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I have a small question about the Midnight Joust: Who gets second place? The one who loses stage two or the one who loses stage three?
If it's the latter, Pitax is guaranteed at least 1 point from a second place, which seems kinda unfair, but if it's the former, Pitax is denied a chance for a second place point. While King Irovetti himself is pretty deceitful, the tournament itself seems otherwise quite fair. Any thoughts?

I've noticed some weird HP calculations in Blood for Blood. A lot of the enemies seem to get more HPs than they should?

Take Armag f.ex. The book gives him 204 hp (5d12+9d10+117). With max for his first barbarian level, that's 12+(4*6.5)+(9*5.5) + 117 = 204.5. The dice seems to fit, so far so good. So let's break down the bonus hp of 117
Even though it doesn't say so anywhere, I assume his ability scores are including Rage and his belt, since that's how they usually do it, so while raging, he has 22 con (+6 mod). He also has toughness, and presumably FC bonus of 5 hp for his five barbarian levels. As a level 14 character, he should then have 14*(6+1)+5 = 103 hp. that's 14 hp short. Does that mean they have calculated his ability scores with rage, but not with his belt? That seems like a very odd decision, doesn't it, since the belt is a consistent bonus, while rage is very temporary?

I also can't get his attacks to fit. It kinda looks like along with Rage, Power attack is calculated in there. So as far as I can figure he should have:
Att: BAB(14)+(Gr)Weapon Focus/Weapon Training(3)+ Str(6)+ Ovinrbaane(3)+ Power Attack(-4) = 22 (or 26 without PA) (book says 24)
Dmg: Str(9)+Power Attack(12) + Weapon Spec/Weapon Training(3)+ Ovinrbaane(3) = 27 (or 15 without PA) (book says 21)

I usually get all the right numbers when I calculate myself, but I've noticed a lot of discrepancies in Blood for Blood. Am I just forgetting something, or have others also noticed this?

My players are getting interested in having diplomatic relations with neighboring kingdoms, so I'm reading up on Diplomatic Edicts, and I have a few questions:

1. The diplomatic edict check adds both target kingdom size and your kingdom size (divided by 5) to the DC. Doesn't it make more sense that you should subtract you own size modifier? The way it is, it just gets more and more difficult to do diplomacy the larger you get (especially since this is against a character's Diplomacy skill and not a kingdom stat). The only way to make the check passable is with an inordinate amount of bribes and gifts (which may be the intention, but I still think it sounds odd)
2. For a treaty you need 3 diplomatic edict checks and for an alliance you need 6. If you spend BP on bribes/gifts to reduce the DC, will those bribes last for all 3/6 checks, or do you have to spend BP on each of those checks?
3. On treaty and alliance checks, it says that you have to roll them in order, since particularly good or bad results may change the attitude. Am I to assume that it is meant that any of the checks that succeed with 5 or more increases the attitude by one step, and any of the checks that fail by 5 or more decrease the attitude by one step? And if this is the case, are the changes to attitude permanent for each of the rolls (so if you started at indifferent, rolled three checks for a treaty and got two 5+ and one -5, you would end up as Friendly going forward?)
4. What would you say the Size of Brevoy is? At a glance, I would estimate the entire country of Brevoy to be about twice the size of all the Stolen Lands, so somewhere around Size = 500. Do you agree?

The PC ruler of the kingdom in my game recently celebrated his birthday where several women courted him and he ended up with a fiancee. Unbeknownst to him though is that she is actually a spy from Pitax. What I'm wondering though, is what should she do?
So that's where you guys come in. Any suggestions? I don't want her to completely screw up the kingdom, that won't be fun for the players. But some subtle, small sabotages could be fun. I'm also thinking she might be playing a long con, and wait until the war with Pitax to inform on troop movements or something like that (they are currently investigating Varnhold, so that will likely be a couple of years).
Right now they are actually too busy out of the country to make it back in time for the kingdom phase, and they figured she would work as a temporary regent while the Duke is away :D

Any ideas?

I've been reading up on the rules replacing the ones in the Kingmaker Campaign, and there's one thing (so far) that I'm really unclear on. There are several instances, like when the Royal Enforcer can choose reduce Unrest by 1 during the Upkeep phase, where you risk reducing a Kingdom stat. Is this reduction permanent, or does it just last for the current turn?
The more examples I see of it, the more I'm convinced that it's permanent, but doesn't that make it a lot more complicated, cause now you have to keep track of extra penalties, that you can't see from just what buildings and leaders you have?

I'm getting ready to run Kingmaker as a GM, and I was wondering about something. Hidden locations require a certain skill check to discover. How did you do that?
Let the players roll one skill check when exploration of a hex is complete? Let them roll one skill check each? Roll skill checks more than once during the exploration? Roll hidden skill checks for the players?

If I let the players roll the skill check they'll know that there is something there to be found even if they fail (unless I require a skill check on every hex), but if I roll the checks secretly, I feel I'm taking a bit of agency away from the players.

I am a little unclear about something with regards to ending a barbarian's rage. In the description of rage it says:

A barbarian can end her rage as a free action

But free actions can only be performed on your turn (with certain exceptions, like speaking). Does that mean that if you want to end your rage at the beginning of your turn, you still use up a round of rage for that turn, since you can only end it after your turn has already started?

It seems to me that that would be RAW, but it seems a little silly that you are not able to drop rage just before you start your turn?

I find it a bit ambiguous whether you should perform a single reading for the party or whether each PC should receive their own reading. I would go in the direction of a single reading for the party, but I know others have done one for each PC. Anyone have any insight into which it's supposed to be?

I'm currently running through Rise of the Runelords as a player (we just cleared the Graul farmhouse). But when were done with that, I'm thinking of taking over as DM with a new AP. But I'm not sure what AP I would like to choose. I used to run a Planescape campaign back in the 2nd ed AD&D era, so if there's something similar to that, that might be fun. But I like the more classic ones like RotR is as well. Also I like it when there's some intrigue, and devious characters who trick the players into doing their work for them :)
If I decide on an AP, I'd like to start preparing before we're done with RotR, but I want to avoid any potential spoilers. Anyone have any suggestions?

Since the rules in the core book are rather vague about this, I figured I'd try asking here.
If you want to create a weapon with an enhancement bonus, your level needs to be minimum three times the enhancement bonus. So for a +3 longsword, you have to be at least level 9. My question is, for special abilities, do you use the enhancement equivalent cost bonus (as in +1 for flaming would require level 3 and +3 for speed would require level 9) or do you use the caster level for the special ability (CL 10 for flaming and CL 7 for speed)? The latter seems more balanced, but the rules say:

The creator’s caster level must be at least three times the enhancement bonus of the weapon. If an item has both an enhancement bonus and a special ability, the higher of the two caster level requirements must be met

and Speed doesn't have an enhancement bonus, it only has the equivalent cost of a +3 weapon.

Also, regardless of which of the two level requirements are correct, I'm assuming you should be able to ignore this requirement with a +5 DC anyway.

We're a group that is thinking of starting up a Pathfinder campaign. I'm just wondering what are the most important books to read to get a feel for the Pathfinder world (we're all pretty familiar with 3.5, so the rules shouldn't be an issue to get familiar with)? I don't want to read any "spoilers", since we're likely going to be switching between DMs, but I would like to know a little of the history, theology and geography.