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I'm rolling a level 15 magus character for a campaign I'm in. I'm planning on taking a familiar using one of the magus arcana, and then the improved familiar feat.

I can't make up my mind between two familiars. Links and what I see as the "big" differences:

Faerie Dragon:

• AC higher by 3
  
• immune to paralysis, sleep
  
• greater invisibility, grease, silent image, sleep, dancing lights, flare, ghost sound, mage hand, open/close
  
• languages: common, draconic, elven, sylvan, telepathy 100ft
  

Silvanshee Agathion

• DR/5evil or silver
  
• immune electricity, petrification, resist cold 10
  
• land speed is 20ft faster, air speed 30ft faster
  
• commune, dimension door, know direction, speak with animals, dancing lights, prestidigitation, stabilize
  
• adds CHA to saves, can share 1/day for 10min
  
• can gaseous form but keep DR, abilities, and speed 5min/day
  
• languages: celestrial, draconic, infernal, speak with animals, truespeech
  

All in all, it sounds like the Silvanshee is better. That DR probably makes a decent difference, it's faster, and can turn to gas, which would make it really useful as a spy.

Then again, the dragon has a host of extremely useful spell-like abilities / sorcerer spells.

Recommendations? I've perused through a number of threads similar to this one: but haven't found much about what people think of the silvanshee.

I want to create some homebrewed feats that allow people who've only taken one level of Monk to use Flurry of Blows as a viable attack (primarily, I'm doing a Monk/Rogue), but I want to do so in a way that doesn't throw off game balance too much.

I've bolded the parts that actually have my questions... so if you're familiar with the mechanics, you can skim over the rest.

The first step seems to just allow the Ascetic Monk feat from 3.5's Complete Adventurer, which allows monk/rogue levels to stack for determining how much damage your unarmed strikes do. Easy. (Is it unbalanced to just say all classes stack for the Ascetic Monk feat? So that a 11 Rogue / 5 Barbarian / 1 Monk is treated as a 17 Monk for damage calculation? (2d8 unarmed damage, vs 2d6 as written))

Next, I made modified versions of Improved/Greater Two-Weapon Fighting, where the big difference is they only apply to unarmed attacks, and don't require TWF as a pre-req, since level 1 monk takes care of that.

The normal Pathfinder Monk rules state that a Monk should treat his BAB for Flurry of Blows as equal to his Monk level. (If you look at the Flurry of Blows column, they already subtracted -2 for two-weapon fighting).

According to the Pathfinder FAQ, you then add any other BAB bonus you have from other classes. So a 11 Rogue / 1Monk ends up a Flurry BAB of +9, while a 12 Monk would have a Flurry BAB of +12.

Given that to keep pace with the Monk, this is already using up 3 feats (one to stack monk/rogue levels for flurry damage, and two for TWF feats)...

Should I require yet another feat to treat your BAB for flurry attacks as equal to your character level? Or is it fair to roll that into Ascetic Rogue? Or into the Flurry of Blows mechanic itself?

Alternatively, it might be more fair to use the relationship of monk BAB with monk flurry BAB. I've noticed that if you ignore the flurry-BAB-equals-monk-level, every 4 levels, the monk gets +1 "bonus" to flurry BAB, vs regular BAB

That is... Take monk BAB for levels
1-4, 1 "bonus" compared to normal BAB for Flurry (then -2 for TWF).
5-8, 2 "bonus"
9-12, 3 "bonus"
13-16, 4 "bonus"
17-20, 5 "bonus"

It might be better to use this in feat mechanics?

Perhaps... "For each 4 character levels you have, add 1 to your BAB to get your flurry BAB (this replaces your flurry BAB progression received from Monk)"

This would give:
20 Monk: +18 flurry BAB (+15, +5 bonus, -2 TWF = +18, which is monk standard)
19 Rogue / 1 Monk: +17 flurry BAB (+14 BAB, +5 bonus, -2 TWF = +17)
11 Rogue / 8 Barbarian / 1 Monk: +19 flurry BAB (+8 rogue, +8 barbarian, +5 bonus, -2 TWF = +19)
19 Barbarian / 1 Monk = +22 (+19, +5 bonus, -2 TWF = +22!!!)

That last example seems like it might be worth putting a clause in there saying, "Your Flurry BAB cannot exceed that of a non-multiclass monk." Think that's necessary?

Any good ideas to these ends? Or feedback? Thanks in advance! :)

I'm thinking of multiclassing rogue with 1 level of monk.

According to the FAQ...

A monk using flurry treats his BAB from monk levels as equal to his monk level. He still adds BAB from other sources (such as other classes or racial Hit Dice) normally to this total.

So a fighter 19/monk 1 has a normal BAB of +19. When he flurries, he treats his monk BAB as +1 (for his 1 level of monk) and still gets BAB +19 from his fighter levels, for a total flurry BAB of +20.

But according to monk...

At 8th level, the monk can make two additional attacks when he uses flurry of blows

...
At 15th level, the monk can make three additional attacks using flurry of blows

Using what the FAQ entry says, would a rogue/monk get the extra attacks at the corresponding BAB?

For example... at level 8 (when monk gains an extra attack), monk has flurry BAB of +6. A Rogue10/Monk1, you'd have a flurry BAB of +6. Does such a character get a flurry attack of +6/+6/+1/+1, or +6/+6/+1?

My understanding of the core rules is that if you make a standard attack action, you can use your move action after your attack.

So where does Fast Getaway come in? The description is "After successfully making a sneak attack or Sleight of Hand check, a rogue with this talent can spend a move action to take the withdraw action. She can move no more than her speed during this movement."

How is this any different than the normal rules? Or does that mean you can take a move action even after a full attack?

Howdy-

I'm just about to start DMing my first game of any RPG. I've gone through about a dozen 3.5e/4e D&D sessions, so I don't think the Pathfinder rules will trip us up too much.

I've settled on Crypt of the Everflame because it seems pretty popular for getting the hang of Pathfinder.

Most of the "reviews" I've seen of it, however, have parties of 4-6 players, and we'll have just two.

I could ask my friends to each make two characters, but this might not be the best path, especially since this is my first time DMing.

Other things I've considered:

• start off characters at level 2 instead of level 1
  
• use the fast character progression, start at level 1
  

What would you guys suggest? My goal is to make this be fun and challenging without having a party wipe.

I'm completely new to Pathfinder, and am about to start my first game.

I'd like to roll a Rogue with the Scout Archetype. The biggest difference between Scouts in Pathfinder and in 3.5e seems to be that the Pathfinder doesn't get extra movement speed. OK, not a huge deal (fights are generally not in a huge space anyway).

Here's my concern though... Without dipping into 3.5e stuff, it seems like there's no way to give a scout a "pounce" attack. That is, doing a full attack after moving.

The best I've thought of would be using the revised Cleave to get a second attack, which is definitely pretty good.

But comparing a vanilla pathfinder Rogue, who at 15+ gets 3 attacks (all potentially sneak attacks), with a Scout, which would only get 1 (or two with cleave)... it seems like I'd be "shooting myself in the foot" to choose this path.

Are there some feats I don't see that would give me a full-round attack after a charge, etc? Or any other way to overcome the huge damage potential difference between the two?

Thanks!