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I've been seeing some discussion around here about DPR and scale of ability and all that, but that's mechanical number tweaking and not much else. I want to have a different discussion, a discussion about the DNA (Design, Narrative, Art. Thanks Rito!) of this class; more specifically, in a game about making characters, what kind of characters can we make? What sort of pop culture beings can we import with the Kineticist that the other classes don't quite fit the bill for, or otherwise don't do JUST what we need them to do!

DEVIL FRUIT USERS (One Piece): Fire Fist Ace, Admiral Akainu (Sakazuki), Admiral Aokiji (Kuzan)[not quiiiiite there yet, need more cold damage support], Admiral Ryokyugu (Aramaki) [when Wood Element comes out, of course], Vice-Admiral Smoker, Pika, Senor Pink, Sir Crocodile, Eustas Kidd [when Metal Element comes out].

• ELEMENTAL MUTANS (X-Men): Magneto [same as Kidd], Iceman, Storm [although Storm Druid is a better fit at the moment, Air Element looks like a better fit once we get more lightening damage support], more that I can't think of at the moment.
  
• AtlA (need I say more?)
  
• LoL Champs: Nilah, Qiyana (apparently, not super familiar with her), Vladimir [if we get blood bending as an option], Rell [same as Kidd], Annie [if you don't want to use Summoner for Tibbers], Ezreal [if you stretch what his gauntlet shoots], Janna [similar to Storm], Zeri.

That's a pretty wide net, but I'm curious what you other people of the forums think. I'm curious what pop culture characters you see the Kineticist delivering on that a Monk or Druid just can't do, and what characters you'd like it to support, but the playtest just DOESN'T (not counting the lack of Wood/Metal Elements not being released yet) for one reason or the other.

So, I noticed that the "non-dex to damage" forum kinda devolved into one part original intent, one part "teh swash doesn't have enough mechanical/flavor/whateverness to set it apart" back and forth. Keeping with traditions of old, I thought I'd open a new forum thread with the intent of discussing JUST THAT so the other one doesn't suffer bloat!

On to my opinions on the matter, since I have both played and run a game with, a Swashbuckler present. I think they're awesome, unique, a little under tuned in reference to raw power (sometimes), and absolutely one of the best thematically designed and executed class Paizo has ever made in the many years of game design they've had. Finishers, Riposte, Panache, mobility, skill usage in combat! If I remember correctly, it also had the single highest appraisal of the APG playtest classes and needed the least amount of reworking going from playtest to release.

So, with the setup out of the way, DISCUSS!

So, since Psychics only get 1 spell slot at level 1, and only have 1 slot of a given spell level the first time they unlock said level..... That sorta hard gates them out of being able to take the (it is rare) Wellspring Mage archetype, and any other future spellcasting archetype or feature that negs 1 spell slot per level.
Is the Psychic THAT good if it got the die roll of MAYBE getting a used slot back once or twice a day?
Was this intended to wall them out or was this an oversight?
Could you still take Wellspring Mage and just say you can't reduce slot amounts below 1 per level?
Could you just suffer through only having cantrips at level 1 and be 1 level behind the curve on when you get higher slot levels?
I'm really curious incase we get another "single 1st level slot at level 1; first time you get a new spell level, you only have 1 for that first level" class and how that style works with things like Wellspring Mage.

So, last night I was hanging out with my friend, and he had the Mawangi Expanse book on him, I started reading it and found the weirdest and most unexpected thing in the side bar. FOOD RECIPIES! That's right, some bored dev or editor got permission to shove IRL recipes for a BBQ rub and hot chocolate into a lore book about expy Africa. Whoever did that, I wanna give you an internet hug. And for those of you with the book, did you try those recipes? Are they good? Did I miss one? Because that's entirely possible, and I would like to know so I can try it.

It's that time of year again, a new book's release on the horizon, spoilers all around, the thinking juices are flowing like Niagara, and new or existing character ideas are now viable. So I ask you, dear people of the forums, WHO/WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO PLAY WITH SoM AND G&G CONTENT!

Let me begin, I have 2 or 3 character ideas, one purely of SoM, one purely of G&G, and the other is an existing character that is an import from 1E.

So, I'm like doing accents, they're my favorite part of RP, and my table's homebrew setting has a little accent layout, but is there anything like that for Golarion? Specifically, I'm planning on making a guy from Nex, Oprak, and Numeria. I have a man intended from The Shackles as well, but that's just generic pirate/Irish last I checked.

I understand the classes are the hardest thing to test in house, and thus we're stress testing them out in the public, and once that gets done, they go back in house, polished, and then go to the final document. My question is: Will we be testing anything else from the APG? I know new ancestries are coming, new items (and maybe a new CLASS of item? HMMMMMMM) and the like, will we be getting a glance at/help you guys refine those as well, or once the classes are finished the APG material is staying in house until Gencon with the full publication material?

So, with the #MyPathfinderSpoiler thing going around, we're getting a general idea of what we can and can't do in this system, how easy some things will be to pull off, ect. ect.

SO! My inquiry to you, my fellow forum-mates... What do you plan on making? What crazy cockamamie PCs do you plan on crafting, what horrid villains do you GMs plan on sending towards your players, HOW MANY GOBLINS WILL RUN AROUND STICKING PEOPLE IN THE SHINS?!? I, personally, plan on re-remaking my Witcher inspired elven blade-dancer type dude, and potentially making The Black Swordsman himself, GUTS! As well as my previous EVIL! Sorcerer/Rogue, and maybe a few more... WHAT SAY YOU?!

So, lots of Focus based things have been popping up in OO, so I thought I'd start a thread on the topic. Now, let's preview the things we know (please correct me if I get any of this wrong, I can't catch the episode live, so I'm gonna be a bit behind)

• Champions (and therefore, hopefully, other classes) can regain their Focus by doing a 10 min rest.
  
• Focus Spells seem the same/stronger than they were in the playtest
  
• There (might?) be a cap to the amount of times you can regain Focus with short rests per long rest

This is a Heroes of Undarin story! Prepare to laugh at us not caring about death. We used 1.6, and started with 2 paladins, but ones of them switched to cleric when we realized that we NEEDED magic.

[TL;DR, in every party ever, have a heal engine, a tank, and SOMEONE WITH RANGE!]

So, let's talk about the Heroes and how we went from stomping face to getting murderized

• Myself, Joseph Joestar, Str monk, trickster extraordinaire (never got to use pocket sand much, too busy kicking people to death). I took the Fist Wraps, Bracers, and a Ring of Ice as my 3 items, and I got the goggles of Night, 2 major heal pots, and the Cape of Mountebank, and the holy rune! from the group share (I also used my gold to buy Bracers of Deflection, I got shot at once... REAL efficient)
  
• Bruce Leeroy, another Str monk, but MUCH more Ki heavy (we both took Ki powers, but Bruce went with WAY more Ki powers than me), he took the same 3 items that I did, but his ring was acid. From the group share, he took 1 greater pot (more Ki meant more Wholeness of Body), ring of Climbing, and Boots of Elven Kind
  
• Shay, Paladin->Cleric of Desna and Grey Maiden. She (the player is a guy, so forgive me if I fudge the pronoun game) got as her 3 items, +3 armor(Grey Maiden variety), +3 weapon (don't remember WHAT it was exactly) and a Ring I think (or a +2 property weapon, I don't remember). From the share, Shay got the wand of healing, the Slippers? We lost track of those. And the +1 cold iron dagger
  
• Akbar Kaboon, Paladin (redeemer) of... not-Desna... NG god(dess), didn't mean much plot wise. He got the +3 armor, +3 weapon, and the Adamantine shield. He got the Evocation staff (he took the Fool Magic Item feat), MAYBE the Slippers, all the ammo (He had a mundane shortbow, you can tell from the post name that he forgot about it, wasn't much point in it anyways, Ray of Frost did more damage) Lesser fire ring, and the Quickness pot. Shay and him split the rest of the pots from the group share.

So, with that, let's start with how pitiful the first encounter was at killing us. THE DEMONS ARRIVE! They used Dominate, and Shay was the only one to fail, she attacks Akbar... And misses, because Akbar has INSANE AC, my turn! I blow up my demon in 1 round... Dragon Kick Flurry (d12s if both hit... They did...) kick kick, with Metal Fists and the holy rune, I removed all of it's health in 1 round. Bruce (with Tiger stance) Did HIS flurry, crit his demon so he bled, and then Disrupt-ed Ki, 2 procs later after running away, THAT one died. Only 1 person got hurt, and it was from a single hit.

TREACHERY DEMONS! This one was kinda hard, the Treaches were kind of annoying, the Toad demon's only point was casting the Swamp, we had some kinda serious injuries, but nothing life threatening.

THIRD EVENT! I was nuking Blood demons left and right while Bruce focus fired ol' Slimey, he knocks Bruce out (first time someone is downed) Shay does a Burst (with Fiend channel), waking Bruce back up and disrupts some spell Smiley had going. Akbar nails the last Blood, so it's all hand on deck with the Slimer. He's gone, so now it's 3 Treat wounds and half an hour of lolly-gagging later.

E4! Not that hard actually, 1 Ki strike to each of them from me and Bruce (with POSITIVE damage) and another Channel Burst (low level, they only gave us scratches) and that's done...

NOW we get screwed, because you know how we've all fought these things so far? WITH MELEE! And spells (which Shay is almost out of!). Now we face a lich. Who can fly.... And ghost mages. Who can fly.... We did NOT have a fun time with this Event, me and Bruce kept wall running off pillar into Flurry-ing, and dive bombing from the holes in the roof. Akbar was using Ray of Frost and MM from the staff, and Shay spent a Searing Light on the Lich..'s mirror image. Lichy blinded Bruce who used Wind Jump to get in the air and strike the bastard, so I was on the ground using the Aid reaction to help Bruce peg the lich in his stupid face, meanwhile the Mages were Cone of Colding us CONSTANTLY since Shay only had Disrupt left to deal with them. 3 people downed->ressed later, I run up a pillar, hop on Lichy's back, and hit him to death. We're BADLY hurt, out of healing (other than the wand), and Akbar is hasted, but has a negative soul. (He "did lines with the lich powder")

THEN THE GOSH DAMN FRIGGIN DEMILICH SHOWS UP! He has his tornado (which means Melee sucks). Our only option to deal with Demi-boy is for me to run up and bring him to pound town (Akbar and Shay are dealing with the Banshee, Bruce is still blind)... I couldn't land a single hit on him... AFTER USING KI STRIKE! I was LIVID I needed a damn 15 to hit the MF-er in the face. 2 rounds of debris later, both me and Shay were on the ground, AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! Soul bind! I DIDN'T instantly die (Shay did the next round, marking the first death) and Bruce (STILL BLIND) was Kamehame-Ha-ing the Skeletons that were coming out of the graveyard. He died from the sheer quantity of flankers chipping away his life force, and then we called it a night with me dying, then Akbar, since we had to leave in 5 minutes (we play at a diner, they were about to close).

So, what lessons should we draw from this? A. 1.6 neutering cleric channels did the job it was meant to do B. Monks are REALLY good against everything that can touch and C. MAKE SURE SOMEONE IN YOUR PARTY HAS RANGED DAMAGE! DO NOT REPEAT OUR MISTAKES, FOR THE LOVE OF SARENRAE GIVE SOMEONE A GOSH DAMN BOW! If we had someone with range, the Lich wouldn't have been SO hard to kill since the bow person could just take pot shots until he was dead (again), and YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO BE IN THE DEMI'S TORNADO OF DOOM TO KILL HIM!

All in all, until the Lich/Demilich fight, it was actually quite fun, it was challenging (but not TOO hard) and overall the tone was this nice mix of horror and goofiness (NONE of us took this seriously, we roughly knew this was the genocide adventure and thought a bunch of semi-comedic character who used gallows humor to deal with the messed up stuff they see in the World Wound was a neat party idea). Then the salt mines opened up once we knew that our only way of hitting anything was terrain manipulation and BS skill checks. So do yourselves a favor, and make sure you're at least packing a hand crossbow! (that's enchanted, mundane weapons are sheer trash after level 5 unfortunately). Sorry for the word salad, I just felt like giving context of the whole adventure would help get my point across

So, I was reading all the new fancy toys that alchemists and paladins get, and the new bloodline that looks awesome. And I was reading trying to find how to incorporate some of these into multi-classing......... There isn’t. Alchemist multi didn’t get a new equation considering Infused Reagents are a thing, paladin multi doesn’t have a “pick a paladin reaction and do the things” thing, and wizard multi doesn’t have the new dynamic preparation included ANYWHERE! How are we multi-classers supposed to test these new features’ limits as a scaled down option when we can’t have the math for it? Are we supposed to pick the base class to test if one way and multi-class to test it some whole other unrelated way? The only one that can be truely tested is the Devil bloodline because the Scorc multi is straight forward in its phrasing of “you get a bloodline only weaker because you’re not a full Scorc”.

So, whilst I was level up my updating my main PC for act 4, I was looking at fancy armor, he's meant to be fast and agile, so I was looking at the lighter end of things. I was reading about mithral and was very confused about what's the difference between Elven Chain and just plain Mithral chain, since "This mithral chain shirt is of master quality, and it does not impose an armor check penalty" is the plain one, why does the fancy one say " the armor is exceptionally quiet. Unlike other chain shirts, elven chain does not have the noisy trait" if there's no ACP to begin with in the base line one, why does the fancy one say that? Is Elven Chain meant to be chain mail and not just a shirt? Because it DOES NOT read that way, so I'm confused as hell

So, I was parsing the loot table trying to build my upgraded Hero (my group is a bit behind the curve time wise) and I was looking at the Adamantine Battleaxe and saw that, listed in the grand table, it's a 9th level item, but in the non-magical items list it's a 7th level item. I also saw that Elven Chain wasn't listed anywhere in the giant table, with or without a sub-text u on it. So, my inquiry is this; Is the Adamantine Battleaxe a 7th or 9th level item, and is Elven Chain a viable 7th level item to pick up should my hero have access to elven items?

So, I was building a angelic sorcerer for Act 3, and I was reading that Angelic Halo heightened to 3rd level acts as Circle of Protection instead of just Protection. So, I decided to read on Circle right before I went to bed, and got a little confused. I decided to CLOSELY read Circle's spell text when I woke up the next day, and I ran into a bit of a Wat moment "Creatures in the area gain a +1 conditional bonus to AC against attacks by creatures of the chosen alignment and saves against effects from such creatures. This increases to +3 against effects from such creatures that directly control the target and attacks made by such summoned creatures" ....wat?

So, I was looking through the rules while I was making a character (a Celestial sorcerer) and was looking at the Staff of Necromancy (he's a creepy emo goth who happens to have angel powers, but he wants that damn staff), but it has spells in it not on the Divine list. I thought I read in the skills section about UMD being eaten by the Tradition skills, but I don't see the math for it anywhere. So I was wondering, is it no longer possible to use a spell completion item unless you can ACTUALLY cast the spell that's in the item, as if you didn't have the item in the first place?