My campaign is converting over to Pathfinder. I've got a Shadowcaster, a Warmage and a Factotum among the characters. I'm wondering what needs to be done with them, if anything, to bring them up to Pathfinder grade.
I'm thinking the Factotum, being another one of Jason's classes, is sufficiently powerful to go in with no conversion necessary. OTOH, the Shadowcaster is relatively weak, especially alongside the pumped Wizard and Sorcerer, so I'm thinking of something along the lines of Wizard school powers or Sorcerer bloodline powers but related to shadow.
With the Warmage, I'm thinking either the Arcane or Elemental bloodlines from the Sorcerer would fit.
Suggestions?
First thing I might do is give the shadowcaster more spells per day. Personally, I think level for level, the shadowcaster's spells are more powerful, the weakness comes from only gaining 1 or 2 per level per day (whilst wizards gain 4 per level per day).
As for warmage, probably put more focus on it's damage capabilities, maybe somthing similer to the Wilder's Wild Surge ability, but only for damaging spells. In essence, it's just a mage focsued on blasty spells, so as long as it's blasting power stands out it should still fill it's role nicely.
I don't know if I'd mess too much with the Shadowcaster, but as the "cantrips" of Shadowcasters, I'd give them at-will fundamentals to put them in line with other casters.
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I havent tried any conversion stuff on the Shadowcaster.
Factotum Only change I made is giving them Cantrips. 3 at 1st level (at will) and 1 each time they gain an arcane spell level. They can cast them as long as they have 1 inspiration point.
Otherwise I think they fit fine as is.
Warmage- Changed Hit die to d8, added 1st level- can choose 1 martial weapon to be proficient with, Cantrips (3 at 1st) (4 at 2nd+) cast at will. 5th - Scribe Scroll. 13th- Weapon training as Fighter with 1 group of weapons. 17th- Armor Training as Fighter
Nothing else.
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The designer of the Shadowcaster offered up some unofficial suggestions for how to beef up the class a bit, over on ENWorld.
Due to the Campaign Settings mention of shadow magic being a popular line of study in Nidal, I do hope to eventually see some Pathfinder write-ups on the notion, although it could just represent some new Illusion (shadow) spells, or a Feat that makes the use of shadow magic more effective (aping some of of the functionality of the Shadowcraft Mage class abilities), and not necessarily a shiny new base class...
1) Charisma determines the DC to save against your mysteries. Intelligence determines the highest level mystery you can cast.2) Grant bonus mysteries per day based on Charisma. These would work just like bonus spells. For instance, if your Cha is 14, you can cast one extra mystery of 1st-level equivalent and one of 2nd-level equivalent per day. (Note that each mystery does give an equivalent level, even though you don't learn them by level.)
3) Eliminate the rule that says you have to take mysteries in a given Path in order. If you want to jump around, so as to broaden your versatility, you can.
4) Within a category—Apprentice, Initiate, Master—you must have at least two mysteries of any given level before you can take any mysteries of the next higher level. For instance, you must have two 1st-level mysteries before you can take any 2nds, and at least two 2nds before you can take any 3rds.
5) Eliminate the rule that says you get a bonus feat equal to half the number of paths you have access to. Instead, you get a bonus feat equal to the total number of Paths you complete. Thus, while you are no longer required to take the entirety of a given Path, there's still encouragement to do so.
6) You may “swap out” mysteries, just as a sorcerer does spells known. If you “un-complete” a Path in this way, however, you lose access to the bonus feat you gained from completing that Path. (You can regain access by re-completing the Path, completing a different Path and choosing that feat as your new bonus, or selecting that feat as a normal feat at your next opportunity.)
7) Once your Apprentice Mysteries become supernatural abilities, change the save DC from 10 + equivalent spell level + Cha to 10 + 1/2 caster level + Cha. This makes them useful even against high-HD opponents, and follows the pattern for other supernatural abilities.
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I would also be interested in any comments on Factotum, as we will be moving over our two Ptolus games over to pathfinder. I play a factotum as a kind of font of knowledge nimble leader in one game and GM the other.
I've never been a fan of the class mechanics, personally, but it seems to be popular with those who are as is (more so if the Font of Inspiration feat is in use).
The handbook is a decent place to find tips on playing a Factotum, although I would avoid many of the specific builds suggested and simply pillage the lists for useful class abilities to emulate.
For flavor,
A Factotum tapping into memories and abilities of other people, whether through having a bunch of other people's memories tapped into their heads or some magical/psychic variation on multiple personality disorder would be neat. (River Tam as Factotum.) This might be a good choice for a psionic-flavored Factotum, from Vudra or of Azlanti blood (who hears voices as a result of Aboleth tampering with his bloodline, in attempt to make his ancestors into walking recording devices...).
Or one could go all 'Akashic record' on the concept and have the Factotum tap into some pseudo-Jungian collective consciousness something or other. Again, tying this into some Vudran or Tien mysticism / philosophy could work.
Or you could put a magical / spiritual spin on it, instead of a psionic / philosophical one;
Ancestral Speaker. The PC is a tribal shaman, descended from a long line of great warriors, clever scoundrels, wise women who spoke for the gods and dangerous sorcerers. The abilities represent a childhood spent listening to the tales of ancestors long deceased, and benefiting from their spiritual tutelage. With effort, the ancestral speaker can channel the spirit of a particular ancestor, tapping into that ancestors arcane, divine or martial talents to enhance their own. Any culture that puts out Barbarians could fit the flavor, with the Shoanti being my first choice. Playing up the fluff might include naming a dozen 'ancestors' (who need not be actual ancestors, but could be deceased members of the same clan, or even, more creepily than ever, members of the same clan or tribe *that aren't even dead,* but whose 'spiritual connection' to this shaman is enough for him to tap into their skills and talents!).
Taker of Skulls. Anyone who has ever cast Speak With Dead knows that a spiritual shadow or echo of the departed remains in their bones. The Taker of Skulls has learned to tap into this spiritual remnant, to channel the arcane, divine or martial talents of these departed souls. As levels increase, the Taker of Skulls can tap into and channel the powers of even more potent spiritual residues. A necromantic opportunist, the Taker of Skulls is marked by an unwholesome fascination with the skills and talents of those they encounter, particularly of those who end up dead... A natural for the Gebbite 'Factotum,' carrying around a satchel filled with bones taken from fallen foes and stroking them as he calls upon their skills and talents (pure fluff, he doesn't need them at all, he just learned his arts that way and plays up the role. Once he's high enough level to gain the use of Shrink Item, he might even start shrinking skulls, lacquering them and keeping them permanantly as jewelry...). Play up the fluff by having him mention the names of individuals whose soul-shadows or spiritual echoes he is tapping into to gain the abilities he's emulating.
I see some good suggestions here. I would suggest a few changes to the Warmage to help her succeed as a blaster. As it stands, an Evoker is a more powerful blaster, which is sad for the WM.
Ditch the current Warmage Edge mechanics in favor of INT+1/2 level.
Allow ranged touch attacks (in conjunction with spells) to use your Charisma modifier rather than Dexterity.
Give them a class feature called Potent Blaster, which increased the warmage's reflex-half DCs by 1 per 5 levels starting at 5th.
Elemental Mastery: Choose a single element (acid, cold, fire, electricity). You may convert any spell with an energy descriptor to this element on the fly without an increase in casting time.
Perhaps not all of those, but definitely something to spice the class up. As it stands, they're far too stat dependent (Charisma, Dexterity, Intelligence, Constitution), and pathfinder really tried to do away with that.
Just my thoughts.
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I was thinking on adding a +1 per warmage lvl bonus to the warmage edge (take int out of the equaton completly) to both reduce MAD and encourage players to go all the way with warmage (to continue with what PFRPG did with the other classes).
Also give it still spell early on (lvl 3 probably and move advanced learning to lvl 4 to get lvl 2 spells with it).
Then at lvl 6 reduce the metamagic of still spell by one to a minimum of 0 (virtually letting them cast any spll without somatic components allowing them to use any kind of armor without arcane failure (please tell me if this wouldn´t work).
I don´t know what to do after that but that gets rid of armored mage for something better
About the Warmage...
I've been trying to work out a few things in my head over the class and a conversion to Pathfinder. I'll put a couple of the things I've thought up here, see what you gusy think. Its kind of my side project for the day today, so going to try and get a full version done by the end of the day =)
First, drop the int thing from Warmage Edge, and instead make it a scaleable plus to damage based spells that adds to damage per die. I was thinking +1 at first level, and scaling upwards to +4 (maybe +5) at higher levels. Ths puts damage per spell massively in favor of the warmage, but thats kind of the point.
Second, allow them to add their con bonus to their concentration checks. Unlike other mages, Warmages would be trained to cast in melee, and doing that would allow them to be a tad more useful in that regard.
Third, modify the spell list. While the pure focus on all the blasty is cool, in a war, mages can also do some handier things, and I was thinking of augmenting the spell list to refelct that.
Fourth, and last, was altering the Advanced Learning to grant more than one spell, something like Int or Cha bonus in spells when they get it, and again, expanding it out a bit to be a little more than evocation spells.
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I was thinking on adding a +1 per warmage lvl bonus to the warmage edge (take int out of the equaton completly) to both reduce MAD and encourage players to go all the way with warmage (to continue with what PFRPG did with the other classes).
Also give it still spell early on (lvl 3 probably and move advanced learning to lvl 4 to get lvl 2 spells with it).
Then at lvl 6 reduce the metamagic of still spell by one to a minimum of 0 (virtually letting them cast any spll without somatic components allowing them to use any kind of armor without arcane failure (please tell me if this wouldn´t work).
That's all sorts of brilliant, as a solution (although I'd word the metamagic reduction feature to only affect evocation spells, which would apply to most of the warmages spells anyway...), as it not only allows armored casting of the mages spells, but also allows the warmage to cast his blasting spells while holding a weapon and shield, or even two weapons.
Given the nature of evocation these days (same damage as in 1st edition, even though the mobs may have five times as many hit poins), +1 damage / level doesn't seem out of line either.
The *crazy* solution might be to allow the Warmage to count all of her energy-based evocation spells as conjuration spells. She has learned to conjure an explosion of elemental fire, instead of evoke it, to craft a fireball, and all of her blasting spells now ignore Spell Resistance...
Cheestacular, perhaps, but it would help to mitigate one of the evoker/warmages biggest problems, that of their spells having to deal with Spell Resistance, then Energy Resistance, then a Reflex Save / Evasion, before having an, all-too-often, lackluster effect.
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I tweaked it a little, decided to make it a lvl 3 ability that lets you use stll spell for free CHA times per day, then at lvl 7 they can use it at will and get to use silent spell (mostly for flavor) CHA times per day.
Then at higuer lvls i keep adding small metamagics Cha times per day as the one before becomes at will. That plus the warmage edge increase, advance learning every 4 lvls and weapon proficiency should make a cool thing.
I just want some advice on what metamagic feats to put in this chain that probably will be at 7 11 15 19.
Finally what would be a good capstone for this baby?
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I tweaked it a little, decided to make it a lvl 3 ability that lets you use stll spell for free CHA times per day, then at lvl 7 they can use it at will and get to use silent spell (mostly for flavor) CHA times per day.
Then at higuer lvls i keep adding small metamagics Cha times per day as the one before becomes at will. That plus the warmage edge increase, advance learning every 4 lvls and weapon proficiency should make a cool thing.
I just want some advice on what metamagic feats to put in this chain that probably will be at 7 11 15 19.
Finally what would be a good capstone for this baby?
If you're following a bonus metamagic theme, adding empower, maximize and / or quicken to the list would make sense. Having these last options usable 'at will' would be a bit much, IMO. Keep them limited to Cha+3/day or something. (Ditto Silent spell or others like Extend or Enlarge. Only Still Spell should become at will, IMO.)
Are you intending these metamagic options to be stackable? One way to make them *not* stackable, if you hadn't intended a 15th level Warmage to be able to throw a Still, Silent, whatever, whatever fireball for 'free' would be to make the use of each option a Swift Action (so that he could only apply one of them). The ideal 20th level capstone would then be to remove that restriction and allow him to use his free metamagics as free actions and stack to his hearts content.
Other 20th level options;
1) Free use of a sculpt spell like ability (similar to that of the Archmage),
2) The ability to pierce spell resistance as if evocations were conjurations (if not already a class feature),
3) The ability to cast a spell as an Attack action, instead of a Standard Action, allowing a Warmage to make a full attack to stab with his spear at his full BAB, attack again at BAB-5 and then skip his BAB-10 iterative attack and cast a spell with that last 'attack action!'
4) Bump free Empower from Cha+3 uses / day to at will status. Ideally, Sudden Still and Sudden Empower would be the only one's usable at will at 20th level, while Sudden Maximize and Sudden Quicken would remain usable Cha+3 times/day.
Lower-level option;
If the Warmage doesn't already have something like it, they really should have some defensive ability appropriate to their nature. Allowing a Warmage to have a bonus to Reflex saves equal to his Cha mod, automatic save success vs. his own spells, and / or Evasion, might go a long way to making a duel between two Warmages a sight to see, as they recklessly explode fireballs at their own feet, standing only a yard apart, trading spells furiously.
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Good stuff, here it is so far then
1 Weapon Training (proficiency with a martial one), warmage edge (+1 per warmage lvl)
2
3 Warmage´s Still (still spell for free cha times a day)
4
5 Advanced Learning
6
7 Warmage´s Silent (still at will and silent cha times per day)
8
9 Advanced Learning
10
11 Warmage´s widen (widen at cha times and silent at will)
12
13 Advanced Learning
14
15 Warmage´s enlarge (enlarge times per day and widen at will)
16
17 Advanced Learning
18
19 Warmage´s maximice (maximice times per day and enlarge at will)
20 Artillery
I like to be able to stack all those minor metamagics (they are cool but not deadly) so they all can be uased together. Also notice that maximize never becomes at will so it works.
Well the artillery ability is basically once per day for a number of rounds equal to your con mod automaticaente traspazas SR e ignoras elemental resistance con tus evocation spells.
I still don´t know where to put the evasion, help on that. I wanted to put it at lvl 2 since it´s a dead lvl but it seems too powerfull.
I would be cautious about adding very much to the warmage to start with. We're not out to escalate the arms race with Pathfinder. The base classes have been enhanced to make them attractive relative to some of the newer options. Warmage is hardly new, so it may be relatively weak and deserve a little bump, but let's not forget ourselves and just add things for bumping's sake.
Cantrips are a reasonable start, certainly. Normal adjustments like hit dice, sure. Maybe a juicy at-will ability similar to that which comes from a wizard school or a sorcerer bloodline. But that's about it. The class shouldn't probably get an overhaul and a bunch of new abilities.
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Well the thing is that caster classes that were redone for pathfinder didn´t really need that much help. They were great to begin with. the ones that got more new stuff wre the ones with great flavor but poor mechanics (paladin monk).
Now they are much better becaue of the alteration of their mechanics without loosing what the class originally did.
So that´s what i was attempting with the warmage, t can do what it used to do before just slightly better and applied to the new mechanics. The warmage edge was improved but remains similar. armored mage was replaced by letting them use still spell at will as they go up in lvl (updating to the new system for not having spell failure for still spells)
The rest of metamagics are just a better version of the multiple sudden metamagc effects they had.
My point being is that i attempted to keep the warmage as close to the original intention of the class but making it both atractive and competitive with other classes.
But if anyone thinks that it is overpowered please let me know.
But if anyone thinks that it is overpowered please let me know.
Honestly, I didn't even mean that I think that way. I just wanted to remind everyone that rampant power creep isn't what PFRPG is all about. Complete Arcane was one of the earliest Completes and some of its classes could certainly use some tender loving care.
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Giving the Warmage an additional non-spell damage ability (like the sorceror's acidic ray from the aberrant bloodline) would be a start. Allow them to choose an energy type at first and additional energy types that can be slected at "dead" levels might be a way to go. Stick with 3+Cha per day. Allow the extra damage from Warmage edge to stack maybe?
Free Still spell would let them cast with sword and shield or two weapons, when grappled, when tied up, when holding onto the legs of a griffon, etc. etc.
Maybe expand Warmage's Edge to add Int bonus damage at 1st level, add Int bonus to CL checks at 7th level, and maybe Save DCs at 13th level. Maybe add +1/2 CL to damage as well.
Maybe add a class feature that converts half of energy spells to "arcane energy" like a combo between a Warlock's Eldritch Blast and a divine caster's Flame Strike.
I like the option of adding Spell Learning at levels 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20. I REALLY like the Complete Mage option or whatever where they can learn a non-evocation spell, but treat it as 1 level higher (4th level Dispel Magics, 6th level teleports, 9th level mindblanks, etc.). Versatility with a cost.