james knowles's page

If I can spend general feats to pick up the multi-class feats, I can get behind this. Pick up some off-class abilities without sacrificing my main class stuff, sweet.

My guess is however, that the dedication feats cost class feats, which diminishes my main class to pick up those off-class abilities, which sucks.

The Devs keep repeating how turning all aspects of the game into feats opens up tons of design space for moving forward, but to me it just seems like lazy design. "I don't feel like actually designing this race/class/archetype/prestige class/spell/whatever, so let's just turn it into a series of feats and call it a day".
Makes me think that instead of books like APG, ultimate magic, and ARG all of the non-bestiary splatbooks for 2.0 will just be "big book of feats volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, etc".

I'm really hoping that actually seeing the whole playtest book will make it make more sense and not seem so bland, but I'm not very optimistic about it.

Aratrok wrote:

For example: I can't tell what Paizo thinks a task being "trivial" means, and it doesn't jive at all with my own personal definition.

The playtest rules thoroughly define each category. Trivial basically means if this is the DC and the whole party can try it and only one person needs to succeed, it would be incredibly unlikely that no one succeeds. For instance, even an untrained 1st-level character with 10 in the stat, likely the worst you have, is 50/50 at the level 1 trivial (a trivial task of a level is actually roughly defined as "Something a totally uninvested character of that level would be at about a coin flip to do"). Even if an entire party of four was built that way with no one invested at all, it's still only a 1 in 16 chance they don't have someone make it. Trivial DCs are relevant enough to be on the chart because someone probably will fail it if everybody has to roll it and all who fail experience some interesting result of failure.

Trivial: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

man, by the time you guys get to revealing the Human (the only non-revealed aspect that I wanna see), I'll already have the playtest book and won't need the preview.

Paizo seems to have an aversion to printing things I want to see, so my post-CRB wish list consists of only 2 items.

[1] A conversion guide from 1.0 to 2.0, kind of like the one they put out when switching from 3.5 to pathfinder.

[2] The new compatibility license, so awesome 3rd party companies like Dreamscarred Press & Rogue Genius Games can keep putting out the stuff I actually want to play.

Yeah, different characters at different experience levels and more importantly, power levels depending on if/when/how they multi-classed is a terrible idea. Thats a huge balancing act that is very difficult to manage, generally some will fall way behind or skip well ahead.

It's pretty much completely non-viable with the goal of keeping the math and bonuses in step.

You would've hated 1st edition DnD then. lol.

As to the OP's topic:
What I would like: I don't see a problem with the current multi-class system, so keep it as is. casters having to give up "precious" spell levels to get other stuff has never been a problem for me (as a DM or player).

What do I expect: since EVERYTHING in 2.0 seems to be based on/around feats, I expect multi-classing to work very similar to VMC from 1.0... only worse. I say worse because, you'll likely not be able to grab other class feats with your general feats, but will have to give up your limited class feats to do so, thus diluting your original class in the process. VMC in 1.0 is a pretty weak option, but at least you don't have to give up your original class features to do it.

What do I know: thusfar, nothing except that it exists in some form in 2.0. Like most of 2.0, I'm hoping for the best while expecting the worst.

Huh interesting what they have done with 1e core book casters. Seems like previous martial casters(paladins and rangers) are now just martials, even alchemist(not from 1e core) got turned into its own thing rather than being weird pseudo caster. Meanwhile the five original core casters seem to now follow this pattern: four of them have spell list unique to their theme(arcane = wizard, cleric = divine, bard = occult and druid = primal) and fifth one is generalist that can use any of them depending on bloodline.

It makes sense to make bards level 10 casters if they are now the "occult" rather than "just" funny magical music men

That said, Bard Supremacy(which has always been a thing) is now official :D

It would have made more sense to me to make sorcerer the full Occult caster to further differentiate them from wizards, and have the bard (as the jack of all trades class) be the one that could mix it up with different spell lists depending on his muse (or something similar).

I've kinda sorta been doing this for years. Everything in the core book is common and readily available at normal costs; hardcover splat-book (APG, ultimate magic, etc) are uncommon and may or may not be available for +25-50% normal cost; all other splatbooks/3rd party stuff is rare and seldom available at +100% normal costs.

It's worked great to allow player's to occasionally get a shiny new toy, without overloading myself as the DM with too much extra work.

Am I the only one that absolutely hates that practically EVERYTHING in 2nd edition has been reduced to a freaking feat.
racial abilities: nope, they're ancestry feats now so you have to be a 7th level dwarf to get what 1st level dwarves used to get for free.
automatic improved skill abilities: nope, they're now skill feats that you have to take in order to do the same stuff you could do for free just for putting ranks in the skill.
class features: nope, they're now class feats that you have to take just to acquire the class features you used to get for free.
archetypes: nope: they're now feats you have to take instead of taking one of your limited class feats.

I realize that one of the goals of 2nd edition was to simplify and streamline character creation, but there must have been a better way to accomplish that goal.

Hi, I'm a monk. My special abilities are called Ki Powers and allow me to cast spells.

Hi, I'm a cleric. My special abilities are called Domain Powers and allow me to cast spells.

Hi, I'm a wizard. My special abilities are called school powers and allow me to cast spells.

Anyone else see the resemblance to 4th edition and the way they made every class homogenized, boring and the same?

Childeric, The Shatterer wrote:

I skipped a bunch of pages due to the flame wars emanating from them, so...

The legendary feats look amazingly overpowered, but you only get a limited number of them (3-6 I believe), so it's not like you're pulling these legendary stunts with everything you do all day long.
If they applied to every single thing your PC ever did, I'd be totally against them. but occasionally being able to do something amazingly overpowered is pretty damned cool.
So, as long as the accessability limit remains, I'm fine with them.

If you're a normal dude you get 3 Skill Feats past level 15 (where you can first get Legendary Proficiency). If you're a Rogue you get 6.

Still, Cat Fall shows you don't need a Legendary feat to do something bananas, though that just moves the house rule from "No Legendary Feats" to "No Legendary Proficiency" which is easy enough to do.

Besides, how often does the need to "fall from orbit without taking damage" actually come up in a game? maybe once every 5-10 years (that's actual real-world years, not game downtime years)? I really don't see it being an issue.

Halfling sorcerer 12/barbarian 1. Contingency set to trigger Enlarge Person when she "wolfs-out" into hybrid form. Causing her to transform from a 3' halfling into a 9' raging werewolf, that's now charging at the enemy.
Not the most "optimized" use, but the look on the DM's (and imagined look on the NPC's) face was priceless.

the blog...meh.
but that illustration, it's like a gremlin on super-steroids...and not in a good way.

dragonhunterq wrote:

Childeric, The Shatterer wrote:

OFF-TOPIC 1: I'm really not a fan of this new method for generating ability scores. To me it lends itself to having too many cookie-cutter characters that are all the same 'cuz that's the "optimal" combination for the classes main stats. [For instance: why would my Fighter ever take the "scribe background" when the blacksmith one pumps my main stat?]. I see this as especially being a problem in PFS games where people tend to optimize more so than in casual games, but it's still an issue.

The floating stat boost should make this a non-issue to an extent. If you have a scribe background you probably want the +2 int, and you can use the floating boost for strength.

This. Outside of very niche situations, like "I want to be a fighter who studied for scribe, but was dumb as hell and got kicked out before becoming a fighter", this is a non-issue. Logic says that if you want to play a scholarly fighter (which is why you picked scribe), then you probably want a fighter with at least a dash of intelligence. So pick the +2 from scribe to INT, select STR as your other modifier, pick STR from the rest of building blocks (ancestry, class, etc), and you are done.

And for the theorical "I wanted to be a scribe but I was too dumb for it", maybe that character should NOT have scribe background. Explain in your backstory that you tried to be a scholar, but you got kicked, so you learned nothing about being a scribe. Then, after being kicked, you learned something somewhere else (like, you got kicked and become an Urchin).

I think it's flexible enough to accomodate most options, specially with a GM outside of PFS that allow for cosmetic changes like "blacksmithing" allowing "leatherworking" instead of blacksmithing. Yes, you could potentially work hard enough to find situations where it doesn't work, but that's true for most parts of any system. It's easier if you try to buildthings WITH the system instead of AGAINST it.

Then where is my CON boost (a fighter's secondary stat) coming from? I'm not trying to work against the system, but the system (what little we've seen of it) seems more restrictive to character vareity than some of you seem to want to admit to.

I skipped like 5 pages so this may have already been said elsewhere.

So each background provides 2 ability bumps, 1 skill feat, and 1 free lore skill. Sounds kind of underwhelming to me. The lore skills especially just seem too niche and may or may not ever come into play.
Now, if they added a starting gear bundle and a relatively weak special ability like 5e backgrounds, then I'd be on board.

OFF-TOPIC 1: I'm really not a fan of this new method for generating ability scores. To me it lends itself to having too many cookie-cutter characters that are all the same 'cuz that's the "optimal" combination for the classes main stats. [For instance: why would my Fighter ever take the "scribe background" when the blacksmith one pumps my main stats?]. I see this as especially being a problem in PFS games where people tend to optimize more so than in casual games, but it's still an issue.

OFF-TOPIC 2: The whole theme of 2.0 thus far seems to be to drop the power level and entrance complexity. Which is cool and truthfully much needed, but they seem to be taking it way too far in that direction for my tastes. I'm still gonna try out the actual playtest in Aug, and I hope that upon seeing the "whole picture" that I'm completely blown away by it...but as of right now, based on what little I've seen, I will not be switching to 2.0. The few Diamonds I've seen thus far do not make up for the sheer amount of worthless coal.

Does any DM out there actually keep track of encumbrance anymore?
Is it a PFS thing (I don't play in PFS)?
I personally haven't come across this since 1st edition D&D. Most DM's I've played with in the last 20 years (myself included) simply find it too much of a hassle to keep track of and just hand-wave encumbrance - unless the PC is being completely outlandish (like trying to carry a 6' stone statue or something.

So it looks like alchemy still sucks for all non-alchemists. But at least they fixed the ridiculously high costs of alchemy items. I'd throw away 3gp for a 1d6 splash weapon, where as before it was never worth throwing away 30gp for the same 1d6.

So, with this I'd need at least 4 ancestry feats just to play a standard P1E dwarf (hatred, weapon familiarity, poison resist, magic resist). Also no mention if stonecunning is a free basic ancestry trait or if that's a 5th feat needed.
5 feats to gain all the stuff dwarves used to get for free sounds like a load of hot garbage to me. Ancestry feats should provide cool alternate options, not the bare-bones basics of the race.

Hopefully, this changes between now and when the actual 2.0 books drop next year. If not, looks like my group will just stick to 1.0.

But I share your concerns with this and as I tried commenting earlier I am pretty disappointed that stat adjustments (to include vision, speed and hp) and these fairly underwhelming feats are all ancestry gets in terms of mechanics. I feel as though a PC could have all 4 of those feats at level 1 and be just about in line with what a normal race gets in 1e which is a resounding meh. I really do hope there ends up being more to it.

Exactly. It's almost like saying "you can play an Elf, but you don't get low-light vision, magic resistance, or ancestral weapon proficiencies unless you spend these ancestry feats to get those things". So basically you're a generic being chassis with no defining features until you take the ancestry feats to turn you into an average member of your chosen species.

I skipped a few pages, so forgive me if this has already been said.

I Hate the idea of Paizo goblins as a core race, but IMO, that wasn't the red flag of this blog post. The red flag was how boring and underwhelming ancestry feats appear to be.

Burn It: could be cool if the damage boost is significant or scales with level -both of which I doubt.

Junk Tinkerer: so I can make a broken, fragile improvised weapon? why wouldn't I just use a normal improvised weapon that isn't broken or fragile and save the feat slot for something useful.

Razor Teeth: This is probably the best of the 4 listed. a free bite attack sounds pretty cool, right? and might be if it's an extra attack, but more than likely it still counts against my 3 actions, which is less cool. Still, being always armed can be an advantage, so this one doesn't completely suck.

Very Sneaky: so I can use stealth to move 15 feet instead of 10 feet (assuming that you round down, 1/2 of 25 feet base speed is 10 feet), not all that impressive for spending a feat slot on.

If this is any indication of the overall scope and power underpowered level of ancestry feats in general, I fear players will only take them when forced to.

(1) Warrior of Holy Light [Paladin]: To me, 4 level casters are kind of pointless. This archetype removes the spellcasting and provides other cool abilities that are better themed to the base character. I've made this archetype the new core paladin in my games.

(2) Skirmisher [Ranger]: For the exact same reasons as listed above.

(3) Monk of the Empty Hand [Monk]: Improvised weapons are cool thematically, but totally suck mechanically. This archetype changes that.

(4) Scrollmaster [Wizard]: "I attack with my rolled up piece of parchment, have at you". This ones just too weird to not consider.

(5) Dervish Dancer [Bard]: I like that this turns the bard into a self-buffer instead of the standard party buffer for a nice change of pace (The same reason alchemists are so cool).

(Honorable Mention 1) Bladebound [Magus]: This archetype is a true roleplayers dream...and possibly nightmare.

(Honorable Mention 2) Altho not archetypes, I'd like to see Bardic Masterpieces and Variant Channeling become a core part of Bards and Clerics respectively.

I'd prefer to use minis and dungeon terrains(prepainted, due to lack of talent and patience on my part), but my gaming budget only allows me the use of pathfinder pawns and flipmats/map packs.

Not thinking you were anti-psionic, sorry if that's the way it came off. I'm actually glad to see someone else on here supporting Ultimate Psionics.

A 20th level cleric casting mass heal cures 200 HP to any number of creatures in range (no set limit on number of targets) + removes a boatload of conditions at the same time, for a 9th level spell. If applied to 6 targets that's 1200 HP of healing, if applied to 30 targets, that's 6000 HP of healing. compared to that, the vitalist is losing big time... except for the greatly enhanced range of the collective (multi-dimentional at 19th level IS a bit much, but how often is that really gonna matter), which IMO brings them back to roughly even.

If you really compare all the Vitalist abilities and power selection to all those of the other Main Healers (Clerics and Oracles, and to a lesser extent Druids), [BAB, hitpoints, mysteries, domains, spell selection, weapon/armor prof, etc] the Vitalist actually seems to be slightly weaker in overall power, but much more flexible with the power that it has.

That to me is true with all of the psionic classes. They're slightly weaker overall than an equililant non-psionic class, but more flexible with the power that they have. That's also what makes them better IMO than the non-psionic classes. Not the power, but the flexability.
Anyway, that's what I think.

The changing powers known each day is basically the same thing as a cleric choosing different spells each day from the cleric spell list and not at all broken.

Those 5 PP you spent on biofeedback for the whole party costs the equivalent of 5 1st level powers, or 1 3rd level power. Once you realize exactly how finite a resource PP are, this can become a problem if you spend all your PPs on it and have none left to actually manifest your powers when needed.

you also seem to be forgetting the golden rule of psionics (Page 137 in Ultimate Psionics): that you cannot spend more power points on a single power than your manifester level. so at 20th level your body adjustment example costs you 19 PP (3 for the power, 4 to network it to 4 additional collective members, +4 for maximize, +2 for empower, +6 to augment it 3 times(you can't further augment it 'cuz that would put you over your limit of 20PP), and would heal all 5 of you for 90 HP each (4d12 maximuzed and empowered). That's more PP than manifesting a 9th level power. A far cry from being broken.

As long as you keep the golden rule of psionics in mind, none of the Vitalist's abilities are anywhere near broken.

Has anyone come up with a set of Variant Multi-class Options for the Psionic Classes in Ultimate Psionics yet? And if so could you link me to them please.

There's so much good, well-balanced 3pp for Pathfinder, and it's sad that more people don't allow it.
The problem, I think, is that back in 3.0/3.5 the bulk of 3pp was total garbage, that companies rushed into production just because they could try and make a buck off the OGL. This left such a bad taste in peoples mouths that they won't give the new 3pp stuff a chance...which is understandable, but also a real shame.

I strongly second the Babylon 5 responses. The entire series was phenomenal start to finish, and would make an incredible campaign.

Dark Matter, Killjoys, and Battlestar Galactica (both the original series from the 70s and the newer reboot) are all good choices, as they're more ensemble-based shows and not so much single character driven like say Andromeda or Farscape.

I once ran a short Alternity campaign (yes, I'm the 1 guy that actually liked that game) based on the old Lost in Space series that was pretty fun, and could be adapted to Starfinder.

I can't think of a bard without singing "Brave Sir Robin" from Monty python and the holy grail.

Seems like you've already got the nerf hammer in full swing. However, you could always go further, I guess. Ban all 9-level casting classes, using only the 6/4 level partial casters; use the mandatory esoteric material components rules; strictly enforce the use of spell components; etc...

Just remember that the more you restrict the PCs access to/use of magic, every single monster/encounter in the game has to be "powered down" as well.
As a DM, This to me creates so much extra work that it's often not worth the extra time and effort.
As a player, this to me creates a boring non-magical world that I don't want to be a part of.

Anyway, that's what I think. But it's your world, so do with it what you will.

The Skirmisher ranger has a number of attack options that hinder opponents and support thier allies

This too.

Time Thief (super genius games)

Hands down the most fun class I've ever played (well, in the d&d/pathfinder ruleset anyways). You get to manipulate time, what could possibly be cooler than that.

People related peeves...
1) People (especially couples) that bring their real-life problems and drama to the game table. Some people game to escape their real world troubles for awhile, not be subjected to everyone else's.

2) People that show up drunk/high to a game session. If that's what you wanna do in your house, on your time, that's cool and I have no problem with it. But don't bring it to my game table.

3) People who are constantly on their phone/mobile device during the game. As others have mentioned, this ends up disrupting the entire session and can ruin everyone else's fun.

Game related peeves...
1) The fact that practically every new class Paizo makes is better at being a Rogue than the actual Rogue.

2) That there's so much cool 3rd party stuff for pathfinder, but most DM's won't even look at, let alone allow it, based off the bad taste that 3.0 3rd party stuff left it everyones mouth.

To me, this is a player who should be applauded for NOT min/maxing their PC instead of being punished for it. Elves have no inherent synergy with the Oracle class and as others have mentioned lightbringer trades out some pretty sweet racial bonuses.

More importantly 'tho, I can picture the concept behind this character: a celestial-touched elf who also has some sort of drow or perhaps fetchling blood in her ancestry. Struggling to find or maintain the balance of light and darkness within, while not even fully aware of the divine influence behind her chosen career path.

In-combat healing becomes a much better option when using the wound threshold variant from Unchained. Trust me, when the wizard loses his highest level or 2 of spells he'll be begging for some healing, quick.

Personally 'tho, I normally use channeling more for the harm undead aspect than the healing aspect.

To the OP: If your party is bickering over the distribution of potions, and other consumables they're already doomed...but I'd love to be a fly on the wall during the argument over who gets something actually worth fighting over like a +3 dagger that they can all use.

I typically use this method: cash items (coins, gems, art objects, etc.) are totaled and then split as evenly as possible amongst the group.
All items that are obviously more beneficial to a single PC (a +2 greataxe when the fighter is focused and specialized with it and no one else is, or the +1 platemail to the only PC proficient with heavy armor, etc) automatically goes to that PC unless he specifically states he doesn't want it.
All other items are cataloged and then each player rolls a d20. highest roller gets 1st pick, etc...bargaining, begging, bribing, trading and such are all allowed and encouraged.

Of course it helps that I tend to not play with douchbags, so everyone is pretty cool about being fair with the distribution.

This system isn't perfect, and it requires me as the DM to make sure that the variety of loot matches the variety of the PC's choices. For instance, if the only magic weapons they ever find are only usable by 1-2 of the PCs, then that's me being a bad DM.

@Rednal: I was specifically talking about adventures, Since that's what the thread is about.

Definitely more high level (15+) stuff. As for theme, some things I'd like to see are:
1)20+ level adventures (paizo has specifically said that they'll never likely go past 20, which means someone else needs to).
2) More Kingdom building support (after kingmaker, paizo kinda dropped this system, which is sad).
3) More mythic support (also mostly abandoned by paizo).
4)Psionic adventures (Dreamscarred Press did an awesome job on Ultimate Psionics, but we need more adventure support for it).

So basically, all the things I want more of are all the things Paizo doesn't appear to give a crap about supporting. Glad to see there's some 3pp guys willing to take up the slack.

To the OP:

Your ruling is clearly not RAW, as nowhere is it written that there is a penalty for a failed Aid Another action - to diplomacy or any other check. You either succeed and provide a +2 bonus to your ally; or you fail and provide no bonus to him; or the DM determines that the aid another action isn't possible for that particular check.

I do agree with you that there should be a penalty for failure of said check, but this is my opinion and not RAW.

I believe your enforced penalty was way too harsh (a simple -1/-2 to the diplomatic characters check instead of gaining the +2 bonus would have been a much better solution). However, this is also based on interpretation and is not RAW.

For me it comes down to this:

If your players were aware of this non-RAW penalty for failure, and how severe the penalty would be and they made the attempt anyways, that's on them and they should deal with the consequences.

But, if they were not aware of this, then that's just you being a jerk and good for them for not putting up with that.

This sounds amazing. I really hope you guys can make this happen.

My 2 favorites currently are
Magus/Oracle(wind): vortex spells with a 18-20 (eventually 15-20) crit range is pretty cool.

and
Druid/Ninja: turn invisible with vanishing trick, wildshape into something nasty while inviso, scare the crap out of your opponent when you attack them and become visible again.

I like to use 80's metal: Savatage: hall of the mountain king, Manowar: louder than hell, and Metallica: master of puppets are favorites.
Also Savatage's more popular incarnation as Trans-Siberian Railroad has some pretty sweet cinematic instrumental stuff. My son has a ton of video game themes on his 3DS (mostly from final fantasy/kingdom hearts) & we use those sometimes for "background elevator music" when in town.

When every single duelist build without exception was based on that feat tree, that means it was too powerful and needed to be nerfed.

I don't think I've seen this much whining complaining over an errata since wizards made it where Haste no longer allowed you to cast an extra spell each round.

I actually had this happen the very 1st time I tried a PFS event. All 5 of the players showed up with a different type of Oracle (battle/life/fire/bones/ and wind(me). The GM just stared blankly at us for about five minutes before he snapped out of it and ran the scenario.
We actually did pretty well. The healing overkill and diverse revelations totally made up for the fact that combat took twice as long as it should have due to lack of front line...or even second string fighters.

Since he's gonna be an evil bastard, you could use goblins instead. Pathfinder goblins are crazy enough to WANT to be used as weapons and thus could justifiably negate the leadership penalty for killing them.

Monk 11 (empty hand/weapon adept/quiggong)// mythic Champion tier 3

20pt buy:
STR: 18(14 base+2 im. eldritch heritage+2 mythic)
DEX: 10
CON: 12
Int: 13
WIS: 20(16 base+2 racial+2 levels)
CHA: 8

Traits:
surprise weapon: +2 attack rolls with improvised weapons
dockside brawler: +1 damage rolls with improvised weapons...and free brass knucks.

Feats:
Human: fast learner: gain +1 hp & +1/4 ki pool each level
1st: combat expertise: feat tax for trip chain.
monk 1: catch off guard, perfect strike* (I technically get the benefits of catch off guard from MoeH, but need the actual feat for the mythic version.
monk 2: dodge, weapon focus - quarterstaff**
3rd: eldritch heritage - abyssal (gain claws that i'll likely never use but need as prereq for later feat.
5th: improved trip
monk 6: improvised weapon mastery, weapon specialization - quarterstaff**
7th: mobility
9th: greater trip
monk 10: improved critical - quarterstaff
11th: improved eldritch heritage - abyssal (9th lvl str boost)
mythic 1: mythic catch off guard
mythic 3: mythic improved critical - quarterstaff
feat from path ability: mythic weapon focus - quarterstaff

*bonus from empty hand
**bonus from weapon adept

plan to pick up the dimensional agility & quarterstaff mastery chains later on.

champion path abilities: impossible speed(+30 speed. stacks with all others), extra mythic feat, fleet warrior(move full speed and make full attack in same round).
arcana: sudden attack

quiggong ki powers
4th: traded slow fall for barkskin
7th: traded wholeness of body for featherstep.
gonna eventually trade quivering palm & tongue of s&m for blood crow strike & ki shout.

Ki pool: 21(10 base +11 vow of poverty -yes the stupid UM version). can use mythic power & rest 1 hour to replenish.

Speed: 90
AC: 22(10 base+ 7 monk/wis+ 1 feats +4 barkskin)
saves: F +8, R +7, W +12
HP: 45+10d8 (90 ish on average)
Improvised Quarterstaff Flurry: +2/+2 ki focus quarterstaff
Attack: +19/+19/+14/+14/+9 (9 base +4 str +2 feat +2 trait +2 weapon)
Damage: 2d6+12(17-20/x3)

can spend upto 3 ki/round to further enhance the weapon & on 1 attack/rd can use perfect strike (upto x11/day)to roll x3 and take best attack. Can use ki &/or mythic power to gain extra attacks.

Skills: other than the k(planes) prereq for eldritch heritage, i really haven't decided what to focus on.

I just need to find a way to pump his saves.
maybe i can find a DM gullible enough to let me use the 3.5 version of vow of poverty. lol

My last DM ran linguistics like this:
1) 1 rank = +1 language, this only applied to those listed as bonus languages for your race. Humans and such had to choose 6 specific languages for this to apply to.

2) 2 ranks = +1 language, this applied to all other common languages listed in the core rulebook.

3) 4 ranks = +1 language, this applied to all other languages (weird new race/ancient dead language/world hopping pcs/etc...).

So if you spent 2 skill points in linguistics you could either gain 2 new racial bonus languages, OR 1 new core rulebook language, OR 1/2 of a new uncommon/obscure language(kind of how the alternate favorite class bonuses work).

Grapple claw hand prosthetic. Standard action to fire and retract the line pulling the wielder to its target point (say 20 or 30 feet of range). Also could snag items within a certain size limit. The Ninja Claw Grapple would of course be near silent in operation. A fun bit of utility but not game breaking.

But you're required to yell "GET OVER HERE" every time you use it or suffer a 50% miss chance. lol

Most groups I've played with tend to either ignore it or at most have it happen "offscreen". Unfortunately, it's the way American society is: you can brutally murder and decapitate 12 people in a pg-13 movie, but show a boob and it's an automatic R rating. It's pretty sad actually.

My advice would be to talk to your group and find out what level of detail - or lack thereof - they're comfortable with. Then go from there.

How on Golarion are you getting a caster lvl of 5 at 1st lvl?

7 new multiclass spellcasters: not at all interested. there's too many spellcasting classes already, IMO.

Investigator: I really liked the alchemist as kind of the anti-caster, so I'm anxious to see where this one goes.

Swashbuckler: I personally don't see a need for this class. The concept can be perfectly made within the existing class selections by carefully choosing your feats and skill ranks.

Slayer: Now we're talking. Been waiting for an assassin base class since 1st edition. SGG's shadow assassin is pretty good, but not quite deadly enough.

So, thusfar 1/5 of the book holds any value for me. definitely not an auto-buy, but perhaps a birthday gift suggestion for next year...Unless the playtest documents turn out to be AMAZINGLY COOL, which could happen.