Start here if you’re coming from an older avowed version.
This latest update is bringing a lot of changes to the avowed. In the past few months, we’ve done a fair bit of restructuring, going back over our documents from the beginning and taking a look at what’s changed, design philosophy-wise, since the start of the playtest.
For a discussion on what overall is changing and why, go to the first spoiler tag. The full changelog is in the second spoiler. The third has some notes about the Tinker archetype and Avowed 2: Heart & Soul, which are not presently included in this rework.
Design Talk:
The avowed is receiving some significant structural changes in this update, aimed at bringing the class in line more with the 6-level spellcasters (magus, inquisitor, occultist, hunter, and the like). We’re moving to balancing more strongly against them compared to our original design, which was somewhere vaguely between 6-level mages and full spellcasters.
In the previous versions of the avowed, the name of the game was efficiency. The class—and its associated options—just did so much more than what similar classes could pull off, given some amount of resources (levels, feats, money, etc). With that in mind, we’ve made major changes to a couple core areas: save DC scaling, pulse shapes, and general quality-of-life abilities unique to the avowed.
Save DCs
Presently, the avowed’s save DCs scale up quite fast. 10 + 1/2 level + Cha mod means that their debuffs are matching spontaneous full casters in speeds, and far outstripping the DCs of the 6-level spellcasters that were our supposed balance goal. Given that not only are their debuffs quite good (in some cases, comparable enough to what you could get on a full caster), but they also get them at-will, this was a problem, if the avowed was to be compared to 6-level or even 9-level casters. While most at-will abilities are largely similar in usage to, say, a spell that can be used 4-5 times per day (thanks to encounter guidelines), at-will powerful debuffs are a bit different. Being able to be at “full blast” in each round of each encounter adds up to more power than we wanted the avowed to have, especially when considering their efficiency of actions.
So! The avowed’s save DC scaling is changing, as follows:
Clauses (including modulation clauses) now have a base save DC of 10 + 1/4 level + Cha mod.
The Reflex save DCs for shapes themselves will remain at 10 + 1/2 level + Cha mod. These saves are equivalent to a “to-hit” roll for an area effect instead of the save for the rider debuff, and as such will remain more reliable than other saves.
Likewise, pact abilities that prompt saving throws will also have a save DC of 10 + 1/2 level + Cha mod.
The avowed can no longer take Ability Focus for its abilities. Instead, we’ve created a series of feats that can be taken by avowed who wish to focus on debuffing.
The full feats can be found in the feats section, but here’s a tl;dr on them. Basically, these are meant to mirror the options available to spellcasters for boosting save DCs.
Mirroring Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus, we’ve got these, choosing a series of clauses instead of a school of magic.
Clause Focus: Add +1 to the save DCs of one clause you know of each grade you have access to.
Greater Clause Focus: Add another +1 to the bonus from Clause Focus.
At higher levels, the avowed will also have access to the following feats, which amp up their less powerful abilities, along with boosting their ability to beat SR.
Clause Expert: +1 to the save DCs of least clauses, +2 on CL checks to overcome spell resistance. Requires access to greater clauses.
Greater Clause Expert: Further +1 to the save DCs of least clauses, +1 to the save DCs of lesser clauses, further +2 on CL checks to overcome spell resistance. Requires access to final clauses.
Finally, these two feats mirror Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Focus, applying a boost to the “to-hit” roll of area shapes.
Shape Focus: Choose two shapes you know. +1 to attack rolls and to the save DCs of those shapes. Counts as Weapon Focus for prerequisites.
Greater Shape Focus: Add another +1 to the bonuses from Shape Focus. Counts as Greater Weapon Focus for prerequisites.
The reason we chose these particular numbers is for similarity in scaling to 6-level casters. The base DC for an avowed scales from 10 to 14 over the first 16 levels of play. For a 6-level spellcaster, it scales from 11 to 16, hitting 16 at level 16 when 6th-level spells come online. However, a 6-level spellcaster’s spells are not at-will.
A bard who gains access to 6th-level spells will likely have 2 or 3 per day when they first get them. He will be able to use them in about half the expected fights of an adventuring day, before having to rely on his lower-level spells. An avowed only has a single final clause at that point, but can use it in every round of the expected four fights. If their base save DCs were even, then the avowed would be very far ahead in the debuffing department. Thus, the avowed’s base save DCs (and success chances) are slightly lower, to make up for their ability to continually spam their strongest options.
The two feats that come online at higher levels, Clause Expert and Clause Mastery, allow the avowed to match the 6-level spellcaster’s highest-level slots in save DCs, but this is limited to weaker clauses than their strongest options, much like a bard will have to fall back on lower-level spells if they wish to continue to cast in combat.
Shape Revisions
Another area where the avowed’s class features gave them more than was really ideal is the aether pulse. Much like how a hunter brings both spells and an animal companion/full attack routine to the table, or how a bard brings inspire courage and other party buffs on top of their spells, the avowed’s aether pulse is meant to work alongside their shapes, giving the avowed a sustainable, strong primary combat option. But, sadly, we ended up giving them too much power. Rather than giving the avowed a baseline to work with, several types of pulse shapes elevated the avowed to the competence level of a specialist natively, without the heavy investment that said specialist would normally require.
Weapon Shapes
Something we’ve wanted to include in the weapon shapes is a heavy amount of “quality of life” abilities. Enhancement bonuses (at first imitating a greater magic weapon spell, but later buffed), access to haste without a spellcaster, and the like were included with the mindset of letting the avowed and their party spend fewer resources on what, at the time, we figured were buffs that were common enough to just assume.
As it turns out, this was a very incorrect assumption. A weapon shape’s haste, beforehand, came online at level 4 (if you invested fully in the shape), and lasted all day. A spellcaster’s haste comes online at level 5-6, and is class-specific. In parties without a wizard or sorcerer, the party isn’t getting haste, but the avowed is (putting them pretty far ahead, thanks to the extra attack). In parties without any full casters at all—not particularly uncommon, especially in 3pp-using tables—the party is probably not getting the spell at all, but the avowed still is. The same goes for greater magic weapon. High-op tables may have characters who buy 3rd-level pearls of power to fuel their wizard’s spell slots and get them a free enhancement bonus (letting them load their weapon up with special abilities instead), but that’s less common than we expected at the start.
So! Moving forward, we’re adjusting weapon shapes. As you might suspect, the free enhancement bonuses and hasted attacks are going away. To replace them, we’ve added in a set of abilities meant to help enable an avowed in their chosen combat style, melee or ranged.
For the melee weapon shapes (aether blade, aether channel, and aether rampage), the 2nd and 3rd ranks of their progressions has been replaced with the following:
Rank II: The shape will give you 10-foot reach (while still letting you attack adjacent enemies).
Rank III: Enemies that move out of your threatened squares provoke attacks of opportunity, even if they’re using the Withdraw action or tumbling or whatnot.
Melee characters don’t function well if they can’t get into melee or stay in melee. The reach and AoO synergy here is to allow the character to, in a way, present enemies with multiple bad decisions. After the avowed has moved into melee, the enemy can stay and attack back (leaving themselves vulnerable to a full attack in return), or they can move out, and get stabbed from behind while they do so. Instead of just giving outright numbers boosts, these abilities should help an avowed with the playstyle of a melee character, while still requiring them to invest in being a melee specialist like everyone else (through feats, magic weapons, ability scores, and the like).
For ranged weapon shapes (aether bolt and aether rounds; we’ve removed barrage for the time being and folded its mechanical concept into the new shape), we did something a bit different. Ranged characters largely do not have trouble getting a chance to full attack. That’s their whole point; they attack from range. However, enemies that get into melee with them can screw them over, and they don’t really have the same sort of minor versatility that melee characters can get by investing in combat maneuvers. So, for aether bolt and aether rounds, we’ve added the following:
Rank II: When you full attack with the shape, you get an extra 5-foot step.
Rank III: You can make ranged combat maneuvers with the shape.
Rank IV: The shape’s range increases.
The goal of these changes are to give ranged characters some more to do and more build paths to follow, and a bit more reliability (though not quite as much as melee got, because ranged is already incredible reliable). Like with melee, they’re going to now need to invest as much money into ranged combat as another class in order to specialize in it, but this should provide a strong foundation for a ranged avowed to build on.
There’s one more change to weapon shapes that I haven’t mentioned yet. Specifically, for channel and rounds, we’re doing away with the somewhat fiddly “replace your damage until level 4, then add damage” effect. With this update, these two shapes will instead simply be dealing 1d6 points of damage per odd-numbered caster level to attacks with one weapon, as an independent instance of damage. When revisiting the math after removing the previous numbers boosts, we found that the early damage should probably be fine; comparable to what, say, a barbarian or rogue gets, albeit more limited in its own ways. Two-weapon fighting for shapes is also no longer stock on the weapon shapes—the Aether Duelist feat has been adjusted to enable TWF for all shapes (and still function as TWF, just in an avowed-specific way).
As a final note for this section, the basic shapes are going away; they’re pretty redundant with the reworked weapon shapes, so we’ve folded them into aether blade and aether bolt.
Area Shapes
The changes we’re making to area shapes are much simpler than those for weapon shapes. In previous versions, the avowed’s area-of-effect aether pulses scaled up to 3d6 points of damage per 2 caster levels (or, 30d6 at CL 20). That’s equivalent to, say, a wizard casting an Empowered fireball... at-will, and before the avowed adds in their own Empower Spell-Like Ability/Balefire Infusion/other damage boost. We’re removing the third tier of scaling; area shapes will be capped at 1d6/level, and the avowed can take feats to boost it past that like everyone else.
We’ve also made some adjustments to the aether blast[i] shape, now named [i]aether burst so we could use “blast” as a general descriptor for these shapes. The fourth rank outright giving you a second AoE made it significantly stronger than the other area shapes, and so we’ve replaced that rank with the ability to deal increased damage to a single creature at the center of the AoE. Aether wrath, whose fourth rank was actually completely redundant (oops), has also received this ability swap.
Flight
Like with weapon shapes, the avowed’s access to always-up flight comes online a bit earlier, and a bit more strongly, than most other classes can access it. As such, we’re changing take flight from a lesser clause to a greater, and the ascension class feature now comes online at level 15. Other avenues of flight, most notably the dragon’s teeth clause for flying zombies, are also being adjusted to occur at slightly higher levels.
Chameleon Clauses
The tune-down in power for the chameleon clause line is a bit of a different situation than the other changes. We’ve found that the clauses simply give far more more utility than other clauses of the same grade, so we’re bumping each of them up a grade. Chameleon clause I is moving to greater, and chameleon clause II to final. The third version of it is removed for the time being.
New Stuff!
With all of that said, I’d also like to go over some of the major new things in this patch. To start with, we’re introducing some new magic items: the promise shard, which can grant an avowed the use of a least clause, and the pulseshaper’s rod, which grants access to a shape stored within it. With the rest of the update, we’ve been putting a lot of emphasis on wanting the avowed to spend money on power like other classes do. These new items are to help give the avowed things to actually buy other than an orange ioun stone and magical stat increases.
In addition, we’ve adjusted the Celestial pact a bit, making its defensive rune much cleaner in use. Rather than granting a reactive heal over time, we’ve moved the healing up some levels and made it an instant return of hit points. In its place, we’re introducing a new condition: taunted.
The taunted condition works a bit differently from other conditions. Despite the name, this isn’t quite a hard taunt like you might see in videogames; instead, the mechanic helps a Celestial-pact avowed tank via soft aggro. A taunted creature has a miss chance on its attacks against creatures other than the taunter, effectively giving them a choice between two bad options. They could attack the taunter (who, as a tanky character, can probably take it better than the squishy mages and whatnot), or they could attack someone else, and risk the taunt causing them to miss.
Hopefully this should give the Celestial avowed a more interesting tanking playstyle moving forward, and we’d love to hear your feedback on the mechanic in general.
Full Changelog:
Avowed
The shapes and aether pulse class features have been merged, as all pulses are now shaped.
Ascension has been moved to level 15, as the intention of the class feature is to allow Avowed to not feel pressured to spend other resources on Flight unless they wish to gain it before it’s necessary. At 15, it’s super necessary.
Clauses of lower grades can now be taken in place of gaining a new clause of the highest level available. When replacing a clause as part of levelling up, clauses can be replaced with any clause that would have been a valid selection at the level you took the clause you are replacing.
Avowed now gain any 2 shapes of their choice at 1st level, and do not gain a bonus basic shape (as basic shapes have been removed; see below.)
Arcane Strike, Dirty Fighting, and Combat Expertise have been added to the list of Avowed bonus feats.
Pacts
The introductory fluff section on pacts has been rewritten to clarify the steps necessary to make a pact, and the source of the avowed’s powers. The “Making Pacts” section has been removed, though it will return as part of the section on fluff we’ll do. Eventually.
Celestial Pact’s Martydom benefit now explicitly applies to temporary hit points lost.
The Celestial Pact’s rune of penance now applies the new Taunted condition, causing a 20% miss chance to hit creatures other than the one that applied the Taunted condition. Also, consecrate.
The Celestial Pact’s reactive healing has been moved to a function of its immediate-action 8th level pact empowerment, Rune of Detention.
The Fey Pact attunement now uses your Avowed level in place of your base attack bonus, and allows you to force the enemy to make a Will save instead of attacking them - so save-focused Avowed are less hecked.
The Old One Pact’s attunement has been changed into an immediate-action clause healing you for the full amount immediately, but can no longer be voluntarily dismissed and instead lasts until the end of your next turn.
The Otyugh Pact has been removed from Avowed: Promises of Power, as it was in serious need of revision (Pathfinder diseases are kind of nuts, it turns out). The revised version will return in Avowed: Heart and Soul, and the deprecated pact can be found here. We’ll miss you, trash friends.
Pact clauses now have grades to allow for interactions with effects based on clause grades. They still cannot be gained through methods other than the pact class feature.
Clauses and Shapes
The DCs of clauses (though not shapes) has been heavily reworked. Unlike most spellcasters, the avowed was not limited in their use of higher-level abilities by fewer spell slots. As their abilities were meant to be roughly equal to the power of 6-level spellcasters like the Bard and the Inquisitor, we opted to bring them into line by lowering the DCs universally to 10+1/4 levels. The Clause Expert and Clause Mastery feats have been added to increase the DCs of the Avowed’s lower level clauses. With these, we hope to see more powerful clauses being used when players are willing to deal with a higher chance of failure, while lower level clauses are the most reliable, allowing for all effects to have uses at all levels - and similarly, their ability to affect opponents should now be more in-line with 6-level spellcasters.
Successful saving throws against shapes which have their damaged halved on a successful save now also negate the modulation’s effects other than damage type changes.
Weapon shapes can now be used to perform a combat maneuver! Like actual weapons. And they still apply the modulation! Not the damage, though.
Area shapes no longer increase to 3d6 damage per 2 levels.
Shape selections can now be exchanged upon levelup.
The Blast tag has been added to instantaneous save-halves shapes to make further interactions (such as feats) have an easy whitelist to reference.
Aether barrage has been renamed aether bolts and rewritten, as it was not fulfilling the fantasy of an onslaught of near-instantaneous attacks. Aether bolts fills the niche of the Avowed’s iterative ranged touch attack shape. All ranks of the shape have been reworked. It no longer grants haste or an enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls, but adds a strength bonus to damage dependant on how many hands you use to make it comparable to thrown weapons and composite bows. The second rank now allows small movement before a full attack, the third allows you to make ranged combat maneuvers (with a scaling bonus to compensate for the lack of enhancement bonuses), and the fourth significantly increases its range.
Aether blade’s third selection has changed to no longer be a damage or accuracy increase, now causing enemies to provoke attacks of opportunity from you even when using movement that would normally cause them not to and grants you a bonus on CMB checks made with the weapon.
Aether blast has been renamed aether burst, because we tried for, like, four months and couldn’t think of a name for the tag other than ‘blast’.
Aether blast and aether wrath’s fourth selection have been changed; they now both deal additional damage to one creature adjacent to the origin intersection of the effect.
Aether cascade now arcs once plus once per 4 levels, rather than once per caster level, as its ability to affect an entire encounter regardless of positioning had rendered other multi-target shapes redundant.
Aether command has been removed from Avowed: Promises of Power due to lazylording being hard to balance in Pathfinder. It’s going to be redone and will return in Avowed: Heart and Soul, but the old version can be found here.
Aether channel has been rewritten, and no longer grants haste or increases enhancement bonuses. It now causes a separate instance of damage when an attack with the weapon hits. Further, its third selection now causes enemies to provoke attacks of opportunity from you even when using movement that would normally cause them not to.
Aether grasp’s numerical bonuses on and against grapple checks have been reduced, and no longer stack with Improved Grapple.
Aether rampage’s damage has been reduced (to compensate for the fact that it gets TWF-level attacks without penalties) and its second and third rank no longer increases enhancement bonuses or grant the rend ability. Its second rank now increases its reach, and its third rank now causes enemies to provoke attacks of opportunity from you even when using movement that would normally cause them not to.
Aether rounds causes a separate instance of damage when an attack with the weapon hits, in the same way as aether channel. Its second and third ranks are identical to aether bolt’s, and its fourth rank increases both the length of your weapon’s range increments and the maximum number of increments within which you can make any attacks.
Aether wrath’s range is now determined purely based on horizontal distance to the center of the cylinder (seriously, you wanted us to do trigonometry for every cylinder effect? What.)
Basic shapes (aether blow and aether ray) have been removed, as basic shapes were redundant and needlessly complicated. The Aether Skirmisher feat has been reworked to allow for the same skirmisher playstyle with any weapon shape. Avowed no longer gain a basic shape at 1st level, instead only choosing 2 different shapes.
Binding disagreement can now be used without an escape clause, simply applying the effects of bestow curse.
Bewitch and create friendship now suffer a cumulative penalty to affect enemies recently targeted by the avowed with each effect, as the avowed was effectively able to use these abilities on a single creature until they failed. This caused the avowed to vastly overpower 6-level casters attempting to use 6th level effects.
Hitting a target already under the effect of caustic pulse with another instance of the modulation increases the ongoing damage slightly.
Chameleon clause I and II have been changed to Greater and Final clauses respectively, as they proved overwhelmingly powerful for non-combat encounters in their current grades, given the equivilent effect in third edition required giving up several levels of spellcasting progression. Chameleon clause III has been removed.
Cover of darkness renamed solid smoke to make it clear it’s not an illusion or [darkness] effect.
Deafening pulse, abrasive pulse, and frostbite pulse now apply stronger penalties with each hit.
Dragon’s teeth now can only be used to emulate animate dead at caster level 11 or higher. Further, husks lose all fly speeds unless created by a caster of 11 or higher.
Frightning pulse renamed to unnerving pulse, as it does not apply the frightened condition.
Lifeleech pulse has been renamed steeling pulse for clarity’s sake, as it does not actually restore life and also we love terrible puns. It now stacks with multiple hits.
Personal gravity has been renamed I go where I please and had its fluff rewritten, due to complications that emerged from unintended interactions with gravitational effects in Pathfinder.
Sightseer has been split into two new clauses with added effects: unveil, which grants see invisibility and allows you to dispel glamers on targets you hit, and night watch, which gives you and all allies the ability to see in darkness.
Shadow strands is now partially negated by abilities that allow the user to see through magical darkness.
Switcheroo now allows you to teleport even if the target succeeds on their saving throw.
Take flight has been changed to a Greater clause, as at-will flight proved to be overwhelmingly powerful against standard encounters at 6th level. We’re aware of Hunter and Druids getting flying mounts at 1st. The point stands.
Unbind spell now suffers a stacking penalty on dispel checks for 24 hours, in order to prevent avowed from simply brute-forcing magical encounters in a way other casters were unable to due to limited spell slots.
The feat descriptor has been added to shapes gained through feats to clarify that they cannot be chosen through the shapes class feature.
Character Options
The Feats and Character Options chapters have been merged.
The Avowed feat tag has been added to allow for further expansions to the Avowed bonus feat list.
Ability Focus applying to all clauses proved to be overwhelmingly powerful when compared to other spellcasters, who had to choose which school to apply it to. Its interaction with the Avowed has been removed. The Clause Focus and Greater Clause feats have been added, which increase the DC of one clause per grade and can be taken multiple times.
Aether Duelist has been rewritten to function much more clearly, and with all weapon shapes that allow iterative attacks.
Aether Skirmish feat removed, then added again and reworked to be more coherent. Improved Aether Skirmish added.
The Clause Expert and Clause Mastery feats have been added for the above-mentioned reasons involving save DCs.
Alter Spell-Like Ability, a new meta-SLA feat which allows you to change the saving throw a given SLA targets, has been added to help the Avowed target multiple defenses (due to their relatively limited choice of spells in comparison to other casters with similar DCs).
Heighten Spell-Like Ability, a new meta-SLA feat which increases DCs, has been added.
Lingering Pulse now functions for all shapes with the Blast descriptor.
Merciful Pulse has been renamed Merciful Pact now boosts your social skills, instead of making you actually BETTER at combat. It still lets you nonlethally blast people, though.
Mystic Reflexes has been split into two feats; Mystic Reflexes, which allows you to make AoOs while flat footed and adds your Charisma modifier to the number of AoOs you may make per turn, and Opportunistic Blast, which grants you a new shape usable exclusively for AoOs and causes you to always be treated as threatening adjacent squares so long as you’re capable of using spell-like abilities. This both lessens the disparity between Dexterity-based and Strength- or Charisma-primary Avowed, that between Avowed and other AoO-based builds, and causes Charisma-based Avowed with a melee weapon shape to no longer gain a redundant effect.
Quicken Spell-Like Ability now functions with all shapes, and can even be used with weaponlike shapes to make a full attack as a swift action. However, such shapes now suffer a -4 penalty on attack rolls and, saving throw DCs, and can only be used with the Avowed’s least clauses at level 11 and lesser clauses at level 16. This is to compensate for the similar 4 level penalty another caster would suffer for using a Quickened spell slot, and the lack of slots of high enough level to quicken their higher-level effects.
The Shape Focus and Greater Shape Focus feats have been added in order to standardize feats that grant accuracy bonuses, increasing the attack roll or save DC of two shapes the Avowed knows (though not applied modulations). Avowed can still take Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Focus for manufactured weapons.
Relentless Frenzy and Rampaging Frenzy have been moved to Avowed: Promises of Power from Avowed: Heart and Soul, as they are effectively necessary for aether rampage to compete with other full attackers.
The Spirited Swordsmanship feat makes a triumphant return, though it does not allow a user to add their Charisma modifier to damage rolls and only functions on weapon shapes that are made against an enemy gaining their armor bonus to AC. This allows builds targeting normal AC with weapon shapes the opportunity to have higher DCs than they normally would at the cost of some damage, for players who wish to play a debuff or support role but have a concept involving a physical weapon. Or claws.
Two new universal drawbacks added available to all characters: the vow drawback, which binds you to a code of conduct imposed by a powerful patron (like, say, an angel who doesn’t want you murdering innocents), and the servitude drawback, which allows a patron to demand favors from you occasionally (like the fiend who demands you occasionally aid his cults).
Balefire Infusion has been slightly rewritten for more inclusive fluff.
Two new magic items have been added: the Promise Shard, which grants a single least clause known, and the Pulseshaper’s Rod, which grants you a number of ranks in a shape chosen by the creator.
Tinker
The Tinker archetype has been removed from Avowed: Promises of Power, as it was proving difficult to balance. It will return later, though for characters already playing one or who wish to play with it regardless, it can be found here. However, the old version will no longer be supported.
Tinker, Otyugh, Command, A2, Later Projects:
There’s a couple things in Avowed 1 that we don’t feel are in a good state, as currently-designed. Aether command, otyugh pact, and the entire tinker archetype are going to be getting ground-up reworks, but for now, our focus has been on getting the rest of A1 ready for eyes again. Similarly, a lot of material from Avowed: Heart and Soul is being reworked internally (on top of any updates to make it consistent with the new version of A1), but isn’t quite there yet.
So, we’ve moved the mentioned A1 stuff into their own documents:
For the time being, these options will live in here (so people using them can still access them), until we can get them reworked. Likewise, the Avowed 2 link is still up, and will remain up until we can get it updated. We’re working hard on getting it ready, but since it’s a lot of material, it’ll probably take a bit.
Now that that’s all said, all that’s left to do is go to the docs themselves! The two Avowed 1 playtest docs can be found in the first post.
For the past year and a half, Forrestfire Studios has been working on an ongoing project and playtest: the avowed. This project began as a sort of side project, but over time, has grown and been subject to revisions, reworks, and shifts of design goals. It’s been a long, fun journey, so with that in mind, if you’re already familiar with the avowed, I recommend skipping to the second post.
In any case, hi! I’m Erin Heck (Forrestfire online), and my co-author is Katia Oakes (Taveena online). You might be familiar with other stuff that we’ve worked on (a lot of things for Dreamscarred Press), or this might be your first time seeing our work! Regardless, welcome, and I hope you enjoy the ride.
So what is the avowed? All told, I’d say it’s something scattered between…
A class inspired by the warlock from D&D, with a playstyle based around having a series of at-will abilities, rather than rationing spell slots. Like a martial class, the main “attrition” mechanic on the avowed is hit points, and the class is written around existing within the main Pathfinder framework, alongside classes such as the bard, inquisitor, magus, and occultist.
A love letter to the warlocks of every edition, along with an expansion of psychic magic's themes and fluff.
A highly variable class built with the goal of supporting any given mechanical role—thanks to how their pact and shape options function, an avowed character can be built as any party role (but, importantly, not as every role at once). This freedom allows you to take your concept and run with it, without worrying about stepping on the toes of others, even other avowed.
A new subsystem that can be expanded through archetypes, prestige classes, and variant rules.
The class and its subsystem can be found in the following two documents:
The Avowed: Promises of Power (part 2): This document includes the class’s main subsystem, aether pulses and clauses, as well as new feats, drawbacks, and magic items for avowed. It also includes a long list of racial favored class options.
Originally, the avowed playtest was done through a PDF uploaded to Google Drive. We eventually realized that this, while pretty, was terrible for logistics. For the rest of the Avowed: Promises of Power playtest, we’ll be using these two Google Docs.
You can also find, in this Google Drive folder, all of Forrestfire Studios' currently-public playtests and any free PDFs or files we've uploaded for people to use. The links to each of the files in the folder will remain the same for as long as the file exists, thanks to being able to just upload new versions.
If you have any feedback, feel free to drop it in the thread or through private messages. This project has been a long time in the writing. We hope you enjoy!
Hello all. It’s been quite a while, and I’m sorry about that. If you’re interested in the reasons behind this delay and the plans around material in the future, you can find a post about that here.
We do have an update today, though! It’s primarily changes to Avowed 1, with some adjustments made to Avowed 2 to make it line up with the altered rules. Here’re our changelogs for today:
A1 Changelog:
The Avowed
Aether pulse’s base form no longer exists; it has been adjusted to be Aether Blow and Aether Ray. Each avowed gets the first selection of one of these for free at 1st level.
Patronage is no longer a class feature; we’ll be doing a larger section on how avowed can be created by a PC in collaboration with the GM when we go to the final release, but it’s not written right now.
The class skills gained from Pact Skills are now listed as Ex; the skill boost is still Su.
Clause save DC is now properly based on caster level, like pact and aether pulse DCs. It was previously class level by mistake. This is particularly relevant to betrothed, whose clauses are used at half CL unless they and the companion both take the action (this was intended to cut the DC, but didn’t by RAW until now).
Pacts
Court Fey pact's 4th-level ability has had its bonus damage reduced. This turned out to just add way too much potential damage to weapon shape users.
Elemental pact’s attunement now deals a consistent amount of damage (1 per level) instead of dice with powerspikes every 4-5 levels.
Elemental pact’s 4th level ability has been replaced with Elemental Eruption. Now, the attunement includes the ability to ignore immunity to your element, and a new 4th-level empowerment has been added to help elemental choice feel more meaningful.
Elemental pact's 4th level ability got renamed to "Overwhelm" now that the name's open.
Self pact’s bonus attack has been moved to the 4th-level empowerment, and the Cha to saves has been moved to the attunement, but made to scale (capped at +1 per level).
Shapes
Aether Command previously implied that weapons that don’t normally add an ability modifier would get Strength to damage. This wasn’t intended, and we’ve fixed the wording.
Aether Lance does not exist anymore as a standalone shape. It’s now a Beam+weapon shape combination feat. The big reason for this is that as a whole, Aether Lance was overtuned at lower levels as a “weapon” shape, more accurate than other AoEs at higher levels, all while bringing mobility as part of its package. We’ve made sure that each of its aspects (line attacks, line AoEs, higher mobility and charging lines) can still be gotten, but they now come at a cost commensurate to their effect.
Clauses
As part of the Aether Lance rework, we’ve added a new least clause focused on mobility, called Surge.
Lock and Key now applies an Alarm to the object you locked (and can be used without trapping it, solely for the alarm effect).
Inferno Pulse, like the elemental pact’s attunement, now deals 1 point of damage per level on its burn instead of the jagged-scaling dice.
Scream’s shaken effect can no longer escalate other fear effects, or be escalated. As an actionless aura, it’s way too good for it to quickly create Frightened or Panicked conditions on most targets.
Feats
Aether Lance does not exist anymore as a standalone shape. It’s now a Beam+weapon shape combination feat.
Like inferno pulse and the elemental attunement, Lingering Pulse’s damage is now 1 per level.
Other
Aether Blow has been removed; it’s now just a basic shape.
Baleful Infusion has been adjusted. It was generally overly centralizing; it’s been changed to, instead of being a free feat and extra benefits, instead just be a burn-based damage booster.
Alicorn and Decataur FCBs, which previously boosted Aether Lance, have been changed to now boost charge damage (which works with the new Aether Lance).
A2 Changelog:
Matching the Fey pact’s reduction in bonus damage, the Undead pact’s level 4 ability has had its damage reduced.
Abilities that used to deal damage as fractions of a base Aether Pulse have been adjusted similarly to Inferno Pulse. Likewise, references to Aether Pulse damage have been fixed. If you previously had an ability that dealt damage as if by an unshaped Aether Pulse, it likely deals a flat amount of dice (for capstones) or uses Aether Ray/Aether Blow (for most other abilities).
With the changes to the base Aether Pulses, the Aether Skirmisher feat is no longer a thing. It’s been rolled into the basic shapes, Aether Ray and Aether Blow.
With the changes to Aether Lance, the Aether Drive feat is gone as well. It’s just default behavior now.
On the aspirant, we’ve removed the Aether-Venom Stinger and Brutal Gore form modifications. These will be returning once we get a good way to adjust them, potentially alongside a new shape, but right now our focus is on Aether Lance.
On the betrothed companion abilities, the Horns and Stinger no longer have their minor ribbon for Aether Lance.
The bulk of today’s changes are centered around the following three things.
Basic Aether Pulses: After looking at feedback and the results of testing, we’ve made the choice to remove the delineation between the “basic” aether pulse and shapes. Unshaped aether pulses are no longer a thing. To help cut down on some of the weirdness inherent in the shapeless pulses, as well as make the avowed’s rules more consistent and clean, we’ve introduced two “basic” shapes, called aether ray and aether blow. Every avowed gets one of these for free at 1st level on top of their normal shape, and they can now be invested in similarly to other shapes. These ones have a niche of being about mobility with single hits, much like the Aether Skirmisher feat previously allowed, and scaling damage instead of remaining at 1d6/odd level all the way through.
Aether Lance:Aether lance had problems. One of our earlier-designed options, it was initially made as a way to support the fantasy of a single charging line attack… but also added to support line attacks in general, which stretched it in two opposed directions. Its damage was built like an AoE shape, but at the time, we didn’t think about just how much more accurate it’d be than Reflex-targeting AoEs. In addition, from the start, it was much better at low-levels (before full attacks) than melee weapon shapes, to an extreme degree. And that’s before we even touch its free mobility aspects.
When we added aether beam, we took more looks at aether lance as the other primary-line shape, and in the end, decided to redesign it. With that in mind, we’ve split off its concepts; if someone is going to be a line-attack-focused avowed, aether beam (and potentially aether breath for a more varied and less specialized line-blaster) is there. For those who want to make AoE weapon attacks with a mobility perk, we’ve consolidated that effect into the other weapon shapes. Aether Lance is now a combination feat for aether beam and any weapon shape, allowing you to make line attacks with scaling distances, as well as the old “charge followed by line blast,” in a way that will hopefully be more balanced alongside the lower-level weapon shapes, without becoming useless as a tactical tool at later levels.
Elemental Pact: A very common criticism of Elemental-pact avowed is that they’re boring. One of our earliest-made pacts, we revisited it and revised it. It should, hopefully, now support more builds and combat styles, as well as having more thematic effects early on for different elements. Whether you’re an AoE specialist, a weapon-user, or something in-between, Elemental pact should be giving you something interesting to do as you scatter energy around the battlefield and reliably assault foes with your element, instead of just giving you an underwhelming “pierce” effect for energy damage.
With that all said, the changes can be found in the playtests’ respective docs. Here are the links, for convenience’s sake: Avowed 1 and Avowed 2
Hey, Forrest. Ain't been around in a bit. I see you've been busy with Avowed. How does work proceed on Cutting Edge? Seems erbody is waiting on SF. Also, UnSoulknives?
Cutting Edge is, overall, continuing. We hit a snag on some of the design elements, but have been working steadily on it. When Starfinder comes out, some things might change, but a lot of it is rooted in presenting technology in the context of fully mixing the tech with a fantasy setting, I doubt it'd change much. It just hasn't been a major focus. Likewise, unchained soulknives are unlikely to come any time soon, though; presently, our current goal is to get the Avowed 1 book finished and released before bringing more things into playtest, because we simply don't have the time, energy, or manpower to do as many things at once as the larger 3pps can.
However, if we're lucky, we might have a playtest doc for the first true SkyMarket release coming up, as well. Since that one is a lot less intense overall (not a whole new subsystem, or a pile of massive, expansive changes to a subsystem), that'll be a bit smaller but maybe faster.
Well it certainly has been a long time, and we apologize for that. There's been a combination of A Lot Of Stuff in this update, and life stuff in general getting in the way. However, after far too long, we have an Avowed 1 update for you all!
There are a couple major changes in this update, which I've gone through in some detail here, though you should check the full changelog to see what else it has.
Discussion of Major Changes:
Aether Beam
We've added a new shape to this update! Aether beam, a dedicated line-attack option, represents a "wide line"—that is, 10 feet wide, much like the lines in 3.5, and should help fulfill peoples' laser needs. Previously, the only lines were aether breath and aether lance, which didn't really support the concept of a massive laser blast, so now we have this for that.
Reactive Healing
The celestial pact's rune of penance has been buffed to help it stop being so meaningless by higher levels, and remove the weird break points around multiples of 10 damage. Now, instead of granting fast healing 5 per 10 damage taken, it will instead heal creatures for half the damage they take, over time.
This comes with a new mechanic, Reactive Healing, that exists to codify the avowed's brand of healing. The avowed is a very at-will class, and we wanted to write a mechanic that keeps that feel, without breaking the game for attrition-heavy GMs and groups. Thus, Reactive Healing, which only heals in response to damage actively being taken, and can't heal you for more than that damage, has been added to handle this.
The Old One pact attunement has also been adjusted to follow these rules (though nothing really changed there).
Another round of changes for Rounds and Channel
Last time, we updated the melee weapon shapes and provided a Pounce clause because we wanted people to feel less forced to go all-in on any given shape, vs taking 1-2 as they like to get a versatile character. Aether rounds and aether channel had the issue of really requiring the third selection to continue to be a damage option, unlike the other shapes, so we've changed it (much like the AoE shapes getting their own scaling). At CL 4th, these shapes will now add damage automatically.
In addition, we've cleaned up the wording and helped clear interactions to function as intended, particularly around things like single-weapon TWF. There is a slight nerf here, though: the shapes no longer add their bonus damage on some types of extra attacks. Feats and options that give attacks above and beyond what other fighting styles can manage are great, but we don't want the shapes to multiplicatively scale quite as hard in these cases.
A1 Changelog:
Pacts
We’re introducing a new mechanic for handling avowed at-will healing such as the Celestial pact’s Rune of Penance, or the Old One pact’s attunement. It can be found at the start of the pacts section, and is called Reactive Healing.
Celestial pact’s halo can now be dismissed without turning off your attunement,
Court Fey pact’s bonus damage against flanked and flat-footed enemies has been moved to the 4th-level pact empowerment. Poaching it with Split Loyalties was a bit much.
Court Fey pact’s capstone has had a note added about how it works with spells that require saves (unaware creatures fail automatically against teleportation effects, and are penalized otherwise).
Elemental pact’s sense now specifies that creatures can be assumed to have an example of your element in their bodies.
We’ve buffed Shadow pact’s sense so that it no longer overlaps with the Sightseer clause, and also added a small scaling benefit to it.
Clauses and Shapes
Pulse Shapes now have a note that concentration on them does not turn off all your other SLAs. Whoops.
A new shape, Aether Beam, has been added to Avowed 1.
Aether Channel and Aether Rounds have been revised (again, haaaah…) to now get their “adds damage to the attack on top of weapon damage” at caster level 4th, instead of coming from a rank of the shape. However, we’ve also added some changes to a couple cases, namely, single-weapon TWF (like a brawler or monk’s unarmed strike) is now treated as multiple weapons for it, and the bonus damage is also added to only attacks gained from base attack bonus, haste and similar effects, off-hand weapons, natural weapons, and attacks of opportunity. Other extra attacks no longer benefit from the added damage.
Aether Command’s swift action 2nd rank has had a note added that it can’t be used in the same turn as other shapes.
Aether Rampage is now just a base of 1d6 per odd level + Str, instead of also adding unarmed damage.
Aether Rampage’s 4th rank is now similar to that of other melee weapon shapes, granting pounce, and its 3rd rank (rend) has been nerfed in damage significantly. It now, however, grants an extra trigger of modulation effects.
Aether Rounds’s 2nd rank now works to create phantom copies of thrown weapons as well.
Hunter’s Instincts now lets you optionally not leave tracks.
Relinquish can no longer be used to counterspell.
Feats
The Aether Torrent feat can now be taken if you have Aether Beam (it still works for Aether Wrath).
Skillful Pact now functions properly with the new pact skills.
Other
Bonuses that were previously doubled on non-attack-roll shapes have been changed to scale at the same speed as the AoE damage scaling, increasing for those shapes but not others.
When a shape's damage dice would round down to 0, it now rounds down to 1 point of damage.
Anyway, thanks for reading, all, and I hope you enjoy the update!
LordInsane wrote:
This is a bit embarrassing, but I haven't been able to find an official answer (either Paizo or WotC) for how constant/continuous SLAs interact with spells that require concentration (do not require concentration, only work when concentrated on but don't need to actually be cast, can be cast as if under the renewing a dispelled constant SLA rule...). Is there one I've missed, and if not, what was assumed for the Avowed's changed detect magic sense when it was changed?
Spells that require concentration run into issues with continuous SLAs, I believe, but bear in mind that you can always simply suppress and restart the SLA (a swift action), and that the non-detect magic senses are supernatural, not spell-like.
Hello all. Today we at DSP have for you a brand-new public playtest for a concept that’s been a long time in the making: the rajah, an initiator that blends akashic power with martial might. This unique class melds akashic concepts and martial skill, taking to the battlefield as a glorious leader who can aid, empower, and strike through their allies!
Within this document you will find:
The rajah base class, a half-BAB initiator with an akashic bent and a unique take on combat. This also includes a variety of racial favored class options for the rajah, located at the end of the document.
Twenty-four new veils unique to the rajah (but accessible by others, don't worry!). These veils are of a brand-new veil type called Titles, and are shaped on allies to grant them a benefit, rather than the rajah themselves.
An assortment of new feats to support the rajah class, the Title veils, and akashic initiators in general.
And finally, brand-new magic items tied to the rajah.
So click this link to jump right into our playtest!
This isn’t all that this playtest has to offer, though. The rajah as an initiator has access to a new discipline, Radiant Dawn, which represents a combination of akashic and martial techniques. This discipline is focused on healing, party support, and debuffing, with mystical and esoteric effects that can be enhanced with akashic essence (which the discipline grants just by having it). The document also includes new style feats for Radiant Dawn users, as well as a martial tradition, The Bank of the Sun! :smallbiggrin:
Radiant Dawn is not in the same document as the rajah (for the sake of keeping Google Docs from melting our computers…), and can be found here at this link.
As always, thanks for taking a look. We hope you enjoy the playtest, and look forward to your feedback!
Hello, all! We've just finished up and reviewed a new archetype for the highlord; we've got several in the works, and this one is the first that's deemed ready for public eyes, so without further ado, the Cherished.
The Cherished is a highlord with a custom, more expansive tenet that makes them much more focused on their allies than enemies. Instead of a conscription method, they've had their chassis and manifesting slightly revised. Better at supporting the party with psionic powers (particularly through the collective), and armed with the ability to empower a chosen champion to fight for them, the cherished is well-suited to playing as a backline support class. Enjoy!
Hello! It has been quite a while since our last major update. After a lot of tinkering, playtesting, and reviewing, we’ve got some new material and tweaks to old material, both in Avowed 1 and Avowed 2.
So what’s changed, then? The biggest things to note are skills (the avowed is being buffed to become a 6 + Int mod class, and gets a boost to a useful skill based on pact), the nation pact (totally reworked, command effects turned into a shape), area-of-effect shapes (had their damage scaling changed), and weapon shapes (we’ve made the 4th rank less mandatory).
Here are the changelogs for the playtests; discussion on the changes can be found in the third spoiler.
Avowed 1 changelog:
Pacts
Nation pact has been reworked; see the discussion on it below.
Otyugh pact attunement now grants you diseases for free as you level up.
Otyugh pact 4th now deals damage immediately for the first failed save, though only once per round.
Otyugh pact 8th has been buffed, and punches through disease immunity.
Otyugh pact 16th now allows you to pierce ability damage and drain immunity.
Clauses and Shapes
We’ve made wording clearer on how the AoE shapes that add Cha to damage work, noting the damage in their descriptions.
Shapes that previously increased damage to 1d6 per CL at rank 2 no longer do (the addition of Charisma to damage is meant to cover that increase, making it more reliable. We overbuffed it a bit. They’ve got new 2nd ranks, and we’ve adjusted shapes to have different scaling (see the discussion below).
The Aether Command shape has been added.
Aether Grasp’s second selection now has an effect that helps pierce Freedom of Movement.
Aether Grasp’s third selection (the force choke) now requires a full-round action to use.
Aether Lance has a new 3rd selection, emphasizing its extreme mobility.
Aether Rounds has been reworked to be more similar to Aether Channel, and thrown weapons are now part of it instead of the latter.
Aquatic Affinity now accounts for creatures with very low (but not nonexistent) land speeds.
Hunter’s Sense now benefits the whole party with a Pass Without Trace effect.
Nightfall’s Deeper Darkness upgrade comes at CL 7th now, instead of 10th.
Reveal Your Secrets now reads and copies books.
Feral Rush clause added
Feats
Overcharge Modulation’s damage has been reworked.
You now cannot use clauses while a Pactbound Guardian familiar is holding the charge on one.
Other
Ascension has a note about appearances being flexible.
Patronage no longer changes pact type.
Balefire Infusion got renamed Baleful Infusion to make it less fluff-locked.
The avowed now gets 6+Int mod skill points, and each pact grants a skill bonus.
Bonus shapes aren’t a thing on pacts anymore. Instead, the avowed just gets an extra shape at 1st level.
Avowed 2 changelog:
Aspirant
Aspirants now have a barrage-based form modification.
The Gale Wings form modification notes that it does not have to be actual wings.
The Savage Claws least effect now adds bleed damage instead of being superfluous once you upgraded it.
Fiend aspirant’s Aura of Dread now only affects opponents.
Betrothed
Companions now get traits and darkvision.
Note added for companions, betrothed, and Extra Clause.
Betrothed and their companions can exchange which Aether Pulse progression each has.
Pacts
Genie subpact no longer gives you the elemental subtype.
The Agathion subpact’s Blood of Martyrs ability now affects more allies, but not you.
Celestial (Angel), Undead (Ghost), and Undead (Nightshade) subpacts added.
Clauses and Shapes
Aether Circus has less missiles at lower levels now, and has been reworked to be able to fire clusters of missiles at the same target(s).
Aether Beast’s hit points have been increased to half that of the casting avowed instead of 1/10.
Least Wish clause added.
As with the Avowed 1 area shapes, the Aether Well and Aether Circus have had their damage scaling changed.
Feats
Aether Drive has been adjusted to work better with weapons, particularly magic ones.
Aether Focus has been revised to be way clearer on how it works.
Aether Skirmisher has been buffed.
Split Loyalties no longer gives the 4th-level pact ability at level 16.
Clauses
Flourishing Pulse removed for the time being; its effect proved a bit problematic with the Otyugh pact.
Discussion of major changes:
Nation Pact
The overwhelming feedback we’ve gotten on the nation pact is that it was disjointed and didn’t really feel like it had a cohesive mechanical setup—its attunement wanted you in melee, command abilities wanted you to lead allies, other abilities seeming to be about buffing, etc. We’ve revised the nation pact, in particular changing the attunement to function regardless of reach and weapons, creating an area of terrain around you even if you’re a “caster” type or a ranged weapon user, and scaling the area. We’ve also added two new abilities that help the avowed interact more narratively with the game; creating crowds and leading armies to victory. These replaced the command effects that the nation pact previously had, but don’t fear, there is now a new shape, aether command, that allows the avowed to help their allies attack from level 1, instead of making you wait until later. We hope that these changes will help make the nation pact fill the buffer/leader role better, while still having plenty of avenues for different builds and playstyles.
Otyugh Pact
The otyugh pact had some problems of its 4th- and 8th-level abilities being a bit underwhelming. Overall, they didn’t really do what they were intended to do (turn diseases into a combat debuff), so we’ve reworked them. In addition, otyugh-pact avowed now gain the ability to punch through immunity to disease and later on, ability damage, with their abilities.
Shapes
Something we’ve heard a decent amount is that there is a pressure to all-in on a single shape, capping it at rank 4 before you move onto other things. Particularly for weapon shapes, we think this is a problem; the way the shapes are set up is meant to allow, but not force, someone to specialize, and with that in mind, we’ve made a few big changes.
Weapon Shapes
The weapon shapes getting pounce at rank 4 meant that if you were being a melee character… you kinda needed to get that rank by the time you get iteratives, if you wanted to full attack well. To fix this, we’ve created a new lesser clause, feral rush, that grants the avowed pounce. We haven’t removed the pounce effects from the shapes, though! If you don’t want to spend a clause on the ability, the shapes are there for that (and get an extra effect if you have pounce already), but otherwise, there is now another avenue for competent meleeing at later levels.
Area Shapes
We overbuffed the area shapes way back, when we added the Cha to damage based on rank… and like weapon shapes, we caused the issue of pressuring players into picking more of the same shape instead of diversifying. To address this, we’ve changed how the scaling of these shapes works entirely; they no longer scale damage by rank at all, not even at the 2nd selection. We’ve added in a new effect on each of the shapes that previously had a damage dice boost, and now, each of the shapes that had that get a new scaling that speeds up each time a weapon user would have gained a similar increase to overall damage.
So what does this mean? If you were all-inning on a shape at lower levels, it probably means you’ll be doing slightly less damage. Sorry about that. However, for mid levels and higher levels, the damage of area shapes is increased, and the shapes are now much better for avowed who’re branching into the effects, letting you pick up more varied powersets or even just grab all the AoEs you want! We recommend that GMs allow players who had invested in these shapes to decide if they want to swap them for other selections, now that they’ve been changed.
Skills
The avowed’s out of combat utility isn’t bad, but it could use a little help. With that in mind, we’ve upped the number of skill points the avowed gets to make it comparable to similar characters like the bard, and also added a skill boost of +1/2 level to each pact, listed in their pact skills section.
As always, thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoy.
Hello, all! It's been quite a while. Over the past nearly-a-month, a lot has gone on our end, including receiving a decent amount of feedback on the highlord. There's been a couple recurring topics when it comes to the class; we hope that the large update we're posting today will help address them (along with many other issues, especially readability and wall-of-textness).
"Why does this class exist? What makes it unique/not just a tactician/etc?"
Overall, we want the highlord to have its own niche; from the start, we intended it to have a particular... callousness about the use of its collective, in a way. More than just a tactician, the highlord is a class that uses its allies as raw materials to win the fight, much like a kineticist (psion, not occult firebender) uses energy and matter to blow things up, or a shaper uses objects and ectoplasm as materials to bring their imaginations to life. Even a good-aligned highlord will often use their collective as a cudgel to beat their enemies with instead of just a network for directing their allies, and with that in mind, we've made some adjustments to the fluff, crunch, and direction of the class.
The core thing we want to express with the highlord is that they use their collective as raw materials; this is possible for them because of a slightly closer bond created by their collective. Instead of just touching the minds of creatures in the network, a highlord shares his mind, either assisting in a deeper manner, or overwhelming others through this stronger connection. This is represented in a couple abilities, including Open Heart, Lifeblood Siphon (formerly Siphon Servants), and their decrees. We hope that the adjustments made to the class' fluff and crunch will help it stand taller on its own, as its niche of a tight bond isn't a thing anywhere else in psionics yet.
"The class is really boring; it doesn't do anything of its own, and the tenets are underwhelming."
On the mechanical side of things, we've made some major adjustments to the highlord's tenets. Previously, they were a bit underwhelming; overall, they were focused on numerical boosts to the highlord or his allies, and while they might have been good from a mechanics standpoint, they didn't really grab many people. After going back over the class and revising it, we have changed the abilities of the tenets slightly, and added seven brand-new psionic powers, one for each tenet.
Unlike most psionic powers, these are unique to a given tenet, and can only be manifested by a highlord of the proper tenet. In a way, one might be better off thinking of them as unique "class features" that tie more heavily into the psionics subsystem than most features, and they exemplify each tenet's goals and thematics in their own ways. Where beforehand, many felt that the highlord was forced to scrounge for meaning through feats (or not taking the class at all), this
is no longer true—the tenets bring powerful, unique abilities for every highlord, alongside the rest of their progression and advancement.
"The class doesn't feel like it does enough to justify picking it."
With all of that in mind, we've also adjusted many of the abilities, including the siphon (changed to work better with the 6-level manifesting of the class), tribute, various decrees, and the resonance effects of each tenet. We hope that the new highlord catches your fancy in ways the old version didn't. As always, thanks for reading! We're using the same playtest document as before, which can be found here or through the link in the first post. :smallbiggrin:
1) It was not future-proofed well. The old archetype gave all INT skills as class skills shortly before we started seeing a bunch of X to INT traits (like the ones in Ultimate Campaign). As written, LW would let you take traits like that and instantly give you more class skills.
I don't really have much to weigh in on regarding this, but I wanted to point out that this statement is wrong; that's not how the stat replacer traits work, nor how lore warden works.
Per the FAQ on these abilities, "this changes the check only at the time of rolling, so this does not change static class features or options made during character building such as your class’s class skills." It then goes on to call out the lore warden's wording as something that that sentence applies to. So, while I'll agree that the lore warden ability might lead to some confusion thanks to how it's worded, it doesn't actually work the way you've stated, as-written.
I'd hope that the rewrite is more about adjusting the wording to match the rules, rather than nerfing it based on this...
Hey all! With more of DSP's older playtests moving from "sitting for a while" to "finally released," Dreamscarred Press is moving on to some new material! Today I've got a playtest doc for a brand-new psionic class, the Highlord. This 6-level manifesting class uses their collective both for leading their allies and destroying their enemies, drawing foes into their mental network to force them to do their bidding... or merely crush their minds.
In the following document, you'll find the highlord base class, including many customization options and seven different subpaths. In addition, there's new feats both for the highlord and for other users of collectives, and a set of racial favored class options for the class!
Hey all! Been a while. There's been a lot of hectic times on our end, so we don't have a full update to the avowed playtests today, but we do have a brand-new product for you, which can be found here as a free download!
Ooooh! A shiny new product! Gimme! Waiiiitttt...What day is it... Nah... you wouldn't do us like that. :P
The Avowed: April Edition has three new less-than-serious pacts for the avowed.
Hey all! Been a while. There's been a lot of hectic times on our end, so we don't have a full update to the avowed playtests today, but we do have a brand-new product for you, which can be found here as a free download!
What - non-racial - options are there to get mind-affecting effects at level 1 as an Avowed? I noticed frightening pulse doesn't actually say it is mind-affecting, and it seems a bit annoying in play to have an avowed character whose attunement does nothing until level 6.
Uses of the Intimidate skill are definitely mind-affecting fear effects, and while I can't seem to find a definite answer James Jacobs seems to imply that all fear effects are mind-affecting (And common sense too, if nonmagical fear doesn't affect something magical fear probably won't unless specifically called out). So Frightening Pulse is probably mind-affecting just by virtue of being a fear effect.
That is correct; frightening pulse is mind-affecting by virtue of being a fear effect. I'll make sure to get an explicit note in it, so people don't have to dig into the FAQ.
So, today we have another update, this time some small tweaks to wording and balance in some places, and a total rework of how the skill-boosting clauses function.
Here are the changelogs for A1 and A2:
Avowed 1 changelog:
Pacts
Court Fey pact’s attunement now has a sneak attack-lite effect, to help them fulfil their striker role.
Court Fey pact sense can sense through walls now.
Dragon pact has new stuff added to its attunement, to make it worthwhile compared to other pacts’ attunements.
Elemental pact has gotten a fairly big rework. Consolation Flare was moved to level 1, becoming the bulk of the pact’s attunement, since previously, that ability was basically negligible (and vanished at level 12…). The effect also now works on missed aether pulse attacks, but still only 1/round per enemy. In addition, the pact has a new 8th-level ability, No Escape, that allows them to reliably affect some of the more evasive enemies they may face.
Clauses and Shapes
Aether Channel and Rounds note that when using their first rank with Vital Strike/critical hits/etc, it uses the weapon’s original base damage.
Aether Swarm’s second rank properly doubles its speed now.
The skill booster clauses have been changed (see the discussion spoiler, below)
Hidden Knowledge has been split into the Dungeon Crawler, Eldritch Knowledge, Survivalist and Volksgeist clauses.
Feats
Merciful Pulse specifies it only works on damaging clauses.
Other
“Perceive” has been replaced with “see” on most things, because what started as a way to account for other senses became a really awful rules tangle that doesn’t hold up under examination.
Pact senses are now noted as requiring line of effect unless otherwise stated. This was the intended function, but it was never directly specified.
Avowed 2 Changelog:
Aspirant
Elemental Aspirant punches through “they heal from energy damage” now.
Otyugh Aspirant’s save DC for the level 4 pact ability now uses its pact save DC.
The Giant Size form modification no longer changes your size bonuses/penalties to AC and attack rolls.
Betrothed
Fixed some wording bugs.
Divine betrothed is base shape Any.
The Arms customization has been replaced with Biped, which now comes with optional legs, but otherwise works the same. Quadruped has been renamed Many-Legged to be more clear what it does.
Pincers, Quick Jaws, and Stinger customizations are now immediate actions to proc (letting them be used on AoOs).
Clauses and Shapes
Artificer’s Insight has been reworked along with the skill clauses in A1.
And here’s a spoiler with a discussion of the changes:
Read here first, probably:
Skill Clauses – Lowered ceiling, reliable floor.
So, the skill-boosting clauses have been an occasional point of contention for a while now. Whether you thought they were fun, thought they were boring, or felt they should be nerfed, they did have a lot of problems. Our goal with the skill boosters, similar to how the Warlock in 3.5 had them, was to have a set of abilities that feel good to pick. It’s not enough to get something like Bardic Knowledge, which is a slow-scaling ribbon ability. If you pick up silver tongue, you’re giving up a slot that could have been walking on walls, killing mosquitos, shooting lighting from your hands, or blowing things up with a laser. The +6 bonuses, we felt, did that, but that came at a negative cost of game health.
Our goal with the changes we’ve made to the skill boosters is to make them less centralizing. This has been the goal of most of our recent changes—to make the avowed a class you pick because it’s cool, strong, and you want to use it, rather than one you pick because “oh well, someone in the party had an avowed, I need to use that subsystem too if I want to keep up.” That’s not ideal, and is part of why aether channel and the SAD feats were changed.
What the skill boosting clauses were meant to do is two things:
Enable an avowed who doesn’t have the skill points to invest in a skill to be able to contribute with it, even if it’s not great.
Boost an avowed who is focusing on the skill an amount commensurate with the cost.
The original versions helped the former, but boosted the latter way too hard. The result was an incredibly reliable, very high floor, that far outpaced anyone of other classes. The Legalistic feat was introduced in part to help counteract that, but it still had its own issues—we don’t want to force the party investigator to go “if I can’t beat them, join them” to the avowed. We want the avowed who focuses on skillmonkeying to feel like a good skillmonkey, without making all the other skillmonkeys regret their choice.
So with that said, we’ve made some changes aimed at bringing the ceiling down while keeping the intention intact. The skill-boosting clauses now only grant a +2 bonus on checks with the skills they boost. However, they gain the following two effects: you can always take 10 on the boosted skills, and when you do decide to roll, you roll 2d20 and take the highest.
People familiar with D&D 5e’s math might note that this is Advantage, a mechanic whose effective “bonus” ranges from around +1 to +5, depending on what number you’re trying to hit on the die roll. When you’ve got an even chance (need a 10 on the die), the number is highest. When you have a better chance, the effective bonus drops, and likewise, it drops when you have a lower chance. What does this mean? It means that avowed with the skill boosts will be more reliable when they’re about on par with the game’s expected math, particularly at low levels, but will hit diminishing returns as their bonuses climb higher through other investment. At the same time, they won’t surpass any other skillmonkeys a huge amount. It weights their luck, but they now have about the same ceiling as everyone else.
Aether Channel, SAD, and centralization – Let’s talk about nerfs.
Aether channel, among avowed mechanics, was hit with the highest-visibility nerf up until the removal of the SAD feats. If you weren’t watching this playtest before said nerf, what it originally did at its second rank was turn your base attack bonus from avowed levels to full BAB. The idea behind this was that it was a cool thing for them, to make them stand alongside the full BAB martials as far as “weapon using” when they’re stabbing people with magic. Aether channel was our hideous blow analogue, intended to enable people to stab people with a weapon at the same time as stabbing with their magic. We missed the mark, and got something that, instead, pushed the avowed ahead as pretty much the best melee damage dealer. Full BAB is way overvalued in this system, but we accidentally undervalued it here—when taken as a whole, alongside the bonus damage, utility of clauses, and pact abilities, the cost was far too little, and the power increase far too great, to keep it.
It might have been possible to keep the BAB substitution, and lower the damage in another way, but we believe that that would cause more problems than solutions, and that moving forward with with current state of aether channel is a better direction. Overall, what we want from aether channel is a shape that allows an avowed to use a weapon as a vector for their power, much like a magus and their spells. The magic is what we wanted to push as the important thing, rather than the “also as skilled a master warrior in a direct fight” aspect that the old channel gave.
With that in mind? We understand completely that people liked it, and will be doing something similar to that concept in the future, likely as an archetype that gets full BAB and lowers damage elsewhere, focusing more fully on the STABBING than the magic.
The SAD changes were done for similar reasons to the skill-boosting clauses’ and aether channel’s nerfs. The avowed was far too efficient, to the point where it was game-warping. It wasn’t because of Altered Life and Unnatural Resilience, two DSP feats we included in our playtest, but because of the general ease with which the avowed could run their offenses off one focused ability score, without any real downsides. A 14 in Constitution is fine; Altered Life wasn’t even really needed to push the avowed to an imbalanced state… And in the end, the decision we arrived at is that we would force a multiple stat dependency, even if it’s not a particularly debilitating one. We’re keeping those feats around for now, to test their balance alongside the Constitution feats.
Weapon shape users now require their attack stat and Charisma, as well as a tertiary Constitution (which isn’t something they need to focus heavily, if they go for defensive clauses to shore up their weaknesses). We have the scaling penalty to a target’s saves in a round where they succeed against your modulations to help weapon shapes debuff. In contrast, “caster” avowed can still manage to be SAD. They just max Charisma and blast away, and this is intended. They’ve got less burst damage, but do different things. So right now, we’re pretty happy with the way this setup is looking. The Body of the Ancients and Heart of Magic feats are mirrors of Altered Life and Unnatural Resilience, letting you swap Cha to Con for the same feat cost as swapping Con to Cha, effectively, and we’re moving forward with testing those as well.
(Also, for those who liked the muscle avowed, Embodiment of Aether will likely return in some form, at some point, as an archetype emphasizing your physical form and an alternate method of determining save DCs. I’m not sure when, but we’re planning on doing it.)
Known Issues, Future Plans – We’re making some avowed-specific items.
Right now, we’re working on tuning the damage of some shapes, particularly aether barrage, to make them fun and functional. The biggest issue, which has been brought up a bunch of times in testing, is that there isn’t an equivalent of the warlock’s chasuble of fell power or the kineticist’s diadem... Which, if it applied blanketly to all shapes, would cause problems for math in other places. Our solution is going to make a boosting implement item for each shape, likely for Avowed 2, with unique effects that help shore up each shape’s weaknesses, and giving avowed things to spend their hard-earned money on.
I know it's not Forrestfire, but you did work on this project, right? I don't understand how this works if I don't take levels in Barbarian. Tia.
Kumiho Huntress(Combat)
You are particularly good at extracting the most delicious parts of your prey.
Prerequisites: Kumiho kitsune, rage powers class feature, base attack bonus+5.
Benefit: You gain the bloody fist rage power, even if you do not meet its prerequisites or aren’t a barbarian. You can use it one additional time per rage
Bloody Fist (Ex)
Prerequisites: Barbarian level 12th.
Benefit: While raging, the barbarian may attempt to punch through an opponent' s flesh and rip out one of its vital organs. In order to do so, the barbarian must confirm a critical hit against an opponent with a natural attack or unarmed strike. The barbarian deals damage as normal for a critical hit and the opponent must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC = 10 + 1/2 the barbarian' s class level + the barbarian' s Strength modifier) or take 1d4 points of Constitution damage as one of its vital organs is ripped free from its body. This power can only be used once per rage
It requires the Rage Powers class feature, and will work with any rage equivalent from your class. So, bloodragers and similar classes can use it. I'll get a clarification into the Bloodforge playteat.
Aaaaand here we have a rather large update, involving a lot of changes to the basic framework that avowed optimization runs on. So without further ado, let's get down to business:
Avowed 1 Changelog:
Pacts
Celestial pact 4th no longer adds a bonus to save DCs.
Court Fey pact’s Fetch clause now notes what memories they have.
Nation pact 4th now has a clarification on what happens if the allies leave your range.
Nation pact 16th has been buffed significantly, since it was previously rather minor.
Self pact attunement has been reworked; it now gains some scaling benefits instead of the AC bonus.
Clauses and Shapes
”Area Shape” is now a tag on some shapes; it means they get more damage (0.5 Cha bonus per selection).
Aether Blast’s area has been upped by 5 at all levels (undoing a nerf we’d tried).
Both Aether Channel and Aether Rounds have been reworked slightly. Their rank 1 effect is now a damage substitution, and the rank 3 effects now add the full damage.
Aether Grasp now allows you to use Dex with it if you have Weapon Finesse (rather than requiring Agile Maneuvers, though that feat will be useful to boost the rest of your combat maneuvers).
Aether Wrath is now medium-range at all ranks, and has a new rank 3 and 4.
Fly on the Wall has had its Stealth bonus adjusted to properly include its size.
Feats
Embodiment of Aether, Spirited Swordsmanship, and Steel’s Betrayal have been removed. They may return in another form later, but right now they’re no longer a thing.
Aetheric Armor’s prerequisite is now Str 17, and it has a different, scaling secondary benefit.
Merciful Pulse has been revised. Instead of increasing damage, it adds to save DC when trying to be merciful.
Overcharge Modulation requires avowed 3 to take now.
Other
The avowed’s aether pulse now deals damage in d6s instead of d8s.
Tinkers can’t get free material component spells anymore when swapping wand spells.
Balefire Infusion is now element-agnostic.
Avowed 2 Changelog:
Aspirant
Dragon and Otyugh pacts added.
Betrothed
Celestial and Divine pacts added.
Betrothed and companion aether pulses have been revised significantly.
Companions can now pick different shapes than their avowed.
Companions now get max HP at their first hit die.
A bunch of the companions’ customizations now make some of the supernatural effects you can get as an avowed extraordinary. For example, wings will make a companion’s flight Ex, since it owes to their form, not their magic.
Clauses and Shapes
Aether Beast and the new Aether Circus have been added.
Five new modulations have been added.
Feats
Aether Detonation, Aether Hive, and Aether Queen, Legalistic, and Split Loyalties feats added.
Hellfire Talent’s bonus damage has been nerfed.
The Heart of Aether feat has been removed, and Heart of Magic is now accompanied by a new feat called Body of the Ancients.
Of Two Minds now works for creatures gotten through feats (like a Pactbound Guardian).
Discussion of Changes:
Embodiment of Aether and Spirited Swordsmanship removed – We’re sad too, but the avowed no longer is.
The biggest changes you’ll see in the new pdf is that the SAD options are gone. After a lot of feedback and discussion, we’ve decided that this is, overall, contributing to major balance problems with the class, and that it can’t exist in this form. Weapon shape-using avowed will need to go dual stat (Physical + Mental, tertiary Constitution), and “caster” avowed can still be basically SAD (Cha-focused, but less overall damage and more a focus on debuffs, utility, and the like). We believe that the current interaction between modulations and weapon shapes will help soften that blow and keep it playable, while bringing the avowed down somewhat to a more balanced level.
Another thing to note is that Self pact has lost its Cha to AC. We found it to be too good of a boost, and so, they’ll just need to get a chain shirt or something.
Heart of Constitution – Fortuitously, this remains.
Heart of Aether has been removed, and the new feat Body of the Ancients exists to fill a similar niche. With two feats, an avowed can change their casting stat fully to Constitution from Charisma, but they can’t run attacks and damage off of it.
d6s, Overcharge Modulation, Merciful Pulse, and Channel/Rounds – Damage reductions.
Next up, you’ll notice that we’ve tuned down the damage of the avowed’s options, particularly Overcharge Modulation and Merciful Pulse, and aether pulses as a whole. Merciful Pulse now has a different effect—rather than bonus damage, it ups your save DC when attacking nonlethally. Overcharge Modulation also has a minimum level on it (3), to keep it from unbalancing low levels.
Aether Channel and Aether Rounds have also had some adjustments—the base shapes no longer add bonus damage, instead giving something similar to the warpriest’s Sacred Weapon ability. We want Aether Channel to be less dippable, while still being useful, so at low levels, it’ll mean you hit with magic and overcome magical DR/apply debuffs, and at higher levels, it still adds the damage it did before. We’ve also changed the way the multiweapon halving works to be more intuitive, and allow mixed weapons without screwing you too hard on the main hand.
Betrothed pulse adjustments – More damage reductions.
The betrothed has an issue: it’s working as intended, but we still missed the mark a bit on its damage. We want the archetype to be a sidegrade, not an upgrade. It’s an archetype, so it should be a change in playstyle rather than a straight boost to the avowed, and right now, it was working as a boost to the avowed’s damage capabilities.
We’ve adjusted how betrothed aether pulses work to bring them down to par a bit; this doesn’t affect AoE users might at all, but will nerf weapon and barrage shapes a bit.
Other changes – Some other stuff.
The rest of the documents have been changed around the above adjustments, as well as small tweaks, such as to Nation pact’s 16th (a buff), Celestial pact’s 4th (a nerf), and a bunch of new stuff added into Avowed 2.
As always, we hope you enjoy, and look forward to your feedback.
The explanation of the difference between psionics and psychic magic would be worth it alone. I have a reason in my homebrew (once Occult Adventures came out it ALL fell into place after 20+ years) but I'd like to see DSP's take on it.
We actually have that explanation in each of our Occult releases, for what it's worth. This way, the fluff is clear regardless of which part you like best.
Alrighty! As noted earlier, here's the update to the Avowed 1 pdf; there's a couple major adjustments being made, which I'll detail in this spoiler:
Discussion on Changes:
There's three big adjustments being made to the player options in this update: Self Pact has been revised a bit, Aether Channel has been tuned down some, and Overcharge Modulation has been nerfed.
Self Pact: Punching and dipping a bit too hard.
Self pact is, overall, a very strong striker package for characters—too strong, originally, thanks to the power of extra attacks combined with aether channel. The way the bonus unarmed strikes worked also locked them into aether channel, generally with just unarmed strikes, which wasn't ideal. Finally, the strong +Cha as an AC bonus made it a phenomenal dip for anyone looking to punch things, which wasn't, strictly, the intended result. The other attunements scale on class level, this one didn't.
So, the changes made to the Self Pact are aimed to combat these things and bring it down to match similar pacts. Their bonus unarmed strike attacks have been changed—instead of dealing 1d3+Str (+other bonuses+aether channel+magic, etc), they now have a scaling damage roll. The bonus unarmed strike in the attunement, as well as the one from Strength of Body, deal your aether pulse's base damage on a successful hit, without any bonuses (or penalties) being applied. This way, it's basically an extra group of debuff procs (if using aether channel), and consistent bonus damage across any playstyle of melee avowed, rather than being overwhelmingly good with aether channel and awful with everything else. The bonus unarmed strikes from the Self pact also don't reduce your bonus damage to other attacks when using aether channel, though, so it'll be worth using regardless.
On the note of the dips, the Self pact's attunement has been adjusted. The armor bonus it gives is now limited to 3 + your class level, which will scale up quickly for people who're focusing Cha and taking levels, but only be about as good as a chain shirt otherwise.
Aether Channel: BAB substitution caused problems.
This nerf is some news that I'm really sad to give. The aether channel BAB substitution was the first part of channel that got written, but in the end, it's contributed to some major issues with balancing its average and potential damage. We've replaced the second rank of aether channel with a similar bonus to attacks (a scaling enhancement bonus ala greater magic weapon), which should hopefully bring aether channel's explosive pouncecharge potential down to the levels we were intending for it.
Overcharge Modulation: Too much damage.
The Overcharge Modulation feat has been reworked thanks to remathing how it interacted with the weapon shapes; it now adds a scaling number of damage dice to your aether pulse, rather than applying a free Empower SLA to the ability. It no longer requires Empower Spell-Like Ability, and functions alongside it, but the general damage that the feat adds will be lower. This change doesn't mean a lot for the AoE shapes, though. They didn't get a lot of bonuses to not multiply, so they're still hitting pretty hard with it.
If you want to skip that and just know the changelog, that's here:
Changelog:
Pacts
Elemental pact attunement now stacks with your existing resistance.
Elemental pact’s Elemental Ally ability no longer gives you the subtype (generally redundant or actually a downside), and the summoned elemental gets your Cha bonus to its attack roll to keep it relevant.
Dragon pact’s 4th and 8th-level ability have had their order swapped, and Dragon pact’s shapeshifting no longer changes ability scores.
Self pact’s Cha-to-AC capped at 3 + level to make it less of an attractive dip.
Self pact’s unarmed strikes have been revised to not strike as overwhelmingly hard, but also to not halve aether channel damage for other weapons.
Clauses and Shapes
A note on how bonuses and Empower SLA work with weapon shapes has been added.
Aether channel has had its rules for using multiple weapons tightened and clarified, and its second rank now has a different effect.
Aether grasp now adds to CMD when using it.
Aether retaliation now notes what happens if you push someone into something (they don’t get pushed).
Fist of the sky now notes that it can be used in the air.
Insectile transformation no longer adjusts ability scores, nor does it adjust size bonuses or penalties to attacks, AC, CMB, and CMD.
Feats
Embodiment of Aether now notes that it works for avowed bonus feats too.
Overcharge Modulation has been adjusted; this is overall a bit of a nerf, but a necessary one—the effect dealt way more damage than was workable.
Pactbound Guardian notes what happens now if you already had a familiar (it stacks levels and upgrades the other one)
Other
Avowed save DCs properly list caster level instead of class level for their scaling. This was intended to be a thing a while ago, but it wasn’t added in.
Atstreidi, Eiremian, and Ethumion FCBs added.
The Path of War rules notes have been moved to the apprendix; this section will be expanded later—for now, it’s just the iaijutsu stuff.
I notice that Aether Grasp provides a lot of bonuses to your Grapple CMB, but none to CMD (Which is pretty bad news for a medium BAB character, but might be a legitimate balancing decision). Is Grasp intended to be rather easy to escape/reverse?
It was not intended to work like that, we just forgot about the CMD/CMB split when writing it. I'm hoping to get an update to A1 up today with some balance tweaks; that'll be a part of it.
Fellfire wrote:
Hey Forrest. Just checked out your patreon and I've got a quick question. Any work being done on UnSoulknives? If there was a timetable that is something I could get on board with.
The projects listed on the patreon are a list of things that I would like to do and plan to do at some point, but right now, only a few of them are actively being worked on. The Avowed is our main priority, as well as the tech stuff that got voted on by patreon backers last month—there's a preview of that up on the patreon right now, and I'm going to be working on it alongside other projects until it's ready for a full playtest.
Hello all! It's been a very long time, and I'm sorry for the long delay. Between between travel, wonkiness with work hours, and illness, we haven't been able until now to get everything we wanted done, done. However, today we've got an update each for both Avowed 1 and Avowed 2. The changelogs are long, and there's a lot of ground to cover, so instead of grappling with this forum's formatting restrictions, I've posted it up in this post on Giant in the Playground's forums, so I would like to direct people there to read the changelogs for A1 and A2, as well as look for responses to their thoughts.
As always, I hope you enjoy the work we've uploaded, and look forward to your feedback.
Looking over A1 and A2 I noticed the only detecting magic options for Avowed seem to be limited to objects specifically (the Reveal Your Secrets clause) or automatic within 30 ft but limited to spells being cast on two very limited specific lists and requiring being a specific pact (Divine Pact) - is this a deliberate design choice?
Nope, not at all. We just missed it, repeatedly. It'll be in the next update. Thanks to spending a week of time away and unable to do work on the Avowed 1 document, there's a lot of stuff to put into it. Hoping to get it done and uploaded soon, though!
Is there any chance of getting the Aspirant a clause that allows Embodiment of Aether to also switch strength in place of charisma for determining rounds per day of aspiration form?
I need to adjust the wording on Embodiment of Aether. I just checked it and realized that it should do that by default, but it doesn't. In the next update to A1 (coming sometime this week; we've received a lot of feedback, done some more testing, and are tweaking a few things in addition to the work on A2), it'll do that properly.
Don't quite have the energy or time right now to address comments in full, but rest assured, they're being accounted for for the full beta of Avowed 2, and the next update of Avowed 1.
In addition, the votes are tallied for this month's project now that the week's over, and the end result is that FFS will be creating the start of our technological stuff project. Expect a small release (for FFS; we're shooting for about 16-20 pages in Google Docs/12 worth of PDF for this month, since we also want to focus on Avowed 2's beta) at the end of the month along those lines.
Thanks again for all of your feedback, and have a good one!
Volvogg wrote:
The new race (Penitent) is awesome! I am assuming that it's inspired by the 3.5 Hellbred race?
Cheers
Volf
Yep! Taveena and I always enjoyed the concept, so she wrote something inspired by it, though running on a different base fluff.
Augh, sorry for the triple post, but I've just pushed an update to Avowed 1's PDF:
Clauses and Shapes
- Aether Barrage has been fully reworked after taking a further look at it.
- Aether Grasp’s “(see text)” has been removed—it was meant to imply that the grapple maintaining was part of it, but so far it’s just caused confusion.
Feats
- Empower Spell-Like Ability now has a note saying that for multi-round aether pulses, you need to expend a use for each round (so you can’t, say, open with an Empowered swarm thn reap the benefits for an entire fight).
Other
- Clarified that going into mystic theurge doesn't double-dip clause progression
Hey all! Got some updates in response to feedback for both A1 and A2 coming (likely tomorrow), but for today, I have an important announcement to make about the format of FFS' patreon, and the size of our releases.
Penitents' Humanoid Origin ability says "If he chooses human..." but does not allow choosing human as written ("a penitents must choose a humanoid subtype from the following list: dwarf, elf, goblinoid, orc, tengu, kitsune, strix, vanara or reptilian").
Apologies for starting with that nitpick; I am quite enjoying Heart and Soul thus far!
Heyo! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season (or, at least, a non-terrible one, particularly for those like me who worked all across Christmas), and a happy New Years.
Got a couple things for you today.
First, there’s an update to The Avowed: Promises of Power. This update includes a lot of small fixes and adjustments. The biggest one is that aether rounds has been restored to something closer to its original power (we overnerfed it), but with some tweaks to keep it sane. Lots of typo fixes, a couple balance tweaks.
Changelog:
Pacts
Celestial pact’s Heavenly Body now adds its bonus as a sacred bonus, not untyped.
Celestial pact’s rune of penance now notes that creatures are aware of the punishment it can cause.
Court Fey pact’s attunement clarified—it redirects to one target, not every possible target.
Fiend pact’s Disquieting Gaze is now 1/round.
Shadow pact’s attunement now grants a defensive benefit if you go fast.
Clauses and Shapes
Aether pulses now carry elemental descriptors if they deal energy damage.
Aether channel has been adjusted to have lowered damage when making touch attacks with weapons, in addition to with TWF.
Aether rampage’s rend is now Strength or Charisma, not just Charisma.
Aether retaliation lets you melee if you have aether blow.
Aether rounds has been buffed back up to applying to every attack, but adjusted to have lowered damage with TWF and touch attacks.
Air lock’s phrasing was adjusted to not reference “zones.”
Weatherproofing notes that it affects riders on the pulses too.
Feats
Aetheric Armor has had its prerequisites loosened a bit to allow for non-pure-muscle avowed to grab it.
Embodiment of Aether now also swaps for pact abilities that rely on Cha, but no longer buffs Spellcraft.
Merciful Pulse now works for clause damage too.
Other
Typooooo fixes.
Clauses can now be dismissed (it’s in the base class’ clause section).
Starting age of the class has been added.
Specific names of multiple websites have been removed from the Specials Thanks section in order to prevent any trouble that it might cause if said websites don’t want me listing them.
Second, it’s the end of the month, and so we’re bringing you this month’s (and part of last month’s) project. The playtest materials for The Avowed: Heart and Soul can be found in this Google doc. This has been a long time in the coming, but sadly, it’s not quite done yet. We’re putting the playtest up in its alpha form, much like Avowed 1 was. However, this time, it’s a lot more complete than the first pdf of A1 was… And, of course, big. This 43-page doc includes the following:
The Aspirant, an avowed archetype based on transforming into something greater. They give up all-day usage in exchange for increased power for a very limited time per day.
The Betrothed, an avowed archetype based around having a particularly close relationship with one’s patron—not necessarily romantic, but that’s certainly an option. This archetype brings a companion to the table, as an ally in and outside of combat.
Two new pacts: Divine (patron) and Undead (symbiotic).
Subpacts! These are like mini-archetypes for individual pacts. In The Avowed: Heart and Soul, we’re including subpacts for the Celestial, Fiend, and Undead pacts, for various different subsets of the larger groups of beings.
A new shape, aether well, which leaves damaging areas around the battlefield.
Four new clauses for all avowed to take; one a skill buff and the other three modulations.
A new race, the Penitent. These beings are souls returned from the lower planes to find redemption—or fall back into damnation. We’ve included the base race as well as several alternate racial traits, a set of alternate favored class bonuses, and a race trait for them.
And speaking of traits, in addition to the race trait for the Penitents, there’s two generic traits for people to take, that tie into the Penitent’s fluff, but aren’t limited to only them.
Finally, we have 13 new feats—eleven for the avowed bonus feat lists, and two new damnation feats.
Avowed 2 isn’t finished yet, but most of the content is up. In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be adding the rest of the pacts’ Aspirant and Betrothed versions, as well as possibly new feats or expanded stuff as needed. In any case, here’s A2, and there’s more to come. Enjoy, and happy New Years!
How is Aether Grasp intended to interact with Greater Grapple/Rapid grapple? As it's written, it seems to want you to pursue the further grappling feats, but the Shape itself is a standard action.
Edit: i think I've got it figured out. Standard action to activate, then the modifier it applies lasts until the grapple is released, or the grapple is broken? Am i interpreting that correctly?
You've got it right there. Greater Grapple and Rapid Grapple don't actually allow you to start a grapple as another action, just maintain one, and aether grasp has the following to say about that:
Quote:
You gain a bonus equal to your Charisma bonus (if any) on combat maneuver checks when using this ability, including to maintain the grapple.
If you successfully grapple the target, you discharge your aether pulse against them, dealing your aether pulse damage to them and affecting them with the modulation applied alongside this shape (if any). You also discharge another aether pulse against them when you successfully maintain your grapple.
By default, it goes like this:
Standard Action—Activate aether grasp and grapple. Discharge an aether pulse if you succeed.
Next turn Standard Action—Maintain aether grasp's grapple, discharging an aether pulse with the same modulation if you succeed, and using one of the effects listed in the grapple rules. Repeat on further turns.
With later investment into Greater Grapple (online at level 6-7, depending on FCB bonus feat) and/or Rapid Grapple (online at 9), and presumably continued boosting of your CMB to keep up, it's this:
Standard Action—Activate aether grasp and grapple. Discharge an aether pulse if you succeed.
Move Action—Maintain aether grasp's grapple using Greater Grapple, discharging an aether pulse with the same modulation if you succeed, and using one of the effects listed in the grapple rules. This first one autosucceeds on the grapple check (effectively, taking the feat gives you an "iterative attack," albeit one that targets a defense that will tend to be way higher than AC).
Swift Action—Maintain aether grasp's grapple using Swift Grapple, discharging an aether pulse with the same modulation if you succeed, and using one of the effects listed in the grapple rules. You take a –5 penalty on your check with this.
Then in your next turn, you can either drop the grapple and redo this round with a different modulation, or continue the same aether grasp, maintaining twice (two move actions) and then using Rapid Grapple for a third, penalized check.
On top of that, it is frustrating how it sets a precedent that Golarion-centric games are things that everyone will be playing, because some GMs don't like refluffing and thus it unfairly locks-out a character (and indeed, their player) from being able to do cool or awesome things because they don't worship the right imaginary god, or didn't get picked-up by fairies when they were a kid.
It's a Golarion-centric book. Should Paizo not produce books that support their own setting?
While I'm not the person you responded to, I think that yes, Paizo should definitely be producing books that support their own setting. However, Pathfinder is a way bigger game than just Golarion, and it doesn't hurt anyone (or hurt the material in any way) to add a passage about options in other settings.
Mostly, I personally wish that these options were written with more emphasis on building interesting characters that fit into the setting one is playing in, rather than dictating a specific path of characterization in order to achieve a certain mechanical concept.
An example I brought up a couple posts ago was D&D's Oriental Adventures, which had some feats with very important setting and characterization implications, but also included this paragraph:
Oriental Adventures, p. 60 wrote:
Characters are not limited to choosing ancestors from their own clan, since intermarriage between clans is common. It is quite possible for a Dragon samurai, for example, to claim a Crane ancestor through his mother’s side. The ancestor feats are listed on Table 4–3: Ancestor Feats, grouped by clan for convenience only. The names and backgrounds of ancestors apply for human characters in Rokugan; nonhuman characters and characters in other campaign settings can name their ancestors and detail their histories as they like, but the feat benefits do not change.
Their goal there was to make the book accessible to as many people as possible, broadening those who can use and enjoy it to its fullest. That's the ideal I like to strive for as a homebrewer and 3pp designer. I think that it's a lesson that everyone should take follow, myself.
I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Forrestfire wrote:
I think your posts lead readers to the wrong conclusion, then. Not to be rude, but my reading was that you seem to be arguing that any amount of refluffing at all is wrong and "playing the game wrong."
I'm saying that if you don't think of the game-world as REAL, then you're playing it wrong; that should not be a point of contention. Of course individual DMs can customize material for their own game-worlds.
I REALLY hate those terms "flavor" and "fluff," though; it's like you're saying "it's not important," when it IS. We don't play the game for the mechanics, we play it to live in another universe, and the mechanics are just a sort of UI.
I disagree there. Personally, I think that the game-world is just as "real" as the mechanics. However, I put the fun of the players at the table as even more real and important than that. If someone at my table (or playing with material I wrote) has a concept that fits into the game world, but differently than the original stuff? I see that as just as valid, and just as real, as the words on the page. There isn't an arbitrary distinction between "game designer" and "game player" here. We're all playing (or writing) the game to create compelling stories in another universe, and if someone has a story they want to tell (or play through), I think they should be encouraged, rather than halted.
It's not about fluff/flavor/characterization not being "important," but about giving every player at the table—GM or otherwise, writer or otherwise—the respect they deserve as people collaborating with the others to tell a fun story and play a fun game.
@Evelyn Jones and Forrestfire: We're having some kind of miscommunication here; to the extent that I understand what you're saying, it shouldn't be at odds with what I'm saying. Maybe it's an issue of what "layer" or "stage of the sequence" we're talking about.
I think your posts lead readers to the wrong conclusion, then. Not to be rude, but my reading was that you seem to be arguing that any amount of refluffing at all is wrong and "playing the game wrong."
In my opinion, refluffing is a lot more complex than "everything can be refluffed to anything else" or "nothing should be refluffed." Ideally, it's done with similar amounts of care as anything else in the game, to create something new that ties just as well (or maybe even better) into the mechanics (which carry fluff of their own, even if it's not explicit flavor text) as the old fluff did.
It's NOT "entirely subjective;" you have to accept the premises the game designer, be it a company like Paizo or a homebrewing DM, present to you, otherwise there is no game.
By this argument, can't one just create your one's own premise, stripping out parts of the game they don't like, replacing them with things more palatable things for themselves and their group, then go on keeping playing the game? After all, as you've said, someone who adjusts the game is presenting a new set of premises to accept.
Generally, "subjective" as shorthand for the concept you're describing—a situation where, depending on the person, the premise presented can vary.
No one plays the exact same game of Pathfinder. Every group—every player—is concurrently running their own systems, based on their outlooks and preferences. We just clump it all into the same group for ease of discussion.
Mark Seifter wrote:
N. Jolly wrote:
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
So basically the intent of the OP is that nothing special should ever be invented for a religion or a diety because it's an unfair denial to everyone else?
Nah, it's that nothing should be flavor locked as well as that flavor should not be used as a balancing point for an ability because it's arbitrary at best.
Personally, I think a trait along the lines of Isa's, BNW's, or mine would be fine, keep the flavor wanted, and still work for those who don't want flavor balancing. I think threads like this show that there's room for workarounds like those suggested, and that there's design space that is open for people that really want to play the game in a different way. Overall, this thread's actually given me quite a few design ideas, so it's a net gain for me.
While combining multiple deity-specific things (much like multiple style feat chains or multiple totems for barbarians) is in itself a powerful potential boost, I think most typical people who would take the trait wouldn't be trying to do that anyway and would instead just be trying to take a single thing from an off-deity. Thus, I think such a trait should be balanced with those people in mind (and with a protection to curb abuse cases) by using something most similar to your idea:
Heretical Knowledge
Choose a religion other than your own. You have studied and perfected all of its secret arts. You gain a +2 bonus on Knowledge (religion) checks involving the chosen religion and Knowledge (religion) is a class skill for you. (This is almost exactly from your idea and is now roughly near the limit of what a trait should do without also allowing the combos that most people aren't even going to try to do, so let's finesse it to prevent that but still allow options for those who aren't doing that:) You can choose to count as a follower of the chosen religion instead of your own to determine what abilities you can gain. Once you make this choice, it is permanent.
That's a really neat idea, and similar to what my group does. Gotta say, it's nice to see that you've got a similar outlook.
I can't say I'm a huge fan of the Golarion-specific deity locking (I wish that Pathfinder had a similar passage to D&D's Oriental Adventures, regarding fluff restrictions), but it always felt implied to me that the intent was that they're mutually exclusive, rather than it being completely hard-locked.
Vital Strike only applies to the attack action, which aether barrage definitely is not. It's completely incompatible with everything but aether blade (which could double/triple its base damage, but given it's touch attacks, you'd be better off just full attacking with it and saving the feats).
Also, a minor thing, but aether barrage is a full-round action to use, not a standard action.
Let's say you've got one of various... alternative burn types, such as the Gambler's, the Legendary Kineticist's and so on.
Does Balefire Infusion's Burn stack to those, or does it create its own standard-burn stack that would have combined with a regular kineticist's?
It works like normal burn, unless your GM is allowing it to work otherwise. One thing to note is that Balefire Infusion's effect (which specifies how its burn works) functions slightly differently from normal burn—if used by an undead creature, it temporarily reduces their maximum hit points, instead of just failing.
Okay, got a small update today, mostly some mistakes that got caught last night, and a few small changes. The Avowed can be found at this link, as usual.
Changelog:
Clauses and Shapes
Aether channel, aether rounds, and aether rampage are now properly free actions to use.
Aether channel’s BAB enhancement has been fixed to also apply to thrown.
Aether circus’ miss chance against things you can’t “see” has been changed to “perceive,” like similar effects here.
Weatherproofing now properly affects riders like Lingering Pulse.
Feats
Removed legacy text on Aether Duelist about aether blades vanishing.
Added a minimum damage for level 1 off-hand Aether Duelist blades.
Deaf Oracles now get Silent Recitation for free, like they do with Silent Spell.
Other
Balefire Infusion now has any burn-accepting Empower/Quicken not expend a use.
Profane damage has a sidebar explaining what it is.
I wanted to chime in and say that your work is down right impressive Forrestfire. This iteration of the warlock is probably one of the best I have ever seen. The abilities/write-up/fluff is exemplary. I only have one slight request .... please, please, please include a death pact in Avowed I.
Cheers
Volf
There won't be a Death pact in Avowed 1, but we're looking at adding an Undead pact, which will have likely similar thematics to the idea, in Avowed 2, and a larger-scale "with the concept of death" pact later down the line.
Got another update today, with some typo fixes people caught and a couple quick changes, along with a table of contents being added, cus I neglected that before. Sorry.
Thanks again for all of your support and feedback.
Changelog:
Pacts
Fiend pact attunement now scales.
Old One pact sense had the “you can exclude people from the sense” that other pacts got added to its sense.
Clauses and Shapes
Fixed an issue with aether grasp’s 4th rank conflicting with the third one.
Feats
Aether outburst no longer blows up its caster.
Mystic Reflexes now grants you threat range to actually hit things with it.
Steel’s Betrayal now has a bookmark.
Other
A couple typo fixes.
Table of contents added.
Iron Heart wrote:
Ooh, fully bookmarked. I love your work even just for that, Forrest. I especially adore the heart's burning intensity that a Self-pact avowed with Balefire Infusion inflicts on people. The only thing I find hinky about that class feature is that the three free invokes are used up first even if you don't use the feat for free (such as by paying to convert the damage to irresistible).
• Steel's Betrayal is plain hilarious.
• Potential better wording in Spirited Swordsmanship is "When used in this way, your Charisma modifier to damage is multiplied by 1/2 for a shape wielded in an off-hand and multiplied by 1-1/2 for one wielded in two hands."
• Lingering Pulse is missing a few words in the core of its effect (filling the area created).
• Here's a catch: Dreamscarred Press is singular (being a company, a collection of people), so you'd refer to Dreamscarred Press's Ultimate Psionics, barring more pressing style reasons to do otherwise.
• GM guidance question: Does a deaf oracle/avowed (who "casts all of her spells as if they were modified by the Silent Spell feat") still use verbal components for her clauses?
The typo catches and wording suggestions I've added in; the thing with DSP's name I'm iffier on, I'll get back to that. For the GM guidance, I would say that they shouldn't need verbal components. I'm not sure where to put the sidebar about it, so I'll get that in the next update. Good thought though, thank you.
Jonathon Wilder wrote:
Hmm, the Nation Avowed could work fairly well in building Undyne from Undertale. The ability "Hearts Beat As One" is eerily named and appropriate, and her being the captain of her king's royal guard works well with the more military focus it appears to have.
Thanks for all the well-wishes, and I'm so very sorry for the delay. The past weeks have been a hell of a time; I had the flu, then bronchitis, but I'm mostly better now. During this time, when I could, my co-author and I kept writing. Avowed 2's work is chugging along, but what's important for today is that, finally, we can say we've got a full beta of The Avowed: Promises of Power.
The below spoiler has the truly massive changelog, incorporating feedback from here and other places, adjustments we've needed to make from playtesting, and many other things, but for the tl;dr on the changes... The document has gone from 48 pages to a massive 67 pages, including the following:
Fiend pact has been fully reworked.
Weapon-based pulse shapes have been tinkered with; their action types and stat dependencies have changed.
The pacts section has been revised for easier reading and parsing.
We have 90 alternate favored class bonuses, on top of the "any" that the default avowed can get. We've covered all of the currently published DSP races, and almost every 1pp Paizo race (the only ones excepted are those that are generally considered too powerful for normal games, like the high-RP ones in the ARG).
A pile of new feats and a pile of new Final clauses have been added.
A section has been added to the end detailing a variant ruleset for buying and selling souls (where the old Fiend pact went, really). This is a preview of Mage's Magnificent SkyMarket, a magic items and variant rules-themed set of releases that we at FFS are planning. In each release going forwards, we're going to have a small SkyMarket section at the end of the PDFs, presenting variant rules, magic items, little extras, or even just design talks. Later, we hope to do a full book of magic items, but right now, it's mostly a thing for adding more content in a fun way to each book.
In addition, we're testing a feat that a lot of Strength fans might be interested in seeing; Embodiment of Aether, on page 44, allows one to run your save DCs on Strength. We're keeping very close watch on this feat for balance issues, but we hope that it playtests well and is fun to use.
Changelog:
Pacts
All the pacts are now in one section, in alphabetical order, instead of divided by type of pact.
Celestial pact’s Heavenly Body ability’s bonus to damage is now doubled with AoE shapes that don’t use attack rolls.
Celestial pact now has a sidebar discussing refluffing and thematics of its “runes.”
Court Fey pact’s attunement is now an immediate action instead of an AoO.
Added a missing passage stating that the Court Fey’s fey realm at 20th level is actually big, not just one acre. The faerie capstone clause has been renamed to homecoming.
Reworded the bonus in Dragon pact’s Draconic Infiltrator to actually give a bonus on Bluffs about your form.
Elemental pact’s Consolation Flare ability now procs once per round.
Elemental pact’s Elemental Ally ability can be maintained now, instead of needing to resummon each round.
Elemental-pact (earth) avowed no longer entomb themselves when they use their capstone.
Elemental-pact (water) avowed no longer drown when they use their capstone.
Fiend pact has been completely reworked.
Old One pact’s attunement has been buffed; it now includes a defensive ability. The telepathy got moved to level 4.
Old One pact’s sense has been buffed to also sense mind-affecting effects in addition to fear.
Old One pact’s Obey ability has been nerfed; it now requires a standard action to use the Approach, Flee, or Halt commands.
Old One pact’s Shatter ability is now optional to perma-insanity people with Flee.
Otyugh pact’s Disease Application ability has been nerfed; it now takes a minute to gross-up an object or area, and you can only apply it to one thing at a time. It also now has a listed range (your reach).
Self pact’s Strength of Body ability has been replaced with a similar, but different ability in order to synergize more with other weapons and aether channel’s normal effect.
Self pact’s Indomitable ability has had a defense against instant death effects added.
Shadow pact now has a sidebar suggesting other ways to use Nevercast Shadows in campaigns.
Clauses and Shapes
The avowed now gains 2 shapes at 1st level; one from his pact and one chosen. These cannot be the same shape (preventing getting the second rank early).
A large amount of new final clauses have been added, bringing the total up to 25 (we’re now done adding clauses to Avowed 1, with 25 at each grade giving a good amount of choice)
Aether channel has been nerfed with regards to off-hand weapons.
Aether rounds has been nerfed to only apply to 1/2/3 attacks per round (though the reload applies to the whole round).
Aether wave has been renamed to aether cascade.
Nightfall now scales further up to deeper darkness, and lets you locate creatures in the darkness made.
Aether blade no longer has limited uses per round.
Aether blade, aether channel, aether rounds, and aether rampage are now 1/round free actions to use, instead of swift actions. Overall, the swift bottleneck on weaponlike shapes has been lifted to allow for more open design space, after remathing them.
Aether blade and aether lance no longer freely substitute Charisma for Strength. This proved to be a bit too good as a free effect, and centralized the class around Charisma to the point that other stats didn’t even matter, so there’s now a cost for it, the Spirited Swordsmanship feat.
Aether blade and aether channel now grant Pounce at their 4th ranks instead of free movement.
Aether lance 2nd and 3rd ranks have been swapped (again) after reviewing math on them. The enhancement bonus scaling has also been buffed to be nicer at mid levels.
Aether retaliation no longer removes your ability to use other shapes in the next round.
Agonizing pulse is now a final clause, instead of a greater. It’s otherwise unchanged; it just proved way too good at that level, and more okay at really high levels. Kinetosis Pulse has been added as a greater modulation clause, to fill the gap left by agonizing pulse.
Emaciating pulse now procs once per hit/save negates, instead of once per round/save half.
Into the night now moves at double speed when shadow walking at night.
Nightfall now lasts 24 hours, but you can only have one up at once.
Feats
Aether Armory feat removed.
Aetheric Armor, Aether Outburst, Embodiment of Aether, Overcharge Modulation, Spirited Swordsmanship, and Steel’s Betrayal feats added.
Mystic Reflexes can now be taken if you have any of the melee weaponlike shapes.
The avowed bonus feat list got expanded by a couple more feats.
Other
Typo and wording glitch fixes. So many.
The avowed now has a note that as a psychic (if nonstandard) mage, they can use psychic skill unlocks.
The finished version of the cover has been added.
Layout of the pacts section has been reshuffled.
Reordered the Making Pacts section to make it clear that the retraining-into-avowed thing is a general rule.
A new magic item, called silver shoes, has been added to the end of Chapter 5.
The list of alternate racial favored class bonuses (for 90 races in total) has been finished and added to the class in an appendix at the end.
A note about how items like conductive weapons function has been added to the appendix.
Added a section at the end with a set of variant rules for soul trading in campaigns. This is a preview of Mage’s Magnificent Skymarket, a later set of projects that will be a place for magic items, variant rules, and other options that fit its tone and themes.
In any case, I wanted to thank everyone again for your patience and support. Now that Avowed 1 is in full beta, we're going to be grinding away the rest of Avowed 2, so we can get the new archetypes, pacts, and options to your game tables as quickly as humanly possible!
Wanted to let people know that I'm stuck in bed after picking up an illness of some sort over Thanksgiving, which might delay Avowed 2 by a couple days. It'll happen shortly, and I'm sorry about that. November's been a hectic month.
Rough, mate. Hope you recover quickly.
Me too.
After seeing a doctor, it turns out that I've got the flu, so that's gonna knock me out of commission for a bit.
Overall, between Avowed 1 running nearly three times as large as I'd planned for "a month's work of writing" to be, and the various stresses and messes I've had to deal with in November, on top of this illness, it's looking like what will need to happen is to finish writing the Avowed 2 project over December, shooting for putting it up in the middle of the month.
Recently, we've been remathing some of the stuff in Avowed 1 and that's taken some time to figure out, and the Avowed 2 stuff needed to go through some significant rewrites for its archetypes, so we're basically having to start nearly from scratch to make the concepts actually work.
Work will continue apace, but there will not be a vote for the project for December. This is one of those months mentioned on the Patreon that things aren't moving as quickly as they could be.
I hope you all are enjoying the current work that's up, and I'd like to thank everyone who's taken a look and/or given feedback. We'd be dead in the water without you all. I'll probably be back with another update to Avowed 1 in a couple of days, depending on how sick I continue to be. It'll include some fixes based on feedback and fixed math in a couple cases, as well as a real list of FCBs (finally!) and some more Final clauses.
Wanted to let people know that I'm stuck in bed after picking up an illness of some sort over Thanksgiving, which might delay Avowed 2 by a couple days. It'll happen shortly, and I'm sorry about that. November's been a hectic month.
Avowed 1's next update is coming as well. We've received a lot of feedback, and I am super thankful for that. Y'all are great.
"When a character takes a level of the avowed class, they have the option to immediately retrain any number of their previous levels (including skill ranks and feats, if necessary) into avowed levels at no cost."
Position suggests this is part of working with the GM to make a more involved pact, rather than a general rule. Please clarify in future releases.
Will do, it's meant to be a general rule, so it'll be moved to earlier.
Iron Heart wrote:
Physical contracts: There's a catch-all magic school. Transmutation. I mean, uh, Universal.
That's true, but that's still a fluff statement about the item and its magic. There is an established precedent for "Strong (no school)" items (metamagic rods, for example), so I'd gone with that to not tie it to the magic schools at all.
Iron Heart wrote:
Strength of Body (Self 8): "If you've selected aether channel 3 times, you gain both the benefits of the haste effect and the shape's effect stack, unlike normal, so long as you only make unarmed strike attacks during your full-attack action."
Oops.
LordInsane wrote:
LordInsane wrote:
You might already have seen it, but aether rampage is still referred to as aether claws with Dragon pact, Fiend pact, Otyugh pact, in the iaijutsu paragraph in Special Rules and in the Aether Armory feat.
Aether Retaliation is also still referred to as Aether Shield in Shadow pact, Aether Armory and Mystic Reflexes.
You might already have seen it, but aether rampage is still referred to as aether claws with Dragon pact, Fiend pact, Otyugh pact, in the iaijutsu paragraph in Special Rules and in the Aether Armory feat.
Yep, thank for catching that. When the next update to Avowed 1 goes up, it'll be fixed. That won't be for another week or so though (I don't have access to my computer with Indesign right now; traveling and working in Google docs for the time being).
For hypnotic strands' stagger, it's because the fundamental isn't meant to be used on allies. It's an effect that, ideally, would be used on enemies to make them attack each other, rather than being used as a buff. However, since "opponent/ally" is kinda a meaningless designation for this purpose (you can attack an ally to make them an opponent), I decided to bake in a softer restriction to it. It's still usable in a pinch to buff allies, and in some cases, will be an amazing option there (follow up their full attack with two more hits to hopefully end the fight and have the stagger not matter), but it's not meant to puppeteer your allies as its primary function.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense. I'd been looking at it more like a 4e Warlord going 'The barbarian hits you with his axe, I hit you with the barbarian' rather than as primarily an offensive thing.
Yeah, it was meant more as an enchanter feel than a warlord.
Also, wanted to say that I've just uploaded a hotfix to the avowed; a couple errors were caught, including some typos, the Fey pact missing Stealth as a class skill, and an issue with tinker archetype UMD.
It's not 100% finished; there's still some more Final clauses to write, as well as FCBs, but all of the pacts for Avowed 1 are in, along with the full 25 each for Least, Lesser, and Greater clauses, new feats, an archetype, two ACFs, and an expanded fluff section on making pacts. We've also gone through and made adjustments in response to feedback given here and in other places, and I am super thankful for that.
Changelog:
Pacts
Celestial, Court Fey, Elemental, and Self pacts added.
Dragon pact’s Hoarding Instinct ability now provides an insight bonus on saves that scales more slowly, in order to interact better with items.
Dragon pact’s Draconic Infusion ability now provides a stacking inherent bonus to the stat, to avoid creating a situation like succubus profane gift optimization.
Fiend pact’s Soul Eater ability has been nerfed some.
Old One pact’s Wither and Flee abilities have been reworked slightly; Wither no longer prompts a save but the ability damage recovers quickly once they leave the area, Flee’s effect has been adjusted as a result.
Nation pact’s sense has been replaced with a nationality detector.
Nation pact’s Nationalistic Fervor ability now works against rebels and traitors as well.
Nation pact’s Hearts Beat As One ability adjusted to be more clear in what it’s supposed to do.
Shadow pact lost Survival as a pact skill and gained Stealth.
Clauses and Shapes
Adjusted scaling for AoE aether pulse shapes to be a more natural progression.
Aether breath has been nerfed some; the lingering effect is now a feat and it has to choose which breath it gets at the 1st rank (getting both at the 3rd).
Aether claws has been adjusted to better convey that its fluff is open-ended, and renamed to aether rampage.
Aether grasp’s 3rd and 4th ranks have been swapped.
Aether lance’s 4th rank has been made baseline, and it’s gained an accuracy booster.
Aether shield has been renamed to aether retaliation to better fit the mechanics.
Aether wave’s loop-back ability now has a line noting that you can only do it once per use.
Escape clause has been nerfed to only work in response to attacks, and hamper you on your next turn.
The lock and key clause can now be found and disabled as a magic trap.
Inferno pulse now continues to burn undead and constructs after destruction (previously had just used “die” in its text).
Sacred flame pulse has been removed and replaced with a class feature substitution. Sacred flame wall has been changed to balefire wall. Balefire wall now fully ignores fire immunity.
Unbind spell clause has been buffed to repeat regardless of failure.
A whole bunch of clauses were added.
Feats
Clarified that Empower/Quicken Spell-Like Ability don’t have infinite uses with aether pulse. Also noted that they still need the minimum CL (6th and 10th) to get the feat in the first place.
Aether Torrent, Lingering pulse, and Skillful Pact feats added.
Other
New cover added—right now, this is an unfinished work in progress; the final version still needs to be cleaned up.
Tinker archetype added.
Aether Blow and Balefire Infusion class feature substitutions added.
The “Making Pacts” section has been expanded significantly, and reworded a bit.
The Personal Contract drawback has had it clarified that you can later turn the item into a magic item, even though the initial one can’t be.
Moving forward, Avowed 2 is still on schedule and should be posted up by the end of the month, and some of the single-target shapes (particularly aether rounds) are being looked at more closely, math-wise.
Enjoy!
Ikiry0 wrote:
Sweet, I'll be sure to pick that up for my local group.
I was a huge fan of the spellburst Savant since the very first version and decided to do some homebrew of my own for it.
A question about the latest version: What is the reasoning behind the decision to make the 'Give your allies an extra attack spell' stagger them? Seems like way too high a cost to lose all your extra attacks from a full attack for a single out of action attack.
Hey, that's a pretty neat homebrew. I really like the Empty Sleeves ability, that's just cool as hell.
For hypnotic strands' stagger, it's because the fundamental isn't meant to be used on allies. It's an effect that, ideally, would be used on enemies to make them attack each other, rather than being used as a buff. However, since "opponent/ally" is kinda a meaningless designation for this purpose (you can attack an ally to make them an opponent), I decided to bake in a softer restriction to it. It's still usable in a pinch to buff allies, and in some cases, will be an amazing option there (follow up their full attack with two more hits to hopefully end the fight and have the stagger not matter), but it's not meant to puppeteer your allies as its primary function.
Hey all, just wanted to check in to let you guys know that I'll be uploading a more full version of the Avowed 1 PDF tomorrow during the day (need to finish up just a few more things), and that I will ideally have the Avowed 2 stuff up by the end of the month. I didn't mean to take this long on finalizing the first Avowed PDF, but at this point, it's 45 pages and counting. Going waaaaay over my goal pagecount of 15-20 pages per release caused some delays...
Are you selling these as well? I'm not a patreon supporter, but would still like to pay you for the work.
I will be, once things are ready for publishing. The Spellburst Savant will be put up on DriveThruRPG.com as a "pay what you want" item (it was originally written and uploaded as homebrew, and I think it'd feel wrong to charge for it), and further projects, including the Avowed and anything else, will be sold once they're finished and playtested.
In other news, I've uploaded a new copy of the Spellburst Savant. Not much this time, just a new fundamental (charged by enchantments and illusions most of the time, and with a mind-affecting theme), and some small tweaks to wording.
I'm going to eventually write the fundamentals-focused archetype, but I do not think that it's going to be going into this first book of the Spellburst Savant. Instead, I'll likely have a project later down the line that adds some more archetypes and possibly feats. Thus, I'm likely going to be finalizing this project soon and not adding new material other than tweaks as needed before its 'release'.
SS v.49:
Changelog:
• Spell list now properly references itself in the rules text.
• Hypnotic strands fundamental added, to allow for something that works with illusions and enchantments.
Alrighty, status update! After reviewing the votes for this month's project (they ended last night), it looks like Avowed book 2 wins out. I'm hoping to have the last parts of the first book up by the end of this week (have a couple pacts to finalize, some more clauses to write, and the archetype, as well as some reworks to AoE shapes), and you should expect Avowed 2 sometime towards the end of November.
