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Suppose I am using a set of master quality lockpicks (720sp) and I critically fail my check to pick a lock. So let's look at the equipment section and the skills section.

Replacement picks are necessary when your tools break as a result of a critical failure on a Thievery check.

Ok, looking up the cost of replacement picks I see 6sp though you could argue that they should be replacements picks of the same quality.

Critical Failure You either undo one success you have already gained, or, if you have no successes, you break your tools. The tools can be used while broken, but are treated as poor quality tools. Repairing them requires replacing the tools (costing 6 sp, or 50 sp for expert-quality thieves’ tools).

Here they explicitly mention quality, but going by RAW, since my master quality lockpicks are not expert-quality, they should only cost 6sp to place which seems weird.

That being said, paying 720sp just because you rolled a 1 feels pretty bad.

Now in a few spots in the book like p. 8, 178, 292 it states that a natural 20 is always a success. Last time around skill checks did not automatically pass or fail on natural 20 or 1 for reasons like trying to jump to the moon and walking up a mild incline. However, I have found no such exceptions except the impossible clause on p. 292:

If you lack the

proficiency for a task in the first place, or it’s impossible,
you might still fail on a natural 20.

Things such as escaping from manacles and being tied up are not impossible since there is an actual DC to do so, the creature just needs to get good. That's a problem since a level 1 character can get tied up by a level 20 rogue and escape in 40 seconds. That's why skill checks not being subject to natural 1 autofailure and natural 20 autosuccess must be reintroduced.

There's a bit of an inconsistency in the multiclass feats

Gain one cleric feat. For the purposes of meeting its prerequisites, your cleric level is equal to your actual level

Gain one fighter feat. For the purposes of meeting its prerequisites, your fighter level is equal to half your level.

Gain one rogue feat. For the purposes of meeting its prerequisites, your rogue level is equal to half your level.

Gain one wizard feat. For the purposes of meeting its prerequisites, your wizard level is equal to half your level.

Emphasis mine. So Barbarians can now cast Miracle? Looks like an oopsie.

I couldn't find a clear answer to this in the Inner Sea World Guide and argued about it for far too long last night.

What is the proper name for the lands of Cheliax? Is it the Chelish Empire or the Chelaxian Empire?

Me and my friends found a falcon punch build that and it is not a monk or brawler build. It goes 10 sorcerer / 10 arcane trickster.
Race: Probably human so that you have this thing called feats.
Build: 9 sorcerer / 10 arcane trickster / 1 sorcerer.
Feats:
H) Improved unarmed strike because your GM won't allow this cheese without it.
1) Spell focus evocation
3) Rogue variant multiclass option
5) Elemental Spell (fire).
7) Rogue variant multiclass
Bloodline bonus) Blood Intensity bloodline mutation
9) Accomplished Sneak Attacker
11) Argue with your GM that multiclass options are compatible with prestige classes that are related to your base class.
13) Quicken?
15) Multiclass cheese again
17) Empower spell
19) Maximize spell
Bloodline: Red Draconic
1) replace your level 1 claws with Blood Havoc bloodline mutation.

Now thanks to your arguing you now have full casting and 10d6 sneak attack and +2 damage per die on fire evocation spells. So you cast greater invisibility and sneak up to someone. Then you pull your arm back very slowly and when it is pulled all the way back, you yell "Falcon Punch!" to cast a Blood Intensified (with 30 charisma of course), Empowered, Maximized, Fire Elemental Shocking Grasp for 17d6 + 134 fire damage to burn them to a crisp. However, in order to actually kill your target, they must go flying off the stage and you must salute while saying "Show ya moves".

Is a cleric's channel energy weaker when energy drained? I.E. A level 3 cleric gets 1 negative level, do they channel for 1d6 or 2d6? Is channel energy dice number a "level dependent variable"?

Suppose I cast a spell with persistent spell applied to it against someone who has a reroll feat such as improved lightning reflexes. How does this get resolved?

Suppose I have an Echoing Empowered Fireball. I cast the original. Does my echo leave me with an Empowered Fireball or a Fireball?

Monk with True Seeing encounters an illusion on the other side of a Wall of Suppression, does the True Seeing effect only extend to the Wall of Suppression or does True Seeing pierce to the other side?

I try to scry a dead person, what happens? Is scrying limited to creatures and not objects? Are dead creatures objects? If not, do dead creatures get a will save or are immune to will saves?

It seems as though dazing fist, befuddling strike, and paralyzing strike are modeled after stunning fist, touch of serenity & co. Yet the 3 from ACG do not have the clause regarding monk's getting 1 use per level per day. Is this intentional?

Prerequisites: Str 13, Int 3; Naga, Serpentfolk, or creature with constrict special attack; BAB +3

Ok, so who all can take this feat? If the semicolons mean "or", then any level 3 fighter can take it, which makes this feat a touch too strong IMO. If the semicolons mean "and" then it is immensely difficult to qualify for and doesn't do much.

As a side note: how does constrict interact with Swallow Whole?

#1 Grease can make snakes fall to the ground. Snakes cannot be tripped because they have no legs. Grease is not a trip effect. Snakes can still fall to the ground if they fail that save.

#2 Wood is immune to mundane fire. Mundane fire deals 1d6 damage per round. Wood has a hardness of 5. Energy damage is halved before applying hardness. At most the mundane fire can do 3 damage which is less than 5 so it deals no damage.

#3 Ordinary house plants are immune to disintegrate. A house plant is an object. House plants are composed of living matter. Disintegrate can only affect creatures or objects composed of nonliving matter. A house plant is neither.

#4 Tower shields have total cover. You can hide behind a tower shield to receive total cover. Items in your possession have the same level of cover / concealment as you do. The tower shield you are hiding behind is in your possession, therefore the tower shield has total cover.

Do things that change your initiative bonus (cat's grace etc.) change your initiative mid-battle? I.E. you roll a 12 on your initiative, the cleric casts mass cat's grace, do you now go on a 14?

If that works, does anyone else find it odd that it is possible to delay people's turns by raising their initiative? I.E. orcs have initiative of 11, you have initiative of 12. You cast mass cat's grace on orcs, orcs now go on 13. The sorcerer on initiative of 10 proceeds to fireball all the orcs. Even worse is that when combined with things that lower initiative, it is possible to skip their turn by repeatedly raising and lowering their initiative.

Does Rapid Shot give you an extra attack when using Dead Shot?

Casting a metamagic spell (combat section)[/url]] Sorcerers and bards must take more time to cast a metamagic spell (one enhanced by a metamagic feat) than a regular spell. If a spell's normal casting time is 1 standard action, casting a metamagic version of the spell is a full-round action for a sorcerer or bard (except for spells modified by the Quicken Spell feat, which take 1 swift action to cast). Note that this isn't the same as a spell with a 1-round casting time. Spells that take a full-round action to cast take effect in the same round that you begin casting, and you are not required to continue the invocations, gestures, and concentration until your next turn. For spells with a longer casting time, it takes an extra full-round action to cast the metamagic spell.

Clerics and druids must take more time to spontaneously cast a metamagic version of a cure, inflict, or summon spell. Spontaneously casting a metamagic version of a spell with a casting time of 1 standard action is a full-round action, and spells with longer casting times take an extra full-round action to cast.

As written, oracles, summoners and inquisitors can apply metamagic without an increase in casting time since the text specifically calls out sorcerers, bards, clerics, and druids. So is it really so that the APG classes get an advantage here?

Can you take the rogue talent combat trick or feat multiple times to get multiple bonus feats?

One of the biggest issues with 3.x was well played casters obsoleting non-casters. Some people around here might have heard of the tier system, for those who have not: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?PHPSESSID=qvl9769e49o3vs4 eqdovgnq2k2&topic=5293

This is the metric by which I am judging balance. As you can see, non-casters typically occupy the lower tiers while casters occupy the upper tiers. PF has made some strides towards closing this imbalance, however, the gap none-the-less remains.

Now for the current state of affairs in PF (magus unranked due to inexperience, though I suspect tier 3):
Tier 1: Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Witch
Tier 2: Sorcerer, Oracle
Tier 3: Rogue, Bard, Summoner, Alchemist
Tier 4: Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Cavalier, Barbarian, Inquisitor
Tier 5: Monk

Now some builds may adjust things a bit such as blaster sorcerers dropping down a few tiers, while the evolutionist summoner moves up to tier 2. In short, PF brought up most of the non-casters up a tier. For the sake of this post, I don't really care about any fine tuning to the rankings, what does matter is that there is a huge difference between what a wizard can do and what a fighter can do.

Let's look at some of the basic choices available upon character generation. Herein lies the problem. There is doing magic, clobbering bad guys, and other stuff. One thing that PF did fix was full casters suddenly becoming better than fighters at fighting because of polymorphs. That's one problem solved. Since we're specifically looking at what non-casters can do, doing magic isn't much of an option. So we're left with being very good at clobbering or other stuff. Looking at the tier criteria, the ability to contribute out of combat is quite important.

Here is where I must reiterate an important point regarding the tier structure, everything that is taken into consideration for the class must be some kind of MECHANICAL benefit from the class. This is why item solutions to problems are not considered unless your class has some direct effect on your ability to use that item compared to others (the link cites UMD'ing wands and stuff in the cases that UMD is a class skill, which makes those classes better at using those items).

In order to close the gap between casters and non-casters, two tracks must be approached. Bumping up non-casters and toning down casters.

First let's start tackling bumping up non-casters. To which I ask, "What do you call a non-caster who does stuff out of combat?" A rogue. Is there anything that a fighter is better at outside of combat? By my count, handle animal and engineering. Yes, that is it. Cavalier? Handle Animal. Monk? Religion, history, running, the occasional dim door. Barbarian? Running, nature. Paladins and rangers don't fair too much better despite their limited casting abilities and a rogue can reasonably catch that at later levels with UMD.

This is a very very big problem. If we want the classes to be able to meaningfully contribute in a number of scenarios and at least help out in others, this needs to be fixed.

So what can we do about that? I suggest two approaches. One possible thing is to give the classes various bonuses akin to bardic knowledge, such as barbarian's intimidate. Another is to give them the ability to use skills in unique ways. For example, a ranger making a survival check to get a clairaudience / clairvoyance 2/day in their favored terrain. Monk making a religion check to receive a commune.

Now let's look at toning down the casters.

Step 1: we need to simply cut out some of the overly abusable spells. (I'm looking at you Planar Binding (http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinder RPG/advice/soYouHaveGottenAnEfreetiToGrantYouSomeWishes))

With that taken care of, we have two more steps towards fixing casters. Step 2 is make sure that casters do not step on non-casters' toes. Step 3 is to give mundane some answers to magic.

A good way to trim through the list is to go through all the schools and subschools.

Abjuration: Magic should be the best at taking care of other magic, that being said it shouldn't be the only answer
Conjuration: Calling: Sufficiently unique and a common fantasy trope
Creation: This is where conjuration is known to be the batman school. This and transmutation seems to be where they simply put "other" spells. Sure you conjured up that acid arrow that flew at the enemy, but you also conjured up that little bead that turned into a fireball? Spells like fabricate and minor creation don't seem to serve any purpose other than to make the craft skill obsolete. Considering that we're trying to make mundane things more effective, this is a bad thing. The Wall of X line has been known to be a bane of mundane classes due to the difficulty for them to deal with it. Outside of combat, if you want to build a city wall, use the craft skill. The fog line is borderline so it'll stay.
Healing: Mundane means should be able to take care of the low end of this such as CLW through Cure Serious. However, it is reasonable to segregate off resurrection to magic only, even if only for verisimilitude.
Summoning: Same as calling
Teleportation: I take this to be very heavily a matter of preference.
Divination: most of this can easily be folded under mundane means and really only abusive players will significantly miss it. Detection magic under sense motive / perception, scrying under diplomacy to simulate information gathering.
Enchantment: Charm and compulsion just laugh at diplomacy / intimidate / bluff. I can understand the appeal of having these around, but they really, really need to be toned down.
Evocation: Each class needs some way to do some clobbering, much of this can stay.
Illusion: There's just a few offenders. First is the invis line, this obsoletes stealth. Why put ranks in it when you can get +20 from a second level spell? While it is iconic, we have to concede a bit of function over flavor.
Necromancy: Much of this is sufficiently distinct the non-casters' turf.
Transmutation: Despite the nerfs, the polymorph line still steps on the toes of disguise. But really this is just a case of disguise needing to be a bit more effective. Also some of the transmutation spells should be moved into other schools, like pyrotechnics.

The next step is to find some mundane answers to magical problems. Some amusing examples include wearing a tinfoil hat to protect against compulsion effects, being drenched in water mitigating fire damage. Being unable to summon creatures inside a lead building. This is somewhere where things should go by whether it makes sense.

The haunted curse says

Malevolent spirits follow you wherever you go, causing minor mishaps and strange occurrences (such as unexpected breezes, small objects moving on their own, and faint noises). Retrieving any stored item from your gear requires a standard action, unless it would normally take longer. Any item you drop lands 10 feet away from you in a random direction. Add mage hand and ghost sound to your list of spells known. At 5th level, add levitate and minor image to your list of spells known. At 10th level, add telekinesis to your list of spells known. At 15th level, add reverse gravity to your list of spells known.

Now a level 7 gnome oracle with the haunted curse who took the APG favored class option, would qualify as level 10 for the curse and thus add telekinesis to their list of spells known. Telekinesis does not have a spell level for the oracle. May the gnome cast telekinesis a level 7? Reverse gravity at 10?

Am I understanding this right? If I have a large enough charisma I can fascinate any number of mooks in the radius?

I have a bard in my group that whenever I introduce a scenario, he wants to go "Ok I do my <x> check and ...". I'm sitting there thinking, it is in the other town and half of what I had planned happens en-route. What do I do about this? When I get him in the flow of things he's a good RPer, but things like that really break some of the verisimilitude that I'm trying to build.

Dread Necro:
Pre-reqs: Ability to cast 3rd level arcane spells, Knowledge: religion 5 ranks, Evil
Class skills: Spellcraft, Intimidate, Religion, Arcana, Disguise, Fly

Level 1: Channel negative energy
2: Undead Might +1, Undead Toughness +1
3: Desecration, Undead Control 1
4: Undead Might +2
5: Negative Energy Body, Undead Control 2
6: Undead Might +3, Undead Toughness +2
7: Animate Dead, Undead Control 3
8: Undead Might +4
9: Awaken Undead, Undead Control 4
10: Undead Might +5, Undead Toughness +3, Phylactery

Channel negative energy: You may channel negative energy as a cleric using your dread necromancer level as your effective cleric level.
Undead Might: Undead under your control gain a +1 enhancement bonus to Strength and Dexterity. This bonus increases by 1 at levels 4,6,8,10.
Undead Toughness: Undead created by you gain +1 hit points per hit die. This bonus increases by 1 at level 6 and 10.
Undead Control: You may create 2 + your undead control bonus with a single casting of animate dead. You may control 4 + your undead control bonus at any given time.
Desecration: Your devotion to the dark arts exudes an aura of profanity. You have a constant aura of desecration. Creatures within 10 ft. per Dread necromancer level are affected by desecration as the spell.
Negative Energy: You have expelled all the positive energy from your body and now are sustained by negative energy. You are now harmed by positive energy effects and healed by negative energy.
Animate Dead: You can imbue beings with negative energy more freely. You can cast Animate Dead as a spell-like ability 1/day without paying the material costs.
Awaken Undead: You have learned how to channel the negative energy from your own body into the undead your control.
You may cast Awaken without paying the material on an undead that you control. Undead awakened this way are under your control in a manner identical to dominate monster. Undead awakened this way are capable of commanding undead under your control as you choose.
Phylactery: You acquire undead traits and the lich's rejuvenate ability.

A few words about Awaken Undead, it is supposed to function effectively like a cohort yet still be fully under your control. Idea is for those annoying times when you need to go into a town that wouldn't be too thrilled about an undead army walking in. Or if you need to "lease" out some of them, or simply when you need them to act intelligently when you're not around.

Even though it's a capstone, I didn't quite want to give the full lich template. Even giving undead traits feels like a lot especially considering a number of the level 20 capstone. I like the idea, but it seems much more powerful than I want.

This is probably an already done gripe, but I none-the-less feel like bringing it up anyways.

At least half of the sorceror bloodline powers are essentially the same.

One of the more distinct lines

At level 15 you get something unique

You get pretty much all the usual stuff but earlier than most at price of it being conditional.

It's unique, but feels a little bland. It's probably the optimizer's choice too.

While it's very similar to Aquatic, it does come out differently.

Only unique thing here is flying earlier than other bloodlines and rerolls, otherwise generic.

Underwhelming past first level

Not very interesting at low level, but one of the better ones for high level play.

Pretty bad that there's nothing unique here at all.

Mid-levels it's great for RP, mechanically it's lacking for any amount dungeon-crawling

Yawn.

Aside from the bloodline arcana, not much of a reason to pick this.

It seems pretty bad in spoiler block, but I like it because all of it's abilities fit together into a nice flavorful package. Some people are going to go "draconic does that too". All the things in the draconic line are things I would expect a dragon to do. However, a person simply with draconic blood? Not quite so much, I just don't see draconic blood manifesting that way. I can see someone who themselves or their ancestors made a pact with a devil doing those things. Probably the big thing that makes the Infernal line more "real" to me is the nice touch of making the touch attack and AoE add the shaken effect. So if you don't think the Infernal bloodline is flavorful, you are wrong.[/rant]

I give this a decent rating because all of it's abilities all point in one direction, and in a direction I see orcs going. Which is smashing things. Not one that I'd really suggest for a PC, but more for an interesting NPC.

Not bad, but not good, at least it is fairly distinct

This has a similar problem that the draconic line has except a bit less severe since the level 3 and 20 is a bit more believable, however mechanically it just isn't as good.

While mechanically very weak until mid-levels, it catches up. What sells me on this is similar to Infernal. Everything fits together into one idea, this includes the spell selection, arcana, class skill, and feats. You want your sneaky sorceror, look no further. If I were to come up against any Drow sorcerors, there ought to be a real good reason why they wouldn't have this bloodline. That's flavor.

It's a minor fit of abilities to idea, mostly at level 9 and 15. Rest of it doesn't really mesh.

Really just the level 15 ability is cool. Decent flavor, but not great; I could see how could love it.

Maybe my love for the 3.5 Dread Necromancer made my expectations too high, but I was kinda hoping that you'd turn into a lich or something like that. Oh well.

I like it because it does exactly what I would expect it to do.

Overall, there are a lot of repeats of abilities. There's some true gems in list like Infernal and Shadow. They just didn't pull things together a lot of the time. Even one with rather generic abilities turned out great because they fit well, however it's hard to hit a home run like that. There's a number of bloodlines that I simply don't see people using because they're neither flavorful, distinct, or powerful (elemental). Granted when I started this thread I expected to be harsher than I was, but still there were enough that I could just completely write off.

RAW, you need to take improved unarmed strike in order to take improved grapple. Yet for all intents and purposes they already have improved unarmed strike since they are always considered armed because of their natural attacks since all base forms have some kind of free natural attack evolution. It seems odd to make it necessary to require a feat that is completely moot due to the nature of the eidolon in order to take a feat.

I just want to know how most people on here would rule this one and possibly know whether or not the free evolutions are respecable.