Maugan22's page

I'm not going to be able to attend the con this year, too much afoot at home.

I have a free con ticket available.

I also have a much sought after banquet ticket that I'm open to offers for, a $25 paizo gift card would for instance work well in trade.

Now that the adventure path is complete I should really get down to some new year's belt tightening.

Don't worry I'll be back :P

I just found the product I was after much cheaper from a FLGS. As such I'd like to use my Christmas gift card for something more interesting. Is it possible to cancel an order in the sidecart?

So after mulling it over and building a rudimentary spreadsheet looking at shipping costs vs local sales tax I bit the bullet today and renewed by subscription for the Pathfinder game. Now the subscription starts with NPC codex and part of my justification in doing so presumes that I'll get it shipped via sidecart as a cheaper consolidated shipment with the adventure path...

Unfortunately I now realize this means that I might be waiting until the payment is authorized a month from now to see the PDF, and I'm impatient, is there a way to issue payment sooner to get the PDF now without sending two shipments.

Ok, so as per usual my players will be fed to a Tarrasque if they read this post.

In the last session our party's CN rogue agreed to spare a Glabrezu demon's life if it granted him a wish. He wished for more constitution (+1). Now immediately following the wish being granted the rogue summarily executed the demon, (which most of the CG party members found no issue with)

Now I'm all for slaying demons but if there was ever a wish that needed to be harshly twisted about this would be the one.

Who's got an extra helping of nasty for me?

As per usual, my players shouldn't be reading this post.

Ok so 3 real world years ago in the very first encounter of our campaign I introduced a 10 year old townsfolk NPC child who, in the midst of a goblin attack discovered she had arcane talent and fought back against the invaders. The campaign has progressed well,, the party is reaching level 18 and the NPC (now an adult, a level 16 sorcerer, and all but married to one of the PCs) has occasionally joined them on adventures in a henchman capacity where her bloodline has proven to have a connection to and power over the monstrous minions of the big bad.

Now the group has been joking for years that this particular NPC will turn out to be the campaign final boss so when I started riffing on this particular idea last adventure it was pretty epic. Unbeknownst to the party the big bad kidnapped and cloned her a bunch of times, the party had a big final battle against a lesser Jabberwock and a couple of casters, one who they presumed to be this NPC but it turned out to just be a clone.

Upon rescuing the original most of the party think things are back to normal, with the potential exception of dealing with her clones cropping up in the future.

One of my PCs however doesn't see it this way. The party rogue, the usually lovable loose cannon, has decided that the NPC is too much of a liability in the face of the Big Bad's looming apocalypse and has decided to kill her and/or trap her soul such that she can't escape or be resurrected. The player wants this plan to be kept secret from the other PCs both IC and OOC.

Now the rogue is the powerhouse of the party, I have zero doubts about his statistical ability to push this plan through. However this is really going to cramp my style as I wrap up this campaign, plus upset both the PCs and their players.

These are the options I've come up with so far and I'm not entirely happy with any of them.
-Tell the player not to despite he's convinced "it's what my character would do"
-Let him proceed with the plan and give the party tools to find out what he's been up to so they can fix things, party turns on each other.
-Let him proceed and have a pivotal NPC simply vanish from the campaign.
-Give the NPC a sudden boost in power such that she can unexpectedly ward of the attack.
-Have the NPC grow wise to the threat on her life and vanish for a few sessions only to come back and make a preemptive strike against the rogue.

Any ideas as to how to best handle this for the enjoyment of all.

Due to a glut of positive feedback, I'm thinking of running my perilous paths adventure on the digital projector again Sunday morning at 8am, need 4 players to make it work please reply to this thread by midnight if interested and available. Will be playing under the tents.

I do a bunch of Live Action Roleplay where i come from (vancouver), mostly European style boffer LARP as seen in movies such as rolemodels. My idea is as follows:

Event: Gollarion themed LARP session, based perhaps on a dungeon from an adventure path such as RotRLs
Site: Nearby Local Park, or potentially the Seattle Underground tunnels*
Gear: Bring your own costume or we can provide one. Weapons will be provided.
Players: 5-15 players plus need 1-3 volunteers to crew (play NPCs/Monsters)

Pros:
Friggin awesome

Cons:
Travel time
*Extra costs possible particularly if we use the underground site.

Thoughts?

If you're my player, no looking at this thread, yes that means you Phil :P

Has anyone tried to run a logic matrix puzzle at a tabletop RPG?

I'm working on adapting one for a pathfinder adventure. I figure it'll be a nice puzzle for which I as a GM don't need to babysit the party on. They can break off into groups or singles and solve it/argue with each other and I'll sit back with some light roleplaying options for the non-puzzle people. IF they get bored/stuck they can wander off kill monsters and come back.

I'm thinking something along this line would be thematically appropriate,
http://www.braingle.com/brainteasers/29529/battles-for-the-gods.html
I'm just going to sub in my own gods/landmarks/artifacts/calendar and fiends

I figure the vault they are trying to break into will ask a random question of them, if they answer wrong they get disintegrated, so they can either risk it %80 chance of disintegration, or they can work out the entire puzzle (spend an hour or two) and save their skins.

Likely include a high int henchman/hireling or two for players who want to participate but feel constrained by a low int character.

Thoughts, advice,

Handed this out as treasure last week:

Cloak of resistance +4 which confers an immunity to paralysis and petrification.

I eyeballed it at 22,000 gp but now the party wants to make copies of it and I'm thinking perhaps I've undervalued it.

I'm sure it's just hiding on me but I've been looking for a while, clearly other folks have no issue finding it.

Using Firefox and IE

Wife just got laid off, need money for groceries.

Really sucks as I was looking forward to Bestiary 3

First off, if you're in my campaign, don't read this.

So my level 14 group has got it in their head that they want to rob a bank... They want the loot to fortify their home town against a growing threat of minions run by the big bad.

Not just any bank mind you but the richest, most highly guarded, bank on their continent of my little home brewed world.

So now I'm looking at writing a heist adventure, as with any good heist story I'm hoping that half (or more) of the adventure will be spent plotting and scheming.

Presuming PFRPG magic, and practically unlimited resources how would you build a bank vault to be not only seemingly impregnable, but also really fun to knock over.

So far I'm thinking the usual suspects like:
Walls that can, with difficulty, be tunneled through from next door.
Antimagic fields
Teleportation barriers
guardian constructs (even inevitables)
encounters that require social engineering/disguise/bluff work.
Traps
Labyrinths
And a head honcho for said bank who the party should love to hate.

I'm looking for your ideas, particularly stuff you have used in your game, on a similar note does anyone know of heist adventures, ideally for pathfinder or 3.5 that may be applicable/available?

Back in 3.5 we had Titan fighting, (races of stone p145) which seems pretty popular at my table.

I noticed that every single gnome/dwarf etc took it which says to me to go get the nerf bat. Also it's closed content which I prefer not to use (not fair to folks who can't get the old books)

So I came up with this.

Nimbleness of the Short Folk {Racial}
You have trained to adapt your ancestral defensive tactics against giants to be of wider use against creatures larger than yourself.
Prerequisite:Gnome or Dwarf, Dodge
Benefit:You may declare a single bipedal creature larger than yourself as "giant-like". Against that giant-like creature you may apply half your racial dodge bonus against giants (typically +2). You may specify a giant-like target, change your target, or stop using this feat as a swift action. As a dodge bonus this feat bonus stacks with the Dodge feat however while using this feat you lose all dodge bonuses against all other creatures.

I'd welcome your opinions, thoughts as to comparative balance.

This is open content see tuskmountain.wikidot.com

I knew the rogue was carrying a cannon around in a portable hole, which was interesting but I found out last night he's been planning to sneak attack with it.

Now I'm pretty comfortable telling my player that this is is not possible under our house rules, but it would be nice to have something in the published rules to back me up.

Does anyone know of a cut and dried rules argument to back up what I presume to be common sense here? Failing this your rationalizations for or against, or comments are of course welcome.

I knew the rogue was carrying a cannon around in a portable hole, which was interesting but I found out last night he's been planning to sneak attack with it.

Now I'm pretty comfortable telling my player that this is is not possible under our house rules, but it would be nice to have something in the published rules to back me up.

Does anyone know of a cut and dried rules argument to back up what I presume to be common sense here? Failing this your rationalizations for or against, or comments are of course welcome.

Just got the old hours reduced at work and need to cancel my subscriptions for a few months, both rules and adventure paths.

First off my apologies to those who don't have the APG yet, I've been pouring over the subscriber PDF for bit and my wife wants to take Warrior of the Holy Light archetype for her Paladin.

There's a portion of this class variant that really confuses me, I'm either being dense or there's an errata issue here.

Power of Faith (Su): At 4th level, a warrior of the holy
light learns to use the power of her faith to bolster her
defenses and aid her allies. This class feature replaces the
paladin’s spells class feature. A warrior of the holy light
does not gain any spells or spellcasting abilities, does not
have a caster level, and cannot use spell trigger or spell
completion magic items.
At 4th level, the warrior of the holy light gains one
additional use of her lay on hands ability per day. She gains
one additional use of lay on hands per day for every four
levels she attains beyond 4th. She can call upon the power
of her faith as a standard action. This causes a nimbus of
light to emanate from the warrior of the holy light in a
30-foot radius. All allies in this area (including the warrior
of the holy light) receive a +1 morale bonus to AC and on
attack rolls, damage rolls, and saving throws against fear
as long as they remain in the area of light. This power lasts
for 1 minute.

The book goes on to detail an 8th 12th 16th and 20th level ability tied to the nimbus of light.

It doesn't state that nimbus of light expends a use of lay on hands but it's in the same paragraph. I'm therefore reading this as:
A) The user get's extra uses of lay on hands at 4th,8th,12th,16th,20th
B) The user can use her lay on hands to power the nimbus of light abilities as a standard action.

Does this seem right to you guys based on the above text?

Ok so here's the situation,

Played a PFS game with a Andoran character called Alexalin last year at Paizocon 09 but never registered her online (though I used a conflicting character number from the looks of it)

GMed two PFS games last weekend at Paizocon 2010 and am interested in converting the character from 3.5 and possibly applying the GMing credit to the character.

As I understand it I may be eligible to build Alexalin as any Andoran level 2 character with 500 gp + the value of treasure from both scenarios but without boons from year of the shadow lodge. However I'm not sure how that works with the online system, or if I missed some salient paperwork at the con.

Any guidance or advice from those who have been at this for a while longer?

First off If you're playing the Dargos game, please refrain from reading this.

I'm looking for some tactics to use against a dragon and a band of his humanoid minions/allies. They are holed up in a large cavern on the edge of a marsh.

The dragon is like this one: Old Black Dragon

The group of minions are believed to be 5 well equipped characters of diverse adventuring types all around level 10, precise makeup unknown to my group but they have a good balance of classes/races. Both dragon and minions almost certainly know that they are about to be attacked within the week, and have the means to prepare some nasty surprises.

My group of is a more experienced group (Level 12-13) looking to off the dragon. We have my level 13 human evoker, a level 12 elven cleric/tank, a dwarf TWF rogue 12, a human archer ranger/rogue 12, and a human TWF barbarian 12.

So far I've got the following for tactics:
A) employing prying eyes to scout the expansive lair
B) setting a fire at the outside of the cave to try to smoke them out.
C) attacking under cover of invisibility spells (from a wand) to try to get first blood.

I'm interested in hearing your ideas for what else the party can do to ensure victory. I'm particularly interested in tactics that seem rational from a story perspective rather than simply arbitrary combination of spells/feats/equipment which are effective against dragons or characters.

Bah boards just ate my post...

starting again...

I live in Canada, subscribe to adventure paths. Plan to attend paizocon. and would like to subscribe to PFRPG rules but find it more economical to buy the books from FLGS and buy the PDFS online than pay shipping.

I also got a gift card recently and tried to purchase a bunch of stuff with it on various Paizo sales but it's refusing to let me use the gift card for stuff shipped with a subscription order.

A) Can I somehow use my gift card for the purchases in my sidecart
B) I realize it may be to complicated to handle logistically but could my sidecart items be delivered to the con with the subscription.
C) I was planning to get the gamemaster's guide at the con. I now notice I could save the cost of the PDF by subscribing and picking it up at the con, however I may just be cancelling the subscription before the Advanced Player's guide comes out if the PDFS are still cheaper than shipping.
C1) is there a way to tell how much PDFs for upcomming releases will be?
C2) Is it much trouble for you guys if I subscribe for only one volume or would you advise against doing this.

Thanks in advance.

I'm attending with my darling wife, she plays but prefers to play with me. If we're attending games it would be nice to get seated together but other lottery events say miniatures with Sean or the Fiction Workshop I'm involved with PFS play as a GM and It would be nice for her to have a chance to attend those on her own.

Is there a way to be treated as buddies selectively or is it an all or nothing affair?

So, I've got a problem on my hands, perhaps others have experienced this also.

Consider a common glass flask, 3 cp value
Consider The same flask filled with acid is 10 gp. that means one pint of acid is worth 9.97 gp.

Consider a modest 10 ft. cube acid pool. that's 1000 sq feet of acid.

Now according to onlineconversion.com the pool of acid 1 000 cubic foot = 59 844.155 844 pint [US, liquid]

That means your average 10 foot pool of acid is worth 596,646 gp + 23 cp

What's to prevent greedy players from purchasing 60 thousand flasks and sell the filled flasks for 300,000 gp profit or so?

I just want place interesting environments for my party, I don't want to need to resort to complicated economics around supply and demand to keep them from getting obscenely rich.

Best I can figure is to say that large quantities of acid are typically of a less dangerous variety (something like real world hydrocloric acid) as compared to something more dangerous (like sulphiric acid) in thrown flasks. Using the lesser acid would deal 1d3 points of damage with a throw, making them not an effective weapon, hence not worth harvesting.

Note: I don't purport to be any good at chemistry, but to my mind alchemy should work on very different principals anyways.

Any thoughts on this?

I'm trying to price out an item for my home game, want to add options for casters (particularly NPCs) without adding an item that no caster can be effective without.

* Mechanics work just like a metamagic rod, just single use.
* Flavor wise these items are cocoons of rare butterflies, magically enchanted to confer transformative effects on the user's spells.

Spell Chrysalis, Quicken
Aura Strong (No school); CL 15th
Slot none; Price 2,000 gp (lesser), 4,000 gp (normal), 8,500 gp (greater); Weight -
The possessor of this cocoon can expend it to cast one spell as though using the Quicken Spell feat.
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, Quicken Spell; Cost 1,000 gp (lesser), 2,000 gp (normal), 4,250 gp (greater)

Detailed rules and other varieties here

My question is, priced as is would your caster invest in these:
* Definitely
* Probably
* Sometimes/Depends on the caster
* Seldom
* Never

I'm much more interested at this stage in pricing based on perceived value by players rather than using math to set pricing.

For those who care: This item is open content

Players in my campaign <COUGH>Sleepwalker</COUGH> Should not read the rest of this post. Seriously Phil, I know where you live. :P

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So here's the thing, I'm looking to off a 9th level PC, and I don't mean send the party looking for a high level cleric and diamond dust I mean dead, finito, caskets, flowers, and mourners, find a fresh character sheet and 4d6 **dead**.

If I can prevent the use of spells such as raise dead, breath of life and resurection I'll be a happy camper. Thankfully True resurection is beyond the party's reach at present.

My player wants to try a new character concept, likes unexpected dramatic death scenes, and his interest dovetails with my need to drive home that my freshly minted Big Bad Evil Girl means business.

I'm sure the character could manufacture a reason for a fantasy equivalent of a Do not recusitate order but this would make the death a bit less visceral for my complacent PCs, I would prefer not to broadcast that the death was planned.

My villain is a fairly high powered wizard with access up to level 7 spells. She's a bit of an insect nut and has a brood of mysterious creatures at her command I can readily give extra abilities. Furthermore she can tap into some pretty potent energies from her master (8th 9th level spells as needed)

Ideally the method used would clearly prevent anything less than a true res, if it's gross so much the better.

Here are my ideas so far:
* Kill the character traditionally and have the corpse teleported beyond reach.
* Changed the character into a bug minion using magic, which teleports to safety.
* Some kind of arcane spell mirroring destruction.
* Have him killed, eaten, and exceptionally quickly metabolized (I think it can be argued that you can't resurrect poop)
* Have him magically aged to the point of death (he's a member of a fairly long lived race)
* Imprisonment or banishment to an inaccessibly plane of existence.
* "Polymorph any object" the character into water and then hit with fireball to evaporate or toss it into a nearby river.

I'm looking for something airtight here, if you notice issues with any of the above ideas I'd like to hear from you, if you have alternate ideas I'd also love to hear them.

Last month I wrote this dwarf rogue for an adventure to harass the party and my players were scandalized that he was dealing full sneak attack damage on each and every one of his 4 attacks. Apparently they didn't know this was possible.

Thereafter, the party rogue who was already the most powerful PC in our group is now picking up two weapon fighting feats to follow this NPC's lead, nearly doubling his damage potential overnight.

Now I don't mind this as it goes, I'm an experienced DM and know how to mess with glass cannons with low will saves pretty readily. However my players (including, get this, the rogue's player himself) are expressing concerns with the power discrepancy that has become apparent. They seem to feel that rules as written in this area are unbalanced, and given that PCs almost never petition to nerf themselves I'm inclined to entertain their request.

So here's my quandry, is there a way of balancing the situation betwixt the PCs without crippling NPC TWF rogues? (including my dwarf when he potentially returns for a second pass at the party in a few levels.)

I'm looking for your creative house rules suggestions. Best I have come up with thus far is to reduce off hand and secondary natural weapon attacks by 1/2 of their sneak attack bonus dice but this does collateral damage to my NPCs.

Last year my wife and I were issued Pathfinder society numbers at PaizoCon by Joshua Frost as we didn't have access to a comp to get our newly created society numbers off the website.

We're planning on attending again this year and would like the numbers to reflect the numbers online to reflect the numbers we got on the paper cards and we're not sure how to get that to happen.

Also I would be interested in running a scenario or two at PaizoCon, I don't have a huge amount of experience with organized play (4 games) but I do have a decade of home DMing under my belt, wondering what criteria/required reading there may be.

Thanks in advance.

There were so many awesome entries this round I found I needed to create a spreadsheet and rank all 32 of them from 1-10 to decide who to give my precious votes.

I can't imagine I'm the only one who ranked the entries something like this. Is there interest in starting a thread of these personal ranking lists? I would be particularly interested in hearing from the contestants themselves whose egos are on the line as it were.

Played a 7th level one-off adventure earlier in the week which included an oracle and a witch. The witch character seemed to be pretty balanced by and large although the slumber hex proved exceptionally powerful against every giant we met.

Stats for familiars such as foxs are going to be necessary for the final, we just averaged a few similar familiar creatures but it was a bit of a pain.

The only other item of complaint isn't really a witch item but rather a to do with the spell black tentacles, the witch used it and it overpowered a throng of rogues way too easily in my opinion. It seems appropriate as a witch spell but overpowered as a spell in general.

Ended up running another yesterday at a new years party

For a Stone oracle Type of damage for shard explosion needs to be defined (we used bludgeoning/piercing)

My folks were very kind to grab me a family pack of combat tiers but the resultant packs were defective,

There's a pronounced slant to both the bases and top tier due to the packaging material being too tight. One of the bases actually snapped upon trying to rectify the issue.

Should I be approaching Paizo or Tinkered Tactics to request a replacement?

Thanks in advance and Merry Christmas.

Hey folks,

I'm running a 3.5 game and are nearing the logical conclusion with the PCs just now reaching 19-20 level. For the past 5 adventures I have been quietly playtesting PF beta rules on my npcs. The PCs in the party are heavily vested with prestige class levels (or in the case of our Ettin (and hence gestalt: Paladin/Barbarian) monsterous levels so the pathfinder power boost to core classes wouldn't affect them much at all.

I'm finding that by and large the the Pathfinder NPCs, particularly the single class NPCs are holding their own well against the party. I've much more ability to differentiate them from "Just another level 20 cleric" and have power to be a credible threat to my high level PCs. It's particularly easy to splash flavor into spellcasters using the schools/bloodlines/domains. As a side note I would like to see them collected into their own chapter.

Another factor which helps my NPCs is a 1 per level bonus to ability scores (rather than 1/4 levels). (capped at HD/2)
NPCs and PCs alike receive this bonus but in exchange stat boosting items are made drastically more expensive. (essentially to the costs of the tomes which would ordinarily grant inherent bonuses)
This has the two pronged bonus of permitting less magical item reliance and improving NPC balance vs the party.

Details are available here: Ability Bonuses.

I'm not sure how backwards compatible this would be particularly against expanded source book material, but I'm finding it pretty simple to convince everyone I play with that it's a superior system and retrofiting as you go seems relatively simple.

As an added bonus if anyone cares here's a full party of high level pathfinder drow suitable for level 19-21 party created using the rules described above: Drow

Ok, now that I've got your attention:

As I understand it PFRPG is slated to be released as a single hard cover with a separate Monstrous Manual type book following hard on its heels. Regardless of how great a monster the PFRPG main book is It seems evident to me that the designers will be forced to cut a lot of good material out in order to meet their page quotas.

I would prefer to see PFRPG published as three books in a similar vein to the PHB, DMG, and MM structure by WOTC. The page count (and cost) of the "players handbook" materials could be reduced to make the book more palatable for Players. I don't know what kind of markup Paizo is looking at for core books, I believe it's not the heart of their business model, but I do think that selling more books would be of benefit to both the system and the publisher.

For those who cry foul at these thoughts, please do remember that Paizo has kindly released PFRPG beta with pretty much %100 open game content allowing players unwilling or unable to purchase the book to find everything they need to play on the internet. I anticipate, and hope, that they will do the same for the final version.

Well I've finally cracked and started up a wiki for the pathfinder (beta) rules, spent about 12 hours last weekend getting the first six chapters up into the site

PathfinderRPG Wiki.

Purpose is simply to provide all rules found in the pathfinder RPG (beta). Mostly to help players make PCs and reference rules in real time during play (similar to what www.d20srd.org did for 3.5)

To date I've got classes, Races, Skills, and Feats, and I'm looking for fellow editors to help add the other chapters particularly spells and magic items if anyone wants to collaborate see contact info on the site.

OGL
The definition of Open Game Content as it applies to the Pathfinder RPG seems very vague. Further there is presently no pathfinder SRD to clearly delineate open game content from product identity. As such I've basically included ever piece of text in the pdf unless it is clearly product identity such as the description of Golorian deities.

It's my hope that if I'm stepping on any toes that one of the Paizo mods who frequent these forums can let me know what specifically they would like to see taken out.

Just ran a short playtest and our party cleric was very very very miffed.

Defensive casting posed a major issue for us, the half-orc cleric realized early on that in order to even have a chance to cast spells in combat he would need to sink all 5 skill points into spellcraft to overcome his -2 int penalty. This was juxtaposed to the frail elf wizard who had no trouble casting defensively with minimal spellcraft ranks by virtue of his high int. That just isn't right.

Basing defensive casting off Spelcraft(Int) seriously hinders clerics, particularly if they have poor int as they have a negative modifier and not enough ranks to do anything else.

Our Solution: Cease to make Defensive casting a spellcraft check. Make it a CMB check instead vs DC 15 + CMB of threatening opponents (a free action as part of spellcasting). If you succeed at the maneuver no attacks of opportunity by enemies are possible, otherwise they get attacks of opportunity as usual. This removes a nasty skill burden from low int clerics and generally make's front line Paladins and Clerics better at defensive casting than their frail back-rank wizard counterparts by virtue of generally higher strength and BAB. It also factors in the size and skill of threatening opponents.
By extention, to cast a spell when grappled you would need to pass a CMB check.

Perhaps a discussion that should be saved for when we broach skills or combat but as it seriously affects defensive casting for all three listed classes I felt it bears mentioning at this stage.

Thoughts?

Hi everyone,

Long time 3.0-3.5 DM, poster to the boards for some time now and this evening me and a few regulars managed to fit in our first brief pathfinder playtest. (we've been awfully busy wrapping up our 3.5 campaign)

Spent a little longer than usual creating a party of 5th level characters. A dwarven Barbarian, a half-orc cleric, and an elven wizard.

Ran a seat of my pant's dungeon using a the thieves guild map of mystery from dungeon 128 and my digital map projector rig (beautiful map particularly when overrun by an aboleth and it's skum minions)

Combat was crisp given the few players, I was surprised by the grapple rules, I still feel that they need to be cleaned up a bit but they are more elegant in play than I would have thought by looking at them on paper.

Combat casting posed a major issue for us, the orc cleric realized early on that in order to even have a chance to cast spells in combat he would need to sink all 5 skill points into spellcraft to overcome his -2 int penalty. This was juxtaposed to the frail elf wizard who had no trouble doing so. That just isn't right. The cleric was deeply offended at what he called a double-wammy of needing to focus in one thing and not being able to diversify, vs other party members (the mage) being able to diversity with 1 skill point to many skills.
Given his character's reliance on defensive casting I can see his point.

Basing defensive casting off int seriously hinders clerics, particularly if they have poor int as they have a negative modifier and not enough ranks to do anything else.

Our Solution: Cease to make combat casting a spellcraft check. Make it a CMB check instead vs DC 15 + CMB of threatening opponents (a free action as part of spellcasting). If you succeed at the maneuver no attacks of opportunity by enemies are possible, otherwise they get attacks of opportunity as usual. This removes a nasty skill burden from low int clerics and generally make's front line clerics better at defensive casting than their frail back-rank wizard counterparts by virtue of generally higher strength and BAB.

Additional solution:
Don't apply int penalties to skill points or impose a 2 skill point per level minimun for all characters and creatures (Both Clerics and particularly animals could use more skills)

Thoughts?

Let me start off by saying that the paladin divine bond revision is a work of unparalleled genius and that I'm looking forward very much to adapting the rules to Chaotic Evil paladins to harass my party with in my next campaign.

That being said forcing a player to chose between a cool weapon and a mount seems slightly unfortunate.

I would like to see a paladin only feat (or two) that allows them to gain the other benefit.

My draft suggestions are included below:
Suggested Feats:
Expanded Bond:
You expand your divine bond ability to employ both a weapon spirit and a special mount
Prerequisites: Paladin Level 10
Benefit: Whichever Divine bond ability you did not recieve at 5th level you now receive. This alternative is resolved at your paladin level -5

Perfect Bond:
Your bond with your deity matures such that both your weapon spirit and special mount are equally blessed.
Prerequisite: Expanded Bond:
Benefit: Both divine bond abilities you possess use your full paladin level.

This issue crops up throughout the beta playtest booklet but it's particularly pronounced in the cleric class given that most domain powers are spell-like abilities.

A spell-like ability has no verbal, somatic, or material component, nor does it require a focus or have an XP cost. The user activates it mentally. Armor never affects a spell-like ability’s use, even if the ability resembles an arcane spell with a somatic component.

This sentence has been removed from the pathfinder RPG but to those familiar with 3.5 it would seem that in a round about way all domain spells, 0 level spells, and many class abilities are now stilled, silent, eschewed materials, and free of exp cost. However for some reason they still provoke attacks of oppertunity.

I think It would be of benefit to clairify the verbal, somatic, and material component costs in pathfinder RPG, I suspect the intention was that spell-like abilities mirror components of the actuall spells upon which they are based.

In any event it should be spelled out.

Hi Guys,

In many ways the role of the skirmishing scouting, man of the woods has been largely co-opted in my campaigns by the scout class from Complete Adventurer.

I feel that the skirmish ability has alot of traction and could be adapted to the ranger to reconcile these classes which though thematically very similar have wide diferences in the rules.

I would suggest phrasing it as a standard action attack (or part of a charge) that deals extra damage if the ranger has moved more than 10 feet earlier that round. I would advise extra damage akin to the rogue's sneak attack progression. This seems robust but considering that it would be limited to once a a round (as opposed to up to 8 times per round for a two weapon fighting hasted rogue) it's still fairly reasonable.

Could give it as an alternative to either spellcasting or hunter's bond.

To pre-empt Intellectual Property concerns around adapting rules from a closed content book I'll reference the following FAQs on the wizards site pertaining to copyright of game rules:
Open Game Definition:FAQ
In a nutshell, you can copywrite the words, the art, the typesetting in a close sourcebook, but not the rules themselves. Bern Copyright convention seems to permit reprinting rules so long as they are reasonably paraphrased or adapted.