AmberVael's page

Hmm...the first sentence of Destructive Maw seems to be missing a word between "into" and "bite". And, uh, I'm not sure how it actually works...though if the missing word is "your" then that would probably clear it up, though if it's "a" then it becomes confusing again.

Mutable Blast is a bit oddly worded too...does the fact that you create an area within 5 ft. cubes mean you can avoid attacking people that are in one of the cubes you selected if desired, such as two creatures in the same square or a swarm in a square with an ally? Or am I overthinking it?

Destructive Maw is just missing an "a." It effectively makes your blast into a single natural weapon, which you use as you would normally use a natural weapon, except that when you hit someone with it they suffer the damage and effects of your Destructive Blast.

For Mutable Blast, think of it like legos. You have a stack of blocks, and you can assemble them however you want when you use your Destructive Blast. It then affects that area. You can't affect half an area, or selectively target certain creatures in its area. You CAN build it into any shape you please.

With the lens focus flaw you lose the base ability of the light sphere. Do you get 2 lens talents? One from selecting the light sphere and one from the flaw's bonus talent?

You do not normally gain a lens talent from selecting the light sphere. Selecting the lens focus drawback allows you to start with a single lens talent instead of the normal glow.

So is this a new series? Or is this stuff that got cut from other products?

This is a new series! My goal is to create small, themed sets of mechanics that allow for new playstyles or cover unexplored niches. These Destruction talents, for example, are intended to add more blast shapes that don't cost spell points, blast shapes that deviate from area effects, and talents that don't fall into the blast shape/type paradigm.

As Rednal stated, the electrokineticist's higher caster level is not affected by buying off the drawback. Buying off the drawback will let you use telekinesis in other ways, but not with a higher caster level.

That said, I'm pretty sure Rednal is confusing Telekinetic Warrior with Soaring Blade. Telekinetic Warrior does not get full BAB, for one.
The best way to look at Telekinetic Warrior is that it loses one talent (the bonus Mind talent) and instead gains full CL with telekinesis. Given that, as mentioned previously, full CL is basically mandatory to be a competent telekinetic, this is a fantastic deal. It means being able to pick up bigger weapons, gaining the ability to fly and lift enemies earlier, or pick up more items with Divided Mind. Higher CL is crucial to lifting more and larger items, and the best stuff about telekinesis comes from being able to lift bigger and bigger things.

Think about it this way - wouldn't you spend 1 talent for +5 caster level with a sphere? Its a pretty good deal.

There's a couple of different ways to use telekinesis, and generally you'll need different builds for them.

The first thing to keep in mind is that however you approach telekinesis, you will absolutely want to be a high caster with it (at least for most purposes). Without being a high caster, telekinesis is substantially worse, and you'll struggle to lift anything of note. Even with that, basically every telekinetic will want the powerful telekinesis talent so that they can lift larger objects.

Incanter can get a lot of versatility out of telekinesis, and is good if you want to use it mostly for utility or battlefield control. Divided Mind is almost essential for a telekinetic Incanter, and allows you to do things like animate an entire workshop of tools or fill a battlefield with knives.
The downside of Incanter is that their low BAB means that they're limited in using telekinesis for direct offense. They can pick up a big object and smash someone with it, but can't ever get many attacks. With incanter it is better to focus on talents like friction field or gravity well, or else get Combat Reflexes (along with dancing weapon and flair) so that your field of knives becomes a meatgrinder.

The more direct combat style is better left to the telekinetic warrior archetype you mentioned, or the armorist archetype soaring blade. Both of these get better BAB, and thus more attacks when using an object of a bludgeon. The advantage of telekinetic warrior is that it is a midcaster for all purposes and has highcasting for telekinesis, while its downside is having medium BAB. The advantage of Soaring Blade is that it gets full BAB, and can summon massive magic weaponry to use with its telekinesis, while its downside is less talents, and being focused on telekinetic weaponry rather than the sphere in general.
Anyway, with this direct style you should focus on picking up the largest objects possible and bludgeoning people with them repeatedly. Mobile Bludgeon gives you an advantage over Divided Mind by allowing you to make full attacks with a single massive bludgeon rather than needing a separate bludgeon for each attack.

A quick question with Divided Mind, when combined with Weaponize could it allow for one to blanket the battlefield with “knives” made of pure telekinetic energy?

You absolutely could.

Also, of note, while you have given me a bit to think on as I consider Easy Focus, talents, and feats a fair focus I was planning on making use of is not both active Telekinesis and Destruction talents in the same turn but instead strategic use of one or the other either on different turns. Have one be active one turn and passive the next, switching it up. The goal being to end a battle quickly as well, perhaps finding ways of adding in status effects such daze, stun, or conditions such as making an opponent flat footed.

This is more along the lines of the "passive Destruction" setup I suggested, in which the key is to strategically make use of destructive blasts with lingering effects while using telekinesis to mop up.

My general advice is to be very careful with your talent selection and try not to get too much overlap. If you can do something already with the other sphere, why pay twice for the same capability? Damage with your standard action is the same whether its from destructive blast or bludgeon, so each sphere needs to contribute something unique to make the most efficient use of your talents.

So, by default using Telekinesis AND Destruction in combat probably won't get you all that far. Both of them will want to use your standard action a lot, and so they will end up redundant.

There are a few ways to make them work together better though. The easiest way is to focus on making one more passive, and the other more active. Either sphere can be built to fit into either role. Right now you seem to have the active side of things figured out with both, so lets focus on how you can make one of them passive.

With Telekinesis, the easiest way to take advantage of it without spending too many actions is to get the Easy Focus boon as part of your casting tradition, allowing you to concentrate on your telekinesis as a move action. Combine this with a less action intensive fighting style, like attacks of opportunity (using Dancing Weapon to get attacks of opportunity with your telekinetically wielded weapons, and Divided Mind to blanket the battlefield in knives), and you can get a ton of value without spending more than a move action on Telekinesis.

More passive use of Destruction can generally be accomplished by placing down enduring effects, stuff like Energy Spheres, Energy Walls, Blast Traps, etc. That way you spend one or two actions on an effect that you can get a lot of mileage out of, while using the rest of your actions on your main offensive sphere. I suggest Energy Wall, especially if you're going Telekinesis. Set up a hemisphere and fling your enemies back and forth through it with your telekinesis.

My experience is that there are a LOT of people willing to do writing and design work. If you want to see this made, and can put money behind that desire, you can certainly make it happen. Just take a look at the Freelancer Open Call thread. Pretty much every opportunity that opens up there gets some level of response. And I mean, I've taken custom requests before, and I'm certainly open to doing so again. I'm sure a lot of other freelancers are in the same position.

If you do commission from someone, just do be aware that you'll probably pay a fair amount more than you'd pay for a similarly sized book from the store, since you'll be the only person guaranteed to buy it.

(Follow link to see a discussion of the kind of rates we normally get -- you might find them quite affordable).

I always found this thread to be great, but its a bit old now. A number of the publishers listed here pay their freelancers much more than they did back in the beginning of 2015, particularly as they've seen success in Patreons and Kickstarters.

The warlock has been done and done and done.

There may not be much interest in another warlock.

Sorry.

It was chosen by vote, so there's at least some interest.

More words and more writer pay sounds pretty cool to me.

Also, hooray for full-time work, even if it might mean a bit less cool content.

There is nothing like this.

I would also advise caution with such a mechanic. As Lirya says, caster level does not affect all talents equally. Warp can also be a great investment even without caster level, and there are some Time effects that are still amazing as well.

In addition, remembering what caster level different effects have could be difficult. While there are features that raise caster level for specific spheres, or other categories of talents, these all apply to an easily distinguished, thematic set.

If you did want to try and make something like this, my advice would be to make it a class, prestige class, or archetype. Rather than changing caster level for specific talents, have an entire class with the shtick of "not great caster level, but plenty of talents."

Its just supposed to be "and does not gain the ability to summon armor at 5th level." The 'or' is just extraneous and shouldn't be there.

Just for clarity, Summon Equipment should only say you can't summon shields (and can't summon armor at 5th level), and Bound Equipment should say you can't have bound shields (or have bound armor or staves at the appropriate levels).

Thanks for the review, Rednal!

Luthorne - it looks like that was a mistake that somehow slipped in during layout. An aasimar with Light Attuned should replace their darkvision and spell-like ability racial traits.

I'm up for a free copy.

Welcome to the playtest of the Illuminator's Handbook, a book in a series of themed expansions for Spheres of Power. For those unfamiliar with it, Spheres of Power is a new magic system published by Drop Dead Studios which divides magic into 'spheres,' themed sets of magical abilities that aim to provide support for a wide variety of concepts from level one, using at-will abilities as well as more resource limited powers.

The Illuminator's Handbook is focused on expanding the Light sphere of magic, and so all its content is related to creating or manipulating light and its properties. It introduces many new talents, including two new series of talents: nimbus talents that allow you to alter the areas of your light magic, and lens talents to give you abilities related to the manipulation and control of light. Also within the book are new archetypes and class options (such as the Astrology tradition and the Sun Warrior archetype), as well as feats, equipment, and more.

You can find the playtest document here. Feel free to comment within the document, or post your comments and feedback here.

I look forward to your input!

At the moment we're releasing them as they're ready, but now that I'm board as a project manager I'm attempting to streamline and organize things a bit more. I still can't offer a complete schedule though, and I won't ever attempt specific release dates. As Rednal says, we'd like to be releasing approximately one book a month (but play loose with that).

What I can tell you is this:

• Enhancement and Time are currently the books closest to release, and one of the two will almost certainly be our next released book (with the other probably following it).
  
• We have some other books that are probably close to playtesting, including Light, Mind, War, and Illusion, so those are ones to look for next.
  
• Alteration, Conjuration, Death, Fate, Life, and Weather are all being worked on, but are in various stages of progress and may not be close to playtesting.
  
• Creation, Dark, Protection, and Warp aren't being worked on at the moment, so their release is probably pretty far off.
  
• And lastly, if you haven't seen them already, Nature, Telekinesis, and Destruction are books 1, 2, and 3.
  

All of this is very tentative and entirely subject to change. If one of our authors gets carried off by a dragon, progress could halt on their book. If another is inspired by a muse, Dark might be completed very quickly.

Continuing our line of sphere-specific expansions for Spheres of Power, Drop Dead Studios is proud to present our fourth book in the series, The Diviner's Handbook!

The Diviner's handbook doubles the number of talents for the Divination sphere and expands the alternate divinations section to include a bonus divination for every other sphere; you can ferret out shapeshifters with the Alteration divination, or look into the past with Divine Time. If swordplay interests you, one of the handbook's five archetypes is the Blind Swordsman archetype, which realizes the classic concept of a warrior with senses far more capable than sight.

Also included are new feats and traits, casting traditions, rituals, incantations, magic items, and monsters themed around Divination magic, adding up to 34 pages in total.

If you're interested in divination or Spheres of Power, I encourage you to check it out!

But most of the new folks we are working with now are people we assign one of the projects we have on our "to do" list that we haven;t gotten to yet, which helps us take care of our existing backlog with adding new projects to the schedule.

This is a pretty important bit, because it applies a lot wider than Rogue Genius. Ideas are very, very plentiful, and whats most in demand is the time and expertise to turn those ideas into something usable. So, there's a lot of publishers out there who would potentially be interested in more freelancers, but may have minimal interest in a completely new product.

So if you know a publisher you like and are familiar with what they do, you might have more success expressing interest in helping them with what they already do and selling yourself on your basis to do that. If you do have something specific in mind you want to publish, be willing to pitch it to a lot of people (and do look around and see where it would best fit).

Also, if you're interested in more information about how to freelance and get into freelancing, there's a lot of resources to be found on the subject. I know some Paizo employees have written a fair amount on the topic (Jessica Price and Wesley Schneider have put a bunch about it on their tumblrs), and that's worth checking out. I also recommend Creighton's advice for freelancers, which he keeps relatively short and simple, while still useful.

Sorry if this advice really isn't necessary for you (you did say you've put out a few pieces already), but its a topic I like talking about. And maybe someone can find it helpful?

I hope people enjoy my contribution; I've always thought wizards need interesting libraries, but coming up with books on the spot can be a bit tricky.

Part of my sinister plan has been revealed! Lure excellent designers into the Swan Lair and never let them leave!

I think I find myself more intrigued about the rest of this plan than worried.

Have you considered working with an existing company?

I've been getting into the industry myself, and I've found it tremendously helpful talking to and working with existing publishers and writers. Its really given me a much better perspective and grasp of how things work. Taking up a few freelancing jobs could not only teach you more about how this all works, but could give you some real experience writing and help start up a reputation, at least with other publishers, writers, and artists.

And of course, working for someone else hardly has to be forever. Freelancing doesn't do much to tie you down - in fact, you could freelance and work on your own projects at the same time. I'm pretty sure there are a number of people who do that already.

If I wasn't as poor as dirt, I'd support this without hesitation. I'll definitely be cheering from the sidelines though!

I'm quite happy to see the increase in writer pay was met. The team definitely puts out a lot of effort, and its nice to know that this will help with rewarding that.

I'm personally a big fan of magic that has more uses than just "smack that goblin over there in the face for me," so Household Magic sounds like it could be pretty fun. Its not necessarily what you want for every game, but opening up options for entirely new game types is definitely something I support.

Sometimes you want to slay dragons. Sometimes you want to be a magical cleaning service crew. A dragon's gotta keep their hoard clean somehow, after all.

Spheres of Power is basically meant to be a replacement of normal spellcasting, and by necessity relies on many of the same rules. If you don't assume that abilities in spheres are basically equivalent to spells, you actually run into problems figuring out how they work.

So... yeah. Treat it as spells for the majority of purposes, I'd say, just keep in mind that they are a bit different in the end, so you may want to exercise some personal judgment.

For a feat like you described, I wouldn't see any problem at all.

Thanks for the review, Rednal. I appreciate your feedback!

Pagan holidays sounds interesting to me. I'll take a free copy.

At some point I hope those Spheres of Power expansions get compiled into a print book. I'm not thrilled with a bunch of 30 page print books but I'm totally into a big fat expansion book for table use purposes.

I could get behind it, and a quick inquiry does indicate that its a possibility, though it'll take a while before all the content is done.

More Spheres of Power (Drop Dead Studios)! I can't recommend it enough for those that are tired of Vancian magic, and I do hope to see it expanded and improved.

If you haven't heard, Spheres of Power is currently getting expanded. Meyers started up a Patreon to help him fund a series of smaller handbooks (one for each sphere) that adds more material in each theme. Two books have already been released: The Geomancer's Handbook for the Nature Sphere and the Telekinetic's Handbook. The plan is to release one each month until there are no more spheres or ideas left.

Just for full disclosure, Meyers brought on some additional writers to help him with the workload, and I'm one of them (the Telekinetic Handbook is largely my work). I don't want to toot my own horn but [VUVUZELA NOISES.]