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I'll join both choruses.
1. I don't think it is too powerful compared to some other class options (in normal 1-11 PFS play).
2. I do think it (can be) more powerful than other occultist class options (in PFS).
#2 is more a function of the way PFS plays and how that relates to the occultist. Several class abilities just don't see much use in the kind of Adventures PFS members go on. Especially Magic Circles and Outsider Contact. So any archetype that swaps those out for something more commonly used is going to be an upgrade.
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I don't get the hate over the 12th level power
Given as an Encanter (Thessalonians's Spec) 8/Enchanting courtesan 2.. I can pretty much do that within Divination/Enchantment spells and thanks to Conceal/Improved Conceal spell all other spells.
conceal spell works off of a static, not quite scaling DC with three skills 2 of which are very common, one of which is the most used skill in the game, and requires that you max out bluff and sleight of hand.
Flat out bluff vs. sense motive is a no brainer for the caster to keep the bluff score high to unbeatable.
as for 12th level, PFS is slowly making its way into that area more and more.
If thats the problem, "the occultist instead gains conceal spell as a feat without meeting the pre reqs" would be an easy fix.
Pretty much what he said
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Actually, Scaled Fist Unchained Monk 1, Occultist 11 might work pretty well, especially if you use your transmutation power to focus to improve your unarmed strike.
Buy an amulet of mighty fists +1, and every fight can start with "I give my fists bane".
EDIT: I don't really have strong feelings about this (ok I really dislike the level 12 power, especially since even the base enchantment implement give a bonus on charisma based skill checks).
yeah, it's definitely possible as a build. But it's asking why? If you're focusing on casting your physical stats aren't so good for melee stuff, and if you're doing melee stuff with a little casting, is it really worth taking this archetype over the normal more combat oriented versions?
Going Dex based monk dip you have Dex for AC and attacks, con for HP off of a d8, int for spells, wis for will saves, and Cha for AC and pool.
ransmutation Implements
Transmutation implements can alter the properties of both objects and creatures.Implements: Belt, boots, sandals, vest, weapon.
Resonant Powers: Each time the occultist invests mental focus into a transmutation implement, the implement grants the following resonant power. The implement's bearer gains the benefits of this power until the occultist refreshes his focus.
Physical Enhancement (Su): The implement enhances its bearer's body. When you invest mental focus in the implement, select a physical ability score. The implement grants a +2 temporary enhancement bonus to that physical ability score for every 3 points of mental focus invested in the implement (to a maximum of +2 at 1st level, plus an additional 2 for every 6 occultist levels you possess).
Base Focus Power: All occultists who learn to use transmutation implements gain the following focus power.
Legacy Weapon (Su): As a standard action, you can expend 1 point of mental focus and touch a weapon to grant it an enhancement bonus. The bonus is equal to 1 + 1 for every 6 occultist levels you possess (to a maximum of +4 at 18th level). Enhancement bonuses gained by this ability stack with those of the weapon, to a maximum of +5. You can also imbue the weapon with any one weapon special ability with an equivalent enhancement bonus less than or equal to your maximum bonus by reducing the granted enhancement bonus by the appropriate amount. The item must have an enhancement bonus of at least +1 (from the item itself or from legacy weapon) to gain a weapon special ability. In either case, these bonuses last for 1 minute.
A level 1 dip pretty much covers a lot of the things the silksworn loses, it gives it pretty good AC (and he can actually cast make armor), and the transmutation implement looks pretty effective with flurry.
Even going Occultist 1 / Monk 10 might be very viable, and might allow a monk to be able to have a bane weapon in every single fight.
Even without the monk thing, the occultist isn't actually losing that much, frankly a silksworn archer might be viable.
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If thats the problem, "the occultist instead gains conceal spell as a feat without meeting the pre reqs" would be an easy fix.
This would be super easy to implement. In the the additional resources there are already tons of examples of options that are legal with slight changes.
It could say "At 12th level a Silksworn gains the feat Conceal Spell as a bonus feat even if he does not meet the prerequisites, this replaces Silksworn Deception."
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A level 1 dip pretty much covers a lot of the things the silksworn loses, it gives it pretty good AC (and he can actually cast make armor), and the transmutation implement looks pretty effective with flurry.
Even going Occultist 1 / Monk 10 might be very viable, and might allow a monk to be able to have a bane weapon in every single fight.
Even without the monk thing, the occultist isn't actually losing that much, frankly a silksworn archer might be viable.
So, what makes the silksworn with a monk dip so much better than the normal occulist or a different archetype of occultist? Like if you want a bane weapon every fight going monk/reliquary occultist gets you your transmutation implement and your focus points off of wisdom. That should be enough for bane for every fight. Plus you're not a divine caster so no huge concentration penalty for casting in melee, and you get a domain and the domain spells added to your list, so now you're able to get divine favor if you wanted.
You'll need to show how this archetype does dips better than other archetypes to make the case that it might make for a reason that it was banned.
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For those convinced it's completely better than the standard occultist, why? What would you specifically do with this build that makes it dominant? Maybe not a full build, but the rough outlines of where you would go with it. I'm not seeing exactly where this outshines the standard occultist or all other occultist archetypes. I want to know what could be done, because right now I'm just seeing extra spells in exchange for almost all weapon and armor proficiency.
The scaled fist idea is interesting and does give some ways to get abilities back, but at the cost of a loss of spell/implement/mental focus progression. That's not an insubstantial loss. See: the entire conversation about prestigious spellcaster and/or prestige classes.
I think that the comparison to both Battlehost and Reliquarian is apt. These cases both drastically change the functioning of the class, to the point that they have very different base assumptions compared to the standard occultist. These archetypes are essentially mini hybrid classes for the occultist.
The level 12 ability is troubling, but I'm not sure if it's troubling enough to make this disruptive. Most of the current 12+ adventures don't have hugely social aspects to them. I don't want to close the doors on potential future 12+ game play, but I'm not convinced that this ability does the damage people would say it does. If it does - how many level 12 silksworn occultists are we going to see in play?
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For those convinced it's completely better than the standard occultist, why? What would you specifically do with this build that makes it dominant? Maybe not a full build, but the rough outlines of where you would go with it. I'm not seeing exactly where this outshines the standard occultist or all other occultist archetypes. I want to know what could be done, because right now I'm just seeing extra spells in exchange for almost all weapon and armor proficiency.
The scaled fist idea is interesting and does give some ways to get abilities back, but at the cost of a loss of spell/implement/mental focus progression. That's not an insubstantial loss. See: the entire conversation about prestigious spellcaster and/or prestige classes.
I think that the comparison to both Battlehost and Reliquarian is apt. These cases both drastically change the functioning of the class, to the point that they have very different base assumptions compared to the standard occultist. These archetypes are essentially mini hybrid classes for the occultist.
The level 12 ability is troubling, but I'm not sure if it's troubling enough to make this disruptive. Most of the current 12+ adventures don't have hugely social aspects to them. I don't want to close the doors on potential future 12+ game play, but I'm not convinced that this ability does the damage people would say it does. If it does - how many level 12 silksworn occultists are we going to see in play?
A Silksworn grants you more focus points than any other archetype if you don't play the goofy I need a large intelligence score game.. A martial character needs a ton of points hence the reason why you would go Silksworn.
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I spent some time last night trying to break it. I haven't played or built an occultist before so take it with a grain of salt, but at best, I was able to build one comparable in power to a bard. So no, I wasn't really able to break it, at least not so far.
So my guess is that the level 12 power is the sticking point. For whatever that's worth.
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A Silksworn grants you more focus points than any other archetype if you don't play the goofy I need a large intelligence score game.. A martial character needs a ton of points hence the reason why you would go Silksworn.
It gets you int plus cha. A character with starting 20 int and then prioritizing cha gets a stat array of 7/12/12/20/8/14 So to be able to get 2 points more of mental focus for a total of 7 from stats and you can't tank CHA and you have no physical stats.
Going 7/12/12/18/10/16 also gives you 7 points from stats and no physical stats.
A basic monk array of 18/12/14/12/14/7 winds up with -1 focus from stats.
A cha monk of 16/12/14/13/10/14 had 3 points.
A monk array of 16/12/14/12/16/7 with reliquary had 3 points.
So a big casting focused build can get an extra 2 focus points, equaling 1 feat, for the archetype and tanking physical stats. Otherwise your point buy is super MAD as you now need/want all stats, with the most likely dump stat to try dex based melee would be to tank wis for a reduced will save.
Also, don't forget that any dipping you need to do reduces your pool by 1. So a dipped silksworn x monk 1 with no physical powers has 1 extra point over a vanilla casting occultist.
But maybe I'm missing something here about how this makes for a clear upgrade over all other options to warrant a ban?
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For those convinced it's completely better than the standard occultist, why? What would you specifically do with this build that makes it dominant? Maybe not a full build, but the rough outlines of where you would go with it. I'm not seeing exactly where this outshines the standard occultist or all other occultist archetypes. I want to know what could be done, because right now I'm just seeing extra spells in exchange for almost all weapon and armor proficiency.
Armor proficiency (and arcane spell failure chance) is the only change I see as a mechanical negative for this class in PFS play. Weapon proficiency is a flavor negative but mechanically there's surprisingly little damage difference between a Morningstar and a Scimitar until you start stacking up tons of static damage and/or effects that trigger on a critical. (See other threads for math.)
Pretty much everything else is better than the base occultist.
- Implements - Better. You get two more, and therefore more spells known as well. You don't have to put focus into all of them; you could just put focus in two at first level like a base occultist, so it's strictly better than base.
- Cantrips/Knacks - a wash. They are 0-level spells.
- Mental Focus - Strictly better. The only way to have less than a base occultist is to dump Charisma.
- Outside Contact - traded for more spells. Better because the bargaining is so rarely used in PFS thanks to the time and cost required.
- Magic Circles - traded for Skill Focus: Bluff and Skill Focus: Diplomacy. Again, it's better because the base ability is so rarely used in PFS. (And if you really do want to use them, magic circle is a third level occultist spell.) The cost isn't bad either. You can have magical articles in all eight slots for less than 5,200 gp. You can have useful articles in all eight slots for 20-30,000 gp. And you'll really only need 6 until 10th level.
So you get more spells, more implements, more focus points, and bonuses to useful skills in return for no armor proficiency and a limited choice of weapons. Overall, I think that for the type of campaign PFS is, the silksworn is just better.
But, I still don't think it's particularly powerful compared to other classes.
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It's definitely a better caster than any other occultist. But having no armor and being reliant on CHA and INT makes it difficult to pull off any sort of melee capability.
Yes you get 2 more implements, but without focus those are just giving you more spell options. So yes this is better, losing out on armor for it is a clear swing. This archetype isn't a fighter and is a caster. Similar to how archetypes that lose a spell per spell level are less caster and more fighter.
mental focus, I wouldn't say strictly better. The stat points need to come from somewhere and if you're going to build a fighter occultist CHA is your dump stat. You have class features to make UMD not care about the penalty as much, and then the standard traits to make it use INT instead. I've seen 2 occultists in PFS play and I know that one of them was running the 7 cha, so he'd lose 2 points for this archetype.
Yes trading out outside contact and magic circles for anything PFS usable is an upgrade, similar to the other archetypes that the occultist has. Of the 2 I've seen, neither were without an archetype.
Plus needing to spend money just for your class features, while not huge and eventually able to use useful magic items, still is a drawback.
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Ever since Additional Resources was released on Saturday, I've been trying to find a way to make a Silksworn Occultist into a decent melee combatant for the modules my group is going to play on our train ride to PaizoCon later this month. I figure I may as well try something that isn't allowed in PFS for this home game. And I'm struggling to come up with a decent build because it's just so MAD. I just keep asking myself why I'm not just making a regular Occultist.
I don't think this archetype is any more powerful than a regular Occultist, but I will say that I wondered whether the following benefit would be an issue when I was speculating whether it would be allowed in PFS:
At 8th, 12th, and 16th levels, the silksworn increases the number of spells of each level he can cast each day by one.
Now, I've had GMs claim that the 6-level casters are actually more powerful than a wizard or witch 'cuz at higher levels they get 1 more 2nd or 3rd level spell than a wizard or witch gets. I think that's an incorrect viewpoint, but it's still out there. And this sort of bonus would just send those GMs into a tizzy. And you have to admit that it is a really nice bonus.
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I think the single biggest concern I would have with this archetype is how strong of a caster it is in terms of spells per day and available spells known. It really treads into uncharted territory for spont casting, which is funny to say given that the occultist as a base class was already uncharted territory. I mean, for comparison's sake, at level 8, ignoring attribute bonuses and FCBs:
Sorcerors know 1 4th (3/day), 2 3rd (5/day), 3 2nd (6/day), 5 1st (6/day), and 8 cantrips.
Bards know 3 3rd (2/day), 4 2nd (4/day), 5 1st (4/day), and 6 cantrips.
Occultists know 4 3rd (2/day), 4 2nd (4/day), 4 1st (4/day) and 4 cantrips.
Silksworn Occultists know 6 3rd (3/day), 6 2nd (5/day), 6 1st (5/day) and 6 cantrips.
That's a BIG jump.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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mental focus, I wouldn't say strictly better. The stat points need to come from somewhere and if you're going to build a fighter occultist CHA is your dump stat. You have class features to make UMD not care about the penalty as much, and then the standard traits to make it use INT instead. I've seen 2 occultists in PFS play and I know that one of them was running the 7 cha, so he'd lose 2 points for this archetype.
Why do you need to dump anything? Unless you want to ridiculously min max sure but you don't need to with the Occultist. I ended up with a stat array of 10 18 16 14 10 14 with the class at 5. If anything Id dump strength to end up with 7 18 18 14 12 14 as the array. And mind you that is just from the resonance and feats.
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You cannot just ignore the existence of stuff like FCB's as a factor.I think the single biggest concern I would have with this archetype is how strong of a caster it is in terms of spells per day and available spells known. It really treads into uncharted territory for spont casting, which is funny to say given that the occultist as a base class was already uncharted territory. I mean, for comparison's sake, at level 8, ignoring attribute bonuses and FCBs:
Sorcerors know 1 4th (3/day), 2 3rd (5/day), 3 2nd (6/day), 5 1st (6/day), and 8 cantrips.
Bards know 3 3rd (2/day), 4 2nd (4/day), 5 1st (4/day), and 6 cantrips.
Occultists know 4 3rd (2/day), 4 2nd (4/day), 4 1st (4/day) and 4 cantrips.
Silksworn Occultists know 6 3rd (3/day), 6 2nd (5/day), 6 1st (5/day) and 6 cantrips.
That's a BIG jump.
The issue I have here is two-fold - (1) that my point is based on the absolute base value for a character of that class level and (2) that the Occultist has a must-pick race set (elf, half-elf) for non-spell bonuses (super-powerful Mental Focus points), which you get more of with the archetype, while the sorceror and bard aren't guaranteed to be human/half-elf/half-orc for bonus spells known. Also, while it's perfectly reasonable to say that attribute bonuses are important, it's likely to benefit the 6 level casters more than the 9 level casters, with the sole exception of characters who pushed to 26 in their casting stat by level 8 for this example, where the sorceror gets 1 extra 4th level per day, but the bard and occultist haven't gotten 4th level spells yet.
It also has another limit. Spells from implement schools you do not have do not count as being on your spell list. This means no filling in stuff with pages of spell knowledge and it actually forces you to make some tricky decisions about what is important.
By the time you're looking to fill in gaps with pages of spell knowledge, you have 5-6 schools possible on the Silksworn Occultist. I'm not sure what your point is here given that there are 8 schools of magic available to the Occultist (no Universal for you!). When you get the final implement at level 18, you must have at least one school with multiple spells per level.
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Venture-Agent, Nebraska—Omaha
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Base occultists don't have the same relationship with scrolls and wands as other classes. Increasing the size of the spell list relaxes that limitation at early levels, and the Charisma focus makes auto-success on wands come on even earlier.
I would love to see this archetype in play, but can understand power concerns.
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mental focus, I wouldn't say strictly better. The stat points need to come from somewhere and if you're going to build a fighter occultist CHA is your dump stat. You have class features to make UMD not care about the penalty as much, and then the standard traits to make it use INT instead. I've seen 2 occultists in PFS play and I know that one of them was running the 7 cha, so he'd lose 2 points for this archetype.
Why do you need to dump anything? Unless you want to ridiculously min max sure but you don't need to with the Occultist. I ended up with a stat array of 10 18 16 14 10 14 with the class at 5. If anything Id dump strength to end up with 7 18 18 14 12 14 as the array. And mind you that is just from the resonance and feats.
How are you getting those stats with a 20 point buy? Assuming you get a +2 to 1 ability score from race, put your level 4 increase into the highest one, and get +2 from Transmutation resonance effect, I still can't see how you'd manage all that.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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How are you getting those stats with a 20 point buy? Assuming you get a +2 to 1 ability score from race, put your level 4 increase into the highest one, and get +2 from Transmutation resonance effect, I still can't see how you'd manage all that.mental focus, I wouldn't say strictly better. The stat points need to come from somewhere and if you're going to build a fighter occultist CHA is your dump stat. You have class features to make UMD not care about the penalty as much, and then the standard traits to make it use INT instead. I've seen 2 occultists in PFS play and I know that one of them was running the 7 cha, so he'd lose 2 points for this archetype.
Why do you need to dump anything? Unless you want to ridiculously min max sure but you don't need to with the Occultist. I ended up with a stat array of 10 18 16 14 10 14 with the class at 5. If anything Id dump strength to end up with 7 18 18 14 12 14 as the array. And mind you that is just from the resonance and feats.
I said feats of which Implement and Ability Mastery would give the missing +2.
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I just want to say congratulations to Isabelle for writing an archetype that was so rich in favor that a lot of us already had characters in mind for it. This was definitely out-of-the-box thinking.
Thank you so much!
I'll admit, I do feel a bit guilty about getting everyone excited for this archetype, since it was my writing and design choices that led to the concerns about power level. That's part of why I'm hoping it becomes available somehow. ^_^
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It also has another limit. Spells from implement schools you do not have do not count as being on your spell list. This means no filling in stuff with pages of spell knowledge and it actually forces you to make some tricky decisions about what is important.By the time you're looking to fill in gaps with pages of spell knowledge, you have 5-6 schools possible on the Silksworn Occultist. I'm not sure what your point is here given that there are 8 schools of magic available to the Occultist (no Universal for you!). When you get the final implement at level 18, you must have at least one school with multiple spells per level.
I believe the issue here is that, for the occultist, only the spells he's specifically chosen via his implement schools appear on his class spell list.
Each implement school adds one spell per spell level of that school of magic to the occultist's spell list.
With that in mind, a page of spell knowledge doesn't give the occultist any benefit - he already knows the few spells on his spell list.
Base occultists don't have the same relationship with scrolls and wands as other classes. Increasing the size of the spell list relaxes that limitation at early levels, and the Charisma focus makes auto-success on wands come on even earlier.
I would love to see this archetype in play, but can understand power concerns.
I'm having trouble understanding how "I can use six different scrolls" is that much more impressive than "I can use four different scrolls", compared to every other character's ability to use every scroll on their class's list (even before they can cast spells in some cases). Especially since the silksworn can't use scrolls to patch gaps in his known spells, as any other caster could.
Is it an advantage? I suppose. But it seems like a very, very minor advantage to ban the archetype over.
As for the Charisma focus, the silksworn doesn't get any specific advantage with UMD that I know of - a normal occultist could just put more points in Charisma and gain that same benefit. As someone known for building 16-Charisma barbarians, it's completely doable. ^_^
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How are you getting those stats with a 20 point buy? Assuming you get a +2 to 1 ability score from race, put your level 4 increase into the highest one, and get +2 from Transmutation resonance effect, I still can't see how you'd manage all that.mental focus, I wouldn't say strictly better. The stat points need to come from somewhere and if you're going to build a fighter occultist CHA is your dump stat. You have class features to make UMD not care about the penalty as much, and then the standard traits to make it use INT instead. I've seen 2 occultists in PFS play and I know that one of them was running the 7 cha, so he'd lose 2 points for this archetype.
Why do you need to dump anything? Unless you want to ridiculously min max sure but you don't need to with the Occultist. I ended up with a stat array of 10 18 16 14 10 14 with the class at 5. If anything Id dump strength to end up with 7 18 18 14 12 14 as the array. And mind you that is just from the resonance and feats.
I said feats of which Implement and Ability Mastery would give the missing +2.
Even if the math works out, that's still something most characters could access. I'll also note that this cost you at least one feat, plus the purchase of a magic item suitable for Ability Mastery. That's not exactly free.
On top of that, while your Dexterity and Constitution are very impressive, a 14 in a spellcasting-focused character's casting stat is generally considered less-than-broken. Between that and the 14 in Charisma, I'm not really sure what you're actually getting from silksworn, other than a significantly heightened interest in the mage armor spell. ^_^
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It also has another limit. Spells from implement schools you do not have do not count as being on your spell list. This means no filling in stuff with pages of spell knowledge and it actually forces you to make some tricky decisions about what is important.By the time you're looking to fill in gaps with pages of spell knowledge, you have 5-6 schools possible on the Silksworn Occultist. I'm not sure what your point is here given that there are 8 schools of magic available to the Occultist (no Universal for you!). When you get the final implement at level 18, you must have at least one school with multiple spells per level.I believe the issue here is that, for the occultist, only the spells he's specifically chosen via his implement schools appear on his class spell list.
Each implement school adds one spell per spell level of that school of magic to the occultist's spell list.With that in mind, a page of spell knowledge doesn't give the occultist any benefit - he already knows the few spells on his spell list.
I'm not seeing where your quote came from, but the Spells entry has this:
The occultist's selection of spells is limited. For each implement school he learns to use, he can add one spell of each level he can cast to his list of spells known, chosen from that school's spell list.
That indicates to me that your spell list is equal to any spell of a school for which you have an implement, while your spells known are equal to your total number of implements, further limited to 1 per implement school per level.
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Didn't level and play my own occultist yet, but the class gets early access to certain spells, could that maybe have been a factor ?
Having looked over the occultist's spell list, I'm not sure which spells you're referring to. Everything I found on a quick skim is at the same spell level as the wizardly equivalent, meaning that occultists get it later.
Even the bard (one of the better comparisons to the silksworn occultist) gets a lot of enchantment spells early. Hideous laughter as a 1st-level spell seems very good. (Plus unnatural lust, the filthy deviants.)
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The issue I have here is two-fold - (1) that my point is based on the absolute base value for a character of that class level and (2) that the Occultist has a must-pick race set (elf, half-elf) for non-spell bonuses (super-powerful Mental Focus points), which you get more of with the archetype, while the sorceror and bard aren't guaranteed to be human/half-elf/half-orc for bonus spells known.
A point of mental focus every other level seems less impressive than a new spell known at every level, to be honest. It hardly seems like an "absolute must-have" to me. If anything, based on my own testing, I'd rather be human for the extra focus power every six levels.
Interestingly, I don't think I've yet seen a single human or half-elf concept. Two ratfolk, two gnomes, and two changelings (counting my own).
Also, while it's perfectly reasonable to say that attribute bonuses are important, it's likely to benefit the 6 level casters more than the 9 level casters, with the sole exception of characters who pushed to 26 in their casting stat by level 8 for this example, where the sorceror gets 1 extra 4th level per day, but the bard and occultist haven't gotten 4th level spells yet.
I'm not entirely sure what point you're making here; could you help me understand?
The nine-level casters will still have higher-level spells, and more spells overall. And many of the other six-level casters gain spells early (such as the aforementioned bard), have other advantages to their spellcasting (such as the magus's spell combat), or have particularly vigorous combat advantages (such as the inquisitor's judgments and bane or the summoner's eidolon).
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It's as much an "upgrade" as battle host. Battle host trades away utility and spells for extra combat focus. This archetype is the same yet opposite, giving away martial power for spells. I definitely wouldn't count that as an upgrade or mandatory. It's similar to making a melee sorcerer via DD. Sure you can do it and it works, but it's a major change from the normal view of the class.
Battle host is exactly what I was looking at when writing it, with the goal of making a thematic mirror of that archetype.
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If thats the problem, "the occultist instead gains conceal spell as a feat without meeting the pre reqs" would be an easy fix.This would be super easy to implement. In the the additional resources there are already tons of examples of options that are legal with slight changes.
It could say "At 12th level a Silksworn gains the feat Conceal Spell as a bonus feat even if he does not meet the prerequisites, this replaces Silksworn Deception."
For the record, my concern is more with legalizing the concept than all of the specific mechanics.
If a Campaign Clarification would help give people the chance to play their silksworn concepts, I'd love to see one made. And if my participation would help positively influence the result, I'd eagerly work with Campaign Leadership to make it happen. ^_^
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Venture-Captain, North Carolina—Central Region
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It also has another limit. Spells from implement schools you do not have do not count as being on your spell list. This means no filling in stuff with pages of spell knowledge and it actually forces you to make some tricky decisions about what is important.By the time you're looking to fill in gaps with pages of spell knowledge, you have 5-6 schools possible on the Silksworn Occultist. I'm not sure what your point is here given that there are 8 schools of magic available to the Occultist (no Universal for you!). When you get the final implement at level 18, you must have at least one school with multiple spells per level.I believe the issue here is that, for the occultist, only the spells he's specifically chosen via his implement schools appear on his class spell list.
Each implement school adds one spell per spell level of that school of magic to the occultist's spell list.With that in mind, a page of spell knowledge doesn't give the occultist any benefit - he already knows the few spells on his spell list.
I think Serisan's point (and one that seems to be a common viewpoint in occultist discussions I've seen), is the lines following your quote:
No spells from any other school are considered to be on the occultist's spell list until he selects the associated implement school. He can't use spell trigger or spell completion magic items from unknown schools without succeeding at the appropriate Use Magic Device check. An occultist can select an implement school more than once in order to learn additional spells from the associated school.
This seems to imply that once you choose a school, all of the school is on your list, but you only know the specific chosen spells. I can also see your point, so it could definitely be clearer.
As for the archetype itself, I've liked since I read it, partly because it's even easier to base a character's flavor around than the already malleable occultist. A ratfolk inspired blade\silksworn Prophet of Kalistrade using the art from Inner Sea Races, a Qadiran trade prince (or princess) so in tune with money they've learned to draw power from opulence, or a would-be wizard with an unusually strong talent for embroider-mancy... All ideas I've been considering.
As for making the archetype available via a scenario, that could be relatively easy. The Society sends a team to make an alliance with a small but powerful group that happens to harbor a new style of magic, possibly at the behest of the Exchange (if they're of a mercantile bent) or the Sovereign Court (if more politically influential). A particularly reclusive sect of Prophets of Kalistrade, members of the Way of the Kirin (to bring back that storyline), part of one of the elemental courts (to tie it to this season), or even one of the vampire nobles from Ustalav would make solid choices, and explain why this style of magic isn't more well known across the Inner Sea.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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Didn't level and play my own occultist yet, but the class gets early access to certain spells, could that maybe have been a factor ?Having looked over the occultist's spell list, I'm not sure which spells you're referring to. Everything I found on a quick skim is at the same spell level as the wizardly equivalent, meaning that occultists get it later.
Even the bard (one of the better comparisons to the silksworn occultist) gets a lot of enchantment spells early. Hideous laughter as a 1st-level spell seems very good. (Plus unnatural lust, the filthy deviants.)
No they are right. You gain access to sort of Haste and sort of Dispel Magic at the level a wizard gets those spells. And even base Occultist are pretty spammy with those spells. I can cast haste 8 or 9 times by the time the Bard gets access to it.
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You gain access to sort of Haste and sort of Dispel Magic at the level a wizard gets those spells. And even base Occultist are pretty spammy with those spells. I can cast haste 8 or 9 times by the time the Bard gets access to it.
I'm afraid that's not quite accurate. You can't "cast haste eight or nine times". You can haste a single person - hardly the same. And the touch range makes things even riskier and more inconvenient.
At the very least, let me assure you that there is a very real difference between hasting one person and hasting seven at once. ^_^
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Yeah, looking it over, the implements section that Isabelle quoted does say that only the spells chosen go onto your spell list. But then when talking about UMD needs it says for schools you haven't picked, which implies that schools you did pick wouldn't need UMD to use. Also in the spells section when it talks about switching your spells known it doesn't mention anything about switching up your spell list.
My guess is that the occultist can use scrolls from schools he knows without UMD. But it easy to see how if you think they they couldn't how silksworn gains far less than if they can.
I think only having the 1 spell per list known is bad. Like haste and fly are the same list, so you need that implement twice if you want both spells, while any other spontaneous caster could choose both as their spells known no problem.
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How are you getting those stats with a 20 point buy? Assuming you get a +2 to 1 ability score from race, put your level 4 increase into the highest one, and get +2 from Transmutation resonance effect, I still can't see how you'd manage all that.mental focus, I wouldn't say strictly better. The stat points need to come from somewhere and if you're going to build a fighter occultist CHA is your dump stat. You have class features to make UMD not care about the penalty as much, and then the standard traits to make it use INT instead. I've seen 2 occultists in PFS play and I know that one of them was running the 7 cha, so he'd lose 2 points for this archetype.
Why do you need to dump anything? Unless you want to ridiculously min max sure but you don't need to with the Occultist. I ended up with a stat array of 10 18 16 14 10 14 with the class at 5. If anything Id dump strength to end up with 7 18 18 14 12 14 as the array. And mind you that is just from the resonance and feats.
I said feats of which Implement and Ability Mastery would give the missing +2.
so stats of 10 18 16 14 10 14. at lv5 you've used 1 of your feats to get this. You'll need another feat for weapon finesse, and it looks like you'll be needing an agile weapon or required human to pull off one of the dex to damage options. And you have 4 mental focus from stats. Your AC is at +8 with mage armor, same as if you had non-magic chainshirt.
A normal occultist can do a stat array of 10/18/16/14/10/10 not needing ability mastery and can use that feat for extra mental focus. Now his AC is the same or better cause he could have a +1 chainshirt by lv5. His mental focus is the same. I don't need to spend 1 or 2 spells a day on mage armor, nor need it as my spell known. Which effectively make it so you only have 1 spell known over me. And I have better weapons to pick from. Also I've opened up CHA as a dump stat if one wanted.
Or I could go str based 17/14/16/14/12/7 and use the lv4 bump into str for an 18. Now I don't need weapon finesse to work, so I can afford extra focus again, putting me at +6 focus, 2 more over your build. My mithral breastplate gives be the same AC, and can be magic, and I can afford it cause I didn't need to buy an agile weapon.
So what is the silksworn getting you other than a lower AC and worse weapons, and more expensive AC options equating to lower AC, and requiring you to spend extra feats or money to make the build compare to the base version of the class at combat?
EDIT:
My point is to show that it's not a universal upgrade. Yes, you could take this casting focused archetype and make it do weapon combat. Just like you could take a sorcerer or arcanist and make it do combat. And yes, these three options all have ways of making a decent combat character at the expense of spell power. But it's not going to be comparing to versions that don't dump combat power for spellcasting. And this isn't even comparing to the 2 legal archetypes that do combat even better than the base class.
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Also, just to restate an earlier point: I'd like to thank everyone who's participating in this discussion. Not just the folks in favor of legalization, but those probing and critiquing the idea as well - such arguments are important to making sure that this reconsideration is thorough, defensible, and well-reasoned. ^_^
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For the record, my concern is more with legalizing the concept than all of the specific mechanics.
While some options get booted for (usually evil) flavor, unless someone is REALLY mad about that time their SO made them walk around the mall with 47 bags of clothes or had a traumatic fashion runway incident I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there's a mechanical problem.
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While some options get booted for (usually evil) flavor, unless someone is REALLY mad about that time their SO made them walk around the mall with 47 bags of clothes or had a traumatic fashion runway incident I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there's a mechanical problem.For the record, my concern is more with legalizing the concept than all of the specific mechanics.
Oh, I don't think anyone's questioning that. My whole point was "If it takes mechanical tweaks via Clarification to get this thing to the table, I'm all for it." If the 12th-level power needs to go, for example, that's fine by me. ^_^
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Some other tweaks could be.
For the free 2 "skill focuses" change it so you need to pick one or the other?
For the bonus spell slots, change it to a free spell focus feat?
Like besides the point I bring up that it's hard to find a solution when we don't actually know the problem, the other issue coming up is being unsure what is valid options to make legal. Is changing an ability or two in CC actually an option they'd be willing to take? Like it does change it so what's in the book isn't what's at the table. But I feel they've done it before where they've made tweaks to legal stuff for making it legal. So it's all just shotgunning out ideas to hope that 1 pellet is actually close to the target to maybe get considered for changing things.
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You gain access to sort of Haste and sort of Dispel Magic at the level a wizard gets those spells. And even base Occultist are pretty spammy with those spells. I can cast haste 8 or 9 times by the time the Bard gets access to it.I'm afraid that's not quite accurate. You can't "cast haste eight or nine times". You can haste a single person - hardly the same. And the touch range makes things even riskier and more inconvenient.
At the very least, let me assure you that there is a very real difference between hasting one person and hasting seven at once. ^_^
That's something that I also deeply considered; there's a lot of focus powers that buff people pretty well, esp in transmutation. However, they require touch range which is either 1) cooperation from the melee hitter to wait a couple rounds for buffing, 2) advance notice, or 3) wandering super close to melee with limited defenses. It's definitely something to keep in mind (especially with, say, legacy weapon) but I think that the mechanics are hard to pull off.
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I have a few ideas of my own. For example... if I had had the words to do it in the original version, I would have cut their base attack bonus down to wizard levels. That would help differentiate them from the regular occultist. Or if the school access is too vigorous for Leadership's taste, cut their first-level access from four schools to three. These are simple, easy to implement, and efficient.
But as noted, we don't know the problem we need to fix.
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Though, when it comes to questions of "oh no extra spells", there are options that give extra spells known that are already legal. For example, for a feat, you can just take expanded arcana.
It's hard to know why this was banned, to the point that it seems like grasping at straws. My best ideas are:
1) 4 spell schools at level 1
2) Hidden Casting at level 12
3) Uncertain interactions with panoply (which were also legalized during this AR go-around).
If it's 1 - well, I'm not quite sure if there's any fix for that. If it's 2 - well, that's seeker level range AND the suggested CC "fix" of "replace with conceal spell feat" seems reasonable. If it's 3 - the silksworn can't take those because of how their implements are chosen.
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I suspect it is not one class feature but the sum of all the parts being better at a relatively low cost.
Also seeker level range stuff won't be brushed off in the discussion (as evidenced by an Evangelist discussion a while ago.) There is more opportunity to play in that tier now than before too.
A loss of bab would be an actual cost to the archetype. Proficiency just typically isn't since it is really easy to get back.
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I suspect it is not one class feature but the sum of all the parts being better at a relatively low cost.
Can you explain more of what you mean here? What do you mean by, "all the part being better"?
As far as I see the only thing better is
-effectively maybe getting 1 feat free of extra mental focus via CHA.
-more versatility by knowing a few more spells.
then eventually
-bonus to 2 skills
-extra spells per day
-hidden casting.
yes they are nice things, for a caster focused build, but I don't see how this has gotten better at combat or survivability.
Is it a better caster than original yes, just like other archetypes make it a better warrior than the original. It's doing what an archetype does, same relative power, more focused on a certain aspect.