T O's page

No, no, no, you don't need maps to play Pathfinder! I've participated in multiple play-by-posts both as a player and GM and can say from experience that Pathfinder works just fine without maps. Yes, even with AoOs and flanking and everything else. What does not work is to think in terms of precise battlefield positioning and letting everyone take their turn individually, that is, to play like you have a map and everyone's real-time presence when you don't have either one.

Here's the rules I use for play-by-post for combats (and everything else):

Single Action Sorcery

I suggest watching a movie and reading books with good fight scenes. Most of the good ones have more going on than open, flat terrain with two roughly balanced sides fighting to the death. Any time it's about more than raw hitpoint attrition, combat maneuvers and jockeying for position become much more important.

Examples:

• The Princess Bride - duel at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity
  
• Fellowship of the Ring - the fight at Balin's tomb
  
• Indiana Jones - on a moving tank
  

In the Princess Bride, they fought all over interesting variable terrain and traded the advantageous ground several times.

In Fellowship, the group was going to die if that endless stream of goblins flooded the chamber they were hiding out in. The choke-point had to be held.

In Indiana Jones, the fight happened on an unstable platform with unsafe places to stand, and the whole thing was on a timer because the tank was going to drive over a cliff. Use that! Turn it into a riverboat full of pirates -- they keep jumping out of trap doors on the deck, and the boat's going to go over a waterfall in d6 + 8 rounds.

And don't make it just everybody fights to the death. Make the PCs care about more than killing. Give them someone to protect, or a reason to prevent a particular enemy from escaping (say, with an important object).

Maybe the party is waiting for the NPC archaeologist to translate a weird inscription? The undead will not stop until the magic words are uttered.

Maybe there are a lot of NPC combatants, both friendly and unfriendly. Like the PCs got involved in some kind of tribal warfare, and they have to participate in a big battle with twenty or thirty combatants on a side.

I wish you could lobby your GM for a change of game system, because that would be very easy to do in Mutants & Masterminds. M&M is meant for superhero roleplaying, but I used it for something much closer to D&D and had good luck. Moreover it's based on the d20 system.

I don't suggest this to be catty about game systems. Rather if you're playing a freeform game to begin with, maybe changing game systems is more likely?

Sorry for not saying so sooner (I'm afraid the internet didn't like me for a couple of days) but I wanted to thank you all for your input. Lots of good ideas here!

Unfortunately the player of our charismatic cleric was sort of making noises like he didn't want a second Face to be horning in on his shtick, so I'm afraid I had to scrap the concept.

But! I do plan on coming back to this lordly warrior concept someday, and now I have the appropriate build ideas for when it comes 'round.

So again, thanks very much! The Pathfinder community doesn't disappoint!

Althuogh are those stats set in order?

No, I can assign them in any order, very fortunately! Original post will be edited to reflect this.

So there aren't too many ways of building a front-line melee character who's also a competent face. In Core, which I'm most familiar with, basically it's just the paladin, or maybe an appropriate cleric build. But I don't know the non-core material too well (the Cavalier class is easily a thousand words), so I could use general advice, and specific suggestions too. Everything is welcome, provided you please be civilized.

Which leads to the concept: A noble warrior, a guy who's refined, educated, capable of courtly intrigues and diplomacy, yet reliable in melee, most probably an armored swordsman. In terms of the character's race and personality, I have three directions I could go, and I haven't made up my mind. The first, and my favorite, is an elf; the other two would be humans I guess (though I'm open to suggestions):

• a high elf-lord: more Elrond than Legolas
  
• medieval ideal of lordship: mature, wise, commanding presence
  
• rich man's son: irresponsible escapee from the noble life
  

These have implications for the build: An elf-lord needs at least a little arcane magic and has to work around difficult racial attributes. The middle concept, the true lord of men, is probably easier because he's a human who doesn't have to be magical. The third is easiest, I imagine, because you can build in flaws as part of the concept (for instance, dumping wis).

A couple of factors are non-negotiable:

• Level 9
  
• Neutral or Good alignment
  
• ability scores are rolled already (see below)
  
• any general-purpose Paizo rulebook is permitted
  
• 3.5 feats, pending case-by-case GM approval
  
• starting wealth or magic items might be low; dunno yet
  

We've got two options for sets of ability scores (I'm fairly certain we go with the second but just for completeness); note I don't have to assign them in order:

15, 15, 15, 13, 12, 11 <-- or --> 17, 17, 16, 15, 11, 8

In addition, the GM's house rule is that I can add +1 to any one ability score at character creation.

To give you an idea of the style of play, we're not really optimizers, but that said, the GM tends to use 20 as the default skill DC, and will absolutely throw level-appropriate encounters at us from the Bestiaries. So the build does have to work well, just not truly optimally.

So for the elf-lord I had the idea of playing a melee-capable bard, or else a magus with social skills somehow (dip?). I've read that melee bards aren't front-line fighters, but maybe for our non-optimizer table a relatively optimized elf bard melee build would be adequate for the purpose. For the other two, Cavalier is obviously jumping out at me. In any case, I could use some help choosing between the three concepts in terms of feasibility.

You're making the right signs that you're going to be a great Pathfinder GM if you're willing to do this much prep work. Also your experience in a variety of systems with different "table feel" will serve you well. I wish I was going to sit at your table, sir!

Pathfinder seems to be your first general-purpose system, though. It can be crunchy and tactical like 4th Edition, or carry heavy atmosphere like CoC, or support really good stories like Mouse Guard. Therein lies its strength: If you GM in a way that balances the three, I think you'll have a really great campaign.

Another piece of advice: I would limit your first campaign to the Core Rulebook at least for the first few months. Pathfinder has a deep stable of build options, feats, classes, and spells nowadays. They sometimes have strange interactions and unexpected implications, much moreso than 4th Edition. You're probably going to have to adjudicate more crufty rules-text than you're used to, so be ready to make judgement calls.

This is slightly off-topic, but do any of your players carry flint & steel? That could affect the DC and many other things besides . . .

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

If I were designing a "Pathfinder Next", I'd scale back the complexity to something near D&D 3rd Edition was when it was new. One of the reasons 3.0 was successful was because it gave you enough to chew on, without choking you.

When all we had was the 3.0 PHB, level 1 characters got a feat and probably a special ability or two. By level 5, one would have one or two more feats and probably one more special ability. Some race and class combinations were more or less complicated, but in general, a level or two would go by without changing how much work it is to run the character at the game table.

Then the splatbooks happened. Then 3.5. And the Complete series.

Pathfinder moved from ramping things up every two or three levels to ramping things up every level. And the widgets you get, more and more, track uses per day. This means my level 9 cleric needs a spreadsheet and I can't really do without one. Personally, I'm a software engineer; this doesn't scare me. But what does scare me is how busy I am. I'm not sure I have time for this wonderful hobby any more.

When 3.0 was new, one of the amazing things about it was that it established unity and relative simplicity from all the chaos. Most characters most of the time got spellcasting, feats, or a few special powers and abilities. Some classes were more complicated, but one didn't have to play them. Now there is no simple class, there is only complex and very complex.

Some of Pathfinder's biggest victories are the places where it made things simpler and more consisent, unified combat maneuvers for instance. Why can't we have more of that?

I'm playing a dwarf cleric, whose Artifice domain grants this ability:

Dancing Weapons (Su): At 8th level, you can give a weapon touched the dancing special weapon quality . . .

This isn't all that great given Dancing weapons seem to usually miss due to low attack bonus:

As a standard action, a dancing weapon can be loosed to attack on its own. It fights for 4 rounds using the base attack bonus of the one who loosed it and then drops . . .

A preponderance of forum posts here seem to agree that it's BAB + not much else while a weapon is Dancing. So for instance Strength, Weapon Focus, etc, don't seem to apply. This is lame when it's hitting for very low damage for our level; it's sort of a fun visual without really being useful.

But then I realized my cleric also gets Fabricate, up to ten cubic feet per level of any material I have handy. And I've got ranks in Craft (Weapons). And a weapon is a weapon, no matter how big it is. And if I don't get the bonus for, say, Weapon Focus, I don't see why I'd get penalized for non-proficiency nor the size of it being wrong.

Where's the PRD version of the d20 SRD table for weapons larger than Large?

Also, Magic Weapon and Greater Magic Weapon seem to apply, but it's not clear what other buffs would. I mean, I can't say giving my dancing Colossal Greatsword a morale bonus, but on the other hand, I feel like a Luck bonus to my cleric would be appropriate, given that it would be a stroke of luck if the thing actually hit something. :]

Also, suddenly I really want to know if our wizard can cast Shrink Item . . .

Not that the chorus needs any more voices, but I agree.

Barbarians can be a good basis for lots of other stuff too, like
my current character. Barbarian rocks so hard you can afford to bleed a little power to do something cool but not really aimed at raw power.

I love Knowledge skills and argue that they are equally the best innovation of 3E beside the d20 mechanic.

Permit me to beat a dead horse for one moment. It's only an innovation if you had an original thought. D&D 3.0 had very few of those. What they did was embrace good ideas that other people had already thought of. There's nothing wrong with that, that's part of the definition of progress and I'm all for it. But I wouldn't call it innovative.

About a year ago I started a campaign and played a Barbarian for just about the first time. He's so much fun! I have a newfound affection for them.

Then I got bored with not being able to contribute to much of anything outside combat (we've left the city we're in about three times), so I multi'd him into Oracle. It's like a whole new character. Making up your own Curse and Mystery based on in-game RP events == win (lately I've taken a Rage Prophet level).

Finally, I'm surprised there's been no love for the Cavalier. I haven't gotten to play one yet, but I really dig that they're a non-magical Paladin. Lately I'm in the mood for what TV Tropes calls the Badass Normal:

Honorable Mention: I sorta dig the gunslinger, though I haven't had a chance to play one yet.

This seemed like an interesting combination to me. It's sort of a ruggedized James Bond. :'] Favored Enemy + Art of Deception seems nifty, as does Sneak Attack + Ranger's stealthiness.

Another interpretation might be bounty hunter -- no matter where they go, no matter where they hide, in the wild or in the city, such a guy can hunt them down.

The saves dovetail too, which I dig.

Haha, gods of internet forum moderation? What a disturbing thought. On the other hand that makes me imagine some sort of modern fantasy game in which the pantheon does, in fact, have a low-ranking demigod of such things. His arch-rival would be the Archdemon Forrchan, Lord of Trolls and Noobs. :']

For full disclosure's sake I have to say that although my character isn't optimized, I was still definitely thinking about a kind of effectiveness, namely, to help out with healing. Our sole cleric was starting to feel strait-jacketed because our party of six needed so much healing. That's not the only reason I did it, but one could still say I was engaging in party optimization.

In a related note, the duelist in our party is juxtaposed with my character. When the campaign started he hadn't taken Duelist yet and was really lacking for it. Now he's got two duelist levels and just got another Int bump so he's really starting to hit his stride, just as I've had to plateau a bit, ironically to multiclass just like he has. It'll be interesting to see how things develop over time.

And of course, tomorrow I start a new job and the schedule may interfere with the very good campaign this is all happening in. Figures.

Thank you both! I'm having a lot of fun with him. I will add that we're not technically a party of two, rather it just so happened that the duelist and I were fighting by ourselves against the winter wolves at the time. The rest of the party was barred from interfering, because we were in an illegal underground gladiatorial contest.

Heh, originally I gave him a decent Charisma because I wanted him to have a certain animal magnetism. No good being into the ladies if you can't actually attract any of them.

PS - I wonder why my post was moved to advice?

So first of all, I've heard Rage Prophet is on the weak side. I'm not interested in taking up the debate, and truthfully I don't have an opinion either way.

Instead I'm interested in sharing my character who's picked up Rage Prophet in kind of a nifty way which is also totally sweet and awesome.

So there's this guy, Laughing Aurochs. He's kind of a standard barbarian -- came from the northern steppes, something of a wandering mercenary, into wine, women, and song, that sort of thing. He's a giant of a man, almost seven feet tall, and carries a two-handed sword.

Laughing Aurochs and his friend Kyris, a duelist, recently tangled with a couple of winter wolves, and killed them. 'Ochs, still caught in the war-fury of his people, raised one of the white corpses above his head and howled in victory. Its blood rained down, onto his face, and into his screaming mouth.

That night, strange white dreams came to him. In the morning, his friends told him his eyes glowed blue, like a winter wolf's eyes. A few days later, he started to feel unusually warm. Lately he's finding that his old friends ale and tavern brawls hold less and less interest for him, and unusual thoughts and images appear in his mind from time to time.

So he was Bbn 6 when he encountered the winter wolves. He then gained a level of Oracle, which the GM let me modify somewhat because none of the curses and mysteries seemed to line up with the winter wolf possession concept quite right (the newish Possession curse isn't that close either). He's now got vulnerability to fire and low-light vision, and the Flame Breath revelation from the Flame Mystery, modified for cold. Rage Prophet I think can be taken pretty much as-is; I just got level 1.

It's really neat having this surprise hard right-turn from the character's original concept, which was intended to let me roleplay a simple, easy, fun character that could really help out in combat. Now I'm starting to acquire weird powers and spells, to let me contribute substantially to events outside combat, and the roleplaying opportunities are changing too. The APG wasn't even published when I made the character!

Like hell I will! Next druid level druids get improvements to BAB, all saves, 2nd & 3rd level spells per day, and wild shapes per day.

:D

Well as far as I know you can trip with any weapon. If it is a weapon with the trip ability it just means if you screw up (by missing the CMD by 10 or more), you can drop the weapon instead of ending up prone yourself.

Hmm, your reading does make sense, now that I look at the text again. Sorry folks, misreading on my part. It never actually says if tripping uses weapons or not, and most weapons could actually be used that way.

Careful, you don't always trip with a weapon; you only trip with a weapon when it has the Trip special quality.

This is a little off-topic, but I've found that only poorly made, ill-fitting, or ill-fitted armor actually chafes, pinches, and significantly restricts movement. The exception would be the freedom of movement for plate, and even then it's actually better than you'd think. Remember that historically, the people wearing armor generally had it custom made or fitted for themselves, and everybody who wore it on a regular basis quickly learned how to adjust the straps and so on.

The closest modern analog is tailor-made clothing, such as executive business suits. They fit really well because an expert makes it to the exact specifications of the wearer. Remember that historically one didn't pay the armorer for the AC bonus, they paid for the freedom of movement to fight effectively while getting the AC bonus.

Like a lot of medieval roleplayers I'm only an armchair historian on this subject (and actual historians disagree on it often enough). Still, I've actually worn armor of a couple of different kinds, and I've been surprised at how good it can feel. I once tried on a coat of plates (not plate armor, a coat of plates is a different animal; google it) that had attached articulated steel elbow and shoulder joints, and I was amazed at the freedom of movement I did have. Granted, I only tried on the top half; for all I know the parts that really hamper skills are all below the waist.

I will add though that I've seen a tournament fight between opponents clad in plate armor, at a historical western martial arts event, and they were somewhat clumsy. This would be the difference between a full-time warrior and a modern man taking a weekend or two to play at swords now and again. :'P

Anyway, the armor check penalty does need to be there despite all this, because I think the armor is still heavy and possibly noisy depending on the type. Moreover the weight is in uniquely disadvantageous places. Swimming is harder in armor in part because the weight on your arms is making the circular motions that much more difficult.

Now, why doesn't the armor check penalty apply to attack rolls, given that swinging your arm is about the same motion regardless if it's moving steel or water? Only the culturally appropriate regional deities can say. :'P

PS - My favorite part of wearing armor was getting slugged a few times with the big rattan bat and then feeling invincible when I realized there was no pain. I gained an insight into the "courage" of medieval warriors right then. :]

Oh, sure, T O, you made a good point that I never responded to.

Thanks so much! :']

However, the hiding and spotting rules are as essential to one (and arguably as many as four) of the core classes as the rules for hitting people are to melee classes, yet they are not rigorous enough to be played similarly from table to table.

This is one of the things that surprises me so much about your position. I've played D&D for a long time and stealth has always seemed to work (and be ruled on by the GM) in a fairly sane way. I'm sure interpretations of stealth rules have varied, but I'd say no more than any other aspect of play. Lord knows, there have been plenty of tableside arguments resulting in the GM invoking his infallibility about the spellcasting and combat rules. :'P Anyway, I know my own experiences aren't statistically significant enough to say they're conclusive; I'm just telling you why I was so surprised. :']

I do agree with your assessment that the stealth rules could probably benefit from being reworded or clarified, though. This thread is proof enough of that. I wouldn't say it's really necessary though. This is because, now that (thanks to you, heh) I've read the stealth rules very thoroughly, I think they work well enough to go on.

If I come to your game having been allowed to sneak up on people and stab them in the back, then I am going to be quite incensed when I join a new game and I am not allowed to do that ever without risking DC 0 spot checks.

I would be, too. That would be grounds for packing away the gear and going home, and never coming back, as far as I'm concerned. If I'm right then the GM is misinterpreting rules really egregiously and I should leave. If you're right the GM is not willing to fix egregiously busted rules, and I should leave. Quod Erat Demonstrandum, baby.

I'm not entirely sure if that addresses your point. I'm just annoyed by core schticks in D&D that are still up to GM handwaving on whether they work or not, and hiding from people is one of those core schticks because the RAW abilities it grants are so vague and limited.

I think it does address my point in that I'm trying to understand things better. :']

Anyway, I think the key thing is that I'm willing to accept that sometimes even the "core shtick" is open to GM interpretation. After all, the GM is already in charge of deciding whether you face a troll or a tarrasque, right?

I do understand your annoyance though. If you sign up because you want to be a ninja and you're stuck being comic relief, it must be very frustrating.

The PRD says under Armor Training, "Whenever he is wearing armor, he reduces the armor check penalty by 1 (to a minimum of 0) and increases the maximum Dexterity bonus allowed by his armor by 1."

I think "the armor check penalty" means "the armor check penalty of the armor." It doesn't mention shields at all; I imagine if they'd meant for it to apply to shields they would've explicitly said so.

However, I think I'd allow it to apply to shields as well since I can't see it being too powerful.

I must be dense, as I cannot find the precise text saying so. If you could write down the precise quote, I would be very grateful.

It's the rules, rather than you, that are dense. :'P

Honestly, it's obvious that Weapon Finesse should count even though there seems to be no clear textual proof. Just roll with it and move on. :]

Knowing your opinion on the general subject I suspect your silence regarding my particular post is not to be taken as assent. No thoughts on what I said regarding context? Such as for instance, the vision and light text being inappropriate for non-vision-related uses of stealth?

I missed your earlier post T.O., but agree that context is king.

From the previous thread, I meant. Sorry for confusion. :]

PS - I like your nickname; I actually had to delete prima facie from a draft of a post from a little while ago. :'P

For those interested, I strongly suspect A Man In Black started this conversation as a result of this other thread; you can see for yourselves the beginning of it by searching for the word "Stealth."

There's no way I'm going to read 135 posts in any case; instead I'd prefer to continue from where we left off:

Well, sure, if you write some new rules for stealth that aren't 3e's rules, then the rules for stealth don't suck any more!

When a GM makes a judgement at the game table about a situation not covered by the rules, the GM isn't inventing new rules. In law, this is the difference between setting a precedent and drafting legislation. It so happens that the GM is both a lawmaker and a judge when running a roleplaying campaign, but that doesn't give one license to confuse one from the other.

What do you think of my previous arguments about context? You didn't say anything about it at the time it first came up. It continues to be relevant: There isn't a general rule about blindfolds, only rules about how blindfolds function relative to creatures with gaze attacks. ;']

I might suggest the U.S. Government if you want a good d2.

Very funny. :'P

Don't know if you have seen it or not but HERE YOU GO _ TO, he created a thread for the discussion.

Yeah, I've been watching the post-count go beserk over the past couple of days. He was right about that, at least. O_o

Too powerful.

What a thoughtful analysis.

The only thing more nerdtastic than katana fanboy silliness is reactionary katana hatin', if you ask me. ;']

It seems balanced given the prerequisites.

I'm having difficulty understanding why this wouldn't stack with Dexterity though. A tough guy can also be a dodgy guy, right? What would you think about changing it to half the Constitution bonus (minimum +1) and making it a Natural Armor bonus?

More interesting discussion about Stealth rules.

Hello again! As I said, I'm not really willing to continue being off-topic about this; let me know if you decide to make a thread and we can discuss it some more. :]

I like it too. :] Historically various countries were famous for their military specialty.

Would I be correct if I took that to mean you need more than just concealment to use Stealth in this maneuver? An unobserved place sounds to me like you have to get to either cover of some type or outside a creatures visual range in the current light (or other) conditions. What is your take on this?

I suspect they just mean a place that's not being observed due to the distraction just created. The normal rules about needing cover or concealment to hide would apply too, though.

Yes, both the mount and the rider can make attacks at the end of the mount's charge movement. Read the Mounted Combat section of the Combat page in the PRD for more details. :']

The feat Mounted Combat is also of special relevance for if a rider is the target of an attack; this will clear up what to do when two mounted riders face eachother.

Regarding running over pedestrians (heh), the mount can try to Overrun as normal. But see also the Trample feat for how to make it worse for the pedestrians. >8']

The key thing about mounted combat is to realize that the mount and the rider are just ordinary creatures that can mostly do as they please with the usual action types in a round.

Hi Thierry!

It sounds like you need a basic introduction to tabletop roleplaying. It's a fun and engrossing hobby, and there are a lot of good choices for what to play, but it's not very much at all like video games or board games you may've played before.

I'd recommend you start from the very beginning, by reading about what roleplaying is all about and how it works. Here's a good article based on a few minutes' googling:

Really Basic Intro to RPGs (pdf)

If you have any questions please just ask. :']

You can't be facing the wrong way because 3e has no rules for facing.

I think we both know that the DM is especially empowered to interpret game situations, especially when there are no rules on a subject. Facing must therefore be one of these. Whether or not a check is even allowed in a given situation is absolutely up to the DM. Let's take another example -- what if the target of the sneaky person is blindfolded? There are no blindfold rules, yet we both know that no Spot check should be allowed. One can claim that wearing a blindfold causes the Blinded condition, but that claim isn't backed by rules anywhere, regardless of how obvious it is.

Anyway, in the interest of staying on-topic I think this is the last I'm going to say on this subject on this thread; if you'd like to start a discussion on another one I'm happy to continue.

Can I have some more information on the project?

What's it written in, and is it cross-platform? What is the license going to be? I'd be interested in contributing to a cross-platform freeware or open-source project but otherwise probably not.

Ooops, I stand corrected!

3.5 SRD, Hide entry wrote:

You need cover or concealment in order to attempt a Hide check.

I don't want to get in to one of those silly hundred-post rules arguments you're discussing (in part because we're getting offtopic here), but I think you and I are miscommunicating about what was once Move Silently and Hide, versus what is now just Stealth. Plenty of 3.0/3.5 situations don't require Hide checks at all. As with my example from earlier, if the target is facing the wrong way, it's just Move Silently with no Hide check necessary. I'm not sure I can prove that with 3.0/3.5 rulestext because I don't have my core rulebooks in front of me and the SRD is pure crunch. The PRD has The Most Important Rule though, which makes me a happy panda. :'D

Against most creatures, finding cover or concealment allows you to use Stealth.

Er, that whole paragraph is about what to do when a character tries to hide from obververs, which means creatures that can already perceive them. I don't think taking that sentence out of context is appropriate:

"If people are observing you using any of their senses (but typically sight), you can't use Stealth. Against most creatures, finding cover or concealment allows you to use Stealth. If your observers are momentarily distracted (such as by a Bluff check) . . . "

Anyway, I think we agree about what really matters, which is to say, how the game ought to be played. I guess I forgot how dumb armies of D&D forum posters could be, because I stayed away from it for so long. :'P

The fluff for the feat reads, "The speed at which you move makes it nearly impossible for opponents to strike you." Not much here suggesting that the user of the feat actually conceals themselves.

That's not what the text of the feat says though. Lightning Stance doesn't grant a miss chance as if from Concealment, it grants actual Concealment. The only kind of Concealment in the game is the one that lets a creature use Stealth.

So, there's no right way to read this. The meaning of the feat is different from the mechanical implementation, which means that little bit of the game is just busted.

So, the GM in this situation has to use The Most Important Rule to make the feat work like they think it should work, and move on. :']

PS - There's no way to escape the paradox by thinking about timing (such as when the Concealment takes effect) because it's granted for 1 full round. Either the Concealment starts during the initial use of Lightning Stance and ends at the beginning of the character's next turn, or else Concealment starts at the end of the character's turn and lasts until the end of their next turn. Either way, they will be moving slower than a run during which they are Concealed.

PPS - The -5 penalty for using Slealth while moving faster than half one's movement rate may also apply.

Congratulations on your new gig. I'm GMing for the first time in quite awhile myself. Have to admit I'm having lots of fun on the other side of the screen. :'D

If it's your first time GMing, I'd recommend not house-ruling anything for starters unless you're really sure about it. Things can get out of hand. Just play it straight, and tell your player who's doing an Elven sorcerer that if they feel they're too weak that you can take kryt-ryder's suggestions and power things up a bit.

Just to make it explicit, here's the total feat allocation for a 1st level Elven sorcerer:

* Elven weapon proficiencies (all bows, longswords, rapiers, shortswords, and any weapon that has the word "Elven" in the name)
* 1 feat of the player's choice for being first-level
* Eschew Materials, granted by being a 1st level sorcerer.

The Bonus Feats you're talking about (for the sorcerer's bloodline) don't become available until 7th level.

After carefully reading the definition of a magic item in the PRD, and James Risner's reference, I agree with Aureus that the Shaken effect should get a 5 minute duration. From the PRD:

"Caster Level (CL): . . . The caster level determines the item's saving throw bonus, as well as range or other level-dependent aspects of the powers of the item (if variable)."

That strongly suggests to me that when you're not sure about some facet of an item's effect, such as duration, use the caster level as a guide, and the only thing that has a caster level related to this item is Doom.

Moreover I dislike Mr. Risner's reference from the book about the source of the fear. The text on page 563 doesn't clarify how long fear conditions last, but rather how an ongoing fear condition may influence a creature's behavior variably depending on whether or not the source of the fear is present.

Are there many magic items with this kind of vagueness though? Having to suss it out and make intuitive leaps like this is kind of bothersome.

Unfortunately, D&D3e's stealth rules are incredibly punishing in this sort of situation. Unless someone is actually standing in (or immediately adjacent to) an area of concealment, as soon as you leave concealment you're no longer hidden. (And, thus, combat generally begins, assuming you have a weapon out and are pointing it at them.) It's something that's totally awesome in both real life and fiction that 3e just doesn't simulate.

That's . . . incredibly unlike the way I've always understood the relevant rules for such things, all the way back to 2000, under a half-dozen GMs, GMing myself, and at least a dozen campaigns. It's always been ran for me that if a person isn't looking the right way, Stealth lets someone else walk right up to them. I can't find the rules bits that directly support what you say; can you spell it out for me?

Vital Strike is a Standard Action. You can move or use a Move Action before the attack. With Quick Draw, "You can draw a hidden weapon (see the Sleight of Hand skill) as a move action."

So there you are, standing 10' away totally unarmed talking to someone. Suddenly, surprise, you have a weapon in your hand. They are surprised, and flat-footed. You make a 5' step and attack them once using Vital Strike. Since they are denied their Dex bonus due to being flat-footed you get Sneak Attack damage.

I think you're trying to say that the move action of drawing the concealed weapon happens before the surprise round, so that way the surprise round itself can be a Vital Strike, right? Characters can't take both a standard and a move action in a surprise round.

There's another problem too. Surprise rounds are for when some combatants aren't aware of eachother; persons speaking to eachother are aware of eachother, so there needs to be some deception about the intent to kill. If I were GMing I'd call for Bluff vs Sense Motive to be able to pull that off, then Sleight of Hand vs. Perception to get the dagger out without being noticed. Failure at either of these could very well be Initiative and then off to the races.

Well, I'll be damned.

Frankly, it wasn't because "nobody thought of it".

Instead, it was because we're all very thoroughly familiar with 3.5e and nobody had actually read the Pathfinder Core Rulebook cover to cover yet (it being a new book and all), and none of us had ralized that something we'd taken for granted for nearly a decade had been surprisingly dumped on its ear like that.

Yeah I know what you mean. I've pretty much resigned myself to relearning everything and taking pretty much nothing for granted.

At least now you know. :'P

My thought is most of the Mystic Theurges you see in the wild will be players who build high level characters rather than folks who play through.

Heh, I like that turn of phrase, "in the wild," and I think you make a good point here too.

A friend is taking Mystic Theurge and a ton of item creation feats in my next campaign. This will allow him to build just about anything.

Wow, I never thought of that. Now that item creation doesn't require spending xp anymore, the Theurge as a magic item creator could be interesting.

I'm sad to say it, but since Pathfinder gives so many fun abilities to the base classes, I think the Theurge is now pretty much an underpowered curiosity. It's a neat idea but I think they need to give it some more oomph to compete with pure base-classed casters.

I think of it like this: Back in 3.5, clerics and wizards didn't get much beyond their spells; therefore the Theurge offered a reasonable trade. I'd call it losing one-turn punch and some spell efficacy but gaining endurance, versatility, and efficiency.

Efficiency hasn't been mentioned yet by other folks so I'll explain it. Attack spells make a good example. Both divine and arcane magic have them, but arcane magic is clearly better at it, so there's no reason to use any of the mediocre divine versions, so one might as well save them for what divine magic is really good at.

But anyway, sadly I don't think the Mystic Theurge offers anything compelling in the face of all the side benefits the pure casters gain these days. All they get in compensation is a mediocre special ability and a decent capstone.

A large creature has reach of 10' barehanded, and has reach of 10' when wielding a typical weapon that's typically twice as long as that the medium creature is using.

This isn't true, actually. The weight (or mass) of a weapon doubles when it goes from Medium size to Large size according to the equipment section of the rules. Since it's probably made of the same material and therefore has the same density, its volume must also double. Volume and length don't scale the same way if you want to maintain proportions, that is, a doubling of volume doesn't double any one dimension unless all the other dimensions remain fixed. A quarterstaff is a good example, because they're simple cylinders most of the time.

The volume of a cylinder is given by:

v = pi * r^2 * h

Where v, r, and h are the volume, radius, and height of the staff, respectively. Assume we want to keep the proportional dimensions the same between the Medium and Large staff, that is:

r/h = R/H

And therefore:

r = (R * h) / H

Where the small letters are the radius and height of the Medium quarterstaff, and the large letters are the radius and height of the Large quarterstaff.

We know we're doubling the volume, so we know:

2v = V

Where V is the volume of the Large staff. Now substituting a bit and solving for H:

2 * pi * r^2 * h = pi * R^2 * H
2 * r^2 * h = R^2 * H
2 * ((Rh)/H)^2 * h = R^2 * H
2 * R^2 * h^3 * 1/H^2 = R^2 * H
2 * h^3 * 1/H^2 = H
2 * h^3 = H^3
2^(1/3) * h = H

Google claims 2^(1/3) is about 1.26, and h is probably about six feet, so we know the Large quarterstaff is only about 7.5 feet long, not 12. That's quite a difference. :']

Hello.

Are there people playing Pathfinder in Tallahassee? If you know someone please tell me.

Have you tried meetup.com ?