Scott Wilhelm's page

Well, how would you feel if you were using 2 Sledge Hammers instead of 2 Butchering Axes? A Sledge Hammer is an Improvised Weapon that does damage like an Earthbreaker: 2d6. Because it's an Improvised Weapon, you can use Shikigami Style Feats. Each one of the 3 Feats make your Improvised Weapon Inflict Damage as if it were 1 Size bigger. As a Titan Fighter Fighter, you can use a Size Large Sledge Hammer to star with. As a Titan Mauler Barbarian, you can use 2. Add that to Enlarge Person, like 5 Size Increases, 3 Virtual, 1 Actual, and 1 because you are allowed to start with a bigger one (two!) to begin with.

If we can fit all that together, that's 10d6 Damage/weapon. Honestly, I suspect Great Cleave, Vital Strike, and Attacks of Opportunity with a single weapon would work better than 2WF with 2 of them, but if you want maximum ridiculosity with 2 Weapon Fighting, I think that's the way to go.

Of course then you're taking -4 (Titan Mauler), -4 (Two--Weapon-Fighting), -2 (Titan Fighter) for a total of -10 to hit on all attacks. Reckless Abandon helps but ... you need a lot of help for that.

Continued levels in Titan Fighter Fighter will reduce the oversized weapon penalties.

There are traits. Giant Blooded--I think--reduces by half the penalty for oversized weapons. Surprise Weapon--again, I think--gives you a +2 on attack rolls with Improvised Weapons. Those penalties will still be too big for what I think is an optimized character, but that doesn't exactly seem to be rorek55's goal.

Just as one's personal experience of inclusivity is not data across the board, neither are anecdotes of prejudice or exclusion. Anecdotal evidence cuts both ways. To say that something is pervasive or systemic without actual statistical data to back it up, is a failing argument in either direction. Discrimination exists, fact. Random conjectures about its percentage of occurance does little to help solve the issue. I prefer to focus on the positives, and stamp out the ugly bits when and where they rear their heads.

I appreciate the idea of anecdotal evidence being bad evidence and the fair-minded attitude of the fallacy of anecdotal evidence "cutting both ways." But in this case, I disagree with you. When it comes to people being made to feel unwelcome, anecdotal evidence carries weight.

If there is a bar you might go to, how many times do you need to be beaten up before you no longer feel welcome there? What if I were to tell you that in reality, only a small percentage of the patrons were of the beating-people-up mentality? And out of that small percentage, only a small percentage of those would beat you up simply because you were a ________ person?

What numbers would those percentages have to be before you would feel unwelcome? I think for most people, those numbers would be small because I think for most people, the answer to my first question is "one." Less than one. I think it would take a bar very few fights before it gets a reputation of a bar where fights happen.

That's an extreme example. In all my years of gaming, I was only targeted with physical violence once. It was during a Munchkin tournament. I played a bookmark that required a dance around a table to activate it, and the MiB presiding gave the other players permission to physically restrain me in my attempt to do so. I have a thick skin. I tend to wear such things as a badges of honor.

There was another incident where, at someone's house, one of the members of the group (who also lived there) thought it would be awesome to show off his new gun. That was not a propos of any threat or voice of disapproval, but I felt decidedly less comfortable.

But back to anecdotal evidence: I do believe, if you really wanted me to, I could go through just These Pathfinder Forums and bury a person in my "badges of honor." I guess you could argue that my body of anecdotes has aggregated into such a mass that it can no longer be called anecdotal evidence, and that would be fair to say.

But it would not be fair to say that my experience is not indicative of everyone's experience. I am telling you, as the target of hostility, that the tabletop roleplaying community is not a welcoming community. I know that because I am not welcome by some members of your community. You can argue that it has not been many, but it doesn't take many.

I invite you now to acknowledge this and

stamp out the ugly bits when and where they rear their heads.

or I dare you to join with the other gatekeepers and just try to keep this troll from passing into your gated community.

But I warn you, those munchkins failed to keep me from dancing around the table.

I'm not in competition with my players. I don't worry that much if another player is being favorited, and if I'm being singled out for harsher treatment, I usually take that as a compliment of my playing skills.

There was a time when the cute chicks at the table seemed to resent the fact that I was the only one who wasn't flirting with them.

But there was also a time when one of the players was new, and she was just not that good at building a melee character, and rather than being outclassed in melee by my cleric, I was the one that suggested to the GM that the novice character be allowed to character levels and options from the Book of Nine Swords. That seemed to work well all around.

I guess I try not to sweat it if someone else is being singled out for better treatment or if I'm being singled out for worse. I just try to be a good player for myself and my fellows, have my fun, and help everyone else have theirs.

Remembered why I come here so rarely now. Absolute delusion to think you keep Dex to CMD while blinded/pinned, whatever it is just because they didn’t write the rules perfectly worded or come to your homegame and stamp it on your forehead for you. Just use general common sense, we don’t need a “ruling from on high,” we’re not 6 year olds. If you are blind and someone attempts to sweep your leg, you’re not going to be able to react prior to being hit. It is no longer your dex that can save you, you’re relying on your own brawn (str) and combat training (BAB) to keep you from losing. You definitely are not meant to maintain dex to CMD when blinded.

If you are pinned you obv lose dex to CMD, you’re pinned. If you’re the one pinning, you obviously lose dex to CMD, because *in order to pin someone, your own movement also has to be very limited.* Watch an MMA fight, they get them in a submission hold, translate over to pathfinder: does either fighter get their dex bonus to CMD, or would you say that’s out of the picture by this point?

Buffoonery, guys. Buffoonery.

Is there a point you are trying to make her, um, RAWmonger?

Name Violation wrote:

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

Alchemists get Beast Shape and lots of ability to Self-Buff.

Unchained Barbarian Rage Damage, with the Powerful Stance Rage Power, your Damage goes up every 4 levels. Barbarians don't turn into Octopi, but lots of Range Powers give lots of Natural Attacks: Bite and Gore or Claws, not both.

regular barbarian can become an octopus.

just another reason to never use unchained barbarian

Any other classes that get Beastshape/Wild shape NOT called Beast Shape or Wild shape?

Beastmorph Witches

There is a Shifter Class.

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

Alchemists get Beast Shape and lots of ability to Self-Buff.

Unchained Barbarian Rage Damage, with the Powerful Stance Rage Power, your Damage goes up every 4 levels. Barbarians don't turn into Octopi, but lots of Range Powers give lots of Natural Attacks: Bite and Gore or Claws, not both.

regular barbarian can become an octopus.

just another reason to never use unchained barbarian

Well, okay then!

Alchemists get Beast Shape and lots of ability to Self-Buff.

Unchained Barbarian Rage Damage, with the Powerful Stance Rage Power, your Damage goes up every 4 levels. Barbarians don't turn into Octopi, but lots of Range Powers give lots of Natural Attacks: Bite and Gore or Claws, not both.

You can get a magic item that lets you turn into a Giant Octopus and then take levels in Fighter or Warpriest.

There is an Advanced Weapon Training called Focused Weapon that allows you to to apply Sacred Weappon Damage to any weapon you have Weapon Focus in.

I don't know of a magic item that lets you turn into a Giant Octopus, but there is one that gives you 2 Tentacle Attacks, the Tentacle Cloak. If you played just a human with a tentacle cloak, your Tentacle Attacks would be your only Natural Attacks, and the Natural Attack Rules say that they would then be Primary Natural Attacks.

How about a Dagger of Slaughtering Innocents? or is that more of an Epiphany magic item than a Christmas one?

A dagger that lets you perform a Coup de Grace upon an Unconscious, Helpless, or Non-Combatant as a Standard Action that does not Provoke an Attack of Opportunity. If the victim dies, you gain the benefits of Death Knell: 1d8 temporary hit points, +2 enhancement bonus to Strength, effective caster level +1, not granting access to more spell for for 10 minutes per HD of the subject creature.

And make it like +1 or something.

How about a 1 shot item with Locate Object, Scrying, Symbol of Scrying, or Discern Location? New, Guiding Star

The 3 Wise Men are NPC Magi, of course. Gold is gold, but what are good properties for magic Frankincense and Myrrh?

A Mistletoe that, when hung, summons a Succubus.

Mistletoe of Beguiling

The original Santa Claus, Bishop (?) Nicholas once snuck up to a poor family's house and threw 3 bags of money in through the window. They landed in the daughters' stockings, and was enough to provide dowries, so the father could marry them off.

So how about just a stocking full of gold?

Here's another one:

Stocking Full of Coal:

A magic stocking that is always full of the necessary ingredients to start a campfire or a fire in a hearth.

How about a Dagger of Slaughtering Innocents? or is that more of an Epiphany magic item than a Christmas one?

If they are naughty:

A Mistletoe that, when hung, summons a Succubus.

A Deck of Many Things.

Coal in a stocking... but it's not coal, it's a sphere of annihilation, and there is no stocking (because it has been sucked into the void and utterly destroyed).

A Sphere of Annihilation in a bag sounds just like a Bag of Devouring.

A Stocking of Devouring?

I guess the first thing you need to do is answer some questions:

What was the world like before it ended? What is the world like at the start of play?

How long had it been since the apocalypse?

I mean, when you get right down to it, any dark age culture that looks back to a greater time could be called post-apocalyptic. The early Iron Age Mediterranean could be called Post Apocalyptic if you look at a time close enough to the Bronze Age Collapse, and the same could be said about the time immediately following the Fall of the Western Roman Empire.

If you are talking about an advanced civilization like mine, only just collapsed, you aren't really talking about a Pathfinder Campaign at all, but more like Gamma World. If you are talking about Gamma World, but a VERY long time after the Apocalypse, then that's sort of a Sword of Sharnarra world, and the players guessing that they are not playing in a regular Pathfinder-like world becomes one of the puzzles for them to solve.

There's common ground here, but I think dunelord's hackles have gotten a bit riled.

You don't say!

And people keep acting like I'm pro Hitler for saying,

There are a lot of statements you have made that, taken individually, I have disagreed with, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler, or even pro-Hitler.

Shrug. You keep throwing in ideas that I didn't say, so no it wouldn't make sense.

I'm glad I asked you to re-state a larger thesis: I'm pretty sure we don't disagree much in the big picture.

Short version: It is a lot easier to say Orcs are racist than try to get cops to stop shooting unarmed black kids.

Did you ever see Bright? It's a modern fantasy movie set in LA, only LA is also populated with Orcs, Elves, and Fairies. There was a scene where a homeowner's wife was complaining about a fairy in their birdfeeder and the homeowner--played by Will Smith, interestingly--went after the fairy with a broom, cheered on by his neighbors when he said to them

Fairy lives do NOT matter!

Will Smith's character was a cop, and his partner was an Orc, the only token Orc on the police force lately disgraced by letting a suspected Orc-cop-killer get away. Will Smith kept saying things like, "Do you have any idea how bad it makes me look to be seen with you? The other Orcs looked at that Orc as a traitor to his race for wearing a police officer's uniform. The whole movie was about racism, and while Orcs were nominally not black people, Orcs were definitely used a vehicle to describe the level of racism in reality reserved for black people. I hope I'm wrong about that being realistic. But I've seen enough of systemic racism to know it's not just fantasy.

My point is that fantasy races can definitely be used to communicate real racism. Robert Howard and HP Lovecraft stories were infamously racist. Bright was clearly using fantasy races to explore real racism.

In the Wizard-of-Oz Books, L. Frank Baum sometimes made references to "Tottenhots, a lower form of Man," and it just so happens that that the San hunter gatherers in the Kalahari Desert in South Africa were called Hottentots by Dutch settlers because the clicking and clucking phonemes of that language sounded like "hottentot" to their Dutch Ears in much the same way the nonsense words foreigners kept saying all just sounded like "bar bar bar bar" to the Ancient Greeks who referred to the whole of the non-Greek-speaking world as Barbarians. That seems pretty racist.

It's not clear that Tolkien's Orcs, Elves, talking Eagles, Dwarves, and Men were intended to make racist judgements or be direct metaphors of real-world human races. But the very idea of different races of people sharply physically and behaviorally prescribed suggests a racist attitude, although I agree that that alone is not enough to say someone is being racist. Still, the nature of Tolkein's Orcs and Goblins, races of evil, demon-beast men that are descendants of high, beautiful, perfect Elves tortured and twisted in the pits of the dungeons of the Dark Lord himself that only exist to menace and be killed by the heroes really seems problematic. And so does the very nature of the Numenoreans, a race of Men that are just better than other men who come from a faraway island to Gondor and they became the Kings of Gondor because of course they did. But I don't think it's fair to dismiss Aragorn's story as merely the personification of the White Man's Burden. Honestly, though, my first pick for playing Aragorn, just because I would have loved to see him deliver those lines like, "Not scared enough, for I KNOW what follows you!" would have been Samuel L. Jackson.

Which sword is yours?

The one that says "Bad Motherf!~#er."

Of course, by that logic, he might just as easily been cast as the Witch King of the Nazgul:

And you will KNOW my name is the DARK LORD when I lay my vengeance upon thee!

Racists generally don't have much need/desire to hide that they are bigots,

Some do. Some are. Some of us are racists and don't even realize it. Some really believe that most of the people in jail are there because they are guilty, and that's all there is to it. Some people honestly believe that they have not problem with immigrants entering this country legally and just don't notice how difficult that is to do.

But there is nothing sinful about being ignorant, only about defending one's ignorance. The key is education and compassion, and most of us really have a lot of compassion.

they just join crazy groups online or real life KKK or claim they don't hate ALL members of a group just people who do X, which happens to be MOSTLY people who don't look/worship/whatever like them.

Now I want to go back to that fantasy world you put me in before.

People who play orcs as the bad guys want to escape a complicated world for a few hours.... That neo Nazi DMs using orcs as stand in for black people is common? That this is important?

Maybe. Maybe even if it is simple racism, it's healthy. Maybe some racists can self-medicate in a fantasy ttrpg and find catharsis to help them live out socially-responsible lives in the real world as good citizens.

It's against my instinct to let people feel comfortable about that stuff, though. Fair warning to anyone who wants to play Puerto Rico with me. I'll play, but I won't be coy about those boatloads of little brown people that we collect, don't pay money to and put to work on our plantations, factories, and haciendas. I won't call them "settlers."

What you're suggesting is what exactly? ...That anything that could in theory be racist MUST be eliminated?

Not at all. I'm saying that fantasy races can be and have been used--for better and for worse--as literary vehicles to convey and examine racist ideas.

That there aren't literally thousands of better ways to fight racism?

On the contrary, fantasy stories can be used as a one of those ways to fight racism. Some people need the sugar of fantasy to help the medicine of anti-racism go down.

So, there are a lot of ways I can look at this question.

What weapons would a kobold realistically use?

Well, none. Kobolds aren't real. They are fantasy monster people. They aren't real, so their weapons aren't real.

I felt like that needed to be addressed.

So, from a game mechanics perspective,
Kobolds are people with arms, legs, hands, feet, and tails. They can use people weapons.

They are Size Small. Their base Damage is low, so when character building, I would focus on build features that are not size dependent: Dex-based fighters (possibly, but not necessarily Fighters) with Dex-to-Damage, Attacks of Opportunity, and I like Sneak Attack Damage. Weapon Specialization is not Size Dependent, neither is Power Attack, Freebooter's Bane, Inquisitor Judgements, Slayer Studied Target, Alchemal Bombs.

They are frail compared with other Size Small creatures, with extra low strength and Con, so I don't expect to see many Composite Bows. I'd expect a lot of Crossbows, But they have a 30' Base Speed. I'd expect to see a lot of Kobolds with Crossbow Mastery wielding Heavy and Crank Crossbows slithering around the battlefield like lizards shooting poisoned Heavy Crossbow bolts.

I'd expect some Reach Weapons.

I'd expect some gishy tactics: most magical bonuses don't scale down with size. And obvious one would be shadow-rogue talents to create Darkness they themselves can see through but Blinds surface invaders, allowing them to Sneak Attack normally.

Their racial traits suggests they are tricksy people, so I'd expect to see some tricksy weapons: nets, bolas, aklyses, and stuff.

Kobolds have Natural Attacks available to them via Feats and Racial Traits. So, a Natural Attack Build is something to consider. My instinct is Quick, Greater dirty tricks to Blind and/or Deafen opponents with 1f Natural Attack with Sneak Attack Damage with all the rest. I'm thinking you (at least) dip into Alchemist to take Feral Mutagen and get 2 Claw Attacks, dip into White Haired Witch to get a Hair Attack and get an Animal Mask or Helm of the Mammoth Lord to get a Gore Attack. So, that's a lot of Attacks; most of them do Sneak Attack Damage, so that's a lot of high-damage Attacks, and I can think of ways of getting more.

Culturally
Well, not real people: fantasy monster people, so their culture is whatever the GM and possibly the character's player fantasizes about. In Golorion they seem to live underground. It longer to dig your home than to build it out of sticks and grass or even stone, so They must be heavily invested in defending homes they have. Living underground, they probably don't have many mounted warriors. I'd expect a relatively small number of heavy infantry, but not none because almost all kinds of people have some need to hold a position or hold opponents in place.

I could see a kobold army with no melee tactics that concedes any battlefield position and just skirmishes opponents with superior range and mobility until their opponents are washed away in a rainstorm of crossbow bolts.

I think any seasoned commander who sees a Phalanx of obviously inferior Kolbold heavy infantry should warn his soldiers and superiors for gods' sake do NOT charge them: it just has to be a trap.

Utility: Traveller's Anytool, Sleeves of Many Garments, Robe of Infinite Twine, Iron Rope: all under 1000gp each. Decanter of Endless Water 9000gp, Sustaining Spoon 5400gp,

carrying things: Stretcher, not a magic item, costs 1gp, lets you drag 300 pounds. The Handy Haversack has been mentioned. Muleback Cords, 1000gp, +8 strength when determining carrying capacity, Bags of Holding: 2500-10,000gp, 250-1500#, Portable Hole: no weight limit, 10'cube. Oddly enough, when it comes to magic storage, the more expensive, the cheaper in terms of gp/pound.

I'm playing a Catfolk Slayer in an upcoming Run of Carrion Crown. I'm a combo of a frontliner, and a scout. but what I'm stumped on is should I focus on my natural claw attacks (with appropriate measure to get such) or Should I bit the bullet and Invest in the cat claw weapons that would give me iterative attacks?

IS there a way to truly optimize either path?
and and which would arguably more fun and less likely to make the GM panic and treat the party like we are too op to handle?

I don't think much of Claw Blades. They're just weapons. There are lots of builds for optimizing lots of weapons. Why do you want to Claw Blades? What do you want in a weapon? How do you want your character to work in melee? Do you want to move around the battlefield a lot? Do you want a devastating Full Attack? Do you want lots of Attacks of Opportunity? Do you want 1 big weapon or lots of smaller weapons? Do you want your character to do lots of tricks in combat, like tripping, grappling, reaching, and stuff? Do you like Sneak Attack Damage?

You can definitely optimize Natural Attacks, and you can definitely make your GM panic.

I guess the simplest Natural Attack Build for your Catfolk is to just be an Unchained Barbarian. You take Animal Fury and get a Bite Attack to go with your Claws. You take Lesser Fiend Totem and get a Gore Attack. Dip a level in White Haired Witch and get a Hair Attack. Your Rage gives you +4 ST, for +2 Attack and Damage for all your Attacks. You take the Powerful Stance Rage Power and do +1 Damage and another +1 every 4 levels, and that's for all your Attacks.

The way I like to do Natural Attacks, apart from being a Druidzilla, is with Warpriest. There are lots of ways to get lots of Natural Attacks, but Natural Attack Damage is usually pretty lame. So Warpriests replace the regular Natural Attack Damage with Warpriest Sacred Weapon Damage, so the result is lots of high damage attacks. I usually prefer Tengu over Catfolk for this, since Tengu can get 2 Claws and a Bite as Alternate Racial Traits. This would work well if you multiclassed between Barbarian and Warpriest because Warpriests get the Lesser Restoration Spell, which removes the Fatigued Condition which comes over you after finishing Raging, and you can use Fervor to cast it on yourself as a Swift Action. Barbarian Rage Strength stacks with Bull Strength. You end up having to take Weapon Focus a bunch of times, but it's not as bad as you think. If you choose a deity that favors a Bite Attack--I like Dahak, who also grants the Destruction Domain--you don't need Weapon Focus to do Sacred Weapon Damage with that. Gore Attacks tend to do a fair amount of damage on their own, so it will be a while before you need WF for that. The Lesser Blessing of Destruction works comparably to the Powerful Stance Rage Power, and they stack.

Anyway, that should optimize your natural attack catfolk, but it should definitely raise the anxiety of your GM.

Sysryke wrote:

Well said on a lot. However, I'm legitimately unsure where you fall in the generational range now. Normally I don't care too much about player's ages, but impugning DragonLance is probably going to rile some grognards.

I almost certainly count as a grognard and I am more than happy to impugn the Dragonlance books, which I found unpleasantly sexist.

Really? I did not see the sexism. I am interested in your opinion.

I'm fine with joke characters in terms of builds, cracking jokes at the table and whatever, but I'm not ok with joke names. If saying your character's name is immersion breaking, that's not acceptable. Imo, stupid character names lessen the experience for everyone.

Well, it's one thing to have Mystic Theurge named Lauren Ipsum and another to have an Elven Oracle named Oo La La or shout "Fall before the wrath of UPCHUCK THE BARBARIAN!"

I guess somewhere in between would a be Druid named Stormy Daniels and her Feline Animal Companion...

No one seemed to be bothered by the one PFS character I played that was named after a porn star. I didn't make an issue out of it, and no one admitted to recognizing the reference. It just stayed my own personal, little joke afaIk.

You wouldn't want to turn away a player's Alchemist or Ninja just because he wanted to name her Scheela Green, would you?

I get wanting to police character names, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Would it really be all that terrible to let your player name her Constable Cavalier John Mclean or the Alchemal Silver Earthbreaker-wielding Inquisitor be named Father Maxwell McKenzie?

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

I'm thinking magic rogue, Arcane Trickster, maybe. In How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Grinch was mostly just industrious, managing to clean out every Who house, leaving crumbs much too small for all the Who mouses.

In When the Sweet-Sour Wind Blows, the Grinch was feared all over Whoville, and it seemed like he had powers of illusion.

In The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat, the Grinch opens up with a machine that silences everything. The machine suggests more Alchemy than magic, but my first thought is Wizard/rogue/Arcane Trickster with a specialty in Illusion.

I guess he has a Familiar, his dog Max. And his sleigh seems more than meets the eye.

Excellent, thank you! I assume the three references above are all books?

When the Sweet-Sour Wind Blows is how I know Halloween Night is Grinch Night. I know it as a video, but it might be a book. The same with The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat. I know How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a book, a cartoon, and a terrible live-action movie.

It might interest you to know I actually made a 3.5 character that was a Monk/Fist of the Forest/Bear Warrior under a Vow of Poverty named Wan Shu Lir, the last patriarch of the once mighty, rich Wan Shu Lir family that had huge logging and textile factories, but poor resource management led to overharvesting the truffula trees his family businesses shut down--no more trees, no more thneeds, no more work to be done. And after years of worrying and worrying and worrying away with all of his factories falling apart, worrying and worrying with all of his heart, he decided to abandon all his wealth and join the Holy Order of the Lorax and fight to protect the trees and plant new forests, sometimes entering a Rage and turning into a brown bar-ba-loot bear.

I'm thinking magic rogue, Arcane Trickster, maybe. In How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Grinch was mostly just industrious, managing to clean out every Who house, leaving crumbs much too small for all the Who mouses.

In When the Sweet-Sour Wind Blows, the Grinch was feared all over Whoville, and it seemed like he had powers of illusion.

In The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat, the Grinch opens up with a machine that silences everything. The machine suggests more Alchemy than magic, but my first thought is Wizard/rogue/Arcane Trickster with a specialty in Illusion.

I guess he has a Familiar, his dog Max. And his sleigh seems more than meets the eye.

I actually try to push myself to try new things with every character. I usually start a build with some combinations of Feats, Skills, Class Abilities, and/or Spells that look so awesome, I can't stop smiling. Then I put them together and find out some disaster of things I hadn't thought of: live and learn. They tend to be fighty characters.

Temperamentally, as an old grognard, I tend to do best playing things like Arcane Tricksters, the one who thinks, the one who schemes. The one who finds the information and low-key is the party leader. I have been told I can slow the party down, but I also tend to be the one who prevents the party from getting wiped out by taking precautions against one disaster after another. There was a PFS encounter, for instance where we had to fight an Ooze and a Swarm simultaneously, and I was the only one in the group that had Bludgeoning weapons, and I brought spares. I was also the only one with Lamp Oil and Alchemist Fire.

The last time I played a pure spellcaster, she was effective, but I was just not excited about playing her. Years ago, Paizo decided that Spell-like abilities could count as the ability to cast spells to start taking levels in a Prestige Class, so I made a Tiefling that was going to be a Mystic Theurge by level 3. Lauren Ipsum, a Lawful Neutral Tiefling Cleric of Asmodeus and a Wizard.

The spellcaster before that was one of the best characters I ever played. She was a Wizard named Claire, and the other players started calling her Creepy Claire. It started happening often that when she cast spells, the HM started sometimes imposing aberrations on her. He took me aside, and said, "Your character is neurotically secretive, and also, the only thing you want to eat is fresh blood." Before that she was aggressively dissecting monsters the party killed trying to do things like harvesting spider venom sack, collect dragon skins, etc, which started off being an extension of old-school gamers' looting everything that is not nailed down that might have any conceivable value, but then evolved into disturbing behavior. At the table, I started doodling random shapes that looked like magic rune writing, and when somebody asked what I was doing, I'd loudly and guiltily say, "NOTHING!" The party was a little creeped out when I kept one orc captive alive. When someone asked if I wanted help, I waved them off, "My b###!es wear their collars." I really liked roleplaying her.

I like multiclassing with Druid and Warpriest. Wildshape into huge animals with lots of attacks, then your Natural Attack Damage, which is usually pretty lame, gets replaced by Warpriest Sacred Weapon Damage which then Sizes up. Lots of high damage attacks, and watch your enemies evaporate in red mists as you tear through them.

I think you have picked rich ground for planting your garden of fairy tale adventures.

I recommend you read up on some fairy tales to refresh your memory and read a few more that maybe you haven't read yet, and take notes.

Read some fairy tales from your childhood. Read some from other countries and cultures. I don't know what your cultural palette is. But whatever your party's cultural background, they might think it's cool to be hunting a boogey man, a Chupacabra, a jub-jub bird, an oni, the Questing Beast, or a leprechaun. Maybe even borrow from history. Maybe work in some more modern children's stories, like some Dr. Seuss characters, or maybe Nanny of the Maroons, or the Night Witches. A deadly assassin-sniper that people call Lady Death.

Maybe mingle. Have a town beset by marauders that is about to turn to a wizard for help. If the party doesn't save the town first, the wizard will release an army of Golems that will proliferate around the world and destabilize every kingdom everywhere. The wizard's name is Mikhail Kalashnikov. We all know what the Golem of Kalashnikov was in real life, but what will it look like in your world? What would it be like for the party in interact with the First Ranger? You know, Robert Rogers.

How about some jokes? Do jokes count as fairy tales? When the adventure is over, the party retires to the bar. They see a priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a bar... They see a blonde, a brunette and a redhead walk into a bar... a horse walks into a bar...

I guess my advice is sample from a large buffet, and pile on your favorites!

You should be a Divine Commander Warpriest. You should 2 weapon fight with Warhammer and Sickle, and take Greater Trip, and Vicious Stomp. Your bonus Teamwork Feat should be Harder they Fall, so you can Trip Giants.

But the big thing is that you will be fighting with hammer and sickle: You'll be the Soviet Union!

Well, 2 basic scenarios come to mind: robbing the place when it's deserted like in Disorganized Crime or even the Tomb of Horrors and robbing the place when it's crowded like Ocean's Eleven. I guess we could have a somewhere-in-between category like Entrapment.

In the first case, there are guards somewhere, and you need to put together a labyrinth of security measures, and it's an an adventure of of traps and puzzles, and if there is any combat, the party has probably already lost.

In the second case, it also becomes about crowd control, and if there is combat, it needs to be a diversion.

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

VoodistMonk wrote:

Song of Fiery Gaze only allows people to see through smoke, not breath it... so you still cannot use it indoors.

Sure you can. There is no limit on SoFG as to where. The Eversmoking Bottle doesn't create any breathing problems. The Pyrotechnics Spell it's derived from imposes -4 ST and Dex on a failed save, which would be unpleasant for party members, but very rarely would that compare with the opponents being Blinded while the party isn't. Smokesticks don't impose any other effects other than obsuring vision.

Environmental Rules wrote:

Smoke

A character who breathes heavy smoke must make a Fortitude save each round (DC 15, +1 per previous check) or spend that round choking and coughing. A character who chokes for 2 consecutive rounds takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. Smoke obscures vision, giving concealment (20% miss chance) to characters within it.

...

Dense smoke, as might fill a burning building, can prove even more dangerous than the flames that create it. In addition to the rules for smoke inhalation presented on page 426 of the Core Rulebook, a character in dense smoke must make a DC 10 Fortitude save every round that she is subject to these conditions. A character may fail this save a number of times equal to her Constitution modifier. After failing to save for the last time, the character falls unconscious and is subject to suffocation.

Quote:

Smokestick

Price 20 gp; Weight 1/2 lb.

This alchemically treated wooden stick instantly creates thick, opaque smoke when burned. The smoke fills a 10-foot cube (treat the effect as a fog cloud spell, except that a moderate or stronger wind dissipates the smoke in 1 round). The stick is consumed after 1 round, and the smoke dissipates naturally after 1 minute.

Quote:

Eversmoking Bottle

...The amount of smoke is great if the stopper is pulled out,

...

For starters, we are only talking about Smokestick Smoke and Eversmoking Bottle Smoke. There is a choking hazard for Pyrotechnics Smoke. Pyrotechnics is different, and not what I consider a big deal.

The magic smoke produced by the Eversmoking Bottle doesn't say it has the same choking effects of environmental smoke, and as a general rule, magic items don't do what they don't say they do. But a GM might decide that it does, especially with a player who is up to shenanigans.

But even in that case, the choking affects friend and foe alike. So if we are in a fight, and both of us are choking, and I'm blind, and you're not, then you're probably going to kick my ass. It would be the kind of ass-kicking you'd feel guilty about later, a beating-on-a-blind-man-ass-kicking.

Meanwhile, the smoke-choking environmental hazard is not that big a deal. It's just a DC 15 Fort Save. Especially if the party knows it's coming, they should be able to prepare for that easily enough. And even if that prep is only good Fort Saves, and you are concerned that the DC goes up by +1 every round, we are still talking about a fight where 1 opponent is blind and the other isn't, so the fight should not be a very long one.

Assuming your gm lets you use paizo 3.5 stuff(that is on aonprd) you can use secret of magical discipline

which let's you cast any spell to cast Genesis a spell which
1. Creates a demiplane with instantaneous duration (not even permanent)
2. Has an exp cost (which is not actually useful but interesting in pathfinder)

Ah, If we are blending different d20 systems into Pathfinder, how's'about we combine the 3.0 Improved Sunder with the 3.5 Combat Brute, Deadly Concussion, Ancestral Relic, and Greater Sunder?

You use Ancestral Relic to magic-up your Adamantine Earthbreaker into a Maul of the Titans that does triple damage vs, inanimate objects. The 3.0 Improved Sunder gives you double damage vs. weapons, so quadruple damage. Greater Sunder makes the residual Damage from destroying someone's weapon, shield, or armor go into your opponent. Deadly Concussion makes it so when you destroy someone's Armor or Shield, the opponent takes the same damage. Combat Brute gives you a Free Action Attack when you break someone's weapon or shield.

It occurs to me that if you really want to be good at demolishing structures, you could just play a Titan Fighter with a level in Living Monolith, take Shikigami Style, and get yourself an Adamantine Sledge Hammer. You will inflict 12d6 Damage/hit, and you will ignore the first 20 points of any object's Hardness. The progression of Vital Strike Feats can get that up to 48d6. Take Master Craftsman and Craft Magic Arms and Armor, and turn your Adamantine Sledge Hammer into an Adamantine Maul of the Titans, and now you will do Triple Damage vs. inanimate objects, so, 144d6 Damage vs. inanimate objects. I guess you should take Greater Sunder so that when you smash someone's weapon or shield, the residual damage will go to the wielder, who will probably evaporate in a red mist.

Get yourself a Lyre of Building, and 1/week, you can emulate the labor of 100 men working for 3 days in 30 minutes: enough to undermine a castle wall? Definitely!

I get the aesthetic of sneaking up and planting demolition charges and blowing up the bridge, but I'd hate to see your demolition expert get outmatched by a Bard with a Lyre of Building or a guy with a hammer.

To press on with your demolitions Alchemist, there have been a lot of good suggestions already. Some might not have been mentioned yet:

I haven't looked at it too closely, but the Bottled Ooze Discovery might yield from the list of Oozes a monster that could dissolve a lot of your targets with Acid and stuff.

The Promethian Disciple Discovery lets you can build Constructs. There are a lot of Constructs that are great at destroying building and stuff.

Really appreciating the feed back so far. To those who've posted, or those to come, any idea when a build like this will "take off"? I don't always quite get what folks mean when they talk about this, but I know you'll see people post about how a build doesn't come into its own or take off until level x. Just wondering if this concept has a sweet spot, a plateau, or a point where it "falls behind".

I think my character develops gradually and quickly.

Catfolk
Level 1, Fighter1: Titan Fighter, Catch off Guard, BAB+1

You use a Sledge Hammer, you take a -2, but you do 3d6/hit

2F2: Shikigami Style, BAB+2

Every Shikigami Style Feat lets you inflict Damage as if your hammer were 1 size bigger. So now you are doing 4d6 Damage

3F3: Iron Will, Incredible Heft(the -2 Penalty drops to -1), BAB+3

F4: Shikigami Mimicry (6D6 Base Damage), BAB+4
5F5: Endurance, Unstoppable Momentum +1, BAB+5
6F6: Shikigami Manipulation (8d6 Base Damage), BAB+6
7F6Living Monolith1: Ka Stone: Enlarge Person 3/day, Toughness, Vital Strike

With my build, you start off as a Tiger person with a big hammer. You steadily do more and more damage: 3d6 at level 1 up to 12d6 at level 7, 24d6 if you use Vital Strike, so you are gaining more than 1d6 Damage/Attack every level.

The Earth Magic Part doesn't come online until level 7.

I recently worked out a variant that is more powerful, but a little crazy. The build works better for a Half Orc instead of a Catfolk, but it works for a Catfolk, and you want to be a tiger.

I'm calling it the "Orc-pocalypse".

Catchy.

The party starts out in the regular, normal world of Golarion, in a remote village somewhere in the middle of nowhere.... non-descript

Sure.

a stranger emerges from the woods and asks the PCs, specifically, to help clear out a temple (Gozreh maybe?) that has been overrun by goblins.

Pretty standard stuff so far, but it sounds fun to play.

the party drifts off to sleep.... months have passed.... the village, they find it overrun by orcs! They must then work to defeat the orcs and free the village.

Over time, they discover that the entire continent has been conquered by orcs, giants, ogres, goblins, etc. They steadily increase their scope, starting with the small village and working their way up to larger and larger conquests. But how did this happen?

2. By making the PCs fall asleep like that you're taking away player agency in a way that should never ever happen. Don't do it.

The David has a point. The initial seeds of adventure give you an idea of the initial plot unfolding, and then next thing you know, your whole civilization comes to an end. Why? If you want to run post-apocalyptic campaign, why tease them with the normal one in the beginning? If this is a heroic fantasy campaign, shouldn't it be about revealing the orc shaman's plot to conquer the world by polluting the water, and the party tries to stop it?

How about this?

The party will probably start out doing some small errands for some people around town, to get familiar with the village and its inhabitants.

The party hears that people are getting sick, and the well water is tainted.

goblins... water jug is now in their possession, functioning like a decanter of endless water.... conquered by orcs, giants, ogres, goblins, etc. They steadily increase their scope, starting with the small village and working their way up to larger and larger conquests.

As it turns out, that poisoned well water is making everyone seriously ill, and the party's Decanter of Endless Water saves the village.

The party saved one village from one group of Goblins, but then they hear that lots of villages have been falling to Goblins, Hobgoblins, Orcs, Ogres, and other nasties all over the place? How is this happening?

An orc shaman has cursed the source of all water, at the highest mountaintop in the land. The orcs are immune to it

Don't make them immune. The Orc Shaman has been manufacturing Decanters of Endless Water and equipping tribes of humanoids, polluting the water and warning his minions not to drink it. He's doing this as a precursor to each invasion.

Does this have to be about destroying the whole world? Your scenario seems interesting enough without making it apocalyptic. You've got pollution and imperial expansion, military conflicts, mysterious illnesses.

Is the orc shaman even capable of conquering the world? How? How many orcs are there? I mean you destroy someone's army in battle, fine, but you always take some losses. You run out of orcs sooner or later. You conquer their whole kingdom: awesome. Now every grunt in your army has a nice farm with pigs and mushrooms to eat and even some elf slaves. Even if that is an overstatement, new lands require new soldiers to patrol more land. There's an ebb and flow. There's a limit as to how big your empire can get. Sooner or later, you have too many client states in your empire, and at some point, the center seems weak, and all of a sudden, they rebel. That's what happened in Ghana and Mali. That's kind of what happened to Rome, and before that, that's why Rome beat Carthage, and that's kind of what happened to Assyrians. That's also why the Saxon invasion of England took generations: more like a migration than an invasion. That's what happened to the Vikings, pretty much: They spread out all over, then they just got absorbed into the local populations.

Is your Orc Shaman a more effective Imperial bureaucrat than Emperor Trajan? Is your Orc Shaman just a guy whose eyes are bigger than his stomach, and his campaign for power is destined to flame out.

Or is your Shaman actually acting in the service of some even more powerful being: a Lich, a Green Dragon, a colony of Illithids, a Demon Lord, someone who is supplying him with those endless Decanters of Endless Water? Are the ranks of their Orcish Armies being stiffened by animated corpses, legions from Hell, hideous abominations, armies of constructs? Will there come a time when that same mysterious benefactor that has been giving that Shaman one victory after another going to turn on them, making it so the Orcs will eventually come to the party for help?

Anyway, those are the ideas I'm thinking about when I think about your storyline.

Any advice on how to build a strong-man, earth elemental magic using character, with a tiger motif, and a penchant for using stupidly big hammers?

I think I can help you.

Earth Magic and the Tiger shape tie for first, being really STR is a close but definitive third, hammer is a must but doesn't need to be optimal, and then leftovers to flesh out.

So, as you observed, you can be a Catgirl or Catboi.

Have considered a tigerish Catfolk, but don't know if there's any RAW way to get one a STR boost.

Well, how are your ability scores going to be determined? If it's a point buy system, you can just make sure you have a high strength by sacrificing whatever. If you are rolling your stats, you usually get to arrange them as you see it.

Druids can turn in to cats and elementals. Goliath Druids can turn into giants. Lion Shaman Druids are extra good at turning into cats.

Still another option would be to take levels in Living Monolith. Living Monoliths can Enlarge themselves 3/day as a Swift Action, and as they take more levels in LM, they get powers along the theme of turning into living stone statues, like Stone Blood, Meld into Stone, stuff like that. Enlarge Person eventually becomes Righteous Might. So you could be a hammer-wielding Catboi who becomes a giant animiated tiger man statue.

Actually, I think that's the build for you: Cat? Catfolk: check. Earth Magic? Living Monoliths become big stone statue people: check. Hammer? I'm thinking sledge hammer, Titan Fighter, and Shikigami Style Feats. I know you said it doesn't have to be optimal, but you don't mind if it is optimized and crazy powerful, do you?

A sledge hammer is like an Earthbreaker hammer except it is an Improvised Weapon: -4 on your attack rolls. Take the Catch Off Guard Feat. That lets you use Improvised Weapons without penalty.

Make your first level in Fighter with the Titan Fighter Archetype. That lets you use a Size Large Sledge Hammer with a -2 penalty, but 3d6 Damage.

Take Shikigami Style Feats. There are 3 of them, and every one you take gives you a 1 spot Virtual Size Increase on your weapon damage, so with your first SS Feat, you Large Sledge Hammer does 4d6, with the second, 6d6, and with your 3rd, 8d6.

You need Iron Will and Endurance to be a Living Monolith, and with your actual Size Increase your base Damage goes up to 12d6.

and then politics.

Yes. The OP is putting the PCs in a world overrun by armies of orcs, giants, and goblins who are winning by polluting the water. The players are to come out of the wilderness and champion the good, clean folk of the world.

It really looks like a campaign filled with political, environmental, and maybe racial subtext. It might be fun.

Well, "provoke" just means give rise to or cause to happen. I'm sure the Song of Sarkoris Attacks of Opportunity are provoked for the purposes of Paired Opportunist'.

But I have a problem with Song of Sarkoris itself. It says it takes effect "when you complete the performance." But allies gain their Attacks of Opportunity "for the duration of the performance." How can you use a dweomer that only effects things while it's going on but doesn't take effect until after it's not going on anymore?

I guess they intended to say "when you activate the performance" after the Full Round Activation time, but I recommend PC's not take this Masterpiece unless you have some kind of time-travelling masterpiece.

Intrepid Rescue Shenanigans

The "you are your own ally" FAQ is probably the worst offender of them all... I was referring to the Intrepid Rescuer exploit brought up earlier in this thread.

Hmm, let's see:

1Fighter1: Titan Fighter, Catch Off Guard

Use a size Large Sledge Hammer that does 3d6 Damage, but imposes a -2 on the attack roll.

2F1Monk1: Master of Many Styles, Unarmed 1d6 & other Monk stuff, Shikigami Style

Now the 'Hammer does 4d6.

3F1M2: Evasion, Combat Reflexes, Monkey Style
4F2M2: Bravery +1, Intrepid Rescuer

You can always go Prone as a Free Action, and with Monkey Style, you take no AC nor Attack Penalties while Prone, and since you count as your own ally, if anyone attacks you while Prone, you get an Attack of Opportunity. This requires a MAD build, so it's likely I'd have to settle for a Dex of 14 or 16, but that's 3 or 4 Attacks of Opportunity every round!

5F3M2: Shikigami Mimicry, Incredible Heft
6F4M2 Shikigami Manipulation

And your base damage for every attack is 8d6!

So lots of high damage attacks: that's what I like in a melee character. The character is good at level 1, and devastating by level 4. Normally, I'd want to go for a level in Living Monolith to get the Base Damage up to 12d6, but that would result in losing 2 Dex and therefore losing an Attack of Opportunity every round, and that might result in a lower overall DPR. I'd have to build the character to check.

And I sooooo have to build this character. Shrouded in Light and Wonderstell: thank you so much for showing me this awesome combo!

Poisoner's Gloves tricks...

Toxic Spell = Spell + Poison
Infuse Poison = Poison + Spell

If you use an Infused Poison for a Toxic Spell:

Spell + Poison + Spell

If you use a Toxic Spell in an Infused Poison:

Poison + Spell + Poison

If you make an Infused Poison with a Toxic Spell, then use it to cast a different Toxic Spell:

Spell + Poison + Spell + Poison

I had a similar idea that might work with Poisoner's Gloves, but I think it's safer to use with the Touch Injection Spell.

So, I like to give my Grapplers Expert Captor, so you Grapple your opponent as a Standard Action, then use Greater Grapple to Tie them Up as a Move Action. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to benefit from True Strike and get +20 on both rolls. What I came up with is to take the Infusion and Tumor Familiar discoveries. Give your Familiar an Infusion of True Strike.

Round 1: Give your Familiar an Infusion of True Strike and use Share Spells and Touch Injection.

Round2: Cast True Strike on yourself and Move to your opponent.

Round3: Initiate a Grapple with an extra +20 as a Standard Action.
Your Familiar injects the Infusion of True Strike as a Readied Action.
You use Grater Grapple to Tie Up your opponent, again with a +20 from True Strike, as a Move Action.

I had a 9th level grappler with a full time Grapple Mod of +30. The True Strike trick puts it up to +50. A Balor Demon's CMD is only 54!

Taking one level in Eldritch Scrapper Sorcerer instead of Iron Will, because free Martial Flexibility.

On those same lines... Eldritch Scrapper Sorcerer (Envenomed Bloodline) gestalt with Snakebite Striker Brawler is pretty awesome. Eldritch Scrapper has Martial Flexibility, and the Snakebite Striker gave it up for other fun stuff. One of the Bloodline Feats available is Skill Focus Bluff, which goes with all the feint shenanigans the Snakebite Striker can do. You can also actually have a snake's bite as a Bloodline Power, if you want it to match the whole Snakebite Striker thing.

Martial Flexibility is awesome, and that level in Sorcerer also gives a +2 Will Save that Irong will gives, but I was taking Iron Will as a prerequisite for Living Monolith so the character can shoot Large Arrows which then get further enhanced by Gravity bow from an Orc Hornbow and do that sweet 4d6 Base Damage.

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

That sounds reasonable. It seems to me what Sense Motive checks are for...Yeah. Charging into pike hedges is one of those things you don't do.

If you're going to ask that your opponent roll Sense Motive, then you'd better offer to roll a Bluff. With a -10 for "sure, your friends all tried that trick a moment ago and they're all dead now, but hey! I'm totes defenseless this time. Go for it" being a "far-fetched" lie, at best. I mean, "attacking me while I seem to have let my defenses down is a good idea even though it was a terrible idea several times before" could easily be considered "impossible", as they have pretty obvious, hard proof as to the opposite of your claim. So -20, then.

But more than that, I *don't* think that's what Sense Motive is for. Combat has enough rolls without adding more, and opposed rolls to boot.
Obvious situations are obvious and don't need rolls.

I don't think the situation is necessarily obvious at all. Combat is confusing and things happen too fast for most people to think clearly and make considered decisions, especially melee combat. You see a guy running around getting attacked a lot and getting lots of attacks, you don't necessarily know that the attacks themselves are what is enabling him to make so many attacks in turn. But it is reasonable to give the opponents a chance to figure out what the character is up to.

I *don't* think that's what Sense Motive is for.

Bluff vs. Sense Motive checks have a specified role in combat. And Sense Motive is a Skill that is used to tell when an unspecified something is up.

You can also use this skill to determine when “something is up” (that is, something odd is going on)

I think being up against an opponent using Panther Style Feats qualifies as "something odd going on" vis a vis Sense Motive.

Anyway, I am not positively pushing the use for any particular game mechanic for this situation. I'm only asserting that a GM using referee knowledge instead of monster/NPC knowledge to squelch a character build is at least as bad form as a player-knowledge metagaming, but it is fair to allow for the possibility for the NPCs/Monsters to correctly guess at the PC's tactics, and there are existing mechanisms in place that can facilitate this. Sense Motive is only 1 example.

At risk of derailing the threat further, I'd say that any intelligent opponent that's seen you fight before (including the previous 1-2 rounds of the combat you're currently in) is more than capable of seeing that making an AoO against the kung-fu master may not be a good idea.

That sounds reasonable. It seems to me what Sense Motive checks are for.

If four of your friends went to get the guy and now they're all suffering from an acute case of collapsed larynx, maybe...don't do that?

Like Like this? That boy will grow up to be an engineer or something. He is the smartest one there!

Same with the pole axe guy with Combat Reflexes

Yeah. Charging into pike hedges is one of those things you don't do.

if you've been in a couple fight-to-the-death situations before, you've got enough experience to know that some situations are losing ones. Use a different approach. If you don't have one, run or surrender or die a glorious death.

It would also make sense to allow a Skill Check each round they see what's happening with a Circumstance Bonus that increases each round.

This isn't his first rodeo. Scott's stance has consistently been that using BWG by yourself is perfectly legal, and that all the overwhelming proof of the opposite simply means that Paizo made a mistake that he's willing to exploit.... Scott never acknowledges that his opinion isn't inherently more valuable than everyone else's opinion.

It is fair to say that I wouldn't care if it were the case that Paizo didn't intend for you to count as your own ally for Broken Wing Gambit. I have often held to the opinion that we are the customers, and they are the business who wants to have faith in their product. We paying customers are not responsible for what they meant to say. They are responsible for what they did say.

I'm the one with overwhelming evidence. I am simply reporting on what the rules say. My opinion is based on fact. I am only as stubborn as my facts.

The rules say:

If that opponent attacks you with this bonus, it provokes attacks of opportunity from your allies who have this feat.

It's right here.

The rules say you count as your own ally:

You count as your own ally unless otherwise stated or if doing so would make no sense or be impossible. Thus, "your allies" almost always means the same as "you and your allies."

It's right here.

Does it actually "make no sense" or is it "impossible" for you to count as your own ally? Let's look:

If that opponent attacks you with this bonus, it provokes attacks of opportunity from you and your allies who have this feat.

It takes a willfully obtuse GM to say this makes no sense or be impossible based on the wording of this Feat. That is a sentence that makes sense. There is no reason why a Feat that offers your opponent a bonus to attack and damage in exchange for you getting a bonus attack should be impossible. That's exactly the kind of thing Feats are for.

feats represent abilities outside of the normal scope of your character's race and class.

It says so right here.

Scott gladly repeats that he's "simply following what the rules say" (unlike the rest of us), but his whole argument is based on an interpretation of the rules that nobody else agrees with.

That is absoulte rubbish. I do not pretend to speak for all other players: that is what you are doing, and you have demonstrated no standing to speak for everyone. And what you are saying here contradicts what you saying earlier.

rules, as those tend to get parroted over and over until the original meaning is lost. The "you are your own ally" FAQ is probably the worst offender of them all concerning this issue because it spreads like a wildfire.

So, here you are saying that no one else interprets the rules the way I do in the very same thread as you say that my interpretation of the the you-count-as-your-own-ally rule is spreading like wildfire. You are making a bad-faith argument.

Mark Seifter's.

Mark Seifter is a Paizo game designer, and he can make changes to the rules by making official rules posts. Wonderstell's quote is not an official rules post. It is not an FAQ. It is not an erratum. Wonderstell is offering Mark Seifter's opinion as evidence. Mark Seifter's opinion is better evidence than my opinion, but opinion is bad evidence. I am not offering opinion as evidence. I am showing you what the rules say. Rules beat opinions.

So Mark and Wonderstell are saying is that the fact that Broken Wing Gambit is a Teamwork Feat, that means it "makes no sense [and is] impossible" for you to count as your own ally with respect to this Feat. The evidence Mark offers is

these feats require an ally who also possesses the feat

Mark is misquoting the rules, here. He wrongly omitted something that falsely changed the meaning of the rules. I know it is an extraordinary claim for me to make: a game designer misquoting the rules of his own game, so now I must show you extraordinary evidence. Here you go.

In most cases, these feats require an ally who also possesses the feat

"In most cases" makes the rest of this something that can't be used to demonstrate that it would make no sense or be impossible for you to count as your own ally in this case of Broken Wing Gambit. "In most cases" is inadequate justification to ignore the FAQ. You need some other official rule: post, erratum, or FAQ. To my knowledge, there has never been shown another official rules source that officially says more on this subject.

If you are your own ally and get an AOO for using BWG, why did Paizo print this combat trick to allow you to do just that?

That is a good question, but you should know that is a question I have answered before. Combat Tricks are Combat Stamina rules, and both Combat Tricks and Combat Stamina rules are optional rules. See for yourself. Combat Stamina and Combat Tricks are in Pathfinder Unchained. And Pathfinder unchained is listed as an optional rule system.

What I am reporting on are the official rules.

I have asserted that when you take and use Broken Wing Gambit, you get to make an Attack of Opportunity triggered by someone attacking you, even though it says "all your allies." I have proven this by showing you the FAQ that says you count as your own ally. I have quoted the rules chapter-and-verse.

Wonderstell and others have tried to say that "it makes no sense [and is] impossible" to use Broken Wing Gambit that way because it is a Teamwork Feat, but they have all completely failed to back their arguments with good evidence. The description of Teamwork Feats does not say you need allies who have this Feat: they only say you need that "in most cases." The Combat Stamina rules say that, but Combat Stamina Rules are Optional Rules.

So, this is a dance people have with me where I report on what the rules say, and they go "nuh-uh," ignore what the rules really say, offer opinion as evidence, try to declare that I am the only one who holds my opinions that also spread like wildfire, try to say that Optional Rules trump Official Rules, and generally make one bad-faith argument after another.

Do not engage in discussion because it won't lead anywhere.

And yet you keep doing it!

I have heard about GM's shutting down Panther Parry, because hey AoO aren't required...

The last player I saw using Panther Style in PFS actually didn't do so well. He was a Monk, and those Attacks of Opportunity he was drawing were hitting, and Monks don't have a lot of hit points.

To make an effective character that does this actually takes some doing.

It's funny you should mention Panther Parry of all the Feats on that Style Tree. Panther Parry specifies that the character's attack comes before the Attack of Opportunity. The character does not have to actually wait for that AoO that was never coming anyway.

But again, if every one of the GM's monsters takes every Attack of Opportunity they can get except for the ones provoked by the 1 character in the universe that took Panther Style Feats, the problem is not the player, the build, or the Feat, but the metagaming GM.

I guess Rule 0 is your favorite rules exploit, then?

Well, you have dragons, turtles, dragon turtles, mushroom people, princesses, castles, giant gorillas, magic vehicles, underground adventures, sky-high adventures, underwater adventures, puzzles, hidden rooms, magic mushrooms, lucky stars, man-eating plants... does that sound like a Mario adventure or a Pathfinder adventure?

I think the answer is, "Yes."

It seems to me like making a Pathfinder adventure more Mario-like is a matter of placement of certain magic items and maybe the creation of certain special abilities, like the Hammer from the first Donkey Kong game and the creation of certain Jump-themed special abilities. Maybe make Flying punishingly difficult to harken back to the Flappy-Bird Game which uses the same background, and while you are at it, how about some encounters that resemble the old Joust game that used the same mechanic as Flappy Bird, and was also punishingly difficult.

I think you are onto something.

Is it wrong that I'm channeling Gargamel a little bit?

Not trying to tromp on your fun, but with the numbers you just put up, I'm cackling a little bit at the idea of a Smurf "genocide". . . . .

Is there a Smurf world hell?

You mean like this?