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I've just been having a look at my shiny new book, and the Psychic just jumps out as awesome.

An intelligence based full spontaneous caster is cool enough.

But combine that with Psychic Magic, which are automatically Silent and Still, but more importantly don't use material components. And the way I read the rules, that isn't just Eschew Materials "don't use material components" but no components at all.

So with this in mind, and a limited number of spells that you can learn, what spells do you choose?

Obviously, Stoneskin and Permanancy, without having to worry about the GP costs, just spring straight out at you? But which others?

Forget the poison and the dazzle effect.

Does sand count as a "powder" that would remove the benefits of invisibility?

If my sorcerer owns a Page of Spell Knowledge, does this count as a "known" spell when crafting a spell trigger activation item such as a wand or staff?

I've just starting playing a fighter and I'm looking at the different options available.

Obviously Sunder is on the list, but there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of advice on it.

Obviously, weapons and armour are hard targets in that they have high hardness, lots of hit points, scale as you increase in level as magic bonuses make them harder to sunder, whilst breaking them doesn't seem to deliver a massive de-buff but destroying them also destroys the treasure.

The description says that you can sunder anything worn or carried so there seem to be a lot of good targets available that don't scale, are quite soft and won't hurt the treasure split.

So here are the obvious sunder targets:

1. Component pouches. 5gp, so won't hurt the treasure split. My guess is that it's leather, so 2 hardness and 5hp. Destroying it should be fairly easy and would be a fairly major debuff to any spell caster. Can't do this on characters with Eschew materials of course, but a look at the NPC codex, showed not one single Wizard, Druid, Bard or Cleric with that feat, so this isn't so much an opportunity as an invitation.

2. Holy symbol. Not that expensive in the general run of things, so you aren't really destroying treasure. One of the few items where it seems to get easier to destroy as you face higher level characters because they use softer metals. Get rid of this, and you get rid of the Divine focus and stop channelling, so again a major de-buff.

3. Familiar satchel. This should be fairly easily identifiable with a perception check. Nice of the wizard to place his familiar in such an easy to kill place. The description says armoured, but doesn't go into detail. I'm guessing leather. Would damaging the satchel injure the familiar? Are you attacking the familiars CMD or the Wizards? Does the follow through of damage from a greater sunder go to the familiar, the wizard or both?

4. Quivers. We don't want to destroy the bow. But destroy the quiver and the archer will have trouble using it. An archer without arrows is a man with stick right?

So the question is, what am I missing? Please can you add other nice targets for a sunder in this thread?

OK, let me give you a hypothetical scenario.

I am a half orc fighter, wearing spiked armour, a spiked shield on the off arm and a spiked gauntlet on the primary hand. I have taken the "Toothy" Alternative racial trait, granting me a bite attack.

Each of these weapons is +5 with the Defending quality.

I also have a bodywrap of mighty strikes, again +5 with the defending quality.

At the start of my turn, I have the option of attacking with any of these weapons, or taking a bite, or a combination of these actions, alternatively, as free action at the start of my turn, I can apply the defending option to myself and add the wielded weapon bonus to my AC instead. The description states that the defending option is an untyped bonus which stacks with all others.

What I am intending to do is throw a dagger at my enemy. The dagger is also +5 defending.

Am I wielding 3 weapons and my bite, allowing me to add +20 to my AC?

Am I wielding the Dagger, if it is ready to throw and get an addition +5 to my AC, or would I only be wielding the dagger if it was actually in hand at the start of the turn?

Are you able to perform Combat Manouevres on other party members, as the description often states that these are used against foes.

If I did use a Combat Manouevre on a fellow party member would:

1. The fellow party member be required to carry out an AOO? (I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't)
2. The fellow party member be able to volutarily fail his CMD, in the same way that the target of spell can voluntary fail a saving throw?

The scenario I have in mind is where, say, a Wizard has got himself badly positioned in the front line and, say, a fighter uses the Reposition Manoeuvre to reposition him to safety. Useful as this would mean that the Wizard would be moved out of the way of danger, and his movement whilst being repositioned would not attract AOO....

I thought i'd try my hand at writing at guide.

I hope you enjoy it. Let me know if I've made any errors and I'll make changes.

Go to Peterrco's guide to Druids

OK - I'm thinking of creating a summoning cleric.

Obviously I want Augment summons and sacred summons, but I'd like to apply a few other effects as well.

So if I choose Animal Domain I get Summon Natures Ally as a 4th Lvl domain spell, which qualifies me for the Starlight Summons (and other) feats.

But would Starlight Summons effect creatures cast using Summon Monster?

The straight description on the feat says that it effects "creatures that you summon", without specifying what spell is used to summon them, but the feat has has ability to cast Summons Natures ally as pre-requisite, suggesting that applying it to the Summon Monster spell is not intended. Can anyone clarify?

OK - I'm thinking of running a campaign where I want the players to have interesting non-optimised characters, rather than the fully optimised that reading these forum's are starting to breed. As a bit of background, I cannot remember seeing a multiclassed, or even a prestige classed player around our table for several years, although this is as much my fault as anyone elses.

I also want to encourage melee/skill classes, because casters are starting to dominate our games.

So here's the idea. You have to multiclass, and you can't let one class get more than 2 levels higher than any other class. If you decide to take a third class or a prestige class later in the game, when your other classes are higher level, then you have to level that class and only that class until you are back in equilibrium.

I anticipate that this will cause some minor issues for melee classes, slightly more issues for Rogue variants, and make casting at high levels a lot more difficult, although with mystic theurge and some heavy spending on traits and feats you could somewhat overcome this at mid to high levels for the players that truly love casting.

So the questions is: Has anyone else tried this or something similar? Are there any unexpected consequences? Does it work? And are there any pitfalls that a GM needs to watch out for?

I'm looking for advice on a strategy for running a Kingdom.
The GM has told us that he is using the John Brazer Enterprizes Book of The River Kingdoms for these mechanics, which I understand are very close to the rules in the Kingmaker Rule Books (which I don't have, and as a player don't want access to).
****Please avoid putting spoilers in any answers to this thread****
So where are we now?
We have placed our capital at the Stag Lords fort.
We have just started playing Rivers Run Red, and have 12 months of building under place after we dedicated a session to building up the kingdom.
We crafted a Lyre of building prior to setting up the kingdom which gives up 2BP reduction on the cost of one building per month. (We'll probably make more of these as we get larger and have the option to build more buildings per month)
To boost our starting BP we made some serious commitments to the High Priest of Erastil, some wizards, who want an academy built by the end of the second year, and the green faith who give us benefits in exchange for a limit on how fast we can expand (9 hexes per year at the moment)
We built a Caster's tower in the first month, as selling magic items looks to be the only way of paying for our commitments. The tower has already paid for itself and we have 45bp at the start of the second year, but have yet to move past one district or build a castle or the academy. We have been a number of economicly useful buildings but nothing major as yet.
...................
Before the Kingdom building session I had read the Kingdom building chapter, but I have now had the opportunity to read the Mass Combat Rules. I'll leave the war gaming tactics to those in the group who have more interest in that sort of thing, but I'm likely to be the only member of the group who has an interest in the actual Kingdom building side of things, so I want to make sure that when war comes the war gamers have the tools they need to win (and given the costs involved I want them to win fast and cheap).
So I'm going to present what I think are reasonable strategies for the Kingdom, and then invite more experienced players to rip it apart in a constructive way.
Here goes:
1. Maximise income:
First let's confirm my understanding of the rules:
I get three types of income:
Normal income: D20 plus economy, less unrest vs control, success give me BP's of the result/5. I can put these BP's in my treasury for later use.
Magic item income: I can try to sell one magic item per district per turn. I need to make an ecomomy check vs 20 to sell a minor, 35 to sell a medium and 50 to sell a major item. I can put these BP's in my treasury for later use.
"negative consumption": My consumption is kingdom size in Hexes, plus Districts, plus Edict/promotion costs, plus costs of maintaining a standing army. I can set reduce consumption (gain negative consumption) by building farms, Royal Reserves and having a forest hex within five hexes of a city. The most efficient way of paying for this consumption is by building farms but I can only do this on grassland or hills. If my negative consumption is lower than my consumption charges, I have to make up the difference from my Treasury. If my negative consumption is higher than my consumption, I lose the benefit of the excess consumption as it cannot be put into my treasury and can't be used to build permanent things like roads or buildings. This is strictly use it or lose it. The big benefit of this is that you don't need to roll. Once you have the development build you get the income every month without chance of failure, and without having to divide it by five.

It seems clear that the best way to improve income is to:
Have a major magic item source in every city district, and to have a large number of city districts.
To use my cities to increase my economy and only use open hexes to build mines or camps where there is no opportunity to build a farm or reserve. (Bonus for building a mine is +1 economy on a successful roll, against 2 BP negative consumption for a farm without chance of failure. 10 times the benefit at least)
Build lots of small cost (plus 1 economy) buildings to increase the economy, as well as lots of roads to also increase economy.
Claim as few non farm land hexes as possible, to reduce the number of hexes that cannot contribute to negative consumption, even if this means having a kingdom made of clusters of farmable hexes linked by one hex wide roads.

2. Military Spending
I'm going to use the following assumptions
Standing armies should be funded entireley out of negative consumption. I recognise that armies are priced by the week, so this means a lot of farmland.
Small countries don't work because restictions on army size means that you can't get the economies of scale on larger units. To benefit from economies of scale standing armies should be as large as possible
The cost of additional abilities is so high that you should only add them to armies once war has started or once it is imminent. Standing armies should therefore not have any special abilities as standard during peacetime.
That a standing army unit of the largest size available should be able to withstand a surprise attack if stationed in city with reasonable defences. Standing armies should therefore be based in cities, and each city should have at least one standing army unit stationed in it to prevent it being lost to a surprise attack.
That each city should, as soon as practically possible, have firstly enough defences to allow an army a reasonable chance of survival if surprised, have garrisons/caster towers/temples to allow training and recruitment of new armies quickly to meet any emergency. Each city should have at least a fletcher and a stables to allow for cheap and effective upgrades of troops in the event of war.
I would expect that some border cities would be set up more as a staging post for armies to be created and improved on than as major population centres. I would expect armies from interior cities to be marched up to the front as regular troops and then upgraded at the border cities to save BP's in time of war.
I think as part of my general strategy it is essential that a war chest is built up in peacetime. I'm intending to mark off 50% income from magic items into a separate account for this purpose.
So my peacetime military stance would look like this.
1. A standing army of basic troops all based in cities.
2. All cities would have defences at the earliest opportunity to give the basic troops a fighting chance against a surprise attack.
3. After defences have been built, recruitment and training builds will be put in place to allow rapid recruitment and upgrading of troops in an emergency.
4. There will be a large fund of BP's ready in the treasury to pay for a war, the longer the wait for this the bigger the fund.
.........................
Ok so that effectively covers my strategy for building a kingdom up to be able to withstand an attack, and efficiently fight a war as either the defender or the aggressor.
I'm not sure that there would be many resourses left over after this to do anything else, but would love to hear peoples ideas to add character to a kingdom as the strategy I've come up with seems to lead to a pretty utilitarian military state.

I'm probably getting all my maths mixed up here.

My understanding is that each hex is 12 miles accross, i.e. from one edge to the opposite edge.

But I keep reading here that the area of a hex is about 375 square miles. You can only reach that size if you have the edge of each hex being 12 miles long, but that almost doubles the distance accross...

Please can someone clarify this for me?

The rules state that you have a +5 DC for every pre-requisite that you do not meet.

It then goes on to say that the "ONLY exception to this is the item creation feat"

It then goes on to say that "in addition you cannot create spell trigger and spell completion items without meeting their spell pre-requisites"

Does this mean that:

1. You add +5 to the DC of making a spell trigger or spell completion item if you are cooperating with another player with different spell pre-requisites.

Or

2. You just cannot make spell completion/trigger items if you cannot meet the spell pre-requisite?