Taku Ooka Nin's page

At a guess, he was probably allowed to use the table of alternate abilities in Blood of Angels. One of the options there is a 20-foot fly speed with poor maneuverability.

Pretty much this.

He was chatting with me on Telegram in our group chat (which he hasn't left, yet) and was like, "Man, all I need now is a fly speed." So I told him that if he wanted to, he could choose to take the fly speed instead of his SLA per the chart.
It does say that with GM approval, you can just choose one (but not two).

he also tuned the sprites to be abnormal giving them a feat they wouldn't normally posses and used a mechanic that the module probably didn't account for as for the imbalance of casters yes its imbalanced as they are the only ones that can work properly with such abysmally low point buy as for the players loving the game i think they just glossed over the fact that the gm will just kill them 1st chance he gets dude killed a guy like half an hour into the session or so this isn't call of chathulu as for unusual races i don't see any one in the party running any as they are at level one and thus can't really play monstrous races

Actually, the sprites I used were right out of the book and more or less followed the tactics given them by Paizo. Well, when one of them was spotted, she didn't run up and color spray the paladin.

THANKS PAIZO! =P

10 point buy and no full casters and purposely killing off characters in the first sesion no less how did you manage to get any players in the 1st place? the 10 point buy alone is a turn off then you ban the only type of characters that make it work

I use 15 point buy, actually. The players have the same point-buy at NPCs.

Shouldn't the staggered effect have knocked him out of the sky, and accidentally saved him?

He made his save every single time. I was so disappointed. You hear that winter-touched sprites? I am disappointed!

What sort of Paladin can't go toe-to-toe with a CR 1/3 Fey? Why did the player not just beat the thing up? Iomedae would not be impressed.

The enemies were attacking from about 40 feet up from him and shooting him to death. The idea of him using cover came up. The enemies just relocated to negate his cover, then started shoothing him again.

(Especially after building such a Mary Sue PC - an Aasimar Paladin with a fly speed at 1st level, really?)

OMG IRK? He's a furry, and basically created his fursona using the Aasimar. He was a horse man with wings. I could have deneighed his character, but he might have whinnyed about it.

So I get why he'd be upset and he had no way of knowing whether he had a killer or lenient GM at that point.

I'm very "by the books" when it comes to mechanics. I do fun and silly RP, but the mechanics are brutally and the NPCs and Creatures are dangerous.

Granted, if he was fighting normal fey, they probably would have just taken all of his gear, and tied him down Gulliver's Travels style or kidnapped him. Winter-touched fey are EVIL with a capital E. I mean, they just spent a day killing all of the birds they found and making fetishes of them.

I wouldn't say it was unfair, but you were definitely playing a cut throat, no mercy type game. ... They were evil pixies so hunting down and murdering the guy makes sense from a roleplaying perspective.

I love cutthroat games. If you make stupid decisions, you can get isolated and killed very easily, and honestly, you'd have no one to blame but yourself.

You chased down and murdered a player who was trying his best to flee the encounter, when there was more dangerous targets, and higher priority targets around, that you could have easily switched target to. So you could of definitely went easier on him. If it was me, I would of switch some of the pixies to the other targets but it is what it is.

The sprite that went after the paladin could have decided to attack the party, but he already had his quarry on the ropes. I had two of the pixies quit the field entirely (one was incapped, the other grabbed him and ran), so the other players were probably more dangerous than the paladin.

I even explained the scenario to the Paladin, and by his own words he agreed that, were he in the enemies situation, he would have done the same thing.

I also disagree when people say the paladin made a bunch of bad choices. He actually made the choices you would expect smart players to make. When he was attacked, he went and hid behind cover and when wounded he retreated. Which is better than most people who often don't use cover very much, and many people do not retreat when wounded.

This completely ignores the "moving away from the other players and isolating himself" parts. This is a team game. You win or lose together, but he decided that he didn't need his team. Work as a team or die alone in Pathfinder. He decided to fight alone, so he died alone.

You say he should of ran to the party, but from the sounds of it he just ran the in the direction away from the threat, which is the safest direction to run.

If all of your friends are dead and you're pretty sure you can outrun whatever the danger is, yes. If your entire team is right there and could help you fight the enemy, no.

The party didn't have a cleric by the sounds of it, so what does running to the party do?

Been higher priority targets for the enemies. The Alchemist could effectively 1-shot them with a bomb on an average damage roll, but they need to get in range. I banned full casters from the game. I highly encouraged 2/3 and 1/2 casters, but the only person who played someone with healing that he could give to anyone else was the Inquisitor and that is because I made that character for the completely new player. When they hit level 2, their healing will double. In 10 - 15 point buy games, I always ban full casters: they simply outshine the more complex classes due to extreme ease of optimization. It has worked very well in the past.

They couldn't have saved him. [The enemies] couldn't coup de grace him, but they could of just shot a few arrows into his unconscious body and he would of died all the same.

The enemies would have prioritized the other player characters if the paladin ran to them after being KOed.

For the most part, the enemies were relatively unaware of the other PCs right up until a bomb seemed to fly out of the snow and blow one of them out of the sky.

Had the other players yelled at or taunted the enemies, they likely would have attacked everyone instead of the guy painting a massive target on himself.

If the Paladin's player was new to the game ...

He was a veteran as best as I could tell. Maybe he was newer than I thought, but he had decent system mastery.

Were the enemies bigger and could have carried the paladin off, the one who 1v1ed him at the end might have dragged him off to the boss of the first half of the book, but it boiled down to finish him off or leave him to die on his own while not being threatened by anyone else. Them killing the paladin made more sense to me.

The enemies are trying to win and survive while acting in their pre-written tactics. They're going to act intelligently if they have intelligence.

There is one thing that makes me paranoid, though:
The players haven't killed any of the fey that have attacked them so far. Enemies have more or less been able to escape.

I am running Reign of Winter, and my players encountered event D.

I had 4 players at the time: a Catfolk Alchemist, Tengu Inquisitor, Kitsune Rogue, and Aasimar Paladin. The former 3 are noobs who are learning the system, but the latter is more skilled.

During the first round of combat, the monsters used their impressive stealth skills to hide in the upper canopy of the trees. The paladin further flew around isolating himself from the players. The players prepared for combat, one stealthed around, another used his perception to search for enemies, and the last double moved to move 3 spaces in the deep snow.

A note about the enemies that is important:

The enemies are only really aware of the location of the Paladin at this point, so they attack the threat they know about and deal consistent damage to him on the 1st and 2nd round of combat while using snipe (-20 stealth) to remain hidden—I was surprised when it was working, and I wasn't even counting in the penalties to perception due to weather effects and distance.

On the 2nd round the Paladin decides to fly further away from his allies and hide in a tree. The enemies reposition using stealth.

On the 3rd round the paladin sees one of the enemies and attacks it with his light crossbow. It does some damage. The the attacked enemey makes itself more obvious and uses Dancing Lights to create move false trails.

On the 4th round, the paladin is low on HP (around 3 left) and decides to retreat from the enemies. How does he retreat? Does he fly to his allies? Does he go to the ground and hide? No. He decides to call the retreat and fly off-screen with a full-round fly (running while flying I guess). His fly speed is 20 ft., the enemies have a fly speed of 60 normally. The enemy shoots him again.

Luckily, the Catfolk Alchemist has a climb speed, so he climbed up one of the trees and pegged the the injured enemy with a bomb. This incapacitates this foe, so I have one of the other enemies fly down, grab the fallen enemy, and flee the battlefield.

On the 5th round, the Paladin decides to continue full-round fly, gets shot again. By this point he has 2 HP left.

On the 6th round, the Paladin realizes that maybe he isn't going to out fly the enemy. So he sees and shoots at it with his light crossbow. He misses. He gets shot again.

On the 7th round, the paladin misses his attack, shots shock and knocked out, and promptly coup de graced by his diminutive enemy.

Is this kill unfair? From my perspective, the Paladin made loads of terrible decisions. I also started thinking that the reason he was acting this way was because he viewed himself as the "Hero" of the story while the other characters were the supporting cast.

After his character died, he decided to quit the game. He packed up his stuff, and left the game store.

Of course, when he left, the other players just carried on as though nothing happened, and enjoyed the rest of the game night.

What do you guys think?

I couldn't think of a better spot to put this, so I am placing it here;

Lets say a paladin is being tricked by a follower of some malevolent entity so far as to even joining their faith, lets say a 'good humored' LN cleric of Ruzel for sake of example. The paladin holds no knowledge of the nature of Ruzel except what they have been told by the cleric, and none have have had a chance to correct them. Over time the paladin becomes corrupted, and begins spouting heresies against other faiths and eventually the paladin starts to kill people believing them to be evil.

At what point does the paladin fall, more than likely tipping them off that something is wrong?

Your problem here is that you're having to create a scenario where the player is likely to figure out what is happening. You're also ignoring the idea that the paladin's deity is likely to tip him or her off to what is happening, and even without that, the paladin is likely find something ethically, morally or spiritually wrong with what is being asked of him.

The other major issue here is that the cleric radiates an aura that matches his or her deity's auras. Sure, a ring of mind shielding will prevent the paladin from noticing where the lingering evil aura is coming from, but it wont take him all that long to figure it out if he spend any time in the presence of this cleric. He will likely be looking for the source of the evil in an attempt to protect his new colleague.

To put this a different way: if you're doing this to an NPC, then have fun with it. If you're doing it to one of your players' characters without the player knowing what you're doing, stop it, but if he or she is fully aware of what is going on and is on board, full steam ahead.

The Paladin falls the moment he or she renounces his or her dedication to the deity, he does something the deity finds unforgivable (hence the atonement spell) or he begins serving a deity that cannot quality for the Paladin class.

There is another option: change the Paladin to a compatible archetype.

As a general rule, character changes should happen because of character agency, and this goes doubly so for player characters: believable stories revolve around NPCs acting in ways that serve their sense of agency, but this is amplified for player characters because stripping the player character of agency in the game enacts the same action upon the player in terms of the game. To put this bluntly, by setting up this whole scenario where the paladin falls without the player actively knowing that what he is doing to cause it, the player is denied the agency to make the conscious choice and accept the consequences, but instead leaves the player left with the decision to continue playing a character with what is effectively warrior levels, make a new character, or just not play in your game. I cannot stress enough how much people who play alignment restricted classes hate GMs pulling some auto-fall card out of their asses in an attempt to nerf the character.

To recap:
If NPC, full steam ahead.
If PC, if the player is fully aware of what is happening and choosing for it to happen, full steam ahead, but if the player is unaware of what you're doing, WTF are you doing? Shtap. You're only going to make your player feel singled out and harbor an Us vs Them mentality between you and the player.

This is a little build of mine that is particularly absurd. The crux of it revolves around the idea that "Life Link" supernatural ability does not heal positive or negative energy, but instead it just heals damage regardless if the linkee is alive or undead.

The basic concept is this: Oracle [Spirit Guide] 17 / Shadowdancer 3 (Oracle 1 - 5, 9 - 20; Shadowdancer 6 - 8).
The game I am building this character is Core Races Only, so we'll use a Gnome. He is not only the ultimate healboy, especially when he gets a ring of regeneration, but he eventually has a full power animal companion with a Shadow that pretty much is never going to die.

Animal Companions are GREAT early on, but they have less impact on the game each level beyond 10 or so due to plenty of factors ranging from AC to the fact that enemies will just be able to kill the animal companion later on.

The Shadow has 1/2 the Oracle's HP (similarly to a familiar) but is far more dangerous because it is only affected by magical weapons or energy attacks (for 1/2 damage with exceptions) and completely immune to physical attacks. That means most of the high CR animals just auto-lose against it. The shadow is outrageously powerful, doubly so when we take into account that it can sink into the ground for total cover and total concealment.
The major drawback of the Shadow is that if it dies, its owner could gain a permanent negative level if he fails a DC 15 fort save (unlikely to happen if for this build). The other major drawback is that this pet cannot heal on its own (due to being undead), and there are only a few classes it would synergize with that could effectively heal it.

This is where Life Link (Su) comes into play. The ability does not claim that it uses positive or negative energy to heal, but instead that it simply transfers the damage, and therefore means that a living life oracle could heal a shadowdancer shadow with it.

This takes this minion from a potential liability if it takes too much damage (you risk the negative level if it dies or you dismiss it) to you being able to let it fight constantly. Hell, there are fights in APs where you could send it in and win due to the enemies having no retort.

What makes this doubly ridiculous is that I am not even taking into account the use of Animate Dead to create a buffer for the Oracle or throw out more undead: this build and theme could be even more overpowered. The Army of Bloody Skeletons acts as the fist, and the Shadow is the heavy hitting assassin that just strength damages enemies to death. When that isn't enough, the Oracles allies actually get off their butts and do something (when they get back from Pizza due to the Oracle taking on everything by himself and winning).

My prototype build:
Attributes (20 point buy)
Str 5 (+4 point buy, -2 race [gnome]
Dex 13 (-3 point buy)
Con 20 (-17 point buy, +2 race [gnome])
Int 10 (0 point buy)
Wis 9 (+1 point buy)
Cha 16 (-5 point buy, +2 race [gnome])
Ability Score Increase:
(4th/8th/12th/16th) +1 Con (20th) +1 doesn't matter.

Feats
(1st) Dodge
(3rd) Mobility
(5th) Combat Reflexes
(7th) Boon Companion [Animal Companion]
(9th/11th/13th/15th/17th/19th) Whatever you want. Leadership would be stupid, doubly so if your follower shadows your build.

Oracle with Spirit Guide Archetype:
Mystery: Lunar [Primarily for Primal Companion: Tiger {a.k.a. "Big Cat"}]
Oracle's Curse: Any work, really, but Haunted is themeatic.
(1st) Primal Companion
You don't have Life Link, yet, so you need to babysit your Tiger.
(2nd) At least you learn "Fumbletongue" for free.
(3rd) Your Spirit Guide decides to show up. Take a Life spirit. Congratulations: you have Life Link now.

Pretty standard oracle until level 5 where you go into Shadowdancer, so you basically have two throw-away levels, but when you hit Shadowdancer 3, you become absolutely terrifying. From that level on, you have a scout that can walk through walls, and worse is that probably has comparable HP to your party's fighter.

At level 9 this Oracle will likely have a +6 belt of constitution, and from that point on, will probably be saving for a Ring of Regeneration.
This character's HP at level 9 would be:

9th lvl Oracle's HP: 139 (+8 [1d8] 36 [8d8] +81 [con mod*9] +9 [toughness/lvl] + 5 [Oracle FCB])
9th lvl oracle's Shadow's HP: 69 (139/2 rnd down)

20th lvl Oracle's HP: 320 (+8 [1d8] 85 [19d8] +190 [con mod*10] +20 [toughness/lvl] + 17 [Oracle FCB])
20th lvl oracle's Shadow's HP: 160 (320/2 rnd down)

This build cannot access 9th level spells. This is one major drawback.

What do you guys think? If we throw in Throat Slicer, with the Big Cat..., well, just see my other post Throw down your weapons or the Wizard Gets It! for how ridiculous that is.

Cheers.

So, you can maintain the same action you pin with? I thought a pin needed to be a separate roll?

with a successful maintain grapple check you automatically bestow one of the affects upon the graplee: deal damage, move both creatures, pin the graplee or, if the grapplee is pinned, tie up the graplee.

This is not an additional check: it is built into maintaining the grapple.

I found a combination of feats that is probably one of the more effective strategies in the game for just killing targets, specifically the less martial player characters if you're the GM.

Throat Slicer looks like a great feat, but it takes a bit of work to make it great. The Grabbing Style works great here, but mixing it with the Improved Grapple line (Improved Grapple, Greater Grapple and maybe Rapid Grappler) and a character built to grapple targets makes throat slicer ridiculously viable.
If the character's grappling ability is high enough, escaping the grapple could become all but impossible for characters who are not built into dealing with grapplers. On round 1, the aggressor moves into position and grapples. On round 2, the aggressor pins the defender with a move action and then either coup de graces the target or readies its target to do so and demands the defender's allies surrender.

Mix this with a x4 crit weapon that qualifies for the throat slicer feat and the coup de grace starts to move from potentially survivable, to almost assured death due to the auto-crit.

Either way, this is one way to make martials more deadly.

It is also a way to make your games lethal again if you're stuck with the players being nigh on invincible gods of death.

Druid is next on my list.

Wonderful, druids are actually really fun. You just have to remember their gimmick: they are self reliant characters who are not intended to have the easy refinement of the other classes. What I mean by this is that you can go pretty much any direction with Druids, be it a specialist or a generalist, but they are hit much worse by not specializing into things.

This said, you can do some crazy things that other people simply can't without expending crazy resources: you could fly around as a Thrush and, with the proper feats (Natural Spell [spells] and Wild Speech [language]) cast spells and talk without issue.
I'll talk more about that later, but yes: Druids are more complex than clerics. In terms of healing, think of Druids as 1/2 a cleric.

Stats

Druid require Wisdom as their casting statistic so it will likely be the top, secondary or tertiary stat in terms of stat allotment, but this depends entirely on build. Typically speaking Will, Con and Str/Dex will be competing against each other in a build with STR and DEX being emphasized depending on if the Druid is going to go with large or small creatures.

Weapons

Weapons are functional for druids, but you shouldn't build your character around them like you can for other character classes. One of the reasons druids don't have amazing weapon proficiency is that their core combat mechanic, Wildshape, hampers the use of weapons therefore making them be counter-productive.

Armor

Armor is great for druids, and the Wild Armor enchantment, while expensive, can turn various forms into defacto tanks. If you grab a plantshape form that has regeneration, that you qualify to use, then you can more or less just tie up the enemies long enough for your allies to dispatch them. You wont be a god of death, but you can ensure your allies, who are, are more effective.

Spellcasting

You are a full spellcaster, but your spells are not as good as a Cleric's spells. However, your spells revolve around animals, chiefly your animal companion, if you took one, and any awakened or trained beasts that are with you.

You can be incredibly deadly with the right helpers, just one of which is your Animal Companion, and it is entirely possible to have a small army of animals ready to attack with abandon at your word.
Your biggest power, however, is your summon nature's ally spell line. If you go to Superior Summons, then it is easy to flood the battlefield with enough minions to prevent the enemy from effectively doing anything.

BeastWildshape

Wildshape is outrageously powerful. People don't see how strong it is until they think about it. Very few NPCs suspect a random dog with a collar when it meanders over to their secret conversation for loves. Fewer people suspect a thrush in the trees when there are literally hundreds of birds watching the events unfold. In combat, there are plenty of options to play with: anything with multiple attacks and pounce, anything with multiple attacks that all have grab, Hippopotamuses with the vital strike chain or, my favorite, huge flying animals to pick up people, fly up several hundred feet and let them go.

Don't underestimate Wildshape.

Domains

The domains for Druids are OK, but they are not amazing unless your build revolves around them. If you want to play a "tank" druid, then anything that gives you a familiar is great, just play Lawful Neutral and take the "Kami, Shikigami" familiar at level 7 and give it the protector archetype so it absorbs 1/2 the damage you take. It has cast healing and can choose to not absorb damage that would kill it. Your HP effectively doubles over multiple fights. I'm not a fan of Domains over Animal Companions, but it is doable.

Archetypes

The Saurian Druid is the most powerful druid archetype in the game: you can apply the Advanced (+1), Giant (+1) or Young (-1) templates to these animals to put them in your summoning ranges for spells, thereby keeping certain favored animals viable for much longer than usual. The other archetype I like is the Reincarnated Druid, which you can build to be both a physical and magical character. Granted, the Reincarnated Druid starts off weaker, but it is one of the few archetypes that could be ancient since reincarnation can revive you from dying from old age. Mix it with a Green Faith Adept and you're golden.

Early Levels

Animal Companions turn you into a god here. The Big Cats are considered some of the best animal companions in the game, but more exotic companions such as the Deinonychus can also be viable. If you give the animal companion leather armor proficiency, then it is entirely possible to have an animal companion with an AC over 20 at level 1, one, I might add, that has a damage output on par with a dedicated fighter. Much like the fighter, however, the animal companion will quickly become marginalized by the game's higher levels.

I think I understand the appeal of a druid

Druids, as I said before, are absurdly fun, but they do require quite a bit of system mastery to make effective. It is also entirely possible to turn them into pet-masters that follow and aid the animal companion.

The other classes are more specialized than druids are, but the druid has the strength that it can prey on whatever weaknesses it can find. Casters have bad AC (the animal companion takes them), Tanks tend to have poor touch AC (touch spells take them), DPR classes have strong damage output but lower defenses (a combination of Druid and companion takes them out), and when the druid is outclassed, Wildshape or spells that impede non-druids resolves that problem.

A well built and used druid is something that strikes terror into its foes because of the options it has to deal with them, and worse is that fact that druid pretty much never stand alone: there are plenty of spells that give them lots of help.

It's a lot more explainable than suddenly becoming a wizard.

What are you talking about? Some huge bearded man just walks in and tell you that you are one.

You are a powerful necromancer Malovec!

The answer is: yes. Wizards are not bound by alignment because their power comes from knowledge, but clerics and Divine spellcasters are due to their spellcasting coming from a deity who doesn't cast such spells and therefore can't bestow them to a mortal.

We're talking along slightly different lines.

I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:

This this this = A

Taku Ooka Nin wrote:

That that that = A

Gotcha.

The fact that PCs are pursuing a common goal, and all that follows from that, should be obvious

You would be amazed at how often this happens. My experience is that it happens most often when the party is filled with duos of characters whom effectively cover the majority of their bases, albeit poorly, to be able to win fights due to optimization. I have three examples here: Inquisitor + Magus, Alchemist + Alchemist with supporting archetype, and a classic: Cleric + Arcane Trickster.

These players tend to be either overly optimized gods of death who view themselves as the "real" PCs with the other players acting as sidekicks, or they just want to hoard XP if the GM is using an XP system where only people present in battles get XP from them. My favorite instance of this was a dungeon I made that basically had a sequence where the PCs could get trapped in the dungeon if they didn't escape quickly enough (think Indiana Jones). The power-duo in that group split off in an actually threatening and deadly dungeon, managed to survive two encounters by themselves (CR+1 and CR+2), used magic to bypass the boss (CR+3) of the dungeon and made a B-line for the exit. The duo escaped with time to spare, but the other PCs (3 of them) ended up getting trapped. The thing is, once the PCs get trapped the monsters basically start wandering the dungeon to create a marathon fight that massacred them with ease. Needless to say, they were not impressed, but the duo found the entire event to be hilarious.

although there are any number of instances where it does make sense to split the party

This is true. If the party is in a relatively safe location, such as a goodly town or location the GM has said is safe.

I may have need for a mid to high level necromancer in my campaign. When looking at the info on the SRD, it would seem that the best necromancer to make from an optimization standpoint would be a cleric instead of a wizard - especially when it comes to making undead. Is this correct? Or are there some advantages an arcane necromancer could have that a divine one doesn't? The necromancer in question would probably be around 13th level or so.

I've always found that a Spell Sage Wizard Dhampir makes an excellent necromancer. You get to cast your animation spells at the same times as a cleric, and you still gain access to Wizard spells.

The best part is Blood Money. Free skeletons, anyone? Free raise deads for when the rogue decides he can solo everything? Free restorations? Free MIRACLE at level 17?

What is not to love? Sure, you don't get channel undead, but your caster level for Necromancy spells gets increased by the Dhampir's favored class bonus so it more or less balanced out.

Just make sure you make all of your undead bloody skeletons, so you don't have to worry about healing them or caring if they die.

In more or less all of my games I ban character switching to prevent people from playing optimal at all levels, but allow retraining rules and expanding them to allow players to retrain point-buy at a high cost. I've been in games where 3/4 the party was playing new characters at level 1, 7, 13 and on, and it was probably one of the most annoying aspects of the game if the GM is aiming for a cohesive central party.

There isn't a narrative reason for limiting the class choices, I just don't want full casters in the game. If I create this game on Roll20, I'll probably make content extra long to make full-casters nonoptimal by default.

20 point buy seems reasonable.

Martials would be permissible.

The kineticist is interesting, but the class is, in essence, a full casting class that specializes into a set amount of spells/abilities that it can spam forever.

The grim reality that I am running into is that I currently live in the middle of nowhere. The only place I can really play a regular game is on Roll20.net, and unfortunately, the GMs that are typically recruiting in an active sense are the GMs that struggle to retain players due to either their attitudes, game world view or their approach to the GM and player dynamic.

I have come to the realization that if I want to enjoy myself on Roll20, I have to run the game because the other GMs I've played with are, lets say to be nice, sub-par. My overall experience as a player on roll20 has turned me off of playing there in general. The time investment has turned me off of GMing since my life is quite a bit more busy these days.

My overall experience on roll20 is that is a hive of power-gamers who want to always be at their optimal peak (hell, one guy wanted to bring in a new character EVERY TIME WE LEVELED UP, absolutely absurd and GMs who treat their players like crap, introduce a slew of houserules that are not clearly defined and understood by anyone and act like people knowing the rules or optimal way to do something is a crime against nature since they know they can most likely replace anyone who drops or is kicked by the time the next session comes along.

I ran a game that was all bards, and everyone had a ton of fun. I highly enjoyed the casual nature, the emphasis on actual *gasp* roleplaying since the players knew their characters would struggle with fights: it wasn't, "oh no, enemies, lets go murder them," but instead worked more like, "Crap! enemies, lets try to sneak or speak our way past them instead of fighting." The players did things that were cool, like just casually walking past a guard patrol of the place they were infiltrating, and because they did nothing to alert the patrol to the fact that they didn't belong, they just ignored the party. "Ok, everyone, act cool and wave or something as we walk past, and, er, Billy talk to Jilly about what you're going to say to the Bossman."

Hell, we went sessions without fighting anyone. They completed entire pieces of content without fighting anyone, and we were laughing our arses off the entire time.

Hmm. This post has turned into a rant about Roll20 and how disheartening it is. I just want to play a game where I am allowed to show up and have fun instead of it being a damned job. I sometimes muse that Roll20's GM and Player base is mostly comprised of people who were exiled from their local groups with a smattering of people who just want to play the game and have fun.

I'm one of those weird a+$&%%*s who actually care about the game even if I'm a player. If I play, I get into it, and I don't like wasting my time—which is what Roll20 feels like from time to time.

I guess my attempt here is to make something that I'll find new or interesting.

This explains why human have such a bad reputation in certain circles.

I know, the homewrecker adventurer comes into town, gets all the girls pregnant, then leaves without paying any form of child support. Those human bastards!

Taku Ooka Nin wrote:

I can't believe you just said that Wizards are limited or 1 trick ponies.

At level 17 - 20, they're broken. Thing is, an extremely small bunch of groups actually play at that level. Hell, at level 17 - 20 I'd say that if you're not playing a full caster then you're hurting your group by being there when you could just kill your character to bring one in. At 17 - 20 there is nothing deadlier than 4 wizards who all took True Name constantly. A single spellsage with Blood Money you're effectively immortal (along with any of his allies) since he could just cast contingency and reincarnate to come back from death even caused by old age.

The vast majority of games I've been in have stuck to level 1 - 4, and in that level range wizards are terrible: they're either 1-trick ponies that are taking advantage of stacking traits and feats to make a single spell game breakingly powerful, or they're save or suck—there is almost no in-between that is anywhere near good.

Some of these games make it to 5 - 9, which is where the 2/3 casters start to pull ahead. Full casters are still somewhat behind them since while they're getting more powerful they're still made of paper. Groups that don't end by 4, tend to end by 9. Still, the sweeping majority of games end sub 10 unless they start at higher levels.

Anything from level 10 - 13 is where the full casters start taking over. The full martial classes are essentially meat shields by now. The 2/3 casters are starting to be left behind and the 1/3 casters are cute with their meager attempts at magic. Very few groups make it past lvl 13 unless they started there.

From 14 on, its all full caster. At this point, expect to run into enemies that are just magic immune to make the less caster based characters relevant.

My point is, regardless of how elitist you want to be or however badly your level 20 blinders are, there is a part of the game—a large part at that—where wizards ~are~ limited and 1 trick ponies.

If the OP wants to fix his problem with SAD classes, then play in the level ranges where they are not (im)mortal gods of the machine.

If you don't believe me, go and make a completely viable level 1 wizard that is badass and can reliably stand on his own with the other classes. You'll only prove me correct if this build relies on Save or Suck spells or if it stacks the deck with traits or feats to increase a spell's effective spell level. Go on, I'll wait.

Bunnyboy wrote:

Having LE member in LG party shouldn't be more difficult than CG member

I'd actually expect an Archon to get a long with an Azata more than a Devil

It is one of the sides of the argument that rarely comes up, but Azatas are constantly attacking or are at war with Archons, they just have the Agathions to thank for mediating most of the conflicts away.

Archons and Devils have one similar goal, Order, but come into conflict as to how exactly that shared goal should be achieved. So long as both groups gave their word, as their words are their bonds, they could be just as firm allies as Archons and Azatas, even if there may be an Axiomite in there somewhere.

Pathfinder milks the Good vs Evil shtick, but it is important to remember that Axiomatic vs Anarchic is just as important a conflict. I believe the books covering Hell more or less stated that not only does Hell has the best army in the multiverse but that no one can match it. But, there is an unspoken alliance between more or less everyone, save Abbadon, against the Abyss since it, and its hordes, are all consuming.

Let me put it this way: so long as devils follow the rules, they can be great friends with archons because you know that if they say they will, then they shall. Its one of the reason Azmodeus gets along with Sarenrae.

As for the idea of auto-falling just because you're working with someone who just so happens to be evil, it is a load of horse manure that bad GMs just love.

Consider how he could show his power even before fight has even starte[d]

Another option is for him to not even be there.

Imagine that the PCs are seeing an illusion that is being maintained by Mr. Big-Bad's familiar (probably familiar spell or something) with the big bad casting spells through one of the two rings wondrous item. Let's say he never actually casts spells that leave a trail.

You could have the PCs taking swings at something they can't hurt until they're all dominated and taking turns kicking each other in the crotch.

Then again, maybe the wizard has no problem banging his little pixie familiar and is happy that she, unlike other women, don't laugh at him when he pulls down his trousers.
=D

Okay so some backstory, my Wizard a cooky half elf teacher who thinks magic should only be used to help people and never hurt so he only uses illusions and outlaws evocation, he is our best roleplayer and a very fun character...

However, he met a Sprite he saved its life and a few diplomacy checks later it decided to follow him and live in his pocket, they made fast friends and a good duo and he decided to make her his familiar.

Now this is where things get weird, he has decided that this sprite would make a cooky little relationship if he married his little fey friend and I am curious if this has a precedent in any D&D or Paizo lore, a wizard banging his familiar... I have no idea how to handle this.

See Monster Girl Quest, then Fairies.

Perverted as hell games aside, it is possible. I'd say make it so if he wants to get down with his familiar, suggest that he might need to get permission (and help) from the Fey Courts to make sure nothing unexpected and potentially lethal happens.
The Fairy Queens of Golarion are far more powerful than their stat-blocks would suggest, and it is entirely possible that they could give the pixie an at-will SLA that turns her master into someone who is the same size as herself for an indefinite period of time. Just add some sort of stipulation that the spell is very fragile and taking advantage of the spell for anything beyond foreplay/sex is probably going to cause it to end immediately, E.G. casting disintegrate at a massive bonus for being the size of a pixie.

As for his son/daughter, use race builder and build a fey/half-fey. Don't let the player build the race.

Here are the questions:

1[a]) Is this a good idea?

2[a]) Can this be done without the party feeling like they were tricked/forced into an unwinnable fight by the GM?

3[a]) Is it reasonable for the BBEG to let the PCs live, seeing as he could easily just finish them off? (Maybe I give the BBEG a time sensitive errand or he has plans for the PCs later?)

4[a]) How should I build BBEG assuming the rest of this is okay? (Level, Stats, magic items, spells, etc.)

Some info on how I build NPCs:

1[b]) They get appropriate wealth by level for there level.

2[b]) They start with 8s in all stats, then I give them 25 points to distribute how they see fit, up to 10 points in one stat (an 18). (This is what the PCs get on character creation, and I want to be fair.)

3[b]) They have access to anything in any first party Pathfinder or DnD 3.5 books.

4[b]) Bosses get max HP and partial immunity to SoDs/SoSs. (PCs get max HP on the first die and 1/2 HD size + 1 per level).

1a) It can be a good idea in TTRPGs. You need to decide if your group is playing a GAME or if it is in a ROLEPLAYING SETTING. The difference is that GAMES assume that the PCs will be able to overcome pretty much anything they run into, and ROLEPLAYING SETTINGS assume that the PCs exist in a world that isn't connected or linked to their levels in any way: if they decide to go poke a king, he'll most likely be CR 11 or so, his combined army's CR will be higher than 30 and he'll probably kill the PCs with no problems if they are foolish enough to challenge him. Still, having at last one encounter that is absurdly high can work even if your game is in the GAME group of Pathfinder, but be aware that your players will think that they can win regardless of if the encounter is, to you, obviously out of their league. If you've only sent encounters that they can handle at them, they will probably view this as a betrayal since they use their TTRPG time as a power fantasy instead of one where the world can and should react to put them in their place the moment they start being problematic for it.

2a) The only thing you have to do is not kill them. The GM Fiat way of doing this is making it so they, for this encounter, cannot outright die from damage. There are a handful of rules from other systems that protect you in terms of having tough BBEGs: in 7th Sea PCs literally couldn't die from damage unless something obviously deadly happened, e.g. falling off a 200 ft. drop onto sharp rocks, and the villains had to deliver a coup de grace to helpless PCs to kill them—essentially stand over them, make a big dramatic speach about how much they suck and then stab them to death.— In D&D 5E the PCs are going to be hard pressed to die from damage taken unless it is absurdly high, and you can't go into negative HP since at 0 you start making death saving throws (3 failures you die, 3 successes and you heal 1hp or so). The old standby for most GMs when it comes to 3.5 or Pathfinder is "You take 9999 damage, if that would kill you, then you're instead at 1 point until you die from negative HP and stable."

3a) BBEGs don't tend to let heroes live since they know that the heroes are the ones who are most likely to kill them. However, some BBEGs might see the heroes as potential minions or allies. The simple reality here is that a well written villain doesn't really want to kill his enemies unless those enemies are competition for his current or overall goal. If he wants to become a god, then the PCs—who don't want to become gods—are fairly irrelevent, but that one guy who is trying to also become a god via the same method as our villain is the top priority for murder. If anything, the villain will want to team up with the PCs to take down his competition while rationalizing his goals and trying to bring them over to his side. Every villain should, in some way, have a justification and philosophy (even if they are not particularly good ones) for why he does what he does. I recall I wrote a villain who wanted to make an artifact on Golarion that would multiply all of the statistics of arcane magic by a magnitude of 10. Arcane magic would erase divine magic, especially with spell sages, and most govts. would become magocracies. After what would likely be hellish civil war in nearly every magically ready country, the world would move into a new era. Thing is, the PCs kind of took exception to the whole millions of people dying because Mr. Bad Guy wants to make arcane magic super strong. It would likely lead to a long golden age, but it would also have a slew of other problems.

4a) As a general rule, build BBEGs that come alone like PCs using NPC statistics. You can do a lot here, but one thing to keep in mind is that if he is a necromancer, he might just revive all of the PCs as bloody skeletal champions or something else likewise immortal. As for his build, I'd say spend his wealth on pets. Few things are as dangerous as a wizard with a shield golem since that shield golem is going to be making a B-Line for the PCs Offensive caster and then Defensive caster without fear of the villain's spells doing anything to it. Not only that, but shield golems have fast healing and typically high DR. If you want to make things more interesting, throw in Leadership. If the villain is spending resources on having it and he doesn't have infinite resources, it shouldn't increase his encounter's CR.

1b) Fine, but make it PC level.

2b) If you're going to use point buy with NPCs, match it to the PCs' point buy.

3b) I'm not a fan of our broken 3.5 became, the entire reason Pathfinder is popular is because it allowed people to escape the power builds and feats. Granted that is just natively seaping into Pathfinder just due to more content ("bloat" as some would say), but there are plenty of poeple who would rather it wasn't used. If you allow PCs to choose 3.5 stuff, then go for it.

4b) I think I read somewhere that bosses typically get max HP. My advice is to build the character, then compare its capabilities to the monster creation table, find what level each of its statistics are going to be at, and then average them to get its CR. In Pathfinder a great deal of GMs are spoiled by the rule saying that NPCs always have this or that CR, but it is important to double check. Hell, people are so spoiled by it that they say D&D 5E's method for deciding monster CR is whack even if it offers you a more balanced and less over/under CR result. SOS and SOD are fairly important and should have no problem affecting enemies. It sucks when your BBEG just gets shut down, but then again that is one of the big reasons they tend to be something immune to most mind affecting: if you want your boss to be resistant to SOS and SOD then make them some sort of Construct, Outsider or Undead.

I always find that high DPR builds are unfriendly to the GM if you're running pregenerated content. One houserule I have found that can prevent power-builds from just wrecking such content is to hard-cap damage against a target at 50% its max hp.

This makes it so power builds are less emphasized at lower levels since it doesn't matter if someone does 90 damage to a Kobold with 4 hp, it can only take 2 hp from a single attack.

If you apply this, then it means you can throw some pretty nasty things at the PCs without just insta-killing them (since this cap also applies to PCs). This means you can have encounters with plenty of smaller enemies with the knowledge that they will be able to act for at least 2 rounds. If you use this, then have enemies die or surrender at 0 hp to become non-targetable non-combatants unless they have something that allows them to fight until they die from negative HP (you can essentially remove them from play).

If you have the time to rebuild the content, then tailor everything to pick on the PCs weaknesses while neither countering nor resisting their strengths.

PCs having the ability to 1-shot (or 1-round) other PCs if they get dominated is pretty common. It is one of the GM's tools for dealing with absurdly damaging characters.

All in all, this is pretty run of the mill. Also, don't forget that someone can coup de grace themselves if they're dominated.

To answer the topic:
Is high DPR a bad thing: yes and no.

Yes, it is a bad thing as if it is too high, then it requires the content to be partially or completely rebuilt to offer any challenge.

No, it isn't a bad thing if it either isn't game breaking or the game has extremely high mortality on both sides. If the enemies can 1-shot people just as well as they can 1-shot the enemies, then it works.

In the vast majority of Paizo pregenerated content, which is intended to be domitable by a base party of CORE characters, having high DPR or highly optimized characters should probably add +1 to their effective party level if not +2 for particularly egregiously powerful builds (E.G. Master Summoners, Dhampir Army Necros wizards with all minions bloody flaming skeletons, .etc).

There is also the argument for just building content that doesn't revolve around the strengths of the PCs. If they're all combat gods, then use hazard / trap dungeons, if they're trapfinding gods, then use social dungeons and if they're good at all three, then they likely are pretty damned balanced to the point you probably don't need to hard-counter them by just avoiding their overspecialized strengths.

1. Kingmaker is notoriuosly easy due to one fight per day problems.

I actually rebuilt this werewolf to make it more of a challenge, not absurd but slightly better.

Milo v3 wrote:

TBH, bloat is near useless in internet discussions since it's super subjective, what matters is whether or not the game has too much For You and Your Group not whether it is objectively too full or not.

I'd say there is a difference between "there is no bloat" and "there is bloat, but I and my group don't mind it at all".

Quote:

Sure, it's possible to build high-powered characters with core. But allowing all the options makes the problem much worse. You'll notice that the OP specifically mentioned an orc/dragon crossblooded sorceror. That's a classic munchkin magnet, but it's not core: crossblooded is from UM.

Doug M.

Milo v3 wrote:

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

Gotta disagree [About PF not having bloat. PF had 11 classes in PF, and now it has 38, not including archetypes, feats and so forth.]

It is completely subjective. [I use all of 3.5, PF and more!]

Thats nice Milo. You probably custom build everything, which makes it really easy to include stuff that picks on the weak points of your PCs, while also being vulnerable to them. I'm a professor now, I don't have that kind of time.

The thing I find kind of funny about all of this is that the guy with the build, since I've instituted CORE ONLY, isn't complaining. He's just like, "Yeah, that build was B.S., building something else now."
I guess he kind of knew this was coming.

What you're referring to is "bloat," or an RPG system's tendency to expand its build options and rules with every new book that's published. Unfortunately, it's kind of an essential part of the RPG business model. Almost every game (except for a few independent ones) does it.

It's like the natural cancer that inevitably kills all RPGs. They start with one brilliant book, then year after year, it grows and grows until the weight of all those extra options render the original concept so cumbersome that the whole system collapses under its own weight. It reaches a point where older players are finding absurd power combinations and new players are so intimidated by all the complexity that they're turned off of the game entirely.

That's about when each of these companies makes some grandiose announcement about a version 2.0, how awesome it's going to be, and how it's going to fix all the problems with rusty old 1.0. They're at least right on one thing: Whether or not the new version is any good, it at least starts the bloat cycle over again.

Note: This isn't necessarily a complaint, just a fact. Paizo wouldn't exist as a company if their system didn't bloat. It turns out you have to sell a lot of books to keep the lights on in an office building full of developers. :)

Yeah, this seems to strike the nail on the head in terms of summing up what is happening.

Lets hope Pathfinder 2.0 is soon.

Hey guys,
so I've been playing Pathfinder for a pretty long time, and while there have been some aspects of the game that have allowed people to make power characters, there is something to be said about the meta.

One of my players in my Kingmaker campaign made a wizard/Sorc (CB: Orc/Draconic) build that averages 27 damage with a save of either 13 (Sorcerer) or 17 (Wizard). This blows game balance completely out of the water since he can effectively 1-shot everything that is under CR 3 or immediately die to it after his turn.

While I was GMing this, I came to a simple realization: these characters are fun for the player but not the GM. Doubly so if the GM is running custom content. This was made painfully clear when I built a werewolf for the party to face, which was supposed to potentially hurt one of them, maybe give someone else lycanthropy, only for this Wizard to casually walk up and 1-shot the monster.

Done. This encounter that was supposed to be really cool was ruined, and not by a crit, but by something that is easily repeatable, perhaps 9 times a day.

After this, particularly egregious result, I've switched the game to CORE ONLY, and told the PCs that they can switch or leave, mostly because I'm not going to rebuilt Kingmaker to make it so things can at least survive 1-round when they are supposed to be decent encounters for the party.

Hades, what PFS having a CORE ONLY mode tells me is that even Paizo realizes how many absurdly broken combinations they have in their game. It is basically 3.5 all over again.

This leads me to a major question:
Does Pathfinder have too much meta? Is there so much meta that overpowered trick-builds are becoming a plague?

I'm a fan of not banning anything, hell Roll With It (Goblin) is the only perma-banned thing in my book, but I'm beginning to see why more and more GMs that I talk to that still run Pathfinder just have ban-lists a mile long or only permit certain books.

This experience is turning me off Pathfinder in a big way, especially when I play 5E and see that everyone is around the same power-levels even with cool stuff added.

I'm very busy these days, and I lack the time required to build custom content en-masse. What is fun for the player is not fun for the GM, and if the game is not fun for the GM, then you don't have a game, simple.

Emerald Spire goes until around lvl 13 or so, and to that end, your level to build for terminates there.

The "Classic Gish" is Fighter 5/Wizard 5/EK 10, but for your purposes it would be Fighter 1/ Wizard 5/ EK 7, giving you a BAB of 10 or so at "max" lvl. This translates to 2 - 4 attacks with a singe weapon - two weapon fighting (not recommended). Your casting class level will be lvl 11, so it could be useful to go Wizard (since you'll have lvl 6 spells).

The classic gish is really about choosing what you want your poison to be. You can be a tanky wizard who wears the heaviest armor around, wields a big dumb tower-shield and casts saveless spells with still spell to effectively be a front-line spell knight; a ranged fighter that relies on a combination of casting and archery to kill enemies; a front-line fighter who pummels enemies to death with natural and breath weapons; or you could make some god-awful spawn of the above.

If you go Wizard, then keep in mind that there are two major choices for you: Divination and Transmutation. At first glance, transmutation just wins hands down: you will receive a +2 enhancement bonus to any physical attribute of your choice. However, Divination lets you act during a surprise round. If you're playing low-dex, that might be worth it. One major thing to keep in mind is that it is impossible to add dex to dmg in Core, so if you're going the dex route then Arcane Archer, Arcane Trickster or a crit fishing build might be your best bet.

The unfortunate reality is that you have to make some pretty bad choices: are you going to be good at dealing damage, avoiding damage, absorbing damage or casting spells. You have to choose as to if you want to do one extremely well, two moderately well, three with mediocre success or all four poorly. You have to make that decision and ultimately decide what you're going to excel in. The EK is MAD like the Fighter can be, but worse with the addition on INT being at least a little required.

The PrC you should be looking at are:
Arcane Archer (Possibly built like a general archer: STR + DEX with an emphasis on saveless spells or buff spells, but you could just as easily focus on Dex + INT).
Arcane Trickster (Probably ray focused to make up for bad BAB, you're constantly Sneak Attacking with the Rays [even just Ray of Cold or Acid Splash] to keep your damage up. A ring of invisibility is absurdly good for this build).
Eldritch Knight (You can easily go two - 4 different direction here: From the two-handed character that bashes things to death with Power Attack, the super fast dex based crit-fisher, the super-tank that DGAF about Arcane Spell Failure via Still Spell or the higher bab wizard who hits with touch and ranged touch spells more often and effectively than the basic wizard.)
Dragon Disciple (There is really only one major build here: BEAT THINGS TO DEATH! DRAGON-KIND! RAAAAAAHHH!)

If you got a high-int route, then spell storing everything is going to be your best friend. Your magic is likely going to be reactive instead of proactive, making it so you can potentially deal loads of damage regardless of if you're hitting or being hit. Just things to keep in mind.

.... I feel like it's an uphill battle fighting my own flaws and insecurities.

TL;DR: Does anyone have any tips for a GM that's both new to the game and extremely shy / introverted.

1) You are only in the spotlight if you put yourself there.

2) A GM should not be bashful, try to avoid it. You can be loud, you can be dramatic, and you can wave your arms around like an idiot (its actually a lot of fun) to make a point about something.

3) Remember that a lot of energy in a game comes from the GM in the beginning. If you want the players to put in a lot of energy, then you need to make the story about them. This is a skill that requires a little bit of practice, but, when done right, the players more or less tell you what to do about a week before each session.

4) Do Not play more than once a week as a GM. I know it might sound odd, but that week if time for you to write. You need to have time enough to actually get anything done: you might be building maps (yay, cartography), building enemies (yay, stat-blocks), building characters psychological blocks (yay, character building) or just writing the story (yay, actually writing), but if you can't do any of the above then realize that Pathfinder can be extremely unforgiving in terms of pulling content out of your arse.

5) The biggest tip is: what you find fun might not parallel what your players find fun. I've had games where I was semi-bored, exhausted the entire time because of it, and worried that the players were all bored as well (but too nice to tell me), but the players all found the content outrageously fun and cool. The only thing that really maters is if your players are having a good time.

6) Ok, so how do your players ~~and~~ you have a good time? Well, write a story with characters you like and want to write about. Make the story's progression fit what the players will enjoy. Boom. Done. It sounds simple, but can be excruciatingly hard. If you don't know what your players like or want, just focus on what you want. Many people will just jump on the bandwagon.

7) Make your N.P.C.s count. I cannot stress this enough. You want to make your NPCs important in some way, but also you want to be able to reuse assets all the time. Don't make throw away NPCs that show up once and then never again, but instead have them return. This is one of the primary reasons Liches and Vampires are so popular: you can't kill them unless you find out where their McGuffin is. This means that this creature is probably going to continually come back for revenge or until the players show some form of contrition to placate it.

8) Reign in the scope of your adventure: Start small, then go big. If you start off fighting Rovagug or equivalent then you have nowhere to go. Bad video games do this to show off how powerful the player's character can be later on in addition to showing off the mechanics (typically because the starter levels are so terrible that no one would sit through them) to try to give the players a chance to understand what is going on. You don't need to do this. Instead, have your players start small. Saving a hamlet from X, Y and Z isn't that bad. Move up to a Village. After a few if those, move up to a town. My point is that you want a feeling of progression. Most Golarion settlements max out in power around lvl 11 or so. The Ruler of Riddleport is around CR 11 or so, this means the PCs could take him on around level 8. If you add some elite pirate guards, maybe level 9. My point is that by level 10 your Players can effectively be leading insurrections. You'll want something more, and that is where the inner and outer planes start to become fun.

9) Lesser Astral Projection is available for Wizards at level 9, Plane Shift is available by level 13 (lvl 9 for Clerics). This means you can start going planar by these levels. The big advantage of Astral Projection is that you don't really die if you are killed in the astral plane, but instead you just gain a negative level or two and you're fine. Plane shift can result in you actually dying, which could be very, very bad.

10) Try to keep your adventures cohesive. If your players go planar at level 9, have there be a reason. Maybe McEvil has astral projected and is plotting to strike out at the PCs via astral plane enemies. Perhaps he has shifted his entire operation to the elemental plane of earth for the expressed purpose of acquiring as much money as possible so he can come back, hire an unstoppable army of death and steamrolling the PCs.

11) Any outsider, regardless of alignment, can be your friend for a little while. Regardless of a creature's alignment, most of the time they will be your B.F.F. if something you're doing furthers a cause of their own. Opposed outsiders will also work together if it means some sort of mutual gain (even if that gain boils down to the obviously stronger one doesn't kill the obviously weaker one, E.G. a Hound Archon working with a Dretch). The example of the Hound Archon (LG) and the Dretch (CE) is a bit of a rare one, but it could happen.

12) Make sure you take advantage of cool stuff. Things like True Names, Planar Allies, Skeletal Pets, Necrocrafts, Golems, cohorts and so forth are excellent additions to a villain. He can surround himself with an army. If the Players make the mistake of attacking him directly, then he'll probably wipe them out without any problem. If they take him apart piecemeal, then he can't do anything about it. Keep in mind that the community is divided on if these things, if they are included by a character's class, spells or feats, count towards or against the character's CR when used to gain any of the above. I'm sure someone will chime in.

My typical version of this is to "credit" people items.
Credit being an intangible force that exists.

In basic English it works like this:
A party with x members finds an item. That item is worth y gold if sold for 1/2 value. (That rhymed: I'm a poet and I don't even know it.)
Therefore, everyone should receive (y/x) gold for the item, but someone wants to use it!
Said character can use the item, but "owes" everyone (y/x) gold until the item is sold and the gold divvied up or the other characters in the party go into that much "credit debt" with the other character, thereby equalizing the debt.

Ideally, everyone finds an item they want that more or less equalizes the debts, but that isn't how adventuring typically works. You go out, you find some cool stuff and it is usually only one or two people who actually get gear.

This usually isn't a problem as there are typically two front-liners (fighter, rogue), one middle-liner (Cleric) and one back-liner (wizard) to use general terms. The front liners will probably build into different stats, especially since the Unchained rogue now exists, meaning one will want STR and CON items, one will want DEX and CON items. The Cleric will want CON and WIS items, and the Wizard will want DEX/CON and INT items depending on build. So, we have one item that overlaps with everyone (CON items), but aside from that everything else is fairly open. The Fighter wants to fight more, the rogue wants to rogue more, the cleric wants to be super-holy-man and the Wizard wants to be LEFT THE HELL ALONE—seriously, he's studying his spellbook FFS!

So, we come to priority: the fighter is probably going to be intentionally trying to keep everything's attention because that is his job, the rogue will be trying to murder everything, because that is his job, the cleric will be trying to keep everyone alive while also murdering things, because that is his job, and the Wizard will be spamming something and complaining about how this is a bad idea, because that is his job.

OP is asking about a Belt of Giant's Strength +2. It should go to the Barbarian. He is probably 2-handing, screaming obscenities about peoples mothers (and fathers) and needs all the punching power he can.

So, if memory serves, and by memory I mean d20pfsrd, the Belt of Giant's Strength costs about 4,000 gp to buy, and sells for around 2,000 gp. So the Barbarian can keep it, granted he accepts that he owes everyone else 400 gp (because his cut of 2,000 gp is locked into him keeping the item). So, when that belt of CON comes up, everyone should ask, "who should we give this to." Perhaps the Barbarian goes into further debt, or maybe he, and someone else, equalize their debt while both owing the others money.

It sounds like a complicated system, but it really isn't unless the GM is making it rain with magic items while the players have their characters dance on poles.

You should just play a Drow and go into noble spell resistance or a Svirfneblin. Then, laugh with glee as spellcasters fall before your attacks if you're worried about caster power creep.
Bonus points if you play an archer.

I can see it now: the new meta — all martials are cruel skinny elves or skittish bald gnomes. All casters become normal elves to break through SR more effectively.

You could always try to make a magic item that is treated as both a quarterstaff and a chihuahua. Just remember to hold the chihuahua by its hind legs and never stop swinging—is desperately wants to get away.

As far as I can tell, you can't create a demiplane within a demiplane, but you can expand a demiplane with repeated castings. Even if you could theoretically do this, you would have to cast permanency on each and every plane or the moment you left it to return to "real time" the planes would end due to the time discrepancy—you are assuming that Wizard Billy can planeshift back to his plane, rest for 8 hours and return before Timestop (4 rounds) ends as far as I can tell.

I might let this fly, save that it ages you by 1 year every time you do it, and there would be a 1/1000 chance that the deepest demiplane becomes magic dead and loses any and all gateways you put in it.

Yes, you would be invincible, and of course I'd use it against you as well. Infinite monsters spawn in what appears to be two castings of timestop by two different wizards. The gravity from theses new creatures become such that Golarion starts to get sucked into a summoned monster induced blackhole, and Nethys steps in to slap you both like a pair of unruly children and says, "Enough! Bad! Go to your room and stop playing with magic!"

As a lich, you keep away from holy stuff and you're okay. It's more for the people who like to sit home and read instead of going to a party. You do it in your isolated, trapped tower and nobody even knows you're dead. There's finally time enough to read everything.

There is also the point about if you're a lich that isn't a complete jerk to people.

Imagine if you actually did nice things for people, they might like you enough to say that you are not bat-shiz evil, but this really only works if you're lawful evil.

If you want true immortality, get powerful enough to cast gate, go to the plane of your god or gods, and ask the god you serve to grant you true immortality. Ask what mighty quest you need undergo for this boon. In essence, you'd become a demi-god, but it is also entirely possible that the deity would just grant you the auto-reincarnate ability Reincarnated Druids have.

You could also just play a reincarnated druid, and take two levels in Green Faith whatever so you can sleep off the negative levels.

:D

I just have to remember to yell, "now, rip out his throat! Good, good, a new minion, or maybe I should make this dead paladin into a skeletal champion...."

TriOmegaZero wrote:

I'm afraid your black and white outlook on paladins is completely incompatible with mine.

That's the entire point of the Paladin.

They ARE black and white. That's why there is a Paladin (Lawful Good only) and an Anti Paladin (Chaotic Evil only) they are literally intended to be black and white.

They each represent an extreme for a reason and that's why they aren't just "Holy Warriors" (those are called Clerics) they are literally special.

When a person sees a Paladin, they know the Paladin is going to help. They are a beacon of hope. An embodiment of all that is good and just in the world. They are built to destroy evil. To see it, to sense it, to Smite it.

When a person sees an Anti Paladin, they know the Anti-Paladin will bring suffering and sorrow. They are a walking darkness. They seek to destroy all that is good in the world. They are built to destroy good. To see it, to sense it, to Smite it.

Err. You are gravely mistaken. You seem to think Paladins are Jesus. The only major things paladins do is A) try to follow a code to the best of their ability, and if they fall short it is expected as they are mortals, B) Obey all laws and customs so far as doing so is not evil, C) Be a champion of good.

I honestly think of them Arthurian Knights from the Malory. They are still effectively humans, and everyone slips up every now and again, even paladins. The real question is what they do about their failings. Expect Paladins to do a lot of praying, make amends and fight extra hard for their ideals in response to personal failure. Expect them to offer people compassion in their failings. One example is a paladin looks at a brutal and crazed murderer who is killing a group of people. He asks this killer why he is doing what he does, and with a good enough diplomacy is privy to the man's story. It turns out this "murderer" is instead of a path of revenge, as the people whom he hunts are the ones who killed his family (or something equally deserving of vengeance). This changes the scenario from a crazed axe murderer to someone who desperately needs guidance and help, which is where the paladin steps in to potentially redeem this person. With a few more diplomacy checks the Paladin manages to get the man to surrender without a fight, takes him to a temple of his god (most goodly nations will allow a Paladin to take someone, partially because they don't want a war with Paladins and partially because they know, for sure, that the paladin has the best of intentions), and tries to show him a better path. On top of that, this "mad man" now has an entire temple and allies of the paladins looking into his claim of vile misdeeds. Expect judgement and redemption.

This is a similar argument in where people argue that Paladins can't work with evil characters, even though the Iconic Paladin (LG) is allies with the Iconic Eldritch Knight (LE) with the pursuit of redeeming him.

Black and white thinking doesn't work in reality, and it doesn't work in game either. The entire reason paladins are likely to have high charisma and diplomacy is that they are supposed to try to reason with people and pull them towards a righteous path.

To put it a different way, you can have a LE Lich be allies with a LG Paladin so long as they agree to a set of terms, probably revolving around "Don't murder people or animate the dead, and let me do the talking. So long as you aren't hurting anyone, I'll let you do your research if you're willing to help do things that help people live their lives." Having a pocket lich isn't that bad of an idea. It makes you actually being there somewhat important since, "Hey, you know, if you kill me this Lich that wants to murder everyone might take it as a reason to declare total war on your kingdom. So, lets discuss this trade agreement."

What has Pathfinder became?
A miserable pile of secrets! *throws wine glass.* Have at you!

Realistically, however, Pathfinder is stacked in favor of the PCs already. Paizo realized that people like to win, and decided to enable them to do that in all manner of interesting and/or cool ways.

Basically you have three major choices: Embrace their power and use Fast Experience to let them level up quickly while keeping the encounters relatively weak to ensure they feel like badasses, use Medium Experience to give them a vanilla experience, or use Slow Experience and ensure that they never fight anything short of CR+1 or CR+2 to ensure they feel challenged regularly.

If you want a game where either side can lose, go with the Slow and Hard option. Ensure that they fight ample NPCs, but don't let them loot the NPCs gear [make it out of bullshitonium that falls apart when exposed to whatever it is going to be exposed to if the PCs try to sell it if you have to].

Basically, don't worry about the PCs numbers. One good bit of advice I have always employed is to ensure challenges and puzzles cannot be resolved by dice rolls. Force the players to think. You can have a little or as much combat in your game as you want, and you are allowed to give XP for completing any challenge, be it an encounter or a puzzle.

I look at Grimrock as an example. It has puzzles everywhere, and while combat is a thing it is more important to survive them with good tactics than just being so amazing that no one can hurt you.

One other option is to just take XP out, and let them level up after completing X amount of content. You might only award XP for completing Riddles and Puzzles, or make it so the combat encounters are so punishingly deadly that fighting is often times the worst option.
If you take the "combat is stupidly dangerous" option, then you want easy ways for people to revive. So, increase all of the enemies chance to hit by +5 or so until they reliably hit the hardest to hit PC, double or triple their damage but 1/2 or 1/4 their HP. This basically makes it a requirement for the PCs to try and kill enemies before the enemies attack them, but it also makes other aspects, such as social or stealth, far more viable.
Another tip is to design content to be purposefully tight and cramped. Nothing breeds fear like isolation.

Personally I don't mind the Leadership feat

I love the leadership feat. Sure, the player gets to control the Cohort like a permanent pet, but those followers of his? Does he think they are really going to listen to him when he says, "DO. NOT. FOLLOW. ME. INTO. DANGER!"? At least one is going to go, and probably an intrepid level 1 at that.

Nothing forces the players forward like planning out their attack plan, and then seeing some of the monsters drag a teenage human boy, that one of the players recognizes as one of his followers, into the monster den. It is an "Oh, Sarenrae damnit" moment where the PCs now need to go save that little idiot.

Ok, so lets turn this into a learning process.
You are a new GM, your players may not. You need to create a game that works for you.

My recommendations are that you...
...Scrap your current game, but instead make a new game in its place.
...Restrict this game to the Core Rules Book (CRB).
...Restrict the party's selection to the core four: the Cleric, the Fighter, the Rogue and the Wizard.
...Have the party fight a CR APL-1, CR APL, CR APL+1, CR APL+2 and CR APL+3 per set of content.
...Only allow people to level up between sets of content (so no dings in content, but instead between games.)
Try to create NPC groups that challenge the party at your CR APL+3 encounters. NPCs are generally weaker than the PCs, so you shouldn't be able to accidentally kill them with this. However, restrict yourself to NPC classes (Adept, Aristocrat, Commoner, Expert and Warrior [use the Basic stat array], but also use the Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard [use the heroic stat array] so you get a feel for these core classes.)
...Practice using traps in your design. Every dungeon should have ...traps.
...Never give gear as rewards, but instead only provide treasure that can be sold as gold.
...Link the selling of this treasure to social encounters, E.G. finding the antiques collector.
...Link getting to the antiques collector to traveling encounters, E.G. the party has to travel to the land down under by the hill, but it is a two day journey there.

Basically, you want to design your game in such a way that it teaches you the system. Above all, just have fun.

Explain to your players that you're feeling overwhelmed and want to structure the game in such a way that lets you learn the system. Your players will understand. The best part about being around other GMs is that you can typically flat-out tell them what is in store.
If the scoff at the above limitations, just offer that you want to keep it simple so you can introduce elements as you're comfortable. Ultimately the classes used do not define the characters, but instead the personalities and RP define the characters.
Plus, two of the most powerful classes in the game are already listed: Cleric and Wizard.

Also, do not allow Crafting or Leadership right now, maybe in the future.

So the big problem here is that Pathfinder kind of rewards you for optimizing your character. If you're playing a fighter an optimized halfling of doom is the difference between +3 atk (Weap Focus, Greater Wep focus, Bracers skill at arms: longsword used) and +4 dmg (weap special, Greater weap special) with two circumstantial damage buffs that are effectively power attack (Halfling racial power attack, and power attack: they stack) that basically translate to you hitting like a truck and not having any of these real bonuses.

If you want a game where people are highly rewarded for branching out into lots of other things, go play shadowrun 5e. Eventually increasing their skill becomes so prohibitively expensive that they just spend their XP on other skills.

Look at it this way: many people who optimize their characters do so in the hopes that they can just get in character with the confidence that their build will keep the character not only alive but also effective throughout the game. Sometimes characters are not even optimized for survivability, sometimes it is just fun to make a character that the GM knows he can kill at the drop of a hat—mainly because these characters tend to be funny and over the top.—

Optimized characters mean the GM can go crazy with encounters. He can pull out the nastiest of the nasty. If he wants the party to face an army of bloody skeletons when they don't have anyone who can channel positive energy, he can. If you have a bunch of "roleplay" characters that are unoptimal because that is how you view "roleplay" characters then you run into the issue that you all might die when the GM decides that you're proven enough to survive an epic fight that has the gloves taken off.

People just tend to have more fun when their characters are optimal and can compete. Yes, it makes you more specialized and niche oriented, but so long as all of the major niches are covered, who cares.

Optimization allows for trick builds, it allows people to play stupid things that only work in specific circumstances. The gun toting rogue alchemist (vivisectionist) with extra hands comes to mind since two levels in rogue more or less unlocks all the rogue talents that lack level requirements. Bonus points if the character is a drow that sees in deeper darkness.

If you want to make roll-players become role-players then roleplay with them doing things that they wouldn't roll dice to do. They might be the most mechanically sound badass this side of Golarion, but when they have to make personality decisions they actually have to make them. Also note that diplomacy doesn't work on players. Sure, he might be one of those cop-outs that roll intelligence or whatever to decide what is the best decision, but those people are always boring.

Basically, the general rule in any TTRPG is to focus on your character. You are the hero of your own story, don't worry about that dude who created a Golden Kobald Summoner (Synthesist) with all dumped physical statistics in a ~campaign about killing kobolds~, seriously, you'll just give yourself a headache. Instead, focus on what your character thinks about these interesting people, and which ones he wont mourn.

I once upon a time made a completely optimal badass character who had unoptimal aspects about his build—that later became extremely optimal, but for reasons I didn't know at the time.— I roleplayed him just how I would roleplay Hamlet: angry, broody, dark and vengeful at times. My experience was that while my character could mop the floor with the other, not as optimized, player characters he also tended to be the one that stood out the most because of how he was roleplayed. Now, don't get me wrong. It might seem annoying for everyone to be using elven spears are rogues or wakizashi on magi, but that is just the metagame. Everyone wants to be the best they can be, because when push comes to shove, they can shove a hell of a lot harder.

I had a group of players that preferred playing unoptimal characters. Hell, their characters sucked—BADLY—and I always wondered how hard I should go. For the campaign finisher, I told them, "For the end boss, I'm not going to hold punches. You guys are going to be going up against optimally built enemies. They wont be built to kill you or pick on your weaknesses, but they are going to be built to do what they do really well." They all assented that they understood.
About 6 months later they fight this big-bad band of badasses. They lose, obviously. However, the nature of their loss is what they joked about. They understood that they struggled with "epic" CR+3 encounters that were built more or less not to challenge them but feel big. This was an "epic" CR+3 encounter that would challenge an optimal party. It was just four NPCs with a collective CR that fit the party's, and they more or less were built as I would build an adventuring party.

So, what happened? The party wanted to play THOSE characters, because holy crap they were strong. I walked the players through how to make them, and within a week we started on a new campaign to kill the characters that killed their last party. They fought unoptimal encounters like they had previously, and won without much issue. They tore through enemy lines to the point that a couple of times I just had the enemies run away from them or surrender. When they met the guys who killed their last characters, they were so much more powerful than the bad guys that even they were not an issue for them and the PCs were at WBL.

People like feeling powerful, but they also like being able to roleplay. The two are not mutually exclusive. You can be Lancelot the charismatic playboy and Lancelot the killing machine. You can have crises of faith, deep seeded emotional issues and any number of character driven needs—none of which are mechanical.— Understand that part of being a roleplayer is realizing that you can play a super-powered character, and still have tons of fun. You don't need to cripple your character, as the personality you give the person is far more interesting than the mechanical aspects.

I have a short ban list.
The "Roll with it" goblin feat is perma-banned at all events I run, even in goblin themed games.

Sometimes dumb ideas can work. Sometimes they are so crazy-stupid that the BBEG has no plan to counter it. Sometimes the Kree warrior is about to destroy the world, and you have to challenge him to a dance-off.

*walks forward suddenly, the honor guard step forward, drawing their greatswords as the lich's head lowers forward accepting the challenge even before it is issued.*

"I challenge you!" He announces it, pointing at the lich, "To a dance off!"
For a moment the audience chamber is silent. Then, the sound of furiously stepping soles sounds as the lich starts to dance.
"Have at you, then."

My Pathfinder group is on the cusp of beating Kingmaker Book 2, we defeated the CENSOREDs, dealt with CENSORED and are ready to invade the CENSORED's lair for the crescendo of the book. It is going to be cool.

However, my GM is becoming tired of GMing, so someone else is going to pick up Book 3. However, between the two I am going to run a mega-adventure. We can always just apply the Advanced template to the creatures in Book 3, 4, 5 and 6 if need be.

I learned a long time ago that players will make the absolute worst decisions in any given situation. I also learned that if you don't punish this they tend to keep doing more of it. This is pertinent because my PCs are going to be traveling to a Demiplane wherein a former general of the Whispering Tyrant is hanging out. He is friendly towards them on the simple basis that he wants his wayward apprentice, who has recently betrayed him to found a stronghold in the first layer of hell, dead. This apprentice also just so happens to be the one causing the plague that is beginning to ravage my PCs' country.

So, what should I do when my PCs have accepted the hospitality of this lich, only for one PC to decide that she is going to attack the Lich in his seat of power. Should I turn to her and say,

"Yes. You can ~totally~ take on this lich who is more powerful than the boss of the entire adventure path. I mean, he has only invited you into his fortress to treat with you, and intends to actually trade with you later because of reasons I can't tell you until they happen when he reach level 14 or so."

So, what should I do if one of my PCs make the monumentally stupid decision of attacking this Lich? There is going to be a Hound Archon joining the party up to this point, and he is actually chill with this lich insofar as their agreement is based. Surely, if a celestial is not attacking this lich, the Paladin wont either, nor should the cleric.

I do have some fail safes in place, and some bad things can happen on this demiplane. People can die, and the plane is legitimately dangerous on its own (it counts as a hazard, but only gives XP once for defeating it since overcoming it is incredibly simple) and the effect of dying on the plane is that the PC gains the bloody skeletal champion (CR +2, so -2 class levels) template, but aside from looking like a corpse the PC doesn't become a skeleton until deathless takes effect—at which point the corpse flips onto its belly and the skeleton tears itself from the flesh that once trapped it! Until this happens, raise dead reverses the effect.

Should the Lich perform this on the offending PC? We know how this is going to go down, a level 6 VS a CR 20.

Perhaps the Lich could banish them from his domain, but not tell them where they need to go.

Hmm, I'm not sure. What do you guys think?

So this question comes up every now and again, and I usually bat it away with the, "the supporting cast is always far more interesting than the hero," argument. However, when someone is adamant about being the hero what are your ideas and tips for the character?

I tend to offer the following:
1) Decide what type of hero you want to be. There are two major types of heroes: Cynical and Idealistic. This isn't evil and good, but instead revolves around the world-view of the hero.

Cynical heroes look for the bad in the world, then cut it out of their world with all of the malice it deserves. These heroes are surprised by acts of kindness, and typically think that such things are foolish to some degree or another. A Paladin can be a cynical hero, he can have faith in his god, himself and other paladins, but he might believe that the world is irredeemably rotten. For the cynical hero, this adversity only strengthens his resolve.

Idealistic heroes look for the good in the world, then protect it with their lives. The focus isn't entirely on destroying evil, but instead adopting the world-view that everyone could get along in theory. These guys tend to be the ones who bring people together into the fold, but they also tend to be the ones stabbed in the back if there isn't a cynical character watching their back.

2) Decide on the class. The hero isn't a wimpy wizard, he is the one at the forefront! He faces evil head-on in some major way.

Paladins are amazingly resilient at higher levels. Adding CHA to all saves can give them insane saves with a cloak of resistance +5 at higher levels. For the guy who is supposed to be the one making speeches, this is fantastic! He might be boring, but he is also the one who holds the line.

Eldrich Knights (or Magi) can make for wonderful Heroes. They can fight in melee, they can be the ones breaching places, but most importantly: they can survive. While this can overlap with Paladins in the case of the (Pal 2/Sorc 6/EK10) build it is not particularly typical. This character can be just as boring.

Fighters are the token heroes beyond Paladins. They are good at one thing: fighting—it is their element.— For this reason they want to be the ones being targeted by the opposition if things go down. Most importantly they don't step on any of the major roles of the other characters: fighters don't understand magic, they value the abilities of a cleric but can't replicate it in any fashion, and they are nowhere near as skilled or clever as a rogue. They realize they are the big-dumb muscle—in the idealist hero's position he might not even realize how stupid his ideas are—, and because of that they are more likely to revel in it while supporting their arguably more important allies.

3) Stat for your role. The hero tends to be the one who squares off with Big-Bad at the end of the story.

If Billy McDeath is going to fight anyone it probably isn't going to be the wizard since he can counter the magic with an anti-magic field. He isn't going to fight a Cleric for more or less the same reason. The sneaky character isn't going to be much help when he'll survive the first sneak attack and rip him to shreds. The hero needs to be able to go toe to toe with Billy McDeath, because he is the least dangerous of all of them in some ways, but at the same time he is also the hardest to hard-counter. It can seem ludicrous, but if the hero has blind-fight nothing short of having the villain's AC up to insane levels is going to save him from the hero's steady damage. If the hero is of a race that can gain Pounce, he becomes even more scary. Being that guy whose job is to hit it until it dies, then keep hitting it for good measure tends to mean you can fight at relatively max effectiveness until you die or win. With a little help from McCasty—your wizard—an anti-magic field cast on the hero can turn him from being the prey of casters to the bane thereof. If he has racial SR, he is the single most frightening thing a spellcaster not built to break SR can encounter.

4) Don't try to be god. God is boring, and like Orcus, he is sitting on his throne waiting for you to come to him. Come on, you're the hero! You suck. It is one of those steadfast rules of being the hero when you're not the only character—unless you're reading about a Mary Sue, at which point this rule does not apply.— If you look at Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins or Haru from The Cat Returns, you'll notice that they all are pretty boring in some major ways. Frodo is able to carry the Ring of Power to Mount Doom because of how much he sucks. It is only after his tale that he realizes he cannot go back to his old life and develops the ambition to go with Gandalf. You're the hero, you are literally the least important person there, so be happy that you convinced some old bugger, some better than thou priest and an untrustworthy skulk to come along with you. Those insidious villains might actually throw a logic puzzle at you, and, well, you're the hero: you're an idiot. There might be some riddle that requires some sort of religious lore or divine intervention—or maybe you decided the best way to keep someone from hurting the other people was to sheath their sword in your body—and that is what the smelly old preacher is for: because you're about the smashy smashy and letting god sort things out. Then, finally, there might be a trap that you can't do anything about because when some Indiana Jones stuff starts happening you're not particularly fast in that armor.

Overall the hero can be insanely fun to play. You accept that everyone else is more important than you in some big ways, but they have to accept that without you they would be the ones finding out if they could survive an axe to the skull. Don't worry, though, you can take that axe to your cranium, you weren't using it for anything as the wizard always points out, mainly because you're the hero.

Honestly, there are some people on this board that seem to think that if a paladin trips and accidentally kicks a dog that he instantly falls. I'd hate to play with these people if they are GMs and anyone has the misfortune of playing a Paladin.

So long as the Paladin's actions are generally in line with his code of honor, then he doesn't fall so long as he feels remorse for what he has done. Amends would be a requirement for him to overlook these indiscretions, otherwise they would begin to pile up and he would eventually feel his power weakening.

I like to think about Paladins losing their power as a sliding scale. The more indiscretions made by the Paladin that goes against his code of conduct and/or alignment the weaker his connection with his god becomes. I like to think of it as he is keenly aware of his deity becoming disappointed in his actions.
This might manifest as nightmares, a strange non-mechanical exhaustion that seems to take him (Assume he has been in a regularly good or energized mood from his deity's infusion of energy) or even a divine penalty to his rolls.

However, there should never be an "instant fall" scenario unless he does something absolutely horrendous, and half-way through that he should be getting a -5 divine penalty to everything to portray his deity's disfavor of his actions.

You also have another roadblock: Iomedae hasn't quite grasped the concept of true godhood, similar to the Drunken God and Nethys. She remembers what it is like to be mortal, and might go out of her way to help keep her paladins on the straight and narrow.

However, you need to keep in mind that the Golarion gods are on par with the Earth gods in terms of how often they interact with their followers. The only major exceptions to this are divine characters (for this example: Clerics and Paladins) that are scions of their gods. From this perspective, we can assume that they have an emphatic link with their gods, and should their gods decide to contact them they can do so.

So, in response to your question:
The paladin should be keenly aware that he is doing things that are wrong. He should know that his Deity is disappointed in what he is doing. You can portray this as him taking negative divine penalties. In one of the modules (Hangman's noose, I think it was) has a Paladins that realizes he wrongfully sentenced a man to death. He renounces his Paladinhood, and therefore falls, on his own accord as he finds this to be unforgivable.

So, what I think you should do is start giving him permanent divine penalties to all d20 rolls. He does things that Iomedae doesn't approve of, instead of losing his powers he begins accruing penalties, first -1, then -2 and so forth. He then can choose to fall, losing all of his paladin powers, but also losing all of the penalties. The only caveat being that if the divine penalties equal his paladin levels he auto-falls. This way it isn't Iomedae that is abandoning him, but him abandoning Iomedae to go his own path. When he decides he wants to return, Iomedae will welcome him with open arms so long as he undertakes some sort of test to prove his worth once more.