Luminiere Solas's page

it's a fantasy game in a universe with completely different rules from our own. where abominations we would find horrifically ugly in the real world, are considered the epitome of sexy. (night hags), a world where humans breed with everything, a world where people can perform nearly impossible feats of athletic prowess by 4th level, a world where the mightiest heroes can wade waist deep through hot lava with little regard for their lives or fall thousands of feet with minor scrapes, a world where old men can chant mathematical formulae, rub thier hands in bat feces, and create a 45 foot diameter globe of fire from over 400 feet away. a world where modern japanese schoolgirls wearing black pajamas can kill fire breathing spellcasting sentient reptiles with thier heirloom tokugawa era daisho. a world where native american shamans, wear the hides of the beasts of the sahara desert, kill brain eating space aliens while taking the form of prehistoric dinosaurs, and commanding thier sentient animated pet tree to assist them, a world where medieval knights, wear rennaiscance era plate armor, worship greek gods, wield roman era falcatas, and slice through sentient jello, a world where young female puppeteers dressed like fragile china dolls, wearing lots of makeup, with a simple cute dance, turn an entire audience into thier personal marionettes, a world where a clueless and sheltered alter boy, can present his silver cross, and due to his faith in the lord, damage all undead in a burst centered around himself, because he beleives in the lord, a world where the local apothecary can further detach himself away from humanity the more skilled he becomes. a world where a little half elf girl can manifest her imaginary friend into reality and have it protect her from local bullies. clearly not intended to mirror our own world.

What I mostly don't like about dump stats is that the game encourages it due to low point buy, stats that are irrelevant, and a fairly large bonus for dumping.

In my game, you get more points to start, but don't get any bonus for stats bellow 10. You're welcome to drop stats for RP purposes, though. (That separates the RPs from the powergamers with a convenient excuse real quick.)

bad idea. remove the reward for dumping stats, and nobody will do it, in favor of flawless mary sues with no depth.

dump stats, while used by specialists, are hardly a bad thing. the flaws shape a character more than their advantages.

most of the stat dumping classes (anything martial) requires the extra points to keep up with the damned schrodinger's 20 int wizard and his absurd single attribute dependency.

I allowed the following races: Aasimar, Dwarf, Elf, Gillmen, Gnome, Gobelin, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Halfling, Hobgoblin, Human, Kobold, Orc, Ratfolk, Sylph, Tengu, Tiefling, Undine.

As a result, I have two humans, an aasimar (azata-touched), a goblin and a hobgoblin. I think it's going to be very fun.

As for balance, I went for the following: 30-pt buy, but you have to "buy" the race as well. So the aasimar character had 15 pts, the humans 21, and so on (based on the calculations at the end of the ARG). I'm pretty happy with the result, to be honest, and so are the players.

most of the ARG races are overcharged by tracking RP as part of the point buy due to having very nonsynergistic abilities. such as the fetchling and aasimaar, while some races offer powerful advantages for cheaper than dirt, such as the dwarf, the orc, and the goblin. i'd be less worried about the fetchling or aasimaar's point values than the huge strength bonus the orc gets practically for free. or the goblin's similarly huge amount of dexterity.

Magus 1/Witch 6/eldritch knight x (fighter 1 instead of magus works too, but you don't get spell combat or arcane pool)

That way you can take advantage of your high str.
For stats your array will work fine.

Traits: Magical knack and adopted (tiefling) -> dark magic affinity or wayang spellhunter if you want to use metamagic feats.

for healing reach spell combined with wayang spell hunter CLW or CMW can be nice.

Hexes:
If you want to be able to heal the healing hex ist a must, even if a lot of people think it's weak. But it's a cure moderate wounds for every party member per day without expending a spell slot.

For a ship campaign water lung could be nice. Else flight. Gives nice abilities including a bonus to swim which seems to be ignored often.

feats:
If you take offensive hexes ability focus for that hex works well.
Then metamagic feats. like mentiond above reach spell.
For melee take weapon focus. at higher levels the eldritch knights opens up weapon specialization

No full build but something I'm thinking about building some time. (without the healing focus in my case)

i might take interest in the Fighter 1/witch 6/EK build.

Gear (23,000 GP worth, not counting pocket change)

Witch Doctors mask of physical perfection +2 and resistance +2 (11,000)

+1 darkleaf cloth hide armor (2,515) ring of protection +1 (2,000) +1 Glaive (2,309) eyes of the eagle (2,500) +1 Adaptable Composite Longbow (3,410)

Hexes, water lung, flight, healing

Feats; Toughness, Power Attack, Deadly Aim, Extra Hex (Slumber) Open Minded (Psionics Unleashed)

Traits Observant (Perception) Magical Knack (Witch)

Roles i think would require 1 of every 4 PCs in a group to cover. assuming you count pets and cohorts as Separate PCs. some of these roles might overlap with others in some cases. the first 2 are critically important roles and the others are mostly optional, but greatly appreciated.

Support Caster, this role generally entails things ranging from buffs and debuffs to healing and battlefield control. i would recommend that the support caster have some means of healing both hit points and common conditions reliably. though exceptions can be made for wizards and sorcerers due to battlefield control and their better offensive spells.

Damage Dealer, this role deals damage. it can be a secondary role for other primary roles without too much issue (a recommended thing actually) and is a fairly valuable role. it is a general rule that they have multiple types of damage. such as a variety of weapons for different DR or ranges, or different energy types for damage dealing spells. a damage dealing support caster could be for example, a martially inclined cleric, or even a sorcerer with a few blast spells. though the ability to quickly slay one foe is commonly appreciated, being able to wound multiple weaker foes can also be appreciated in some circumstances

Face, this role generally overlaps with others, and is needed for negotiation, spreading reputation, or infiltration, depending on circumstances. it's also recommended that the face be at least trained in sense motive and appraise to get more out of transactions.

Scout, this guy has the stealth bonuses to sneak around, the perception bonuses to notice things, and any combination of the following, the disguise skill to infiltrate enemy camps, the survival skill to follow tracks, or the disable device skill to deal with traps. they generally need some way to keep attention away from their self, some way to avoid traps, or some way to inform the party of incoming threats.

Sage; an optional secondary role for most classes, this is the guy with the relevant knowledge skills, and maybe spellcraft or appraise. he identifies stuff and might have divinations to help out.

the crafter; an optional secondary role for most support casters, if crafting isn't banned, this a recommended 1 in 4 PCs role. essentially, the minimum consists of a maxed spellcraft, craft wondrous item, and craft magic arms and armor. though forge ring could also be useful because all the decent magical rings are so expensive. the reason you need multiple in a large party is to speed up crafting so you don't spend multiple years of downtime between adventures abilities that speed up crafting help greatly.

the Defender, Also known as the tank, and despite common opinion, this is not the dwarf in plate with a tower shield and maximized AC. this is the guy who keeps the enemy focused on him and keeps the attention away. either by dealing lots of damage, or by punishing those who move away from him. such as by having abilities that deny withdrawing, abilities that stop movement, or just by having many nasty attacks of opportunity with reach and a large threatened area.

Hey, it's your fantasy world, you can design it any way you want

Personally, though, I just have trouble believing that the average person able to get by only spending 10%-20% of their income on food, even if they cook nothing themselves and buy everything pre-prepared, or that they have something like 60% of what they earn as disposable income. That's possible for a middle class person in a first world country today, but no one on Earth lived like that before about the middle of the twentieth century, and most people don't live like that today.

If you have super-high-magic "crystal towers and togas" type world where it's basically a modern first world country except with high tech replaced by ubiquitous and uber-powerful magic, then it makes sense, but short of that, I just don't see it.

when you have a world that has had any exposure to magic whatsoever. the economy won't be medieval for very long.

the introduction of even one spellcaster, can produce more spellcasters, who can eventually rewrite the worlds economy pretty quickly.

and magic, creates the competitive spark required for rapid technological advancement.

if anything, magic is a highly empowered science that will make any nation that uses it, at least, the standard for first world, maybe even better than such.

the moment you pick a class other than commoner, you are optimizing.

the problem i see with DPR is that it becomes expected not only of martial classes, but of classes originally not intended to be primary frontline combatants. such as rogues, bards, and monks. monks have no real contribution due to how crappy their class abilities are, but they were intended as support melee, whilst bards and rogues were intended to be skill monkeys.

a fighter can sacrifice 'Fighteryness' to become something else. as Ravingdork's Raven King has proven. but all you are doing is a tradeoff. it's no fighter, it's a heavily armored shadowdancer with the leadership feat and suspiciously custom tailored equipment.

@Ravingdork

to support cold napalm's point, the moment the agile enchantment is rejected, your damage will drop drastically. by at least 7 points per swing. means the monsters have an even easier time ignoring you.

and what do you do when that 75,320 gold piece weapon is stolen or sundered. or what do you do when the big bad monster grapples you. in both situations, you cannot use that fancy sword of yours.

and how did you survive the low levels to even afford that weapon? or did you just magically start high enough level to use it? i doubt you could have bought it without anything short of a commission.

and where did you get that surplus of magic items that seem tailored to your build? an organically produced pathfinder character raised from the low levels upward wouldn't have such a tailor made set of equipment. at least not something so fitting for the build.

this isn't a proper pathfinder character, it's a mary sue with the perfect tailored magical equipment to help outfit and compliment them perfectly, so fitting, that no glove could ever be anywhere near as comfortable.

the gear is just way to tailored to have any sense of organic progression.

oh look, he is even a king, the raven king, how cliche. i have seen over a dozen raven themed characters in the last 2 months. and not just on Paizo.

People get on me for using mary sue traits, but by intentionally studying them and intentionally applying them, i learned to recognize them very well. this character would actually get some decent reviews on fanfiction.net

I don't like the rule that makes it easier for spellcasters to cast their spells while taking a beating.

try saying that when you are the caster and all your spells fail because some guy keeps hitting you with arrows from 100 feet away. eventually, you are going to want to bring in concentration checks again.

it is no fun for the caster to automatically lose the spell he was trying to cast, just because you got shot by a 1d8 crossbow bolt. try seeing it from the perspective of the guy whose sole purpose is to cast spells.

I have always pictured monks more as mystics and less as combat monsters. For me, they were calm wisemen who could defend themselves if they needed to. In my mind the Bruce Lee style character was always an unarmed fighter. But over time, I realized the game mechanics did nto always support this. But tht is how I imagined them.

i agree with that. the closest i see to a proper monk, would be a Psionicist or Psychic warrior. depending on the type of monk.

monks are such weaklings, to think that the monk who lost to a fighter, a bard, and a caster, all lower leveled and less geared means something about the class. it is why i would prefer to use Ashiels homebrewed monk conversion, too bad i don't know a DM in person whom would allow it.

i haven't really experienced 3 round fights, they usually last 7-10 rounds. occasionally over 14 with bad luck. but weekly william, instead of using a bunch of smaller encounters uses fewer but larger encounters. usually we have 2 APL+6-8 encounters a day made up of several smaller but still generally level appropriatish monsters. this gives us more mileage out of our short duration buffs, a need to devote more in combat resources to healing, and bigger, longer, more epic fights there is usually a lot of bodies, especially since the fight is APL+6-8 for factoring a party of 10 PCs plus any additional combat pets, level appropriate allied npcs, or cohorts. so for a normal 4 person party, it's more like APL+12-14. but it is made up of several smaller but still generally level appropriate monsters of anywhere ranging from CR+4-CR-4. plus, each combat round takes forever.

our parties tend to have a lot of damage dealers, very few tanks, and are slim on casters and healers that don't also deal damage in some way.

NPC allies, Cohorts, and Combat pets tend to die like crazy because they are factored as if they were additional PCs for the purpose of determining encounter size. every last Zombie, Bound Outsider, trained hound, or Dominated Giant counts too. we usually try not to use undead creation, the planar binding line, animal training, or long term domination because it just makes the fights longer and more taxing for us.

the following 10 commonly recurring topics need to be banned on at least a temporary basis

1. monk bashing threads of any kind

2. martial vs. caster disparity threads of any kind

3. antagonize is broken threads

4. synthesist is overpowered threads

5. alignment threads of any kind

6. guns and gunpowder hate threads

7. oriental hate threads

8. threads pertaining to how melee combatants can't do anything to fight ranged or flying foes

9. threads complaining about entitled players or adversarial DMs

10. threads complaining about the existence of dervish dance or agile weapons

i had a lawful evil inquisitor inside an otherwise goodish party. she was a follower of Zon-Kuthon and a prison warden with a hellknight attitude gone extreme. the group knew she was evil, and she took no effort to hide it, but her plan was to spread justice like a combination of Judge Dredd, Gogo Yubari, and Vladimir Tepes with a hint of Cenobite thrown in. the group didn't quite approve of her gruesome methods, most of which would be extremely gross, cruel, sadistic, and savage violations of the Geneva Convention. but they got results the party benefitted from greatly. all sorts of gross mutilation techniques were applied whenever possible, but it helped gather intelligence, and put a major thorn in lamashtu's side. she always had at least 30 pounds of salt, some fishing tools, a field surgeon's kit, at least 30 pounds of silk rope, some source of portable small magical fire similar to a lighter and similar items intended for torture inside her handy haversack.

evil characters can travel with a good party just fine, and Yamiko wasn't much worse than bringing a hellknight jailer. she took the letter of the law to the extreme. insulting her methods was punishable by death.

not everybody is mature enough to play an evil character, but Yamiko did not follow the book of vile darkness at all. she used a lot of field torture methods from north and south american tribes. some of which are too grotesque to post on these forums. don't try and replicate her unless you are going hardcore NC17 with the gore and your group is similarly accepting and sufficiently mature.

Shuriken Nekogami wrote:

Young succubus arcane bloodline sorcerer with the leadership feat. name her Koakuma. make her cohort an asthmatic purple haired samsarang wizard with a 5 constitution named Patchouli Knowledge.

You've got it all wrong!! Koakuma is the cohort, and Patchouli is the Wizard with the Leadership feat.

(I'm a Patchouli fanboy, bite me)

I got to play a Half-Fiend (Devil) Elf Wizard (Necromancer) once. It was pretty awesome, and one of my allies was a Wereshark Barbarian.

i know Koakuma would be the cohort, i just wanted to take advantage of Koakuma's epic leadership score to bring Patchouli even more love. Patchouli would still be the one in control.

monk 1. +2 to 3 saves, improved unarmed strike, stunning fist, increased unarmed damage, a free feat you can ignore the prerequisites upon, and a bunch of useful class skills (perception, sense motive, acrobatics, climb, swim, and religious knowledge) a level sacrificed for a hit die that grants 7 feats.

cleric 1. 2 domain powers, a free martial or exotic weapon proficiency, cleric item use, a religious title that can help in legal scenarios, a few free healing potions per day, channel, orisons. +2 to fortitude and will saves.

Every time I run a fight with a Dragon it's always a cake walk for my players. The problem is that Dragons are usually presented as solitary creatures so my players usually massacre them in short order due to action economy. A decent ranged combatant in the group and the odd mage or sorcerer and a Dragon gets pummelled mercilessly

I've threatened and killed PC's many times in the past with all sorts of creatures but when it comes to Dragons they barely survive a round.

Anyone else find Dragons a tad weak?

try messing with the dragon's feats and prepared spells, try prebuffing. try kiting, grapple all that stuff.

a smart dragon doesn't sit there and let the archer shoot him, a smart dragon should use a flyby grapple to bite, chew and swallow the archer at a safe distance with his superior speed and exploit his spells to the greatest advantage. when the archer is unconscious, you flyby projectile spit him at the arcane caster to damage both using the falling damage plus weight damage. a medium humanoid body deals like 2d6+1.5 str before factoring falling damage when used as a projectile. cleric will have to save the archer while you prepare to do the same to the arcane caster next round until you have to harm the cleric.

Also won't different npcs and pcs find different things attractive in character?

they would. but not many people would want a burly masculine warrior woman from the desert whom was built stronger than most orcs.

examples of appearance.

who says my buff battlescarred amazoness warrior woman with the 12 pack abs can't have a 22 charisma? yeah, she may have looked rather masculine for a woman, but she was a divine champion of the freaking iron lord. she may have been built like a Mrs. Universe candidate but she was one Scary Woman with major testosterone. (Suli Battle Oracle of Gorum)

and who says that the creepy small framed japanese woman with all the casts and bandages can't have an 18 strength and a 16 constitution? as a warrior cultist of Zon-Kuthon, she pushes her small body to extremes beyond what most people can achieve. (Tian Barbarian)

i once played a life oracle whom was young and naive to the point of being such an airhead. people didn't take her any more than an acolyte. she was your typical airheaded blonde. or so she acted. instead of dressing like a priest, she wore a white sweet lolita dress and had a sabre (treat as scimitar) at her hip and maxed out perform (Dance). she passed herself off as a wandering performer and though she did cast. her incantations were celestial poems and nursery ryhmes and her somatic components were her dances.

Edit; Lumiere Dawnbringer was also an Aasimaar

106 you disobeyed the mad count's orders, yes, you brought the head of his nieces captor on a pike. but he wanted it on a platinum pike, not a wooden one. and his niece wandered off again, now his bounty is placed on your head and he wants it on a platinum pike.

Version Three

a lot of abilities were delayed, good fortitude was dropped, mettle and speed bonus was dropped, dance of 1,000 cuts was delayed as a capstone, warrior's discipline progression was changed with some new and revised disciplines added. some of which have some supernatural taste. intelligence became even more vital.

Martial Adept

tired of martials that don't get nice things? the martial adept gains nice things. not as nice as a wizard, but he has some nice spammable class abilities that seem more overpowered on paper than they are in person.

no longer do you have to choose between moving and full attacking, no longer do you have to suffer at the hands of flying ranged opponents. no longer does DR have to wear your down. hell, the right choice might even give you regeneration. this class is designed for people who want to play characters such as Kenpachi Zaraki to Lu-bu or Li-Mu-bai. it also works for characters like Hercules or Siegfried without too much effort.

it may sound a little overpowered at first, but the easy way to keep it in line is not to create an extra warrior's discipline feat. the abilities are powerful on their own and meant to be of restricted access. though there isn't level requirements, some of these powers can get a little overpowered.

why ban a class on the grounds of its name? and why ban one based on the fluff provided by the writers?

there are half a dozen ways to build a sneaky assassin. but they are all missing a piece of the assassin package that the ninja encompasses.

Yosarian wrote:

DeathQuaker wrote:

I think it is possible to refluff a class if the mechanics can still be used in the world. If the mechanics do not apply or are hard to work in, that is the real issue.

Yeah, but, why?

If you want to have a stealthy assassin type in your world available to characters that's not a ninja, then why tie yourself to the ninja mechanics that aren't really appropriate? Why not just re-design it so it makes sense with your concept?

If the ninja mechanics are not appropriate, then that falls under "if the mechanics do not apply or are hard to work in, that is the real issue."

Maybe I'm missing something, but I feel like we're both saying the same thing, except you're arguing with me.

(Also, I'm sure you just meant it as an example, but there are also several ways to build a stealthy assassin in Pathfinder without using the ninja anyway.)

there are, but the ninja is a supernaturally gifted stealthy assassin that doesn't require excessive multiclassing, has mechanics that support assassination and do not require an evil alignment, has a level of customizability that the other stealthy assassin classes don't quite possess, has an incentive to ambush with a small blade, and doesn't fall apart trying to do the job it is intended to do.

you can try something like this with an arcane trickster, but you lost your incentive to ambush with a small blade, fall apart as an assassin and you can't hit anything.

you can try with a bard, but you have no incentive to ambush, and the skills are generally percieved to be against type. performance is generally not very subtle and neither are you buffs.

you can try a rogue with the Ki Pool talent, but you fall apart due to a lack of Ki and a lack of advanced ninja tricks. you fall apart before you plant that blade to your foe's neck.

you can try with a ranger, but again, no incentive to ambush, you have no real way to augment your stealth beyond skill points and being within a favored terrain. you cannot guarantee your terrain will be favored, and your animal pet will likely alert the foe of your presence.

you can try with an inquisitor, but buffing isn't very subtle, takes time, and denies the edge of surprise.

you can try with a vivsectionist, but most vivisectionists favor claw and fang, and tend to have a lot of gore covering them, making it easy to reveal them. plus, people will suspect the mutant man out of prejudice. 2 pairs of arms, a tumor familiar, and a bunch of bottles isn't very subtle.

it's a pretty good sourcebook. just be careful with the race builder's guidelines. it doesn't take things like synergy into account and undervalues some of the most powerful races such as the Orc and Dwarf while overvaluing things like the Suli, Aasimaar, and Fetchling.

Alex Smith 908 wrote:

If everything single apprentice mage can break your will 1 time out of 20, why can't amateur bards who take a feat?

They certainly can! ...assuming that the feat in question is the Major Magic Rogue Talent used to select Charm Person.

There's a huge difference between my possibly being charmed by someone as a result of their dabbling in otherworldly arcane forces and my personality being overridden by someone being rude to me. And even then, Charm Person just makes me view the caster in a more friendly light; it doesn't make me abandon dying friends or otherwise act against my nature (and the more the caster tries to make me do that I wouldn't normally do, the more saves I get).

Seriously the Charm Person thing was answered like ten times on this page of the thread alone, this is becoming a broken record.

so i can chant mathematical cyphers and dominate your mind if i am a wizard, but as a bard who mastered instigation, i can't use my training to make a pacifist fly into a rage and attack me beyond all rational thought?

thunder and fang doesn't even require you to be a Shoanti. it merely requires you to pick up the fourth volume of curse of the crimson throne, and come up with a halfhearted excuse for why you got accepted into a Shoanti Quah.

adventurers are clearly glorified bandits.

lots of people forget that orcs, gnolls and kobolds have needs too.

a lot of them are slaughtered in hordes without a care for their age or gender.

the starving orc tribe raiding a small town run by humans for provisions to sustain their kin is no different from a starving tribe of humans raiding a small town run by another group of humans for provisions to sustain their kin.

murder? evil?

when you sign up to be an adventurer, you effectively declare yourself a bandit.

what do bandits do?

they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raid

what do adventurers do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raid

if murder, raiding, pillaging, theft and plundering were all evil acts. there would be no such thing as good aligned adventurers due to all the evil acts they perform. there is literally no difference between an adventurer and a bandit.

Defendant; "the child insulted the honor of the inheritor. i had to avenge her pride as a holy knight."
Judge; "i understand, if some child insulted my religion, and i were as pious as you, i would be driven to smite the child as well. it is clearly the child's fault for insulting your faith so strongly."

it only encourages caster to invest more in their casting stat and further neglect several others.

do you really want a level 10 wizard with 26 int adding +8 to their armor class for 10 whole hours?

it's weaker at the early levels, but later on greatly advantages SAD int based pure casters by providing double the bonus by level 10 and Triple by 18-20.

i wouldn't make such a houserule as it is so biased in favor of the SAD wizard.

the Aasimaar doesn't need to be nerfed. it might come out as 15 points, but those 15 clearly don't show any real signs of synergy, and are mostly spent on situational perks.

for 11 points, i can build a Far more powerful cleric race. and the 11th point is even spent on the linguist array.

Heal (Witch) high level emergency healing
Cure Light Wounds (Witch or Bard) this allows you to use wands of CLW
Summon Monster 9 (Summoner). get a 9th level spell at level 11 for a 6th level slot.
Restoration (Witch Healing Patron Spell List) your party would love you when you can remove negative levels
Ill Omen (Witch) prime your foe for a save or suck or screw their attacks without a save

you don't need to do that. a synthesist who dumps strength and relies solely on his fused state is going to be sorely screwed once his symbiotic suit loses all it's hit points for the day, is banished, dismissed, or the one minute transformation is interrupted. transforming takes a whole minute. giving a foe 10 rounds to attack you. this makes ambushing while the party rests or eats breakfast even more annoying for a synthesist. also, being fused in a public setting such as a settlement of any size will draw unwanted attention from the locals.

My experience, a gaming group often have these roles:

"The Snowflake": Makes a character based off whatever idea he has at the moment, and brands you a nazi fascist scum if you dare point out that not having BAB+1 until level 4 makes his "Stylistic skirmisher" useless in combat. Usually requires a competent character to babysit him, and a GM that coddles him for his character to have any spotlight.

"Captain Armsrace": The powergamer that annihilates anything as fast as possible. Has at least two dump stats that does not affect him, cares little for actual RP, but does damage in the 100s/has DCs in the mid 20s by level 5. Also applies to GMs who want every fight to be a challenge, forcing the players to optimize to survive.

"The Glue": The guy who does his best to ensure the party works. Doomed to forever play clerics, bards and other support characters that can help snowflakes survive and take care of the "face" aspect that Captain Armsrace disregards.

"The Hardcore Historian": The one who stops the game to voice his opinion that having longsword statistics apply to a BROADSWORD is an affront to his entire being, and that historically accurate should trump rules.

"The Lawyer": The player that stops game to look up rules if there is any disagreement or conflict of understanding whatsoever. Often someone who also GMs. Does not care that flow and immersion is broken, the game must obey the LAW. Will also never accept a GMs ruling if in doubt unless shown written proof.

"The Instigator": The behavioral mirror of The Snowflake. Will voice her opinion, shoot others down, and not give two whits that she is being obnoxious, rude or disruptive towards the penultimate goal of the game: Fun. If SHE is not having fun, NOBODY is gonna have any gosh durned fun!

i would like to add a few roles to the quoted list

"The Fanboi" they usually have an object of unhealthy obscession they channel through all of thier characters. some of them might seem to be creepy fetishes but this isn't always the case. this object of obscession can be anything from ninjas, to elves, or even fauxlitas. you can tell this is the case when the last 5 characters in a row played by the player in question. it's best not to ban this concept not matter how creepy it may seem, because it alienates that particular player. they typically embody some of the traits of the snowflake. only they are more predictable. female versions are called "the Fangirl"

"Mister TMI" this may take a variety of extremes, but they usually tend to deliver too much explicit detail in thier gaming. this can be as minor as "i need your restroom for 30 minutes" or as extreme as describing thier character's sexual activities or clothing choices in explicit detail. some descriptions work better than other. "youthful and small framed" works a lot better than "childlike"

"Mister Cinema" this guy usually favors cinematic descriptions over following the rules and insists that rolls be fudged in favor of "rule of cool". they tend to complain if thier character dies at an unheroic moment or due to unheroic means.

"The Cheater" this guy is in it to win it. he fudges rolls, cheats and deliberately misreads his sheet and forgets buffs he adds as an afterthought. he forgets to track daily resources but something seems wrong when he has cast 10 fireballs that day.

"the tagalong child" usually the younger sibling or child of another player in the group. they usually require guidance due to not being familiar with the game on the grounds of a short attention span derived from thier precocious age. they occasionally catch party members in blast radius.

"Doctor Forgetful" when they update thier character, they tend to forget thier bonuses, or forget to update them. they often forget about key class features and forget easily ingrained mechanics, such as higher hit points from constitution or the bonuses for a bane weapon.

"the Signifficant other" usually the romantic partner of the DM or an influential player within the group. they get whatever priveleges they want from from the DM due to thier connections. in place of a romantic partner, it may also be a childhood friend or a sibling.

Discussion

you may discuss any further details here and finalize your characters. the 10 of you are the chosen inmates. and yes, you will eventually get to recover your gear on the way out. though i still need to stat out boss opponents.

but they also have quadruple the skill points of an animal companion, higher DPR numbers, a much higher level of customizability, more reach, the advantage of sentience, and similar stuff the animal doesn't get.

the summoner itself, is also a full progression arcane spellcaster crammed into a bardic spell list. they may not have as many spells as a druid, but they get many important buffs a level or 2 earlier than a proper full caster. they also summon as a standard action for 10 times the duration at the highest appropriate spell level a wizard of equivalent level can cast as many times per day as a sorcerer can utilize 1st level bloodline powers. the summmons are also a lot better than any 1st level bloodline powers to begin with. they can also use cheaper metarods and (Commonly Houseruled) pearls than a druid, cast spontaneously, gets a better list of weapon proficiencies. which contains the longspear and spiked gauntlet, the 2 best simple weapons in the game. conjuration is the best school out there.

even nastier is either the synthesist or the master summoner. which take either the eidolon and make it an unkillable martial god or take the summons and make them even nastier.

It is evil. Doing something to someone evil does not make it less evil. PF/D&D does not support a means justify the ends concept. That is how evil works, and the fact that "good" is not supposed to operate like that is the only thing separating them from evil.

nothing in the paladins code forbids torture, and even though it is perceieved in the real world as an evil act. you are talking about a 3 decade old game that was originally based off a wargame that was loosely inspired by a series of fictional sources that took place in a setting where torture is a perfectly valid means to get information.

we aren't playing Disney Princesses D20.

but gorillas and orangutans do have opposable thumbs. it's what allows them to use tools.

the flame burns a forest to encourage rebirth. but it does not morn the millions of animals that die in it's radius.

the hurricame sinks many ships, it does not mourn the dead sailors.

a lion does not mourn the gazelle it killed to eat

thus a druid shouldn't feel compelled to mourn a wolf he sacrificed to take out a seemingly unnatural abomination.

it's natural selection that he reveres. the strong survive, and the weak are merely food for the strong. it's more lawful neutral than neutral good. think of charles darwin. not some modern vegan hippie. still a valid druid.

Ah but see you've hit on the monk's REAL weakness.

Dabbler rolled those stats. No point buy.

In AD&D certain classes were rare. They were rare because they needed really high stat rolls to qualify for them. Paladins needed a 17 in CHA, monks needed like 4 15s. These were the original MAD classes, the ranger and Druid were MAD too.
Point Buy and it's near universal acceptance as the default stat generation method has hurt those old MAD classes that haven't been retooled for a world where Point Buy reigns supreme. This is the core issue, not with he Monk but with the d20 system's underlying math.
When stats are rolled, the general power level of characters gets altered. On the boards, spellcasters reign supreme. That supremacy is predicated on the acceptance that all casters start at level 1 with a primary casting stat no lower than a 16 (and probably no lower than 18).
Just to see how crazy the old game was, play a game where you roll 3d6 6 times and drop the stats in order. You will come up with some decidedly UNoptimized characters most of the time.

but randomly determining attributes has several flaws. emphasized even more if you do them in order.

Tiefling, swap darkness for charisma bonus. Succubi were also cunning and creative with thier manipulation. so the stock tiefling works. swap Darkness SLA to negate CHA penalty and invest a few points. you might not be as Suave and Smooth as your typical succubus, but i don't really think you need that +4 charisma, when +0 with a few points spent, and a Dex/Int bonus can also be fitting.

or you can keep the Cha penalty and play the Shy, Innocent succubus blooded library assistant Ala Koakuma from Touhou Project.

and no, women did not historically run around in chainmail bikinis with a giant axe in each hand either.

i don't get why people see D&D or it's derivatives as medieval european.

you have medieval knights wearing rennaiscane era armor, wielding roman era falcatas, worshipping greek gods, traveling with native american shamans wearing the hides of saharan beasts, who transform into prehistoric dinosaurs who are accompanied by modern japanese schoolgirls wielding Tokugawa Era Daisho and Wearing black pajamas, and old men wearing robes and pointed hats who chant mathematical equations to control reality, on a journey to kill brain eating space aliens, giant sentient firebreathing spellcasting reptiles and sentient jello.

just had to post this again.

well, spend 100 gold pieces on medical supplies and deliberately break then reset the bones in the limb till you get a masterwork fist with a DC20 heal check and tada, your fists are master work once you spend 300 gold pieces worth of time as per the craft skill. now that your fists are masterwork, you can enchant them. it takes several weeks. essentially works like craft, but different flavor.

Prices listed are always for fully charged items. (When an item is created, it is fully charged.) For an item that's worthless when its charges run out (which is the case for almost all charged items), the value of the partially used item is proportional to the number of charges left. For an item that has usefulness in addition to its charges, only part of the item's value is based on the number of charges left.

in other words, divide the cost by 50 to calculate the cost per charge and add up the price for each charge seperately.

750 divided by 50 is 15, 15x12 is 180. using a 12 charge wand of cure light wounds as an example

secondhand wands are far more likely to be found in a community than fully charged ones. erase all thoughts of "magic mart" from your head. think of a market district that has multiple dealers that each might have a few items.

the only way there is going to be a constant supply of fresh items is if a community were to have a factory of devoted crafters who spend thier lives producing these wands or whatever item. consumable items are also easier to find than high level spellcasters. especially when you need high level spells.