Ooc

Could I also make a change: I was having another look through the traits as I thought a +1 save bonus was pretty unimaginative, and spied Warrior Poet. As written it's a dwarven racial trait. If I amended my backstory to say the village skald was a dwarf, could I take Adopted and choose WP - might need a GM call on changing the bonus from dwarven history to something else (Knowledge Nature perhaps?), but it seems too good a fit for a bard/barbarian to pass up.

No need to be dwarfy if you don't want... and yeah just pick one Knowledge skill (not local) to give a bonus to. I think history might work best, but its up to you.

Thanks. My other trait is giving me a bonus on history so I thought nature or geography might be a better fit - I'll take geography and re-jig my skills to replace it for Bluff

I don't know about any of you people, but with 8 characters and 16 professions, I feel like I'm in one of those logic puzzles you get in IQ tests. "The actor who is not also a veterinarian stood next to the only Varisian who was not a plumber." I may need to make a cheat sheet.

We could always put our names and classes/professions in bold at the top of each post.

That would be fine, of course, but I'll clue in eventually-- I was just whining.

Also, while we as players know that not all of us will get into the Pathfinders, do our _characters_ have any reason to think they are competing with each other? Katsunin's post made me wonder. Like, they all know they have to do well enough to pass, but if they're confident they will pass, is there any reason for them to care about their performance compared to others?

My character is very honor-bound. His entire reason for joining the Pathfinder Society is to achieve something grander in life. If he sees that he's surrounded by a bunch of failures who somehow manage to pass the trials, then he could never take pride in his own ability to pass.

There'd really be no reason to expect the Society could give him what he wants in life if they just let any random person in. If his peers seem to all be superior to him in skill and cause him to push himself even farther, and he passes, then he views it as becoming one of the elite.

You're probably only reading it like he's implying they're supposed to be competing against each other because of metagame knowledge.

Minor question for the Pathfinder experts around here: Skill points... multiply by 4 at first level or no?

No. Max ranks are equal to your HD in any skill, and cross-class skills don't cost extra. Instead, any class skill that you have ranks in gets a miscellaneous +3 bonus.