Introduction
So, Hall Kennette is a prolific author that has been kind of focusing on Akashic magic supplements. He has a Patreon where he publishes his designs, and he compiles this material monthly normally with a thematic motif. This is the result.
What’s inside?: 20 pages for 5 buck, which includes:
-8 archetypes: The Mycomancer Druid loses a lot of class-defining features to focus on a kind of fungal necromancy, using the new monster in this book, the corpsemold, which basically mimics the real-world zombie fungus; among its other abilities, the Mycomancer can become an undead-like creature, resist decay, animate dead and the like. A really cool take on an not-that-uncommon variant for the druid. Another common trope is the Dirge Bard, for the Legendary Bard class, which again has a necromancy-motif and includes two new bardic performances: Symphony of Souls and Panicked Allegro.
Continuing with the Legendary classes, we have the Tome of the Puppetmaster for Legendary Magus; these morbid Magi animate corpses but not with necromancy (more like animated objects), which is a great way to scare undead hunters. They can even “spellstrike” through them! Another awesome archetype! Speaking of awesome, they have an ability called Master of Puppets, so it automatically gets the horns and a headband from this metalhead. Pale Mages is the archetype for Legendary Wizards; they bond with a force called “The Pale”, being healed by both positive and negative energy and affected by it as if they were a living and undeath creature. They also add A LOT of cleric spells to their spell list, mostly healing/harm spells and spells that restore life and create undead; they don’t know them automatically, but can add them to their spellbooks by copying them from other Pale Mage spellbooks and scrolls, or by leveling up. They get other cool abilities like being treated as undead by the unliving, able to turn/command undead more times per day, and get some iconic uses of Kn. Religion that should be available to other characters and finally gaining some of the unliving’s immunities. Good one too even if standing on the necrocleric’s toes!
The next two are archetypes for the Monk (not the unchained one). Astral Selves are Akashic Monks that master the new Astral Pugilism veil and the Forcestrike Knuckles veil. This complex veil takes a page, and gives you unarmed abilities that count as magic, lets you “throw” unarmed attacks and even create a clone of astral energy that explodes when bound to the body. The rest of the abilities basically are just renames and can also affect your copies. The Guided Soul Monk is the second one and this time is a Charisma-based, ancestral spirit-flavored hack of the base class. It uses light armor but loses AC bonuses, doesn’t deal extra damage when leveling up (apparently dealing 1d3 damage), but their flurry’s extra attacks are physically damaging touch attacks that deal “aging” damage that bypasses all form of damage reduction but doesn’t affect creatures that are immune to magical aging… and deals 1d6 for every odd level. Thanks god it’s not multiplied on crits, but man this is too strong. I would reduce the damage to 1d6 plus 1d6 for every 4 levels. There are other abilities that are equally cool but pale in power to the flurry of unresistable damage. The archetype is damn cool to be sure, but the flurry is just to stronk IMHO.
The Specter is the archetype for both Rogues, chained or not, and converts the class into a supernatural one. They lose evasion and master strike in exchange for the ability to become kind of ethereal for a couple of rounds per day. They can improve this form with 7 archetype-exclusive Rogue Talents, which make me think that it would have been better as an alternate class or even a new one. To finish the class options section, we get the Machinist Sorcerer bloodline. This one uses the two other new veils, Machinist’s Pile Bunker and Machinist’s Powered Armor. At first you can only shape one but gain essence (up to 10) to empower it, and later you treat them as bound and also increase their essence capacity, and you also get special synergy when both are shaped. Another cool one!
-The Akashic version of the Vitalist: As you probably may know, the Vitalist is a Psionic class, but here we find an Akashic version. Their veilweaving is great, getting up to 10 veils (using the Radiant veil list) and 6 binds, with the same essence progressions of Viziers/Radiants. They can still gain Psionic Focus even when they lose all psionic manifesting. There is a problem with using the Radiant’s veil list and giving them 10 veils, and that is that they only get 6 slots in their list. There are a few veils that can be shaped in other slots, and Twin Veil is a thing, but I don’t think they get veils for all slots. There are Akashic variants for all Vitalist methods. While I like the Radiant and the Vitalist, I think they are too similar already to need this variant. All in all an interesting hack that maybe would have worked better as a hybrid class.
-1 Feat: Precision Veil Breaking is a powerful anti-veil feat that adds all the damage from one round of your attacks together, to see if you successfully sunder a veil. Very nice especially with all those Enhanced-veil-clad warriors out there.
-2 Prestige Classes: Machine Scion is a class that uses the Machinist bloodline, and synergizes with it but otherwise doesn’t require it. It works like the Evangelist PrC, even mentioning it in a copy/paste error. It… is not really that interesting, giving you ability bonuses, natural armor and blindsense, but nothing exclusive. The Veilbreaker is good for anti-Akashic characters and requires Essence Rejection. It only has 5 levels, has a warrior chassis with all good saves, gets the new feat as a bonus, increased power for the Essence Rejection feat, get even more powerful saves against veils and even evasion/mettle against them, and can even sunder essence, becoming a nightmare for veilweavers.
-Optional Ruling: This one works with the popular Enhanced descriptor. It’s basically just a modification of some favored class bonuses for the Eclipse class and some extra options for Fisherkings, Nexus and Viziers.
-4 Veils: Ablation Field is reprinted from Arcforge since one of the classes uses it, and I already talked about Astral Pugilism, that leaves us with two more, Machinist’s veil. Pile Bunker is a hands/wrists veil that gives you a pair of weapons that kind of work like punching daggers; each one can store up to your maximum essence capacity times 3, and generate one charge per point of essence invested. The base veil’s effect let you spend charges after hitting your foe, and give you 1d6 damage per charge! At top level, a fully charged attack could basically do 24d6 guaranteed bonus damage! And make that double since each hand stores energy separately. AND you get to improve the die when you crit to d12! Thanks but no thanks. The binds of the veil let you spend charges to do other effects. Cool veil but the damage is too much IMHO. Powered Armor is a shoulders veil that creates a retractable full plate armor basically made of mithral; with essence, you can reduce the armor check penalty and increase the maximum dexterity bonus per point of essence, and even increases your speed with enough essence! The shoulders bind lets you fly with it. Normally, armor veils occupy chest slots though. I don’t know, but I imagine all agile warriors shaping this veil via the Shape Veil feat.
-1 Monster and Template: The Corpse Mold is an intelligent plant that can animate corpses, with an accompanying template, Mold Zombie. This is not only here to complement the Mycomancer, it is a cool monster that can be the focus of a campaign!
Of Note: The archetypes are really cool! Nice takes on old tropes, specially the corpse puppeteer. And the monster is awesome!
Anything wrong?: “Aging” damage, while cool, is too powerful to give in those quantities. The power level of the veils and some archetypes is too much in my opinion. All veils have to take into account that anyone can shape them, and most probably bind, with but a feat or two.
What I want: I think the Machinist’s veils and bloodline would have worked better for a Bloodrager, so a version of the bloodline would have been great.
What cool things did this inspire?: Mold from Out of Space (TM). An adventure for undead hunters that have no clue on how to deal with these bizarre zombies (insert devil emoji).
Do I recommend it?: The strongest section is the archetypes one, so if you have access to those books from Legendary Games, then yeah. If not, the other archetypes and monster make up for it. However, the bloodline, Vitalist and veils are not my cup of tea. This is volume has some of my favorite and least favorite options in the line, so I think I will give this one a 4, but subtract 1 star if you don’t have access to all the books supplemented.