kwiqsilver's page

I reread Searching (p. 317), and I think I was conflating it with Seek (p. 308). Searching does require more focus and physical interaction, so I can see it being impossible to do well while Sneaking or Defending (without something like a Master+ skill feat).

I read a post that implied Sneak Attack damage doubles on a critical. On p. 308, it says "dice for your weapon", so I would think SA damage does not double. But I don't see anything that explicitly excludes SA damage, like in PF1. Is my assumption correct?

In PF 1, there were clear rules on analyzing a monster (e.g. dragons were Arcana, giants were Nature, DC = 10+CR, etc.). Are there any rules on which skills cover which monsters and what the DC is? For the DC, I figured I could use the monster's level on table 10-2 p. 337, and use the rarity to determine the difficulty. But I'm not certain how to decide which skill to use. With Knowledge: Planes gone, is demonology part of Arcana, Occult, Religion, all three?

The exploration tactics (p. 316) imply that defending, searching, and sneaking are mutually exclusive. Does this mean a Rogue can't sneak and search? Or that a Fighter can't keep his guard up while looking for an ambush? Or that a Ranger can't sneak, search, and keep an arrow nocked?

Also, I read a post that said the trained in unarmored mistake will be in the errata. Have they published errata for the playtest yet? I haven't been able to find it.

Hello

I'm not sure if it's too late to suggest this level of change, but I would like to suggest that all new books use gender-neutral language throughout.

For example, page 14 of the playtest section 3 "Choose a Background" currently says, "Your character's background might represent a special aptitude she's been honing since her youth, detail her upbringing, and illuminate some other aspect of her life before she became an adventurer."

This sentence and many others in the text are heavily gendered. A gender-neutral version of this would be:

"Your character's background might represent a special aptitude they've been honing since their youth, detail their upbringing, and illuminate some other aspect of their life before they became an adventurer."

Gender should not matter, so don't use gendered pro-nouns, unless you are talking about a specific character who has chosen a particular gender, then using their pronoun of choice is appropriate.

"They" is a plural word. "He" and "she" are singular. If we're talking about one character, "it" would be the appropriate neutered word.

The Deadly definition (Rulebook p. 415) uses d6s for the Rapier example, the equipment section (Rulebook p. 180) says "Deadly d8" for the Rapier.

@Jesikah
Legolas was a Ranger. Rangers get Master and Legendary Perception at 7th and 15th level respectively.

@Doc Voodoo
With the Alertness feat, p. 163.

You can't go past Expert in a skill unless it's a Signature skill, so you couldn't take Legendary Perception, even if it existed, because no class gets Perception as a Signature skill.

So far, I've noticed the Fighter, Rogue, and Ranger have Perception roll bonuses, and the Rogue has Perception proficiency increases.

I really liked the concept of the Mystic Theurge, Eldritch Knight, and Arcane Trickster in 3, 3.5, and Pathfinder, but in practice they always seemed to suck, because the spellcasting fell so far behind.

This sounds like it could fix that problem. I plan to put the rules to use extensively in the playtest.

Also, RIP sheylinite Bard/Paladins.

They didn't say there will only ever be four multiclass archetypes, just for the playtest.

Mark Seifter wrote:

Colette Brunel wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

No, that is not the case. It's a one-time feat, not one you can take again. It's in the first sentence of my post in the quote.

That is... what I said. Perhaps you misunderstood me.

What I am saying is that a human with Natural Ambition will always be one class feat ahead of a half-elf or a half-orc, which actually matters, because class feats are strong options that directly improve a character's ability to carry out their class's specialty. That trumps gaining minor, auxiliary side benefits.

But that's not correct, so I'm not explaining well. Our example from before is Half-Elf Ezren who takes Half-Elf at 1st level and Natural Ambition at 5th to get Widen Spell when it matters more. Compare to Human Ezren who takes Natural Ambition at 1st and then <something else that isn't a class feat because he can't take Natural Ambition again> at 5th. The half-elf Ezren is not a class feat behind. Now a full elven Ezren would never be able to get that class feat, but the half-elf can.

And yet Human Ezren takes part 2 of "Insert Wizard build here" at level 5. Half-Elf Ezren has to wait till what... level 7? Further?

But human Ezren doesn't get low-light vision, the speed boost, the bonus language, or the diplomacy boost.

Joana wrote:

I understand that a PC gets better at fighting or wizarding or rogueing by practice, but I don't get why he'd get more elfy or gnomey.

If this is how the system is supposed to work, I agree with you. It's genre-contrary to get more ancestry traits as you level.

I could understand getting traits that are not based on physiology (e.g. picking up a weapon proficiency and the racial language), but picking up darkvision after first makes no sense. I'd also say picking up a halfbreed feat any time after character creation makes no sense*, as well as dropping one through retraining. The preview above doesn't list that restriction on the feat, but I'm going to assume/hope they have it in the playtest book, or add it in the final version.

* Without magic.

Charon Onozuka wrote:

edduardco wrote:

What about Research? There will be a Downtime option to Research Spells and Formulas similar to Crafting items? And if yes, would a PC able to Research Rare Spells and Formulas?

With the way rare is defined, I'd probably guess "no." Rare stuff seems to require explicit interaction with the GM, rather than being something you can do on your own as part of a general rule.

And to be fair, I personally kinda like that. After all, it lessens how special a rare spell is if any wizard can spend a week in the library and just happen to perfectly recreate the secret spell of an ancient runelord which has been lost for ages...

This is fairly accurate. Now, if you found a few rare scribbled notes that weren't the whole lost spell but enough to begin the process of research? That's a whole different animal!

Why should it be inherently more difficult to recreate a rare or unique spell? Finding a scroll or a copy in a spell book? Yes. Finding descriptions of it or notes about it in the texts of the church of Nethys? Sure. But recreating a rare spell should be no more difficult than creating a new spell.

I see the following situations:

Second hand experience
The character hears about the spell in stories, reads about it in an old text, etc.
This should be no different than if the player decides to research a spell that does the same thing as the original spell without hearing the legends first. It might not exactly replicate that spell, but it should be limited in its fidelity only by the accuracy of the records.

First hand experience
The character observes the casting and/or effect of the spell.
The character should be able to analyze the somatic, verbal, and/or material components used and gain insight to the spell. If the character can see or experience the effect of the spell it should be easier to replicate it. Seeing the spell cast multiple times should make it easier to replicate, while seeing it cast in the heat of combat, or other stressful situations, should make it harder. It should be possible, with enough observation, to exactly replicate the spell.

kwiqsilver wrote:

Etching a rune is a magical process

>.>

No, it isn't. Etching is a normal thing mundane people actually do with metal and stone work.... unless you want to claim that anyone's great-great grandparent's headstones are magical objects.

This discussion is in the context of creating magic items in the Pathfinder 2 game, not an earthly cemetery. Creating a magical rune of potency or sharpness on a scimitar is a magical process. Removing that rune is a magical process. Transferring that rune to another item would also be a magical process.

Right, so, first and foremost.

Etched runes. Just... just for the record, you know etching involves cutting designs into, say... metal, yes? This isn't a process that is erased or 'copied' just by licking your thumb and wiping it away.

Etching a rune is a magical process, I'd assume removing one is also a magical process. This is just a preview, the full rules should have a flavor text description of what's going on.

Dents? And repair? Oh, yeah. This is a level of micro I never wanted in Diablo and WoW, let alone in a table top RPG. Especially when any skill involved can just be erased by 6 gold bottles.

Agreed. If we have to start tracking HP, dents, or other values for gear any more than we do in PF 1 (where it really only comes up when you fight that bad guy who took the sunder feats), it's going to be annoying.

Interestingly, the lesser potion is the most cost efficient of the 6.

Gold cost: yes, resonance cost: no. That's part of the idea behind resonance.

Rather than:
Success
Critical Success
Failure
Critical Failure

I think it would be more logical to list them in best -> worst (or worst -> best based on your POV) order:
C S
S
F
C F

I don't think it's very clear what the costs are for each ability of the cloak. In particular, it's not clear if I have to spend resonance for each of those benefits, or just to don the cloak.
It might be better for items like this to describe the powers sequentially, e.g.:
Invest a point of resonance to don the cloak to gain X benefit.
Once donned:
Perform X action(s) to gain Y benefit(s).
Perform A actions(s) to gain B benefit(s).
...

Quote:

I like this type of archetype, because it expresses specializing in a an aspect of that class (similar to a wizard selecting a school). Two examples that come to mind are the Armor Master and Polearm Master fighter archetypes from Pathfinder 1. In these, the fighter skips some training in weapons to focus on defense, or skips some training in weapon variety to focus on a type of weapon.

The old system allowed two fighters to be very different, almost as different as a fighter and a ranger, even at first level. The new system sounds like all fighters will have the same generic base

I think you are missing that PF2 classes are already way more modular, and lots of base class features have now become optional feats (and you get a lot of feats.) Base Monks don’t even get ki powers unless they opt into them, for example.

Also, we have been assured that feat trees will be way less of a thing, so you can really throw together some wacky combinations.

I remember the Rogue and Monk preview stressing how flexible the two classes are, but the Fighter didn't strike me as more flexible than the Pathfinder 1 version, maybe because that class is the most flexible in the Core book. I reread the preview and there are phrases like "the fighter has the largest selection of feats out of all the classes" and "a conscious effort to give fighters a number of paths...These paths are pretty open". The Pathfinder 1 fighter has the largest selection of feats, and gets the most feats in the game, but still has several baked in class abilities that assume the tank style. And the second phrase sounds almost like Ranger styles, which are customization, but not at the level of a P1 archetype. If the description had been more like the Monk, where they expressly stated Monks don't get ki powers or any weapon proficiency without spending feats, it would have been more clear.

I know the feat trees are getting pruned. These archetypes are basically trees of dependent feats, so the analogy to the Pathfinder 1 feat trees (graphs technically) seemed appropriate. Having wasted feats on Mobility and Spring Attack in D&D 3.0 (when you only got character feats every third level) to get Whirlwind Attack to become a Weapon Master, I appreciate the pruning.

That's one of the key benefits; you get to keep full spellcasting, capstones, and other major features that allow you to progress in your class's main thing while still gaining prestige class style benefits.

I definitely like the prestige classes restructured as prestige archetype feat paths. I've never played a prestige class character in Pathfinder (and only one multiclass character), because so many class abilities fall behind so quickly.

As long as the classes are flexible enough that a fighter can be a heavy tank, a nimble archer, a dragoon lancer, or a quick witted swashbuckler*, without getting wasted generic class abilities (like tower shield for the last three) then I'll be happy.

* The swashbuckler is of particular importance to me, as we might convert our current campaign to the playtest rules, after playing the test adventures.

kwiqsilver wrote:

So are the archetypes that remove some abilities in exchange for others gone?

...

I suspect that the PF1 class specific archetypes can be replicated by a simple collection of class feats (or a class feat tree) - or the Dedication feat could have a class as a prerequisite if the archetype feats change a core part of the class

But that's not quite the same. For example:

One way to fix that might be to give the fighter N combat feats to choose at first level, and turn class abilities like armor training and weapon training into class feats. Actually...that sounds pretty cool. A fighter class that is just a blank slate with "class feat" as the only abilities gained. Consider that my first playtest feedback. :)

So are the archetypes that remove some abilities in exchange for others gone?

I like this type of archetype, because it expresses specializing in a an aspect of that class (similar to a wizard selecting a school). Two examples that come to mind are the Armor Master and Polearm Master fighter archetypes from Pathfinder 1. In these, the fighter skips some training in weapons to focus on defense, or skips some training in weapon variety to focus on a type of weapon.

The old system allowed two fighters to be very different, almost as different as a fighter and a ranger, even at first level. The new system sounds like all fighters will have the same generic base abilities and then just advance separately. This doesn't seem much different than feat trees, like the Pathfinder 1 Critical Focus tree, Blindfight tree, or Feint tree.

The 10th level untrained fighter would potentially be able to do something impressive involving that piano for a quick little trick (I can imagine maybe playing Mary Had a Little Lamb with one hand while bench pressing the piano with the other hand), but is completely incapable of Staging a Performance of Sonnorae's Sonata #53 (the Betrayal Sonata).

Is there some rule based reason for this? Does playing a complex piece of music require more than just succeeding at a DC 20 perform check (e.g. a skill feat or master proficiency)?

And do other skills have similar requirements such that being a master of X is more important than having a +20 bonus in X?

I don't think I like the idea that a 10th level fighter who has never touched a piano before is going to be a better pianist than a low level bard with training.

It also seems like the difference between untrained and legendary (5 points) is low enough that it'll be stuck in the shadow of the large die roll variation at lower levels or of the large level bonus at higher level.

Last Thursday (May 10), I emailed customer service about refunding my PaizoCon ticket as directed here:
http://paizo.com/paizocon/faq#v5748eaic9w73

I have yet to hear from anyone indicating that you have received my request and will process it.

Counterspell being a reaction makes sense, and would actually make counterspelling viable.

Counterspelling in 3.5/PF1e is so situational and overly complicated that I've never once seen someone actually do a counterspell.

I've used it lots of times, when fighting a teens level wizard or sorcerer.

Since there's no swashbuckler in the playtest, will there be a fighter archetype that allows for a light, nimble fighter with social skills, or will that require a fighter / rogue multiclass character?

If either of you are still looking, my Thursday night group in Ballard is looking to add one or two more. We have three players and a GM at the moment.

My group just finished Kingmaker, and after the fight with Nyrissa, I was wondering how other groups handled it.

My group consisted of a barbarian 16 wielding Briar, a monk 16, a cleric 16, and a sorcerer 16.
When we first encountered Nyrissa, nobody had any protection against the blindness effect (is there even one possible?). The sorcerer had the blindsense ability from the dragon bloodline, and entered the fable eyes shut.
The cleric went blind, wasted a turn removing it, then spent the next few rounds not doing much with his eyes closed, because he couldn't target anyone.
The monk tried to fight with his eyes closed, but with her high AC, the monk's lowish attack bonus, and the concealment miss chance, he was rolling 8 misses a round.
The barbarian averted his gaze, and swung away, only scoring one hit per round, but luckily staggering her.
The sorcerer (my character) had greater arcane sight running at the beginning of the fight, so I knew all of her magic defenses (barkskin, shield, displacement, *FIVE* resist energy fire spells--my sorcerer was capable of 200+ point of fire damage per turn with a 33 DC). I also did a decent job guessing at what her magic items did from the auras. The sorcerer spent the first few rounds casting a quickened dispel on her, followed by preparing a greater dispel to counter her spellcasting.

The fight would have probably gone slowly in her favor (the sorcerer would eventually fail a counterspell roll against maze on the barbarian, the barbarian would eventually not avert his eyes, and fail a save), and we were only scoring one moderate hit per round. The cleric player and I were discussing how we could negate her spellcasting better (which would allow the sorcerer to target her with greater dispel, removing all those protections), when our session ended. Before the next session, I was trying to figure out how we could prevent her spellcasting, and stop that blindness effect. The cleric didn't have silence ready, but the sorcerer had limited wish.

When we reconvened, I spent a round syncing up the initiative order, so it would be sorcerer, other allies, then Nyrissa, and used a limited wish to create an anti-magic field. After that, she lost her blinding effect, her AC went down to the teens, and the combat was pretty one-sided.

But not every party is going to have anti-magic field, or a wish effect. So I'm curious how others defeated her, particularly how they dealt with the blindness effect.

Noting there are already 2 apps that work with herolab is there a call for this?

I am the dev for one of the android hero lab apps so if its not doing something you want i can always work on adding the features for you and I have already done most of the work your asking for so there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

If possible, I'd prefer to remove the requirement for herolab.

So we all know there's a character tracker out there for macOS, iOS, and Windows. But there's nothing good for Android/ChromeOS, despite their overwhelming popularity. So I figured we could either wait for that other tracker to possibly get ported to Android some day in the future...maybe, or we could create our own (and make it not suck like that one does).

So who's with me? I've got some good Java skills and some ideas for how to design the engine and datastore. What I don't have are the front end skills, or the time to type in all the details about what every feat or magic item property does.

I'm looking for at least a few more developers, preferably some with Android UI experience, and some data entry volunteers.
I figure in the spirit of the OGL, we can host the project on GitHub, and release it under the GPL.

If you're interested in helping out, post here with your skill set, interest level, and contribution potential. If we get enough interest, I'll set up a github project that everybody can join.

My idea so far is to have all the game content and character sheets be json data that we store in Google Drive. The character sheet would just be a list of levels, feats, items, curses, spell effects, diseases, etc. that are currently active on the character. The character would be a singleton that has a bunch of methods to query things (e.g. Will save). Each time the player adds an active item, spell effect, level, etc., it adds its bonuses to the character singleton (if better than any existing ones of that type). Each time the player removes one of these, it removes all bonus associated with that source. (And would need to trigger a UI redraw, most likely).
That should make it fast, scaleable, and easily customized for house rules. The design is fairly easy to implement, just a LOT of typing.

Now that they've modified Weird Words to be useful, I have a usage question:

Since it's a performance, and a bard can only have one performance active at a time, does Weird Words end an active Inspire Courage? Or is this a special case, since Weird Words is instantaneous?

If WW does stop IC, does the IC stop immediately, or run until the end of the bard's turn?

My bard's typical combat strategy is to start IC and cast Good Hope in the first round, and then shoot his bow, or cast mind control spells in subsequent rounds. But WW would be a useful substitute for the bow in some cases, especially in rounds where I can't benefit from Rapid Shot and Haste. However, if it ends my IC, then it sucks for the party as a whole.

I'm trying to form a group that will play on Sunday afternoons into the evening. The specific hours and frequency of Sundays are flexible, but I'd like to start in October.
Ideally the group would include multiple people who wish to occasionally GM (including me) in addition to playing. The plan would be to have one GM run his campaign for a few sessions, then switch to another campaign, with another GM, rather than having different GMs run the same campaign.

I would start the GMing with the Skull & Shackles adventure path. I've never really been a fan of printed adventures, but this one seems pretty good, and Pirates!

I have space to host the game sessions.

If you're interested, send me a message through the board or post below.

So is there any hope of getting this ability unnerfed?
I've used it twice as written in this post, and it was only useful because it's my only means of doing bludgeoning damage, and there were multiple swarms of tiny animals to fight.
In other circumstances, it's better to use inspire courage and a bow.

I think the one shot per target limit needs to go away. And if that puts it too far on the powerful side of the spectrum, just limit the charisma based damage to once per target.

I'm playing in a Kingmaker game, where we've just started making contact with Varnhold, our neighbor to the East (NO SPOILERS!!!!). Because of that, I was thinking of setting up diplomatic and trade edicts (from the optional kingdom rules).

I did the math and these rules look completely broken. My analysis is below. Has anyone tried to use these yet? If so, are you just failing constantly, or did you change the rules dramatically?

Diplomatic Edicts:
DC = 10 + your kingdom's Infamy + the target kingdom's special Size modifier + your kingdom's special Size modifier + alignment difference modifier + relationship modifier + the target kingdom's attitude – your kingdom's Fame – BP you spend on bribes or gifts

A country like Brevoy would have a special size modifier of 100 or more, making the DC for two countries of that size over 200. Now, sure you could spend 200BP in bribes to pull the DC down to something manageable, but to recoup that cost from the benefits of the edict would take decades. The money would be much better spent on internal improvements (or simply on armies to conquer the other country).

Trade Edicts:
The formula is completely irrational.
The DC for the three kingdom rolls is
* DC = CDC + RM + LM + Corruption - Productivity
The Control DC (CDC) is
* CDC = 20 + size + grids
The Trade Route Length (TRL) is the length of the trade route weighted by terrain type. (This part makes lots of sense...until you see how they use it).
The Route Modifier (RM) is
* RM = TRL / 10
The Length Modifier (LM) is
* LM = max(0, size - TRL)
Substituting...
* DC = Size + Grids + TRL/10 + max(0, Size - TRL) + 20 + Corruption - Productivity
So (assuming the TRL doesn't exceed the size) we get
* DC = 2*Size + Grids - 0.9 * TRL + 20 + Corruption - Productivity

So it's really hard for a large kingdom to engage in trade. But the longer the trade route, the easier it is, because you can eliminate one of those size addends, by having a TRL >= 1.1*size.

We would have to get our kingdom bonuses up to around 80 to even have a chance to make these rolls. Brevoy, at around 400 hexes in my rough estimation, would need to have kingdom rolls around +800.

Restov and Varnhold (less than 10 hexes away each) are too close for us to trade with, but we would have no problem making the rolls to set up a route with any city 30 hexes or more away. We could take our trade goods through Varnhold, and through Restov, to New Stetven, but we'd be too incompetent to sell anything as we pass through those two cities.

Don't forget about being immune to gravity and walls.

And your own clothes; you'd walk right through them. But don't worry about the public indecency charge, because the guards would never be able to impede your movement away from them.

Why did you pick Townsville?

I grew up in Townsville, Australia.

It's a Powerpuff Girls reference.

My group finally built a bank, so I added the Ultimate Campaign buildings to the toolkit.

I PM'd Tinalles about adding the changes to his distribution, but for anyone in a hurry:

Get this file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pwujbe48xtthntd/city-builder.tbz
Untar it in your city-map-toolkit directory.
It contains buildings.css and buildings-sprite-[123].jpg
Use the new buildings. The name to use is the listed name, in lowercase, with dashes replacing spaces.

So they extra-nerfed it? Great...
Using one round of performance for inspire courage is going to work out better in many cases (especially when fighting small groups--where the bard can't fire all the sounds, and when working with a large group--where the only bound to inspire courage targets is their ability to perceive the performance) than using 6-10 rounds of it on this attack. 10 rounds of performance can be expensive if the party gets into multiple fights per day. And yes, eventually the bard can do this as a standard, then restart a different performance as a move (then swift), but that's an extra use of performance, and the bard doesn't even benefit from it! Or the bard can choose to launch fewer words to conserve performance, but then his damage output drops accordingly.

If they're going to eliminate the ability to stack shots on a single target, removing the save is a good start, but they should probably also just make it non-weapon based sonic damage. That would both prevent it from becoming useless at high level, and fit more with the concept of the sound striker. Sure it wouldn't affect certain targets, but any bard should know the defenses of his enemies.

Also, maybe add verbiage that indicates the bard can use this as a single shot performance while maintaining inspire courage, etc. In this case, it would help the sixth level bards use the power without losing inspire courage for a full round, and save the higher level bards a move/swift.

Can I retrain to get suggestion back?

Also...
for anyone else who thinks the water looks purple, find this line in main.css:
.water { background: #00f; }

And play around with the color value("#00f"). I went with #07f (no red, half strength green, full strength blue) and it looks fairly water-like.

Next, I'm going to see if I can use a table or something to put multiple districts on the same page.

For anybody still using this (I recently discovered it for a kingmaker campaign I'm part of), here's how to make the district borders link to other districts:

Assume you have:
Townsvile-Central.html and Townsville-North.html. North is (obviously) on the north edge of Central.
In Townsville-Central.html, change your north border to this:
<div onclick="location.href='Townsville-North.html';" class="border" id="north"><span>Townsville North District</span></div>

And in Townsville-North.html, change your south border to this:
<div onclick="location.href='Townsville-Central.html';" class="border" id="south"><span>Townsville Central District</span></div>

That's also assuming they're in the same directory on the webserver. If they're not, you'll need to modify the relative URL or go absolute.

It's also assuming you don't have internal walls or canals. If you do, just change the class to "border wall" or "border water".

You can put in a link to anything you choose. Neighboring districts just seems like the most likely choice.

I had a GM tell us that our enemies could take attacks of opportunity while under the effect of Hideous Laughter, because an AoO doesn't count as an "action".

That sounds counterintuitive, but I cannot find anything in the rules that specifically contradicts it. The best I can find is the statement that AoOs require that the character threaten, and that threatening requires the character be able to make melee attacks.

I'm looking to start a regular game on Sunday afternoons - evenings either in Seattle, or somewhere nearby. (If I find four people who live in Bellevue, I'm willing to drive across the bridge to you).

I'm a willing part-time GM, but I want to play at least half the time. I've played Pathfinder since 2010, 3/3.5 for years before that, WoD, Shadowrun, AD&D 1st & 2nd, etc.

If you're interested, post here or contact me through the board.

Other locations for the search engine to index:
Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Renton, East Side, Bothell, Kenmore, Shoreline, Edmonds

kwiqsilver wrote:

Does anyone know if there has been any progress on this issue?

I have an open support case with Apple over it.
I installed acrobat, but it really sucks: it doesn't remember view settings, it doesn't support full screen (which I need on my tiny 13" Air), the UI is not intuitive.

I found a work around which seems to solve the problem:

Right click on Preview in the Applications folder then click on Get Info.

Click in the tick box for 'Open in 32-bit mode'.

And that's it. Solved the problem for me...

And with that, acrobat is in the trash!

I discovered a trick for those who like to view two pages side-by-side. The books start on a right side page, so if you display two up, you get what would be the front and back of the same piece of paper in the physical book. However, with preview, you can make a duplicate with a blank page before or after the first page, and any pages that the layout guys intended to have side-by-side (like the chapter opening artwork) are seamlessly side-by-side.

Does anyone know if there has been any progress on this issue?
I have an open support case with Apple over it.
I installed acrobat, but it really sucks: it doesn't remember view settings, it doesn't support full screen (which I need on my tiny 13" Air), the UI is not intuitive.

I'm moving to the area (Kenmore, at the north tip of Lake Washington) in a few weeks and am looking for a Pathfinder group. I have years of experience in D&D from 2E to 3.5, but have recently switched to Pathfinder.
I'm looking to join or start a group. I have experience as a GM as well, and am willing to run in a multi-game group if no dedicated GM can be found.
Feel free to contact me here, or at jasonmajors AT gmail DOT com

Have you found any groups? I'm moving to the area in a couple weeks and looking for a game.

If you're using feats from 3.5 books, I highly recommend Practiced Spellcaster (from the Complete Arcane or Complete Divine). It gives you a +4 bonus to caster level math (SR penetration, duration, damage, dispel, etc.), but not to spell access, up to your total character level.

So if you took it for wizard, you'd have the spell selection of a level 17 wizard, but those spells would be as powerful as those of a level 20 wizard. And if you took it for cleric (it's a separate feat for each base class), you'd have the selection of a level 13 cleric, and your spells would be as effective as a level 17 cleric's.

I'd take it around level 3 and 5, because at lower levels, casting a spell as a third-level caster versus a sixth-level caster, is a huge difference, while at super epic levels, you'd hardly notice the difference.

Sneak attack on spells has been possible since 3.0. That's part of the concept behind the arcane trickster prestige class.
The important things to remember are:
1) The spell has to have an attack roll (generally touch or ranged touch).
2) The spell must do hit point or ability damage; not drain, penalty, etc.
3) The sneak attack damage is of the same type as the spell damage (e.g. scorching ray sneak attack damage is fire, acid splash sneak attack damage is acid). Normal resistance and vulnerabilities apply.
4) If the spell does any non-hit point damage, the sneak attack damage is hit point damage (you can't drain somebody's entire Int score with a sneak attack powered ray of stupidity).
5) Spells that have multiple attacks (e.g. scorching ray), or do ongoing damage (e.g. acid arrow), only do sneak attack damage on the first hit, or first round.

With oozes as the only creatures I can find with an immunity to sneak attacks, sneak attack spells are *much* better in Pathfinder than in 3.5.

I suggest trying to learn at least one offensive, defensive, and utility spell per level. And as you get better versions of spells (greater invisibility, overland flight, etc.), swap out the lower level version for added flexibility.
Minimize overlap in your spell selection. Having two spells that do mostly the same thing is a waste of your scant resources.
And of course, one of my favorite spell combinations (once you hit 12th level): feeblemind followed by a quickened ray of stupidity. It puts fighters (and others with weak will saves) into a coma they rarely wake up from.

I've seen a few suggestions for a crossbow in the previous posts. If your GM allows it, take the launch bolt 0-level spell from spell compendium instead. It's the same thing, but you don't have to carry a crossbow (just the bolts), or spend a move action reloading it (it's a free action to draw the bolt). Or just use acid splash: there's no save or SR, and your chances of hitting with a ranged touch attack versus a ranged attack are probably going to be superior enough to make it do about the same damage.
In general though, past fourth or fifth level, if your sorcerer is using a weapon, you're doing something wrong. My Sorcerer 4/Rogue 3/Arcane Trickster 2 owns a dagger that I've only ever used for coup de grace attacks.

You'll need to move through cover or concealment, hide, and then throw. Or use the sniper option under the stealth skill, if you can succeed with the -20 modifier.
Another excellent option that I use with my arcane trickster: greater invisibility...everybody's flatfooted to me!

The scroll (or a wand, staff, etc.) would work, but you'd expend one for every day spent enchanting. A better trick would be find a first level cleric and pay him to assist you (or if you're evil, just charm him into doing it).

Multiple characters can work together to create an item. The feat, spell(s), gold, (and XP pre-Pathfinder) can all be provided by different characters.