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Here's the idea a party consisting of every core character class and every race, all drawn from popular culture, History or literature.

Barbarian: The first one is Conan the Barbarian
Bard: The Pied Piper
Clerc: Saint Patrick
Druid: ?
Fighter: Odysseus
Monk: ?
Paladin: Joan of Arc
Ranger: Robin Hood
Rogue: Ali Babba
Sorcerer: Circe the Sorceress
Wizard: Merlin

Elf: Peter Pan
Dwarf: Rumplestiltskin
Gnome: ?
Halfling: ?
Half-Elf: ?

I'l like to hear your ideas about filling these slots, and would these characters get along as a party?

Here is a magic item, my character and his companions made up in his campaign in the 1980s, he was a 14th level cleric of Thor named Boris Broderic, a Druid named Lumavin, a Ranger named Thargon Green, and an elven wizard Nogar, we set up strongholds on an island in a vast ocean we were exploring, and yet we wanted to maintain contact with the capital city of Gloryhelm, from which we came, so we crafted two Teleport stepping disks, a disk 1 inch thick and 10 feet in diameter made out of solid silver. On the side of the stepping disk is a crystal ball for scrying.

When one scrys a certain location an illusion of the place is projected around the stepping disk of the place being scryed, upon utterance of the command word "Teleport" every person and object placed on the teleport stepping disk is teleported to that location, it is a one way teleport, teleporting whats on the disk to the scryed location. A twin teleport stepping disk was crafted in the distant city of Gloryhelm with the same properties. Typically one disk was set to teleport its objects and creatures to the other stepping disk with no chance of era, to other places one either teleported high or low, so we aimed high and took into account that we would fall a certain distance when teleporting to unfamiliar locations scryed on the disk's crystal ball. The disk was rather heavy, to transport it, we placed it on a raft and towed if from a ship. If used in a Pathfinder game, what level would this magic item be, and what experience points would you say it should have?

There is a setting I'm working on called Urthe, pronounced the same as "Earth", which is geographically identical to Earth but with magic and fantastic creatures. The human civilization began 2000 years ago, with the mysterious appearance of the city of Pompeii in the shadow of a volcano on the Italian penninsula. There is a pantheon of Roman gods, about 13 of them and a more mysterious overarching diety worshipped by monotheists - a catchall phrase that includes Christians and Jews among others, but for game purposes we just call them monotheists. Unlike the pagan dieties, the monotheist God doesn't routinely grant spells to his clerics, they can turn undead as normal though. Miracles are granted to all worshippers of a monotheist religion, a 00 on a percential dice means automatic success in that monotheist God grants the spell to whoever prays for it, not necessarily a cleric of the religion, those of higher level in the cleric class get a bonus to their percentile role when requesting a particular spell from this God, Paladins also add their level to a lesser extent than the cleric.

Roman dieties and the clerics are as the normal Pathfinder rules. The question is, take a geographic map of Earth which is the same as Urthe minus the cities, and where should the various fantasy races be placed? Any ideas on that matter? You can use the names of Earth analog locations such as countries or states of modern Earth to describe the location on Urthe.

In some other time, in some other space, an Earth Clone world was created called Urthe. Urthe was much like our Earth in many respects, one important difference was that Urthe was an artificial creation, originally a planet much like Venus, Urthe orbited a Sunlike star and around it orbited a Moonlike moon called Lune. Urthe orbited its star once every 364 days, and Lune orbited Urthe once every 28 days. Urthe has a 24-hour day, an axial tilt of 23.5 degrees. Lune orbited Urthe at an axial tilt of 5 degrees inclined to the ecliptic. The planet Urthe orbited its star at a distance of 150,000,000 km, and it was accompanied in its orbit by the fourth planet Thor, an asteroid belt and the fifth planet, a gas giant with a Saturn like ring system called Bifrost. Thor was half the size of Urthe and Urthe measured 12,800 kilometers in diameter, slightly larger than Earth, with a gravity field slightly stronger with a surface acceleration due to gravity of 10 meters per second squared. Lune measured 3500 kilometers in diameter and it orbited Urthe at such a distance that it appeared the same size as Urthe's star in its sky. Urthe's seasons were normal Earthlike seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, the months are translated into the familiar calendar names of January through December, though January has only 30 days instead of 31, all the other months are the same as in our calendar except that there are no leap years. All years are of the same 364 day length exactly.

Earthlike life on Urthe is only 10,000 years old, it was planted there by beings called the "seeders" or sometimes called the "abductors", as many humans now living on this planet were abducted by aliens and dumped on Urthe. At one time there was a stargate at the site of our Stonehenge, various people were transported through it from our Great Britain to Urthe's island of Avalon, and various myths grew up about this place including those revolving around the legend of King Arthur, but on one fateful day in the past, the gate was permanently closed and all contact with old Earth ceased, those left on Earth continued with their lives and spread to the mainland and colonized it. Throughout the suceeding centuries they spread throughout Urthe's seven continents, developed a technological civilization and spread into space, some colonized the planet Thor, while others mined the asteroid belt between Thor and Bifrost, and then the FTL drive was developed. The Urthe humans spread to the stars, and colonized the surrounding stars, and encountered other alien humans on different planets, and some true aliens as well, most were of similar technological development as they were. The nations of Urthe united to face the challenges of off-planet orgin humans and aliens, develop a common defense and alliances with various friendly alien races and humans, and to face the common threats and perils presented by some unfriendly aliens bent on conquest of all surrounding space.

That is the premise of my Pathfinder compatible game, there are a number of character classes that are similar to the Pathfinder classes
Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, and Rogue are identical to the Pathfinder classes, though a new list of skills and feats are available to those in this setting, other character classes have been altered, there are Rangers, for example, but they are a kind of explorer class, they operate on frontier worlds, but unlike the Pathfinder Ranger, they have no access to spells. A character class called the Psion has use of psionic powers of the mind, another character class of Hacker exists which can do basically the same with computers and computer networks as Psions can do with minds. The NPC class of Expert becomes a PC class, where some Experts are doctors, scientists, and engineers, the main thing about experts is they get a lot of Knowledge, and Craft skills with related feats associated with them. I try to economize on new skills, by using old ones such as Fly in a new context such as in flying space ships. Craft skills are used to build and repair various equipment, Knowledge skills are used in more service related careers for example a Doctor would use his knowledge skills to treat and heal wounds, while an Engineer would use his Craft skills to repair a starship's Engine or FTL drive. Humans are basically self-repairing creatures, it is the Doctor's job to know how a human self-repairs or heals, therefore he requires a knowledge skill to know how best to help a human body heal itself. An engineer must simply reconstruct those parts of a damaged starship engine so that it functions once more as before it was damaged, and that calls for a Craft skill.

The races of the Starfinder setting include both humans and halflings, much as the Pathfinder setting has them, though halflings in this setting don't mind wearing shoes, their bodies have adaped to higher gravity planets by having shorter stature and less mass. the typical halfling stands about 1 meter tall and is proportioned similar to a standard human, who stands typically under 2 meters tall. I have to think about other races, perhaps a repiliod would be appropriate, a giant alien about 3 to 4 meters tall, perhaps closer to 3 meters would be enough. A robot would make an interesting race as well. And Aquans are humans adapted to living underwater, typically in tropical waters of Earthlike planets, they resemble Aquatic elves.

I have a Traveller T20 book, and the one thing it lacked was a good "hit point" recovery system. So I created a list of procedures with DCs attached to them that one makes a skill check in order to meet. The original Traveller system required hours, days and weeks to recover stamina and lifeblood points, to me this seemed not much fun, it limited the number of combats a player character could engage it without extensive rest and recooperation. So by applying the Profession (Medical) skill to these various DCs, you can give a Traveller character the ability to heal like a cleric with feats such as Treat light wound DC 14, Treat Serious Wounds DC 18 etc, each of these procedures have names similar to cleric healing spells, and it assumes high tech medical equipment to accomplish these tasks. Each task or proceedure may be tried twice per combat per person, the second time has a DC that's 2 points higher than the first. Each treatment takes 1 combat round to accomplish, just like casting a cleric's spell.

I have a suggestion for a future Pathfinder expansion, its my idea, so my suggested name for it is Pathfinder SF, it uses the rules for Pathfinder but applies them to a Science Fiction setting. All that really needs to be done is to add a bunch of Science Fiction character classes, Release a Pathfinder SF Beastiary and list the additional science fiction equipment items. I think the gaming mechanics could be identical to Pathfinder core.

I wasn't particularly thrilled with d20 Future. I think the core characters classes named after the ability scores they featured were a bit one-dimensional. A better example to follow, would be the Traveller T20 game, but that's geared towards a very specific setting. In the process of creating a D20 game for the Traveller setting, they created a list of character classes, modeled after Traveller Careers, turns out this is pretty "D&Dish" with the exception that they made some of the weapons excessively deadly to compensate. The list of SF character classes I'd include would be Barbarian, Engineer, Merchant, Noble, Rogue, Scout, Mercenary, and Scientist.

What if we were to make a Pathfinder version of Spelljammer?
I mean cut out the giant space hamsters and and gun toting hippos. Lets start with the basics.

1) Wooden ships or otherwise propelled by spelljamming helms.
2) Rules of physics that allow the Spelljamming helms to retain an atmosphere and gravity.
3) Rules of combat between ships in spelljamming space.

I think the spelljamming ships should start out conventional looking, they wouldn't necessarily look like giant squids, or manta rays or hammer head sharks, a simple sailing ship in space is a good start.

So lets hear your opinions.

The Novels starting with Dies the Fire and ending with Sword of the Lady, seem to be progressing towards a fantasy setting from a Modern one, by the second trilogy, we start to see characters begin to cast real spells with magic. I was wondering how the Pathfinder RPG might be adapted to this.

Perhaps start with some characters

Rudi Mackenzie is obviously a Fighter of some sort, Juniper MacKenzie might be a cleric or a wizard, probably leaning closer to wizard, but it would be best to use the example Witch class in the D&D 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide, the spells she casts are informational, she undergoes some transformations when in battle, but nothing that really points to obvious magic, at least as far as I got in the novels, no fireballs or lightning bolts. Some undead types are beginning to appear or perhaps a case of Demonic Possession. Mattilda Arminger is another fighter type. Anyone here familiar with the novels who'd like to add something?

Imagine a Wormhole 8000 miles in diameter.
The Wormhole connects two different Universes that of Traveller T20 and Pathfinder. Technology does not work in the Pathfinder Universe, and Magic doesn't work in the Traveller Universe.

To properly conceptualize a wormhole, imagine two sheets of rubber parallel to each other so that one lies right above the other. Now place two magnets, one on top of the top rubber sheet, and another one underneath the bottom rubber sheet, the two magnets are oriented so that opposite poles point at each other so they attract, stretching the two rubber sheets till the make contact, this represents the curvature of space time in our 2D rubber sheet Universes, Now cut a hole around the area where the two magnets make contact and stitch the two rubber sheets together at the site of the hole and that is your wormhole. An ant crawling along the top rubber sheet can descent down the wormhole and end up on the bottom of the lower rubber sheet, and that is how a wormhole is traversed from one Universe to another.

Now extend the above analog from 2 dimensional rubber sheets to 3 dimensional space, the wormhole goes from a circular hole connecting one rubber sheet to another to a spherical opening in 3 dimensional space, and this spherical opening happens to be just under 8000 miles in diameter, with the gravity suitably dampened to 1 time Earth Gravity, now fill the neck of this wormhole with matter, rock dirt, and basically bury this wormhole so that it cannot be seen, and from the outside at both ends it looks like a planet, this planet rotates for day and night, it orbits a star, it has an atmosphere, and oceans on its surface, and from all outward appearances it looks like an ordinary planet. The wormhole remains underneath the surface of this apparent planet, its transition zone lies 1000 feet below its ocean surface, anywhere the ocean floor descends below 1000 feet it simply dissapears into the wormhole opening, so it is possible to pilot a submarine through the opening, once past the transition point, all electronics, all weapons, explosives, internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors cease to function, and the only thing that will work are the manual valves that will release air into the ballast tank which will cause the submarine to surface in the Pathfinder world which we'll call Phantasia. Likewise a mermaid or other sea creature can descend below 1000 feet in the Pathfinder World Phantasia and rise to the surface of the Traveller World Prometheus. Magic does not work in Prometheus and Science does not work in Phantasia.

Elsewhere on the World of Phantasia there are dungeons, some of them delve to a depth below -1000 ft. the tunnels descend through the wormhole transition zone and the gravity reverses such that what was formerly up is now down and vice versa, the tunnels and dungeons continue to rise up through Prometheus' surface onto a science fiction world with two suns in its sky and a single moon. The moon features and the starry background of its night sky appear as a mirror image to that seen in the sky of Phantasia. Whereas in Phantasia the Sun rises in the east, in Prometheus the sun rises in the West, or put it another way the land features of Prometheus (those that weren't altered by human or alien hands) are a mirror image of those found in Phantasia. Phantasian humans are predominantly left-handed while Promethean Humans are predominantly right-handed. The Promethean "Common" often referred to by some as English is read and written from left to right, in Phantasia the Common language is read and written from right to left, and it could be read by a Promethean by holding it up to a mirror and the mirror image of it appears identical to English.

A few background notes on the Traveller side of the wormhole.
The Planet Prometheus, or at least what appears to be a planet from the outside orbits, the primary star of Alpha Centauri, the time is the 22nd century around 2150 AD by our reckoning, The Earth has been conquered by the Third Imperium in 2100 AD, it is revealed to the Earth humans, that their home planet Earth was not the original home planet of humanity, but a duplicate of that planet which lies elsewhere in the galaxy, that planet has been duplicated down to the level of fossils in mountain ranges and so forth. The Third Imperium arises from another duplicate Earth, this one referred to by its inhabitants as Terra. The third Original Earth is referred to in the writings of ancient ruins as Gaia, its exact location is unknown at this time as the dating on the Ancient ruins is not precise enough to locate it, and the civilization on that Ancient homeworld is thousands of years older than that on either Terra of Earth.

The Earth and Prometheus are on the frontiers of the Terran Third Imperium, the First Imperium of which was known in our history as the Roman Empire, however on Terra, that Empire never totally fell, instead it transitioned into a Second Roman Republic, then a second technological Empire which expanded into space, that Empire declined and fell, but the remnants of that Civilization later expanded again after 1000 years of Interstellar Dark Ages, it expanded beyond the original extent of the former Empires maximum expanse and continued on to conquer 22nd century Earth, a key technology of that conquest was the nuclear dampeners used by the Third Imperium Interstellar Navy, it was that technology which allowed them to conquer Earth while leaving Earth cities largely intact. Another conquest was the planet Prometheus, seismic readings revealed the unusual nature of this world, and the Imperials which descended through the wormhole underneath found that all their technology was dampened much like the nuclear weapons of Earth were dampened during their conquest of it. The Imperials beat a hasty retreat after losing a third of their expedition's numbers.

Phantasia is basically a standard fantasy world as described in the Pathfinder core rules, with the exception of what lies beneath its surface.

I am open to some suggestions for the names of these two worlds. Phantasia is one name for the Magic World, and Alice would be the Traveller World's name. Alice and Phantasia are hollow worlds, in that one is on the inverted inside of the other and vice versa. Phantasia appears to be on the inside of Alice from the perspective of Alice and Alice appears to be on the inside of Phantasia from the perspective of Phantasians. Space is a little warped at the membrane between the two worlds, converging lines that descent towards the planet Alice's center, diverge when passing through the gate membrane and ascent towards the surface of Phantasia.

Various creatures and things from both worlds can pass through this gate from one world to the next and back again, but certain things happen during the transition. An undead creature such as a skeleton deanimates if taken through the gate into the World of Alice, a zombie turns into a corpse if brought into Alice. A robot moving from Alice to Phantasia ceases to function upon its transition to the new world, bringing it back to Alice returns its functionality, as would returning the Skeleton to Phantasia would reanimate it. Ghosts simply can't cross this boundary to Alice as they have no material existance, neigher can phantoms or spectres and other such insubstantial undead. A polymorphed creature or a shapechanged one, retains its new form upon transition to Alice. A werewolf in hybrid form is stuck in its hybrid form for the duration of its visit to Alice, in Wolf form its stuck in Wolf form until it can get back to Phantasia, in human form, it appears as an ordinary human while on Alice.

Dragons become reptilian creatures without breath weapons that can't fly, as its wings are too small to allow for flight without the assistance of magic. High technology ceases to operate when brought to Phantasia, explosives burn too slowly to explode, steam engines fail to operate with sufficient steam pressure to accomplish useful work, electronics fail to operate, thus most high tech devices from the Traveller Universe fail to operate that don't operate on a purely mechanical basis, such as wind-up watches, windmills, watermills, sails etc and the like. Most creatures can survive just fine in both frames if they don't depend on magic for their existance. A mermaid can swim in Alice's oceans, but she can't cast spells or do anything else that requires magic. The creatures are similar on both worlds, as there has been travel between the two. The more fantastical kind of creatures are rarer and harder to find on Alice, as they prefer a more magical setting to exist in and so don't come here willingly.

Suppose we created an RPG that was like Pathfinder, compatible with it and 3.5, but one based in the classic space science fiction milieu, what would it be like? Basically I'm looking for improvements over the D20 Modern/Future rules, make them like Pathfinder/D&D 3.5 could be a subset of them meshing the rules perfectly together without the need for conversion from one set or rules to the other or fudging.

One idea is that modern/futuristic weapons should have a penetration factor that discounts armor ratings by a certain amount. If the opposing character is not wearing armor, then there is no armor factor and penetration does not apply. but when armor is worn then the penetration factor acts a bonus to hit for not more than the total armor factor of the opponent, thus if the armor factor is 6 and the penetration factor is 4, then the character using the weapon gets a +4 to hit, If however the armor factor is 3, and the penetration factor is 6, for instance, then the weapon user only gets a +3 to hit as 3 factor points is all the weapon can deduct with its penetration factor.

Futuristic armors typically have better armor factors than he medeval types.

I prefer to avoid fancy names for science fiction character classes. I don't see why you can't have a Fighter, or a Rogue in a science fiction setting, Barbarians fit into science fiction settings as well, they go in unaltered. Now with the Cleric and the Wizard, we have to find suitable substitutes. Clerics are generally healers, so we could have a character class called Doctor for instance. The Wizard converts to Engineer.

So now we have the Character Classes Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian, Doctor, and Engineer. We don't really need anything else. What do these science fiction characters do? They basically kill monsters and take their treasure, much as their fantasy counterparts do, and they gain experience points and gain levels, but there's no magic in this setting, instead we have technology. Typical technology is rayguns, and spaceships.

So lets mirror the various elements:
Fighter = Fighter
Barbarian = Barbarian
Rogue = Rogue
Wizard = Engineer
Cleric = Doctor
Horse = Spaceship
Crossbow = Raygun
Monster = Alien
Undead/Construct = Robot

So what do you think?

I am working on a 3.5 campaign, I've entitled [u]The Thirteen Colonies Campaign[/u]. I have been using the old Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rules, because I really didn't like the 4th edition rules, I thought it was really unnecessary to try to make all the character classes equal, and to devote an entire chapter for each character class. The character sheets were more complicated, and so were the combat rules, I thought Wizards was going in the wrong direction with their new game. In short I was completely lost with an unfamiliar game system, and I didn't like such a steep learning curve and all the additional books I would have to buy to get back to something approaching the same coverage as the 3.5 core rulebooks.

That said I stuck to the old system, I was familiar with, then I saw the Pathfinder Beastiary, it looked like a Monster Manual with a lot of familiar monsters in it, and basically that's what it was. I'm new here so please bear with me, this is my first post. I thought great, someone's still publishing the 3.5 game. So I'm interested in porting my 3.5 D&D game to this Pathfinder system. I have yet to buy the Core rulebook, but I have the stated Beastiary.

So what is [u]The Thirteen Colonies Campaign[/u]?

Imagine the Earth split in two by a demarkation line matching the longitudes 30 degrees west from pole to pole and 150 degrees east from pole to pole, basically half the planet. The Old World is "historical", there is no monsters no magic and plenty of historical character from the 18th century including kings and queens, and emperors familiar to your history books, but the Western Hemisphere is the Fantasy Hemisphere, all the rules of 3.5 apply there, and gunpowder and steam technology doesn't work there, there is a limit on the energy intensity of explosive chemicals, and steam pressure doesn't build with sufficient intensity to run an efficient steam Engine, sort of like S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series, only this didn't just happen to a technological civilization, the Western Hemisphere was always this way, you just cross the demarkation line to go from historical to fantasy and back again.

The Historical Date for this parallel Universe is 1764. Much of the history in this parallel universe is similar to our own. The events and rulers of the Old World Eastern Hemisphere follows our own history with regards to rulers wars and so forth, but wooden ships sailing west enter a fantasy universe with fantasy races, and magic although the continental outlines and major geographic features are the same as in our western Hemisphere. I've already created stats of a Fantasy George Washington who wears full plate armor, and is basically a Cavalier type Fighter with horses, a plantation, and slaves.

Replacing the Indians are elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and half-elves plus monster races (orcs, hobgoblins etc), and monsters (dragons etc). The British have basically established 13 colonies on the Eastern coast of North America, but have had to adapt to the local conditions. Ben Franklin is a wizard in this world for example. The wooden sailing ships are more advanced than standard 3.5. I've created a new currency system based on the British pound, and I relabled the equipment list so that its denominated in this new currency.

There you have it in a nutshell, so what do you think of this idea, and any suggestions or comments?