Xorran's page

I have a lot of things I always do, both as a player and GM. I always buy dice that have a full compliment of dice, 4d6, and a proper percentile set. I always color code my attacks on my character sheet, 1st attack white, 2nd attack blue, and so on. Then when I roll, I roll eveything at the same time, attack, miss chance, and damage, almost all of my players have adopted this, and it speeds up combat alot.
When I GM I always write down characters stat blocks on a spreadsheet that I put in my GM screen, name, AC, HP, perception, and any other stats I may need to roll in secret for them. Also resulting in sped up combat, since I never have to ask players any of their stats, it also helps encourage role-play, since I can always refer to character names instead of player names.
Probably the biggest things I do as a GM is that I encourage role-play, and offer my players about 50% of their total xp from role-playing, or bonus campaign xp, instead of just combat xp.

I get a big kick out of it when a player tries usimg the whole, "I get 90% off this item because it'll only work for a NG Elven Wizard." I always let it slide, it's hilarious when they find magic items from monsters/NPCs, because I always say something along the lines of, "You found Super Cool Magic Item Xxxxx, but it only works for CE Lizardfolk Barbrian, but you MIGHT be able to sell it for 5% of it's original retail price." Players quickly change their minds on stuff like that, particularly when they realize their WBL is only 5% of what it should be.

After level 15ish, once you get contingency, clone, and your own demiplane. A single wizard is basically unkillable, your only option is going to be to roleplay your way through the encounter, unless your GM is one of those people who doesn't do any roleplaying, and always starts combat with less than 100 feet between you and whatever you're encountering.

The biggest problem I see on this thread, is people "breaking" the game by not following one simple rule, and that is to find an equivalent item, and base the cost on that. Anyone that would tell me, heal 1 hp per round, or cast Cure Light Wounds when I walk, I would just say, "Okay, so you want regeneration on a slotless item, that'll be 180 thousand gp, problem solved. Oh you want continuous True Strike, that'll be 2,000 x 20 x20 x2 = 1.6 million gp, sounds about right to me. The problem people see with "breaking the game" seems to be a narrow field of vision when people look at item creation. There ARE rules to cover these thoughts and ideas of breaking the game, I guess if you ignore a bunch of rules and guidelines you can break the game, but for the most part, as long as you follow the rules, you're fine. I dont know when I last handed out 1 million gp to a single character so they could make a "continual strike" slotless magic item. But honestly, if you're handing out that type of treasure, I think players breaking your game is probably the least of your problems.

Personally, I allow pretty much any custom items in my games. I dont really feel that there is much "game breaking" things players can do with it. Also, players spent feats and skill points in order to make magic items, to me, it would diminish those feats if I added restrictions to players out of "fear of breaking my game." Not to mention, often times I just go with, well, if a PC can come up with the idea, so can my NPC's, which really helps balance things out, also giving PC's the ability to take item crafting feats, or leadership, basically the two types of feats I see a lot of GM's not allowing in their games, gets players really excited about the game, creates a really good experience for players, and it gives tons of fun and versatality in the game. Not to mention, with craft tatoo, pretty much anything can be made slotless anyway, and I've never had anyone break my game with that.

At what point do you start going through all the slotless magic items already in the game and saying "well, a slotted version of this exists, so in my game the slotless version doesn't." For example, do you get rid of all ioun stones, carpets of flying, staves, wands, potions. Really, nothing PC's are going to do is going to "break" your game as long as you can think on your feet, or adequately prepare for their magic items.

Once you get Greater trip, you basically get double the AoO's against an enemy, first from it moving, then the trip will provoke, next round when he gets up you get another AoO.
Make sure to get movement increasing items, like Boots of Striding and Springing. By level 10, your threat area and number of feats you get,make this build pretty ridiculous. Make sure you take Stand Still, then you can control the whole area, even against creatures that can't be tripped.

This is a very handy feat for a character with a reach weapon, at level 5 you have a threatened area of 15 feet, at 6th level with Lunge, that increases to 20 feet. With a high dex, which you would want with a combat reflexes build anyway, you could be getting a potential 5 to 6 (or more) attacks at level 6. And don't forget about trip manuevers, to help maximize the number of AoO's you can get, from when they stand up.

With Combat Patrol you can end up dishing out a lot of damage on your own, and at the same time keeping your enemies completely shut down from moving.

For me, this largely depends on which of my groups I'm currently running, my smaller group of 5 players, and about 4-5 hour sessions, I level them up every 4 to 5 sessions, my larger group of 14 or more players, and 8 to 12 hour sessions, I level them about every other session.

For me, I always give out experience at the end of the night, or during a food break, so no roleplaying time is lost.

Another thing I do, is I always give out bonus xp to people who RP their character exceptionally well, and don't do too much ooc table talk, which always encourages other players to do the same.

I've gone several gaming sessions with little to no combat, so I always keep in mind that PC's get xp for "encounters" not just killing things in combat, and encounters are everywhere, basically anything accomplished through roleplaying can be considered an encounter, so often times I just start with baseline session xp, say 5,000 xp, for the session, and just raise or lower that xp by 0-10% for each individual, depending on how well that player interacted in the session.

I do this all of the time, I regularly have NPC'S that are the same level or within a level of the main group that often float in and out of the party. Mostly because my main group has 14 regular players, most of which have cohorts, and we do our weekly sessions in our LGS, so we get a lot of new people who just want to "try it out" and it's much easier to just hand someone a character and some dice and say have at it, but if a couple sessions in they decide they want to keep playing, I'll let them make their own character.

What happens if an opponent is bull rushed during his movement?
Here's my scenario, I have a character with Impact Critical Shot, and Improved Snap Shot (and the prerequisite feats) if I make an Attack of Opportunity against someone 15 feet away from me as they are moving out of my threatened square toward me, and confirm a critical hit against them, and bull rush them 10 feet away from me, placing them 25 feet away from me after the bull rush. Do they get to continue their movement toward me? Or are they stopped in their tracks, if they get to continue their movement, is the 10 feet I moved them subtracted from their movement? Are they required to use a second move action to continue moving toward me? Possibly provoking another Attack of Opportunity (With Combat Reflexes obviously) from me again? Or is that considered the exact same movement, even though I pushed them 10 feet out of my threatened area, and they are now required to move into and out of my threatened squares again in order to get to me.
Just wondering if anyone was really familiar with what is supposed to happen in this sort of scenario.

I'm a little more inclined to think they priced the Ring of Force shield the same way as they did Bracers of Armor, since it's not really an enhancement bonus, or an "other" magic bonus, it's a type of armor bonus "shield" but I think they basically made the base ring priced at 4,000, and added another 4500 for not needing a proficiency to use, and being able to activate and deactivate as a free action, maybe adding 2,500 and 2,000, for those abilities.
In either case, I'm sure they didn't give you an upgradeable version of Ring of Force Shield for a reason, simply because letting the armor bonus increase, or giving special shield abilities to it, would basically mean a must-have item for many people, and they simply wanted to avoid that.

With a Heavyload belt, you only need strength 15 to carry 198 pounds. Well within the range to carry around whatever you need.

I've been tasked with making a level 16 character for a campaign, (joining in late) and I was wondering if anyone knew which feats you could use with Sonic Thrust or Telekinesis type spells.
Here's what I'm thinking...
Making a level 16 Monk: Hungry Ghost Monk, Qinggong Monk, and taking Sonic Thrust at level 15. Being able to make 15 attacks at 600 feet seems like quite a bit of fun. But my main question is, do you guys think feats like <Improved Critical> and abilities like the Hungry Ghost Monk's <Steal Ki> (Since it doesn't say melee only) work with the weapons you'd hurl with Sonic Thrust.
I'm thinking about basically going with 15 sized Colossal Obsidian Masterwork Temple Swords. Since they would weigh in at 75% less than a normal colossal Temple Sword (12 pounds each) and getting rid of the fragile quality, and deal 6d6 damage per weapon, with a threat range of 17-20, with 15 attacks, it should replenish my Ki basically as often as I use the ability, with some to spare.
So I was basically wondering if anyone knew if this idea would work or not?

Personally, I believe I have a little more control over my table than your average GM. Since I have full stat blocks of PC's right behind my GM screen that always allow me to keep track of their AC, HP's, skill checks, etc.
I even keep track of PC's health, and describe wounds in a dramatic manner, instead of saying, "Oh, Bob is missing 20 of his 60 hit points." I'd instead say "looks like he's got a few nicks and scratches, and a nice sized gash across his left arm, if you want to roll a heal check, you might be able to discern which healing spell would be most appropriate for his wounds."
But otherwise I don't even let players know how much damage they've taken, except in dramatic terms. Even the spell Deathwatch doesn't let people know that Bill took 9 damage from a dagger, so it drove me pretty crazy when I had players look at the Cleric and say, "Hey, can you heal me for at least 15 damage before we move on to the next fight?" I prefer things to happen in a role-playing manner. But that's just me.

The "rerolling" of characters weren't part of the first adventuring party, any sort of attempt to contact the old party, or avenge them in anyway, or even retrace their steps, would have been simply using player knowledge, that our characters would have known nothing about in the first place.

In my campaigns, I don't really play excessive hardball, but I don't exactly coddle my players players either. I think finding a good balance is definitely key to having a good ongoing campaign, and mine has been running every week (save for 4 missed sessions) for almost a full year now. I think a good thing to do is to always give players options, give them a sense of danger, even if there is no real sense of danger, making PC's feel like they are going to die, even though an antagonist is actually 5 levels lower than them, is sometimes way more satisfying than actually pitting them against someone who is going to kill them in 2 rounds of combat. Drama and role-playing can make encounters so much different than what people realize. Be descriptive with your monsters, instead of 6 Orcs, describe a few of them in detail, specific weapons scars, coloration, clothing, attitudes, and especially if there is a "leader" and often times just the idea of suspense, and not knowing if that "leader" Orc could possible whoop the PC's all over the place, just because you made of some goofy description of the one-eyed Orc leader covered in scars from his many battles, clearly from fighting off the many Orcs within his tribes to become the leader of this band, as he stares viciously at your party's Cleric with a bloodlust you can barely fathom. Even though he's just a silly Orc with maybe an extra level in Barbarian, nothing big, just drama.

On the other hand, one GM I had, claimed that he didn't "coddle" his players, so he would do things like surprise our Level 7 party with a CR 13 Monster in the middle of the night, that had so much stealth that there was no possible way we could notice them, and did a TPK. And the same GM killed us with a CR 16 monster after we all rerolled characters. Needless to say, he delighted very much in the killing of PC's, and always felt that he "won" when we died, and his campaigns never lasted through their first adventures.

So there's always ways to find a careful balance.

For Pathfinder I use 7 full sets of dice, all of different colors, and always keep track of attacks 1-7 with the same colors, and roll all my attacks and damage at the same time, and since everything is color coded, damage dice being the same color as the d20 die, it's easy to figure out which damage dice to use for damage. Normally, this leaves me with several "unused" percentile dice, also 7 colors, I use about 6 of them to keep track of things like hit points, combat rounds, bleed damage, or anything else that you may need to keep track of temporarily, spinning dice is a lot of time easier than erasing, writing, etc etc.

Example, if I'm playing a fighter, and he gets two attacks, at a +15, and +10, with a d12 for damage. I designate my Black dice for his first attack, and the White dice for his second attack, I roll all four of my dice at the same time when making a full attack, lets say I roll a 4 on my Black d20, and a 19 on my White d20, I'd ask the GM if a 19, hit, if not, I'd ask if a 29 hit, if it did, I know to use the White d12 for damage. If the 19 from the Black d20 hit, then I know 29 from the White d20 hit so I would simply tell the GM that both my attacks hit, and tell him the damage from both my Black and White d12's.

Almost all my players have adapted this form of play for combat, and it really speeds things up in combat, especially when you have archers or monks making 5+ attacks per round.

Just my thoughts, whoa, I really rambled there.

If it was a home made NPC, say one of your main antagonists for you guys for a while, it's possible he also had the story feat <Accursed>
That's probably the best/easiest way for a PC/NPC to get SR.

Sounds kind of like a build I did, except I went 3 Paladin/5 Monk so far.
But just to clarify, Fates Favored doesn't increase Halfling Luck since it's a "racial bonus" not a "luck" bonus, unless you have some magic item or spell that gives you a specific luck bonus to your Saving Throws.

The reason I went with 3 Levels of Paladin is for the Holy Tactician Archetype, and taking the teamwork feat <Shake it Off> which can increase all your saves by +1 for each ally that you share that feat with, up to a +4 total to all your saves. Making your saves even more ridiculous. And with continuing to level Monk you get Evasion, and all those goodies. You can also go with Hungry Ghost Monk, to regain your Ki points, along with Qinggong Monk, to get nifty things like Barkskin (more AC) and with your 1 level dip in Cleric, if your deity were Sarenrae you could take the feat <Crusader's Flurry> so you could Flurry of Blows with a Scimitar, with Dervish Dance, adding your Dex to hit and Damage instead of Strength, and if you picked up <Improved Critical> later on, critting on 15-20, meaning with a Hungry Ghost Monk while flurrying, you could build your Ki Pool back up very quickly.

Then you'd have both ridiculous AC and Saves, Fight Defensively with Crane Style/Wing, with a Scimitar in one hand and nothing in the other.

Aside from the the people complaining of Monks in general, there are several feats you can take as bonus feats for monks, just no list has been compiled, but thus far from this forum, we've discovered:

Binding Throw (14th)
Ki Diversity (any)
Ki Throw (10th)
Improved Kit Throw (14th)
Hamatulatsu (6th)
Bend With the Wind (Meditation)
Body Control (Meditation)
Body Mastery (Meditation)
Combat Meditation (Meditation)
Meditation Master (Meditation)
Meditative Concentration (Meditation)
Perfect Awareness (Meditation)
Perfect Center (Meditation)
Slow Time (Meditation)

That does give Monks 14 more feats to chose from for bonus feats, if anyone else finds others that I've missed, please feel free to post them, hopefully we can make a short list for an easy reference.

Thanks everyone so far for your input on discovering these feats.

I have been looking, and I haven't found anything in any new printings, but does anyone know of any errata for Monk bonus feats.

Since the Core Rulebook only lists 19 Feats for Monk Bonus Feats, and the Core Rulebook only has just over 100 Combat Feats.

With printing of all the new books and such, the combat feats have increased to over 400 in total, Fighters automatically have access to all of these bonus feats since they are marked as combat feats. But there has been no new list of "Monk Feats" from what I can find. You would think with increasing the list of Combat feats by over 4 times the original amount, that Monks would have access to 4 times as many bonus feats, so 60-80 choices, rather than 19, but have found no such list, has anyone else?

Yes, the question is in fact possible for a level 5 character to make a +5 weapon/armor with a Spellcraft DC 25 check.

Although, the only time I can even see this happening from a PC perspective is if your PC took Leadership, and had a leadership score of 19 or higher to obtain a 5th level follower, and said follower was basically a crafting wizard. As a GM I would resolve this issue by saying that while your follower is a close friend, his business is obviously crafting magical items for a living, and this follower is NOT going to craft you every magical item from now until eternity at cost, effectively making no money at his business just because you're his good friend. Instead since he's an NPC who is basically always considered to be "helpful" as per diplomacy, I would maybe offer him a 10% discount at best on magic items crafted in the town in which this particular 5th level follower resides. After-all, he IS in the business of making money, and having one friend shouldn't stunt his business for 50 days every time his buddy comes into town.

Otherwise, if your GM is just handing out 25,000gp to level 5 characters every session, then who cares what you can make, just buy a bunch of stuff, it'll obviously be faster and you can just go kill things quicker and make money faster anyway. And you won't have to use a feat to save money which you're obviously swimming in.

Snake Fangs wording is a little funny, so I'm not entirely sure if Paired Opportunists requires the feat to specifically have the word "provoke" in it or not, so I was wondering if anyone knew if these two feats worked in conjunction.

Say I were a Paladin-Holy Tactician/Monk, I shared Paired Opportunists with everyone around me, and while using Snake style, I used Antagonize to force the opponent to attack me, if every time they missed me, does everyone adjacent to me get to make an attack of opportunity as well? Or does Snake Fangs crazy wording not make this combo effective?

Personally, I would NOT want to go through all the available books, and go through EVERY spell, and make a brand new permanency list, especially considering Paizo has already done that in the spell descriptions, I can think of just a few off the top of my head in Ultimate Magic, the 3 Create Demiplane spells, all 8 new Symbols spells, Sanctify Corpse, Loathsome Evil, Anthropomorphic Animal.
Since the work has already been done, and balance issues already considered, I see no reason to attempt to re-invent the wheel, and possibly unbalance the game, and put in WAY more leg work than what you would even need in any particular game, just because a few people found a cool spell they want permanent.

Almost any Pathfinder spell introduced after the CRB that the designers felt would be in-line with other spells available to be made permanent, actually have an entry in the spells description, and Lead Blades does not have such an entry. Personally as a GM, with the crazy versatility and power of Lead Blades, I would not house rule it to be allowed to made permanent.

Exactly, in almost every case, while some players may use downtime activities to craft magical items, make gold, retrain, or any number of other things, the person who missed a session or two, just tell them, you missed 7 days of "in-game" time, what were you doing during that time, more often than not, if he spent the time gaining xp, he'd level up to the party in no-time, if he decided to spend it doing something else, it's totally his choice.

One thing that does, is it still gives things to players who show up to every session, a little extra cash, ability to retrain, etc. Without really penalizing absent players, and also without rewarding players 100% for not showing up to a gaming session. It's entirely possible if you reward absent players with guaranteed levels, loot, and everything they were absent for, they may just decide, "Well, I can go out drinking, or just skip every other session, and still reap all the rewards of people who put in the effort." Not saying that everyone would, but there's always a chance.

So having slightly different xp, loot, and retraining for people who are dedicated enough to show up to every session seems like a good reward system to me. And not game breaking enough to upset anyone.

You can also use downtime activity from Ultimate Campaign to catch up in XP, at level 4 each day of downtime adventures will give him 1,200xp, at level 5 it'll give him 1,600xp per day, and level 6 it'll give him 2,400xp per day.
I use this system often in my campaign, as I have anywhere between 8-14 players a week, who often float in and out, and not everyone can make it every week, and while "active" players use their downtime for things like making money, crafting things, or whichever, the not-so-active players get to use their downtime for making sure they're caught up in xp to the people who actually role-play every session.

If I built an Aasimar Mystic Theurge, with the new changes with SLA's meeting prerequisites for Prestige Classes, I'd probably go with.
Aasimar alternate racial trait: Scion of Humanity, so you count as Human, for feats, and such.
Feat: Racial Heritage "Half-Elf" For Paragon Surge.
Feat: Heavenly Radiance (Aasimar only feat) for the SLA at 3rd level of "Wake of Light" now you meet the divine and arcane portion of Mystic Theurge with only 1 level of Oracle, and 2 levels of Sorcerer.
Then you can hit MT:9, Sorc:2, Oracle:1.
And use Paragon Surge for obvious reasons, using either your 3rd or 4th level spell slots, and giving you a ridiculous number of spells available to you.

Ecw, accounting for that many bodies, normally not that big of an issue, since I have all the stats for my PC's written down (most just hit level 14) I can pre-plan combat pretty easily.

I normally look at the melee type characters, and find creature types that they can only with with say a natural 18-20, that way, after party buffs and such, they might be at 13+ at best, which balances out the table a bit.

I also use a lot of tactics, which is to be expected, since most combat scenarios are going to involve intelligent beings.

Another thing I forgot to mention, is most of my PC's have Leadership, so even though there may be 12 players at my table, it can sometimes have effectively 18+ PC's. It can sometimes get a little hectic, but since our whole group is based out of a single single, (instead of randomly wandering around the world) and has access to teleportation and such for when they do need to travel, I make sure each PC has a "schedule" for me, of their week to week activity, and downtime, so I know who to include on certain encounters and such. After-all, if our 13 level wizard's schedule is to spend half his time crafting magic items, and something in the city comes up, he's probably not even going to get informed of the "party problem" instead, his cohort will get informed and sent to solve the problem with the party.

Everyone having Leadership also allows everyone to use some downtime activities for retraining and whatnot to get things done, while their cohort takes care of "business."

Also, I like to occasionally have my PC's make followers, level 2-4 PC characters that are just named followers to certain PC's, that have a bit of a personality and background, and let the players play them for a session or three, just to get a break from the high level play, and to just change things up a bit, and add some flavor into the game.

I run an open campaign at my local game store, my games also involve a minimum of 10, some sessions as many as 16. I don't run any modules, so I can't give a whole lot of advice for adjusting modules to adjust for a group 2-3 times the size of a typical group.

But for general play, one big thing that helps me in combat situations, is initiative, I basically just consider all characters and monsters to "take 10" for initiative, so the combat order is always the same, less dice rolling, and less time always adjusting combat orders. That will speed up combat dramatically.

Another thing I do, is I make sure all my players stay in character all the time, to keep "table talk" to a minimum, as small out-of-game tangents can get out of control with that many players. Same goes for rules clarifications, or rule disagreements, we go with my ruling at the moment, and write it down, and double check the rules after the session, so the game doesn't get bogged down with anyone trying flip through books to clarify rules.

In my sessions, might be slightly different than yours, as I have 3-4 veteran players, and the rest are normally fairly new to Pathfinder, so the veteran players can often help out new players, so if you're doing all the helping I can see how your plate can be pretty full, just make sure not to take too much time during the session for rules, ask players to write stuff down, to be asked after the sessions.

Another thing I do, to give my players some "out-of-character" time, is I take a 10 minute break every 2 hours, since my sessions last about 8 hours, one of those breaks is about 20-25 minutes for dinner, that also seems to help people get out of character a bit, and reflect on the sessions, or discuss things with other players in an out-of-character fashion, without disrupting the game.

My current campaign has been running over 40 weeks now, without many problems at all, and I've never had to split up my group, or remove anyone from my campaign, and overall, very few complaints about the way things are run.

I hope that helps.

Sorry, not trying to hijack the thread or anything, but just a few things to point out here.
1. Blood Money does NOT work on spells with a longer casting time than 1 Standard action, since Blood Money is a swift action to cast, and the next spell needs to be cast in the same round.
2. Also means, you can't quicken any other spell to work with Blood Money, since you can only quicken spells that cast in 1 full-round or less, and you only get 1 swift action per round.
3. This limits Blood Money's usefulness, especially for money-making schemes, and is more designed to keep spell casters useful for when they somehow get their stuff taken away from them and still require material components, since it's main benefit is basically "Eschew Materials" at the cost of 1d6 damage.
4. You can't even abuse Blood Money for expensive spells like Symbols, since they all have a cast time of 10 minutes (See point 1) Or spells like Permanency (Casting time 2 rounds) or even for a spell like wish, unless of course your casters are all running around with 51 strength, at which point I'm sure Blood Money should be the least of your worries.

With all that, if your players are still able to find a couple ways to increase their WBL less than 10%, I'd say that's completely fine, since even item creation feats, gutsy Rogues, or any clever player can do more than that.

Every day you haven't used your arcane bonded item to cast a spell, when it gets to the end of the night (since you can use it to cast a spell once per day) cast something with an expensive component, start with Continual flame, Everburning Torches are worth 110g, you can make roughly 55gp per day with casting just that from your arcane bonded item. Later, of course, you can cast more expensive spells from your arcane bonded item.
The reason I remind you to use only your bonded item to use the spell, is that it's a Spell Like Ability to cast from your Arcane Bonded Item, which means it has no Verbal, Somatic, or Material components.

I would say that no, a Ring of Force Shield does not require any sort of free-hand to wield, furthermore; since it has no armor check penalty, characters who are not normally proficient with a Heavy Shield can wield it without penalty (Since the only drawback to wielding a shield you aren't proficient with, is taking its armor check penalty on all your attack rolls, and strength and dexterity based ability checks).

Having the ability to activate and deactivate it as a free action any number of times in a round, basically means you can shoot arrows through it, throw items through it, cast spells through it, or anything else you can think of, by simply deactivating as a free action before your action, then reactivating as a free action after your action.

In game terms, it's nothing more than an item that gives a +2 shield bonus to AC. So it would stack with Armor bonuses, Deflection, Luck, Insight, Sacred, or Profane bonuses. That's basically it.

If he's a Martial Artist archetype, make sure to remind him to use his Exploit weakness for an dodge bonus equal to half his level against opponents. Helps out tons. If he can get 1 more int, Combat expertise for more AC will help out, and Crane Style, will give him lots of AC boosts while fighting defensively. Since you said he's the one taking the most damage, start in on a defensive style build, those will help out a lot.
Retraining his Ability score bump to Int, and retraining his Power Attack to Combat Expertise, (you didn't say what level he is) but say he's level 6, fighting defensively with Combat Expertise, against a single opponent, with Crane style, will boost his AC by 9 points (dodge bonus) and give him the ability to deflect one attack per round. Seems like a pretty decent trade off, if he's the one getting close to death all the time.

Personally, I have almost zero problems with Q's in my games, my typical sessions have anywhere between 8 and 14 people in them, and every one of them, I have at least 1 guy who always has Charisma 7 (stat dump) and at least 1 rules lawyer. Neither of which bother me.

Stat dumps are just a part of the game, some more experienced use them for slightly more MAD type characters, but they do have their drawbacks.

Rules Lawyers, and people who will try to break your game with every possible feat combination they can think of, yep, there's at least one of them in every gaming troupe.

There are game mechanics that help to curve this sort of play though. Remember that Pathfinder is a Role-Playing game, try mixing up your sessions a lot more, see if you can make an entire session without doing ANY combat, turn it into a big social event, where your players are going around the city, trying to figure out certain things, gather information, talking to people, following clues, etc etc. That stat dumped Charisma guy will be kicking himself when he just say, "I'll just stay at the inn for a few days until everyone comes to get me..."

Remember to keep diplomacy in mind, starting attitudes with NPC's can be a total game changer for people who have low charisma. Also keep in mind the munchkin Barbarian who complains to people about not having the "correct spells" memorized all the time, make sure that guy isn't the Int/Cha stat dumped Barbarian, with no points in Spellcraft, and the appropriate knowledge kills, and if he is, politely remind the player that, "Yes, I'm sorry Q, as a player you are aware of these facts as per the core rulebook or other sources, but your character lacks the appropriate knowledge or skill to bring this fact up to the group. So I'm just going to let them know that you accidentally blurted out an out-of-character comment instead of an in-character critique."

Another thing I like to do, is tell all of my players an extra trait, yep, sounds a little OP right? But after seeing them role-play for a session or two, I locate a drawback found in Ultimate Campaign, for example Headstrong seems to fit Q's description quite well, Headstrong: You feel compelled to correct every action and argument that contradicts your worldview. Whenever you witness an action or hear an argument that contradicts your alignment, you must attempt to stop or correct that action or argument. If you either don’t try to stop it or fail in your attempt to stop it (as adjudicated by the GM), you are shaken for 1 hour.

Shaken gives them a -2 penalty on pretty much all checks for 1 hour, but seems like he role plays that anyway, and gives you a mechanical way of reflecting that.

Sorry for such a long, but personally I find very few problems are ever solved with simply "Boot/Kill the PC." every player or character is an opportunity for you to learn as a GM, and for the other people at the table to learn as players.

I honestly don't see it as "The most powerful feat in the game." If you look at your "all martial party" if they all took leadership at level 7, a good portion of those martial characters normally stat dump charisma, giving them -2 Leadership, with a starting leadership score of 5.

Oh no, our group of level 7 martial characters that go up against CR 7+ characters plan to bring a bunch of level 3 squishy cohorts along with them? Good luck, those types of cohorts ARE best left back at the base, doing things like running businesses and such. Even in Ultimate Campaign, under Managers, it says you can select a Cohort, or notable follower to be your manager for a business, sounds perfect for someone who's 4 levels lower than you, that's a loyal companion, that you don't want to get killed in combat by one or two arrows.

If your level 7 Martial DOES want to bring his little level 3 Wizard cohort along with him into combat, that first death will drop his Leadership score from a 5 to a 4, making that feat even LESS useful than it was originally. Something to keep in mind. And I'm sure after that, he will soon realize, risking his cohorts lives, and eventually ending up with a permanent level 1 cohort won't help much.

From a different Leadership thread I posted in, basically this is how I run leadership in my games:

The PC creates the Cohort.

The PC role-plays the Cohort.

The PC controls the Cohort in combat.

If anything comes up that may go against the Cohorts background, alignment, deity, or friendship with the PC, I have veto with the Cohorts actions.

Example: Recently I had a PC who tried to sell one of his followers souls to a demon in order to earn a favor from said demon, the NPC follower was NOT willing to do this by my veto power. Not only that, the follower left, with a few of his friends, and the PC's leadership score dropped, just for attempting it.

Other than that, there are very few restrictions I use with Cohorts, I could make everything really restrictive. But I think that would just take the fun away from everything. Not to mention. With retraining, if I handed someone a level 5 Warrior, the PC could just simply say, "Hey George, I'm really glad you decided to join us, but you know what, your skills aren't quite up to par, but your willingness and attitude are PERFECT for our group, so here's what I'm going to do, we're going to train you for the next 15 days, to become a true fighter, so you can help defend yourself, your town, your family and your friends so much better. And on top of that, I'll even pay for all your training, just because I like you so much, and it's only going to take 15 days out of your 80 year life-span, what do you say?"

I'm pretty sure most Cohorts would say yes, if the GM looked at me, and said, "Your level 5 Warrior doesn't want to be better at his job, for free, and has decided he doesn't like you anymore." I'd probably throw my dice at him.

My current campaign has 10+ players in it, I don't ban leadership, have never banned leadership, and probably never will.

In my games:

The PC creates the Cohort.

The PC role-plays the Cohort.

The PC controls the Cohort in combat.

If anything comes up that may go against the Cohorts background, alignment, deity, or friendship with the PC, I have veto with the Cohorts actions.

Example: Recently I had a PC who tried to sell one of his followers souls to a demon in order to earn a favor from said demon, the NPC follower was NOT willing to do this by my veto power. Not only that, the follower left, with a few of his friends, and the PC's leadership score dropped, just for attempting it.

Other than that, there are very few restrictions I use with Cohorts, I could make everything really restrictive. But I think that would just take the fun away from everything. Not to mention. With retraining, if I handed someone a level 5 Warrior, the PC could just simply say, "Hey George, I'm really glad you decided to join us, but you know what, your skills aren't quite up to par, but your willingness and attitude are PERFECT for our group, so here's what I'm going to do, we're going to train you for the next 15 days, to become a true fighter, so you can help defend yourself, your town, your family and your friends so much better. And on top of that, I'll even pay for all your training, just because I like you so much, and it's only going to take 15 days out of your 80 year life-span, what do you say?"

I'm pretty sure most Cohorts would say yes, if the GM looked at me, and said, "Your level 5 Warrior doesn't want to be better at his job, for free, and has decided he doesn't like you anymore." I'd probably throw my dice at him.

Well, from what I've read. Basically your PC's cohort just chills back at his "home base" type of place, and does nothing but crank out magical items. For me, I don't think this would bother me that much, clearly, this NPC's main goal is was to obviously make a living crafting magical items for the populace, since he's a Wizard who took nothing but item creation feats. Even a Wizard with a decent shop could average out a decent living making potions and such.

Simply explain to the PC's, that if they want to tie up nearly all of the Wizards main business he is going to need to hire an apprentice, to take on the "little" jobs, since the party is constantly filling this big item orders, he has no time to make the small items and do his job to make money, furthermore; I'm sorry, while I'm willing to help you out with every single item you need made, I'm not going to do it at cost, at best you're going to get a 10-25% discount, simply because the cohort is still going to have to pay his bills, and his staff. Since OBVIOUSLY, item crafting is his job, you did make him that way, expect him to act like item crafting is his job.

Problem solved, item crafter off to the side all the time, not REALLY saving any money on anything, and who knows, maybe even at some point, this Wizard might be the guy who buys magical stuff the party doesn't want to sell in his shop at 55-60% value, rather than the normal 50% value. I really don't think it's going to inflate things that badly, to basically have a "contact" which you could have easily obtained through prestige points, but instead this player decided to burn an entire feat on it, thinking it was his way of power gaming.

Well, I've been a GM for a pretty long time, very few times have I had to veto cohorts, normally if someone just decides to cohort out a wizard or cleric with nothing but item creation feats, or something like that.
And as far as pure munchkins go, if they view their cohorts as nothing more than a stat block, I make sure to keep track of that, while their leadership score shrinks, and they eventually lose their cohort. And I always remind players, if they are going to over munchkin something in my game, to remember, I'm familiar enough with the rules, that I can easily make NPC's that will out munchkin you and your little cohort if your only goal is to try to break my game ;)

I think the main thing, in my campaigns anyway, letting the PC build their own cohort, figure out their background, and then running it all by me when it's finished, is normally plenty. Sure, I have final veto power, but very rarely have I ever had to say, "Nope, not this guy."
I feel the main thing about letting a PC build their own cohort, is they have a sense of attachment to their cohort, instead of just an extra sheet tucked behind their character that their GM handed them. In almost every sense, the cohort IS another PC as far as my games go. They have their own motivations, feelings, etc, and most of my players are perfectly willing to put the legwork in to flush out the background of their cohort, if they want to take the Leadership feat. I've actually had players nearly cry when their cohorts died, just because they were so attached to them, and not because they were attached to their stat-block, they were attached to the characters. I've also had entire parties go on rescue missions to save cohorts, just because even the whole party felt they were a member of the team, not just the cohorts leader.
To me, handing someone an NPC, and saying this is your new cohort, really takes away from the feat. It would be like me looking at the fighter and saying, "Well, I realize you've been using a longsword for several levels, and now want to take weapon focus and weapon specialization in the longsword, but I'm not personally a fan of the longsword, so I'm going to switch your feats to weapon focus and weapon specialization to rapier."
PC's should get the choice when it comes to their character, including backgrounds, feats, familiars, and cohorts. That's just my take on it.

Yeah, that seems pretty restrictive in my opinion, "I realize you're level 15, and tons of people know you, you even have dozens of followers, but you've been searching for a loyal fighter companion, none will join you, the best you can find is this level 13 expert baker."

I've never banned Leadership in any of my campaigns, and I always let my PC's create their own Cohorts, giving them full access to whatever books they want.
If you look at Chapter 3 in Ultimate Campaign, under "Companions" I've pretty much followed that kind of ruling for as long as I can remember.
I've only had to interject occasionally with Cohorts/Followers, say if someone tried to sacrifice a follower, or something similar, then leadership score drops, follower leaves, etc. After-all, they are still people, and won't blindly follow PC's, just because they say, "Well, if this demon wants a soul, I'll just volunteer Fred's, I'm sure he'll be fine with it." He won't be, lost follower, drop in Leadership score.
I do agree with a lot of people, that Leadership is a very powerful feat, but if done correctly, they are also a great tool for the GM, plot hooks, role-playing opportunities, bringing in new players letting them just run a cohort during play, etc. I've never seen a real reason NOT to allow Leadership, aside from making the table more complex. But my ongoing campaign has over 10 players in it right now, and each and every one of them has Leadership, and if you ask me, it just makes role-playing that much more flavorful.

Honestly, I don't think this is a game breaking problem.
Player A) Spends 1 day in town Crafting 1,000gp worth of magical item, goes to the merchant to sell it the next day for 500gp, for which he uses his trait to negotiate 550gp out of them, profit 50gp, I would imagine he would likely have to go to a few different merchants in town before he would find the right merchant to get that 50gp trait to kick in.
Player A now loses 2 days of time. And made 50gp.
Players B-E) Spends 3-4 days gathering information for their next adventure, following clues, investigating, etc etc. Possibly getting somewhere between 2-5% of their required experience to reach their next level. After all, killing stuff isn't the only way to earn experience, encounters are encounters.
Player A) Notices he is now 1-2 days behind the rest of the party, and 2-5% experience short of the rest of the party, decides to use the downtime rules in Ultimate Campaign to "adventure" (killing boars, or whatever) to catch up on experience.
Conclusion: After 3-4 days in town Player A makes 10-15gp per day, made 2 dice rolls, and had nearly no interaction with the other players or the GM, but gets to watch Players B-E go through town for 3-4 days, do lots of role-playing with each other, NPCs, gather lots of information, and generally get to experience Pathfinder as a ROLE-PLAYING game.
Hopefully after doing this a couple times, Player A will realize missing out on the social aspect of the game for nothing more than 10-15gp a day, will make Player A want to become part of the game.

For purposes of using Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, or other feats that require a specific weapon, I normally just look under the Fight weapon groups as a guideline for proficiencies. For example, weapons listed in the Close weapon group are, gauntlet, heavy shield, light shield, punching dagger, sap, spiked armor, spiked gauntlet, spiked shield, and unarmed strike. I would use that list for proficiencies that require a specific weapon in the particular feat.

Honestly, I think the intention is for purely custom made magical items, not something you grab out of the book, and just decide to throw discounts onto it in order to get the most discounts you can from an item. Otherwise, every wizard would be decked out in their "This item only works for a Wizard, Loremaster(Or insert your favorite prestige class), of Good alignment, for your nifty 90% discount on all your personal magic items. Which is just a way to game the system. I mean really, a GM who allows this is running a purely cookie-jar campaign, and at that point, should just allow everyone infinite gold/magic items anyway. I would personally not allow anyone to stack these types of bonuses unless the item was also highly restrictive in the process. For example: If that item that only worked for a Wizard/Loremaster/Good character's only function was that it allowed for your familiar to advance in levels as though your Loremaster levels were counted as Wizard levels for the purpose of your familiars advancement.

But I would not let that same Wizard make a Headband of Mental Superiority +6 for 7,700gp. That would just be ridiculous.

They are right in the Core Rulebook, under Magic Item Creation, Magic Item Gold Piece Values, Other Considerations.

The System is in place for very specific items, if you look at creation costs for crazy Magic Items, eg. Holy Avenger +5 Longsword, 50,000gp, Spell Resistance up to 25, 130,000gp, and a Greater Dispel Magic (6th level spell) on command, 6*18*1800=216,000. And 2,630gp for a Masterwork Cold Iron Longsword. Giving us a grand total of 398,630 not the listed price of 120,630. Take the 398,630 And shave off 70%, since its abilities can only be used by someone who is a Paladin(Class), Good(Alignment), and has an aura ability(Skill, Unwritten, but assumed since the SR extends to his companions) for 30% 30% and 10% decreases in price for a total of 70%, giving you an end price of 119,589. But since it's an item that's been around for a while, and it actually states "Not all items adhere to these formulas. First and foremost, these few formulas aren’t enough to truly gauge the exact differences between items. The price of a magic item may be modified based on its actual worth. The formulas only provide a starting point."

So in this example, these abilities specifically function only for a Paladin, and not just because someone said, "I feel like making this normal magic item only work for a wizard"

Perhaps that item you're trying to make work for only wizards of a good alignment, is only capable of casting Magic Missile against evil foes.

But that's just my take on the whole thing.

Oh wait, never mind, my bad "In addition, other spells that change
your size have no effect on you while you are under the
effects of a polymorph spell."

But as far as I know, they haven't changed Enlarge Person to a Polymorph effect, so they should stack, as long as you don't cast them in reverse order, ie Enlarge Person then Giant Form. I could be wrong though.