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I've been running a game which is going to plunge into Daemon territory as it nears it's peak, and I intend to utilize a character in it which I *know* has tons of potential but I am having trouble wrapping my brain around.

The character in question is from a third party 3.0 book called the Book of Fiends named Raum. He's an example Demon Lord the book puts forward for possible use, but I've switched him to a Daemon Harbinger in Pathfinder due to his connotations.

The idea behind Raum is that he was born at the end of all existence, and his life since then has been reverse to ours; His perception of time flows towards the beginning of creation. Because of this he believes he's not a Daemon at all but some sort of sentient message to the past, created to pass on or do something of great importance to prevent the terrible calamity which leads to the undoing of existence. The problem is that whatever created him did not seem capable or willing to make this a bearable journey; As of the "Present" Raum is feeble and failing in almost all regards due to old age. Driven by fear that he will not discover his "Purpose" before he withers away entirely, he has in his desperation tried to leverage his knowledge to trigger apocalypse scenarios prematurely, his desperate bid essentially being that his unique state of existence may be so that he can soft-reboot reality to prevent the hard crash he was born from. The fact that all of reality coming from the other direction pretty much verifies that he will not be successful in this regard does not stop his attempts, proving the depths of his hopeless desperation. When not actively seeking out moments when reality will come close to destruction, he wanders aimlessly across the lower planes, weeping and calling out for remembered friends who will not actually be born for millennia.

For my campaign I want Raum to be a sad but necessary tool for the main storyline: The party wish to stop a different Harbinger from enacting an apocalyptic plot, but do not know the exact location of his hideout in Abaddon. They *do* however encounter a disappointed and dejected Raum, and upon figuring out how he works follow him as he slowly mopes in reverse across the wastes to the other Harbinger's lair that from Raum's perspective the party have already foiled the ritual of.

With all that in place, though, I also want to make meeting such a bizarre and uniquely tragic character something particularly memorable. That, alongside simply trying to figure out how to properly RP or mechanically handle a time-reversed character, is why I'd like some input or suggestions if possible.

What I have so far brainstorming by myself:
- Is technically a Harbinger of Charon, but does not actively serve any Horseman. The domains he grants are Destruction, Knowledge, Madness, and Erosion domains, as well as the Fate, Memory, Truth, and Catastrophe subdomains. Yes, I know by-the-rules he couldn't have Fate, but that is 100% him and the parent domain Luck is 100% *not* him. Also of note is that he does not possess the Evil or Daemon sub/domains, since he vehemently refuses both despite any evidence of the contrary.

- In-game, would not be an active threat to the party, as from his perspective they've already foiled what he's there for and sulkingly admits that they could do no more harm to linger. The party could talk with him, but his level of degeneration means that they would have to repeat themselves before he catches it, solving the issue of the GM needing psychic powers to answer queries players haven't even asked yet.

- His special state of being makes him neigh-unkillable; If he was able to perish, he probably would have done it to himself by now, and he was "Created" to withstand the official apocalypse at his youngest and weakest. Other Daemons still torment him as he wanders, but it's mostly verbal abuse about how they all know he will fail and wither away unfulfilled.

- Raum can read text backwards and forwards interchangably, as a side effect of learning audible languages in reverse and having to mentally figure out on his own why written languages didn't sync up with that.

- At least one party member by then will have recently achieved immortality. Raum will interact with them in a mix of joy and desperation, treating them as an old friend nearing the end of a terminal illness. The implication being that the immortal character will last quite a long time into the future and Raum will bond with them, but from Raum's perspective there are only a couple scant decades left until he loses yet another person who has accompanied him for so long on his journey.

Anything else I could add to make him even more interesting? Or possible details I've overlooked? All input would be greatly appreciated.

As for the Knowledge checks, why aren't all the examples you listed DC 10 (or even less)?

It is perfectly possible for most people to manage to get by in game life by taking 10, since a DC 10 check covers a lot and and doesn't require any skill points invested to know.

I used the lowest as examples because even those are supposedly beyond someone who does not have a rank in the related skill, because all Knowledge skills are Trained Only. As in, they cannot be attempted without at least one rank in the skill. You apparently cannot know what a dog is without Knowledge: Nature any more than you could decipher a spell without Spellcraft or make a forgery without Linguistics. The villagers cannot take tens on skills they are blocked off from using entirely.

One I've heard before and liked is that no one should be able to see the sun. Distance is a stacking penalty, while being bright and large are one time applied bonuses only, meaning that trying to notice a massive ball of fire millions of miles away has a negative modifier in the millions.

One I've noticed lately though involves Knowledge checks. More specifically that they're trained only, so a rank is needed in each to even try to use them.

What information is supposed to be locked behind these, pray tell?

Knowing any recent or historical event (Knowledge: History)
Knowing laws, rulers, or popular locations (Local)
Identifying a common plant or animal (Nature)
Recognizing the holy symbols or obvious followers of a well known deity (Religion)

So an average person -- a level 1 commoner with two skill points per level and a neutral Int modifier -- May possibly know where the bar is in his town and who governs said town, but does not know what a dog is if so. Or he could know about dogs and Iomedae, but not a single law enforced in the place he's lived all his life. And this is if this commoner has dedicated all of his skills to being knowledgeable, it's much more likely to find someone who knows one or none of these categories.

Long story short: In an average town Gather Information checks should be hard to impossible, because the villagers you're asking should probably require a Handle Animal check instead.

Permanency magic mouth, bone/flesh golem?

Both of those are creatures built for combat, with the flesh golem in particular having a will-happen-eventually chance to go berserk and start smashing whatever's closest. They'd be interesting for a multi-purpose setup where the mascots are used as security as well as entertainment, but as pure entertainment for commoners it's far too much of a liability.

Max ranks in craft (marionette) and craft (taxidermy) so you can get a lightweight, taxidermic puppet. Maybe don't max out the ranks so the construction looks cheesey. Then get a custom magic item letting you cast unseen servant a few times per day so you can turn them on by telling a telekinetic servant to move them how you like on repeat.

For background music, permanency ghost sound to loop some basic background music.

For a much more sophisticated animatronics solution, have them be taxidermic creatures (the construct template). It is supposedly cheaper than other kinds of constructs (I assume even animated objects), explicitly looks poorly made/cheesey, and follows commands given literally. So as long as you are very careful about the orders given for basic motion, it will work.

Didn't know about the Taxidermic template, nice find there. Although even with the gimping the template brings, the result still runs into the previous problem of it being able to easily kill commoners when something eventually goes wrong. Although, maybe since it's being designed specifically to be harmless, it could come out even more 'Flawed' than usual...

The Unseen Servant and Ghost Sound could work, but ideally we're looking for a setup which is idiot proof and semi-autonomous. Some sorta package deal which starts up at the press of a button/speaking of a trigger phrase by a guest, goes through a routine, and then shuts down. Real theme park in nature.

Also, this restaurant owner is creepy as s$$#, I just want you to know. Actual monstrous humanoid corpses being used like this... Oof.

Yeah, it admittedly is pretty morbid. But taxidermy as a whole has always been. In the hypothetical owner's slight defense, at least he isn't turning them into flying drones like that one guy in real life with his cat.

Go look at Five Nights at Freddys for possible complications.

At least partially why I'd ideally want them more akin to a couple simple movement devices/spells grouped together than anything with sentience or capable of true locomotion. No matter how good your food is, no one forgets that time Olaf the Owlbear tore the birthday boy in half.

Say a character is running a restaurant or something similar on the side, a fun little business to come back to once adventuring jobs die down. And, somewhere on the road cleaving through the various baddies out there, he decides to make a little more creative use out of the Gnolls/Owlbears/whathaveyou he usually just lets lie where they drop. So the next time he slays one he uses a wand of Shrink Item to turn the corpse into a cloth badge and puts it in his bag. Then when he gets home he pulls up contacts for a taxidermist, an artificer, and a generalist wizardly type.

So, once all that's in place, what's the most cost-efficient way to get what he wants accomplished?

Baselines:

- The resulting "Animatronics" should be able to stand in place, make small movements, and emit music with legible words on command. Nothing more than that. They do not need to be able to walk, and definitely should not have any sentience.

- They should be, at most, constructs. Preferably not even that, just material manipulated by internal mechanics/rudimentary movement magic. Undead is right out, a fun time for the family is not worth eternal damnation by Pharasma.

- The "Routine" does not need to look authentically real. In fact, bonus points for looking cheesy and unnatural like the source material. What is important though is ease of use and repetition; They must be able to be activated simply, and with effects which do not fully expend themselves in the process so they can be used constantly and repeatedly over the course of business days.

So far I've found that Magic Mouth with Permanency added to it should cover the "Singing" part, but not the accompanying background music or movement needed to make your monster of choice mime playing their instrument. Any ideas?

Based on your first paragraph, I have to wonder if your problem is with in the in world aspects of the alignment system. It really sounds more like a outside of game system play group issue - and for that the solution is going to be "talk to your group", not try and make a point by abusing the in game mechanics.

As to the rules question itself, at lot of these are going to be "ask your GM", but this line

Quote:

If you're the target of a spell or effect that is based on alignment, you're treated as the most favorable alignment when determining the spell's effect on you

is specifically in regards to the spells effect on you, and not in regards to other consequences that may or may not result from that spells success or failure. The rest of the party being banished and leaving you alone is not a concern of the ability.

Oh, my apologies if it came off as some attempt to crash a game with no survivors. It is literally just a driving force behind my character tied into her backstory. She was greatly wronged by forces of evil while young, and because of the tainting and her situation/locale afterwards attempts to flag down the occasional Paladin for help went south as soon as Detect Evil came into play. She's suspicious of everyone and everything, and takes great joy in dancing around attempts to pin her down in ways which leave anyone enforcing it no solace but to shrug and give up, but she can function in a group and is not going to sabotage allies for no reason. Especially against demons, which is what the usual enemy in the campaign tends to be.

To start off with, a brief on the Mythic Path ability in question:

Beyond Morality: You have no alignment. You can become a member of any class, even one with an alignment requirement, and can never lose your membership because of a change in alignment. If you violate the code of ethics of any of your classes, you might still lose access to certain features of such classes, subject to GM discretion. Attempts to detect your alignment don't return any results. If a class restricts you from casting spells with an alignment descriptor, you can cast such spells without restrictions or repercussions. If you're the target of a spell or effect that is based on alignment, you're treated as the most favorable alignment when determining the spell's effect on you. Any effects that alter alignment have no effect on you. If you lose this effect, you revert to your previous alignment.

I am currently playing as a character in a mythic game who, due to entwined events in her backstory, is soured rather badly on both sides of the good/evil axis; especially concerning abilities like the Detect spells which can instantly give one side of it justification to lay into the other without taking into regard how complex people and situations can be. Thus, this ability and all the ways she could use it to subvert the system itself put it near the top of her advancement list.

Which begs the question: If a character with the intention to squeeze every last drop out of making a mockery out of the alignment system picks this up, how much would he or she actually be able to get away with? For example, a selection of handpicked scenarios/occurrences:

- By default, the character automatically always registers as the "most beneficial" alignment for any spell which cares about that. Would the ability be smart enough into account the circumstances of this event, or at least would the player be able to 'Override' the default for a result they'd prefer? For example, the best result against a magic circle against [alignment] or similar effect would most assuredly be to not count as the alignment and completely bypass it. But if the character's entire party has been hit by said effect while on a plane they are not native to, being the only one immune to it could leave her alone and surrounded by enemies while all her support is banished back home. Would the ability be able to parse that and allow the character to be banished as well, or at least could a character who realized what could happen decide to be affected?

- Does this ability trump class abilities which mask/alter/enhance alignment "Pings"? For example, Paladins and Antipaladins have increased readings of good and evil respectively as they level up as a feature. This seems like it'd tie into the never registering feature of the ability, but since it's an enhancement being added from the outside so to speak it'd be safe just to make sure.

- Likewise, do effects which add an alignment aura onto a character without regard to the character's actual alignment get suppressed by Beyond Morality? In particular, my character went through a backstory-related event which injected nasty stuff into her soul so she has always registered as an overwhelming evil despite being neutral. This condition never forced her to be evil though, and it registers as an entity separate from her to a reader with a good "eye", so it's kind of a gray area.

- How does a character with this trait interact with morality-based classes not designed with her in mind?
For this, I'll put forward a class my character is eyeballing for future prospects: The Insinuator Antipaladin.

This particular flavor of Antipaladin is a special case, more of a cosmic freelancer sitting between the normal Pally/Antipally. His code isn't so much about spreading evil as never performing deeds without acting in self-interest; An easy feat for my character, as any act against the abyss is very much in her interest. The Insinuator also makes daily pacts with Outsiders instead of dedicating themselves to a single being, with their abilities shifting in accordance to their current patron. The daily bartering for powers is an automatic success if the Insinuator chooses one identical to their alignment, but needs to pass a check to woo any patron within a step of their alignment, and any difference past that is right out.

I think you can see where this is going.

The Insinuator class only refers to evil and neutral patrons, because all Insinuators are evil and thus should never be able to pull off courting good patrons, but one with Beyond Morality is under no such limitations. Sure, the Insinuator also must follow the guidelines of their daily patron, but if at the start of the day an Insinuator who's beyond morality rings up an angel and goes "I'm killing demons today, you in?" would it have good enough reasons to turn her down? Likewise, would this character also automatically succeed with every request for a patron, because they always count as the exact alignment as whoever they've called up?

Likewise, the Low Templar prestige class gains a planar cohort lined up with their alignment as an endcap. Does this give someone with Beyond Morality free reign to pick any aligned Outsider (within reason), or does it go by their pre-mythic alignment? Putting this all together, theoretically being Beyond Morality could lead to stuff like crusading against the abyss with your Protean blood brother while under the blessing of the Inevitables, which is something which would without a doubt be up my character's alley if possible.

Hi all! I'm someone who has been interested in the Pathfinder system (and/or it's spiritual predecessors) for a while, but just very recently managed to get a game together to actually play. And since my character of choice wound up being a Swashbuckler who gained sneak attack dice through a prestige class, precision damage in particular has become important to me and I have a couple of questions along those lines.

1: Are there any magical enchantments/items of note which either enhance or modify precision damage? Other than the type which modify "Precision Dice", since the Swashbuckler ability uses a flat number instead of rolling dice so a good chunk of my character's damage output would be unaffected by those as far as I can tell.

And more curiously: Is precision damage truly as scary as it seems to be handled by the game?

To elaborate, I'm not asking for advice on finding ways to boost precision damage because I'm too lazy to look myself. I've taken a good search around, and mostly come out empty handed. There seems to be a very tight leash on tampering with precision damage like one would metamagic for spells or damn near any other class trait via feats and miscellaneous shenanigans. I've found it easier to find ways to give any class the ability to Lay on Hands or Inspiration/Panache/Grit than to give them a bonus to just precision damage in general. Even the Rogue, who the damage type was essentially built for, more commonly has optional perks to take away dice worth of precision damage in exchange for an effect than add alongside the damage or enhance it. Or even broaden it. Like, the only thing I've found to circumvent precision damage on those normally immune is a feat which might do the job roughly 25% of the time. And the only thing I've found which allows precision damage to be affected by crits (with a doubling no matter the multiplier, no x3s or the like) is a mythic bonus in the very last 'Tier' of bonuses in the mythic Trickster archetype. For comparison, this is also the tier which allows the Hierophant to ignore all crits forever, the Champion to either always confirm criticals then give the max damage output or punch enchantments to death, the Guardian the ability to reroll saving throws as a free action for 1 Mythic point which can be repeated as many times as he wants (for reference, a Mythic hero at this point has ~20 of those points a day), and the Archmage.

The Archmage.

I want you all to take this little adventure with me, if slightly compacted:

Star Walker: Expend two uses of mythic power to surround yourself with a bubble of air enclosed by a thin iridescent layer of force. While this bubble offers no protection from attacks, you can propel yourself through the air at great speed. As long as you concentrate, you gain a fly speed of 240 feet per round.[...]In the void of outer space, the bubble’s speed is much faster. Although exact travel times vary, a trip within a single solar system takes 3d20 hours, while a trip beyond takes 3d20 days[...]. Ceasing concentration while in the void of outer space has no effect on the bubble—it continues traveling in the previously stated direction at the same speed until an outside force slows it down. The air in the sphere is constantly refreshed and kept at a constant temperature, protecting occupants from the void of space[...]By expending two additional uses of mythic power, you can increase the size of the bubble to a 10-foot-radius sphere and you can bring along up to 11 Medium creatures within the bubble.

Now, this may not be statistically the most useful of encap powers, but think about this. This wizard can, at any point he wishes, gather the entire party together and leave. Leave the planet. Leave the galaxy. Leave the cosmos. Wave at Desna as they soar by, veer around Carcosa, and keep trucking out into the great unknown forever. All they have to worry about is sustenance, and if this mythic team did not already take the lower mythic perks which allow them to live without it a spellcaster who's thought of this most surely has some sort of magic to make sure it never becomes an issue during his (very lengthy) downtimes. Aging to death may not even be an threat either, since that's one of the first perks a mythic character can pick up.

Taking this all in: Allowing a character to double his precision damage on a crit is apparently comparable to/roughly as game-breaking as being able to forcefully convert a Pathfinder adventure into a Starfinder adventure at will. Is this... I dunno, correct? Because if so, I shudder to think what x3 precision crits would entail.