SheepishEidolon's page

Paizo values our subscribers as the backbone of our business

I'd say the backbone of your business is thoughtful innovation. You introduced ideas like subscriptions, pawns, flip mats, completely free online rules, strong support for third party etc. And seemingly it worked pretty well for you, in general.

Instead of clinging to a business model that becomes increasingly brittle when campaigns increasingly happen online, trust in your capability to innovate.

As a GM, I don't love PF1. At least not the mechanics and their presentation: Huge stat blocks, long spell descriptions sometimes and cross-references back and forth. In actual play, fiddly rules questions and condition tracking can unnecessarily bog down the game.

Still my players love the character customization, and I feel that, too. So I continue, but cut corners when it comes to preparation, a bit more every year. I have like a dozen houserules, and most of them are about simplifying the game (while keeping the interesting stuff). Who knows, my table might become like one of these 3.5 tables, houseruled to the point where the original system is barely recognizable.

Beyond that, I like the setting. It has something for everything, including many opportunities to add your own ideas. I wouldn't GM another AP for a while (too clunky, too railroady), still some of them make great reading material. And I had a great time collecting all the pawns.

I'd offer them a new alternate capstone every level beyond 20, instead of new class abilities (they still progress at the steady stuff). Choosing one seems to be a meaningful decision, even at that character level. This will lose steam after a few levels, though, after the more interesting capstones are taken.

Personally, I'd rather worry how to challenge them before the final fight. There are not so many CR 21+ creatures in the books, and they are usually supposed to be unique. Improving CR 20- creatures comes at the risk of the players' question "Can't we fight something epic?". And building level 21+ NPCs can be quite exhausting, unless you excel in efficient preparation (library of NPCs, building blocks, reskinning, skipping unnecessary details etc.).

Also be careful with the duration of your campaign. Every month comes at the risk of losing a player, so playing year after year might result in a campaign cancelled before the end. If you want to go beyond 20, consider leveling quickly - unless your players are diehards with unwavering motivation, solid health and neverchanging private situation.

The Kickstarter is online. For those who are curious about Owlcat's stance: They actually advertised BKOM's campaign in their latest update.

I had fears that BKOM, a mobile/indie video game company might try and be too ambitious with doing their games for Pathfinder. But seeing them keeping it simple with an ARPG is kinda nice.

Same here. Better a Pathfinder ARPG at least some players enjoy than a RPG that never gets released. Or worse, released in horrible shape, with no hope to ever become polished...

Alignment restrictions have a chance to make players explore something else than their usual behavior pattern. Appearantly many players start their roleplaying careers with an alignment close to their real life attitudes, and some seem to pretty much stick with it for decades. If a class they desire forces them to play something else, they can grow on it.

Luckily not every martial character relies on picking a two-handed weapon and Power Attack. It's a valid playstyle (and makes PF more accessible due to its simplicity), but personally I appreciate the variety Pathfinder offers, from sword and spell to natural attacks.

Just because he asks for a solo campaign, you are not obligated to do exactly that. You could offer him to watch a session of your usual players, with the chance to control a pet or summon sometimes.

Just a warning: A casual interest like "oh, I watched this movie, and now would like to try it" often results in "ok, not my cup of tea". Especially if they invested little time and effort to make it happen. Don't make it too comfy for them, let them read up some stuff on their own, and let them make their own decisions (even if they are quirky or mechanically ineffective).

I'm pretty sure there's recruitment boards on other parts of these forums.

Yeah, there are some PF1 APs in the recruitment section, with a varifying degree of modification.

I am running Curse of the Crimson Throne right now, after a homebrew campaign. Ironically, it doesn't really reduce my prep time, because I spend a lot of time at getting familiar with story details and sometimes mechanics I wouldn't use otherwise.

I will be back to homebrew afterwards, using APs only for inspiration. PF2 APs usually don't appeal to me, only Abomination Vaults piques my interest.

Now, if it were more polished than Owlcat's games

Owlcat had a dedicated crew and they really struggled to port a good share of the ruleset to a computer game. I remember Kingmaker's bug infested start. Many studios would have given up on fixing such a mountain of issues.

If I were at BKOM, I'd try to motivate everyone to learn as much as possible from the past. A light-hearted approach will succeed only on a natural 20, unless the scope of the game is really reduced.

I start at level 1, but I don't throw very deadly foes at my players at this level. Together with Pathfinder's safety belt (don't die before -Con score) they are safe to explore their new characters.

Wizards and sorcers might struggle, but I'd tell such a player: You don't have to do two-digit damage at level 1. The martial PC might dish out such amounts, but then the player sacrificed a lot of utility in favor of damage. And a good share of it will be wasted, most of the time - a standard goblin has 6 HP. A Knowledge check can also contribute to combat, as well as identifying enemy spells or demoralizing a foe.

Finally, starting at 1 means we have more time before Pathfinder gets into higher level play - a stage where the game IMO becomes less fun: Weaker class balance, more bookkeeping, fewer possible noncombat challenges, longer combat duration.

gdotbat wrote:

What about the 3 action economy system? This is what Starfinder really needs.

Integrating 3AE into SF is not something that would be easy to do for a number of reasons.

Pathfinder Unchained managed this relatively well for PF 1E, within 8 pages. Since Starfinder uses the same clunky "standard action, move action etc." system as PF 1E, Unchained's "Revised Action Economy" is probably a good starting point for any Starfinder GM who wants the 3 acts system.

A good package. Minor issues: "Troubles in Otari" uses the flip-mat image for the adventure. "Flip-Mat Classics: Anceint Dungeons" has a typo.

would be a shame to lose PF1, but if they don't want to fight that battle that's their call to make

Let's start with a disclaimer: I don't endorse piracy. Good books should be rewarded with buying them.

But in such a scenario Paizo could find unusual allies among pirates. While illegal copies are currently undesired, they would become a boon once the books are no longer allowed to be sold legally. They still have the chance to spark interest in buying legal books (such as PF2), and they would undermine Hasbro's lawful evil policy. All Paizo would have to do is to stop fighting piracy of PF1 books, once the scenario becomes reality.

I wonder about the motivation of such a move (if it's true). Sure, it might put a lot of pressure on competition and even drive some of them out of business. But WotC barely has the ressources to rehash old stuff - do they really think they can keep all these players interested in the hobby? Do they hope to completely dominate a very small market instead of being the biggest fish in a small one?

And as a third-party producer, I'd avoid working with such a company in any way. If they pull such a move once, they might do again.

EDIT: Finally, if only half the affected companies allies to challenge WotC, both on business and legal level, I wouldn't bet on WotC.

As GMs, we trust ourselves to play all alignments in a proper way, even as we spend only little time on fleshing out some of our characters. So IMO we should trust players to be able to properly play a single evil character. At least some of them.

I banned scrying spells since such a cautious playstyle is not what I consider adventuring. They might be back at next campaign, though, to allow players that playstyle if they really desire it.

Beyond that, I changed effects that neutralize opponents (anything beyond staggered / slowed) to allow a new save at the end of each round. By now I saw this in action for some sessions and IMO it works well, although a crafty player already figured out command isn't handicapped at all. Nevertheless, this houserule avoided a ban on such effects.

I am thankful that most of my players don't feel the need to gravitate towards (IMO) problematic material. They seem happy as long as they feel the challenges are fair and they get to shine (which can require me making a fool of my NPCs, but that's part of the job).

To me, honestly, a +2, +2, +1, +1, +0, -1 just sounds like a peasant farmer who doesn't wear shoes. Or rather, since that is exaggerating for effect, it sounds like an NPC village guard or town merchant. It does not sound like a hero or champion.

IMO, heroism and championship are more about attitude and deeds than capabilities. At least heroism is way more convincing if there is an actual challenge - superhuman stats actually undermine that. To use an extreme example: Superman stopping a mundane bank robber is not heroic, it's something he does without any risk. At least for himself, he still has to care a little bit for innocent persons involved.

Sure, with more power the scope of heroic deeds increases. A high-powered PC can save the multiverse, while a low-powered one might struggle to drive off a bunch of goblins. IMO both can be equally heroic.

It's appearantly rather a guideline Paizo used internally. See rogue, ninja, alchemist (visectionist), vigilante (stalker), slayer + VMC rogue and probably more. Accomplished Sneak Attacker's text made it somewhat public.

At high levels monster HP scale quickly and there are increasingly powerful other ways (than HP damage) to neutralize them. So it's no biggie if the guideline is broken with a 2nd or 3rd boon.

I appreciate the lowered prices for accessories (maps, pawns, cards etc.).

But personally I think the digital store here rather has a convenience problem than a pricing problem: Downloading multiple PDFs could be much more convenient. An outline how it could be:

1) You don't have to login again just to access your digital content.
2) There is a well-sorted gallery of your assets, fitting to the structure on the rest of paizo.com.
3) Names are shortened to the relevant part. Nobody needs 20 lines starting with "Pathfinder Adventure Path" in a row.
4) There are images of the book covers.
5) All these versions of a book (one chapter per file, lite etc.) are presented
6) You only have to click an asset once to mark it for download. If Paizo wants to stick with watermarks, they can be added silently before the user actually downloads (see 7)).
7) Once you are finished with selecting books, you click "Download selected" once. The result could be a ZIP with 0% compression, they are created pretty fast.
8) The files are named consistently and user-centric. My preference: When I buy the Advanced Player's Guide, I don't want PZOabcd.pdf, I want Advanced Player's Guide.pdf.

Sorry I wasn't entirely constructive, but the download section annoys me every time I have to deal with it.

What's wrong with using the SRD?

My personal example:

Weapon Expertise (Ex)

At 3rd level, a samurai gains an unparalleled expertise with his chosen weapons.
(...)
Finally, his samurai levels count as fighter levels and stack.

Weapon Expertise (Ex)

At 3rd level, a samurai gains an unparalleled expertise with his chosen weapons.
(...)
Finally, his samurai levels count as fighter levels and stack with any fighter levels he possesses for the purposes of meeting the prerequisites for feats that specifically select his chosen weapon, such as Weapon Specialization.

Became quite relevant when a samurai among my players had access to Critical Mastery, forcing targets to do two saves against save-or-suck instead of one.

I actually checked older versions of Ultimate Combat, but it never was the generous / sloppy version d20PFSRD uses. And according to archive.org d20PFSRD had it right back in 2014.

I will write them and see what happens.

My second example would have been reincarnate: They used a random table while implying it was the table. To be fair, by now they mention the CRB table first, then the previous table as an unofficial one.

Umm, personally I'd flip through the "Revisited" books ("Classic Horrors Revisited" to "Undead Revisited"). Any of them describes 10 races and how they can be used for the campaign. Even if a creature was already used extensively in campaigns, the books can add new facets.

Random examples:

Ghouls (Classic Horrors Revisited) sometimes create entire societies below ground.

Minotaurs (Class Monsters Revisited) build elaborate mazes and are cunning enough to lure people into them.

Troglodytes (Darklands Revisited) make unreliable allies or mercenaries.

Nabasus (Demons Revisited) can grow with the party.

Ropers (Dungeon Denizens Revisited) catch adventurers to start philosophical discussions with them. While they eat them, limb by limb.

Still playing in my first campaign since 9 years, and we made it to level 8 recently. When sessions are scheduled in a slow, erratic pace, and the GM actually prefers lowest-level play, such things happen. By now I suspect it's rather escalation of commitment that makes me stay...

When I GM, in average we play once a month. My personal favourite would be a rhythm of 3 weeks (session, recover 1 week, collect ideas 1 week, implement 1 week), but since I try to have every player in every session, that's not realistic.

But races are not all about racial traits and favored class rewards. Each of the core races comes from a vibrant culture with its own history, norms, and adventuring outlooks. To represent this, each race’s entry presents a number of new character options, such as race-specific archetypes, adventuring equipment, feats, magic items, and spells.

Race-specific archetypes, not type-specific. So by RAW duergar can't take dwarf archetypes.

Inner Sea World Guide has a few bits at page 251. For Abyssal and Celestial they have no information how they sound, though. But others are described to fit their speakers, thematically:

Aquan: Aquan is a guttural tongue with thick, throaty sounds and long syllables.

Auran: Auran is a breathy, gentle-sounding language.
Dwarven: Dwarven is a guttural, phlegmatic language consisting of hard consonants and clipped syllables.
Elven: The Elven language is complex but beautiful, sounding poetic in its cadence and tone.
Goblin: The nigh-incomprehensible yapping of goblins, the militaristic barking of hobgoblins, and the sibilant taunts of bugbears all use the same vocabulary.
Gnoll: Punctuated by high-pitched yips, deep barks, and throaty growls, this cacophonous language is difficult for non-gnolls to pick up—much less master.
Ignan: Ignan consists mostly of short words—their staccato feel on the tongue emulates the popping of fire.
Infernal: Infernal requires precise enunciation, for many of its words with unrelated meanings nonetheless bear extremely similar pronunciations.
Necril: A whispering tongue said to have ties to ancient Osiriani, Necril is the language of the dead—it is spoken primarily by ghouls and agents of the Whispering Way.
Orc: Known for the brusque delivery of its disjointed, hard-consonant syllables, Orc sounds harsh and angry.
Terran: Terran is a slow and deliberate language, the sounds of which cannot be rushed.

Since demons are short-tempered, fierce and physically strong, for Abyssal I'd focus on short words, sharp consonants and an abundance of "o" and "u" (the "evil" vowels).

Celestial IMO would rather use a singing way to speak, soft consonants and a focus on "a" and "i" (the "good" vowels).

Now three years later my buddy has gotten over it and he's very good at playing wizards, but I'm still salty about it.

With good cause. I mean, one of the three could have switched class himself. They could have diversified their characters a bit (could be as cheap as buying a bow). They could have accepted the incident as a singular one. They could have appreciated the challenge. But they opted to force someone else to play something he initially didn't want...

I guess the underlying problem is that they fear failure as soon as "not all bases are covered".

We do. And to get back to topic:

Planar Focus: Burn or freeze your enemies with a variant of animal focus.
Feign Curse: Pretend to curse someone which results in an actual (short-term) curse if they believe you. Purely skill based, hence interesting for contribution to combat beyond attack rolls and magic.
Unbreakable: More HP for fighters plus a slightly improved death HP treshold, not that exciting but gets better thanks to the bada** feat name and the realization you are closing to barbarian HP.
Gnawer: A locked door is in your path? Call the ratfolk rogue to gnaw through it! Their bite attack will ignore a solid amount of hardness.
Magical Heart: Sounds like a feat for Ponyfinder, but instead allows wyrwoods to become more tanky by getting temporary HP on each unarmed hit. Based on Arcane Strike, so you might have to tinker a bit.

So when someone is like "Play an arcane trickster. It's better" I'm like...no I wanna play a rouge. And stuff like that just kind of fuels the idea I've always had that tabletop gamers are very prone to power trips.

Well, a lot of players fear to feel helpless or to be judged negatively by their fellows. So they go for the most power they can get. No matter whether it's actually necessary for the campaign. They sacrifice the fun of a challenge for safety. And they try to convince others of their path, because it works for them.

IMO players should be free to play what they enjoy. The more they fear they can't keep up, the more this freedom implodes to a selected few "builds". I think multiple things can be done:

1) As a player, you can trust your team. Resist the urge to try to cover everything by yourself, instead let someone else handle things. They might surprise you positively.

2) As a player, you can stand to your anti-meta choice. Fellow players probably won't understand, but there is a chance that they notice you are doing well enough.

3) As a GM, you can tell outright tell your players "look, this campaign won't be that difficult". Take care to stay true to it. Players might not believe you first, but with time comes trust, and they will feel less of an urge to powerbuild. Worked wonderfully in my Crimson Throne campaign.

4) As a GM, you are in the position to suppress the behavior of players to make fun of others because their PC is "too weak". Be quick to defend the questioned PC ("they can do other stuff well", "remember how they saved this encounter?" etc.) and the behavior will diminish.

Creating a divination specialist who can contribute to combat is probably going to be extremely difficult.

Hrm, I'd try to use options beside spells here. If the diviner is a wizard, high Knowledge results are relatively easy to achieve and do contribute to party's success. Spellcraft allows to tell the party what actual nasty things the opponents are doing. The Bruising Intellect trait means Int based demoralize attempts - which are no game winners, but should contribute more than firing a crossbow.

And maybe you covered the scouting before, with your spells. Maybe See Invisibility will become necessary once in a while. And for sure you will cover the appraisal and identification of loot afterwards. So IMO it's completely ok if you lean back most rounds of combat and chomp pizza instead. Though it seems wise to speak about this at session 0.

Thassilonian Specialist from Inner Sea Magic is one step into this direction: Two schools get completely removed from your spell list, as compensation you gain a school spell slot each level you can use twice.

Are you set on wizard, anyway? You could pick just spells of your chosen school for a sorcerer, and look for a fitting bloodline.

Monsters with multiple appendages that have the grab ability can start multiple grapples in the same round.

And you can become such a monster with Beast Shape II or Plant Shape I - that are the options in the CRB appearantly. As long as you have a reliable source for according scrolls and can use them, you don't even have to be a caster.

When it comes to nerfs by FAQs, I will shamelessly quote myself:

There is a reason why Paizo did nerf options they considered overpowered: Such options are way more harmful than underpowered ones. If an option is underpowered, it will be ignored by ambitious players - hence all the other options are still relevant and the game is still interestingly diverse. But if one option is overpowered, every other option will be ignored by the same type of player - hence this part of the game becomes way more boring. See this blog entry for a slightly more elaborated description, I got it from there.

These sentences sound like demigods are no deities:

Every deity and demigod knows the power of faith to change lives, shape nations, and alter the destiny of whole worlds.

Whether one's patron is a deity, demigod, or something else doesn't affect the level of divine spellcasting a worshiper can achieve.

Somewhere between gods and mortals stand demigods: semidivine creatures with enormous power and obscure agendas.

However, the same books lists "Demigods" among "Other deities" in the table of contents, and the index puts them at the same place as Core deities. Might be for simplicity.

My personal take: If it has stats somewhere, it's no deity, hence affected by Antimagic Field. I find the spell to be a big legacy mess, but a CR 25+ creature might be able to simply kill off its user with melee attacks anyway.

I find myself reminded of Baldurs gate most traps when you spot them trigger a red "area" if your enter it you trigger the trap, if you stand next to it you can disarm it. However there was one trap in a maze that can't be disarmed and if you step on it you die. No save, no x damage you just get crushed between the ceiling and the floor.

Yeah, that crushing corridor was one of the worst sections of the game. You solved multiple encounters in the maze, got crushed all of a sudden and had to load a savegame that (potentially) threw you back to the beginning of the maze. It looked like it could be disarmed, just to crush the character in the process. I guess they wanted to drive home "this maze is deadly" and "beware of traps", but it was just horrible game design IMO.

Speaking of game design: If a player spent character options to be good at handling traps, I wouldn't undermine this with devious triggers. A dedicated trapfinder should always have a good chance to notice the trap before it triggers. If the player enjoys making up clever solutions, give them unique situations to deal with, but otherwise a roll should suffice.

If you want a trap to be smart and interesting, rather combine it with other threats.

The Ruins of Azlant adventure path features a number of underwater maps. Book 5 uses four relatively complex maps (21 minor maps altogether) with most squares underwater, and you get five big mostly water-free maps on top of that. That's probably better than a flip-mat like Flooded Dungeon.

Personally I'd simply fill these maps with thematic encounters: Undead cyclopses, gory traps (reflavored Symbol of X might go a long way) and haunts. Ancient cyclopses aren't known for using outsiders, constructs or other mortals as minions, but maybe the adventure contains further parties: Immortal creatures that want to keep intruders out of this fool place, rivaling adventurers who want the treasures for themselves or an infamous lich who came out of its hideout to explore arcane secrets. The boss should probably showcase the strange insights cyclopses get.

Don't forget to give players reasons to go for this city. Loot is good, but maybe there is a direct connection to at least one player character, like being plagued by nightmares of this place, or the chance to understand their source of magic.

I was going to make it a feat, one that a Rogue would get as a bonus feat, and let anyone else who wanted to do 2 and 3 to pick up the feat. However, I'm unsure if those are even worth a feat.

IMO it would be stronger than Close Call (reroll Disable Device 1/d), Sabotage Specialist (delayed breakdown of manipulated device) and Ranged Disable (Disable Device at firing range, but only simple device, with -4 penalty and rather steep requirements). So it seems to be a solid feat. It's tempting to think feats should be game changers, but usually they aren't.

Trapfinding's value depends on the campaign, naturally. A classic dungeon-heavy campaign makes it relatively attractive, while a focus on intrigue or military reduces its use. IMO that's the main reason it's possible to trade it away.

My players breeze through the first book of Crimson Throne, one level per session (of 5, 6 hours). Despite the speed, they had a few close calls. We agreed on "kid gloves" for the first levels: If you are killed in battle, you are back to 1 HP afterwards - allows us to focus more on the story. Surprisingly, it didn't apply yet. Also, they somehow manage to find time to roleplay and rescue animals.

It's fun, but I already feel the itch to make up something on my own. The second book offers a chance for a crossover between Crimson Throne and my previous homebrew campaign, and I will gladly take it...

Necro'd, but can't access the guide any more.

Found it to be online today: Bodhizen's Guide to the Optimal Inquisitor

Lately, my local GM enjoyed dragging us into aquatic adventures. And frankly, I hated all these restrictions that come with operating in water (optional rant in spoiler tags):

So I thought about environments that actually give new, interesting options to the players. Like subjective gravity to move more freely, a network of short-range teleportation circles or the ability to throw big chunks of terrain around. The opponents would have the same options.

Does anyone have further ideas?

Plus, you choose how much of your purchase supports ComicBooks For Kids! and ComicBooks For Troops!

Thanks for pointing out this option. I don't see the Troops cause in the selection, though. Does the Comic Books for Kids charity automatically hand over some money to its sibling cause?

Humble Bundle taking 40% by default and 30% as minimum (that's appareantly a recent change) is quite steep. I mean, Kickstarter wants something like 5% to 10%, even Steam (with all its technical support for game devs) requires only 30% from devs.

Either way, I will buy this one also. A pseudo-African setting is hard to relate to for me, but let's give it a chance. Looking forward to the one-shots and flip-mats for sure...

At some point a GM has to try their own content. Unless they permanently want to stick with unmodified foreign content - which has its own issues.

You can dodge some issues with reading advice, learning from foreign content and considering things carefully. But at the end you will make mistakes. Which is fine as long as you communicate with the affected players and learn from it.

I'd rather avoid having conflicts in groups, but if there's no other way i'd give someone the kick for th good of the group.

You might have to.

To summarize: He tried to dominate two situations with drama respective threat of violence, instead of reason. He doesn't get what's the issue, so he might do it again, not necessarily on purpose. The other players don't want him around - that could be toxic group behavior or healthy instinct, judge yourself.

If it's what I suspect, you won't see any improvement, only quickly created pretexts (which he actually believes), empty promises and periods of peace just to be interrupted by sudden toxic behavior. The hobby has a relatively high amount of such people and they profit from the rather inclusive community. Maybe I am biased by my own experience (4 frustrating years with such a player), but the pointers are there.

Dungeons of Golarion has roughly a page on him (basically the wiki entry with more details), but no stat-block. The book leaves it to the GM whether Karamoss is still alive - respective still existant, since he is partially machine now. His labyrinth (final area) is supposed to be CR 13, so that's the supposed power level for him, I guess.

The other three books cited by the wiki don't mention anything new about the mage. You can search the web for "red redoubt of karamoss" to find an image of his dungeon, if that's relevant.

Building him, hrm... My design goals would be:

1) distinct from the average mage
2) visibly connected to the robot theme
3) a fitting challenge for his CR (it's easy for full casters to vastly underperform or overperform, IMO)

Beyond that, his personality should be noticable, even if just in verbal outbursts. Fleshlings daring to challenge him, the future of life, in his own lair? Oh, he will tell them that he will rip out their faulty biological parts and replace them, and that they will be thankful!

In general Pathfinder rewards "act first, kill fast": An opponent might have several nasty abilities to hurt you, but if you don't really allow it to use them, your defenses will barely be tested.

However, sometimes this doesn't work out and you are seriously damaged. Some arguments in favor of combat healing:

1) Not every PC enjoys full HD. Getting only half the dice (or similar) means healing becomes urgent earlier.

2) Combat healing doesn't need to cover all damage. If it's half as strong as the incoming damage, the frontliner lasts twice as long - which might already make the difference.

3) While a healing PC could instead take an offensive action, they are not necessarily good at it. Being good at melee / ranged / offensive spells doesn't come for free. The price (ability scores, feats, equipment etc.) probably wasn't paid, so they accomplish little (mostly an ego boost to the martial player who can feel superior). Or the price was paid, but this comes at the expense of the things the player actually wants to do.

Evil cleric is supposed to play out in a different way than a good one. Either way: You can still prepare cure spells. There is infernal healing which is sometimes superior to cure light wounds, and its evil descriptor means little to an evil cleric. And finally, an evil cleric's allies might prefer negative energy anyway - this mainly applies to undead minions, but also to the odd dhampir.

Arguably, an evil cleric could also be less generous with healing anyway. Their companions might have to listen to "you deserved your wounds" or "my deity doesn't tolerate fools". As a player, make sure you are on the same page as your fellow players before pulling that.

Can a Half-Elf Sorcerer be better than a Wizard?

Totally. If the former is more fun for you (and doesn't impair the others' fun), it's better. The power level is only relevant since it's one of several things that affect your fun. In a nonlinear fashion, but that's a topic on its own.

Ok. I will show myself out. ;)

Hrm, personally I'd like some screenshots right on your website, even if it's just mockups. Don't gate too much behind Patreon posts - not everyone has an account (the page asks me to log in), and without proper bait there is little incentive to create one.

Since the amount of character options is huge, it might help to focus on the Core Rulebook for the beginning. It gives you an intermediate goal to pursue, and it's the book that people care for most, in average.

Either way, it sounds like a promising project! :)

What about nothing? If you worry about balance between Str and Dex based rogues, you could also weaken or completely remove finesse training. Core rogue offered both paths (just encouraging Dex a bit with Weapon Finesse via talent), it's Unchained rogue which tries to push players into the Dex path. Few players manage to ignore a freebie like finesse training, rather they think they'd miss out on something if they don't use it.

Ok, to get back to the proposed alternate class:

1) There is a lot of incentive to take a single level: You first get the usual rogue dip benefits (class skills, skill ranks, +2 Reflex, sneak attack, trapfinding; Weapon Finesse for Unchained). On top of that you gain Dex to damage (which is usually level 3 / gated behind Weapon Focus), a +1 to all skills (which is far beyond a feat or racial ability), potentially two further class skills and your trapfinding bonuses get doubled.

2) If a rogue can max out 8+Int skills already, there is limited benefit in adding 2 to 6 further skills which are automatically maxed out (Rogue's Edge). I see a lot of people dumping Int due to this, and such a pattern is opposed to the ideal of having a lot of different builds (and hence charcters) for the same class.

3) I don't see whether you abandon the rogue talents you didn't mention. The description of Wild Magic sounds like Major Magic is still possible, but the sentence at rogue talents implies that only the explicitely listed options are available.

A few times per year there is a 10% discount. More rarely, you can save 25%. Finally, there is the occasional Humble Bundle which contains a single but complete AP.

That's still a lot of money for 144 books (not including mapfolios etc.). You can save more by being picky - IMO not every AP is worth reading, and the modules' quality can be quite different oo.