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I've got an all-Dwarf party running through Giantslayer (shocking, right?), and they're looking for places to start trading/selling some of their loot.

Since they'll be in the vicinity of Glimmerhold around Book 3, I'm thinking about running 'Clash' as a side quest.

Has anyone who's run both (or played both) got an opinion on the viability of this?

It looks like I'll have to update some of the diety choices in 'Clash' to better reflect the updated Dwarven pantheon - any thoughts from better minds than mine?

(sorry if this is something that's been suggested already - it's tough to keep track of all the comments!)

It seems like there are a couple big hurdles with the current version of Dual Identity, such as:

-5 minutes being a really long time to access a primary class ability

-Losing (nearly) all of your abilities/feats when in Social mode, which also makes a rules nightmare...

What if the Social Identity wasn't actually separate from the Vigilante Identity? After all, when he's playboying it up at a Wayne Foundation fundraiser, Bruce Wayne doesn't stop being Batman - the social persona is a DISGUISE, not an alternate identity (as opposed to the Chymist PRC, which actually ends up being two people).

If Social Identity can be 'equipped' with similar mechanics to putting on armor (including partial benefits for 'donning quickly'), instead of completely losing abilities, the Vigilante loses renown/takes penalties to the social roll for non-subtle use of their abilities (this would make some of the Talents like stealth casting even more helpful).

This would also help the class have a little more functionality at first level.

I'm playing a gunslinger (mechanist) [a 3rd-party archetype that uses INT for grit and focuses on know(engineer)] in Iron Gods, currently at 5th level. The build is focused on maximizing the damage on a single shot each round (so not going for crazy multi-gun/multi-shot approach).

As we look toward 6th level, I'm considering a brief 1-level dip. I've narrowed it down to 3 potential choices. I'm looking for outside opinions (I'm not necessarily looking to go with the most power-optimal choice, but want to consider all possibilities) - gaining perspectives from others is always helpful. I'm going to choose from the following:

1) stick with straight Gunslinger, which lets me get to level 11 and Signature Deed as quickly as possible, and progress other class abilities

2) take a level of Alchemist, which would not only let me use Mutagen for the DEX boost, but would give me a handful of 'spell' options. Drawback is the loss of BAB and slightly lower hit die.

3) take a level of Mutagen Fighter (cheese ahoy!), for the mutagen and free feat

Any thoughts? Are there things I haven't considered?

Mild spoilers for Sword of Drezen - go away, Dickerson!

...

The party charged in through the gatehouse and cleared out the chamber in F4. They immediately headed to the Chapel of Torag, and decided to fortify that room and rest/regain.

So I'm trying to guess how the remainder of the 'residents' on that floor might respond. In the module, only Staunton's reactions (or impatience) is mentioned - the rest of the baddies are more primed to handle that first wave of attacking heroes. Plus, the book seems to assume that PCs will retreat back out of the citadel to rest, rather than try to create a beachhead.

Any suggested reactions? I'm not sure I want the entire castle coming down on the party while they recuperate, but there's gotta be consequences for taking a nap while your breaking & entry is in progress...

I've got a player that would like to use the Mortification rituals (from Chronicle of the Righteous), and I'm trying to make sure I'm understanding them correctly.

The book states that "a creature can instigate a ritual of mortification by refraining from eating, drinkinf, and sleeping for a certain number of days..." and that "this initial investment deals 1d6 nonlethal damage...at the beginning of each day so invested."

-So would this replace the normal penalties for going without food or water (Starvation and Thirst) or the penalties for going without Rest? If so, that's a bunch of Fort saves and lots of nonlethal damage to engage in the longer rituals.

-Would taking a potion count as 'drinking' for the requirements?

Looking for feedback on a homebrew for an Oracle of Life in our WoR campaign. Any feedback is appreciated:

Golden-Blooded: your blood is inflused with positive energy, making it glow dimly with a unnatural light.
You are vulnerable to negative energy damage and any bleed damage; additionally, you have the 'Delicious' condition (–2 penalty on Escape Artist and combat maneuver checks made to escape a grapple against any creature that has a bite attack with the grab ability).
However, any cure spells or channels originating from you heal an additional +1d4 points of damage

At 5th level, the bonus to healing magic increases to +1d6

[still trying to figure out how to progress at 10th and 15th - just boost the healing bonus?]

Thanks for the help, everyone!

Recently, my Magus died and was brought back as a Worm That Walks!

The template, while awesome, is way to powerful to just apply to a PC (especially since we're at lower levels - it happened just as we were going from 5th to 6th). After talking with the GM, he's letting me convert the abilities into a sort of custom Prestige Class gained slowly over a few levels.

I applied the BAB and saves from Adept, and tried to seperate the different aspects of the template over five levels.

First level:

Vermin (ex): gain the Vermin (augmented) type; unlike most Vermin, WtW is not mindless

Swarm Body (su): No discernable anatomy; loses Nat Armor bonuses; Susceptible to high winds - treat as Fine creature; 50% extra damage from area effects

Discorporate (su)

Diehard (ex)

Slam: natural attack, damage according to HD

WtW Immunities (su) <gained at subsequent levels>
Immune to sleep (1st)
Immune to disease (2nd)
Immune to poison (3rd)
Immune to paralysis (4th)

Damage Reduction (ex) equal to 3x class level

Second Level

AC bonus (ex): Insight bonus to AC equal ½ WtW class level

Tenacious(ex): +4 to Grapple CMB, +4 to CMD

Third Level

Squirming Embrace (ex)

Blindsense (ex) 30 feet

Fourth Level

<AC Bonus, Paralysis Immunity>

Fifth Level

Hive Mind (su): Immune to any physical spell or effect that targets a specific creature(s)

Fast Healing (su) equal to HD

How does this look? Is anything overly wonky?
(sorry for the formatting, I'm cut-and-pasting from a word document)

Background: We've just started the second book of Serpent's Skull, and we're able to use our 'downtime' to spend our accumulated gold before we hit the jungle.

My character is a Chelaxian Magus (Bladebound) who uses a rapier. At the moment, I don't have a single magic item equipped (other than a few charges left on some wands from book 1). I'm the primary arcanist for the party, but I'm also a 2nd-tier melee combatant.

Because of the Black Blade, I don't really need magic weapons, and (I'm metagaming a little here, given what I know about patterns of treasure in the APs) I'm assuming that I'll be able to find most generic items (+1 prot rings, amulet of nat armor, etc) throughout the course of the Path.

I've got quite a bit of gold (~10,000 gp) saved up, and I'm trying to think of some specific items to shop for/have made. This is my first time playing a Magus, so I'm very much open to ideas. All I've got written in my notes so far is "get some Pearls of Power..."

Any suggestions?

Freedom of Movement "enables you or a creature you touch to move and attack normally for the duration of the spell, even under the influence of magic that usually impedes movement..."

Would this prevent a targeted character from being affected by Icy Prison's lasting effects?
-Would they totally ignore the spell effects whether they successfully saved or not? I'm having trouble conceptualizing how freedom of movement would help when a failed save results in being totally covered in ~foot-thick layer of ice

-Would they still take the (caster level) cold damage each round, but not have movement impaired at all?

My PCs know they'll be facing a baddie with this ability, and I'm guessing they might think to prep this; I figured it would be helpful to understand the mechanics of the interaction beforehand.

Thanks for the help!

Background: we're about to wrap up the first book of Serpent's Skull and move on with the Adventure Path. While we began the campaign as semi-strangers, we've developed into a working team; two of the PCs (myself and another player) are strident worshippers of Asmodeus, god of contracts - so we're looking to actually write up a party constitution to formally guide our group in the future.

The players and GM are all experienced, and we've been playing together for some time (and play together in other campaigns). So, the question is, how can we put together an 'Adventuring Compact' from the character's perspective? What would need to be formally included? And most importantly, any ideas for 'legal loopholes' that the Chelaxians (a mage and his man-at-arms) might use later to their own advantage?

Any and all suggestions are appreciated!

One of the rules I was not really aware of was the ability of weapons with a greater than +3 enhancement to overcome DR as if the weapon was made of special material/quality.

So how do I determine a weapon's enhancement bonus? Is it the total magical enhancement, or just the 'static numerical bonus'?

So, would a +2 keen flaming ghost touch sword be considered to have a +5 enhancement (the total of all magical additions) or only a +2?

Sorry if this is a foolish question, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

Thanks for the clarification!

I've never seen one of these used before, but it got randomly generated in our last session as part of a treasure cache.

As far as I can tell, the 'see through objects' aspect is fairly straightforward, but I'm a little confused about how it might work with other effects/conditions.

The Ring says you see like as if under normal illumination - so a wearer without darkvision could see in absolute darkness? What about magical darkness?

How does the X-Ray vision work with other visual things like concealment? Illusions?

Guidance is appreciated - thanks!

[possible spoilers below for #4 - Fortress of the Stone Giants]

My group (4-5 players at 10th and 11th levels, 25-pt buy) made it most of the way through the library level of Jorgenfist. After rough fights against the headless lord and a wonderfully pain-in-the-neck Scanderig, they've unanimously voted to rest/heal/regain spells (they know Mokmurian is a big hat and is yet to come). Using Stone Shape and Secure Shelter, they've created a sanctuary in one of the cleared rooms.

However, this means that Mokmurian (who know they're coming + group makeup/tactics) also has time to rest and prepare fully...

Here's my question to folks who have run this encounter - the group, as a result of lucky decisions, avoided a bunch of the encounters on the previous level, including both lamia and Lokansir, the uber-hill giant. Both are described as special servants of Mokmurian, and Lokansir is said to be his closest ally.

It seems to make sense that Mokmurian might summon Lokansir to help him in the fight. However, Lokansir seems like a lot to add to an already tough encounter, but it's mostly becuase he's soaking up damage (and actions).

I'm looking to make Mokmurian a truly terrifying challenge (the group is quite powerful, and has powered through a lot of the baddies in the campaign so far), but I'd also definitely want to avoid a campaign-ending TPK.

Any thoughts? (and thanks for reading to the end here!)

I don't have a lot of experience pricing homebrew magic items, so I figured I'd toss this one out to the experts on the boards.

Gunslinger is looking to get a magic item crafted that would magically generate his ammunition (replicating the Abundant Ammunition spell)

spell is a 1st-level wiz/sor, and would only require a caster level 1; this means it's 1(spell level)x 1(caster level) x 2000gp so far.

If it's not assigned to a specific body slot, it's doubled.

4,000 gp seems a little low. Am I missing something?

PS- At 10th level, is it reasonable to give him this type of item so we no longer have to keep track of the 6gp per shot? We don't normally track ammo usage, but we've never had a gunslinger use costly ammo before either.

We were considering running this in between our usual sessions of our Rise of the Runelords campaign. Other than upping the CL of the opponents, what else do we need to be aware of? (Are there any parts of the adventure, story-wise, that challenge level 3, but are easily bypassed by higher level PCs?)

Help/suggestions are appreciated!

Does the slam attack from lesser Spirit Totem and Greater Spirit Totem get modified by anything other than BAB+CHA? I'm wondering about both benefits and penalties.

When the Barbarian is fighting defensively, does the spirit slam attack take a -2 penalty?

Would Power Attack penalize the attack roll and add to the damage?

If the Barbarian is wearing a Ring of Blinking, would the spirit slam also have a 20% miss chance on its attack rolls?

I'm sorry if these are foolish questions, but we're having our first Spirit Totem PC joining the game, and I wanted to have answers for potential questions. I'm not seeing anything on the messageboards, but my search-fu is weak.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

We're toying around with a high(er) power level, and there are several questions that we've never had to deal with before. This one is still puzzling us:

One character has equipped both magical Bracers of Armor (+7) and Magic Armor (+5 light).

I understand that the armor bonus itself doesn't stack, so the maximum AC bonus is +7.

But would the character be able to still benefit from the magical special abilities of the armor, even if they're not getting any AC boost? For example would Fortification armor still provide the 'miss chance' against critical hits?

Thanks in advance for your help!

We're starting up a Rise of the Runelords campaign, and one of the players has been wanting to play a werewolf for the last several game.

Looking at the Wolf Shifter base class from Wayfinder #5, it seems to just be an archetype/adaptation of Barbarian.

Has anyone used this class? How does it stack up? Is it workable in a RotR campaign?

How would other characters (PCs and NPCs) react to a Shoanti who shifted into a wolf-man hybrid???

A player has inquired about possibly using this variant for his barbarian in a pathfinder home game.

It essentially replaces Rage with a Strength boost and DR.

The big difference is that, unlike normal rage, the character doesn't choose when to enter into this state - it automatically activates whenever HP are fewer than 5xBarbarian level. There's no limit to # of 'rages' per day.

Has anyone tried this with the Pathfinder system? Do we even need to convert anything, or does it still work okay in the context of a Pathfinder barbarian?

All help and feedback certainly appreciated