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Given the success of the ironclad, it's sequel season, baby!
I'm pleased to announce the queuing up of the Motebringer and the Gloomstrider, a pair of edgewalker specialist archetypes that focus exclusively on light waypoints and dark waypoints, respectively. These have been sitting around in the design notebooks for quite some time, and right before a Kickstarter claims my soul for a month seems to be the best time to unleash them.
Expect these two new class options to hit stores sometime next week at a price point of $1.50 +/- $0.25. (We'll see how many exclusive waypoints I end up building in.)
Sweet. Been waiting for this for awhile! Looking forward to it!
Out of curiosity, have you considered something like greater manifestations from ethermancer for them? Like trade a feat and a waypoint for something particularly powerful, but only 1/day instead of using your pools?
Huh.
That's a fairly strange comparison to make, as one refills his pools in real-time, while the other does not. I've resisted doing an expy of that mechanic for the sole reason that the mechanics it requires to function properly are just that rare. Gunslinger, ethermagic, Forest Guardian Press' symbiont series, and sanguine disciple are the only possible expy points I can think of presently.
That said, for sufficiently loose interpretations of "greater manifestations", yes, I think I can pull something off. But it's really not going to look anything like it. Easiest thing to do would be to angle the incoming archetypes' exclusive waypoints to 1/day.
The idea, for me at least, was regarding the fact they are hyper specializing and cutting off half their potential abilities. Having something unique or a bit more powerful available only to them to offset that seems like a natural extension to me.
Thought the same ever since Antipodist came out too. The tradeoff you take for specializing in light or darkness instead of both just generally doesn't seem worth giving up access to half your potential abilities.
Aye, looking over that document, it's fairly clear that what we have in practice is an inversion of specialist wizards - likely a result of my aversion to that rule.
The generalist has more flexibility AND more abilities known under the antipodist system, while the specialist can take one specialty "school" and know every single top-tier ability.
This split would be significantly more even if there were, say, enough top tier abilities in the favored school to last the player until 20. Or if the feat that lets the generalist easily hop to level 2 spells in assorted schools didn't exist.
Easiest fix is to apply a fudge factor.
Best fix is to expand the spellbook, as organic growth will right the wrongs itself.
Still, I'm confident that those who want to play very specific wombo-combos will find the specialist variants to be of great use, while those who just want to play with a new system will have fun with the generalists. Is this not the sort of gameplay approach you wanted? If not, I'll listen.
I have to agree, expanding the spellbook seems like it would be the most obvious fix and help that way.
For me, it is that specific effects are only able to be pulled off by one specialization when it fits well with both. Good example of that is say, invisibility, either by refracting the light or cloaking oneself in shadow perfectly or something.
That said, I don't know anything about these new variants or what you are doing with them, just giving more generalized feedback. What exactly are you aims with them? If they have a good chunk of exclusive waypoints and abilities each, that would help in any case.
Combined pools, tag specific abilities to make them cheaper, then iconic abilities.
I should clarify that I have a subsystem for the creation of equipment from light or shadow, though I'm still fighting myself regarding which archetype gets it.
Alright, so I've taken my notes, wadded them up, and decided I had a better idea.
Motebringers now have a radiance pool and a mote pool. The mote pool is used to build a custom "radiant shawl", which sits in the shoulders slot and does all sorts of awesome things. Given what else typically goes in the shoulders slot, yes, a free "+5 cloak of resistance, plus bells and whistles" is possible.
...And the word count is now exploding. These may have to be separate, lest they be bigger than the original base class.
Alright, so I've taken my notes, wadded them up, and decided I had a better idea.
Motebringers now have a radiance pool and a mote pool. The mote pool is used to build a custom "radiant shawl", which sits in the shoulders slot and does all sorts of awesome things. Given what else typically goes in the shoulders slot, yes, a free "+5 cloak of resistance, plus bells and whistles" is possible.
Nice. Sounds similar to the Direlock's dire mantle. Except that it isn't, I know, and there are REASONS why. Which is why I said "similar". ;)
Alright, the motebringer is ready to roll minus one last balancing pass on the various infusion costs, and is large enough to be a $1.25 product on its own. Release tomorrow!
Today meaning Tuesday, though that does assume that Paizo okays the product the day I put it on the site. Wednesday is safer. I'm now in layout and am adding some "non-combat flavor" abilities to fill in gaps on the page.
Alrighty, so I've filled in the holes in this layout with more abilities rather than pictures. The custom magic cloak, central feature of the archetype, now has a grand total of 30 abilities.
A little cleaning up and I'll be posting this. Expect it on OBS in the next hour and Paizo/d20pfsrd.com once it gets through their respective systems.
Edit: Custom SUPERNATURAL cloak.