Mattrex's page

Ooh, the chance to critique. Well, let's see.

First of all, you put a line break between the description and the first ability, and between each paragraph thereafter, which is inappropriate according to the provided template. You also fail to space after the colon in the ability. The name is "Fates Wearer" but the opening paragraph calls her a "fate weaver"; that might not be a template error, strictly speaking, but it's definitely something that's going to raise eyebrows and not in a good way.

So that's it for the template errors. Next up is the writing, which needs quite a bit of editing to get into a publishable state. You have an issue with subject-verb agreement in the first sentence of the description, the second sentence is laborious to read and grammatically suspect (I think it should be "the more enemies she engages at once", though even that doesn't really make the initial clause all that coherent), and the third sentence needs a comma in the middle for clarity and to ease the rhythm of the sentence.

The first sentence of the actual ability needs some commas on either side of "and for every level thereafter that the fates wearer gains a revelation". For that matter, "revelation" should not be capitalized; class ability names are never capitalized unless they include proper nouns. Additionally, at the end of that first sentence you introduce an ambiguity: by saying "her subsume ability grows in power", do you mean "her (subsume) ability grows in power" or "her (subsume ability) grows in power"? According to the ability name, the name of the entire ability is "subsume ability", so if that is correct, the end of the first sentence should read, "her subsume ability ability grows in power". This reads awkwardly but is correct according to house style.

Second paragraph. You use the word "combat" instead of "encounter"; the latter is more appropriate. You use the phrase "in melee with", instead of "in reach", which is clearer and more appropriate for house style. In addition, the text of the ability is confusing and while I can muddle out what you mean by it--the oracle gains whatever level-appropriate ability her opponent possesses by sacrificing some of her own abilities--you do a poor job of clarifying the limitations and conditions surrounding this transferral. That's without even addressing the mechanical questions.

You use passive voice frequently throughout the text of this ability, too: you should say in the third paragraph "she regains access to her sacrificed mystery spells" instead of "her access to her mystery spells are restored".

Really, the whole text of the ability needs to be ripped apart and rebuilt from scratch to emphasize clarity and minimize questions. Obviously, this is only your first draft, so there's some amount of that to be expected, but if I were reviewing this as I would be reviewing a submitted entry, that's exactly what I would be saying.

Next I would like to dive into the actual mechanics, but I'm off work now, so I've got to get running to dinner. Maybe later tonight!

We just need to reach out and encourage women to enter and make paizo.com a community in which women aren't afraid of taking a risk and putting themselves out there (as Jessica mentioned in one of her early posts).

Here and a few times before, there has been talk about community-building. That is an admirable goal, but what specifically do you think can or should be done to facilitate that? What is it exactly that people think we (as a community here on paizo.com) should do, or what do they think we are currently doing that we should not do?

I confess that I sometimes feel a little like Josef K., indicted for nonspecific crimes by an ambiguous authority, where my guilt is presumed and I am given no option of remediation or appeal.

So, I am encouraging you all to express what it is that you feel is holding you back here. Tell us what your grievances are with this community, so that it can work to address those proactively.

I appreciate the feedback, even if I also respectfully agree that I am doing someone a favor if they have to look a word up in the dictionary! That said, I agree that "raucous" was not the best choice, and had I given it more thought I might have chosen a more precise way to phrase what I was going for. At the time, I was ruthlessly taking a hatchet to my first draft, which had all the "prized by" nonsense, so I wanted to be tight and evocative in as few words as possible.

The biggest glitch of the item (costs and spell requirements aside) is probably the "activate at the end of a jump". It's not a mechanical glitch so much, in my mind, as it is a matter of clarity and relying on people to understand the fundamental rules. What I really meant was "as a free action at the end of a jump [using the Acrobatics skill]", i.e. a high jump or long jump. Since that is a skill use (which provokes AoOs) and/or movement (which provokes AoOs), I saw it as a good trade-off and a way to give characters a motivation to literally jump into the fray.

With some additional polish I probably could have conveyed that the free action was tied to a skill use more clearly to prevent very literal-minded people from saying, "well, I'll hop up six inches as a move action". Obviously, being able to FAQ this sort of thing isn't the same as baking it right into the item description with no additional clarification needed, so it's a good object lesson and something to remain aware of for future creations.

First of all, congratulations on making Top 32! Good luck in round two.

These are great items that I love and want for all of my rogue-like characters (and I do love rogues). They're super useful, the effect is specific and unique, and they offer a lot of room for creative use by smart players.

That is kind of the problem with them. They are very good, especially given the gloves slot (there isn't a lot of competition in that category) and relatively inexpensive price. And in addition to the silence effect, they also give +5 to Disable Device and unlimited message at will? This is treading close to the line of an item that is just doing too much for too little cost.

I'd have cut out the skill bonus--rogues already have tons of boosts to Disable Device at their disposal, and the gloves stand on their own without that crutch.

That said, this is one of those items that I wish I had come up with first. They would definitely make a solid addition to any rogue's toolbox, particularly with some tweaks to powers and limitations.

First of all, congratulations on making Top 32! Good luck in round two.

This was easily one of my favorite items in the contest, and though I only saw it once, it was a no-brainer to vote for. The mind-bending mental image of someone being sucked into (or trying to crawl out of) a cloak attached to someone's back was a bullseye.

I'll be honest, I liked the idea so much that I didn't even pay very close attention to the specific mechanics. The only thing I'd say is that with such an expensive cloak, the DCs should be slightly higher. (Or the cloak should be cheaper.) It's otherwise a very solid item.

First of all, congratulations on making Top 32! Good luck in round two.

I can only assume that it's my own personal biases, but I loved this item and voted it up every time I saw it, even though I know it has some questionable mechanical aspects. Frankly, I think the idea of turning yourself into a swarm (which was the first image I had upon reading this, notwithstanding that it can be used on other creatures as well) was unique and compelling, and I'd be enthusiastic to see what a creative player could do with such an item.

But with great creativity comes great responsibility, so there are some unanswered questions that would probably require quite a bit of FAQing to completely unravel. Why are nonmagical clothes (possibly made of leather) shrunk, but nonmagical backpacks (possibly made of leather) left behind? What if you have a magical backpack? What if your mundane gear is inside your magic items? When shrunk, are the individual copies able to use their items individually, and if so, to what effect? If one of my minis zaps a wand, even if it does nothing numerically, does it use up a charge? What if 49% of them zap the same wand? 50%? 51%?

It's the sort of thing that makes a GM have to sit down and think through, or just rule by fiat. That's excusable when the item is as fun and interesting as this, but it's also going to lead to some degree of contention at the table when different people have different interpretations of what should happen. The item would have been much stronger with more clarity, but I confess that it would be difficult to consider every possibility in an elegant way and remain within the word count.

That said, this was very appealing item and I'm glad to see it made the cut.

Congratulations on making Top 32! Good luck in round two.

I liked this item, and voted for it at least once (don't remember if I saw it more than once). When I was reading it originally, it didn't even strike me as being a spell-in-a-can: it was so far removed from the "cast a spell as a standard action" baseline that it didn't even trigger that part of my brain. This is a good thing.

I like that there's a give-and-take to the effect that balances it out. It can inflict multiple opponents with suggestion, but it can also be killed--possibly before it even inflicts one person! So there's some risk and some reward for the user, meaning it's not always a guarantee that you'll want to use it.

The only quibble I have is that the item doesn't specify whether the snake can attempt to inflict the same person multiple times if the first saving throw succeeds. I'd prefer it to note whether or not an initial Will save makes the target immune to the suggestion for 24 hours, like many similar monster abilities do.

First of all, congratulations on making Top 32! Good luck in round two.

My impression is largely the same as other reviewers': domain selection is an important aspect of character creation, as equally as important to a cleric as their choice of race and deity. Just as one would be very careful with an item that allows you to change your race at will (notwithstanding the several items I saw this year that allowed just that), we should be careful with any item that allows you to change normally irreversible decisions made at 1st level.

That said, I really did like the idea of temporarily adopting other aspects of your god. I'd have fussed with the requirements: I wouldn't have made channel energy a currency to exchange, but would rather have allowed the cleric to swap out a domain for 24 hours once a week, or something similarly restrictive. The real key here is, when designing an item that swaps or exhanges values, you have to make sure that the alternate value is around for less often than the base value, otherwise they switch places. You did limit duration somewhat with the one-round maximum, which was a good effort at curtailing long-term abuse, but it also results in PCs using it only when necessary and in a very granular, mechanistic fashion.

That said? I did vote for this item, several times. I do like giving players options--sort of my personal creed is that there should be an option for PCs to do everything--and this stood out to me as a solid example despite its flaws.

First of all, congratulations for making Top 32! Good luck in round two.

This item had me a little bit on the fence. I saw it more than once during voting, and voted for it a few times and against it a few times. It's really a matter of flavor versus mechanics: love the flavor, and it's got tremendous capacity to become a "gotcha" moment that makes complacent players expecting a humdrum encounter to sit up in their seats and take notice very quickly. As a GM, that sort of tool is invaluable.

The mechanics of the item are a bit wonky, though. I don't actually think it has to do with the item's central thesis: the whole idea is great, but the item doesn't come built-in with many safeguards against abuse. Being able to convert channeled energy to cold damage on a 1-for-1 basis is not only powerful for GMs looking to have a villain hose the party, but for a cleric with Selective Channeling looking to turn his cheap channels into devastating cold bombs while sparing his companions.

This item would be much, much stronger with a few safeguards built in. Whenever making an item, always ask yourself this question: "If I were a rules lawyering player with this item, how would I be able to abuse it?" Perhaps limiting the amount of cold damage that can be inflicted, or causing channels to reduce the amount of time the candle has left to burn, or something like that. Something that doesn't make the party cleric carry a lit candle in hand at all times to ice over the baddies.

A last quibble is that the phrase "divine cold" kept tripping me up. I realize now that it's just a flavorful description, but it reads to me like a technical game term (like "positive energy" or "negative energy"), and I actually had to double check to make sure it wasn't a real thing.

First of all, congratulations on your success, and good luck in round two!

Now, having never seen most of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, I didn't get the same "movie-in-a-can" vibe as some of the judges, so I really liked the flavor of this item. I recall seeing and voting for it during the contest, as I thought it would be something that players would have a lot of fun playing around with in any kind of seafaring campaign.

The mechanics are a bit rocky, as some have said; it's got a lot of things going on at once, which is a lot of recordkeeping, and requires a fair deal of GM fiat when determining how or whether certain ioun stone abilities apply to the ship (since those abilities are designed for PCs, not ships, which follow different rules). I generally prefer items with zero recordkeeping requirements.

The other thing that stood out to me are the prodigious number of construction requirements; now, take this with a grain of salt, since my own item was criticized frequently for having too few construction requirements, but I tend to see three (not counting the Craft Wondrous Item feat) as the upper ceiling, and this item has five. Moreover, all of those various requirements tend to emphasize to the reader just how much the item simply duplicates the spell effects, rather than applying some sort of unique twist that can't be reproduced by casting a simple spell.

To everyone: Thank you for your show of support. It's gratifying to see that people enjoy something I created, and I certainly hope that at least a few people shamelessly steal this item to use in their home games. That is the ultimate compliment for an RPG designer!

The most recurring criticism is that telekinesis seems odd as a spell prerequisite; I might have a blind spot here, because I thought it was precisely on-target, and actually spent a good while considering spells to use. I had previously considered the likes of repulsion and force punch, but ultimately it was the fact that telekinesis allows for a ranged force-based bull rush (very similar to the effect of the boots) that put it in that slot. Considering its secondary effect, perhaps feather fall might have been appropriate as a secondary requirement.

As far as the name goes, "stompers" is just a colloquial name for boots, particularly boots that you get dirty wearing. Given the sudden violence inherent in the item's theme and its method of activation, it seemed a perfect fit.

Anyway, I'd like to thank everyone again for their support. I hope I do not disappoint you all in the next round!

Doesn't always work.

"Sean walked by zombies." complete active sentence.

In the rubric provided, "by zombies" suggests that the action is performed by zombies; in this case the word "by" indicates instrumentality, that is, it points to the cause or means by which the verb occurred (zombies). This use of the word "by" is as a preposition.

"The bank was robbed" indicates that something robbed it. "The bank was robbed by zombies" reveals the agent of the verb.

The sentence "Sean walked by zombies" does not use the word "by" in its sense of instrumentality, however; in this sentence, the word means "near" or "past". This use of the word "by" is as an adverb.

Since the sentence "Sean walked" is in active voice, and the sentence "Sean walked by zombies" where "by" is a preposition makes no semantic sense, and requires you to change "by" from a preposition to an adverb in order to make sense, the rule of thumb in fact remains true for that example!

Also consider that in a small community of 100 people, you only need to have a single paladin--say, someone wintering during a pilgrimage or protecting an important local shrine--to have the "percentage of paladins" be 1%.

In a metropolis with 500,000 people, you'd need 5,000 paladins to achieve the same percentage; depending on the setting, there might not be 5,000 paladins on the entire continent.

It's easier to explain why there might be a couple members of any given PC class in a small community than to figure out how or why there are twenty thousand fighters in a single city.

Remember, that every item you look at is someones best effort to enter this contest. Not everyone is ready to be a RPG Superstar or has the chops to be a game designer, but they all made an effort and from positive and constructive feedback they may get there.

This is a pretty feel-good way of looking at it, and it is valuable to remember that we're dealing with real people on the other ends of these items. But I think it's pretty obvious on its face that many, many items were not "best effort". Some items I would have a hard time even characterizing as "effort".

Standards are important, and while it may make us uncomfortable to contemplate the fact, not everyone is capable--or willing--to meet them.

I've run into this a few times. I feel I can safely point it out since I've seen an unusual number of items fall into the exact same trap: they come up with some novel, interesting, and even useful trick, and then ruin it by making it usable ten to fifteen times a day, or more. Literally.

The vast majority of daily-use magic items are usable one to three times per day. It's kind of boggling that so many people who are otherwise astute enough to craft something compelling end up so wildly inflating their items' uses per day.

While it's not exactly strictly the phraseology that bugs me, I've seen a lot of items that, in addition to whatever effects they have, are also a bag of holding mixed in. A lot of people are trying to sex up their items by adding in extraneously useful effects, I think.

Which brings up my final issue.... 290+ words. Few items really need that many words. If your item has that many, you probably should have done some more editing.

I don't buy this. I have some experience writing within word limits, and working within any reasonable limit is already an exercise in creative editing. If you say the limit is 300 words, don't pretend that it's really 200 words. Either say it's 200 words from the start, or don't get upset when someone uses what they're given.

One of my biggest peeves as a writer is being given a moving target. It's passive-aggressive and it has no place in a professional context.

This doesn't apply to people who use more words than are necessary to describe their concept, but different concepts--by definition--will require different word counts to meaningfully communicate them. Just because you can describe Wondrous Item A in 100 words doesn't mean that the upper limit on every item is 100 words.

To all your questions: except as specifically stated in the text, it works exactly as does a wizard's familiar. That means that it gets all the abilities that the text does not specifically omit, including an empathic link and so on. It follows all the same rules, including being a magical beast rather than an animal. It follows all the normal rules for dead familiars and replacing familiars and so on. It follows all the normal rules for stacking levels.

Yes, I know that. My questions were rhetorical. By RAW, all of these things are the case. The buccaneer pretends he is a wizard of 1/2 his level, and there we go.

My difficulty is reconciling these rules with the fact that the gunslinger is a martial class with no arcane capacity. The gunslinger doesn't perform magical rituals (unless his racial traits, feats, or other class levels grant them). You might as well give the fighter a bonded weapon.

Beyond that, the buccaneer's familiar ability explicitly states that its familiar cannot share spells or deliver touch spells. Does this restriction continue once he gains levels in other familiar-granting classes whose familiars do have that ability? If not, why specify? If so, then it's a very bad ability. Is there a logical justification for is ability, or am I left to chalking it up to "just because"?

The Advanced Race Guide features a racial archetype for Gunslingers called the "Buccaneer", not to be confused with the archetype for Bards called the "Buccaneer". One of the Buccaneer's abilities is as follows:

"Exotic Pet (Ex)
At 5th level, a buccaneer gains a familiar as a wizard of half the buccaneer's class level (though the exotic pet never gains the ability to deliver touch spells or share spells). This pet is typically a monkey or parrot (use the stats for a raven familiar). Such animals are useful scouts, even in the thick of combat. As long as the pet is within 30 feet of the buccaneer, the buccaneer also gains the benefit of evasion."

While I will begin by offering my opinion that this ability is poorly-written and shows evidence of being incompletely thought out, I am interested in knowing if there is any errata or other material that might clear up some of the questions that the ability poses. I'm not really interested in "you can just fix it yourself" arguments; of course I can, but that is no excuse for poor initial design (if indeed it is poor initial design and I'm not way off the mark here). I am, however, interested in how you might go about personally answering the questions if there is no concrete official answer.

The problems:

1. Is the familiar gained as a result of this class ability a magical beast? If so, at what point does the creature cease being the animal type and acquire the magical beast type? Familiars are explicitly indicated as magically-augmented animals (hence the type change), but gunslingers have no magical capabilities or even supernatural abilities, unlike other classes which gain familiars or animal companions.

2. Does the buccaneer's familiar gain an empathic link? This ability is a supernatural ability, ostensibly due to the binding ritual that links master and familiar together. Is the buccaneer's exotic pet in fact bound magically to the buccaneer?

3. Speaking of binding rituals, does a buccaneer whose familiar dies or is dismissed gain the ability to acquire a new one, as a wizard does? If so, how does the buccaneer do so, given that they do not normally possess magical capability and cannot perform a binding ritual? Is there still a 200gp cost involved?

4. Does the buccaneer's levels stack with any wizard levels for the purpose of determining the familiar's abilities? The rules for familiars state: "All familiars have special abilities (or impart abilities to their masters) depending on the master's combined level in classes that grant familiars." This, along with the fact that a buccaneer's familiar is treated as a wizard of half his level, would seem to indicate that they do stack. If so: does the buccaneer's familiar gain the ability to deliver touch spells or share spells? Does a buccaneer with enough levels in wizard to get 12 levels in a familiar-granting class gain the ability to scry on his familiar as a spell-like ability? Do the answers to these questions depend on whether he took his buccaneer levels first, or his wizard levels?

Taking away someone's ability to cast magic, huh?

These recommendations and thought experiments are interesting, and useful, but yeah, I was originally thinking of something along the lines of the Tranquil in Dragon Age, or stilling in The Wheel of Time. Where you don't need to go through a fancy rigamarole to keep someone imprisoned because you've cut them off at the source.

That's not to say the fancy rigamarole isn't also useful. The idea of a high-security magic prison using some of these tricks is delightful.

There isn't any theme or attitude which is verboten at a table out of hand, but the GM's expectations and the players' expectations must be in harmony.

Your expectation was that you would create a serious, believable fantasy world and run a game wherein your players would craft a dramatic story.

Your players'--or at least one of your players'--expectations was to dick around, eat pizza, drink beer, and make jokes.

There is no circumstance in which these two expectations may be harmonized that doesn't result in one of the two of you growing frustrated and bitter.

Imagine that you're the magistrate of a small city, and you've captured a sorcerer who has been causing all sorts of troubles; he's been stealing with mage hand, or setting things on fire with spark, and in general performing criminal mischief with his spells or bloodline powers. He's been caught before, and given the lash or the stocks, but he hasn't learned, and he remains up to his tricks as soon as he's let go. The last time you caught him, he managed to escape through the use of his magic, but now you've got him again and you are determined that this will be the last time he is going to be a problem.

Now, assume, for the sake of argument, that you are not simply going to execute him, either lawfully or by turning a blind eye while someone gets their hands dirty on your behalf. Either your city's laws prohibit it, or his crimes--while troublesome--don't justify execution, or you have any other reason not to see him dead. You know that you can't simply lock him up, because he'll find a way to get free again. Exile would simply make him someone else's problem, and you're unwilling to foist him onto your neighboring cities. If only you could... get rid of his magic!

How would you do it? Is there a means, within the current Pathfinder system, to do so? (I seriously doubt that, aside from destroying an artifact with mage's disjunction.) Do you think this is something which should be possible at all? If so, how difficult should it be? Should there be a way to reverse it?

This is primarily a thought experiment--I've been thinking about crime and punishment in a world that has wizards and clerics walking the streets--so I'm not really looking for complete, coherent systems, but I am interested in seeing what sorts of ideas people have about this subject. Please, tell me what you think!

I wasn't able to find anything explicit about this in the rules or on the forums, and though I have an inclination of my own, I thought it would be good to get some second opinions as well.

Does being underwater in and of itself provide concealment of any kind, whether a miss chance or an ability to use Stealth, either to creatures in the water or creatures out of the water?

I realize there are easily circumstances in which the answer would be "yes"--murky water, for instance. But I'm interested in water in and of itself.

At a glance, the prerequisites required for the various critical feats seem dramatically outsized for the conditions they inflict. You need BAB +9 to even get the prerequisite feat, Critical Focus, let alone meet the prerequisites of the feats themselves.

I allow that I may be missing some sort of value calculation, so what I'm asking is whether there is a good reason for the prerequisites to be so high, and so narrowly limited in some cases to characters like 15th-level fighters.

Yay, it's official.

I was thinking of a color that would denote us all as Paizoites (Paizoans?) so Green just seemed semi-common but distinctive enough to use as a group color.
(The beer will be flowing like it's St. Patty's day...)

Anyways, I'll be there in green...The Party has arrived.

As luck would have it, I wore a green shirt to work today, long before I ever saw this suggestion. Good choice!

Seeing as how this is my first PaizoCon, I was enthusiastic about attending the event banquet, but regrettably, I wasn't able to get in in time. If anyone would like to sell me a ticket, I'd like to arrange something--maybe I'll take you out to dinner as thanks or something!

Good evening, folks.

A close friend of many years has made the difficult decision to realize his dreams and break free of the stifling mediocrity of corporate America; in other words, he quit his job to create a game studio with a couple of his associates, and now they're making a video game.

The game is Solarial, a science-fiction themed sandbox adventure game in the vein of Terraria or Minecraft. The Kickstarter project for the game has just gone live as of today, and I'd like to spread the word as far and wide as possible, because word of mouth is what makes the wheels of Kickstarter turn.

You can find the project here! The project is set for 60 days, with a very modest goal, so I have high hopes--so long as word gets out!

If you guys like the project, please share it with your friends. Every pair of eyeballs and every donation, no matter how small, helps; it all adds up.

In my current Carrion Crown campaign, the only non-Pathfinder feat that exists is Practiced Spellcaster, taken by the magus/oracle. I didn't even know Practiced Spellcaster wasn't in Pathfinder until after we'd already discussed his character taking it, and it's far from being one of those weird poorly-thought-out feats.

Y'all are the best. If you're coming to Paizocon in 2012, I owe you a drink.

I'll hold you to that, even though I don't drink. You can get me a Coke and we'll see how well your Kingmaker campaign went.

I will also add that most AP's have at least one TPK-worthy encounter, where the bad guy is heads and tails above the PC's. Feel free to tune it down when you find it if the group is not ready for it. Many GM's dont realize AP's are not "one size fits all", and run them as written with bad results.

On the other hand feel free to make encounters harder if the party is mud stomping the NPC's also.

This is a very good point. Xanesha in Rise of the Runelords is a good example. One thing I would encourage when dealing with these encounters is not simply to scale it to the PCs--though you can do that too--but to encourage the players to recognize and anticipate that there will be some very hard encounters. Not all fights have to be a straight-up slugfest until one side falls down, and if the PCs come up with some clever way to eliminate the threat--so long as it's plausible and it works--then let them do it. Encourage them to fight smarter, not harder. (Of course, some groups prefer to just fight harder, using intricate and elaborate tactics in a direct fight. That's fine too; just know your players.)

Incidentally, my PCs defeated Xanesha by dropping an 800-pound statue on her and throwing her down twenty flights of stairs. She wasn't in much condition to fight after that.

Having run games from three Pathfinder APs at this point, one bit of advice I would make to you is this: Don't be afraid to ignore or completely change elements in the books if they don't fit in with your party's disposition or your personal preferences, or if they would otherwise hinder the game flow.

One weakness of the APs is that they tend to be very heavy on background, historical events, and "behind the scenes" information that the PCs would have no possible way of knowing, or that would not be truly relevant to them in most circumstances. The way I approach this story information is as a guide to help me understand the motivations of the NPCs so that I can play them more realistically. The PCs may not know exactly how some minor villain came to be where he is, and odds are most of them won't care, so don't worry about it unless they specifically ask or search it out. However, if I'm keeping the NPCs' motives in mind when I play them, their particular actions might motivate the players to learn more about them.

When it comes to playing some NPCs, often I'll just stumble into a personality, mode of speech, or affectation that feels "right", something that wasn't necessarily planned but which comes across as interesting and distinctive. In these cases, my advice is to go with what is fun and natural, regardless of how the NPC is portrayed in the book! If the minor villain is depicted as being dour and humorless but instead you find yourself portraying him as sneering and egotistical, don't sweat it. Your players will probably not be able to tell the difference, and so long as you don't turn a major villain into a goody two shoes, it's terribly unlikely that you're going to "break" anything. (And in my case, PCs have managed to turn minor foes into friends because they thought the NPCs were interesting to interact with.)

For Kingmaker specifically, since that AP emphasizes exploration, travel, and open-ended discovery, another thing I would recommend is keeping information regarding weather effects and overland travel at hand--maybe write down the different weather types on notecards so you can quickly reference them if it starts raining while the PCs are travelling.

Your question brought some interesting images to mind of halflings serving distinct roles or positions in society based upon the culture they were born in. Assuming that humans and halflings have a sort of symbiotic relationship (wherever the humans go, there too go halflings), you can think of a bunch of different cultural variations.

In lands influenced by Cheliax, Azlant, or Taldor (i.e. most of Avistan), halflings are often manservants, valets, and assistants (or slaves).

Perhaps in Tian-Xia, halflings widely serve a spiritual function as ascetics or travelling monks, such as the komuso in Japanese history.

Until there's anything specific on the matter, I think you couldn't go wrong by picking some sort of social niche and placing halflings there.

This is something I'm mostly interested in seeing others' opinions on, since I have done ideas myself but haven't come to a concrete conclusion yet. So the general question is: how much do you, as a GM, help direct your players' actions by suggesting, subtly or otherwise, courses of action to them?

For example. Let's say the PCs are going through a dungeon, and usually they search the rooms for secret doors, hidden items, and so on. But in one particular room, for some reason, they forget or neglect to search, and there's something important in that room. Do you remind them that they forgot, recommend they thoroughly canvass the area, or just let them completely miss it?

Another example. There is a particular knowledge check which can be made to recall an important piece of information relevant to the task at hand, but no one so much as broaches the subject of making a knowledge check. Do you let them know they can make a check, or let them only make it if they get the idea to do so themselves?

Again. The PCs are in a situation where they could use the help of a particular NPC, magic item, spell, or other assistance. Such an aid would prove to be very useful (let's say, using Speak With Dead on a particular corpse). But no one gets the idea to do so. Do you remind them that that aid would be useful, or recommend that course of action?

These are, of course, all generalizations of situations which have happened in my own games. I'd be interested to see how other GMs deal with it. I'd also like to hear from the player's perspective: what would you prefer your GM do in situations like those, and why?

Several of the campaign traits listed in the Jade Regent Player's Guide grant PCs a bonus to combat rolls made against enemies who "threaten" the NPC identified in the trait. My question is this: Do these traits' bonuses apply when

a) the NPC is threatened by an enemy in the sense of being in combat with an enemy, or otherwise in imminent danger posed by the enemy; or

b) literally occupying an enemy's threatened square in combat?

Because the traits do not use more precise language ("threatened square" or the like), I think that there could be good faith arguments for either interpretation. I'm interested in seeing if perhaps someone from Paizo has clarified this in an official capacity, or if it's just up to the GM to make the call.

Masterwork stick remember (basically a club).

It's a bat!

My party has a dhampir PC--who is the party cleric. Well, oracle, technically, but he channels positive energy. So when he channels, he just chooses not to include himself in the effect. Problem solved.

An interesting bit of fluff is that he's taken the Life mystery and Energy Body, and plays it as his body being an (unfortunate) conduit to the Positive Energy Plane. He also took the Wasting curse to reflect how this conduit is eating away at him; his cover story is simply that he's a leper, and he goes around wrapped up in bandages so people don't find out he's a dhampir.

Recently one of my friends and regular players decided he wanted to get some experience GMing Pathfinder, and as I was likewise interested in playing a game for once instead of running one, I agreed that this was a good idea. We began browsing the Adventure Paths to decide on which one to run, and I wondered whether Jade Regent--being the most recent AP and therefore likely to be the beneficiary of five years of experience writing APs--wouldn't be a good idea to start off with.

However, a major concern I have after merely reading the Jade Regent Player's Guide is that the major NPCs of the Adventure Path are... well, really major. They have class levels in PC classes. They're strong, they're tough, they're experienced adventurers with wealth to their name. The PCs are all but required to design a pre-existing relationship with one of the NPCs, and of the campaign traits in the Player's Guide to represent these relationships, the vast majority of them put the PCs in a subordinate role.

The whole thing reads like an institutional parody of the worst "GM's Pet NPC" horror stories out there, minus the parody. The very fact that the Player's Guide offers a suggestion that the players could play the NPCs as their own PCs (as well as the fact that one of the NPCs is a long lost heir to an empire) suggests to me that the entire thing was written to star the NPCs, where the PCs end up being hangers-on, students, or people who are just incidentally along for the ride.

Is this impression accurate? I haven't read much more beyond the Player's Guide, on the possibility that my friend ends up running this AP, so for all I know the NPCs all die en route or otherwise disappear, or there are other events which serve to showcase the PCs as more than just plucky sidekicks.

This is probably more applicable for the baddies attacking the PCs.

That's actually exactly what I'm trying to figure out. The reality is that PCs don't get many, or very strong, methods of acquiring SR, with the exception of, say, Diamond Soul. So you end up with one of two situations happening:

1. The PCs are fighting lower-CR monsters whose caster levels are low enough that PC SR makes a difference, at which point it's likely the PCs are going to ignore or absorb most of the monsters' abilities anyway.

2. The PCs are fighting a BBEG with a caster level significantly higher than their SR, which makes the roll to pierce PC SR more of a formality than anything.

I can think of plenty of reasonable counterarguments--maybe SR isn't meant to be much of a big deal to PCs in the first place, and is more of a stat designed for monsters. Maybe one considers it a good thing that SR is only good against weaker foes to begin with. However, as it stands, SR for PCs seems as though it will rarely, if ever, be the sort of thing which would turn the tide of a closely-contested battle, especially as the bonuses start piling up. The rolls begin to feel like foregone conclusions, and foregone conclusions do not make for compelling drama.

That's probably reasonable to have a 1 auto fail on SR. Although if a 1 would have succeeded, the opponent with SR is highly outmatched, and will be dead soon anyway so it probably doesn't matter much.

Keep in mind that the attacking spellcaster does not roll to penetrate SR at all unless the defender has at least one point of SR. Outmatched or no in whatever other sense, having at least SR 1 in that circumstance would give you a 5% chance of avoiding all spells affected by SR.

I'm leaning towards allowing it for that reason, as otherwise enemy spellcasting abilities scale to such a degree that PC SR would be next to worthless without it. But I always like hearing various opinions.

As far as I know, the only rolls which automatically fail on a roll of 1 are attack rolls and saving throws. The question recently arose in my group whether rolling a 1 on a caster level check to overcome SR should also be considered an automatic failure, given the following text from p.217 of the Core Rulebook:

"The defender's spell resistance is like an Armor Class against magical attacks."

Implying that the caster level check is the magical equivalent of an attack roll. So the question is, is this simply an instructive simile or to be taken more literally?

Thoughts?

If I end up with a "spam detect evil and never compromise" type character, I'll just change them to a neutral tribe. I think it's silly that all kobolds are apparently evil anyways.

Also, don't forget that Detect Evil doesn't actually detect evil alignments by default, only the evil aura associated with clerics, certain evil magic, outsiders, and undead. If the target is merely an evil creature with 5 or fewer hit dice, it has no evil aura at all. And you'll notice that the only kobold with 5 hit dice is pretty obviously actively evil and not just "evil because kobolds are evil".

So if you've got your zealous paladin with the Detect Evil hair trigger, remember that the kobolds won't actually show up that way.

For example, let's take the first one. Must heal all those who ask for it. There's some good intent here, but also some potential for abuse by you as the DM. A wicked creature who has learned of the Paladin's code may use it against them to preserve themselves. A completely irredeemable creature, the very essence of wickedness and suffereing, and to whome the Paladin should respond with all the vigour of attacking a cancer, can say 'Mercy! Heal me!'. What situation does this place the Paladin in now?

It places the paladin in a pretty tough situation, which is, in my opinion, part of the entire point. Being a paladin in D&D isn't a matter of doing good and obeying a strict moral code when you feel like it, or when it's convenient for you to do so. Paladins can't just decide to say, "Boy, it's really annoying that I have to do this, so I'll figure out some reason why I don't have to."

Will an evil, intelligent creature abuse a paladin's code of mercy by surrendering and demanding to be spared, knowing the paladin will not refuse them? Why yes, they will. This is what differentiates a paladin from a lawful good fighter--the paladin obeys his code and serves as an umblemished example of righteousness even when it hurts. Even unto death, if it comes to that. Paladins must be prepared to deal with these kinds of situations, and have to be able to have a solution for problems, particularly evil intelligent beings, other than "find an excuse for killing it".

The paladin does not take shortcuts to serve "the greater good". Down that path lay easy rationalization.

In games I've DMed with paladins, evil humanoids who have recognized the party's paladin have surrendered with the smug knowledge that they won't be touched by the paladin or anyone in the paladin's group. This often leaves the group with dead weight that they have to deal with somehow, which they've approached in various ways. Does this frustrate the paladin? Yes. Does he deal with it? Yes. One time they tied up their prisoner and delivered him back to town to face formal trial, for instance.

For that matter, not all evil creatures will surrender. Particularly demons or religious fanatics, or less intelligent creatures: the former hate the paladin and would fight to the last breath, and the latter may not recognize the paladin for what he is or that he follows a code.

I should also note one rather troubling aspect of being blind: Blindness (or invisibility) prevents a ranger from applying favored enemy damage to targets. I could, of course, just handwave that away as something which the PC has adapted to over the years, but again, I'd like to review more elegant solutions before having to say "a wizard did it".

I agree with the finding the square and concealment penalties would still apply.

How about the Blind Fight feat? it helps out some.
Give the character blindsense at some point? blindsight at higher levels?

Blindfight would help with the necessary Acrobatics check and if she ever gets into melee combat, but she's being built as an archer. Crazy, right? Maybe, but we're trying to make it work.

In terms of granting abilities, technically yes, I could give something like blindsense or blindsight, but I want to avoid just giving things out of the blue, and would prefer (initially) to limit myself to working within the rules. I mean, technically, I could just say, "Ah, what the hell, you don't have any concealment penalties," but as a DM I prefer to have a light touch.

I'm preparing to run the Kingmaker AP for my group, and so the players have been working on their characters for the last few days. One of them has come up with the idea for a ranger who has been blind from birth. Difficulties? Oh yes. But because it's a cool idea, we've been doing some thinking on how to make it a viable concept without simply removing any penalties or obstacles the character would face in trying to do her duties.

So. In combat, a blind character essentially treats all opponents as invisible; they take a -2 penalty to AC and lose their Dexterity bonus to AC, which is analogous to an invisible character getting a +2 bonus to hit and ignoring his target's Dex bonus. In addition, all opponents have total concealment versus a blind character. (The other penalties, such as limited move speed, are minor and not really under consideration here.)

So in order to successfully attack a target, the blinded PC would first need to discover the location (i.e. the square) that the target is located in, and even then, any attacks would have a 50% miss chance. Taken as it is, this would make for a lot of misses and a lot of frustration. Some frustration is fine, but the point is to mitigate it a little bit. So the question becomes twofold: One, how would the PC go about locating a target's square, and two, how would the PC mitigate the concealment penalties one the target has been located?

A few ideas have cropped up, but they raise questions, too. Using Keen-Eared Scout, beating your Listen (Perception, in Pathfinder) check by 10 gives you the "precise location" of an unseen creature. Some of my players think this means that succeeding on such a check would negate concealment penalties, because precise is precise, after all, not "vaguely somewhere in this 25-square-foot area". However, I notice (and cross-referencing from 3.5 rules) that normally beating a Listen/Perception check by 20 allows a PC to identify the square that an invisible creature is located in, but that concealment penalties still apply. This would mean the feat halves the margin you need to identify the location, but my hunch is that the concealment penalty would still apply.

However, this also raises questions. Beating what Perception check? Obviously, if the target is trying to be stealthy, then it would be an opposed check against Stealth. But what if the target is in combat, or patrolling a corridor, or just standing around smoking a cigarette and not trying to make any Stealth check? Is there a good Perception DC to be able to hear someone who is just standing still, but not making an effort to be quiet? For that matter, the DC for hearing the sounds of combat is -10, but it's a far cry from being able to hear that swords are clashing over there to knowing exactly what squares the combat is taking place in. Or is it?

So. For the sake of argument, the PC has somehow targeted her opponent's square, and attacks. What methods are available to reduce the concealment penalty? I've posited a seeking longbow, but are there other methods, and how would they interact with the necessity of having to locate the target audially beforehand? I'd be interested in any related thoughts on the subject of "blind archers" as well, if anyone has any clever ideas.

Meh. Not me. While I am all for heroic things happening, at some point you have to have some sort of limits. What about the strong enough barbarian grappling a ghost? Well you'd probably say "of course not, that's just plain silly" well then why is it any less silly to say that grappling air is basically impossible? Just because it doesn't say it in the rules?

Maybe its the grognard showing through but I guess I don't feel I have to adhere to every rule "because it says/doesn't say so".

To the original poster, yes, I know, your question is resolved. I'm now threadjacking this thread into a more philosophical debate about playstyle :)

Everyone's a critic.

Given that a 20th level barbarian can lift a ton or two over his head, and given that at high-to-epic levels you can (for instance) walk on clouds with an appropriate Acrobatics check, to suggest that with sufficient suction one could hoover up the air molecules wherein an air elemental is manifest does not seem beyond the pale.

For that matter, the reason you can't grapple a ghost is because they're incorporeal, literally not existing as physical matter on the material plane. Air elementals, on the other hand, are made up of tangible air molecules.

That's not to say it wouldn't be incredibly dangerous and probably stupid, but you try telling the mouth-frothing berserker that he might want to reconsider his course of action.

You are correct, it does not make sense in real life. But then, in real life, neither does lightning bolts and fireballs flying from my finger tips. Since the rules seem to allow both...

This frequently gets pulled out in a discussion of "realism" in D&D or any fantasy universe, and it misses the point. Yes, according to the laws of physics, real-life people can't shoot lightning from their ass. However, it's a fundamental element of the various D&D universes that certain people can do exactly that, and the laws of physics allow for such things.

On the other hand, the world still maintains verisimilitude. Swords, axes, hammers, bows, and crossbows all still behave the same way they do in the real world, so whips shouldn't be any different. That sort of disconnect between RAW and verisimilitude is the source of much of the breaking of immersion one sees at the gaming table.

(such as a Barbarian who tries to grapple an Air Elemental... what does he do, he sucks it into his lungs !?!...)

Given a strong enough barbarian of high enough level, frankly, I think that's an amazing idea. I'd approve it!

I'm skeptical of the application of such a thing, even if it does technically adhere to RAW. You have to consider exactly what the whip is doing when you're trying to trip someone: you're not just sort of hitting the sides of your target's legs and pushing their legs out from under them like you would with a polearm. Whips are far too flexible for that to be a credible way to trip someone. Instead, you trip with a whip by wrapping around one of their extremities and physically yanking them off balance.

Trying to whirlwind attack with a whip would amount to you spinning in a circle and smacking everyone in a 15' radius with it. You might be able to trip a group of enemies with a polearm that way, but it's more likely the whip would just bend and pass harmlessly by the legs of the people you're hitting. You'd honestly have to be moving /very/ fast to even keep the momentum up after hitting the first person.

With the new Dragon Disciple class here it became clear that this version went a very different way than the original PrC. It seems more of a bloodline focus PrC for the Sorcerer. That is fine and all, but I really missed the concept of developing into an uber melee half dragon. Now I know we don't have the final half dragon coming in a few months, but here is a stab at it with the half dragon we do have.

So my goal here is a total focus on melee and bloodline-like abilities. So here it is.

Dragon Blooded

So feedback would be welcomed.

Thank You

Not bad at first blush, but there are some clarifications it needs, particularly regarding the breath weapon. The ability states that it does 1d8 damage per sorcerer level; this is problematic for two reasons. One, since a PC doesn't have to take any levels of sorcerer in order to prestige into the class (since you can qualify with feats, also), a PC who prestiges into this class via feats will have a breath weapon that does 0d8 damage.

Two, this ability improves unevenly depending on how many levels of sorcerer the PC chooses to take, rather than how deep in the PrC the PC wishes to go. For instance, a sorcerer 14/dragon descendant 6 will do 28d8 damage with his breath weapon, which is almost as much damage as a great wyrm red dragon does with his. If one goes all the way and becomes a sorcerer 10/dragon descendant 10, then presumably the damage will be 20d10, which is actually a net decrease for ostensibly adopting more of one's draconic heritage.

Another concern is rooted in the fact that the ability does not explicitly describe how much damage a "full strength" breath weapon does, and that the save DC is similarly tied to sorcerer level.

My recommendation is to explicitly state how much damage is done by the breath weapon at each tier, and to decouple the damage and save DC from skill ranks or levels in other classes. One suggestion is to have levels of spellcasting classes (or just sorcerer, or sorcerer and bard, or however you decide) stack with dragon descendant levels for purposes of determining breath weapon damage and save DCs, and then have them do X damage per Y levels.

I also notice there's no spell progression at all; given that dragons are inherently spellcasters, some small improvement or addition of spellcasting power might not be amiss. I recognize that the dragon descendant is not intended to be a spellcasting class, but something along the lines of additional spells per day or spell-like abilities depending on dragon type might enhance the connection to dragon blood.

Not bad for a draft, though. I know that my initial reaction to the dragon disciple in the PRPG was disappointment at some of the changes.