Michael Gentry's page

I dunno, that's what I did in OG Dark Souls after I found my first mimic. As long as they only start doing that after they run into one seems fine to me.

I might be wrong, but it sounds like the tactic is not, "I shoot the chest and if it flinches then it's a mimic," but rather, "I ask the GM if I am, by RAW, even allowed to target the chest at all, and if the answer is 'no', then I know that I'm not dealing with a mimic."

Which honestly seems to me ridiculously wrong-headed on the part of both parties.

The illustration for the pahtra ancestry is not a Medium humanoid. If it were the same or even close to the same height as an adult human, its head and hands would be grotesquely oversized. Is it supposed to represent a child?

A plain reading of the rules suggests that black hole and supernova are stellar revelations, and remain so when used with Attunement Rush Surge.

Meant "Surge", sorry.

The latter. Just your stellar revelations, rather than zenith ones.

I'm not sure I agree.

First, black hole and supernova are explicitly stellar revelations. From the text of the Stellar Revelations class ability (emphasis mine):

At 1st level, you automatically learn the black hole and supernova stellar revelations.

Both abilities "function as a zenith revelation for the purposes of abilities that reference them," — which Attunement Surge does not.

A plain reading of the rules suggests that black hole and supernova are stellar revelations, and remain so when used with Attunement Rush.

Second, it's not clear to me that the term "stellar revelations" necessarily excludes zenith revelations.

From the description of the Zenith Revelations class ability (emphasis mine):

At 9th level and again at 17th level, you gain two powerful stellar revelations. Choose two revelations from the zenith revelations list: one graviton revelation and one photon revelation. The list of zenith revelations begins on page 107.

Zenith revelations are powerful stellar revelations that require you to be fully attuned in a stellar mode. After using a zenith revelation, your stellar mode immediately becomes unattuned.

I've always interpreted this to mean that when one is talking about stellar revelations, one is also talking about zenith revelations, unless one adds specific language to exclude them. If there is any rules text that suggests that zenith and stellar are mutually exclusive categories, rather than the former being a subset of the latter, I'm not aware of it.

I'd like to see "Starship Feats" silo-ed in their own category (like "Class Feats" or "Ancestry Feats"), with all PCs getting a specific number of them at specific levels.

That way players don't have to worry about "wasting" a feat choice on a starship-specific feat if their game doesn't end up involving starship combat as much.

Hey, if the GM wants to do deus ex machina for plot reasons, they shouldn't let the rules or game balance stop them.

Who said the above scenario is a deus ex machina? Who says it doesn't have to require a special ability, die roll and/or resource expenditure? Who said gaining control over the garbage system is necessarily the solution to the problem, or even the desired outcome?

A game mechanic doesn't need to be realistic to be fun or interesting.

I think that the debate between "actual hacking" and "fictional hacking" is a very real thing here. Which should SF2 try to emulate?

The kind where a droid rolls up and jams a probe into an unlabeled socket and instantly gains control of every waste-disposal system on the station.

It seems very weird to recalculate the CR of a fight every time a combatant drops. That leads to all sorts of absurd outcomes, of which the Solarian's powers shutting down is not even the dumbest. Furthermore, as BNW pointed out, if you're going to recalculate CR every time an enemy drops, then you also should be recalculating APL every time a PC drops.

As long as the PCs are still rolling dice and spending resources and not taking 10-minute rests, then a CR 5 encounter remains a CR 5 encounter until the last space goblin drops.

Devices on ships that amplify spells to make them relevant in space combat.

Seconded. One of my big hopes for starship combat, in fact, is that they find more ways to make magic relevant to it.

109: A heavily redacted dossier detailing something called PROJECT: STRING. The nature of the project is unclear, but it centers around a person referred to as "Target B". There is a photo of Target B; it looks precisely like one of the PCs, down to the bar and wardrobe, except the person in the picture is wearing an sunglasses that the PC is sure they have never owned. The sunglasses are an ordinary, common style that the PC could purchase cheaply anywhere.

Attached to the dossier is the following annotation:

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT:

1. DO NOT attempt to kill, harm, or apprehend Target B.
2. DO NOT attempt to make contact with Target B.
3. DO NOT discuss PROJECT: STRING or Target B's role in PROJECT: STRING with Target B.
4. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ALLOW THE SUNGLASSES TO BE LOST OR COME TO HARM (this directive supersedes all others).

As long as we're tossing out personal anecdotes and pretending it's solid polling data, I've been running SF1 exclusively and frequently for years, and the move to PF2 compatibility is the best news I've heard since Starfinder was first announced.

I don't think you're missing anything -- looks like the fit isn't very accurate at either end. Full disclosure, I didn't really test it, I just let the computer take its best guess. It doesn't surprise me that there's not a clean fit, because as I said, the designers just put up some numbers in a roughly quadraticish-looking curve.

If it were a real quadratic equation you'd see the rate of increase in y going up in a nice, smooth, curve, but that's not what the BP/tier table is. Someone at Paizo said, "Let's start at 50 and go up by 20s until we hit tier 6, then go up by 30s, then 40s, then 50s, then for the really big, tier 15-20 ships let's just go up by 100." Then they went back and said, "Hmm, those tier 7-9 numbers look a bit too big, let's nudge those down a little," and then they called it a day. There's no way to capture that in a simple math equation because that's not math.

Well, I guess be aware that the equation is just an estimation, and gets less and less accurate as you plug in higher tiers, probably because the curve isn't really a proper parabola, it just sort of resembles one. I think by the time you get to tier 20 it's off by about 25 BP.

Another way to look at it is that the table starts at 55 BP and then goes up by 20 for the first six tiers, then up by 25 for a few tiers, then up by 40, then up by 50, and then there's a big jump where the last five tiers go up by 100 each. It's not consistent, and it obviously was designed by feel rather than by any mathematical progression.

If you were going to extrapolate past tier 20 you could probably do worse than having the next few tiers go up by 150 each, or maybe 200. I think if you dig down you're going to discover that lots of the numbers are, in fact, quite arbitrary, and imposing a system onto it means you're going to have to make some arbitrary decisions of your own.

Anyone know how Tier and BP relate to each other, mathematically speaking? And no, I don't mean "How many BP do I get at each Tier?" I can read tables.

Not sure exactly what you mean by this, since the mathematical relationship between tier and BP is, literally, a table.

My graphing calculator estimates the curve to be BP = (2.77256 * tier^2) – (11.8741 * tier) + 103.066, but I don't know how helpful that is.

So basically, an uplifted tardigrade spy XD

Map its genome and I'd argue you don't even have to uplift it.

27. Biological Tracking Device

A very small, very simple living organism -- a dust mite or a tiny slime mold, for example -- placed inside a tiny, easily concealable stasis capsule. Plant the capsule on a person, object, or vehicle, then use the organism inside as the target for a know coordinates spell.

I have a group that is preparing for a classic heist where they will be stealing a macguffin, and they have (reasonable) concerns that the macguffin might have a tracking device hidden on it. We're looking for equipment that might give a bonus to scanning for and/ or blocking the effects of the bug.

For blocking, it seems like a signal jammer would do the trick, although it would block all other comms as well. Maybe a null-space chamber would work, though I'm less certain about that. Can comm signals go in or out of an NS chamber? Does an object in a NS chamber count as being on a different plane?

For scanning, I'm not aware of any gear or spells that specifically help you sweep for bugs. Starfinder has a lot of gear, though. Am I missing something?

Finally finished this! You can check out complete descriptions and interpretations of all 54 cards, plus artwork as interpreted by Midjourney, here.

Feel free to use, repurpose, steal, whatever.

A quick rundown of the cards:

Hammers

The first 9 had no volume or mass either until the tenth one went in.

Looking at 235 of the CRB, the schematics would be to avoid having to do the appropriate crafting checks to make the items.

There is no skill check. You need skill ranks in the appropriate skill, sufficient UPBs, a workshop and tools, and sufficient time, and that's it -- there's no dice roll involved.

A player character can create all the items presented in this chapter as long as he has the skills, materials, tools, and time needed to construct it. He must have a number of ranks in the appropriate skill equal to the item level of the item to be created. For weapons, armor, vehicles, and technological equipment, the appropriate skill is Engineering. For magic fusions and magic items, the appropriate skill is Mysticism. For hybrid items, you must have the required ranks in both Engineering and Mysticism. For drugs, medicinals, and poisons, the skill can be either Life Science or Physical Science. For any food or drink, the appropriate skill is Life Science. For computers, you can use either Computers or Engineering, and you can construct a computer with a tier equal to half your ranks in the skill. For items that are not considered any of these categories (such as most clothes, tents, and so on) either Engineering or Mysticism can be used. At a GM’s discretion, an appropriate Profession skill can be used for a narrower range of items. For example, a character with Profession (weaponsmith) might be able to make technological, hybrid, and magic weapons and weapon fusions, but no other items.

Crafting items requires you to have access to tools and a workshop or similar space. Most starships have an appropriate area set aside, and such space can be rented at the same price as lodgings in major cities (with the size of the lodging being equivalent to the size of the workshop, which limits the size of items that can be constructed and how many people can work on a single item at one time). Creating an item normally has a base time of 4 hours. If your number of ranks in the appropriate skill to craft an item exceeds that item’s level by 5 or more, you can craft that item in half the base time. If your ranks exceed the item level by 10 or more, you can create the item in one-quarter the base time. Objects larger than a Medium creature take twice as long to craft for each size category larger.

To create an item, you must have UPBs with a total value equal to the price of the item to be created. At the GM’s discretion, you can scavenge similar items for parts, allowing 10% of the scavenged item’s value to count toward the UPBs needed. Even magic and hybrid items are created using UPBs, as the Mysticism skill is used to form the materials into runes and specific implements for rituals utilized in the creation of magic devices.

Not super clear on why you need that house rule for schematics. RAW already allows you to craft any gear up to [skill ranks] in level using UPBs equivalent to its purchase price, without requiring the additional purchase of a schematic.

Maybe purchasing a schematic could allow you to craft items above the normal level limit?

I'm starting a new campaign with 7(!) PCs, and I'm a little worried about designing properly tuned encounters for them.

The rules tell me to start with APL, and add +1 if there are more than 4 PCs. They're all starting at 1st level, so APL = 1 + 1 = 2. Then let's say I want it to be a "challenging" encounter, so I add another +1 to that, for a total encounter CR of 3. This gives me a total XP budget of 800 -- or two CR 1 creatures.

I cannot help but worry that 7 level 1 PCs are going to absolutely demolish two CR 1 creatures.

Am I wrong about that? I mean we're talking about a mechanic, a soldier, an operative, an envoy, a solarian, a nanocyte, and a witchwarper against... a pair of trained squox. The squox will be lucky if they last 2 rounds.

Any advice? Should I bump up the APL by one more? Or should I just relax and trust the math?

* My players are not really min-maxers, and neither am I (none of us has the head or the patience for it).

** Please don't say "split the party up". I could offer each player $100 in real money to split up and they still wouldn't do it.

Or are you suggesting you can't patch a Malfunctioning system twice in a row? If so, I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying a single Engineer can't spread Patching a Malfunctioning system over two rounds (because that's the only way I can see how a single Engineer can do this). Or are you saying something else is stopping an Engineer spending consecutive rounds Patching the same system.

I'm suggesting that the patch action can only ever improve a given system one level higher than its "actual" status.

For example, you have malfunctioning engines, giving the Pilot -4 on all rolls. You patch them (using as many actions over as many rounds as that takes), so now they are treated as glitching for the purposes of determining action penalties. Pilot action penalties are now -2, but the engines are still malfunctioning. This means, if you patch them again, they would just be treated as though they are glitching, and since they are already being treated as glitching, there would be no effect.

In other words, you can't use patch make a malfunctioning engine go away entirely, the best you can do is improve it to glitching for the duration of the battle.

Also to clarify, this is how I think I would rule if it came up in my game (it hasn't ever, yet), but I think there are a number of valid ways to interpret it, depending on how tough you want to be on your players. (I don't do society play, so I have no thoughts on how they do it over there. )

That all seems to make sense except for maybe a slight quibble with point (vi)? I would rule that you can't patch a Malfunctioning system twice in a row to remove the penalties entirely. Per point (i), after you patch the Malfunctioning system the first time, it's treated as though it were Glitching, but it's still actually a Malfunctioning system. Therefore the second patch is not being applied to a Glitching system but to a Malfunctioning one.

That said, it kind of hinges on how you choose to parse the phrase "treated as". Although I'd personally rule it as I described, your interpretation is probably equally legit.

The Star Knight (Strength, LG) - A soldier in ceremonial uniform kneels in front of an altar, lifting a laser rifle up over his bowed head. The stained glass window consists of hundreds of monitor screens, filling the cathedral with golden light. The Star Knight gains strength through devotion to a righteous cause; he is ready to sacrifice himself if necessary, and it is his selflessness that ensures his victory. Misaligned, the card is a warning against hubris, blind devotion to an unworthy cause.

The Panopticon (Constitution, LE) - A technician sits at a bank of monitor screens; every screen depicts another technician and more screens. Behind the technician, dozens of camera drives hover silently, watching. The Panopticon denotes constant watchfulness, safety through universal distrust. Seek out betrayal and you will always find it. Misaligned, it is usually interpreted as a confirmation: someone will betray you, but you will not see it coming.

The Syzygy (Intelligence, LN) - A series of three planets in perfect alignment. In the background, behind the stars, are the faint outlines of the clockwork and gears that brought them to this position. The universe is built upon logical processes, and those processes can be understood. A complex plan may come to fruition if it is enacted with deliberation and precision. Misaligned, this card page a breakdown in the proper order of things, whether through unforeseen circumstance or sabotage.

The Dreadnought (Strength, LN) - A powerful and majestic warship looms against a field of stars, the triple beams of its broadside plasma cannons suggesting a doshko's fangs. The dreadnought projects might justified by right, a line that shall not be crossed, the appropriate use of necessary force. Misaligned, the card represents disproportionate response, ends corrupted by unjust means.

The Hulk (Strength, NE) - The broken shell of a derelict starship—possibly the same one that flew so strong and proud in its sister card, The Dreadnought—floats aimlessly through space. Only darkness is visible through the rents in its hull. The Hulk is the futility of all strength, the decay that saps purpose and will. Misaligned, it may hint at hidden reserves, an unexpected resurgence of hope.

The Navigator (Dexterity, N) - A scout ship charts a course through the shifting pastels of the Drift. On one side celestials beckon from a floating fragment of heaven, while on the other side fiends caper and leer atop a jagged shard of Hell. The pilot has not yet committed to one direction or the other, for it is the journey that matters, and the ability to maintain one's bearings in a sea of constantly changing options.

The Comet (Dexterity, CN) - A comanide sits astride its ball of ice as it hurtles through space, leaving a trail of vapor and particles behind it. The comet appears but rarely, but its appearance always presages great change, prepared for but never truly predicted. When misaligned, the Comet is a harbinger of catastrophic and woe.

The AI (Intelligence, N) - A human-like face peers down from a gigantic monitor screen at the robed programmers who busily attend to its many consoles and readouts. It is the sum of all knowledge, perfect calculative comprehension unclouded by moral qualm. The future is knowable, provided you have sufficient information.

The Scavenger (Dexterity, CG) – A space goblin sits atop a pile of junk. Spread before him is a selection of items cobbled together from unlikely combinations of technological scraps, magical crystals, twigs, and string: a laser pistol, a datapad, a serum, a forcefield module. From each device, a different-colored wire coils upward, connecting to a golden key that he holds triumphantly in his little green fist. The card represents cleverness and ingenuity, the ability to manufacture opportunity from the circumstances one is dealt, no matter how desperate. A worthless thing may turn out to be a treasure. Misaligned, this card warns that plans fall apart, chaos infects every orderly system, and the best intentions turn to dross.

The Oracle (Constitution, N) – A vast tree towering over a landscape teeming with alien life; its roots intertwine and connect with countless organisms as its branches reach up to embrace the stars. The natural world is all-encompassing, and its imperative to evolve is absolute. Circumstances will change for good or for ill, and to survive we must adapt with them. Diversity through adaptation is what makes us robust and enduring; to eliminate change is to strangle life in its crib.

The Hacker (Intelligence, CN) – An ysoki crouches inside a cramped access tunnel, surrounded by exposed circuitry and wires. One wire dangles down to connect with a datajack in the ysoki's head. Her eyes are blank white static; she cannot see that over her shoulder, a glitch gremlin is busy severing the connecting wire with its teeth. It promises rewards for lateral thinking, approaching a problem from an unexpected angle, disrupting common assumptions, and subverting known systems. But one must be cautious, for subversion is a system that can itself be subverted. When this card is misaligned it indicates a hidden flaw, a weakness that can be turned against itself, or betrayal by a trusted ally.

The Lighthouse (Wisdom, LN) – A blue-white pulsar, its glowing emission plumes shining out in opposite directions. A beacon of safety in times of trouble or darkness; illumination of an occluded mystery; a clear course of action revealing itself and dispelling confusion and doubt. Misaligned, it can represent false hope, a deceptive signal leading one astray.

Equilibrium (Wisdom, N) – A kasathan warrior monk stands atop a windswept sand dune beneath a night sky. In his upper left hand he holds a blazing star; in his upper right he holds a swirling black hole. His lower two hands clasp the hilt of a glowing energy blade. Equilibrium is the recognition that light and darkness, the push of energy and the pull of entropy, both have their place in the grand scheme of the cosmos. The goal is not to champion one over the other but to find the middle path that integrates both.

So, this was always too cool an idea to let die.

The Empire (Strength, Lawful Evil) – A throne surmounted by a peacock's plumes, flanked by warships advancing in formation. Rule by conquest, the pitiless imposition of law upon those too weak to govern themselves, slavery for the slave's own good. Misaligned, it represents freedom from tyranny, the overthrow of oppressive order.

The Shepherd (Wisdom, Neutral Good) – An oma benevolently watching over glaiads at play amongst the myriad tumbling particles of a gas giant's rings. Maternal nurturing; benevolent protection; an assurance that all is for the good and in its right place. Troubles will pass or work themselves out. Misaligned, can indicate a yearning for an idealized past that cannot longer be recovered, or imminent troubles threatening to disrupt a time of comfort.

The Void (Charisma, Neutral Evil) – A blank, utterly black card. The utter abnegation of awareness, identity, and self. The unknowable forever sealed behind the unperceivable. With no ornamentation or distinguishing marks of any kind, it is impossible to know whether this card is misaligned or not.

I'm thinking of homebrewing an item that would allow a spellcaster to affect intelligent undead with mind-affecting spells.

What would be an appropriate level/cost for an item like that? Should it be limited to a certain number of uses/day? Are there any items of roughly equivalent power that I could use as a guideline? Just looking for ideas to start with.

I'm thinking of homebrewing an item that would allow a spellcaster to affect intelligent undead with mind-affecting spells.

What would be an appropriate level/cost for an item like that? Should it be limited to a certain number of uses/day? Are there any items of roughly equivalent power that I could use as a guideline? Just looking for ideas to start with.

How do people adjudicate the difference between drawing/sheathing a weapon vs. retrieving or putting away a stored item (which is coverd by the Manipulating an Item action)?

Drawing a weapon so that you can use it in combat or putting it away so that you have a free hand requires a move action. This action includes activating or deactivating the weapon. This also applies to weapon-like objects that are easily accessible, such as remote controls and most tools or sensors you can carry and use with one hand. If your weapon or weapon-like object is stored in a pack or otherwise out of easy reach, you must instead retrieve it as a stored item before you can use it (see Manipulate an Item).

Exception: If you have a base attack bonus of +1 or higher, you can combine drawing or sheathing a weapon or weapon-like object with moving up to your speed as a single move action.

Moving or manipulating an item is usually a move action. This includes retrieving or putting away a stored item, picking up an item, moving a heavy object, and opening a door.

These descriptions imply that any item that you could conceivably have in a pocket or clipped to your belt can be "drawn or sheathed" like a weapon, while it's pretty clear that anything in a backpack requires the Manipulate an Item action. However, both are move actions, so it seems like a distinction without much difference (although weapons may be drawn as part of a different move action, per the exception).

Would you, for example, require an additional move action to unsling or unzip the pack before retrieving a stowed item? Or do you just treat it like drawing a weapon (with the exception that you can do the latter while moving)?

Just interested in how different people handle it.

Okay. Part 1 of the question was, are there any class abilities/spells/gear etc. that would grant that ability?

Basically something like the poison conversion alchemist's discovery from PF1, that lets you change a poison's type (ingested, inhaled, injury, etc.)

Is there a specific rule or ability that allows someone to use an inhaled or ingested poison or drug with an injection weapon? Or do most people just handwave it?

For that matter, how much Bulk is a Medium creature? How much is a Small creature?

How much bulk can a mule drone carry?

The quantum troll's 'Spooky Action' ability reads:

A quantum troll exists in several possible quantum states at once. It threatens squares within 30 feet of it.

Is this intended to imply that the quantum troll can make an attack of opportunity anywhere within that threatened zone, despite its 10' reach? It doesn't say so explicitly, but otherwise I have a hard time understanding the benefit of threatening squares outside your reach if you don't have a ranged attack,

Does a venom spur count as a weapon with the injection property, for the purposes of a biohacker's injection expert class feature?

EDIT: For that matter, is it an unarmed strike? A basic melee weapon? Does it benefit from Weapon Specialization?

But all of that is assuming that the Chimera Mystery doesn't have the actual 'Unobtrusive' Envoy expertise talent printed it in.

It doesn't.

The Chimera Mystery AP makes reference to an "unobrusive envoy talent" in the entry for the unobtrusive chassis drone mod:

Your drone looks like a mundane domestic drone of the same size. With 10 minutes of work, you can alter cosmetic aspects of your drone's appearance to make it look like other domestic drones in a local building or area. Your drone gains the unobtrusive envoy expertise talent but uses your total Engineering skill modifier to determine the DC to notice it.

Any idea what this was supposed to refer to or how it's supposed to work?

A 5-mile-diameter dome contains around 4.8 trillion cubic feet, not 172,000.

If there are 2 million people in Absalom station, then each of them would have roughly 2.5 million cubic feet to stretch out in. I think they're fine.

Most of the complaints about the Barricade feat are coming from people who have not read the rules closely enough.

As a move action, you can stack and reinforce objects that are too small or too fragile to provide cover into a single square of adjacent cover.

Anyone can spend a standard action to kick over a wooden table with 5 hardness and 15 hp and take cover behind it. You don't even need a skill roll. The presence of the Barricade feat does not prevent you from doing this.

Someone who has the Barricade feat can spend a move action to create cover that is just as sturdy out of a roll of aluminum foil, or a pile of foam beer cozies, or a couple of discarded plastic cafeteria trays, or literally any old crap that happens to be lying around.

I don't understand why people keep claiming that the latter is "something anyone could do before they made a rule defining it."

No, because what you're seeing is not a fault, nor an accident, nor a glitch. It's purposeful and intentional to prevent art theft.

Is that really what's going on? Because every other image in the PDF extracts just fine.

In all previous Adventure Paths, the cover art was extractable from the PDF, at a size and resolution that was just about perfect for laptop wallpaper.

With Strange Aeons, unfortunately, this is not the case. The only extractable version of the cover art is the small version inset above the table of contents, which is fine for reading but too low-res to make nice wallpaper.

This makes me sad. I have always enjoyed collecting the covers of all the APs.

Is there any chance we could get updated versions of the PDFs with the cover images made separately extractable?

Ooh, I wonder if his means we get an updated Korvosa sourcebook in the Campaign Setting line.

jingasa of the fortunate soldier

tengu drinking jug

Firm stance. Your character is breaking the game please do something about it. There that is it that is what I want him to say, to do, to do something like that. I am making that offer in good faith and how did I break character concept before hand. It was supposed to be an evil party! What character class is more evil then an Anti-Paladin!

You wrote:

we all agreed that were were going to be a questionably moral party not straight up evil, but not good ether ... I however went all in playing an Anti-Paladin

(emphasis mine)

Unless I drastically misunderstood what you wrote, or unless you wrote something other than what you meant, the group (including you, and your GM) agreed to play morally questionable PCs that were not straight-up evil, but not entirely good, either. You, however, decided to roll up an anti-paladin, which I think by any reasonable definition would be considered straight-up evil. I think it's clear from your wording that you understood that your choice was contrary to the intent of the group agreement.

Let me be clear: I agree that your GM should be more up-front with you about not liking your character, and about why he doesn't like it.

But I also think it's actually pretty obvious what his feelings are. You don't need him to say a special magic sequence of words out loud to you, and sitting around waiting for him to do so just makes you petty. You could try to be the bigger person in this situation; instead you seem wed to the idea of just being the more passive-aggressive person.

If you know that remaking your character would patch things up, then do that. If you don't care and intend to keep your character regardless of how your GM feels, then say that.

I offer to remake my character if he doesn't like it, he doesn't respond. I offer to play a different character, he's like meh about it. All he says is it's overpowered and keeps complaining about it. I want to bring a character to really drive home the point that no it's not over powered.

He is being annoyingly passive-aggressive about this, but then so are you.

It really doesn't take a genius to figure out that the GM does not, in fact, like your character. I could be wrong, but it seems pretty likely that the reason is not because it's overpowered, but because you agreed to a certain set of character concepts beforehand and then went and deliberately blew off that agreement, and now you're pretending that it's his problem, not yours.

You say several times that you want your GM to "take a firm stand," but I don't really understand what that means. What is it you want him to do? Do you want him to make it clear that he's unhappy with your character? He's already done that. This "firm stand" business is just being deliberately obtuse.

When you offer to remake your character, are you making that offer in good faith? If so, then just remake your character. If you just want to keep your character and don't care what he thinks about it, then you need to tell him that, explicitly.

Constructing elaborate schemes to "teach someone a lesson" is something that only works in sitcoms and cartoons, not in real life. It is childish. It will not make your GM suddenly see things your way. It will just make you look dumb and him more upset.

Other things your corpse-in-a-closet cannot provide:

- leather
- milk and cheese (because people are going to want to eat something besides not-quite-maggoty pork chops 3x/day)
- manure, to fertilize crops
- labor, for pulling wagons, plows, and mill wheels
- tallow for candles, soap, and grease
- glue from horns and hooves
- bone and sinew for fashioning various tools and implements

Sorry if I misunderstood; you also said:

You are only looking at the situation from a single time. As in, you have to feed the people, so you kill 45 cows.

..which seemed to imply that you thought farmers buy a bunch of cows, slaughter them all at once, and have a big steak party. But that's not how cattle ranching works -- you slaughter some, you breed the rest. Sure, growing a calf takes time, but you're never starting from zero. You always have groups cattle at different stages of growth, and you hold back studs over multiple generations.

But where do those animals come from?

Um, from all the herds of cattle that many, many people are breeding all over the place in a rural economy, all the time? You do realize that the normal, non-magical way is how it works in the real world, right? Large populations of humans have been using self-renewing herds of cattle to feed themselves throughout history. Do you wonder where all those cows come from, too?

Yeah, you could drop 2,700 gp on a couple of command-word items that cast the necessary spells at will. But if you have the cash to make an initial investment like that, you're not a farmer. You're an adventurer, and you have better things to do than sit around in a village casting purify food and drink over a hundred times per day so that the villagers don't have to work. And even if you didn't, there are more villages than adventurers in this world. Which is why the farmers of Golarion aren't scrimping and saving to buy a ring of the rejuvenating pig carcass; they're just raising cattle the normal way, which can be mastered by any 1st level commoner and requires a far smaller initial outlay of cash.

Actually, the really funny thing is, the whole argument about cows is moot, because herd animals are Large creatures, and restore corpse only works on Medium or smaller creatures.

You could do it with a pig, I guess, but that makes even less economic sense. You still have to cast purify food and drink the same number of times, because the amount of food that the population needs to consume stays the same. But you have to cast restore corpse many, many more times per day, because the pig has less meat on its carcass. Your daily spellcasting costs have just gone up by a factor of 10.

Meanwhile, the price of a fresh, living pig is just 3 gp per head. For every 10 gp you spend on a restore corpse spell, you could have purchased 3 pigs (1 boar, 1 sow to slaughter, and 1 sow to breed), with change left over for feed.