By now you've already made your choice and feel good about it, that's the important part taken care of. But to add a little something to the problem in general as likely other people are dealing with less extreme versions of a similar problem.
I've been GMing for 42 years now and have had fantastic and craptastic groups, the dynamic you describe is one I've encountered several times in the love of the hobby throughout the various regions of the USA. I'm not of the opinion that my many years makes me better than anyone else, just means I've been doing it long time, nor do I worry about being politically correct. I'm not a jackass with my views, but I don't mollycoddle people's sensitivities either.
Over the years I've encountered this type of person more times than I care to recount, I call'em "Zealots". Zealots aren't like devoted fans, whom you actually can reason with and have a talk about their behavior over. You can sit down with'em over a beer or coffee and say "look man, I know you'd prefer if we did X instead of Y, but this is what I run and I promise you I will always try to be fair and consistent with this body of rules. If I'm not call me out on it and I'll hear what you have to say, but otherwise lets work with what we got and if you got suggestions or complaints, let me hear them off the table where I can be more receptive." A devoted fan will at the minimum, respect that you'll do your best to be fair and consistent.
You can't do that with a Zealot. In their mind, you are literally speaking blasphemy, and further they tend to narrow their view of how something should be done to their way and none other. Their egos are fragile things with a hatred and rage towards anything that challenges their beliefs simmering beneath at all times. They don't reason, they lash out and "punish" transgressors. Zealots are also frequently emotionally disturbed in other areas as well and thus tend to be powderkegs, often to the detriment of our collective hobby.
The most practical thing to do with a Zealot is to shoot them. But since that carries grave consequences you'll have to settle for a symbolic shooting and kick them from the group if possible. In your case, that wasn't possible because the group he belongs to has already come to terms and accepted the Zealot as part of their normal. So instead you shoot the group (figuratively) and move on, a equally wise solution. Had you not chosen to remove yourself already its what I would've advocated.
One thing I can say as a old fart in this hobby, true group chemistry is a rare thing to encounter and if you do, definitely cherish and nourish it. But never be afraid to pack bags and move on if even the most basic chemistry and courtesy isn't present, life is too short to put up with any of that.
There are a lot of options to protect miniatures when traveling.
An expensive option: plastic travel case with foam trays that isolate each mini and allow you to store tons of them. A lot of hobby/miniature places sell these.
A medium-fancy option: go to your nearest big box store and get a small fishing tackle box. Many of them have openings that are almost exactly the size of your average tabletop gaming miniature.
A cheap option: use the small plastic containers that dice come in. I wrap mine in a small bit of paper towel and they don't ever get messed up in there.
This. Simple solution us old timers use (who cut our teeth on RPGs back in ancient times prior to the internet called the '80s) is a fishing tackle box lined with foam. The more precious the miniture, the more care in creating the foam compartment. I.E. using a heat gun to melt a somewhat conforming chamber in a foam block, insert custom foam block into adequately sized compartment of the tackle box.
Plastic minis were typically the disposable sort, such as the Warhammer armies that one would have mass quantities of and so didn't get nearly the care. So most of the tackle boxes gamers used back then had lower trays that while still lined with foam, had "communal compartments". But the metal ones almost always had their own compartment (unless of course they were as valued as the plastic ones) and the size of the box was often a WIP. One guy I knew had a snap on like box that he could just keep adding layers to, his box was if I recall correctly, 11 layers deep.
All that said, with no disrespect intended towards your interest of minis, allow my story below to serve as a cautionary tale with a cherished solution at the end.
Trolls & their offspring:
Enough time has gone by that I can recount this tale with a bit of wry humor, but at the time...well...lets just say that its a good thing the show Dexter wasn't a thing back then.
By '96 I had spent a near fortune on metal figs/paint/brushes/travel cases/etc, and at the store we almost always played at, I often had metal minis on display as examples of airbrush painting. I had shifted hobbies from miniature wargaming and had a fairly good skill set at creating landscapes and textured 3d terrain and had gone "all in" into RPGs bringing my minis with me. Also, partly due to being fairly good friends with the store owner (I generated a lot of business for her) and because I freely shared my landscape accessories/tiles with others, I had storage privileges for my terrain tiles and accessories in the back game area. My minis however, were all transported by tacklebox as was the norm back then.
This store had a large back room with two rentable gaming bays I typically rented 2-3x a week and after doing this roughly 5 years I was quite well known, and the gamers of the area tended to respect each others possessions and gaming area enough to look and not touch. The store had a no food in the back policy, and since it sat right in the middle of several restaurants a 5 minute walk away, sometimes we would take a break to grab a bite to eat, leaving our minis and tiles out because we never ran into any issues with anyone messing with our stuff.
Friday, June 14th 1996 changed all that. This was a night where doing a climatic end to a 8 month long campaign and we had rented our bay for a 10 hour session. We broke for dinner at 7ish and hit the mongolian BBQ across the street. I'm sure that the clarity with which I remember all this is already making some of you cringe in dread anticipation.
I don't know how things are these days as it seems like the internet pretty much killed RPG stores, but back then such places usually had a lurking troll or two of either gender who due to A) being a troll with typical troll social skills and B) thinking the word "hygene" is a rare Witch Curse, was largely avoided but because they were adept at survival they would usually just lurk and rarely interact. Sometimes, these trolls for whatever mysterious reason, manage to have offspring, and in particular, the female variety had this strange notion that others grimacing and backing away was a form of sign language to encourage them to tell us intimate details about their caves, fungus farms, and their latest attempts at recreating renn fest fashion wear.
Our store's local troll maiden was miserable at A) having offspring and B) breaking every mirror she walked by, had as usual allowed her snot trailing crawling tumor familiar like offspring to wander into the back gaming area. At this point I have to apologize as I used to be far more acidic and colorful of my description of the troll maid and her mucus shedding offspring, but time heals all wounds no? Anyway, said tumor familiar found our gaming table, and while it couldn't reach the gaming table's height it could reach the side table that sat much lower and on which I put my 3 tackleboxes of all airbrushed minis.
We were gone roughly a hour, and upon our return I find my entire collection of 250ish "elite" grade airbrushed minis was wrecked (admittedly, half of them were plastic and thus quite fragile in the pincers of such a creature). Of course there was no reimbursement (troll mothers are notoriously low on loot), and being a mother troll she couldn't fathom why I would leave my possessions out where her offspring could wreck them since obviously, it wasn't her role in life to monitor her creation, it was everyone else's. Naturally, I had the urge to flay the skin off this troll and her child using a dull spoon dipped in salt. While most insist it was my friends restraining me that prevented such a flaying from happening, I clearly recall that I (barely) made my will save and I'm equally certain my barbarian like howls of rage was only heard by the surrounding 3 counties, not states as my friends at the time insisted was the case (they were prone to being a bit melodramatic).
After a roughly two week mourning period, I invested in cardboard minis.
Turned out to be the best thing ever. The amount of artistry that one can bring to custom cardboard minis puts plastic/metal to shame IMO, and their travel is in comparison, stunningly simple. And if a snottling happens to chew on one, I just print up a replacement, slip it into the slotted base, and carry on. Though to be perfectly honest, my Circle of Protection vs Vermin has been made permanent and so I no longer encounter such aberrations.
And yes, I still wish I could flay that troll and her offspring. But since I live 3 states away now, and buy all my gaming products via the internet, I manage to avoid encountering such creatures anymore.
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Sans reading the story, short version: invest in cardboard minis good sir, trust me when I say, the convenience is unsurpassed, and just as worthy of your artistic efforts to customize.
Though this post is 4 years old, it still serves as a excellent connect the dots post about Spellstrike. I've been GMing/playing PF for 3 years now and never seen a Magus in action. This week one of my players decided to replace his fallen 8th level character with a Magus and to be perfectly candid about it, I was totally way off in my understanding of this and thoroughly borked up our first session with this new Magus (fortunately, none of us had any grasp of the class' mechanic so it was a shared shame). next session is tomorrow and after reading your essay, I GOT IT (yes, caps warranted) and will educate my group accordingly. Heartfelt thanks good sir.
I enjoy PF for what it is, a tactical wargame, most of its roleplaying elements is summed up in how someone beats a critter to death, but barely any effort at doing anything else.
I think it's up to the GM and the players if they want to make it something else, and a lot tables will (mine always seem to find a way.) It's not really the best system for social mechanics, but if you want to have a game about courtly intrigue that also has a dragon, a magic sword, and a lich in it, then you kind of need to run this rule system in a way it probably wasn't meant to be.
But I mean, "taking the rules and putting them to uses for which they were never originally intended" is sort of the heart of tabletop RPGs.
I agree to a certain extent, particularly with what you said about GM and players making it more than what it is. Which is why my group likes PF as it is, I tried to get them into Exalted (which admittedly has its share of unique problems) because I felt it was a lot less tactically focused and allowed for a greater array of play styles, even for martially inclined characters. But unfortunately the setting just didn't click with them.
PF does what its designed to do very well, but at the same time the inherit limitations of its design is such that martial characters really only do a limited number of things, often to silly niche level purpose because that's what the rules make them do.
My solution would be to have the villain assemble a very complicated ritual that requires a magical whatzit that he made himself, tuned to various planes. These are then placed around the world in hidden locations where they're joined by the ritual in a network, who's end result is it acts like a firewall separating the world from other dimensional access. Further, the mystical wall is fed more power by the souls and spirits of the dead, consuming them and converting them to a arcane-divine energy. It doesn't destroy these souls or spirits mind you, it just taps the potential eternal energy they represent.
This cuts the various deities off enmasse, as well as any and all forms of magic that seek to go past the barrier, and to fully bring home the hammer you should limit all divine spells to no more than 3rd, maybe 4th level (in temples only where residual faith pools). Undoing this ritual requires very careful planning, because the whatzits are tuned to particular planes (or gods if you like as well), if you open it for one plane/deity that comes through in a rush while the others are still cut off. Massive power play with politics and intrigue to make your head explode as various factions of the faithful seek to make sure *their* god wins. Naturally, all those cool summoning spells don't work, making Druids giddy and drunk with power as nature summons are the only ones available, and if you want to have some fun there shut down their access of Elemental Wyldshaping with the explanation that when they go into elemental forms they're channelling a part of that plane into themselves. Barrier prevents this and they're now limited to non-elemental forms.
To keep tension going, besides the locations being hidden, make the ritual extremely obscure, and learning how to undo it costs one their sanity. It takes someone capable of casting 9th level spells, and as they learn the ritual they have to learn it for each tuning, increasingly they become paranoid, delusional, and psychotic. Bringing down the barrier thus is not only a effort of great coordination and dodging the intrigue/political/treacherous bullet of the many faithful, but now you got crazed high level wizards in the aftermath who could be up to all kinds of shenanigans.
So not only do the heroes have to figure out where this network's whatzit nodes are(of which you could make 100s if you were particularly sadistic) but they have a lot of eggs to juggle as they go about undoing the barrier, and after the barrier is down, you got plenty of material to keep them busy for a long time to come. If you wanted to be ambitious, you could run two groups in this, let them compete to see which set of gods/planes get to come in first.
Like i said. Some people only visualize a fighter swinging their weapon regardless of feats, skills, tactics, real game play and then compare it to the wizard who casts spells in a variety of ways, but is still only casting a spell.
Next will be the ways in which a caster shuts down a martial or does everything better. Same story different thread.
Can you explain to me where a Fighter achieves more than "swing the sword"? Because personally I'm a huge sucker for martials and would love to have a sudden revelation that yes, I can have the same amount of narrative power that a 9th level caster gets.
Maybe I'm not picking up on what you mean but the narrative power of the character has, I think, absolutely nothing to do with his class per se. It's about what you (as the player with the GM) choose to go after as a character. While how a wizard or bard goes about gaining a kingdom and castle, for example, is vastly different from how a martial character might go about it the character's goal is essentially the same and both will create a narrative in the process. Or do you mean something else by narrative power?
I've been in this boat many a ocassion and I'd have to support Arachnofiend's position. I've been gaming with the same group for a very long time now (20 some years) with 3 rotating GMs of which I'm one. I love my friends dearly, but their preference for martials often puts me in a rut where I have to make sure there is lots of weapon clashing when I run, because when I throw a caster in the mix its nothing but groans and curses. I'm the only one out of us that plays casters regularly, though I mix it up by hitting 3/4 caster classes. I've proven time and again how caster types can add exponential benefits to a group, and they will repeatedly stick with melee beat sticks or archers. Most of the time I don't optimize, because I already get complaints about dominating a game.
The other night we got into a good natured argument about melees vs casters, and while I didn't say it, what struck me about it is their position was largely machismo wish fulfillment. They like being juggernauts that tear through hordes like in a video game. The problem largely stems from the fact that the game is designed from the ground up towards being a tactical wargame, with very narrow niches and development paths for martial characters.
Casters on the other hand, while also requiring the same wargame approach to specialization, have the inherit flexibility of certain spells. There's a reason why blasting for a caster is typically a sub-optimal choice, they can do more with within the limits of a spell. I still vividly remember the night one of the gms set up a campaign for us to stop a strong king from demolishing a noble who was more popular. I sat quietly while the other guys debated how to ruin supply lines, poison wells, assassinate key generals, etc. When i was accused of not helping, I suggest i could always geas the king and duke into accepting any reasonable compromise that would benefit both them. The look on my GM's face was as if I had kicked his puppy. That's a example of altering the narrative.
I enjoy PF for what it is, a tactical wargame, most of its roleplaying elements is summed up in how someone beats a critter to death, but barely any effort at doing anything else. The rules barely touch on social conflict, there's zero tactical social combat, its all summed up with catch all rolls hitting a DC, which frequently from the 100s of games I've witnessed have less than a passing effect on play. The vast majority of GMs consider a Diplomacy roll to be good for a couple of minutes and way less effective than a Suggestion spell, let alone a Geas. Until the rules treat something besides tactical weapon flicking (or tactical level spell slinging) martials are extremely limited in what they do, beating stuff up in different ways.
Update:
I printed up this thread, called up my group and got everyone to show up a couple of hours early. We got to our gamer cave and I read this post outloud to everyone and we fired up HL and took a second look at the guides that were being used. The spreadsheet was likewise reloaded.
First after all the numbers were crunched, the group agreed with the general posts of this thread and my hunch that the 2H fighter isn't broken, he was just being played right. I also lost my turn to play tonight as we wanted to test what our revised attempts would yield (sad face).
2nd we looked at the Gunslinger. The first thing we cleared up was the reloading rules, which we also applied to other areas where questions about Free actions arose. Then we went through the computations a 2nd time. The PC is a Pistolero, but he wasn't staying close to the fray, he was shooting from further away. And he wasn't using several feats properly. (I won't go into detail, I'm sure you can guess at what they were). End result was, his damage output suddenly jumped right on par with the 2H fighter and if he used his grit, it went higher. The GS player was downright giddy.
Next up was the Sorcerer. His big gripe was that he was using up his 3 6th level spell slots to buff his 3rd level spells and they still weren't amounting to as much as he felt they should given that the martials have infinite refresh on their attacks (the cleaving that was going on was pretty impressive). So the very first thing I did was suggest he change out his magic item buy and get a maximize rod. 3 charges of the rod applied to his level 3 spells put out the same damage without burning his 6th level spells. Next up it was discovered he didn't have Empower, which made those lower level spells more use friendly as well as a couple of the higher level ones. We did a few other tweaks here and there, nothing major, but it left him with a lot more to do than before and his damage numbers were a lot more satisfying. Part of it was also realizing he'd have a select few go-to blast spells, and then the rest was about utility, that made a nice difference too. (he figured he needed at least 3 different energy types which we cleared up as well, his spell selection improved noticeably from that as well).
Our Rogue: He dropped the 2 weapon fighting and class entirely, and went Ninja instead. We also changed his race to Catfolk and went with Cat Burglar. His damage got better and his versatility got significantly better, he always had something to do and though he wasn't a DPR monster, he was a lot happier for the shift. We tinkered briefly with recasting his Rogue as a Knife Fighter using a single blade, that too worked out way better than 2 weapon fighting, but the Catfolk Ninja really grabbed his imagination and with lessons learned from before, his damage is respectable and the comedy relief his new character inspired in him was well worth it(though I worry he's abusing the poison a little, time will tell on that).
Our Monk: He was the hardest to configure and took the longest. We redrafted himself as a Quingong Monk using Dragon Style. His damage jumped up a good bit, though he was still a good 36 pts behind the Gunslinger and Fighter, he was luke warm at best regarding the gap. After some soul searching on the matter, we decided that his normal character type is less supported in PF than it was with what we were used to. We discussed other archtypes and in the end his feeling was that it takes a heck of a lot of effort to make a Monk able to boot head, and then when all is said and done you're still trailing far behind the other guys. He acknowledges that its got great saves and mobility, but he brought up a pretty good point, that if he's away from the rest of the group with all that great mobility, its a false positive. And he detests playing ranged characters so a Zen Archer wasn't going to happen.
So we took out one of the NPCs I was going to introduce to the group as a hireling, which was a Battle Oracle. This is where we all pooled our heads to help him out with the build and spell selection, made use of the guide, and got him finalized. He's playing a naginata weilding character who got a good assortment of the 2H weapon feats and we made him a Hork which was this asian flavored half-oni wandering mystic warrior. He utterly fell in love with the character and funeral services were held for the Monk class at our table.
We decided to play late tonight, I threw some fluff combats at the players to basically give them some experience using their new builds, first one was a tad clunky, 2nd one was smoother, 3rd one everyone knew pretty much how to run their character to fairly solid effect. We also updated our spreadsheet to take into account common class practices, which did a good bit to help with the learning curve to make sure everyone was using their assets properly. I.E. we had the numbers to shoot for, if you were falling short of that something isn't being done right. By the 3rd combat though we're by no means masters of PF, but we're not as incompetent anymore.
Finally, I mentioned to the group that while I was happy to run them at this level and deal with whatever pitfalls our collective ignorance could cause, that there were a couple of posts that suggested we start at a lower level. The guy who was going to GM his game tonight who put his game on hold was also going to reboot a old campaign with higher level characters. After some discussion, I convinced them that this should be a low level game and to start off with level 3 instead of level 13. We also decided to play classes different from what's in my game though I don't think the Monk will make the cut there either. This way we get to learn the game at either end of the spectrum and will hopefully lead us to a brand new campaign after a couple of months with a much more solid understanding of the system.
I'd like to thank everyone for their input, it was extremely helpful and appreciated. Cheers =)
My apologies for the follow up post, but it occurred to me put up the Fighter's stats so that at least his abilities aren't flapping in the winds of vagueness.
Str: 22/26 (belt of +4 Str)
Con 18
Dex 14
10's rest of the way
First off I'd like to extend a warm thank you to all the responses, I expected maybe one or two at the most. Again, thank you all very much.
My group and I are getting together again tonight, this time I get to play and to reiterate from earlier, we're rusty as hell towards D20 rules in general and PF has seen us crash learning for 2 weeks now, we're constantly updating our command of the rules. We got a understanding that says for the following month, we get to redraft characters as our knowledge of the systems refines itself. I'll get the easy stuff out of the way first.
The group felt the 2H Ftr was game breaking, while I didn't. I was taken aback to be sure, but like some have said, he's a hammer waiting for a nail to present itself. I'm of the opinion that we are both doing some things wrong from a rules perspective and not playing to the classes strengths, the Fighter because his mechanics are relatively simple, is easy to digest and impliment. Thus playing him at optimal performance is easy because its so straight forward.
I'm also fairly certain we used the rules regarding the Monk correctly, he was playing without any Archtypes but we found he had a number of difficulties with the MAD and damage windows. Its a big change for us because he played the same style of character in Exalted where he was the equal of the swordmaster. I confess, a number of the design elements of the class aren't as obvious to me such as making him a 3/4 BAB class seems inconsistent when compared to Paladins/Rangers; about on par with the diversity of abilities, have spells that are similar to Ki powers and yet they are full BAB. I'll be the first to admit I'm still a noob with the rules, but I'm glad I'm not the only one going WTF when I look at the Monk vs other martials. Seeing several replies stating that Monks are indeed weak makes me wonder what the justification was on the part of the designers and why it hasn't been attended to. Perhaps balance lays in using the Archtypes?
RE: Gunslingers. I think we screwed up the mechanics. The player has 2 single barrel pistols with alchemical paper cartridges and rapid reload and made extensive use of the Gunslinger guide found at Giant in the Playground. But we got confused how to use the number of attacks/reloading/free action sequence. My initial interpetation was if you get 3 attacks, have a single barrel gun, and can reload as a free action, then you can shoot-reload-shoot-reload-shoot as a full round action. But some discussion about this suggested that even with a free action one can't get off all 3 attacks since a full round attack cannot be interrupted with any other kind of action, Free or Swift. My initial take was that its the same thing as a archer drawing a arrow from a quiver but then we couldn't find anything that suggested one could reload inbetween shots and that unless one had a revolver or a double barrel pistol, one was limited to one shot a round. At the end of the night we came to the conclusion either we were doing something wrong or the supremacy of the fighter was being highlighted further.
RE: Spellcasters I've read Treantmonk's guide and others to what full casters are better off doing, I agree that blasting is a less effective use of magic than other kinds of spells, but we had concerns because in order to use maximize on a 3rd level spell the Sorc is tapping his 6th level slots, burning through them pretty quickly and still not doing as much damage as the 2H user especially as there is a save involved that can reduce the damage to half which the Fighter didn't contend with. Sure he has to hit his target, but his attack bonuses were high enough that it was a minor concern. Of much greater concern to him was movement.
In closing, most of the stuff I figure is us learning things that will reveal itself to us after more use of the rules, but our biggest issue was the Gunslinger vs Fighter damage, how free actions interact with full round actions and the significant gap that seemed to suggest a unusually skewed preference towards fighters by the game designers. Again I appreciate all the feedback given so far and humbly thank any who continue to add to this in advance.
Forgive my somewhat befuddled post, its late after a tough game session but I needed to get this started and hope for some feedback before tomorrow evening.
My group and I have decided to step away from Exalted finally and get back to a less "flamboyant" game system. All of us are AD&D 3.5 vets but haven't touched the system in quite some time (9 years now). We've all decided to make use of all the following books Core/APG/ARG/UC/UM/UE. I resurrected a old campaign I had run long long ago in the FR which at the time we put it to rest, the party was 12th level. We took the characters at the time and "translated" them into PF using the above listed books.
Our party consists of a Gunslinger, a Oracle of Arcane Lore, Fire Sorcerer, a Cleric with healing domain, a Rogue TWF specialist and a human Fighter. We are using Archtypes as we felt it made the classes a lot less cookie cutter and all of the players have accessed various guides to optimize their characters but without going crazy about it. (basically all the chars bought the "essentials" for their purpose within the group). The problem we ran into is the Fighter, he is a 2H weapon AT and is pumping out incredible damage. He is utterly destroying everything he runs into while the rest of the party is good naturely joking that they've polymorphed into minor side kick status. At the end of the night the group also Feel PF is kind of broken but 2 of us wanted to crunch some numbers and see if we could get any insight.
The player of the 2H warrior created a spreadsheet and we started plugging a number of classes into the fields and we're not squeezing every ounce of performance out of the builds but were just trying to get a feel for the damage out put ranges. We ran about a dozen different variations but I'll spare you all the sordid details, we based it off the characters that were in play for the most part and erred on the conservative side of tactics and got a summary of these numbers.
Damage per Round totals
2H Fighter: 103
2 weapon Fighter: 52
Sorc: 40 (no meta magic use)
Rogue (sneak attack half the time) 34
GS: 32 (no grit powered attacks)
Monk 24 (no ki powered attacks)
I realize these numbers typically require a great deal more detail with relevant builds, like I said we stripped things down to bare essentials to get a feel for comparative damage output using the same basic considerations that the 2H fighter tends to use (i.e. things like a staple feat like PA) go to tactics without being munchkin performance hounds about it. We were also pretty beat by the time we made this thing and I'm sure we overlooked a few things, but the thing that we walked away from is that PF seems to either have a extremely heavy bias about Fighters (and utterly hates Monks) or the Archtype itself is somehow broke. Granted, classes bring more to the table besides damage, casters in particular have utility and so forth.
Again, my apologies for kind of babbling here but what I'm basically trying to ask is this: Does PF favor Fighters really that much across the board when it comes to DPS?
I spent way too many hours trying to google a solution for this after searching through the various rulebooks failed me, and as a newly minted PF GM I've run out of time to devote to this and figured I'd ask this wonderful resource here.
I got a player who wants to play a Magus but wants to run it based off of CHA like the Sorcerer. I figured from what I know that this shouldn't be too difficult since I knew Sorcerers have the option to shift their spell casting stat from CHA to INT or even WIS by selecting a certain bloodline. But I couldn't find squat on how to do this for a Int based character to go to CHA. Normally I'd just make the swap and be done with it, but we're using Hero Lab alot and ideally I want to use a more official feature than my whim. So basically my question is, am I missing something? Is there no option to flip INT to CHA for a Magus?
Also, the player said he'd prefer if he could be a "Sorcerer like Magus", meaning spontaneous casting with fewer spells, etc. I considered building a archtype to do this, but as I said in the beginning, I'm newly arrived to PF and some advice would be appreciated.
Agree with Kaishakunin, but I'm not a good person to offer up anything much past that because I'm known as being politically incorrect. I deal with reality more than theory and have always believed you are what you allow yourself to be. The human spirit is like steel, its forged in fires of adversity, not excuses.
