Draeth Darkstar's page

Yeah, that was my assumption of the RAW. It's unfortunate that that's RAI, I much prefer the design decisions in the classes and archetypes that treat their improved progression as a higher caster level progression for the ability. The whole beauty of the Spheres system in my eyes is the cross-compatibility.

Are abilities for Sphere casters that say they scale with your level instead of your caster level intended to scale with your class level or character level?

Class level seems like the obvious answer since that's how the base rules work in most cases, but then Spheres tend to work off your caster level which was changed to explicitly stack so that multi-class casters are more viable, so I'm really not sure what the RAI is.

Specifically, I really want to make a multiclass Armorist (Blaster) / Mageknight (Doomblade), but I'm not sure how to interpret the level scaling.

Arm Cannon: "The arm cannon is a ranged weapon that makes ranged touch attacks, and deals 1d6 bludgeoning damage +1d6 at 5th level and every four levels beyond 5th... In all other ways, the arm cannon counts as a destructive blast from the Destruction sphere with a caster level equal to the armorist’s level."

Destructive Blade: "Rather than having its power determined by the doomblade’s caster level, the destructive blade always treats the doomblade’s level as its caster level."

My expected reading of those features is that they'd scale by class level only, but that seems directly in conflict with how the system works and would be pretty disappointing.

My best guess for the RAI is actually that you're supposed to treat your class level as your caster level for those abilities, but it stacks normally with caster levels from other sources, such that, for example, a 4 Armorist / 6 Doomblade would have a caster level of 7 for Arm Cannon (3 + 6/2) and 8 for Destructive Blade (4 + 4/2), but that's not really supported by the RAW.

Thanks, fellas. Decided I'll end up picking one up anyway, since the other members of my group want to use it.

Maybe some day there'll be a more accessible version I can use myself.

Can anyone who's seen the finished product in person comment on the font size? I'm pretty blind, so it usually takes a moderately large print (16-20pt) for me to be able to read it at enough distance that a GM screen would actually be useful.

Sincere question: What does it take to get a response from Paizo's customer service team anymore?

I just sent my third email regarding the same issue today, as over the span of 20 days I have received no response whatsoever.

This is the second time in two months I've been through this with Paizo and it's really wearing thin on my patience.

I try pretty hard not to fault people in the service industry because I know it's hellish work, but this is just not an acceptable level of quality. It should not take weeks to receive the barest acknowledgment that I've submitted an issue and it's being looked into.

I am seriously reconsidering my financial support for this company right now.

I would honestly be horrified if they had to manually cross-reference every customer, much less grant the downloads one at a time, but I work in web development for a living and I've seen databases that poorly designed, so maybe. There's no point in speculating on this side of the digital curtain, as it were, but there certainly had to be a better solution than this.

Nah, I understand. I don't share the view, but PDFs mean nothing to me. Nothing hostile about a difference in opinion. :)

This is just such an unusual occurrence. I suspect the issue for Paizo was that they don't have any easy way of setting up a subscription with two different versions the subscriber can opt between. It'd probably be a lot of code for a feature they're unlikely to use again.

Probably not worth it to automate, but I can't imagine it should have been that difficult for them to grant the PDF to people who are subscribers and also pre-ordered this book - it's a limited edition so there can't be that many people who bought it in the first place.

I'm not challenging your opinion, just clarifying for new Paizo customers since it's an often misunderstood area - free PDFs pretty much never come with any preordered books, unless you're a subscriber.

( I'm presuming you started your subscription with the Alien Archive).

I understand, and I'm sorry if I'm coming off unclear or at all hostile. I'm irritated because of the exemption of this book from the subscriber perk, not with anything that anyone in this thread has said.

And yes, I had to have my original Core book pre-order cancelled because this one was announced so much later, so my subscription is now starting with the Alien Archive.

Draeth Darkstar wrote:

Those of us who paid the premium price for an aesthetic upgrade out of brand loyalty are currently unable to read or play the game and will apparently have to pay a further premium for the PDF, while everyone who pre-ordered the standard edition now have their free PDFs in hand.

Preordering the standard edition didn't give you access to the PDF. (I'm not disputing your opinion, I'm just clarifying).

Paizo use free PDFs to incentivise subscriptions - that's their main attraction, for many subscribers. That means they can't offer them in other situations without reducing the value of a subscription.

Again - not challenging your right to a different view, just clarifying the difference between a subscription and preorder from Paizo, since there's a lot of new people around and it is causing some confusion.

Perhaps I should further clarify - anyone who pre-ordered and also subscribed for the Core line has a free PDF now, a week before the street date. People like myself who pre-ordered the limited edition and also subscribed do not.

Also, it's right there in bold:

Quote:

Note: This product is not available as part of a Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscription.

And again - that notice was not posted when the product was listed. You can verify this by reading up the thread at the point where one of the Paizo employees clarified and stated the product description would be edited after the fact.

Draeth Darkstar wrote:

I can't even begin to state my displeasure that this book doesn't come with a PDF. Feels rather like stiffing your most loyal customers to me.

Don't really see how a limited edition is stiffing "loyal" customers.

They've stated multiple times in multiple places that this book would not net you a free PDF.

Those of us who paid the premium price for an aesthetic upgrade out of brand loyalty are currently unable to read or play the game and will apparently have to pay a further premium for the PDF, while everyone who pre-ordered the standard edition now have their free PDFs in hand. What part of this are you not understanding?

They may or may not have said, "multiple times in multiple places" that this book wouldn't come with a PDF included by now, but they certainly had not when I ordered mine the day it was listed on the store.

I can't even begin to state my displeasure that this book doesn't come with a PDF. Feels rather like stiffing your most loyal customers to me.

I'm happy to do it! Just crossposted to Amazon, so it should be published soon.

Good third party work keeps the game fun and fresh. I'm working on a campaign right now that's a thematic gish of Avatar versus Naruto, and after picking out all the material I'm going to use for the factions, I realized it sort of turned into Team KOP's Kineticists versus Dreamscarred Press's Path of War and Psionics under the hood (with this class somewhere in the secretive middle space).

I'm going to try to get a review out for each book as I can get through them all, so I'll probably have more questions on the other product pages sooner or later :)

Thanks for the additional answers, Onyx!

I agree that with your errata, it's perfectly reasonable, the only concern I had was the potential for "double dipping" 1 1/2 Charisma + Power Attack + Precise Strike, which would be ugly (and doesn't work with Slashing Grace per the FAQ about bastard sword and katana handedness shenanigans).

Thanks so much for the quick and thorough responses, guys. I really appreciate it and I love your work.

Let me first say that I absolutely love this class. It's probably my favorite third party hybrid both for the amazing design ideas behind it as well as the theme (elemental characters, ninjas, and Psylockesque weapon creators are all in my top favorite fictional tropes, so this book is totally my jam).

That said, I'm looking forward to writing a review, but before I feel like I can do it justice, I have a few (okay, a bunch) of questions, some for balance reasons, some because (what I think are) the RAI seem to be omitted in the RAW, and some because I'm having a hard time assuming the RAI.

Physical/Elemental Jutsu: These seem to be intended to create a a pseudo-manufactured weapon, and all of the Hadou techniques follow this pattern, making the kinetic blast take the form of different wielded weapons that are in most ways treated as such, but there are some exceptions, and I'm not sure what are intended and what aren't:

• The base 'weapon' damage being 1d4 for most forms and 1d8 for the katana form implies that they are intended to represent a dagger and katana wielded by a medium-sized creature. Is it intended that the damage is always the same, regardless of the creature size, or should a smaller or larger Kinetic Shinobi adjust the damage dice accordingly? It's not an issue for the base Kineticist, because their damage scales with level like a more prototypical spell-like ability, but this class is a bit of an edge case between mechanics.
  
• The existence of Razor Jutsu and Heavy Katana leads me to think we're to assume the critical range and modifier of all forms is 20x2 like a vanilla Kinetic Blast unless explicitly stated otherwise, is that correct? If so, does that not make criticals with these weapons somewhat underwhelming, since a dagger is 19-20x2 base and a katana is 18-20x2 base, while the Kinetic Shinobi needs to spend two of their talents to get, at best, a 19-20x3 version of a katana (which also locks up one of their two advanced Hadou if using True Fusion) that can't be improved by feats or other crit boosts, whereas a base katana can be modified to 15-20x2 with one feat? As far as I can find, they don't seem to have any special damage bonuses that would be modified by critical hits except for the +2-12 bonus from spending a Ki point on Elemental Jutsu, which is inconsequential since it comes at a limited resource cost and doesn't scale with any ability scores.
  
• Is an amulet of mighty fists, or some other magic item, intended to apply to these weapons, or is there some other way to get them an enhancement bonus and magic weapon properties that I've just completely missed (without playing an Arsenal Sniper or Shikon, since they just use manufactured weapons)? If not, that seems to me to be a big oversight that makes them outright inferior to manufactured weapons and other 'weapon creator' classes like the Soulknife which get an enhancement bonus that passively scales with levels.
  

Hadou Techniques, Hadou Admixture, and True Hadou Fusion:

• This one's less of a question and more of an observation: Twin Stars existing implies that you are not intended to be able to use Kinetic Kunai with two weapon fighting. As it's written, I can see nothing that would actually prevent you from doing exactly that, though - you would not need to be able to create two weapons at once to throw them with each hand while making a full attack action, since as written, creating them is 'part of an attack action,' which seems to allow you to create-and-throw them using Kinetic Kunai and either alternate hands or swap the weapon between hands as a free action before throwing it. This could use an errata to explicitly bar it without the explicit ability granted to use dual jutsu with it.
  
• Is there any particular reason the damage of Twin Stars is reduced? This penalizes the two-weapon Kinetic Shinobi throwing build in a way that no other throwing build I know of is punished, which seems to be a bizarre design choice that isn't really rooted in any mathematical need for a reduction, especially considering the one-handed build allows Kunai Grenade + Greater Vital Strike + Startoss Shower, which is head-and-shoulders better, especially against adjacent targets.
  
• What is the intended behavior of Titangrip Jutsu? My assumption would be that both hands deal 1d8+Cha Mod with Physical Jutsu and 1d8 with Elemental Jutsu and they are treated as one-handed weapons, but RAW is very unclear, and by an extremely strict reading I think you would be wielding two light weapons each dealing 1d8 + 1 1/2 Cha Mod with Physical Jutsu and 1d8 + 1/2 Cha Mod with Elemental Jutsu - that seems unintended, especially considering how conservative the other damage options are.
  
• Weighted Kunai seems less burdened by the lack of explicit rules text, but just to be certain, the intent is that you can throw the Kinetic Katana with a range of 20 feet (80 with Extended Kunai) and deal 1d8 + 1 1/2 Cha Mod with Physical or 1/2 Cha Mod with Elemental Jutsu, correct?
  
• Using True Hadou Fusion, would Titangrip Technique + Weighted Kunai not produce the exact same effect as Twin Stars + Weighted Kunai, except that the former would deal full damage instead of reducing it by one step (at the cost of -1 AC/Reflex)?
  
• How are Bomb Blast, Kinetic Naginata, Kinetic Yeoman, Oni Force, Starstorm Art, and (Greater) Vigilant Blade intended to interact with each other and with Advanced and True Fusion Hadou techniques? Fully compatible unless explicitly noted otherwise?
  

Ninja Trick: It seems odd that this leaves the relevant ability scores of Ninja Tricks as written by default - should Ninja Tricks be based on Charisma for a Kinetic Shinobi, where appropriate? What about Rogue Talents acquired as Ninja Tricks?

Needler

Hadou Techniques / Elemental Main Gauche: As written, this seems to make it impossible to use Precise Strike or any other ability that functions in the 'open hand' style with kinetic blast, due to the requirement that the character be holding a weapon in the main hand to create the main gauche, since there is no other base Hadou technique that creates a single one handed melee weapon, is that intended?

Kinetic Partisan: Contrary to the starting Hadou techniques, this seems like it would allow you to use a two handed weapon with Precise Strike and other single-one-hander abilities as written, which is extremely powerful since it could also be used with 1 1/2 Power Attack and other two hander abilities that Precise Strike is intended as a counterbalance to. Is this intended or does this ability need to be noted that it doesn't count as wielding a single one handed weapon?

Sorry that got a bit long!

I have one for you that's thematic, but pretty open-ended. I'm currently running a game about the planar boundaries breaking down on the Material, causing all sorts of weird, extra planar things to seep through, warping the world in unnatural ways and loosing extra planar beings. The party is currently 3rd level.

So, my request is simple; pick a plane and give me your idea for an adventure about it spilling over into the material plane, appropriate for characters somewhere between 3-6.

One of the only things 4e did that I actually liked was that it gave casters some interesting weapon options that affected their spells and weren't just sticks of 'casts some specific spells per day.'

Has anyone done a conversion of the implement rules for Pathfinder? I considered just making enhanced weapons work with spells but I have some concerns that some weapon properties would be overpowered on magic, especially area spells.

Draeth Darkstar wrote:

Just wanted to offer up feedback that I'm another person who would subscribe to this line if I could just get the books without the other stuff.

What other stuff?

Map folios I guess are the only other thing left in this subscription now since a after a second look the flip mats are in their own category now.

Draeth Darkstar wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Jeremy Smith wrote:

Coffee Demon wrote:

Will a print version of this be released any time soon?

April would be the soonest we have proof copies back from the printer for review.

But short answer: yes, depending on your definition of Soon. :)

What about a vey nice deluxe edition combining Path of War and Expanded?

Still hoping for an answer to this one. I love my copy of Ultimate Psionics, but I have regrets about the books that got compiled into it. Also, AFAIK, Path of War still hasn't been reprinted with errata, has it?

It was mentioned in the previous thread (which might now be gone since the Work In Progress was turned off) that a decision on that hasn't been made yet and is going to be based upon demand for it. We may create a hardcover with both books, but a final decision has not yet been made.

I realize that's not really a yes or no, but it's because we don't have a firm yes or no answer to give right now.

Thank you for the quick response! Does Dreamscarred Press have polls or anything to track consumer demand, or is whining at you in product threads the closest we can get? :) Related, is there a newsletter or anything like that?

One way you might be able to measure (and generate) some demand is with the crowdfunding method. I know Onyx Path has been really really successful with their Kickstarter books, even on projects like compilation/update books that you might otherwise think would be against Kickstarter's "new venure" theme.

Just wanted to offer up feedback that I'm another person who would subscribe to this line if I could just get the books without the other stuff.

Jeremy Smith wrote:

Coffee Demon wrote:

Will a print version of this be released any time soon?

April would be the soonest we have proof copies back from the printer for review.

But short answer: yes, depending on your definition of Soon. :)

What about a vey nice deluxe edition combining Path of War and Expanded?

Still hoping for an answer to this one. I love my copy of Ultimate Psionics, but I have regrets about the books that got compiled into it. Also, AFAIK, Path of War still hasn't been reprinted with errata, has it?