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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Spheres of Arms?

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

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.

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

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 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.