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I recently allowed traits for my gaming group, they have to choose 1 combat trait and 1 social trait. One of my favorites are Rich Parents, which gives you an addtional 900gp as starting wealth. What do you consider the best and most useful traits for your characters?

Are there any traits you like that adds to your roleplaying experience?

I've used Vitality/Wounds in a Skull & Shackles game to wonderful effect.

The trick is to only stat up boss and elite enemies with Vigor Wounds, the rest can stay on hp so that combats aren't lengthened. It also means that PCs can still get those dramatic critical hits off where the player can yell out the big number and high-fives all around.

The other thing I did was add in some additional houserules:

Catching Your Breath You can spend 15 minutes of uninterrupted rest to regain your vigor once per day.

Healing Magic: When using healing magic the spell heals Vigor and Wounds at the same time, with the dice roll determining vigor healing and the number of dice determining wounds healed. Eg: A 1st level cleric casts CLW, this heals 1d8+1 vigor and 1 wound at the same time.

8 Hour Rest: Characters who take a full-night's rest recover all their vigor and their Constitution modifier in wounds. This can be increased by a further 1 point with a successful DC 20 Heal check.

Both of these were to take some pressure off the primary healer, so they could use more than just Cure magic during a day of adventuring.

Wounds: You use your Constitution score to determine your wounds. When you hit 0 or less you remain conscious but any standard or move action you take requires a Fort Save (DC 10 plus Wounds beyond 0) to stay conscious. (This just made the book-keeping a little easier)
I highly recommend the Vigor/Wounds system.

Ow man, these houserules rocks! This gives me hope for the vigor/wounds system, thank you for taking the time to write this!

What prime moral law are you talking about? Religion or civil law?

In the second paragrahp you are talking about moral relativism, which is generally immoral. We can however gain some sort of understanding why people would do such actions (bad or good). But doesn't make it moral.

There are no such thing as a absolute morality, but it is easy to argue why lying and murdering is wrong, even biologically arguments for it.

Why is cursing wrong? Isn't the whole concept of cursing that you give words powers, a meaning beyond a sound? Do women deserve more respect than men? Isn't that sexist? There is a standard, the civil law. Are you hinting that we should follow a deity, this smells like religious morality preaching, but I might be wrong.

Common decency? Be specific.

"Argue against that if you will, but it's the truth", ehh, what? Why would write something if you aren't going to listen to other arguments?

I agree with you on the 2nd last paragraph, way too many paladin clones, there are many ways to roleplay a paladin. But I wouldn't point out indviduality as the reason why, maybe hypothetical morality situation doesn't just have one right or wrong answer.

As a GM, I would give the paladin a warning after doing something that would be a immoral, unless it's hororific beyond belief.

Thanks guys once again for the clarification. You guys are a well of knowledge!

P.s. It's been a tough job basically starting from scratch to learn a totally new game (noob when it comes to tabletop RPGs).

Don´t give up, you will get there eventually :D

Hey guys!

I have this monk in my group that I am GMing, and I am not sure what weaknesses I can exploit in combat.

He is currently level 4 and has a lot of experience with playing the monk class.
He is using a 20 stat build, monk of many styles.
The stances he uses are a combination of panther style (with claw) and boar style? Basically, he pwns small enemies, by running past everyone and hitting them hard. He has covered every "obvious" weakness.
(I forgot to take his character sheet from last session)

- Deflect arrows, self explanatory, but if I am lucky, and hit him with a ranged attack, he will deflect it. (naturally the enemies would start attacking other targets)
- +4 AC against attack of opportunity, which means that most enemies will not hit him during this free Aao.
- Monks have high will saves and good touch AC.
- He has plenty of monk weapons that deal different types of damage. (cold iron, admantine and silver)

Despite this, I have gotten lucky with a few rolls, and he is the only that have become unconscious in the group.

Is the only option to make him face big monsters that crit high, such as ogres? I am not interested in killing off his character, just so that I can easily create encounters that challenges everyone in the group. And he is the hardest one to figure out for me, since I am an unexperienced GM.

Thanks again Paizo Community!

edit: He has requested to houserule slow fall to have the same effect as feather fall, would you say that would be too OP in your opinion?

Please make a Bestiary 2/3 box, I would pre order it :)

Hello "the great community" that is Paizo.

I am sort of a moderate experienced GM who needs help balancing out a level 3 adventure I have made.

The quest for the party is to question and investigate a dwarf paladin who claims to have been able convert undead creatures to warrior of light. The order claims he has been dwelling in evil magic (the party will discover that he has merely been able to hyptonosize/control them).
They have been ordered to either question or kill him.

The combat encounters are as follow:

The party will travel down a deep mountain with some mining carts (hanging, not wheels), during this travel, they will need to make split second decisions on which path they need to take, if they are lucky they will end up in a small room above the first room of the dungeon, this room has a small treasure chest. I like to have a d100 table for magic items. During all this traveling, they will encounter other mining carts about 20 feet away for the most part, (not sure what monsters to put here) and they will get fired at by the monsters, the mining cart gives partial cover at best, so they can either hide and wait them out, or try to shoot them down.

There are no monsters in the first room, it is shaped like a half plus, sort of. It will contain some markings that will reveal to the party that this place is a mite lair. (their quest is about the end of the tunnel).

The first door leads to a curvy cave like corridor, which are quite smelly, and its hard to travel through. The party does not know that if they spend too much time in this room, they will get sickened.
At random, a green mite (yes you read right, a green one, not blue), will appear, who wish to warn the party of the upcoming battle, however, he does not speak common, nor can see very well. If he gets scared, he will run away the mite hole he came through. I think I can do more for this part, but not sure yet.

The next room is quite big, it is is very similar to DM crafts creation in this video. With similar strategy as he mentions at the end of the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJLeo9pZ-Z0

How many monsters should I add? Should I try to somewhat force the party to realize that they might have to run?

The next room is a corridor leading to the main quest, the tower for a dwarf paladin. It's 3 floors, medium size. I am not sure how I should create this encounter. Should I add some traps? Should it be two encounters?

Are there any puzzle encounters you would recommend?

Thanks for the future answers!