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I have an older published source book that has an NPC villain who uses a necklace of strangulation to sneak up behind characters and slips it over their heads. With more recent descriptions of the item this mode of attack can apparently only be used once a month, assuming that the NPC can even retrieve the necklace a month after its use. But, other than this limitation, this seams to be an awfully powerful, and perhaps, unfair mode of attack and yet, assuming the NPC is able to attack with surprise, a fairly easy method of attack. Any thoughts on how to deal with this? Note, I'm also concerned about PCs using this method later on against my NPCs.

I suppose the real question is whether or not a combat maneuver is considered a melee attack, since the channel smite feat says it can be used as a swift action before a melee attack - for example, using a channel smite while performing a trip with a trip weapon.

I'm making a character for a Pathfinder/Ravenloft game and need to know if the bonuses for a ranger's favored enemy are considered insight bonuses, because I'm also looking at taking the monster hunter prestige class later on. The monster hunter prestige class has insight bonuses for certain monsters (chosen by the player) that are very similar to the ranger's favored enemy bonuses. So I need to know if the monster hunter's bonuses will stack with those of the ranger. Thoughts anyone?

I know this subject has been discussed several times before in several places, and that it has been stated numerous times that the cleave feat cannot be part of a full attack action and can be used only as a standard action. But I have a player who raises what I think is a valid argument against this rule and I'm wondering if anyone out there can offer a valid counter-point (or two) to his argument as opposed to simply quoting the rules or their interpretation of the rules.

The argument is this: If a character with multiple attacks is allowed to make a move (say of 30 feet) after or before making a cleave, why can't he instead swing his weapon one more time in the time it would take to make that move? Frankly, I don't have a good answer for this. One would think that in the time it takes for a character to move 30 feet during combat (i.e. not running), that same character would have more than enough time to swing his weapon again.

I'm trying to come up with a system for determining the level of expert craftsmen within a city, (weaponsmiths, for example) and I was hoping someone might know of some general guidelines for this or even a random generator. I would assume that the larger the city the more likely the odds of higher level experts, and the higher level the expert the rarer they are. And I have some ideas on the average levels of expert craftsmen as well as a method for randomly determining their levels. But I wanted to see what others may have to say on this.

I've seen a lot of discussions here about combining archetypes and such but I have not been able to find anything specific on whether or not an ability already gained by an archetype continues to progress after no longer advancing in that class or archetype.

Specifically, I have a player that has taken the Knife Master archetype for his rogue, which allows d8s instead of d6s for sneak attacks, with the Sneak Stab ability. Later on, he plans to switch to an alchemist with the Vivisectionist archetype which allows sneak attacks instead of bombs. The question then is whether or not the Vivisectionist's sneak attacks progress as d6s or d8s.

Originally, I was thinking yes. But now I'm thinking no, because while the sneak attack of a Vivisectionist stacks with that of the Knife Master it is not a continuation of the KM's Sneak Stab ability.

In other words, the character would only get d8s for the levels he has gained as a KM. Any damage gained by the Vivisectionist would be d6s added on to the d8s.

Can a cleric pick more than one sub-domain for the same associated domain? I have not been able to find anything specifically that says he can't, though there are rules prohibiting him from taking a sub-domain from two different associated domains or from taking a sub-domain as well as it's associated domain.

As an example, for the Glory domain, there are the sub-domains of Heroism and Honor. The replacement powers do not overlap, so one might think that one could take both sub-domains. However, both sub-domains have replacement spells of 6th level, which obviously do overlap. If both sub-domains are allowed, how would the 6th level replacement spell be determined? Player's choice perhaps?