Lawrence DuBois's page

...It seems that Sean's post was literally the only one I didn't see. Now I feel a bit sheepish. Still, definitely agree with you that the qinggong monk could've had a second pass with the editor.

Sorry for necro, but I really don't think a satisfying conclusion was reached here, and I have a player who's looking at the qinggong monk and I'd like to have an answer for him. Personally, I'm intuitively inclined to think that - in the absence of a clearer, official ruling - being able to swap out every individual instance of slow fall separately just smacks of munchkin cheese. But then, swapping out the whole thing for just a single ability makes it one of the poorer trade-offs when compared to other swappable abilities like timeless body and tongue of the sun and moon. But then, there are several other very solid abilities that are swappable which are much more powerful than even slow fall in its entirety, so... that kinda goes nowhere. But the thing that really gives me a hang up is the fact that 8th-level and 10th-level are separate tiers, even though without the ability to swap out individual instances of slow fall, there is absolutely nothing to functionally distinguish between those two tiers. They might as well be bundled together into a single tier since the only thing that differentiates tiers is what your monk level has to be before you can select abilities from that list, and after 7th level you have to wait until 11th level before you can gain a new ability. So there is no point at which you could take an 8th-level ability when you weren't able to take a 10th-level one. Unless you can swap out individual instances of slow fall.

...Way back when I first started playing, I actually remember having read that. And then I promptly forgot it until you reminded me.
"I know how spellcasting works. I don't need to reread those rules. This isn't grappling." -_-; It is always a good idea to reread rules.

Fair point. I didn't really think that through. Just kinda went with a quick intuition call. I should learn to stop trusting those more...

I do plan to play a fair bit of this by ear, based on what sorts of combinations the party has used, but I did want to have an idea of what should be particularly watched out for, or a bad idea.

I think I'll plan for 4th-level slots being open for metamagic only (or perhaps for spells of any lower level), and then reassess to consider opening them up to full spell slots once we get closer to that point.

Also, I intend to limit Extra feats. I'm deciding whether to make that limit one or three.

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...

Cool, I look forward to checking it out. Though... I wonder if I could pester you to at least offer some speculation about whether or not they would pre-redemption? I mean there's really no wrong answer. If not, they are the bad guys after all, and if so, then Even Evil Has Standards. Obviously, a GM could rule either way for their particular game - and I for one tend to treat canon, especially in RPGs, as more of a suggestion than immutable rules, anyway. So this is entirely just to sate my curiosity.

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

Thread resurrection! I know it's a couple years too late, but you never did get a reply and not to be too proud of myself, but I think this is a pretty good thread idea that ought to stay alive. So...

I don't have Elves of Golarion either, but I'd say it's safe to assume that anywhere that has nobles has a healthy gradient of nobility, including a bottom tier of technically nobles. The core of an aristocracy is basically the royal family tree, with those on more distant branches making up the lower noble ranks. This is then modified and layered upon by marriages and the occasional granting of a peerage or noble title. Elves are usually implied, if not outright stated, to have fairly low birthrates for their lifespan (which is how they can be the longest lived race and yet not be nearly as populous as humans), and so I wouldn't think it a stretch to assume that elven nobility is much closer to that original core where the baron- and count-equivalents are all still fairly closely related to the main royal family. Alternatively, there could be more completely unrelated elven nobles in order to "fill in" and make up for this low birthrate. Indeed, if this is the elven standard, it may even be that granted peerships are more common - or even given precedence over hereditary titles. Since elves have such long lifespans, it could give them a longer period of time to find the ideal successor rather than just sticking with the current noble's kid for the sake of stability.

If this is the case, it would give you an interesting twist on the haughty elf assumptions. His haughtiness isn't (immediately) due to others just not having the right blood/heritage, but because each individual in elven society is expected to <i>prove</i> their worth while humans and other shorter-lived races seem content to just assume that their leaders will be good enough based solely on who their parents were. Of course, in effect this would lead your character to considering his elven heritage to make him inherently better than everyone else, but more because of the way that elven culture works in comparison, and his own ethnocentrism.

And then when it comes to proving worth, consider how long elves typically have to prove said worth - a single great deed would not be enough to impress an elf as over a century or two, pretty much anyone can stumble into performing a single great deed. Worth could only be proved by <i>consistently</i> performing great deeds -
appropriate to whatever "worth" the individual is trying to prove, of course - slaying a bunch of dragons, while great, says nothing about how good an author's books are. Basically, you can draw your haughtiness from imagining the dystopic version of a meritocracy.

As for why he's adventuring, I'd personally go for a fairly simple solution drawn from the pleasant convenience of his noble background and presence in the Pathfinder Society: he was assigned to it as a Kyonin representative. The Pathfinder Society is large, famous, and influential enough that I could easily see most countries -
even a fairly isolationist one - essentially treating it as a sort of pseudo-nation, and have all the same diplomats, embassies, and so forth with it as they would with any other influential country. While the majority of these would probably be diplomats who simply stay in Absalom and spend the majority of their time negotiating with the Society's leaders, the Society would probably require that each country that does so also send a certain number of individuals to join the Society proper as part of those negotiations. The Society isn't hurting for recruits, so they would probably only ask for a nominal number of these representatives - few enough that the quota could easily be met solely by volunteers who would see it as an honour to perform this duty for their country.

Well consider that my house rule here is basically treating it like extra skill ranks. So what I've been doing doesn't allow unusually high bonuses, just typically high bonuses in a couple extra skills. Really, the only reason I see to revert back is one less house rule to remember.

Yeah, for some reason for the first time in years, a minute after posting this I realized that the disconnect lay in the fact that I'd been treating it like a skill rank (specifically in the level-limit aspect). Feeling a bit sheepish now, but also unsure of whether I should keep doing it this way or revert to the actual rules... Probably just wait til the end of the current game I'm running, then revert to RAW.

Anyway, I'll leave this thread up in case anyone else makes the same mistake I did. ^^;

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 number 2, angrygm's paragon monsters. Or I think "legendary actions" from 5e. Basically one creature gets to act as if it had multiple initiative results, effectively taking multiple turns in a single round of combat. I've not tried running with it myself, but looksnlike a good subsystem.

As for #1, I suppose you could always have monsters take class levels. Rotrl has harpies with monk levels if I recall.

I'll give the paragon monster thing a look, but something about it just... feels wrong. Still, better than nothing.

As for granting class levels, that just takes a previously low CR monster and makes it a high one. I'm talking about, for example, to allow a horde of weak monsters to be a viable encounter.

Bounded Accuracy in 5th Edition lets low CR monsters remain a threat for many, many levels.

Basically, 5th Edition reduced the bonus you get from "BAB" from 1-20 to +2 to +6. Also, PC ability scores max at 20, and monsters max at 30. This means a typical PC has a starting attack roll bonus of +4 or +5 and maxes out at +11 at 17th level.

AC is also pretty restricted. Monster ACs are between 8 and 20, usually in the 11 to 15 range. PC ACs usually max out around 20, with magic boosting it by 1 or 2 or so. (No Xmas Tree effect!)

So a CR 1 monster with a +5 to hit hits 30% against a level 20 PC.

But to do something similar in Pathfinder would require re-doing lots and lots of details.

They're different games. Pathfinder really rewards rules mastery and optimizing builds. 5th Edition sacrifices complexity for ease of play.

Perhaps combined with some armor-as-DR rules, (including a minimum damage clause) that might have some potential... Probably would need a fair bit of tweaking, and perhaps even rewriting a few class features and other common rules, but...

So... I really only have a couple of things I wish were different. These aren't the only problems I consider Pathfinder to have, but they are the only ones that I can't really find a homebrew/house rule solution for. (I would love to hear suggestions, if anyone's got one.)

1) Allow low CR monsters to remain viable in combat. Not saying that an adventurer should be likely to die from a bunch of lemures, but they shouldn't be able to virtually ignore them.

2) Viable solo boss encounters without requiring a ridiculous amount of pre-planning (both in and out of the game world). Some villains just should be fought on their own, but doing so means either a short, anti-climactic fight, or always fortifying the villain in ideal conditions and countless wards, which gets rather old.

Well the bulk of sorting things out is simply categorizing all the different types of crafting. However, I could modify the Quirks part of this to work for mundane items, too. It's kind of always bugged me how, for the most part, all craftsmen in a game create essentially identical items. Pathfinder is actually an unusual exception for having a whopping 3 variations of items to reflect the craftsman's skill and personal technique: normal, masterwork, and shoddy. Surely this can be expanded upon. Not a variant I imagine a lot of people would really be interested in, but... That's kinda what house rule systems like this are for, I think. Heh... When/If I actually finish hashing all these rules out properly, perhaps I'll start up a Recettear-inspired game to test them out.

Sorry for the necro-posting, but I was just looking for advice on (narratively/design-wise) problematic spells and came across this thread.

As for teleport, I've basically decided to go with changing it to work more like the teleportation and portal spells in World of Warcraft: namely, that you can only teleport to certain pre-defined locations that require a ritual to create (and, optionally, to maintain). I generally treat the destination as being a specific 20-foot cube. The Familiarity table in the teleport spell description is modified so that instead of "Very familiar", "Studied carefully", etc. the categories basically become "Very familiar", "Studied the teleportation ritual for the destination" (includes being taught or reading notes on it, treated as copying a spell into your spellbook - even if you don't have a spellbook - but without taking up any pages), "Visited the location" (must have at least had the actual, specific destination area in their line-of-sight at some point), "Know the destination exists" (can simply be told, or optionally, a Knowledge (arcana) check could allow a caster to make a reasonable assumption that a teleport destination exists somewhere; for example at the mage's guild in a major city), and "False destination" remains as normal. Greater teleport basically bumps you up one tier on the Familiarity table (except for "False destination"), and grants automatic success if you're already at "Very familiar".

This makes teleport more of a time-saving convenience for long-distance travel to specific locations rather than a way to completely circumvent an adventure.

I've also homebrewed teleportation ward spell that can be used on a destination which basically reverses (and flips) the Familiarity table results (so, for example, someone who has studied the location carefully and tries to teleport to it will only land on target on a roll of 99 or 100). Greater teleportation ward causes anyone who tries to teleport to the destination to treat it as a false destination. Both spells allow for exceptions to be worked into the spell on its casting (only warding against/only allowing certain races or individuals, requiring a password to be spoken during the casting, holding a special token or marked with a specific sigil - more uses for arcane mark! - etc.).

How will you do magic items?

Specifically, wondrous?

Pretty much a case-by-case basis for which Craft would be used to create the base item. They're so varied, and the mechanics only go so far (as they should, IMO - no need to bog things down with extraneous detail) that trying to create hard rules for which magic items are created by which skills is just madness. Of course, this system also supports - and almost assumes - a sort of "chain of production" system. Essentially allowing a player who has both Craft (smelting) and Craft (bladesmithing) to craft a longsword for a mere 1.67 gp (or 9.4sp, if using all of Alternate Crafting), albeit requiring more time.

So the "raw materials" for crafting any item - including a magic item - simply includes whatever it is that you're turning directly into the final item, rather than going all the way down to the logs and ore needed to make the whole thing from scratch. Unless, of course, the magic item specifically states a Craft check requirement, or the base item is something that wouldn't have much reason to exist in a non-enchanted form. Still, it probably wouldn't be too absurd to expect that specialized mundane craftsmen exist who make a living crafting such items for mages to enchant, or at least would be amenable to hiring their skills out to a mage for such purposes. The construction of an apparatus of Kwalish (I forget the Paizo name for this) might reflect the real-world construction of planes or submarines, where no one person (or even company) makes the whole thing in-house, but rather subcontracts out the various parts to others. However, doing this would, of course, increase the base cost of raw materials for magic items whose construction does assume everything being made from scratch by the mage, himself. Though, again, I personally treat the default magic items' raw material cost as starting with a mundane version of the finished item. Presumably, you could maintain the assumption that the printed magic item cost is considering the absolute raw materials, but this could easily cause a lot of items' crafting cost to actually surpass their final price if more than one or two Craft skills would be involved in its construction.

Regardless, this does sort of nerf Craft Wondrous Items a bit compared to other Item Creation feats, since unlike Craft Staff or Craft Magic Arms and Armor, a single Craft skill doesn't cover most of what the feat can make. But it's pretty minimal, and CWI can kind of use a bit of a nerf compared to other Item Creation feats. :p (Not to mention that it's only a nerf in the munchkin-y sense of not being able to get the absolute most out of it that the system would theoretically allow.)

Yes, I'm roughly lining the tiers up with the DC difficulties on the table, for one. As a rule of thumb, generalists craft up to Normal difficulty items, skilled tradesmen craft from Normal to Intricate, and specialists go from Intricate up (each one inclusively). Of course, this is just a rough division, and there can be items of virtually any difficulty but generally such things are either well-crafted or shoddier versions of items within the tier's normal range, and, of course, a higher tier skill can be used to craft items of a lower tier, just at a slight penalty (due to the emphasis on specialized skills requiring a lessened focus on more general skills - and, of course, the penalty only increases by 1 every 5th rank, so you don't run into a situation where your general skill actually deteriorates as you get more skilled in a specialized tier). Additionally, I try to give each tier a few higher DC items that can only be crafted by that tier.

Aside from that, it doesn't really rely on the Alternate Craft rules, though I do use them, myself. Additionally, there are a couple of "optional" variant rules for it that even I go back and forth on using. One, for example, is that when you spend your first skill point on a Craft skill, it has to be a generalist tier skill. When you spend another point on that skill, you can upgrade it to a skilled tier Craft, and finally up to a specialist tier Craft with your next point. This can probably be scaled up if you'd prefer - given typical PC growth, I'd feel more inclined to make it every two ranks that you can upgrade, but I go with every one just because NPCs are rarely expected to go far beyond 3rd level, and so that would drastically reduce the number of specialized craftsman you'd normally expect in a settlement.

Thanks. If you're interested, I may get around to posting my Craft tree/table/thing. Technically, it's incomplete at the moment, as while I love it, it hasn't got high priority. It's mostly an outline that I add to on the fly as situations come up in-game or I learn about another specialization that existed. And in addition to that, I really only go about three tiers deep with it (which I call "generalist", "skilled", and "specialized"), but in parts the document has even more layers of specialization based on historical specializations that I just find a little too specific to be worth it for a game. But they're there...

Just finished editing in my own proposal/thoughts on the subject. I'm posting on my phone right now so in addition to being slow to type, I was having some issues posting at all. Sorry about that.

Eh. Seems needlessly complex. Not to mention the fact that that would allow a player to eventually add practically every one of their skills as Profession skills by level 20. I'd think that the general assumption is that it is exceedingly rare for a person to have more than one or two sets of professional skills. And I don't think that allowing other skills to be used as Profession necessarily makes Profession redundant. Profession (sailor), for example, could easily remain as-is even though it would necessarily touch on skills like Survival, Knowledge (geography), and so on, because in addition to encompassing a variety of distinct skills (as opposed to primarily relying on only one), it uses very narrow and specific aspects of those skills that aren't as universally applicable as the other skills, themselves. One might be able to use Profession (sailor) to predict a coming rain or thunderstorm, or to look at a map and determine good sea routes, but they would need Survival to predict a sandstorm, and Knowledge (geography) to infer land routes and mountain passes on a map.

Of course, I'm comfortable leaving a lot of this to GM adjudication, but if you'd really rather something more concrete, I'd just say allow a player to choose a background occupation and determine which skill (including Profession, itself) best fits it that he can use to make a living off of. This can either be chosen and fixed at character creation, or each time the player wants to make some spare cash during downtime. Either way, it still prevents a player from simply using Sense Motive because that just happens to be his highest skill bonus, unless he can come up with an occupation that would significantly and solely use Sense Motive to make money (none come to mind - a charlatan would be better off with Bluff, a gambler would at least rely equally on Bluff and Sense Motive, as well as skills particular to the game he's playing, a translator would be closer to relying on Diplomacy, though I'm tempted to say that'd be its own Profession - Linguistics wouldn't count since all that's necessary is that he understand the two languages, which can be done even without a rank in Linguistics, and because knowing a language is an entirely binary thing in PF; however, translating a text from an ancient language or unusual dialect might allow Linguistics).

What's important is that the skill that is chosen should be universally applied to all characters following that occupation, with no consideration given to what skills the characrer may or may not even have ranks in. For example, if you decide that a translator should use Linguistics, then all translators should use Linguistics, and not Diplomacy or Profession (translator).

Just because you haven't been formally or classically trained doesn't mean you wouldn't at the very least learn things on the job. Whether you were taught the principles and terminology behind how an arch works, or figured out how to build one through trial and error doesn't change the fact that you'd still have to understand how the weight is distributed in order to construct one, and that understanding equally grants you the insight to know its weakpoints, whether or not you know what "keystone" or "voussoir" means. Vocabulary is the only real difference I could potentially see between the two, and given how language aquisition works, I don't consider that a big enough difference to split the skill. Especially not when activities as diverse as jumping, climbing, and swmming are all handled by the same skill. Neither does Perform differentiate between someone who plays by rote or plays by ear.

I think that the craft/profession skills are purposefully hand-wavy. For one, profession(cook) is a huge blanket statement. Anyone who knows how to cook, knows that baking and cooking are two different schools of cooking entirely. As you mentioned earlier joinery and carpentry are two different crafting types. However, I wouldn't want my role-playing sheet bogged down with tons of skills to cover each specific type of craft and profession skill. In fact, most games/modules don't really include much in the way of craft or profession skill checks. Pathfinder society allows you to use down-time to practice your profession, but you really only get cp and sp for nominal rolls and all of this takes place outside of the normal gaming session. PS completely removed crafting from their game. I can really only think of one time that a profession check was needed in a game that I ran. PCs were on a boat, and the crew took damage. A PC attempted to step up and prevent the boat from capsizing. I made him roll a profession(sailor) check. Apart from scenarios like this, or downtime, I don't feel like profession/craft is something that needs expanding. It really only plays a background role in games anyway. At the end of the day, what does it matter in terms of game mechanics if the party cook burns the eggs or the party carpenter can't connect a cabinet to a wall?

Well to each there own, and as I said at the beginning, I totally get why something this involved isn't the default. But as for the idea that a characrer sheet would get bogged down in Craft skills because of this, it wouldn't really. For one, historically, skilled tradesmen rarely studied deeply into more than one craft, and the degree of cross-training that would exist is the reason I included the penalties for using one Craft skill in place of a related one, rather than require each specialization to be solely used for its own items. This also makes it so that there is minimal use to be gained from taking ranks in several related skills - and I find it is rather rare for players to spend ranks on mpre than one or two Craft skills, anyway, given how little use Craft has to campaigns anyway. Until the background skills system was introduced, I'd actually stopped using it entirely for years when building characters.

The one exception to this is low-magic and E6 campaigns, and I find that the feel of such games benefits from a slightly more "gritty" set of Craft rules.

Profession / Knowledge relationship as I've heard it explained in one setting, and using your architect example...

Knowledge (architecture & engineering, as you put it) is the ability to recognize the key strengths and weaknesses of structures, and machines you are examining.
Profession Architect is the ability to make a living off of designing structures and machines.

It was never a hard and set explanation, just one DM's way to relate it for any that did not understand the relationship in his game.

The trouble is that this allows for a character with 20 ranks in Profession (architect), and 0 in Knowledge (architecture), which... just... no. An architect's ability to make a living - especially in a medieval era setting where architectural complexity and a building's value were pretty much always directly proportional - should be directly tied to their familiarity with architectural and structural principles. Practically speaking, there is no way that you're ability to understand the integrity of a structure and your ability to design a structure yourself could develop independently. And since there are no rules that require X number of ranks in one skill in order to put Y ranks in another, I'd just feel much better about allowing an architect to use his Knowledge skill to earn a living than require he spend two ranks to do so, anyway.

Ah, that's a good idea. Though my thought is more the opposite; using other skills to function as Profession.

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).

You are talking about Charles Stross' Laundry Files series on your first description, if I remember correctly, the specific book you are referencing containing the "basilisk effect" was "The Atrocity Archives". It should be noted that magic in the series is Really dangerous, even for the pros. There is nothing warm and fuzzy in the series that isn't hiding some ugly fangs and claws. We are talking about the impending destruction of the human race, the planet, and whatever else the Cthulhu crowd steps on when they return.

Excellent! I'd been trying to rediscover what the series was called so I could check it out. If I got anything woefully off in my description, remember that this was fuzzy memories of what my friend told me about it - plenty of room for error.

Though it should also be said that it's perfectly possible to snatch some ideas from a setting without taking all of them, if they don't suit the setting you're trying to build.

I don't remember the name of it, but a friend of mine told me about a series that's set in a more-or-less modern or near-future world with magic. It's pretty much just proper magic, same as you see in fantasy, but the feel all comes from how it's treated in-universe. Namely, that magic is considered by the setting's characters as just another branch of physics, following its own - but still testable, verifiable, and quantifiable - laws. In particular, as I recall, people skilled in magic are treated like computer programmers, and they in turn treat magic like computer code. I don't really know if it is actual code or not, but I think that merely its thoroughly "scientific" treatment is all that's necessary for the effect. Magic spells, enchanted items, even monsters' abilities are never handwaved as being "just magic", but can instead be studied, analyzed, and effects can be directly adapted from one thing to another with a skilled enough technician. For example, I believe a central plot revolved around a terrorist organization analyzing and isolating the effect of a basilisk's gaze (as in the actual monster's ability to petrify those it looks at) and figuring out how to apply it to the nation's security camera network.

Now, I'd have to sit down and really think about this to figure out how you might modify the mechanics to allow for this sort of thing, but again, simply treating spells as being another set of mundane rules of the universe could go a long way on its own.

A similar variation would be alchemy in Fullmetal Alchemist. The effects are so varied and wondrous that most alchemy is functionally magical spells, but every single effect has some sort of explanation that follows other real-world physical laws (at least within the realm of narrative plausibility - there are examples of full-on magicless sci-fi which stray much further from real physics). If you're unfamiliar with it, I recommend watching at least the first dozen or so episodes of Brotherhood to get some ideas for how it handles this. What would probably help is to define, very basically - a sentence or two at most - how your magic system works, and then use that to define what it can - and more importantly, can't - do. I also recommend you use very simple, basic rules for these things (can manipulate matter, cannot create something from absolutely nothing, etc.), and allow your players creative freedom in figuring out how to get around these limitations to produce spell effects that might all in the gray area between these rules.

I've been working on this project some more lately, and have decided, more specifically, to start working on some adventures. There have been a few fairly significant changes to the original plan, which are:

• I will be designing the campaign adventures for E6 (for those unfamiliar with the variant: in short, the maximum character level is set at 6th, and characters gain bonus feats instead of levels from that point on - plenty of variations on this basic concept, though, so feel free to google them). Each expansion will be getting its own E6-scaled campaign.
  
• In tandem with this E6 approach, my plan is to either do away with or rework XP so that level growth is based on completing adventures, regardless of how many enemies were defeated or how tough they were. There will be two main types of adventures: questlines, in which a series of quests from a zone (or, occasionally, zones) will be adapted to form a unified adventure, and dungeons, in which an instance (either dungeon or raid) will be adapted to form an adventure. I intend for questline adventures to take one (and only one) whole session to complete, and for (very roughly)* every five bosses in an instance to comprise a session. It will then, in turn, take a number of sessions equal to your current level in order to level up. I'm messing around with some particulars for things like allowing lower leveled character to catch up to higher ones, but that's all less important.
  
• I'm setting aside the core rules for now (which I will still be making with full 20 levels of play in mind), and ignoring all of its spells and feats for now. I will add them back in or create new ones as turns out to be necessary while writing the adventures. Once I've finished writing the adventures, I will review these to see if any more should be added. Ditto for archetypes and the like (though the engineer is definitely staying). Additionally, I will only be using/referencing material from the books included in the PRD.
  
• For a shift to more specific changes, I'm switching out the engineer's cognatogen class feature for inspiration, and will be reworking his discoveries and schematic list.

It's been some time since I last wrote my own adventure, and I was much less experienced when I did, so I'd like some peer review to make sure I've made something decent. For this test run, I chose to adapt The Deadmines (dungeons being more easily defined than questlines), which will be made for a party of 3rd-level adventurers. My intention for dungeons is that they should be challenging, but not difficult. Success for an average party will require either thorough preparation or good resource management, but requiring both will be the purview of raids (questlines will be more casual "breather episodes"). That said, being the first dungeon, I intend for The Deadmines to not mean guaranteed failure for an ill-prepared party, but it should be hard enough that the party will know to prepare for future dungeons. Lastly, The Deadmines will be intended to last for two game sessions with the break occuring after Sneed is defeated. During these sorts of breaks in dungeons and raids, characters will be treated as having had an 8 hour rest (allowing healing, spell replenishment, and so on), but without any actual time passing in-game. The main reason for this being to allow for more challenging bosses (particularly the final one), but without undoing the players' progress up to this point, or otherwise creating plot holes for why the enemy hasn't taken advantage of the party's time sleeping.

As for feedback, I'd like thoughts from more experienced DMs on how difficult it would be for a 3rd-level party to run it, particularly keeping in mind various things I've said concerning balance and difficulty up to this point. I'd also like estimations on how long this would likely take to complete (and also whether those estimations are purely theoretical, based solely on time spent playing, or if they include allowances for out-of-character chat, looking up a couple of rules, and so on).
Lastly, I didn't really start playing WoW until halfway through Cataclysm, so I never actually got to run this version of the dungeon, myself (thanks to WoWpedia and Bradygames for allowing me to attempt this, anyway). As such, I'd love some feedback on how I adapted things to fit better into and make the most of it being a tabletop game rather than an MMO. I know I've diverted from how the actual dungeon plays out, but trust that any huge change (such as the Rhahk'zor encounter, the nature of the entrance - since I did include the tunnels leading up to the instance portal, not simply what's inside the instance itself - and so on) was intentional. I'd still like feedback on those adaptations, but please don't simply criticize it for not being exactly like the original. I'm going more for "in the spirit of" rather than "to the letter".
The Deadmines

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

But then how do you keep cantrips from completely eclipsing 1st, 2nd, or even 3rd-level spells? Note that even if the cantrip's effect is on par with a Nth-level spell, the fact that cantrips are infinitely castable makes it so that more than likely, such a cantrip would, in the vast majority of situations, be preferable to a spell of level N+1 or more.

Previous to now, I've played D&D, Shadownrun, Cyberpunk2020, Star Wars EotE, and a complete homebrewed system, so I'm not new to RPGs or being the GM, but I am new to PF.

Well I'd like to take this opportunity, then, to say that Pathfinder is, of course, very similar to 3.5e D&D, but that the devil is in the details and there are a lot of small, nuanced changes between the two systems that result in some pretty marked differences. For example, in 3e, you'd see a lot of "dip" builds among power-gamers where a character would take one or two levels in several different classes, and might be tempted to think that since Pathfinder did away with multiclassing's XP penalty and whatnot that multiclassing would be even more of a problem, but this is wholly countered by the fact that Pathfinder also did away with empty levels, as well as introducing numerous archetypes and hybridized classes so you'll rarely see anyone multiclass at all, whether they care about power-gaming or not. For characterization-focused players, there's pretty much guaranteed to be a class or archetype that perfectly matches your concept (and if there isn't, it's generally not hard to refluff something to match), and if you're a power-gamer, the hit to saves, BAB, and loss of class-level-based abilities (which virtually every class has, now) outweighs any benefits that versatility might grant.

This isn't necessarily to say that Pathfinder or 3e is a better or worse system than the other, just that Pathfinder's quest to do away with the bugs in 3e unintentionally (but, perhaps, inevitably) created some quirks of its own. So, in short, just be careful about carrying over any assumptions you may have or form moving from one system to the other. Probably about 75% of the system is virtually identical, another 20% is fairly evident what's changed and how, but that remaining 5% means that your first few times playing, you should carefully read at least any and all rules pertaining to your character, no matter how well you may know the other system.

Lawrence, that sounds like a good idea. That will surely create a moral dilemma for them. I also was thinking that perhaps I could have them run into a character that acts, talks and is for all said purposes a Paladin. The character will think he's a paladin but the kicker is everything he does is evil but he thinks he's doing it for the greater good. What the character really is, is an insane anti-paladin. But in the beginning they will think him to be a paladin that is just in the asylum because some rich person wanted him locked away. Later on they will have to find him and deal with him.

Nice! If you want to be even more diabolical, perhaps some rich person really did just want him locked away (evil doesn't always get along, after all), and perhaps that particular crusade the (anti-)paladin fights could at least arguably be called legitimate. Perhaps it is a case of some legal loophole being abused that could actually have benefits for the town as a whole, but will definitely have great benefits for the rich guy abusing it, just to layer the grayness even more.

I could imagine non-standard versions of NPC races ending up here as well. Some orc that thinks he or she is a cleric of an elven deity, maybe a polite and courteous gnoll, a goblin that's terrified of fire, etc.

I second this. Even more convoluted moral dilemmas! People who actually are insane, but with ailments that are at least arguably beneficial to themselves and the public, rather than harmful.

I feel like Lawrence DuBois. Expanding what constitutes as a favored enemy is a great way supplement. Undead are a pretty strong candidate as well since few games I've been in can keep from bringing them in. Maybe offering undead (incorporeal) as an added option is a possibility to differentiate from bodily undead?

In such a situation, I'd probably divide the categories up more or less like so (though not necessarily with these names):

Incorporeal revenants - ghosts, spectres, etc. Undead with the Incorporeal subtype that are the spirits (or something similar) of a once living entity.

Corporeal revenants - zombies, vampires, etc. Undead without the Incorporeal subtype that are the bodies of a once living entity.

Intelligent undead - vampires, liches, etc. Undead with an Intelligence score.

Mindless undead - zombies, skeletons, etc. Undead without an Intelligence score.

Composite undead - bonestorms, necrocrafts, etc. Undead that are the combined remains/souls of numerous entities.

Template undead - vampires, liches, etc. Undead that apply a template to another creature rather than being a wholly unique one in their own right. In this case, I would not count skeletons, zombies, or similar templates since they pretty much only rely on the original creature's size and a few other physical features.

Transformative undead - bodak, allip, etc. Undead that turn others into what they are through a completely transformation (that is, a brand new stat block, not merely a template).

Note that this was basically just off the top of my head, and that if I were to actually run such a campaign, I'd probably be rather more fastidious and in-depth about it, not to mention that it would depend largely on how many of what types of undead players are likely to encounter.

voideternal wrote:

The underlying question seems to be: How often is a ranger's favored enemy supposed to apply from a game-balance point of view?

Is this PFS and did you choose FE humanoid(human)? Then the answer is a lot.

I think the real question here is, will it be a problem if the ranger has his favored enemy bonus active on virtually every opponent they face?

The answer is no. In fact, there is a spell that allows them to do exactly that, and while it's good, perhaps even great, it's certainly not game breaking.

But it does make the choice meaningless. There is no opportunity cost or trade-off, you either made the "right" choice (where your bonus affects everything) or you made the "wrong" one (where it affects nothing). From a non-power-gaming/optimization-concerned perspective, a ranger's favoured enemy bonus was not intended to affect everything or else there'd be no choice to be made when getting the class feature. That there is a choice required implies that some limitations are intended to exist, and that it should not affect the vast majority of enemies. If a given campaign concept does not easily allow for that to be the case using the rules-as-written, then house rules are needed to correct for this. I know that if I were playing a ranger, I would much rather have to choose FE (cleric) than FE (human) in a campaign that features only humans if for no other reason than that it makes my choice actually matter. (Incidentally, while I like aspects of PFS in theory, I am not a fan of its execution, so referencing it won't sway me.)

Might I suggest, if after all these posts you still think something should be done (which, personally, I do given that having this problem implies that you'll be having a lot of humanoid enemies in this campaign, and the ranger wasn't meant for his favoured enemy bonus to apply to 95% of a campaign's enemies - the entire reason it has to choose subtypes for the more widely used types), consider making rangers pick a character class in place of a humanoid subtype, so a ranger may take "Humanoid (druid)" or "Humanoid (rogue)" as their favoured enemy. Personally, I'm almost inclined to say that the hybrid classes from ACG could count as either of its constituent classes, just as an Outsider (Evil, Lawful) would count as Outsider (Evil) and Outsider (Lawful). I say "almost" because while, as a general rule, the hybrid classes tend to be better than either of the classes they combine, this isn't universally true, and I don't think the difference is quite enough to warrant it. That said, you may feel differently.

I still haven't worked out the mechanics but I'm thinking of a scaling blast that a wizard has access to to provide damage capability regularly. The idea is similar to a warlock's eldritch blast and is inspired by Zed from Legend of the Seeker (TV show, not the novels). Not sure if it should be based on spell points, a fatigue mechanic or just per day based off of Con. Of course my idea is so that wizards can do more thematic ritualistic magic with effects other than damage yet not sacrifice damage capability.

I wanna say one of Paizo's recent books or soon to be published books is actually going to have something resembling the 3.5e warlock in that regard. Renamed, of course. I'll go browsing through stuff to see if I can find it again.

EDIT: Turns out it is called the Warlock, and is an archetype of the Vigilante, both found in Ultimate Intrigue. It replaces what can be reductively equated to the ranger's combat style class feature - not something central to the class, but not insignificant either. Still, it may give you some ideas for how that sort of thing could work. Being an Ultimate book, I expect we'll see it added to the PRD in about 6 months or so.

Very cool. May I recommend, in that case, creating a couple of inmates who actually aren't insane but are merely being dismissed as such, particularly if the party is good, so that they have to decide whether or not they should bring them back to the asylum. The druid I mentioned in my previous post could be an example. Perhaps they have some legitimate grievance with the town (perhaps it cut down a holy grove to make way for some new houses or something, or hunters from the town shot his animal companion, mistaking it for a regular deer), and were thrown in the madhouse so that the town's elite wouldn't have to acknowledge any potential wrong-doing on their part.

If Wizard is using Lighting Bolts, he's doing it so-so. He should be using Battlefield Control spells or summons.

Unless doing so wouldn't be in character, of course.

I wholly understand your predicament, and wish I could find an answer, myself, but sadly, even while having a limit to the number of things they can do per day, casters are already, as a general rule, rather more powerful than other classes. Granting them the ability to recover spent spell slots - especially for spontaneous casters - only makes them more powerful.

The best solution to this, so far, is wands, scrolls, staves, and other spell trigger items. Of course, these all strike me as more like bandages to this problem than actual solutions, and you can certainly find detractors for each (considering them not good enough, that is). It would be great to have the classic image of mages slinging fireballs and thunderbolts left and right in the heat of battle, but anything that allows such things needs to have an answer for those who would rather sling black tentacles, dominate persons, and summon monsters.

Yeah, pretty much. I suppose for completeness, I should add examples like:

You slay a powerful dragon that has been terrorizing an entire region, and receive 1 point with your main faction, and 1/2 point with each active faction for such an impressive deed, even though none of them are especially affected by it.

The Kingdom of Stromfall has been harrassed by a powerful orc tribe from the north. Defeating their leader, and scattering the tribe earns you 2 points with Stromfall, but also a point with their close ally, Evervale.

I should also point out that these points are all fame, and that only one or two points of prestige are awarded for each of these deeds, regardless of how much total fame is gained across all factions (so, in the case of the case of the dragon, you will only get 1 point of prestige, not 3, even if you have five active factions). Although, that prestige can be spent on rewards from any active faction. This is all to make keeping track of prestige less of a hassle for all involved.

Lastly, I'd like to note that rereading my previous post, I've either changed my mind or didn't say what I meant concerning one or two things; most notably saying that you gain fame with your active factions each time your fame with your main faction increases. This will only count for the "generic" deeds, like slaying that dragon, which aren't tied in with a particular faction (although, a faction like The Dragonstalkers may grant extra fame on top of the "generic" increase).

Well, it sounds like this is going to be a rather hectic scenario (though quite interesting, I might add - scratch most all of my concerns about unfortunate implications), so I don't quite see how the PCs will get much opportunity to learn about any given patient's backstory. I could be wrong, of course, but under the circumstances, I think you'd be hard-pressed to squeeze in more than one or two introductions (of which your noble cannibal should certainly be one). Statting up a 1st-level barbarian, and 1st- and 2nd-level warriors and commoners will certainly do well enough, as far as I can tell.

Rogues, barbarians, arcane spellcasters, some clerics to evil, ancient, or mad deities... What, exactly, is it that you're looking for? Of course, those are all good for generic madmen (and women), but pretty much anything can work for individuals. Insanity does not discriminate. Consider a noble paladin who lost hope after seeing a glimpse of hell, or a druid with a grudge against civilization who was arrested for arson. I would like to raise a word of caution towards using the mentally damaged as mere fodder - it comes with many unfortunate implications... Not the least of which being that historically, more sane but undesirable people ended up in asylums than truly mad ones. Because of that, if you just want to do a simple dungeon crawl that doesn't wrestle with complex ethical issues, I recommend going the mad cultist route. Pick an evil deity like Zon-Kuthon or Rovagug, and have his clerics make up the majority of the inmates. Still a little unpleasant if you think about it too long, but you can then have the high concentration of cultists cause the deity's influence to infect the rest of the inhabitants, turning all of them into uncontrollable and incurable lunatics.

Also, if this is your first time running a game, might I suggest considering running a published adventure first? There are a number available for free. (I particularly enjoyed the We Be Goblins! series, myself.) They're fairly short, so completing one shouldn't take more than a session or two, meaning that you can get on to your own custom campaign fairly quickly, after getting some familiarity with how a game is run. They can also be examples on how to build your own adventures. (If you have run a Pathfinder game before, please forgive my presumption and feel free to ignore this bit.)

A half-decent powergamer just needs one school to break the game. Limiting such an ability to just one school is about as restrictive as Power Attack's BAB prereq.

Seriously, all hostility aside, consider E6. It's a simple enough variant that is already well known among the community. All it does is stop PC level advancement at 6th-level (or, optionally, 7th- or 8th-level, depending on whatever your preference is), and after that point, every so many XP (say, 10,000 or so - up to you), instead of a level, players get a bonus feat that they qualify for. Just that sentence accomplishes pretty much every goal your house rules imply. Bonus points, between 6th- and 8th-level, pretty much every class is on even footing, from fighters to summoners - even the arcanist is, at worst, noticeably powerful rather than shamefully powerful. Combined with the fact that sequence-breaking magic (teleportation, divinations, etc.), and save-or-die spells are either inaccessible or only usable for a few rounds a day, there's pretty much no reason to ban anything beyond that which the rules wouldn't already let a 6th- to 8th-level character already do or qualify for. And you don't even have to sacrifice epic combat, because such a group can, with the right preparations, actually take on a CR 15 dragon and win. It won't be an easy fight, but then, it's not supposed to be.

My thoughts - at least for a quick and dirty way - would be treat them as a consumable magic item, regardless of whether or not they actually are magical traps (although, obviously, mechanical traps shouldn't be affected by dispel magic and similar effects), and price them accordingly. On the other hand, magic items tend to be quite expensive, while bear traps (which seem to be what you're describing) probably shouldn't cost any more than an exotic weapon or alchemical item for the base version. Consider that a simple 1d6 weapon costs as little as 1 gp, can be used to deal damage at least once every round, and you can bring it to your enemy whereas a trap has to be set up before it can deal its damage (only once), and you have to hope that your enemy stumbles into it. Now, true, if you can set them up ahead of time, you can do additional damage without spending actions as you would with a weapon, but just something to keep in mind if you want players to bother with them rather than purchasing some magical daggers or something.

Also, some things to consider: do these traps use an attack roll or a saving throw? In the case of the former, what is their attack modifier? If the latter, what is their save DC? Do they scale in any way? What about traps to inflict conditions instead of (or in addition to) damage? Or traps that deal different kinds of damage? Can your basic trap be made of different materials like cold iron or adamantine to bypass DR? Can they be enchanted? How much would those modifications cost?

Also, have you taken a look at ranger traps from Ultimate Magic? It's a feat-bought ability rather than a purchased item, but it fills much the same role. You might consider creating magic item versions of those.

If the rules are out there ahead of time, the players can choose whether or not to play.

Okay, I was working from the apparently mistaken assumption that you had a single, recurring group of players who you'd be playing with - a situation which, I think I'm right in saying, most would consider to be the ideal. This statement implies that perhaps you live in a high population center with lots of prospective players that you can meet with, and if so then you're pretty much right. Players can choose whether or not they want you to be their GM. But many groups are in smaller towns or cities where if they don't like the GM's rules, then they're up the proverbial creek without a paddle. But if you're fortunate enough to have dozens of potential players and those who don't like your rules are, indeed, readily able to find another group to join, then by all means feel free to ignore my comments as the irrelevant bleats about sour grapes that they aren't entirely distinct from.

P.S. A technical quibble, but in my mind a "house rule" is merely a variation on how something in a particular local (or "house", if you will) game will be arbitrated (or "ruled") on - i.e. your modifications to feats; good job there, incidentally - not merely limitations and restrictions. Those are a category of their own. But this is just quirk of vocabulary, and hardly expected to be universal. You'll be as petty as I am if you respond to this particular aside.

Nobility could focus on nobles-by-birth, whose behavior may not be anything like 'noble' in word or deed, despite their high station. Protection could well extend to protectionism, a focus on the specific community and traditions of the faithful, and 'protecting' it from all those filthy outsiders of different races and languages and skin colors and nationalities.

Yeah, my mind was scratching at this sort of possibility, but I was doing this literally at midnight, so I was a bit too sleepy to be able to fully realize its mutterings. I was quite sad about skipping it, because, as I said, I knew there was very real potential for it. I just couldn't quite grasp it.

The good thing about the forum dice roller is you're not bound by availability real physical dice.

I didn't realize this forum had a dice roller. ^^; Still, I was using the old dice roller from the WotC site, so I'm still not bound to the availability of physical dice. Also, I don't like relying on editing a post as using the forum's dice roller would require, or just posting a roll followed by the fleshing out when I could just type it all up in a single post.

Anyway, now that it's morning, I'll do another.

NG Water, Protection, Animal, Earth. ...Well that's just boringly easy. It's essentially Poseidon if he wasn't a jerk. Ah well. Perhaps I can come up with something interesting if I randomly determine his subdomains, too. Fur, Feather, Purity, Solitude, Flotsam, and Ice. Well, colour me inspired.

Sinaa
The kindly old lady of the north, Sinaaq holds sway over the glaciers and frozen seas at the top of the world. She is at home in this lonely and foreboding place, still untouched by mortal hands, with only a few arctic animals for company. Her remoteness has led to her being forgotten by all but the oldest of arctic druid sects (some of whom have even forgotten her true divine nature and believe her to be a mere nature spirit or even just a powerful druid). But she is a beneficent deity who will lend her power to any who have true need of it, whether they know of her to ask or not, bringing icebergs and raft-worthy detritus to those who find themselves shipwrecked on her glacial coasts. Still, she can be a vengeful goddess, and will break off huge icebergs from her glaciers, and summon mighty tidal waves to sink those who have intentions to sully her pristine north. Unusually for a deity, she spends most of her time in a mortal form, usually that of an old Shoanti woman, walking along the beaches of snow, and with a small, warm hut that always happens to be just a few yards away when she turns to it. It has been so long since she has had any formal worshippers that the closest thing she has to a holy symbol is an ancient glyph meaning 'ice floe'. Her favoured weapon, such as it is, is the ulu, a utilitarian knife with a broad blade (treat as a dagger that cannot deal piercing damage).

Restricting things to Core only is to make the game more manageable for new players and GMs. Ruling out races and classes in a setting that doesn't have them is to maintain consistency and setting flavour. Running an E6 game is to create a more down-to-earth, gritty feel. Restricting options based on power level is a lazy and ineffective way to ward against power gamers and other disruptive player types while punishing players who just want the opportunity to realize their character concept.

If you want to ban wizards, for example, do so because arcane magic doesn't exist in your setting or something, but keep it consistent and also ban other arcane casters, unless, perhaps, arcane magic is accessible to those who have inherently magical creatures in their ancestry (sorcerers). But then you'll have to explain why a player couldn't just refluff the wizard class to fit in with that bit of lore. Basically, if you want all of us who are on your back about banning things to get off of it, provide some in-universe explanations for why players can't pick those options (especially multi-classing, since this isn't 5e, which was built from the ground up with a lack of multi-classing in mind).