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Hello! I'm not interested in trying to make an argument about whether content that has been given errata is in error, so please help by keeping this thread from exploding into debate on that subject.

I have numerous questions and concerns about original content, and tracking them down on sources such as the PFSRD is very difficult. Is there any location in which I can not just find what text was 'changed to' but find the original information it was changed from, in it's entirety?

Hello all, been away from any kind of civilization and normal life for quite a long time. But I'm finally back, ish, and looking to take up playing the game again. That said, I'm particularly rusty, and despite some lovely guides, I could use some advice on how to make a certain themed character.

Ideally, I would be going for something along the lines of a valkyrie, very martial, perhaps with a SLIGHT touch of magical support, and builds a lot based around a fly speed.

As I see it, this requires a fly speed that can't be dispelled, and is pretty much always on, rather than x/day. The only good options I know of, are Aasimar alternate features, or the feat chain for aasimars that grants it at level 10. However, this is locked at 20ft and poor maneuverability, considering this will be a martial, and almost certainly in heavy armor.

That said, I'm hoping to find a way to improve that, or other options for a natural flying ability for such a character.

Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure how to build the character itself. With the advantages of flight, it seems like it'd be begging for a reach weapon (On that note, are there any options other than polearm master fighter for hitting adjacent people?) or the airborne charge/flyby attack route.

Specifically, is a fly speed largely the same as a land speed in terms of rules? (Double move, charging, etc)

So far, depending on the combat style, and what options are available, I could see fighter filling in the many feats required, or possibly ranger of some kind, or vigilante. That said, I'm horribly out of practice, and would like to know how some of you would tackle a situation like this.

Hello everyone. After a really hectic time in my life, the dust is finally settling and I'm going to be trying to get back into the swing of gaming in my area. But a recent idea someone gave me had me wanting to try and make a synthesist along the lines of a tentacled, sea-dwelling horror.

However, seeing as I'm both rusty, and not the best with synthesists, this has lead to several questions:

1. Gaining extra tentacle attacks. Can the summoner take the multiattack feat, given that it would only apply when in eidolon fusion?

2. Identical natural weapons: If you take a special ability such as grab for a tentacle, it applies to only 1 of x tentacles you may possess, not automatically applying to every tentacle attack, yes? (Or say, improved bite on an eidolon with two heads?) I.E., Four tentacles, one bite. I would need to take grab four times for tentacles, or grab twice and pull twice, to get a special ability on each tentacle, or does taking grab (Tentacle) apply to all four of the weapons?

3. Multiple such special attacks: Lets say that the beast has 3 tentacles, grab, and pull. Both grab and pull say that they occur as a free action when attacking. Does that mean that the synthesist can theoretically grapple/pull two opponents, when hitting them in a full round attack? Or does it apply to only one attempt at a 'free' maneuver per turn?

3B. Speaking of which, let's say that for some reason,I have an attack with grab, and pull on it. Does it get to make both checks? (As silly as that would seem, just trying to understand the rules of it) and only have one succeed? Or does a certain attacking limb only get one 'free' special attack?

4. Is there a particular reason why tentacled eidolons of a certain size can't constrict? Or should tentacles just get by on grapple damage?

First off, sorry if this isn't the right section, I was baffled as to where this would fit in.

I was inspired by some earlier projects I had seen, but couldn't remember clearly after having vast amounts of frustration with repetitive map drawing, and limited battle-mat space. So, my basic idea, was as follows:

The Problem: I have no experience whatsoever in any form of carpentry, or knowledge of the tools and materials I should use for this. So I was hoping someone with a little more experience than I could share some tips on the quickest, easiest, and most simple ways to get an electronic battle-mat like this running.

After having a number of various feats and houserules and third party supplements, myself, the other DM in our group, and our on-again, off-again necromancer realize that the marvellous Animate Dead fails to satisfy unless we're collecting a menagerie of giants. And the flavorful, interesting Create Undead line lacks any meaningful methods to control the undead you create, unless you like relying on temporary, unreliable means.

The bottom line is, I'm looking for ways of getting permanent humanoid minions similar to through Animate Dead, not just having to forgo the town guard and heroes in their grave, and go hunting hydras and cyclops to reanimate.

My group has discussed things such as paying increased gold cost to animate certain varieties as per Create Undead, or ways to animate dead with increased hit dice, so on, and so forth.

What sort of methods have people used, or worked up before to have a more reasonable set of minions?

The Idea
Rule of Cool, except making it work mechanically.

Rambling
In an ongoing game I'm in, our DM has a tendency to throw very large, very capable enemies at our party. Standard fair, Minotaur barbarian by third level, large category black dragon with minions by fifth, 12th level PC classed, PC equipped and specced gunslinger by seventh.

After some rather disturbing realization of character mortality in my game, I began looking for a new build when my floating caster eventually gets taken out. We have an oracle buffer with some minor battlefield control, and a LOT of melee muscle in the form of a vanilla monk, and a sword saint/shield focused fighter to lay on some defence and hurt on things. We also posses a vanilla bow ranger laying on some ranged attacks and group bonuses.

I looked at a lot of different ideas, but another ranged character just isn't appealing to me, whether magic or weapon based. So I thought why not try something odd?

cutting to the chase
Melee debuffer.
Monk, with weapon adept and drunken master archetypes. As for what's allowed, anything pathfinder is A-OK, but too much cheesing is punished severely.

I don't have a specific build for this, it's a very new idea for me, with very little set in stone.

Our group uses a 4d6 standard roll for ability scores, and I was thinking of going for a human katana user, specializing in dirty trick and disarm as time goes on. The lack of flurry will hurt, but in blinding enemies, disarming them and letting them pick them up or fumble blindly, AoO's should help balance that out some.

Additionally, while reading through the wording on drunken strength, it's worded on the SRD as a melee attack, not an unarmed strike or monk weapon, so I could quite literally use it with any melee weapon as I read it, is this the case?

Other ideas I had were using the equipment trick with the scabbard as a ranged weapon, the occasional stunning fist, and possibly snake style. Or possibly the feint chain as opposed to one of the other maneuver?

The idea here is in terms of mechanics, to be a character that while isn't as severely a threat as the other frontline fighters, is dangerous when underestimated, or when fighting in conjuction with them.

As our DM is a sucker for roleplay, it's quite literally a washed up old swordsman, who's 'stunning fists' are represented in foul breath, fights in a dirty and honorless manner, and a surprising amount of skill at exploiting an enemy's vulnerabilities. Ideally someone to continually cripple enemies and garner their attention from other squishy people, and back it up with some emergency defence should crippling them fail.

Finally, would there be any way to make this sort of character viable at different age categories? I've been a sucker for older characters, but I can never find a good way to make a melee one work.

From the PDF

Precision (Ex): Whenever you make a full attack, the

penalty on additional attack rolls is reduced by 5. This
ability can’t reduce the penalty on additional attacks to less
than 0. For example, a 12th-level fighter, whose total attack
bonus was +16/+11/+6 when making a full attack would use
+16/+16/+11 with this ability. You must be at least 3rd tier
before selecting this ability. This ability can be selected
more than once. Each time it is selected, the penalty on
additional attacks is reduced by an additional –5.

Does this apply to other forms of 'full attack' actions the character can take advantage of, like flurry of blows, or two weapon fighting?

I picked the issue back up, and flipped through it reading idly, until I came accross the seraphic Cohort, a fighter archetype that gives up all fighter bonus feats, in exchange for an eidolon, as if he were an equal summoner level. There's a little more fine print (Such as, you have to build towards the angel base form. D: ) but otherwise, seems pretty awesome. But not having as much experience as I'd like with martial characters, or summoners, is it too awesome? You're getting the full power eidolon as a summoner were, and most of the class features of the fighter, just not the rbead and butter of the class. I'd definitely like to try this for a change of pace, but I understand a lot of the ahte summoners catch.

In a recent campaign, I've been told by the DM that such things as becoming a lich are a doable possibility. This is rgeat, given my plan to be a venerable Wizard/EK. Living up to one of my older characters who once managed the in-character line
The problem: We have an inquisitor of Phazzy in the group who my character considers a good friend, if deluded.

The easy solution? We HIDE IT. Gentle repose, illusions, etcetera, etcetera, but what else can I use to shield myself? The main problem I can consider is the possibility of "discern lies" as well as true seeing.

As for "Detect undead" Well, I can just wear lead lined robes. I'm dead, after all, no lead poisoning.

When you are good, really good at coming up with lots of different designs, character concepts, and putting them down in paper, ready to play, how do you cope with too many of these options? Just recently, a friend said he was making a new cmapaign based on FR/Pathfinder. I reached into my folder, and started drawing character sheets to hand to him. (Sacred mountain monk vow of chains, necromancer/EK, paladin widower, lumberjack, burglar, musketeer, etc.)

I have way too many good ideas, and not enough campaigns. I ask people what they'd rather play with, and/or what the party needs, and with our group, that's never really an issue. I'm just wondering if anyone else has a similar load of characters they ahrdly ever get to use, and how they deal.

If anyone here rememebrs the old dungeon PrCs, there's one old one that was a favorite of mine where the capstone for that PrC (Designed for arcane casters, the Eldritch Master) Allowed him to be 'aware' of whenever anyone spoke his name (In reference to him, of course.) Not aware enough to teleport there, but more than enough to say, Scry the event, and then have enough to teleport there, if they so choose.

This is something I'd greatly like to see back in the game, and while I COULD convert the (admittedly, somewhat limited) PrC to pathfinder, I was hoping that there would be a way to feat it in. That said, what would some reasonable pre-req's be? My personal beleifs are again, focused on arcane (Or paticularly studious divine) casters, and probably shouldn't be accessed before level 10, at the earliest.

Another windy explanation cut short, a DM in our group is planning on running a game where some of the characters are allowed (See: Encouraged) to play unusual type characters, within a CL limit. This includes things like normally nonplayable creatures, awakened animals, even a stunted/super young dragon.

That said, I'm planning on going for a quadrapedal type if I can. I'm familiar with the armor rules, but that's really about it. Without going into third party material, what sort of things work, or don't work well for a quadrapedal character that will be taking class levels?

I'm a bit unsure if there's a specific format to this, but I ordered a product that I'm very enthusiastic about. And now it's been around a month since the ship date. Is there anything that I can do? Or can it take a bit longer than this to arrive at some destinations?

Note: Spoiler's don't bother me too much, but I'd prefer to avoid them.

Strangely, our party does fairly well at avoiding conflict with people of ANY alignment in it. I cannot conceive of how, but party conflict has only been a problem twice. (And both times, the players were cool with the character's actions.)

That said, after a failed attempt, one of our members is going to want to take up carrion crown. That said, (Again) we're working on asembling a team, and backstories. But I find myself divided. On one hand, I get a chance to step away from my favorite form of wizard, experimenting with a paladin to get more martial type experience under my belt. A standard PF Paladin, not a lot else to say, will probably be a sword and board, or a double weapon user. I'm familiar with how wicked paladins are, but not the specifics of the campaign.

On the other hand, we have my favorite type of wizard, something I know fairly well by the pathfinder rules, but on the plus side, my DM has told me that a lot of 3.X content is okay too, including some third party spells that I am a HUGE fan of. (Flavor more than mechanics, etcetera.) And lawful evil goes a long way to being a good party manager. It's not entirely certain yet, but the eventual goal will most likely be lichdom, or just maybe a few levels of Arch Mage (From 3.5 DMG) Thrown in.

That said, I'm trly divided, with great backstories for either, and just wondering from those who have played through it, what they would consider.

And if it helps at all, our party is ALWAYS the type to make up their minds at the last minute. We have one guy that like making a very DPR focused fighter with oodles of hitpoints, but he could also go martial cleric fairly easily. The other one is almost always some form of ranger, or gish. The others, there's no way to predict what they'll try.

I'm really not sure if this goes here, or in advice. But I do need some help considering whether or not to impliment this variant rule introduced in Unearthed Arcana.

More or less, what it sumns up to, is hey. You don't have a limited number of spells per day. Any spellcaster has a certain number of rounds they have to wait before casting any spell again, but no upward limit. The balance between spontaneous and prepared casters is that spontaneous ones have a lot less to wait before re-casting. And the wait time is calculated based on how high the spell you cast is, compared to the highest level spell that you CAN cast at that level.

Basically, almost half of our party wants it, and the others are neutral. But I really need to know what this does for balance. It theoretically makes a spellcaster immensely more powerful, but much less of a rapid-fire beast. I can't decide if this is a good thing, or a bad thing. Obviously, this will change PC and spellcaster tactics to try to draw things out longer, allowing them to cast more.

I personally like the idea, as it circumvents the "I cast a spelllll, FIREBALL. Wait, what was that thingie I just did?" Issue, but I need to know if there are any big unbalancing factors I need to know about.

Once again, here I am looking for advice. My party wanted to engage in a high power campaign (Not neccisarily epic level) and I foolishly agreed to DM it. Right now, I've got 3 PCs looking to swindle their way into power sooner, at great eprsonal cost. (Which was one of the ways for them to get there, legitimately.) But besides ownership of the soul once the person dies, are there any other good ratifications of making trades with evil powers? What if someone isn't neccisarily interested in the soul? (There are other forces, evil witches, high wizards, strange outer beings) Who all have the potential to boon the PC's, but I'm running into the same two basic problems.

A: What does the PC give up, that has an effect not just story wise, but also in the game playing? That is to say, how does what they trade away affect them, in and out of character?

B: What sorts of boons do they get out of this, which, while going beyond the normal things granted to PCs, shouldn't be ridiculously gamebreaking. (Any moreso than just starting to reach the epic levels.)I'm trying to go beyond simple stat boosts or limited spell like abilities.

Foreword: This is just an idea I had as a result of some in-character arguments. I was hoping to see what others thought about the situation. I admit that I'm pretty polarized in one direction, but that's part of why I'm asking around. Also, I'm not even THINKING about the witch class, or bard in this post, as I've never been given a good explanation as to how an arcane caster like the bard can cast cure light. Or how the witch's patron derived spells are arcane.

Time and time again, game balance aside, people have told me about arcane spells and hit point damage is that that's one barrier that's only granted by the gods. And arcane magic simply can't make it happen. I think about this from an in-and-out-of-character perspective, and that lends me to these thoughts:

Game Balance: Seems to me the trick to balancing it is to make it simply less effective, or more dangerous than giving them healing on par with the "divine casters."

Idea 1: Healing is less effecient: Smaller heal die (D3's, D4's, etc.) spells come later on, requiring pricey material components?

Idea 2: Healing is more dangerous: Healing harms the caster. For any one of several reasons, be it backlash from tampering with life energy, or simply the fact that you're fortifying their health with your own. (A necromancer favorite!)

Story wise: As for this explanation, people say that healing magic is divine, a gift from the gods, that arcane magic simply cannot emulate it. Well, that's nice. Fire was once the gift of the gods, according to legend, but ooh, look, fireball. Soaring through the sky without wings to carry them? Check. Life after death? Check, sort of. Reshaping the world to their whims? Double check.

So while I think it should be CAPABLE of being done, I'm unsure how, but again, this is fishing for opinions and suggestions, so please, let loose.

Not for me, but a player in my game came to lament to me about a character idea. Long story short, he has a highly moving backstory, and a very well thought out character that makes the RP'er in me feel all warm and fuzzy. But the gamer in me screams in fear and rage. The reason? Fallen paladin. My player is similarly divided. While he believes he has a great idea for bringing a fallen paladin into the existing campaign (after his old character met an unfortunate end a few sessions ago.) He wonders what to do with a good few paladin levels that have had almost everything trimmed form them. Has anyone managed to play an 'effective' character with levels in fallen paladin?

Note: Just to make sure this is totally clear, this is not a blackguard, or anti paladin, or anything of the sort. this is a paladin that screwed up, and lost their class features.

So, an explanation first. I'm in military tech training, with my iPhone my only connection to the outside. I come from a haphazard improv group that did 3.5/pathfinder, And now I've got nothing. Excluding weekends, I can maybe make 1-2 posts a day. Is pbp gaming really an option for me to get my RP fix? Also, there isn't a convenient thread explaining the differences/things I need to know to try pbp is there? Thanks in advance.

Just as a recent thread asked for tips on a specific character with high wisdom, I found myself wondering on some concepts of an extraordinarily bright NPC who's currently travelling with my party to keep them out of trouble. Focused in one thing, and one thing only (A 20 intelligence universalist wizard) He's exceedingly brilliant, but at the same time, most of the archetypes of the "brainy" magi type characters we see are always withdrawn, or obsessive with their narrow interests. He's actually got a suprisingly decent wisdom and charisma as well, and thus I'm trying to think of some way of showing that intelligence in roleplay without just being extremely withdrawn, dark, or only coming forward about obscure tidbits of knowledge that most of the party wouldn't understand anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I respect that type of character, but there's got to be more than one shade of a brilliant mind.

Sorry if this isn't the correct place, this is my first post. I'm a (Very) rookiee GM, and I've fallen in love with the apthfinder system. The only reason I GM at all is because none of the party is willing to. So I've gotten a good campaign module started, but while the party is easily a powerful, all-star combination, here's my problem. We have a Paladin, LG that venerates Cayden Callien, a CN Bard that doesn't want any trouble from anyone, he's in it to learn more, and make some money on the side. And recently, the party has been more or less brow-beat into accepting the company of a LN inquisitor who venerates Asmodeus.

Now so far, things are off to a rocky, but not violent start, as the inquisitor and the paladin are having heated philisophical debates, but, thankfully, They're both flexible enough in their viewpoints not to draw weapons on eachother. Yet. However, things are always tense in the party, and I'm wondering. Is there any way aside from pulling the "I am GM, and you will fear and obey." Card, or forcing the party into such harsh situations that they have to put aside what they believe in to survive? I love a degree of party 'conflict,' but I don't want the party coming to blows over it, I just want a driving story.

Thanks in advance for your help.