1. Linguistics only gives one language per point. S/He will have to wait a level.
2. Only the highest, I'm pretty sure.
3. There's an update to the Campaign Setting in the pipeline, but adapting the existing feats isn't too difficult. Ignore skills that are no longer used, unless they have been rolled into another skill, in which case use the new skill.
4. There is the fighter feat that you mentioned, or you can simply import the Open Minded skill. As long as you are careful about importing combat feats from 3.5, you should be able to import noncombat feats pretty safely. Just treat all the 3.5 stuff as optional(being very careful with the combat feats), and you should be okay.
Hope this helps.
1. taking the Linguistics skill gives an extra language, but as we understand it, for receiving extra languages, it is totally unimportant if you take it as a class-skill or not (the +3 is just a bonus on the skill-check, not extra ranks, right?!?), but if this holds true, how can a player who wants to now more than one extra language achieve this??? Old rules: just put more ranks in it. New rules: you are just allowed to put one rank in it at first level, right?!?
That's correct, yes.
Our Ulfen cleric (Int 10) wants to know his mother-tongue Skald and still wants to be able to speak Celestial, how is he supposed to do it?!?
Well, look at it this way: Is he likely to need to know how to speak Celestial before he gets to level 2? He could take it then and simply say he always knew it, it just never came up before. I use this approach a lot, as it's the only way to represent a multi-skilled character in PF.
2. our second cleric plans on taking levels as sorcerer, the problem/question: Do the Energy Resistance (Ex) from domain powers and Elemental Resistance (Ex) from bloodline powers stack, or do you count just the highest?!?
"Like bonuses do not stack" is the rule, the question is if they are like bonuses. The work-around is take them to different energy types.
3. is their any update for the class-options from the Campaign Setting or from the Gazetteer?!? We think they are still 3.5, but we need PFRPG rules. The cleric mentioned under 1 is interested in the Holy-Warrior variant, and our fighter wants to take the Academy-Fighter. But both variants gain advantages not useful for Pathfinder. The cleric is already proficient with the favored weapon of his deity (giving him Weapon Focus or any other fighter feat instead, seems pretty powerful) and some of the extra class-skills for the fighter are no longer in use. BTW, are those "regional" feats like the Cosmopolitan feat from the Katapesh description still useable or is there a conversion concern also?!?
My DM let me take an Academy fighter, he added some extra skills to the list, but I had to give up bonus feats at 1st, 8th and 16th level for the skill-points. I opted to give up the armour proficiency with medium and heavy armour at 1st level instead of the bonus feat (I wanted a swashbuckler-style fighter anyway) which he allowed.
If you want to update or add in any feats, you can always do so. Pathfinder is designed to be backward-compatible, so there shouldn't be much issue with this if the DM agrees it.
4. are their any feats or traits which give a character extra skill ranks (not just a bonus on a skill), as the old 3.5 D&D Open Minded feat did?!? We put a lot of emphasis on skills in our campaigns and not every player wants to play a genius with an Int 18 score, but often still needs more than 2 or 3 skill ranks at first level (what good is a bonus on a skill, if you haven’t activated it (trained-only-skill)?). Open Minded is a all-time first-level favorite of mine, please help.
Just import Open Minded is my suggestion. +5 skill points is worth a feat, it certainly isn't game-breaking.
For the Linguistics you could also ask the DM for trait that gives you Celestial. If it makes sense for Character Background that's where traits come into play. You could have trait that give you a +1 to Linguistics and allows you to choose another language you can speak fluently. That seems to about the same power level of the other traits.
Just ask the DM if the cleric may be allowed to speak both languages without having two ranks under the condition that he raises his linguistics to two as soon as he can. Style trumps rules.
