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Technically I've already posted this once, but we've expanded a lot since then. So at risk of killing the thread again, here goes....

Nation: Xylari
Capital: Kaiyaria (Stag Lord's Fort, named for dead PC elf druid. Castle in the city is named for our other dead PC, Aleksander.)
Other cities:
Daruka (at Temple of the Elk, 1st city and former captial)
Fort Oleg
Tatzlford
Hansonii (at the elven castle, named for our assassinated Duke)
Behiria (south of Tuskwater, named by the behir random encounter who helped us fight the trolls in exchange for being titular lord of a city)
Perlivash (at the hot springs, intentionally designed as tourist trap/pleasure city)

Since our DM tossed in part of the Hook Mountain Massacre to undrevelop some of the cities he really felt Varnhold should have built over the seven years our campaign has run, we will soon be adding Fort Rannick and Mahanon (aka Turtleback Ferry) to that list.

We're currently working on Varnhold Vanishing after taking six and a half in game years to get through River Run Red. (Currently, we're actually working through parts of Hook Mountain Massacre, as the DM thought that Varndhold should have more than 1 city after existing so long, but also needed an excuse for largely destroying the additional cities to limit our power when we take them over. He's set it in his homebrew world.)

We're down to only two actual PCs at this point, but I'll go ahead and list the Council of Xylari:

Lina Hansonii Aumar, Duchess of Xylari half-elf monk/warmage/enlightened fist

Crushing Grass, General centaur swordsage/psychic warrior

And now the NPCs....

Elminster Aumar, Duke of Xylari human fighter/rogue

Siassara Pendrod, Treasurer half-elf inquistor/monk

Ginon Reiksberry, Magister halfling bard

Kesten Garess, Warden human fighter

Melphia Kavken, High Priest elf adept

Bardo Alarnus, Councilor half-orc expert

Brode Adamant, Marshal dwarf samurai/cleric

Tomin Hanvaki, Diplomat gnome aristocrat/psion (telepath)

Sabatieni McNorton, Spymaster halfling sorcerer

We have two more people who travel with our party:
Lamya dark elf duskblade

Jasper Garrett human monk/swordsage

Our leader is a monk/warmage. She's got a decent intelligence and wisdom on top of her ludicrous charisma, and LOTS of social skills. (She actually has Open Minded just so she could put skill points in things like Sense Motive and Perform(oratory).) She tends to be strong-willed, but possibly a little headstrong.

Our Council is full of a lot of people who have either a decent intelligence or wisdom (we seem to have very few with both). They are a variety of classes, both PC and NPC, and many of them also have taken the time to put their skill points into social skills.

So I would say the best thing to go with is something that rewards the high Cha that benefits the KM rules, but also allows you to have access to the social skills that benefit a ruler--and if Sense Motive isn't a class skill and your sorcerer dumped his wisdom, convince him to take Skill Focus. :)

Our party killed the majority of the bandits. All of the ones in the first encounter died, as did all of the ones at the camp except Kressle. We were keeping her and one bandit captured during a random encounter in the stable at Oleg's for a while, trying to rehabilitate them....until we came back from one of our trips out to find that a party had been sent to rescue Kressle and hopefully kill us as well. They'd wreaked a great deal of havoc at Oleg's while we were gone, so when we returned we killed them to a man/woman--all except the second bandit we'd been keeping in the stable. He'd been beaten by them for refusing to go along with their plan. He became our spymaster when we founded our kingdom, and at our last session became our Duke when my character married him.

We kept Akiros and one other bandit from the Stag Lord's fort around, though Akiros later died and the other bandit is now short a tongue and one arm after they tried to hold the Stag Lord's fort by themselves before our kingdom made its way down there. My character is determined to locate a scroll of regeneration for him.

We also have made allies of the kobolds and lizardfolk, the various good fey in the area (one of cities is named for Perlivash), and a behir that we rolled as random encounter. The last is now the ruler of one of our cities (he named it Behiria) as a reward for helping us during our war with the Troll King.

Our mostly good aligned council with a lot of diplomacy among them just trumped him on rolls so many times that he eventually gave up. Our Baroness even got married as a distraction...

But his spirit was not gone. Apparently Jhod, our High Priest, took some of his words to heart. A few years after Grigori gave up, we went to lead a war against the trolls and came back to discover that Jhod had determined that the Duchess's tendency to do occasional adventuring meant that she was not the best choice for a leader. Thus, he attempted to overthrow her. (As a note, her above-mentioned husband had been assassinated two months before.)

We showed back up in town to be hailed as "heroes" with a notable omission of our Duchess's title. We found Jhod in the Throne Room, sitting on the throne, trying to convince the Duchess that she should step down as it was best for the country. The rest of the Council stands around awkwardly, so we engaged in a battle of words. Unfortunately for Jhod, our Duchess has the highest diplomacy on the council...and I rolled a 20. He wouldn't back down, so eventually the halfling bard hit himj with a hideous laughter and the dark elf duskblade tied him up and took him to the dungeon. He's going to be severely lectured, convicted of treason, and exiled. But the Duchess is going to be very insecure for a while--and will be getting married again before she begins participating in the events of Varnhold Vanishing.

I'm known to jokingly refer to our leaders as the "Multicultural Council." We have, to this point in the campaign, had a total of 9 PCs, and only one was human. (None of the current ones are.) Our current Council stands as follows:

Lina Greer Hansonii. Duchess. Half-elf monk/warmage/enlightened fist. Until recently she had a Duke, but her elven husband, Catesbaei, was assassinated about 2 sessions ago. My character.

Crushing Grass. General. Centaur psychic warrior/swordsage. The other PC on the Council. (Our third PC is a replacement character and not currently on the council.)

Siassara (Valga) Pendrod. Treasurer. Half-elf inquisitor. NPC healer who used to travel with the party.

Ervil Pendrod. Magister. Human Bard. Siassara's husband.

Jhod Kavken. High Priest. Human Cleric.

Melphia Kavken. Diplomat. Elf Adept. Jhod's wife, created when we rolled a public scandal and decided Jhod had gotten one of his priestesses pregnant. She became diplomat after our first one married our Duchess.

Kesten Garess. Warden. Human Fighter.

Elminster of Shadowdale. Spymaster. Human Fighter/Rogue. We're playing in our DM's homebrew world, and he's always joked that big NPCs from other worlds exist in his world too--just not as important. He threw Elminster in leading a group of bandits as a joke, and we liked him so much we kept him.

Bardo Alarnus. Councilor. Half-Orc Expert. Local smith who was chosen to replace our elven druid when she died.

Brode Adamant. Marshal. Dwarf Samurai/Cleric. Replaced the halfling we'd had in the role when she died.

Now all we need to is to get rid of one or two of the humans and replace them with, for one, the halfling bard who is our replacement NPC healer, and find a gnome, and we'll have just about everything. This is particularly appropriate as in our campaign, Pitax is being run by our DM homebrew world's equivalent of the Red Wizards of Thay. I personally figure they're probably behind our Duke's assassination.

They'll like us even less when we name the leader of one of the next cities we build: a behir who assisted us in fighting Hargulka.

Name: Catesbaei Hansonii
Race: Elf (and proud of it!)
Classes/levels: Swashbuckler 4
Adventure: Rivers Run Red
Location: In his own bedchamber in the castle in our capital
Catalyst: Someone (as yet unknown) decided to take out our Duke and Duchess.
The Gory Details: Catesbaei was actually the NPC husband of my character, Lina. He'd married her because he wanted to have the title, but they have grown increasingly fond of each other.

Lina and Catesbaei had been arguing most of the afternoon because of some things related to the re-emergence of a character from her background who was his greatest rival for her hand. (Catesbaei was jealous and Lina didn't understand why.) They entered their room and as they were crossing it, an assassin dropped from the ceiling and hit Catesbaei with his death attack, killing him instantly. Lina immediately began screaming for every healer she could think of, the other PCs, the rest of the Council, and guards. The assassin disappeared, but Lina had an item that allowed her to cast see invisibility (a spell a warmage would not usually have access to).

A few rooms away, the party's halfling bard (Ginon) and centaur swordsage/psychic warrior (Crush) were sleeping. Ginon was woken by Lina's screams, and woke Crush by making use of his Fiery Burst reserve feet. The centaur grabbed the halfling and crashed into Lina's room. Ginon tried to heal Catesbaei, but was forced to tell Lina there was nothing he could do. Crush used expansion to make himself huge and attacked with his greataxe while Lina started slinging spells, but both were fairly ineffectual until the assassin failed the fort save to avoid being blinded by Ginon's glitterdust. Lina then successfully set him on fire with a ray of flame, while Crush hit with the greataxe and Ginon contributed with a scorching ray. Desperate, the assassin dived out the window, only to be felled by the lingering flames, and then killed outright by a parting magic missile from Lina. He continued falling 60 feet to the ground, where he took more damage and ended up at -43 hp.

To complicate things further, our treasurer, who had been the party healer until her player got bored with her and declared she was pregnant as an excuse to replace her, was also nearby and responded to the screams. Her horror at her friend's death sent her into labor (9 on her fort save), sending Crush running off for a midwife while Ginon tried to comfort Lina. (The treasurer safely delivered a little girl.)

My character is now in very deep mourning for her husband, which will make her decisions as we come to the end of Rivers Run Red even more complex. Should be fun to roleplay. :)

Interestingly enough, these events, some of the worst in our country's history, happened in month 69.

My campaign has a female leader--currently a Duchess. She had little interest in marrying, but finally did so partially to quiet the "you're such a nice girl, you should get married" people and to help distract from Grigori. Despite having a childhood friend written into her background who is rather desperately in love with her and some advances from Maeger Varn, she chose our Diplomat, a high elf named Catesbaei Hansonii--a restatted version of Lily Teskerton. Our party being largely female (except for the centaur), our DM decided that a male flirt worked better. He's a bit of a snob and would really have preferred an elven wife instead of a half-elven one, but put aside his principles so he could get a title.

The Duchess, who is my character, knows why he married her, but is still quite fond of him. I have heavily implied to the DM that I would be amused if he either a) gets caught cheating on her or b) is assassinated. :)

Thanks for the suggestions. Simply killing him after we accepted him would actually probably piss off more of our council than accepting him did, but I'm debating letting the Marshal's replacement, a cleric of the God of Honorable Battle, try to put together enough of a case that we can have a lawful execution. Of course, that presupposes that we can contain him, but if not we can still make his eventual death one that fits within our laws. Will have to discuss that with the other player (we're down to just the two of us :( ) before a decision is made, though.

In the meantime, however, he is unlikely to get to make any decisions. We accepted his services as Royal Assassin, but we didn't really agree to let him sit on our Council. :)

Fair warning, my darling husband/DM, because I know you'll read this. :)

Just as a note, there may be some minor spoilers for RRR in this thread.

Anyway, so at the end of our session last night, we had an interesting thing happen. Rigg Gargadilly appeared in our Duchess's throne room and offered his services as Royal Assassin. Taken completely aback, she requested time to discuss the offer with the rest of the Council.

To give some background, the Duchess (my character) is NG, and the rest of our Council tends towards Good/Lawful. Also, a few sessions back, we discovered the keep where Rigg lives and killed all of the other fey living there. Rigg escaped--he gave up after the party bard hit him with a glitterdust--but slit our horses' throats on his way out. A session or two later, he killed our halfling marshal. This session, he was acting as a serial killer in our capital. Needless to say, the Council was not really in favor of employing him.

In the end, we decided to do so largely because if he's working for us, we have some measure of control over him. If he's not, he'll probably just continue killing our people, possibly including us, for fun and/or profit. His employment was contingent upon his agreeing to only kill people the Council directs him to kill, something the Council doesn't actually intend to do.

So my question now is what do we do with him? We have a Royal Assassin who we don't intend to let carry out any assassinations. Another player suggested allowing him to carry out any lawful executions we may have, and I'm in favor of letting him wreak some havoc among the trolls, since they've been doing their best to do the same to us. But if we don't let him kill people (his initial pitch included the fact that he likes to kill people), he'll likely just start up doing it anyway. How do we keep him busy and/or happy without actually letting him function as a Royal Assassin?

I'm also fond of the Everchanging Book of Names for NPCs because it's an easy way to keep cultures distinct. As for my PCs though....they tend to get "stuck" with names in my head. My two favorites are my human cleric named Misery Mulligan (the explanation for her name was that her prostitute mother said she named her child after the only thing she'd ever brought her) and my elf druid named Dallasaverenel Moonrain, who hated his full name and took pains to introduce himself as Dallas. Really, the latter was only because somewhere along the line I couldn't seem to stop thinking of him as Dallas, but thought it didn't sound "elven" enough.

Though I also think that the favorite PC name I've ever seen is the halfing ranger who traveled with Misery named Subotai Wenlyfforlyffed. (Apparently, it's inspired by Welsh.) In the first session, the DM had an NPC reading off our names, and read Subotai's last name as "Sorry, I don't speak halfing."

We're in the middle of Rivers Run Red and we're running just over 4 years. We're only about 24 hexes with 4 small cities (1 of which has only a few houses). I agree with one of the above posters--how are you all getting so big so quickly?

Our access to the Stolen Lands was actually based on a marriage alliance. We're playing in a homebrew world, so we needed a bit different explanation. Our exploration charter was owned by a noble who gave it to her daughter (Siassara, NPC) and the daughter's fiance (Aleks, PC) as an engagement gift. Siassara traveled with us as our primary healer. When Aleks was killed by a werewolf just before we finished the first AP, Siassara was free to return to her boyfriend, Ervil Pendrod. Four years of game time later, they're still together, but haven't bothered to get married yet.

The first actual marriage we had in our Kingmaker was when we rolled a scandal and the DM decided that Jhod, whom we'd named High Priest, had gotten one of the lesser priestesses in his new temple "into a family way." A random dice roll declared her an elf with the unfortunate name of Melphia. They now have a son, and Jhod remains High Priest, while Melphia was just named Grand Diplomat.

The second one came partly because my character, Lina, was tired of hearing about how a nice young Baroness such as herself should really settle down, and partly because she was hoping it would help distract people from Gregori the rabble rouser. She was being courted by Meager Varn and being pined over from afar by Jasper Garrett, an NPC I put in her back story who is now working for Varn, but in the end chose to marry Melphia's predecessor as Grand Diplomat, an elf named Catesbaei Hansonii. (He, by the way, would be more recognizable if you knew that both of his names are species names of lilies. We had a primarily female party and the DM thought a male flirt would be more fun.) She doesn't love him, but she's grown quite fond of him now that they've been married nearly a year.

It should get more interesting, as I recently told the DM that the rogue-y Jasper would make a good cohort when Lina hits 7th level and takes leadership. I also plan to declare her pregnant at the end of our current AP (Rivers Run Red), unless the DM decides to make things interesting before then.

Name: Kaiya
Race: wood elf
Classes/levels: Druid 5
Adventure: Rivers Run Red
Location: Looking for Howl of the North Wind
Catalyst: She pissed off Howl of the North Wind
The Gory Details: The DM had seriously powered up Howl, as he's using some house rules that powered up the PCs as well. Howl became a 6th level sorcerer who had, among other spells, rope trick. Kaiya saw a random rope hanging in the air and pulls on it. Howl and his pack of wargs come out, and the rest of us stay a little further back using ranged attacks while poor Kaiya goes toe to toe with an advanced warg sorcerer--and while our dice took an inexplicable downturn in rolling capability. She and her lion companion, Arnau, both went down, but Arnau was lucky enough not to be killed outright, so we managed to save him.

As pursuant to the wishes of the homebrew goddess Kaiya worshiped, we spread her ashes in a grove just outside our capital city (built at the temple in the woods). The grove is permanently guarded by Arnau (who already owned a ring of sustenance).

We named our kingdom Xylari. It has no real meaning--just something one of our players came up with and we all thought sounded cool. But anyway...

Kingdom: Xylari
Capital: Daruka. At the Temple in the Woods. Means tree in some language or other (from India, I think...)
Other Cities: Fort Oleg; Tatzlford (just recently annexed...); and Kaiyaria. The last is named for a PC killed by (heavily powered up) Howl of the North Wind the session before it was founded. At the Stag Lord's Fort. A future city will be named Aleksandria, for another PC who died before the kingdom was founded.

Rulers: Lina Greer and Catesbaei Hansonii, who have just recently attained the titles of Duchess and Duke.

We're also playing Pathfinder Beta, with a bit of 3.5 splat books thrown in when players ask. We've just finished Armageddon Echo, and our party stands thus:

Desmyra, N dwarf druid (who has been systematically attacked by every plant of animal in the module) with a lion animal companion, Faern (who frequently overshadows her)

Kisa, CN half-elf barbarian/fighter/favored soul of Gorum (who wields a large-sized great sword and routinely bisects mooks in one hit)

Melissandra, LE human sorceress (Chelaxian who spends most of her time summoning devils) and her human monk/fighter/rogue cohort, Valeria (with no personality)

Nuka, N squirrel illusionist (who doesn't know he used to be Nolveniss Azrinae....he was a victim of a combination of baleful polymorph and awaken) and his air mephit familiar

If there's a prize for the most ridiculous PC, I think my squirrel wins.

My group and I just finished Armageddon Echo. The party seems to be a little overpowered, even though there's only 3 players. Here's the party composition:

Desmyra, the dwarf druid hated by nature, with a lion animal companion named Faern;
Melissandra, the Chelaxian sorceress who intends to establish herself as the newest crimelord in Riddleport;
Kisa, the half-elf barbarian/fighter/favored soul of Gorum with pink hair and an enormous greatsword;

They are joined by Valeria, Melisandra's monk/fighter/rogue cohort, once Armageddon Echo begins.

And now their adventures:

We'll be starting the 4th book at our next session in a few weeks. I'm going to use the time to beef up the encounters in it so that there's a possibility that I'll actually threaten them with them....

The only reason I know anything about psionics is because my husband got into them, built a shaper for a game we were playing in, and then obsessed over which feats and powers he should take. I learned something about it out of self-defense. :)

I've now played 2 psionic characters in games, both telepaths, and thoroughly enjoyed them. I love being able to scale my powers at will. ("That creature has already taken a lot of hits, so I'll just use a 1 pp swarm of crystals and save the rest for later.") It's a nice, versatile mechanic that allows you to vary your tactics with the situation.

I guess the fact that I've played only telepaths should tell you something about my view of psionics. I do see them as very mental. Now, having said that, I don't have a problem with them manifesting things beyond reading minds and such things. I like seers, and I find shapers interesting as well. I haven't had much interaction with the others, but I don't have a problem with psions doing direct damage. And I love the "choose energy as you cast" mechanic, and see no problem with arcanists getting to do the same.

In my eyes part of the fun of D&D is figuring out how to use your limited resources in the best way possible. The 15-minute adventuring day is rarely a problem for our group. This is generally because our DM has set some sort of time limit on our dungeon crawls. Rather than just killing things and taking their stuff, we usually have something along the lines of "if you don't rescue the princess quickly, she'll die." Nova-ing becomes less of a problem because you don't have time to stop and rest. If you nova anyway, then you're bored for the rest of the adventure. (And if you rest, the DM should totally have you have to deal with the dead princess, and possibly with the horrible monster the bad guys sacrificed her to raise.)

As far as transparency goes, I agree with it. It seems silly to me that arcane and divine magic, which come from very different power sources, have the same resistances while psionics does not. It seems like there should be either one kind of resistance or three. Since three is obviously difficult with backwards compatibility (and would require lots of extra work determining what has "divine" resistance and what has "arcane" resistance), go with one. And as far as Spellcraft goes....well, I was an advocate of the (apparently ignored) effort to have Spellcraft mechanics run off of knowledge skills rather than their own skill, so that arcane would come from Knowl(arcana), divine from Knowl(religion), etc.

Will I buy it? Well, my husband probably will if it's based on the XPH and we won't need two copies. But in such a case, I will advocate it, or possibly buy it for him for his birthday or Christmas or whatever. I am intrigued to see what nifty benefits you guys can come up with to put psionicists on par with the rest of your rewrites. (Which should include an "at-will" 0th level power sort of thing...)

Dealbreakers? Leaving psionic dominate as is. A mental based class should clearly have the capability to suppress someone's will and control them. Makes lots of sense. But as written, it is inferior to the arcane spell of the same name. (Concentration vs. days per level? Yes, it's a level lower, and the d20 SRD says you can augment it to make it days per level (I don't remember that from the book--is it an errata?), but at that point it's a 6th level power rather than a 5th level spell.) Sorry, that's a pet peeve:)

Sorry to ramble. Hope that this helps!

But what if you want to say Dispel Magic for something more serious.

Let's say you play with casters that actually Counterspell. Improved Counterspell gets broke by this. Use a spell of the same school to counter it instead of the same spell (or dispel magic.) Damn, Knowledge (Religion) sucks.

Dispel Magic for something more serious like what? Spellcraft is not even in the spell description for Dispel Magic, what else would you use it for? Please let me know--is there some errata I'm not aware of?

As far as counterspelling, I believe someone above suggested allowing using a different Knowledge skill at a penalty, maybe a -2 or -5. And, honestly, both clerics and wizards have both arcana and religion as class skills, so if you're a dedicated counterspeller (and someone who took Improved Counterspell probably is), you could always just take both--just like you were probably taking both spellcraft and knowledge (arcana) in 3.5. And even casters who don't have access to both as class skills could still have a pretty good modifier--and if it matters that much to you, take Skill Focus on the one that's not a class skill and make it even. Yes, it takes a feat, but you have more of those in PFRPG anyway.

Dispell Magic is dispell magic. Once a spell is in place the divide is stupid. If you go down this route, then you have to alter every magic item in the game, why? Well what if a cleric decides to craft magic armor.. he can you know? What then? What about holy artifacts? Surely they're not arcane in nature.

Yes, Dispel Magic is Dispel Magic. It works on everything, because the spell requires caster level checks, not skill checks, to use it. You don't even need to know what you're dispelling, just what the caster level of the person who cast it is.

As for identifying auras or whatever using detect magic? Well, it seems to me that a transmutation aura is a transmutation aura whether a cleric or a wizard cast it. The original spell might have been slightly different, and a wizard who was watching a cleric create magic armor might have trouble identifying the spell as it was being cast, but in the end the lasting effect is the same. It makes sense to allow each class to identify auras based on the knowledge skill keyed to their class. There might be some exceptions, but those are probably going to have to be adjudicated by DMs more than by overall rules sets anyway, as they would probably be unusual and/or unique cases.

Thanks for asking that question--it's something I hadn't thought about and should definitely be stated in the rules. Please, anyone else who has objections, state them. I've only rarely seen Spellcraft used in game, and while I'm sure that applications can be found for most of its uses via knowledges, I would like to be certain that there are no glaring oversights that would cause problems later...when Pathfinder pretty please adopts this version of the skills for the Beta? :)

I think that many people here are falling into the trap of assuming that barbarians are controlled by the cultural stereotype of "barbarian." Just because most of the flavor text goes that way does not mean that just because you use the barbarian class you have to be from a hunter-gatherer culture. Perhaps you are a civilized person who has learned to channel a rather nasty temper into combat power. In that case, it still works nicely with the swashbuckler/pirate theme.

In the interest of helping the OP with his request for optimizing rather than just maligning his concept, here's my two cents (bearing in mind that while I enjoy optimizing my characters for whatever I want to do, my knowledge of the classes and feats and stuff is less complete than it could be):

I think that the whirling frenzy variant is an excellent choice for a character that will be based largely on lighter fighting. You still get the STR boost if not the con, and that extra attack will be really handy in the stereotypical pirate crew on pirate crew battle.

Dread Pirate is a cool class with a lot of neat abilities, and you have a choice of whether to be honorable or not as fits your concept. Very flavorful, and very much keeping with the sort of scenario that you described for your character. The reknown abilities would be right up his alley.

Dervish is a fantastic class for fighting, but it does require a fair amount of space to move in, which might not be available on the close quarters of a ship. And the dervish dance does not work with the whirling frenzy variant extra attacks, I'm pretty sure, though it is nasty with TWF...and kusari-gama....I had a player do that once....The downside to Dervish is that it's ridiculously feat intensive, and has a class ability (finesse-able scimitars) that's awesome, but makes you wonder why a finesse based character would be picking up weapon focus scimitar to begin with....

I'm told that most people on the 3.5 CharOp boards agree that swashbuckler is really only good for three levels (until you get the nice INT to damage), so I would recommend taking those three levels, and then sticking with barbarian and prestige classes. Sorry not to comment on any others you mentioned, but I'm not as familiar with them.

Hope this helps!

I enjoy rolling for both hit points and stats. To a certain extent, it's a love of the gamble. Yes, I might get a low roll, but the fun of getting that full 10 on the fighter level is such a lure....now, having said that, my husband (my primary DM) allows us to take the average instead if we roll low. I also played under another DM who allowed us to have two other players roll the same die with us, and we got the highest of the three rolls.

I also enjoy rolling my stats, though again, we typically allow a 32 point buy if you're not satisfied with your stats. It allows for the joyous possibility of really high stats, but doesn't screw you if you roll badly.

Actually, one of the things I dislike about 4e is that they have done away with randomness in character building entirely. It makes for more balanced characters, I suppose, but I love the fun of getting something that's a little better than average.

But, having said that, I really fall into the camp of offering two options, much like 3.5 did with making stats available by 4d6 drop lowest and point buy.....but this time, let's put them in the same place.

The Black Bard wrote:

Ooooh, what if the "fancy" abilities of more powerful weapons were only unlockable by taking a feat, say "Advanced Weapon Manuvers" or such? Then you have the opportunity cost for spiked chain reach.

Good idea. I wouldn't mind getting rid of the exotic weapon category altogether, anyone with martial proficiency can use any weapon, but to use a weapons special ability you have to take the feat. Sort of like the stunts from the Exotic Weapon Master PrC from CW.

Meaning no offense, but isn't that the same, in the end, as taking Exotic Weap Prof? Either way, to use the weapon properly (i.e., with all of its abilities), you take a feat. It's a different flavor perhaps, but the mechanical benefit is exactly the same.

Honestly, I've only ever seen one person use a spiked chain--me. We were low level, and though my cleric had Improved Trip, she wasn't terribly game breaking--and got totally hosed one time when she fought a high strength fighter who could overcome her trip attempts. I guess I can see where problems can come up, but I don't understand why it's such a big thing. Seems like there should be ways of shutting it down sometimes--throw the character up against a bunch of high strength dwarves who also have improved trip and see how they like it then. As my husband says, anything a player uses opens the field for the DM using the same...and usually better. (I am not advocating shutting it down all the time--allow the player some benefit from those feats and such!)

And, FWIW, I like the idea of renaming "exotic" weapons to (insert cool name that means "weapons requiring more training"). A dwarven waraxe isn't really exotic because it's dwarven, it's exotic because it's heavier than a normal axe and requires more training--training that is provided to any dwarf trained in martial weapons because of cultural standards. (On a separate note, this would go to taking special monk weapons off the exotic list since, as other posters in other threads have pointed out, a kama equals a sickle and other such things.)

I like this thread. It makes me laugh. All threads should be this cheerful. Yay for cookies and correct grammar!

Only problem I see with rolling Spellcraft into Knowledge Arcana, etc, is that the bard ends up knowing more about magic than the full caster types, seeing as the bard has all knowledge as class skills, and gets bonuses to the checks. Not something I like.

Actually, last I checked wizards got all knowledges too.

Bards only get that if they take the time to invest ranks in the applicable knowledge skills. Yes, they get bonuses, but isn't there still the DC 10 is all you can get untrained? (My copy of A3 is in the other room, so sorry if I'm wrong.) Seems to me if a bard wants to take the time to invest ranks in Knowledge Arcana and Religion and Nature and Psionics and whatever...well, that's 4 of their 6 skill points right there. (Maybe 3 because of that bonus knowledge thing? Anyway, it's still a big chunk.) I don't see a lot of bards bothering, not when they have so many other cool skills they can get instead.

Edit: Oh, and just to stay on topic, I noticed the same thing about Casting Defensively. And agree with the aforementioned suggestion to return Concentration and roll Spellcraft into knowledges. In case you couldn't tell:)

I honestly don't see why speaking that many languages is a problem. As someone said, how many characters actually use the skill anyway? And, FWIW, in 3.0 I built a character who spoke 14 languages at 6th level. She was half-elven bard (2 racial) with an 18 INT (4 more) and max ranks in Speak Language (9) because I thought it was a cool idea that she could go anywhere she wanted and speak to anyone--especially since she was focused on storytelling, which is very language dependent. Was it game breaking? No. It just meant the party, which was in a setting without Common, could talk to anyone they met. (Also, she wouldn't be able to pull that off in Pathfinder--it would take til 9th level to do it.)

Do I think everyone should be able to do this? No, of course not. But it makes sense that someone who studies text enough to decipher script would know languages also. (Maybe they've got a terrible accent from only seeing it written--that would be a fun roleplaying concept to go with!)

And since someone above made real world comparisons, let me make one too. I had a friend in college who one semester took Spanish, Russian, German, Chinese, and Italian. I bet you he could get somewhere on Decipher Script checks. And let's not even talk about translators at the UN....

Grr, stupid website eating my post!

Anyway, my suggestion: Get rid of flat DCs for Skill Checks that involve interacting with NPCs and/or monsters.

This has already been done for Tumble (I like the new rule! Good one!). Casting defensively (for which, incidentally, there are no rules printed in Alpha 3, though Combat Casting is still in the feat section) should work on a similar mechanic. Both involve avoiding an attack of opportunity for doing something that would ordinarily provoke one, and under 3.5 rules both became similarly pointless at a certain point where even rolling a 1 meant you succeeded. But, to make them more similar and so that casters are not unfairly screwed, perhaps the check should just be made to avoid an attack of opportunity? If the attack hits, then the caster has to make a second check under the damage dealt while casting rule, which gives a second chance at not losing the spell.

On the same token, the Diplomacy rules have always bugged me (though kudos for giving the ability a duration!). Why is it equally easy to persuade the town drunk, a highly trained diplomat employed by the king for negotiation, and a Great Wyrm Red Dragon? Perhaps the check should be modified by the targets base Will Save or ranks in either Sense Motive or Diplomacy? That way when nations send negotiators for trade agreements, they don't all end up going the way of whoever got the highest initiative.

And, while I'm here, I'm going to take the time to second (third? fourth?) some previously mentioned ideas:

1. Bring back Concentration, and roll Spellcraft into the associated knowledges.
2. Each class has a minimum of 4+INT skill points.
3. More combat styles for rangers.

Well, I put my two cents on the other thread, might as well say something on this one too....

For the example of the fighter: How much time do you think that an average mid-to-high level opponent has spent watching people tumble around him? Because surely, by the time he's reached that level even as an NPC, he's had to deal with some sort of monk or rogue or whatever tumbling past him. Eventually, even the dimmest of people will have spent enough time watching this to figure out where weak points are...and to hit them, now and again. Because it will be only occasionally. Skill modifiers are easier to jump up than BAB. A first level rogue with a 14 dex who invests in skill focus can have a +9 modifier to his tumble checks vs a DC 16 against a fighter type. If you want to tumble a lot, you still can. You just have to invest more in it.

And, honestly, the fact that I might fail isn't going to stop me from tumbling into melee. Because you know what? There's still a chance--a good one--that I'm going to not take an AoO, which makes tumbling still superior to normal movement.

To go back to the mention earlier, I think agree that if they're going to change tumble DCs, they should also change Casting Defensively DCs. The OP is right--they are very similar, and the DCs should remain accordingly similar for the same reason--the fighter whose taken the time to study tumbling so that he can occasionally get past its defenses is also going to have studied spellcasters so he can get past theirs occasionally as well.

I'm opposed to flat DCs for diplomacy too, in case anyone was wondering:)

I have to admit, I like the new rule. In general, I dislike flat DCs, because after a while, the DC doesn't matter. My 6th level Battledancer has a +14 to her tumble checks. If I want to tumble past a single opponent, I don't have to roll. Ever. Because, since a nat 1 doesn't fail automatically on a skill check, I can just go. I only have to roll a 3 to tumble past 2 opponents. In two more levels, that'll be an autosuccess as well.

Now granted, this is under 3.5 rules with a synergy bonus from her 5 ranks in Jump, but she also doesn't have skill focus. Our party rogue, who has a dex four points higher than my battledancer, already autosucceeds past 2 opponents--again, without skill focus. The most common use of the skill doesn't matter...and we're only 6th level.

From the flipside, using BAB does make sense to me. Fighting a full BAB character of comparable level means I'd have to hit a DC 7 or better--or a 21. And, honestly, it makes sense from the fighter type's perspective as well. "I've spent six levels watching people tumble past me. I used to be able to hit them occasionally, but now I never can, and, further, I can't even improve to the point where I can." I mean, I guess I can sort of understand why people make the argument that maybe the fighter should have a feat or special ability, but what about rangers or paladins? And, further, isn't fighting ability supposed to be what BAB represents? Why do only people who invest in a feat learn to defend against something that happens to them all the time? (Because, let's face it, every rogue and monk worth his salt is going to have max ranks in acrobatics. Even dex based fighter-types of other classes can invest in it in PRPG and then take skill focus to make their modifier comparable.)

In summary: I like that the DC is no longer flat, and don't have a problem with the 15+. I also have yet to playtest anything, but we have a rogue and a ranger in our group who both have ranks in Acrobatics, so we'll get to see with and without class skill bonus. Should be fun. :)

I just spent half an hour typing up a post and then the forum seems to have eaten it. Grr! I'm just going to hit the high points in this one.

jennibert wrote:

If you take the time to take a favored enemy and it NEVER comes up in game, then your DM is a jerk. Either s/he should make sure that you do encounter an orc occasionally, or s/he should note during character creation that it is unlikely you're going to encounter orcs, and you might wish to choose something else.

But your character doesn't like orcs and according to the theory above, that's a good enough reason to take a level of Ranger. Not your DM's job to tell you how to make your character. And not your DM's fault for no orcs if you're playing a pregenerated module/adventure path with no orcs in sight.

Two points:

2. I always thought it was the DM's job to work with the players to make sure everyone is having fun. If I tell my DM that I want to play a ranger with favored enemy orc (which, incidentally, I did last night), then that tells him something I want from the game: to fight orcs. If we then proceed to fight nothing but kobolds, then I'll not have as much fun because I never get to use one of my abilities. Yes, I can then pick kobolds as my next favored enemy, but it still means I have a useless class feature. If, on the other hand, my DM took the time to say, "Look, I understand that your character comes from a place with lots of orcs, but there really aren't any in the place where you'll be adventuring." I would thank the DM, and then decide whether I wanted to stick with my original concept, or switch it to something that might come up more often. I can still have the orcs, but at least when it doesn't come up I'll have known it in advance.

I can see where playing modules might make this more difficult. Having never played modules (my husband loves his homebrew world and I spend most of my play time there), this aspect did not occur to me. But aside from pointing out that there are exceptions to my "DM is a jerk" statement, this seems irrelevant to the discussion, as building a character for a module you're not familiar enough with will probably end up with any character, multiclassed or not, having class features or character choices that are not useful in that scenario.

And relating to posts that came up since I began my response to the above one....I can see where cherrypicking can be bad, especially in alignment based cases (edit: looking specifically at the paladin with low mental stats mentioned by Pathos). As a DM, I'd probably be inclined to ask for a really good in-character explanation before I'd allow it. But just because some people will do that sort of thing is really not a good reason for making a blanket rule that limits multiclassing, IMHO.

So basically what you're all saying is that you're all fine with a person in your group starting out at level 1 as a rogue, getting lots of skills and sneak attack. Then level 2, actually progressing as whatever class his actual character is going to be. Because that's what this opens up.

Yes, exactly. I don't care if someone wants to level dip. If they do so, they lose out on some of the abilities of whatever their "real" class is. That's the balancing factor.

If a character doesn't like Orcs, said character doesn't need ANY levels in Ranger for favored enemy and it's even worse of a waste of a level from a character stand point if your adventure NEVER encounters an orc.

If you take the time to take a favored enemy and it NEVER comes up in game, then your DM is a jerk. Either s/he should make sure that you do encounter an orc occasionally, or s/he should note during character creation that it is unlikely you're going to encounter orcs, and you might wish to choose something else.

The point is that I don't see class as your character's job. To me, it is a set of things you can do. If you like the abilities of several different classes because that what fits your character concept, then I don't have a problem with you taking levels in those different classes. Because, if you do, you lose out on the cool higher level abilities of those classes that your single-class comrades have.

I agree that giving an option between spellcasting and shapeshifting seems an extreme idea. That said, I played a shapeshifter druid for one live session and a single fight when the game went online, and I loved the versatility of being able to do it at will. I was low level, so I only had access to the first two forms, but the speed boost and fly speed were what I enjoyed the most--made my elf capable of being all over the battlefield...and almost got him killed, but that just added to the fun. He also benefitted from the spellcasting, as the shapeshifted forms were not terribly powerful in combat, and we didn't have another healer.

I'd suggest something more along the lines of offering a choice like this:

1. You can gain shapeshifting at will, possibly with less powerful forms available (not too up on the Monster Manual, so I'm not sure what to suggest). (I;d like it to start at first level).

2. You can gain an animal companion and access to a domain. That gives you something to contribute to combat in the companion, and adds a bit to your spellcasting.

I'm not sure how balanced that is--if anything, it probably favors the shapeshifter. Perhaps some other form of spellcasting related ability could be added--bonus spells or something. But it's a start of a suggestion, anyway.

FWIW, I never thought multiclassing was that game breaking. Yes, I ran a game where the human swashbuckler/scout/fighter/dervish tended to get the most hits in combat, but she also took more hits than the gnome fighter and human cleric who were both in full plate...and they weren't combat slouches either. The character who was worst in a fight was the half-elf wizard/rogue/arcane trickster.

I see multiclassing as a way to make a character concept work that is outside the normal rules mechanics. "My character is dedicated to fighting a certain kind of foe, but I don't really care about nature" means that the character will probably multiclass ranger with something else. If the person in question isn't sure which way they want to go, getting a benefit from a favored class is a good suggestion of what to choose. A halfling might chose rogue, a dwarf fighter, a gnome bard, etc. But if the player chooses to make a gnome ranger/rogue because she likes the flavor, she isn't penalized for it like under the old 3.X rules. She just doesn't get 1 extra HP. Wow. What a terrible price to pay. I think I'll cry.

I hated the XP penalty under the old rules set. It made my attempts at making more unusual combinations more difficult and was more stifling to my creativity than otherwise. I see the new version as inline with the racial and/or regional feats that pop up in various books: They're a bit better than the normal because they encourage you to play to type. But if you choose not to, there are still plenty of other options to choose that are still good--just not extra good.

So that's my two cents.