Hag Eye Ooze

gnoams's page

**** Pathfinder Society GM. 1,429 posts (1,503 including aliases). 18 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 27 Organized Play characters.



Shadow Lodge

I was looking at the escapologist archetype for rogue, which gives you an ability to full action escape from mind affecting effects, and calls out being able to do so even while paralyzed. My question is, will this ability work with compulsions?

I feel like the intent is yes, it should be useable, however most compulsions are going to force you to do other things with your turn so you don't get the action to try to break free. If you think it does work, would it override the compulsion so you just stand there struggling to break free, or would your body perform the compelled activity while your mind struggles separately. It seems wrong if you could use this ability to escape from being paralyzed or put to sleep, but couldn't use it to escape from charm/suggestion/confusion/domination.

My reasoning is that hold person is a compulsion, it compels you to stand there not doing anything. By the wording of unfettered mind, it is obvious that it works to try to escape from hold person. Suggestion is another compulsion that forces you to do something, but for some reason because this compulsion makes you do something active you can't try to break from it? This seems the strict raw reading, but makes no sense.

Shadow Lodge

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So I decided to try a technomancer, haven't tried any of the spellcasting classes for starfinder yet. I'm looking through all the spells and feeling like meh, why even bother, spells are terrible.

Here's my problem. Pretty much every spell is readily replicatable via technology. In a fantasy setting shooting flames out of your hands is cool, but in a futuristic one you can just buy a flamethrower. I could cast illusions, or get a holographic projector. Flight? go buy a jetpack, or some antigrav stabilizers. Detect spells? We got handheld scanners. Life bubble? everyone's wearing a space suit. I could go on. There's just, not much magical about being a technomancer, and to top it off, you get the worst base stats of any class (saves, skills, hp, & sp).

I'm still going to try it and have fun with it. I made an elven technomancer icon who is a DJ (she puts the techno in technomancy).

Tell me what I'm missing. What do you see as the role of a technomancer? What unique things does a technomancer bring to the table?

Shadow Lodge

I'm setting up an encounter, the players are walking down the road when they hear sounds of battle up ahead. They come upon a group of refugees being attacked by soldiers (it's a war torn country with a newly crowned ruler consolidating their power and cracking down on heretics). Presumably the heroes will rush in and help. (Try not to get caught up on this setup, the specifics of the encounter aren't the point)

So here's the question, the party happens to be level 10 at this point. Do you have, say 4 CR7 soldiers, an EL11 encounter appropriate for a level 10 party? Or do you say that makes no sense, 4 of the country's most elite soldiers wouldn't be off harassing some peasants. This should really be a band of 20 CR1 soldiers and maybe a CR3 sergeant or something, making it no challenge for our 10th level heroes.

When do you go for verisimilitude, and when do you say f--- it, it's a game, here's some level appropriate villains to fight?

Shadow Lodge

When you play a character with high defenses, after a while the gm stops targeting you. When your character rarely gets hit and rarely fails a save, you start getting ignored. The resources you put into being a tank are now wasted, and if anything, are actually harming the party as the gm targets weaker characters instead of yours. I find this to be nearly universal, and it makes sense. The gm wants to have fun and challenge the party, not miss miss miss. Even gms who are very fair and don't think they do this, still tend to do it unconsciously to some extent ime.

So here's the idea. Make a character with a terrible basic defenses, but other ways to mitigate damage in order to be good at attracting attacks, and being able to take them. You want to look easy to hit too, in order to give the gm every excuse to spend their attacks on your character and not the rest of the party.

My initial thought is DR and fast healing. Bloodrager with the verdant bloodline to get fast healing. Primalist archetype to trade out your 4,8,&12 bloodline powers for rage powers, for improved DR (4 gives an ac bonus which you don't want, so take some rage power instead). For feats you take endurance, diehard, fast healer, combat expertise, stalwart/imp for more dr, raging vitality for more con for more fast healer. You end up at high levels with something like DR20/-, fast healing 10, and hundreds of hp. Which is decent, but without any AC at high levels, you'll still get chewed down pretty quick. I looked at some sample monsters for level 12 and it looked like you'd last 3-4 rounds on average. At that point, you really need power attack as you still need to be doing some damage to keep monster attention. Even with accuracy stance, power attack + expertise puts your to hit bonus pretty low. (there's a trait to reduce that expertise penalty by 1, but that's all the mitigating I could find there).

Anyway, mostly just build theorizing for fun. Anyone have other thoughts, shenanigans other classes can pull off to accomplish this idea? Similar things to do on the saves side (ie having poor save bonuses but being able to mitigate/overcome failed saves in other ways).

The idea is not to be op or invincible, but to find an alternative means of tanking that lets the GM hit you frequently, but reliably keeps you alive (Ideally you'd have the same rate of survival as a high AC build, and not require an extra amount of resources from the rest of the party to keep you alive).

Shadow Lodge

"This foam reduces the damage from the burning condition or from the corrode critical hit effect taken by creatures within the area by the listed amount each round;"

but I don't see any amount listed anywhere.

Shadow Lodge

I'm working on the next chapter of my home game, the players are going to be traveling through a war torn region. (Basically there is a warlord that is conquering/unifying the local tribal groups of the area) While the war is a background world event, not related to their quest, several of the PCs have vested interested in the factions that are fighting and I am expecting they will want to join in (against the warlord).

The players are level 9, so they should be able to have some significant impact upon a battle, but not able to take on armies by themselves. The warlord herself is basically a world boss, and an impossible challenge for them, they will not be able to fight her.

I thought about doing some mass combat, but the players wouldn't be in control of any of the units so that's not very interesting. So I'm looking for ideas on how to write encounters to let players be part of a larger battle and have some impact on it. I thought about using troops, but I hate their auto-hit swarm style damage. I think there's some potential for some cool scenes, but I'm also dreading that it could be extremely challenging for me to run and could easily bog down with too many combatants.

Shadow Lodge

I found myself in the middle of a rules argument the other day, wondering how it happened and if it was my fault again, and it struck me that I may go about making rules decisions using different criteria then other folks. So this thread isn't about any specific rule conflict or interpretation, but rather how one goes about resolving them.

I look at the wording of a rule and think how did the author intend this to function, and will it be fun. Simulation of reality plays little to no influence on my decision, and the exact verbiage is far less important than the intent. I also tend to think the description of what something does as being the rule and the how it does it being the fluff (I'm perfectly fine with "reskinning" as long as the new skin fits the setting).

When in doubt, I tend to swing on the side of what would be more favorable to the players. If a player has some immunity I don't negate it. I think subverting a player's abilities in order to make a scenario play out in a desired fashion is an extremely bad rule call. I feel that some GMs make rule calls specifically to make things harder for their players, which is terrible imo. Challenge should be addressed through scenario design, not through rule adjudication. Unsurprisingly this happens more in published scenarios than home games, where the design was done by someone else.

Which brings me to the subject of challenging players. PCs in pathfinder tend to be extremely good at specific tasks. Some GMs seem to think that the way to challenge players is to nerf their abilities, or say they don't work because reasons. To me this is how you aggravate players, not how you challenge them. Challenging players is about making them overcome their weaknesses, not about battering down their strengths.

Ok, that got off on a bit of a rant. Anyhow, I'm interested in other opinions. Other views on what's important and what you take into consideration when you go about adjudicating rule disputes.

Shadow Lodge

Just a simple order of operations question. If you have weakness to a damage, but make your save.
For example say burning hands vs a swarm that has weakness to aoe 5. The swarm makes its saving throw. Is the damage (2d6)/2 +5, or (2d6+5)/2?

Shadow Lodge

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In Pf2, when you make opposed checks it is generally one person rolls, the other sets a DC, which is 10+their roll bonus. So the person rolling is getting a free +1. This seems a very strange decision to me, like the person who made it thinks rolling 10+ on a d20 is a 50% chance. Due to this decision, spellcasters effectively have a -1 to hit baked in to any of their spells that target saves. A look through the bestiary shows that saves are not any lower than AC either.
I can't think of any reason for this. I could understand say if they wanted advantage to always go to the aggressor, but it's not universal. Sometimes you roll to hit vs defense, other times you roll to defend against attack. If two people have a +7, it should be 50-50 who wins should it not? But its 55% in favor of the one rolling the dice.

Shadow Lodge

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I always end up making my own character sheets for a new system because I seem to have different opinions on what is important to include and how they should be laid out. I've seen lots of custom sheets popping up, so I thought I'd share mine as well. Maybe get some ideas for improvement, and maybe someone else will find them useful.

IMO, a good character sheet needs to be easy to parse and compact (single page front and back, none of these 4-6 page abominations). It needs a space to draw a picture (this is an important step in character creation for me, and must be of decent size on the front, not some tiny square crammed in the back where nobody sees it). Lastly, it needs plenty of blank lines. I prefer empty space to something like a block for shield stats so that I can write what is important for this particular character instead of having an unusable wasted section.

Gnoam's PF2 character sheet

Shadow Lodge

the ability says "You attempt to cure one poison or disease afflicting
you; attempt to counteract the affliction."
So what is the attempt, is there some roll, what is it, how does this function, am I missing something obvious?

Shadow Lodge

So ability scores in pf2 are pretty much starfinder, but start a little higher. With the 4 boosts/5 levels, it seemed like something to plan out ahead of time to get the most of your ability scores. So I started a little math and I found the results to be a bit wonky.

Lets assume non-human, so here's a couple starting spreads:
1: 18 16 14 12 19 8 or 16 16 16 12 10 8
5: 19 18 16 14 10 8 or 18 18 18 14 10 8
10: 20 19 18 16 10 8 or 19 19 18 16 12 8
15: 21 20 19 16 12 8 or 20 20 18 18 14 8
20: 22 20 20 18 14 8 or 21 21 18 18 16 10

In this example you start level 1-4 with a different spread, but end up with the first one being better at levels 10-14 and 20, while the second one is better at levels 5-9 and 15-19.

It seems now that starting ability score choice will be based upon what level you intend to play to, or what levels you will spend the most play time at. It will of course vary from character to character whether having higher 4th and 5th stats will actually have any effect or not, so starting with 18s might still be the best even when your total stat modifiers are lower. It seems a little odd, and a new layer of character creation you need to plan out to get the most of a build.

Shadow Lodge

So I was looking at other options on being "the party healer," and I came across the feat Incredible healer, which made me wonder if using the heal skill could be a viable way to provide healing. So enter the doctor:

So far what I've found is a few feats: incredible healer, healer's hands, acupuncture specialist, and the heal skill unlock.

feats:
Incredible healer: heal an amount = your skill roll.
Healer's hands: Treat deadly wounds as a full round action once per level per day.
Acupuncture specialist: Remove curse with a heal check.
Heal skill unlock: heals ability damage too

Plus some traits: clockwork surgeon, precise treatment, friendless
traits:
clockwork surgeon: add int to healing
precise treatment: use int instead of wis for heal skill
friendless: use heal skill on yourself

the phantom thief archetype of urogue seems the best base for a educated doctor character and gives skill unlocks earlier.

In combat healing is limited to 1 use/level/day, which seems like it might be kinda rough, but the amount of healing is going to be pretty decent. 1st level would heal something like 5-7, 2nd level 6-9, 3rd level 8-13, 4th level 12-17 plus 2 ability damage. Then 5th level it gets amazing at something like 30-49 plus 2 ability damage. By 10th level we're looking at healing somewhere around 60-75hp + 6 ability damage.

So, would you feel comfortable with a doctor patching you up, or would you prefer a classic cleric? It seems viable on paper, but I can definitely see people feeling nervous about waiting till they're badly injured before getting a big heal back to full. The doctor lacks little heals or any aoe healing except for umding consumables.

I couldn't find any heal skill related magic items that are at all worthwhile. Any other options other there to make the heal skill viable?

Shadow Lodge

So I was looking at the Dandy archetype for ranger in ultimate intrigue, and I noticed that they lose survival as a class skill, but they don't trade out track. This seems like an obvious mistake. Having a class feature adding to survival, but survival not being a class skill makes no sense. I'm assuming that track is supposed to be traded out for something.

I was thinking of giving +1/2 level to diplomacy checks made to gather information as a stand in, unless there is an actual correction of this mistake somewhere?

Shadow Lodge

Going to start playing in a game set in Ustalav soon. I didn't see any Ustalav players splat book. Anyone know of any regional themed archetypes, feats, traits, etc? Just looking for inspiration, don't have any particular character type in mind, could be anything. Except not some weird monster race, sticking to core races. Being assumedly a character in a horror show, got to at least be somewhat a normal person.

Shadow Lodge

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So as I read through the playtest rules, a few things struck me as no longer having distinct meaning, yet the terms were kept over because that's what they were called in pf1. Seems like these could be combined into one term to remove confusion.

Small/medium. There appears to be no difference so why have two size categories here when the rules for both are the same? Combine these terms into medium.

Archetypes/multiclassing/prestige. No need to even call them archetypes or multiclassing or prestige classes because that confuses anyone who has played previous editions into thinking they are something which they are not. They are just more feats that could be listed along with the other feats in the feats chapter where they belong.

Those are the ones that were really bugging me. Anyone else notice other old terms like this that could be fixed? Or am I the only one bugged by this stuff?

Shadow Lodge

So it seems to me that constitution isn't nearly as important in starfinder as it was in pathfinder. In fact, it seems that many starfinder PCs will do just fine with a much lower con than I would be comfortable with in pathfinder. Please correct me if I am missing something, but constitution only adds to two things: stamina and fortitude saves. That's it. It doesn't change your hit points, it has no bearing on stabilizing, nor the amount of damage it takes to kill you outright. Not that stamina and fortitude aren't good things to have, but having a 10 con doesn't seem like it's very risky in this system. In a way, constitution seems like one of the least important stats now.

Shadow Lodge

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I really hate the build point system presented in the CRB. I like player agency. I do not want space ships that magically improve when you level. Even if you explain it away as the players receiving build points as rewards, it still removes player choice. It also breaks immersion, and just plain doesn't make sense. I want a system where it is up to the players to decide how much they invest in to their spaceship(s). So I decided I want to be able to assign credit costs to BP.

I ran across this thread discussing worth of a bp. Porridge gave a nice breakdown of cost for wealth by level. So I thought I would run with those numbers. Then I gave it a little more thought and realized the way he presented them doesn't work the way I want it to.

Setting the price of a starship to the wealth gained by an encounter with the starship times 10 does seem like a great starting point. This way the PCs can sell a captured starship for the amount of credits they should gain for said starship encounter (going with the normal sell for 1/10th cost). Perfect. Build point costs, however, cannot be set to starship price divided by build points. Build points are used to upgrade starships, so their price needs to be set to the difference in cost between tiers of starship. So running with this math: a tier 1 starship costs 4,600c and has 55 bp. A tier 2 starship costs 7,750c with 75bp. So that means the 20bp to upgrade from tier 1 to 2 must cost 3,150c. So upgrades to a tier 1 ship cost 157.5 credits per build point.

Ok, so this sounds good. I started to write out the math and this is where things get really wonky. The wealth progression in starfinder is not at all linear. It goes up in leaps at different levels. This means that the cost per build point fluctuates considerably per level. I guess I'm OK with this. It just means that certain tiers of ship must have cheaper parts available for them for whatever reasons. It makes more economic sense than there is no bp to cred conversion.

Entries written as follows: tier #- purchase price in credits. Base build points for a ship of that tier. Credit cost per build point to upgrade. Here's how the math turns out:

tier 1/4- 1,100c. 25bp. 80c/bp
tier 1/3- 1,500c. 30bp. 80c/bp
tier 1/2- 2,300c. 40bp. 153.33c/bp
tier 1- 4,600c. 55bp. 157.5c/bp
tier 2- 7,750c. 75bp. 163c/bp
tier 3- 11,000c. 95bp. 150c/bp
tier 4- 14,000c. 115bp. 850c/bp
tier 5- 31,000c. 135bp. 400c/bp
tier 6- 39,000c. 155bp. 280c/bp
tier 7- 46,000c. 180bp. 320c/bp
tier 8- 54,000c. 205bp. 1,840c/bp
tier 9- 100,000c. 230bp. 1,175c/bp
tier 10- 147,000c. 270bp. 2,575c/bp
tier 11- 250,000c. 310bp. 2,250c/bp
tier 12- 340,000c. 350bp. 3,200c/bp
tier 13- 500,000c. 400bp. 5,400c/bp
tier 14- 770,000c. 450bp. 7,200c/bp
tier 15- 1,130,000c. 500bp. 6,500c/bp
tier 16- 1,780,000c. 600bp. 8,200c/bp
tier 17- 2,600,000c. 700bp. 14,500c/bp
tier 18- 4,050,000c. 800bp. 14,500c/bp
tier 19- 5,550,000c. 900bp. 15,000c/bp
tier 20- 7,820,000c. 1,000bp. Maxed

So for example: you decide to purchase a tier 3 starship. You pay 11,000 credits and that gives you 95 build points to make your ship. If you want more than those 95bp you can buy them at 150 credits each, up until your ship reaches 115bp. Now it is a tier 4 ship and you have to spend 850 credits per bp to upgrade further. Once you reach 135bp, then your ship is now tier 5 and the upgrade price drops to 400 c/bp.
If you decide to sell a custom ship, I would give the price based off what tier it is in. So if your ship has 294bp it would be tier 10, with a sale value of 14,700 credits. But if you wanted to be generous, you could do the math to figure out the exact cost.
There are no rules for tier 21 or higher starships in the crb, so I think it's fine to say that 1,000bp is the maximum you can put on a starship; we don't need prices for anything beyond that.

I'm putting this out there in the hopes that other people look and think of things that I missed and how to make it function better. Obviously, you would need to increase the credits the players receive so they can afford their ship. Using these numbers and only credits, the ship would need to receive approx two and a half shares to maintain the appropriate level as the pcs.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

I am a bit confused on how we are supposed to be recording reputation on the starfinder chronicle sheets. On the bottom of each sheet it has a place to write in factions, then a reputation ___|___. What is supposed to be written there?

Shadow Lodge

2 people marked this as FAQ candidate.

I keep reading and re-reading the section on power armor and thinking I must be missing something, because several important rules needed to make it function seem to be missing.

Batteries: there's a whole paragraph under power armor about batteries and usage, but it fails to mention what action it is to replace a battery. Is it just a move action like reloading anything else? Do you need to exit the armor to replace the battery?

Auto loader upgrade: makes it a move action to reload your weapon, but isn't that just the normal rules for reloading? How is this an upgrade?

Weapon slots: there is exactly two sentences about this, and they don't say anything. What does installing a weapon onto power armor do? Do you have to install a weapon in order to use it with power armor? Does it take any time or skill to install a weapon? Is there any limit to what can be installed? Can you have 3 heavy weapons installed on a flight frame? Can you then fire all 3 at once with soldier's onslaught? You can't install melee weapons, so how do they work with power armor? Can you disarm an installed weapon? Can you exit your suit of armor, then pick up one of the installed guns and shoot it? If your power armor is huge, do the weapons you install in it need to be huge too?

Phase shield: a power armor only shield that takes one arm. You can't make attacks with that arm, but do you make attacks with arms on power armor? Does it take your arms to fire your weapons? Maybe arms are only used to hold melee weapons, so this rule is only to say you can't use a phase shield with a two handed melee weapon? How many arms does a suit of power armor even have? Does being a Kasatha change this?

Shadow Lodge

I'm playing an animal speaker bard in serpents skull, and recently gained the "Attract rats" ability. We ran into a lot of unanswered questions when going about resolving how it works.

Attract Rats: wrote:
At 6th level, the animal speaker can use bardic performance to summon 1d3 rat swarms; they remain as long as he continues performing.

That's all it says, aside from advancing at higher levels. So it does call it a bardic performance so it seems safe to say it takes bard song rounds to maintain, is started with the same action needed to start any other bard song, and can't be maintained with other bard songs. That's all well and good, but what is the range? Where do they appear? Do you have any control over them?

The title of the ability also implies calling rats in the area like the pied piper, but the text implies they appear out of thin air like a summon spell.
So, I'm looking for thoughts on how this ability is actually intended to function.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

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If you asked me last season, I would have said pathfinder society scenarios, on a whole, are well written and fun, and that I was a fan of PFS. Now, I'd say pass me the plunger, this steaming pile of poo is clogging up my toilet. I came to his realization this morning, as I finished playing through 7-23. Every season 7 scenario I played, I thought to myself, well this one isn't very good, but the next one will be better. After 23 times, I have to admit to myself, no the next one probably won't be better, maybe it's time to give up.

Let me break it down. It's not that the stories are bad this season, the quality of stories in season 7 is still good.

It's not that the scenario ideas are bad. Most of the setups for this season have sounded intriguing, they could have been good/fun scenarios.

The horrendous stench comes from the crippling restraints that the scenarios have put upon GMs and players alike. It feels like playing a video game with invisible walls everywhere, and they haven't even bothered to make a fence or something, you just run into the air every other turn you make. Obstacles are given a set solution to overcome them, nothing else is allowed. You want to sneak pass this combat? The lowest party member rolled a 40 on their stealth check? Sorry it says right here that these human guards have a +9 perception, but they spot you from 200 feet away, at night. If you had failed a DC20 stealth check, then they would have seen you at 400 feet. Roll initiative.
Rollplaying, puzzles, investigation, it's all been replaced by skill challenges. Roll a die, did you beat the DC? Excellent, let me read off this result from the chart? What? you were trying to sneak into the office and not the warehouse? Too bad, the chart says that succeeding at that bluff check gets you into the warehouse, and you find this mcguffin you weren't even looking for. You wanted to go to the office? Sorry, the scenario says you can't go there until tomorrow, even though it's right there across the street.
I'm tired of apologizing to players when I run a season 7 scenario, that they can't do something because the scenario writer doesn't want them to. I'm tired of being shut down as a player because I go on top of the rail car instead of through it and even that minor deviation is explicitly disallowed by the module.

I don't know what's happened, there was a few bad scenarios like this from previous seasons, but now every single one this season is rotten. As a GM, I feel insulted that the writers don't trust me to handle the players ideas. As a player, I feel frustrated at the constant arbitrary breaking of rules and lack of choice. I like PFs, I don't want to just throw up my hands and say I quit. But I'm sick of being treated like an idiot; I'm not going to continue playing a game if it treats it's player base with so little respect.

Shadow Lodge

So I played a pfs scenario recently with some clay golems in it.

cursed wound:
The damage a clay golem deals doesn't heal naturally and resists magical healing. A character attempting to use magical healing on a creature damaged by a clay golem must succeed on a DC 26 caster level check, or the healing has no effect on the injured creature.

I did some forum searching and all I could find was people agreeing that the ability is poorly worded. I'm wondering what the intent is, and how you would run it versus:
1 (ex) regeneration/fast healing.
2 (su) regeneration/fast healing.
3 lay on hands
4 does it matter if the spell is conjugation healing or not?
5 if it hits a construct can the construct be repaired?
6 if it hits an undead can the undead regain HP from negative energy effects?
7 how about a living creature (ex dhampir) with negative energy affinity?
8 is a creature that is immune to curses immune to this? (The text doesn't actually call it a curse effect, just the name of the ability)
9 if it damages a plant can the plant grow back?
10 if it smashes a wall can the wall be rebuilt by normal labour? (Maybe a bit silly, but I'm curious what the intent of the power is and where the line should be drawn)

And can this be removed by any means other than getting your HP back to full?

Shadow Lodge 4/5

So I registered a core character shortly after the campaign launched. There was a lot of reporting issues initially, but then it seemed to get fixed. At least, 3 of the 4 games I played got reported. All the games reported for the character have the pfc tag. The character used to have a CORE label next to it, but now that's gone and I'm being told by the GM trying to report the next game that my character shows as regular, not core. Anyone else getting characters suddenly switched out of core on them? How do I get this fixed?

Shadow Lodge 4/5

So I had a silly idea for a pfs character. A druid that wildshapes into a horse/tiger/whatever mount. An animal companion, 3 int to be able to put ranks in any skill. Takes ride, mounted combat, spirited charge etc. Animal companion rides druid into battle, negating attacks on his mount master with his ride skill.
I'm picturing an ape riding a tiger, evolved companion to get pounce so mount and rider can charge and full attack together. Probably with 4 levels of monk, boon companion and shaping focus to make up for multiclassing, dragon style to always be able to charge.

Is being taught to ride too much of a stretch of the animal's abilities? The FAQ does say it's assumed an animal can use its feats with handle animal, and int3 says an animal companion can take any skill so it seems legit, but I still feel like it might irk some GMs so I wanted test the waters as it were before committing.

Shadow Lodge

So my Pathfinder Society shadowdancer just got her 3rd level of the prc, so now her shadow comes alive. Huzzah. But as far as I can tell RAW (which I'm stuck with being a PFS character) the shadow I get is straight from the monster manual. The one in the monster manual is medium sized. So does my gnome cast a long shadow?
Is that intentional that all shadowdancers be they large, small, tiny, or colossal, all have the same size shadow?
Or did I miss something?

Shadow Lodge 4/5

When you apply GM credit to a character, do you have to take all the boons on the sheet? There are many scenarios with negative "boons" such as for failing to accomplish certain goals, or for angering a particular group. Are you allowed to only take the good ones and cross off all the bad ones?

Shadow Lodge 4/5

I've been running a number of low level mods recently and have to make couple of new characters to give the credit to. Every time I make a new character I find myself fighting between cool concept and optimization. I love coming up with weird concepts, like a gnomish inventor that rides around on his flying machine shooting guns, then find some rules to make it happen (a summoner/gunslinger with a flying eidolon). But then she only has a +4 to hit and does 1d6 damage and I just can't play something that weak.
I feel like at first level if my attack bonus is less than +5 and my minimum damage isn't at least 5, then I'm not pulling my weight. Am I optimizing too much?
I often end up dumping a stat down to 8 or 7. Even when I want the character to be clever or charming, I just can't justify to myself putting that 14 into cha or int when it doesn't add to any class abilities and means my attack bonuses or my defenses are going to be 2 less. I also have a hard time putting anything less than a 14 into con, I feel like I'm just asking to die if I do.
I don't like making overpowering characters, one shotting encounters is usually a let down; I don't want to step on other people's fun. But I've also been at tables where the fighter can't break the monster's DR and I refuse to be that guy.

So I'm looking for that happy middle ground. I'm wondering what other people's baselines are. Are my expectations too high of what is minimally necessary to be a contributing member of the team?

You used to be able to get away with much less in seasons 0-2, but I'm looking at current scenarios as the bar that I have to meet.

Sovereign Court

So I had this idea of making a gnome mech pilot. IE a small summoner riding a medium eidolon. The eidolon takes exotic weapon prof fireams and shoots a musket.

The question is, as the gnome riding the eidolon, could you spend your full round actions to reload your mount's gun, allowing the eidolon to move and fire every turn?

Extending this line of thought, if the gnome could reload as a free action, could the eidolon full attack?

Sovereign Court

I searched around and couldn't find any reference to this: What fighter weapons group would the blade boot fall under? (would the brawler fighter archetype bonus apply?) I'm thinking follower of Calistria that uses a whip and kicks people with her stiletto heels.

Also curious if other people think acrobatic steps/nimble moves feats or the feather step slippers/spell would work to mitigate the penalties from walking with your blades out.

blade boot drawback: When the blade is extended, you treat normal terrain as difficult and difficult terrain as impassable

Feather step states: "For the duration of this spell, the subject ignores the adverse movement effects of difficult terrain, and can even take 5-foot steps in difficult terrain."

nimble moves: "Whenever you move, you may move through 5 feet of difficult terrain each round as if it were normal terrain" (acrobatic steps upgrades to 20 feet/round)