WithoutHisFoot's page

Also, keep in mind you aren't limited to one first level class feat. Even setting aside going back for them, Natural Ambition is an extremely popular ancestry feat. If you went crossbow, for example, you're probably not taking any of the others.

Yeah, he's done exactly that. He picked up Twin Takedown as well, which has gotten some use. I didn't mention it earlier because it wasn't overly relevant to my questions about Monster Hunter & Monster Warden.

...Why would you ever sacrifice actions to use a free action? He should be getting the knowledge check for doing something he needed to do anyway if he wants that flurry perk: hunt prey. Unless he's cycling targets rather than picking one, killing it, and then picking another? Because that is antithesis of how Ranger's are designed to operate.

He liked the idea of a role as party buffer. That's the reason he picked up Monster Hunter. To that end, he's been using Hunt Prey even when he wouldn't normally need to in order to make more attempts to grant the Monster Hunter bonuses. Again, his effectiveness in combat isn't really an issue here. He's been doing fine. Obviously he'd do more if he stopped trying to activate the extra MH bonuses, but I'll reiterate my earlier comment about incorrect expectations. I think the way the feat is presented lends itself to those bad expectations, so I doubt we're the only ones who've made this mistake, but I'm glad to know, regardless.

The feedback has been clear and universal here: recall knowledge for "free" is good enough for a feat. The level 2 "upgrade" is pretty bad, for now. I'll lay all this out for him, offer him retraining if he wants it (and straight recommend it for the 2nd level feat).

My usual approach...

This seems like as good an approach as any, to me. I prefer this style to letting them pick from a menu, as well.

Lastly, the new focus spell you mentioned does look pretty nice, though it looks like acquiring it is a 4th level feat. Not a bad thing necessarily, but it does mean you can't just swap out Monster Warden for it. Thanks for pointing it out.

Recall Knowledge is an action, getting it free is good. I'm curious if this is your players first game of PF2, because it sounds to me like you're giving out good and useful information, and part of the problem might just be that they've never had to worry about spending actions to get it, and they are thus undervaluing it since they don't realize what it's like not to have it.

Haha, yes, it is. It took some time for me to convince my group to make the switch, so this is our first real foray into the new system. This is a useful insight. Certainly they've had access to the ability from the beginning, so the group has gotten used to him always checking for monster knowledge. That said, I think the other problem comes down to incorrect expectations. Bot the player and I read the feat as "party combat buffs," when it seems that's just not the function. Growing pains of learning a new system, maybe.

I'll lay out what you've all been saying here to him and see what he thinks. The second level feat, at least, still seems to be rather bad without the level 10 upgrade, so there may be some respeccing in for him.

Crossbow Ace, Twin Takedown and Hunted Shot are way overpowered for first level feats. They enable the Ranger tactics. You are not supposed to compare Monster Hunter to them.

Are they, though? Our champion's Ranged Reprisal lets him make many retributive strikes that he wouldn't otherwise. Our archer fighter's point blank shot is, most of the time, +2 damage on two attacks. Our rogue's nimble dodge has prevented quite a lot of attacks from hitting her. These seem at least as good. If three of the five 1st level ranger feats are on this level, plus a bunch from other classes... I dunno. That sounds like baseline, not "overpowered." But I think this is really besides the main point.

For the record, the ranger in my group took Flurry, not Outwit. He decided that the significant reduction in MAP was more valuable than a +2 to the recall knowledge checks. For what it's worth, Flurry has been very useful - even sacrificing so many actions to try and use Monster Hunter, he's been pulling his weight in fights, largely thanks to flurry. For my part, while I recognize that there is more he could do to optimize this ability, I wouldn't think it would require serious optimization to get the ability to activate at least semi-reliably. That said, you fine folks are saying that we should view the "free" recall knowledge checks as the main benefit, not the team buff. While I don't think that's what the feat advertises, I'm more than willing to entertain the idea.

But even if your ranger has a different hunter's edge, if you really want to help your ranger out, you will remind them that if they take feats like additional lore in specific monster types, you will allow recall knowledge checks against reduced DCs as well, and you can easily have a character with a 25-30% crit chance against the monsters that they are focused on fighting. Circumstance bonuses to attacks, saves and AC are pretty valuable.

This is an interesting idea, and I'd certainly allow it, but I don't think asking him to spend another feat to get more use out of the feat would be much consolation.

Monster Hunter also leads eventually (at 10th level) into Master Monster Hunter, which allows identifying all creatures with Nature and gives the Monster Hunter bonus on a success as well as a crit.

So that's also a factor. The base Feat provides Recall Knowledge, which should be useful, and an occasional bonus, upgraded to a very common bonus at 10th, and increasing in magnitude at 16th when you can grab Legendary Monster Hunter.

The higher level additions certainly seem like significant upgrades. Right now the bonus has been less "occasional" and more "incredibly rare." I suspect that the 10th level upgrade will reduce or solve that problem, but even playing almost weekly, that's likely six months to a year away for us. You'll forgive me if I say that "Don't worry, it gets better at 10th level!" isn't a very satisfying answer. It's something I'd consider more strongly if they were starting at those levels, however.

For my own games, I tend to just hand out what some might consider pretty "meta" type info such as the HP, AC, or damage dealt by their attacks in addition to any weaknesses or special defenses. Of course the amount of info I fork over depends on how well the PC did on the Check itself too. It could even reveal something such as a particular fear the monster might have if any apply. If the party discovers some of these things or already knows something I always provide them with a piece of info they don't know.

Can anyone else weigh in on this? I've been telling them one or two important pieces of information on the first success (usually either an iconic ability, or information about weaknesses and/or resistances). My group usually figures out the AC and HP fairly quickly on their own, but things like which save is lowest might be good to add to the list. What else do you folks do to make sure that recall knowledge feels like it's valuable?

Should I be valuing recall knowledge that highly? It's true that I hadn't really thought about it during my comparisons, but I think that's because we've found that part of this to have sharply diminishing returns. Once you've learned the first couple details about an enemy there's not much reason to use it again.

Compared to, say, Crossbow Ace (which gives a +2 or +3 bonus to damage on crossbow shots for no cost), or Twin Takedown (which fairly reliably helps overcome physical resistances), I'm not sure that I'm convinced of the value.

I've got a ranger in the game I'm running who has taken Monster Hunter and its 2nd level upgrade, Monster Warden. He loves the flavor of these abilities, but in practice it's been abysmally useless. We've played a dozen or so sessions, and he's only successfully activated them a handful of times, despite attempting them almost every round.

The main culprit seems to be the fact that it requires a critical success to activate. I've been setting the DCs as an easy check for the creature's level for most enemies. (I thought I had read that suggestion somewhere in the CRB, but I can't for the life of me find it now, so maybe I made it up.) For enemies at their current 3rd level, that means a typical DC is 16. The ranger in question has a +7 to Nature, Religion, and Occultism, a +5 to society, and is untrained in Arcana. That means for most things, he can critically succeed only on a 19 or 20. 10% chance to activate his ability. Mind you, it's a bit better when they encounter things under level, and worse when they encounter things above level. Against a level 1 enemy, he still needs a 16 or better to critically succeed (25% chance).

The end result is that, to date, he's successfully used the ability maybe half a dozen times, despite attempting it nearly every turn in every combat. Of those successes, I don't think it's ever actually made the difference between hitting an enemy or not. Further, only twice has a party member benefited, because for most of those successes, he killed the enemy on his next hit or the party members were occupied fighting other things.

For something that costs two feats and lots of skill allocations to use at all, this seems just way too hard to activate. Am I setting the DCs wrong? The ability might be usable, if still not great, if I made the DCs Incredibly Easy, which would up the success rate by 40%.

At first I thought maybe the game was just valuing a whole-party combat buff very highly, but Bards get Inspire Courage for free, which has a similar action cost (1 action) and is better in almost every way.

There's something to be said for Inspire Courage being the Bard's iconic ability, so I don't have an issue with it being better. But it's just so much better.

Am I missing something? Running something wrong? Or do we need to resign ourselves to this being a bad feat line?

PF2 is coming at a good time for my group. I've been running a long term homebrew campaign with a 30+ page houserules doc that is about to end. It's a good time to try something new. We'll probably try Starfinder first, but PF2 is on the horizon for us after that.

What will I miss the most? Probably the system mastery and strong opinions that I've picked up over the years. I built a lot of that mastery by practically memorizing rulebooks in high school. I don't really have the patience to do that anymore, so I'll probably never know another system as well as I know PF1.

I dislike that as warriors get more skilled, they apparently forget how to move. Skilled warriors in our imaginations tend to be highly mobile - how many fights can you think of in movies where they just stand still? In most popular depictions, half the action is in how the combatants move around the battlefield and take advantage of terrain features. It holds in real world combat as well. You almost never see skilled fighters standing still; in boxing, in fencing, and in martial arts, footwork is often cited as one of the most important skills.

And yet, in pathfinder, combat gets less mobile as warriors level up. At low levels, moving and attacking is common. Combatants have the ability and incentive to move around the battlefield. But that stops at 6th level when full-attacks become a common thing, and no terrain advantage can outweigh the benefits of more attacks.

There are several good ideas above that you should consider using. Additionally, it's worth mentioning that if you hide your rolls, when all else fails you can simply say "Yep, he made the save."

Is this "cheating"? Yes. Does it sometimes make the game more enjoyable? Yes. Should you do it all the time? No.

It seems to me that an easy way to add NPCs would be to literally add them as the PCs battle the effects of the evil force. Maybe the PCs free an area from the villain's influence and return a few people to normal. As they continue to fight they could free more people, who could provide them information, resources, or just additional goals. Some of them might become allies, some might need protection, etc. There's a lot you could explore there - consider all the ways people might react if they woke up to find themselves in a world overrun by this evil entity.

The fact that you two are already talking about the problem is a good sign. He's going to be able to tell you what he's looking for better than any of us.

With regards to the two solo encounter hooks that he passed on, I'll say that it's possible that he simply didn't recognize those as the adventure hooks they were. That might be his fault for not paying attention, but it could also mean you didn't make them as obvious as you think you did. It's important to remember that the players can't make decisions if they don't have all the information, and you often have to make the information more obvious than you think, because they don't know the whole picture like you do as DM. My rule of thumb when I'm DMing is any information that is absolutely critical (whether because they need to know it to understand the plot or because it's likely to influence their decision making) should be given/findable in at least three different ways.

For example, when given the job for the strange trap, he might need to know not only that it's suspicious, but also that he should do something about it (maybe innocents will be hurt, or maybe no one else can intervene in time). So the shady character offering him the job is one way to give the information - he gets the offer, notices the person looking over his shoulder, and the person makes a comment that points toward whatever bad thing he's going to do with it. Maybe later at the tavern he overhears another local talking about the same shady character, and loudly wondering what he could be involved in. Maybe he gets approached by someone else involved in whatever is happening who wants out, concerned that a bunch of innocent bystanders are going to die. By presenting it three different ways, you're making it harder for him to miss the hook, giving him multiple opportunities to consider what he could do, and you're also emphasizing that this is important.

I've been playing around with ideas for a time looped adventure as well.

A thing you need to consider - if time is looped, why should the party bother with side quests? Presumably the side quest will be reset when the loop resets, so you'll have to think of some other way to make them worthwhile. Majora's Mask did this by rewarding the player with new masks. How will you reward your players for doing these quests?

Use the automated bonus progression from Unchained, or something similar,so that you can leave out the necessary trinkets like rings of protection and cloak of resistance. The math in Pathfinder assumes that players have these items. It's built into the monster CR system. Using ABP means players get the bonuses they need without them being tied to actual items which would ruin the low magic feel you want.

I also recommend E6 for low magic games. Without it, any spellcasters in the part will get out of control, as a lot of mid and high level magic can only really be countered by magic. E6 keeps the levels low enough that this isn't too much of a problem. The last low magic game I played in ran into this problem - the DM needed magical enemies and obstacles to challenge us, bit as he added these more and more, the campaign stopped feeling low magic. E6 would have solved that.

I don't see any reason that arcane surge should let you bypass the restriction of one swift action spell per round.

Arcane surge allows you to cast a spell as a swift action. The language "cast a spell" is even part of its rules text. The casting time rule limits you to one swift action spell per round, and does so using fairly general language. I don't see any reason why arcane surge shouldn't fall under that.

Wow, Rappan Athuk is huge. From the descriptions, it seems like the kind of thing I should be able to cherry pick pieces of for years. I suppose if I can't find something in a book that big, I can't find it anywhere.
Thanks for the suggestion.

While it's never been to my personal tastes, the adventure where the PCs happen upon an ancient crashed ship or some other cache of technology seems like a classic to me. I could see it being interesting for the fantasy world if the technology is very dangerous and easily usable by anyone. I can imagine a group of nobles, or even wizards, who are very upset that a bunch of peasants have armed themselves with laser guns.

Explaining these strange "golems" that don't seem to be powered by bound elementals could be intriguing for an artificer character.

My current homebrew campaign is taking my players to a sprawling underground complex that they must navigate to reach a story goal. Large sprawling mega-dungeons are such a staple of the genre that I feel obligated to put one in the campaign, and this is a moment where it fits rather well. That said, I don't run dungeon crawls bigger than a few rooms very often, so I'd like to look at published adventures for some inspiration. Those of you with experience running this sort of thing, are there any published dungeon crawls that you can recommend? I don't mind paying for something if it's well done.

Some things to consider:

• I normally run 100% homebrew, so I'm very comfortable modifying and rewriting things to fit my needs. Although I've shared the setup for my adventure below, it's fine if your recommendations don't seem to fit.
  
• My PCs consist of a party of six 8th level characters, but again, I'm comfortable modifying things if necessary, so recommendations don't have to fit that party level.
  
• The story and setting call for an underground complex consisting of a collapsed and buried city that was later built over. While, again, I'm comfortable modifying, it would be most helpful if recommendations consisted of something that I can re-skin accordingly.
  

If it'll help, here's the basic story setup I'm working with:

Thanks for whatever recommendations you come up with!

Sounds like a dungeon to make players tear their hair out. Entertaining, but I wouldn't use that technique often.

Good ideas about the religious wards/tests. Outer layers to keep people out, inner layers to keep the vampires in. Innermost regions where the vampires have free reign.

One of my favorites is when the loot also functions as the hazards.

Can you give an example? I'm assuming you mean something more than a cursed ring or something.

I've been playing with some ideas for fixing up the premise. theDavid has correctly called out that the premise is weak as initially presented - there needs to be a reason the church would imprison rather than simply kill the vampires. Ascalaphus, you had some interesting ideas here. In particular I like the idea that the church secretly sends blood down to the vault, possibly in the form of criminals and political prisoners. I'll need to give some thought to your other suggestions, but there is definitely promise here.

The PC's main goal is to retrieve the key that the vampire lord is protecting, so this could also give him a reason to submit to the vault. Perhaps he felt this church vault could be a secure place to protect this key. This seems somewhat sinister as well - it could be that he turns the church followers in order to force them to build the prison in the first place.

Regardless, the setup and theme is only half the battle. Are there any published dungeons folks can recommend I go look at for ideas? Jacob's Tower was worth looking at. I'd imagine there are others.

I haven't written a proper dungeon crawl in years. Lately I've been doing mostly event-based style games. I'd like to send them into a large dungeon now, before they're too high level to trivialize or bypass most of the traditional dungeon elements. However, since it's been so long since I've done one (and I wasn't particularly good at it even then), I could use some advice.

-What are your favorite or most successful dungeon elements?
-How do you plan and gauge the length of your dungeon?
-How do you ensure that the dungeon is challenging for a large party? (mine is eight players!)
-Are there any exemplary dungeon crawls that you can point me to for inspiration?

If it helps to know the setup:

Any ideas or advice are much appreciated.

A far better response than I expected. Lots of good thoughts here - not enough time & room to mention all of them, but I'll address bits as best I can.

How close are your fey to mythological fey? Do you have the Seelie/Unseelie Courts? It sounds like, if you did, it would be more of a Summer Court and a Winter Court situation.

You use the Knights of the Round Table as a comparison. How much do you want to lean into the Grail lore and the Camelot flavor for your story?
...
Concerning your third point, have you decided that freezing Olgrimm is actually sparing him, or are you open to other interpretations?

Honestly, until now I hadn't done much with the fey in my world at all, but I think I took to this plot for the same reason you seem to like it - it's a rare chance to give the fey some real agency in a story, and I like the potential that comes with that. The only fey story I had up until recently was a legend about the fey's first (and only?) king, largely unrelated to the knights of winter (written long before they took shape in my head).

I'm not opposed to a seelie/unseelie distinctions in principle, though I'm not sure I'd include a literal unified court for each. The knights themselves feel more seelie than unseelie to me despite their winter theme, but I could easily see the Queen herself having a very cold and cruel exterior - unseelie. The idea of seelie knights serving an unseelie queen seems contradictory at first, but I think your suggestion (echoed by others here) that the Bane might transform her back to the seelie "Summer Queen" works really well here. This can give us some meaning to "the winter of her heart" - she's a seelie queen, cursed and frozen. I think it likely that her knights remember what it was like before, and want to free her.

The Knights of the Round Table were an instrumental inspiration to creating these characters, so I definitely want to allude to them slightly. I wanted something with that feel in the world, but of course, with players already used to the idea of heroic adventurers and questing for the great maguffin, it needed something to make it stand out. Hence the recasting the knights as fey - wild and strange and twisted. I don't think it needs to be a literal representation by any stretch but, as I said, I like the allusion.

Concerning the freezing of Olgrimm, I'm definitely open to other interpretations. I think the Winter Witch likely killed people - Olgrimm's kingdom is full of hardened northerner tropes, and I doubt they'd consider her a serious threat if nobody ever died. The idea of a romance plot has been brought up by a few folks, and this seems like an interesting angle to take the story. Of course, it still leaves a lot of options for motivations - does she free him to preserve him? To punish him? Because it is a forbidden romance? Even if we go this route, the question still remains is freezing him a good thing or bad? I think there's room for internal conflict here, which is a good thing in a story.

The Bane of Sorrow is a mirror, given from one lover to another, originally given by a courtier to the Queen as a gift...

This idea is really interesting. I especially like the double edged nature of it - the Bane is intended to be a good thing, a useful tool, but is perverted and corrupted by those who aren't ready for it. However, I'm not sure it fits as written for two reasons: First, it gives her a big self-image/confidence complex, which isn't a trait I'd super love to give to a female character, even if the result is to make her a badass ice queen. Second, a big trope among fey stories is that they don't really understand others (well, mortals, at least), and this interpretations of the artifacts runs counter to that. I think they would fit really well into a spiritually awakened empire or some sort of theocratic monarchy, but not so well in the wild and alien world of the fey. The big takeaway you've given me is that the Bane of Sorrow should be a double-edged power, one that does as much harm as good. I also hadn't considered the idea that they might have already had the Bane and lost it - and maybe it's not just the solution, but part of what caused the problem in the first place. I think that's an interesting possibility.

The Bane of Sorrow is death. The fey are destined to search in vain for it, but when they find it, their quest ends. Stories among fey speak of the Bane of Sorrow as being just out of reach, and yet always slipping between their fingers.

This is an interesting interpretation as well. If I were writing a short story without players to consider, I might use this interpretation - it has a satisfying philosophical bent to it. However, I think given the expectations of the gaming group in the D&D playstyle... I'd better keep it something tangible.

I like the idea that King Olgrimm and the Winter Queen met during his "heroic adventures" away from his kingly duties, and met in the way Captain Kirk would meet any exotic woman. They both sound like they were very passionate, headstrong people, and their relationship likely reflected this.

This description alone has convinced me that this is the way their story needs to go. The romance idea came up a few times, and I think you really nailed the feeling. You've done a good job fleshing out the possibilities of their relationship as well. It's plausible and I think leads to a good set of potential outcomes depending on the player actions.

I introduced a side plot in my homebrew campaign in which my PCs met and helped a fey knight who was on a centuries long quest to find an artifact known as the Bane of Sorrow. At the time, this was mostly just an interesting tangent. I figured the character might show up again periodically, have some interesting and quirky interactions with the party, then disappear again.

However, later in the campaign, I'm finding this side plot to be more compelling, both to me and the players, and a point is coming up where I think it'll mesh pretty well with the main plot. The only problem? I can't for the life of me figure out what the Bane of Sorrow actually is. Care to toss out some ideas?

Here's what the party already knows:

In all, I'm left with a few questions that I need to answer.

• What is the Bane of Sorrow? (What does it do, where did it come from, etc)
  
• Why do the Knights of Winter need it?
  
• Why would the Winter Witch spare Olgrimm by freezing him?
  

Any discussion or ideas much appreciated.

The guidelines for monster creation give a pretty detailed description of expected monster statistics at each challenge rating. According to their tables, a CR 5 monster should have an attack bonus of 7 (for a low attack bonus) to 10 (for a high attack bonus). While things might vary a fair bit, an AC of 28 means many monster need a 20 to hit you, and those with high attack bonuses still need an 18 or better. 28 is probably fine.

The argument that "every generic fighter" should have a +1 tower shield and shield focus is patently ridiculous. Some fighters will have those, but not everyone uses a shield or invests into it that heavily. In my current campaign, for example, there is a sword and shield fighter who doesn't have shield focus at level 7 because he's been too busy picking up feats for two weapon fighting and shield bashing (he's also not using a tower shield). Last time I played a sword and shield character, I never picked up shield focus - I don't think it's a great feat, honestly, and most characters don't have enough feats for everything they want.

I would want a rule that eliminates the dependence on the big six magic items. The automatic bonus progression from unchained does the job just fine, though I use a homebrew heroic progression. I've found this to be a fantastic change. It eliminates the need for items that do nothing but give a numerical bonus, which ends up making magic items more interesting across the board. In addition, it makes players feel more heroic, because they know that it's not their shiny gear that makes them awesome, but their own skill and innate might.

Rich Burlew did a rewrite of the diplomacy skill awhile back that might be helpful ( available here )
It gives pretty clear guidelines on how to adjudicate persuasion attempts. It implicitly assumes you're telling the truth, but I don't think it'd be much work to also make it work with bluffs.

I could easily post my current House Rules in their entirety if people were interested.

Yes, please. I've been considering options to let martials be a bit more mobile for some time, and I'd love to see what others have tried. The bits you've dropped so far seem pretty sound.

I've been using a wealth system that I took from Evil Lincoln's house rules, which in turn seems based on the wealth system in d20 modern. It's available here. I know you said you don't like anything random, but you could eliminate that by mandating that the PCs take 10, or otherwise modify it.

I like using it for exactly the reasons you listed - PCs are less likely to loot all the bodies murderhobo style, and it's easier to support wealth from alternative revenue streams, such as income from a business.

I'll echo the going sentiment here - the game's action economy means a single enemy is rarely a challenging fight. Typically I would create a boss that is 2 or maybe 3 CR above the party, then give them minions ranging from 3 below to equal CR, depending on how many you feel is thematically appropriate. Higher boss CRs get fewer minions, of course.

It's important, however, is that the minions should provide different types of challenges. If the BBEG is a mage, give him some reasonably strong warrior minions to play speedbump while he readies the big spells. If he's a warrior, give him a mage or two to pack him full of buffs and use crowd control on the party. If he's smart, give him some memorable tactics. Maybe he tries to goad the specific nemesis PC into single combat while the others have to deal with his minions.

If he or his lieutenants have encountered the party before, consider preparing for some of their favorite tactics. Maybe the party wizard has a few favorite spells that usually turn the tide in their favor; give him a mage minion whose job it is to counterspell. Maybe the cleric loves using summoning spells; order two archers to ready arrows to interrupt him when he does. If he's a culminating villain in a long story, he probably knows a few things about the party - let him use that. These kind of tailored strategies can add an extra layer of depth to the challenge, essentially adding goals to the fight beyond kill the BBEG as fast as possible.

Lastly, if the PCs are fighting him in his home base, let him choose the battlefield, with terrain that is advantageous to him. If he likes to fight at range, put him atop a ledge or balcony (maybe less useful by 13th level, admittedly). If he's some sort of demon with fire resistance, maybe he fights them in a place with lava, flame jets, and other fire hazards. If he's the clever type, maybe he's installed some well placed traps to surprise the PCs mid-fight. Heck, if things go poorly, dropping a ceiling on them is a good way to show off his strength.

487. Heaven's Fall: Last night a great light was seen in the sky, a falling star streaking down toward the east. An angel, they say, fallen from heaven, landing somewhere in Sunless Lands to the east. If you could gather an expedition to find it, you could gain all manner of power and discover the true nature of divinity. What would you do with the power of the gods? Of course, you're not the only one with an interest.

488. The Hero of Old: 200 years ago, your kingdom's greatest hero defeated a powerful evil, saving the world from destruction. Now that evil has resurfaced, and the hero is needed again. Join an expedition travelling across dangerous and strange lands in search of the hero's fabled tomb, where the will of your gods will return the hero to life, to save the world once again.

I've been trying to figure out a different way to roll hitpoints. Here's something I've come up with and would like some feedback:

Roll your hit die twice and take the best. If both dice would give you less than half, then add them together.
Example: Sneaky the Rogue rolls a 4 and 1, his hitpoints that level would then be 4+con. Next level he rolls a 3 and 2, his hitpoints that level would then be 5+con.

This distribution drastically favors the higher die rolls, and makes it very unlikely that you'll get anything less than half. Interestingly, it makes the max die result the most common roll. If that's something you want, then it's a valid solution (it's a little roll-heavy for my tastes, but that's a matter of opinion).

To give you an idea of how much it changes the distribution, I tested it for a d8 hit die. The chances of rolling each of the numbers (1-8) is as follows:
1...... 0%
2...... 1.6%
3...... 3.1%
4...... 4.7%
5...... 20.3%
6...... 21.9%
7...... 24.4%
8...... 25.5%

The average result of this distribution is 6.35, compared to the usual average of 4.5.

Compare this to the traditional way of rolling, which gives an equal 12.5% chance of rolling each number. I didn't test it for the other dice, but I'd expect a similar distribution.

It will absolutely result in higher typical hp rolls. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it depends on what you want.

I don't really ascribe to the belief that wielding a two-handed weapon somehow makes you less responsive on the battlefield, but if it works for your group then more power to you.

The rule itself seems interesting, if a bit arbitrary. I'd caution against using wisdom only because that seems like adding yet another very useful feature to that stat, to the point that I would have trouble justifying choosing to boost any other mental stat. Not exactly game breaking, but it pushes int and cha further down the dump track for most characters.

Some folks have been asking about spellcasting. You could give a penalty to initiative based on spellcasting. Give the mage a penalty to their initiative result on the following round equal to half the level of the spell they cast (or simply equal to the spell level, if you think that's not harsh enough). For example, a mage who starts the combat with an initiative result of 14 casts fireball, so acts at initiative count 11 instead the next round. It's up to you whether to reset them on the following round, or maintain their lower initiative for the rest of combat.

In my games, we roll initiative every round (I have a simple program that does it), which shakes up combat a lot and makes things more interesting. I could see your system really meshing well with that.

You mention in the last paragraph that the fighter should be the one weaeing heavy armor, yet you've removed both his heavy armor proficiency and his armor training. Can you explain the contradiction? If it's a core part of the fighter's identity, why did you remove it?

I've tried to do something similar in my games. My main motivation was an attempt to eliminate the Paladin-as-traffic-cop mentality that was developing among my players. I found that in the standard rules, at-will detect evil eliminated many role-play opportunities and removed a lot of mysterious elements from the game.

"Sir So-and-so wants us to go rescue the Princess? Nah, don't trust him, he's evil. I just checked."

When the Paladin's default social response is Detect Evil, I get annoyed fast.

Tying these to cosmic affiliations removes this mentality while still letting the Paladin sense the presence of demons and the like.

The change you're proposing will certainly get the job done, but you may find some players don't like the idea of making the game significantly more lethal (as measured in new characters rolled per campaign).

If you're willing to take a more comprehensive approach to reworking the death rules, an excellent option can be found at the Alexandrian. It eliminates resurrection magic entirely, but adds a mechanic that ensures that the game doesn't actually become more lethal

I've used it in a few campaigns now, and it works very well.

If I remember correctly, the game Mythender basically goes to level 100,kinda.

Maybe it doesn't even have a level cap.

Not only does Mythender not have a level cap, it doesn't have levels at all, really. There's a sliding scale of power with some serious tradeoffs (the power corrupts you) , but you can go both ways on the scale, to a point. It's a neat system, but very much not Pathfinder.

One of Pathfinder/D&D.'s greatest strenghts is its ability to handle BOTH realms of realism (at low levels) and realms of godlike power (at high levels) in the same system. Other systems might do one or the other better, but can't handle both with the same (relatively) smooth transition. Increasing granularity so that it's a 100 level game doesn't make that better. The alternative, scaling the power ceiling even higher, might be worse. That kind of scale would make me feel like the low level stuff just didn't mean anything at al.

She can almost certainly have more than a single CR 2 minion,especially considering that she is specced to be a control mage. If she doesn't have much direct damage, then she needs minions to be a threat.

A pair of CR 3 minions might work, or three or four CR 2 enemies, as a party of five can probably kill them pretty fast. There isn't a hard and fast rule here.

If you're unsure, something that may work is starting with a smaller number of enemies,with the possibility of more arriving if tbe fight turns out to be too easy. If the fight is hard enough, simply don.'t introduce them, and the PCs never need to know. Learning to scale difficuty like this is a very useful skill to learn as a DM.

I quite like the redivision that you've come up with. The feats themselves, however, are far too powerful to be a single feat for all three abilities. I could, however, imagine either splitting each up into a chain of three feats and using them that way.

The only one here that I really dislike is the CL 16 ability for enchantment. It boosts a leadership score, but doesn't grant one, so as written you have to take the leadership feat in order to gain any benefit. Even if you do, leadership doesn't strike me as a particularly interesting synergy (and many campaigns don't use it at all). If you're rolling most of the emotion effects into enchantment, then maybe this is a good place to work with that? I can imagine an ability that makes your emotion effects contagious, for example. Worth thinking about, anyway.

Another thing worth mentioning from a design perspective: by rolling both evocation and conjuration into the Invocation discipline, you've ensured that the evocation specialist already has access to summon monster spells. This makes the second half of the CL 11 ability redundant. Instead, maybe this would be a good place to boost "blast" spells. They are a fun, but typically weak, part of the classic wizard archetype. If anyone could actually be good at them, I'd think the evocation specialist would be the one. Maybe allow the evocation specialist to add one point of damage per damage die or something similar, but only to spells of the element he is attuned to. Actually, adding one point as part of the CL 6 ability, then scaling it to plus two at CL11 and plus three at CL 16 strikes me as a pretty reasonable way to make blasting spells relevant.

I really like both the flavor and mechanics of this class. It seems well balanced (though as always, I'd be interested to hear about the results of playtesting). As it stands, I'd certainly let my players use this.

I'm of the opinion that zeal is reasonably balanced. It has no target restrictions, but loses the bonus to hit and AC from Paladin. It's possible to gain one, but not both, from the oaths. Combined with the shorter duration, I think it is meaningfully different - stronger in some ways, but weaker in others.

A couple of questions-
Mobile Sentinel doesn't specify what kind of action it takes. Presumably it should be an immediate action? If you don't specify, someone might interpret it as a free action during someone else's turn, which is odd.

Redirect Blow is a bit unclear to me. Does the knight-errant have to land an attack of opportunity (making an attack roll, dealing damage, etc) to redirect the attack, or does it merely have a "cost" of one attack of opportunity?

I have run two versions of this over my time as DM.

Years ago, I used a rule based on this variant rule written by someone way back in the days of 3.5. It does not add an enhancement bonus to damage, but increases the critical threat range for weapons, and increases max dex or DR for armor, depending on the material. The cost and craft DC progression the author uses is incredibly high, so I used the following:

Craft DC........Market Price
20..............300
27..............5,100
34..............15,900
43..............35,100
50..............65,100

This worked well for awhile, but (as is probably obvious looking at it now) the extra critical threat range quickly became far too powerful. Even with the caveat that it isn't affected by improved crit, it lead to a situation where the fighter could expect to crit nearly any time he landed an attack.

More recently, I'm using a rule where, in addition to an increase in the enhancement bonus to hit (still no damage) the crafter chooses a bonus from a list for each.

My current rule:

Overall, I like it. In general I dislike that you've combined a point system with x/day (it feels a bit awkward - I'd prefer one or the other), but your ideas are on the right track. Interesting and useful without being too oppressive.

I'm curious, however, about the option for an extra move action. Why did you choose to limit it to when the fighter has a full pool? It seems like an awkward way to implement this ability - either it discourages the fighter from using his pool, or he accepts that he's not getting this particular benefit.

Its current implementation sort of feels like a half-measure. If you are worried about abuse, simply making it cost is probably sufficient.

Illiteracy is the default in the language system I use, but the system as a whole is more complicated (and more rewarding) than the usual language system. Each language has multiple levels of competency (but a single point in linguistics gives you multiple Language Points, which partially compensates). Picking up literacy is extra. The languages are based on region, rather than race.

The end result is that only about half of my PCs are literate, and language becomes a much more interesting aspect of the game. It helps give each kingdom a real identity, and makes overcoming language barriers an interesting challenge for the party.

There are lots of ways to implement illiteracy successfully, but I think as long as you're consistent, it should be fine. Language is far enough removed from the combat mechanics that balancing it really isn't much of an issue. Simply requiring any character who wants literacy to spend a skill point is probably sufficient, though I'd recommend streamlining it by allowing that one point to grant literacy in all languages you know. Otherwise the skill cost can become quite significant very quickly.

The "Heretic Faith" feat makes some sense to me because it lets you do something mechanically different - giving a good cleric access to evil descriptor spells, such as summoning devils, for instance.

Maybe that's a better direction to take this, Brokenbane. Rather than requiring a feat tax for something that is purely DM adjudicated, consider creating a feat that lets these dead god clerics do something unique or interesting. You could tailor it to the specific god(s) you're thinking of, and you'd have something really memorable and interesting.

I'm all for this character concept, but rather than taxing it with a feat that doesn't do anything, let's give it a feat that makes it really worthwhile to play.

Why does this need to be a feat? If you need an NPC that, for story purposes, worships and draws power from a dead god, simply let him do that. Ditto for PCs - I'm not sure I see a reason to add this as a feat tax. As DM, you're already adjudicating what gods clerics can choose from anyway. Why add an extra barrier to an interesting character concept?

I constantly find myself tinkering with house rules. Currently, I have a combined house rules and supplement document that is 35 pages. I'll happily send it to any who want to take a look, but some of my favorites:

-I use a "Heroic Progression" table that integrates the bonuses from the 'big 6' magic items into level advancement. The one I use is a slight modification of this one.

-I also use Rich Burlew's diplomacy rewrite. It's a thing of beauty.

-I use Justin Alexander's rewrite of the death and dying rules. The big thing it does is get rid of resurrection spells without actually making the game more lethal.

-Evil Lincoln's Strain-Injury mechanic. I find it an elegant way of handling the wand of cure light issue, and pretty much eliminates the "let's sleep in the dungeon because we're out of healing" trope.

-A weapon group proficiency rule based on this one. I've rearranged some of the weapon groups and use them as the same groups for a fighter's weapon training.

-I use a more complex language system with three levels of language competency, and languages based on nationality rather than race. Of all the house rules I use, this (to answer your original question) has been my absolute favorite.

-I've rolled jump, climb and swim into a single Athletics (Str) skill. Tumble and Balance remain part of Acrobatics.

-Diplomacy and Perception have been added to some class' list of class skills. Every class that had 2+ Int skill points per level gets 4+ Int skill points instead. This has been really great for giving more players the ability to do things outside of combat.

-I use a supplemental Truename magic mechanic that is designed to be added to any spellcasting class. I've posted the rule previously here.

-I use a crit table of my own design that my players get a kick out of. I wrote it when I was planning a steampunk game that would feature steamwork prosthetics, so the nastier effects feature losing limbs and organs. The table only gets used for a roll of natural 20. Normal enemies don't get to use it, but "named" enemies do.

-Paladins and Antipaladins detect ORDER and CHAOS respectively, which is less about how you act, and more about where your spirit is aligned in a cosmic sense. This cosmic alignment is separate from the good/evil/law/chaos moral alignment, and a typical human has no cosmic alignment at all. The practical benefit is that paladins aren't able to pick a burglar out of a crowd, or even necessarily a mundane murderer, but demons and evil cultists still raise all the right flags. It means Paladins aren't traffic cops, but can still do the demon slaying, undead hunting action that they should.

48. Vahd Kahl Aevorn, the Three Dragon Isle

The Isle of Vahd, home to nineteen tribes of Tomorian Fire Giants, is a stark place of blasted rock, fiercely burning lava flows, sulphur and ash and great beasts touched by the power of fire. At its heart, three massive mountains stand sentinel over the island, fuming great columns of ash and smoke high into the sky. It is said that in each of these smoldering mountains sleeps a great dragon, three of the greatest Seulisian Wyrms of the Age of Glory. It is known that the giants born in the shadow of these dragons have fire in their veins. The tribes worship the dragons as gods before all others, but the giants fear them all the same. When a Tomorian prays, it is a prayer that the three dragons will not awaken for another thousand years.

The Tomorian giants guard the Dragon’s Teeth, the craggy and narrow straight between Vahd Kahl Aevorn and the mainland, and will sink any ship that sails without paying their price. While the giants used to simply throw boulders, heavy enough to hole a ship easily, in recent years they learned to construct immense longbows of black wrought steel. Three man heights tall and massively strong, the giants fire arrows bigger than ballista bolts hundreds of yards that can pierce even the strongest of vessels.

49. Citadel Ioris, the Fallen

This once-mighty fortress city was the site of a siege that lasted 100 years at the height of the greatest war of the Age of Glory. A betrayal and a promise to the black god of spite brought a curse down on the battlefield, and for nearly a thousand years, two great armies of bone and ash have risen to do battle on the eve of each new moon. In present day, the citadel sits at the heart of a great desert and is avoided by all but the bravest explorers.

Recently, the armies were freed from their curse, but were not released from undeath. Now for the first time in a thousand years, the two great skeletal armies have free will and find themselves seeking a purpose.

dunno if that helps.

Of course it does!

At the moment, rainzax, CE has no role at all - I removed it as a prerequisite for all feats and give it to every character once they reach +1 BAB. Even with everyone getting it, I've yet to see anyone who used it. It is not perceived as a very useful feat, especially when stacked next to power attack. I'm not opposed to finding a way to make CE useful, but I haven't seen one yet that I'm happy with (excepting perhaps a certain fighter rework I recently saw). However, I could very easily see this feat being integrated with CE, perhaps simply getting their Expertise bonus in points when they use the ability.

This feat feels like a feat for Fighters more than any other martial class, as the Fighter is the "smart" melee class in my mind. If I end up tinkering with the fighter class, I'll consider giving it these two feats for free.

The two concerns you raise - skill tax and slowing down gameplay with extra rolls - are likewise the two items I saw as potential problems. So far, the skill tax seems to be kept in check by the changes that I've made, though I'm keeping an eye on it in my games. The party fighter recently put a rank or two into linguistics to expand his languages, so he must not be feeling too strapped for skills. In one of the early drafts of this, I considered making the check based on base attack bonus, or even simply attack roll, but I eventually discarded it because it didn't feel quite right to me. Being able to hit things really well isn't intrinsically tied to understanding the flow of battle, which is what this feat is really trying to represent. I consider it an added bonus that you can boost this with skill focus if you really want to (though I think there are better feats to take). However,if the skill tax still worries you, then I'd recommend tying the check to either base attack bonus or the attack roll itself (the latter might require that you adjust the DC scaling some). If you're using a better Combat Expertise mechanic, then tying this feat to that somehow also makes a lot of sense to me (and I'd be curious to see how you'd do it).

As for slowing down the game, this is a situation where I would highly recommend you allow prerolling as a DM. Normally I am not a fan or prerolling - as a DM I don't like having to take a player at their word - but in this case the tactics check can dramatically change what the player is doing on their turn. Allowing a preroll also feels thematically appropriate to me - the warrior surveys the field, using his tactical knowledge to formulate his plans. I think prerolling will help eliminate the potential slow-down. However, if you allow them to preroll, they should understand that rolling is a commitement to use the ability on their turn, even if the roll would fail the check.

I like your suggestion about inverting the point pool, but I had already chosen not to allow characters to store points because I was worried about someone saving up a dozen points and just doing the whole list. That kind of behavior should be discouraged, both for balance and for plausibility.

UsagiTaicho, I'm sorry the feats were a bit too wordy for you. While I tried to keep it as concise as possible, fleshing out new mechanics does take a bit of explanation. I think it's comparable to most class features, at least.

To your comments, this system would mesh very poorly with a system that splits the full attack up into standard, move, and swift actions. If you're using such a system, then I understand completely why you wouldn't want to use this. I considered such a system, but didn't use it for various reasons.

I didn't write this up specifically for Halloween, but it seems appropriate.

You could let your fightr retrain a bonus feat at every even level, or every odd, or both for that matter. Its your game.

Well, yes. But the problem isn't with his current feat selection, but has to do with problems with the feats system itself, and how it's integrated with the fighter. They're long term problems. He doesn't know it yet, but I suspect that he's going to feel crappy come late game, and with the current class chassis it's not easy to fix that.

There are lots of quick fixes I could apply, and I still may, but they're not exactly my idea of a long-term solution. You can only patch something so much before you're better off tearing it down and building anew, after all. Aelryinth seems inclined to do that, and his stated design goals mesh fairly well with my own thoughts so far.

It may be worth noting that at this point I have a playtest-ready version of the martial sister-mechanic that I promised. I've posted it in another thread.

While it's not strictly necessary to include both in your games, I think doing so is healthy for martial-caster balance.

This is the sister-mechanic to a truename ability designed to be used with any spellcaster. That mechanic can be found here. Both mechanics are intended to be easy to implement, and usable by a wide variety of characters.

This mechanic consists of two feats that address a simple problem that is deeply ingrained in Pathfinder's d20 combat system: combats are static, far more so than in the books and movies that inspire us. The Pathfinder rules for full attacks make mobile skirmishes set around interesting scenery and obstacles all but impossible to recreate, and often lead to fights that are, well, boring. This mechanic is an attempt to add movement and variety to combat while keeping the full attack system. It has not yet been playtested, however, and I would welcome your thoughts on it.

While this mechanic can be instituted as-is in your games, I have some general house rules that are relevant.

• Obviously, this rule uses the Knowledge (tactics) skill. It should be made available to most martial classes, except perhaps the Barbarian. In addition, the Summoner and Wizard traditionally gain all knowledge skills, and this should be no exception. Choosing whether to grant or exclude this as a class skill essentially determines whether or not that class can use this feat.
  
• This feat does seem to be a skill tax, which I did not want. I have made two changes that help alleviate this. First, all classes that had (2+Int mod) skill points per level are increased to (4+Int mod) instead. Second, Climb, the Jump uses of Acrobatics, and Swim have all been rolled together into a single Athletics skill, which is Strength based. These two changes help most martial characters pick up a few extra skill points.
  
• In my games, I have ruled that combat maneuvers by default provoke an attack of opportunity only if the maneuver misses, with the exception of grapple. This encourages players to attempt combat maneuvers more often, which allows for a greater variety in combat. (I have excluded grapple mostly for personal reasons; I have found grapple to slow down combat more than any other single mechanic, largely due to the high complexity and poor quality of its rules.) Whether or not you use this option is up to you, but you may find that the feat is less appealing without it.

This mechanic is, to be frank, not as elegant as my truename mechanic. I like the options it provides, but I'm not terribly happy with the costs associated with it - skill tax, feat tax, and action economy tax. However, the two feats feel very strong to me even with these costs; without them it would be overpoweringly so. I am also slightly concerned with the dizzying attack option. The other combat maneuvers are all based around movement, but this one alone allows you to give a real meaningful penalty to an opponent. I have included it because I felt the need for at least one more option at the three point level.

Still, in the end I'm fairly satisfied with this mechanic. Feel free to use it, in part or in whole, in your own games. I'm about to begin the campaign in which this will be playtested, so needless to say it is experimental and may need some revision before its final form. If you have any criticisms, concerns or thoughts, please share them!

I don't have much to add to the discussion at this point, but I agree with your design principles wholeheartedly. Class design is something I've been thinking about a fair amount lately, and I'm very interested to see what you come up with. Do you have an estimate for when it'll be ready for playtesting? I'm running a campaign that just reached 3rd level, and I'm already seeing problems with the group's fighter.