Sir Antony's page

Gut reactions:

I like that the animist gets two apparitions at a time right out of the gate. This fulfills the class fantasy and sets it apart without adding excess complexity.

I like that the apparitions sound like they were pulled from Spirit Island rather than copy/pasted cleric domains or sorcerer bloodlines.

I like the idea of exemplars limiting their divine spark to one ikon at a time and want that gameplay loop to stick.

Yeah, given that mix of needs, I’d be tempted to look elsewhere. Perhaps something like Genesys? It breaks away from the d20 number-crunching and leveling that your one vet wants, the opportunity system gives your fiancée convenient options beyond hp attrition, and there’s not quite so many things to keep track of that will overwhelm your casual players. If your group doesn’t get hung up on the weird dice, it might work.

A lot hinges on what the parts of the game are that are tripping up your new players and boring your veterans. Is it character creation? Round by round tactical options? Ability to actualize character and genre concepts? P2 might be the answer, but my guess is it would be luck along with other factors like your growth as a group that makes the difference.

There are a few things to keep in mind that might surprise you if you discover them during play.

- An Armiger can respec their custom weapons with 8 hours of downtime.

- Most of the effects will naturally pair with certain fighting styles, but there are some that aren’t just stabbing, hacking, and shooting. Alchemy adds utility and healing in addition to bomb-throwing.

- Many effects specifically don’t apply to temporary sphere access, and are called out as such. Switching weapons doesn’t temporarily give you ranks in Diplomacy, nor does it give you a bird companion.

Well one Spheres answer to “why use multiple weapons?” Is the Armiger.

I ran an ape-themed adventure a little while back that used quite a lot of them. There were girallons which I kept pretty much as-is, but paired them with a bunch of gorillas with Athletics and Brute talents. So the girallons largely stayed put while the other gorillas ran around tossing PCs into their blender.

I also added plenty of Berserker, Gladiator, and Guardian to my King Kong. It was a nice way to add survivability to a big, solo monster without just pumping numbers to absurd heights. Sure, the party could focus fire and tack on debuffs, but he was going to get his swings in.

I'm going to give it a more solid readthrough before making too many comments on layout, but there is one I'd like to make right now. When listing range of success or failure, it should go:

Critical Success
Success
Failure
Critical Failure

Right now they're out of order for no discernible reason.

It’ll be a couple days til I’m back at a reliable connection. When I am, I’ll be sure to contribute.

#2 also future-proofs against a theoretical ability that would have a combat maneuver that did not use an attack roll, such as an automatic hit or one that triggered a save.

With the number of Akashic classes nearly tripling in the past 6 months, I think that side of things is in pretty good shape. The gap at this point is more Passions, Philosophies, etc. It was mentioned those are upcoming in Co7S, so we may be in pretty good shape there. Beyond that, more veil sets are always fun.

Correct. Shape Veil just grants a veil known, and if you don't already have one, a veil shaped, a veilweaver modifier, and a veilweaver level. So you need some other source of essence.

It's not quite what you're asking about, but check out DDS' Spheres of Might.

That pretty much requires declaring your entire set of actions at once. It’s not the end of the world, but it locks things up somewhat awkwardly. If I move and attack, I have to know ahead of time whether my attack will drop the target and I can move to the next target, or if I need to use a second attack.

I hope most, if not all, combat maneuvers are not considered attacks and therefore do not stack with the attack penalty. Giving up my -10 attack in exchange for a disarm is a not great/not terrible option. They lose an action and the use of that weapon for any reactions in the meantime. If it’s at the same -10 as my attack would be, it’s just as unappealing as it is now.

You can certainly introduce SoP into your game without converting everything and everyone. If the verisimilitude is more important than saving yourself the trouble, go ahead, but IMO there’s no pressing balance concerns with mixing the two. As others have alluded to, one of the big appeals of the system is bringing character concepts online faster and easier than standard Pathfinder typically allows.

Spheres of Might uses the same framework and a lot of the same terminology, but by no means are the two systems a package deal. I would actually recommend different approaches to introducing them to your games. While converting vancian casters to SoP is better done as an all-or-nothing proposition, or better yet reconceived from the ground up, SoM lends itself really well to dabbling. Have a boring mundane opponent? One of those where they can do a lot of damage on a full attack or charge but nothing to speak of otherwise? For the cost of an uninteresting, swappable feat (do they really need skill focus?) you can give them an interesting tactical option.

Where can this eclipse iconic be viewed?

On the most recent Kickstarter update post. Race looks like the kyton-spawn, unless there's a lot of chain veils I missed.

Vizier is definitely the vessel for this. Most of their abilities are veils, essence, and the pumping up and reshuffling thereof. More paths and veils will make this progressively easier.

The problem I've found with OA is that in the end, it isn't that different. There's a fair share of new rules and mechanics. Many of those, particularly the kineticist, are presented in a particularly complex way. The payoff is classes that often don't fill a high-demand niche or do so in a way that makes for a substantively different gameplay experience. Medium tries to do the 3.5 Binder, but in a way that is determinedly unweird.

That means that a lot of people, like myself, who want something new and interesting don't find a whole lot to sink your teeth into. I wasn't a huge fan of 3.x until the later days and crazy subsystems that dared to do magic differently. I have little interest in taking the same old mechanics and reshuffling things. When the pitch for ACG was "we're making a book of classes that are just a mix of old classes," it was clear I was not the intended audience. Instead, I'm the player/GM who gets their fix in 3pp. Some good, some bad, but consistently fun if what you want is magic that doesn't just consist of "casting spells."

Elsewhere in the player base are those who enjoy an experience with a limited set of "classic" options. Your Core-only folks, for instance. Overlapping that is a set that has never liked psionics in any form and probably never will.

Yeah, I saw that and figured the lucent was probably moved to a bestiary chapter. A page number reference would be a good idea when the time comes.

You could make it a dual function of the veils themselves, but that seems fiddly. How do you do it without 1) unnecessarily pairing social and vigilante effects and 2) making veils that play poorly with other classes? What if the class came with a set of "veil mirrors" where your social identity could make use of having something shaped/bound to certain chakra? So as long as you have something shaped to Hands, you could invest it in the Social Identity Hands Receptacle*.

*with a better name, of course

I've been super-busy, so I haven't really had a chance to look at stuff as much as I'd like, but one thing I was pondering recently is if there's anything to make it easier for smaller creatures to perform combat maneuvers?

Specifically, I'm thinking of the trope of both normal-sized creatures managing to manipulate giants by tricking them by running around and with them winding up on their back, or tiny faeries tripping up people with their capes or tossing things in their face, etc. Just a straight bonus to CMB seems a bit lame, but something like a feint check or some other use of the Bluff skill to lower CMD, perhaps even negating some or all of their Strength bonus to CMD due to using their own movements against them might be a possibility? Perhaps requiring sharing the enemy's square (and thus being sufficiently smaller than they are to allow such a thing)? Mostly thinking dirty tricks, trips, maybe disarm, reposition, and steal...

Just a random thought off the top of my head I thought I'd toss out there, I just like the idea of smaller characters having good ways to use trickery to humble larger ones in general, but the way CMB/CMD scales with size makes that a bit difficult (not to mention being sometimes impossible with enough size difference), and while I agree it should generally be harder, some sort of option that's not as straight-forward but allows smaller characters to use their size to their advantage sounds fun, even if it requires a certain level of investment.

Of course, it's entirely possible this already exists and I just completely missed it, life has been eating me alive lately...

There are a few talents that do things along those lines. Athletics: Scale Foe has built in bonuses that roughly cancel out the opponent's size advantage to CMD. Athletics: Close Quarters Training gives you soft cover in their square. Scoundrel is all about this, letting you use Dex and Sleight of Hand for steal and dirty trick maneuvers, and the base ability applies the CMD-reducing battered condition. Fencing has plenty of talents related to feinting, but not much that would cancel out size differences as far as I can see.

Stack wrote:

Regarding skill spheres, the equestrian sphere got reworked into the beastmastery sphere, with packages for handle animal and ride. I am pretty exited about it myself.

absolutely awesome!

my only concern is the split focus between riding and training an animal. While there is some overlap for certain builds, not everyone who has a bear wants to ride it, and not everyone who has a horse wants to train it to attack.

So long as my attack horse can ride my bear if I want.

Well here's my first crack at the Rhino Lancer.

At the expense of some fortitude and perception, the rhino now has solid options in combat other than charge, which is still iconically the go-to.

Yeah, the ideal for me would be to keep enough of the spheres and talents weapon agnostic so that it doesn't require unique natural weapon talents. This makes it more fun on the DM side - the example I think of is a rhinoceros with Lancer and Berserking spheres - and gives other options for natural attack PCs beyond "gain as many as possible." Let the catfolk striker make use of Boxing with her claws.

I like the more agnostic Paragon as well. Plus, the class leaves plenty of options to add an alignment or divine focused archetype back in.

My experiences of the pre-pf days were that DMs who didn't want to include other subsystems due to either mechanical concerns or lack of familiarity would have Core-only games. I imagine if the DSP analogues were printed by Paizo, the same people would do the same things.

Nothing in my readthrough indicated you couldn't. It would still need to be the dragon type and size is in play. Personally, I'd lower the resale value as any buyer that can afford it can make the appraise check to tell that it's a functional knockoff.

Most LA could be replaced with RHD without too much trouble. Honestly, Dragon and Outsiders were the only two types where the benefits you got from a RHD made the delay not only in hp, but BAB, max skill ranks, feats, and ability score boosts worthwhile.

Spheres of Arms?

A little disturbing. Sounds like the description a GM uses to clarify that this is, indeed, the BBEG's lair.

The trick with spreading out front-loaded class features is doing it in a way that doesn't run counter to being able to quickly realize character concepts.

Seconding what Cyrad said about difficulty in balancing point buy modular classes. Anothe problem is such a system is rather unapproachable for new players. Classes are nice & simple to parse and there's an assumption that the features built into the class will let the player accomplish what the class is described as.

Agreed. Mutants and Masterminds is a blast to play, even as a new player, because you can so specifically represent a concept you have in mind before you get any game-specific notions. It's a beast to ask a new player to try and build for, though.

Arsenal. Sounds good on it's own and leaves the players wondering when they'll run into the Manchester United clan.

For 9th level spell casters overall, I would clarify the language and add more detail to some of the "known problem" spells. I would also enforce greater specialization on wizards, So that Wizards could be good in one or two schools, but at the cost of not being able to do other things. That would reduce the ability of a wizard to step on everyone else's shoes.

How much would it help if casters had to learn spell chains? You can't learn Gate unless you spend a certain amount of your lower level spells known on summoning spells.

Even better: keep all those cool high-level spells fully available, but adjust casting time for all spells.

Casting time = spell level in rounds.

That would go a long way towards making magic more "special".

Having played by this system in a long-running game, please no. Functionally, no one will ever cast higher than a 2nd level spell straight up unless it's out of combat. What they will do is go wand-crazy, as that's a full on workaround.

Yeah, not that different from saying Knowledge(nobility) probably won't come up much in this story.

Another way is rules specific to the game world.

This is "things to change" in the general game.

It would be a good idea to label game world specific content in the rule books. Then again, the core gods are skimpy enough that you can flesh them out for your game world.

So, are you thinking something along the lines of: a feat for Elf Inquisitors has a little symbol or keyword next to it indicating it is Golarian-only?

Gotcha. Sounds like a sorceror with an appropriate bloodline would technically work, maybe that warlocky vigilante archetype, but if you want to reliably get the latent fiendish abilities vibe without working around components and spell failure chance, thaumaturge would still be a good way to go. It's also a lot friendlier to multiclassing with non-casting rogue levels.

Hey look, another thread where I get to be the token 4e defender! Just want to point out that pretty much every "they fixed this in 5e" that's been brought up was actually fixed in 4e and then arguably not unfixed switching to 5e.

Both martial/caster disparity and the 5-minute workday go away with the AEDU system. Yeah, it's possible for everyone to blow all their daily powers and insist on resting after every encounter, but that's not a widely disparate problem across classes. Everyone can do it or no one can do it.

Feats aren't there to gate actions, they either improve the likelihood of success, or improve the result. You don't need Mounted Combat to fight from horseback, you want it to gain bonuses to doing so.

Plus, you have the simplified action economy of standard, move, minor. Any continuous effects cost a minor action to maintain.

The question I have to ask is: what is it about the warlock that the player wants? Is it the all-day magic? the pact theme? The one invocation where you turn into a swarm of bats? The answer to that will help steer you in one direction or another. If we're looking at replicating a very particular build, it might get to the point of just tweaking the 3.5 class. Drejk's suggestions are a solid start.

If we're open to more broad suggestions (3pp in particular), Spheres of Power might be a good route. The Thaumaturge, in particular, is intended for characters focused on a limited set of powers (comparable in number to a warlock's invocations) and a spooky, forbidden magic theme. It's not a perfect match, as there is still a pool of spell points used to enhance abilities, but it's an idea.

Oh, it would be cool. I just wonder if there's a biomagical connection between the Frostbite ability and the breath weapon. Basically, is it all super cold air hanging out in the throat, and the winter wolf expels a little bit with every bite and occasionally blows out a bunch as a breath attack? If so, why can't they also use the breath weapon in humanoid form?

It helps that these classes don't look all that different in-game from a core fighter and wizard. Sure, they play very differently. That's the appeal of them. But to the average onlooker, a warder is an armored guy with a sword (or axe, polearm, whatever) who stabs, parries, ripostes, blocks, and slashes his opponents to death. To a trained eye, yes, he uses an unfamiliar style, but there's a bazillion different styles in the world already. What's one more?

The sphere wizard is very much the same. She throws down zones of darkness and light, conjures illusions, and summons bizarre creatures to aid her. She can travel great distances in the blink of an eye and smite her foes with fire and ice. Sounds like a wizard, right? Now, those who see her heal the injured might wonder if she's some sort of hybrid cleric, or maybe a druid when she commands a tree to wallop an orc, but she did say she studied at that unpronounceable foreign academy, and there's all sorts of odd sorcery bloodlines. Maybe it's like that. It is kind of impressive how she has so much stamina for magic missiles, though.

I would argue Frostbite wouldn't apply in that case, as it refers to the winter wolf's bite, not "...makes a bite attack..."

I feel that it should be easier to resurrect a more powerful truenamer, to the point that a level 20 truenamer could be resurrected if someone even accidentally speaks something that sounds similar to their truename. That way, you could have a powerful dark lord still referred to as "He who must not be named" for generations. Or maybe Tzocatl died out as a language because they kept resurrecting some evil wizard every few years :p

I really like this idea.

Put me down for a 15' cone level-one option. I'd be happy to see it a couple different ways. You could either do it as an additional simple blast. It would work well for fire and aether, both of which should have an additional option. It would also be good as a level one+burn one form infusion.

As an aside, while I see the comparisons to the 3.5 warlock, it's the 4e elementalist sorceror that this class seems to be modeled more closely after.

In the class description under "Role," it says that their limited healing ability primarily provides temporary hit points. Should this have been included in Touch Treatment or is there another ability I'm missing?

Edit: never mind. Psychosomatic surge.

Might not be bad to add some to Touch Treatment, though.