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Our solution is just to bump the characters to lvl 4, giving the spider a INT 2.

In the Cavalier Mounts splat book, there are several mindless vermin that the Cavalier can take. The campaign we're starting is going to take place primarily underground, so a typical horse or dog isn't going to work. My player really wants to ride a spider, which I have no problem with.

So, the splat book states that these animal companions should only be used for the Cavalier, since they are domestic animals and not suited for the Ranger's or Druid's purpose. The issue I'm having is the spider is mindless (- INT) which means the spider gets no feats, no skills, and only 1-2 tricks. The Cavalier states that the mount is always considered Combat Trained and gains Light Armor Prof as a bonus feat. RAW it appears that the mount isn't combat trained and doesn't gain the benefit of the feat. Plus, it appears the mount won't gain any feats or skills until lvl 4 when they gain an INT score, meaning they miss out on a few feats and skills. I'm trying to figure out how to fix this issue.

I have several ideas:
1) Training collar: A mindless creature wearing this collar is considered to have an INT 2.
2) Give the spider the lvl 4 +2 INT bonus at lvl 1. Possibly rework WIS to an 8 and give +2 WIS at lvl 4.
3) Claim the mount is specially trained and gains Combat Training and Light Armor as long as it's being ridden. Don't know how to work Handle Animal in this situation when not riding the spider. Either the spider will gain feats/skills but not benefit, retroactively gain all feats and skills when it reaches lvl 4, or just gains the feats/skills from lvl 4 onwards missing out on a lot of good stuff.

Personally, I think the first idea works the best. Looking for other options and opinions on my thoughts.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'm completely opposed to Barbarians, simply because they have a habit of killing themselves when they drop out of rage. I know there's the new Rage Archetype that'll allow you to put your bonuses in Str and Dex instead of Con, but Pathfinder has left a sour taste for Barbarians.

Oracle of War just doesn't fit the setting, that was what I tried looking at first.

I'll look into the Sohei Monk. The Zen Archer monk is my favorite and I was looking to make him first. However, again, I don't think the setting works for Monk.

It sounds like I should go Ranger or possibly Magus, if I can get Magus to work the way I want it to. In the small party, a Melee spell caster would probably be best.

Starting up a new Pathfinder campaign and it was decided it will be a Drow campaign in the Underdark. I've decided on going with a Male Drow "Fighter" who wields a Falchion. My party will be a Cleric and a base-TWF Ranger. We're starting at lvl 2 and will probably get to around lvl 5-7 before we switch to something else.

I'm debating between going THW Ranger and THW Fighter. I don't want to step on my other ranger's toes, so I'll be looking into Archetypes to ensure we aren't exactly the same.

So far, I see the differences as THF Fighter gets more Feats where-as THF Ranger gets more utility. Thoughts?

Edit: I had the sudden thought of rolling up a Falchion wielding Magus. Might be interesting...

Search for Pullman, WA

This is the college I attended many, many moons ago. It is roughly the size of a Hex. This town holds about 24,000 folks (Washington State University is 19,000 of them).
...
Now go north of Pullman, to Garfield. This town holds about 600 folks. It's about the size of one of the three NPC settlements. It occupies about a 4th of a Hex. A very large PC Settlement would be something roughly this size.

Now to give all that some scale, go west to Mount St. Helens. The mountain would fill approximately 4 Hexes (2x2).

Pullman appears to be about 2km x 5km in size, making it roughly 10 hexes total. Garfield is 2km x 1km making it roughly 1-2 hexes in total. Mount St Helens appears about right, depending on how you encompass it.

And this is my point that Hexes are sounding larger than they really are. It sounds like a settlement should take up the majority of a hex. This leaves very little room for anything besides.

Also something to keep in mind: When America was first settled a typical family of 5 needed 40 acres of land just to survive. And they weren't even self-sufficient; they still had to trade to get materials and food they didn't produce. To put into context, 40 acres is 2 hexes.

Fast travel shouldn't be safe for several reasons.

First, since Fast Travel takes time (not instant), you don't want to force the user to spend time watching his monitor and do nothing. The times of WoW fast travel mounts are over. They weren't fun. they didn't make the world seem bigger. They added no value in any form. Whenever I used them, I simply clicked the button, saw it would take 15-30 minutes and walk away. This is not a good thing. Eve has fast travel right with their Auto-Pilot. Sure you could use it, but its very risky. And if you don't babysit it, you'll come back to an exploded ship.

Secondly, as was pointed out already, Safe Fast Travel would make for some very odd and exploitable attacks.

Third, if Fast Travel was safe there would be almost no use for Hideouts since everyone would fast travel. I do believe Fast Travel and Hideouts deserves its own thread (How will members in a hideout have the ability to break the Fast Travel without breaking immersion?).

On the topic of Fast Travel and movement speeds: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Make Monks be MUCH faster than every other class. At cap, their base speed should be 300% greater than its counterparts, just like the PnP.

Overall, I'm ok with 4 game days = 1 real day. It does create a bit of a structured time frame, but the days pass relatively quickly. One thing I would suggest is to have the Day to Night switch happen in scales, similar to the changing sunrise. In this way, winter would have more Night hours and Summer more Day hours. This is also assuming that Golarian flows in an ellipitcal pattern to its sun (or follows conventional physics at all).

I'm NOT in agreement of making Fast Travel safe. I am, however, in agreement that Hideouts should have the ability (gained or given) to spot not only Fast Travel but normal travel as well.

On the topic of movement speeds, simply animating the character to "Always Run" would be sufficient. Yes, your character is as much distance as if you're walking, but nobody will really care because your character appears to be moving "as fast as s/he can". Even in Skyrim the default is to "Always Run" with Shift-click walking.

In multiple threads I keep reading about how some people think the hexes are going to be ENORMOUS and contain a settlement a piece and ect. I want to get down and assess the actual size and complexity we can expect from a hex.

For starters, each hex is 1.2 km X 1.2 km (about 3/4 mi from edge to edge). While this may seem quite large, it's not. Looking at the Philedephia pic provided in an earlier dev blog, no city on the map can fit within just 1 hex. Likewise, comparing the Crusader Road map there's only a dozen or so towns currently on the map (and only 3-4 being considered so far).

This leaves the big question of what I'm getting at and what we can expect. We should be able to expect a single settlement taking up more than a hex. Also, hexes with settlements will contain little else beyond what goes into a settlement.

I would expect about 1-4 hexes minimum between settlements, to allow for settlement growth. I expect there to be large portions of the map dedicated to strictly wilderness, hideouts, and the occasional Inn. It should take 10-20+ minutes to walk from one settlement to the next.

Thinking about it in terms of Eve, not every node has a PoS. Typically, a PoS is set up in a protected area and used to harvest the surrounding nodes. I see settlements working the same way, with the ability to expand a settlement into adjacent hexes.

This is a bit off topic, but I had an amazing thought the other night talking with my gf.

Player generated content is an amazing idea for ensuring the game does not become stagnant and that their's always something new and fresh. There are cases everywhere of good player content: Shards of Delaya (EQ), Neverwinter Campaigns, Dawn of the Ancients, Starcraft MMO, et. al.

Instead of just allowing players to generate content, how about allowing players to generate their own game shards? Allow players to lease server shards and develop their own personal content for that shard. In this way, you have private servers but are still generating revenue since everything is run from the Developers side.

By the by, I would LOVE to see the Devs in game as the Golarion deities.

@Nihimon I was including the parking lot, though the building is 1/2 mi (approx 1 km) from one end to the other.

@Valkenar It sounds like if the right character uses the right skill in the right place they will locate the hideout. A group designed to take out hideouts will have this person. Therefore, the only thing they don't have is the coordinates of where to look.

If constructions sites are static, they will easily be able to look it up in a spreadsheet. Or just run around the world and make their own spreadsheet, marking every construction spot for a hideout and every hideout they encounter. Getting the right character with the right skill is trivial and always will be.

As said, locating the hideout should be harder than "Stand on this spot and click this skill". It should involve scouring the wilderness looking for signs, tracking the bandits back to their lair, or interrogating a bandit for the location of his hideout.

Ryan mentioned that the portal to enter/exit the hideout would be separate from the hideout by at most a few hundred meters. If discovering the location of the hideout means discovering the location of the portal, then that would fulfill what I'm looking for in a hideout.

With the assumption that there will be about 100 logged in users per hex, I'm sure that each hex will only have between 1-5 hideouts (5-10 users per hideout). There will probably be close to 5-10 hideout construction sites. Each hex is only 1.2 km X 1.2 km. How many bandit camps would you expect to run into during a 10 minute walk?

On a side note, the building I work in is the size of a Hex.

I'm pretty sure hideouts weren't really set to be standard permanent content, IE when someone attacks and defeats a hideout it dosn't change owners, it is permanently destroyed. Also judging by the PVE content section the hideouts will likely appear with random pve areas.

Even after the Hideout is destroyed, it sounds like the construction site will become available. And that construction site would be at the exact coordinates of the previous hideout. A hideout should be secretive. Knowing where the hideout was built isn't so secretive, even if you can't "see" it you can just find a friend who can. There should be more effort into locating a hideout than simply standing on a known coordinate and rolling a skill check. Locating the Hideout should be an adventure in and of itself. It should involve Player skill and coordination, not a spreadsheet and the right character ability.

I'd suggest that many structures could/should have possible upgrades to have the interdiction function of a hideout. There are plenty of stories of inns with shady histories and hidden basements, or a Raubritter (robber knight) attacking travelers from his tower. It would also make it harder to find the bandits when a hunting camp, livery stable, or fishing shack could just be a front.

This is an awesome idea. From what we know, though, a Hideout is nothing more than a hidden place with storage out in the wilderness. From this, any building can be considered a hideout, and probably be even more hidden. The only thing that the Hideout appears to have over the other buildings is the entrance is hidden. It would be awesome if each building had private meeting places, though (probably just private chat rooms to start).

The idea of having pre-defined construction sites works for me with everything except Hideouts. The biggest issue I have with setting pre-defined hideouts is, as stated before, it lends to spreadsheeting the world out.

A Hideout's location shouldn't be known. It breaks immersion a little. There are two situations I see happening. First, a band of greifers with the skill to find Hideouts can go to each construction site for one and greif away. Secondly, a band of thieves looking for the construction site will determine someone got there first because they can't build their Hideout.

Hideouts should be "easily" transportable. The group should be able to pack up and move should they need to.

Zones should be defined for Hideouts instead of setting specific coordinates. Basically, instead of having the Entrance to the hideout be determined separately from the hideout, allow the entire hideout to constructed within that perimeter. This would allow for an increased amount of time for the people in the hideout to escape/mount an attack on those trying to find their hideout.

I'm rather excited for this initiave for several reasons. First, and foremost, I love the idea of a Pathfinder MMO. I love the world, the stories, and the system. I'm hopeful that PFO will not follow in STO and DDO footsteps of lots of combat. It'd be nice to see more options than "I stab him with my sword".

I am quite hesitant to call this project a "pay-to-play beta". I will admit that under the covers it looks just like that model. This appears more like Agile Development, where an initial product (albiet, a percentage of the final product) is shown to the customers to allow customer feedback to control the growth of the project.

Also, it seems to be a great marketing plow. Only allowing 4500 people a month into the game creates an elitist feel to the game.

Overall, I would like to see this model adopted for more MMOs as this opens up a lot of design flexibility. With this type of development plan, it wouldn't be beyond the games design to have single, permanent events that will change the shape of the world and bosses that will only spawn once. Instead of spending millions creating a static world players will beast through in a few months, PFO will be spending a magnitude less over the course of years developing new content for players to consume. And with middleware reducing dev costs, that's even more money that will be spent on content, game design and growth.

The greatest issue I see with Barbarian is the sheer number of "Once per rage" rage powers. They feel way too much like Encounter Powers. I'm not a fan. I really like the few Rage Powers in Ultimate Combat that cost additional Rage Rounds to use. This is what I really wanted to see for the Barbarian.

After looking through some of the DPR Olympics and running a few searches, all I can really find are 1-3 lvl dips into Barbarian.

I forgot about Pounce. That is an amazing ability. I need to head back and catch up on DPR Olympics. Ironsides was the last one I read.

Superstitious is risky. If allies can't heal you, you have a high chance of keeling over when you leave rage. Combined with Urban Barbs Controlled Rage, and I have no problem at all (never take Con).

I need to read the Barb entries for DPR Olympics before making any more claims about the Barb.

This topic is probably one that has already been beaten to death, but I've been away for long enough to completely miss the Ultimate Combat release. Finally got an opportunity to look over UC...

I was really hoping that UC would boost the strength of the Barbarian. My initial impression is this did not happen. There are some cool things Barbs get, but nothing that makes me want to roll a Barbarian.

Barbarians seem to be getting the shaft in Pathfinder. The Rage powers are nice flair, but the majority are only usuable once per rage OR completely situational OR suffer from MAD.

I really like some Archetypes available, especially the new Urban Rager. Yet I still feel the Barbarian is gimped compared to the rest of the classes. The Barbarian seems even weaker than a Bard or Rogue.

What on-paper value do you gain from playing a Barbarian?

I really like the Advanced Template idea!!

I'm currently running the Serpent's Skull AP for my group. When we started 2 of 6, we increased the group size to 6. The party is just tearing through my monsters. I started giving them max HP, but that doesn't help too much. Adding Advanced Template + Max HP should provide a decent challenge without increasing the number of monsters.

A counter question to your Rope Trick dilemma: How did you counter the use of Mordenkaiden's (sp?) Mystical Mansion from 2e?

It sounds like your players have adapted to Pathfinder faster than you did. Instead of quitting, maybe it's time for someone else to take the GM reigns so you can get a different creative perspective.

Currently, I'm converting the original Tomb of Horrors (I hear wizards made the 3.5 too easy) into Pathfinder to spur my creative skills. Being a young GM, I've concentrated too much on combat and not enough on riddles and puzzles.

Quote:

ITs nowhere stated that it takes a swift action to activate forgotten trick

It states all Ki tricks are activated by swift actions under the Ki pool ability.

Actually, it states

Each of these powers is activated as a swift action. A ninja can gain additional powers that consume points from her ki pool by selecting certain ninja tricks.

This suggests that the all tricks in the Ki Pool ability take Swift actions. It also states under each ability whether it takes a Swift, Standard, Move, or Immediate action. Therefore, Forgotten Trick costs no actions to use.

In regards to multiple uses of Forgotten Trick, Hayoto Ken was right. Forgotten Trick allows you the use of one ninja trick for a number of rounds. I don't see an issue blowing 10 Ki for an addition +100ft sneak attack with Deadly Range.

As for "One free use", I call BS since the Monk gets none. If Ult Combat releases Monk "one free use" Ki abilities, I will forgive the ninja, though.

+1 for not broken as written, though +1 for additional clarification.

When does a creature get to roll a will save for "Disbelief"?

This question is in terms of Shadow Conjuration, Shadow Evocation, Silent Image, and any others I don't know about.

When does a creature count as interacting with the above mentioned?

Looks like you've got quite a following, dwtempest.

I'd also like a copy of those puzzles.

Referring to a few previous posts, the rules for opposed checks read "exceed the target". There were two examples given as well, Perception vs. Stealth and Bluff vs Sense Motive. Who's roll becomes the target for these?

One party has to set the target, with the other needing to exceed it. I can't decide who's action would get the priority. In most instances, I will default to the Player's benefit. The players will set the target that the NPCs will have to exceed. This gives the Players a slight advantage.

I have played "Defender wins" in Robotech (Roll for dodge), Serentity, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds and DnD. I cannot say which of these systems where house-ruled this way or which were RaW. I was a player, so didn't really care too much.

Roller wins. Whoever is actively rolling is the one that wins.

I bring to question opposed checks, let's say Bluff and Sense Motive. In this case, either can initiate the check. This is especially in my games where I don't call for a roll until the RP is done or a player requests one.

Another good example would be a Guard actively perceiving a town square. A pick pocket enters the square and rolls a SoH. Who wins on a tie?

Also, it's not a flat 5% variance either way. There are waaayyyyyyyyy more variables involved. If all you were doing was rolling a d20 with no other modifiers, then it might be 5%. However, with all sorts of static and variable additions to the end result AND target number, it is a vastly different equation and changes from situation to situation.

Edit: However I'm not the greatest at maths, so that could just be only at the upper and lower ends of the spectrum. I'm not really sure. I just know that +2 to attack is not a flat 10% bonus to success.

You are correct in your edit, mostly. If you need a 10 to hit and you get a +2 to attack, that equals to a flat 10% bonus since now you need an 8 to hit. However, if you need a 2 to hit and get a +2 to attack, you won't be gaining anything since 1 always misses. On the other side of the spectrum, you could increase your chance of success by 0%, 5%, or 10% depending on how close to the difficulty a nat 20 is for you.

Many games have it, Pathfinder doesn't.

"Defender Always Wins" is a ruling that states the attacker must EXCEED the defenders DC, be it AC or opposed checks. Pathfinder sets forth that all rolls must MATCH the difficulty.

Taking this to a statistics perspective, DAW gives a 5% sway to the defender. Whereas, matching gives a 5% sway to the attacker.

Which paradigm do you use and why?

I agree with Doc's assessment.

In regards to Returning, I thought it was only possible to catch as many returning weapons as you had free hands. Therefore, only able to catch 2 returning weapons at the start of your turn.

You can be the party healer with very little investment on your part.

Grab all of the Inflict spells from your free Cure or Inflict. Pick up Cure Light Wounds and Cure Light Wounds, Mass as spells known. Then grab Craft Wand at 5th level. You can craft 1d6+1 Cure wand for just 375 gold. Make the party invest into UMD and give you money for the wand crafting. Heal the party out of combat with wands. Currently, my party is being healed by just a Cure Light Wounds wand. I'm not sure how well the CLW wand will scale into higher levels, though.

Mass Inflict is your best option for massive bleed. 1d8+10 (Will 1/2) with 3 bleed at lvl 10. I don't see an easier way until then.

Don't take Mobility. Run and gun tactics aren't your thing. Instead, consider grabbing a Light Shield and Shield Focus for an AC boost. As long as we're talking defense, grab Improved Fort as well.

Very nice build.

As said, as soon as you are dispelled, you are quite worthless, though. This probably can be said about 90% of all characters, though.

The only thing that can kill you is random chance. A failed "Save or Die" would do it, but you can only fail on a natural one. Using abilities like Touch of Chaos and Vision of Madness would help with this. It would be enough to frighten you, but probably not enough to kill you.

"Rocks fall, Shioji make his reflex save and teleports away, everyone else dies".

@Brassbaboon:

I want to point out a few things:

Firstly, Doc never called you arrogant. He stated your post had an "arrogant presentation", which it did.

Secondly, Doc was upfront about his frustrations. He clearly stated when he was being touchy about things.

Thirdly, all you have done is attack everyone who disagrees with you and tell us you are right and we are wrong. You have yet to post anything useful for the OP.

Lastly, you continue to make fallacious arguments. Real world people can easily be represented by PF rules. Personally, I like to think of myself as a 4th lvl Expert with a Skill Focus in Profession (Computer Scientist).

@STR Ranger: You bring up an interesting point. My knowledge of the military is limited to Wiki and Media. From those I have gathered that Army prefer to be labeled "soldiers, Navy "sailors", Air Force "airmen" and Marines "Marines". Though I do agree that all of the enlisted can be called "soldiers" when referring to the military as a whole.

Edit: @brassbaboon again: I presented you with the PF equivelents of your trick shots. Your response was to flame Doc and tell me I'm wrong. Please stop being unreasonable and show us in PF numbers how those tricks you show us are impossible.

My first question was very poorly worded.

Rewording: How many rounds at the start of combat should a player use to cast short duration self-buffs?

I've heard from the boards that a typical adventuring day should be 4 encounters of about 4-5 rounds on average. If it takes 4 rounds for the Battle Cleric to buff himself to be useful, he's no longer useful. The rest of the party can take out the BBEG before the cleric is ready. A good scout could allow the party several rounds before the initiative roll to prep buffs, but those aren't the encounters I'm referring to.

What is the maximum # of rounds that should be used to cast 1 min duration self-buffs?

When players use 10 min/lvl buffs, how does the gm know when they wear off?

I have an Oracle of Bones in my Serpent's Skull campaign. She is lvl 4 now, going for a straight Necormancer build. She has taken Death's Touch and Undead Servitude as her 2 revelations, probably going to pick up either Bleeding Touch or Raise the Dead. I feel that Raise the Dead is quite underpowered, so probably will go with Bleeding Touch. Didn't realize how powerful it really was till just now. It's an additional 2 points of dmg a round at lvl 5 and there's no save.

I wanted to say that you made a poor choice with Armor of Bones, but after attempting to build my case I'm going to suggest to my player she take Armor of Bones at 5th lvl.

Pick up a 2 handed melee weapon and Power Attack. Falchion if you happen to be half-orc, Spear otherwise. This is assuming you have a Str of 14, which you should to assist making your touch attacks. You have med BAB, invest a little to ensure you're not useless when out of spells and Extrodinaries.

You are the Bad Touch Cleric. Look for picking spells that will debuff or control the battlefield.

Your tactics should be:
1) Assess need for support spells
2) Close into melee with BBEG
3) Inflict as you will get bleed dmg regardless
4) Death's touch since Touch AC is lower and no Will save
5) Spear until dead.

You shouldn't look to use more than 25% of your spells/day or death's touch unless your DM allows for the 15min work day.

Let me first say that I agree with the consensus of talk to the gm and think about leaving depending on his/her response. In the DM's defense, there was more you could have done besides running as has already been established from previous posts.

As per your decision based on your alignment, I don't believe leaving the villagers to die was a Good thing to do. It wasn't Chaotic either. The Chaotic Good thing to do would have been stay in the village and kill every creature threatening the villagers. You are chaotic, you do not care about their pacifistic laws. You are good, you care about innocents being slaughtered for no reason.

Everybody's concept of alignment is different. Personally, I do not allow my party to choose alignment. Instead, I assign alignments after a session or two based on their character's actions and personality.

To suggest that increasing the range limits on daggers and hand axes by 50% is somehow unbalancing the game is honestly laughably ridiculous.

It's not unbalancing the game for the majority of thrown weapons. I would be careful to not increase the range for anything at 30ft range (javelins, chakrams, ect). Shurikens are in need for the biggest boost to range. It doesn't make sense that a Chakram gets 30ft but a shuriken gets 10. I'd forgive the shuriken its 10ft range if it had the 3.0 rule of being able to throw 3 at a time.

I'm suprised that in a thread about throwing weapons nobody has mentioned the Hurling Barbarian. Suprising that even he only gets a 10' boost to thrown range.

It's quite obvious that thrown weapons are greatly hindered compared to bows. With exception to shuriken, drawing a thrown weapon is a move action unless you have Quick Draw (correct me if I'm wrong). It's also unclear if you can full attack with the "Returning" property. A hurler is expected to have Returning Distance ammunition with the Far Shot feat and is still only able to throw 2 things a round at a max distance of 100' at a -4 penalty. 3.5 had a hurler prestige class to offset this, wonder if PF will be getting one as well.

I just had a sudden thought of a Halfling Alchemist using a Halfling Sling to throw bombs... *Runs to attempt to build the character*

I could not find the spells linked to creating variant zombies/skeletons.

Personally, I like the RP value in creating undead that you then must gain control over. I also like the idea of daily checks on intelligent undead. Since the amount of undead you can control with Animate Dead is not counted towards Command Undead, you can control Oracle LVL HD of Intelligent undead and Oracle LVL *4 HD of zombies and skeletons.

As for feats and skills, the only feat that I can find to help Necromancers is Improved Channeling.

I want to build a necromancer with the Oracle of Bones. So far, the only way to pull this off seems to be Animate Dead/Create Undead, Raise the Dead, and Undead Servitude.

Oracles don't get access to Animate Dead until 6th lvl and Create Undead at 12th. This leaves Undead Servitude and Raise the Dead as the only alternatives until that point. I have no issues with Undead Servitude, but Raise the Dead seems to fall flat for me since the only scaling to the power is the ability to use it again at 10th lvl.

Help with understanding how to use what's given or information on what I'm forgetting would be greatly appreciated.