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Create Building
Sor/Wiz 7, Clr/Or 7, Bard 6
School: Conjuration [creation]
Casting Time: 1 minute per square foot (see text)
Target: Close (see text)

You magically conjure a building into existence, one brick, board, and nail at a time, by meditating and focusing on the intended structure. In order to cast this spell, you must be in a relatively flat, clear area-- the building radiates outaward from you during the casting of the spell and the finished building will stand in the spot you are in during the casting-- you are always in the center of the building upon completion of the spell. A stone foundation is summoned as a part of the spell. If you intend for the building to have a basement, the spell can create hewn stone walls for the basement but the are the basement is to occupy must be dug out first.

The building is constructed of nonmagical brick, wood, glass, and metal. Once the spell is complete, the building is completely mundane and cannot be dispelled. The caster may include details such as wall sconces, decorative crown molding, or other simple fixtures, but no moving parts more complex than a door hinge or simple window pane. Any doors created do not have locks, but may have latches or bars.

There is no limit to the size of the building this spell can create, except that the building must be created all in one casting. If the building is to have multiple floors, the total area of all floors determines the spell's total casting time. (For example a three-story building with a 60-sq ft foundation would require a casting time of 180 minutes.) If the casting time exceeds four hours, the caster must make a concentration check each hour after the fourth, with a cumulative -2 penalty on the check.

As part of the casting of this spell, the caster must also make a Knowledge (engineering) check. The DC is 15 for the first 50 square feet, and increases by 1 for each additional 20 square feet, plus an additional 1 for each extra detail the caster wishes to include beyond "door" or "window". The caster may gain a +4 bonus on this check if he spends 1d4 hours before the spell's casting sketching out the blueprint of the building; any number of people may aid him on his check during this time. If the caster fails his check by 10 or more, the building collapses 2d4 rounds after the spell is complete. Failure by less than 10 means the building is safe to occupy but is flawed in some other way-- perhaps the door frames are out of square and the doors don't close properly, or perhaps the windows are on the wrong walls (or missing entirely) or the walls may alternate between wood and stone in odd places. The details are determined by the GM. A skilled laborer may be able to repair the building with a Craft (carpentry) check.

Sinister Strength
School: Necromancy
Duration: 1 minute per level
Clr/Or 3, Sor/Wiz 3, Antipal 1, Bldrg 2, Inq 3
Target: One creature touched.

This spell infuses a target with negative energy. The creature gains a +4 profane bonus to Strength, but takes 1d4 negative energy damage each turn for the duration of the spell. The caster may choose to end the effect at any time as a free action.

(A fairly risky Strength buff that stacks with Bull's Strength and Enlarge Person for when the Barbarian REALLY needs every bonus he can get... as well as a way for a necromancer to turn his undead minion into a miniboss.)

Firebrand Fists
School: Evocation [fire]
Duration: 10 minutes/level
Target: you
Clr/Or 1, Drd 1, Brd 1, Inq 1, Sor/Wiz 1

Glowing orange runes appear across your knuckles. For the duration of the spell, your fists are treated as if you were wielding +1 flaming burst brass knuckles and are proficient in their use. Additionally, you are treated as having the Two-Weapon Fighting feat for the duration of the spell. If you land a critical hit with one of these attacks, you may cast arcane mark on the target of the attack as a free action, even if you do not know the spell or have it prepared.

(The idea is that a low-level wizard can use this as a way of conserving his spell slots and still contribute in a fight beyond "acid splash for 1d3". The 3/4 BAB classes may keep this one handy even after they've moved beyond fighting goblins and rats, just in case.)

The mental image of someone looking for the sun on a clear day and failing to find it is just too funny to pass up.

Why has nobody done this yet?

Dwarven Battlestein
Exotic Light Weapon
Cost: 35gp
Dmg(s): 1d3 (see text)
Dmg(m): 1d4 (see text)
Critical: x2
Range: -
Weight: 3lbs.
Type: B
Special: see text

Typically crafted from hewn stone or wrought iron and etched with traditional dwarven drinking songs, the handle of this ale stein is inlaid with leather and shaped to sit tightly against a drinker's fist, making it suitable as a close-combat weapon as well as a vessel for drinking out of.

You get a +2 bonus on Bluff checks to convince someone that the stein is not a weapon. The stein can hold up to one alcoholic drink or one potion without spilling, and the latched lid can be opened or closed with the thumb of the hand wielding it as a free action. (Drinking the contents takes the normal amount of time.) If the stein is full, it deals damage as though it were one size category larger. If you have the Catch Off-Guard feat, you may treat the battlestein as both an improvised and a manufactured weapon.

Dwarves treat the battlestein as a martial weapon, and get a +2 on Sense Motive checks to recognize the difference between it and a normal stein.

Feedback?

30. Mercantile Savvy: For all the disparaging talk about their people skills, adventurers are experts at dealing with merchants, caravaneers, couriers, and the independently wealthy. An adventurer treats every settlement as though it were one size category larger for the purposes of whether magic items are available for sale in that settlement. In addition, she adds her adventurer level to Survival checks made to navigate to a settlement for the purpose of buying or selling merchandise, to Appraise and Sense Motive checks made during bargaining, and to any Bluff, Diplomacy, Sense Motive, and Knowledge checks made to convince someone to employ her or offer her work.

31. Adventurer's Rule:Rule #14: I can have that special ordered. Starting at 7th level, an adventurer who knows Rule #14 can name any item of value not more than 50% of her recommended WBL and announce her intention to purchase it. That item becomes available for purchase in the settlement she is currently in after 2d10 days. She must still pay the full value of the item, and must remain in the settlement until the item arrives or is custom-made. Alternatively, the adventurer can spend 2d4 days traveling in order to meet a courier on the road. Any Survival checks made while traveling in this way benefit from her Mercantile Savvy bonus. Either way, if she does not purchase the item upon arrival, it is immediately lost and the adventurer may not use this ability again for 30 days or until she has gained a level in adventurer.

Give him the Thug archetype, and have him max out Intimidate. Bludgeoner feat, high STR, and a greatclub or dire flail.

Then give him the ki pool and invisible blade ninja tricks. Max ranks in Stealth helps, as does a Cape of the Mountebank.

The PCs are infiltrating his lair, finding the various traps, henchmen, and what-have-you, when suddenly one of them takes 1d10+10d6+whatever damage... and is frightened for X rounds. Nobody sees what caused this.

The party wizard attempts a Spellcraft or Know(arcana) check? Fail. The cleric channels positive energy to defeat the "haunt"? Fail. Trap sense? Nope. Will saves through the roof? Nope. Next thing you know, the party is either retreated back to the tavern (giving the BBEG time to reset the traps) or is scattered to the four winds throughout the hideout and doesn't know what they're fighting (giving the BBEG's henchmen the opportunity to gang up on each PC separately).

I'd probably set up the BBEG himself like he's half crime-boss, half Scooby Doo villain, having convinced half the city that he's actually some kind of undead creature or that his hideout is haunted. Bonus points if the party comes in assuming he's a vampire or lich and try to channel positive energy at him.

Personally, I also like the idea of an oracle lich. Oracles get their power straight from the gods without necessarily understanding their plan, so an oracle might not choose to pursue lichdom, but have it thrusted upon him for reasons he doesn't understand. Such a lich might not even know what his phylactery is! Perhaps he sees it in his visions, and has been questing for it without precisely knowing why or how to find it.

Lovecraft is rolling in his grave.

Lovecraft was rolling in his grave since the day he was born.

"I've slept in the corpses of water buffalo tougher'n you!"

"If the gods wanted you to leave here alive, they wouldn't have created ME!"

This is actually pretty tough-- all the good ones I can think of are references to things I don't think exist in Golarion.

158). A traveling candlemaker has set up his merchant's wagon in the market square. He says his candles are the highest quality, made from the freshest beeswax. Nobody doubts this, because his wagon is surrounded by a cloud of hornets at all times. In the three weeks he's been here, two beggars and four dogs have been killed by bee stings, but this is a strictly-run Abadarian city and by the law, the candlemaker can't be held accountable, nor can he be ejected from the city since his market square permit was reserved and paid for months in advance. Now, concerned citizens are asking to PCs to find a solution that gets the candlemaker (or at least his hornet-filled wagon) out of the city in a way that doesn't cause the candlemaker to seek legal reparations.

142. A strange library

If we're talking about MAJOR changes, my big one would be to condense the game down to 10 levels instead of 20.

Let's be honest, how many groups actually play a campaign out to all 20 levels? Even PFS only goes to 12, as a consent that 20 is too many.

And it seems like most PF arguments I see are caused, at their root, by the fact that high-level and low-level play are essentially two different games. Which would be fine if they actually WERE two different games, but people who like the first game have to inevitably watch it slowly metamorphose into the second game, while people who prefer the second game have to slog through the first game to get there.

So, make it a 10-level game instead. A 1st-level character in this paradigm would be about as powerful as a 3rd or 4th level character is now, while a 10th-level character would be as powerful as a15th-level character is now.

Spells would get condensed into four or five levels. 1st-level spells can either get rebalanced or dropped altogether (srsly, every class's 1st-level spells, half of them look like something I'd pay a clown to do at a birthday party). 7th, 8th, and 9th-leve spells can mostly be cut, or repackaged into "epic events" that can happen when the plot says so (9th-level casters are long overdue for their date with the nerf bat anyway).

Feat chains will have to be condensed as well, to allow for the fact that characters will get fewer feats over the course of their lifespans.

Prestige classes can either become base classes in their own right, or be dropped. Their more flavorful abilities can perhaps become feats, talents/powers/discoveries, or spells, so as to remain options for that style of play.

This is in many ways building a new RPG from the ground up rather than "changing Pathfinder", but it would solve a lot of the issues of Pathfinder.

If we're making minor changes:

1. Attacks of Opportunity hit flat-footed AC. The whole idea behind them is that you're finding an opening in your target's defenses, right? This also helps out rogues and ninjas, especially if they take Combat Reflexes.

2. Attempting a combat maneuver doesn't provoke an AoO. FAILING the attempt does. Feats can negate that provocation. Speaking of...

3. Completely gut and rebuild the Combat Expertise line of feats, and also all the "Improved Combat Maneuver" feats (even the ones that don't use CE as a prereq). Make them more interesting beyond flat bonuses and "you are no longer punished for attempting this tactic."

4. Weapons no longer have critical multipliers, they now have critical damage dice. A rapier, for example, might be "18-20/+2d4" while a wakizashi is "18-20/+1d8" and a scythe is "20/+2d12". This would allow different weapons to have more visibly different stats and thus make more room for new weapons to be released in previous books. It would also mean your Strength bonus et al. aren't multiplied on a crit anymore, which would make crits much less of a novablast and make the crit range of a weapon less important than it currently is.

5. Give the core (and ARG) races racial hit dice. So at character creation, a human character gets an extra 2d6 HP, while an elf gets 2d4, a dwarf gets 3d6, and a gnome gets 2d8 or whatever. An extra HP buffer at 1st level would really help make me feel like I've got a decent shot at making it to 2nd level, and actually getting to, y'know, PLAY the character I dreamed up, planned out, and built.

He was very anti-semitic until he made Jewish friends, unless my memory fails me.

To be fair to Lovecraft, most everyone was grossly racist [and sexist] back then.

And I suggest a Wisdom of 2 or 4. And anything else that gives poor will saves. In Lovecraft scary shadows send you permanently mad.

I've actually heard that even by the standards of his day he was off-puttingly xenophobic and Anglophilic. This is more reason that I'm proposing a build of "archetypical Lovecraft protagonist" more so than "Howard Phillip Lovecraft". Although some good-natured Brevic jingoism might be in the spirit of things as well.

I'd like to believe that all my favorite artists and writers didn't also do terrible things... but I'd also like to believe personality flaws are not a barrier to artistic talent and that a man's achievements can be celebrated independently of his failings.

My GM told me to use the "elite array" [15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10] for stats, so I can't really "dump" Wisdom. It will definitely be his lowest stat, though. If anybody knows of any feats or bard spells that lower your Will save for some benefit (or anything else that might do so), I'm all ears.

Prestidigitation seems to be the epitome of what low-level magicians and tricksters would use magic for-- basically a lot of flash but no substance. Low-level priests, meanwhile, are performing "minor miracles", like creating water where there is none.

Arcane magic is all about "magic as a tool invented by mages", compared to divine magic, which is about "the will of a higher power made form". As a result, divine spells get the job done efficiently and abruptly, while arcane spells are more about exploring just what a spell can do.

How about punishing somebody by making it known to all other citizens that crimes committed against this person, and ONLY this person, are legal?

At this point, the exact nature of the punishment depends on how loyal his loved ones are and how bad public opinion of him is, with the occasional outlier of a law-abiding citizen with a sadistic streak.

My DM is of the opinion that a hand crossbow is actually strapped to your wrist like a cestus, leaving that hand "free" in much the same way as the hand you use your light shield is. Thus, at my tables you can wield two and reload each of them without having to dip two levels in a class whose only class feature you care about is the ability to reload your weapons.

I still haven't built a dual-crossbower despite that, mainly because you'd need the TWF feats AND the archery feats to pull it off, plus something to add to your damage rolls to even make it worthwhile.

I'd probably do it as a fighter with a 1-level dip of rogue, for 1d6 sneak attack when I can get it plus Weapon Training/Specialization and the ridiculous amounts of bonus feats you'd need to pull it off.

Just because the dwarves haven't been to the surface doesn't mean their food hasn't.

Lots of rivers flow underground in places and break the surface in others. It's possible the dwarven tunnels always had easy access to the surface via a water route, that they never knew about because they aren't aquatic. Thus, any type of freshwater or even saltwater fish could be said to be fishable from underground.

That also gives us a potential source of seaweed and other vegetation, as well as a source of water to feed the inevitable mushrooms.

They could also be farming/husbanding other forms of cave fauna, like lizards, rodents, bats, or whatever else Golarion might have.

I do hope this thread isn't dying, and that people are still interested in it. I know Secret Wizard himself has been busy and I sympathize, so to keep the hope alive until his schedule clears, I've decided to take a crack at some of the unfulfilled requests in the thread.

I hope you like it! Let me know what you think!

Druid spells that deal damage:

Level 1: Firebelly, Frostbite, Mighty Fist of the Earth, Nauseating Dart, Produce Flame.

Level 2: Aggressive Thundercloud, Burning Gaze, Fire Trap, Flame Blade, Flaming Sphere, Fury of the Sun, Gusting Sphere, Heat/Chill Metal, Stone Call, Stone Discus, Tar Ball

Level 3: Air Geyser, Burst of Nettles, Call Lightning, Ice Spear, Raging Rubble, Vengeful Comets

Level 4: Aggressive Thundercloud (greater), Ball Lightning, Blast Barrier, Explosion of Rot, Flame Strike, Flaming Sphere (greater), Geyser, Ice Storm, Spike Stones, Volcanic Storm

It's late, so I won't go through every level, but there's plenty here to have fun with. Besides, most blasters I've seen metamagic the hell out of their spells, so the lower levels ones can easily be the most important ones you know.

Granted, several of these spells seem to deal damage as an afterthought to their primary purpose of debuffing, but that just means you've got options. You also have all three saves covered, allowing you to target whichever one seems appropriate.

82)The Impossible Alliance. A statue, thirty feet tall and constructed of what appears to be mithril-plated granite, of an orc cheiftain and an elf noble, smiling and shaking hands. The statue is on an unmarked granite plinth. Local record attests that it has been there for at least a century but its origin is unknown.

Local orc tribes have made several attempts to destroy or deface what they see as blasphemous but so far have failed. Most elves become visibly offended and flustered by the statue but few have gone so far as to try and destroy it. The statue radiates a faint aura of transmutation, and most mages believe it is magically repairing any damage done to it.

The smite good still checks for good. If you're good and have paladin level they count for extra damage, even if you are a ex-paladin.

In your original post regarding whether an ex-[class] still counts as a [class], you said "whichever option is least beneficial to the player". This makes it sounds like it's not a question of what exactly smite good checks for, and more a question of how to most efficiently screw over the player.

Your own example of a LN Dredd-style ex-paladin, for example, should be immune to smite good despite having a level of ex-paladin because smite good specifies "a good creature with levels of cleric or paladin", and he is no longer "a good creature", whether his level of ex-paladin counts as a level of paladin or not.

So, what would make Combat Expertise good?

Removal of Intelligence requirement or changing to Int or Dex of 13+, making it easier for martials to obtain?

+2 AC per -1 To Hit, rather than +1/-1?

Allow to stack with Total Defense?

Any other ideas?

Here's my idea.

Combat Expertise

Prereq: INT 13

Benefit: Add your INT modifier to your CMB and CMD.

It's not a perfect solution, but it now at least provides a benefit that is relevant to most of the feats that use it as a prereq. Also if your INT is higher than 13, it provides more benefit, which means Magi and Alchemists are suddenly solid options for trip builds and the wizard might occasionally want to cast Fox's Cunning on the Fighter.

I ban d10's. Only the five platonic solids are suitable for my games.

D3's are currently under review.

Secret Wizard mentioned that he wasn't interested in doing the Sylph "mobile fighter" archetype because he already did a bunch of archetypes with mobility as a theme. After re-reading the ones he named, I noticed that most of them involved charging. So I took a different approach. Here's what I came up with:

I thought about having the tempest's bull rush attempts simulate the effects of strong winds, with the wind severity increasing as the tempest levels up, but after re-reading the environment rules, I decided that was more unwieldy than necessary. Hope the guy who requested this one (and everyone else) likes it!

If having this much gold around really bothers people, you can always just have townsfolk deal in copper and silver instead. You want a potion of Enlarge Person? 500 silver, please.

This also has the advantage of showing your players why the average commoner doesn't really make these kinds of purchases that they are so cavalier about. Even though the rules for Profession checks indicate that a commoner has more buying power than you might expect, it just FEELS like more money when you count it out in silver.

Meanwhile, it's assumed that when the PCs save the town and are rewarded, even though the GM SAYS "You are given 600gp", the mayor isn't just handing the PCs a sack of coins. All the notable figures in town chipped in their thanks, and they're handing the PCs a wheelbarrow full of various trade goods worth a total of 600gp.

If you want to pay this up, mention each notable figure and what they chipped in. Old Bellowsbeard The Blacksmith donated ten steel ingots, Lady Obernathy contributed six bags of saffron, the Farbert family chipped in three chickens, etc. Let them get to know the people they just saved and feel their gratitude.

If we're talking about things that are unfun for their CR, I'd like to add the Quasit.

Quasits aren't terribly dangerous. Their melee attacks do 1d3-1 and 1d4-1 respectively, and as listed they don't have a ranged attack. They do have a 1/day Cause Fear, but not much else. I would argue that that's part of the problem.

The problem is the sheer amount of defensive abilities they have. DR/5, immunity to some energy types and resistance to several others, a fly speed, invisibility at will, AND fast healing?

And this is all at CR 2. The fighter doesn't have a magic weapon yet, so he's taking a -5 to damage rolls without Weapon Specialization. The wizard doesn't know Glitterdust yet, so at-will invisibility is a serious problem. The ranger probably doesn't have Precise Shot yet, so the quasit being IN another player's square mean he's at a -8 to hit a Tiny creature with good Dex. The rogue can't effectively flank it, since it'll be sharing a square with a PC (seriously, how does that work?)

And even if the party finds a good strategy, fast healing and a fly speed mean that the quasit can just go invisible as an SLA, retreat to the rafters for a few rounds, and heal up while the party either burns resources healing or scrambles for another tactic. This, combined with the pathetic damage that the quasit itself deals, means that fights against a quasit are likely going to turn into twenty or thirty rounds of the PCs and the GM staring at each other, neither one able to actually DO anything of consequence.

Ironically, fighting multiple quasits would probably be easier, since that would push the CR of the encounter up to the point where the PCs would be level 3 and actually have the tools to get around the quasits' smorgasbord of defenses.

I think people are being way too hard on Gallyck here, and possibly on his DM.

Why is it a problem that Gallyck played a NE wizard with dreams of lichdom? He's level 5 at the time, which means he's been doing it for at least 4 levels now, and presumably his DM and fellow players said that was okay with them. If the DM was going to sic a 16th-level wizard on him for it, he should have just said right from the start, "Don't play an evil character, it won't work for the story." Likewise, if the rest of the table didn't want an evil teammate, they could have spoken up.

Furthermore, if your DM's reaction to all this is just "scry, fry, zombify, hang your character sheet out to dry", that's just a disappointment. When you told him you wanted to play a NE Wizard who intends to become a lich and seek arcane power at all costs, and he said that was okay, he basically gave you permission to do what you did in some form or another. You definitely need to deal with this can of worms you opened, but if he doesn't at least give you an opportunity to get out of this mess, he's being needlessly retaliatory.

My whole post up above about how this wizard may be far more screwed than we think? I basically wrote it so that Gallyck would have a draw card in case his DM tells him "I don't want to just kill you off and derail the campaign, but I don't see any way around it."

415: One of the local taverns has a large sign out front reading "LADIES' KNIGHT". Several horses wearing masterwork saddlebags and heraldic crests are stabled out back.

The "murder is legal" thing wouldn't be that hard. No LEGAL consequences doesn't necessarily mean no consequences whatsoever.

If you kill someone, that someone may have had friends, family, business partners, or any sort of people that needed that guy alive and won't be happy with you. If you have enough of those people, or one such person in a high enough place, than suddenly murdering you isn't so easy.

Everybody wants to kill their boss, but bosses get to BE bosses by making the higher-ups respect and value them more than they do you. Doubly so in a meritocracy. Real-life street gangs and crime organizations don't flinch at leaving a random punk in the dirt, unless they know that punk has a gang of his own, in which case they lay off to avoid all-out war.

I think what we'd really see in such a situation is a culture built around clannishness and vigilante justice. Much like in Ravnica, the best way to thrive in this world would be to join a guild. That way you can scare off potential murderers with the threat of retaliation. In truth, most folks would never actually contribute to their guild besides lip service, and each guild would have plenty of members whose murders it wouldn't actually bother following up on, but the illusion of protection would be there.

From a GM standpoint? You could give the PCs the names of a few local gangs and their insignias with a Knowledge (local) check, and if they happen to cross an influential member, you've now got all the hook you need to throw combats with gang enforcers at them. For extra credit, make sure they have reason to cross swords with a person of note in just about every gang. As the PCs gain notoriety, perhaps gangs they haven't yet angered will offer to let them join. This provides them with connections for any "favors" they need (magic items to purchase, information, sanctuary, etc.) as well as helps drive the plot (as they grow in power, their gang leaders will have "tasks" for them that may advance their own agenda or get in their way).

Could legalizing murder actually work? As an idea I like it but it seems as though it wouldn't work.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "work."

From a logistic standpoint, it'd be easy. All the law enforcement has to do is not spend any time or effort tracking down or punishing murderers (unless they're also wanted for an actual crime, like tax evasion).

From a world-building standpoint, it's a little more nuanced than that.

-Tavern brawls tend to go south much more easily, and probably break out more often.

-Lots of two-faced people who'll tell you anything you want just to keep themselves alive.

-Lots of bullies who'll happily walk all over everybody they meet and kill whoever calls them out on it.

-The PCs never have to worry about excessive murderhoboing... or murdering hobos I suppose.

This also plays well into your desire to make kobolds more relevant. They may be physically weak, but they've got no issues with killing, and make excellent assassins. Those that don't become assassins might be a major economic force, as they offer their goods and services to mercenaries in exchange for "protection" that's really more like "here's my hit list, you know what to do". Indeed, once the PCs gain notoriety, a kobold merchant caravan might offer them some choice magic items in exchange for some of this "protection".

My best advice is that your setting should legalize murder.

If there's no legal consequences for murdering somebody, then that means there'll be two kinds of people in your world-- those who fear getting killed on the street, and those who take advantage of this new freedom.

The first group will primarily be the good-aligned. They'll either be afraid to leave their homes, or will make every effort to dissuade others from killing them, by kowtowing to whoever looks stronger then them, or by intimidation tactics. And intimidation tactics won't work forever once people start realizing that the person in question never actually follows through with his threats.

The second group will be the evil-aligned. They'll have no qualms about killing whoever they don't like. If they're strong, they'll just crack the heads of whoever gives them any trouble and dare the others to stop them. If they're weak, then they're more likely to submit or flee, then sneak back later and catch their enemies unaware, or hire goons to do the dirty work for them. This means that the first group will eventually learn that they can't always assume that the meek and submissive aren't murderers, and will have to fear them too.

This helps create a culture of fear and oppression without Evil Overlords having to "maintain" it. If everybody learns to fear each other, the genuinely good will feel oppressed, isolated, and hopeless while the evil enjoy newfound freedom. It'll also be that much harder for revolutionary groups to form (or any kind of independent organization) since everyone's been taught to distrust each other.

I would just say Cold Iron Everything. Cold iron chains over the doorway, cold iron farm tools, cold iron forks and knives, the works. Just about every item that a villager would have in his house that's made of metal should be Cold Iron, so that A) demons are (hopefully) warded off, and B) in case of emergency, the villager will always be within arm's reach of a cold iron improvised weapon. I don't think demons would actually be repelled by the presence of cold iron, but that plays into the "hoping beyond hopelessness" theme you seem to like.

I would also say the holy symbol of a good-aligned deity should be everywhere too, in the vain hopes that they work like crosses do against vampires in most literature.

Freehold DM wrote:

Silent Saturn wrote:

42. The Menagerie at Kul Vonor

Sopoooooo stolen!

It's an imaginative idea, but such a prison could very well backfire someday; after all, if they have the magical means, it could be a prime recruiting ground for enemies of the state ... even the source of an ad hoc army.

That's what makes it a compelling story element!

I imagine that there are guards, of course-- a tower with a good view of the horizon, and an occasional patrol up and down the ranks. Plus, the Menagerie is as much a work of art as it is a prison-- the public is welcome to come and look at all the statues, so there's usually someone around. Every once in a while, they catch somebody acting suspicious and find he's concealing a scroll of transmute stone to flesh... or a sledgehammer. Most of the folks who attempt it get caught.

Plus, a freshly depetrified prisoner may have a grudge against the people of Kul Vonor, but that doesn't mean he'll help YOU out. He has no worldly possessions whatsoever, he's still chained to a pedestal (the spell transmutes flesh to stone, not metal), his friends and loved ones may or may not be dead of old age, and his agenda could be anything from pathologic violence to political revolution to embezzlement. And he already fought the law once and lost everything; how eager would he be for Round 2?

Any recruiter isn't going to be able to put together a worthwhile army before getting caught... but a single rogue with a good bonus to Disable Device, Stealth and UMD and a scroll of transmute stone to flesh might find his old partner-in-crime and get away before the guards notice. Heck, I can definitely see a module where the PC's are tasked with "retrieving" a person of interest from the Menagerie, and their patron gives them a few extra scrolls "just in case".

143. When introduced to new people, they will frequently decide whether or not to trust this new person based on their own ability to guess when people are lying based on nonverbal cues, in spite of how much harder that is to do with someone you've just met and regardless of whether they have reason to believe the person is untrustworthy or their statements are false.

136. Convinced that silver and copper coins aren't "worth tracking" and refuse to negotiate in increments smaller than 1gp. Whether they round up or round down for any given purchase is impossible to predict-- they might order a 3sp drink at the inn and tip the barmaid a gold piece, then immediately walk right out of a shop without paying the 71sp8cp they owe because it's "not worth the hassle" of digging out their coin pouch.

54. The Blight's Paw
A bare patch of dust and gravel in the center of a temperate forest, miles away from any settlement, about half an acre large and in the rough shape of a pawprint. Despite being surrounded by healthy vegetation for miles around, the spot itself has no sign of even a single sprout of plant life, not even fungus. The ground is a fine dust with no sign of animal tracks, and any shoe prints seem to almost fade away of their own volition, though not quickly enough for anyone to see it happen. Those who stand in the spot report that even the surrounding weather seems not to want to enter-- there is never any perceptible wind, the dusty ground never turns to mud in even the most torrential rains, snow never sticks to the ground there, and even the sky appears just slightly off-color on clear days. Witnesses have observed birds and bats adjust their course to avoid flying over the spot.

No origin for the phenomenon is known, but travelers have told tales of the spot for at least two centuries, and in that time, there has been no observable change. Druids and priests of Gozreh will sometimes make pilgrimmage to the spot. A few seem noticeably changed by the experience, as though they received an epiphany there. If any of them have discovered the secret behind the spot, none have revealed it.

Polymorph the PCs into a gazebo?

Better yet, just imply the presence of a gazebo and watch their common sense fall to pieces.

116. The names they give for themselves sound like they just named themselves after the first thing they happened to see in the morning, that is when they aren't just going by the name of their profession ("Cleric", "Alchemist", "Fighter") or some random insult someone threw at them ("Barbarian", "Thief", "Witch").

116b. Then they tell you that YOUR name sounds "dumb" and "made-up", sometimes going so far as to insult your entire culture's naming conventions.

42. The Menagerie at Kul Vonor
Several acres of grassy valley below the mountaintop dwarven city of Kul Vonor Keep, dotted with tens of thousands of statues. The statues are all of various types of humanoids: mostly elves, humans, hill giants, and kobolds, with some dwarves and gnomes, and the occasional outlier. Every statue has its hands and feet chained with actual metal chains, most of which have hopelessly rusted over years of wear. Each statue has a name, date, and a brief description of various crimes lightly chiseled onto its chest. Some have obviously stood for centuries and have gathered moss and climbing vines, while others have been added more recently. Some have obviously been manicured, some have flowers or foreign flags left at their feet, and a few have been vandalized or even smashed. Some statues have a second date after the first; some of these second dates have already come to pass and others have not yet.

Every statue is in fact a living person under the effects of a transmute flesh to stone spell. This is Kul Vonor Keep's highest-security penitentiary, where its most troublesome prisoners are stored as a warning to future lawbreakers. The summary of crimes chiseled on each prisoner's chest serves not only as a warning as to what might earn you this fate in Kul Vonor Keep, but also so that future generations might appeal on a prisoner's behalf, and future judges might opt to show leniency. The fact that some prisoners' "sentences" appear to have ended years ago suggests that the opposite decision is also made at times.

6) Mt. Symphony-- One of the greatest marvels of dwarven stonework, engineering, and harmonics ever carved, the peak of this mountain has been largely hollowed out and reinforced with steel girders. Numerous tunnels dot the snowcapped peak, carved to catch the prevailing winds just right. The entire mountain is effectively a giant wind instrument, and whenever there is wind on the mountain peaks (nearly always), hauntingly beautiful tones can be heard for miles around. During the windy season, travelers come from all corners of Golarion to hear the music of the mountain.

Sadly, all my campaigns tend not to go to a far enough level for us to encounter massive natural wonders, but Paizo's published material contains lots of phenomena that would qualify. The Worldwound-- a natural canyon that also serves as a portal to The Abyss-- would qualify, as would some of the ancient Thassilonian landmarks you encounter during Rise of the Runelords.

If you want us to just brainstorm natural wonders like the other "1001" threads?

1. The Colossal Cascade-- a stable portal hundreds of feet wide and at least a thousand feet above sea level, about a mile off the coast. Seawater is constantly pouring out of it, like a waterfall with no cliff. It is believed that the other end of the portal is the Elemental Plane of Water, or on the ocean floor. It is also believed that the spot it hovers over was dry land before it was opened.

2. The Labyrinths of Hrrough-- Eleven square miles of moss-covered granite walls, forming a nigh-incomprehensible maze. Minotaurs are known to make pilgrimages here, and are especially aggressive towards any non-minotaur "trespassers" they find within, though even they no longer remember the maze's original architects. Aerial surveys have thus far failed to provide an accurate map, but have shown several interior landmarks, including rune-etched standing stones, magical fountains, crenellations along portions of interior wall, and (most compellingly) numerous stone passageways leading underground.

Honestly, I'm more bothered by the fact that the example talks about a sorcerer with a prepared spell.

I enjoy giving rogues the surname "Tumblers" and then giving them max ranks in Acrobatics AND Disable Device.

I also once had a druid named Treow-- Middle English for "tree". Also Middle English for "truth"-- this is why "tree" and "true" are only one letter off from each other; they have the same root word. The people of the era associated nature and the natural world with the secrets of the universe and the like, which is why Druids are still a trope today.

In another rogue thread, I suggested that the most quintessentially "roguish" thing to do is to pretend to be something you're not. To that end, I decided to try and come up with some rogue talents that would let a rogue steal some abilities from other classes. Here's what I've come up with so far; feel free to add your own ideas or comment on mine.

Allfood is a little silly. You survive in the wilderness by eating... random stuff that you've magically transformed into "food".

Also, the material components are a pinch of salt and pepper. Given the description of the "food" this spell creates, you're going to need quite a bit more than that.

Bhijo was a glutton, even by goblin standards. He ate everything that wasn't nailed down, and he usually ate the nails too. His dream was to eat an entire farm's worth of food in one raid-- the whole crop harvest, every pig, every cow, everything. He knew he could never do it, but some nights he'd have wonderful dreams about it.

One day he discovered a wagonload of watermelons. The farmers driving it were dead-- they'd been pincushioned full of arrows by raiders. The raiders had taken all the stuff THEY thought was valuable, but left the melons and the dead farmers. Bhijo climbed up into the wagon and gorged himself for hours, until his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed from exhaustion.

In his food stupor, he had a vision. Urgathoa, the goddess of gluttony and undeath, came to him and blessed him. She called him her favored disciple, and told Bhijo that his devotion to her sphere had allowed her to send the world a miracle.

When Bhijo awoke, he noticed that the dead farmers were gone. There were tracks leading away from the wagon, and when he followed them he saw the miracle. The farmers, and several other dead humans, and gotten back up and were marching to the nearby human village! Bhijo was amazed at the sight-- dozens and dozens of humans, staggering down the road, their clothes and armor in tatters, showing their gray, bloated meat underneath. Bhijo imagined how tender they must be-- the meat was practically falling off the bone! His appetite came back with a vengeance, and he said a small prayer to Urgathoa, thanking her for this bounty.

By the time the zombies had reached the main gate into the village, Bhijo had eaten nearly all of them. Some humans in heavy armor came out with maces and bashed the remaining zombies into the ground, which Bhijo was thankful for, since he'd been getting too full to chase them down himself. As he gnawed the meat off of the last one, he began to pass out again, but not before he saw the humans with maces look down at him, awestruck. Soon, their faces were replaced by that of Urgathoa appearing to him again.

That was over a century ago, and that village still tells the story of that brave goblin, who sacrificed his life to save them from a horde of zombies only to die of dysentery a few hours later.

I just finished reading a book called NOS4A2 (I recommend it highly) that makes me think it would be quite interesting to have a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith as your eidolon. You'd need the mount evolution to actually ride in it, and it'd probably only have a single slam attack, but it'd be pretty cool.

Now I sort of wish there was a Summoner archetype where your eidolon is a vehicle...

Three words: Eldritch Heritage(vomitorium).

Bored with the pantheon in the CRB? Homebrewing a whole new setting? Love clerics so much you played one for every deity in the splatbooks? This is the thread for you!

Try to include everything a player would need to know to roll a cleric of that deity, but if you don't have the idea fleshed out yet, that's cool too. Somebody else will be along to fill in the gaps, I'm sure. I'll start.

1.Zhraatha, the Vandal King (CE)
Domains: Artifice, Chaos, Destruction, Evil, Strength
Favored Weapon: Warhammer
God of vandalism and demolition. Bestows his faithful with the means to destroy their enemies' weapons and raze their lands.

2.Count Hemoseptimus (LE)
Domains: Death, Evil, Law, Nobility, War
Favored Weapon: Dagger
God of blood money. From the hired assassin and his clients, to the callous aristocrats who advocate war for political gain, to the wandering sell-sword who offers his loyalty to the highest bidder, the Count is watching.

3.The Keeper (LN)
Domains: Community, Knowledge, Law, Madness, Trickery
Favored Weapon: Blade Boot
Goddess of secrets. There is power in knowing what others do not, and that power is lost when the knowledge becomes widespread. The Keeper grants that power to those she can trust with it. What they do with it is their own secret to keep.