Santova's page

My first thought would be to have a system of extreme tempature where if inadequately prepared you take damage every hour.

Depending on what they're wearing their status ranges from 1-10. Average temperatures low from 4-6, the colder it gets the lower it is, the hotter it gets the higher your number is. Water helps reduce the number, so in hotter temperatures this helps and in lower temperatures this hinders you. The more clothes they wear, the bigger bonus they get so again, helpful in cold hurts you in heat. Roll a fortitude save every hour they were not properly equipped for the tempature, if they fail take a d6 for every number they are outside their temperature range. Ex: someone is wrapped in warm furs and by a hearth, so they're status is at a 3. However, they are suddenly teleported into a 110 degree desert at the night if the sun, a climate we'all call a 7. They decide to wait by the fire in hopes they'll be seen and rescued, so an hour later they make a fortitude check. They fail, and because they're equipped for 3 but in 7 they take 4d6 non-lethal damage. They decide to take off their coat and sniff the fire before setting out, putting them at a 4. They fail their save next hour and take 3d6. Etc. Stuff like eating food, drinking water, etc improve your save

Thank you for your insight and feedback! Firstly I would like to say it was originally my intention for there to be negation of arcane spell failure, and I just forgot to write it out explicitly so that's been edited.

But I would also like to say that the goal of this class archytype was not actually to make a wizard that hits things; theres lots of spell casters that do that already, and do it better, much like the magus as you noted. I realize I devoted a lot of page length to modifying the staffmater's ability to hit things with a staff, but the goal is not to make them hit things more; rather, it's to eliminate the need to drop their staff and pull out dagger if a wolf slips past the tank and gets too close. I don't want to design a wizard that hits things, but rather I want to design a weapon the wizard can wield while casting without having to switch it out or drop when they need to cast a spell that's not in the staff. That being said I did include the ability to crit with spells as per the magus text, although I kept the loss of the spell in the instance that you miss. Perhaps I misread it, but I believe the magus also looses the spell if they miss their touch attack, so it doesn't seem that much weaker, it simply comes at a later level. The magus ability seems to be a full round action as well unless I'm not reading the FAQ correctly. I do however envision a senario where you could miss with your staff swing, but the spray of acid from the tip of your staff still hits against the target's touch AC. To balance these issues out do you think the roll to hit with the staff and the roll to hit with the spell should be separate rolls since they roll against different ACs? That way a touch spell that would normally hit your target isn't stopped because your staff get's deflected by their armor?

Another things I worry about is loosing those extra metamagic feats that make their spells just all around better and more versatile; to counteract this I tried to beef up their spell casting by letting them cast 2 spells at once, and basically give them the option to store a much larger amount of spells, as well as pretty much always being able to benefit from the bonuses normal wizards get for their arcane school.

With those ideas in mind do you think the class focuses too much on being able to hit things for what I'm trying to do? And should I calculate the rolls to hit different with the spellstrike than I am currently?

There's also the spell storing enchantment for armor which your DM might allow you to apply to your weapon. Costly and cumbersome, this method would require someone to cast the spell to store it in the instrument, and then you'd only get 1 cast of it before you had to get it stored again.

Consider that if goblins are intelligent then perhaps there's more to them than being inherently evil monsters. I don't know what goblins look like in your setting, but I've always been fond of putting goblins in a similar climate to the equivalent of dwarves in my world. Dwarves are known for being short of stature but still medium sized- what would you think of a similar build for goblins?

In my setting, goblins and "dwarves" lived at odds due to territory disputes. Both were primarily subterranean creatures, but due to environmental and political circumstances, the goblins were at a disadvantage and were eventually forced deeper underground as their homes were filled with the refuse and waste that the düweles produced. This furthered the racial divide, and those that were driven to the surface were hunted down as monsters, perhaps unjustly so. In my setting this creates the perception of goblins as monsters, gives them a reason to hate many of the surfaces races, who sided with the düweles against them, with a fiery passion, while still allowing them to have a culture, civilization and actual point of origin, rather than being weak throw away monsters that make little sense.

I would love to hear about your take on goblins, and how you envision them in your world, and what you plan to do with your hob vs non hob goblin peoples now that you're considering re-designing them for your own setting.

A very cool idea! I think it fits nicely within the team player theme you've got going on. Combine that with the healing blessing (my favorite one) and you're gonna be one mean, fervor machine. I can just imagine citizens fleeing as the local library is burned down by marauding barbarians. A Warpriest, clad in a simple white robe with the symbol of Sune emblazoned upon the chest places a hand upon one of the terrified townsfolk and the sudden feeling of relief is nearly indescribable as a wave of warm healing energy knits the skin under his burns together again. A sense of peace and calm falls over him as the warpriest stands, almost glowing in the light of the flames. The bandits aren't yet afraid of the woman approaching, but villager knows they will be soon. Perhaps though, if Sune sees fit to spare them, they can be taught a better way of life an make amends for their misdeeds.

I hope you find a place to put your archetype to good use! I'll be keeping an eye out for any other homebrew stuff you post in the future

Here should be a working link if I formatted that correctly.

I agree that the ideas are rough, but pretty much all the text I use that isn't flavor based is taken from other archytypes or paizo material. It would be helpful to know where my language is unclear or confusing so i can go in and give it the old fix'er'up'er.

I agree that their arcane bond should be the staff, so I edited that to fit. I had a portion where I stated that any staff the staffmaster wielded acted as a quarterstaff, but as it was seemingly unclear I went back in and changed the wording around to be more direct and in line with how you phrased it.

The only thing about double weapons that I would think is worth mentioning is that if you're fighting an enemy with particular elemental vulnerabilities where damage is multiplied, having a quarterstaff with both ends enchanted to target that weakness suddenly becomes very valuable. I still removed that section per your suggestion, but I was intending to model the bonuses off the same formula used to calculate strength bonuses being applied to quarterstaffs and other half weapons; I think I used the same language and just replaced the relevant bonus with int.

The damage type and reach abilities have been modified so that they can be turned on and off as you need mid-combat, giving our wizard some extra edge to make up for their shit bab. Basically the thought is that of course a +1 is worth more than being able to do slashing AND piercing damage, but if you encounter a skeleton suddenly, being able to trade out a +1 to be able to do any damage at all is handy. In my head I imagine the wizard fashions a magical endcap on the weapon in the shape they desire, allowing them to do different damage types. Weird, maybe. But it certainly doesn't hurt to have more options right?

The staffbound casting is supposed to be an improved version of arcane school. Already the penalties are less harsh than casting without your bound object, so it doesn't seem that harsh a penalty. In addition, you can store extra spells allowing you to have a backup haste or dimension door that doesn't take up a spell slot. You also don't have to get married to one arcane school- pick up another staff, and you can cast spells of the same arcane school at a higher level. More versatility at the cost of struggling when you're disarmed. Basically you can spend an action to switch weapons in combat and thereby switch your arcane school, without having a whole school of spells essentially cut off from you. I think it's probably one of the more powerful aspects given the extra spell slots and versatility a normal wizard wouldn't have access to. Also the arcane bond solves the problem of having a staff at level one.

I appreciate your honest and insightful feedback, and hope to refine this into something relatively balanced and usable in a regular game.

To reply to your comments though, I don't play the game regularly or claim to have any skill in balancing or anything like that. I just noticed that it was possible to double stack your AC which I thought could scale quickly, and in a party with lots of other adventurers if you have one character who's AC rapidly surpasses others it can be difficult for a GM to balance encounters. I agree with all the points you've brought up, and don't think there's really a right or wrong way to do it, I just simply noticed other content produced by this game did things a bit differently and thought I'd bring it up. I know for instance that sacred fist gets ki-points instead of sacred armor and is basically ends up a monk with some modifications. So if you want to stay closer to the warpriest idea you might want to ignore everything I'm saying and try to keep it within one class. The things I noted were just abilities that I thought I might have enjoyed when I played my character before if that makes sense

I should mention one of the reasons I'm so interested in this is my first big pathfinder character was a warpriest of Shelyn (hence the avatar). I started as a normal war priest and eventually went though a major character metamorphosis and was allowed by my DM to re-outfit myself as a sacred first so I could go the non-leathal route. I really love the flavor of this class, and think the idea of creating a archetype around a loving goddess of creation and crafts and love etc is awesome. I think the more you sort of step away from the regular path and tailor it to be your own unique archetype, the better off you'll be

I think it's a great fit, although I am curious as to why this archetype gains both sacred armor and a passive bonus to AC from their charisma. The sacred armor bonus they gain goes to +6, higher than most, but that makes sense with the loss of heavy armor, except that they also gain charisma AC as well if they're unarmed, which suddenly starts stacking up. By level 20 it's easy to get 30-35 charisma, meaning your AC is now + 21-22. The sacred fist archetype follows the monk armor path and gets rid of sacred armor all together. I would suggest balance wise replacing the sacred armor with something like the cavalier or bars inspire others abilities and just keep the charisma into AC, as that's the way similar archetypes made by paizo do it

A cool idea- I would ask though why the removal of the engineering class skill? If the focus is protecting and fostering love and creativity I would imagine something like engineering, which at its core is a type of creating, would be looked upon warmly by their goddess. I also wonder what you think of tieing one of their abilities to having a maxed out craft or preform stat, so instead of simply saying they must have a skill maxed out, perhaps if they don't they get fewer fervors or less blessings, or counted as a lower level for certain abilities etc, that way it feels like there's more personal choice involved, yanno?

I also wonder, since there's that emphasis on these artistic skills if you might give them an ability to use a fervor to grant a bonus on a preform or craft check? Maybe a once per day, grace-of-god kinda deal where they can expend a use of fervor and roll with advantage, or add the die they would normally heal to their result instead, that sort of thing. If you're worried about being underpowered that's a nice small boost that I think has good flavor. Another idea in this same vein is giving them the ability to use fervor like a cavalier uses their battle standards, since this class seems to revolve around helping and inspiring others. Giving them bonuses similar to a bard or cavalier when they use fervor allows them to fufill this role in a more technical sense I think. I don't know a lot about balance but I think those could be fun tweaks that give the archetype a little more personality and uniqueness

Hey, I was playing around with the idea of a wizard who used a staff as their primary weapon, but when I read up on them I was a little underwhelmed. So based son some prestige class abilities and the scroll master archetype I whipped this up:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Feny_kYAYDunuxqCO3KvpgRVfkyqVx4Z-lOAIK6 LIjs
For my own homebrew campaing. The thing is, I don't know all the feats and traits and spells and such so I was looking for some input into balancing it out and any potential problems that might make it exploitable. I have a feeling that might be a bit overpowered or at least stronger than some other archetypes, but I told myself that the people who write the rules can't always balance everything either, so it's not such a sin if its overdoing it a bit.
Thoughts? Comments? Snide remarks?