The Skinsaw Murders NPC stats (Spoiler)

[Delthos]

So I was running my son's group through this AP using the anniversary edition and I encountered something with the stats on some NPCs.

NPC spoiler:

I found that the Skinsaw Cultists have the Selective Channeling feat. The problem is they only have Charisma of 8 meaning that the feat does nothing for them and they can't even take it as it has a minimum requirement of Cha 13. Even if you take into account their Skinsaw masks doing 1 point of Charisma damage they don't have the minimum Charisma requirement. I don't think the Charisma damage has been taken into account even though their stats give them the +1 damage on attacks meaning they are assumed to have donned the masks already. If they had included this their Charisma should be 7 in their stat block and the DC for their Channel Energy should be DC 8 instead of DC 9 and they should only be able to use their Channel Energy 1 a day instead of 2. It looks like someone wasn't paying close attention when they converted the stats to Pathfinder as they didn't have the feat in the original AP.

I see why the feat was given to them, even though it's not allowed, as it works great as part of a delaying action and their fleeing upstairs. Channeling Negative Energy is also the easiest way to do damage to all the PCs and does more than their War Razors are likely to do. As it stands there is a lot of channel negative energy that can be used during the encounters in the saw mill, 9D6 dmg to each PC from the basic cultists (assuming they are close enough which isn't difficult considering the layout of the mill) and 12D6 dmg from Justice Ironbriar. With selective channeling it allows them to go in teams of two and exclude each other from the effect. In the end is more effective than trying to flank pcs and get sneak attacks in, which at first seems like the obvious tactic.

So all that being said, which feat would you give them as a replacement feat? They already have Improved Initiative, Martial Weapon Proficiency, and Weapon Finesse (from Finesse Rogue). It's probably easiest to just give them Improved Channeling which would give them a modified DC10 on their Channel Negative Energy. It will make their channeling a little better even though they aren't likely to use it much without the Selective Channeling feat. Weapon Focus would make them a bit more likely to get some sneak attacks in.

[Latrecis]

There's an errata thread out here somewhere and a compiled errata document, the link to which I don't have handy.

Spoiler:

Yes, as written they do not qualify. As I recall, the suggested replacement was for weapon focus (war razor.)

Or you could do what I did - ignore it. You could bump their charisma to qualify if you're feeling squeamish. Keep in mind, they are not going to be able to use the power en masse since at best they will be able to only exclude 1 ally. And if they do use it, the pc's will take 1d6 of damage with a DC 10 will save. And even if they were willing to use it as large group, say 4 of them, that's not one save against 4d6, but 4 saves against 1d6 each. And the cultists do damage to themselves. If you do give them the weapon focus feat, that probably makes them more effective since its more universally useful in their circumstances.

If you think about it, it's unrealistic for all 13(?) cultists to have the exact same ability scores so you could give some a better CHA (and keep the feat) and others the WF feat. Of course this means you need to keep track of who's who. Maybe each group has one team leader who has CHA 13 with the selective feat and the others have WF.

Fortunately, my players are not able to call for an audit of my npc's :) I'm keen on following the rules of course but at some point I need to balance other demands - how much work is it for me "to fix" and how interesting the encounter will be.

[Akerlof]

How about replacing it with Channel Smite? They're still channeling the profane power of Norgorber, just doing it one enemy at a time. It also doesn't have any extra prereqs.

[Bakaninja]

Compiled errata: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fty0tllqWqNzwxlKtD-2zSIAAzAqlpjzIrvroxY zjTs/edit#heading=h.qk0z0y96ga2

Errata thread: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2oj6e?Rise-of-the-Runelords-Anniversary-Edition -Errata
Though, watch out, because the early errata are for the original ROTR.