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I will look at the Thundercaller and see if they, or some other bard/skald archeype, looks like a good match for a dragonborn.

I was hoping the Bloodline Powers would have felt like shouts, but that may not have shone through as much as I was hoped.

I was inspired to make this class when I had a new player that was having a hard time getting into the world of Golarian, but he knew and loved Skyrim, so I wanted to build a class that would be balanced (so I build it from preexisting features) and that he could really get into.

The Dovahkiin class is inspired by a warrior type build from Skyrim. It combined the features of a Fighter and a Bloodrager. My apologizes that the tables of class features is hard to read, but I can't find a good way to post tables.

A mortal born with the soul of a dragon (or other powerful entity) that makes him capable of great feats.
Role: Direct combat with some spells casting and magical abilities.
Alignment: Any.
Hit Die: d10
Class Skills: Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (engineering) (Int), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Survival (Wis), and Swim (Str)
Skill Ranks per Level: 2 + Int modifier.
Level | BaB | Fort | Ref | Will | Special | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th
1st | +1 | +2 | +0 | +0 | Bonus Feat, Bloodline Power, Martial Training | - | - | - | -
2nd | +2 | +3 | +0 | +0 | Bravery +1 | - | - | - | -
3rd | +3 | +3 | +1 | +1 | Bonus Feat | - | - | - | -
4th | +4 | +4 | +1 | +1 | Blood Casting, Bloodline Power, Eschew Materials | 1 | - | - | -
5th | +5 | +4 | +1 | +1 | Armor Training 1 | 1 | - | - | -
6th | +6/+1 | +5 | +2 | +2 | Bonus Feat, Bravery +2 | 1 | - | - | -
7th | +7/+2 | +5 | +2 | +2 | Bloodline Spell | 1 | 1 | - | -
8th | +8/+3 | +6 | +2 | +2 | Bloodline Power | 1 | 1 | - | -
9th | +9/+4 | +6 | +3 | +3 | Bonus Feat, Weapon Training 1 | 2 | 1 | - | -
10th | +10/+5 | +7 | +3 | +3 | Bloodline Spell, Bravery +3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | -
11th | +11/+6/+1 | +7 | +3 | +3 | | 2 | 1 | 1 | -
12th | +12/+7/+2 | +8 | +4 | +4 | Bloodline Feat, Bloodline Power | 2 | 2 | 1 | -
13th | +13/+8/+3 | +8 | +4 | +4 | Bloodline Spell, Armor Training 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1
14th | +14/+9/+4 | +9 | +4 | +4 | Bravery +4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1
15th | +15/+10/+5 | +9 | +5 | +5 | Bonus Feat | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1
16th | +16/+11/+6/+1 | +10 | +5 | +5 | Bloodline Spell, Bloodline Power | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1
17th | +17/+12/+7/+2 | +10 | +5 | +5 | Armor Mastery | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1
18th | +18/+13/+8/+3 | +11 | +6 | +6 | Bloodline Power, Weapon Mastery | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2
19th | +19/+14/+9/+4 | +11 | +6 | +6 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2
20th | +20/+15/+10/+5 | +12 | +6 | +6 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2

Class Features

The idea was that when dealing with more than 5 identical creatures, they would gain the minion template. increasing in power based in its size. minions shared hp pools and each successful attack would effectively reduce the number of minions instead of tracking hps individually.

Could you post the rules for your Minion template? I also tried the Mob template from 3rd edition D&D (Dungeon Master's Guide 2, I think), but it made groups far too powerful and wasn't built to handle magic effects very well.

My players have liked just rolling a single extra d10 when they roll a '1' or '20' and the situation calls for it. I think a lookup table would be relatively easy to implement, but the fact that it only really helps in fringe situations may make it more trouble than it is worth most of the time. I am mostly reporting the lookup table because there are no Conjugate Error Function dice, which would have been very mathematically faithfully to the regular system.

Because attack and saving throw checks (more checks in PF2) always succeed on a d20 roll of'20' and always fail on '1', beyond a certain point further improvements to attacks, armor class, saves, and save DCs have no affect. I propose two solutions to operate beyond these limits using a lookup table and percentile dice OR an additional dice when '1' or '20's are rolled.

When the difference between a DC and a d20 roll bonus is '2' or less there is always a 95% change of success (i.e. AC=10 and attack=+8), and when the difference between the DC and bonus is '20' or greater there is always a 5% chance of success (i.e. AC=20 and attack=+0), with a linear gradient of success between '2' and '20'. This piecewise success function can be well approximated with a Conjugate Error Function or Erfc. I would present the plot comparing these functions (Erfc[(x-11)/10])/2, and Piecewise[{{0.95, x<2}, {(21-x)/20., 2<=x<=20}, {0.05,
x>20.0}}]), but I don't know how to place figures in forum posts. This Erfc function allows d20-like success rates without discontinuities and the limits imposed by piecewise functions. Probabilities of success could be determined by subtracting the bonus from the DC and comparing to the table below, followed by a percentile roll for success.

These values were rounded to the nearest whole percent numbers, resulting in some outcomes having 0 or 100 percent chance of success, indicating tasks that there is less than 0.5 percent change of success or greater than 99.5 percent chance of success, that is, tasks that will be consistently failed or completed practically every time.

For example, a DC 20 check with a bonus of 10 would have a 56% success chance (compared to 55% change on a d20), if the bonus was 5 then the success chance would be 29% (30% on d20), if the bonus was 0 then the success chance would be 10% (5% on d20), if the bonus was -5 then the success chance would be 2% (5% on d20), and if the bonus was -10 then the success chance would be 0% (5% on d20).

ALTERNATIVELY
The d20 system could also be maintained if, when a '1' or '20' is rolled, an additional d10 is then rolled to subtract (for '1' rolls) or add (for '20' rolls) 0-9 to the original value instead of guaranteeing failure or success. This method is less mathematically justifiable but doesn't require an Erfc function or lookup table, is easy and fast to remember and implement, and my players prefer it.

As a GM that likes to keep a realistic feel to the game, I am concerned about the ease of obtaining Master and Legendary skill levels. For example, if there have only been a few individuals with Legendary Swim in history (like Beowulf) and only a few Masters of any given skill alive at a time (like metal winning Olympic athletes), then I will have to make the game a meat grinder to keep the PCs from unbalancing the skill economy of the world as they gain levels and skills, and make them restart at low level.

I do like the idea of quantized skill levels and abilities that unlock as skill levels are increased, but I'm uncomfortable with allowing actions that defy reality. Defying reality seems like the realm of magic, never mundane skill. I would NOT let my PCs swim like Beowulf because no one in human history ever has, which is to say that degree of skill is so rare that it has never been observed (lied about yes, but never done). This sounds like stuff from the 3rd edition Epic Level Handbook, which I would be more comfortable with since those were characters that had surpassed mortal limits.

A book of the Paizo staff GMs' favorite house rules could be fun.

The best way to make a lot of gold is to find a monster with a lot of treasure and kill and take the treasure.

I agree that adventuring tends to much more profitable than a safe/boring job. I already get 8 hours of my mundane job a day and I don't know why anyone would want to focus their fantasy game around more time at a mundane job (I am being somewhat facetious). If there weren't any adventures around then I would travel from town to town asking mayors, guards, folks at the taverns, etc. about troublesome monsters, interesting rumors, and wars.

This reminds me of the optimal Guess Who strategy.

For getting a name you could ask, is the first letter of the target's first/last name is from the fist half of the alphabet, and so on. You could determine a letter with 4-5 questions, perhaps fewer if someone in your group has a good Linguistics skill and can determine likely names from possible letter combinations. Another option would be to get a comprehensive list of likely/common names and ask if the target's name is on the list, then if it is on the first half of the list, and so on.

You could also try geography questions to determine the person. For example, Does the target living in this county? Do the target live in a more northern than southern region? Once you have the region identified you can start asking about the city they live in and at least narrow the area down to improve your search. If you know that the bad guy lives in the Baron's mansion then you have made some good progress in your search.

If you want to model radiation effects realistically you may want to skim over some health physics material, which is the study of health effects from radiation. GURPS also does a very good job of modeling radiation, with increasing bad stuff happening to you as your radiation dose increases.

I have considered making radiation based spells in Pathfinder, but I thought that keeping track of radiation dose and the complex effects of radiation would be cumbersome and I felt that the official system of Con damage only wasn't realistic, so I never pursued the radiation spells. By profession I am a nuclear engineer and I game with other nuclear engineers and scientists, so I would definitely get called out if I introduced unrealistic radiation spells.

My philosophy is that anything that can be created can also be destroyed. In terms of artifacts (especially major artifacts) it may be unknown how to destroy them. If the artifact is a one-of-a-kind, then the fact that it still exists means that all attempts to destroy it have failed and some new method will need to be tried.

My players dealt with the Bloodstones of Arazni once and decided to try and destroy them in such a way as to restore Arazni's mind and power. Since this had never been done they had to come up with a plan on their own. They consulted with a high level cleric who could reliably answer their questions, but they had to come up with a method on their own, and then risk their lives to test their theory.

Since Paizo hasn't clearly stated just what the Starstone is, exactly what it does, or just how it works (at least to my knowledge), I think it would be very difficult to determine a method to overcome the Starstone's durability.

Seems like about a CR +1. It seems to have kind of a lot of spells, which doesn't both me, but it doesn't seem typical for a CR +1, so you might get some complaints about it.

Once your template is setup to a point you like you could do combat simulations between creatures with your templates and the same creatures with typical templates (Celestial, Fiendish, Advanced, etc.). If the creatures with your templates lose more or less than the creatures with typical templates, then you can tweak your template until the fight ends up pretty even. I find that using averages and sharing rolls between equivalent combatants makes the simulations go faster and reduced the uncertainty from random rolls.

Best of luck to you.

Created by a wizard that intended to build a mechanical army. Their creator may be dead, either because they killed him or because his army has defeated. Either way the remaining clockworks are free.

I have played/GMed for ~25 years and I don't believe in luck, only statistics. Everyone can have a bad game session with few, if any successes, but in the long run these will balance out will good game sessions, with many successes. If you characters are consistently under performing then you may want to consult some character creation guides like Treantmonk's Guide or Professor Q's Guide and think through your combat tactics more carefully to see if you are putting you character is harms way too often. You can succeed when you take luck into your own hands.

Good ideas. You could also look at templates that give +0 to +1 CR adjustments (Celectial, Fiendish, Advanced, etc.) and build many parts of your templates from the pre-existing ones, or at least use them as guides lines. If you really want to dig into this, you could have creatures with your templates fight creatures with officially accepted templates in simulations to see if they are balanced.

Not a bad idea if you want to run a more GURPS-like game, but you may find that not all feats, traits, skills, etc. are created equal so your system may break down some if you try to make all of these features equal each other. For example, if a feat is worth 60 points, and Toughness gives 1 hp per level, and is 1 hp is equal to 1 skill point then Skill Focus should give 1 skill point per level, but it doesn't. Personally, I believe that many traits are worth less than half a feat. Perception also tends to be a much more useful skill than Knowledge Nobility.

All I am trying to say is that not everything was built to have interchangeable values, so you may have to implement many small tweaks to make these features interchangeable. If you are willing to do that, then great; I would love to see a good point buy Pathfinder system, but it will be a lot of work to do.

Adding a since descriptive sentence is good. Also if the spell only affects something that mammals have (i.e. mammary gland) then further explanation may be unnecessary. (For example, an Enhance Lactation spell wouldn't affect reptiles since they don't lactate. Of course if they did then it would, but they don't so it doesn't.)

I suggest doing simulations to compare an Expositioner to similar classes. Have identical teams face off against each other with characters of the same classes performing the same actions. The only difference between the groups should be that one has an expositioner and the other should have have a classes that fills the same role as an expositioner. If the team with the expositioner wins statistically significantly more or less often then you will know that the exposnitioner needs tweaking until they both win about the same.

You can increase the speed of simulation convergence with the following techniques: 1) have classes of the same type (i.e. both group's fighter) act simultaneously, perform the same actions, and share the same rolls, 2) rather than using rolls for attacks, damage, and saves use the statistically averaged outcomes, 3) have the groups start out in mirror image formations compared to each other, 4) automate this process as much as possible to make things go faster since you may get tired of performing full simulations quickly.

Send me a personal message if you need help with the math or algorithms. If you do want help, please, let me know what computer algebra/language system you are best with (Excel, Mathematica, C, a hand calculator, etc.).

Good luck.

Sounds a lot like the Innuendo skill from D&D 3.0. You might want to read over Innuendo and see if any of its features can be useful. Personally I won't let any classes learn Theve's Cant for free, but if they want it they can learn it with a point in Linguistics. This language should probably also popular for enforcement NPCs to take.

Yog-Sothoths' Key (a.k.a. the Blacksmiths Charm, the Chime of the Outer Gods, the Ragnarok Jasper, the Black Phylosopher's Stone)

This strangely spikes ball is made of an ageless black material with features that rise and fall in unbelievable ways as though the very geometry is offensive to your mind. Feeling the ball, the spikes and valleys don't feel like they are in the same place as they look, making it difficult to dexterously handle with in-perceivable geometries.

The area around Yog-Sothoth's Key has a dimensional warping affect. This gives +2 to Perception checks as people can see part way around obstacles, but -2 Acrobatics as the world shifts subtly and unpredictably. All attacks have a 5% miss chance. Crystals will grow without order, allowing metals forged around the Key to be metal glass, increasing hardness and hit points by 50%, and reducing the time and cost to make master work items. The Key is considered Ghost Touch, as it is a point where all dimensions cross. (May have other unusual effects as well)

The Key has several very powerful abilities, which no mortal knows how to properly operate, although some may think that they can operate it safely. It would take a great deal of trial and error to determine any of these abilities. Using the Key is also very dangerous since 3 dimensional creatures, like most mortals, will have a difficult time using an 11 dimensional object. Misuse of the Key attract other worldly creatures, particularly hounds of tindalose (feel free to give the creatures some crazy abilities to freak your players out). Hounds of tindalose and other strange creatures may also periodically be drawn to the Key without provocation.

Things the Key is know to be able to do: True Seeing, Blink, Contact Other Plane, Dinensional Door, Greater Scrying, Teleport without Error, Phase Door, Plane Shift, Gate, Displacement, Astral Projection, Planetary Teleport, and others.

The Key was created in the deep past, long before this world formed, by Yog-Sothoth. It is used like a Rubik's Cube with geometries that are shifted around to achieve certain affects. Since mortals cannot perceive or properly interact with 8 of the 11 dimensions of the object (nor is there an instruction manual), mortals cannot use the Key as it was intended and will eventually cause some dimensional catastrophe, summon an uncontrolled Shoggoth, banish people (possibly the user) outside of time and space, or some other bad thing. Its powers are nearly unlimited, and a person may try to take advantage of those powers, but misfortune will eventually overtake them.

Turned off sense's:

you have normal sight , low light vision and dark vision which one are you using at the time? If you have blind sense and normal vision are you using both at the same time or can you turn one off or not use it and just receive information from the other sense.

MDC

I looked up Darkvision and Low-light vision and neither of them says anything about needing to be activating or canceling out by other forms of vision. They can all be active simultaneously.

Sorry if I wasn't very clear. I meant I can't think of any real senses that are turned on and off. For example, owls have eyes that are very sensitive to light (Low-light vision), but they don't turn the light sensitivity of their eye on and off. Bats and dolphins have echolocation (Blindsight/sense), pigs and dogs can smell well (Scent), elephants have a tremor sense (Blindsense), some snakes can sense infrared radiation (Darkvision?), fish can sense motion in water with their lateral lines (Blindsense), salt water fish and sense electric field (Blindsight), and some birds have specialized organs that act like a compass. None of these sense need to be turn on and off, they are all always active, as are our senses of touch, smell, vision, hearing, and taste.

If a creature shielded their eyes or ears before they were stuck with Lux or Acoustic it would be reasonable for the penalties to be reduced or eliminated. This degree of detail may be beyond the level of typical Pathfinder rules and is probably best left to DM judgment, like determine how soaking yourself in water will protect you from a Fireball spell.

Thanks for your comments. I will consider what to do if a creature has time to prepare for Lux or Aucoustic by shielding their eyes/ears.

Interesting; so you don't have positive energy as cleric-only, fireball as arcane caster-only, that sort of thing?

That is right, I don't have class specific detail yet, although I would like to address that topic in the future. For now, most offensive spells should be fine for having any of these elements substituted into them. Wizards/sorcerers have the most offensive spells, so these will have the biggest impact on them. I did specially consider positive/negative since wizards/sorcerers tend to be poor healers. Since a positive spell only has half affect for healing, and because you can't discriminate between friend and foe, I didn't see a problem letting wizards/sorcerers use it. You would also be a pretty terrible necromancer if you were banned from death-rays. It is important to remember that part of the price of a healing spell is the spell you could have cast but didn't. For example, casting a positive ball could heal your group 20 hit points, but you may be doing that instead of using a Fireball to deal 40 damage. I have also toyed with the idea of having positive/negative only heal 25% of their rolled damage, which I may apply to offensive heavy casters but not let the healers keep 50% healing.

Not a bad idea. There is also the Magic Knack trait that increase your caster level by +2 as long as it doesn't raise your caster level above your total level.

Scholar of rural folk lore (wait, that is pretty much what a witch is and would be pretty suspicious). Herbalist (sorry, that also describes a witch). Alchemist (pretty much the same as an herbalist). Farmer (it will work until your crops succeed when your neighbors' fail, then you'll be accused for sure). Minister or witch hunter might actually be the safest, and you could get into the role playing of being part of the witch movement to control the church/government from the inside.

Since the magus would not longer be capable of knowing arcane spells, they would be unable to cast arcane spells and would not longer qualify for the Arcane Strike feat. They should lose access to Arcane Strike until their intelligence recovers.

On the other hand, this rule has been ignored in official Pathfinder material, such as the Orc Witch Doctor, which has effectively 14 intelligence for the sake of learning witch spells, but knows a 5th level spell.

These days magic weapons deal half damage to incorporeal targets. Weapons with Arcane Strike are considered magic so they would deal half damage. Adamantine is NOT inherently magical, so it would have to be enchanted (+1 or better) in some way to harm a poltergeist. Force spell (like Magic Missile) deal full damage to incorporeal targets, of course you still need to knew where to aim, which can be tricky since poltergeist are naturally invisible.

If a poltergeist is dumb/arrogant enough to use its Frightener ability, then it regains invisibility the END of its turn, means it cannot move after using Frightener, so you will at least know were the aim, although your attacks will have a 50% miss change since you cannot see it.

I used a poltergeist against my players once and quickly regretted it. 2nd level players cannot reasonably combat something with natural invisibility, incorporealness, telekinesis at will (3d6 damage), flight, and undead immunities. Even if you do guess where it is and use Glitter Dust, it can retreat into the floor or solid wall until the Glitter Dust were off, then return and resume using telekinesis.

Pages of Spell Knowledge and Headband of Charisma.

Also, if you are a human then your favor class bonus should be for one additional spell known from the sorcerer spell list that is at least one level below the highest level your sorcerer can cast. This is from the Advanced Player's Guide and will be much more useful than an extra hit point or skill, in my experience.

The Lord of Madness book recommends giving slaves (such as a griffin mount) a value of roughly (100 gp)x(CR)^2. So giving a griffin should probably reduce treasure elsewhere by ~1,600 gp.

I haven't done Curse of the Crimson Throne so I can't say what a good way to give the griffan would be.

Good luck.

I agree with Cyrad that touch and flat-footed AC are both important and come up pretty frequently in my games. Creatures are flat-footed on the first round of combat, until they act, which is very important to rogues, and ray/touch spells would lose a lot of their potency without touch AC.

It sounds to me like your real concern may be with guns using touch AC, so you may want to consider making some change to guns rather than to the AC system. Perhaps you could have guns only overcome a limited amount of armor based on the gun's base damage dice or something.

Historically, there is reason that traditional armor started to go out of fashion as guns became better. Since Pathfinder is built on the assumption that armor gives good protection, so you may have to modify things a little.

Good luck.

Githzerai and probably Giff (hippo people). Probably a ton of the random monsters (I'm looking at you, Fiend Folio and Monster Manual 2).

Sundaken is exactly right.

You could just say that coup de grace from a non-lethal weapon is Fort or be knocked unconscious, but would be a house-rule sort of thing.

Rules are always written with certain assumptions in mind, and if you look long enough you can often find cases where those assumptions may not be valid. I would recommend doing what seems reasonable and in line with the spirit of the rules.

If you feel that Bleed shouldn't apply to Inevitables, then when the rogue sneak attacks an Inevitable just say that the Inevitable does bleed even though it was slashed where the rogue figured an artery would be if it had one. Alternatively it could leak oil, lawful-fluid, cheese whiz, or whatever, at least until it regenerates.

This might be too technical for you but here are my thoughts,

IMHO, it really depends on how Low Light vision is defined, as in some games it is defined more as shifting the eyes ability to see into other frequencies as well as the standard visible spectrum. I also have seen some games just say it is magic and go from there.

The same goes for blind sense, if it is ground vibration based then air based vibration should not have a huge impact.

Also what about creatures with multiple sense's or that can use multipe types of senses? Does the GM say ok, they were using this sense at the time the spell was cast so they should have this modifier? Or do they say the creature has these senses and take the worst possible penalty? Or does the GM say if they have more than one sense type that suffer no penalty as the other sense can fill the void left by the one that is affected.

As for play tests, you could introduce magic items that have the abilities and test them out that way. A cheep trick is to strip the PC's of spells or quite a few spells and then that forces them to use your magic items with the abilities you created. Or you could also just devise a mini-game or one shot adventure day with various GM created PC's and the abilities you want to test out.

MDC

Not too technical for me.

The Core defines low-light vision as giving characters eyes that are so sensitive to light that they can see twice as far a normal in dim conditions. Since low-light vision eyes are more sensitive to light, I figure they can also be more easily overload with intense light. I'm not familiar with any other definitions of low-light vision, but reasonable exceptions can always be made.

Blindsight and Blindsense are defines as coming from non-visual senses such as vibration, acute smell, keen hearing, and echolocation. Since 75% of those examples may be overloaded by loud noise, creatures with those abilities will lose more total sensing ability than creatures that don't rely on them. An exception should be made for creates that probably gain blindsight/sense from acute smell. I could say that blindsight/sense is a vulnerability unless the creature also has the Scent ability. I will have think about this.

I can't immediately think of any senses that are typically turned off, so could you provide a couple of examples of what you mean?

Good idea for play testing. If I also record what the characters do every round maybe I could replay the fight with different elements (strong maybe). You get a GOLD STAR for helpful suggestions.

I prefer the Necropolitan template for when my players get turn into undead (willingly or not) and for many of my lich needs.

ALL of the classes rolled into one. We will call it the Omniclass. I want the omniclass to be so spread out that it can't be bad at anything or good at anything. It could be like that guys who stays in college for like 8 years full time without getting a degree because he keeps switching majors. They should have tons of highly circumstantial abilities that are used so rarely that they will be forgotten about when the right circumstance actually occurs. They should have a weird grab-bag of second-rate spells and a few mental abilities, but not enough to be very effective. They should have access to all skills as class skills, but only get about 4 skills points per level. They should be proficient with light and medium armor, but still have armor interfere with spell casting. And they should definitely be proficient with a random assortment of weapons that people don't actually use. O' ya they should also start out with less money than most of the other classes since they accrued a lot of student debt.

You could just make up a Reduce Monster spell that your back guys have invented. Sorry, I don't have a good by-the-book solution to your problem.

You could use big snakes, they could reasonably fit through narrow passages. Earth elementals have Earth Glide, so they could be partly in an earth/stone wall while fighting in a narrow passage.

I would replacing Invisibility Sphere OR Lighting Bolt with Haste, and Acid Arrow OR Fiery Shurikin with Glitter Dust.

Some of my favorite 5th level spells are Dominate Person (make bad guy join your team), Hungry Pit (drop opponents out of combat and deal damage every round), Roaming Pit (less initial damage and no damage over time, but you can move it around to remove more opponents from combat), Fire Snake (burn all your enemies and none of your allies even in close combat), Phantasmal Web (kind of like web but it cannot be destroyed and only affects your enemies). If Feeble Mind and Persistent Image have not helped you much you may want to trade them out for Fire Snake and Roaming Pit.

Some of my favorite 6th level spells are Contingency, Chain Lightning (like Fireball but better), Summon Monster 6 (Dire Tiger: charge + pounce + all attacks + rake + grad = frustrated GM (it can do all that in one full round)), Banshee Blast (untyped damage that may panic enemies, removing some of them from combat). I would suggest Summon Monster 6 first since since spell resistance is giving you trouble, and then work on getting Spell Penetration Feats in the future.

You may want to see about retraining to swap out Point-Blank Shop, Precise Shot, and Elemental Focus for Spell Penetration, Greater Spell Penetration and Spell Specialization (evocation).

Anyways, this is your character so you do what you want and what you think will be fun.

I think these are pretty appropriate substations. A challenging rating value is a pretty broad range, so as long as the creature you end with is roughly as dangerous as what you started with, you should be fine.

I also agree with what others have said that this creature may not be very challenging. If your group defeats it too quickly, then you may want to give it enough extra hit points until it injures your group more, or make it explode into a cloud of bats, or something that makes the group earn the rewards and feel awesome for overcoming this creature.

I agree that Dominate Person is overpowered for vampires. I don't know how anyone could beat a group of vampires that uses every round dominating people. I prefer to use alternate vampire builds from 3rd party books.

I suggest building some characters that are identical except for their classes (same attributes, gears, feats, etc.). Have one be your Raider and the others be vanilla classes with fast BaB and up to 4th level spells (paladin, ranger, etc.). Perform simulations having them fight, and see if your Raider tends to wins more/less often than the others. You can hasten the simulations by using average damage from attacks rather than actually rolling attacks and damage. The more you can automate the easier the simulations will be.

Best of luck.

Careful with how you use it: abuse leads to the GM looking for ways to make it backfire.

I very much agree with roguerouge. Using spells outside of their intended function can results in the GM doing bad stuff to return balance to the game.

That being said, it is a very clever idea. Just hope you never have to fight a guy with Symbol of Death on his shield.

First I am all for new an interesting ideas on elemental damage.

Why would low light vision increase the penalty by 25%?
Why would simply having blind sight/sense reduce acoustic penalties?

The reason I ask is just because you have one "sense" does not mean you do not have the other, ie if you have blind sight it does not mean you do not have sight and if your sight is affected then it does not mean that just because you have blind sight it negates 25% of the penalty.

Also, does not Incendiary do more damage than the base spell by doing damage/5 or 1 point of damage per round per 5 points for 4 rounds? That 4 round addition to the effect can be huge IMHO.
You also might want to add a GM note that if the target has flammable objects on them to raise the ref DC or raise the ref DC for some other reasons as well. ie no hand free to put out flames, drop and roll in a puddle of flammable oil, etc.

Have you done any play testing? How did the changes affect the game.

MDC

I figure that eyes that gather significantly more light than human eyes (low-light vision) will suffer more from intense blasts of light than human eyes, hens increase penalties.

Blind sight/sense increases acoustic penalties since Blind sight/sense are often described as relying on echolocation, seismic vibrations or some other form of sound. This would be like how bats, with blind sense from echolocation, can in reality be disoriented by loud noises.

The penalties I have from Lux following the penalties from the Blinded condition. I'm not 100% comfortable with what I have for Acoustic as being nearly the same as Lux but the Deafened condition is pretty wimpy compared to Blinded, so I used pretty much the same affect for both, except that Lux gives a miss change for attack and Acoustic gives a spell failure chance. I assumed that loud noises not only deafen but also temporarily stun and disorient targets. I would like to come up with something better for Acoustic in the future.

Since Incendiary reduces the damage by by one step (d6 -> d4) it deal less initial damage than standard fire, equal damage after 2 rounds of burn, and more damage after 3 rounds of burn. So standard fire is better for a short fight, the same in a fight that last a few rounds, and worse in a long fight. I was alright letter Incendiary do more damage since you have to wait 4 rounds to get the full affect.

I used the same extinguishing rules for Incendiary as are printed for Alchemist's Fire. I did write some environmental conditions that would affect fire/Incendiary spells, but I haven't considered modifications based on what a person is carrying.

I have not been able to conduct a live play test yet, just simulations. I have tried but my players prefer to just use the spells printed in the books. If anyone is willing to try my elements in their game, I would be very happy hear any play testing feed back. Until then about the best I can do is come up with better simulations.

ElyasRavenwood wrote:

I am just curious. I know its in the rules.

Come to think of it, Elves have been immune to sleep for a long time. What edition does this rule come from? Why are elves immune to sleep? was it a "game balance" issue at one point in time?

Thanks

It's been a legacy part of the races since first edition. Presumably from inspirations from Tolkien. This also led to things such as trancing instead of sleeping, which was left behind with third edition.

Pathfinder Elves DO need sleep.

You are correct that elves in Tolkein stories did not sleep but did go into a trance that mixed reality and dream (that sounds like sleep to me, but apparently it wasn't). Many elements of Tolkein were used in D&D and Pathfinder. I don't know if Pathfinder books explicitly say whether elves sleep or not, but the fact that they cannot be put to sleep by any means is supporting evidence that they do not sleep.

I don't know if I am expert, but I will give my opinion based on my GMing experience.

I would not bother with attacks of opportunity (AoO) since falling occurs much faster than the normal movement speed that AoO were written for. Again ignore rules about entering an enemy's square and about ending your turn on their square.

If the character is just flying above a creature and blindly falling into them, then the two of them are likely to end up prone and in the same square (like how you can be in the same square when you grapple).

If you character wants to perform a proper dive-bomb like a bird then they may want to looking into the Flyby Attack feat.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

Keys, locks, and manacles all seem appropriate since they are all related to locks, but I don't actually know.

I think it depends on the flavor of game you want to run. If the campaign is some rapidly escalating event with a sense of urgency, then your players may opt for no down time (undead are getting stronger and smarter, and someone has prophesied that "doom comes with winter"). On the other extreme, if the characters are only called upon in times of great distress or war, then down time could be years (an undead dragon and its army are threatening to conquer the city).

(Elf or Human) Wizard and gets feats like Spell Focus and Spell Penetration (after ~10th level many creatures have spell resistance). Eventually you will want to get Spell Perfection. Avoid Elemental Specialization since you will eventually fight outsiders and other creature with arbitrary energy resistances/immunities. Try to get one or two a Rods of Elemental Spell or several force spells to deal with creatures with energy resistance/immunity. Metamagic rods can help you a lot.

At the start of my campaigns I tell my players that their characters are permanent but not their gear. Items come and go. Players may get upset when their characters lose stuff, even temporarily, but I think it can give them a good opportunity to grow and to show that they can be awesome without their Stuff of Awesomeness.

I think you did a very good thing that will lead to much more memorable experiences than if you had let him keep his stuff. Now he will have to think more tactically and convince his comrades to help until he gets his stuff back. He also has a nemesis that could become a reoccurring villain.

If your players complain a lot, then next time you could have the succubus dominate the tank, teleport away, and mentally command the tank to attack the rest of the group. After using a succubus to its full (scary) potential they may be more grateful that they only lost some gear.

I would not apologize or undo anything, just roll with it and let character growth and role playing occur. You may want to secretly soften up the upcoming fights just a little until he gets his stuff back, just don't tell your players. You want your characters to struggle but ultimately be victorious.

I don't know a lot of the features you reference, but I will take your word that they work. One of these features does give you the ability to cast 1st level ARCANE spells, right, because that is a requirement for Dragon Disciple.

You may want to build your character all the way and do some combat simulations to test how well he works. Use your character in a group with a few iconic characters fighting some tough typical enemies and see how well your group fares. Then you can make changes to your character, re-run the simulation and see if your group does better or worse. You will reach convergence faster if you use averages than than actually rolling dice, when possible. I have written functions to obtain the average results from attacks (assuming x2 damage from critical hit), savings throws, savings throws with improved evasion, two-weapon rend, sneak attack, and combat maneuvers. These are written for Mathematica and you are free to use them if you want to do simulations, although you may have to translate them into Microsoft Excel or some other language if you don't have Mathematica.

Feel free to send me a PM if you want a hand doing combat simulations.

Do you have a plan for converting race-, class-, or ability- based resistance to these new energy types?

Perhaps a table?

Energy resistance and spell resistance should apply as usual.

I have thought some about how race-, class-, and ability- features would interact with these energy types, but I only have come up with answers for some of the abilities as follows:

Blind Fighting, Improved Blind Fighting, Blindsight, and Blindsense each reduces penalties from Lux by 2, but Low-light vision and light sensitivity/light blindness increase penalties by 25% each.

Blindsight and Blindsense increase penalties from Acoustic by 25%. (You know, I actually hate calling them Lux/Acoustic, but I had to change it from calling them Light/Sonic since using pre-existing Pathfinder terms was confusing a lot of people.)

I suppose channel resistances could apply against to Life/Death, poison resistance/immunity should apply against Toxic, disease resistance/immunity should apply against Plague, bonuses against curses/hexes should apply against Curse (they are rare but I have seen them at least once).

Desiccation deals non-lethal damage, so its ineffective against undead and constructs.

Poison immunity should prevent the penalties associated with Caustic, but I haven't figured out how poison resistance will work yet. Trip immunity prevents the penalties associated with High Momentum Material/Force but I haven't figured out how trip resistance will work yet.

I will try to go through all of the elements and figure out how they will be affected by common abilities. You get a GOLD STAR for giving me a good idea of how I can improve my elements.

As I read Glue Seal, the coating on an item (one item, not an area) is negated with a Ref save. Otherwise, if the item is affected then a combat maneuver/strength check is needed to separate it from any items it was touching at the time the spell was cast. The only residual affects involve having the item stick to creatures. Unless the archer tries to drop his quiver or bow, this shouldn't be a problem.

I also agree with what other has said that Glue Seal affect an area for entangling creatures XOR one single item, but not both.

In my experience as a GM, archers tend to do the most damage in a group during an average round of combat, while taking very little damage. I don't thing you need to have the very BEST archer because they are all very good. Personally I would just stick to a fighter with the Archer archetype and get as many archery and weapon related feats as possible. An Arcane Archers could also be good after you have all the archery feats you really want.

If Mithral is a viable option then it would reduce the weight by half, so for Full Plate it would cost you 9,000 gp and lighten you by 25 lbs (0.00278 lbs/gp).

Handy Haversacks give 120 lbs of storage, weigh 5 lbs, and typically cost 2,000 gp (0.0575 gp/lbs).

Bags of Holding give 250/500/1000/1500 lbs of storage, weigh 15/25/35/60 lbs, and typically cost 2,500/5,000/7,400/10,000 (0.094/0.095/0.130/0.144 lbs/gp)

Portable Hole gives 283 cubic feet of storage, has negligible weight, and costs 10,000 gp. If we equate average storage volume to average storage weight from Bags of Holding (~7.04 lbs/cubic foot) we can determine that a Portable Hole will hold about 2,000 lbs. (0.200 lbs/gp).

Muleback Cords increase carrying strength by 8, weight 0.25 lbs, and cost 1,000 gp. Assuming you start with 10 strength then your medium carry capacity increases from 66 lbs to 200 lbs. (0.134 lbs/gp).

Having an item enchanted to cast Ant Haul at will costs spell level x caster level x 1800 gp = 1800 gp and will probably weight 1 lbs or less. This would triple your carry capacity, so with 10 strength and a medium load of 66 lbs, you could carry 198 lbs AND cast Ant Haul on your comrades increasing their carrying capacity. You could agree with your comrades to reserve up to 1/2 of their extra carrying capacity for your stuff and the other half for their stuff. Great for the whole group (0.0733 lbs/gp for only you + values for the rest of your group).

Heavy Load Belts have Ant Haul continuously in effect and cost 2,000 go (0.066). Like the item above but worse, although less likely to be vetod by your GM.

Mules or donkeys with saddle bags costs 8 gp + 4 gp + 0.05 gp/day for feed and carrie 600-800 lbs. Assume 700 lbs carrying capacity for an average mule/donkey (58.3 lbs/gp + 14,000 lbs/gp/day).

Mules or donkeys plus carts are the same as above but the cart allows the animal to use their dragging capacity, increasing their effective carrying capacity by x5. Total carry capacity is 700 lbs x 5 = 3,500 lbs, and cost is 8 gp + 15 gp + 0.05 gp/day (152 lbs/gp + 70,000 lbs/gp/day).

Untrained Hirelings cost 0.1 gp or more (varies dramatically depending on the book, so you should just stick with the Core) per day. You will have to pay for their food and lodging if you want them to follow you away from their home. Assuming the hireling is equivolent to a farmer with 11 strength and has a 76 lbs medium load capacity then you get (760 lbs/gp/day). Values will decrease with traveling, but you could also get a cart like for the mules and donkeys.

Although Mithral is the obvious answer to your problem it is also the mostly costly in terms of weight reduction per gold. I usually make sure my characters own a donkey and a cart.