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Lol, a Katamaran (a ship with two thin hulls, connected by a large deck in between them) would be lighter, but I was assuming a normal merchant ship that people just happended to buy passage on. So nothing fancy like Darkwood or anything.

OK guys, it was a hypothetical question. I got that idea before going to sleep and wanted to ask if it would work. I found it amusing to try and pull this stuff on a GM when travelling by ship. Maybe even make it amusing for other party members "You wake up from your nap and hear loud noises upstairs. As you ascend to the main deck, you see a 10 metre tall tornado in the middle of the ship and there is a sparkling circle below it. Your wizard is screaming like a man possessed in some unknown language and making threatening gestures at the tornado, while the captain is yelling death threats at the Wizard. The crew runs around like headless chickens and some stuff is being blown around by strong winds. What do?"

On the plus side, this thread gave me a better grasp of how Planar Binding is supposed to work, because after reading it, I found it wordy and confusing.

I do like the idea of tracking travel time and distance as well as food and doing Survival rolls on land and some kind of weather rolls on a ship. To most people this is much less exciting than hand-waving the journey as having exactly one random encounter before getting to the dungeon proper. The kind of slow-paced exploration I'm describing would be kinda fun at low levels, but by the time the party has a lvl 11 Wizard, they have spells to fly over chasms and rivers, create food and water, create magical shelter and generally make challenging terrain irrelevant.

The crunch answer seems to be that a single Huge Air Elemental would help a little, but would not be amazing. It would still work for 8 hours per day (or continuously, depending on GM ruling on Exhaustion) and add at least 1.5 mph (assuming no running, and no double move) to a 50-ton ship. It is enough to make a difference during escape from a similar class ship or to get out of a windless zone and should even shorten a long journey by a day or two. For anything amazing and memorable, multiple Elder Elementals would be needed, but it would at least look cool.

I assumed a sailing ship, not a galley. I assumed the party wants to go from city A to port B and buys passage on a merchant ship and those usually work better with sails. Rowboats can make pretty good ramming warhips, because while they have sails too, they don't depend on the wind during naval battles, but have less room for cargo and feeding all those rowers gets expensive.

While a water elemental would be stronger and faster, I think that binding an air elemental is safer. If it escapes, it will possibly attack some people or damage the railing, then go away. If it lingers, spells and ranged weapons can take care of it. An escaped and angry water elemental could drown some people by pulling them into the water and under, then sink in the sea after it takes some damage. From down there, it could trash the rudder and throw the ship at some coastal rocks, all with relative impunity, because water blocks most spells and would provide concealment, while PCs aren't usually geared for underwater combat (where ranged weapons are crap and the elemental has speed advantage anyway).

Thanks for the wind/sails chart, I didn't know that having wind at a slight angle and not directly from behind is best for speed.

I think the best thing for the GM to do when some complicated rules question comes up is to make a quick ruling that kinda makes sense, then look that up after the session and probably use the revised version in the future. Spending a lot of time looking up charts and weights and speeds during the session would just grind it to a halt.

Thanks guys. I especially like how you've come up with a way to calculate this.

As for Newton's laws, I simply assume that the Elementals can easily move in their native element while pushing or pulling an object and the "force applied the other way" is just air or water being pushed behind the ship and there is no need to worry about it. (And if you really hate inertia-less drives, DnD already has telekinesis, bull rush and other spells that don't exert "an equal and opposite reaction").

Greater Planar Binding to bind Elder Elementals would be really pushing it, because the bigger the elemental, the greater the chance it will break, leave, attack or just sit in the circle and be uncooperative. Still, I'll include them here.

Elder Air Elemental, 28 str, fly 100
1200 lbs max load, x4 for Huge, x5 for dragging, x2 favourable conditions is 48000 pounds or 21.77 tonnes.
100 ft speed is reduced to 70 ft, which is doubled for double move to 140 ft. (running would be x3, but I assume even Elementals can't run for days without getting tired).
So with the assumption that moving heavier things slows down the elemental proportionally, that 50 tonne boat is being pushed at 60 feet / 6 seconds, which is 6.8 mph or 163 miles per day.

Elder Water Elemental 30 swim 90
1600 lbs max load, x4 Huge, x5 pushing, x2 favourable conditions is 6400 pounds or 29 tonnes.
90 ft speed is reduced to 60 ft, which is doubled for double move to 120 ft. (running would be x3, but I assume even Elementals can't run for days without getting tired).
So with the assumption that moving heavier things slows down the elemental proportionally, that 50 tonne boat is being pushed at 69.6 feet / 6 seconds, which is 7.91 mph or 190 miles per day.

Therefore water elementals are a bit better, which makes sense.

Assuming the Wizard has 20 Int (reasonable, especially with a circlet of intellect +2), level 11 (minimum to cast level 6 spell) and 10 Charisma (dump stat, but the party may have a cloak of +2 charisma), these are the chances for success on planar binding a huge air elemental:

1) The elemental has a will saving throw to avoid being trapped. The only negative consequence of it passing this save is that the Wizard has to start over. HAE has +5 will saving throw and the DC is 10 + 6 + 5 = 21, so there is 30% chance the binding won't work, without further negative consequences.

2) The HAE has no spell resistance or teleport, but it can try to escape with a Charisma check. It pits it's 11 Charisma against DC 15 + 11/2 + 0 = 20. If it fails, it will try again each day. This part is actually dangerous, because when it escapes, it can perform a few attacks against the ship and crew before disappearing. It has 60% chance per day of escaping and possibly causing trouble, which makes this very risky.
EDIT: Charisma check is d20 + Cha modifier, so it has 5% chance of escaping, not 60%.

3) Before the Elemental starts the task, it has to be bargained with an opposed charisma check. The Wizard can have a +0 to +6 bonus, depending on what he offers, how intimidated the elemental is and how it hates the task. I'll use +0 because the Wizard isn't offering anything, they are surrounded by air and water, which makes the elemental more confident, but the task is agreeable. There is 45% chance that the Elemental will agree to perform the service. Otherwise the Wizard should probably just dismiss it or it will sit there until next day, when escape attempt and bargaining start over. It won't hurt anyone while captured, but it will scare the crew. I think once the Elemental agrees to the task, it will stop trying to escape with Charisma check, but will only remain in service for up to 11 days (caster level).

Heh, Sorcerers are inherently better at Planar Binding than Wizards because of all those Charisma-based checks.

And random encounters be damned, if pirates or aquatic lifeforms see a huge squid made of water pulling a ship or a tornado pushing it, they're not going to mess with that thing :) Navy might attempt to "help" though, which could lead to a role-playing opportunity.

Finally, spells like control weather or control winds could be better suited for this (and much less dangerous), but they're so situational that Wizards and Sorcerers rarely bother with them, while Planar Binding is all-around useful for other things too.

is the air elemental on the ship or in the water cuz if its on the ship no matter how much wind it makes it wont make the ship move

It is an air elemental, it flies. The elemental is first planar bound on the ship, but once it agrees to perform forced labour, it is supposed to fly behind the ship and push it. Also, this is Pathfinder/DnD, so Newtonian physics doesn't fully apply :)

I find the thought of ship sailing fast with a "Deja vu" music in the background hilarious :)

I suppose if this worked, it might have some practical applications for expensive and fast spoiling cargo and the like (VIPs would probably rather use teleportation). Bonus points when pirates see that something weird is going on with this ship and avoid it like if it was plagued :)

The party is currently travelling on a ship. The journey is taking too long and they want to speed it up. The Wizard decides to clear a part of the main deck between the masts, draws a summoning circle, then casts Tongues to speak Auran and finally casts Planar Binding to conjure a Huge Air Elemental. He commands it to "without damaging this ship and without blowing anyone or anything overboard, I command you to make this ship go faster in the direction and for the duration dictated by me".

Air elementals have no ability to cast gust of wind or anything like that at will, but it makes sense that a big air elemental could make enough wind to move a ship. I rather like the idea of an air elemental blowing in the ship's sails and if it worked, it would mean always getting good wind and always from the back of the ship.

I assume that the captain can be placated, and a heated argument between party and ship crew is not a problem here. I also know that journeys are usually hand-waved by the GM and when there is a lull, it happens for story-related reasons and this is also not part of my question.

So:
1) Would it work? What would be the bonus to charisma check, assuming nothing is offered to the elemental? This task is not against the nature of the elemental, but probably not fun enough to grant a bonus on opposed charisma test.

2) Would a water elemental work better or just as well? Would planar binding something else work even better?

3) The silver for the summoning circle has no cost, but silver costs around 5gp per pound, so would assuming 25 gp cost for the circle be reasonable?

4) What could go wrong with this plan? I think on failure the Elemental would just leave or perform a single Whrilwind attack, possibly throwing someone overboard, and then leave. Maybe the presence of all that air and water around the ship would make controlling elementals more difficult. Would a room below deck be better for binding? Less air and less chance to disrupt the circle during the rest of the journey, but also not enough room for the whole elemental.

The rules for crafting pretty much suck, but there is a book called "Making crafting work" that makes them better. Basically, the difficulty scales with the type of item and material used and high crafting rolls let you make it faster.

Grin. You might want to take a look at this comic.
http://friendshipisdragons.thecomicseries.com/comics/23
http://friendshipisdragons.thecomicseries.com/comics/61
http://friendshipisdragons.thecomicseries.com/comics/69 (She kept the sharp scale)

> I've seen a PC end an encounter with a red dragon through creative application of Profession (Dressmaker) in the past.

Lol, this actually worked?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kot8bT7HR6o

> I would play the hell out of this campaign under a good story-weaving DM. Just saying.
> Not every world/party needs a big bad.

You can try jade regent. It has rules for a caravan. Although those are pretty much "upgrade your wagons, buy enough food to get to the next town and some trade goods to sell at the next town". The trading is abstracted to buying units of trade goods and selling them elsewhere for a flat price.

> Maybe opposed profession merchant checks (no retry) for every point of
> difference you get that X% is added or subtracted to the price (down to cost).
> Say you beat them by 20 you get 20% off or sell for an extra 20%,
> if they beat you by 20 you pay an extra 20% or sell for 80%? As said
> they'll never sell for less than cost or pay more than X of the town
> wealth value (or appropriate amount as determined by GM).
A barter skill would be hard to balance in-crunch. You'd end up with the party face pumping it up and doing all the trading and no one else having it.

A more realistic economy system where prices depend on local supply and demand, distance from source of unique goods, if it is peace or war, how good the harvest was and other factors could get unwieldy pretty fast, but I'd still like some guidelines on how to do it.

Merchants fail because Pathfinder and DnD make a poor job of simulating economy. We get a flat price system where things can be sold for half price and fabricated for 1/2 (magic items), 1/3 (mundane, masterwork, alchemical, poisons) or 1/6 price (same, but with easy access to the main ingredient). This is OK if all you want to do is adventuring, but if taken verbatim, it makes trading impossible and crafting either marginally profitable or a cash cow (if fabricate can make masterwork items by paying just for basic ingredients).

I actually looked for rules on price variation depending on time of year (important for food) and local resources (wood would be expensive on an island, but abundant in a forest, food would be more expensive in a city or mountains), but didn't find any. I even checked the Jade Regent and some old ADnD books and... nothing. If it is profitable in-fluff to move goods by ships and caravans, them the prices must vary. But then if they did, the PCs would just get some inter-dimensional storage and teleport spells and go piss off the merchant guilds everywhere instead of killing monsters.

I've went over lots of Pathfinder books and profession "sailor" comes up fairly often, but other than that professions aren't much use. Skill points are a very scarce resource and unless the GM is willing to give a few flavour skills for free, Profession skills just gimp characters.

On the plus side, Profession is a class skill, so you get +3 points to it. This means that with +1 wisdom modifier, you only need to spend one skill point to take 10 on DC 15 checks. So dipping a point or two in professions isn't horrible, just non-optimal. If you could use a Profession to substitute certain skills at -4 penalty, they would be more useful. Or at least give skill synergies.

* Sailor is for nautical campaign, as has been said.
* Soldier is marginaly useful in a larger-scale campaign. But it really should be Profession (military commander).
* Merchant gives a minor boost to economy in Kingmaker. Arguably and depending on GM, this might also be profitable or at least let you use your contacts to sell one item per month for 75% price (but this costed a feat in 3.5).

Here is a full list of professions I've compiled:

Thanks, great tips on what to summon. I love summoning and polymorph, but feel overwhelmed by the number of options. Is there some kind of book with advice and stats both with and without augmented summoning? I've seen a Wizard guide with a long section on summoning, but it didn't include everything. The second biggest drawback of invisible summoning I see is that summon monster restricts to 1 step from alignment. So those Lantern Archons won't come to someone who isn't good or lawful enough... such as a person who kills silver dragons and paladins. The biggest drawback of summoning I see is that it extends the duration of the turn by forcing the DM to keep track of location, hp and so on of multiple extra creatures.

I was wondering about Lantern Archons myself. They can cast everburning flame as an SLA, meaning no material component cost. Which means you can mass-produce everburning torches and it would be a good idea to secure contracts to make thousands of them to illuminate a city district or a castle. This is more profitable than adventuring and even better than false focus. Just think how high above the accursed WBL you could go and use that wealth to win against CR level scaling!

Build a maze with transmutation spells. Have a hidden corridor behind one of the walls that can only be accessed by passwall and similar magic and is undetectable by perception. Place your stash there, shielding it with lead and anti-scrying spells. Make the rest of the dungeon into a labirynthine complex with a fake treasure chest at the end. Put a scroll with explosive runes inside. And another with "Nice try, but my treasure is in another dungeon."

Symbols are a standard way of security and so are magical traps. These work OK in conjunction with constructs and undead.

Have a door that looks like a riddle. Place a sepii snake sigil there along with something that can kill a helpless person. Basically anything that reduces mobility (such as irresistible dance) combines well with something that kills. You can even use this concept to close off several hundreds meters of a corridor and submerge it in dirty water, making escape all but impossible.

Make a smooth corridor with a trap that reverses gravity into a prismatic wall. Stack a dazzling firewall trap on top of it. Oh and drop stone walls on both ends for good measure.

Prismatic wall or prismatic sphere make for a nice defensive wall. You and only you can pass them easily.

Bind some outsiders in such a way that entering their room breaks their summoning circles. Make them angry.

Place a lot of illusions everywhere. A silent image can hide a trap or a door.

Cultivate those oozes and gelatinous cubes. They double up as good garbage disposal.

Mhatever mundane equipment is needed: extra clothes, a mule, food, waterskins, blanket, etc.

Handy Haversack, Efficient Quiver.
Several kinds of arrows, most mundane, some made of different materials and with different arrowheads and enhancements. A few bane arrows can make a difference. Actually, make it 2 or 3 efficient quivers.
Pearls of power, lvl 1.
Wands of lvl 1 utility spells, preferably ones that don't scale up with caster level much.
Scrolls or potions for highly situational spells, like: See invisibility, Spider climb, Remove Fear, Remove Paralysis, Lesser Restoration, Remove Blindness, Water Breathing, Fly, Cure Serious Wounds, Cure Light Wounds.
Traveler's any tool
Masterwork tools for any skills you are using lots of.
Antitoxin
Ring of sustenace
ghost salts, adamantine weapon blanch, alchemical silver weapon blanch, cold iron weapon blanch
Either Alchemists fire or a wand of burning hands to kill swarms.

I like this thread. Goblin whaler ship is especially amusing and Kobolds can be reasoned with, as long as they have supervision of someone stronger.

As for trolls, I wouldn't really want to rehabilitate them, just turn them into an army. The first part is rounding them up and either intimidating them with walls of fire and hold monster, repeatedly giving them the beating of their life, or mind control.

No matter the method, they must be transported to a secure boot camp and it must be made clear that the consequence for escape is death (keep some of their skin for scrying on escapees, then make an example of them), while the consequence for disobedience is severe punishment. Assign them sergeants from some previous batch of Trolls who went through just enough pain to take it out on their subordinates, but not enough to mentally break down.

Once the recruits are beaten into submission, begin their training to give them a level of barbarian, fighter or warrior, feed them well so they get advanced template, then equip them with steel armour and weapons. Two handed swords, greataxes, polearms and oversized ranged weapons would all be good.

In parallel to their training, brainwash them with some suggestions, For example:
* They are better off now that they no longer need to worry about their food.
* Their army is unbeatable now that they have better tactics and weapons and it makes them better trolls than the wild ones.
* Absolute obedience to their superiors is the only option.
Also include a punishment for harming their support staff, while directing their destructive urges towards the enemy.

In addition to the staff needed to control and train them, assign some casters with wands of resist elements and other buffs to cast just before battle.

The cost is considerable and so is the difficulty for everyone involved, but once it succeeds, you get a very good heavy infantry and they can even be used to round up more trolls, so as an added bonus eventually almost all the trolls inside your kingdom will either be converted, killed or flee.

But then this way of subjugating and enslaving a race is lawful evil and goes against everything in this thread.

Can someone do Boggarts (frog people)? There are some in Kingmaker.

Check out Ultimate Campaign. It expands on the rules of Kingmaker and adds rules for smaller scale operations: buildings and henchmen teams.

> Cutting off the horn kills the unicorn. Or it can't be removed unless the unicorn is dead. That's how I've always played it.
Aw, too bad. But it does solve an exploit and answers why no one does this.

As for the original idea of summoning evil outsiders to kill them, I think it would be doable to forego the dire lions and instead put an aquarium filled with holly water inside the summoning circle. Or failing that, a gelatinous cube. It would be an equivalent of an acid bath (depending on how you count it, 10d6, 20d6 or 20d4 damage per turn) and would make concentration for teleporting out pretty much impossible. If holly water dissolves the outsiders, making claiming the prize impossible, or this process gradually weakens or depletes the holly water (say by 1l per 4d4 damage), it would be much less profitable. Still entertaining, though.

Using their organs and body parts for something might be profitable too. I think skin and blood of devils and demons are spell components or something.

My wealth-generating scheme is a Unicorn farm. Capture a live Unicorn and restrain it. Cut off the horn and drain some blood. Cast regeneration and restoration (or give it rings of regeneration and sustenance). Repeat. Each horn is 1600 gp of components for making healing items. Which means it can be used for making healing items worth 3200 gp. So just mass-produce them and sell in bulk at a discount. Buy good security and lawers. Preferably ally with some evil church and make some bureaucrat allies who see how convenient it is to have abundant healing in their country. Secure contracts for healing items from people in high places, maybe even the army.

Going against a villain doing this and having support of the local establishment and police might even make for a tough adventure for chaotic good players.

Here are my poorly organised notes on hirelingh. I hope some of it helps.

Hirelings:
1 sp / day for simple labour, without travel -> 3 gp / month
3 sp / day for skilled, without travel or semi-skilled with travel -> 10 gp / month
1 gp / day for high end servants -> 300 gp / year
3 gp / day for skilled PC class. -> 100 gp / month
10 gp * level / week for PC classes -> 40 gp * level / month
Guide 2 sp/day, bonus to survival, food for 4 and a chance to speed up movement off-road by a small margin.
Porter 1 sp/day, gets a bonus to carrying capacity (+2 Strenght) if given 30 minutes. Light up to 86 lbs, medium up to 173, heavy up to 260 lbs.
If travel is involved, they have to be provided food, shelter and everything. They get basic clothes and basic equipment for their jobs, but any extra or masterwork tools must be provided. Unless hired to fight, they will run or hide or surrender or sometimes use ranged weapons. Their imperative is to survive. They can have morale problems. If too many of them die or leave angry, PCs reputation will suffer. Some may attempt to steal sth and run at night.
Casters are usually paid per spell.
Mercenaries: Usually single or small groups. They are always unreliable. 1 sergeant per 10 troops and 1 horsed noble commander per 10 seargeants. Minimum 1 month of service and I don't know about purchasing their equipemnt, but for infantry it is 20-100 gp and for cavalery 400-2k. They're paid 2 sp/day for footmen, 4 sp/day for cavalery and 5-10 sp/day for leaders. This is just for garnison, active duty (like travelling) is double that and combat is triple. They get armour, weapon, backpack and can carry 15 kg of stuff, mostly food.
Travel ratios are 5 cp/day and 1 kg for a medium humanoid, 2 cp/day for a horse (8kg or 5h of grazing) or small humanoid (0.5 kg) and 5+ gp/day and 25+ kg of meat for a griffin or something (needs herding cattle, goats or sheep behind the army). A medium humanoid needs 4.5 l of drink per day, small one 2.5 l and a horse 50 l.
A 9th level Dwarf can be hired for 10 gp per day or half the tresure, whichever is greater.

Infantry is either missile or melee and often uses combined arms to hide archers behind shields and spears. Cheap and all-around good. Cavalery is expensive and vulnerable to magic, which makes light missile cavalery a better oprion than heavy lancers. Air is expensive, but great for reckon. Navy is expensive and vulnerable to fire, so it is mostly used for logistics. Caster divisions are the most effective and mostly used for intelligence, counter-intelligence and incursions.

During times or war, military and adventuring gear can double or tripple in price.

Oil lamps burn 0.5 litre per 6 hours on maximum burn (~60W lightbulb) (or ~50 hours on a gallon of fuel), but can be turned down to a candle flame for a much lower consumption. (Maybe 10 times less fuel?)

Some items are in demand. +1 and +2 swords and armour, as well as say, wands of cure ight wounds or lvl 1 and 2 pearls of power can be sold for 75% value.

A nice house with a few rooms for a family to live would be wroth around 1kgp, while a shack maybe 200 gp. A manor can cost 5-15kgp.

A landed knight has an income of 2-10kgp, while a king or a baron can get as much as 5Mgp per year. Of course this is subject to the cost of living, hiring staff, paying unkeep, etc. Also, much of this is in goods rather than coin.

A manager is typically a 3rd-level character with 3 ranks in the appropriate skills and the basic NPC ability score array (Core Rulebook 451), giving the manager a maximum of +7 or +8 for class skills and a +4 or +5 for non-class skills. He can be provided Masterwork Tools.
Utlimate Campaign has some b~~$~~&% prices for managers, 2-5 gp/day, whereas usually even 1 gp/day should be more than enough.

=====

None of my characters ever hired an NPC, but some were involved in alliances, romances and even occasionally helped in combat, so not having access to an expert in a city is very counter-intuitive to me.

As for having 20 mercenaries around, I can see why it would be a very bad idea for organised play, but for just playing with friends, there are ways to make them more annoying than they would be worth. Just throw all kinds of logistical problems that a bigger group presents, including:
* Their unkeep.
* Outfitting them in anything better than leather armour, small wooden shield and a simple weapon (which they should start with).
* The cost and logistics of carrying enough food, because the PCs won't feed 25 people on just foraging. They would need at least a few donkeys to carry all those travelling rations, tents and so on.
* Mercenaries arguing for better pay or straight-up threatening to murder the PCs after they defeat the dungeon and are weakened. So in the end, the mercs may eat up a significant part of the treasure. I'd say about 1/3 loot plus their pay, unkeep, food, etc.
* Leeching XP from players. Because why not. And if they happen to level up, they of course want more pay.
* Problems when visiting a town ad getting into a fight or committing a rape or something getting stolen from somebody important.
* Some might desert at night, taking some stolen things with them. The PCs may attempt to track them, or just continue their mission.
* One or two of them might actually be an informants for the group that the PCs are trying to thwart. He can convince some others that they will get more pay if they betray the PCs.
* The sell-swords will fight, but not die for the PCs. Once 20% of them are down or 50% are injured, the remainder retreats, either in organised fashion or just every man for himself. If they see anything really scary like a dragon, they simply run. They regroup far enough to probably not join the same combat before it ends.
* If they get injured, PCs are expected to burn those CLW wands on healing them.
* If too many of them die, the PCs get a bad reputation as employers.

So the mercenaries are an unreliable bunch, sucking more than 500 gp per month, possibly even over 2000 gp per month and a nightmare to equip. What do they bring to the table? My answer is, not much. They are mostly lvl 1 and 2, with maybe a lvl 3 commander and aren't optimised, with mostly warriors and an occasional adept. They can defeat maybe up to CR 5 monsters, but will take a significant portion of the treasure from them. Anything more challenging and they get massacred and run away, leaving the PCs to their fate. It might be fun as an experiment, but not that fun to actually play and in the end would probably show why in DnD, it is better to send a smaller skilled group than a bunch of lvl 1s at a problem.

Heck, I've been in a campaign where our town was getting harassed by slavers, so we got the sheriff to hire about 30 mercenaries. They were almost worse than the slavers, forced us to pay them extra and were close to razing the town. We almost got rescued by another organisation who simply destroyed our gates, rode in and dragged away the toughest of them as recruits. The rest of them dispersed after that :) And even with the mercs, air superiority on our side and an alchemical bomb with random transmutation effects crafted by our characters, is was a tough fight.

BTW, with a skilled craftsman getting 10 gp per month (perhaps less) or 120 per year, and a nice house costing 1kgp, a lot of adventuring gear seems horribly overpriced.

I use sacks and Extended Floating Disks, but what Mark Hoover said. At 1st level you can buy several sacks and pouches, a donkey, or get a hireling for about 2 sp/day to carry items, help set up camp, keep watch some of the night, roleplay and so on.

After the first adventure, you can get masterwork backpacks and horses and pack horses for everyone. The wizard can also burn spell slots on floating disks or mounts (AKA "Wall of horse").

Handy haversack is one of the first items I'd get for everybody. Bags of Holding and portable holes come into play much later.

Other useful spells include shrink item and secret chest. Also teleportation, but only after packing up and several trips may be necessary.

As far as minions go, you might be able to get away with having outsiders or undead in some countries.

The extradimensional spaces look like about 2 handy haversacks, so I'd go with about 5k for that.

A character without knowledge (arcana) or knowledge (religion) would be able to know only common knowledge about it, that is answer only basic DC questions. So he would know that clerics, druids and adepts (with the distinction being somewhat fuzzy) can heal and that casters can say strange words, make a few gestures and stuff happens. Over time he might learn to recognize common effects, such as magic missile of fireball if the party wizard does them a lot, but he still wouldn't have the ranks in Spellcraft to recognize which spell is being cast.

So a TL;DR answer is "not much".

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=4854.0

This thread has all kinds of information on poison use in DnD. It includes a section on poisons that cause sleep, temporary paralysis, unconsciousness and similar effects that good characters can use without much repercussions, even if they miss their intended target.

My view is that contact or injected poison is just another overpriced tool of the trade for adventurers. Ingested poison is trivial to defend against with spells like detect poison and purify food and drink. Nobles would probably have enchanted chalices, plates or cutlery to cast these spells during every meal.

A paladin or good cleric... well, there is nothing in the rules about it, but with a little alchemy and craft potion, they should be able to make blessed oil to smear on weapons. It is basically just casting a modified version of bless water on some fat and pretty much creates a "poison" that works on undead.

To make poisons really work, they should be at least 10 times cheaper or there should be some common cheap poisons that just about anyone with 3sp/day income should afford. For example in some DnD book, I've seen "foetid paste" worth 5gp that causes filth fever and is easy to make. But then all alchemical items are overpriced.

Then there is always the matter of amusing the GM by polymorh any object to turn vials of ingested poison into a sheep to feed that Dragon. It will revert to poison and kill it, but make sure a clueless peasant is doing the delivery.

As for banditry, well it was often a side-occupation or a pastime in winter. In other words there are more opportunists who would do it for fun and profit and often without killing the victims than outright camping a road and murdering everyone. If a lot of people in an area do it against each other and their families and friends know about it, it puts a lot of people in a Gray-blackish area. I'd expect young commoners doing this for fun and using hit and run against weak targets rather than bandit camps and strongholds. But then in DnD things are different.

Chemical weapons are bad not just because of killing people, but rather because of their AoE maiming and poisoning. They can also last for decades. I watched a movie about a town in Kuwait that was attacked with a chemical cocktail and even ten years later, much of it's population was cripples and crippled children were still being born with alarming frequency. The land itself looked barren.

Thanks.

Background information on artefacts is often unknown / mysterious, so not much info is needed. Let's say some minor godling or a powerful demon had a feud with several others, such as Gogunta (Boggarts) and Gozren (Lizardmen) and made some of these bows just to spite his enemies. The somewhat crude design (the bows look plain and not masterwork at all) is as much an effect of lack of skill, imagination and patience as a deliberate attempt to make reptilian deaths into a nasty surprise.

While these bows have no intelligence and no Ego score, they tend to find their way into the hands of those who can use them, such as swamp-dwelling rangers. If something is guiding the fate of these bows, it seems to be more concerned with quantity of slain enemies than quality, so to speak. Because these bows look so ordinary, it is easy for their owners to pretend they're nothing special and that they're just great shots or lucky. These bows sometimes show up in armouries, among dozens of similar weapons, without a good explanation of how they got there.

As for Dragons questing to destroy reptilian deaths, they are not easy to find (will register as +1 shortbows to divination), aren't such a big threat to begin with (well, compared to a 100kgp custom enchanted bow that an adventurer might have) and just like the book of vile darkness, no matter how many are destroyed, a few more are created each millennium or so.

That these weapons work against Dragons at all is a (welcome) side-effect rather than a deliberate decision. Reptilian death offers no protection against dragons to its wearer and have no mind-affecting or abjuration effects of any kind. They don't even instil the desire to kill any lizard or amphibian on sight, and are merely good tools to do so. Still, if unused for too long, they tend to find their way into more someone else's hands, weather by trade, theft or other serendipitous means.

Another interesting side-effect is that they work both against true form and polymorphed form. Which means they work both against humans polymorped into lizardfolk and dragons polymorphed into humans. Any such creature whose flesh touches reptilian death takes 2d6 damage per round, bypassing DR and must make a DC 20 Willpower save or drop it. Gloves aren't enough to prevent this effect, but tongs and telekinesis work.

> It should definitely have Adaptive and probably also appropriate Bane.
It has bane against all reptiles and amphibians. Adaptive would take this weapon from the "OK against reptiles, joke against anything else" territory to "OMGZ, gimme!", which I don't really want. I want these bows to become backwards compared to a +5 dragonbane composite longbow, but still worth keeping around for hunting crocodiles for their leather and similar lower-level threats. And definitely something that a lvl 3 ranger hunting in a swamp would prize.

> Maybe the Enhancement bonus scales a bit according to the level of the user
I don't like level scaling and the creator of these bows definitely didn't have enough imagination to make the bow unlock it's powers based on the "worth" of it's wearer. He doesn't care if it is used by lvl 6 ranger with FE:Lizardmen or a lvl 1 commoner, as long as it is used to kill reptiles. The maker of the one ring had much more foresight than whoever makes these bows.

Still, there could be a few different variants, some of them more powerful, as any design is improved over time. Or it could absorb a small part of the lifeforce of slain enemies (while leeching XP from the party) and "level up". But I think it should instead forever remain +1 reptilian_and_amphibian bane (keen?) shortbow.

> I'd be careful with the Daze powers.
Hm, I wanted to give it some special power to offset the fact that +1 bane shortbow is in itself nothing special. Maybe make it keen, even if bows normally don't have this property (19-20, x3) and make it daze or paralyse it's intended targets for one round (durations stacking) on critical hits. But then with 4 attacks, extra shot, many shot and haste, that 10% would work about half the time, which would be OP at high level against a dragon. Shaken, sickened or frightened might also make good status effects for this.

At first glance, it appears to be a crudely made shortbow coloured dark gray (as opposed to most wood being brown). Detect magic reveals a strong conjuration aura, but otherwise it seems to be a +1 shortbow. Unlike some magical weapons, this one doesn't emit light.

It is a bow called "Reptilian Death". It is a bane of all reptiles and amphibians: Dargons, Kobolds, Dinosaurs, Crockodiles, Lizards, Lizardmen, Frogs, Boggarts, Nagas, Snakes and so on. In addition, each hit with this bow on a reptile or amphibian dazes it for 1 round, unless it makes a DC 20 Fortitude save. The durations from failed saves add up if the creature is hit multiple times in a round.

A shortbow can be used from a horse, while a longbow can't. Bane raises Enchancement bonus against that type of enemy by 2 and deals extra 2d6 damage.

Optional: It is a composite shortbow with "Adaptive" property (that normally costs +1), meaning it adjusts to the strength of the wearer in +0 to +5 range. Maybe increase the basic enchancement bonus to +2 or +3? Maybe upgrade Daze to Paralysis, but that would be a very nasty surprise for flyers.

This thing is a reference to "Juka Lord" bows from Ultima Online. They could be upgraded with gears to various slayer weapons, including reptilian death. "Paralysing blow" was a special on bows in UO and it stopped enemies for 3 seconds.

I want this thing to be pretty strong, especially at lower levels and basically tear through anything weaker than a Wyvern. It should still be pretty scary against true Dragons, but not nearly as good as a +2 dragonbane +1d6 elemental damage keen +5 strength longbow.

I don't have a clear idea how it could be destroyed, but it should involve doing something beneficial to reptiles or amphibians. Covering it in frog eggs until they hatch and consume it would be too easy.

They should have left a small chance for a slot to restock on its own, like maybe 1% per turn on 10% per year. Now it just sits there forever.

The guide needs an update for Ultimate Campaign.

Magic item buildings could be boosted by making them a pre-requisite to recruiting caster armies. Even with small size and capped at CL 5 those can be pretty good for the +3 attack, +3 defence and a few special abilities. Their attack and defence bonuses shouldn't stack with armour and weapons upgrades as wizards have little use for those, but I'd give them mounts and ranged weapons for free.

I'd argue that if players are managing thousands of subjects, there is nothing wrong with them making withdrawals each turn. Yes, they will use that wealth to upgrade their equipment, but so what? They can afford armies, so they should get some personal income too. In fact, I'd give each minister 100 gp per month and each ruler 200-500 gp per month, decrease Economy BP by 1 and make it not cause unrest. I haven't looked precisely how to do it, but unrest from getting withdrawals could be countered by buying defensive structures ASAP.

Boosting upkeep BP by building as many farms, mines and sawmills as possible plus buildings boosting them further is worth it. Up to 5 upkeep BP can sit in each granary for emergencies and armies eat upkeep like candy, even when garrisoned.

Personally I'd house-rule that for each BP generated from economy, the party get to pocket 50-100 gp in taxes without causing unrest. I'm also of the opinion that many quest rewards are too high, for example 250 gp for fetching some turnips. To put things in perspective, that's what a commoner earns in 7 years, danimt! If those turnips are worth their weight in gold, I want to start a garden.

I've seen an old DnD book that had income for all kinds of things, including dovecotes and it came to about 5k-10k per year per an estate with surrounding village, so if we assume there are dozens of those per hex and that the state gets just a small cut, the +2 BP per farm hex would be about right.

I don't see a problem with "giving the players too much wealth for their level". That's what they get for their troubles of running a barony. Heck, Rogue Trader (a game about flying around in an enormous spaceship and trading) didn't even require paying for personal equipment. If they can afford to build castles and cities, their personal wealth shouldn't be a big problem any more.

Wait, there are actually modules that have maps with hexes and random encounters? Please tell me their names. All I've seen so far are story-based modules.

Why are the helpful creatures stronger than the hostiles? Typically this makes the PCs question IF they should attack things, but it also means that the PCs wont just ambush everything or strike first.

I disagree. They may meet something relatively harmless, like a few local people or maybe a neutral Nixie (CR 1), who will only use charm person in self defence. Fey creatures playing pranks on the party, like a faerie dragon can also be fun (and make the wizard consider taking Improved Familiar). Of course some monsters or bandits masquerade as commoners, so you never quite know. It is best to be polite, but cautious.

I don't like it when a game suffers from the "lvl 15 vendor syndrome" and literally the whole world gets more dangerous just before the party levelled up. I don't have much problem with eventually going for tougher challenges once the XP from hunting goblins dries up, but if the encounters get tougher almost faster than the group gets tougher, to me it feels like being cheated out of my reward for levelling up. Plus it forces me to look up optimised builds and munchkin up instead of having fun or going with a wacky build that is rather weak, but makes some sense for RP.

Just think about the ego boost when the players are high level, decked out in gear like Christmas trees and the GM says. "You stumble upon a group of goblins. They scream in terror and run away." The satisfaction is even greater if the group had difficult encounters with goblins at low levels, even loosing a few of their members and decides to chase the goblins and make an example out of them and their families. PCs get an easy fight, satisfaction and some treasure. What's not to like?

I was thinking about an exploration game and even wrote a small script to give me random CRs with the assumption that as the players level up, they should be able to streamroll most things (in other words there is no CR scaling and it actually PAYS OFF to level up and be the biggest fish in the pond).

CR 0, neutral, friendly or weird encounters can be interesting. For example they might find a ruined temple. Apart from some animals who dwell there and try to defend their home, it was picked clean long ago. They get a nice description, a shelter for the night and a free meal (assuming they kill some of those animals.)

Animals are a mixed bag. Most will avoid them, but can be hunted for food. A few predators might try to defend their territory or attack at night. Then there are bugs who are always nasty, but I think there is a spell for that. Rats can bite, run, repeat and prevent a spell-caster from refreshing spells.

Do they have food? Waterskins? At least blankets for sleeping? Do they sleep in armour? Do they burn a fire at night? Do they post watch? At low level any of these things can bite them.

Some encounters can be a skill check (usually DC 10-15 Knowledge Nature or Survival) and resource gathering, like "You find a beehive, yay", "You find some berries that can be used as material ingredient worth 10 gp by a druid to make a healing potion", or "You find some moss that will glow for three days like a candle."

Anyway, here is my perl script

I'm not quite satisfied with the results. The encounter levels tend to be doable at first, then TPK at some point. Although I guess that was the general idea and as a Wizard once said, "any encounter you can expeditious retreat from is a successful encounter".

For example:
Soft cap is 6. Hard cap is 15. Rarity of tough encounters is 0.1
2 1 1 4 1 1 1 2
1 5 6 2 1 3 1 3
2 1 3 5 4 2 2 4
3 1 7 2 1 1 2 1
1 4 1 4 14 12 1 4
1 2 6 3 3 1 2 4
3 1 2 2 1 1 1 2
2 3 2 1 3 1 2 2
3 2 1 1 1 2 1 2
2 7 3 6 5 1 4 3
1 6 2 1 1 2 1 2
2 4 2 1 3 2 8 1

A fun thing to do with a series of traps is to make one into suggestion "Run along this corridor into the room forward. Your friends are waiting for you there with a feast". Or reset the traps and make the suggestion "Run out of here, the place is about to collapse".

Looking at that scene in Indiana Jones, he didn't have to run away from the giant ball. If he succeed his reflex save, he could have ducked back the way he came and it would roll harmlessly above his head.

So let's go with "the inner bag becomes inert until retrieved". This allows stacking four type 4 bags within a type 1 or one type 4 inside a handy haversack to not have to worry about type 4 bags weighting 30 kg. If it even works this way, I'd limit it to 1 level of stacking.

I have another question. The rules say "If a bag of holding is overloaded, or if sharp objects pierce it (from inside or outside), the bag immediately ruptures and is ruined, and all contents are lost forever." This makes me wary and worried about a few problems.

I can reasonably avoid it piercing from the inside by using sheaths, quivers and wrapping sharp items in leather. Not getting it pierced from the outside is trickier, but rules about destroying carried items seldom come into play, so the handy haversack will probably be OK longer than my character will live. Though I suppose some spiteful enemy loosing a fight could still target it specifically and I can't help it.

The problem with a possible bag of devouring can be tested on summoned monsters being told to put in and retrieve a rock from there. It may be fixable with spells like remove curse (forgot the exact rules) or maybe weaponised. Anyway, the risk is manageable.

What I most worry about is the weight limit. There is no easy way to tell how much exactly is in the bag, so the risk of accidentally overloading it and loosing everything seems very real. On the other hand "Classic Tresures Revisited" talks about submerging a bag of holding in water without it exploding, so I don't get how it is supposed to work. I toss in one coin too many and boom? I notice that I have a problem closing the bag and have to take something out? The rules don't say.

The problem is even worse with a handy hoversack which acts like 3 separate bags of holding. 40 kg for the main space at the back and 2 bags 5 kg each for fast retrieval of small items. Or something like that. If one of it's 3 bags gets pierced, are the others OK? If so, I need to keep a very detailed list where exactly is each of the items inside the magical backpack. Or assume the big items were in the main space and roll 50-50 for which of the small bags contained each small item.

How do I approach the weight limit on a bag of holding safely? Carry a scales with me, pack very carefully and leave a 10% weight buffer? How to use a bag of holding safely? Any hints on making extra-sure it won't get pierced? Loosing stuff including the spellbook because of a stupid mistake would really hurt.

Ugh, these damn things were supposed to make adventuring life easier and instead they create so many frustrating problems :/

Or the spell caster just snaps his fingers and everything within a thirty mile radius gets paralyzed and/or reduced to ash instantly because it failed an impossibly high will save. It is very easy to rig a caster to be able to use magic without obviously using magic, in which case preparing an action against them is far more difficult.

No spell up to level 9 has this kind of power. Unless you are referring to some broken combo, like Locate City Bomb, which sensible GMs will ban anyway. Heck, I haven't seen anything even close to this kind of power in the Epic Level Handbook.

Besides, this is not a topic about the power of spell-casters. You're just trolling by coming up with things that add nothing to the discussion, which I think is against the forum rules. Or should be.

A city gate could have an arcane spell-caster to cast detect magic and collect toll on magical items and to blast if the gate is ever attacked. I'd give him 2nd or up to 3rd lvl spells and some wands and scrolls. In addition one or 2 guards could be adepts with healing.

A more powerful spell-caster could be hired by the city and a few places in the city (including gates) could have magical reusable items / traps with alarm spell. Guards could activate those, alerting him about a problem, so he can scry or teleport and blast or otherwise come to their aid.

Finally, there could be a garrison or several patrols close to the gate, who run towards it when the defenders sound a horn.

So there are several ways to bolster the defences and if the PCs are foolish enough to frontally assault a fortification, they should get a nigh-unwinnable battle. So yes, intelligent and trained defenders should act intelligently.

If you don't like them acting on one initiative, divide them into 2-4 groups with different initiatives and let each group pick their own target. At first they should hold back on using any items worth 5 gp or more, but focus fire is definitely within the realm of what they would do.

Alarm and divination traps with live (or undead) guardians work well and are less dangerous to the owner of the dungeon. But this doesn't mean traps can't work. I've seen a whole book with about 200 of them and some were quite creative, like a pit with a funnel and a shrink person spell (which expires quickly, trapping medium creatures inside), then submerging the trap with dirty water so they suffocate.

Dropping a porticulis in front of them and behind, while activating a firewall or cloudkill in between is also a good trap. Reverse gravity into a prismatic wall is also a good cheese grinder. Basically a good trap needs 2 things: some way to trap intruders and some way to kill them.

I've also got an idea to make a dungeon where the treasure is behind one of the walls (which the owner uses pass wall to access it and the wall otherwise looks ordinary, but they might find some traces with DC 25-30 Perception check) and a whole dungeon filled with traps and undead as a decoy. As a reward, the end of this dungeon contains a piece of paper with explosive runes.

The way I see it, a proper way to do a dungeon run is to use divination to scout it, then teleport or dig around it with magic. Or at least test every corridor with summon monster.

Sigh, looks like I'm a killer DM.

My fix is to (ab)use fabricate spell and take all kinds of craft skills on a Wizard (+1 rank, +3 class, + high int bonus) which lets me take 10 on DC 15 and later DC 20 checks (which includes DC 20 check for instant masterwork items). My favourites are alchemy, armorsmithing, weponsmithing, blacksmithing (should cover any items like chains and tools and locks), carpentry (should cover bows, crossbows, arrows and ships), jewellery (should cover gemcutting), leather-working, sculpture, stonemasonry, textiles and of course trapmaking. These should cover most bases and are probably an overkill, but if the GM insists that this character doesn't have the skill needed to make something, just buy another craft skill at level-up and never buy more than 1 rank, except for Alchemy. Get masterwork tools and keep them in a backpack, but in general it is better to buy something complex than buy skill ranks anyway.

In case of a trap pit, the rules don't make sense to me, so I'd allow adding more workers to complete the project faster. Normal trap costs assume they're in a dungeon and cleverly concealed, so a hole in the ground with spikes smeared in disease-inducing sludge at the bottom would be considerably cheaper.

When I wondered about creating simple traps in the wild (mostly to supplement alarm spell at night at low levels), I've come up with these rules:

Craft (Traps) rules: You have a working knowledge of how to design and build simple traps. To design and build elaborate traps that require extensive knowledge and work, thousands of gp and weeks of work (such as stone pressure plates in dungeons), you need at least 5 ranks in this skill.

Check: With 10 minutes to an hour of work and proper materials, you can build simple traps that work on tripwires and other mechanical triggers. The result of this skill check is the saving throw DC necessary to detect it using Perception. Disable Device DC is the same as Perception DC if you want to do it quietly and leave as little evidence as possible and half of that if you just want to trigger it from a distance, cut the wire with a knife on a 10 foot pole, discharge a bear trap with a stick or anything of this sort. For traps that make an attack, such as a rigged crossbow, the attack bonus is your int bonus plus 1 point for every 5 points that your check exceeded 10. (So a roll of 17 grants Perception DC 17, Disable Device DC 17 or DC 8 and attack bonus of +1 + int bonus if applicable). On a roll less than 10, the trap doesn't work when triggered. This roll must be made in secret by the DM. The DC of a simple trap is capped at 20 and a non-rogue can find it with Percpetion.

When designing a trap, provide your Game Master with a rough diagram and a list of materials. If the GM thinks it wouldn't work or that you don't have the materials, he may either declare automatic failure or give negative circumstance bonus. A typical trap will need one to 10 feet of wire or string and 5 or so small metal or wooden parts. If a crossbow or any other expensive component is a part of this trap, it must be provided.

Let's say that parts for one simple trap cost 5 cp and by dismantling it you can get up to 4 cp back, so the time to set it up is really the biggest requirement (lvl 1 commoner poachers must afford traps after all). At GMs decision, these traps can decay over time, especially if left outside in bad weather. This decreases Perception and Disable DCs by at most 1 per day and finally the trap disables itself. This can be prevented with maintenance.

Some traps are free and quick to make. Examples: A water bucket over the door takes just a full-round action to set up. Contact poison smeared on X, if you have the poison. You just need to make a DC 10-15 Craft Trap to "set it up right" for the basic trap of these kinds. Failing means the bucket or rock isn't stable, the poison isn't smeared well, and so forth. Oh and if you roll a 1 on applying poison, you get poisoned yourself and roll fortitude.

There is also a variant of ranger that replaces spellcasting with setting up traps that last for days in just 6 seconds.

But that book works too. Thanks.

Here is a list of all craft, profession and perform skills, I found in Pathfinder.

BTW, I can scarcely believe no one linked Tucker Kobolds yet. http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tucker%27s_Kobolds

They are normal Kobolds, with maybe up to 6 levels of character classes, but they use tactics. They have traps, throwers with acid and alchemist's fire behind crecelations, set things on fire to smoke the intruders and use all kinds of dirty tricks.

Oh, one more thing. If the PCs are going to be approaching a fortification in the open, describe it to them and preferably draw a map. This might give them some ideas why just running uphill in the open with their weapons drawn is a bad idea.

If that gate is at least moderately important, it should have an arcane spellcaster with detect magic and 2nd or 3rd level blasts.

> Marching orders.
Yeah, but if they don't spread, realistically arrows would have a bigger chance of hitting somebody. I was playing under a house rule, that if they are clumped and an arrow misses it's primary target, it hits a secondary if he has low AC. And it is always fun to see an arrow hit the wrong goblin in Dwarf Fortress.

> What caster doesn't take eschew materials?
Unrealistically few of them. Materials are generally hand-waved as "just have a component pouch", but if you read the descriptions, having components would actually be quite unwieldy. I mean who *wouldn't* want to avoid being forced to carry hundreds of small vials with things like bat guano (that he has to touch), live spiders (that he has to eat), live crickets (while trying to be stealthy) and so on, just to do their job? When I think about it, Eschew Materials would be one of the first things I'd want to pick as a Wizard. As things are, about the only benefit this feat provides is not having to fiddle with ingredients while grappled.

Better yet, take "false focus", get a symbol of your religion worth 100 gp or more and have most effects of Eschew Materials plus ignore component costs of up to 100 gp (such as animating a few skellies). If you ever loose the symbol, it is easier to just carve a new one (no rules say it can't be crude and worth 5 cp) than it is to replace the weird stuff inside a components pouch. This feat is very climatic if you're going the Mysthic Theurge or Arcane Hierophant route (don't).

> Should (eventually) the PC's have hit squads sent after them? (Ruthless with sleep hexes and cous de gras)?
Probably not, unless they really pissed someone off. Then they get one hit-squad, but not ruthlessly efficient. Maybe just have these guys track them in the wild and approach using potions of invisibility and blue vinnis poison. Horses can scent intruders anyway.

A scry and fry squad should cost at least 10k for the job, so few NPCs would be able to hire one. And at some point the PCs should get a base of operations and think about it's defences, as well as protecting themselves from scrying.

Well, sorry for the rant. I've never been involved in any organised play and I think I prefer the freedom of just playing with a group of friends and a GM who lets people do things the way they want to, maybe just trolling them slightly over doing things other than adventuring.

None of my characters ever directly hired an NPC, but some were involved in alliances, romances and even occasionally helped in combat, so not having access to an expert in a city that should have a bunch is very counter-intuitive to me.

As for having 20 mercenaries around, I can see why it would be a very bad idea for organised play, but for just playing with friends, there are ways to make them more annoying than they would be worth. Just throw all kinds of logistical problems that a bigger group presents, including:
* Their unkeep.
* Outfitting them in anything better than leather armour, small wooden shield and a simple weapon (which they should start with).
* The cost and logistics of carrying enough food, because the PCs won't feed 25 people on just foraging. They would need at least a few donkeys to carry all those travelling rations, tents and so on.
* Mercenaries arguing for better pay or straight-up threatening to murder the PCs after they defeat the dungeon and are weakened. So in the end, the mercs may eat up a significant part of the treasure. I'd say about 1/3 loot plus their pay, unkeep, food, etc.
* Leeching XP from players. Because why not. And if they happen to level up, they of course want more pay.
* Problems when visiting a town ad getting into a fight or committing a rape or something getting stolen from somebody important.
* Some might desert at night, taking some stolen things with them. The PCs may attempt to track them, or just continue their mission.
* One or two of them might actually be an informants for the group that the PCs are trying to thwart. He can convince some others that they will get more pay if they betray the PCs.
* The sell-swords will fight, but not die for the PCs. Once 25% of them are down or 50% are injured, they retreat, either in organised fashion or just every man for himself. If they see anything really scary like a dragon, they simply run. They regroup far enough to probably not join the same combat before it ends.
* If they get injured (and they will with around 14 AC), PCs are expected to burn healing kits and CLW wands on healing them.
* If too many of them die, the PCs get a bad reputation as employers.

So the mercenaries are an unreliable bunch, sucking more than 500 gp per month, possibly even over 2000 gp per month and a nightmare to equip. What do they bring to the table? My answer is, not much. They are mostly lvl 1 and 2, with maybe a lvl 3 commander and aren't optimised, with mostly warriors and an occasional adept. They can defeat maybe up to CR 5 monsters, but will take a significant portion of the treasure from them and leech XP. Anything more challenging and they get massacred and run away, leaving the PCs to their fate. It might be fun as an experiment (and to teach the players a taste what a logistical nightmare an army can be), but not that fun to actually play and in the end would probably show why in DnD, it is better to send a smaller skilled group than a bunch of lvl 1s at a problem.

Heck, I've been in a campaign where our town was getting harassed by slavers, so we got the sheriff to hire about 30 mercenaries. Those brigands were almost worse than the slavers, forced us to pay them extra and were close to razing the town. Another PC barely avoided getting raped. And even with the mercs, air superiority on our side and an alchemical bomb spreading dust with random transmutation effects crafted by our characters, is was a tough fight, with many wounded NPCs on our side.

Wait, this is not the forum for general GM advice? My bad then. But now I also know not to get involved with any official campaigns and GMs because it would get really frustrating really fast, because this is not how I want to play an RPG. So thanks for that. I hope my notes on prices will still be of some use though.

Anyway, here are my badly organised notes on hirelings in DnD.

Hirelings:
1 sp / day for simple labour, without travel -> 3 gp / month
3 sp / day for skilled, without travel or semi-skilled with travel -> 10 gp / month
1 gp / day for high end servants -> 300 gp / year
3 gp / day for skilled PC class. -> 100 gp / month
10 gp * level / week for PC classes -> 40 gp * level / month
Guide 2 sp/day, bonus to survival, food for 4 and a chance to speed up movement off-road by a small margin.
Porter 1 sp/day, gets a bonus to carrying capacity (+2 Strenght) if given 30 minutes. Light up to 86 lbs, medium up to 173, heavy up to 260 lbs.
If travel is involved, they have to be provided food, shelter and everything. They get basic clothes and basic equipment for their jobs, but any extra or masterwork tools must be provided. Unless hired to fight, they will run or hide or surrender or sometimes use ranged weapons. Their imperative is to survive. They can have morale problems. If too many of them die or leave angry, PCs reputation will suffer. Some may attempt to steal sth and run at night.
Casters are usually paid per spell.
Mercenaries: Usually single or small groups. They are always unreliable. 1 sergeant per 10 troops and 1 horsed noble commander per 10 seargeants. Minimum 1 month of service and I don't know about purchasing their equipemnt, but for infantry it is 20-100 gp and for cavalery 400-2k. They're paid 2 sp/day for footmen, 4 sp/day for cavalery and 5-10 sp/day for leaders. This is just for garnison, active duty (like travelling) is double that and combat is triple. They get armour, weapon, backpack and can carry 15 kg of stuff, mostly food.
Travel ratios are 5 cp/day and 1 kg for a medium humanoid, 2 cp/day for a horse (8kg or 5h of grazing) or small humanoid (0.5 kg) and 5+ gp/day and 25+ kg of meat for a griffin or something (needs herding cattle, goats or sheep behind the army). A medium humanoid needs 4.5 l of drink per day, small one 2.5 l and a horse 50 l.

City gate toll: 2cp / person on foot, 1 sp per rider and mount or a pack animal, 1 gp per wagon.

An acre is 2/5 ha. A bushel is 35-36 litres or 15-25 kg.
There is 35-50% arable land, 15-20% forest, 20-25% pasture and the rest is unusable.
Population density in the county is typically 2 adults / acre. With 3-4 there is hunger. So that's 5 adults (or 2 families) per ha or up to 10 adults per ha with overpouplation. 1/3 of that ha is fallow, the other 2/3 grow staple crops, like grain and beans. 10 people per ha to harvest in one day.
Normally there are 2 crops per year (even if different plants), but cold climates get a 50% decrease and warm a 20% increase in income. Plant growth increases the uield by 33%, affecting farms, pastures, vineyards, orchards and gardens. Has 1.5 km radious.
Wheat crop is 600 kg / ha. without plant growth. Density of wheat is 0.85 g/cm^3.
Cash crops: Lumber, Flax and Hemp,
Cotton - labour intensive and requires 25 people per 1ha. It strips the land of nutrients, even with plant growth,
Olives - warm climate only, 4 years to mature, can be converted to 60% oil, 15 bushels of olives or 10 bushels of oil per ha.
Orchard: Fruit, cider. 2-3 years for trees to give fruit. 10 bushels per ha (r u serious? 10 crates of apples per ha?) 1 bushel of fruit makes around 40 litres of cider.
Wool: 5 sheep per ha. of pasture. 1 worker can shear 12. A shepard is needed per 100 sheep.
Vineyard: 7 years before gives fruit. 1 hectare produces 220 l of wine. Wine is low quality, no aging, spoils after a year. A barrel holds 220 l.
Beehive: produces honey and wax, about 1 hive per 30 hectares.
Dovecote: produces doves for food and their droppings are a good manure. About 1k doves, 30 days to mature, 50-100g of food per day.
Mill: a good profit in coin and a portion of milled grain. 1 per 60 ha. Can be water or wind and is prone to breaking down.
Mine: Usually owned by a king or lord above the PCs. Income is 1/3 to that lord, 1/3 to PCs and 1/3 to the miners, who also pay taxes on it. A mine needs 30 miners to work. After it is exhausted, it can be used to grow mushrooms.
Quarries are just for construction stone and usually owned by the PCs. They need 30 miners to work. 1/2 income to the PCs, 1/2 to pay the miners and for taxes.
Mills are not just for grain, they can help with wool, olive oil, wine, tanners and smiths, increasing their income by 20%.

Infantry is either missile or melee and often uses combined arms to hide archers behind shields and spears. Cheap and all-around good. Cavalery is expensive and vulnerable to magic, which makes light missile cavalery a better oprion than heavy lancers. Air is expensive, but great for reckon. Navy is expensive and vulnerable to fire, so it is mostly used for logistics. Caster divisions are the most effective and mostly used for intelligence, counter-intelligence and incursions.

During times or war, military and adventuring gear can double or tripple in price.

Oil lamps burn 0.5 litre per 6 hours on maximum burn (~60W lightbulb) (or ~50 hours on a gallon of fuel), but can be turned down to a candle flame for a much lower consumption. (Maybe 10 times less fuel?)

Some items are in demand. +1 and +2 swords and armour, as well as say, wands of cure ight wounds or lvl 1 and 2 pearls of power can be sold for 75% value.

A nice house with a few rooms for a family to live would be wroth around 1kgp, while a shack maybe 200 gp. A manor can cost 5-15kgp.

A landed knight has an income of 2-10kgp, while a king or a baron can get as much as 5Mgp per year. Of course this is subject to the cost of living, hiring staff, paying unkeep, etc. Also, much of this is in goods rather than coin.

The best thing we can do in order to prevent shenanigans with hiring hireling scholars is to draft tough but fair payment plans to ensure there is some (yet limited) scope for what they can and can't do for payment. Let's get an idea of what confidentiality costs. Let's get an idea of the cost of a +10 skill rank. The core rulebook hireling rules do not accomplish this.

Yes, it would be great to get rules for this. Sure, for a mid-level adventuring party the cost might not be much, but it is better than just GMs making up numbers.

I've seen a booklet with 4 NPC companions (a guide, a porter and a camp follower) and the rule was that if you get ambushed on a road, they try to avoid combat and fight only if they must. they won't follow you into a dungeon, but will stay with the horses and keep an eye on them for you. Non-combatants who stay with the horses can get jumped and killed, but this should be rare. They will also charge extra for some services. Heck, if the party gets to know them and they die, taking the hireling possessions to his family hundreds of hexes away can be an adventure hook in itself.

It is not inconceivable that a scholar would want to go on an archaeological expedition (or send a younger apprentice), but he would only enter the dungeon once he is sure that the monsters are dead and the traps disarmed. If any case, a travelling scholar would probably slow the party down and have at least 2 pack animals worth of stuff. He might also insist on having additional guards, a share of spoils and so on.

You can spend prestige on a vanity, which is essentially a follower who knows stuff. That's how you get a hireling in PFS.

Lame.

That's not terribly outrageous and nobody wants to see "the hireling strategy" abused. Neither do we want to see hireling combatants, which the PFS guide strictly forbids anyway.

This is outrageous. I *should* have an option to hire mercenaries to do the fighting, or intimidate some Orks into serving me or whatever. This would create some problems, but if enemy leaders have henchmen, the players should have that option as well. Maybe even up to and including outsourcing fetch-quests and escort missions. Plus luring people to where they die, only to claim and sell their equipment is hilarious in some computer RPGs.

I'd say that if they just want to speak to a sage briefly, 10 gp is enough. For a few hours or days of work, 50 gp should do it. If they have to pay more than 500 gp then they get horribly ripped, unless that is the only scholar in hundreds of miles who knows the answer. If they kiss up to the scholar's apprentice, they might get their answer for less than 5 gp, or even for a beer. I base this on a rule I found somewhere that a service of a good lawyer or a similar expert (including preparing documents, speaking at the court, etc.) is worth around 50 gp. A lot of you are doing it too meta-gamey, basing the price for answering a question on the wealth of the PCs. Look at it this way instead: A commoner's monthly income is 3gp, while a skilled worker gets 10 gp per month (I think I've seen it in an older DnD book, not Pathfinder). An expert should be happy to earn 50 gp in several days. Heck, even PC classes who are supposedly really good have rules that they can earn 10 * level gp per week in a city after finding a job or something like that. An expert can be level 3, maybe 5 if he is especially good.

However, this discussion makes it sound very much like some people don't even want to BE Pathfinders - they just want to play the Pathfinder RPG in an organized play environment.

There is nothing wrong with that. Nor is there with requesting rules for such a situation. Seriously, the OP asked a simple question "how much should consulting an expert cost", to which a good answer is "50 gp or less for a week, but he won't travel with you". Instead you guys derailed this discussion into a massive off-topic about how people are supposed to make their characters. Or something. Geez. And if people want to play as members of an organisation, this should give them contacts to people who know things and want the PCs mission to succeed. Which means getting some answers for free or a token price.

But please - let's do it by making our PC's into the heroes, and not by making them middle management, sending unnamed NPCs out to explore, report, and cooperate on our behalf. There are already enough Pathfinder Proxies out there without adding hired sages and sellswords.

Because summon monster and prying eyes are cheaper for the exploring in the long run anyway :P But jokes aside, yeah, I can see how having too many hirelings would make the combats too dragged and the rest of the game into diplomacy checks over not paying the mercenaries enough. It would stop being amusing after a few sessions.

find a scholar "that could help them with their petrified friend". They paid like 50 gold and the guy said, "Duh, just rub the blood on them!" It was a first level party, and as a GM I felt a responsibility to help them have fun and survive. Not die in the first encounter. But in a level 7-11, I'd have been like, "well, he's a statue now and you have no idea how to help him, what would you like to do now?"

That makes you a horrible GM in my opinion. They can pay a caster for a spell. They can pay to have an item made and enchanted according to their specification. But they somehow can't hire a sage to answer a simple question or look it up in a book, even when paying a lot for it. WTF, man? Are you running a simulation of a fantasy world or are you just screwing with your players just to spite them?

If you can buy the expertise after you know which knowledge you need its effectively the same thing as having all of the knowledge skills.

Nope. It is still better to have the knowledge skill, then only pay for it when you don't know the answer yourself. Even when you don't need to know *right now* what are the strengths and weaknesses of the monster attacking you, just knowing something is always better than having to make a trip to the town (which may be far) and paying for it. This means that learning a few languages and spending at least a point on knowledge skills will usually pay off and forbidding players from ever hiring experts is a really stupid way to force them into spending skill points the way you want them to.

But rise linearly, whereas your income rises exponentially.

There is no rule that ties the income of an average NPC to the average party level.

If someone is ugly, has no useful skills, but has wealth, he can hire others to work for him. It is as simple as that.

In fact, if my PC were to be needing to hire expert help, he/she would most likely need to hire a combat expert... hay! that's covered in the OPs post, when he was checking the rules on Hirelings!

Core Rulebook wrote:
Hireling, Trained: The amount given (3sp a day) is the typical daily wage for mercenary warriors, masons, craftsmen, cooks, scribes, teamsters, and other trained hirelings. This value represents a minimum wage; many such hirelings require significantly higher pay.

So, if I just hire say 20 mercenary warriors, paying combat pay, hazard pay, a bonus for good performance, and say another bonus just because I'm trying to be a "Good" PC that should run me 60 gp or so. At that rate I'm paying 10 times the listed "typical daily wage" for mercenaries... That would allow me to replace the rest of you "under-educated" pathfinders. Need someone to swing a sword and kill things? Hire them! They are cheep!

That's covered in the existing rules!

Ah, finally one of you gets it. Thanks mate.

I wonder how those who are horrified at the idea NPCs might use basic tactics like focusing fire would react to the idea of NPCs using more advanced tactics like having all but one or two bowmen fire at the wizard while the remaining bowmen ready actions to disrupt spellcasting (in order to prevent fireballs or healing), and then when the beatsticks are in position to threaten the foremost archers, having them five foot step back, and tanglefoot bag the beatsticks while the other archers eliminate the spellcasters (with at least one always readying to disrupt casting).

Splendid idea. Well, except that the cost of tanglefoot bags sucks, but garrisons would have some stocked for emergencies and the cost is more reasonable if you only have to replace them like maybe twice a year. Another thing to do is having 1-2 people with slings and thunder-stones target the casters.

Another option would be to just have a high level crossblood sorcerer fireball the party for 15d6+30 damage. That would accomplish the same result with significantly less time spent. =P

Nope. 2-3 level ranged speced fighters are common and cheap enough to man a gate. Lvl 15 sorcerers are scarce, expensive and have more important or interesting things to do. Plus it is better to keep them well protected and in reserve instead of where they would make easier targets.

If the PCs are approaching a gate and it is clear they are hostile, have the commander tell his men to start shooting them from afar. Even with range increment penalties, that's a few rounds where they have to run to get closer. Plus it gives the PCs plenty of time to run away, should they so decide. If they persist, close the gate, lower the portcullis, raise the bridge, whatever. Fortifications are built to make it easy for archers to defend and difficult for melee to attack. Finally once the PCs are defeated and the remainder of them runs, have the defenders mock and insult them. Furthermore, as soon as a serious skirmish started, someone would blow a horn to summon more defenders from the barracks not far away, so the defenders should get reinforcements in under 10 minutes.

I think the commander should have some feat that gives a +1 or +2 morale bonus to attack and AC to nearby troops. This at least gives a mechanical reason to target him. I haven't looked into it, but there are some teamwork feats, like bonuses for standing together in a phalnax.

in normal logic if its a fort, any siege would require 10-1 odds in the players favor to crack it.

3-1 could work with siege weapons numerous and strong enough to damage the walls and kill some defenders. Or stronger casters. Or air superiority. But if they just charged carrying grappling hooks, ladders and battering rams, it would be a slaughter.

Unless the archers are goblins. In that case the commander would be lucky if the archers don't shoot each other.

Lol, the "monstrous humanoids revisited" has a rule that says goblins will sometimes spend their round laughing at another goblin's death, screaming, picking nose or just running around.

It think this should end in One or two volleys, then groups of a few archers firing at will focusing fire separately, but targeting mostly those already wounded or without cover. Oh and if Medieval Total War is any indication, long range volleys are more about hitting anything at all than focus-firing anyone.

I've seen an adventure module where Kobolds had a defensible position in a cave, with several rooms with the only entrance being a stone shelf that was only accessible with a climb check. It was defended by 2 kobolds with slings, but it never made sense to me, why one of them wouldn't run to warn the others. Their combined force and at least 2 good choke points (one being a river ford) would make it almost impossible for PCs to defeat them before access to at least summon monster 2 or fireball. Of course from meta-gaming perspective this only works in campaigns where failure is an option and PCs can count survival by running away a success.

"Mr Captain Sir, we killed the one not wearing armor, turns out he was just a traveler that was trying to warn us about the attack, which is why he was waving his arms around".

Lol, this is even funnier than a monk in wizard robes practising confusion-fu. As has been stated in this thread, there are ways the PCs can mislead their enemies, which is what they should do to counter focused-fire. If there are multiple people casting spells, I guess it quickly goes to "fire at will" and "finish off their wounded first". Also "ready your actions and interrupt spell-casters".

It takes Spellcraft to identify which spell is being cast. But I can't find any rules that state you need Spellcraft to know that a spell is being cast.

Without at least one of silent or Still spell feats, it is quite obvious at close range. Like DC 5 Perception obvious. Though the noise and distance would make it more difficult further way. But this is about the inability to hide casting a spell, not the difficulty of faking casting a spell. So that monk could train with the wizard to be able to get a +4 circumstance bonus on Perform(acting) check pretending to cast a spell to get targeted by all those arrows. There are no rules for this, but you might adopt the rule from goblins comic, that casting a spell makes a glowing image around the caster.

Against newer players, probably not very fair – but it might be a good object lesson if there is a reason for them to survive to be put in jail and then visited so that they realize they aren’t actually in a video game.

Yep, this is a good way to teach your PCs some tactics.

Sppony recorded a funny talk about this topic, BTW. http://spoonyexperiment.com/counter-monkey/counter-monkey-leaping-wizards/

Personally, I'd dump 1 point into it to unlock it and on later levels get it to where I can take 10 on a DC 20 check.

After reading through here, I like E6. It just makes sense and does away with some of the worst problems of DnD, such as GMs being told in the manual to cheat on ("scale") encounter levels (which should instead follow a 1/x probability distribution, unless the PCs are looking for a tough fight on purpose). It also removes the need for all kinds of crutch-like fixes to overpowered PCs. I like the idea of keeping the PCs closer to normal humans.

Nice, Cleric 1, Wizard 1, Mysthic Theurge 4 gets 3rd level spells in both classes, special abilities of 1st level wizard and cleric (including a raven familiar who can talk and channelling positive energy). He gets +3 BaB, +5 Willpower, +2 Reflex, +4 Fortitude. Taking cleric first boosts HP and Fortitude save.
With E8 Mysthic Theurge, I'd keep the "ability to cast 2nd level arcane and divine spells" as a requirement and let him be Cleric 3 / Wizard 3 / MT 2 (because a Cleric 1 / Wizard 1 / MT 6 would be too cheesy). Still only limited to 3rd level spells, while straight caster classes get 4th level, but it is a reasonable price for versatility.
Toughness, and feats boosting saving throws and attributes by 2 and maybe arcane armour training would make this guy much tougher. Of course the capstone feats for Wizards and Clerics are not available to a MT. So is crafting some interesting magic items.
An Arcane Hierophant build would probably work even better.

I don't see a lot of magic items from the ultimate equipment guide, which I expected to be there. Such as horseshoes of speed.
And damn it, Handy Haversack and Efficient Quiver are just 1 CL beyond the 8 CL limit and they're so convenient. Oh well, pack horses it is, then. Pearls of power are CL 17. Too bad, they're cheap, so it would make sense to load up on like ten of them and use each lvl 1 spell slot for a different spell.
Stat-boosting items could be limited to +2 or +4, to make them on-par with lvl 2 buffs at best. Remember that a headband of intellect gives 1 extra maxed skill per +2 bonus when worn.
I wonder if using ritual magic to create more powerful items at ten times the cost would work with E6, similar to how Epic Level handbook handles creation of epic items.

Magic weapons and armour don't need to be +1 for extra abilities. Instead make them +0 (with a bonus to hit from masterwork, but no +1 to damage) for 250 gp, which allows adding properties that cost money, but not a +x bonus. Very handy for making specialised arrows cheaper.

Overall casters get lvl 3 spells, while full BaB classes get a 2nd attack, which makes them quite powerful. 3/4 BaB classes, but not 0.5 BaB classes can get that second attack by spending 2 feats, which works for me.

I also like that this makes archery more powerful. Point Blank Shot + Rapid Shot + Many Shot on a full BaB class and you get 4 attacks per round, where everyone else has 1 or 2 at best. Add Mounted Archery and a light warhorse with horseshoes of speed and you can kite a group of melee fighters, which is always fun. Even the non-archery speced people would be wise to have a ranged weapon and either soften up the enemies before they charge or just shoot once their spells run out.

It also makes mounted combat and heavy cavalry more viable and anyone with flying mounts, like griffins, is a terrifying force.

Skills still count at this level and aren't out-classed by magic yet, as described in the article that started E6. Even better, there is no requirement to keep up with higher CRs, so even 1 point to "unlock" a skill or get the +3 bonus for a class skill is a good investment, especially with high int.

Another thing I like about E6 is that fewer things are fluid. After a while, the players will memorise their attack bonuses on all their attacks, ranges of all their spells and so on.

E6 also makes alchemical items and poisons more viable. Too bad, the poison prices are so broken and even crafting them at 1/6 price is too expensive to use regularly. I'm especially a fan of poisons that put to sleep, like Drow Poison (made from mushrooms) and Blue Whinnis (made from a plant). In E8 you can get hundreds of doses of temporary (but free as beer and working) variants with minor creation spell.

The E6 manual lacks a list of Pathfinder / DnD feats that are compatible. Just a list of names divided into epic and non-epic would do. Some things like Leadership, Improved Familiar and Arcane Armour Mastery probably are epic, but available.

Adding symbols to feats for what makes for cautious and gestalt progression would also help.

Since so many rules are getting re-written, you might as well build in some more 3.5 variant rules into it, like vigour and wounds.

In general, I prefer point-buy systems to levelling systems, so just getting feats (including some that grant skill points or a max +2 attribute bonus) is appealing to me.

Ah, if by "auto-heal" you mean "buy a few wands of CLW and spam them", then I no longer disagree. The thing is in DnD you're expected to burn spell slots or money on healing spells and items. A wand of CLW is a very good deal, but it isn't free. I see Lesser Healer's Sphere as overpowered because the party will usually be able to afford one after their first adventure and never have to worry about healing between combat again. I'd say this is worth at least 10 CLW wands, not 3.

Some DnD equipment is a good bargain and some is not, but for spells you expect to use a lot of, like CLW, mage armour, protection from alignment, and maybe a few others, 3600 per "everlasting wand" is a very good deal, at least compared to wands or pearls of power.

> Hit Points have been a "per encounter" resource for a long, long time already.
What?! DnD is an attrition game, hps don't auto-heal unless your party has rings of regeneration.

> Bottomless Skillet
There already is an item like that, I think.

> Lesser Healer’s Sphere
This is great. No CMD check, co charges, no nothing. Just auto-heal any number of people after a combat. Very overpowered in my opinion, but not quite on a level with a lyre of building. The greater versions aren't really worth it, I think.

> Headband of Sending
I wouldn't buy it, especially that you need at least 2 of those and it uses up the headband of intellect slot. Overpriced for what it does and for the rare occasions when the party has to briefly split up, just use spells. Anyway, don't bother with charges per day when you can have a similar constant effect.

> Rather than roll 150d6, I'll assume it's taking average damage. 3.5 * 150 = 525 damage.
Minus 15 * hardness, which a book doesn't have that much of. Looks like anything not immune to electricity that fell into that pool pretty much burned and dissolved.

I'm pretty sure I've seen a rule somewhere, that is someone or something is underwater, you can't target it with (some?) spells from outside the water and must at least put a hand under there. So water could block line of effect from a trap. I think.

> marital/martial
It didn't look quite right when I wrote it, but I blame the spell checker :P

Anyway, these other classes with full BAB progression have some awesome abilities and a warrior just gets more feats, so they need to be used effectively and even then it seems underpowered.

In general, scribe things that you don't normally prepare, but occasionally need badly. Good examples are removing poison and disease.

Saving gp is probably a good idea, but you might want to look over some mundane equipment and cheap wondrous items for something you like.

He didn't say, 150d6 damage in one go, he said it was 10d6 each round for about 15 consecutive rounds (one round is 6 seconds).

IIRC there is another rule, that water blocks AoE spells or something of the sort. If the book was submerged most of the time, it only took a hit from the first lightning and was inside a backpack at the time, which greatly increases the chance it survived.

As for water damage, well, wet paper wraps when drying and ink dissolves when wet, so it can be a problem.

I also wonder how would mending and make whole affect something half-burnt and smudged. I believe the rules say that if something is destroyed, it can't be magically fixed, but if it is only partially broken, then it can.

Whistling arrows are for signalling, but could potentially scare a horse. I'd house-rule that any animal without combat training (similar to what a war-horse gets), can be scared by whistling or flaming arrows.