Inspired by this:
Dreamscarred's Psionics books are pretty solid, although I think they have a tendency to overlook some of the grotesquely broken combos you can get when you multi-class their material with core material splat books. Or maybe that's just too much to expect someone to account for.Feel free to let me know of any such combinations you find. We try to find as many as possible, but with just me and Andreas making up Dreamscarred Press, we get a large amount of our mechanical feedback from our open playtesting volunteers. We're more than happy to issue errata if something was missed.
I guess that Dreamscarres Press is not the only publisher that welcomes feedback for their work.
So what comes to your minds that is too powerful or too weak and thus could be made better with some errata?
My first find is:
Mythical healer feat
With normal healing spell it may work well. But with abilities that only heal little hp it can more than double the healing output, which is way too much for my taste.
Example1: The celestial bloodline 1st level power heavenly fire. Normally it heals 1d4 hp +1 per 2 sorcerer levels.
At level 1: 1d4 (with feat 2d4)
At level 4: 1d4+2 (with feat 1d4+2+1d6]
At level 7: 1d4+3 (with feat 1d4+3+2d6)
Example2: The wizard necromancy (life) school power healing grace. It normally heals 1 hp per level of spell cast.
At 1st level that increases from 1 to to 1d4+1.
At 10th level the same level 1 spell would heal 3d6+1 instead of 1 hp.
I got another one. This one is not too strong or too weak but unclear:
Benefit You have a basic knowledge of magic which allows you to cast a few basic spells, including guidance, resistance, bane, bless, doom, and protection from evil. Up to 1/week, you can prepare one of the listed spells in a special ceremony. The ceremony takes 12 hours and involves studies of arcane or religious texts, the invocation of gods or demons, and a sacrifice worth 100 gp. The spell remains prepared until cast, or until you prepare another spell in this fashion. Your caster level is equal to half your character level (minimum 1st level).
This one gives you some insignificant spell usage but lacks the information if you count as a spellcaster (arcane or divine) after taking this feat. Could you, for example, take the arcane strike feat after lerning simple magic based on knowledge (arcana)?
I don't know, the Mythic Healer doesn't strike me as particularly "powerful," on average it isn't a very big bump in healing (about the same as fey foundling is providing generally; a flat out +2 per die healed).
Yes it goes up by caster level, but at the same time it keeps some of those low level healing spells "relevant" longer which is a good thing for the healer. Healing the rest of the party with lower level spells, keeps the "healer" low on resources. This drops some of the pressure on them so they can use some of the better spells on what they want instead of playing healbot.
As I said it's not too powerful for a healing class.
But it is for some other abilities that provide healing.
As such I'd welcome something that restricts it for those occurances.
See my example 2.
I really like the idea of the feat but as it is I could never allow it in any game I GM.
Sure, I can just HR it.
But before I do that I rather go the esiest path and disallow it.
For the first point, they are limited per day just like spells. For most intents and purposes it is a healing class ability. Using your logic, that makes it "ok" no?
For the second point, the Life school, I was reading it and going "yeah that is pretty powerful" until I got to the end and realized it gets split up. So I don't see it as being horribly overpowered. At 20th level, casting a 9th level spell, you are healing 18+4d6(42 max) spread out however you want. Casting a first level spell heals 3+4d6(27 max) spread out however.
Is it good, yes, is it game breaking/bending? No. You aren't healing with every spell you cast, or if you are, you are damaging/penalizing (with offensive spells by including them in the area of effect) your allies which is typically a 'bad idea.'
If anything it allows for an arcane support healing buffer type, which is a good thing and a cool concept which usually is ineffective to the unplayable mark.
Third-party material should work with core Paizo stuff (but it's hard to balance third-party material against all the other third-party material out there). In the example listed above, Mystic Healer is probably a somewhat over-powered feat in that - mechanically speaking - every wizard with the necromancy (life) arcane school would want it, regardless of build.
However - and here's what's really tricky about being a third-party producer - you can't balance against something that hasn't been written yet. Paizo knows what content they've released, and Dreamscarred Press knows what content Paizo has released... but Paizo doesn't necessarily know what content Dreamscarred Press has released, and isn't obligated to balance future content against Dreamscarred Press' existing content.
Paizo can write something that - when combined with something a third-party publisher wrote - ends up horribly broken. As a third-party designer, you can balance your products against Paizo material that has already seen print... but you can't balance it against future releases.
When you find stuff like this: check the release dates! The problem may not lie with the 3pp guy - it might just be an unfortunate circumstance of the order in which the products were released.
PS: This feat would be cool on a monk with wholeness of body.
Daron Woodson
Abandoned Arts
I absolutely agree it is good, and in that case, it is like PA with a 2H build. Every 2H built takes it, and even those melee that don't 2H take it a great deal of the time. Does that make it over powered? Feat tax for a concept is what it comes down to for me, I don't think that is over powered, so I don't see it as being too good. Those aren't necessarily the same. A feat that is 'must have' for some archtype or a singular class choice isn't 'over powered,' I'd give it that classification if it was that way for a lot of those.
But as you covered, devs cannot cover all the bases of every other item published so coner cases are inevitable. You just have to expect at some point some combination will be really decent.