Design Manager
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Any thoughts on any of the other archetypes?Well I found it odd that the Summoner archetype doesn't get Blood binding and the Magus archetype is SUPER cool looking.
I can't comment on balance though because I'm still new to a lot of the concepts.
The (Daeva) Caller was... interesting. So here's the thing with the Summoner. It's bonkers good. Just incredibly potent and potentially powerful as a class, and often a sore point for GM's as there's a fairly broad segment of the player base that think it's a bit OP. And they're not entirely wrong. I could probably make a Sorcerer archetype that trades its Bloodline for a Fighter at the Sorcerer's level -3 and there'd be room to argue over whether it was as good as a core Summoner. So one thing I had to be careful about was presenting a build that did all the stuff you'd want from a guy who has his own pet daeva, without it being good to the point that it was just a caster with his own built-in Daevic. As part of that design decision I decided that Blood binds were going to be specific to the Daevic class and a symptom of their unique relationship with the daeva (though inevitably I probably will have an idea for something that absolutely has to be able to use Blood binds...).
I ended up deciding that it just wasn't practical, or even really the best idea, to try to do a straight point for point trade out between the core Summoner and the Akashic archetype. Instead I went for something that was going to be fun and incorporate all the elements I wanted, and that would hopefully be acceptable at as many GM's tables as possible. The end result was the Caller, who in some ways is actually a little bit of a power down from the base Summoner, but who so far has been incredibly fun to play and has been very well received by playtest players and GMs alike. I had the pleasure last night of watching a player in one of our alpha groups use Share Veil to have his daeva share Armory of the Conqueror and Gorget of the Wyrm (bound) so the two of them could fly after a fleeing enemy and use their oversized greatclub and longspear to thrash him around. It made me happy in a pretty big way because the daeva and Caller were actually working together as a coordinated team. I feel like a lot of times you end up with a big imbalance between the Summoner and eidolon where one 1/2 of the equation is really all the focus of the build.The Magus was easier. I started with the idea "I want a character that's like Ivy from Soul Calibur with a splash of Starkiller from Force Unleashed", and then applied the theme and tone from the Akashic setting with a little bit of polish. Expect the Snake Charmer to get at least one revision, I'm thinking Adamant Coils will be shifted to 6th level, possibly replacing the 6th level Arcana, and then the new 13th level ability will allow the whip a limited amount of sentience so it can act under its own power to guard the Charmer when he's unconscious.
***EDIT***
We just hit a new page so let me link these in here for easy reference-
Vizier Playtest
Guru Playtest
Daevic Playtest
Archetype playtest
You may notice that the Vizier uses the new Akashic language while the Daevic and Guru still use the Incarna terminology. I'll be working to get all of the playtest docs (as well as future releases) to consistently use the akashic terminology that will be reflected in the final document
Ahhh ok, that explanation makes sense. I agree that summoners can be overly strong, especially in the hands of a skilled player. Even with a slightly weaker Eidolan I'd still play a summoner, especially since it seems you made the Eidolan more versatile :)
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Design Manager
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I am so happy the see you doing this, and I love how it looks so far. I am part of a campaign that only gets to play about 8-10 times a year. The game has been going on since 2005 and my character is a dwarf cleric/incarnate/sapphire hierarch. We transitioned to pathfinder during the beta testing and haven't looked back, but I have been dying to see someone update incarnium magic, so this is great. The reason for all this explanation is that I was wondering if you were planning to make a prestige class for combining divine caster/incarnate? I would definitely buy this book if you are able to do that.
Anyway thanks for tackling such a cool system of magic.
I absolutely am :)
The rough draft of the divine/akashic (final name for the new incarnum style power source) PrC is actually going through initial playtesting with the friends and family group now, and I'm hoping to get the PrCs out for open playtesting sometime next month. Right now I'm a little behind on getting out updates for the Daevic and Guru, so I'm trying to finish those first.
I've got some feats for combining Essence with the Channel Energy class feature, and I'm trying to use cool ways to incorporate that into the prestige class. I had to do a little reworking to accomodate the fact that there's a lot of divine options that don't get some version of channel who might want to use the PrC, but what I'm trying right now is a flexible class feature that works a little differently depending on whether you use Channel, Judgements, or Lay on Hands. There's something in there right now for Oracles as well, but I kind of hate it and am looking to do something more dynamic and original (currently they just get to invest Essence to temporarily boost their effective class level when determining the effects of their Revelations. It just feels bland to me though).
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Just to give an update on the vizier release - I got Path of War Part 4 out, got our GM Screen PDF out, I'm about to release Psionic Bestiary Part 10, and then I move on to the Vizier as I wait for playtesting on the psionic dragons to conclude. :)
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Design Manager
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Not sure what the heck happened to the original links, but apparently Dropbox lost them all. Here's new ones to access the playtest material.
Vizier
Daevic
Guru
Akashic Archetypes
Sorry again guys, not sure what's going on with Dropbox.
All of those links are disabled... Apparently problems with DropBox continue?
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Design Manager
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Links should be working now guys, let me know if there's any further issues.
**EDIT**
I may have spoken too soon. The GitP folks are telling me that they're getting to the splash page now but they're getting 404 errors when they try to open the link. Let me know if you guys are seeing the same thing or something different and which specific links are giving you that behavior.
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Design Manager
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Okay guys, the links I posted above should all be working now. Let me know if any of you find that not to be the case.
Things got a little side-tracked with that DropBox issue, but I should still be able to get the Guru update out tonight. In the meantime, here's a couple of the new Guru Veils-
Descriptors: none
Class: Guru
Slot: Body
Saving Throw: none
This veilweaver’s form seems somewhat hazy and out of focus, as though he were not entirely solid.
A veilweaver who wears this unusual Veil is supernaturally light and attuned to the very air around them. While this Veil is shaped up to 10 feet of the wearer’s movement can be used to tread on air as if walking on solid ground. Moving vertically is similar to walking up or down a hill (the maximum upward or downward angle possible is 45 degrees, and the rules for moving on a diagonal apply - every second square of movement counts as 10 feet). The wearer must still end their movement on a solid surface or they immediately fall.
Essence: For each point of Essence invested in this ability, the wearer increases the amount of their movement that can be spent walking on air by an additional 5 feet.
Chakra Bind (Body): [G20] When this veil is bound to the Body slot, the wearer is treated as though under a constant air walk effect, but is never affected by strong winds unless they choose to be. The wearer can extend these benefits to one additional ally within 60 feet for each point of Essence invested in this ability.
Descriptors: Varies (see text)
Class: Guru
Slot: Head
Saving Throw: Will (see text)
A mask forged of the veilweaver's chosen element shrouds his features from view and marks his mastery of that power.
When shaping this Veil, choose one energy type from the following list: acid, cold, fire, electric, sonic. The Veil gains that descriptor. Whenever the wearer would take damage from an effect which deals damage of one of the types other than his chosen element, the first 5 points of damage is converted to his chosen energy type (for example, if the wearer selected “cold” when shaping this veil and was then subjected to a fireball spell, the first five points of damage assessed after rolling his saving throw would be treated as cold damage instead of fire).
Essence: The amount of damage converted by this Veil increases by 5 points per point of Essence invested.
Chakra Bind (Head): [G8] Any creature with the Elemental Subtype must succeed on a Will saving throw to make a melee attack against the wearer of this mask. If the creature’s subtype also matches the element chosen at the time this veil was shaped (use acid for creatures of the earth subtype and air for creatures of the electric subtype), the attacker takes a penalty to their saving throw equal to the amount of Essence currently invested. If the attacker fails the save, they cannot complete their attack and the action is wasted. Once an attacker has successfully saved against this Veil’s effects, they no longer need to make any further saving throws against it for the next 24 hours.
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Interested in seeing how this turns out. I never played Incarnum in 3.5, but given the quality of DSP products, I have no doubt it will be stellar. Will definitely check it out when all is said and done.
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Design Manager
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Interested in seeing how this turns out. I never played Incarnum in 3.5, but given the quality of DSP products, I have no doubt it will be stellar. Will definitely check it out when all is said and done.
Excellent! Always excited to hear that someone else is interested :)
Also, the link above for the Guru has been updated. Changes include three new Veils, an added ability for the Akasin Philosophy, and updates to the document to include the new Akashic verbage. Courtesan's Cloak updated to provide a bonus vs. ranged attacks instead of a bonus to Stealth checks to eliminate overlap between Veils.
*grumble-grumble* Unsecured library connection *grumble-grumble*
I noticed a potential wealth balance problem with the vizir path of crafter's transfer essence feature. It allows much cheaper recharging of wands and staves (with staves, which are slowly rechargable for free by the right characters it's less of a problem, though) than normal. You could craft a wand with caster level high above the minimum CL for their spell level and a dozen of wands of the same spell level but at minimum caster level and transfer charges from the cheap ones when the main wand comes close to depletion.
Hmmm, let's make some calculations... I make a wand of fireballs with CL 10th for 3 x 10 x 750 for 22,500 gp or 450 gp per charge and then recharge it with CL 5th wand of any 3rd level spell (3 x 5 x 750 = 11,250 gp) at the cost of 225 gp per charge.
This potentially could also allow much cheaper recharge for the wands containing expensive components.
I wonder how much a problem it could be - on the other hand it would make use of higher caster level wands closer to being reasonable...
Editorial thought: I would add Essence dedication term which would refer to the investment Essence that remain "locked" until the veilshaper rests and reforms his veils. This way the Essence dedication process could be described in general Essence section together with investment and in the description of particular abilities you could just say that this feat/skill/ability does x for each point of dedicated essence.
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Design Manager
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Thank you for the catch Drejk!
Note that I've moved the main discussion for this thread to the new Akashic Mysteries thread, both to reflect the new working project name and so that I could set up an OP with ready access to all of the related materials.
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Last I heard 1 or 2 of the classes were just waiting on layout. Path of War just came out because it came out of layout, so now I'm guessing we can expect it pretty soon.
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Design Manager
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Last I heard 1 or 2 of the classes were just waiting on layout. Path of War just came out because it came out of layout, so now I'm guessing we can expect it pretty soon.
That's correct. Vizier has already been through layout and editing and should be available any time now. Guru would be at the same point if I hadn't caught a serious case of hot liquid death that's had me out of commission for basically all of September so far. For the latest available docs, see my link to the Akashic Mysteries thread above. I'll be updating that ASAP with all the latest news and playtest docs.