Reyterra's page

My main point was that the level bonus seems to purposefully limit the players to get them to the "numbers" the developers want them at when optimized to ensure the 50/50 treadmill they want is working properly.

Which is also safe to say that they don't plan to release any future content that may disrupt that too. They'll likely release different classes and monsters, with different flavor and fluff, but largely the same mechanics.

Aside from that, it seems to justify nothing. Yes, the wizard is going to get better at balancing (acrobatics), marching (athletics), and even sustaining in the wild (survival), but all these things are a negligible DC and don't require any proficiency to do anything. One could simply take 10, or spend some time rolling the dice in a non-combat situation, to achieve the exact same results.
Ontop of that, anytime they would apply aside from these negligible checks, they're often proficiency gated and therefore useless. What's the point of the barbarian having a +18 to nature if he can't use it to identify something that requires master? He might as well not have the bonus to begin with, because only a druid or ranger with the appropriate proficiency can even roll for the roughly 50/50 chance of passing.

If they wanted characters to be good at their signature skills (or whatever skills they pick, up to expert), then they could add something similar to Operative's specialization (pick a skill group, gets an automatic +1 per level) but allow players to get the same progression of their choice that doesn't go above expert if it's not a class' signature skill.
That way you can have barbarians that can be good at performing, but won't be as good at performing as a bard of the same level, and will only be good at it if they choose to learn to do it, rather than it being oddly instinctive.

Though, if it's done this way, there won't be a need for proficiency gated tasks to begin with.
Especially if the DCs continue to scale as hard as they do, the only ones having an even slight chance of being useful are the ones that chose to invest time and effort into learning it.

Level bonus in this game is both redundant and pointless.
So the premise of it is two things: to allow unskilled characters to do things based on general experience that makes them more versatile (such as a wizard being able to make the acrobatics check to climb a tree, etc.), and to control the bonuses that players can have at any given level to guarantee that their chances when optimized is about a 50%.
The quote saying so is on page 336.

Many tasks use the high-difficulty DC for their level, but circumstances adjust this. For trivial, low, and high DCs, a character with the amount of skill described in the following paragraphs likely has a greater than 50% chance of success, thus allowing more critical successes.

The earlier is evidenced by the fact that the game requires a large number of your beginning ASI to be spread between several stats, ontop of that any stat above 18 is a +1 rather than a +2, thus giving the stats a soft cap and encouraging them to diversify.

Which both of these things are counterproductive to each other, since the DCs are set for optimized characters. If you choose to not do so, you likely can't pass anything above trivial. If the DCs are lowered, it would allow for roleplay heavy characters with lots of fluff to be viable for gameplay and still allow for advancement.

However once again we're back to that the DCs are set for roughly 50% - which there are already systems in place that do exactly that, see the Rogue Trader game from Warhammer where players roll a d100 against their own skill level that's modified by stronger or weaker monsters that lower or raise the percentages, respectively - but this entire system is negligible since it's rare that players (especially in modules) will ever face anything far above or below what's relevant to their levels.
The entire point of it was to take away non-fluff (and in backgrounds for optimizing, some fluff) choices which makes for very boring character creation and RP since an optimized class will only have a choice of two or maybe three backgrounds.

One could still RP despite whatever background they have, however mechanically things remain the same. That a level 20 barbarian and a level 10-ish bard have the same +18 to performance and lores. Meaning that the level bonus alone is six times the bonus given by being "legendary" in the use of the skill.
Now, proficiency gated tasks are there to prevent these bonuses from being abused in exactly this manner, however, if anything relevant (see, mindfog fungus' disable check in doomsday dawn) is proficiency gated, what's the point of having the "other" bonuses to begin with?

Whew. Good to know. Is there anything special I have to do to be able to be an official DM? Or do I just mark myself as the DM for the session when I put the chronicle sheet in?
I'm sure that one is somewhere in the guides I've already read, I just overlooked it.

Alright. One more question.
I had thought about DMing locally for the game group I play with, since the other nearest DM in Louisiana is in Baton Rouge (I'm in Lake Charles), and we have a group of 5. Now I know that there's a minimum three players and a DM, but I don't want to exclude the other two players. One I haven't asked about registering - though he's unreliable, so even if he did, I doubt he'd maintain his chronicle sheets - and the other flat out refused to register because he thinks it's a hassle to maintain, even though it really really isn't, but insists on playing anyways.
My question is, would I be able to play with this group and simply mark the others as anonymous or completely leave them off altogether and reward the ones that are playing? If I can, do their characters have the same restrictions as official characters, or can I let them build as they please, since they don't get credit anyways?

Am I allowed to use gold from one of my characters, to revive another of my own characters that has died previously?
For instance, if I made a barbarian that died shortly after, would I be able to spend the gp or prestige from my rogue to revive the barbar?
And am I allowed to use anyone else's prestige (gp I know the table can pool) to revive someone that just died in that game (like the barbar) or can I only use my own prestige on my own characters?
If I can revive previously dead characters (characters marked as 'dead' after a session is over), is there a time limit to do so? Like if my barbar dies at level 6, and is marked 'dead', is there any definitive time that I have to have him up by outside of the end of the session, or is there no option to after the session is over?

Alright. Thank you everyone. ^_^

I did have another - unrelated - question, though. Should I continue here or start another thread to keep it organized?

Alright, so worst case scenario I'd be a level 12 character at the end of the session with a -4 that I spent all my gold and prestige on raise dead, but I won't be hard pressed to get rid of the negative levels aside from obvious reasons.

There's no time limit for removing the negative levels, but most negative conditions (curses, diseases, etc.) must be removed by the end of the scenario. See the Guide to Organized Play, page 22.

Does this make sense? ^_^

But were I to get the negative levels, they would simply carry into the next session until I removed them or would I HAVE to get rid of them before the end of the session? What if, like I mentioned before, I lacked the prestige or funds? Would that be the only acceptable reason to carry them over?

I haven't actually started playing pathfinder any, though I did play some 3.0 and a lot of 3.5, so I'm just trying to adjust to the new rules so I can play official games again.
So I searched it and saw that in older versions raise dead didn't actually give negative levels, instead it just cost gold. The rules I'm looking at now show that to raise a character (assuming level 11, for a decent amount of PP and gold to do this) would be 5 PP to have the body retrieved, then 16 PP for the raise dead, then 4 PP per negative level.

My question however is that, should I get hit with a raise dead spell twice at (or during the course of) level 11, considering that I have four negative levels would that put me at an effective level of 7 and unable to play in the same subtier as my companions, or would I be a level 11 with a -4 to everything affected by it until I get them removed?

Is there a time limit to how long I have to get these removed (end of session, etc.) or do they simply stay on my character until I pay the gold or PP?

If I continued playing the character with the negative levels to try and gain back gold and PP to remove the negative levels (assuming I used all my PP and gold on the raise dead spells) and I manage to get the exp to hit level 12, am I now a seeker with 4 negative levels and am unable to play my character further to get rid of the levels outside of trying to take it to an event to get the gold? Or would I be able to continue playing as a level 8 to regain the gold and potentially end up a total of level 13 before I can have them removed?

Is it alright if I ask some very noob-ish questions in PM before I attempt to join and end up not being able to?