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What it looks like I will be going with:
20 point build- 12 Str, 16 Dex, 14 Con, 12 Int, 14 Wis, 7 Cha (before race)
lvl 1 Swashbuckler (noble fencer) combat reflexes
lvl 2 Gunslinger (thronewarden)
lvl 3 Swashbuckler weapon focus (hvy pick)
lvl 4 Gunslinger
lvl 5 swashbuckler slashing grace if I can retrain my weapon focus, quickdraw otherwise
lvl 6 Gunslinger if gunslinger and swashbuckler initiative stack, Swashbuckler otherwise
Lvl 7+ Swashbuckler

At the first opportunity retrain WF (pick) to WF (waraxe), but only when I get a new feat so I can go straight to slashing grace

I am keeping stone cunning as a racial trait because the character is a miner and knowing the ground is kind of his thing.

My 2 top traits are glory of old (racial) and reactionary (combat) but selection is not final.

Any final tweaks?

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

The best way to do this is to use the pick only for the first two levels and then switch to a dwarf war axe Once you get slashing grace with the dwarf war axe you not only get DEX to damage it counts as a one-handed piercing weapon, so it works with all the swashbuckler class abilities.

AON lists the Heavy Pick as a one handed piercing weapon. I see no reason why it won't work with the Swashbuckler abilities.

heavy pick

It works. The issue is recovery of panache is linked to crits and pick is 20 only crits, 1/3 the number of crits you get from traditional swashbuckler weapons. That is what makes it suboptimal.

This is effectively a dare character.

The basic premise is a dwarf swashbuckler who uses a heavy pick as his weapon.
Swashbuckler must be the primary class, but some multiclassing is fine.
He is a miner, so he really likes his pick. Switching to another weapon for a proper dwarf, like a waraxe, at later levels is a possibility.

Your deviousness is appreciated.

Ok. I think I'm going to go with Magical Lineage, but I need to decide what spell I'm going to use it on. There's the entire list of magus and witch to choose from, except the fire spells.

The default for magus is shocking grasp. But if you plan to never be in melee I would suggest snowball. It is on both lists and a 1st level intensified snowball is great fun.

If you can give further details on what you are trying to accomplish, we might be able to give a better answer.

Character with hide in plain sight, so they can hide even when observed. In melee with opponent. 5' step to hide so they can get sneak attack with next attack.

Quote:

Ranger Combat Style (Ex): The slayer selects a ranger combat style (such as archery or two-weapon combat) and gains a combat feat from the first feat list of that style. He can choose feats from his selected combat style, even if he does not have the normal prerequisites.

Quote:

At 2nd level, a ranger must select one of two combat styles to pursue: archery or two-weapon combat.

It says select in both classes. As I see it, the act of selecting the combat style makes it part of your class, with all the benefits and limitations.

But slayer does not grant the class ability, it just grants the feats.

A 5' step is a "no action"; it limits the ability to make any further movement, but a creature would still have their move action available to hide as per Sniping. Movement may require a stealth check, but a stealth check does not require movement.

So does a 5' step allow a stealth check or not?

Assuming that a character meets the conditions to hide, can a character make the check after taking a 5' step? Or does he actually have to spend a move action to hide?

Check: Your Stealth check is opposed by the Perception check of anyone who might notice you. Creatures that fail to beat your Stealth check are not aware of you and treat you as if you had total concealment. You can move up to half your normal speed and use Stealth at no penalty. When moving at a speed greater than half but less than your normal speed, you take a -5 penalty. It’s impossible to use Stealth while attacking, running, or charging.

If people are observing you using any of their senses (but typically sight), you can’t use Stealth. Against most creatures, finding cover or concealment allows you to use Stealth. If your observers are momentarily distracted (such as by a Bluff check), you can attempt to use Stealth. While the others turn their attention from you, you can attempt a Stealth check if you can get to an unobserved place of some kind. This check, however, is made at a –10 penalty because you have to move fast.

Action: Usually none. Normally, you make a Stealth check as part of movement, so it doesn’t take a separate action. However, using Stealth immediately after a ranged attack (see Sniping, above) is a move action.

On the most literal reading of the rules: Yes. There is no restrictive language in the slayer class.

But using some common sense and the transitive property there is a strong implication that the restrictions from the combat style class feature apply. Also there is some precedent of abilities that reference another class's abilities having to follow the same restrictions.

I would say no, but there is wiggle room if someone wants to allow it.

It depends on if you want to do more blasting or shore up your weaknesses.
For shoring up your weaknesses I would go with either ranger or unchained monk. Either choice gets you:
Full BAB. This increases your CMD and makes you more accurate with ranged attack spells.
Good Fort and Ref saves
At least 2 extra skill points a level
Expanded class skills. Including acrobatics, climb, and swim; which are very useful to have a point or two in at low levels, especially when class skills.

To answer your overall question, there are a few things that alter your AC when polymorphed.
1) you lose all armor and shield bonuses. (Aside from a few exceptions.)
2) You lose all natural armor bonuses from your form (such as being a nagaji.)
3) You replace the size bonus of your old form with that of your new form.
4) You adjust your Dex as specified in the spell description.
5) You get the higher of natural armor granted by the spell or class ability. Thus a high level draconic sorcerer would keep his +4 natural armor bonus when turning into a wolf, but have the +6 from the spell if he turned into a triceratops.
6) You should keep most other bonuses to AC such as deflection, insight, and dodge. Though you might lose access to the dodge bonuses provided by some feats (like dodge) if your dex drops too low.

Very rarely will I just handwave a whole fight. Even vastly underpowered foes still get put on the board. Sometimes you have to give the players something to roflstomp to let them feel powerful. This works especially well with things they used to struggle with.
Or the point of the encounter is to drain resources, not to seriously threaten the PCs. To skip these encounters is to make the boss fight easier.

But I will call an obviously lost fight early (unless the players are having too much fun playing with their food). Usually I will say "burn X levels of spells." The spells can come from SLAs, hard cast, or items. I will entertain other ability uses counting as spell levels. The players can divide the load as they see fit.

There are plenty of options other than straight damage in combat. Area control to isolate enemies. Buffing allies. Healing/status removal. Debuffing enemies.

I have several characters who, if they are trying to do damage then things have gone horribly wrong. But they are always contributing to the fight, even if only by providing a flank for the rogue.

I'm sure the GM can handle special situations as needed keeping things fair.

The existence of the rules forum and extensive FAQ list suggest that your statement may not be entirely true.

The rules clearly state that attacks granted by BAB must be used in descending order. The rules are silent on when bonus attacks can/must be made.

For the people who insist that bonus attacks must come at the start of the sequence I present the following scenario: A monk finishes his sequence of attacks but hasn't quite finished the opponent so he decides to spend a ki point to gain an extra attack. Do you tell the monk no, he had to spend the swift action to gain the attack at the start of the round because now he is making a highest BAB attack after a lowest BAB attack?

Sorcerer/oracle is probably the worst way to do MT. You get your 1st level of MT until level 9. And you lose the vast majority of your bloodline and mystery powers.

From a power standpoint cleric/wizard is probably the best because of the earliest entry into MT and having the fewest class features lost to thaking a prestige class. needing 2 mental stats is something of an issue, but if you do not use one of the classes for things that require saves all you are missing out on is a bonus spell or two.

A build I am currently trying out is a sorcerer/cleric.
For sorcerer I took the celestial bloodline with the wildblooded archetype so that I use Wis for both classes.
For the cleric I took an archetype that trades away channel energy.

That's a fair point, but the Klar counts as a light shield. I won't get it's armour bonuses the round I do cast any spells ofc.

Rules read:
With a light shield you can hold the weapon in your shield hand as a free action so you have a free hand to cast.

"You strap a shield to your forearm and grip it with your hand. A light shield's weight lets you carry other items in that hand, although you cannot use weapons with it."

P.152 of the core rulebook.

Run that interpretation by your GM before building around it. You do not have full use of your hand, you cannot attack with weapons held in it, so your GM may rule that you cannot cast with it either.

Why are you playing a druid when you are building a fighter?
You will not be casting in combat because both of your hands are full. If you are fine with your spells being limited medium to long term buffs then this could work.

I had initially considered all holy damage with the mythic point but thought it might be too greedy.

Thanks for the feedback.

For a mythic feat is seems underpowered. Feats like mythic power attack or mythic vital strike are a lot more powerful. Channel energy is not that powerful, especially in a mythic game.

Since the amount of fire damage is based on the amount of damage you heal it will not be affected by things that boost up the damage vs undead. For example, the Sun Domain power Sun’s Blessing will not work because you are not channeling positive energy to damage undead. Likewise, the Aasimar FCB of extra damage vs undead and evil outsiders will also not function. That also means other abilities that add effects to channel energy when harming a foe will not work either.

At 20th level tier 10 you will be dealing 10d6 damage to 6 foes within 30 feet of you. If you expend a mythic point 17.5 of that ignores fire resistance. If the targets, make their save they take 8.75 points of damage. Unless you are a life oracle or other CHA based channeler the chances are that any significant target in a mythic campaign will probably make the save. 9 points of fire damage and 9 points that ignores fire resistance is nothing at that level. Your arcane caster at that level will be throwing maximized augmented mythic fireball dealing 200 HP that ignores fire resistance and immunity to all foes within a 40 feet radius.

Remember, you are channeling to heal your friends; the damage is just a nice bonus

I will be playing a mythic game some time in the future. I want a custom mythic feat and figured I would run it by you people for a sanity check before asking my GM.

Mythic Purifying Channel:
Prerequisites: Purifying Channel

Benefit:You may increase the number creatures damaged via purifying channel by half your tier (min 1). You can expend one point of mythic power to change half the fire damage to divine damage which is not subject to energy resistance (like flamestrike).

Purifying Channel:
Prerequisites: Cha 15, Selective Channeling, channel energy class feature.

Benefit: When you channel positive energy to heal, one creature that you exclude from your channeling takes an amount of fire damage equal to the die result you roll for healing, and is dazzled for 1 round by the light of these flames. A successful saving throw against your channel energy halves the fire damage and negates the dazzled effect.

Thanks for the feedback.

You could try the Resident Evil opening. Ship is already landed and the PCs are missing a chunk of memory. Searching around will give them clues as to who they are and what they are doing. And the discovery that an important pieces of the ship is missing. And so is Fred, and there is a trail leading to an opening in the Mountains of Madness.

At its heart Mountains of Madness is a dungeon crawl. The horror comes from discovering that the world is just an outpost for some elder things. To do a one-shot all you need are some cthuhloid critters and some tech items. Stuff like mi-go with forcefields and laser pistols. Add in some traps and haunts.

Or you could use the module Doom Comes to Dustpawn. That has some 'things man was not meant to know' on a returned spaceship and has a significant cthuhlu feel to it.

Intimidation is a decent debuff; it gives the victim a -2 to attacks, saves, and skill checks. So if you have offensive casters in your group this can help them land their spells. If your group has decent AC then the -2 to hit boosts defenses. But this has no reall effect if ACs are super high or really low.

Shatter defenses is not that much use unless you have sneak attack. Without sneak attack all you get is a reduction in AC, but the people most affected (high dex) are the most likely to have uncanny dodge. The bad guys are only flatfooted to your attacks, not those of your allies.

And then there is the out of combat social skill use. Prisoners can get downright talkative when they know you can rip their arms off.

If you read the first line in the quote, I posted you will see that you do not threaten a target you threaten a square. Since Cut from the Air requires you to be armed you are in fact threatening the square the ranged attack travels through.

Opportune Parry and Riposte states “as if she were making an attack of opportunity.” That means you must satisfy all the requirements of an AoO or cannot perform the deed.

Are you claiming that you cannot parry a reach weapon? Becuse if you must use all the AOO rules then you do not threaten someone with greater reach than you.

1) Use intimidate on the bad guys. Giving them a -2 to hit, skills, and saves is a decent debuff.
2) Use feats like antagonize or the divine fighting technique of Iomedae.
3) Use spells like biting words that have multiple uses per casting.

ShroudedInLight wrote:

I do not personally advocate for critical fumbles. Martial characters have it rough enough without needing to worry about one of their 6 attacks a turn causing them to decapitate themselves.

To deal with martial having more attacks and thus those with X5 the attacks then a 1st level would fumble x5 time more, i added a 2nd roll. each bab a character have (which should represent his martial prowess and expertise) is a stacking 5% to not fumble on a nat 1 (which is followed by a to hit roll to confirm the miss, like with a crit) so say a level 6 fighter rolls a nat 1 and then a miss confirmation, he has 30% to just miss and not fumble. while a level 20 would only fumble if he rolls a nat 1, then a miss confirmation and then a 100 in a 100% roll.

Too many rolls. That just slows things down too much.

The PCs might only have to survive for a certain amount of time to win. After that help comes, or the boss realizes that he left the oven on, or was just testing them, or some other excuse for the fight to end without death.

I am asking my GM for a custom feat for a multi-classed character to increase the effective level of some powers. I wanted to check what seems reasonable to the people here.

The inspiration for the feat is feats like boon companion, shaping focus, accomplished sneak attack and monasic legacy. All of these feats increase the effective class level of a specific ability with a maximum of the character's hit dice.

I want to increase the level of my cleric domain(s). The real question is, is the entire domain increased by the feat or just 1 power within the domain?

No. They are not airborne. This is a contact effect, not inhalation.

Do not have resisting the compulsion based on will saves. Base it on a flat DC based on how severe the addiction is. So if it is relatively minor only DC 6. You might increase the DC at intervals if the character has not been able to indulge for a while. But it then goes back to the base DC once they get their fix.

The next thing is to determine what is considered gambling. It could be anything from only card games to any time someone says "wanna bet?" In general the more common the temptation the lower the base DC should be. (A small probability checked many times will result in a lot of failures.)

It really depends on what you want to do with the classes, because they are so versetile. All of them can be combat monsters. All of them can be healers, though druid falls a bit behind. All of them can be decent blaster casters. All of them can be great support characters. So the race is going to depend more on the role than the class itself.

For life oracles, there's no race like gnome.

The players are rolling up new characters. That was never in doubt. What had/has me concerned is the disposable character attitude. For this book in the AP replacing characters is not that much of a chore, but it does mess with plot hooks for later books that have been established.
But once you hit book 2, and especially book 3, it is much harder to integrate a new character. It is one thing to ask a random stranger to go explore dangerous ruins with you. It is a different matter to ask that same stranger to rule a country with you.

From my point of view the fey was an antagonist not an ally, why should the PC believe it. The shambling mound could have just as easily been another illusion of the fey to get the party to run away.

Why is the wizard deciding what information it gets? The GM should be the one determining that not the player. The way I usually handle identifying monster’s abilities is to start off with the most obvious or well known. I might consider what the players are asking but would probably start with how tough the creature is.

I am not saying the players are blameless, but from what you have said they may not have really known how outclassed they were despite the wizard being able to identify it. If the GM is using an encounter to teach the players they should run away, it should be clearer that they are outclassed.

I have seen a lot of GM that like to give the players minimal information on how well they are doing or how tough the monster is and then wonder why the players did not flee. In one encounter my character did 15 points of damage. When I asked the GM about how well my hit was, his response was "it took some damage". This GM would never give out monster stats including HP, AC and was never clear how much damage if any the party was dealing until the monster dropped dead. We had no real way of knowing if the monster was almost dead or barely wounded.

For info on monsters I let the players ask questions that they want answers for. That way they get info that they feel is relevant for the situation at hand. Also they cannot accuse me of feeding them useless info. I have no problem giving out game info like AC, hit points, hit dice, or saves. After all many spells directly interact with these stats and a caster who made his check is likely to know if his sleep spell can affect a bog standard critter based on HD.

As far as player experience the one with the least experience has been playing for at least 3 years. Another for at least 6 years, and the other two for at least 10 years. They know how tough a shambling mound is.

Was it one of the characters that identified it? If it was the fey that was “playing” with them I can understand them not taking the warning seriously.

If it was a PC that identified it, how much information did you give them?

I know several people who if their character would not have the information, they probably would do what your party did. These people have decades of experience in a variety of games but tend to get very into their character even when the player knows better.

The fey was messing with them for a while. It always stayed invisible while stealling stuff or playing other pranks. But since they were taking out the bandits it decided to help them when it saw the shambling mound approaching their camp site. It used ghost sound to wake them up. When the one person went to investigate it, while still invisible, it told him to run away.

Did any of the characters have any ranks in knowledge nature? And if so, did they make the DC 16 check to identify the shambling mound? Since the DC of the knowledge check is higher than 10 only a character trained in knowledge (or a bard) can attempt the roll. Since it was a “Random” encounter there should not have been any rumors about it for the players to be forewarned.

People complain all the time when a player uses out of character knowledge to their advantage. Why is this any different than a player without knowledge nature pulling out the cold iron weapon when they see a fey creature?

Yes, it was identified. And they still didn't run until it killed 2 of them. One of them had grease prepared and didn't try to slow it down so they could run, he stood there and hit it with acid splash.

All of the players have been playing Pathfinder for at least 3 years.

Melkiador wrote:

TxSam88 wrote:

AP's have enough in them already - no need to use Random encounters.

Really depends on the specific AP chapter. Some of the authors bake them in and some just add them as an afterthought.

well, we're on our 12th AP, and have yet to use a Random encounter. We use Milestone levelling so no need for extra XP, and they already take 12-18 months to finish an AP, so no need for extra stuff to do.. so yeah, we've yet to see a need for Random encounters.

Normally the way I use "random" encounters is to mine them for inspiration. But this AP is Kingmaker where you need some rndom encounters to populate the wilderness.

I am using milestone leveling but some random encounters count toward the milestone milestone count.

Melkiador wrote:

You may want to just skip random encounters,...

on the mechanics side the random encounters should be within tier, or CR = APL to APL+2 for 4 PCs. Shambling Mound is CR 6 so players should be 4th level. You could do APL+3 but those should be plotted events.

So yes, APL+5 was overkill and should have never happened.

That would be correct if it was just sprung on them like normal random encounters. But in this case the saw it was an overwhelming threat, had every chance to escape, and chose to engage anyway.

Just started running an AP. Characters are still level 1, Random encounter generator came up with shambling mound. Obvioulsy pitting them against that is a TPK. Out of character I had previously warned the players that not everything they find is going to be within their power to defeat, at least not right now. So I decided to use this as an in game demonstration of this point.

A fey NPC that had been playing with the PCs alerted them to the danger. Then tried to scare them away with some ninor illusions. They still refused to take the hint and one of them went to investigate. The fey then dropped all subtlety and just said to run away. Nope. The character then sees the shambler at the same time it sees him. He is told he can just outrun it. Nope, he leads it back to the rest of the party. 2 characters die before the rest finally get the hint and run away.

Is there any coming back from this?

Go kitsune vigilante.with the realistic likeness feat and the seamless shapechanger social talent.
I would also suggest taking either 2 levels of bard or cavalier with order of the songbird for versetile performance (act). Your disguise and bluff checks will be insane.

Fortune is not as good as it looks. Once per round he can roll twice and take the better result. And the choice has to be made before the dice are rolled.

Evil Eye is mind affecting, so there are a lot of targets you cannot use it on. But it is a great general purpose debuff.

Healing gets a bad rap. The healing provided is relatively minor, but how many parties would turn their noses up at a wand of CLW with 5 charges per day? Also you can use it to hurt undead. Lastly it is great for healing NPCs that you do not want to waste resources on.

The ancestor patron is very good for a buffing witch.

What role will you be filling in the party?

Levels wouldn't stack in any way. Neither class mentions stacking with similar abilities.

But the AC bonuses would stack since one is base on Cha and the other Wis. You would use the class levels independently to determine what increases to AC you would get.

Actually, it is needed because flurry of blows removes the 1.5 STR for attacks in the flurry.

Not if you go unchained.

For added thematic fun use DRAGON STYLE and DRAGON FEROCITY to get that 1.5 STR bonus back.

No need as dragon bites come standard with 1.5 str to damage. (Pg 90 of the Bestiary)

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

I am ideologically committed to player character-non-player character transparency, and PF1 gives me that.

Interesting, care to extrapolate on why such a commitment?

In PF2 PCs and NPCs work on different rules. For example a 12th level NPC fighter does 3d8 damage without having a magic weapon. Or a bog standard NPC orc has a racial ability that a PC orc cannot have.

What I was contemplating was multiclassing with psychic. Psychic casters do not have verbal or somatic components. Nor material components for the most part.

I would be inclined to say it is not merely based on being unable to speak or other factors. The base shifter class mentions being unable to speak (using only animal sounds), but does not go into the same detail of the oozemorph's restrictions on casting.

As for whether something like Natural Spell would allow casting... I will leave that to others.

SLAs are not prohibited, so that heavily implies that it is not some mystic inability to use magic

When in ooze form it says cast spells. Is this a mystic ban on casting or is it simply a result of not being able to use verbal, somatic, and material components?

Fluidic Body (Su): An oozemorph’s base form is not that of her race but rather that of a protoplasmic blob that has the same volume and weight. An oozemorph treats her creature type as both ooze and her base creature type from her race for the purposes of effects targeting creatures by type (such as bane weapons and a ranger’s favored enemy). In this form, the oozemorph is immune to critical hits and precision damage and can’t be flanked. However, she has no magic item slots and she cannot benefit from armor; cast spells; hold objects; speak; or use any magic item that requires activation, is held, or is worn on the body.

So if a character had feats or class abilities to remove those casting components could the character cast spells while in ooze form?

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

It's actually two feats. You also need weapon focus bite.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Two feats is not worth one bite attack to me.

Why not? It means that you can make a full attack with a weapon that gets extra reach and 1.5 str to damage. ALL of your flurry attacks can be with the bite.