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Some are born with power, some gain power through study and careful application of intellect, and some gain power through force of will or faithful prayer. Then there are those who are willing to pay for power, to gain what they want by bargaining with beings great and terrible from realms beyond the mortal plane.
Pactbounds are the last of these. They have some inherent power, but their desire for more calls them to make a pact with a planar emissary to gain a connection to that plane that enhances their power and grants them the ability to call upon spirits of that plane to aid them by sacrificing the power of their very soul.
So, I've been working on this content on the side while working on Shards of Power and Whispers of Immortality and its finally ready for playtesting!
(Note: All AI art are placeholders while I wait for the artist I worked with on Shards of Power and Whispers of Immortality to work their magic.)
Pactbound is a full 20 level base class for Pathfinder 1e that uses the Akashic Magic subsystem from Dreamscarred Press. The class relies on the player devoting themselves to powerful extraplanar beings, be they Deities, Elementals, Fey, or otherwise to make Pacts. This allows them access to akshic veils and the ability to summon spirits from their pact.
Inside you can find:
- -The Pactbound- a full 20 level class
- -6 Pacts- including Astral, Celestial, and Draconic, with their associated spirits
- -2 Archetypes- the Pactblade (a PoW initiation archetype that gains access to disciplines based off their pact) and the Hexbound (a brand and hex using pactbound that weakens enemies)
Playtest Doc can be found Here!
__**--Pactbound Changelog--**__
Hey all, lots of things were suggested and changes were made. Here is a list of some of the things that occurred! As always, thank you for your feedback and please continue to give it!
**Suggestions**
-Move HD up to d8, Move BaB to 3/4,
-remove ability to burn essence as part of base planar detonation ability to increase damage and ability to add planar detonation to enahnced weapon veils in favor of planar manipulations
-Suggest adding planar manipulations and Manipulated Augmentation class abilities similar to Retold Nexus <@465545678312177664>
-add favored class bonus for all races to gain addtional manipulation points.
-Allow Mind Rush Astral Pact planar augmentation to trip enemies if moved more than 10ft.
-remove 1/day restriction from Death pact's I am Become Death Covenance
-Move Pactblade BaB to full and HD to d10
-suggested altered planar manipulations for pactblade
-suggested altered planar manipulation for hexbound
**Changes:**
-Moved Imp Essence Capacity to right place and included on class table.
-altered Favored class bonuses.
-Changed wording of Planar Armaments to clarify effects related to feats and abilities.
-Clarified Hexbound's max essence pool.
-Altered wording of hexbound's Eldritch Detonation for clarity.
New art added from the lovely Ciara Taylor, who I have worked with previously on the releases for Shards of Power and Whispers of Immortality.
Got a few more suggestions and some of the old ones were accepted!
-Suggestions Made-
- Move HD up to d8, Move BaB to 3/4
- Allow Mind Rush Astral Pact planar augmentation to trip enemies if moved more than 10ft.
- remove 1/day restriction from Death pact's I am Become Death Covenance
- Move Pactblade BaB to full and HD to d10
-Changes Made-
- May now choose from either daevic or lunar veil lists for veils known
- removed ability to burn essence as part of base planar detonation ability to increase damage and ability to add planar detonation to enahnced weapon veils in favor of planar manipulations
- added planar manipulations and Manipulated Augmentation class abilities similar to Retold Nexus
- added favored class bonus for all races to gain additional manipulation points.
- added altered planar manipulations for pactblade
- added altered planar manipulation for hexbound
Whoo, big suggestions were brought up and lots of changes were accepted. Here is a list of some of the things that occurred! As always, thank you for your feedback and please continue to give it!
Suggestions Made
- Fundamentally changed how spirits progress to bring in line with other things like eidolons
- Create table with linear HD progression and progression of abilities similar to Eidolon/phantoms
- Restructure spirit skill and feat progression
- Change spirit spell-like ability caster level to HD
Changes Made
- remove extraneous text for weapons and attacks
- standardize feat progression for spirits
- Mind rush from astral pact now trips
These suggestions and changes were so large they bumped the page count from 72 pages to 75!
More tweaks were suggested and a few other things. Below are the changes and suggestions made. As always, thank you for your feedback and please continue to give it!
Also, Just a note since its been brought up: this class is in no way connected to the Pact Magic content released by Radiance House and uses none of that content. It is a class based around Dreamscarred Press's Akashic Magic system with an archetype that uses Path of War system content.
Suggestions Made
- move blurb about spirits not being able to be summoned while other summoned features are out to the Pact Spirits Section
- further clarify pact spirit abilities
- bring Guardian Spirit BaB up to match HD (+15 level 20)
- bring Theurge spirit BaB up to be 3/4 of their HD (+11 at level 20)
Changes Made
- Create an official Pact Spirits section in the Paths to Power area
- add note from author about pact spirits
- clarify soulforge forged soul interactions for spirits, action required to summon pact spirits, and how essence invested in the pact applies to pact spirits and how its split across multiple spirits.
- Clarified Draconic Pact's Husk of the Dragon pact defense ability and its effects.
Some of the previous suggestions were accepted after deliberation. As always, thank you for your feedback and please continue to give it!
Changes Made
- -move blurb about spirits not being able to be summoned while other summoned features are out to the Pact Spirits Section
- -further clarify pact spirit abilities
- -bring Guardian Spirit BaB up to match HD (+15 level 20)
- -bring Theurge spirit BaB up to be 3/4 of their HD (+11 at level 20)
- -altered spirits to remove unecessary info about HD, Skill points, and BaB (given there is now a table with that info before the pacts)
- -clarify info about spirit caster level for their spell-like abilities and special qualities.
- -fix formatting issues caused by altering content
Altered a few things to make the Favored Class Bonuses more balanced. As always, thank you for your feedback and please continue to give it!
Changes Made
- -edited dhampir FCB to affect death and necromancy veils, removed darkness
- -edited elf FCB, removing limit of just unicorns comparison set
- -edited human FCB to grant veils known instead of adding pact veils
- -clarified effects of kitsune FCB
Good to have some free peepin's of them Pactbound Akashic Binder stuff out there to be viewin' for PF1e, RecordedChaos. ;)
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Good to have some free peepin's of them Pactbound Akashic Binder stuff out there to be viewin' for PF1e, RecordedChaos. ;)
I thought so too lol. The playtest is coming to a close at the end of January. The Artist I've worked with for my other two books is making more neat things to go in this one and hopefully the book should be out in March. Depends on how long editing and formatting take.
Lots of suggestions have been brought up, and changes have been made!
Please take a look at the following:
Pactbound Abilities
- -Shared Covenance ability gained at 11th level now grants chosen ally the benefit of pactbound's pact defense treating benefits granted from pactbound level/essence invested/essence burned as halved, and uses the pactbounds Cha bonus.
Changes to Pacts
- -Astral Pact pact defense (Astral Influence) now grants temp hp equal to their pactbound level plus their Charisma modifier and recovers temp hp equal to the essence invested in the pact at the beginning of each of the pactbounds turns.
- -Pact Defenses that grant resistances to energy types equal to 1/2 pactbound level now largely grant resistances equal to pactbound level.
- -Celestial Pact pact augmentation (Celestial Surge) now deals half damage that is nonlethal to good aligned targets.
- -Draconic Pact pact defense (Husk of the Dragon) has been edited for clarity. It now allows the pactbound to subsume other armor or enhanced armor veils into it to grant the husk any enhancement bonuses, magic enhancements, or armor modifications the subsumed armor or enhanced armor veil possesses. The cost for benefits granted by essence burn has also been reduced from every 3 points of essence burned to every 2.
- -Elemental Pact pact augmentation (Primal Eruption) has been edited so that the primary and splash areas increase in size by 5ft at 8th level and every 6th level thereafter.
- -Elemental Pact's 15th level Covenance ability (Paraelemental Avatar) has been altered to line up more closely with other polymorph covenance abilities.
- -Fey Pact planar augmentation (Wrath of the Court) now has an added ability to cause a burst that leaves behind illusory difficult terrain for one round.
- -Fey Pact 15th level Covenance ability (Form of the Fae) has been altered to bring it in line with other abilities.
Changes to Archetypes
- -The Pactblade's Quicken and Balanced manipulations have been edited. Quicken now allows the pactblade to initiate a martial strike using their planar armament as a swift action and Balanced now allows the pactblade to treat all rolls of 1 or 2 on damage or healing dice from a strike and the planar armament as 3s.
- -Pactblade's Resurgent Blade ability now recovers 1 manipulation point and treats their pact defense as if they had 2 additional essence burned for 1 round. Both effects increase at 8th and 16th level.
- -The Hexbound now has the Fell Bargain ability, which allows them to treat their pact abilities as if they had 1 additional point of essence burned for 1 round the first time in a combat that a target fails a save against one of their hexes or brand veils. This ability improves at 8th and 16th levels.
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Good to have some free peepin's of them Pactbound Akashic Binder stuff out there to be viewin' for PF1e, RecordedChaos. ;)
I usually have my content available for free to use on Library of Metzofitz several months after the book has started being sold. I'm doing this because I love it and will continue to do so!
We're closing in on the end of the playtest! The comments and support have been amazing and I am grateful for the interest and critiques.
Newest Changes:
- -Mind Over Body covenance of the Astral Pact has been altered so the penalty to attack rolls doesn't penalize Planar Detonation.
- -The Pactblade's Planar Armaments is now considered to be an enhanced weapon veil for the purpose of Akashic Arms and Armor, Unified Theory, and other feats and effects.
- -Pactblade has a new planar manipulation- Heavy (1 points): The pactblade may treat their planar armament as a two-handed weapon for the purposes of feats and effects for this attack and the damage die size of your planar armaments increases by 1. If the pactblade instead uses their planar armament to make only a single attack as part of an attack action, they may treat that attack as a special attack action to reduce this manipulation’s cost to 0.
And with that, the Pactbound playtest is officially over! I greatly appreciate all the comments and suggestions given, and look forward to the upcoming Echoes of Magic playtest which will be starting sometime in March-April this year.
I hope to have Pactbound go into formatting and editing, as well as receiving the rest of the Art from the Amazing CC Tay. Hopefully the book should be out on DriveThru RPG around the same time the next playtest starts.
Once again, thank you for all the interest this passion project of mine has received. Pactbound was actually started even before my other two books and I am thankful it is finally seeing the light of day.
I will continue to post updates on my Patreon and Discord, and will post on here when the book is up for sale. Till next time!