Ryzoken's page

I don't normally do this, and I'm probably putting this in the wrong place, but I'm going to try it anyway. Apologies in advance.

So, I play PFS. So do a lot of people. This year, my local PFS crew has decided to try to raise money for Extra Life. Noble cause. Problem is, we're coming up a bit short on our goal, which isn't exactly a great start. So I came over here after pushing it around on Facebook to see if maybe some of you might be interested in boosting us up a bit.
Here's a link to my page for the greater Sacramento team's Extra Life drive.

"But what's my cat got to do with this?" you might ask.

If you click on the link, you'll be directed away from Paizo's site over to Extra Life, where you'll see a picture of my very cute cat, Himiko. She has no idea I used a picture of her for my profile picture in a frankly shrewd and calculated attempt at driving donations through cute cat pictures, which the internet loves for obvious reasons.

She is a very cute cat.

If we hit my personal donation goal (only $25 away!), I will put additional pictures of my very cute cat, possibly with witty captions, on the internet for people to see, linking to them in later posts.

If we hit the team donation goal, I will put pictures of when she was a kitten (and thus even more adorable somehow) on the net.

Donate to charity, see pictures of a very cute cat. It's a win-win.

All my searching hasn't come up with a clean answer for this, so I figured I'd create a thread.

I have a searing need to put Improved and Greater Grapple on an animal companion, specifically a big cat animal companion. Provided I raise said cat's Intelligence to 3 (via that ability score increase ability buried in the AC progression table) before doing so, would it be legal in PFS to select Improved Unarmed Strike, Improved Grapple, and Greater Grapple over time?

My research indicates that the only restrictions on an animal companion taking feats are Int 3+ and physical capability to perform the action. The former restriction is cleared via the ability score increase, the latter is fuzzier (pardon the pun.) Improved and Greater Grapple are supported by the cat's inherent Grab ability, but the Improved Unarmed Strike prereq for those is more curious. I imagine a cat would totally be able to perform an unarmed strike, using one or more limbs/headbutt, so I think that's clean enough to work, but am unsure. I'm totally visualizing the cat performing either the aforementioned headbutt or a wheeling double pawed kick with its hind legs, similar to how a horse would kick with its rear legs.

tl;dr: Improved Unarmed Strike on a 3+ Int Animal Companion. PFS Legal?

On Oct 31st, 2010 my PF group finished our first AP: Legacy of Fire.
Our game lasted 16 sessions comprised of roughly 5 hours per session on a roughly biweekly schedule (some adjustments occurred due to scheduling snafu's and once we were unable to play for the better part of a month and a half). We had 6 players, with one drop, resulting in 5 players at terminus. The characters ended up at 14th level using the fast progression chart with a number of combats towards the end skipped.

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The cast (original party characters marked with asterisk):
Cyprian Mazarin*: LG human priest of Sarenrae. Ended up a Mystic Theurge. Only character to not die in the course of play. Strong ties to Aldriana, Kyoll, and Tessara.

Kyoll*: NE tiefling rogue. Seemingly marked for glory from the get go, got the group's first kill and the group's last kill. Died and was reincarnated a few times, ended up in the same body she started in thanks to a wish. Strong ties to Aldriana and Tessara. Still on the fence about Cyprian.

Tessara Wyrdon*: Elven fighter. Fell in combat at the claws of the Peryton, remained deceased until the denouement of the campaign where she was resurrected by Kyoll. Level 4 or so? Strong tie to Kyoll and Cyprian (and Tessara, by way of birth)

Aldriana Wyrdon: Elven wizard and sister to Tessara. Replaced Tessara and served the party well over the course of the campaign. Strongly tied to Cyprian.

Morgrym Stonefist*: Dwarven fighter. Fell beneath the Carrion King's mighty greataxe. Left to rot as the party lacked the capacity to return him to life, until the denouement where he too was reincarnated (into a dwarf, lucky!) Was lucky enough to meet his undead father before himself biting it.

Kyras: Half elven druid and escaped slave. Replacement to Morgrym. Favored elemental forms and died only once (though I did almost get him in flavor text!) at the hands of Jhavul himself. Reincarnated in the denouement from a scroll.

Murvy Busharcher*: Halfling sorcerer. Became the moldspeaker but was consumed by green slime in the Stone Speakers. Was sorely missed. Reincarnated in the denouement. Had strong ties to Tessara and Aldriana.

Marcus Trueblood: Tiefling fighter, then an aasimar fighter, then a drow fighter, then a tiefling fighter. The party's beatstick (cleared entire rooms with his great cleave in Bayt-al-Bazaan) and resident tasty meat snack. Found Haleen.

Beldin* (surname expunged): Halfling ranger/rogue. An expy of Belkar from Order of the Stick who didn't end up being a major player due to scheduling conflicts. His player was forced to drop and Beldin was later rendered to dust by the Proteans of Kakishon. Not terribly missed.

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So of the original six party members that set out from Solku to liberate Kelmarane, two pushed through to the end. Great fun was had by all, and a great tale was woven. We didn't get to use the 3rd book at all due to the actions of Kyoll and a pragmatic approach to handling a certain scroll, but the other five books provided ample play to engage our group a good 9 months or so. I wish I'd been able to find adjusted stat blocks for the last book (from 3.5 to Pathfinder), but struggled through with a few missing monster entries and a scratch built build for Jhavul at the end. He's the big bad, he deserved a bit of star treatment!

And that treatment definitely had the party seeing stars! Jhavul was able to kill the fighter twice (in as many rounds, full attack for 250? Don't mind if he does...) and the druid once, and provided Cyprian his closest near death experience ever (Awesome Blow into a lake of lava? Awesome...). The druid bought the group a reprieve with a lucky Baleful Polymorph (Jhavul plane shifted out immediately to get that fixed) long enough to reincarnate the fighter, and when Jhavul came back 20 minutes later, the group was able to grind through the last of his 440 hp (maximized hit dice, :P) to win at great cost.

We next start Council of Thieves where I step down from GM'ing and get to play my first character ever in his second plot reset, Arcadias Battleblade the elven greatsword wielding rogue. He's not optimal, he's not even practical, but he's awesome!

A debate came up today when we were discussing build decisions, revolving around touch spells and their delivery in Pathfinder.

When one casts a touch spell, you can hold the charge to deliver the spell at a later time. This much is clear. But what kind of action does this take? Normally, it's a standard action to perform a touch attack, but in the case of touch spells the standard action to touch is subsumed in the initial casting (if you don't hold the charge). Consider:

It's my turn. I cast Cure X Wounds (standard action). I hold the charge (no action), then move up (move action) behind my big friendly fighter. What kind of action does it take to touch my friendly target and apply the spell? Bear in mind that this is all happening on the same turn, separated only by a single move action between casting time and delivery.

We've not been able to find a clear cut case of RAW, just a Q&A on the WotC board for 3.5.

So, I've not been able to figure this one out on my own, thought I'd post a thread and get the opinions of others and possibly a word from on high as to what's what.

I have two different site URL's, with disparate content that each claims to be the Pathfinder System Reference Document, unless I've misunderstood something somewhere.

The first URL:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/

The second URL:
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/

So, what's real and what's not? Is the paizo site PRD the 'official' PRD and the other is unofficial? Does one contain player created content and the other not?