Paths of Magic Development Blog #4 - The Shaper

Christopher Moore January 8, 2021

Hope everyone had a good holiday! Here’s hoping for the new year to be a bit better for all of us. In today’s Paths of Magic update, I’ll be going into one of the new classes to be featured in the book, the Shaper! The shaper was playtested last year, so if you want a more in-depth read of the class’s abilities you can check out the playtest document.

The shaper is a master of time and space. She “shapes” reality by moving around and controlling the empty space underneath, referred to as the void. Despite its magic-heavy theme, it instead focuses on its martial capability first, gaining full BAB, d10 hit die, and full weapon/armor proficiency. She uses her planar magic to instead supplement her combat ability, primarily in the form of hindering enemies and protecting herself, though as you can guess having control of time and space magic nets her some key utility and support like haste or teleport.

So what gave us the idea for this class?

The shaper is a class theme/design I’ve long wanted in Pathfinder, and if I had the time I would have tried to include it in the original run of Path of Shadows. The primary inspiration comes from the Void Knight concept in the MMO Rift, which was a tank class that focused a lot around anti-magic capabilities (though the “void” theme was more eldritch/pact-based than planar magic). At its core, the main desire for the class was to lean heavily into this anti-magic idea to act as a potent anti-mage without having to be a full caster itself.

Doing that concept in Pathfinder is…hard. Or at least hard to do well as a martial character. The closest mechanical approximation to anti-mage martial with a smattering of magical power is a primalist arcane bloodrager (for that sweet Spell Sunder), but very little of it is effective at proactively stopping magic, aside from, ya know, bashing the caster’s face in, and like most martial capabilities it’s limited to melee range, where the spellcaster is already at its worst. The best anti-magic characters were typically other full-casters, especially the arcanist with counterspell exploit, since counterspelling is normally such a poor strategy compared to just readying a magic missile. So I aimed to create my ideal anti-magic martial.

This came down to essentially a wish-list of abilities, including:

Full BAB, d10, with good armor/weapon proficiency.
The ability to force concentration checks outside of melee range.
A way to counterspell as an immediate action, like an arcanist can
Able to take both Disruptive and Spellbreaker, and preferably feats that chain off of those
Access to as many anti-magic spells as possible, including arcane sight, dispel magic, greater dispel magic, silence, spellcrash, globe of invulnerability, spell resistance, and antimagic field.

If you’ve read the shaper playtest, you can see that all of these items made it, in one way or another, primarily as choices for the class’s distortion ability. But making a character around only “no wizards allowed” doesn’t make for a very compelling character class; an archetype, perhaps, but it’s too thin for an entire class. Not to mention the obvious problem of having not much to do if you’re fighting anything that doesn’t use magic.

With that in mind, a few concepts got tossed around. One of the early designs of the class was the “Revenant” and was themed around pure entropy. This very edge-lord interpretation had a themed “emptiness”, such as Life, Light, or Magic that it would consume, along with a passive aura that would drain or counter those effects. For example, being near a Life-based Revenant would have absorbed healing effects, while being near a Heat Revenant would absorb energy from nearby to constantly inflict cold damage and sap strength. While that design was eventually retired, many of the ability concepts were carried over into the shaper’s distortions, with the main take away being the shaper’s signature “void” ability for a big debuff/effect field centered on the player.

Another design was one that didn’t have spellcasting, and worked more like a kineticist where it had several ability categories to get as it leveled up. Distortions messed with the effects of the void debuff field, while essence powers worked like utility talents. This was scrapped pretty quickly, though, once it became apparent that many of the essence powers were just replicating existing spell effects.

Eventually the current shaper design was decided upon, thanks to giving a lot of room for interpretation and flexibility. Being able to shape reality obviously gives a lot of breathing room as to what sorts of abilities you can make, but I still wanted to keep it a bit more tightly themed than that. As such, many of the old themes from revenant were used to focus the abilities of the shaper: namely, creating abilities around countering/negating either Magic, Light, Life, Space, or Time. That provided plenty of space (heh) to work in while keeping the overall direction of the class more unified.

With that wall of text out of the way, what new is coming for shaper in the final release?

Surprisingly, very little is changing in the shaper’s core abilities since the playtest closed. Most of the major revisions (such as base effects of the void) were done during the playtest period. However, the improved void power got a pretty hard nerf from being difficult terrain to simply “move at half speed”, since it was bit too oppressive of an ability. I’m also considering adding a few new distortions to fill out the class (right now there’s like…40% of a page just empty at the end of the class description that could be used). “Essence” has also been renamed to “quintessence” to avoid confusion with akashic magic systems.

Archetypes, of course, will be made for the class (though they haven’t been fully written yet). The original concept of the Revenant is coming back as an archetype focused around death and negative energy effects, replacing the default void with a damaging field of negative energy and substituting the class’s eldritch sight with undead detection and lifesense. The Void Caller archetype lets the shaper create her void around a point in space, rather than around herself, to better enable an archery/ranged build for the class. I’m also toying around with a Chaos Mage that gets to generate wild magic surges all over the place, which should be interesting, to say the least.

Magic items are also being included for the shaper, just like any good class should get. The shaper’s fold is a not-quite blindfold that doubles the range of his eldritch sight and lets him see interplanar/phasing creatures, like ethereal foes or those under blink effects. There’s also the ring of quintessence mastery, which is sort of like a ring of ki mastery for shapers that gives a handful of abilities and can cheapen some of the more expensive distortions she has.

That’s all for today. Stay tuned for further development updates!

Paths of Magic Development Blog #3 - Technique Feats

Christopher Moore December 18, 2020

Happy holidays, everybody! Today’s topic for Paths of Magic is that of feats-more specifically, technique feats introduced in Path of Iron and how they’re being implemented into Paths of Magic.

Feats are an odd space in Pathfinder. There’s hundreds upon hundreds of them, but most players stick to the same ~50 or so for most characters like Power Attack, Spell Focus, and Rapid Shot. When you design a feat, it has to compete for that space. This is made more difficult by the fact that the majority of players that use 3PP are also likely using house rules to eliminate feat taxes (like the popular “Elephant in the Room” house rules). So you’re stuck making feats that are compatible with vanilla Pathfinder and trying to sell it to people who like chocolate.

Often times I find it best to take an existing option and simply make it work better than it did before. I did this quite a bit with Path of the Wilds, for example, by making a number of feats centered around making Vital Strike a bit more of an attractive option (outside of Shikigami Style shenanigans, at least). Path of Iron similarly had some feats like Powerful Throwing to mitigate the need for a belt of mighty hurling and Double Strike to give some much-needed mobile strength to two-weapon fighters.

The place this is most apparent, I think, is in the technique feats introduced in Path of Iron.

Technique feats were intended to be the fighter’s answer to the monk’s style feats. A collection of three feats that grant you a stance with a self-contained playstyle is a good way to buff up existing options (like Archon Technique does for tower shields), make some options less feat intensive (as with Shinigami Technique) or even do something a bit off the wall (like Protean Technique). And by making them exclusive to each other like styles, you can make them a bit stronger than your average combat feat since they can’t be used in conjunction with each other (Technique Master Fighter excluded).

When designing the techniques in Path of Iron, the first step was deciding upon a unifying theme. Style feats at the time were largely based around animals, like many real-world martial arts. Basing it on other creatures made sense, but I initially considered just using creatures from any type that fit the idea. After a bit of playing around, it become apparent that sticking exclusively to outsiders made a more cohesive concept.

Some of the techniques’ names were pretty easy to figure out. Shield archons use a big tower shield, so the technique that let you use tower shields better got to be Archon Technique. Balors are skilled with whips, so let’s put the whip abilities into Demon Technique. Others were more of a thematic approximation, really, rather than based on a specific creature. Proteans are chaos beings, so making a technique based around making extremely-swingy dice rolls work in your favor felt like a fun idea. Lots of devils use bleed effects, so a Devil Technique can make bleed builds a bit more useful.

Beyond that, it mostly came down to making sure the feat lines felt worth taking. That might seem obvious, but when you combine the techniques themselves and their prerequisites, it’s often asking players to put all of their feats for the first 8 or 11 levels exclusively into one technique. That’s a lot to ask given that many campaigns will end before players can completely finish the feat path, so they needed to be made viable from the first feat in the chain, not waiting until the last feat in line before being effective.

So, while that’s a lot of preamble to describe some of the initial inspirations and designs from Path of Iron, where does that leave us for Paths of Magic?

Funnily enough, near the release point of Path of Iron was when Paizo dropped the Weapon Master’s Handbook and introduced weapon-based style feats, completely defeating the point of techniques! I’ve debated going back on that design choice and renaming all of the techniques to “Styles” but many of the style names are already taken, like Archon Style. So, rather than rename all of them, I plan on including a sidebar in the feat chapter that outlines turning the technique feats into weapon styles, should your table prefer to use them in that way.

Second, all techniques are of course being revisited and re-balanced, both to account for new feats in the book and to make certain options more attractive. Devil Technique, for example, no longer increases the DC of stopping bleed checks, since that was made into a standalone feat (Savage Wounds) in Path of the Wilds. Instead, the ability to stack bleed effects has been moved earlier in the feat chain, and the end of the feat chain deals higher ability damage and also reduces the target’s move speed while bleeding. Inevitable Technique has been completely redesigned, now making it focused around Vital Strike. Rather than raising your minimum die rolls, it instead acts as a sort of round-to-round Hammer The Gap, where you get increased attack and damage rolls against creatures when you repeatedly Vital Strike.

Lastly, as you might expect, Paths of Magic wouldn’t be complete without adding some new techniques, as well! Two new techniques are being introduced: Psychopomp Technique, and Garuda Technique. Psychopomp technique is a mixed combat role combining Snap Shot feats with the ability to heavily penalize your foes’ saving throws, making it good for Arcane Archer-esque builds and archetypes (like arrowsong minstrels or archer inquisitors). Garuda Technique is all about mid-air charges and jumping at foes; if you’re thinking about Final Fantasy Dragoons at this point, you’ve got the right idea.

Both of these techniques are featured below for your previewing. More updates coming after the holidays!

Garuda Technique (Combat, Technique)

You leap into the fray, striking foes from above.

Prerequisites: Death From Above, Acrobatics 5 ranks

Benefit: Whenever you attack a foe from high ground with a melee attack, you deal an additional 2 damage. This damage is doubled when performing a charge.
You can now jump as part of a charge. You make an Acrobatics check when performing the charge, which determines how far you can jump, as normal. The attack from the charge must be made before you land, and you stop after making the attack, even if you miss or have additional distance remaining for your jump.
If the Acrobatics check you made to jump is higher than the CMD of the creature you are charging, you are treated as being on higher ground for the purpose of making the attack, regardless of your actual positioning.

Garuda Dive (Combat)

Your maneuverability while charging is unparalleled.

Prerequisites: Death From Above, Garuda Technique, Acrobatics 7 ranks

Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to Acrobatics checks while using Garuda Technique.
When you jump during a charge using Garuda Technique, you can continue your jump. If you miss, you continue in the normal direction of your jump, but if you hit, you can alter the course of your jump to any other direction, including back the way you came (though this does not grant you any more jump height; it only changes the horizontal direction of the jump).

If you have the high ground, you do not provoke attacks of opportunity for charging toward or moving past the creature you charged. You still provoke from other creatures, as normal.

Garuda Talon (Combat)

You follow up your aerial charges with a second strike.

Prerequisites: Death From Above, Garuda Dive, Garuda Technique, Acrobatics 11 ranks

Benefit: The damage bonus you gain from Garuda Technique increases to 4, and you gain a +1 bonus to melee attack rolls when you have the high ground; this bonus is also applied when using the Death From Above feat.
If you charge at a creature during a jumping charge with Garuda Technique, you can make an additional attack. This attack uses the same weapon and uses your full attack bonuses, with a -5 to the attack roll. This attack cannot be used with other abilities that grant you additional attacks as part of a charge, such as pounce.

Psychopomp Technique (Combat, Technique)

Your attacks carry the burden of fate.

Prerequisites: Dex 13, Rapid Shot, Weapon Focus, base attack bonus +3

Benefit: When you strike a creature with a ranged weapon for which you have Weapon Focus, that creature gains one fate point. For every two fate points on a creature, it takes a -1 penalty to all saving throws against any effects created by you (max -4 penalty). Fate points last for 1 minute. This is a supernatural curse effect.

Psychopomp Fate (Combat)

Every strike gives you insight into your foe’s actions.

Prerequisites: Dex 15, Psychopomp Technique, Rapid Shot, Snap Shot, Weapon Focus, base attack bonus +6

Benefit: For every two fate points a creature has from Pyschopomp Technique, you gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made as part of attacks of opportunity against them when using a ranged weapon for which you have Weapon Focus (max +4).

For every four fate points a creature has, you treat your threatened area as being 5 feet larger when using the Snap Shot feat with a ranged weapon for which you have Weapon Focus (max 10 foot increase).

Psychopomp Doom (Combat)

Your strikes bring foes ever-closer to their demise.

Prerequisites: Dex 17, Psychopomp Fate, Psychopomp Technique, Rapid Shot, Snap Shot, Weapon Focus, base attack bonus +9

Benefit: It takes half as many fate points to gain the benefits from Psychopomp Technique and Psychopomp Fate for you.
For every two fate points a creature has from Psychopomp Technique, the creature takes a -1 penalty on saving throws against all effects, not just your own. This does not stack with the penalty against your own effects (ex. at four fate points, the creature has a -4 penalty to saves against your effects, and a -2 penalty to saves against anything else).

Paths of Magic Development Blog #2 - The Elementer

Christopher Moore December 5, 2020

Time for another development blog! I want these to not only cover the ongoing development of Paths of Magic, but give some insights into my design methods and philosophies when writing.

Today’s blog looks at one of the classes from our latest book, Path of the Wilds - the elementer!

When it came time to make Path of the Wilds, I knew for sure that I wanted a class that focused on the four elements, but that was about all I knew. The main inspiration was “why can’t my stormborn sorcerer get call lightning storm”. No, really. Despite the tons of cool elemental spells in Pathfinder, they were scattered across multiple classes (namely druid vs. wizard), so you could never get everything. So I made a class that did.

When it started out, the class was a bit more traditional in its casting style: a straight 0-9 level spellcaster like a wizard. However, the old version of “affinity” was that the elementer had four (yes, four) separate energy pools, one for each element. Casting an elemental spell would grant you affinity points for just that one element. There was no aegis form; you just got more powerful effects the more you cast spells (kinda like kineticist’s overflowing elements, in a way, but fueled by spell slots instead of HP). After a few minutes, the energy pools all emptied out and you went back to square one.

As you can imagine, this was a royal pain in the ass to actually play. Tracking four separate pools (along with a separate “time until depleted” counter for each) was awful. I simplified it down into one energy pool from casting, but that ended up making affinity too strong if it just lasted as long as you could cast (since at high levels, players could just chuck out a shocking grasp or similar between fights to keep the pool full). So, it needed to be reduced in duration.

That’s where the current implementation came in with the “aegis” form burning away your built-up energy very quickly. The voluntary switch could make the form stronger but with more harsh drawbacks (i.e. no spellcasting in aegis form), which also made a more interesting playstyle of having to choose the appropriate time to focus on spells and the right time to burn your aegis form and go toe-to-toe with enemies.

However, aegis form on a full 0-9 spellcaster was clearly going to be WAY too strong, so the class got turned into a mid-caster with 0-6 level spells. But with that, we’ve lost sight of the original goal of the class: to have all of the elemental spells in the game. The solution was the fusion mechanic, letting the class have a sort of “fake” 0-9 spell list but with much higher spell slot cost. I’d already used similar mechanics for the nightblade’s Path of the Ravaging Void as well as the saboteur’s combined arms feature and liked those implementations, so using it again for elementer made sense. It was also not as powerful as it might look on the surface, since the vast majority of elemental spells are just “deal damage in big areas” and not the game-changing magic that high-level casters are known for.

Rounding out the class’s ability list was spell twists and other supporting mechanics like evasion/barrier (for some defense against other casters), intensity (because a blaster-caster with no bonus spell damage is just sad) and attunement (to make aegis a bit more flexible). And with that, a new class is made.

I might make this sound “simple” but this took place over about five drafts (including some that I didn’t even cover here, like one poorly-conceived idea that had no spells at all) and dozens of hours of rewrites. It takes me a long time to get to a draft that I’m really happy with, and even then it often comes down to my friends hounding me to put the pen down and move forward.

To close out, let’s cover what I’m sure we’re all actually here for: previews of Paths of Magic content! The design of the aegis really prevents expanding much on that element (heh) of the class, so instead Paths of Magic introduces five new spell twists: one per element and one “any” twist. Of course, the class will also be getting more spells, archetypes, magic items, and so on, but for now I’ll just be posting the new twists.

More updates coming soon!

DIVE

Element: Water
Effect: A powerful current backs your movement in water. As a swift action, you gain a swim speed of 40 feet, a +8 bonus on Swim checks, and can breath underwater. If you already have a swim speed, you increase it by 20 feet, instead. This swim speed lasts for a number of rounds equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 1).
Boost: For every spell level above 1st, the swim speed (or bonus to a swim speed) increases by 10 feet, the Swim bonus by +1, and the duration by 1 round. If the slot used is at least 3rd level, you suffer no penalties for attacking while underwater. If the slot used is at least 6th, you are unaffected by hazards from being deep underwater, such as pressure damage.

FUME

Element: Earth
Effect: A gout of acidic earth sprays upon a target within 30 feet. The target takes 2d6 acid damage; a creature struck is also sickened for 1 round. A Fortitude save halves the damage and negates the sickening effect.
Boost: For every spell level above 1st, the damage increases by 2d6. For every two spell levels above 1st, you can target an additional creature or object. All targets must be within 30 feet of you.

HEAT

Element: Fire
Effect: A burst of sweltering heat emits from your hand in a 20-foot cone. Creatures in this area take 1d8 nonlethal fire damage and are fatigued. A Fortitude save halves the damage and negates the fatigue effect. This cannot cause a fatigued creature to become exhausted.
Boost: For every spell level above 1st, the nonlethal damage increases by 1d8. For every two slots above 1st, the range of the cone increases by 5 feet.

HINDER

Element: Any
Effect: Elemental energies disrupt your opponent’s casting. As an immediate action, you counter a spell that appears in the same elemental category as the spell you used, or has one of the following descriptors based on the element of spell used: air (air, electricity, or sonic), earth (acid, earth), fire (fire, light), or water (cold, water). The countered spell must be 1st level or lower.
Boost: For every spell level above 1st, the level of spell you can counter increases by 1.

STATIC

Element: Air
Effect: You surround a single willing creature within 30 feet of you with a crackling aura of electricity. Any creature striking the target with a non-reach melee weapon, unarmed strike, or natural attack takes 1d6 electricity damage. The effect lasts for a number of rounds equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 1).
Boost: For every spell level above 1st, the duration increases by 1 round. For every two slots above 1st, the damage increases by 1d6.