Min/Max Boards

Probably for the best, yes. Sometimes I find myself expanding the handbooks I've written. I know I have some I wrote years ago where I keep adding bits to them here and there and then it becomes another new post and so on. And I know sometimes people expect a handbook to have a discussion thread and take the lack of a discussion thread for an indicator there is none (but that is easily remedied by mentioning in the handbook post itself that comments can be posted directly to the thread).

Previously the system was that you had to be a member of the DnD Handbook Writers group in order to be able to post in the Handbook forum, but now it's gotten mixed up with the (Continued) system that no longer works. May as well go back to the old way of doing things. Looks like making some kind of thread-lock so that only OP and moderators can post into it isn't an option unless someone is willing to modify the forum code a bit.

New feat courtesy of Planar Adventures!

Quote

PEACE OF MIND (CONDUIT)
Source Planar Adventures pg. 31
The blissful peace of Nirvana is never more than a thought away from your mind.

Prerequisites: Knowledge (planes) 3 ranks.

Benefit: As an immediate action when you fail a saving throw against an emotion, fear, or pain effect, you can ignore the effect and instead become dazed for an amount of time equal to twice the duration of the original effect. Any nonlethal damage you would have taken from the original effect is reduced to its minimum value (as though a 1 had been rolled on all dice). You cannot activate this ability if you are currently dazed.

You can use this feat’s benefit once per day, plus an additional time per day for every 5 ranks you have in Knowledge (planes).

I think the only good use of this is against spells with instantaneous durations or if you somehow develop daze immunity. There might be a few cases where the regular condition is worse than daze (confusion?), but even then the doubled duration makes it a dubious proposition. For the most part this feat's effect is much worse than what that spell or effect was going to do to you.

I actually found a legitimately compelling use for this deranged feat. If you have a Padma Blossom (may want to hold it with a locked gauntlet and weapon cord, to be safe), you are not affected by the dazed condition, so this can actually be useful for psychic spellcasters who are totally screwed when under any emotion effect.

And I have a lovely new feat to share:

RETRIBUTIVE KICK (WEAPON MASTERY)
Source Weapon Master's Handbook pg. 22
You can use your weapon attacks to set up a foe for an unarmed strike.

Prerequisites: Improved Unarmed Strike, base attack bonus +5, weapon training class feature with a melee weapon.

Benefit:  When you make a full attack with an appropriate melee weapon and your first attack misses or is blocked, deflected, parried, or otherwise caused to not hit the target, you can immediately make an unarmed attack against the same target with the same attack bonus. You then cannot make any more attacks as part of that full attack.

Yep! If you are full attacking and your first attack (and ONLY your first attack) fails to hit, you can trade all your subsequent attacks for a single unarmed attack with the same attack bonus. Exceptionally useless when you are hasted, which at higher levels is pretty much always because either a spellcaster will Haste you or you have Boots of Speed. The only vaguely useful thing I can think of here is that lets you retain the benefits of True Strike for a second attempt at an attack. Definitely the result of a zealous editor nerfing it into the ground. Likely the original version was written to let you have your full attack and let you perform a retributive kick with any attack that missed (which would make this legitimately useful for monks, at least).

Incidentally, you can use a Martial Focus feat to qualify for this without a weapon training class feature, if for some reason you want to.

That's preserving a guideline that was instated for reasons you do not know at a time when forum activity was very different from today (ie. you wouldn't find such old threads populating the first page of a board) even though right now the standard is for everyone to ignore the guideline if they have any interest in posting in existing threads. Making new threads is only really useful if it actually warrants a separate topic rather than being more relevant and useful as part of a preexisting one, and "consider making new threads instead of just posting into existing ones if it works better as a new topic" is a guideline that's different from "you shouldn't post in 120+ days old threads if you can help it."

I also gave some thoughts on why I consider this rule to be unproductive here but I'll directly quote the relevant bits:

There's no problem at all with necroing threads. If you want to liven up an old thread with new feedback, be my guest. I honestly don't understand why some forums have rules against thread necro, since many old threads are good ones and there's nothing wrong with the conversation picking up again where it left off, and I feel like those forums tend to have moderators who feel obligated to create rules and enforce them just so they can feel like they're moderators. Not to mention it's just a pain when you're websearching for information on some topic and you find a forum thread that's useful but just old enough to be missing a lot of newer material or insights and no one was willing to post the newer stuff to that thread because that would be "thread necro" so now you have less helpful threads to look through and get to hope that maybe there is another thread that does have the information you want.

Anyway, I reckon I've just about said my piece on it now.

So, there is an under-the-radar item for Druids, Hunters, and Rangers in Pathfinder:

EVERGREEN SEED POUCH
Price 16,000 gp; Slot none; CL 9th; Weight ½ lb; Aura moderate conjuration
Source Daughters of Fury pg. 59

This leather pouch is decorated with fresh mistletoe and sprigs of holly that are shaped to resemble the druidic symbol of the Green Faith. The pouch contains seeds of various small plants and grasses. When the pouch is used as a divine focus component for a spell that affects or creates plant matter—such as entangle or spike growth—its magic manifests as the pouch opens and the seeds float out. The seeds plant themselves in the ground and instantly grow to create any vegetation or grass that the spell requires to function inside of the spell’s area of effect. The vegetation created by the pouch grows regardless of the terrain, and lasts the full duration of the spell, allowing the user to cast plant-altering or plant-creating spells in deserts, badlands, and other harsh terrains.

CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS
Cost 8,000 gp
Craft Wondrous Item, wall of thorns

The original design call is here. It's pretty much identical, but also mentions it can be embroidered with holy symbols of nature gods while this one mentions it just represents the symbol of the green faith. The main thing that is suggested is that this does specifically act as a Druid's divine focus. It doesn't seem to act like a Cleric's divine focus, but there is an open question whether you can use it as an additional divine focus. It is very clear that you can use it with arcane spells if you have the False Focus feat, which is relevant for Skalds and Magaambyan Arcanists, at least. The feat's "Normal: A divine focus has no effect when used as a component in arcane spells." clause also suggests that you can always use a divine focus as part of casting; it just typically doesn't do anything. This is relevant, because not all Druid plant-based spells require a divine focus and the Evergreen Seed Pouch is a useful item for some such spells. But you may want to run that by your GM to be safe.

While Entangle and Spike Growth are already mentioned (and you can enable Entangle with the use of Create Water and Lily Pad Stride easily enough), Plant Growth also stands out as a really good spell to use with this. Pathfinder nerfed Solid Fog from its 3.5 era version but Plant Growth has actually been buffed compared to its 3.5E counterpart, if anything (it now grants +4 to DCs of plant-based spell effects in the area for 1 day).

Anyway, thoughts and ideas?

Actually you just need to go to Administration Center > Posts and Topics > Topic Center and disable Time before topic is warned as old on reply. See here. If you want a board-specific option, there is a package here that offers that. It seems close enough in forum software version to be compatible.

There is an automatic warning against posting in threads that haven't been posted in for 120 days. I'm pretty sure we don't have any such actual rule and all it's going to do is discourage people from posting on what is already a low activity forum. Does anyone disagree?

Odds are you will have to use a race with LA if GM permits LA buyoff. Other than that, there is the Critical Strike spell but it does not technically grant Sneak Attack. You could try equipping a Rogue's Vest with UMD, but strictly speaking it only gives +1d6 damage when making sneak attacks (ie. it does not grant the ability to make sneak attacks itself), so you will have to run that by your GM as well.

A shame ToB is banned though.

May as well mention that Silver Spindle Ioun Stones give the use of any 1st level Cleric, Sorcerer, Wizard, or Druid spell as a cha-based SLA 3 times per day, scaling with caster level. (And of course you should slot in a Wayfinder so it doesn't orbit around your head.) One of the silly things that's possible with this, for instance, is to get Magic Missile as a SLA 3 times per day and combine it with Smite Evil to do a ton of bonus damage. If you wear a Corset of Delicate Moves, it is possible to, in a single round, cast Litany of Righteousness on someone, activate Smite Evil as a move action, and cast Magic Missile for 5 missiles as a standard action, each of which will do a ton of bonus damage from Smite Evil (especially if you add Bracers of the Avenging Knight) and even more damage thanks to your litany. A level 10 Paladin would do (1d4+1+14)x2 5 times, so easily over 170 damage with Magic Missile, more if the enemy is one of those types that receives double the bonus damage from smite on the first blow.

It's also possible to gain SLAs like Charm Person, Grease, etc.

Seems like an absurd spell. I'd probably just invert what negative levels do.

Negative level: "An affected opponent takes a –1 penalty on all skill checks and ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws, and loses 5 hit points and and one effective level or Hit Die (whenever level is used in a die roll or calculation) for each negative level. A spellcaster loses one spell slot of the highest level of spells she can cast and (if applicable) one prepared spell of that level. If she has more than one spell at her highest level, she chooses which she loses.."

Positive level interpretation: +1 bonus on all skill checks and ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws. Gain 5 hit points (and max hit points). Gain 1 effective level and HD for calculation purposes. A spellcaster gains one empty spell slot of the highest level of spells she can cast and (if she is a prepared spellcaster) can utilize partial spell preparation or other such capability to fill the empty spell slot with a prepared spell to cast. A spellcaster still does not obtain spell slots of a higher spell level than normal.

But then I'd probably houserule to pare it down a bit, or just ban the spell. This spell is highly abusable, especially with a Persistent Spell metamagic or similar, but even without that and even with Nanashi's interpretation there are ways to just get a giant bag of chickens, quick draw them and drop them as free actions, lifesap them, gain like 100 temporary HD, and leverage some HD scaling ability for absurd effect before the spell runs out. This is just a very badly designed spell with major balance issues.

Shared Stash is extremely dubious. You need to be sharing a square with an ally for that to work and if your ally is sharing a square with you I'd probably let you take items out of their pack without any teamwork feat. Really, the "retrieve a stored item" action never specifies that it needs to be your own storage and neither does the Quick Draw feat, so if you're drawing items from the storage of a friendly PC sharing the same square as you, I'd probably let you just do it without any ridiculous teamwork feat. This is starting to look like the Strike Back or Cleave Through feats which allow you to do stuff that sensibly you should be allowed to do anyway. Probably belongs in the bad PF feats/etc. thread.

Sly Draw is handy. Always Threatening seems largely pointless, as any weapon you are drawing out of a bag of holding is effectively already concealed. Mythic Quick Draw is a ridiculous way to reobtain the ability to draw anything like 3.5's Quick Draw feat. But on that note the Underground Chemist rogue can also quick draw alchemical weapons without needing a casting of the Quick Throwing spell. Really, Jason Bulmahn's moronic Quick Draw nerf in PF core only served to make alchemical weapons largely trash, but that was pretty much his intention, Paizo being Paizo and all that.