Xander Davis's page

All aboard the Derail Express.

Move the guild's heart with a poem about the brotherly love you share with your party and how sad you would be if they died.

Please Don't Kill Me, you can edit your first post to add things you hadn't thought of.

Or, you could, until I posted this.

Paizo makes an effort. Most of the 3.5 books were not even spellchecked, let alone playtested. Is Pathfinder balanced? No. But it is a shining golden god to anyone who has endured years of 3.5 printing things like Complete Warrior's Samurai A.K.A. "play a 3.5 Fighter except you don't get to pick your feats and you get less of them."

Leadership always leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and not just because of the cohort cannon. Your GM shouldn't be underhanded about it though. If he doesn't want Leadership, he should just say he doesn't want it. There's no reason to make up rules that allow him to make your feat a waste.

A 1-level dip in Oracle at 9th level gives your Barbarian fatigue immunity, so I see a lot of people going Rage Prophet because they already have that Oracle level so "why not?"

Kind of a lame build though.

While not necessarily feats or traits, the Oath of Loyalty archetype for Paladin allows you to make one ally virtually invincible for a fight instead of smite evil, and such a Paladin could take Variant Channeling: Protection as well. Alternatively, a Cavalier in the Order of the Dragon with the Honor Guard archetype and the Helpful trait can Aid Another to add +8 to an ally's AC, including with Bodyguard.

It is also important to note that you can take the Adopted trait in order to give your human the Helpful trait for free, without consuming your second trait slot. Source.

The key here is that in the wording of Bodyguard, it is circumventing the prerequisites for using Aid Another to increase an ally's AC. Ordinarily this must be true: you are adjacent to both your ally and the enemy; and you expend a standard action. Bodyguard says nope, you can increase their AC anytime they're attacked and adjacent to you by expending an AoO.

Where is the enemy? Doesn't matter. What kind of attack is it? Also doesn't matter. If you're in combat next to a friend and that friend becomes the target of a Ray of Frost spell cast by a wizard on a flying carpet fifty feet up in the air, you can use an AoO to give your ally +2 AC versus that ranged touch attack.

The main issue with ranged sneak attacks is that you lose the most reliable trigger: flank.

X-down wrote:

You can also make melee attacks (and use crossbows) while prone, albeit at a -4 penalty to hit.

There is no penalty for firing a crossbow while prone.

Yes, I worded that badly. The penalty applies to melee attacks.

A paladin can choose to worship no deity, or, in fact, an evil one. It's awkward, because he has to follow the paladin code any time that it contradicts his religion, but still allowed.

Source. Source.

1: CE
2: Demon
3: Awkward Silences, Poor Hygiene, Mountain Dew
4: Joe of the Convention
5: Joe entertains himself by sprinkling an ample supply of unpleasant odors and uncomfortable moments over any and all large gatherings of mortals, especially those meeting to share an interest in gaming. If you're certain someone in the room isn't wearing deodorant but you're not sure who it is, don't turn around. Joe could be right behind you.

I doubt that passage will have a place in PFS. When players start adding broad, undefined mechanical features to the game in an organized play environment (in this case, penalties to masterwork tools), it's chaos. One GM thinks it's a reasonable drawback, the next GM thinks it's too lenient, and so on.

You can also make melee attacks (and use crossbows) while prone, albeit at a -4 penalty to hit.

Well, he's smarter than my Tiefling.

I never had any problem with masterwork tools. +2 feels like a lot more than it actually is. The typical skill monkey can have as high as a +9 to half his skills at first level without any bonus to them from race, class, or inventory.

Mostly, masterwork tools are just cool to have. They're one of the very few things that allow true customization in Pathfinder Society and the like. A player can say that his character is wearing Masterwork Badass Goggles, and will likely be the only person with that item, since he designed it. Albeit, "design" basically just entails naming it and picking a skill, but my point remains. You get to make something.

Fill your pockets with scrolls bearing explosive runes, then play dead in combat and wait for the enemies to loot you.

With Aasimar and Tiefling heritages, you can basically add +2 to any two scores you want. That definitely helps every MAD class, because a lot of ability bonus combinations were not formerly available.

Maneuver Master Monk, Heirloom Weapon: Guisarme, Improved Trip at 1 and Improved Dirty Trick at 2. Flurry of Maneuvers can be done with any weapon, and adjacent enemies safe from your guisarme are threatened by your unarmed strikes/maneuvers (feet, legs, etc). Huge saves, decent AC, ranged trip AoOs with combat reflexes, can entangle/sicken or entangle/blind with a Flurry of Dirty Tricks.

Wear a lead coat.

The first and last step of optimization is to ensure that your creation is actually legal and correct. I have no problem with min-maxers, and count myself among them, but you should give him no quarter. A component of his build is flatly wrong and he should lose one of the archetypes.

The decision of divine hunter vs oath of vengeance is a familiar one to anybody who has built an archer paladin. They're both immensely powerful, but do not stack, which forces variety. Were it that they did stack, every archer paladin on the planet would have both. As is, we at least have "divine hunter archer paladins" and "oath of vengeance archer paladins." In the world of optimization, wherein the goal is to be as effective as possible, variety only occurs where difficult choices like these have to be made. Remove the choice, everyone's build will be identical.