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Ascension Games is announcing our next book, Paths of Magic, a new content expansion for Pathfinder 1st Edition! This book serves not only as a compilation of the three paths of Shadows, Iron, and Wilds, but also an expansion on all three books. Just about everything is returning from our three 1st edition products, and getting a thorough evaluation and re-balance based on the years of updates Pathfinder has seen since their initial release. We’re talking new saboteur tricks, more invoker spirits, new rune magic scripts, new spells, more technique feats: you name it, it’s getting new content!
But what’s key about today’s announcement is that we’re doing a playtest of two new additions to the Ascension Games’ roster: the cabalist, and the shaper. On top of that, the nightblade is seeing some major revisions, and will be getting its own playtest! A lot has changed since the nightblade was first released over five years ago, and it’s time that it got a fresh coat of paint.
The playtest will run for eight weeks, from September 25th - November 20th. You can check out all three documents on Google Drive below:
-The Ultimate Nightblade
-The Cabalist
-The Shaper
There will also be a running update document to detail any major changes that occur during the playtest. You are welcome to add comments to the documents directly, or you can share your thoughts here in this thread (or on Giant in the Playground or Reddit). Alternatively, if you’d rather send us feedback directly, feel free to use the contact form on the Ascension Games website.
This project has been a long time in the making, and serves as a capstone on our products for Pathfinder 1st Edition. I want to make this book a spectacular send-off to a fantastic game, and I’ll need as much help as I can get to bring Paths of Magic to the quality that you all deserve.
I hope you’re all as excited as I am for Paths of Magic!
Chris Moore,
Lead Designer
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We're one month into the Paths of Magic playtest, and could use some more feedback! Every bit of info helps, even if all you have to say is "Looks great!".
The playtest has also had a few minor revisions, bringing it to v1.1. This primarily consisted of typo and minor error fixes. The nightblade's umbral spells have also been updated to more logically use the new shadowmorph descriptor. You can see the revisions here.
In the meantime, you can check out the first of our development updates for Paths of Magic, starting with the saboteur! You can check it out on the Ascension Games blog.
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Good to have some free Paths of Magic playtestin' stuff for PF1e. :)
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IMO, not playtested:
The nightblade's shadow surge notes visible effects, but not how noticeable those are. Can anyone in the know tell a nightblade on sight, or might some roll be required?
The ebon craft art has what seems to be a lot of redundant text, given that it can only be used for craft magic arms and armor or for craft wondrous item. Also I'm halfway surprised that the path of the darkened fortress makes no reference to it, can't work with or expand it or something.
Many of the nightblade abilities reference dim light as something absolute. This is something which varies depending on any low-light or similar vision of any person(s) perceiving. Edit: There's a FAQ on that admittedly. It might bear repeating.
The path of eternal night doesn't actually break if you carry a bag of rats to kill with it, but it does get decidedly better.
Just wondering whether the black beast 1-only restriction trumps the penumbra and antumbra arts ability to duplicate a shadow, or vice versa. Black beast isn't a spell.
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IMO, not playtested:
The nightblade's shadow surge notes visible effects, but not how noticeable those are. Can anyone in the know tell a nightblade on sight, or might some roll be required?
That's a fair point, given the description. I should either add in a way to ID the effect or make it not noticeable to observers (probably a better idea; hard to be a good assassin if people can tell that you have shadow powers at a glance).
The ebon craft art has what seems to be a lot of redundant text, given that it can only be used for craft magic arms and armor or for craft wondrous item. Also I'm halfway surprised that the path of the darkened fortress makes no reference to it, can't work with or expand it or something.
The reduction in crafting requirement can apply to other creation feats like Forge Ring.
Ebon Craft was the 5th-level technique for Darkened Fortress in the original print of Path of Shadows. I moved it to a general art to not force Fortress nightblades to have mandatory crafting feats, since not all campaigns will have the time.
Many of the nightblade abilities reference dim light as something absolute. This is something which varies depending on any low-light or similar vision of any person(s) perceiving.Edit: There's a FAQ on that admittedly. It might bear repeating.
I could, but I'd like to avoid repeating the FAQ.
The path of eternal night doesn't actually break if you carry a bag of rats to kill with it, but it does get decidedly better.
How so? Powered by Death would stop working past 2nd level or so and the health leech from corrupting feast doesn't stack. The only art that could be exploited at higher level is Grave Walker, from what I can see.
Just wondering whether the black beast 1-only restriction trumps the penumbra and antumbra arts ability to duplicate a shadow, or vice versa. Black beast isn't a spell.
Penumbra and Antumbra lets you benefit from more than one shadowmorph at once, but does not supersede Black Beast's limit on only 1 summoned at a time (that is a function of Black Beast specifically).
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The Paths of Magic playtest has about two weeks left, and has just received a final update! This update includes big changes to some core features of the classes, including the cabalist's ritual magic and the shaper's void, along with some updates to the new Umbral Host nightblade path.
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After a solid eight weeks of testing, the Paths of Magic playtest is finally over! Well, sort of. While this is the official “end” of the playtest, all of the documents will remain publicly available on Google Drive, and the discussion thread here will remain open for any feedback you'd like to share.
Of course, this is only the beginning for Paths of Magic. There’s still quite a bit to be done (early 2021 release, ideally), and we’ll be giving out updates along the way! Every two weeks or so we’ll be making progress updates, developer musings, and more on the Ascension Games’ blog. If you want to keep up with the development progress, you can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter to see updates as we post them.
Thank you to everyone that participated in the playtest; your feedback has been a great help. Until next time!
Chris Moore
Lead Designer