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I am currently a Swashbuckler 7 / Paladin 2 in a RotRL game. I didn't plan to take paladin levels to start but I did intend him to be a pseudo-paladin, living a virtuous life and spreading the word of Shelyn. After a certain chapter in book 2 that forces A LOT of saves I said "screw it" and did the multiclass. I don't regret it, but I was already playing with a code anyway and there are definite downsides. My saves are amazing now (and almost every boss seems to be a caster of some sort) but I am two levels behind the gunslinger in deeds and I won't be able to take Signature Deed until level 13.

Ignoring saves, you'll be fine. You'll be weak until you get Dexterity and level added to damage at level level 3, you'll be really powerful at level 6 when you have an extended crit range (achieved at level 5) and get a second attack and you'll still be effective but slightly less so starting around level 8 or 9 when the enemies because bigger and have larger attack bonuses (meaning your parry works less).

Around level 6 my DM regularly called me overpowered because parry/riposte is very powerful at that point. Everything is medium-sized with mediocre attack bonuses and you get what are basically a lot of free attacks out of it.

I have no idea what it is like at 10+ but figure things continue diminishing as enemies get bigger/badder and magic plays a more important role. I expect my character to always be effective but I'll be limited to doing things that melee characters do.

I was in this game one time where we were hired to take down a challenge that seemed impossible. The more we considered the situation the more we realized that proceeding was just dumb (except for one guy who was convinced we could do it), so we returned to the guy that hired us and told him that we couldn't do it. He was unexpectedly pleased, telling us that he was testing us and only wanted to hire people smart enough to know when to cut bait.

Sometimes the smart move is to just walk away. This strikes me as one of those situations. If you must stop this construct I'd look for ways to take it down other than direct damage.

Playing in a game alongside a gunslinger right now, I'd recommend disallowing that class. My DM has us underleveled by 1 level and gives all enemies max HP and +2/+2 to hit and AC and we're still wiping the floor with them. Before playing alongside one I underestimated just how powerful it is to basically never miss.

Once the gunslinger hits level 6 they have 4 attacks/round when hasted and usually hit on all of them. 80+ damage a round just tears through the AP, and even unhasted 60+ damag a round isn't too shabby either.

My DM realized it was a problem last session when my swashbuckler critically hit with both of his attacks and the table's general reaction to the damage was 'meh.' Then when we leveled our characters after the session the wizard asked the DM is she could retrain her summoning feats because her summons seem useless alongside the gunslinger. We're now discussing what we should do about it.

I want to second the idea of leveling by milestone. I think it works best in all games but particularly in APs where it tells you what level the players should be and when. And if the players are new they won't even realize and they'll just think it is normal.

You probably want to keep them properly leveled through Thistletop. Even with a group of 5 that place can be a challenge. After that you can either adjust the challenges or let them get behind a level here or there. My group found book 1 challenging and then book 2 pretty easy, though our characters did all mature between levels 3-5.

I have to agree with the people who say that there should be a FAQ about this. This is an iconic ability of a base class and has been a known issue for 5 years. If there is an easy answer it would take a minute for this whole question to be out to rest. If there isn't an easy answer, well, that's a major fault which should be fixed.

This line is unambiguous and makes it 100% clear that...

I personally read that line as a slightly redundant but possibly necessary clarification that the move-action precludes additional use of the spell effect. I could see someone trying to argue that the 'as if studied for 3 rounds' effect was single target but still getting the regular benefits of the spell against others. Said another way, that line clarifies that they can't have the larger cone effect of the spell active and concentrate on one target within effect while keeping it going.

i hate the "Strength doesn't do much and we can't take damage away from it" argument because for many characters the only thing Charisma affects is skill checks and the only things Intelligence affects are skill points. i can build a human fighter with 6 INT and CHA, put my one skill point per level into perception, and i'm fine.

but lord forbid we devalue STR. it's worth holding back certain classes and fighting styles from something we know isn't broken because we might devalue STR in the process. nevermind that the most powerful class in the game doesn't need it at all and no one seems to care.

i didn't want to be a Negative Nancy in the other thread but I'm glad that someone else feels the same way. in the Swashbuckler playtest thread the community hit the developers over the head with the fact that, despite their insistence otherwise, dex-to-damage is not broken. it is still inferior to a STR-based character and it is actually needed to make a DEX-based Swashbuckler better than a STR-based one.

and that's where some of this dex-to-damage obsession came from - in the playtest a Swashbuckler was more effective prioritizing strength over dex and that makes no sense whatsoever.

but in that thread they said we'd get dex-to-damage so all was well. sweet, i can play Dex-based without feeling like a chump. when i read Jason's post the first thing i thought was, "wait, there wasn't going to be a dex-to-damage feat in the book until Slashing Grace was determined too weak?" despite us showing them otherwise, despite us telling them over and over that they had created a Swashbuckler that was better built STR-based, and despite them saying we were going to get dex-to-damage, Jason just told us that they decided against dex-to-damage anyway and only threw it in last minute (and only for slashing weapons, wtf?).

and THAT makes absolutely no sense. dex-to-damage is so powerful that you insist it is mythic. it is so powerful that you spend time defending your stance on it in the Swashbuckler playtest thread, and in the time intervening you choose to not include it in the book. and then, at the last minute, you toss it in as a sweetener for another feat? it goes from being too powerful for a feat to being an add-on within another?

this whole thing makes no sense. Jason's response is either a load of bull or their process really is this disjointed and illogical. personally i think him lying to us in that response is less damning than accepting that they spent all that time deciding that dex-to-damage was too powerful and then tossing it in last-minute as a sweetener. if that's their process why should we have any faith in them whatsoever?

i just started playing a rapier-based swashbuckler and my DM has a simple rule, if it is printed i can use it. i guess i'll just have to accept that i'm a chump because i didn't create a swashbuckler with STR as a primary stat (from what we've heard nothing has been done to change this if you don't use Slashing Grace) or that uses a slashing weapon (i can't use the rapier feat until it is printed).

/rant

ok, so it is a house rule then. that made the most sense. i couldn't believe that i was the only one who thought the rule was annoying.

our DM did mention the "kingdom in the background" thing, but i figure he wants us to do some basics to get thing started. the unfortunate part is that i would like to do the kingdom-building but the rest of the party seems to view it more as a hassle than a fun aspect of the campaign.

for now i'll just have to leave things in his hands, i guess. hopefully his changes make things better. and the rest of the group buys in. thanks for the help.

Hi all, first post on the Pathfinder forums. My group recently started playing a kingmaker campaign. I know our DM is house-ruling some things, and I see a possible issue. I'm a bit of a rules lawyer though and don't want to question my DM if I'm just off-base here or misunderstanding.

By normal rules, do farms take multiple months to build? I ask because I can't find anything about how long farms take to build, implying that rules for it don't exist. my group started its kingdom in hills, where it costs 4 BP to build a farm. It takes one month per BP to build farms. Therefore, each farm will take 4 months to build.

My concern comes into play with consumption. Claiming the hex for a farm raises consumption by 1, and it will be 4 months until it starts to pay off consumption. So far we have three hexes (city, one where we started a farm, and another we just claimed (with intent of making it a farm). That puts our consumption at 4 (3 hexes + 1 city district) per month before edicts (my group chose token promotion and 1 festival, which i'm going to have to convince them to get rid of until we have some farms established). if we keep on adding hexes our consumption will soon be at a point where we won't be able to afford it with our monthly economy, and i don't want to dip into our small treasury spending BP on consumption that could be buying us buildings.

do we just need to slow down, wait 4 months for our first two farms to build, and then proceed slowly? we're not being very ambitious, just trying to build a road to Oleg's with farmland along it. it seems a little off that such a simple endeavor would be so difficult to accomplish (and afford) in about 6 months of game time. do i just need to adjust my expectations and start suffering phases where we do nothing? my group is already pretty "meh" about Kingmaker and I don't see them being especially patient with things taking forever. is my DM making things unnecessarily difficult on us?

thanks for any input.