meibolite's page

with constitution modifiers, any modification to the ability bonus immediately affects the creatures hit points. If the character loses a point of con bonus, they lose 1hp per level, if they gain a point in ability bonus they gain 1hp per level

Ex: Cohen the barbarian (Lvl 10) has a 22 Con, so a + 6 bonus, he would have on average 131 HP, (Excluding toughness and such) If he puts on a belt of Mighty Constitution +2, he immediately gains 10 HP for every HD he had. If cohen then took constitution damage or drain to bring him down to 18 con, he would lose 30 HP immediately, which may kill him if he's in low hp range already.

With ability scores like Int giving retroactive skill points, i don't believe it will give retroactive ranks, however if for an entire level the character has the increased int, they will gain an extra skill point per +1 to int bonus they had for that level.

Okay so i was reading through the additional resources page for pathfinder society, and i saw that nothing from the catfolk entry in the advance races guide is legal, however Tengu and kitsune are... and i'm wondering why that is.

I can understand some of the alternate traits being illegal, like scent in place of low-light vision, but the vanilla version of the class seems to me to be balanced for the most part.

So my question is, are vanilla catfolk legal, and if not, is there any reason why when there are more breakable races that are legal?

I don't know why this got moved to conversions... its not converting some premade character to the game... its trying to describe to someone who has never played before each of the classes.

For my two cents, i've always described the rogue as either Solid Snake (For stealthy DPS rogue) or James Bond (For the more social rogue)

According to the players guide, a ship cannot actually make a "Double move" A ship can move no faster than its top speed, and it takes a standard action to accelerate to a faster speed, so as far as I can tell, no a ship cannot fire its weapons after doing a maneuver such as Full ahead or Hard to Port/Starboard.

However that being said, a PC on the ship who is controlling a weapon can make an attack on their initiative with the siege weapon.

The best part of this was the player was just attempting to break the arm... but he wasn't too happy with his character up to this point (trying to get himself killed so he could roll a new one) so when he rolled and confirmed the critical, i figured i might as well play the barbarian rage up, so that it was certain that he would be keelhauled... i never expected the blessed by besmara trait would have meta game influences as well lol. He is also #1 on scourge's list of crew to kill lol now.

The best part of the story is when he told scourge, plugg, and harrigan that he didn't kill either of the pirates... they "committed suicide by attacking a berserker." in the words of his character.

I'm just hoping if he is the one to fight the "Owlbear" he doesn't end up killing him too, because i think Harrigan might just cast him overboard, or execute him on the spot.

I know that fighting with two weapons or a double weapon allows you to make an extra attack per round with the off-hand weapon, but if you have more than one attack in a round with a full attack, does the penalty apply on the main hand attack for all attacks?

Say i'm level 20, with full BAB, so I have a BAB for a full attack of 20/15/10/5, assuming i'm fighting with two weapons, have TWF feat and using a light weapon, is my full attack 18/18/13/8/3 or is it 18/18/15/10/5? Or is the extra attack generated per round also generated per attack in a full attack so I would have an 18/18/13/13/8/8/3/3 for 8 attacks?

Well are you playing a Melee rogue or a ranged rogue staying within 30ft of your enemies.

If you are playing the latter, you can easily fly above them if there is room, and really mess with them. Especially if your wings allow you to hover (I don't know much about the angelic wings feat)

As a melee rogue, it won't help as much as far as I can tell.

@Zimheaho I do have an obsidian wiki for my campaign, however my players are way too busy to contribute to it, and I'm not a fan of wikis myself. Just too much of a hassle. I grew up on the computer but i prefer spreadsheets to text files for record keeping that way, and I have no idea why lol.

@Derf I was thinking of first doing a homebrew setting, but since two of my players have never touched a D20, i'm shying away from that until they get more comfortable with the system. I have most of the stuff you mentioned, or its in the books for the AP (page numbers for monsters that aren't included in the path, and the stat blocks for characters who are unique to the path)

The DCs are on the GM screen thankfully, but would you suggest I keep a separate sheet of everyone's perception, sense motive, and other modifiers for things that I would roll secretly? And maybe tape it to the GM screen?

Also, how do you guys track initiative? I've seen many different ways, normal list of initiative numbers as they are rolled, the white board approach, the 4e "card" approach (I keep a stack of cards of monsters/characters and put them in initiative order, and move down the stack) as well as the electronic approach.

What works for you guys? I don't like the normal writing stuff down because some of my players are keen on the ready action and delay action stuff, so initiative orders get all out of whack and i'll end up filling a sheet or two of paper in a long combat

So my first session as a DM turned out to be pretty awesome, here is the highlight of night. This is in Skull & Shackles: The Wormwood Mutiny.

During the roughing up encounter on day 2, the barbarian decided to try and "sunder" the arm of one of the pirates who was attacking the party's alchemist. He rolls a natural 20, and the way our group handles natural 20s on anything but saves, we roll critical threat. He then rolls a natural 19... obliterating the CMD for the poor pirate. The barbarian is currently raging because he doesn't like getting sucker punched. He proceeds to literally disarm the pirate, who took lethal damage from having his arm ripped off. I wanted to help keep party members from being keelhauled, especially after the look of horror on everyone's face when Jakes is keelhauled, so I tried to give him a fort save to just fall unconcious... and rolled a natural 1... which is the only roll I never fudge, so he dies. The pirate with a dagger sees this, so he draws his dagger and misses his attack against the barbarian. The barbarian rushes him and beats him to death with the arm of the guy he just killed. Two pirates dead in a matter of seconds.. the other pirates had been subdued by the party.

Well, instead of just going upstairs, the party starts trying to figure out a way to cover up the deaths, and themselves. Since I had it taking place slightly later than the book says to (there were no witnesses to the killings) I had Sandara come looking for them... the barbarian almost killed her because he noticed her coming down the stairs and was thinking "NO WITNESSES GRRR" but was talked down by the rest of the party. She helps them corroborate their story of self defense to Scourge. The blood covered barbarian was sentenced to 8 hours in the sweat box while the murders were investigated.

After surviving the sweat box, the barbarian was pulled out and sentenced to a slow keelhaul. 12 reflex saves, at DC 20... here is the most awesome part of this... he makes 10 of the 12 saves, 5 of those were 20s, 3 19s, and 2 lower saves.. he takes 14 damage overall... coming up the other side bloody and with 1 HP left. Even Captain Harrigan is impressed with this.

During the night festivities, Grok challenges the barbarian to a game of heave, and ends up losing horribly to the barbarian. She is so impressed by this, the single handed killing of 2 pirates while unarmed, surviving a keelhaul and drinking her under the table, I immediately made her helpful to the party.

In the course of two days... the party now has two friends on board, and moved 3 other NPCs up 1 level on the helpfulness chart out of sheer awesome. Right now I'm psyching up the barbarian player about the fight with the "Owlbear."

Hey guys,

Well my adventure is finally off, and I'm having trouble figuring out the best way to keep records of what goes on in the campaign. Right now i've got a notebook for notes regarding who is friends/enemies with the party at the moment as well as keeping a blog of the story so far. Would you guys have any other suggestions as to what to do? I'm DMing this, and didn't realize how much record keeping i'd have to do for Skull and Shackles, even after reading the adventure path over three or four times.

Do you think keeping a blog of the story is a good idea? I know it allows the players to check up and remember what happened.

Any other record keeping ideas would be great. I already am keeping a copy of everyone's character sheets and such for that side of record keeping.

Golden moment for my game, that I just started DMing today:

During the roughing up encounter on day 2, the barbarian decided to try and "sunder" the arm of one of the pirates who was attacking the party's alchemist. He rolls a natural 20, and the way our group handles natural 20s on anything but saves, we roll critical threat. He then rolls a natural 19... obliterating the CMD for the poor pirate. The barbarian is currently raging because he doesn't like getting sucker punched. He proceeds to literally disarm the pirate, who took lethal damage from having his arm ripped off. I wanted to help keep party members from being keelhauled, especially after the look of horror on everyone's face when Jakes is keelhauled, so I tried to give him a fort save to just fall unconcious... and rolled a natural 1... which is the only roll I never fudge, so he dies. The pirate with a dagger sees this, so he draws his dagger and misses his attack against the barbarian. The barbarian rushes him and beats him to death with the arm of the guy he just killed. Two pirates dead in a matter of seconds.. the other pirates had been subdued by the party.

Well, instead of just going upstairs, the party starts trying to figure out a way to cover up the deaths, and themselves. Since I had it taking place slightly later than the book says to (there were no witnesses to the killings) I had Sandara come looking for them... the barbarian almost killed her because he noticed her coming down the stairs and was thinking "NO WITNESSES GRRR" but was talked down by the rest of the party. She helps them corroborate their story of self defense to Scourge. The blood covered barbarian was sentenced to 8 hours in the sweat box while the murders were investigated.

After surviving the sweat box, the barbarian was pulled out and sentenced to a slow keelhaul. 12 reflex saves, at DC 20... here is the most awesome part of this... he makes 10 of the 12 saves, 5 of those were 20s, 3 19s, and 2 lower saves.. he takes 14 damage overall... coming up the other side bloody and with 1 HP left. Even Captain Harrigan is impressed with this.

During the night festivities, Grok challenges the barbarian to a game of heave, and ends up losing horribly to the barbarian. She is so impressed by this, the single handed killing of 2 pirates while unarmed, surviving a keelhaul and drinking her under the table, I immediately made her helpful to the party.

In the course of two days... the party now has two friends on board, and moved 3 other NPCs up 1 level on the helpfulness chart out of sheer awesome. Right now I'm psyching up the barbarian player about the fight with the "Owlbear."

This has to be the most memorable thing to happen to me in any campaign. Even more than when we caused 5 dragons under the control of the BBEG to break their enchantment and destroy an entire city... then convinced them to leave us alone.

I can already tell this is going to be an awesome campaign.

Wow. You can tell the NFL season just began. When I first read the thread title, the first thought that popped into my head was "Why would someone post here for advice regarding Archie, Peyton, and Eli?".

I spit my milk out when i read that lol.

Yeah, the rogue is also the skill monkey, since that's what she really wants to play lol. I know that rogues aren't the most optimal class, and that Ninja are a better rogue, but she doesn't want to play one, and I'm trying to keep the eastern stuff out of the shackles for now.

I'm not sure i'm completely comfortable starting at level 2, especially since 2 of the 3 aren't really familiar with PF, or 3.X in general. I'm glad that this campaign doesn't have a lot of fighting for level 1 characters, and its 15 min adventure days for the first 2/3 of the first book (makes limited resources not so limited)

My main question is still should I bring in a fresh level 1 to balance them out, or have one of the NPCs that they befriend join them?

So I'm running Skull and Shackles as a three man (i upped the power level of the players to help compensate) And my players make a good party, Healer in an Oracle, Tank in a Barb, and Damage in a Rogue, and I'm wondering if I should roll a DMPC to run with them from level 1, or just use one of the Prefab characters when the party gets around their level.

I know the benefits and downsides to both, running a 3-man party for a little bit will level them up faster since there are less people to divide between at first, however they may be hard pressed for the first few major battles.

Having the Prefab NPC join makes it a bit easier on the paperwork side, since I don't have to keep track of another character and I already have a character built for when they are somewhat equal in level

Thanks for the advice everyone. I was going to let her play what she wanted, I just wanted to give her suggestions as to what would be easier/harder to play. Thankfully the first handful of "encounters" in S&S is more role play than anything else, and the Limited resource problem for casters isn't as big of a problem in the first few actual battles because its a 1 battle per day adventure for the first few levels.

I'm finally getting my Skull & Shackles off the ground, and have invited a player who is brand new to Pen & Paper rpgs, She's interested in playing, but I'm wondering what would be an easy class to learn for her. I told her about the Preservationist archetype because she's really into Pokemon, and that is basically a Pokemon Trainer, but would that be too hard for her to play?

I know a lot of people say rogue or fighter as a good starting class, or ranger, but I don't want to shoe-horn her into something she won't have fun playing, but I also don't want to smother her with a lot of information.

I'm heading off to bed after this post so I wont be able to respond to everyone's advice till morning, but feel free to discuss amongst yourselves, or send me a PM with your advice

-Meib

To all the people who say kick him out, i have to agree with Redcelt, the reason its hard to drop him is that we've all been playing together for about 6 years, and its one of those comfortable groups. Its difficult to find players out here especially on the days that we can actually get together.

Quote:

Carried around a small potted plant, would start every combat by throwing it towards the enemy, then cast entangle to root everything, then throw alchemist's fire in order to catch the plants on fire and burn everything to the ground.
That's not powergaming. That's playing smart.

It is power gaming when he specifically manipulates the rules in his favor to make him significantly more powerful than the average hero, or even major boss monsters. In order to deal with him as a player, three of us who have DMed him had to make monsters that were nigh impossible to beat with normal tactics just so that the BBEG didn't fall to cheese tactics.

And with my thing about him min/maxing his skills i'm talking about getting to the point where he would have a +20 in a skill (not talking in pathfinder specifically, we just migrated to pathfinder recently. It is perfectly possible to have insanely high skill modifiers in 3.5, i had a beguiler who had a +20 bluff at level 2, used mainly for feints for her surprise casting ability.) and to the bluff/coerce the enemy to kill themselves, i mean he would bluff against an extremely high DC to where he could convince someone that the trap they just passed was completely safe because the rogue "disabled" it, or get them to the point of being friendly through diplomacy and convince them to do something extremely dangerous that seemed innocuous to kill them. IE "Read this peice of paper my friend, I can't seem to translate it" and the paper is one which had "I prepared Explosive Runes" and of course had explosive runes cast upon it.

some examples of this guys power gaming: Carried around a small potted plant, would start every combat by throwing it towards the enemy, then cast entangle to root everything, then throw alchemist's fire in order to catch the plants on fire and burn everything to the ground. his stats are usually 18-20 in the primary stat of his class, 16-17 in whatever secondary he has, and 6-8 in everything else. His feats/traits/flaws he would choose would be the best min/max he could do for it, as well as min/max his skill choices. One game he built a silver tongued bard that at level 2 had something like a +20 to diplomacy and bluff specifically so he could trick or coerce NPCs into somehow killing themselves.

He mainly powergames in the "do everything to ruin how the encounters play out" way. He's the kind of player that would use a Locate City bomb because it is legal and breaks the game.

I'm honestly thinking of just not inviting him because when i had talked about my interest in running Skull and Shackles he immediately went on a long rant about how it is by far the "worst possible adventure path ever" mainly because of the Ship to Ship combat discussed in the player's guide.

And to running an adventure path he hasn't read, I would have to homebrew everything from scratch since he reads every single adventure path from any system so he can figure out the optimum character for it. If anyone here has seen Dorkness Rising, the guy who plays the monk personifies this particular gamer. He plays to win, not for the story of the campaign.

I'm looking to start up an adventure path that i'm pretty sure one of my group has read cover to cover, and would know how to optimize his character to the point that everyone else is practically useless in the campaign. He's a notorious power gamer in our group who always tries to break the campaign, however when he DMs he gets mad when we have optimized characters.

I'm looking for a good way to give everyone equal spotlight in this campaign, because in our group we have a representation of all 4 major types of gamers in the group: The Hack n Slasher, the Intellectual, the Power Gamer, and the role player/actor.

I was thinking of pregenerating the characters for them, at least stat/class wise, but letting the players flesh out their personalities, and making all the characters PFS legal even though this isnt going to be a PFS game. My friend the intellectual, who also has a problem with our power game suggested just having everyone make their characters the first session and to supervise it, though i'm sure that even with having them make the characters there, our in house power gamer will still make the "ultimate X" character and over shadow everyone else so they feel left out.

I know its extra work to make all the characters and randomly assign them in the first game, but it can allow everyone to be on equal footing to begin with instead of having one super optimized character as well as suboptimal and bad characters.

My other option is not inviting this one guy to the game, however he is still a good role player and is fun to have in the party even when he's overshadowing everyone else.

The campaign i'm looking to run is Skull and Shackles, which fits our group because even when we play a standard "heroic fantasy" campaign, our groups tend to turn to piracy and chaos... always lol. With my luck though, the party will end up being super heroic instead of pirates lol.

So TLDR Which is a better choice: Generating characters the first meeting, or pregenerating the characters for the group?

adding on to Dudemeister's cool monsters: air elementals as twisters to tangle with ala pecos bill. you can find alot of good stuff in the american tall tales.

I can't remember the riddle anymore, i ran the adventure years ago, and lost the notes on it. but it basically came down to "2 Up, portal, 2 left, portal, 1 up, you are there."

Wait, think about this...isn't Batman a Chaotic Good Paladin? *mind blown*

Batman is all alignments didn't you know?

I once had a level in a wizard's tower that was a seemingly endless corridor of rooms. Each room was 15ft square, and looked exactly the same. They had a door in the center of each wall, as well as a portal in the south east corner of the room. One of the rooms was the true room, while the rest of the rooms were epic level illusory doubles of the initial room. There were no monsters in this level of the dungeon, and any attempt to mark the room other than the real room, caused the same symbol to propogate to the other rooms. There was a riddle presented to the party a few levels down from that floor.

The real trick was that the entire floor was only 3x3 rooms, with 5 foot corridors, however the at each end of the hallway, it looked like it went on for miles in every direction, while in actuality it was just a portal that transported you back to the other side of the chamber when you went through it. Took the party i was playing with 2 real time hours to finally figure out how to solve the puzzle.

I like the idea of the scrollmaster, however i'm not able to see how it can work mechanically, since the scrollmaster uses his scrolls as a Sword & Board melee fighter. Maybe a refluffed alchemist? instead of vials of explosive materials, he uses his innate magical ability to imbue cards, and card like objects with explosive power? And since you want a fate themed character, I'd suggest taking any formulas and discoveries that work on that side of things.

I can't help envisioning this character with a quarterstaff as a backup weapon... gambit just keeps hopping into my head.

I'm thinking that this player wants a Will Turner/Jim Hawkins type character, you know full of ideals and good, but also still willing to do whats needed instead of whats necessarily "right". I'm actually pushing them into Buccaneer or Freebooter since i feel that more fits the fluff of their character.

Oh I am the GM Yawar, I'm just trying to figure out a way that won't unbalance the campaign too much. I have played paladins of neutrality in other campaigns, one of my favorites is my Paladin of the Raven queen in a 4e campaign who is TN, (we kept the 9 alignments because Unaligned opened too many cans of worms) and it is pretty fun. Almost fell because I accidentally befriended a lich who i had on speed dial... damn my int dump stat to not recognize a lich for what he was lol. I think I am just going to have all the abilities that are Evil based become Lawful, like the DR and such. but I'm going to ask the player if she's channeling positve or negative energy, just so I know how to handle undead around her. She wants to be a champion of true freedom of choice, and have the pirate's code as her Paladin Code, unless she would rather be a privateer, which then I'll use the Privateer code.

I'm with you on the Holy Warrior of ANY god scheme but, part of what sets the Paladin apart (in general) is the holy goodness they bring to the table. If they don't want to be good then have them make a Ranger or Fighter that prays to Besmara. Or a Fighter/cleric combo mix.

All of the Paladin class abilities pretty much depend on goodness to function and are designed specifically to combat evil. Neutral just doesn't have the solid conviction to fight or banish anything.

I have to respectfully disagree with someone of a Neutral leaning not having the conviction to fight or banish anything. Take an Anarchist (in the theoretical sense, not what we have in this world calling themselves that) They believe in freedom above all else, and are willing to fight and die in order to bring down any laws that restrict said freedoms. I seem to remember in NWN 2, there was a domain ability given that was something like "smite infidel" which gave the ability to smite anyone with a different alignment than your own, though i would change it to being anything axiomatically opposed.

Also the paladin as presented in 3.5/PFS i feel presents only one kind of paladin. I agree that all paladins should have a code of honor/conduct, however the LG pigeonhole really takes away a lot of the roleplaying oppurtunities that 4E presented for the paladin. Also the flavor of a fighter who prays to besmara is not what this player is looking for, and all of us at the table agree that multiclassing really hurts in the long run for a short term benefit.

I am currently gearing up for a Skull and Shackles campaign, and have put a restriction on alignment to have non-lawful characters (mainly because i have heavy role-players in my group who take alignment very seriously, and don't want to cause party conflicts) But one of my players really wants to play a Paladin, but of Besmara. As she is definitely NOT Lawful Good, how would you suggest I go about this?

Since she is Chaotic Neutral, i plan to handle it kind of like a cleric of a neutral Deity, if he chooses to channel positive energy, use the regular Paladin class, and change anything that has the Lawful type in its build to Chaotic, and if he chooses negative, to go with the Antipaladin class.

With the Oath however, Should i have the paladin follow the Pirate's Code or Privateer's Code as his Code of Conduct?

Also, does anyone here feel that taking a paladin away from Lawful Good really hurts the class in general, from a fluff standpoint? I personally subscribe to the 4E concept of a Paladin as a holy warrior of a specific deity, that holds all which their deity represents to be the true way. Whether they are a Paladin of Pelor, or a Paladin of Orcus.

I personally have a feeling that Harrigan himself may be under a Geas, and possibly found out a sort of loophole in the Geas that allows him to have some free will, but eventually will have to do whatever it is that he is told to do, and maybe one of the terms of the geas is he cannot divulge anything about the quest.

I'm not big on golarian lore yet, but as far as i know, the Chelaxian Empire is rather evil, and wouldn't be above using a Geas on someone to further their goals.

If your DM will allow it, ask him to let you read the Pathfinder Journal from the first book in the adventure path. It has a wizard in it who uses a special type of wand called a Spellshooter, which is basically a gun that fires off fireballs instead of bullets. You could easily fluff a wand into one of these to make it more pirate like. But as Snow said, pretty much any class works in this campaign, except maybe Paladins, unless you can convince your DM to let you play a Paladin of Besmara, and your code of conduct be that of the Pirate or Privateer Code.

I personally have no problem with non LG paladins, as long as they are of a specific deity and follow the deity's taboos and such to the letter. If they are of an evil deity, i follow the Antipaladin build, while if they are good, i follow the regular paladin build. I forget if paladins have a Lawful based aura or not, but if they do, just change it to Chaotic if they are a chaotic deity, and for a Neutral on the good evil, give them an Chaotic/Lawful smite instead of Smite good/evil.

In Pirates of the Inner Sea, they give 4 new archetypes, one for fighter, a bard, ranger, and rogue. All four of them seem to be perfect for this campaign setting, and can really set up a full 4 man party lol. I personally love the Corsair fighter, eventually you have no armor penalty while swimming... even in full plate..

I'd be interested as well.

The only reason i'm against being a non-evil worshipper of an evil deity is from DMs in the past i've had who would "penalize" me for not being evil enough for the deity, while also outlawing evil characters in his campaigns. I had a cleric of Nerull once who embodied the balance that death provides, (much like pharasma is in PF and Raven Queen in 4E) and he basically said i needed to be more overtly evil in order to be one of his clerics.

Then again he was sort of a bad DM who required paladins to be Stupid GOod or Lawful Stupid, smiting jaywalkers and what not.

I read the Faiths of balance, and it is literally a 3 or so paragraph blurb. I was hoping for something more along the lines of Besmara's expanded description she received in AP 55, and Pirates of the Inner Sea.

Also Besmara is out as an Undead Lord, because they MUST take Death as a domain, and the Undeath Subdomain if possible, and Death is not one of her many awesome domains.

Nethys just doesn't sit well with me, i can't explain why.

And groetus is out just like Besmara because of the lack of Death in his portfolio.

Does PFS require a Cleric to worship a deity? or are they able to revere a certain aspect of the cosmos like one can in a non PFS game?

What i meant BNW, when i said creating undead to destroy undead is "Create a lesser unintelligent undead in order to combat a greater undead such as a vampire or lich" type deal, its the equivalent in healing to say amputation in order to stop the spread of an infection, or in D&D/PF to stop the spread of a curse. If a paladin cannot drop the "Unholy sword of Evil Incarnate" because it has possessed him, and you have no ability to remove the curse, just remove the sword, at the wrist. its a very extreme use of the ability, I wouldn't have done it willy nilly, however I don't like the idea of being a cleric of an evil deity. I read up on Hanspur, and i really wish there was more on him. Is he in any of the AP books dealing with the river kingdoms? Like how Besmara is in both Skull and Shackles and Pirates of the Inner Sea?

I understand that she is very against the undead, however she grants the Death domain to her clerics if they so choose, and in that she gives them Animate Dead, Create Undead, and Create Greater Undead. As Bomanz said earlier, this would be more using the shell of a creature as just that: A shell, and having it fight to bring the balance of life and death back. I know its a very grey area, but I believe even with the fluff of her being Anti-undeath, if she gives her devout the ability to create it, if its being done in service to her, then it wouldn't require atonement.

Also having reread the taboo section in Faiths of balance, my character would specifically be creating undead in order to destroy other undead as it states "You may not create undead, nor control them unless specifically to destroy them" Personally i view this as within the bounds of a Cleric of Pharasma, although if there are any other Neutral deities with Death as a domain, i'd be open to them.

So then as a cleric of pharasma, i won't detect as anything, which is nice. Now onto another question, which may or may not break my character. RAW states that a Good cleric of a neutral Deity channels positive energy. While an evil cleric channels negative, and a neutral chooses.

From reading the Undead Lord archetype, it does not require one to channel negative energy (although that would be better to heal the undead companion) It does state that you gain Command Undead as a bonus feat, which requires channel negative energy class feature, however since it is granted as a bonus feat, i'm assuming it is granted whether or not you meet the prereqs, as it is with TWF for rangers.

I guess my problem is that i want to make a Good character, who utilizes the powers of evil against itself, much like the Necromancer from Diablo does. But that is where i run into the problem, RAW states that if I'm good, i have to channel positive, otherwise have to go neutral, and if I do too many good deeds, I lose my class features and must atone and go back to neutral.

Jiggy wrote:

Remember that unless a PFS document explicitly states otherwise, Core rules are followed. Core rules allow clerics of evil deities to be neutral themselves, and PFS has not changed this. So as long as you play him as actually neutral, you should be fine on that point.

But remember that a neutral cleric of an evil deity will still detect as evil.

All sorts of interesting RP potential there, that my own Dhampyr Undead Lord Cleric hasn't really encountered, yet, but he is only just level 2.

And that was despite playing First Steps Part 2: To Delve the Dungeon Deep with a couple of stereotypical good clerics. No paladin, thankfully, but the party seemed happy to have my little skeleton buddy along to soak up a few enemy attacks...

But what about a Neutral Cleric of a Neutral deity who channels negative energy? IE Pharasma, who is TN but is also the goddess of death? Would I detect evil then? because from what i've seen in RAW, you only have an aura when you are Lawful/Chaotic or Good/Evil, not when you are neutral.

My understanding is that it is allowed. I would double check the Ultimate Magic book on the list of allowed material and make sure the archetype is allowed at all. I seem to remember someone just receantly asking about the undead companion on the boards though so it leads me to believe they are allowed.

I looked, and it didn't show up as being modified nor disallowed in the FAQ, so things are looking up for me :)

Thanks Bomanz, I don't know why but i've always loved the necromancer hero. I blame Diablo 2 for that. Something about using "evil" against itself appeals to me. I also love my dark character types, as I'm running a vivisectionist in a Kingmaker campaign. quite the crazy mad scientist he is... cutting everything up he can get his hands on.

I know that Evil characters are not allowed in PFS, but I want to play a Neutral Undead Lord archetype, and i'm not sure if it is legal or not (can't find anything saying no to negative energy clerics) But I don't want to spend the time building one if it is an illegal character choice. I haven't gotten anything in the PFS boards, so i'm hoping i can get it answered here :)

True, i guess i'm just worried about one of the players who completely broke our friend's campaign by carrying around a bonsai rose bush, and had all spells per day as entangling roots, and pretty much locked up every combat before it happened. Including against the BBEG who happened to have a garden full of plants with contact poisons... got tangled up in his own poisons and just died right then and there. He's one who really knows how to break the game lol.

I actually like your idea MC, and that would work better in my campaign too :) and time constraints aren't really a problem in this campaign, as i'm spreading the time out by a factor of 7 or so, so what normally takes a day in the adventure path is going to take a week story wise with a few exceptions. I want the Shackles to be bigger than they are currently, as well as to fight that problem that hogart mentioned of you are now all of a sudden way more powerful after a couple weeks than you were for the last 10 years (if we are talking humans). I don't want my characters to go from level 1 to 20 over the course of a couple months to a year.

It won't really change much mechanically with the AP, as I'll have the characters make their work checks the same time, but they get assigned to the same task weekly rather than daily, and it allows more time for their blood to boil with Plugg and the lot :)

I do like the idea of "forcing" my players to role play by announcing their intended path to the next level. Would it be fair to say that they cannot multiclass until the end of the first path though? since all they can really focus on is survival?

@Noir If they were training in the same type of class, like barbarian - fighter, then they could work on their training easily, but if like Hogarth said, Joe the fighter pickign up a spell book and learning how to cast arcane spells overnight when Sarah the wizard took 14 years to learn how to do it, and he's just as effective hurts the suspension of disbelief. If any of my players are planning on multiclassing, i'll ask them up front, and make sure that the party meets a new "crew" member who is trained in that, and all this training would take place on the ship during down time anyway, basically when they are travelling from point A-B

It does seem like a lot, but one of the reasons i'm doing it is because some of the players in the group i'm with are munchkins, and while I don't want to say they can't multiclass, I still want to keep some of the realism of the setting, I don't believe it is possible for say a Paladin 3 to all of a sudden become a Paladin 3/Monk 1 at level 4 because he just wants some of the passive benefits of the monk without having trained at all in the monastic ways. I did like the old way of where you actually had to go train to level up, but I'm only using that for classes you don't already have. If the classes are close enough together, say Paladin and Cleric, i'll halve the training time, but for drastically different class types like Fighter and Wizard, i'll keep the times up. I kind of want to use the 4e classifications of Martial/Divine/Arcane/Natural to determine training.

In the campaign i'm starting up this weekend, one of the house rules i'm thinking of putting in is an extended training time for multiclassing. What i mean is, if a PC wants to multiclass they have to find another person (PC or NPC) who has at least 3 class levels in the class they are multiclassing into, in order to train them in that class.

The only reason i'm doing it is because fluff wise, it doesn't make sense that someone who spent their entire young adult life training in one class to suddenly be able to take another completely different class.

I know i'm taking some stuff from AD&D for this, where you had to seek out a trainer for your class in order to level up (not to mention pay gold... AD&D was harsh)

I just would like advice on how long such training would last. I'm running skull and shackles, so there will be downtime on the ship for this stuff to happen, i'm assuming 1d3 week per stage of the class' starting age. IE: Self taught classes like Barbarians take 1-3 week of training, while a wizard with the advanced study starting age would take 3-9 weeks. Also while training in the new class, they will have the basic abilities of the class, such as BAB, saves, and as training goes along they will learn more of the starting class abilities.

What are your thoughts on this, and is it too restrictive? I will allow the PCs to continue advancing in the second/third/fourth class as long as they are actually using the abilities of said class (i hate people who dip into a class for a couple passive benefits but never actually use the class features) Also, if the PCs utilize a trainer outside of their crew/party members for training, what should the cost be?

thanks guys, though the way i was partially interpreting it could make some things very fun in a weird way. but i didn't want to ruin my party's poor 5 cha barbarian with a curse that would make him drown because his fort changed to base + cha instead of base + con. would be hilarious to see the dwarf sink to the bottom of the ocean because he wasn't "pretty enough" though.

okay, i was just making sure. It's kind of weird to put that "Save is X based" in for specific abilities that are only available to one creature in the stat block.

I can see it for when an ability gets damaged/drained, but with low level monsters, it seems weird when there aren't a whole lot of spells/attacks that affect ability scores, especially the mental ones.