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In an attempt to balance the fun of alignment with the practicality of avoiding moral/ethical arguements, I'm thinking of changing why a creature has alignment.

Core Change: A creature/object/spell has alignment if and only if it has planar energies of the appropriate type infused into it, and retains that alignment regardless of its behavior (where applicable). All others are true neutral.

Examples:

• Aasimars count as good, while Tieflings count as evil.
  
• Undead are still evil. (Basically Fiat declaring that negative energy is an evil planar energy.) This means Dhampir also count as evil.
  
• Characters with the Aura class feature count as the alignment of that aura. For example, Paladins still count as good. Clerics of a CG god would count as good and chaotic. Etc. (Note that such characters are presumed to have a code of conduct still, but alignment change is a consequence of violating that code, not a tenet of it.)
  
• Outsiders and any other creature with aligned subtypes are still aligned as appropriate.
  
• Dragons do not count as aligned, but retain their reputation. The same goes for other creatures with strong alignment associations but no planar connection.
  
• Monks count as Lawful once they either gain the ability to strike as Lawful, or DR/chaotic. This rule extends to other classes that grant alignment DR bypassing or aligned DR.
  
• Certain bloodlines based on extraplanar creatures also grant alignment, such as Abyssal or Celestial. The alignments granted should be obvious.
  

Other Changes:

• Most abilities that affect only one alignment instead have partial effect on neutrals, typically half damage and no conditions. If it's only a condition, it's instead half duration (minimum 1 round). Smite, for example, functions against neutrals but adds half the normal damage bonus (other aspects remain unchanged). Only applies to the abilities of creatures or things that act like them, not to items like Holy/Unholy weapons.
  
• Feats and classes lose their alignment pre-requisites, but might grant you alignment if you take them.
  
• You cannot take 2 divine classes that gain power from alignment-opposed deities or that would grant alignment-opposed Auras without special DM approval. I recommend bribes.
  
• Detect <Alignment> spells no longer detect intent, as intent is no longer aligned.
  

Possible Fun Changes: A cleric of the seperatist archetype can shift their god's alignment by one step for the purposes of what Aura they receive. They use this new Aura to determine eligibility for selecting alignment domains.

Weird Consequence: It's technically possible to be both good and evil at the same time. I'm not sure what to do with this other than treat the person as neutral. It might also make sense for some things to treat them as aligned still, like the ability to hold a Holy weapon without incurring negative levels. (Such a character could hold neither a Holy nor an Unholy weapon.)

Feedback: I'm looking for any thoughts on weird consequences this rule could have and parts of the system that may have non-obvious patches. And, naturally, if there's anyplace where something might cause a huge game issue.

So it's clear that vestigial arms cannot grant you additional attacks. That's fine. But what about moving your attacks up the BAB ladder?

Take a lvl 11 fighter [mutation warrior] with TWFing, Improved TWFing, Greater TWFing, amd Vestigial Armsx2. Since he has 3 or more hands, TWFing is replaced by multi-weapon fighting. Doesn't really matter, can't get extra attacks, right? But what about this:

Normal TWFING: +9/+9/+4/+4/-1/-1
Multi-Weapon (vestigial armsx2): +9/+9/+9/+9/+4/+4
Multi-Weapon (natural 4-arm race, no vestigial; for comparison): +9/+9/+9/+9/+4/+4/-1/-1

My question is: Is the entry above for multi-weapon fighting (vestigial) valid? It's not gaining extra attacks compared to the normal TWFing routine (6=6), but it is using the arms to move the attack bonuses up to a higher to-hit. Of course, one of those attacks converts from main-hand to off-hand, resulting in a loss of damage, but that might well be worth it (esp. with double-slice).

I have already read in other threads that if you had claw/claw/bite/unarmed/unarmed you could convert that to claw/claw/bite/dagger/dagger with vestigial arms since that isn't more attacks than normal, so I'm leaning towards this being a valid usage, but I think it really comes down to whether Vestigial Arms is merely limiting extra attacks or if it actually limits having extra off-hands and this wasn't stated in the discovery itself. I'm guessing that RAI is the latter (no extra off-hands rather than merely no extra attacks), but currently available info states the former.

So the Fighter can get a familiar through the Eldritch Guardian archetype, making it the only spell-less class to get one directly. But anyone can get it thanks to the new feats.

Problem: The Figment archetype of familiar makes your familiar disappear when you go unconscious until such time that you.. prepare or regain spells. Which is impossible if you don't have spells. This means the first time you go to bed you lose it, then never get it back.

Question: Is this archetype intended to be useless for non-casters or is standard resting sufficient? Or am I just missing something somewhere? I'm guessing it is intended to always return after a night's rest regardless of why it disappeared.

(Note: The figment *does* come back after a full night's rest if it dies, but not if it is lost due to the master falling asleep, distance, or an anti-magic field.)

As a side note, I ask because I thought it would be interesting to have an Eldritch Guardian with a Figment+Sage familiar that acts as their own smarter-than-they-realize subconscious feeding them information.

There have been a lot of magic item discussions lately, but most of those revolve around taste (some people want the +5 on themselves, some want it on their sword/ring/amulet/etc, but the math is the same either way).

This thread, however, is not about those. It's about the small handful of magic items that change how your character works in ways that open up new options for how to design your character.

The most notable examples, IMO, are the Agile and Guided weapon properties. These properties are not in a core book, but are often used to make non-standard builds.. well.. functional.

Admittedly, Agile and Guided are emulated by some feats and class abilities to a certain extent*, but it seems to me that if something has the potential to completely change the way you build your character it should be available a bit more generally.

I suppose some would argue that the properties should simply be removed rather than emulated in general fashion via feats, but I actually like the idea of a purely dex/wis/int-based martial type. This is purely preference.

I'm actually not sure where I'm going with this. So far I just have a few random thoughts that were stirred up thinking about various character concepts and how to best achieve them.

* The Dervish Dance feat or the gunslinger's Gun Training perform the same function as Agile for a limited weapon set. The Zen Archer's Zen Archery class ability and the Guided Hand feat each perform half the function of Guided, also for a limited weapon set.

So I saw some comments about DMPCs being used/abused in games, and I wonder what opinions/stories people have about them.

I ask because I've used DMPCs before, but always in a more passive role (such as a bard) and always in a niche that was not already filled by another player. None of my players seems to have been bothered by it, and a couple even rather liked the character.

My take has always been that as long as you aren't taking the glory from a player (whether by giving the DMPC face-time or by stepping on a PC's chosen specialization), a DMPC is fine. Not the best use of a DM's time, but not a particularly bad thing.

Any particularly good/bad stories out there?

So you always see the typical "here are X enemies of Y type" kind of encounters, which are fairly boring. But what are the most exciting encounters you ever done or have thought of doing?

One that I've always wanted to try is an opposing party made completely of bards. Each one specializes in different things, and uses a different perform, but they all use song and/or dance in sync with each-other when they fight. Unfortunately, doing this would almost certainly be a brutal encounter and I haven't had players get high enough level for such a thing yet. I usually have this song in mind when I think of this encounter (stylistically speaking, not lyric-wise), especially the part from about 1:30-1:50.

Any cool ideas out there?

This is more of an "I'm curious" than anything practical, but what happens if you cross-blood empyreal and sage?

The Cross-Blooded archetype says you get the bloodline arcana of both bloodlines. The Empyreal bloodline arcana turns the sorcerer into a wisdom-based character/caster, while the Sage bloodline arcana turns the sorcerer into an intelligence-based character/caster. Both have identical wording save that one says "Wisdom" and the other "Intelligence."

So either this means that the character can cast based on either one at a given point in time (yeah right!) or (more likely) they get to choose which one they adhere to when they take sorcerer in this way.

Opinions?

This discussion has probably come up before, but I couldn't find it.

The question is, exactly what are you options with standing from prone? Since it's not actually a move action it looks like Acrobatics, by RAW, cannot be used to avoid the AoO. Is this correct?

If so, is there any way to avoid the AoO from standing?

It seems to me that an acrobatic character should be able to find a way to at least get a check to avoid the AoO without too much effort.

The only way I've found is to use a rogue talent to 5-ft crawl away then stand, but even this is only good if the opponent does not have reach (which is relatively common). This bothers me on two levels. One, it doesn't really prevent the AoO from standing, it just gets you out of the way first. Two, it can only be done by a rogue and several other classes (such as Monk) seem like they should be able to do such a thing as well.

So I am making a new character for a somewhat homebrew-ed (system-side) campaign taking place in forgotten realms and was wondering if anyone knew of any aquatic devils?

Don't need to read:
The reason I ask is that I used the tiefling chart stuff out of AP25 (along with some very old-school age/weight/lifespan/etc information I found, since I couldn't find any PF stuff) and it gave me an aquatic tail. I also have the "Devil-spawned" background (so +2 Con, +2 Wis, -2 Cha instead of the normal adjustments).

Now, my character's backstory is that their family is naturally good at magic, but the fiendish background is known to be brutish* (thanks to the "racial memories" ability from AP25 that took the place of darkness). Since my character resents being a tiefling (as most do) their goal is to prove that it is their human ancestry that makes them strong by doing everything through magic (thus becoming a caster). By doing this she also hopes to win favor with her family again (they kicked her out at 12 when she grew her tail), since without that clout she has no ability to influence people (cha of 6). Her two long-term goals are to become human again and to defeat or prove the defeat of her fiendish ancestor. The former of which will most likely be easier than the latter.

*Brutish as in "relying primarily on physical prowess to exert control on others."

So I was thinking the other day about what makes an interesting character, and realized that the most interesting characters were all about the weird quirks that got rolled into their concept, with their crunch acting as support. Or at least, all mine were.

So I thought I'd start a thread with 2 points*:
1)How did you create some of your memorable characters? Did you throw random stuff together (crunch-wise) then add personality? Did you see a character in a movie, tweak it slightly, then find out how to make the rules match? (Many different things could happen here...)
2) Try making a character. Not a PC, a character. Just think of the kinds of things they should be able to do that would make them cool, and the personality to match. Do not put any crunch into it at all (put away the rule books, both physically and metaphorically). Then, once you think it's cool, try to figure out what it would take to make it work.

I'll go first.

On point one, my most interesting character was one I just sort-of threw together (crunch-wise) because people were starting a group and needed a rogue. As I built the character I decided it would be funny to have a character specialize in pub darts (treated as the "darts" weapon, but a couple sizes smaller so they did 1 damage). This character somehow ended up with some kind of weird omnipotence complex where they thought they were a Paladin/Rogue/Fighter/Bard/Cleric/Ranger/Wizard. They were actually a level 5 rogue when they died for flipping off Asmodeus when he refused to betray his party (double nat-20 saves versus fear.. as a halfling). They had a book in which they inscribed all of their "great deeds" (inevitably written with him having a bigger role than he did), which eventually ended up worming its way into other campaigns.

Part 2) A (dubiously sane) man who believes that fire is the ultimate cleansing force. He can heal, but when he does it has the appearance of flames "burning" the wound. In combat he'll either hit you with burning fists, or conjure blades of pure fire.
A city-born pyro, he originally set out adventuring because he accidentally burned down a friend's house (with them inside) and had to go into (self-imposed) exile to avoid execution. He has since run across several injustices in the world that would remind him of his mistake. The last straw was when he was asked to use his (at the time still limited) mastery over fire to quickly burn a pile of bodies put there by a necromancer's army so that the same man could not come back to make a new army out of them (or reanimate his former one).
Since this time he has wandered the world in an attempt to save people from the horrible fates that the world has in store for them, hoping to eventually save enough people to finally lift the weight from his own heart.

----

Part 2 - Rules) RAW, the only two things that would make the above character work are Druid and Oracle of Flames. The former doesn't really fit, though, and the latter's curse would be hard to work in. Possibly haunted by the spirit of his dead friend? Then again, only the Druid has the ability to make blades of fire. I could also have him take the oracle revelation that makes all weapons flaming.
He could, I suppose, do a Fire-based sorcerer bloodline, but that still misses out on the "swords of fire" point.
So I'm going to leave this one at "Oracle of Flames with the Haunted curse" with the possibilities of Elemental Fist, and definitely the Touch of Flame revelation. The benefits end of the haunted curse doesn't really help him (thematically), but I'll just have to deal with that for now.
Either way, this guy would need some decent strength, decent dex (I somehow imagine this one as a TWF type), decent con (melee-oriented) and decent cha (for the spells). More than a little MAD.

* I made this thread partly because I'm going to try to make my players do concept->crunch for the next campaign, which will be in an as-yet loosely defined setting that they can help define with these very concepts.

No responses after nearly 24 hours... I suppose a variant like this might be a little big to casually ask advice for :P.

Oh well, maybe I'll see if the players in my current game are up for trying it out (probably on the next campaign instead of the current one).

Basic question related to current vs. 3.5 rules: How does iterative attacks with multiple weapons work?

Excerpt of my own comment on another thread with my opinion on the issue:

It's a legacy feature of the 3.X system that iterative attacks can be made with any weapon you have on hand (or could have on hand as a free action) as long as you take the iterative penalties.

So a guy wielding two longswords that has a BAB of 6 could make an attack with his right hand at +6 BAB and another at +1 BAB with his left hand, or both with his right, or both with his left, but needs two-weapon fighting (and the penalties associated) to do more attacks than that.
A guy with a longsword could do one attack with it at +6 BAB, drop it, quickdraw another weapon, then attack with that at +1 BAB if they really wanted to.
I don't believe this is stated in the PRD directly, but barring any official clarification to the contrary this is how I'm running it and how most will run it (since one often defaults to 3.5 rules when things are unclear).

Does anyone have any rules (or clarifications thereof) that explicitly forbid or allow any of the above?

So I thought about the idea of making a martial artist style character. No supernatural or mystical abilities, just a lot of skill with using their body as a weapon. Also, I wanted them to keep full BAB.
I basically came up with the following fighter variant:

What you end up with is a character with Monk AC, Monk damage, bravery and a bunch of bonus feats.

It could also be split into "lose armor stuff, gain monk AC and reflex" and "lose weapon stuff, gain unarmed strike" for higher granularity.

Begin the criticism:

I was wondering what people think of these feats that I made.
Ignore the "Epic Feats" section as that's more musing than reality. The "Modified Feats" are my house-ruled feats. I really only care about feedback on the "New Feats" section.
Redundant Link To The Feats

Some of these feats and rules associated with them are things I saw elsewhere, but didn't remember where (at least a couple cases I suspect are from these forums) so I recreated them from scratch.

To preface this thread: I don't want a discussion of the meaning of alignments, or whether an alignment-free system is a good idea.

What I do want is help identifying all the points where the system has attributed a mechanical meaning to alignment.

The following is what I have so far:
Alignment-restricted classes: Paladin, Monk, Barbarian, Druid, Assassin
Spells: Detect Alignment, Protection from Alignment, Spells with an alignment tag but don't directly mechanically depend on alignment (e.g. animate dead), magic circle against alignment, hallow/unhallow, ...
Class Abilities: Paladin, Paladin, Paladin... Cleric
Weapon Enhancements: Holy, unholy, axiomatic, anarchic

I can easily enough just thumb through the obvious holy/unholy spells, but I was hoping the good people of the forums could help point out non-obvious alignment-dependent rules/features/etc so that I can be sure to give due diligence to those as well. I'm pretty sure I got the big items already (I hope).

I'm only looking for stuff in the core line of products (ie Core, APG, GMG).

I will be moving into Redmond on the 24th (April) and will be staying long term. I'm looking for any pathfinder groups that play friday/saturday nights (or other nights if they end earlier than 11pm).
Depending on the location and timing I may need a ride to and/or from the location as I will be without a vehicle.

According to star trek, in temporal mechanics an "Effect" can come before the "Cause", making normal cause and effect analysis useless.

I believe I've found such a situation when Overflank is used. For those who don't know, Overflank is a teamwork feat that makes you get an attack of opportunity on an opponent if the person you're flanking with crits.

Say person A and person B are flanking a creature. For fun they both have 15-20 crit weapons (not necessary, but makes this example more likely). Person A attacks and crits, this causes B to get an AoO. On this AoO, B gets a crit. This causes A to get an AoO.

Now, since AoOs resolve before the attack that triggered them, Person A gets an attack of opportunity because of an attack that hasn't occurred yet.

This isn't really a big deal, I just through it was a funny situation. This actually occurred in our running of RotRL recently, causing us to do 270 nonlethal (we have merciful weapons) to a creature as a single act (one attack, several chaining AoOs). It's amazing what acrobatics and good flanking can do.

And I don't mean the awesome capacitor type, I mean the "I'm gonna be all over the place" type.
Basic Situation: I'm going to be moving around a lot over the next few months, but still like playing Pathfinder. I'm not a fan of playing not-in-real-time, but am willing to use one of the computer-aided things.
I would be playing with one of the groups present where I'm at now (since I'll be here for 3 weeks anyway), but the only groups around I either a) don't know anyone in well enough to even locate the group, b) can't play with 'cause of timing, or c) don't want to play with.
The group I had been playing with I finally got tired of when I realized one of the players was cheating... a lot. I ran a one-shot with the group (as DM) and caught the guy fudging no less than 4 d20 rolls and trying to smooth over it when he was caught. Two of the others are so inexperienced that they still can't make characters without help, and the last is so utterly exhausted all the time he can't focus.

Anyway, I was wondering if there were any groups that play over some-kind of computer aid (or willing to allow it) that I could play with. I can only spare time for a once-a-week thing, but I've never been late to a session. I do tend to make characters for the personality and not for effectiveness (such as a Druid 13/Cavalier 4/Rogue 3 build I had once), but I can go either way and still have fun.

So I had an idea for giving multi-classing a good test run and to see what kind of combinations can and can't work by making people try them.

The basic idea is that you roll a d20 twice, once for each of the two classes you will have, and try to make the combination viable. You must keep both classes within 1 level of each-other at all times until both reach level 3, at which point you can utilize any combination you wish and may also take a prestige class (but you may not take any other base class).

d20:
01 - Alchemist
02 - Barbarian
03 - Bard
04 - Cavalier
05 - Cleric
06 - Druid
07 - Fighter
08 - Inquisitor
09 - Monk
10 - Oracle
11 - Paladin
12 - Ranger
13 - Rogue
14 - Sorcerer
15 - Summoner
16 - Witch
17 - Wizard
18-20 - Roll Again (if you receive this result again, you may choose this class. This cannot let you choose more than one of your classes)

If you receive a result that cannot coexist peacfully (eg Monk + Barbarian) you may reroll the second class you rolled.
For example, I rolled a 9 (for monk) then a 20 (reroll), then a 2 (barbarian). Barbarian is not compatible with monk, so I reroll and receive an 8 (for inquisitor). This character will be a Monk/Inquisitor.

As another example I roll a 16 (witch) then a 14 (sorcerer). These classes can coexist peacefully so those are the ones you get to play.

This idea assumes you start as a level 2 character with 1 level in each of the two classes. It is recommended to do a point-buy with 20+ points to make it possible to get the stats you need to play at least a somewhat effective character.

Part of the point of this idea was to try and get my players to think less in terms of "I'm this class so I do this thing" and more in terms of "this is my character, this is what he does." And this includes the attitude towards the other characters. By disallowing players from discussing their characters on a game-rules level (other than base stats, as those become evident after a short period of adventuring) I'm hoping to improve role-playing slightly.

So I'm musing over the idea of creating my own form of wild magic zone, with a very different flavor than the one that already exists for D&D.
In my mind a zone full of uncontrolled magic would be an area to be feared for direct negative consequences (similar to a radioactive area, but with a much higher potential for positive outcomes that's just barely outweighed by the negative and no residuals after leaving the area).

To preface this, though, part of the idea is that these zones are how the raw magic comes to be for magic items. Basically, certain objects (namely crystalline substances and really dense materials) will absorb that raw magic which can later be transfered by crafters to other items, but in a more controlled form that creates the magic item.

The downside of these zones is that if you spend too long in them (time varying with the strength of the area) you get a mutation of some kind (60% chance of something negative, 40% of something positive). Because of this, animals and any other creatures native to the area know to avoid the spot (DC20 handle animal check to force an animal to enter).

I was thinking that some of the possible mutations could be:
Grow an extra eye (+2 to Perception checks, -1 to saves vs. gaze attacks)
Partial Blindness (-4 to perception checks)
Complete Blindness
Deafness
Permanent increase or decrease to a stat

The thing is, I'm trying to come up with more specific rules for it. Things such as how much money worth of magical materials can be generated in a given amount of time, or how long it takes to get a mutation and maybe even a chart to roll on to determine the effect.

So a few weeks back I had the closest thing to a total party wipe-out that didn't result in actually killing anyone, and I was wondering what other "close call" fights people have been in.

Mine goes like so (~lvl 5 party):
I was the DM at the time, all the party members save one had just been put to the floor by the BBEG (a raging barbarian), who turned to the last person (the fighter).
The BBEG broke their warhammer. The fighter stepped back and tried to shoot with their bow, missed. BBEG steps forward, breaks the bow. Fighter tries to punch them with their right gauntlet, misses. BBEG sunders the gauntlet. Fighter throws an offhand punch with the other gauntlet... and crits, killing them through sheer luck. One more round and the fighter would've been out of weapons and forced to trigger AoOs.
Also, the fighter was small sized and in heavy armor, the barbarian was medium sized in light armor. No running away here.
Oh, and I'm not sure how you can sunder a gauntlet and not hit the person, but since it's technically a weapon I just went with RAW on that one. And because the fighter was about a sneeze from death.

So I have a simple question that I haven't been able to find an answer to... What happens to an animal companion when they are released? Do they lose all the benefits of being with the druid, or just the things under "special"? This really isn't clarified anywhere and became relevant when a player of mine wanted to release their companion and make it a cohort (after raising its int to 3) (I don't care whether raising its int to 3 makes it a valid cohort, just whether it keeps its abilities, and what it keeps).