zachol's page

Have accelerated crafting (1 day = 1000 GP) require materials at half cost instead of 1/3, and have it require a feat (Master Alchemist = alchemical items and poisons, Master of the Forge = metal weapons and armor, Master of the Wild's Bounty = wooden and leather weapons and armor and other miscellaneous equipment; optionally, change the names of the second two to not suck). If someone's willing to spend an entire feat on it, mundane equipment at half price seems reasonable.

Get rid of the Craft skills entirely (along with Profession). Repairing your own equipment doesn't require a check or feat, you just do it automatically during downtime. Repairing other stuff (like a bridge or whatever) can be taken care of with ability checks and maybe a knowledge check. Alternatively, keep the Craft skills, and allow cheaper crafting if someone wants to scrimp on it (though it takes a lot longer).

If you're keeping the alchemist, maybe go in strong on the alchemy angle?

Bump the inquisitor to full BAB, remove the +attack judgment and otherwise thin the list (how is this game setting handling DR, particularly DR/magic?), see if there are any replacement judgments you can think of. An easy idea might be varied +elemental damage judgments, or ones to defeat DR like silver or cold iron, themed as being alchemical oils the inquisitor applies to their weapons, making the inquisitor more of a beastslaying Van Helsing sort (without the undead hunter part as much). Depending on how you're handling consumables and equipment, they could be able to invest money into expensive vials that would grant emergency uses of judgment, or possibly also double-strength judgment boosts.

Give bards healing salve abilities. Out of combat, everyone should have access to heal skill stuff that makes healing a little faster than normal (unless you really want to keep things at a super slow pace), while bards would have in-combat and emergency healing capabilities. Then, double down on the lore angle, allowing Knowledge skills to grant in-combat bonuses against enemies, with the bard able to do it as a class feature without investment in individual Knowledge skills. Without the cleric and wizard, bards become much more important debuffers. Maybe even consider things like Knowledge (engineering) allowing you to manipulate the environment; the bard (or anyone else with K (engineering), but the bard gets it for free) might be able to fire an arrow at a crumbling pillar, hit just right spot, and create an area of difficult terrain or maybe deal some area damage.

Retaining alchemists also helps tie into the theme, having them as buffers. If you're cutting down magical equipment, temporary stat enhancement bonuses become much more important, and if the alchemist is the only one who can provide stuff like Bull's Strength, their role becomes a lot clearer. You might want to throw them a bone and give all alchemists the infusion discovery for free, otherwise it would sort of become an obligatory non-choice. Alternatively, turn all enhancement bonuses into morale bonuses; then the alchemist, barbarian, and bard are all playing in the same space in terms of buffs, and it relieves the pressure on the alchemist.

A lot of this depends on how you're doing equipment. Personally, I'm a big fan of giving consumables (or effective consumables) as class features to encourage their use. You could give the rogue free alchemical items they've "requisitioned," saying that they only get more if they use the ones they get, completely removing the pressure of managing cash and the feeling that you shouldn't "waste" consumables. Then you'd have the alchemist (bombs, infusions), bard (salves), inquisitor (judgments/oils) and rogue (general items) with these sort of consumables as class features, giving a nonmagical explanation for their abilities while hopefully encouraging other characters to use more consumables in general. This sort of status quo would also allow you to introduce occasional "really magic" consumables for one-off dramatic effects, while making sure they never become ubiquitous (assuming you want that sort of thing at all; if you're going for a much stronger "no magic ever" setting, then you can just not, of course).

I like having a firm sense of the character's personality and behavior and an idea of what she used to do and where she comes from. I used to construct really involved backstories (if only for my own enjoyment), but more and more I've found that leaving the past open can be a lot more valuable. It allows you to insert stuff that would be appropriate to the situation at hand, like "oh I've been here, I've got a contact," or for the GM to ask "could your character have a brother or cousin for this plot point?" and to instantly develop connections that fit the larger story.

A halfling wizard managing to knock down a door could be explained as "the door was actually flawed or previously damaged and the halfling got lucky."
Also, Pathfinder doesn't really model things like leverage and mass. If you compare a tiny halfling wizard with Str 7 to a fat human merchant/expert with Str 8, with regular 1d20 rolls, the merchant only has a 5% edge on breaking down a door over the halfling, when really it should be much larger.
If you are going to retain straight Str rolls for knocking down a door, I'd be careful about making changes focused on the halfling that then also catch the fat guy.

The problem there is how to define effectiveness.

If I purposely focus my character on non-combat abilities (in order to match their concept), that's going to make a character that's effective in the kind of games I play, but not for those who play a more combat-focused game.

I feel like even if you accept this, there's still sometimes hostility against optimizing within a certain domain.

For example, say I'm making a magus. I could choose to use Dervish Dance and Magical Lineage on shocking grasp, or I could take, say, Power Attack on a Str-focused build along with Armor Expert. Maybe my image in the first place is of a heavily (well, moderately) armored gish who can cast spells and use brute force at the same time. The high Dex Dervish Dance build is inappropriate (I want to use a longsword anyway, not a scimitar). Noncombat stats are roughly comparable between the two, so we're just looking at combat.
Here, it seems like I'm losing out. Str magus has less Dex, so less AC and Ref. Power Attack doesn't give the same kind of returns to a magus compared to, say, fighter, considering the lower BAB. The magus gets their damage a different way (damaging touch spells). I can do the Magical Lineage trick with my second trait and the meta feat, but that's really pigeonholing my attack routine.

I honestly would rather be able to just say "I want to make a Str magus" and feel like I was as effective as the Dex magus, instead of possibly being more or less effective. It's not like I particularly like having to comb through all the options while focusing on which is "better."
I know that a good group and a sensible GM can make most concepts and executions work by smoothing things over and adjusting encounters, but I wish I could more confidently make a character in isolation and know that it was both sufficiently good at its job without overshadowing other characters. The easiest way to do this is just assume a relatively high level of optimization and build to that. If anything, building optimized characters is a matter of being polite. I can always wind them back a few notches if its clear they're inappropriate for the group, but it's difficult to rebuild an unoptimized character to fit in a high powered group.

To be perfectly frank, it seems like characters of the same level should be about equal in power. Calling a character "weak" or "unoptimized" only makes sense in comparison to other characters of their level, and it feels like the game has fundamentally failed if characters of the same level have wildly different levels of power (assuming you're still making a good faith effort to build an effective character, ie not taking metamagic feats if you don't cast spells).
I mean, if you want to have a story about a character slightly out of their depth, sure go ahead, but do that by playing, say, a level 7 character in a party that's otherwise level 10.

Would also love a copy of the rules, whenever it's convenient.