YuenglingDragon's page

Hey, Mark! Long time no see. Tell Frank to pop by here and answer some questions for this guy. It was his creation. And he worked on the older books nearly alone.

Did you know that in the time it took to write this post, I could have emailed him and told him directly? I didn't and now I'm going to bed. I'm great at making the smart calls. G'night!

I missed this the first time I read through the KickStarter page:

Voidstalker - This archetype for the ethermagus base class exists for the sole reason that a base class with a glowy beam weapon is going to make people want a double-ended glowy beam weapon.

We were talking about what we had and what we needed and under ethermagus was "Darth Maul archetype."

So that had to happen. Had to happen.

He's going to be fun to play. I'm looking forward to writing his NPC entry. Kind of a rogue/scout sort of class that's focused 100% on the voidblade instead of worrying about any other the other etherhearts. I think I might make the NPC an assassin. I will be pleased to know how many parties he murders.

EDIT: Broke $1000! Utterly incredible, you guys.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I'm so incredibly excited that this is live and I can talk about it. Bradley is one of the most talented and innovative developers in the business and I've been so incredibly appreciative of the opportunity to collaborate on this project.

The ethermagus is going to be a boat load of fun to play and the cantor is a cool new way to play divine support for your party.

I'm looking at the kick starter page now and I see we're already almost a quarter funded. That's humbling for me as a guest writer. I suspect Brad is quietly weeping right now.

As for firing living creatures, check out my blogpost on the Symbiote Base Class in development. Specifically the Biomunitioneer.

Some more tinkering with the concept in the seventh MCA thread led to adding the Swarmgunner to the Biomunitioneer - that's right, like a flamethrower, only you have a swarm under your control.

Do you play 40k? If not you need to research tyranid weapons and get your mind blown by a hydrogen filled grub that autodarwinates on contact in a most fiery way.

Revolution! Burn all the spell books!

Small, light blade launcher, like shooting out a starknife or dagger!

Kiel, you should know there's already a flechette launcher mod! Unless You're thinking of an underslung thing that shoots daggers? Ooh and doubles as a bayonet! OK, nevermind, I'm making that.

Taser rounds, my friend. Taser rounds.

Good idea. It's already set up so that you can shoot electricity if that's your thang, but something that adds the staggered condition would be good. Maybe also a bonus to Intimidate "don't tase me, bro"-style.

Nonlethal rounds

I might have the taser deal non-lethal damage. I might also make an underslung beanbag launcher.

Would a Junon Cannon be a bit much to ask for?

Gonna need to know what that means.

Something like the Lazy Guns from Iain M. Banks' Against a Dark Background would be amazing.

I love Ian Banks but I haven't read that book. Can you elaborate?

I'm genuinely flattered. I owe you a bouquet of kittens.

Edit: I don't know why I'm surprised that the internet can deliver this picture for me...

In addition to the Stalker option (which is actually really cool), and the Cryptic option in Ultimate Psionics, there's some stuff by other 3pp who did releases that really took the time to deal with firearms in the thorough way they require that could scratch that itch until DSP has the time to really dig in and give it the attention it needs to really be done right.

Little Red Goblin Games has a .pdf called the Tome of Munitions that features a Gunslinger archetype called the Ascetic Trigger who uses katas and other techniques to give you a character much like Christian Bale in Equilibrium.

Flying Pincushion (for whom I work) just did a gun kata prestige class, too, in Into the Breach: The Gunslinger.

...PoW will have a mythic piece. I've tried using the existing Mythic book for PoW, however, and while the class specific stuff is nice in those paths, overall it's not entirely necessary. Many of the current path abilities worked just fine with PoW. What we may do instead, is just create path abilities for the existing paths to fit for Path of War and include it into PoW2. No need to reinvent the wheel, right?

I'll agree with this. Since my next game is going to be Wrath of the Righteous and I want to play a Stalker I looked into it. Champion, Trickster, and even Guardian all work fine. I'd appreciate getting a couple Path abilities specific to intitators but I don't feel like I need them, much less a specific Path.

I think a light background texture is fine. We use a sort of parchment background. Things that are more ornate and have fixtures in the corners or scroll work or crap like that can be cumbersome and limiting for your design too.

I did not use an archetype for this or the others. I can tell you my next character is going to be a Soul Hunter moving into Umbral Blade becausse those things are sweet as hell.

I finally made time to run some playtest stuff with the Harbinger. I can't post the detailed kind of data that I did with the core materials because all I got over here are hastily scrawled notes and gibberish.

The Harbinger did about as well as the other PoW classes, beating people to death with their own arms and such. Like pretty much everyone else, he failed miserably at killing the mob of sorcerers. Too many magic missiles for anyone.

Claim makes is insanely easy to get back maneuvers, which I guess is good since I never felt like I had a lot of them. Against multiple opponents like the buccaneers, big cats, and so forth, making a bunch of claims and then laughing your way to the morgue with the bodies of his opponents was a cinch thanks to dark authority punching their attack rolls in the butt.

At level 10, huntsman's curse followed by persecution was basically a death sentence and returned those maneuvers for killing a claimed enemy. Persecution might be stronger than it needs to be.

We're offering a bundle deal on Into the Breach books The Oracle and The Witch!

You get two bucks off and a bunch of new toys for your spell casters!

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Opinion time: How do you guys feel about bundles like this? I had the idea that we might offer a bundle every time we release a new book that includes that book and our previous release. So the next one would be Witch and (spoiler alert) Gunslinger. After that Gunslinger and whatever's next (you won't get our whole release schedule out of me, scallywags!) and so on.

Does that sound appealing or a waste of time?

Would you rather see bundles with more of a theme?

Bigger bundles with bigger savings?

You're the best, Liz!

We hope you enjoy this book as much as we did. Let us know here if you have any questions or feel free to PM me!

The witch is coming! The first 10 people to PM me with their email address can get a free reviewer copy of the book! We'd really appreciate your honest review if you get one of these but obviously I'm not going to hunt you down if you get a copy and don't write a review. Probably.

I'm really excited about this book. Nearly thirty pages of witch goodness including 11 archetypes, 2 prestige classes, new hexes, patrons, and feats and a brand new alternate class, the Sèvitè, written by yours truly.

Sèvitè can be translated as "servant of the spirits" and is based on Haitian Voudoun. It's kind of an interesting story behind it, too. Frank Gori, the publisher, brought me on as mechanics and balance editor after our Oracle book (available now!). He was impressed by my ability to beat the hell out of his work, I think. I had never really thought I had the creative spark to really write like this. But bring my system mastery and skill with simple(ish) statistics into play and I can contribute.

I was about to go to bed one night after editing submissions for the book and the word "loa" pops into my head. I must have known the word form something. Fiction maybe? Was it ever mentioned in True Blood (my wife loves that show)? But the word pops into my head unbidden and I just have to look it up. So I lay there in bed reading about Haitian Voudoun and loa on my phone. I just had to write about it. I started the next day and never looked back. I've written an alternate class or archetype for all the books we've been working on since. I found my creative spark all thanks to the loa.

As a class, I think it's pretty interesting, too (though I admit to being biased). At 1st, 2nd and every few levels thereafter you gain a loa. The loa grants you spell-like abilities usable a few times per day and another option: being ridden. Being ridden or possessed by a loa is believed to happen in Voudoun. When the sèvitè is ridden she loses access to her skills, spells, and the SLA's granted by other loa but gains new powers. An example is below:

Ayida-Weddo: Ayida-Weddo is a loa of fertility, rainbows, wind, water, fire, and snakes. This loa grants the sèvitè the ability to cast light at will. At 3rd level she may cast color spray three times per day. At 7th level, she may also cast mass dazzling blade three times per day. At 13th level, she may cast prismatic spray once per day. At 15th level she may cast prismatic wall once per day. Finally, at 17th level, she may cast prismatic sphere once per day.

While ridden, the sèvitè is surrounded by patterns of shifting colors. This functions as the blur spell. She gains a ranged touch attack of bright light that deals 1d6 damage per three sèvitè levels (minimum 1) with a 30-foot range. This attack overcomes damage reduction of any type. At 7th level, she is also treated as though under the effect of air walk.

This can also be a really cool RP opportunity if you want to play the possession to the hilt and have your sèvitè act or speak differently while possessed by the loa.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the sèvitè and the rest of the book.

I'm also going to come to the defense of Chris "Errant X" Bennett and say that he has ben incredibly responsive to feedback from testers here. When I decided to test these classes in comparison to MAgus because that's where I wanted the power level to be.

I can't play fighters anymore. They bore me. They don't do enough and they make enough of an impact. Magus is where I wanted to see these classes end up. They generally ended up a little lower than that against some of the most dangerous opponents.

So, fun fact about recharge mechanisms, when I was doing all my Arena of Doom stuff I don't think I ever needed to use a recharge. I had enough toys at my disposal that it was never really necessary. YMMV but I think they will probably be considered more of a 'oh crap' button for when you really need a specific thing rather than something you do a lot. Possible exception for Warlord because gambits are cool.

Frankly, I'd love to see an interview with a cartographer. I don't know anything about how they do what they do.

This sounds really neat. Myself or someone else from Flying Pincushion would love to participate.

I wish I had good answers. I wanted to use this for my last character and came away from my reading with so many questions that I didn't even want to bring it to my GM for his approval.

Into the Breach: The Oracle has a Warlock that you might prefer. I wasn't coming here to plug our new book, just making sure that the question wasn't about the Warlock in the book. But I figured since I was here...

In the d20PFSRD Shop

Coming to Paizo and other sellers soon!

Flying Pincushion may be new to you but I hope you'll give us a shot. We're different from many publishers because of our community-based approach to development. I'm a ScrumMaster in regular life and I try to bring the agile approach to our work. We all write together and edit together and work together so that each archetype, mystery, or whatever is as great as it can be.

Anyways, I hope you'll try Into the Breach: The Oracle. If Oracle isn't your thing, the Into the Breach series will be continuing with Witch soon and Gunslinger after that.

Issue with Soul Claiming. "A soul hunter may not claim a target creature with less than 1/2 HD." I assume you mean less that half the soul hunter's HD. But right now as long as it has at least a full hit die I can claim it if I were a jerkass rules lawyer.

Edit: Also the 12th level combat insight for the soul hunter is boring as hell. He already regains expended maneuvers when he kills claimed creatures. There has to be something cooler that he can do. Like maybe a free soulburn on any other claimed targets or something.

Edit 2: The battle templar is the super awesome.

Edit 3: Battle Templar issues. Last sentence of Divine Recovery, you should probably specify per spell level. It's a little unclear that that's what you intend because it could be read as templar level.

Guardian of the Faith grants a divine bonus. As far as I'm aware that bonus doesn't exist anywhere else. Did you mean sacred bonus? If not, you might as well have left it untyped since nothing else will be overlapping with it.

Edit 4: Dragon fury art is outstanding. Kudos to whoever did that one.

Hi, everybody!

Ssalarn asked me to looks at this stuff sooooo long ago but I've been so busy with life and my own projects that I haven't until recently. Bad friend. No. Go lie down.

I PM'd most of this to Ssalarn but I'm going to put it here too for discussion.

Daevik: My guess at power level right now is better than a Fighter, worse than a good Magus. Yes, the Daevik has some slick versatility but magic does that for the Magus, too. There's only a couple bits that give me pause, like binding Bloody Shroud with Blood Bind. It's potentially a lot of negative levels. TWF with Kukri and you're guaranteed to be dropping negative levels on bad guys.

Guru: I think guru is solid. Ssalarn tells me it was the last one they did and they got to apply all the lessons learned to this one and I think it shows.

Vizier: There is a narrow path to stupidly powerful for him right now. Avatar of light for extra DPR, Ditchdigger's Armlets for battlefield control, Light Whip for even more control while Ditchdigger recharges, and something like hand cannon or riven darts for everything in between. If I made that a bad guy, my players would flip the table in frustration.

I like Light Whip, but once it's bound it's totally nuts. If I were a wizard playing with that guy I'd cast greater invisibility on him and just let him run around forever tripping the hell out of everyone and not even using an action to do it! With the right defensive veils, he probably doesn't even really need the invisibility. Maybe instead, when it's bound he can activate it as a full round action to trip everyone?

I'm in the market for new names for Flightbreaker.

Don't you dare.

Flightbreaker is an awesome name.

Just wanted to pop on and thank everyone for their feedback. We're reviewing and fixing things now. Everything else is on hold until this book is in the best possible shape.

So I just read Endzeitgeist's review. While I respect him a great deal and use his reviews CONSTANTLY when deciding if I want to buy a product, I think he missed the mark here.

I take issue with weasel words like "widely considered" when he talks about skill vs AC. By whom is it considered bad design and is that list long enough to call it "wide."

Second is the balance concerns noted. God knows I don't have time to playtest everything I review and that means EZG definitely can't. But that means that making broad statements of relative power level is difficult to do accurately. Myself and others put in many hours to test balance and found these classes to be about inline and maybe a bit below the Magus. If that makes them overpowered, then anything that is ever written about Wizards or Clerics ought to get that "OP" stamp, too.

As for deviations from "traditional" Pathfinder tenets, I'm unconcerned. Death effects happen so far down the line that they're pretty much ignorable and they happen after the point where a Wizard can just shunt some jerk off to a plane made entirely of poo so who cares?

I think it's a great product (I review it in the upcoming Open Gaming Quarterly). Sure, it's an advanced product. Probably not for new players or those that can't keep their sheet straight. But if you want melee types to "have nice things" I think this product is the way forward.

I pondered.

So, there are a few things. First, the PrC doesn't mesh well with standard Stalker mechanics in a lot of ways. Most PrC's allow you access around 6 or 7 which makes their capstone attainable in a standard AP. While this is also true of the Umbral Blade, in reality you can't start it until 9th at best because missing out on the 8th level Combat Insight sucks. You still lose out on critical recovery and dual strike that way, though. In my build I didn't start it until 11th level and that was only because I knew we'd get to level 20 in the campaign it's planned for. I might skip the PrC in another AP because I'd never get the really juicy stuff in the last 2 levels.

In a lot of ways this feels more like an archetype than a prestige class. There isn't a huge amount of synergy with the basic Stalker.

Not sure I'd want it as a five level PrC, though. I really like a lot of the abilities (especially Embrace the Shadows, Shadow Consumption, and One with the Dark) and you'd never be able to pack them all in a 5 level PrC.

This came up on DSP's forum. Whatcha think?

-X

That poster isn't completely wrong. But he is kind of wrong.

You don't really miss out on maneuvers known or readied, just delay them a little. I statted one up and ended at level 20 with the same number of maneuvers and only one less stance (made up for with the PrC's stance).

It does suck to lose your Deadly Strike and Ki Pool progression, along with additional Arts, uses of Dual Strike, and Combat Insights. For that you get, some extra cold damage, the ability to finesse a few extra weapons (an ability that may not be used much since it doesn't help TWF very much), and some sneakiness. Embrace the Shadows and Shadow Consumption are certainly stronger than a normal stance, though limited in rounds per encounter.

That's my breakdown but I'm not actually sure what any of it means, yet. I'm still pondering.

Hey, Chris. Loving the new PrC's. Umbral Blade particularly. Well done.

One question. Am I to understand that none of the prestige classes get to swap out old maneuvers for new ones? That seems harsh. As far as I can tell, none of them are getting abilities so mind blowing as to justify losing on normal class abilities, and losing on ALL replacement maneuvers.

Perhaps they might get replacements at 3, 6, and 9?

Hi! So, Whisper and Quills and Cursed Razor. Neat stuff here. Flavor is great. Loving everything about it.

Mechanics are a little wonky. Spilled Salt is unclear about what trigger it.

Not sure how Touch of the Witch works. If I'm in the stance and I hit someone who is not cursed with the Mockery Maneuver, do I deal bonus damage or do I have to hit him once and then hit him with Mockery for the bonus? Basically, what's the order of operations here?

Aura of Iron's Betrayal seems a little strong for a 3rd level stance. That's quite a few penalties to stack up on someone. The last sentence is also kind of confusing. Is it meant to mean that cursed creatures must save again after the duration of keep the broken condition on their gear?

Thirst of the Vampire also seems kind of strong. I'd have to look around and see if there are level 5 spells with that kind of stat damage.

Eye for an Eye, just making sure I have this right, you still take damage and status effects and everything but the target of the counter also takes them? Right? He doesn't get them INSTEAD of you, right?

You can't apply something from Luckdrinker's Aura to yourself? Or is this one of those cases where you count as an ally to yourself?

Good news! There's also stuff I love!

I love Shadow Pin. Counters that trigger on movement and such are great and something I've been waiting to see.

Curse of Chains is also super sweet. Warlock's Blow made me pee a little. With glee.

Traitor's Roar is crazy fun.

Warlock's Mirror will wreck someone's day. Phenomenal.

Knives, have Chris send you my playtest reports. For each level (5, 10, and 15) the classes fought two humanoids and two monsters or groups thereof. The first time I did Arenas I only used the bestiary and this time I added the NPC handbook enemies to get a more even appraisal. But yeah, there's dragons, gargoyles, aberrations, and so forth.

I get that. It just makes the archetypes seem dull by comparison now. I'm still buying the stuff, don't worry.

Edit: Just bought the sub.

Edit 2: Why would anyone select the Deadly Insight Art when you can spend a ki point to do the exact same thing at level 5?

Edit 3: Outer Sphere Stance should probably say that it works when wielding two weapons or a double weapon unless it's not meant to work with a double weapon. The line is kind of confusing. The discipline restriction should already take care of that, right?

Edit 4: Stance of the Ether Gate should probably say "This stance counts as Dimensional Agility for purposes of qualifying for other feats." The way it's worded is a little unclear a definitely not future proof.

Here's the thing about the game design. Full BAB pretty much guarantees a hit against everybody. My Warder and Warlord hit nearly all enemies on a 2-5 or better. 3/4 BAB is not significantly worse. It's designed to hit normal AC most of the time. So like a 7 or an 8 on the die. And with abilities that allow me to hit touch or flatfooted, it just gets better. The Stalker is firmly in Tier 3 territory.

I can certainly understand not wanting to dig through all the pages here to find the posted playtest data so I'll post my first arena stuff here.

OK, so the first YuenglingDragon Arena of Doom has finished. The Arena style fights I did during UM and UC playtesting were fun and, I hope, informative. I've refined that process a bit and here's what I did.

I think the last fight against the Forest Guardian was where the Stalker really got to shine. He was so flexible I realized I could basically keep the Guardian from every getting a full attack by staggering, tripping, disarming, and kiting with Fading Strike. It didn't hurt that I got a couple crits and was able to Deadly Strike the bejeesus out of him.

The stalker continued to keep up with the Magus in the level 10 trials but fell a bit behind in level 15. But not because he couldn't hit. His problem was the lack of flexibility that is inherent in a caster.

I'm at a conference in Denver and I left my laptops charging cable a few thousand miles away in Maryland so I may not be able to provide feedback on the new changes for a bit. I'll see how much charge in left in the battery this evening. Hopefully enough to get the new PDFs and move them to my phone.

But I want to state for the record that Ssalarn is awesome and the things he says are straight up gospel.

Wildblade is a great name.

I know Companion Tactics is a little derivative but I though really pushing the teamwork, companionship angle for him would be cool. I don't think any Ranger archetype does teamwork feats currently.

What archetype are you talking about, though? If we're talking about the Huntmaster, he doesn't have anything precisely like this, although the changes to Tactician are similar, it still requires an action on the part of the Cavalier and can apply to a whole pack of critters.

I wanted to really focus on making these two fight as a single unit and do so in interesting ways. Teamwork Feats are the easiest and lowest page count way to do that.

I'd love to see a stalker archetype that blended in the Soulknifes weapon manifestation. It doesn't have to be Soulknife, though. It could be a more generic thing like the Spellblade Magus' athame.

Either as a Fighter Archetype or as a Warlord one, (and I know I've harped on this plenty) a leader who leads by virtue of being the most vicious guy in the gang. Look at a leader like Idi Amin. Not exactly a savvy ruler or anything but he ate people so he stayed in charge. Until he didn't. But that's the nature of an African dictatorship.

I'd like to see a Warder archetype that was learned and sagacious. Int is already a factor there so doing some cool stuff with it and knowledge would be neat. The deductionist class (TPK) does some really cool stuff with smarts.

A Stalker that traded out some class abilities like Deadly Strike, Dual Strike and maybe some of their Stalker Arts for casting from a limited list of shadowy, illusiony spells. Maybe make up a couple spells but I think there'd be plenty to choose from Paizo and maybe some 3PP? Rite Publishing made an awesome Umbral Weaver Bard Archetype that could be used for inspiration.

I've probably got more but there's a good start.

EDIT: Animal Companions that can initiate maneuvers. That would be sick as hell.

I don't know if or when I'll get to do a level 15 playtest for the Defender of the Realm. I have a busy week and I leave Sunday for Denver on business.

Chris, I sent you the docs for the level 10 test and I'll talk a bit about the experience so far in case I don't get to do the 15.

It's really strong.

Really, really strong.

Mounted Combat is strong in general but the Defender has several advantages.
1. No armor check penalties on Ride checks means he can wear full plate without having to invest in mithral.
2. Maneuvers work well with charging allowing you to stack even more damage on top of Spirited Charge. This is kind of a big deal. In Pathfinder like many RPGs, HP damage doesn't affect you until you're at zero. A guy with 1hp fights and defends himself just as well as when he had 100hp. But if you can kill him in one hit, he does nothing. Although this didn't affect me because of the way starting position works in the arena, in a real game, killing off guys will also increase the chances that the Defender will be able to use Ride-by Attack over and over with impunity.
3. Counters and stances also synergize well with mounted combat. Mounts are often the weak link in the mounted warriors chain of destruction. Not so with counters and some of the stances. With Ion Horse Stance, El Horso had an AC of 34, DR5/-, and dealt extra damage. With counters I could negate hits against it and then do so again with Mounted Combat (with no AC penalty).

Some ideas. A reduction in armor check penalties to Ride check rather than a blanket dismissal of them might be a good start. I think that the damage dice on a lot of the maneuvers will need to get scaled down, too. Defender Training may need to replace heavy armor proficiency as well as tower shield proficiency. Consider beginning Extended Defense at 8 as normal and having Mounted Partnership replace the increased uses per day at 15th level.

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Also, Lordy but Cornered Frenzy Strike does a silly amount of damage when you have a weapon, a spiked shield and spiked armor. Instead of casting Fireball, I'd want my wizard to make a spell that dropped me in the middle of a pile of guys. It is entirely possible that hitting everyone within reach with every weapon you have is already strong enough without adding extra damage dice.

It might also be worth considering that it forces everyone in the party to be interested in initiating. In my group I might be the only one who wants to use maneuvers. I can still play a warlord and stay away from golden lion. But not if you make maneuver sharing a core ability. This seems like an aarchetype to me. A sensei kind of thing.

Is this about the b**ching over on GitP a couple weeks back? There is room in the game for more than one guy to be good with a weapon or two. It's kind of a hallmark of fighting with weapons. Fighters get an ever increasing bonus on an ever expanding list of weapons. Warlords get a good bonus on a smaller selection of weapons. This is fine. If they aren't good at using weapons you might as well take the "war" out of their name.

How does Pretty Daisy Lord sound?

Not to derail the Archer Lord conversation but I HATE the name "Mithral Rook's Stance." It's the only instance of chess terminology and it's out of place. Can we change rook to tower or rampart or something? Anything would do. You'd have to call it Mithral Poop Stance for it to be more out of place in the discipline.

Yeah it's small but if he can stand next to the squishies, an option generally not available to a melee warder, it'll be well used.

I'm not noticing any changes with Piercing Lance maneuvers. Were there any changes done there?

I will note that Sidestep Canter is a silly name. Canter is a forward speed. Lateral movement of a horse without moving forward is called a side pass. This is probably only going to bother equestrians and word nerds like me.

I'd also like to commend you for moving the Defender's Mount to 1st level. It's always better when a character that's meant to be mounted starts that way rather than having a horse suddenly show up in a dungeon because you hit level 5.

Man, despite all my previous objections to so many archetypes for the Warder not having shields, I think Ssalarn might have convinced me.

Today looking at the new, polished sects I'm seeing nothing that uses a shield in a different way but everyone handling defense in a new way. The Empyrean does defense with dodging and swirling blades, the Defender defends his mount, and the Scarlet Sentinel does it with a spear. In light of this, I'm not seeing any reason why the Archer Lord shouldn't be here. I do think you should ditch the mounted bits of it, though. The warder doesn't need two archetypes that do mounted combat.

Although, I guess that's what you intend to do with the Warlord? Give it a mount and some mounted archery stuff? I see room for both. A mounted archery Warlord and a walking about Archer for the Warder.

Amen to that. May coffee ever run in your veins like blood.

Let's see, current driving time to Oklahoma is about 21 hours. So maybe not sharing. But if you ever find yourself in Maryland, scotch and a cigar on me.

Anything we can help with?

Chris, don't think I don't see you over there posting on GitP instead of getting me a warder to playtest.

I've got my eye on you, mister and I'm not made of patience. In point of fact I'm mostly made of caffeine and Scotch.

So I finally managed to get my two year old settled with some Bubble Guppies and chocolate milk and read the GitP stuff.

From what I can tell they are all bandying theory around and not a one has actually played. I might try to make an account over there and set them up with actual data.

Frakking armchair play testing.

Thanks for spelling my name right. That's uncommon. One day I'm going to have to change it, though. Not only is it hard for other folks to spell, I don't even drink Yuengling anymore.

Anyway, to talk about some of the specifics in playtesting that I did that Ssalarn referred to.

Defense: At level 5 they had the same AC but after that the Stalker was able to stay 2 ahead thanks to his dodge bonuses. However, that's only a 10% chance to hit difference. Compared with Mirror Images, the Stalker was defensively less impressive when it really counted. The Warlord had a consistently lower AC than either but rather more HP and some counters to make up the difference.

Offense: Nobody beats the Magus in burst damage. Intensified Spell with shocking grasp and Spell Perfection meant that could easily nova for 25d6+weapon damage at the cost of two spells (one cast and one from a spell storing weapon). That's crazy.

Flexibility: This is where the Magus really shined. There is probably never going to be a PoW class that can beat the encounter against 6 level 10 Blackscale Sorcerers. There simply isn't a reasonable defense against 6 quickened magic missile spells followed by the sorcerers all flying off. The Magus had Black Tentacles which was basically fight over. At higher levels, the Magus also had more skills per level and while he lacked as many class skills as the Stalker he could make up for that with sheer quantity.

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All that to say, these classes are good but measurably worse than easily half a dozen other classes.

Looks like others have translated my shorthand so I'll just answer your point about balance.

Making only tier four and five classes is not only a bad business model its also bad for balance of the meta game and diversity within the game. I grant you, I wouldn't want to see a knockoff of the fighter that did little more than replace bravery with two good saves. That's bad. But making a whole new system, why not aim for a solid three? I don't know where you would personally place the Magus. I've seen him as a high 3 or low 2 in most instances. These are so far just under the Magus so that's pretty much a three. That's balanced in the meta game and good for the game, too.

IanCB but let me offer some rebuttal points anyway.

1. Making them weaker. That's a frankly terrible idea. I said it earlier in this thread but I'll say it again here. IT is really unfortunate that when, in Pathfinder, people talks about class tiers there are at least five. That means that there are significant and unfortunate differences in power levels and usefulness. If the bar to entry for 3PP is a tier 4 class like the fighter or god forbid the monk, they shouldn't both publishing at all. The Warlord and the Stalker are both fairly well balanced against the Magus. The Magus was able to do everything the PoW classes could do but they couldn't do everything he could do.

2. The Gambit System. Playtesting has shown that certain builds don't need Gambits at all. Those who primarily use Primal Fury, Scarlet Throne, and Thrashing Dragon can pretty much just kill people. The only discipline that really finds itself using enough maneuvers to need Gambits is Golden Lion. And in that case you're giving bonuses to allies like AC and such. It's not that big of a deal.

3. I don't care if something steps a bit on the Fighter's toes. It's a bad class. Somebody ought to step on its toes. However, despite the fact the Battle Prowess looks a bit like Weapon Training, it's definitely not as good and the Fighter has advantages in armor, armor training, and feats.

4. Dual Boosts: Again, this mostly only comes up for Golden Lion users. In fact, my level 10 Primal/Throne Warlord didn't even have two boosts. My level 15 Warlord had two and would use both on an initial charge and do a metric ton of damage but that's at the same level that a Wizard can make his own plane of existence so screw it.