Min/Max Boards

I think something more like the psionic augmentation system might be more elegant, too. But there is a limit on how many times you can multiply Multiple techniques (there's a meme reference here I really want to make): "Multiple Arts – Arts marked with brackets around their ki point cost are Multiple Arts. When a Monk uses Multiple Arts, he may choose to multiply the ki point cost by a number up to ki level. If the Monk chooses to do this, any quantity in brackets in the effect is multiplied by the same amount."

Which means that the most damage you can do with Ki Shock would be 21d6, at a cost of 35 ki points (I'm pretty sure that's it). Unfortunately, that means the monk, when expending about 40% of their default resources at 20th level, deals only 1d6 more damage than a sorcerer using one of their many 8th level spells to cast Polar Ray (although the Monk deals untyped damage whereas the sorcerer deals cold).

Maybe . . . maybe make Ki Shock deal 3d6 damage for 5 ki points with 25 ft range. Each additional Ki Point spent adds 1d6 damage or 5 ft of range, and you can spend a maximum of Monk level ki points on any given technique (so Ki Shock would deal 18d6 damage for 20 ki points at 20th level). It would require going in a fine-tuning other techniques though  . . . .

Well, I've got approval to use the class in my game and even a suggestion from the DM to raise the GP cost of ignored components from 1gp. Any idea on how powerful that would be, or what the limit should be? I'm not really sure - we've always been a bit fast-and-loose with the components (except XP and really expensive material components, like precious stones or whatever) in the in-person games we play.

ETA: I'm afraid the power level might be a bit high, but I'm not quite certain right now. If you have any ideas for decreasing the power level and still keeping the knowledge-focus of the class that would be cool. Suggestions are welcome.

ETA2: I've come back and looked at the class and fixed some ambiguous/potentially game-breaking abilities. As in, no more massive caster level bonus from Magic of Knowledge or infinite wealth from Magickal Kitty.

ATHENAEUM CAT

"SHH! This is a place of learning! HEY, YOU, THIEF! DROP THAT BOOK!"

Athenaeum Cats act as both librarians, collecting and caring for books and other knowledge sources, and acquirers, seeking out and collecting sources of knowledge for their collections.

BECOMING AN ATHENAEUM CAT 
Levels in cat burglar and archivist are required. Most Athenaeum Cats are obsessed with obscure sorts of knowledge, the kind that can only be found in dusty, trap-ridden dungeons or the archives of unfriendly magic-users.

 ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
 Class Abilities:  Kitty Form (Humanoid Form is using the Mows Alternate Class Features), Dark Knowledge, Lore Mastery (history, local, or nobility and royalty)
 Skills:  Knowledge (any two) 8 ranks, Spellcraft 8 ranks, Profession (librarian) 8 ranks
 Feats: Kitty Knowledge, Spell Focus (divination)
 Spells: Ability to cast 2nd level divine spells, ability to prepare and cast four divination spells of at least 2nd level


Class Skills
 The Athenaeum Cat's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Bluff (Cha), Diplomacy (Cha), Gather Information (Cha), Hide (Dex), Knowledge (all) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Open Lock (Dex), Profession (Int), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spot (Wis), and Use Magic Device (Cha).
Skills Points at Each  Level : 6 + int

Hit Dice: d6

   BAB     Fort     Ref    Will    Abilities                                                     Spellcasting
1.  +0       +0     +0       +2    Smarty Cat, Divination Spell Power +1                         +1 level of existing divine spellcasting class
2.  +1       +0     +0       +3    Dark Knowledge (Puissance)                                    +1 level of existing divine spellcasting class
3.  +1       +1     +1       +3    It Belongs in a Musuem!                                       +1 level of existing divine spellcasting class
4.  +2       +1     +1       +4    Kitty Memory, Divination Spell Power +2                       +1 level of existing divine spellcasting class
5.  +2       +1     +1       +4    Dark Knowledge (Foe), Talented Archivist                      +1 level of existing divine spellcasting class
6.  +3       +2     +2       +5    A Cat Always Knows                                            +1 level of existing divine spellcasting class
7.  +3       +2     +2       +5    Magic of Knowledge, Divination Spell Power +3                 +1 level of existing divine spellcasting class
8.  +4       +2     +2       +6    Magickal Kitty                                                +1 level of existing divine spellcasting class
9.  +4       +3     +3       +6    Dark Knowledge (dread secret), Effortless Sight               +1 level of existing divine spellcasting class
10. +5       +3     +3       +7    Divination Spell Power +4                                     +1 level of existing divine spellcasting class
Weapon Proficiencies: An Athenaeum Cat gains no new weapon or armor proficiencies.

Smarty Cat: Levels in this prestige class stack with your Archivist level to determine the number of times per day you can use your Dark Knowledge ability.

Divination Spell Power: At 1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th level you gain a +1 bonus to caster level on divination spells. You may also add a new divination spell of a level you can cast to your prayerbook each time you gain this class feature.

Dark Knowledge (puissance): As the Archivist ability, gained at 2nd level.

It Belongs in a Musuem!: At third level, you gain the ability to stash away your goodies, especially those that belong in a museum. By using a standard action, you can hide an item tied to knowledge or with historical significance, instantly teleporting it to an extradimensional space connected to (but not part of) your library. You can hide a number of items equal to your level in this prestige class + your intelligence modifier in this manner. You can retrieve these items as if they were stored within a bag of holding.

Kitty Memory: At fourth level, you can memorize any piece of information you choose. When you come across a piece of information (such as a passage from a book, a spell in a scroll, or a story) that you wish to remember, you can make a concentration check (DC is 10 + 1 for each piece of information you have already memorized). You can recall a piece of information you already memorized with perfect accuracy at a later date. Memorizing magical text through this ability does not give you the ability learn the spell or use the magic preserved in the text.

Dark Knowledge (foe): As the Archivist ability, gained at 5th level.

Talented Archivist: You gain a new Kitty Magic or Burglaring ability, adding your levels in this prestige class to your cat burglar and archivist levels to determine the ability you can choose.

A Cat Always Knows: At sixth level, you are treated as if the spell Arcane Sight were always affecting you. You can intensify this ability by making a DC 25 Concentration check and concentrating on an item for one minute. This acts as the identify spell, but without the material component, and it works on artifacts.

Magic of Knowledge: At seventh level, you gain the ability to use the magic inherent in information. You gain a +1 bonus to caster level for every three items you have memorized using your "Kitty Memory" class feature, up to a maximum of half your hit dice.

Magickal Kitty:  At eight level, when you memorize magical text with your "Kitty Memory" class feature, you can use the "Scribe Scroll" feat to reproduce the text in scroll form, without XP lost but with the GP cost. However, because you must use strange notations when translating magic from your memory to a usable form, only you can use or read this scroll. If you use "Kitty Memory" to memorize information not translatable to text (such as the contents of a psionic tattoo) then you still produce a text, but to use it as a scroll you must succeed on a Concentration check (DC is 15+3*effective minimum caster level of information being translated) or even you cannot understand its convoluted form.

Effortless Sight: At ninth level, you gain the ability to ignore any verbal, somatic, and material components costing less than 100gp of divination spells you cast.

Dark Knowledge (dread secret): At ninth level, you gain this ability, as the Archivist ability.


 
PLAYING AN ATHENAEUM CAT
 Athenaeum Cats are a rare and reclusive bunch, but many a would-be thief has unwittingly encountered an Athenaeum Cat when trying to steal from her library.  Their curious and reclusive nature means that Athenaeum Cats often stumble across dangerous pieces of information; those who know an Athenaeum Cat generally either want to help protect her library's contents from misuse or to misuse those contents themselves.
 Combat: You aren't much of a fighter, preferring to avoid conflict in your kitty form or wait for fights to resolve themselves and slink away with your treasures. You probably tried picking up a sword and helping out once, and ended up hitting yourself in the foot.
 Advancement: You're either a daring treasure thief who takes knowledge from those who would misuse it or a reclusive librarian who protects knowledge from misuse and identifies what knowledge is at risk of misues. The more daring bunch tend to concentrate on cat burglar levels or other levels that let you run in and out undetected; the protectors and identifiers of knowledge are far more likely to concentrate on archivist levels.
Resources: In some especially civilized areas, Athenaeum Cats might form a guild along with like-minded individuals, pretending to be ordinary librarians and keepers of knowledge. In less civilized areas, Athenaeum Cats tend to cultivate friendships with adventurers who can protect them and their knowledge with more than just wit and spell; in any event, only a very few Athenaeum Cats reveal the extent of their abilities to others, and even fewer venture forth alone, without a fighter to beat the baddies away.

ATHENAEUM CATS IN THE WORLD
"Where'd my book go? I need it before we can start ending the world."
 You generally hide your abilities from others, choosing to either present yourself as a rather incompetent but surprisingly clever thief or a scholar obsessed with obscure subjects but generally handy to have around.
 Daily Life: Much of your time is spent reading and categorizing your collection, but when someone tells a rumor of an ancient artifact in a tomb 2,000 miles away, you're the cat they idly pet as they tell the tale.
 Notables:
 Organizations: You might belong to a Guild, if you're in a particularly civilized and scholarly area. You generally aren't stupid enough to try and do what you do alone, much less in a group that fully understands your abilities, unless they all have the same passion for protecting knowledge that you do.

NPC Reaction
 People don't really know what to make of you - they think you're either the worst, clumsiest thief around, or that you're a scholarly recluse who knows something about everything and who shares information in return for more information.

KEYBOARD CATS IN THE GAME
 This class plays well with most parties, unless they're the conquer-the-world or start-the-apocalypse type.
 Adaptation: This is meant for somewhat silly campaigns, but can play well in a more serious millieu.
 Encounters: Athenaeum Cats are generally found wherever there's a concentration of knowledge or an artifact that could change/end/restart the world. They're there when said artifacts are being designed, too.

New Kitty Feats

Kitty Knowledge
You are an unusually scholarly kitty.
Prerequisites: Dark Knowledge, Kitty Form, Know(any) 6 ranks
Benefit: Your Cat Burglar and Archivist levels stack for the number of times per day you can use Dark Knowledge. Your Cat Powah ability depends on your Intelligence modifier instead of your Charisma modifier.

New Kitty Magic

Reading Cat: You gain the ability to read information with unusual speed. You can learn and comprehend written information with twice the normal speed. At fifth cat burglar level, this speed doubles again, to four times the normal speed. At tenth level, you can instantly comprehend the text of a book or another written information source with a touch. To do so, you must make a DC 20 Concentration check.

I invited her to a date to walk along the beach, and it felt sort of awkward over the phone. Is that normal?
She was happy to accept, but...

I've had awkward moments on the phone with my SO of 5+ years, my mom, my dad, and my closest friends. These are all people I know really well and, in the case of my mom and SO, I can talk to happily for hours on end. Awkward moments happen, especially on the phone. Take her at her word and go for a walk on the beach. But, for the love of love, don't try and walk miles - wander at whatever pace she seems content to set and stop to look at stuff. If you're still nervous, remember to ask her questions about herself. It'll let you know about her and, of course, most people prefer talking about themselves to hearing about other people (in general, I'm weird in that I like to listen, but it's also fun to talk every once in a while).

Link to the base class on GitP.

Thanks to Morph Bark's homebrew tier compendium, I (just now) discovered this awesomely fun class, decided I wanted to play one, and that I wanted to make some more marks for it, because . . . frankly, I just think it's a shame to have Magical Beast Marks, none of which feature the unicorn or the pegasus. So I made two marks. Please PEACH - especially if you have ideas for the Mark of the Unicorn, since I think it's way less cool than the pegasus one.

Mark of the Pegasus
Shape: (Ex) You sprout beautiful wings in an appropriate color (white is most common) and feathers begin to grow in your hair. Your new wings grant you a fly speed equal to your base land speed + 5 ft/2IL (average maneuverability).
Name: (Ex) You gain the ability to make two wing buffet attacks, dealing 1d6 + STR damage each with the same reach as your other natural attacks.*
Essence: (Ex) Any round on which you choose to not fly or make wing buffet attacks, you can use your wings to give you a natural armor bonus to AC equal to 1/3 IL.*

Mark of the Unicorn
Shape: (Ex) You can become ethereal, as per the spell ethereal jaunt, once per day per 8 initiator levels, using your initiator level as the caster level.
Name: (Ex) Any weapon you wield gains an unearthly silver glow vaguely resembling a unicorn’s horn or outline, as appropriate, when you wield it. Any weapon you wield is treated as if it had an enhancement bonus equal to 1/5 your initiator level so long as you wield it.
Essence: (Ex) You gain a +3 untyped bonus to Charisma and are surrounded by a magic circle against evil at all times; like a unicorn, you cannot suppress this ability.

* - two cavalry style combat feats from jiriku's fighter fixon GitP inspired these abilities.

A quick (if somewhat silly) question: since you say the formula from your secondary circle are treated as if they were shaped with the "Reshape Formula" feat, can you only use a formula from your secondary circle once every 5 rounds because that's how often you can use the "Reshape Formula" feat? Or did you mean for this specific use to circumvent that restriction of the feat?

You did the right thing. Smashing cockroaches is a horrible idea - I'm told the females carry their eggs on their body, so smashing them gets the eggs on whatever you smashed it with. If that's your shoe, you are leaving a lovely present of cockroach eggs everywhere you go.

That said, I prefer chemical warfare to slicing when it comes to cockroaches. I go, "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!" for like 10 minutes, tracking the cockroach as it goes, and then killitkillitkillitkillit with whatever nasty substance I have handy (Raid is obviously useful, but 409 works surprisingly well). Or I let my cats torture it to death. Slowly. They're mean creatures, but so long as I feed them, water them, and clean their litterboxes, they don't try to torture/kill me

Umm . . . I wouldn't give up on the argument that SOPA/PIPA/whatever-A violate free speech, at least in the US. This current Supreme Court has been very zealous in defense of free speech, and since the traditional arguments for regulating media (limited scope, as in radio/TV) are completely bogus wrt the intertubes, well, I foresee a 5-4 decision (maybe 6-3, depending on Scalia, Kennedy, and whether Thomas just votes with Scalia or actually thinks the case over for himself this time) overturning such an act. That, of course, won't help anyone in other countries where it gets passed, or repair the damage such a law could do while in effect, during arguments (assuming it wasn't put on hold during the trial, which it should be) or before a suit is properly filed.

The scary thing about all this is I'm starting to realize just how out-of-touch my parents are. Of course, I knew my dad was having troubles when he was talking about supporting Ron Paul because he's so liberal compared to Obama  And my mom . . . don't get me started. I can't tell her SOPA/PIPA are bad, b/c she'll disbelieve it simply because I said it and I can't be right except when she already agrees with me.

How did I come about, with this sort of gene pool?

More stuff coming soon, once I've applied for summer internships. Sorry for the huge delay - finals always eats my lunch, and this year was truly horrendous. I wish people would actually help you when you ask for help, especially if they've already promised to do so. . . *shakes fist*

Okay. Back to work. I promise to be talkative soonish.

My cats won't drink water unless it has ice in it. They REQUIRE ice water. Regular water is for plebs like their attendant (me).

I'm not kidding.