StSword's page

This did a pretty good job of describing what's in it, but I thought I'd add some stuff for anyone on the fence.

It has sphere archetypes for all of the original Akashic classes and prestige classes.

Revisions of the veils to make them compatible with Spheres of Might talents.

An Akashic magic tradition so all your spherecasting can come from making constructs out of akasha.

No rituals or wild magic table, or akashic archetypes for Spheres classes, but I hope that isn't a dealbreaker for anyone.

I know this is a couple of years old. But, is the Player book not sold here?

Huh, it doesn't look like they do sell it here.

Doesn't seem to be at the Open Gaming Store either or the Rite Publishing website.

But drivethrurpg has it.

Odd.

I really should do a full revisit of the Spell Words. Is anyone interested?

I know I would be.

I got a printed copy from a friend but can't seem to add a review. Can I post my review here in the comments?

Go right ahead. I've done that myself when I had the same issue.

Wait, its final installment? .-.

Yep, although they might do a compilation, I understand.

What is the gist of the capstone? Also, is there a permanent creature type change at some point.

Let me get out my copy here....

Their capstone is "Form that Surpasses the Gods" which counts them as in their final form at all times for adaptation use. So an aquatic Horradin can be always aquatic or venomous or giant or whatever.

They also gain a benefit based on their evolutionary track. Toads grow a size, werebeasts gain DR silver, etc.

As for permanent creature type change, no.

They can do temporary though.

Fluctuating heritage allows a humanoid horradin to count as both humanoid and another creature type when transformed.

And omni-heritage allows a horradin to choose what creature type they count as with a swift action while in their final form.

And every horradin gains the shapechanger subtype when they change shape.

But horradin automatically change back to their base form when combat ends, but their shapeshifting doesn't have a time limit out of that, so a horradin could count as an undead or dragon or whatever all combat every combat.

Hope that helped.

Since the evolutionary trees are what this class is all about, I figured someone ought to list what all of them are in case one isn't sure if they want this or not.

The first is Fleshwarping, as in the Drow art, in this case for an aberration style monstrosity. So also really appropriate for games that include lovecraftian goodness in them.

The second is for those who alchemically transform into oozes with Gelatinous. Could probably be rebranded for nanotech goo sort of stuff in a high tech game.

Insectoid was already mentioned above.

Power up for DBZ style power ups, already mentioned above.

Toadish surprised me, but it occurred to me that a knightly order of the frog prince might suit some games.

And finally last but not least, a werebeast inspired evolution. Which makes it real easy to see introducing this class as a skinwalker invention to reclaim the power of their heritage.

Is there an archetype that converts wizard to spontaneous casting?

The prodigy wizard casts and prepares like an Arcanist- they can prepare a certain number of spells, but they can cast those spells as long as they have spell slots left instead of firing and forgetting.

Is that close enough?

Oh I've had a thought.

You've produced a lot of flavorful classes.

Have you thought about producing simple class templates so the monsters can get in on the fun?

Accelerist zombies, Outlander dragons, Symbiotic Kytons, Battle Augur Ogre Mages?

Congrats to getting the book out.

Already in my wishlist.

Is this the one with that awesome champion archetype for Solarians from the playtest or am I going to find that in another book?

Well I see you made your goal and then some. Congratulations.

Sadly I was not able to participate, funds are just tight right now, but I look forward to buying a copy when that changes.

I had just been thinking that it was a shame that the book didn't go into more depth, myself.

I would have loved a system for converting all the classes and prestige classes into voltaic style initiators.

So would anyone be kind enough to give a rundown of the Zoomer class?

Yes, thanks for the review, as someone who has noticed this book, the extra detail was most welcome.

I saw your comment about combat stamina.

Well I can't help you there, but I am aware of a book with limit break options that would be usable with this class.

Feats of Legend Limit Break has feats that are available to classes with martial flexibility when they are down to their last quarter of hit points or less.

So the other day I discovered the Monsters & Magic rpg, a non d20 OSR game.

It's like a mod for a computer game, it has levels and all the classes from monk to illusionist, attributes, races, hit points, vancian casting, etc, but it replaces the d20 system with the effect engine system.

The Effect Engine system, which is what really interests me about this product, allows for narrative changing results from the dice rolls.

Complaints I've seen often enough about dnd is that combat gets repetitive and that martials just aren't as versatile as casters.

With the effect engine, each point of success over the resistance roll or static difficulty challenge can be spent. For points of damage, and/or spent to give your opponent a penalty or give yourself an advantage.

Instead of a fighter swinging his sword at a goblin to do damage until one of them is dead, the fighter might cut the goblin's forehead to hamper his vision with the blood, or damage the goblin's wrist so he drops the club or has trouble swinging it, or maybe spend it to give himself the high ground in the fight, or cause the goblin's blood to shower the fighter to make him more intimidating.

Which to me, sounds like it might be a viable cure for the issue of martials lack of versatility and combat repetitiveness.

So has anyone checked it out?

And is there any reason why the Effect Engine couldn't be used to mod another d20 game? OSR is of less interest to me than later editions of dnd, so is there any reason why I couldn't say mod a Pathfinder game with the Effect Engine?

Not that I'm aware of.

Close though is the Genius Guide to the Talented Rogue, which gives a rogue access to abilities of many of their archetypes as well as the ninja. No vigilante stuff though. I would suspect that's what you're thinking of.

There is an official advanced talent, Stalker, that allows a rogue to take a vigilante talent as if they were a 10th level stalker vigilante, treating their sneak attack as if it were a hidden strike, though.

I feel the need to point out that rogues have official talents to gain a ki pool and gain ninja tricks though.

And Purple Duck Games made their own Porphyra rpg that is basically Pathfinder, so they are definitely planning on more PF1 compliant books.

And Drop Dead Studios is still supporting PF1 as they are still coming out with more spheres books, Samurai Sheepdog who are in fact planning a Play manga book which will be a spiritual successor to BESM d20 with a point buy "build your own class" kind of thing, and I believe Little Red Goblin Games is planning on still supporting PF1.

And that's just what I know of offhand, I would be very surprised if there weren't others.

As for whether anyone is making adventure paths or compilation books, have no clue, sorry.

While I unfortunately don't have a game going right now, Drop Dead studios did a setting- Skybourne.

In Skybourne, the spheres of power rules are the basic and most common form of magic, but spheres of power has rituals that can emulate any pathfinder spell.

People figured out how to empower those spells so they can be cast quickly, hence regular pathfinder magic also exists.

So the two types of magic are connected through rituals.

Which made me wonder what a spheres of power/words of power setting would work, but never got very far with it.

I note the Pathfinder OGL description of Solar Wind in the Art of the Blade page includes Guns as one of the discipline weapons, but in the Solar Wind page they are specifically left out of the list of weapons that the discipline can be used with. Which is correct? Can guns be used with Solar Wind?

Edit: I see in the PoW errata that the sentence not including guns is to be taken out, so I'm going with guns can be used with Solar Wind.

You could use guns with solar wind regardless.

Discipline weapons aren't the only weapons you can use with a discipline, they are the weapons that can have special synergy with the discipline which may give a bonus due to feats or class features or the like.

So does the build you want to use have a feat or class feature dependent on using discipline weapons? If no, it doesn't matter. If yes, do you care about those benefits more than about using guns? For that matter, there is a feat to add weapons to discipline weapons so you could have guns as a discipline weapon if you really wanted.

if you have the ability to make ranged attacks with unarmed strikes, it would be totally legal to apply solar wind maneuvers as you punch someone from across the room.

Ah, okay, thank you!

So Agents of GAIA uses the standard pathfinder classes, that was not actually something I knew before.

How does it change things mechanically to represent standard pathfinder classes in a modern secret magic setting?

Well by that standard, I'd say yes, it makes the medium more powerful.

I however feel that is the wrong standard, unless the game somehow has more mediums in the party.

It's in comparison to others that power level becomes an issue, and on that scale, I don't think it would be an issue.

Reminds me of the Binder class from the 3.5 Tome of Magic.

This book has oodles of fun stuff, I was quite impressed with all the options they threw in back during playtesting, but I have to say the Pactmaker from Grimoire of Lost Souls by Radiance House is far closer to the Binder.

But I've never been one to see being spoiled with cool options as a problem. :)

Huh, so Necrobotany does the exact opposite of what I thought it would do, good to know.

I do love the concept though, I remembering really loving the stone zombies from the Scarred Lands I think, where the necromancers figured out how to combine animate dead with flesh to stone to make construct zombies.

Oh and by the by I love the crafting items out of normally intangible things, while I'm gushing. Just wish there was a way for equipment summoner types to get in on the fun.

And Ritualists are Men in Black types, that has all sort of fun ways to integrate them into a campaign. For example, a campaign with some Mythos touches to it, making Ritualists guardians of secrets that Player Character Races weren't meant to know.

Thanks for the info, I look forward to the day I've got some cash. :)

Okay, thank you.

The Executioner kills people (among other things, obviously), the Puppeteer sics puppets on people, so their description says exactly what they do.

But take the description of the Ritualist for example, they perform rituals to give themselves pseudo-supernatural abilities. Don't get me wrong, nothing about that doesn't sound awesome.

I'm just left wondering what the ritual abilities do. This being a skill book, I would assume that they are either require skill rolls to work, or work to enhance skills, or both I suppose.

Are they front line fighters who avoid attacks with rituals of acrobatically dodging attacks like it's a gun fu movie and attack with rituals of sleight of hand to have invisible attacks one cannot dodge?

Are they skill monkeys with rituals of hypnotic voice for diplomacy or rituals to enhance stealth by fading into the background like you're invisible?

Are they control types with rituals of using crafts to MacGyver traps and rituals to use sleight of hand to steal large objects?

So really I just want a short short summary of what they do. Ritualists perform rituals to do what? Professors master skills to do what exactly?

As for spell hybrid feats, I'll just settle for necrobotany. I assume it allows one to make undead out of vegetation. Does it work with Create Undead and Create Greater Undead or just Animate Dead?

Well I've been waiting for some commentary about this one.

Anyone feel up to giving a little review?

I have to say I'm particularly intrigued by the spell hybrid feats and the ritualist and professor classes.

Well this has certainly caught my attention.

I see it includes spells, how much of this book would be useful for a necromancer from a different subsystem, like say spheres of power or wordcasting?

Huh, good to know.

High tech mythic perhaps?

You're running out of subsystems I know are popular.

Not that I'd say no to a book of high tech Pact Magic. High tech spacefaring cultures ought to have plenty of material there.

Fair enough.

But yes, I think you folks might want to consider expanding on the Spheres of Might material.

The first thing that springs to mind, or at least my mind, is how combat techniques change with the setting.

Outlaw weapons, and people start playing hardball with farming implements and bare hands and feet, etc.

So in a high tech setting like Starfinder there ought to be warriors taking advantage of their high tech weaponry and doing stuff with their monomolecular whips or jet powered knives that either wouldn't be possible or practical with lower tech weaponry.

How about a Armiger who keeps tinkering with personal bit of power armor?

Or a Commander of robots for something similar to the helmsman? Or a Helmsman who channels his combat talents through his mecha?

Or throw in some Champions material, like say a magic swordsman with a plasma sword, for example.

So I think there's definitely an unexplored niche there.

Ah yes, to the top of my wishlist with this.

I've enjoyed the previous books in this series and I like SoP and SoM, so that's a no brainer.

But since you're open to questions, how about a short rundown of the SoM love in this book? Talents, archetypes, feats?

Well of course this book comes out while I'm too broke to buy it. :(

I know about the Radiant, Eclipse, and Nexus, so would anyone be kind enough to give a synopsis of what the Aethernaut is like?

Or the new goodies for the Aberrant Aegis, Echo, and Theurge?

I like to know what I'm missing, you see.

I was browsing open gaming store and found a series of books of classes, Of Stranger Bonds by Alessandro Passera, culminating in a compendium that collects the entire series. Couldn't find it anywhere else, which might be part of the problem I'm having.

50 classes total, 49 classes based on being monsters, and the Pledged, who seem to be "get power by agreement with outside powers," in this case the Strangers, class with 6 archetypes, plus orders that they can join ala cavaliers, and a "summoner variant."

So I quite like monster classes and this has stuff from Zombie to Phoenix, and the Pledged sound more fleshed out than most 3PP material.

But the devil is in the details, the concept is awesome, but there are no previews, no reviews, and fifty bucks is a bit much for me to just buy it and hope I like it, even when that comes out to a dollar a class.

So has anyone perused any of the books and be willing to give an assessment? I'm willing to assume that any of the books are indicative of the other eight books in the series when it comes to utility and quality.

Yeah, what IS this exactly? I sounds neat, but I'd have no idea what I'd actually be getting.

I've read a bit more about this product, and it's like a Men in Black/Librarians kind of scenario where the players work for an organization that deals with the things that go bump in the night so that the muggles can keep enjoying their cable TV and fast food without realizing that humans aren't on the top of the food chain.

So I know I like the concept, I've watched several tv shows with that concept, after all.

It's their execution of the concept that I want to know more about before I know if this is a must buy for me or not.

I want to know what are the PCs like in particular. Do they deal with monsters by using hunting techniques to deal with superior opponents like on Supernatural? Use wits and knowledge to solve the issue without generally resorting to violence like in Librarians? Or do they use cinematic skills or their own supernatural powers to fight fire with fire?

There are a lot of different ways they could have gone.

I'm curious about this, anyone willing to give a little review of this?

Good to know. Thanks.

Which 3PP would that be? I'd be interested in looking at something like that.

Well there would be Purple Duck Games' Unchained Monk Archetypes and Everyman Gaming's Everyman Unchained: Monk Archetypes 1 and 2.

It seems to me that a bit more detail on the classes might be helpful to anyone on the fence.

So four new classes.

The Channeler kind of reminds me of the dragonslayers of Fairy Tail.

They get spells, elemental blasts, elemental resistance and later immunity, and eat attacks of their element to heal themselves.

They have the four basic elements- earth, air, fire, water, and then, if my counting is right, 27 advanced elements.

At 19th level they can have a character master up to 10 of them.

At twentieth level the channeler can have two elements active at a time, so elemental blasts of fiery darkness or frozen love is a go.

The Kai is a spellcaster who casts cosmic magic through poses and specializes in casting spells as free actions, so it makes me think "tai chi magic."

The Maven is a master of a handful of spells, up to 6, that they can augment in all sorts of ways. A fireball could be cast as ice, force, acid, lightning, or heal people, or ignore anti-magic fields, etc, as an example.

And last but certainly not least is the Runesmith, a cleric like divine caster of middling attack bonus who can only cast their non-rune of symbol spells as runes or into spell completion items.

Runesmithing, available to non runecarvers with a feat, are kind of like an item creation feat, allowing one to make a rune on an object to hold a spell until triggered.

So the Runecarver is kind of like a runic cleric Batman, the runes they prepared being what's in their utility belt.

Also, Solar Zodiacs get proficiency in all martial weapons, qualifying them for a Martial Tradition in SoM. So there's that.

Huh, I was just looking at the Zodiac because of this discussion and somehow I missed that last bit.

Good to know.

Although this discussion was making me think what a SoM archetype for this class would be like, and I was thinking something like Shirou from Fate Stay/Night who can not only conjure weapons but the skills that go with that.

So instead of summoning champions or just summoning weapons, a Zodiac who transforms into their own champion, giving them access to appropriate combat talents to go with the weapons they manifest.

So like Barrage and Sniper to go with Archer, Athletics and Brute for Bull, Equipment to go with Crab, etc.

Something like Brawler Martial Flexibility, basically.

No idea what class feature(s) to suggest that replaces so it doesn't come out as cheese or weak sauce, though, I have no talent in that regard, alas.

Something that I forgot to add in my review: The Solar Zodiac has/gives indirect support with/to the Spheres of Might system with some reverse-engineering. You can exchange a lot of your normal feat for access to adept or proficient progression, But I bet any DM worth his salt, and owns Spheres of Might, will let a Solar exchange 5 or 8 of the bonus combat feats the class gets for such a progression, or maybe all and then some of the normal feats for the expert one.

Solar Zodiacs have up to 10 extra feats as a class feature, combat feats being one of the available options.

Extra combat talent is a combat feat, so essentially the Zodiac already has a built in combat talent progression if the player so desires.

Or the player could just use the regular feat exchange and then take advantage of those extra ten feats.

A Zodiac could switch out 8 feats for 15 combat talents, and still come out ahead with two extra feats, or sacrifice five feats to get 10 combat talents and still enjoy five extra feats.

Or spend those ten feats to get up to 25 combat talents under their belt.

So I have to say I'd think the Zodiac is pretty adequate on the whole "let a player play a SoM version" front.

Although sadly it doesn't qualify for a martial tradition.

Okay, since there hasn't been any review or discussion about this product, I thought I'd get the ball rolling.

Apparently inspired by the Occultist class from pathfinder, this class also has items that they invest energy into.

The very major difference is that the Successor doesn't choose objects based on schools of magic, but rather on character types.

So the choices are cunning, faith, war, and magic.

Which means this is a chameleonic class along the lines of the taskshaper, radiance house occultist, the interjection games reaper, or legend summoning thaumaturge.

So how magical, roguelike, magical, or divine your character is going to be will vary with day to day as you choose to invest your mana, or keep it in reserve (at the cost of half efficiency) as situations come up.

Of course which legacy powers and heirlooms you choose will also limit your options, you're not going to be very good at emulating rogues if you don't have an heirloom of cunning. :)

This book also includes archetypes for other classes to get in on the fun, namely the slayer, war priest, arcanist, and brawler.

Also includes an archetype for the Successor, which is kind of a Successor as Shifter, instead of being a character with access to psychically charged heirlooms from a legacy of power, they are raised by wolves types who are infused with the power of nature which they can invest into their own bodies. And grow claws.

This book also includes feats, the bulk of them seem to be about combining heirlooms into dual legacy heirlooms for a pool of specialized mana that can be spent to increase a specific effect.

Also the folks at Lost Spheres seem to include at least one green lantern fan, since there is a feat chain that allows a Successor to use a ring for legacy powers that aren't generally available to rings, and feed items to the ring to enable the successor to manifest the destroyed items with the expenditure of mana.

For those of you who like me have a fondness for equipment makers like the Soulknife I imagine that is a nice bonus.

Is this the first in a series? do you need any other book to use this?

The other books in the series are-

Arcforge: Psibertech, covering psionicist stuff as the name implies.

Arcforge: Star*path which covers starfinder to pathfinder and vice versa conversion and includes Path of War archetypes for the Solarian, Envoy, Soldier, and Operative.

While the description is more informative than a lot of descriptions here, it did leave out something I felt people would want to know.

While also giving guidelines for converting from pathfinder to starfinder and vice versa, this also finishes the trilogy of books based on the subsystems of Dreamscarred Press- Path of War.

So if you've ever wanted a PoW archetype for the Solarian, Mechanic, Envoy, or Soldier, this is the book for you.

And I'm really digging the Robot Lord archetype for the Helmsman, which allows one to replace mecha with a mechanic's drone or exocortex.

Prototype would be largely redundant after the Symbiont class, but how about an archetype for Symbiont along the lines of the blackblooded Crona of Soul Eater?

A Symbiont that manifests not natural weapons but manifest melee and thrown weapons and new limbs to wield more melee and thrown weapons?

Yes, thank you, that is far more informative.

StSword wrote:

So would anyone who's bought this one feel up to providing at least a mini-review?

The concept is interesting, but the description doesn't even make it clear if this is a base class or a summoner archetype.

I'll update the description. In function it's a base class and not an archetype. There were a few reasons for that, largely because of how much we stripped away, gave the class a spell book, and swapped the casting stat, it became impractical to think of it as an archetype due to such large changes. For all these reasons it was much easier for us to program the herolab files as a class all its own rather than an archetype.

The other reason we wanted to go with a class rather than an archetype was because in the future we want to build archetypes off of this class. For instance we're working on a Necromancer version of this class that would swap out the standard templates for Undead templates instead.

Okay that's a start, it's a class,and the necromancer archetype does sound interesting.

It is a studied summoner, how does studying improve its summoning? Does it learn how to apply new templates? Does it learn how to summon specific individuals for a pseudo-consort relationship? Learn how to add new monsters to the available summon monster lists?

Now maybe for other people saying "this is a scholarly summoner" does it for them, but for me that's like describing the ranger class as an "outdoors person."

To me that doesn't sell ranger, but a "combat oriented class that can track and enjoy an animal companion while specializing in a form of combat and limited nature based spellcasting," that sells ranger.

So would anyone who's bought this one feel up to providing at least a mini-review?

The concept is interesting, but the description doesn't even make it clear if this is a base class or a summoner archetype.

Well if you don't use my suggestions I'm sure you'll add other cool stuff anyway. :)

The other day it occurred to me- Battle Augur covers both the blue mage and a megaman like archetype, there's another famous video game character it could be made to cover- Kirby. You are what you eat!

Also another character that I thought might make an interesting class- Epic Mickey with his Paint and Thinner.

Well the In the Company of...series has both a Wight and a Vampire book (so as a playable race with a monster class), and Necromancers of the Northwest have a playable vampires (revenants) in their Liber Vampyr series, available as a template and as a class feature since the vampire classes gain the revenant template as a first level bonus.

I'm sure there are others, but that's what I can recall offhand.

And yes, nothing stops a Helmsman (or any other class) from buying power armor but the class features would still be about controlling and enhancing mecha instead of enhancement of worn power armor.

Perhaps something something like that will make the cut if you decide to make this a trilogy.

Arcforge Magitech perhaps?

I especially liked nano-metabolic interface and Resonant Musculature of the Goddess

I do wish Necrotic Scourge Augmentation had been written with the intent to include an option for those playing an undead character (thanks to third party material). But oh well.

Kudos for the aegis inspired power armor rules.

Only wish the rules had been in one book, because Arcforge really made me want an akashic iron man type archetype for the Helmsman.

Thanks.

Bought and perused.