On Your Feat, Soldier: Preview of Feats in Path of Iron

Feats are one of the features that ties all of the classes on Pathfinder together. It doesn't matter if you're a scholarly wizard or a brutish barbarian, every class needs feats in order to succeed, though some need them more than others.

The feats in Path of Iron will focus primarily around combat application, rather than magical classes. Feats such as Double Strike, which lets a two-weapon fighter hit with both weapons as a standard action, or Powerful Throwing, which lets a character use Strength for both attack and damage rolls with weapons, are just a few feats that will help combat characters have more flexibility when building their characters. That's not to say there aren't a few feats for the more magical types. Improved Bound Object will make bound objects a much more enticing choice for those with arcane bonds, and the Metal Focus feat will improve the DC of any spells with the new "metal" descriptor by +1.

But these aren't the most important part of the feat chapter. The big addition that Path of Iron brings are the new Technique feats.

Technique feats are much like style feats. Each technique comes in a series of three feats that build upon the last and work around a central idea and fighting style. You can only benefit from one technique at a time, though you can switch between multiple techniques if you have them much like you can with a style feat.

Whereas style feats were all built around unarmed strikes, techniques use manufactured weapons. Also, where style feats found their inspiration in nature and animals, techniques are based around the numerous Outsiders of the Great Beyond. Some of these techniques use specific weapons, where others are more general fighting techniques. The Demon Technique, for example, emulates a balor's signature of a melee weapon plus a whip in the off-hand, while the Inevitable Technique has a more general focus of consistent, even-handed attacks.

To top it all off, there will be archetypes for existing classes that utilize these techniques. The most prominent one will the Master of Many Styles equivalent that will go to fighters, which will allow the fighter to combine multiple techniques at once.

Talk is easy, though. What really counts are examples, right? Here's two of the current technique feat chains: the Archon Technique, which emulates a Shield Archon in its mastery of the tower shield, and the Asura Technique, which learns its own form of the dance of disaster from the Adhukait Asura:

Archon Technique (Technique)

You protect yourself from harm, your shield an extension of your body.
Prerequisite: Tower Shield proficiency, Improved Shield Bash
Benefit: The penalties to attack rolls for using a tower shield are reduced by 1, and you receive a +4 bonus to your CMD against attempts to sunder or disarm your tower shield. In addition, you can use a tower shield to make a shield bash as if it were a heavy shield, though it deals 1d6 damage for a medium sized creature on a hit.
Normal: You can’t make a shield bash with a tower shield.

Archon Defense (Technique)

Your strikes are as powerful as your defense.
Prerequisite: Archon Technique, Improved Shield Bash, base attack bonus +4
Benefit: The penalty to attack rolls for wielding a tower shield is reduced by an additional 1 (this stacks with the reduction from Archon Technique) and you always add your full strength bonus to damage rolls when making a shield bash with a tower shield. Using your tower shield to grant yourself total cover on an edge of your space becomes a move action, and you can spend an immediate action to change which side of your space you are defending.
Special: This feat counts as Double Slice for the purpose of meeting feat prerequisites, but only when using a tower shield.
Normal: Using a tower shield to create total cover on one edge of your space is a standard action.

Archon Bulwark (Technique)

Your mastery of the tower shield makes it impossible to catch you off guard.
Prerequisite: Archon Defense, Archon Technique, base attack bonus +6
Benefit: If you successfully hit at least one shield bash attack with your tower shield when making a full-attack action, you can use a swift action to grant yourself total cover on one edge of your space. If you spend a move action to place your tower shield (with the Archon Defense feat), you can choose two contiguous sides of your space to defend, rather than just one. Changing which side you are defending using the Archon Defense feat changes both sides with the same action.

Asura Technique (Technique)

You fight with a flowing dance, striking in multiple directions at once.
Prerequisite: Dodge, Mobility, base attack bonus +6
Benefit: Whenever you take the full-attack action with a manufactured weapon, each consecutive hit you make against a different target than the last deals an additional 1d6 damage per previous target hit. For example, if there are three different creatures that you strike, the first successful hit deals no additional damage, the second target hit takes 1d6 extra damage, and the third target hit takes 2d6 extra damage. This damage bonus cannot increase beyond 2d6 damage and is not multiplied on a critical hit. The additional damage is only added once per target on the first attack you hit them with that turn.

Asura Motion (Technique)

Your flowing movement makes it difficult to catch you off guard, and even more difficult to escape your reach.
Prerequisite: Asura Technique, Dodge, Mobility, Combat Reflexes, base attack bonus +9
Benefit: The bonus creatures receive to attack rolls when flanking you is reduced by 1, and you gain a +2 bonus to dodge AC to avoid attacks of opportunity from moving through a threatened square (this bonus stacks with the bonus granted by Mobility). Whenever you make an attack of opportunity against an opponent, you can move up to 10 feet in any direction, so long as your movement ends in a space adjacent to that opponent. Your total movement each round from this feat can’t exceed your normal speed.

Asura Dance (Technique)

You slash with grace and speed, dancing around the battlefield to harry your foes.
Prerequisite: Asura Motion, Asura Technique, Dodge, Mobility, Combat Reflexes, base attack bonus +11
Benefit: Creatures do not gain an attack roll benefit when flanking you (though they can still gain other benefits of flanking, such as sneak attack). Whenever you take the full-attack action using a manufactured weapon and strike with a melee attack, you can move up to 10 feet before making your next attack. You must have another attack to make in order to move in this manner, and cannot move a greater distance than your normal speed in a single turn.

Keep an eye out for the next teaser for Path of Iron, where I'll go into the next base class, the vanguard!

It's A Trap! Preview of the Saboteur Class

The first preview of Path of Iron that I'll be showing is one of the new base classes, the saboteur!

The new base classes in Path of Iron were each made to fill a niche in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game that I feel isn't covered well, while also keeping in line with the theme of "metal". In this case, the saboteur is a master of traps, both their creation and destruction. Trap making as a combat form has always been...difficult to achieve. Normal traps can take days to make using the normal Craft rules, are prohibitively expensive, and once placed are difficult or outright impossible to move. Even those mechanics that allow for traps to be made quickly, such as Ranger Traps, are incredibly weak. Why spend a full-round action to make a trap dealing 1d6+10 damage to a target when you can just shoot at it? Knowing that, I built the saboteur to have strong trap-based features to fill this otherwise incomplete role while giving it enough supplemental ability and style to not be limited to just "trap guy" (or in this case, gal).

Saboteurs are a rogue-type of class, with a d8 hit die, medium BAB progression, and both a good Reflex and Will save (I feel every class should have at least two good saves, always). She's lightly armored and has a limited weapon proficiency, though she gets a good variety of specific weapons. She has a wide selection of skills at her disposal and gains 6+INT skills per level, which is more than enough considering her primary ability score for class features is Intelligence. She can also cast spells of levels 1-4, on par with a ranger or bloodrager. Her spell list is almost entirely composed of utility and mobility buffs like detect thoughts and passwall, rather than more combat-based magic. The class design is built around three main mechanics: Saboteur Traps, Marked Target, and Tricks.

Traps face two problems with combat application: they are slow to make and deploy, and they are very expensive. Well, saboteur traps solve both of those problems handily. A saboteur can create a number of traps each day equal to 1/2 her level + her Intelligence bonus, and making a trap takes only a standard action instead of minutes or days. These traps can be made with the stuff found in a spell component pouch and scrap metal, rather than thousands of gold worth of materials. When a trap is sprung, it explodes to deal 1d6 bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage (saboteur's choice) to the creature that triggered it and any creature within five feet. The damage scales, of course, up to 10d6 damage by the time you hit high levels. On top of this, saboteurs learn a number of modifications to the trap, letting it deal fire damage, creating a deafening boom, or even letting the saboteur scry upon the person that triggered it (all of which are in addition to the explosion, by the way). At mid levels the saboteur can also setup traps from a distance and can even attach it to a ranged weapon to hit a target with the trap directly. While the traps normally have the very basic location-based trigger, some of the new spells in the book that she gets can alter the trigger type to be based on alignment, sound, or creature type.

The second core mechanic to the saboteur is her ability to Mark a target. Marking a target grants a number of benefits to the saboteur and lasts until canceled. Marking targets might seem a bit similar to a slayer or investigator's studied target, but has a more focused application. She can only mark one target at a time, and a single target can be marked once in a 24 hour period. In addition, whereas studied target grants all of its benefits at once, the saboteur must choose between four kinds of marks to apply to her target: Assassin's Mark grants bonuses to attack and damage rolls, Charlatan's Mark increases a number of social skills when used on the target, Duelist's Mark lets the saboteur better evade her opponent's attacks, and Informant's Mark grants large bonuses to Knowledge checks, Perception checks, and Sense Motive checks concerning her target. She must choose wisely when marking her targets lest she be left wanting for a different mark. Of course, the limitations lift a bit when she reaches higher levels, letting her maintain more than one target at once or switch up what kind of mark is applied once per target.

Her final core mechanic are saboteur tricks. I feel every class should have at least one customizable feature for players to choose from to allow different play styles. Tricks perform a wide variety of roles, from simple abilities like cantrips and poison use up to being able to fool divinations like detect good or zone of truth and turn invisible when disengaging. Many of these tricks add new features to her Marked Target class feature, making her favorite marks more potent. She can bypass some damage reduction types with Assassin's Mark or read her target's mind when using Informant's Mark, just to name a few.

The saboteur has other class features to round off her abilities, of course. Trapfinding was an easy must-have, as was Evasion/Improved Evasion. Some new abilities include a method of salvaging traps for raw materials (including salvaging her own saboteur traps to regain daily uses of the ability) or being able to make Disable Device checks in record time.

That's all on the saboteur for now. Keep an eye out for future posts about Path of Iron; next, I'll be talking about feats and the new Technique feat lines.

Announcing Path of Iron, the next book by Ascension Games, with Kickstarter opening on July 10th, 2015!

A few short months ago, I released my first book Path of Shadows out to the Pathfinder community (which you can find on DriveThruRPG, the Open Gaming Store, Paizo.com, and the Ascension Games website). The book was a huge undertaking and quite the challenge, but at the end of the day the book has been praised across the board for its design and construction. Now, I want to continue on with the "Path" line of books, aiming to meet and exceed the expectations the community has after Path of Shadows with my newest book, Path of Iron!

Much like my last book, Path of Iron focuses on a specific area of magic, in this case, metal. Now, metal is a bit vague compared to shadows and darkness, which are already clearly defined schools and descriptors in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. So, what exactly is metal magic? In this case, I'm focusing on spells and abilities that utilize physical objects and materials, or more specifically, objects made of metal. Spells that conjure storms of blades, powerful constructs, or turn an opponent's armor to slag are just a sampling of what's in store for Path of Iron. I'll also be including options built around combat and warfare, much like Ultimate Combat does at the moment for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. And just like with Path of Shadows, this book will cover all aspects of Pathfinder: three new base classes, dozens of spells and feats, new magic items, a brand new magic system, plus archetypes and options for plenty of existing classes all will be found within the book.

Of course, the details are what's important, right? Here's an overview of what you can expect in Path of Iron:

• The archivist base class, a scholarly magician who taps into the ancient art of rune magic, a brand new form of magic casting where every spell serves to strengthen the next. Choose from one of six specializations within rune magic, such as Creation and Revelation, to further enhance your powers in a given area.
• The saboteur base class, a roguish-type that blends arcane spells with clever tricks and traps. The saboteur is an expert of trap making, able to create deadly devices nearly instantly while bypassing those laid by foes with ease. Fooling divinations, assasination, and reading people's minds are just a few of the tricks the saboteur can master to take on any job.
• The vanguard base class, a martial-magic hybrid whose innate talent and eldritch power manifests through the animation and control of a powerful construct. Create resonances between your construct's magical power and your own to support your allies or hinder foes, and imbue spells into yourself and your companion to come into effect at a later time.
• Dozens of new archetypes and options for existing classes. Play archetypes like the Zen Marksman monk to flurry with a firearm, or an Arcane Marauder magus to (finally) use spell combat with a two-handed weapon. Options include new ranger combat styles like Quarterstaff, Spear, and Firearm, or choices like the new Metal spirit for shamans.
• Spells for casters of all stripes. Shapeshift your greatsword into a halberd with the alter weapon spell, or steal magical enhancements from your opponent's armor with the siphon enhancement spell. Strike all nearby enemies with a single blade spiral or have your weapons and armor act on their own with the dancing steel spell. Included is an alternate rule for adding the "metal" descriptor to these spells and to existing Pathfinder spells like iron body, heart of the metal, and molten orb, of which archetypes, feats, and magic items within this book will support.
• Feats to support a variety of play styles. Who needs a belt of mighty hurling when you can take the Powerful Throwing feat and use your Strength bonus on attack rolls with thrown weapons? This book will also be introducing new Technique feat chains, which are like Style feats for various weapons and wielding styles. Tear your opponent's armor asunder with the Bebilth Technique, or smash your opponents with a tower shield when using the Archon Technique.
• New magic equipment, weapon and armor properties, and magic items abound. Use the gatecrasher to destroy any barricade, magical or mundane, or create magic items with ease with the aid of the hammer of the forgemaster.
• Rune magic, a new form of magic casting that is pioneered by the archivist base class. Each spell leaves lingering power in the form of intricate runes upon the caster, which the caster can then consume to supercharge his next spell. This isn't just an extra feature placed on top of the already-existing spells, this is an all-new list of spells built for this system, with abilities, feats, and magic items to support it.

Kickstarter and Playtest for Path of Iron

A project of this size is certainly a daunting one considering I'm the only author, but rest assured that I intend to deliver a consistent, balanced, and high-quality product, as anyone that has read through Path of Shadows can attest to. However, unlike with Path of Shadows, I can't do it alone.

A book of this size and scale needs more input and funding than just one guy, and as such I will be launching a Kickstarter two weeks from today to fund the project on July 10th, 2015. Of course, feedback and input is just as important. A public playtest of the material will be made available once the Kickstarter is complete, which will include all three base classes and the new rune magic system so the community can give their opinion on the design, strengths, and flaws of the book.

In the meantime, feel free to ask questions about the book or my previous work. Every few days leading up to the Kickstarter launch date I'll be posting teasers for each section and class within the book, going into more detail on each (along with some sweet art by lead artist Danielle Sands). Check back every once in a while leading up to the Kickstarter to find out more!

Thanks for your support and I hope you are as excited as I am for Path of Iron!

Christopher Moore,

Ascension Games, LLC