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I'm about to start a pathfinder adventure path in reign of winter and am seriously considering taking this drawback
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/drawbacks/sheltered/
It makes sense in the context of the character I'm using. But what i wanna know is how much would the shaken condition hurt a character?
It is a -2 to every d20 roll. A permanent -2 to all attacks saves, and skill checks is pretty debilitating.
A shaken character takes a –2 penalty on attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks. Shaken is a less severe state of fear than frightened or panicked.
A frightened creature flees from the source of its fear as best it can. If unable to flee, it may fight. A frightened creature takes a –2 penalty on all attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks. A frightened creature can use special abilities, including spells, to flee; indeed, the creature must use such means if they are the only way to escape.
Frightened is like shaken, except that the creature must flee if possible. Panicked is a more extreme state of fear.
A panicked creature must drop anything it holds and flee at top speed from the source of its fear, as well as any other dangers it encounters, along a random path. It can’t take any other actions. In addition, the creature takes a –2 penalty on all saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks. If cornered, a panicked creature cowers and does not attack, typically using the total defense action in combat. A panicked creature can use special abilities, including spells, to flee; indeed, the creature must use such means if they are the only way to escape.
Panicked is a more extreme state of fear than shaken or frightened.
Just being shaken is pretty bad, especially at low levels. The worst part, though, is that most sources of fear conditions will stack with each other to give you even worse fear conditions, and those can be crippling.
Still, it's only active when you've taken more damage than half of your maximum hit points, so it's pretty reasonable to manage to make a build where it'd rarely come up. Temporary hit points, temporary constitution bonuses, converting damage to nonlethal damage (doesn't count for this purpose, I'm pretty sure), magical healing... Barbarian, skalds, and kineticists are fairly good choices to take that drawback and rarely have it come up. (Kineticists because your character's burn would probably render said character unconscious before the drawback would even kick in) Something to note: The fluff of these classes and that drawback do not overlap easily, so that'll encourage you to create a rather interesting and non-standard background.
It wouldn't be worth a full feat.
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A shaken character takes a –2 penalty on attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks. Shaken is a less severe state of fear than frightened or panicked.
A frightened creature flees from the source of its fear as best it can. If unable to flee, it may fight. A frightened creature takes a –2 penalty on all attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks. A frightened creature can use special abilities, including spells, to flee; indeed, the creature must use such means if they are the only way to escape.
Frightened is like shaken, except that the creature must flee if possible. Panicked is a more extreme state of fear.
A panicked creature must drop anything it holds and flee at top speed from the source of its fear, as well as any other dangers it encounters, along a random path. It can’t take any other actions. In addition, the creature takes a –2 penalty on all saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks. If cornered, a panicked creature cowers and does not attack, typically using the total defense action in combat. A panicked creature can use special abilities, including spells, to flee; indeed, the creature must use such means if they are the only way to escape.
Panicked is a more extreme state of fear than shaken or frightened.
Just being shaken is pretty bad, especially at low levels. The worst part, though, is that most sources of fear conditions will stack with each other to give you even worse fear conditions, and those can be crippling.
Still, it's only active when you've taken more damage than half of your maximum hit points, so it's pretty reasonable to manage to make a build where it'd rarely come up. Temporary hit points, temporary constitution bonuses, converting damage to nonlethal damage (doesn't count for this purpose, I'm pretty sure), magical healing... Barbarian, skalds, and kineticists are fairly good choices to take that drawback and rarely have it come up. (Kineticists because your character's burn would probably render said...
Well the idea is to put it on a magus who is a city boy from absolom, Very capable fighter, but has seldom seen live combat. And the few times he did he only got seriously injured once....and let's just say that the shock of that hasn't entirely gone away.
Simply put the whole point of this build would be to have a high AC making it so he doesn't get hit in the first place, in fact if he wanted to he could have his ac up to a max of 30 by level 5, with the help of crane style, Shield a respectable Dex score and enchanted armor and bobbles.
So yeah this is a guy that really doesn't wanna get hit at all, that's why avoiding attacks will generally be his specialty.
Seems like it'd be an interesting character, then, even if it's not mechanically optimal. I hope you enjoy playing!
Also, melee or ranged combat?
It depends what kind of character you're going to be. On a Paladin it wouldn't be so bad since once you hit 2nd level you can self heal and hopefully keep yourself above the 1/2 HP threshold, and once you hit 3rd you're actually immune to shaken (unless you take certain archetypes). Outside of a character that gets immunity or really great self-healing though, this drawback is game-breaking-ly bad. I'd only consider it in an intrigue-heavy campaign or something where you know you don't have to be good at combat.
Putting it on a Magus is tough because they really don't get much healing. Avoiding getting hurt is sometimes harder than it seems because AC only helps against so many things, and even AC can be countered by touch-spells/flanking/etc.
EDIT: The other time I'd consider this is if you're trying to limit yourself. I just joined a group that are pretty new to pathfinder & this might actually be a fun way to keep the party a little more balanced.