LFG: Pathfinder

Converting some NPCs and reading about the stuff they have as I go along... I see Power Attack has changed. I approve of those changes, makes it a lot more intuitive to use in battle.

Yeah, I like a lot of the changes between 3.5 and PF. Makes a lot of sense, and gives utility to a lot of the other classes.

Urgh, I dunno how I feel about dirty tricks. It makes sense to give players the option to fight dirty, but the main problem is that the conditions it can grant are not created equal. I can easily see players solely trying to impose blinded, entangled, or sickened almost exclusively (maybe even to the point of abusing it since those conditions are just that good). I'm almost tempted to houserule it because of this.

I'll be completely honest...I've never seen anyone use dirty tricks in any of the games I've run. You've gotta burn a feat to do them without provoking attacks of opportunity, and it's never been worth it in my opinion. There's so much more I can do with those feats.

That said, you do you. I've never seen dirty tricks on action, so I can't really be a good judge here.

I've also never seen it, and that's over the course of a couple years and dozens of characters played in Pathfinder.

I guess I've just been used to play with power players and rule layers all those years... XD

That's just it...most of my players WERE power gamers and rules lawyers. Heck, that's how I learned to play. None of us have ever used dirty tricks, because we just didn't feel it was worth burning the feats for them.

Not when there were so many other feats that you could do so much more with. ^_^

I don't like the combat maneuver system in PF generally. It requires too much of an investment to have any chance to do anything well. The feat system is actually very bad (in my opinion), because it stops you from being good at stuff with arbitrary "feat taxes". I still find it enjoyable to play, but it can be very frustrating to be so limited in certain aspects.

I like the idea of having a separate defense score and bonus for combat maneuvers, but Naatkinson is right. There's too much of an investment for anyone that's not a fighter to do any of the combat maneuvers. . Pathfinder is my favorite D20 system right now, but even I'll admit that it can be limiting.

As a friend of mine once told me "If we wait for the perfect system to play, we'll never play". Every systems, no matter how good, will have this little thing that makes you ask "why?".

While I have no problems with skill groupings (which some other 3rd parties D20 games made as well, like Spellslinger), I feel Pathfinder made some odd choices (other than the Linguistics skill I mentioned in a previous post). For example, Acrobatics. Why put Jump in it which used to be a Str-based check when they could have grouped it with Climb to make an Athletics skill? I understand the whole Combat Maneuver thing, but i've never been a huge fan of how Pathfinder handled it, and even Trailblazer's take on it wasn't entirely to my satisfaction either...

Jump getting mixed into Acrobatics always did confuse me. I mean, in a way it makes sense, but I agree with you on the "Athletics" skill...should've combined it with Climb and Swim to make an Athletics roll.

But hey, it's a lot better than 4E...which is what I was stuck playing before I got my hands on the PF core book. In my opinion, at least...

So, I got bored last night and built a character for this game...it's a concept I've been wanting to test out for a while, and have never had the chance to. Thought this might be the perfect opportunity to do so, even if I have to make changes here and there to fit the campaign. :D

Even if you change your mind and decide that translating over to PF isn't worth the trouble...I still had a blast building the character. I enjoy character creation...almost as much as I do actually playing XD

Creating the character is a lot of fun ! May I ask what kind of character you've created ?

Certainly!

Awesome idea ! He looks like a really interesting character ^^

Expedition to Castle Ravenloft allowed players to be part of a guild of undead hunters if they wished to, at the start of the adventure. I've converted the rules for this guild to Pathfinder and am posting it here for a quick sanity check.

The Lightbringers
The Lightbringers are an expansive guild of undead hunters that readily hands out charter membership to anyone who wants to stamp out undead. The Lightbringers have no central headquarters. Generally affiliated good-aligned temples in large cities set aside meeting rooms for those who sign the guild’s charter. Sarenrae’s temples are best known for hosting Lightbringers—believers and nonbelievers alike.
Symbol: The Lightbringers’ symbol is a stylized half-sun, half-moon disc.
Credo: "Suffer no false life."

Lightbringers Entry Requirements
As a guild, the Lightbringers organization requires prospective members to have at least 1 rank (if a trained class skill) or 4 ranks (if not) in an associated skill. The guild accepts all classes, so no minimum level requirement exists. Entry and annual dues are required, and the guild imposes minimum service.
Associated Classes: Any.
Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Heal, Knowledge (history), Knowledge (local), Knowledge (religion), Sense Motive.
Dues: The initiation fee is a one-time payment of 100 gp, donated to the affiliated temple housing the local Lightbringers chapter. Annual dues are also 100 gp, but the real cost of membership is a commitment to destroy a minimum number of undead each year. Each member sets his or her own limit, and is accountable only to the local chapter.

Lightbringers Benefits
All guilds provide basic service to their members, including food and lodging, a 10% subsidy on the cost of basic supplies and guild-related services, emergency loans, and other aid. Guild members gain a contact within the organization who can help with specific tasks.
In addition, the Lightbringers guild provide the following benefits to members.
• A guild member gains access to alternative class abilities associated with the guild (see below). On joining the Lightbringers, a character can choose to retroactively apply Lightbringers alternative abilities to class levels he or she has already gained. The guild doesn’t require that the member take any alternative abilities, it merely offers the option.
• A guild member is guaranteed on free casting of restoration per week at an affiliated temple, as long as the condition requiring the spell was caused by an undead.
• Lightbringers respect each other. A guild member receives a +2 circumstance bonus on Diplomacy checks made while talking to a fellow Lightbringer.
• A guild member who finds an undead enclave too tough to handle alonce can travel to the nearest affiliated temple and petition the Lightbringers for aid. Such request requires a DC 20 Diplomacy check, with a cumulative -2 penalty for each previous call for aid that member has made. On a successful check, the member gains the aid of one guild member whose level is equal to the petitioner’s -2 (min. 1); determine class randomly.
• Every guild member gains a useful contact.
• Guild members qualify for the Favored In Guild feat described below and qualify for its associated benefit. The guild doesn’t require that the member take the feat; it merely offers the option.
Favored In Guild Benefit: The guild further subsidizes a member’s purchase of equipment useful in combating undead, including stakes, holy water, alchemical flares, alchemical stakes, alchemical vampire repellent, silvered weapons, and so on. this subsidy reduces the usual cost of supplies by an additional 5% (maximum 1,000 gp/year).

Favored In Guild
You are an active and valued member of your guild.
Prerequisites: Membership in a guild (including 2 ranks in two of the guild’s associated skills, and at least 1 rank in another two of the guild’s associated skills).
Benefits: As an active member of your guild, select one of your guild’s associated skills. As long as you remain a menber of the guild, you gain a +2 competence bonus on all checks made with that skill.
An active member in the Lightbringers also gain additional fringe benefits, as noted in the Lightbringers organization description above.

Lightbringer Alternative Class Features
Alternative class features replace class features found in the original class description. If you have already reached or passed the level at which you can take the feature, you can use the retraining option described below to gain an alternative class feature in place of the normal feature gained at that level.
Lightbringer alternative class abilities help members improve in their quest to destroy all undead.
each set of alternative class abilities represent variants for selected standard classes based on the concept of hunting undead.
A character need not take all the alternative class abilities provided for a class. For instance, a light bringer paladin might decide to take only the detect undead class ability at 1st level, ignoring those available at other levels.
The format for alternative class features is summarized below.

Alternative Class Feature Name
A general description of the ability and why you might want to consider it.
Level: You can select the alternative class feature only at this level (unless you are using the retraining option).
Replaces: This line identifies the ability that you must sacrifice to gain the alternative class feature.
Benefit: This section describes the mechanical effects of the new ability.

Class Feature Retraining
Retraining is adjusting a decision you made earlier in your character’s career by selecting a different legal option. This technique represents the character practicing new talents in lieu of honing older ones. In a way, the process is similar to attaining a new level. In keeping with the concept, the retraining option can be chosen only during level advancement.
Each time your character attains a new level, you can chose to retrain. This decision must be implemented before any of benefits of the newly attained level are applied. For example, if a 5th-level rogue wants to trade her trap sense feature for the penetrating strike alternative class feature, she can do so immediately upon attaining 6th-level, before she gains any of the benefits for that level (such as additional hit points, skill points, and so on).
Class feature retraining allows you to swap out one character option at any character level for another. The character remains basically the same, since his class levels haven’t changed, but he’s now highlighting a different aspect of his class. Such retraining also allows a character to adopt an alternative class feature, such as those presented in this section.
To chose an alternative class feature, substitute it for one class feature available at that level. the new feature must represent a choice that you could have made at the same level as you made the original choice. Also, the new choice can’t make any of your later choice illegal—though it might automatically change class features acquired later if they are based on the initial choice.

Lightbringer Bard
Bards who are most excited by the music of the dirge, the funeral marches, or the requiem are those most strongly drawn to the light bringers. The light bringer bard brings hope and courage to those oppressed by the depredations of unlike, and he uses tricks, music, and magic to thwart for conspiracies of undead masterminds.

Undead Bardic Knowledge
A light bringer bard has special interest in events, items, and persons that are important to undead. Your focused, careful studies allow you to identify such creatures and effects commonly associated with them.
Level: 1st.
Replaces: Bardic knowledge.
Benefit: You can tap into some of your specialized knowledge of the undead. You add your class level to your Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (religion), or Knowledge (history) skills, which you can still make untrained, but only on checks made to learn about an undead creature or some other bit of undead lore—such as an item used to destroy a legendary undead or a plague caused by undead—as your insight concern only the undead. For every +5 bonus this class feature grants you, you can instead opt to roll your affected Knowledge skill one extra time, keeping the better result. for example, a 7th-level bard with undead bardic knowledge could opt to make a Knowledge (religion) roll twice, but only with a +2 bonus, keeping the best result.

Inspire Channel Energy
You use your knowledge of religious hymns and divine songs to lend greater energy to an ally’s channel positive energy attempt.
Level: 3rd.
Replaces: Inspire competence bardic performance ability.
Benefit: When using your bardic performance ability, you can help an ally who channels positive energy to damage undead. the ally must be within 30 feet and able to see or hear you, depending on your choice of performance. you must also be able to see the ally. The ally gains an extra d6 on his channel positive energy attempts so long as he continues to see or hear your performance. The effect lasts as long as you concentrate, up to a maximum of 2 minutes. This bonus increases by +1d6 for every four levels you have attained (for every levels at which inspire competence would have increased its bonus by +1; +2d6 at 7th, +3d6 at 11th, and so on). You can’t use inspire channel positive energy on yourself. This is a supernatural, mind-affecting ability.

Repel Domination
Your study of the undead allows you to fortify your mind against their attacks.
Level: 6th.
Replaces: Suggestion bardic performance ability.
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus on saving throws against mind-affecting spells or abilities from undead creatures. Furthermore, whenever you succeed on such a saving throw, the undead creature that produced the effect is shaken for the remainder of the encounter.

Lightbringer Cleric
Lightbringer clerics are those clerics who focus first and foremost on their ability to harm undead by channeling positive energy. They know that the positive energy they bring to bear against undead is the single most important aspect of their class. The negative energy of undeath must be opposed everywhere and always with the positive energy of light.

Destroy Undead
You can better channel positive energy to greatly harm undead creatures.
Level: 1st.
Replaces: Channel energy (positive).
Benefit: Instead of the clerics’s normal ability to channel positive energy, a light bringer cleric can channel positive energy only to harm undead, not to heal the living.
Destroy undead works just like channel positive energy when used to damage undead, except that it inflicts 2d4 damage at first level, plus an addition 1d4 of damage for each cleric level above the first, to a maximum of 21d4 at 20th level. So, for example, a 5th level cleric using destroy undead would inflict 6d4 points of damage to every undead within 30 feet if they failed their save, and half that if they succeed.
When using this ability against incorporeal undead, it inflicts full damage on them.
Destroy undead still counts as channel positive energy for the purpose of meeting prerequisites for feats, prestige classes, and so forth. A light bringer cleric can use this ability the same number of times per day he could channel energy. Any ability that grants a bonus to channel positive energy instead grants an equal bonus to this ability instead. This is a supernatural ability.

True Daylight
Lightbringer clerics, as befit their names, are capable of channeling divine energy in the form of pure sunlight.
Level: 1st.
Replaces: One domain 1st-level granted power.
Benefit: A light bringer cleric can use up one of his channel positive energy uses for the day to empower a daylight spell he casts with positive energy. The resulting daylight effect has a smaller radiance radius and a shorter, inconsistant duration; however, the daylight created is the equivalent of actual, real daylight for the purpose of its effect on creatures that are damaged or destroyed by bright light (such as vampires).
The effect created by this ability sheds true daylight in a 10-foot radius and has a duration of 1d4 rounds (roll to determine each time this ability is used). This is an extraordinary ability.

Positive Healing
By imparting a portion of the divine energies he commands into an ally, the light bringer cleric sustains his friend against injuries.
Level: 1st.
Replaces: One domain 1st-level granted power.
Benefit: A light bringer cleric can use one of his channel positive energy uses for the day to internalize the influx of positive energy and so can grant himself or an ally within 30 feet the fast healing ability. The amount of hit points healed by this fast healing ability is equal to the cleric’s Charisma modifier and lasts for an amount of rounds equal to 4 plus one fifth of the cleric’s class levels, rounded up. so for example, a 3rd level cleric with a charisma score of 14 would grant fast healing 2 for 5 rounds

Lightbringer Paladin
Lightbringer paladins are little different from standard paladins, and share the same compassion to pursue good, the will to uphold law, and the power to defeat evil. However, the light bringer paladin has made it her specialization to seek out and destroy undead, seeing them as the penultimate manifestation of evil in the world.

Detect Undead
Lightbringer paladins specialize in sniffing out the stench of undeath.
Level: 1st.
Replaces: Detect evil.
Benefit: A light bringer paladin can use this ability at will. This is a divination effect similar to detect evil, except that it finds undead only (of any alignment). Unlike with detect evil, the light bringer paladin doesn’t need to concentrate to know all relevant information. At the moment the paladin uses the ability, she knows if there are any undead with a chosen 60-degree arc, knows the exact number, and knows their exact location. This ability is the equivalent of a 2nd-level spell . It is a spell-like ability.

Sarenrae’s Blessing
A light bringer paladin excels at slaying the undead. When he channels energy to smite his foes, the power he summons proves particularly effective against the living dead.
Level: 3rd.
Replaces: Divine health.
Benefit: A light bringer paladin who uses his smite evil ability against undead gains an additional +2 bonus to his attack rolls and deal an extra 1 point of damage per two paladin levels. For example, a 13th-level light bringer paladin armed with a longsword would deal 1d8+19 points of damage when using his smite evil ability against an undead, plus any additional bonuses for high Strength or magical effects that would normally apply. This is an extraordinary ability.

Strengthen Bond
The light bringer paladin is a special, favored warrior of light. The gods strengthen his divine bond so that the powers of darkness cannot easily defeat him.
Level: 6th.
Replaces: Mercies gained at 6th, 12th, and 18th level.
Benefit: If the paladin chose to enhance her weapon, her weapon’s enhancement bonus is considered 1 higher for the purpose of calculating its hardness and hit points and it gains a +2 to its saving throws. She can also add bane (undead), ghost touch, shock, and shocking burst to the list of properties she can apply to her weapon.
If the paladin chose to gain the service of a loyal animal, her mount will—in addition to the standard qualities of a special mount—become immune to all death spells, magical death effects, energy drain, and any negative energy effects (such as from inflict spells, chill touch, or channel negative energy).

Lightbringer Rogue
While most rogues are loners from day one, the light bringer rogue has decided to throw in his lot with others who share her fundamental disgust and rancour toward undead. The light bringer rogue has taken extra trouble to research dusty tomes and tombs to learn about undead habits, undead physiology, and most importantly, undead weaknesses. The light bringer rogue desires to bring all undead to their penultimate ends.

Penetrating Strike
Creatures that are resistant to damage are a bane to rogues everywhere. Particularly in ancient tombs where undead are common, rogues must rely on their wits to survive. You have spent significant time studying this problem and have learned ways to strike harm even to these resilient opponents.
Level: 3rd.
Replaces: Trap sense.
Benefit: Whenever you flank a creature with damage reduction or which is incorporeal, you can find a way to pierce through those resistances.
against damage reduction, for each 1d6 of extra sneak attack damage you forgo, your weapon gains one of the vulnerability required to overcome this damage reduction. So for example, a rogue with sneak attack +3d6 that attacks a vampire he’s flanking with a nonmagical silver weapon could chose to lower his sneak attack extra damage by 1d6 in order to have his weapon considered magical in order to bypass the vampire’s damage reduction.
In the case of incorporeal targets, if the weapon is nonmagical, you still inflict half your extra sneak attack damage. If your weapon is magical, you inflict your full sneak attack damage. Your weapon’s regular damage, included damage from high Strength or magical effects which would normally apply, is either ignored or halved, depending on the situation, as per the normal rules for incorporeal creatures.
Note that these benefits do not extend to creatures that ignore sneak attack damage because you cannot flank them. In addition, you still cannot use these benefits against such foes if they are flat-footed. You must flank a creature in order to use this ability.

One thing I see: there aren't cross class skill ranks in Pathfinder. They replaced that with a +3 "trained" bonus if a skill is a class skill.

Ah yeah, right. I will rework the wording for that...

Did a more thorough review of your guild post, now that I'm at a computer and not on my mobile.

You fixed the skill rank thing...that was the only one I saw that really stuck out. Looks good :).

One of my favorite changes, to be honest