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Overhand Chop (Ex): At 3rd level, when a two-handed fighter makes a single attack (with the attack action or a charge) with a two-handed weapon, he adds double his Strength bonus on damage rolls. This ability replaces armor training 1.

So, could this be combined with Vital Strike, Deadly Stroke or other 'make one attack' feats? Basically this is much the same as the old question if Vital Strike can be combined with 'as a standard action make one attack' type of feats.

Am I reading it right that a Barbarian with the Intimidating Glare rage power and the appropriate feats could do the following if his enemy is adjacent or can be reached with a 5 foot step.

1st round
- Go into rage and use your move action to intimidate one adjacent enemy for at least 1d4 rounds and then use your standard action to make him flat footed with Shatter Defenses.

2nd round
- Use your standard action for a Deadly Stroke. If your enemy decides to disengage you can use your move action(40 ft + whatever movement boosting magic effect, item or feat you have around level 11) to get into melee again. If you hit him you can immediately apply Shatter Defenses again and he is flat-footed for another round.

3rd round
- See 2nd round. Repeat until your enemy is dead or no longer demoralized.

Add Intimidating Prowess and Skill Focus(Intimidate) to the mix and I think this could turn out as a very scary combo. Especially if you can add the Vital Strike Feats(and Power Attack of course) to the mix. Yea, it is kind of feat intensive but the interesting thing is that you only need two levels of Barbarian for the Intimidating Glare rage power and could fill up the rest with fighter levels.

As of the current rules, you cannot use Vital Strike as part of a charge. Vital Strike is an attack action, which is a type of standard action. Charge is a special full-round action (excluding partial charge). You cannot currently combine the two.

So how does Vital Strike and the following non-full round attack options interact.

1. Cleave is a standard action and does not guarantee a second attack: Can you apply the Vital Strike (and/or Deadly Strike) benefit to the first strike(and only that one)?

2. Spring Attack has a rather mushy description, but I am pretty sure you can combine it at least with a Vital Strike. I'd also like to have some clarification if you can also combine it with Cleave and Deadly Strike. (My GMs interpretation is that Spring Attack allows you to take an standard action between your move action as long as said standard action is used as an attack action.)

3. Deadly Strike is defined as "you deal double the normal damage" with an explicit exception regarding critical hits "The additional damage and bleed is not multiplied on a critical hit.". <munchkin> Does that mean that the additional dice from Vital Strike are also doubled?</munchkin>
Seriously, I don't think it does because of the critical multiplying damage rules, but the explicit exception in the feat itself is a bit irritating.

Some of the topic I want to discuss was brought up before but I really feel that it got not enough attention as the two threads where rather short lived and I got some new thoughts in the meantime.

Let me first try to sum up the gist of the two threads here and here:
As much as I am happy to see the old clunky turning mechanism go I am a bit unhappy about the cookie cutter approach of the new channel energy mechanics. Yea, channeling positive energy is really good and does alot to keep the group going without expending precious spell slots, but I really think that channeling negative energy is feeding a bad cliche and not an option for most players. Even for the evil cleric BBEG it seems kind of weird that he absolutely has to heal undead and damage the living. Jason had chimed in on this and said he is considering to make the damage/healing part optional, so you could go for the secondary effect.

So for my request:
I would really like to see some more versatility possibly coupled with slightly different approach that has more to do with being the vessel of the power of a deity instead of channeling some energy from some 'lame plane'.

A few ideas:

• Every cleric has the power to channel his deities power through himself. The basic effect(healing/beneficial or damaging/adverse) is still dependant on the alignement of him and his deity on the good-evil axis.
  
• A cleric who channels negative power is good in damaging enemies but might still have the option to heal/help allies, but not nearly as good as an cleric who channels positive power.
  
• Depending on the chosen domains the cleric gains some some secondary power he can mix into or substitute for his channel power attempt.
  
• - A cleric with the healing domain might forego the undead damaging part to empower the healing portion of his roll or use two turning attempts to heal one single ally for 1d6/level hitpoints.
  
• - A cleric with the luck domain might use a channel attempt to let all allies within its radius reroll a save.
  
• - A cleric with the destruction domain could use an channel attempt to destroy nonliving matter.
  
• - A cleric with the evil domain could burn an channel attempt to make enemy creatures shaken.

Please do not take the above examples to seriously, thats all I can think of right now. It way past bedtime here an i guess some of these examples are a bit too good. %^O ZZzzZZZZzZZzZZZ

What happens if a char wears two magic items in a slot? Ok, not all slots make sense here as it it could be next to impossible wearing two armors, helmets or gloves. So for this question let us stick with small items like rings and amulets.
As an example lets have a look at my cleric: He has a Strand of Prayer Beads and a Reliquary Holy Symbol(MIC). Both items must be worn in the neck slot to be usable. Obviously he can't get the benefit of both items at the same time but I wonder how two or more items interact.

• The wearer must consciously choose(standard action to switch?) which one is active. (I know this is good, how about making a feat out of it?)
  
• The item with the higher caster level overrides the other one until it is removed. (In this case: what happens if both items have the same CL?)
  
• Both items cease to function until one is removed.

Bracers of Armor are the only items beside armor that can have (some of the) special armor abilities. What happens when a character wears both?

For example:
Does a fighter wearing a Full Plate +5, improved fire resistance and Bracers of Armor +1, heavy fortification gets the benefit of both special abilities or only of one? What about a Ranger wearing Padded Armor +1, heavy fortification and Bracers of Armor +8?

I don't see a huge issue but if this works it's a rather cheesy way to save money and circumvent the maximum +10 enchantment rule.

From the Bane enchantment description:

Against its designated foe, its effective enhancement bonus is +2 better than its normal enhancement bonus.

From the description I'd say that such a weapon would also bypass damage reduction against its designated foes like it was +2 better than its normal enhancement bonus. But what happens if you fight a designated foe with eg. DR 10/- with a +4, bane weapon? You'd be touching epic territory here but there are no rules how and if a +6 or higher weapon would overcome epic DR.

My shot at overcoming epic DR: -2 to epic DR for every enhancement bonus over +5. So a +7 weapon would ignore the first 4 points of epic DR an enemy might have.

C'mon it might go back to 1st ed Ravenloft but reading it's description makes my head spin.

Must ... resist ... to ...min-max . a ... TWF build ... or apply .. convenient parts ... of the ... properties... to another ... magic .. weapon.

The title says it all. I always wondered how this relatively affordable item can allow a Monk to to get +5 class levels in two of his best class abilities. If I compare a Monk 11/Fighter 5+ to an equal level pure Monk build the later looses by a considerable margin when it comes to melee prowess. Imho the full BAB, Weapon Training and the additional feats are invaluable. Especially Vital Strike and Improved Vital Strike takes the cake as the Monk gains his full flurry progression at level 11 and can now qualify for Improved Vital Strike at Level 19.

Well, in 3.5 I always considered the spell True Strike as a nice option, mainly for ray casters and, to a lesser extend, gish builds. It's first level, it got a fixed +20 bonus to hit, ignores concealment and doesn't depend on the caster level. Good but most times hardly worth the standard action or the 5th level spell slot for the quickened version.
But combine it with an optimized Power Attack/Devastating Blow build and it might become overpowered. Delivering next to full attack damage with a single strike is good enough(imho already too good) by itself but combine it with Power Attack and True Strike and you have a 95% chance of killing or mortally wounding anything (non-crit immune) but a BBEG in one blow. You can find some numbers in this thread

I don't really know if it's really an issue and what to do with True Strike if it is, maybe changing the bonus to 5 + 1/3 caster level?

I asked this question way back in Alpha:

And got the following answer from Jason:

Hey there all,

Rest assured that Leadership is a strange little subsystem that I hope to address in an upcoming Alpha release. Stay tuned (but feel free to give ideas).

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Well, I did not see any game relevant changes in the wording of the feat, but with the new EXP progression(s) a cohort can now actually gain exp compared to his leader. That in itself is not a problem but the text regarding cohort level says:

Cohort Level: You can attract a cohort of up to this level. Regardless of your Leadership score, you can only recruit a cohort who is two or more levels lower than yourself.
...
If a cohort gains enough XP to bring it to a level one lower than your level, the cohort does not gain the new level&#8212;its new XP total is 1 less than the amount needed attain the next level.

This passage was obsolete in 3.5 but in Pathfinder a player character with a low leadership score can attract a low level cohort and after that the cohort would gain EXP until he is two levels below his leader.

Uhm ... *bump*

/runs away

I would like to suggest giving Overhand Chop the same boost as Backswing with a higher BAB. My suggestion would be BAB 6 or 8.

My motivation:

- At higher levels the damage output compared to a full attack becomes pathetic.
- Even with triple strength bonus a full attack does more damage.
- It's one of the few feats that can be used with Spring Attack.
- Overhand Chop can not be combined with other "as a standard action" feats like Devastating Blow.
- Against non-crit immune creatures Devastating Blow is still incredibly more powerful.

Uhm, ... *bump*

/scurries off

Yes, I know all people are happy about the new energy channeling but I have a small gripe with negative energy channeling.

Any neutral cleric PC who selects negative energy channeling for flavor reasons of because he worship a deity such as Wee Jas it pretty much hosed when he is fighting undead. True, he can try to control, but not without healing them. Also he must be very carefull not to hurt his allies.
I just can't understand why channeling negative energy automatically implies that you must heal undead. Sorry, but the old Rebuke was way way cooler.

So basically I would like to suggest a bit more options for channel energy. I'd be totally happy if the cleric can just choose to omit the damage and/or healing and go for the secondary effect only. Maybe with a small boost on the DC.

Dear Paizo staff. Would it be possible for you to provide printer friendly PDFs of the Beta? The background art is nice but hard on the toner. Personally I'd settle for the web enhancement(s) since I've got my Beta book today. *yay*

Imagine a chararcter wearing Bracers of Armor +1, heavy fortification and a Full Plate +2, ghost touch. Of course the armor bonus from the Bracers do not stack with the Full Plate, but would he get the benefit of both heavy fortification and ghost touch?

While reading the Alpha 3 I noticed two oddities:

1.) The Channel Energy description mentioned that you can immobilize undead, but there is no further reference to that.

Drawing upon the power of your deity, you can cause a wave of energy to emanate from you, dealing damage to undead creatures or causing them to become immobilized.

Since I'm playing an LN Cleric of Wee Jas I'd be more than happy to have an alternative to healing undead.

2.) The description of the Trip CMB seems a bit ambiguous and could be interpreted in such a way that you can make a normal attack _and_ try to trip someone.

While most combat maneuvers can be performed as part of an attack action (in place of a melee attack), others require specific actions.

This would indicate that all you always loose your normal melee attack, but:

Disarm
You can attempt to disarm your opponent as part of an attack action in place of a melee attack.
[...]
Sunder
You can attempt to sunder an item held or worn by your opponent as part of an attack action in place of a melee attack.
[...]
Trip
You can attempt to disarm your opponent as a melee attack.

To make it clear the "part of an attack action in place of" part should either be in all relevant CMB maneuver descriptions or in none of them.

I'd like to propose three more discussion boards for the upcoming Beta Playtest.

Character Build Discussion - (Discuss and optimize characters/NPCs)
3rd party Product Interaction - (What works with PRPG, what not, what's broken, how can you adapt it.(Eg. with Houserules) )
Adventure Conversion - (Get help changing an ongoing campaign to PRPG or converting Adventure specific Monsters, Items, PRCs, Feats, ...)

Sorry, couldn't think of more fancy names.

I'd like to see an update or even a total makeover for that feat. At least in our group the established lore is never to take a feat if you can have the same effect on an magic item. In any case I'm not a fan of the feat or the enhancement. Unless you can add alot of extra damage with a critical hit the actual benefit is not very good. See here for details.
Ok, the keen enhancement only works with slashing and piercing weapons but the majority of serious melee/ranged builds are not limited to bludgeoning weapon. And iirc in some WotC Splat Book there is a keen equivalent for bludgeoning weapons.

So here are my ideas:

1. Leave Improved Critical as it is but add some nice feats which have it as a prerequisiste.

2. Add a +4 bonus on the confirmation roll.

3. Improved Critical does no longer double the weapons thread range but auto confirms a critical.

I guess I don't need to explicate that the spiked chain is far too good compared to other reach weapons and, combined with an optimized build, not far from game breaking.

The below idea came to me after an especially cheesy performance of the spiked chain trip fighter in our AoW campaign. Basically its just integrating the Short Haft feat from PH2 into the weapon.

"Once per round as an immediate action the wielder of a spiked chain can choose if he wants to threaten adjacent fields or use the weapons reach."

Alternatively it could be an free, swift or even move action to switch to/from reach. Imho applying such a rule to the other sadly underused reach weapons would be a good thing.

While I think D&D would not be D&D anymore without rolling dice for stats and hitpoints I think the SRD system leaves much to be desired.

Basically I would like to see a rule that would take a character's theoretically possible hitpoints at his level into account.

Taking a cue from my GMs houserules and the "Death and Dying" article from Wizards I would like to propose the following:

- A character has his maximum and potential hitpoints.
The maximum hitpoints are the ones he rolled for.
The potential hitpoints are the absolute maximum he could have rolled for at that level.

- A character cannot go under half his potential hitpoints when he rolls for hitpoints. (Constitution bonus might be an issue)
- When a character's current hitpoint total drops to a number between 0 and his Constitution bonus (if any) expressed as a negative number, the character becomes disabled.
- When a character’s current hit point total drops to a negative number between his Constitution bonus + 1 and his negative Constitution score (inclusive), the character is unconscious and loosing 1 hitpoint per round unless he is stabilized. If he receives any form of healing he becomes conscious with at least 1 hitpoint.
- When a character’s current hit point total drops between his negative Constitution score + 1 and [his maximum hitpoints minus his potential hitpoints minus his Constitution score] he is dying and loosing 1d6 hitpoint per round. Also he can't be stabilized by nonmagical means(or +X on an heal check?). If he receives any form of healing he goes to at least his negative Constitution score in hitpoints and is stable.

Example

Grompf the 10th level Fighter has a Constitution of 16
He has 130 potential hitpoints and rolled for a maximum of 90 hitpoints.
He would be disabled between 0 and -3 hitpoints
He would be unconscious between -4 and -16 hitpoints
He would be dying between -17 and -56

First let me say that I am pleased by your decision to expand on the 3.5 SRD. While I do not agree with any change in the alpha release it think it is an huge improvement over the original rules.
Recently I decided that my Cleric will take Leadership as his 9th level feat. Reading the rules in the SRD I discovered lots of quirky stuff:

Cohort Level: The character can attract a cohort of up to this level. Regardless of a character's Leadership score, he can only recruit a cohort who is two or more levels lower than himself.
[...]
Cohorts earn XP as follows: The cohort does not count as a party member when determining the party's XP.

Divide the cohort's level by the level of the PC with whom he or she is associated (the character with the Leadership feat who attracted the cohort).
Multiply this result by the total XP awarded to the PC and add that number of experience points to the cohort's total.

Example:

So a cohort that is, for whatever reason, not at his maximum level could never catch up.

Also, if a leader slips out of his cloak of charisma for any reason: Will his suddenly surplus followers know? Will his cohort loose a level he could not regain?

Basically the whole mechanism screams for an adjustment.