jeffh's page

Was just coming by to see if there was a thread on this issue. It's also affecting (at least) the Starfinder FAQ.

Okay, sold.

Is the scan any good? I'm running a conversion of this set in, of all things, the Star Wars universe. Might buy this to save wear and tear on my physical copy, given what they cost on eBay, but only if it's taken from the original files, or at the very least, a good scan with clean, easily readable text.

I, er, might have found a scan of this issue elsewhere on the Web. But it's not of very good quality even for the time - blurry with no OCR, bookmarks, or other features I'd hope for. If it's of the same quality as the web enhancement, though, consider me a buyer.

As for multi-issue Dungeon adventures, everyone seems to be forgetting Shackled City. That predates AoW by a couple years or so and is nearly as long and ambitious. And, this very issue contains a continuation of the Maure Castle scenario from an earlier issue. I'm sure there are other examples.

Same here, trying to edit my wishlist and I get a 404-type page with seriously out of date playtest links. Glad to know it's not just me, but while it slightly improves my mood, that doesn't actually bring me closer to a solution.

Flavour-wise that's perfect, though I'm not crazy about the mechanical implementation. (I mean just to name the most obvious thing, does that predate Drag being its own combat maneuver?) Thanks, though, that's pretty much what I was looking for and will at the very least be a useful starting point.

Based on what I've seen so far, not a chance. Major changes would need to be made between now and release for me to consider switching over wholesale, though that doesn't mean I won't buy some of the products (e.g. adventures). 2E has a few ideas worth stealing but overall, doesn't fix my major issues with Pathfinder and makes several of them (notably the extreme level-scaling) worse. Its good ideas are never implemented in the most straightforward and intuitive way, nor the one that would be easiest to balance; most are saddled with limitations and exceptions and special cases until you wonder what the point of making the change in the first place was, if they're just going to kludge it back into something that plays like the old version. No thank you.

Is there a weapon in Pathfinder canon for grabbing and holding/dragging people around, sort of like that hook thing they use for pulling Gonzo off the stage on The Muppet Show?

The mancatcher isn't quite what I have in mind, though it's close and could be pressed into service if there isn't a better answer.

(I apologize for the ugly pseudo-formatting; I can't get the formatting instructions to come up, as I've already reported in the Website Feedback forum. When I click the Show button, literally nothing happens.)

Going back to 3.0, my groups are consistently confused by DR. It seems very simple to me, but no matter how many times I explain it and/or get them to read the explanation in the book, they keep having the same questions over and over. I answer them, they get it for the rest of that session, but it never sticks. A week later the same people are asking the same questions as though that conversation never happened.

One issue is that I seem to be the only person I game with who gets the notation. Over and over, people are confused by the thing after the slash being what *overcomes* the DR, not what they get DR *against*. Even PCs who themselves have DR of some kind have repeatedly had this issue.

(I do not, as I have sometimes heard, ever describe say DR 10/Magic as "DR 10 against magic". When I catch my players doing this I try to discourage it. At one time I figured this was the source of the confusion. It's not; avoiding that language makes no difference.)

Another recurring problem is that, even when they get what overcomes the DR they're dealing with, they never never never seem to understand that the weapons they have aren't that thing. "But it's magic, doesn't that count as silver? But it IS made of steel (that's the same thing as cold iron, right?)! Why does it matter that it's not adamantine, it's magical/flaming/has a picture of a unicorn on it!" I'm exaggerating, but only slightly. Even when I temporarily get them into a state where they can accurately state what the relevant rule is, they keep, driven as far as I can tell entirely by wishful thinking, trying to make that rule have all kinds of exceptions it doesn't have.

Thirdly, once I *do* get them to understand the notation it just creates a new problem with those PCs I mentioned who have DR of their own. When someone has a DR type other than "magic", they keep wanting it to work against spells no matter how many times I repeat that DR only applies to physical/weapon damage, because "it doesn't say magic gets through it!". In this case sometimes I can't even get it through their heads for the duration of that session. I get someone to temporarily understand this and they're asking the same question again later that same session. AAAAAARGH!

These are not, in a general sense, dense or stupid people. They're smart, well-educated, and in some cases otherwise quite rules-savvy. Most of them have little trouble using sound tactics and sometimes they pull something genuinely brilliant out of their hats. They just DON'T GET DR.

I conclude that the notation must be at least partially at fault. Perhaps in some cases my explanations are too, but I mean... DR is not that complicated a concept, there's only so many ways to explain it and and I'm pretty sure I've tried them all. It doesn't seem to make a difference, at least not a *lasting* difference. In any case the bulk of the problem is not getting them to understand any particular explanation at the time, it's getting them to RETAIN that information.

Has anyone else had this issue and come up with some brilliant solution that solved it in a lasting way? Or think they might have one regardless of their personal experience of the issue, or lack thereof? It's frustrating me out of all proportion to its seriousness (if I'm honest it's a much smaller issue than I'm making it sound, I'm just grouchy about it right now) and I'm tired of answering the same questions every week.

Not working in Vivaldi either. I click the Show button, literally nothing happens.

With Bestiary 6 coming soon, I've got the series on my mind right now. I mostly get along okay just using d20pfsrd.com for monsters, but sometimes there's just no substitute for an actual book, y'know? The thing is, there's just enough of them out now, especially with the new one on the way, to make it confusing to try to figure out which I should be getting.

Obviously the first one is your source for staple go-to critters and classic D&D monsters. But what factors are there that would make me want to choose one of the other four (soon five) over its rivals? For example:

1. Are there any major themes running through them? Like, I've heard #3 has more monsters based on non-Western sources and also more fey than the others, that sort of thing.

2. Any major changes to the design philosophy or underlying math over the course of the series? For example, I remember that in the first two Monster Manuals for D&D 4th Edition, the monsters tended to have too many hit points and do too little damage, whereas with MM3 they started to mostly get it right. Has anything comparable happened in the Pathfinder world?

(One reason I ask: My experience with trying to run modules, some official and others converted from 3.5, is that monster accuracy is reasonable only at very low levels. From about level 6 up some Pathfinder monsters hit on a 4 and others miss on a 15 and very little seems to be in between. Save DCs are even more extreme with most ridiculously low, a few that basically say "you save on a natural 20", and literally nothing in the middle. Wondering if that's been fixed.)

3. Would any of them make a particularly good alternative to Bestiary 1, i.e. a good baseline set of monsters for a somewhat non-standard campaign?

4. Are there any ranges of CRs that some bestiaries are particularly good for or neglectful of? Like, with some books for other, related RPGs you notice there's essentially nothing for characters above level 10 or so that isn't a demon or a dragon; any such issues in Pathfinder?

Right now I'm leaning toward getting #1 for the basics and #3 because both of the points mentioned in item 1 above are big selling points for me. But I would be very easy to persuade away from this and toward other volumes, especially given answers I like to questions 2 and 3 above.

Problems with the spell index that are making it not very useful for my immediate purposes (trying to get a list of all spells in a particular source):
* Book filters don't seem to work, period.
* Using and then resetting a class filter causes the list to become blank and the page to stop responding. I can refresh it, but then I'm back to the full unfiltered list, not to anything actually useful.

It's a conversion of the Warblade. It sounds like you're just fundamentally not interested in a conversion of the Warblade. Which is totally fine, in no way do I hold that against you, but it's not especially helpful as feedback.

You've got me curious, though - would you say the same thing about the Fighter? Because the Warblade was initially the ToB's Fighter replacement. If the answer is "yes", I think that kind of underscores my point, but at least it helps me understand where you're coming from.

I'm not familiar with the warblade from 3.5e but this looks kind of like a boring class. It's basically just a full BAB, d12 martial class that gets maneuvers. I'm also not a fan of the ability to recover maneuvers just by doing an attack or full-attacking, which goes against other maneuver-based classes that all require some kind of situational game mechanic or forcing you to waste a full-round action.

If you're not into martial classes, you're not into martial classes; that doesn't really help me, at least not without a concrete suggestion for improving it. Not every class has to be for everyone, that's why there's like fifty zillion of them.

The recovery mechanic is, as noted above, WAY toned down from the 3.5 version.

You should probably give it a different name, since Warblade is closed IP, property of WOTC.

Why? That would matter if I were planning on publishing it in a commercial sense, or if WotC had Palladium's attitude toward fan works. But neither is the case.

How would this (if at all) interact with Dreamscarred Press's Path of War revamp of the maneuver system?

I'm not sure I understand the question. The maneuver rules in PoW seems pretty much the same as in ToB. If you mean to ask whether it can use elements from PoW, that's explicitly answered in the class description. If you mean something else, you'll need to ask a more specific question.

(Minor correction, and apparently the above post is just old enough that I can no longer edit it: in the description of Iron Heart Legend, "Status effect" should be "Condition", technically. I use the two interchangeably and sometimes forget which one is "official" correct Pathfinderese.

Also, there should be something in there about the maximum maneuver level listed in the chart only applying to single-classed Warblades and possibly being much higher for multiclassed characters.)

Warblade
Based on the class from Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords by Richard Baker, Matthew Sernett, and Frank Brunner
Pathfinder-ized by Jeffrey W. Heikkinen
Special thanks to Chris "ErrantX" Bennet

Warblades are similar to fighters but with a greater appreciation of the value of tactical thought, or at least a wider variety of ways of operationalizing it. Brilliant if frequently undisciplined tacticians, warblades achieve great martial prowess through careful study of fighting techniques and intensive training. Most are motivated largely by the opportunity to get out into the world and prove themselves against worthy, legendary foes.

Role: Striker. While it is possible for a warblade to effectively boost his or her allies through White Raven and Golden Lion maneuvers (achieving a sort of hybrid Striker/Leader nature), and many maneuvers offer a measure of battlefield control, you will usually be most effective if you choose your maneuvers such that these are side-effects of doing your main job – hitting things hard and often. Besides, you won’t achieve the individual glory most warblades seek by being a support player.

Alignment: Warblades tend to be individualists motivated at least in part by personal glory; as such, they are more likely to be Chaotic than Lawful. They show about the same distribution of good vs evil tendencies as anyone else.

Abilities: As with any melee combatant, Strength is extremely important to a Warblade, and it’s not a good idea to dump Constitution or Dexterity either. However, in some respects Warblades are to combat what Wizards are to magic, owing their abilities at least in part to careful study, and for this reason Intelligence plays a larger role in powering a Warblade’s abilities than you might expect.

Quick Warblade: Play as a human, dwarf, or half-orc. Of the minor races, (full) orcs are among the most effective Warblades. Prioritize your ability scores in the following order (highest to lowest): Strength, Intelligence, Constitution, Dexterity, Wisdom, Charisma. (Feel free to shuffle the middle four around a bit, but you definitely want high Strength, and benefit the least from Charisma). For your starting feat(s), take Power Attack or Weapon Focus (in some big two-handed weapon that appeals to you), both if you’re human. For the love of God make sure Charging Minotaur is among your starting maneuvers, but don’t be shy about swapping it out a few levels down the road; it’s fantastic (and fun!) early on but ages fast. Punishing Stance is almost certainly the best stance to start with.

Hit Die: d12

Starting Wealth: 5d4 × 10 gp (average 125 gp.) In addition, you begin play with an outfit worth 10 gp or less and a beat-up copy of an obscure swordfighting manual.

Class Skills
The Warblade's class skills are Acrobatics, Climb, Craft, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Knowledge (History), Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (Nobility & Royalty), Knowledge (Tactics), and Swim.

(Note that Knowledge (Tactics) is a new skill recommended for campaigns that feature the Warblade or similar classes. Feats from Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords that require Concentration and/or Martial Lore now require Knowledge (Tactics) instead. If you've been using Path of War anyway, there's an analogous skill in that book, just keep using that instead.)

Skill Ranks Per Level: 4 + Intelligence modifier.

Table: The Warblade

(Next to each level are the special abilities gained at that level, followed by a summary of maneuvers and stances known in the following format: Maximum level/# of known maneuvers/# of readied maneuvers/# of known stances. Stars indicate you get to swap a maneuver or stance at that level. I've got a proper Word table of this but it didn't translate to this format at all.)

1st Battle Clarity (Int to Reflex saves), Studious Recovery 1/3/3/1
2nd Uncanny Dodge 1/4/3/1
3rd Battle Ardor (Int to confirm crits) 2/5/4/2
4th Bonus Feat, Flexible Weapon Training 2/5*/4/2
5th Contingency Plan, Reliability (1/enc) 3/6/4/2*
6th Improved Uncanny Dodge 3/6*/4/2
7th Battle Cunning (Int to damage vs flat-footed or flanked) 4/7/5/3
8th Bonus Feat 4/7*/5/3
9th War Mastery 5/8/5/3*
10th Reliability (2/enc) 5/8*/5/3
11th Battle Skill (Int to CMD) 6/9/6/3
12th Bonus Feat, Reliability (2 uses = immediate reroll) 6/9*/6/4
13th War Mastery 7/10/6/4
14th Improved Recovery 7/10*/6/4
15th Battle Mastery (Int to attack and damage on AoOs), Reliability (3/enc) 8/11/7/4*
16th Bonus Feat 8/11*/7/4
17th War Mastery 9/12/7/4
18th Reliability (4/enc) 9/12*/7/5
19th Battle Supremacy (Int to attack and damage after hit) 9/13/8/5
20th Hybrid Stance, Bonus Feat 9/14*/9/6

Class Features
The following are class features of the Warblade.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency
A Warblade is proficient with all simple weapons, all martial melee weapons (including those that can be used as thrown weapons), light and medium armour, and all shields save tower shields.

Maneuvers
Much of the Warblade’s effectiveness is derived from the maneuvers he or she knows. Most maneuvers are unusual, powerful moves you can perform with your weapon. Maneuvers available to the Warblade are nearly always Extraordinary abilities, impressive but non-magical results of study and training. The mere act of using a maneuver doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity, though some of the things you do as part of one might (for example, if the maneuver tells you to make a charge attack, this movement provokes AoO’s normally unless otherwise stated in the maneuver’s description). Spell resistance doesn’t apply to maneuvers, even overtly supernatural ones.
Normally, a Warblade may choose only maneuvers from the Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, Stone Dragon, Tiger Claw, and White Raven disciplines, all taken from Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords. You may choose, at any time in your career including at character creation, to abandon one of these disciplines (provided you currently know no maneuvers or stances from that discipline), forever losing access to it, to gain access to one of the following disciplines from Path of War: Golden Lion, Iron Tortoise, Primal Fury, Scarlet Throne, or Thrashing Dragon. You may trade up to two of the
traditional disciplines in this way, thereby gaining access to a total of two of the newer disciplines, but at all times, at least half the maneuvers and half the stances (both rounded up) that you know must come from the traditional disciplines from the Book of Nine Swords. When a maneuver from Path of War needs to know your Initiation Modifier (say, to calculate a save DC), use your Intelligence modifier.
You begin play knowing three first-level maneuvers. You learn additional maneuvers as shown on the chart above (one at every odd-numbered Warblade level, plus levels 2 and 20); the maximum level these maneuvers can be is also shown in the chart. Note that some maneuvers have prerequisites, typically some number of other maneuvers of the same discipline; you can’t learn a maneuver you don’t meet the prerequisites for. If you’re learning two or more maneuvers at the same time (for the Warblade, this will only normally happen twice, at 1st and 20th level), one of them can count toward the prerequisite for another, but two of them can’t count toward each other’s prerequisites. For the purpose of meeting prerequisites, stances (see below) count as maneuvers.
At 4th level and every even-numbered level thereafter (the levels where the number of maneuvers you can know is marked * above), you may exchange one of your maneuvers known for any other maneuver you meet the prerequisites for. It’s okay if the new maneuver is a higher level than the one you’re “trading in”; indeed, it’s generally assumed that you’ll use this ability to “upgrade” your maneuvers in this way. While you must meet the prerequisites for the new maneuver you learn in this way, it’s okay if this leaves you no longer meeting the prerequisites for an existing one; you only need to meet the prerequisites when you first learn a maneuver, not to prepare, use, or continue to know it.

Readying Maneuvers: You ready your maneuvers by spending ten minutes practising with your weapon, studying old training manuals, or going over the nuances of your most recent battle.
At first you can ready all the maneuvers you know, but from 2nd level onward, you must choose between them based on the challenges you expect to face in the near future. You can only use maneuvers you currently have readied, and once you’ve used a maneuver once, it is no longer readied; it is also not possible to ready more than one instance of the same maneuver (though if you take the option of mixing in Path of War maneuvers, there are a few cases where you can ready two maneuvers that function very similarly). There is no limit to the overall number of times in a day you can use a maneuver,
so long as you ready it again between uses.
It’s assumed that you’ll start nearly every encounter with your maximum number of maneuvers prepared, since you can recover your maneuvers in under a minute if you don’t need to change any of them (by spamming Studious Recovery, see below). Maneuvers can therefore be thought of as “once-per-encounter” abilities. Even if you want to change your readied maneuvers, it only takes ten minutes to ready them again; there is no limit to how many times per day you can do this.
Types of Maneuvers: With very rare exceptions, maneuvers fall into one of three categories:

• Strikes – You make an attack which deals more damage than usual and/or has some additional effect (or in a few cases, you make several otherwise normal attacks when you could normally only make one). Strikes are usually standard actions, but occasionally require a full-round action.
  
• Boosts – You grant yourself, or occasionally your allies, some benefit. Usually these require a swift action to activate and have very short durations, sometimes only the remainder of your current turn.
  
• Counters – You do something in response to some event in the battle, such as an enemy attacking you. Generally, these are immediate actions you can perform outside your turn.

Stances
You also know stances – different states of battle-readiness you can put your mind and body into, granting yourself (or in some cases your allies) ongoing benefits and sometimes drawbacks. At first level, you know one stance, chosen from any of the disciplines you can choose your maneuvers from. You learn new stances at various later levels as noted on the chart. In addition, at levels 5, 9, and 15 (marked * in the “stances known” column of the table), you may swap out one stance you know for any other stance of any of your available disciplines that you are of sufficiently high level to use. Note that these are the same levels at which new, more powerful stances become available for you to choose from (most of the disciplines available to Warblades have stances as 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 8th level powers).
Unlike maneuvers, stances do not need to be prepared and are not expended when used; you can shift into any stance you know as often as you like. Putting yourself in a stance requires a swift action; once you’ve done this, the stance lasts until you spend a swift action to end it or switch into a different stance (a single swift action suffices to switch from one stance to another; you don’t need to end your current stance then use a separate action to enter the new one). A stance also ends if you are rendered unconscious or otherwise helpless, or after about five minutes of not being in combat; some stances also have specific conditions that can cause them to end. You can’t shift into a stance you’re already in (a nuance that becomes important when you start learning Battle Mastery abilities).

Battle Clarity
At 1st level, you gain the first of six features that let you use your Intelligence bonus in combat, reflecting the Warblade’s tactical acumen and ability to improvise. All such features have names of the form “Battle _____”.
As long you’re not flat-footed, add your Intelligence bonus (minimum 0) to Reflex saves.

Studious Recovery
You may recover some expended maneuvers by taking a moment to study the battlefield or a specific opponent. You may use this ability in either of two ways.
By making a simple melee attack as a standard action or the first attack of a full attack action (but not by using a strike maneuver), and taking the opportunity to study the target’s fighting style, you gain an insight into how to win the current battle. To reflect this, recover any one maneuver you’ve expended.
Alternatively, by taking a full-round action to take stock of the situation, you may recover a number of expended maneuvers equal to two or your Intelligence modifier, whichever is more. You may also move up to half your speed while doing this. Your awareness of your surroundings at this time is such that, as soon as you announce this action, you gain a +2 Insight bonus to your AC and all saving throws until the beginning of your next turn.

Uncanny Dodge
Starting at second level, as long as you can move at all, you don’t lose your Dexterity bonus to AC when caught flat-footed, fighting an invisible foe, or similarly disadvantaged.

Battle Ardor
Starting at 3rd level, add your Intelligence bonus (minimum 0) to attack rolls made to confirm critical hits.
Once your base attack bonus reaches +9 or better, Battle Ardor counts as Critical Focus for the purpose of meeting feat prerequisites. The bonuses from Battle Ardor and Critical Focus don’t stack if you have both.

Bonus Feats
At every level divisible by four, the Warblade gains a bonus Feat.
This can be any Combat or Teamwork feat, or a feat chosen from the following additional list: Acrobatic, Athletic, Blade Meditation*, Endurance, Great Fortitude, Iron Will, Ironheart Aura*, Lightning Reflexes, Run, Stone Power*, Tiger Blooded*, Unnerving Calm*, White Raven Defence*. (Feats marked * are found in Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords; the rest are in the Pathfinder core rules.)
You must meet all prerequisites for these bonus feats, with one exception; you may use these bonus feats to take feats that require Fighter levels as though you were a Fighter of a level two lower than your Warblade level, so long as you meet any other prerequisites they have. For example, at 8th level, you’d be treated as a 6th level Fighter for this purpose. This stacks with any actual Fighter levels you have. This only applies to feats gained with these bonus feats, not to the feats you gain in the normal course of gaining character levels.

Flexible Weapon Training
Starting at 4th level, as part of the process of readying your maneuvers, you can temporarily reassign feats like Weapon Focus to different weapons.
To use this ability, you must ready one less maneuver than you would normally be able to. If you do this, you may choose a number of feats you know up to two or your Intelligence modifier, whichever is more, that are specific to certain weapons or to a narrow range of weapons, such as one of the Fighter’s weapon categories or the weapons associated with a specific discipline. Until the next time you ready maneuvers, all of those feats are now associated with a different weapon, weapon group, or discipline of your choice. You can only make choices that are valid for the feat in question (for example, you can’t make Rapid Reload apply to anything other than crossbows). You may use this ability to temporarily change which version of Blade Meditation you have.
You can only reassign feats in such a way that, after the changes are all made, you meet all prerequisites for the new feats. (For example, you can’t reassign Weapon Specialization without also reassigning Weapon Focus to the same weapon.) You can use this ability in a way that leaves you not meeting the prerequisites for feats you already had, but if you do, any feats whose prerequisites you no longer meet don’t function until you let their prerequisite feats return to normal. (Example – you switch your Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization feats to a different weapon, but you also had Greater Weapon Focus and weren’t able to switch that too. You lose all benefit from Greater Weapon Focus until you let your feats go back to normal.)

Contingency Plan
Sometimes it turns out you misunderstood the situation you were heading into and planned things out all wrong (in game terms, you readied the wrong maneuvers). By 5th level, the Warblade knows to always have a backup plan for those situations. As a swift action, you may expend some of your prepared maneuvers (i.e. remove them from the list you have prepared, as though you’d used them, but deriving none of the usual benefits from doing so) to ready one or more maneuvers you did not have readied at the beginning of the encounter.
You may use this ability a number of times per day equal to two or your Intelligence modifier, whichever is more, but never more than once in the same encounter. The maximum number of maneuvers you can expend at one time in this way is also two or your Intelligence modifier, whichever is more. You then ready one less new maneuver than the number you expended. (For example, if you expend three maneuvers, you then ready two.)
If your Intelligence modifier is very high, it is possible to run out of previously non-readied maneuvers to prepare in this way. If this happens, make up the excess by recovering maneuvers you previously expended. Example: A 6th level Warblade with an Intelligence of 18 knows seven maneuvers and can prepare five, leaving two un-prepared. She goes into an encounter that wasn’t what she was expecting at all, uses one maneuver normally, then uses Contingency Plan to discard all four of her remaining maneuvers. She can now prepare three, but she only has two maneuvers that weren’t prepared at the beginning of the encounter. She must prepare the two she didn’t previously have prepared; she then recovers one expended maneuver, presumably the one she actually used at the beginning of the encounter.
Once you’ve used Contingency Plan, any maneuver that you had prepared at any point in the current encounter is fair game for recovering using Studious Recovery (or any other methods of recovering maneuvers you might have, such as the Sudden Recovery feat), so long as the total number of maneuvers you have readied never exceeds the limit given in the chart above.

Reliability
At 5th level, when one of your maneuvers fails to have any effect – for example, you miss your attack roll against its only target – you can choose not to expend that maneuver, allowing you to make another attempt to use it later in the same encounter. Once you have used this ability, you cannot use it again until the next time you ready your maneuvers.
At 10th, 15th, and 18th level, you gain another use of this ability. You recover all your uses of it when you ready maneuvers.
At 12th level, when you use a strike maneuver and miss all its targets, you may expend two uses of Reliability to immediately reroll one of those attack rolls, adding your Intelligence bonus (minimum 0) to the roll. You may only make one extra attack roll in this way, regardless of how many targets the maneuver had. If this extra attack hits, the maneuver is expended; if it misses, the maneuver is not expended.

Improved Uncanny Dodge
Starting at 6th level, enemies gain no benefit from flanking you.

Battle Cunning
At 7th level, you add your Intelligence bonus (minimum 0) to your damage rolls against enemies you are flanking and/or have caught flat-footed.

War Mastery
At 9th, 13th, and 17th level, the Warblade gains one of the War Mastery abilities listed at the end of this document.

Battle Skill
At 11th level, you add your Intelligence bonus (minimum 0) to your CMD.

Improved Recovery
At 14th level, you become much better at recovering maneuvers and changing your readied maneuvers.
When you recover maneuvers using Studious Recovery, you recover one additional maneuver, chosen randomly from among your expended maneuvers.
When you use Contingency Plan to prepare additional maneuvers, you prepare maneuvers equal to the number of maneuvers you expended to pay for Contingency Plan, not one less than this number, with the last such maneuver being chosen randomly from among the remaining candidates.
Whenever you use any other ability, such as the Sudden Recovery feat, to recover one or more maneuvers, you recover one additional maneuver, chosen randomly from among your expended maneuvers.
Ignore this ability if it would result in having more maneuvers readied than the maximum for your level, as listed in the table above.

Battle Mastery
At 15th level, you add your Intelligence bonus (minimum 0) to your attack and damage rolls whenever you make an attack of opportunity. This does not stack with the bonus from Battle Cunning, but does stack with Battle Ardor.

Battle Supremacy
At 19th level, whenever you hit an opponent and successfully deal any damage, until the end of your next turn you add your Intelligence bonus (minimum 0) to all further attack and damage rolls against that opponent. This bonus does not stack with Battle Mastery, Battle Cunning, or previous instances of itself, but does stack with Battle Ardor.

Hybrid Stance
At 20th level, your mastery of the art of war is such that you can create novel and extremely effective hybrids of existing fighting styles on the fly. You may be in two stances at once, gaining the benefits (and any drawbacks) of both. You can begin, end, or change both stances with a single swift action. If you enter two stances you were not previously in at once, they can both trigger War Mastery abilities that trigger from shifting into certain stances. You still can’t change into a stance you were already in.

War Mastery Abilities

At levels 9, 13, and 17, Warblades gain one of the following War Mastery abilities. (More can be obtained with the Heroic War Mastery, Champion War Mastery, and Legendary War Mastery feats.)
Most War Mastery abilities are linked to either a stance or a discipline, and serve to make that stance, or all stances of that discipline, more effective. To learn such a War Mastery ability, you must know the linked stance, or at least one stance of the linked discipline, as the case may be. If you ever change your known stances in such a way that you orphan any of your War Mastery abilities, you may immediately change that War Mastery ability to any other one of the same or a lower tier that you meet the requirements for, including one linked to any new stance you just gained.
War Mastery abilities are sorted into three “tiers”, which also affect their prerequisites:

• Heroic abilities merely require you to be a 9th level (or higher) Warblade, i.e., to be able to get War Mastery abilities at all.
  
• Champion abilities require you to be at least a 13th level Warblade.
  
• Legendary abilities require you to be at least a 17th level Warblade and to have at least one of the Heroic or Champion abilities linked to the same stance or discipline, if there are any.

Diamond Mind
need to write stuff here

Iron Heart
Corporal Punishment (Heroic, Punishing Stance): When you hit an enemy with a melee attack or Iron Heart strike while in Punishing Stance, the AC penalty from Punishing Stance doesn’t apply to that enemy until the end of your next turn.
Cruel and Unusual Punishment (Champion, Punishing Stance): While you’re in Punishing Stance, you may use an Iron Heart strike that is normally a standard action as the first attack in a full attack. If you do, the AC penalty from Punishing Stance increases to -4.
Capital Punishment (Legendary, Punishing Stance): The damage bonus from your Punishing Stance increases to 2d6. When you score a confirmed critical hit while in this stance, you deal a further 2d10 damage.
Absolute Mithril (Heroic, Absolute Steel): When you are in Absolute Steel stance and your movement provokes an attack of opportunity, the AC bonus from this stance increases to +4 against that attack.
Absolute Orichulcum (Champion, Absolute Steel): When you are in Absolute Steel stance and you move 10’ or more during your turn, you may make a standard action melee attack – including an Iron Heart strike, but not another discipline’s strike maneuver – at any point during your movement. If you hit, further movement that turn does not provoke an attack of opportunity from any creature you hit (but still provokes normally from other enemies).
Absolute Adamantine (Legendary, Absolute Steel): When you are in Absolute Steel stance and you move 10’ or more during your turn, your melee attacks and Iron Heart strikes ignore an amount of DR equal to half the distance you’ve moved so far that turn, in feet.
Mambo (Champion, Dancing Blade Form): Once per round while you are in Dancing Blade Form, if an enemy one square out of your reach does something that would provoke an attack of opportunity, you may take a 5’ step toward them, then make an attack of opportunity. You may only do this once per round even if you are entitled to more than one AoO (e.g. due to the Combat Reflexes feat).
Samba (Legendary, Dancing Blade Form): When, thanks to the reach extension from Dancing Blade Form, you hit an opponent outside your normal reach with a melee attack, until the end of your next turn, that opponent’s movement toward you provokes attacks of opportunity as though your reach was 5’ longer than it is, provided you’re still using Dancing Blade Form.
Definitive Blade Defence (Legendary, Supreme Blade Parry): Whenever you hit an enemy with a melee attack or Iron Heart strike while in Supreme Blade Parry stance, until the end of your next turn, the amount of DR granted by that stance increases by 2 or your Intelligence modifier, whichever is more, against that enemy’s attacks.
Iron Heart Hero (Heroic, Iron Heart): Whenever you shift into an Iron Heart stance, you gain temporary hit points equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 0) plus the highest level of maneuvers you can use.
Iron Heart Champion (Champion, Iron Heart): While you are in an Iron Heart stance, your movement rate increases by 5’ and you have DR 1/-. These benefits stack with those granted by Absolute Steel and Supreme Blade Parry respectively.
Iron Heart Legend (Legendary, Iron Heart): When you shift into an Iron Heart stance, you may make a new saving throw against any one ongoing status effect, spell effect, or poison that is currently affecting you. At the GM’s discretion you may be able to use this ability to remove other ongoing effects that hinder your performance in combat (bur never diseases or curses). You get a bonus on this saving throw equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 0).

Stone Dragon
Stuff here

Tiger Claw
Also need stuff here

Stone Dragon
You guessed it, write stuff here.

New Feats
As with nearly all feats, you can only take these once each.
Heroic War Mastery (Prereqs: Warblade level 9, Int 13): Gain one additional War Mastery ability whose prerequisites you meet, which must be from the Heroic tier.
Champion War Mastery (Prereqs: Warblade level 13, Int 15): Gain one additional War Mastery ability whose prerequisites you meet, which may be from the Heroic or Champion tier.
Legendary War Mastery (Prereqs: Warblade level 17, Int 17, at least one of Heroic War Mastery or Champion War Mastery): Gain one additional War Mastery ability whose prerequisites you meet, which may be from any of the three tiers (Heroic, Champion, or Legendary).

So, I writed a thing...

In the second post of this thread, I'm going to paste in the Warblade rewrite for Pathfinder that I've been working on. This was originally for one of the games I run, where my sister is playing a currently 9th level Warblade so it's going to get playtested, though arguably not in the most rigorous fashion. I figured having done all that work, I might as well share it more widely and, in the case of this forum, with people who probably know Pathfinder better than I do and might be able to constructively criticize it. Or just swipe it for their own (private, non-commercial) use, that's cool too.

I am obviously only 20% done the War Mastery abilities. I've done the Iron Heart ones as proof of concept. That discipline includes Punishing Stance, in which my sister's character probably logs like 90% of her combat time anyway, so it seemed like the highest priority for my own purposes. Everything else is feature-complete, but not necessarily 100% final. If you see something that strikes you as horrible, let me know, you might very well be able to get me to change it.

Pathfinderizing the Warblade probably didn't need to be as big a job as I made it into. For a more minimalistic conversion, just change the levels of the bonus feats, do something about Concentration, reword Battle Skill, and Bob's your uncle. However, this would have left a few things that I was never entirely satisfied with and/or that didn't seem to mesh with the Pathfinder way of doing things:

• The lack of all-simple-weapon proficiency, in what are obviously meant to be a bunch of highly skilled fighters, always bugged me. It probably won't make much practical difference; maybe it'll help a Warblade here and there through those tough early levels.
  
• I never liked the very narrow selection of bonus feats.
  
• There were still a number of levels that, while not technically dead (you always get at least a new or upgraded maneuver), were kinda on life support. I added things to fill them that might also help fix some of the things that annoy my sister regularly with this class.
  
• The levels at which the original Warblade gained new stances made NO SENSE when you looked at them next to when new stances became available. Originally I was just going to introduce swaps at the levels where new ones become available, I ended up going slightly more elaborate.
  
• Stances don't scale and BTB you never get to change them. War Mastery let me both partially fix this AND fill three of the aforementioned dead levels. (Path of War stances already scale a little, so I will NOT be introducing War Masteries for those disciplines.)
  
• Speaking of which, I wanted to allow some, but limited, access to the new disciplines from Path of War. (I also adopted a few other conventions from there, like whenever I needed or wanted a number, I made it "two or your (in this case) Intelligence modifier, whichever is more" any time that seemed like it would yield reasonable answers.)
  
• The designers have expressed misgivings about four features of the original Warblade, feeling they go too far in making the Warblade an almost-strictly-superior 3.5 Fighter: the d12 hit die, the ability to meet feat prerequisites as a fighter, the ability to change the "targets" for feats like Weapon Focus, and the recharge mechanic, with some doubt being expressed as to whether the latter even needed to exist. In the end I nerfed the latter three rather than removing them entirely; as for the d12, I'd be more likely to give that to fighters than remove it from warblades if I thought it was creating a problem in the relative power of the two. In the case of the feat-swapping thing, I may have nerfed it so much and in a sufficiently complicated way that it might have been better to remove it entirely.

A couple ideas were borrowed from two other Warblade rewrites I found on GitP's forum. I'd credit the OPs for those ideas if I could remember who they were. (If one of you is reading this and it bothers you, please let me know and I'll revise this post accordingly.)

Anyway. Enough "designer's notes" and similar crap, let's get to the actual class writeup.

I wasn't feeling it this year, despite my decent performance last time. Partly because there's so many other systems I've got on my mind right now, including my own, that I'm not really thinking in Pathfinder terms at the moment. Perhaps next time I'll enter again. Good luck to all who did decide to enter!

Your basic premise that this check has a DC in the usual sense is precisely what I'm denying. (And this is the fourth time I've said either that exact thing or something that pretty clearly implies it!) The rule lays out an alternative mechanic, which at least to me, seems sufficient to invoke the "unless otherwise stated" in the rule you're leaning on.

IF the rule is meant to work the way you say, I don't see why the wording would have been changed from one that clearly says that, to one that doesn't and can easily be read as saying the opposite. It's not like that change was made by some random force of nature. This is something a reasonably intelligent human being put some non-zero amount of effort into doing. It happened for a reason. The most plausible reason is an intentional, functional change.

("To save space" is an absurd explanation for a change that would at most cut one line of text, and a fairly crucial one, in a 200+ page book FULL of needlessly verbose descriptions and absurdly overcomplicated subsystems that would be much more obvious candidates for such a cut.)

I don't see how a mere example trumps this, especially an example of a different rule. If the example was meant to clarify this rule, then that's where it would be. Possibly, the example was written with the old rule in mind and at whatever point it got changed, the example got overlooked precisely because it's listed under a different rule. {shrug} seems at least as plausible as any other explanation. There's pretty clearly been some kind of editorial mistake somewhere, no matter which side you come down on.

The reply he gives is specifically in response to "does income checks have a DC?" - read the preceding posts. If it was meant to mean that the Income checks always succeed, he'd likely say so.

That said, if you feel it's a problem you can always start a FAQ thread on the question. :)

I understand that, but he doesn't give enough context to make it clear that he fully understood the question. The question isn't just "the DC is unclear, what is it?" (which appears to be the question he answered); it's "it's unclear whether the concepts of success, failure, and DC even apply here, in fact there are pretty strong indications that they don't". I'm not sure from his response that Sean was clear on the distinction.

This is the argument: "well, even though the rules say that the DC is the Control DC, and that the rules elsewhere have to explicitly call out when the DC is not the control DC, and even though the examples in the rules text explicitly point out that you can fail the Economy check and therefore not earn any income, and that the taxation phase does not explicitly state that the Control DC is not the DC of the Economy check for taxation, because it doesn't say you have to succeed you can't fail and will always earn income with at least a +2 Economy bonus."

Doesn't wash, I'm afraid.

No, the argument is very clearly laid out above, with bullet points and everything. Responses to what I actually said are welcome; dishonest caricatures of it, much less so.

Edit: Also, it says "attempt an Economy check..." What happens when the attempt fails?

What indeed? You're quite right, this is totally unclear from the rule as written. How you think that fact supports your side and not mine, however, I'm honestly not seeing.

You do need to beat the control DC. One of the developers designers confirmed this when Ultimate Campaign was first released.

I remember this since I had the exact same line of thought as Jeffh above. The phrasing of the income check could probably have been a little more clear.

Edit: Here's the post.

That's... actually not very clear in this particular case. The text Sean quoted only says "unless otherwise stated". The rule doesn't say anything about "if you succeed..." or otherwise suggest success or failure matter in the usual sense. Instead it gives a totally different mechanic for evaluating the results, one that's unusual but not unprecedented (cf jumping distance). I'd say it states otherwise.

Has this been officially clarified anywhere? Because I am pretty confident that you DON'T have to beat the control DC.

• The actual rule quite plainly does not say this. It would not have been difficult or awkward for it to do so.
  
• In fact, there was a line giving such a restriction in the original version of these rules, in Kingmaker. It was taken out in UC. I would assume, absent specific evidence to the contrary, that this didn't happen by accident.
  
• The example for the Income Phase doesn't mention it either, even though it would clearly be relevant.
  
• The only place that says or even implies anything about comparing this check to the control DC is the example for the Edict Phase. I think it's pretty obvious that the actual wording of the rule that covers a given situation is a higher authority on how that situation works than any example, let alone an example listed under a different rule.
  

I conclude that the Edict Phase example is in error, and that you don't have to beat the control DC.

Just FYI, my latest "This Week at Paizo" e-mail begins: "Dear Paul", and addresses me as though I were new to that mailing list. My name isn't Paul and I've been receiving those e-mails for years. What's up with that?

Welp, disappointed but not surprised to not be advancing this round. Congratulations to everyone who did! There's some really good stuff in there and I think everyone who's left is capable of writing a ridiculously good module. The competition was pretty fierce this round. I'm honored to have made it this far and looking forward to seeing what the top 8 come up with.

Sleepy mousey

The cute is strong with this one.

Voted, then PMed Pedro about who. I will say that it could have gone several different ways. I thought there was one that was head and shoulders above the rest (oh what the heck, it was the Coryphae), I obviously was going to vote for myself, but there were five or six that my remaining two votes could plausibly have gone to and for now only myself and Pedro know where they went.

I tried to base it solely on the monsters, not previous work, even though I kind of think the maps are more likely to be indicative of who I'd like to see win (but then I would think that!). As a result, apart from myself, I didn't vote for any of the people I'd have placed in the top five based on the previous round, though they were certainly positioned respectably.

That manic dance element just really jives with what I think of when I think of the fey in Candlestone Caverns.

Heh. 90% of the time when people say "jive" in this context they mean "jibe", but in this case "jive" makes a pretty good pun, intentional or not.

My own messageboard tags are causing every post I make (and, by extension, every thread I post in) to exceed the width of my screen.

Would it be possible to have someone change the white-space setting for the .avatar-title{ style in the .css file for the Paizo messageboards from nowrap to normal? I can manually instruct my browser to make this change every time it displays one of your pages, so I know it fixes my problem, but I can't figure out how to automate that process, so my browser keeps defaulting to the nowrap setting in your .css file that prevents messageboard posts from fitting on my screen.

A thousand times this. The constant horizontal scrolling is making it a pain - almost literally - to follow RPG Superstar. To give the other entrants a fair shake I have to read their entries and your Web design is making this thing that should be a pleasure tiring and annoying. And if I'm saying that as someone who is in the top 16 myself, I can only imagine how much it turns off many of your more casual readers, with less invested in RPGS.

Yeah, I can use third-party add-ons to work around the problem. But I shouldn't have to.

Sounds like we cut our teeth on the same Basic set, Scott. I don't have any of the orange dice from it - only dice I ever wore out, because God were those ones ever cheap - but I think I still have some sea-green ones from my first Expert set somewhere. (I was an odd duck as I had the Mentzer basic set, but Zeb Cook's expert set that was meant to go with the Moldvay basic set).

Scott LaBarge wrote:

So here's a question I imagine should be fine to ask: Where did the rule that monsters need 3 odd stats and 3 even stats come from? Is there some rationale behind it, or is it just "the way things are done"?

I know there is probably a real answer that is part "keeping things interesting" and "it's good game design", but my accumulated personal experience from this contest -* is the real answer is always "because some Gigax guy did it that way 40 years ago and we're still doing it that way since it works, so do it that way."

In his day, most monsters didn't have all six stats. All had an Intelligence score and a few (giants mostly) had a Strength score specified in their descriptions, and that was about it as far as I can recall. Some very early adventures (maybe just KotB?) listed Dexterity scores for monsters because of how initiative worked at the time but that was soon dropped. Monsters having a full set of stats wasn't done until 2000 with Gygax long out of the picture.

Owen (Dana and Gabriel too, but especially Owen), thank you very much for your response.

I understand where you're coming from now. That does not, of course, mean I 100% agree, but I certainly see how yours is a reasonable position.

I do like it when the creative people behind the products I enjoy get opportunities to discuss their thinking and interact with fans. And I've occasionally been persuaded to give a product I'd dismissed a chance on the basis of such interactions, too.

(I have also seen those interactions go badly - indeed, one freelancer, not someone who ever worked for Paizo to my knowledge, once told me to choke on something unprintable over a comment I'd made on Usenet! But on the whole I think the positives I've seen come out of these things outweigh the negatives. But for a publisher, I can see how the risk of the negatives would loom large.)

Grrr... wish we could at least answer direct questions about our entries.

Which triggers an idle thought or maybe suggestion for future years. I feel like it could be really interesting if there were a "discuss and defend your choices" component. (No tearing down of other people's entries or anything, just a brief defence and/or answers to specific questions about your own entry. "Here's why this number is the way it is, here's what I see happening with this ability in actual play" sort of stuff.)

To avoid being overwhelming for the voters, it would need to kick in for the top 16 at the earliest or maybe even the top 8, just so people don't feel like they have to read a novel in order to vote. (Fatigue was definitely a factor among the friends I discussed the top 32 with. My own mother didn't get around to voting for me because I encouraged people to do it with integrity and she didn't feel she had time or energy to give the other 31 entries a fair shake.)

Getting back to my suggestion, that's how a lot of the reality shows this contest is modelled on do things and it also gives a really good chance to show how people respond to feedback and can use it to help develop an idea. That seems like an important skill for a freelancer somehow.

Maybe even make a later round use a version of something from an earlier round, but revised to take this "feedback round" into account.

Anyway, just some thoughts about possible futures from someone who's a bit discouraged about this year and trying to look ahead.

Sean Reynolds' monster advice PDF discusses some of this stuff, as well as a few other typographic and stylistic niceties.

Twitch. Squirm. Groan. Hold breath. Gasp. Spin in chair. Roll on floor. Eat cookies. Close door and yell. Open door. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Inspect tongue in window reflection. Put head on table. Sing 'Needing, Getting' under breath. Twitch. Squirm.

Mildly nervous, but not as close to this extreme as I expected to be. Part of me is actually like, "bring it on".

Good luck everyone!

I figure this might be a good place to find people with this kind of interest, so:

Has anyone got recommendations for books of mythological or fictional creatures that might make good sources of inspiration for RPGs, NOT including books specifically written for tabletop RPGs?

For example, Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings is a particularly well-known, and by all accounts very good, book of the sort I have in mind. I plan to get it at the next opportunity and certainly don't mean to dis it by saying this, but it's also 46 years old. I figure other good work of that sort must have appeared since. Amazon will help me figure out what EXISTS but is much harder to use to get a feel for what's GOOD, especially for a relatively narrow purpose like that.

So. Anyone familiar with a book of this sort they'd like to recommend OR (less, but still somewhat, helpfully) one they'd particularly like to warn people away from?

"And when they came to the palace of the King, they saw that every tower and battlement, every wall was covered in vines and flowers so that it seemed from a distance to be a castle built entirely of flowers."

Michael Moorcock, The Queen of the Swords

First timer in the top 16 here.

Hope things go smoothly for your dad, Monica.

As for Paizocon, I really don't know. Money's been a real problem lately. If things have improved significantly by then I'll certainly give it serious consideration.

Monica Marlowe wrote:

Jensen Toperzer wrote:

Monica you are fabulous and even if it was a temporary madness that made you enter I am super glad you did. Your work thus far has been stellar. Please keep at it, and, if you don't win, consider freelancing (ENWorld is looking for both Pathfinder and 5e writers!)

Thank you so much for your kind words!

One thing at a time, I'm not looking beyond RPG SS until it's over. I am working on a freelance short story at the moment (which will hopefully become a Kickstarter in the near future) and when Medusa's Guide for Gamer Girls releases, I have a non-fiction article in there as well. I've been circling the design area for a while now, it was only a matter of time before I fell in the pool.

Definitely focus on the contest first! This goes for everyone! Opportunities will be out there once you're finished with the contest, but for now you should be taking a breather, and then looking at encounters. Also, to the best of my knowledge, the only twist for the final round has been level, so brainstorming adventure ideas is always a good idea.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that. I'm having the same problem I had with the monster, when left entirely to myself I want to keep the ideas I come up with for another project of mine. Sometimes being given limitations actually helps you come up with something you might not have otherwise and I'm kind of hoping the module pitch is like that, should I make it that far.

I do have two cool adventure ideas that are tied to and inspired by specific places on Golarion, so I wouldn't feel right keeping them for my own project. I came up with one of them while researching my monster, actually. But the problem with those is that they both feel like the opening chapter of an epic. I guess they could be stand-alone modules but they'd be better as first chapters of Adventure Paths. So they're most likely unsuitable for this contest.

Jeff Heikkinen wrote:

Actually, I kind of feel like the worst-case scenario is making the top 8 but not the top 4, because then you don't win but you can't enter again either.

Jeff your first two entries were very imaginative. I think you could be a successful freelancer no matter what tag ends up behind your name. Same goes for any of the top 32 and alternates.

You need not place at any particular level to "win" RPG Superstar. If your goal is to become a designer. You can use the exposure and experiences of the competition to help achieve that goal. You may not start by writing a full module or a society adventure but there are many other opportunities.

Making Top 8 is only a worst case scenario if you give up working towards your goal.

Well, thanks a lot, that is a different and probably better perspective on things. Honestly, I've never looked into what's even out there in terms of freelancing and perhaps I should. I really have no idea where to start!

Not too stressed at this point, BTW. I've done everything I can do about this round and now I get a few days off from thinking about the contest. Of course, come Tuesday I'll be here hitting Refresh on my browser three times a second just like the rest of you, but for now I'm pretty calm.

That reminds me like 4 of the top 16 are VOs for PFS!

Brian, Charlie, David and myself.

While at least one other (myself) isn't even sure what that means...

I really don't know how well this round is going to go for me. I'm worried! :|

But hey, let's remember: the worst case scenario for this round is that we lose now and enter again next year older and wiser. Right? :)

Actually, I kind of feel like the worst-case scenario is making the top 8 but not the top 4, because then you don't win but you can't enter again either.

Done but not submitted. Word count currently 599 :-). Giving it one more check in light of Sean Reynolds' PDF, which I finally got last night after unrelated problems kept it out of my hands a day or two longer than I'd have liked.

My first draft is around 625 words and still needs some flavour stuff. That's better than Dana's 1500 but still not good enough. Need to break out the hacksaw...

On the plus side, this puts me exactly on the pace I expected to be at this point - basic concept and stats for Wednesday, draft writeup by midnight (Central time) Thursday, clean it up and add some finishing touches over the remaining 16 hours.

It's easy to throw some stats together and call it a monster, particularly if the AD&D MM1 is your only reference point as to what's acceptable.

It's much harder to take an idea that's interesting and hasn't been done to death AND execute it in a way that preserves what's interesting about it in a gameable way.

There's an additional layer to doing it in Pathfinder that old school D&D mostly didn't have in that you have a zillion stats to get right and most of them are interconnected. If you change your critter's Dexterity, you just changed at least three other numbers in your stat block as well. In my experience most of the details don't matter if you're just prepping an evening's gaming for your friends, but for this contest, and any future professional gigs, it's something we'll be expected to nail. There's a few things you can fudge, but far more that you can't, or at least shouldn't in this particular context. (And given my fluffing the price of my magic item, I expect my own entry will be in for particular scrutiny in that area.)

Ideally you want those numbers to help communicate your concept and comply with a ruleset the size of a college textbook.

No, it's not easy.

Submitted!

[Jaw hits floor]

I *think* I've got my guy statted out and I thought that put me on a pretty good pace. Congratulations!

Near the end, it says "lair" where "layer" was clearly intended. This could be misleading to people less knowledgeable about Golarion, though it's probably obvious to people who know the setting. (I didn't as of 10 hours ago but I've been boning up on Golarion since learning I'd made the top 16.)