It is very possible that it got caught in a blanket ban. It has happened before. But like others say above, rarely does the campaign leadership come out and explicitly state why they banned something, most of the time we just assume. Like vivisectionist: flavor or taking a rogue's schtik?
The campaign leadership has been pretty explicit about vivisectionist being banned because it's evil. I mean, they've got an ability called "Torturous Transformation" that is all about experimenting on animals. Their fluff text explicitly calls them evil. There's no problem with archetypes that overlap with other classes; the Trap Breaker archetype from the Dungoneer's Handbook and Crypt Breaker from Inner Sea Magic let alchemists do everything rogues can do with regards to traps, and they're both legal.
CRobledo wrote:
The campaign leadership has also set precedent for un-banning things after some time and reconsideration, like Magical Knack.
This is true. Make a rational, detailed argument about why Spellkiller should be legal, addressing both the fluff and mechanics, and there's a reasonable chance that somebody who can make the change will listen.
1) Don't tell them what the rolls are for... and have them roll lots. Have them roll 6 or a dozen, then use the 5th one. Also, I tell my players that I use the numbers for (amoung other things) deciding which random player to target with an attack. Monster needs to chose? He picks the guy with the bigger number in blank #6.
That's probably a good idea, although some players might accuse me of intentionally choosing a bad roll when I want them to fail -- and I might be tempted to do that, but on the other hand, I don't want to be the kind of GM who punishes a player for being good at something and forces a paladin to take a 1 on his Will save when detecting evil.
nosig wrote:
2) Taking 20 on Perception "You can do it for searching a room, but make sure the players know that tossing a single room could take 30 minutes to an hour, and it could take days if they're going to thoroughly search the entire manor." Why would "tossing a room" take 30 minutes? A perception check takes a move action. You can do 2 in a round. So, a careful glance around a room, (Perception check from the doorway) with a Take 20 would take 1 minute.
One of the problems with the rules on Perception is that it doesn't indicate how large an area you can search with a single Perception check. When you walk into a room and make a perception check, if you roll well, does that mean you did so well that you can immediately see the tripwire in front of the door, the secret door on the wall, the trap door hidden under the bed, the fake bottom of the drawer in the table, and the gems stuffed inside the bed's pillow? And that's just for a bedroom; if you're searching a ballroom, does that also mean you see the hidden compartment on the back of a pillar and the hidden message written underneath the staircase...?
For rooms that have things hidden in them, it's not even possible to find some things unless you're actively in the room examining objects. When players walk into a room, I'll give them a check to see things that are visible from the doorway, but otherwise they have to explicitly tell me what they're searching or go through every square in the room and individually search it. If they're taking a 20 on making perception checks to search every square in an entire room, that can quickly add up to over 30 minutes searching for moderately-sized rooms. In scenarios where time isn't of the essence I'll hand wave it away, but there are some situations where every minute counts.
Furthermore, if you just let players make a single check or take 20 to find everything in a room as soon as they walk in, that's a serious blow to the usefulness of class abilities like Trap Spotter. Who would ever take that when you can just glance from the doorway and find all the traps, anyway?
What kind of sources are you allowed to use? If 3.5 material is allowed, I'd strongly recommend looking at the Swordsage from the Book of Nine Swords. It's basically perfectly-suited for a Kenshin-type character; light armor, lots of mobility, and powerful single strikes.
If that's not allowed, take a look at the Sword Saint Samurai archetype from the Dragon Empires Primer. If you don't mind the concept of throwing some actual magic into the mix, try the Kensai Magus archetype from Ultimate Combat.
I dislike point buy because the costs are weighted, even though the game's math is linear. Every +1 to a roll is exactly as beneficial as the last +1, so there's no reason having 4 +1s to a single roll should be more valuable than +1 to four separate rolls.
Ah, but that's only true if you take a very naive look at what an extra +1 bonus to a stat is worth. For a fighter with a two-handed sword, an extra +1 strength is worth far more than a +1 charisma. Going from a 17 str to an 18 str means not only that you have a +1 to hit, but that's also an extra +2 to damage. Having a higher attack roll also means you can afford to power attack more often, so even more damage. You can carry more, climb better, swim better, break things better, and so on. What does a +1 to charisma buy you? Slightly better social skills that you're terrible at anyway because you don't have enough skill points to focus on them?
It's worth even more to spellcasters. Going from a 17 to an 18 in your primary casting stat not only increases your saving throw DCs but also gives you an extra fourth level spell per day, which is huge. No wizard is ever going to choose having an 11 strength over being able to cast an extra Black Tentacles.
Having the stat costs be weighted ensures that characters have at least slightly rounded stats instead of absurdly lopsided ones. If stat costs were one-to-one, why not play a sorcerer who has a 40 charisma and 8 in every other stat? Sure, you could set an arbitrary cap on each stat, but that won't stop people from pumping their important stats up to 18 and lowering the others as much as possible.
To be fair, even with weighted stats, it still encourages min-maxing a bit. People pump up their primary stats and dump their low ones as low as they think they can get away with, which still leads to fairly lopsided characters. Personally, I think rolling dice leads to more interesting characters, because they tend to have stats allocated in ways that nobody would ever choose when min-maxing a character; I think it leads to characters that are more interesting to roleplay because they don't have the exact same stats as every other character with that class.
Some die rolling methods are better than others, though. I used to like 4d6 drop lowest a lot, but that has a huge amount of variance, and it tends to lead to situations where a few players have amazing stats and a few have terrible stats -- unless you let players roll multiple sets, in which case you tend to have situations where everybody has amazing stats.
Lately I like 4d4+2 a lot; the average is slightly lower than 4d6 drop lowest, but the minimum isn't as low, and the variance is a lot lower, so you end up with far fewer amazing or terrible sets. 2d6+6 is also fun; there's a lot of variance there, but it also prevents anybody from having a stat lower than an 8.
It's like priming a mini for painting. The magic won't stick to them if it's not masterwork. You wouldn't want that +1 enhancement flaking off, would you?
If you don't need the hours-long duration of Darkvision, consider picking up a few scrolls of Alter Self. It's only 1 minute / level, but that's good enough for a fight, and it can give you other nice buffs, too. It's always worth carrying a few scrolls of useful utility spells like that -- I define "useful" utilities as spells that have a duration of at least minutes/level and don't have saving throws, so being crafted at the minimum caster level doesn't matter.
One option to consider, if you're not fighting something that can use Darkness at will, is to just back off. Walk out of the room, close the door, hold it shut, and wait a while for the spell to wear off. Granted, that's not so effective if the bad guy can just use Darkness again.
As far as spells go, Sleep and Silent Image can be very powerful in the right situation, but the problem with them is that if you're in a situation where they're not useful, you're screwed. It's a good idea to have at least one damage-dealing spell of every spell level so that you're not useless when you run into something that is immune to your illusions or enchantments. Magic Missile and Snapdragon Fireworks are both good first-level choices. At second level, I like Flaming Sphere and Scorching Ray. The all-new Snowball and Flurry of Snowball spells are also great low-level damage dealers.
For feat choices, keep in mind that for many illusion and enchantment spells, if the enemy makes their save, it doesn't affect them at all. That means that, even moreso than other schools of magic, it is important to bump your spell DCs up as high as possible. Get Greater Spell Focus ASAP and Spell Penetration next, because it won't be too long before you start running into things with SR. Also get metamagic feats that make it harder for enemies to save; Bouncing Spell, Intensified Spell, and Persistent Spell will be your friends. I'd also recommend picking up a Lesser Rod of Extend; at low levels, your durations will be short enough that your spells might wear off before the end of combat.
I loved the Taldor Faction mission, Phillip. My Sczarni was happy to carry it out as loudly as possible for good ol' Taldor. It doesn't help that the mission doesn't specify a location, so I played it safe and hit everywhere we went.
I also tried to expand the Sczarni protection racket down south.
Oh, it was definitely a fun mission. Out-of-character I thought it was hilarious and awesome. But in character?
Spoiler:
You're doing tens of thousands of GP of property damage and potentially murdering dozens of innocent people.
That's not even close to being neutral, that's just evil.
I have mixed feelings about this scenario because I think with a bit more fleshing out, it'd be a great module for a morally-ambiguous party, but I don't think it's appropriate for a group of PCs who are supposed to be the good guys.
While taken on it's own, it's a fun scenario to play, honestly I wouldn't mind seeing The Many Fortunes of Grandmaster Torch be retired. I know the Pathfinder Society can sometimes be morally ambiguous, but some of the stuff you have to do in here is just evil.
Spoiler:
I mean, you're basically sent to shake down four people and steal their artifacts from them. As far as the players are aware, these four people have come by these items through perfectly legitimate means, and you're told to take them by any means necessary -- and then the scenario railroads you into taking several of them by force. I don't know how a paladin could make it through this scenario without falling.
The faction missions are pretty bad, too. The Qadiran faction mission explicitly tells you to murder somebody using a particularly painful poison.
Then the Taldor faction mission tells you do "deal as much death and destruction necessary", which involves blowing up a refinery, dealing a huge amount of property damage and possibly killing several innocent workers and guards inside. Even my morally-questionable Chaotic Neutral Sczarni sorceress had some qualms about doing this one, but I at least waited until I was pretty sure nobody was inside...
