC, marionette possessionUM, nauseating trailACG, nondetection, pain strikeAPG, pellet blastUC, pierce disguiseACG, protection from arrows (communal)UC, protection from energy, ray of exhaustion, rechargeTG, resinous skinUC , resist energy (communal)UC, seek thoughtsAPG, shrink item, silver dartsACG, slow, spider climb (communal)UC, stinking cloud, stunning barrier (greater)ACG, thorn bodyAPG, thunderstomp (greater)ACG, water breathing
4th-Level Engineer Gadgets: air walk, air walk (communal)UC, arcane eye, ball lightningAPG, caustic bloodISG, confusion, cure critical wounds, darkvision (greater)UM, dazeUM, detonateAPG, dragon's breathAPG, echolocationUM, enchantment foilACG, enervation, eyes of the voidACG, fire shield, fire trap, flaming sphere (greater)ACG, freedom of movement, globe of invulnerability (lesser), invisibility (greater), locate creature, magic circle against technologyTG, magic siege engine (greater)UC, make whole (greater)TG, malfunctionUM, neutralize poison, resilient sphere, scrying, secure shelter, shout, solid fog, spell immunity, stoneskin, unbearable brightnessACG, universal formulaAPG, vitriolic mistUM, wall of fire
5th-Level Engineer Gadgets: acidic sprayUM, baleful polymorph, blight, cloudkill, cone of cold, contact other plane, corrosive consumptionUM, destroy robotTG, elude timeAPG, energy siege shotUC, hammer of mendingISG, hold monster, icy prisonUM, languid bomb admixtureUC, lightning arcUM, magic jar, overland flight, pain strike (mass)APG, planar adaptationAPG, prying eyes, rapid repairUM, sending, sonic thrustUM, spell resistance, stoneskin (communal)UC, teleport, unbreakable constructUM, wall of soundUM, wall of force, waves of fatigue
6th-Level Engineer Gadgets: acid fog, analyze dweomer, antimagic field, caging bomb admixtureUC, chain lightning, discharge (greater)TG, disintegrate, dispel magic (greater), energy siege shot (greater)TG, freezing sphere, globe of invulnerability, heal, mislead, programmed image, transformation, true seeing

I've been wanting to make an engineer/tinkerer class for a while now, but there's a few other things I'm working on first - like my group's next campaign. In the meantime, however, partly as a stopgap until I can sit down and make a solid one, and partly as a way to playtest a couple of my ideas for it, I've decided to come up with alchemist archetype for the concept.
Basically, instead of using infusions and mutagens, the engineer would use various gadgets and inventions (respectively, more or less). My initial, general idea is this:

Gadgets: Basically repurposed infusions. A new "spell" list would probably need to be made since some infusions wouldn't work well, flavour-wise as gadgets and some spells that wouldn't work well as infusions would as a gadget. Otherwise, the mechanics would probably be largely the same.

Inventions: Taking the place of mutagens, inventions (or something like this) are what I consider to be the bread-and-butter of the engineer class/archetype. The simplest way to deal with them is to basically make them as copies of magic items, but with a few differences. First off, inventions, being primarily based off of science rather than magic, are either entirely immune or at least highly resistant to dispel magic and similar effects. Secondly, as something of a counterbalance to this, they are subject to the misfire rules of firearms (or something similar). Each time an invention is used, there is a chance that the gears or other mechanisms don't work quite as intended, and it may even break permanently.
Beyond this, I have two main ideas for dealing with this: engineers can make inventions just like any other magic item can be made (but probably get a more-or-less free one that only they can ever use), or engineers can make a limited number of inventions which expands as they gain levels, perhaps based on a total equivalent caster level of inventions combined.

The Inventions mechanic is the one that will really need balancing, and I may need to resort to just coming up with an entirely new system and even set of items just for it, however I'd like to avoid that if all possible. Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.

So, these are my basic ideas. I kindly ask that you guys help me hammer them into something that might at least approach balance so that they may be effectively playtested.

I'm working on setting up a World of Warcraft campaign for my group just because we think it'd be fun. The plan is to basically adapt each zone to a couple of core quest-line/plots to build the zone's adventure(s) around. To keep the growth curve steady throughout the campaign, I'll be awarding levels at appropriate points, manually, rather than experience after each encounter. Additionally, after what equates to the endgame boss of each expansion (plus vanilla), I'll be awarding a mythic tier.

Now, I don't expect, plan, or intend for our group to visit every zone just like how when leveling a character in Wow, itself, you don't (need to) go through every zone, nor will we necessarily visit every dungeon, even if we adventure through its zone. However, one thing that I'd like to encourage is the not-quite-end-game raids and larger dungeons that I can't quite fit into the planned levelling progression without slowing things down. These would be things like the Black Temple in Burning Crusade, Ulduar in Wrath of the Lich King, Firelands in Cataclysm, or Throne of Thunder in Mists of Pandaria.

What I'm trying to figure out is how to incentivize playing these adventures. Experience isn't an option given how I'm working levels (plus, I'm trying to keep the leveling curve similar to WoW's - basically, every four WoW levels equals one PF level which will bring us into the cusp of epic territory once we reach WoD), using mythic tiers for these as well as the actual endgame adventures, and I fear that equipment would be too transient - I'd rather have something that even while adventuring in WoD, my players will be able to look back and remember earning in those.

Unrelated Footnote: Just to assuage any concerns, I will be adapting all of this to tabletop, not merely converting stats. The adventures will be built with the freedom of Pathfinder in mind, not merely bringing the hack-and-slash grind of the game to the tabletop.

I'm preparing a Warcraft campaign for my group, and I'm doing relatively well creating and refluffing what I need so far, but trolls are giving me some trouble. I do have the 3.5e Warcraft RPG books, but I don't like the Rapid Healing ability as presented there. It's just a bit too slow.
So I'm considering using the Fast Healing trait (ARG), but slowing it down to 1 hp per minute rather than 1 round.
Would this be worth about 3 RP? Any other ideas for watering down fast healing to make it a viable trait for core-level races?

I love creating characters, and frequently create them on the side even when there isn't a game for me to play them in. Usually these are put on the shelf for me to thumb through and pull out to play in later games. Anyway, there a couple of character ideas I've been wanting to make, but have been met with difficulty in translating them to the character sheet.
Unless I'm missing something, there isn't really any supported way of doing these, and I'd kinda like to see such options added.

#1: A spear-wielding monk. Generally speaking, some way of having alternative sets of monk weapons, or something.

#2: A character who fights with gauntlets. Ideally monk (which would tie into the above), but fighter, barbarian, or other martial classes works, too. Point is, gauntlets aren't a really viable weapon to focus on because Improved Weapon Proficiency renders them entirely obsolete with the possible exception of being able to apply magic weapon enhancements to unarmed attacks.
But there are some pretty cool characters who fight with gauntlets - Alexander Louise Armstrong (technically spiked gauntlets, which are actually at least as good as daggers, but...), Inui Banjin, Yang Xiao Long (sans the built-in shotgun part, of course), Dante's Ifrit and Beowulf weapons, etc.

#3: Characters with impairments who aren't oracles. First off, I know that there are frequently balance problems with flaw systems, especially the one from 3.5e, but every now and again, I want to make a character who is missing an eye or a hand.

Here's an idea I had for a thread: Ever get ready to start a game and you have some idea of the sort of character you want to play, but can't quite figure out a good backstory? Or how to fill in and round out their personality? Or what class or archetype would best represent the flavour you're trying to capture?

Well, assuming it catches interest, this thread would be a place where you could post your what you do have planned about your character, and ask for some advice from others on how you could flesh out that character.

Some notes on format:
1. You may post as much information as you'd like to for your character, however please try to keep it organized. If it is more than a couple of paragraphs, please use [spoiler] tags. If it isn't so long, please don't. Of course, if it is so long that you need to use a spoiler, there's a good chance you don't really need us.

1a. If there is campaign-specific information we should know, always put it in a spoiler tag, and try to keep it relatively short.

2. Make sure that you clearly state what sort of advice you are looking for either at the beginning or (preferably) the end of your post. Don't hide this in a spoiler tag.

3. This is not a crunch thread. There are hundreds of threads on the messageboards about various ways to optimize various characters and builds. Of course, one can't remove the mechanics entirely from the character creation process, but try to keep this stuff to a minimum and pertaining to the fluff or roleplay aspects of the character.

Long story short, I'm toying with the idea of making publishable campaign setting that instead of the standard elves, dwarves, and gnomes, is primarily inhabited by other races. Since Pathfinder already has so many great races, and the setting has a bit of an elemental theme, I was thinking of using the elemental humanoids (oreads, ifrits, etc.) as its primary inhabitants. Now here's the question: would I be permitted, under the OGL, to reprint their mechanics in my book or would I have to just refer the reader to Bestiary 2 or Advanced Race Guide?
I'm no lawyer, but as best as I can figure out I can't see anything in the OGL that would forbid it, unless they count as "proper names", but I just figured it would be better to check and be certain.

P.S. Don't hold your breath for me completing this project. It's just something I've been considering.

What would happen if you applied the Giant simple template to a rune giant (making it Colossal), and then cast enlarge person on it?

A pretty straight-forward question: Does a cleric who worships a deity with the bastard sword for a favoured weapon get proficiency with it as a martial (two-handed) weapon or exotic (one-handed)?

I'm sure this question has been asked and answered before, but I've been having difficulty finding anything decisive in my searches.

I was just reading one of the sylph's alternate racial traits, specifically Breeze-Kissed, which has the phrase "A Sylph with this racial trait surrounds herself with swirling winds, gaining a +2 racial bonus to AC against non-magical ranged attacks."
This made me wonder something that I never really thought of before: when the phrase 'non-magical attack' is used, does it mean entirely mundane, or just not from a spell, spell-like ability, or the like? And similarly, how does this interact with things like natural weapons that are treated as magic for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction? Since its specifically stated that the latter is for damage reduction only, I imagine not, but its always nice to double check.

...I tried to kind of reference the whole "in SPAAAACE!" thing with the title. Not sure it worked. Anywho...

In my spare time, I've decided to start making a campaign setting for the Pathfinder system that is largely based on Floating Continents and related tropes. The idea primarily arose as a way to give airships more inherent purpose than simply Rule of Cool and as a convenient and stylish way to get around the world. If the oceans are replaced with open sky, airships become the best method of transportation. While this is where the idea began, I definitely hope and intend for it to go well beyond this. What would a world suspended in the clouds be like?

Naturally, this will necessitate more robust rules for airship travel, construction, piloting, etc. The basic ideas are already starting to accrete like a new-born planet. Inspiration is being drawn primarily from settings like Eberron, Spelljammer, Final Fantasy (particularly FF XII's city of Bhujerba), Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle (and probably Castle in the Sky, but I haven't seen that one yet - it is on my too watch list this week, however), Allods Online, and Skies of Arcadia.

In terms of overall tone, while of course I aim to create as versatile a setting as possible, I intend for the default tone to hover somewhere between classic Final Fantasy and Miyazaki movies. A sense of idealism and wonder more than the gritty world of Eberron or the silliness of Spelljammer.(Let it be known that in spite of this, these are two of my favourite campaign settings throughout all of tabletop gaming.) Technologically, it will be somewhere between Golarion and Eberron but leaning more towards the Golarion end of things. The setting is at roughly the same level as Golarion, they just had to develop a little further along certain paths in order to thrive.

As for the floating continents themselves, the largest (and rarest) will probably max out at around the size of Australia or Europe - mostly just to support large seas and perhaps even an Underdark analogue. Maybe one that's comparable to Africa or South America in size. The majority of islands range between Ireland and Ireland plus Great Britain in size. All floating miles above the Mists which rumours say hides another inhospitable world full of terrible monsters. The main purpose of this is to provide an explanation for gravity's universal "down", and so that people who do fall off of skyships or continents don't just fall forever which would mean that they could always be rescued, providing one could find them. As for why the landmasses float... I haven't nailed that down yet, and wouldn't be against just handwaving it if I can't come up with something.

EDIT: A little bit of random info that I came across on Ravenloft suggests the Mists bit is probably a little too similar to ignore. It was just something I came up with to quickly solve the issue mentioned above, and I actually had more of Final Fantasy IX in mind when I did that. I suppose I'll come up with another solution to that problem... Note that aside from this, the only thing I actually know about Ravenloft is that it's a horror setting. I don't even really know the particulars of it's Mist so it might not be as similar as I think.

Another thing I intend to do with the airships is aim to have as much variety in their construction as Spelljammer (but more sensible shapes, of course) - sleek elven ships made of wood and powered by sails and arcane magic, sturdy dwarven ironclads that use bound fire elementals, and even ships made of bone that run on the trapped souls of the dead. On the other hand, I want to avoid adding in too many mechanics - particularly the kind that would require additions to character sheets. Aside from maybe adding a skill or two (probably Pilot, and nothing else if I can help it), I'd like the default character sheet to be able to record everything necessary for a character. I only mention this because quite a few settings (particularly fan-made ones) add numerous skills and mechanics that, in my opinion, just result in mucking things up.

So anyway, this is the basic outline of where I'm starting from. I haven't the foggiest notion of how to proceed from here (beyond probably making a map of the world - as much as one can be made for a world that consists of potentially wandering landmasses). Comments, suggestions, questions on anything are more than welcome.

Okay, so here's the predicament:
Some alchemist archetypes replace swift alchemy with another ability, but say nothing about instant alchemy. Additionally, the entries themselves for the class proper do not directly reference each other ("At level X a character may... instead."). I would say that RAI would clearly have instant alchemy be downgraded to swift alchemy in this case, but from what I can tell, RAW simply skips over swift and lets the character gain instant when they get to that level.

Am I missing something that would make RAI RAW?

From what I gather, the slave trade is quite strong in Golarion (unusually so for a fantasy setting) and being someone who simply loves experimentation with roleplay, an ex-slave was simply a matter of time for me. My concept involves a very bitter man who escaped slavery and has become a monk, vowing to do all he can to rid the Inner Sea of slavery. Sadly, though there is lots of talk about where slave markets exist in various sourcebooks, there is very little information on slave life - one of the things I was most disappointed to find lacking in the Osirion book.
While my first instinct was to have him be a labourer who worked on massive construction projects (like, say the pyramids) it seems to be implied that those days have largely passed in Osirion.

So basically, what are your thoughts and assumptions (or comments from Paizo staff *hopeful grin*) on the subject.

By the way, I am already aware that slaves - representing a sizable investment on behalf of their owners - were, in general, much better taken care of than many people are inclined to believe. What I'm more interested in is the specifics of Osiran slave life. In particular what kinds of manual labour would one expect a slave to perform, who might own them in terms of rank and nobility, and how the latter might affect the former.

One idea that I've been wanting to use for a character is something more or less inspired by Nightcrawler from X-Men. In particular his seamless use of rapid, short-range teleportation mixed with combat. I've been trying to decide, first, on how to best do this - a magus or bard archetype, an alternate class like the samurai or ninja, a new class entirely, or (what I've settled on for now) a prestige class.
I don't have much experience at making classes, however so I'm looking to you guys for advice and help.

So here's the basic outline I have so far:
Hit Die: d8
Requirements
Skills: Acrobatics 4 ranks.
Spells: Ability to cast dimension door or use it as a spell-like ability.
Special: Evasion class feature.

I can't decide whether the Dimensional Agility feat should be another requirement or granted at 1st level as a bonus feat.

Class Skills: Acrobatics, Bluff(?), Escape Artist, Knowledge (arcana)(?), Perception, Sleight of Hand, Spellcraft, Stealth.
2 + Int skill points per level

Class Features

• Sneak Attack +1d6 at 1st level, increased by 1d6 every 3 levels thereafter (+2d6 at 4th, +3d6 at 7th, etc.)
  
• +1 spellcasting level at every other level starting at 2nd (4th, 6th, etc.)
  
• Blinkstrike: Once per day (increased periodically with level), a blinkblade may use a move action to treat an adjacent opponent as flatfooted/flanked until the end of the round. At the end of his turn, the blinkblade may choose to move to any other square adjacent to his target. This does not provoke an attack of opportunity.
  
• Perhaps a +10 ft. increase to base land speed at some level.
  
• Flash Step: At 10th level, a blinkblade may use dimension door as a spell-like ability once per day. This use may be used as part of a move action at any point during the movement.

Really, dimension door is rather more powerful than this concept needs, and I may homebrew a lower level spell - probably with a range of short - to use in its place.

This is just a very rough idea of the concept I have in mind and I would greatly appreciate comments and suggestions in particular on how to balance the class and for other ideas to incorporate into the class.
One last comment: While a rogue/sorcerer is what I had in mind and is mostly what the PrC is based off of, I like the versatility of the requirements since it allows a surprisingly wide variety of classes and archetypes - a monk/cleric, ranger/witch, or rogue/bard could all provide very different spins on the same mechanics.

When I first started reading the blogs and such for this project and came across the mention of hexes, I immediately assumed that this would be a sort of in-the-background management device used to handle and manage various aspects in the game from load times to kingdom control radii (or something). But part of that assumption was that these hexes would be largely invisible to the player (at least in the final product) and that in-game things would be glossed over with a more naturalized sheen.

Though I haven't yet finished catching up on the blog posts, it seems from inferring various posts in threads that at least some people have different expectations.

With the full understanding that we are still very early in the planning and development stages, I would like to ask for a bit of clarification on how the hexes will translate into the game itself, and in particular how "visible" will they be?