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Honestly, the Moon Dogs were the worst enemies my players faced. They went to such lengths to catch them, getting Lanterns of Revealing and focusing on See Invisibility, and ways to detect shapeshifters.

Anyway,Shades is INSANE in what it can do. Here are some examples:

Wall of Lava - an erupting death dealing wall that can literally go up anywhere inside their fort? Damn.

Douchebag's Move (aka Trap The Soul) - spell-like abilities don't require components. Including TTS. So, if you really want to douchebag GM your players, have them or their closest allies start to disappear.

Maze - when they do face the PCs, have the dumb ones NOT fight. Bye bye.

Incendiary Cloud - oh the poor mooks. In my games, this slaughtered their mooks, becoming the nexus for the Ashen Cloud (or whatever it was called) event later in the game.

Blood Mist - oh look at all those angry people, fighting eachother. Have fun... once per day.

Teleport Object - I sure hope they're holding onto every piece of magic item they have. My players didn't. They lost stuff from magic chests containing their loot, to important diamonds (used for Raise Dead, amongst other things), to entire traps going missing. Annoyed the crap out of them.

Resurrection - oh you killed someone important? Who hates you? Here, have them back. Again.

Vinetrap - you think you're going into town? Think again. And again. And again...

Maddening Oubliette - sure hope everyone got high Will-saves, because if not, this one will HURT. Insanity is never fun.

Phase Door - not an immediate benefit, but it just takes a few days to litter the fort with escape routes only the Moon Dogs can use. And having players run into walls all day long... well, it is kinda funny.

Fairy Ring Retreat - This has the potential to divide and conquer the players, since the caster is the one that opens the exit portal.

Wall of Iron - oh did you have a door there? Or a hallway? Or servants somewhere? Let me rectify that for you.

Acid Fog - ruins all their stuff, and most of their mooks. Poor stuff. Poor mooks.

Have fun. Poor players.

Looks like we missed something - it should be a move action to transform.

Hi!

Well, taking the "High Level Logic" to it's extreme will end you with a Tippyverse powered by a Wish-economy.

Casual Viking wrote:

Skylancer4 wrote:

It's actually new writers brought in to work under the DSP name, who have very different thoughts on what "game balance" is supposed to mean. They come from a forum where optimization is standard and have stated outright that classes like the Fighter are bad design and feat chains are horribly bad design. They have no intent on making it play "nice" with core options.

I'm stating this as, I'm not of the opinion DSP's products aren't quality material, but to say that who is actually writing the material might be something to look at from this point on if your expectations are not being met.

The point is, you now have two separate design philosophies from the same company. One which has always "played nice" with core rules and now, one that is pushing the boundaries. Depending on what you are looking for, you need to start checking who writes what from them, as the "quality" of work will be different.

Hi!

When we design, we design for a very specific, and tight, area. We want our classes to land in what is sometimes called or defined as "T3" in most cases (the unavoidable T2 for Psion/Wilder is pretty much due to backward compatibility). For those unaware of what that means, it means that a class should be REALLY GOOD at one thing, and atleast be able to help out or add to the rest of possible focuses.

For example, the Marksman is REALLY GOOD at ranged combat, can do melee combat, skilled encounters, some sneaking/scouting and social interactions fairly well. You can expend resources, such as gold or feats, to gain a broader ability set (like Expanded Knowledge), or to focus even more (like Precise Shot).

Path of War, Akashic Mysteries and pretty much any other material we release tries to adhere to that. So no, there are no "other" writers than all of us DSP writers. Do we make mistakes? Hell yes. We try to fix those as best we can. We listen as much as we can, at as many different places as we can, for the feedback our fans give us. Listening doesn't always mean agreeing. We had many vocal fans during our very first initial playtests of Psionics Unleashed. We listened. Sometimes we changed things, sometimes we didn't.

If we set the bar for something different, we'll tell you. Upfront and clear.

- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

Just wanted to thank everyone who mentioned us here first.

If I would recommend anything, it would be the following:

Anything Midgard by Kobold Press, as well as Deep Magic. I haven't checked out Advanced Races, but it looks great.

Malefactor (TPK Games), Tinker (Interjection Games), Direlock (Forest Guardian Press) and Machinesmith (LPJr) are some of my favorite 3PP classes and they make tons of great additional material worth checking out.

Legendary Games make awesome additions to the Adventure Paths and a wide variety of other game books (and a Kickstarter right now for their Adventure Path!).

In the Company of Dragons from Rite Publishing is great, as is their 1001 Spells book.

I can't forget Pact Magic Unbound, from Radiance House. They do what we did for psionics, but for Pact Magic. They're AWESOME. :D

Oh yeah, the Nightblade by Ascension is a new, but beautiful addition to the 3PP flora.

ENJOY!

- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

Jeremy Smith wrote:

# of hours available / # of projects to get done = some projects get put on the back burner for a while.

If a project is announced and then sits a whole month in the back burner, maybe it is time to add personnel at Dreamscarred Press or cut back on the announcements until they have been been allocated with a reasonable amount of man hours.

I can only agree. Good thing this wasn't announced at all and that we have heroic authors, editors, artists, layouters and FANS who help us make these books as good as they are! :)

The number of people who pour their hearts into the books is amazing, and that we manage to keep up this number of releases of this SIZE, is a miracle if there was ever one.

If you would like to join the heroes above, feel free to tell us! :D

A psionic archetype for it would be awesome, but I don't know if that is in the books for it?

Well, if you were a 7th level sorcerer with money and power, would you NOT have guards or a backup plan when inviting a bunch of serial-killer psycho-cultists into your house? Unless they manage to utterly surprise him, they won't have a chance. Even a bunch of low-level guards are a problem when they get in the way to taking out the dangerous sorcerer.

In my game, the guests were asked to leave their weapons and wands at the entrance, but some smuggled them in anyway. The Baron, knowing they were coming had cast Detect Magic before they entered the room and surveyed them as they entered, were presented and seated in a highly formal way (one by one), giving him time to ascertain that they were using illusions of some form, most probably to hide who they were, but also leaving the opportunity for smuggling weapons into the room. He can have detect thoughts up too if he wants to, giving him the ability to read them much better. Finally, he has Sense Motive +14, not unreasonable to have him read them well enough to guess their actions.

Not only this, but Tiadora is handling the introduction, making it dangerous to so casually throw away what the Cardinal has provided.

Finally, he has a dust of disappearance, giving him a fair chance to turn invisible on round 1, neutralize enemies and make his escape, giving them a powerful enemy and giving them very little.

We have a project underway, but with only the two of us, some things take time. :)

We're stuck waiting for art, which right now clogs a few of our releases from getting out. Once that is solved, expect Daevic ASAP.

Andreas Rönnqvist
- Dreamscarred Press

We love you fans for contributing to the playtests, and your feedback helps makes things better.

That said, I'd be superhappy if we were judged by the book we actually release versus a book no-one has seen yet. :)

To all of you, especially Dale - a huge thankyou for the praise. We are humbled by your words!

Skylancer - with regards to PoW and balance. On some level, we have chosen a slightly different balancing point. You can't really open up for martial initiators without making the Fighter a little sad since they thematically and conceptually work in the same "area".

That said, compared to Casters, PoW punches below them and roughly ends up where the Magus/PsyWar is in terms of power and versatility - which is what we wanted.

Yeah, this book isn't for those of you who own Ultimate Psionics, unless you want to support us ;).

That said, it's a perfect gift for GMs to look through, an intro book to psionics for new players or people who are interested in Psionics and don't want to go spend 80$ straight up for Ultimate Psionics.

For expanded psionic materials, we've got Seventh Path in layout as we speak and more being developed.

When we started on the path we find ourselves on, we were a small 3PP with an artbudget slightly smaller than 0$. Since then, we've gone on to release more books and Ultimate Psionics, which is a milestone for us. Yet, as a starting book, at 80$ in print, it's a hefty investment.

Because of this, we're releasing Psionics Unleashed Revised, which brings the premier core psionics rulebook a new, improved look, we add all the important errata, make sure 0-level powers are consistent and also add in the two new races from Ultimate Psionics to round it out.

Check out the cover at our website and tell us what are the most important errata to include in the Core Psionics Book? Maybe we missed something!

Psionics Unleashed Revised will be available in PDF, softcover, hardcover and in both black/white and full glorious color. And at a pricepoint that is easier to justify ;)

- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

Soon as in this week! :D

To encourage all of these fantastic reviewers, if you've written a review for one of our products, send me a mail at stormhierta@gmail.com and tell me what book you'd like and I'll send over a PDF for free.

Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

I just want to come in here and say that, both as an author, publisher and customer, I'm highly grateful for all of these reviews! First of all, as an author, even if the book has been reviewed before, hearing another persons opinion helps us understand what was good or bad and thus, in a way, makes the next book better. As a publisher, I can't stress it enough that we're a small publisher, with people doing this because we love it, and when those reviews come in, it helps! Finally, as a customer, there is nothing better than to see what another person feels about a book, even if it is negative, because it gives me something to reflect around when buying.

So, triple thanks!
- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

The author had some personal events that influenced his ability to partake in the playtesting for a few months. I'll leave it to him to share if he feels it is necessary, but we are still working on this, albeit at a slower pace due to his inability to partake in the past months.

I'll try to be clearer.

Slow and Steady works to remove the movement penalty of Obese.

- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press
Author of both the Aegis and the aberrant.

And for those that don't know - Seventh Path is a reference to the six existing psionic disciplines and how this opens up an entirely new one - Athanaism.

This is the power of the mind over the spirits, seen in cultural references in everything from Mediums to seances. The Psion gets a new practicioner called the Conduit, who gains access to these powers. If you see a lingering mention of the Medium, that was the initial internal name before the Occult Adventures playtest released.

I would actually say that the Slow and Steady trait would work.

I tend to read alot of the 3PP material that is out there, but when writing we work and assume from a Core perspective. Essentially there are a number of reasons:

1. Taking into account everything Paizo writes and produces is ALOT of work, adding 3PPs ontop of that is insane, especially for small companies like us.

2. Market reasons - having access to the Core books is a form of "minimum common base" that we can assume people understand and can work with and/from. So if we write material that takes niche products into account, it will have to be our own niche material.

3. Collaborations are fun and interesting. We've been bouncing some ideas with Alexander Augunas about cross-creating something with Pact Magic. We have worked either directly for another publisher (LPJr) or with another publisher (Legendary Games). But that takes both sides to agree. It takes alot of effort to co-ordinate and effort is expensive for small teams.

That said, when we GM, we generally go pretty wild. My personal and natural inclination is YES. That means my Way of the Wicked campaign (3PP by itself) has player-designed races, refluffed classes, rewritten powers and spells, variant classes and archetypes. Heck, I have a Shadow Mastiff Aegis with a Crystalized Faerie as psicrystal. Weird is just the start of it all.

- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

No-one here seems to suggest that no supervision is needed, just that it is MORE efficient than, for example, plowing a field yourself. One supervisor can supervise 10-15 fields being Undeadified and plowed, compared to needing 10-15 people at the minimum.

Also, the reason you can't leave low-wage workers unsupervised is because they are human. They get bored, have low motivation because the wage is soul-suckingly low and they'd rather be doing something else. These Undead never get bored, have 100% motivation because they HAVE no soul to be sucked dry. The best thing they know is doing what they were just told to do. Whatever it is. Always. And forever.

Thanks for all the feedback, all the reviews, all the conversations and discussions. Thanks for sharing your view on what we do right and what we do wrong, to the betterment of both publishers and readers.

On a personal level, I would focus on the occult themes of Occult Adventures. These are people that have intense occult bonds to something (spirits, ghosts, the elements, other people) and draw their power from that connection, manipulating it.

The power of psionics comes from within, from that wellspring of power that is our inner mind, and I would play up that too. All of the Occult are powers from without, bonded, but from without, while all of the Psionic are powers from within that might affect the world around them.

Not unlike how arcane magic is manipulating the laws and rules of the world to force effects to come into existance, or divine magic is drawing upon a divine source (be it gods or nature) to work change upon the world.

But that is just how I would do it. :)

- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

These are some of the best Third party adventures:

Fire Mountain Games:
Way of the Wicked AP
Throne of Night AP (1-2 released)

Frog God Games:
Slumbering Tsar (mega-adventure)

TPK Games:
Reaping Stone
Bleeding Hollow
Fen of the Five-fold Maw

Also, we'd love it if you gave our three adventures a look:
From the Deep Adventures

Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

With regards to more psionics books, Psionics Augmented: Wilder, Psionics Augmented: Soulknife and Psionics Embodied are being written as we speak, the first and last closest to release. We're also working on Psionics Augmented: Seventh Path that introduces a whole new Discipline to Psionics. So we got plenty of material coming in the pipeline! :)

With these new books, we're expanding the basis for Dreamscarred Press. That means we get to have more wonderful freelancers to work with, but it doesn't mean any less psionics material for you guys. We still work just as hard as we did before on providing our fans with more psionics material. In fact, when our fans try our new books, it feeds right back into psionics too, since it gives us a little more breathing room on what we can try for psionics.

With that said, I'm really proud of what Matt and Jade have done with Bloodforge, and if people like it, we're sure to expand on it too!

Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

@Malwing: From this thread, made for you.

Looking it over, I would add that it gives you a +3 bonus to saves against gaze attacks too.

@ Orthos: Cursed Razor retains both flavor and some of the associated organisations.

@True_shinken: We'll see what we can do!

Archetype only book you say? Hmmm... not a bad idea at all.

Just wanted to pop in and tell everyone that Akashic Mysteries is being polished in layout and we hope to have the subscription and first release ready real soon! :D

- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

*pondering*
We've done Psionics Unleashed, Expanded and Augmented.

So if we do Psionics Unveiled...
*continues pondering*

Winter Warriors is a fantastic piece. I can recommend all Gemmell books.

Hi Guys!

Andreas from Dreamscarred Press here. Like David said, we've been working with the design team for the sliver of psionics that is in IZ2.0 and we've taken steps to ensure that the material is both loyal to the setting, the theme as well as being compatible with Pathfinder in general.

The psion that is in the base setting is a telepath, capable of "pushing" people to do what he wants, trick them into believing he is a friend of theirs, rewrite memories and on the more forceful side, invade your brain and make you do unspeakable acts. Overall, the powers are very mental and very thematic, but still ties into the setting. It uses the same, well-tested and expanded, system that we released in Psionics Unleashed, but slightly adapted.

We look forward to the release of Interface Zero 2.0 and hope everyone enjoys it! :D

This book came out of a special project, where we took a look at great books from previous editions that the original companies hadn't updated and showed no interest in updating either - and we decided that it would be a great loss to not have these fantastic books for Pathfinder.

Part and parcel of this project was to give new talent a chance to shine, so everything in the book is done by new talent (pretty much) - Matthew Medeiros, the main author has done a few smaller books for other companies, but this is his first time "stretching his legs" with a big book. Levi Hinton has done some work for DSP some 6-7 years ago, for Mind Unveiled, but returns in force here. Layout, proofing, editing and feedback was also done by new talent, so IF it is a little rough around the edges, take this chance to give good feedback and we'll do our best to help (and give the new talent a break).

We will have this book prepped for print, but right now our schedule is a little tight and the original layout talent isn't available anymore. So, the answer is YES, just not right now.

Thanks for asking guys!

- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

That said, like Ssalarn said, the whole concept of Flow and Patterns fit very neatly in with Akasha, and we might (not sure yet, since we haven't launched a Kickstarter for it yet), present a psionic "theme" to the Akashic Mysteries as something we'd do for Third Dawn.

Just wanted to pop in here and say that this was a MUST HAVE at our Kingmaker game. We got the PDF (in Sweden) and printed out what we needed, and the GM printed it all out and taped up pages on his GM Screen. Very nice!

Will this get an update now that Ultimate Campaign is out?

A potential, future, hardcover will depend on sales of both PoW books and most certainly a Kickstarter to raise the funds for a print-run with added art.

So it's not a done deal. :)

Just wanted to chime in.

Count me in, I'll see if Jeremy is up for it. If you wanna talk to some of our current freelancers, I'll pass the word around too. :)

@Serpent: Sinä kirjoitat hyvää ruotsia!

I think it is a win/win/win situation to be honest where pulishers, freelancers and you all get what they want. Go for it. Will you be picking publishers at random, inviting them or doing an open call?

Best regards
- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

No, and the ball is in our court. We're a bit behind schedule on a bunch of things and this is one of them. We're learning the hard way the many hurdles the aftermath of a Kickstarter can mean.

That said, we're working on it and should be finished soon.

- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

It is untyped damage and bypasses all forms of DR and Energy Resistances.

Well Zilfrel, people offered to look if there was a problem with that in this thread that you brought up eight months ago, but it didn't really go anywhere.

I'm pretty confident we could help iron out those problems if you ever brought them up. :)

Thanks for adding to the conversation! :D

I approve of opening up possibilities.

The goal of Path of War has never been to change or supplant the Core Rulebook - if we did such a project we'd be very much upfront about it. Balancing has been done against classes such as the Paladin and the Bard from the Core, and the Magus, Inquisitor and Cavalier from the expansions.

That said, the goal of Dualistic has always been to help the Two-Weapon Fighters. No-one can deny that with a set limit on GP, having to invest twice as much into your weapons than the guy with the 2handed weapon (which is already leading in DPR) isn't helping.

Even though it has been suggested that a solution like Dualistic has already been considered by Paizo and discarded, there is absolutely no evidence of that. In fact, the same can be said for exactly every class, feat, ability or enhancement up and until they ARE included. SGG made the Magus before Paizo did, and the same can be said for alot of the classes or concepts Paizo later released. Just because Paizo hasn't released it, doesn't mean they have come up with it and then discarded the idea.

So, with that said - it seems as if Dualistic is proving to be the biggest contender for discussion here, am I right? What if the copy had 1 point of less Enhancement bonus than the original. Would that help?

- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

I will refer readers to this thread: Psionics is Overpowered

Or just download the PDF for perusal when you feel like it: Download PDF

If you feel like it, I can always copy-paste the material into this thread. :) (Yeah, we have had these discussions once or twice in the past...)

Best regards
Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press

And, that said, the last thing we want to do is run SSalarn ragged. He knows he has my blessing to focus on the important things - his life, family and future.

Writing is fabulous, great and fun - but it is also a bonus, not the "core". So he gets as much time as he needs. My input will be when it is "good enough" - because that is just as hard to see once you start down the road of an open playtest.

Is that the Warder document I just proofed? Yes it is. So very close :D

Zhayne: What do you feel got bungled with Path of War and how can we help with that?

Not unlike our Path of War project, Magic of Incarna takes a look at a familiar system from the old Dungeons & Dragons, Incarnum, and re-envisions it for Pathfinder. Drawing on primal magic, the veilweavers learn to shape and form their Essence into powerful veils, granting them sublime control and magical power.

Headed by the talented Michael Sayre, known as Ssalarn on many forums, we are extremely happy and proud to start the first Open Playtest of the Incarna rules.

Download the First Playtest Document

Note that the playtest document can (and most certainly will) be updated as playtesting progresses. We would love it if you guys took a look at the rules, gave it a once over and helped us create balanced and interesting choices and options for Pathfinder players all over.

Thanks in advance!

Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press