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Slightly silly but not unexpected. Oh well. It's workable up to 8th at least. 21 games of a fun concept ain't nothing.

Is it at all possible to alter the flavor of shape you assume with Wild Shape without running afoul of rules?

To be more specific, I've been playing around with the notion of a grizzled old Druid whose animal companion is a grizzled old lion, and once he reaches 4th and starts Wild Shaping, he joins his friend in Liondom and they engage in glorious feline combat.

So this works out great until 8th level, at which point his Wild Shape allows for Huge animals. The complication of course being that there are no Huge lions. Which is a pretty big hit to the Lion-team flavor.

So, to the point, is it a foul to shift into, say, an Allosaurus (whose attack pattern follows that of the Large lions very nicely,) use all of the mechanics of said Allosaurus, and simply give it a once-over with a coat of Lion-colored paint? (Obviously assuming GMs are up for it, I'm throwing it out here to get an idea of whether or not it's permissible on an organizational level before I start asking if it's permissible on a table-by-table level.)

So, quick thought - with my current Panache pool dropped from 4 to 3, is it worthwhile to swap Combat Reflexes out for something else, as my current Panache really can't support more than one Parry per turn anyway? (It honestly couldn't support it before either, but there were theoretical situations in which it might be necessary.)

I would rather have guns. Swashbuckler / Picaroon is not so good with them. Are there any other swashbuckling archetypes with guns?

Musketeer also gets guns, though the other option would be to multiclass Swashbuckler/Gunslinger (which, if you take an archetype like Mysterious Stranger works out in fun ways)

Here is a thought:

STR 12 / DEX (18) / CON 14 / INT 7 / WIS 12 / CHA 14

You are within one point of gaining power attack, allowing you to take it at mid level if desired either by putting a level up point to it or by getting a belt. Human is giving you a bonus skill point to make up for the skill loss by dumping int, and you are still getting one extra panache from inspired blade. You can have fencing grace at first level.

That's not a bad idea, but I think I'd rather have 2 more skill points/level than earlier access to Power Attack early on. If I get a +2 belt of Dex/Str later I can still pick up Power Attack using the 8th level stat point.

What I'm looking at right now is probably:
Str 10 / Dex 18 / Con 13 / Int 10 / Wis 12 / Cha 14

This allows me to take Con at 4, keeps my Skill progression robust, gives me a positive Will save, as well as no negatives to Knowledge: Local (which is a surprisingly useful skill in PFS scenarios.)

I love swashbucklers :D

Is there a particular reason that you want to use the Inspired Blade Archetype? With a 10 int, you are giving up more panache recharge opportunities for no benefit.

The flavor (fits the rogueish thing I have going nicely), the extra point in the pool, and the free feat that was a stepping stone to Fencing Grace mostly.

You still get an extra panache point even if you have INT 7, with inspired blade.

Putting it to 12 will get you an extra skill point and extra +1 on INT skill checks, nothing more to panache though.

This is true, which would feed a few more skill ranks to the face role, but with that in mind, would it be more worth-while to go Int 10 and Wis 12? Or possibly play the musical carrying capacity game and go with Str, Int, and Wis 10 to sneak in a Con 14?

If you don't mind grabbing another book, Piranha Strike may work better for your build than Power Attack. It also means you don't need a 13 strength, although the carrying capacity is nice.

I agree that Wisdom of less than 10 is a very bad idea. The Con is a little low for a front liner as well.

Drop the Charisma a little bit, invest in Wisdom.

Sadly, Piranha Strike only works with light weapons which the Rapier, paradoxically, is not. That was what I was planning to go for when I first devised this build, then I noticed it was impossible, which set off this crazy chain of reworks over the past week.

Power Attack isn't quite as good with a one-handed weapon. You should be doing fine with damage with Fencing Grace. Don't worry about how small your Panache Pool is, just take Extra Panache at level 3. Of those 2 spreads, go Str 11, Int 12, Wis 10, Cha 14.

Fair point on Power Attack, it is a lot less efficient for a one-hand, especially giving up as much as would be required to get it. Str 11 should be enough to keep me from having to walk on egg shells to balance weight for the moment.

You mitigated the chance you'd kill your friends with the Cha to will talent, but you are still taking the risk that you're going to spend a lot of time sleeping/blinded/confused/scared/etc. If you are willing to take the risk then that's fine, but if you want to avoid it you may need to get that will up somehow.

Well, fortunately Sleep and Confusion are Compulsion effects, but the point is well-taken. Iron Will may be a worthwhile investment, perhaps? Or...

If you plan on keep CHA up, Steadfast Personality will help with the will save, even though it locks you out of using charmed life on will saves.

That's also another route that could work out, the only reason I wasn't looking at it before is that it's relatively meaningless with a Wis penalty. It would also free up the trait slot from Irrepressible (which creates a whole indecision tree unto itself, but that's another matter.)

Honestly, Cha 16 isn't really necessary. Drop it down to 14, and you can afford to bring your Wis to 8, Int to 12, and Str to 13, so your Will Save goes up, you get more Skills, your carrying capacity goes up, and you can even afford to get Power Attack if you want. If you're really in love with such a high Cha, drop it to a 15 and bump you Into to 12 and Str to 13, and put your 4th level Ability Score point into Cha.

It's also important to know where you fit in your group. Are you planning to fill any holes in combat/skills/socializing? What roles are you trying to fill?

Apart from additional Panache/Class Features, the Cha was meant to allow me to play Face (heavily into Diplomacy and such.) However, I don't think a 14 over a 16 is going to hurt that part all that much. The 1 smaller Panache pool is the concern there, but that may be mitigated by things like a Plume of Panache, or obviously by ticking Int up to 12.

My general plan as it stood was to put the level 4 stat in Str to allow for Power Attack.

The general consensus then seems to be more Wis is needed - do people think it's worthwhile to drop to a pool of 3 Panache and go to 13 Str, 10 Int, 10 Wis, 14 Cha? Or 11 Str, 12 Int, 10 Wis, 14 Cha (and sidestep the Power Attack concept?)

Edit: Tricky thing with PFS is that it can be hard to nail down a role, as what shows up to a mission may vary wildly from one game to the next.

So, I've just been getting back into Pathfinder by way of PFS, and my first character in years is a Swashbuckler, a class which oozes cool and seems on spec to be mechanically capable.

But I find myself with a million ideas of how to take it, pulled in a lot of directions, and I feel as though I am doing it very wrong somehow. He's just acquired enough XP to hit level 2, and as soon as I next sit down at a table with him, my ability to change things goes away, so... Is this horrible? If yes, how can I fix it, and if no, what are some good ways to proceed from here?

I'm glad you didn't just go with the usual trite "I'm a blind monk with blindsight." However, the archetype needs a lot of work. Sneak attack is completely worthless because it doesn't work on enemies that have concealment (total concealment for an unchained rogue). It also doesn't make much thematic sense. Spider sense is such a bland ability for something that replaces the iconic flurry of blows.

The archetype has two abilities which remove the concealment as a factor, activating Sneak Attack. One of those is above-said Spider Sense.

Edit: No, I haven't run it in test games yet - the only Pathfinder I've been able to play of late is PFS.

So, I added limited Flat-Footed protection into With Eyes Unseeing, and gave Spider Sense a rounds-per-day limit (it seemed a little out there to have it be always active) but gave Greater Spider Sense at level 17 a mechanism for extending that duration (because it seemed fine for the end-game version to have a much wider access to it.)

That's a reasonable point, I could see adding a protection agaisnt Flat-footed to With Eyes Unseeing at 3rd, maybe making it only against attacks made from within a 20 ft. radius?

Oh, yeah, he's definitely blind. That's kind of the point of the design of Spider Sense - he can pick one guy to be supernaturally aware of and therefore gains bonuses that to a large degree counteract his blindness against that person. Everything else still has a pretty good chance at beating him to a pulp though.

I could see working things like Uncanny Dodge and Improved Initiative in, but I'd probably have to find something to exchange for it - he already gets a full chain of feats free-ish, I'd be nervous giving him much more without pulling things out.

I know you're going for the Zatoichi Blind Samurai-esque thing (which I love), but: where's the Blind in his blindness? You made the Blinded condition necessary for the archetype, but do you impose any of the condition's drawbacks for which these perks are compensation? In other words, does he suffer: the -2 to AC, lose DEX to AC, need to move at half speed, etc., and slowly overcome them as he levels up? (Blind Fighting to overcome the loss of Dex to AC; Improved Blind Fighting to overcome the fact that all foes have concealment against you; and so on.)

I like a lot of the features you gave him. But "blind without the drawbacks" - while it fits the trope - simply becomes flavor with no mechanical impact. I could play a "blind" Rogue, or Magus, or any class for that matter, if the blindness is only there for flavor. A "blind" Kensai would be just as cool.

Would it be more interesting without the inclusion of the Blind-Fight chain as a part of the archetype? As I recall, I figured it'd be an auto-include for any build of this in any case, so I tried to factor its power level into the other features and just rolled it into the kit. But aside from those feats, he's as mechanically blind (and penalized) as any other blind character.

So I've just gotten back into Pathfinder after an absence of a little over 2 years (College gaming group faded after graduation) and I was going through my old files and came across a Monk archetype I started messing around with while I was at the height of my Pathfinding. It's rough around the edges, but I wanted to get some thoughts on it before I look at possibly polishing it a bit more.

It's designed to capture the old trope of the blind old Kung Fu master who fells opponents with careful, impossible precision rather than flurries of blows.

The Blind Sage Monk