I am in a campaign at the moment where I am playing a kineticist with the blood kineticist archetype. General advice would be appreciated, but mostly my question about how one can decide when the Wrack ability is worth using.

When is the reduction of damage worth it for the ability to not make an attack roll? Tis easy to always use it when foes are in melee with allies before I get the precise shot feat, but when else is it useful? And is it useful enough that I should get ability focus (Kinetic blast) before I get precise shot?

I also intend to make use of kinetic healer, which is possibly not the best healer but the party does lack a dedicated healer plus is unlikely to get access to wands. We do have two party members with some off-healing ability and both desire to make use of the brew potion feat to make healing potions (One's an alchemist, the other is a sorcerer that somehow got brew potion at level 1). How terrible a situation is this for a party?

I asked this before as part of a thread int he advice section on a build I was making, but did not really get a satisfying response in terms of why it wouldn't work*:

For the kineticist class, the defensive talent for the water element is shroud of water (Bonus to either shield or armor).

Now, when one gets the expanded elements ability, one can select their primary element with it. Add that to the expanded defense wild talent saying: "Choose an element you selected with expanded element. You gain that element's defense wild talent." What is to prevent a kineticist getting shroud of water twice, so as to use both the shield bonus and armor bonus? What is the exact rule that shuts this down?

*The one person whom said it wouldn't work claimed the reason was because one could not get the same class feature twice. Which I know is untrue due to stacking things like sneak attack from multiple sources. Unless there is something about that I am misunderstanding something.

This might be a bit of a rule question as well as general advice. See, I am playing a tiny sized kineticist in a campaign (Terrible idea, turns out armor giving half armor bonus is a bit of an issue) and have an interesting choice ahead of me.

My primary element is water, and I might of found a quirky thing to do with the rules that may or may not. If I pick water again with expanded elements, it is then valid to pick with expanded defense, right? Double dipping in shroud of water, to get the armor and shield options? Is there any reason this does not work?

If it does work, is it even worth doing? If I were to not do it, I'd be getting earth as a secondary, aether as tertiary element, getting expanded defense for both. Is double dipping in shroud of water better than branching out into multiple elements?

I am going to be playing a gunslinger in an upcoming campaign*, and I have to know if I could have someone else spend actions to load my gun. Possibly a familiar via the buccaneer archetype, or a squire via the squire feat. Is this possible? What would a character need to reload someone else's gun?

*Made the mistake of using gunslinger as an example of what may not fit in all fantasy systems hence having all such flavour restrictions up front was vital, and the GM decided he really liked the idea of someone playing a gunslinger. He has said the setting has guns being 'very rare' but is going to ignore the restrictions of such for my character only, just so I'd play one. Kind of unrelated to the point of the thread, but knowing I shall find even less support for guns than the normal emerging guns level is a bit worrying.

In a campaign I am in, one of the players has argued that if one starts at higher level, one qualifies for all feats as if they had everything they have at the higher starting level when they got the feats. I am of the opinion that this is very wrong, but can't find a single rule to contradict this on the srd.

Anyone with a view point on this matter?

The Crystal Chakram looks like a great weapon, apart from wording of the description putting it between ammunition and normal weapon in terms of how it works. Through searches on these forums there have been some people whom have just said a crystal chakram is treated as ammunition, which implies fr all purposes and no one in those threads called them out on it. Hence I must ask:

1: Are crystal chakrams treated as ammunition for the purposes of drawing them? For spells like Abundant Ammunition and greater magic weapon? For cost of being made of a special material?
>What I can find simple says 'for the purposes of creating magic weapons', though what happens when they are thrown sounds rather like ammunition there too.

2: What special materials actually work with Crystal Chakrams?
>I know some special materials call out that the weapon must normally be made of metal or wood, others do not. It seems rather odd if a Crystal Chakram was made of a non-crystalline substance.

3: Are crystal Chakrams treated as Chakrams for their range and how they work in melee? If not, how would they work in those areas?
>Information is missing from the table on d20pfsrd.com, and the description lacks the melee use details that the chakram description page had.

4: For purposes of drawing them, however that may be treated, how many could one have readily accessible at once?
>As one could go through a lot in combat if using them as their main weapon.

The campaign I'm in has hit a bit of a problem with conflict between characters. There is no issue between players at all, nor does it look like it will get that bad, but it is still an issue that would be nice to know how to best approach. I'd like advice for what can be done to get characters working together better, even if such ideas require the GM to set up events to help it work out.

The main problem is conflict between my character (The main healer of the party, using the vitalist psionic class from Dreamscarred press, which is relevant due to the unusual mechanics it uses for healing. Especially the unwilling participant feat for it) and the party ranger. It may be a bit my fault, as my character forced the ranger into being part of a telepathic collective so as I could cast healing and buffing effects on her, which I admit may of been a mistake and waiting till she needed the healing/buffs so as a chance to have it be a willing thing would of been much better.

The event that really started things getting really bad from my perspective was when the ranger stabbed a beggar in front of most of the party. The beggar did call out for the city guard in response, making the ranger flee, though a certain lawful party member asked me to stop the ranger. I did the only thing I could with my abilities, draining 18 hp and causing 3 damage bleed, which is rather significant at level 6. The ranger managed to tend to bleeding and still escape, but blamed my character for doing such a large amount of harm. This is also the event that when the player explained the why, the GM decided made her of evil alignment, due to backstory the GM hadn't read till then that would of made her evil to begin with.

Since then it's been a bit of a stretch for the ranger to even be working with us at all, feeling very forced. The ranger has made it clear she never wants to be part of the collective, meaning no healing, no buffs, no telepathic communication. Past clearly selfish actions of not sharing anything she finds while searching places (She tries to be sneaky about hiding what she finds, but is rather bad at that) but expecting a full share of anything anyone else finds, has resulted in the party not being willing to let her carry any healing wands or potions she did not pay for herself.

Last session things got worse, her going as far as spending the first round of combat picking up loot and trying to hide that she had found anything, while the rest of us almost died. She was spotted doing so by only one party member who just happened to be our smarter evil character (Which the rest of us think in character is lawful good for various silly reasons), whom after the fight suggested the ranger should get no future shares of any loot due to that action and not revealing what she had taken no matter how much we tried to make her. It was very hard to argue against that suggestion and the ranger had nothing to say in her own defence.

Any suggestions of how to solve this without forcing a change of characters? How can we best rebuild party trust?

(1) Does destroying an alchemical weapon, like alchemist fire or a fuse (2) grenade, set it off/cause it to do it's splash/AOE?
(3) Does it depend on what causes the damage?
(4) How much damage is needed to destroy one anyway?
(5) The area of effect templates specify one must target an intersection between squares for centre of of radius based effects. What if a fuse grenade is set off in the middle of a square instead of an intersection, which is a likely result if set off by damage, yet is illegal according to the rules?

Reason for the questions:
Fuse grenades may or may not explode on impact when thrown (The rules aren't entirely clear, but as the quest has been asked here a number of times, it isn't worth asking again. Thus it is a GM call), if they don't then even a 1 round timer would allow a foe to throw one back. Hence being able to roll an unlit one, or multiple, to a location and then hit it with alchemist fire or a skyrocket firework to set it off straight away would certainly save one from that risk, right?

Other semi-related question:
(6)If fuse grenades are thrown like splash weapons but don't explode on impact, then making a touch attack to hit a foe directly seems rather pointless (Even if it does explode on impact, it would be just as pointless). Is there any reason not to just target a square to land it near your target, instead of hitting the target directly?

Big scary dog-like creature is a room is seems magically trapped in. We only know what it is because the GM slipped up when trying to google an image of what a barghest is meant to look like. Currently our only character competent at ranged combat is away and likely won't be back next session, but that isn't the issue.

The party cavalier wants to keep the creature as a pet/mount. He wants to tame it. My character, via crazy perception rolls, noticed a secret door on the other side of the Barghest, hence I'm not keen to just leave the cavalier taming the beast as an impossible long term goal, as I want to open the secret door. Can't kill it without upsetting the party's most competent party member.

So, how to go about this? How can I get to the secret door without anyone or anything dying? Is taming a barghest to use as a mount even possible? If not, how do we safely shatter a cavalier's dreams?

The GM for a campaign I am in is willing to allow the noxious bite feat even though it is a monster feat. Add that to the fact I am a fan of kobolds, which can get an acid breath weapon for reqs and if not getting bite some other way, like class feature or trait, can trade natural armor for a bite attack hence can meet the pre-reqs, I desire to make a build based around the feat.

Issues:
1: Having to spend first three feats to get acid breath and then noxious breath hurts a bit. Would be worse if starting at level one, though I am not going to be in that situation as I am preparing this as a backup character for if my current one dies (Currently third level, so waiting till level 5 is still a bit of a downside). Still, any way to get noxious breath earlier?
2: Not a clue what would go well with the noxious bite. What class synergies around a bite attack that causes nausia? Is there any way to get multiple bite attacks per round with this?
3: Some foes will be immune, though I am reasonably sure that only constructs and undead would be unaffected. How can I deal with combats focused around such foes that render noxious bite's main effect useless?

I am curious as to how much cantrips/orisons are actually worth in pathfinder. If a player wanted a custom/homebrew archetype that traded out cantrips/orisons, what should they get in return? How would this vary based on the differing spellcasting classes, as different spell lists, cantrip/orison numbers, plus prepared vs divine should make a difference.

I do know there are two things by 4 Winds fantasy Games that make assumptions of the value of cantrips/orisons: first is a ranger archetype that trades favoured terrain for druid orisons; second is a feat that gives two extra cantrips/orisons. It just seems a bit rushed to judge value purely based on those two.

What are the opinions on what would be balanced for a homerule alternative to cantrips/orisons?