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I have an idea for an epic feeling low level adventure, but it requires the inclusion of a "stone to flesh" spell or something similar.

If I include an NPC who can cast 6th level spells it would take some crazy excuses to justify that NPC not solving every problem. If I give them an item that can cast the spell the party could just sell it later and be crazy rich for their level.

Here's the basic outline.

Desert nomads use Stone to Flesh to turn rocks into meat because they're tired of the bland food produced by other spells. Big bad was petrified hundreds of years ago. Erosion has worn away at him so when he is unpetrified he's missing part of his brain and is weakened and crazy. Also, some of the things the nomads ate previously were inactive golems, and the partially digested golems suddenly activating again created some horrifying zombie-esque victims (turning a stone golem to flesh basically just makes it a flesh golem, and they'd probably be orks or some species that likes their meat raw).

It turns out that the reason the big bad was petrified instead of just being killed is that his death triggers his crumbling but somewhat functional fortress, which is actually a giant golem, to go on a mindless rampage of revenge. Players must try to disable golem from the inside before it reaches a nearby populated area. A creative way to disable it would be to cast stone to flesh on some of its vital components to make them much easier to break.

So really, I could just cut out the bit about using the spell to help disable the giant golem and I'd be fine... But I want that part :( Any ideas?

((TLDR: is there a good disarming build for a bard? Or a houserule? Or advice on tactics a bard can actually pull off?))

I'm playing a bard, and from the start I was aware of the idea that bards don't make good fighters. I just didn't realize how bad it would get, and hope that maybe I'm just doing something wrong and can change course.

As it is, I have my bard song and a list of buffs in order of importance. Combat is often over before I even get a chance to cast all of them. Our group can handle some pretty significant CRs, and my buffs are a big part of that. But playing this bard means the only choices I make in combat are where to stand. And I always stand as far away from enemies as I can because they can usually one shot me.

I understand that my character plays a significant role in combat, but as I player I could just leave a list of spells and go make a sandwich.

I honestly tried to give my character something to do. Knowing the being a damage dealer was out, I tried to focus on being able to disarm. Now, I didn't fully appreciate how many foes don't wield weapons. Even when I do fight something holding a sword I find that their CMD is at least twenty points higher thane even my buffed CMB.

I don't know what I can do to make myself more effective at disarming. I use a whip (which has an inherent bonus to disarming), the "dueling" enchantment that boosts disarming, a feat to base my CMB on dex (my second highest attribute after charisma), and the entire disarming feat tree.

If I use a wand of true shot I will have at least a chance of succeeding, but two full rounds seems like a steep cost to simply hamper a foe. And that's assuming I don't get interrupted by needing to heal someone, or get stunned, or injured, or sneezed on...

Is there some vital part of a disarming focused build I have missed? Is there a house-rule to make disarming more reasonable?

Failing that, for the future, or if I can retcon my feat choices, What is a good bard build that lets you feel like you participate in combat?

TLDR: I'm curious what types of true neutrals are out there. Here's my character, I'd like to hear about yours.

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So, a while back I made a character and have been playing a campaign with him. After I planned out his ideology I was kind of surprised to find that it seemed to fit best under the true neutral alignment. However, from what I've seen on forums like these it seems a rather atypical neutral.

Funny thing is, I didn't know how much the planes would figure into this game. When I told my DM about my character concept we had the following exchange:

"Have you been reading my campaign notes?"
"No... should I have?"
"No, just... Well this should be interesting."

While what follows may not reflect the exact rules-as-written nature of the planes, this is his take on it. In the campaign knowledge of the workings of the planes is generally not deep or widespread. By this point in the campaign the player characters probably know more about the planes than just about any mortal, but we're still learning things. Also, a few things have been changed. For example, instead of three of each there is only one "good" plane and one "evil" plane.

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My character, Pelekko, is campaigning for material plane independence. It ticks him off that other planes keep interfering to try and lure morals to their side of some pointless eternal war. Even sometimes using the material plane as their literal battleground.

So he basically rejects the alignments, seeing them as artificial. He believes that what you see when you cast "detect good" is how much essence of the celestial realm they have allowed into themselves. Upon death a person's soul is "taken" by the realm that has the most of their hooks in that person. It is unclear what happens to the true neutral, but he hopes he will reincarnate within the material plane. If not, he'll find some way to make that happen.

Before the campaign started he was a spy. However, he was basically playing both sides in an effort to prevent a war. Disrupting the war-machine of the enemy while also exaggerating their strength in reports back to his home country. He would rather the mortal nations save their strength to fend off the true threats.

One of the main conflicts in the campaign is that portals or "holes" are opening up which allow the demonic realms to enter the material plane. How would he like to deal with it? Rally the mortal nations for a counter-invasion until the demons decide it's a bad idea to keep those portals open.

He's got some big plans. But is it that much crazier than a hero who hopes to attain godhood?

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Pelekko- "We have spells that can return the recently dead to life do we not? Those spells are taking that soul one plane to another. Is it so unbelievable to think that these planes might be doing the same thing on a larger scale?"
Ally- "That would have to be a very large spell."
Pelekko- "You're right. To maintain something like that you'd probably need hundreds of 'morally' aligned ceremonial structures where acolytes meet once a week or so to chant and perform rituals."
Ally- "Right. And if someone were doing that I think we'd-"
Pelekko "-You're an idiot."

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Pelekko- "Well, here's your chance! Just ask these archons which one remembers being your grandfather."
Ally - "You know they don't remember being mortal."
Pelekko- "That's because they never were... A mortal's soul isn't their steel, it's the fuel in their forge."

Long and short of it is that an Evil intelligent sword named Damocles is the primary antagonist of my campaign. One of his objectives at the moment is to create the perfect humanoid to wield him.

He's basically doing this by selectively breeding various species. I will likely just fudge it and say he's using a magical process to combine species because a forced breeding program can get pretty creepy if you think about the logistics of it all.

Damocles has no respect for organic life. He sees a strong wielder like a fighter would see a +3 sword. Useful, but discarded immediately when a +4 sword comes along. His ideal wielder would have high physical stats and low mental ones, particularly wisdom. Thus being someone he could dominate consistently.

So, I'm looking for advice on what he might create for this purpose.

Are half-fiend and half-celestial mutually exclusive? They are socially incompatible sure, but the circumstances would be mind control levels of coercion.

I've ruled out vampire because they have too many restrictions on behavior. However, if there's some way to make him a lich that would be excellent. Damocles would love to have a wielder who will never bother him with things like eating or sleeping. Problem one, it looks like all liches are required to be self made. Second, so far as I can tell all undead are immune to mental effects like domination. Does that include vampires and liches? I was under the impression that was because of the "mindless" quality of zombies and such. Are fully conscious undead like vampires and liches also immune?

half-dragon is practically a given. Will probably choose type based on whatever immunity doesn't overlap with immunities granted by other templates.

So, as far as I understand the majority of the population would fall into the "neutral" alignment. Not evil, but not selfless enough to be considered "good" either.

So, good people become various celestials when they die, and bad people become various demonic thingies. The super lawful people become Axiomites, and I don't know if there's any chaotic afterlife. There are Proteans, but I don't think mortals can become those. There are also formians, but I haven't found anything saying if mortals become formians because they deserved to, or if they were just captured.

What happens to all of the people who are just kind of "meh"?

I'm doing a bit of a different take on Neutral alignment. He's not just somewhere between being Good and Evil, he outright despises Good and Evil equally. As he sees it, angels and demons are using mortals as pawns in their eternal war. He wants the prime material plane to stand up for itself. His dream is that someday instead of residents of the prime material plane passing judgement on each other based on how "good" they are, angels will pass judgement on each other based on how "prime" they are.

Anyway. I'm looking for suggestions on how he could go about doing this. Sure, he'll probably have no chance of actually pulling it off unless he gets to epic levels, and maybe not even then. Either way, it's a goal he's going to be working towards.

I don't know if this is specifically pathfinder cannon, but in our campaign extra-planar creatures like demons or angels will simply re-form in their home plane after they are killed. This bugs him to no end. (I would be interested in knowing if we are wrong about this, but it has already been established in our game's cannon, so it'll be sticking around.)

He plans to learn the spell "Create soul gem". It traps a soul, and if that soul is then used as a spell component or some-such the soul is destroyed utterly. Or as it says "Most methods of using souls extinguish them completely, consigning them to oblivion. In these cases, only the direct intervention of a deity can return them to life—and sometimes not even then, such as when the soul is specifically devoured by one of the Horsemen." Seems like if you need a thorough way to get rid of someone, that's as good as it gets. (this, along with the cash values of souls, is on the "Daemons" page if you want to check my work)

Even if he does this full time he wouldn't be able to permanently kill more than six or so extra-planar creatures a day. That's not going to make a dent in their numbers, but it would make a good tool to keep specific enemies from coming back. Though it raises the philosophical question of what happens if this pushes him into an Evil alignment. Trading in mortal souls is "undeniably evil and an affront to the natural order" but their may be some wiggle room in the manipulation of non-mortal souls. Though if that's better, or much worse, or any different at all, could probably be debated all day. I'll see what my DM has to say.

Lhaksharuts (No, my cat didn't walk across the keyboard, that's a class of the "Inevitables") have "separating the planes" at the very top of their to-do list. So if they can do it, it stands to reason that it is possible to cut the planes of good and evil off from the prime material plane. Or at the very least, put more restrictions on travel between them. Maybe reduce it to a couple of well guarded gateways. Of course that would be the kind of thing you can only even think about doing when you've got a kingdom under you.

So, any other suggestions you have for carrying out this hopeless war would be appreciated.

One of my players has Manacles of Cooperation and is continually capturing foes with them. The will save to attempt escape is pretty low, but I don't know the DC to try and escape.

What's the standard difficulty to escape/lockpick/break manacles?

I'm rather familiar with D&D 3.5, but would like to run a pathfinder game. I don't think that reading through the entire rule set is called for, but the system seems peppered with small but significant changes. Is there a list somewhere of these changes? I'm not talking about micro details like how tower sheilds are treated, but things that are important to character creation and such.