Khevtol's page

My group was somewhat interested in this playtest, so we made some quick characters and ran them through a scenario. While there is a lot to like about this playtest, the major sticking point we had is how impact feats feel and how it affects character builds.

Background

• Feats try to act a bit more like 4e powers, so they end up defining most of what your character does, especially if you are a martial character
  
• You get 3 feats at first level (ancestry, background skillfeat, class), and roughly 1.5 feats a level
  
• You end up with around 5 ancestry feats, 11 skill feats, 5 general feats and ~11 class feats at 20th level
  
• Given most players play at lower levels, and advance at most once per session, most characters will only have a handful of feats, and wait at least a week irl to get a new one.
  

Our Issues

• Many Feats lack impact - It just doesn't feel good to spend your limited feat choice on a small skill bonus or situational action (hobnobber, diehard, experienced tracker...hell every general feat really).

• Dedication/Gate feats suck - Given you have to wait 2 levels between each class feat, having the two feat requirement really really hurts. So do adopted ancestry, and things like pirate spellcaster dedication where it feels like skipping your feat choice and having to wait a few weeks for any real abilities.

• Pushes Hyper-specialization - With so few feat slots, and feats doing so little, the system seems to encourage spending all your feats on your one "thing" and not branching out. It would help to either have more feat slots (esp skill/general) or just bundle situational abilities and make each feat a big impact moment.

• Actions locked behind skill feats - Having to tell a player that they can't try to train an animal, trick a magic item or even pickpocket someone without the proper feat sucks. For that kind of action, the feat really should improve the existing action, or let you succeed without a roll.

• Too many interesting things are use restricted or way too high level - For example getting a climb speed is apparently a level 15 thing and its flat out impossible to non-combat shapeshift without burning a resource. It would be nice to have more play defining abilities at lower levels and have more unconditional abilities in general.
  

There is a lot of good stuff in the playtest, and hopefully the feat system is improved to bring it to the same standard.

Thanks for the feedback!

Ability scores: It may be simpler to give characters a high point buy like 20 or 25 and do rules normally. That should give characters plenty of leeway and still allow people to follow published rules which is simpler for everyone.

Sorry, had a few edits that weren't mine applied. Made it so you get an 8, 18 and 15 points, and removed the race thing. The optional rule is still there, but I will look into how it affects everything. That's mostly meant to compensate for MAD classes.

Races: You should clarify weather you are allowing players to build their own race or to choose any race from the list with RP below 15. Also as a general rule RP are not a well balanced mechanic so you might have some issues there for inter-party balance.

If you do want to use it however you might allow players of particularly low RP races to gain alternate racial traits to even out their power. For example the 6 RP grippli could get the jumper, glider, and toxic skin racial traits on top of their base traits and still be at 12 RP.

Agreed with the RP thing. That wasn't my edit. Will change it back to specifying non-monstrous/very powerful races, with listed exceptions (munavari, sverfnebin etc). I can see giving additional bonuses for weak races, but i'll probably add that under adjustments. Building custom races goes under "3rd party content you should ask about". I didn't intend to suggest that was default.

Feats: You are giving out a ton of feats between free feats, flavor feats, and automatic feat progression. From a design principle more is not always better.

There were two goals for the feat stuff. The first was similar to the feat tax stuff you usually see. Cut down on having to take tax-feats just to take the cool stuff you really wanted, and having to take 3 feats just to be reasonably competent at a thing you wanted. The other (mainly flavour feats), was to increase versatility, and let people take the interesting weird stuff that they don't usually take because it competes with a combat option/improving their main thing.

I agree it might be too much, and will look into it. I was already slightly wary of people just abusing the feat chain thing to overload capabilities.

Death saves: consider how this might work with the ferocity orc ability or similar abilities and how you will replace them.

Good point. Death saves just replace the negative HP thing while "bleeding out", so ferocity and similar just applying to the same period makes sense. Other stuff might need adjustment.

Wanted critique on a rules doc I drafted up for my game.

You can find the doc HERE on google drive.

My goals were:

• Fewer rules roadblocks between a fleshed out concept and a character.
  
• Focus on letting characters be more versatile, rather than increasing vertical power. (especially martials)
  
• Make things a bit smoother and more engaging for players and easier to run for me.
  
• Don't overload players by making them need to digest a ton of complexity/specific cases before diving in. Consolidate where possible, and keep wording light.
  
• Try to keep bookkeeping and metagame planning to a minimum. It slows down the game and doesn't add much.

I would love any questions, critique or feedback you have on the rules. Also, do you have any rules that would be good to add in?

Not sure if this is kosher, but here goes. Veera is a pulp fantasy RPG I'm making that aims for changing characters, tactical gameplay and encouraging risks. I've only hammered out most of the system core, but it's mostly playable and I wanted some feedback. Here is the brief features/goals list:

• Uses 1d12 and d6 dice pool that is easy to read and not too slow to resolve.
  
• Cinematic Pulpy feel, where characters can use their motivations as justification to shrug off blows
  
• Characters that grow and change through gameplay
  
• Tactical gameplay without tracking tons of rules. (Med-crunch)
  
• Overflow damage and risk dice that drive tension and encourages taking risks
  
• Stunt point mechanic to power character abilities.
  
• Character creation that is clean and flexible.
  

Ill be honest here. It feels like someone tried to cram the shadowrun simple/complex action system into pathfinder and didn't do so well.

from what i read i like the ideas

and i am sorry if this is mentioned but is this meant to replace or stack with magical enhancements?

It is meant to stack. However the costs are adjusted as such, and a lot of the +x bonuses don't stack with magical versions of the same (and don't go as high). That way they both have their own niche.

> LINK TO DOCUMENT<

This is a [WIP] doc/pdf of martial character options. The intention is to increase both the in combat and out of combat options for martial characters without hurting balance.
It includes:

• nonmagical weapon modification
• weapon runes
• Traits
• Feats
• Special materials

I am working on play testing the feats, traits and materials, and doing a sweep to increase the depth/complexity ratio. I am also adding among other things:

• an equipment section (Weapons, Armor, Random gear)
• class features (shaman spirit, magus arcana, rogue talents..etc)
• More Traits, Feats and Weapon Runes
• a variant rules section

What do you like? What do you hate? What is unbalanced? What do you want to see more of? Is this project worth continuing? I would really appreciate feedback, criticism and suggestions!

for the phantom, with the ability "Shared Consciousness (Su):" it states that once per day the spirtualist can shunt a mind effecting effect to the phantom instead. This lasts for the duration of that effect. If you decide to shunt a permanent effect, do you lose this class feature forever with no way to return it?

I'm writing a bunch of new spells for this book, and I've made a point to include the shaman, investigator, and oracle (as well as other classes) when appropriate.

Thank you for your response. My apologies if I seemed whiny or similar.

Thank you for the prompt response . Honestly my main concern for this book and previous books is support. You guys have released 10 classes in the past year, and five more with this book. While the ideas look wonderful I am afraid that this book and perhaps a supplement will be all.

While classes like the swashbuckler and arcanist hook really well into existing material (any wizard spell or combat feat basically works as support), for classes like the shaman, bloodrager or the psychic magic classes here...existing material doesn't work as well. I really want to see is Ways for both the ACG classes and the psychic magic classes to hook into existing material to give them a bit more implicit support going forward. Whether it be feats that let psychic magic classes add one spell per level from another list, an archetype that let's other classes get in on the fun or ..etc. Sorry if that doesn't qualify as valid feedback for the material. I just see a lot of the versatility of the existing classes coming from the fact that a lot of new material can be used by them without explicitly being directed at them (the hurtful feat, new arcane or divine spells...etc). I just am afraid of this entirely new subsystem getting cool stuff and possibilities in the next three books or so and then never again...or never as much as the other classes.

The call and calm spirit spells are accessible to the cleric and spiritualist. However I do seriously believe that the shaman ought to have those spells added as well, in addition to perhaps having feats ,alternate archetypes,shaman spirits or similar that let the shaman use some of the psychic magic abilities. It seems pretty similar in tone and tenor.

I like this.

I had been waiting for more dramatic mundane weapon qualities and no third party has delivered something this simple and elegant.

I'd love to see more of the weapon runes.

I'd personally rewrite a lot of the skill feats before using though.

Thanks for the feedback! What would you do to the skill feats? I do admit they are a bit rough, and need tuning.

Haven't read them all, but loving what I see. I appreciate that you made it take the place of the masterwork bonus, and tied masterwork to your system with balanced and mobile. I totally plan on incorporating this into any campaign I will run. So far I will say very well done, and thank you.

Really glad that you like them. I tried hard to make it easy to integrate into an existing game without dramatically changing existing material.

The Document.

I had some time on my hands and made a (WIP) document with new character options for Martial characters, both in and out of combat. (Because making martial characters better at damage doesn't accomplish much)

While I originally started with a Weapon modification system, I got a fair bit of feedback, reformatted things to not look terrible, fixed a lot of stuff and expanded a lot, with armor and shield mods, weapon runes, new special materials and feats. Hopefully with more time I can add even more.

What do you like? What needs to be fixed? What would you like to see? What just Sucks? Please be brutally honest. Feel free to comment on the Google Doc as well as reply to this thread. Also don't hesitate to play it or use the material however you want!

Note: I figured a new thread would be the better idea since I have expanded past the scope of the old one. However I don't believe I can delete the old one. Hopefully that doesn't qualify as spam.

This is mostly because I can't edit my original post:

I have added feats, three example weapon and armor runes (different subsystem) and some special materials. They have worse balance than the weapon modification system as they have not been play-tested, but feedback and comments are greatly appreciated.

Your work has encouraged me to start writing up my own system and I found yours quite helpful as a source for inspiration. Since I'm looking for a way to replace magic items, I aim for a more complex crafting system, but the following modifications might be interesting to you as well (names are hopefully self-explanatory):

camouflage (armor)
thermal insulated (armor)
harpooning (crossbow, firearm)
wrist-loader (handcrossbow, small firearm)
collapsing (club, quarterstaff)

Thank you! Feel free to use any and all of my material if it would help.

I'm curious what you have in mind for armor modifications!

Shield and armor modifications added. I am unsure of what is proper ettiquete for saying so. Should I just edit the first post, or make additional ones?

I am oddly fond of the hemmorage modification, and can't wait to try it out in playtesting!

I plan to do something similar for my low magic/technologically advanced setting, so I am very interested in this (I am looking for a way to replace magical enchantments with technological modifications).

A few general observations and ideas:
- What are the Craft DC's necessary to implement these modifications?
- Special ammunition is a cool idea, but it does not really fit into this modification system, in my opinion (since you can buy as many different arrows/bolts/bullets as you like, modification slots don't hold the same importance for ammunition as they do for real weapons).
- For the purpose of balancing, you could create more powerful modifications that take up more slots. I could also imagine more complex weapons (with different parts or clockwork mechanics) having more modification slots than primitive wepons.
- I would like to see more modifications that have a small drawback under certain circumstances (like reinforced weapons being more difficult to hide, for example).

I'm curious what you have in mind for armor modifications!

Glad that you like it!

-So far as craft DCs I intend to have standard DCs for making Artisan and Exemplar weapons, and not different DCs for each individual modification. I still need to experiment to see what a good DC would be.

-I agree with the ammunition bit. I will consider moving that to a separate "weapons and gear" section.

-My original draft had that actually. Each modification had a "slot cost" and a minimum grade listed. I ended up cutting that due to complexity. If all goes well I can see having a few multislot modifications though. Another consideration was "crown" modifications that could only be placed on Exemplar weapons.

-I have one or two in mind, and I do intend to do that. I just want to keep it mostly positive due to the fact that you are paying for it in gp up front. One of the shield modifications does that though .

-Talking about shield (and armor modifications) I should have a few added to the draft in an hour or two.

Bell guard, I would structure explicitly as working with Parries and only with parries, so it fits with the Duelist's Parry, the Swashbuckler's, and the Mythic Parry. Conceptually, it's sound, it just gets weird when me having a dagger with a certain hilt lets me jump backwards faster.

The latter I would work in as a separate Armor bonus. It's nice to have but doesn't really belong in the same spot, if that makes sense.

That sounds like a good idea. I misunderstood your mention about gunslinger dodge seeming weird and thought it applied to swashbuckler parry as well the first time.

(Holding edits for a bit so I can do it all at once tomorrow or something, instead of in bits though.)

Thank you for your feedback. It means a lot.

Benign: I agree completely. I will change it ASAP to perception.

Predicted Faults: Yes it does rely on crit failure rules existing, and was intended to give martial characters more options regarding that in tables that run it. I was thinking about also adding an additional quality that lets you confirm a crit by giving your weapon the broken condition for tables that don't go by crit-fail rules.

Bell guard:I might remove those secondary bonuses due to complexity. My original intent was that it gives a reason to take the quality in tables where opponents don't really disarm. Plus it seemed like a decent idea to give some support to the ACG. Do you think it would be a better idea to split it into two categories?

The weakness and strengths I need to fix through more testing and playtesting. I am glad that none of them seemed to be massively gamebreaking, or completely useless. I did have a vague idea to try to give a bit more support to weapons that aren't used as much, like thrown weapons, bludgeoning weapons and similar. I will try not to go overboard on that.

Document Link Here

I am working on a homebrew doc about mundane gear modification and options for martial characters. This is really my first try at this sort of thing. If this seems fun and worth perusing, I intend to put the finished thing as a free document or a "pay what you want" pdf. (Not pretending I am even close in quality to actual third party publishers)

Does it seem fun? How is the initial balance? Is the concept worth continuing and play testing more? Are there any parts that are confusing or overtly complex? Feedback, criticism and thoughts are greatly appreciated!

If we're bringing logic into the question a better question might be why do people feel the need to makes characters that want to punch people in full suits of steel armor or creatures with inches of thick hide like dragons. Though that can be taken further too.

Because it is awesome. I think that sums it up really.

Part of the logic is that it is a lot harder and more expensive to enchant your fists. You also don't really get a choice to -not- use your fists as the entire class is based on it.

You also don't get the increased damage that other classes do using power attack with two weapon fighting, your BAB being unable to use power attack that effectively(or while flurrying) and you being unable to wield a fist with two hands. (Unless you detached your arm and beat someone over the head with it in which case it would actually only do 1d4 damage as an improvised weapon and you would be better off just punching them or using a dagger).

It is higher damage than a normal weapon, but the lack of high strength additions and additional cost to enchant makes up for the damage.

If I am a lev 16 Nature Shaman and thus get the true spirit ability:

Companion Animal (Su): The shaman's spirit animal takes the form of an animal companion of her choice, using her shaman level as her effective druid level. The animal retains all the special abilities and the Intelligence score of the spirit animal, but also has the statistics and abilities of an animal companion. If the animal is dismissed, is lost, or dies, it can be replaced in the same way as a normal spirit animal.

I am curious about what exactly caries over from the familiar. If I have a parrot familiar, can my raptor animal companion/familiar now speak?

If I take improved familiar beforehand, does that mean my animal companion gets the spell like abilities/special abilities of the improved familiar?

What is the HP/skills/base saves of my familiar/animal companion? Which order are they applied?

Always the best of either.

Thanks for the reply! For this question, taking the best of either works well for saves but becomes odd when it comes to HP and skills. You see, familiar HP says 1/2 of yours regardless of the animals HD, and while the animal companion might have higher HP, I am not sure which order they are applied.

So far as skills, the familiar gets your skills or its, whichever is better. The animal companion gets skill points. Does this mean I get to apply the skill points and then take whichever is better.(Which gives it a lot more effective skill points) or do I have to pick one or the other?

Thanks for your time!

EDIT:I looked over the wording of the ability and it says

"Companion Animal (Su): The shaman's spirit animal takes the form of an animal companion of her choice, using her shaman level as her effective druid level. The animal retains all the special abilities and the Intelligence score of the spirit animal, but also has the statistics and abilities of an animal companion. If the animal is dismissed, is lost, or dies, it can be replaced in the same way as a normal spirit animal."

If I read right it means you can make your raven into a t-rex since it says 'take the for. Of' and so those other questions are still an issue.

My current nature shaman is getting to that level and the animal companion true spirit ability has me bewildered. How does it work? Here are a few of my questions:

1.Let's just say I chose a parrot familiar. Once I get the ability, it says my parrot becomes an animal companion as well as a familiar. Does this mean I can turn my parrot into a t-rex when I get the ability? Or does it just get the boosts and feats?

2. If the answer to the above is yes, can my t-rex talk? Does it get free weapon finesse because the raven had it?

3.If the answer to the first question is yes, and I pick improved familiar, does my t-rex get the spell like abilities?

4.If the parrot stays a parrot, but gets feats and things, do I still have to use handle animal to control it in pfs.

5.Can I pick both a familiar archetype and an animal companion archetype?

6.Is my spirit animal still outsider(native)?

7.Do the natural armour bonuses stack?

8. If my character dies permanently, does the familiar/companion persist and have sentience afterwards?

9.What is the HP/skills/base saves of my familiar/animal companion? Which order are they applied?

10.What is the HD of my companion/familiar, and does this give it extra feats?