Paths of Magic Development Blog #16 - The Nightblade

Welcome to our FINAL development blog for Paths of Magic! We’re hard at work getting the final steps in place for the book’s release. it’s in its last bits of revision and editing; once we get it to the printers and proofed we can set a concrete date for release. I would like to release it ASAP, but I’m actually in the process of moving (closing next week!), so I didn’t want to try and publish a book at the same time as I am changing homes. Updates over the immediate future will be a bit sporadic, and after today’s post all of the book’s content will be covered. Instead, we’ll focus on sharing our awesome art from the book! Ideally we’ll able to give a concrete release date within the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

For now, let’s go back to where it all began - the nightblade! First introduced back in 2015 with Path of Shadows, the nightblade was our debut into Pathfinder publishing, and served as the foundation for our design philosophy ever since. Let’s take a look at the origins of the nightblade and where it’s going with Paths of Magic.

The nightblade, by Danielle Sands.

The nightblade, by Danielle Sands.

The nightblade wasn’t my first attempt at making Pathfinder content. I had done quite a lot of homebrew before then, but like most people new to the hobby, my homebrew was a hodgepodge of existing rules, like a rogue with extra poison abilities or an alchemist with a 0-9 spell list. The nightblade started much the same way. In fact, it was initially a wizard/rogue hybrid class, like the other hybrids found in the Advanced Class Guide. Or rather, it was a rogue/wizard/shadowdancer in one class. Sneak attack, trapfinding, shadow jump, 4th-level wizard spells…it certainly worked, I suppose, but it was incredibly unoriginal. I absolutely needed to make this class more interesting, and went through several revisions attempting to do so.

A few months ago in the vanguard update, I mentioned one of my weaknesses as a designer is letting the design “get away from me”; that is, I iterate and iterate upon concepts until I lose sight of the original goal. That happened A LOT with the nightblade, whose basic concept was “a stealthy rogue-type that focuses on shadow magic”. I recall one design where the nightblade’s core feature was an “aspect of terror” and the whole class focused on fear effects. Another design had a literal “night blade”, where the character summoned a weapon of darkness to perform special tricks with (reminiscent of the Soulknife from D&D psionics). I really liked that design, too, but when I stepped back and looked at it, it had completely missed the mark of the nightblade’s purpose. So back to the drawing board I went.

I want to say the version of nightblade that I stuck with was the…sixth version? This is the one that finally dropped the sneak attack or sneak attack-adjacent abilities (I had made a “dusk strike” that only worked on flat-footed opponents or when you were concealed, and only once per round) in favor of the nightblade’s “Paths”. The paths were directly inspired by the Shadowcaster from 3.5e’s Tome of Magic, but I stuck with traditional spellcasting instead of adopting the actual rules for the shadowcaster. I wanted each path to cover both a thematic and mechanical conceit within shadow magic as a whole, and also had the urge to make them sound really edgy (hey I like it, sue me). The initial paths were as follows:

  • Bloodied Chain (fear effects)

  • Darkened Fortress (shadow conjuration, weapons)

  • Eternal Night (death effects + negative energy)

  • Frozen Star (evocations, specifically cold + darkness)

  • Hidden Step (teleportation and mobility)

  • Lurking Shadow (summons)

  • Twilight Veil (illusions + invisibility)

As you can see, a few of these didn’t make it into the final book. Frozen Star was deemed useful but too focused (and also a bit boring), and was broadened to work with a more general evocation flair, becoming the Ravaging Void path. Hidden Step was too niche to build around, and its powers were stripped out and made into general nightblade arts or abilities (shadow jump used to be exclusive to this path, instead of a core feature). Lurking Shadow was repurposed into the Dark Conjuror archetype, and its shadow familiar was instead given to Darkened Fortress, whose theme was broadened to all conjurations, not just weapons and armor.

Supporting mechanics came next. Some were obvious to me from the get-go: innate darkvision was a must (I didn’t want it to feel mandatory to play a race with darkvision), as was the ability to see in supernatural darkness. Shadow jump and hide in plain sight were also obvious choices, and given it was a lightly-armored class, evasion was also included. I originally gave it trapfinding, too, as well as a few bonus feats from a fixed list (with choices like Moonlight Stalker and Improved Blind Fight), but removed them since they felt a tad excessive. The Shadow Surge mechanic is what, I feel, gave the class its true mechanical identity. Even if the surges were limited and not used all that often, having an “infinite” resource helped separate it from the normal designs within Pathfinder, and felt far more interesting than another “1/2 your level + Stat” resource pool.

Despite the progress made, I was nervous about the quality of the class, especially it being the first one I was trying to actually put out there for the world to see; I was even considering just dropping the project due to my anxiety. After all, there were already a lot of big names in the 3PP scene; who says anything I made was good enough to matter?

At the time, a few of my friends from college had a LOT more experience with Pathfinder than I did, so I bought them all lunch and asked them to do a read-through of the class. Their positive feedback really encouraged me to keep at it; I still clearly remember one of them saying “you’ve got something special, here”, so I chose to stick with Path of Shadows and see it through to the end. And now, a bit over six years later with Paths of Magic on the horizon, I’m really glad I did.

Now, onto the good stuff: the evolution of the nightblade in Paths of Magic!

If you’ve been following our development, you know that last year we did a playtest for the Ultimate Nightblade, a revised version of the class brought up to our current design standards. Some of this was to address ideas that didn’t feel fully functional. For example, for the Darkened Fortress, being able to summon shadow weapons was cool, but was too limited by being only a few times per day. Changing it to a baseline, at-will feature (like the Gloomblade fighter) makes the concept far more functional as a full “build” instead of a nice utility. Similarly, the Ravaging Void had a few of its powers shuffled around; rather than Twisted Elements being a technique usable 3+CHA times per day, and Umbral Blast as the surge ability, they have swapped places. Now, you can add debuffs to your spells by spending shadow surges, and you have an at-will ranged bolt of shadows for cold damage, letting you go all-in on evocation effects without having to plink away with a crossbow at low-levels when you’re out of spells.

Many path abilities received balance tweaks and QoL updates, as well. The Bloodied Chain’s base power (umbral shackles) got a hard nerf to only halve movement speed instead of a no-save entangle; it was by FAR the strongest path power of the five paths and was in desperate need of a reduction in power. The Eternal Night path saw quite a bit of re-tooling to give it a much clearer identity as the “death” build, allowing its Powered By Death ability to be used at-will but with a much shorter duration (1 round instead of 1 minute).

Funnily enough, the originally-scrapped Lurking Shadow path (the summoner one) made it back as the new Umbral Host path, giving players an option now focused entirely on summoning shadow creatures. As such, the Dark Conjuror archetype has been removed (since all of its abilities are now in the Umbral Host path). In its place, there’s a new archetype specifically for the Eternal Night path: the Deathwalker. It gets the ability to channel negative energy and learns all of the main “create undead” spells in the game; good for those that want to focus exclusively on raising undead minions!

For now, I’ll leave you with a preview of some of the new-and-improved nightblade arts you’ll find in Paths of Magic. Some of these are returning arts with improved effects, while some are brand-new abilities to the nightblade.

Casting Art (Ex)

The nightblade gains a metamagic feat as a bonus feat. When she casts a darkness, shadow, or shadowmorph spell that is affected by one or more metamagic feats that would raise the spell’s level, she reduces the total level adjustment to that spell by 1. This does not apply to the Heighten Spell metamagic feat. The nightblade must be at least 6th level before selecting this art.

Cloak and Dagger (Ex)

When attacking a creature she is flanking or that is denied their Dexterity bonus to AC, the nightblade gains a +1 bonus on attack rolls and weapon damage rolls. This bonus increases by +1 at 9th and 15th levels.

Dark Reality (Ex)

A nightblade with this art can use real darkness to improve the potency of shadowstuff. When casting a shadow spell that replicates one or more spells from a school of magic (such as shadow conjuration), creatures within dim light, darkness, or magical darkness take a -4 penalty to their Will save to disbelieve the effect. This penalty only applies to the initial save to disbelieve, not any other saving throws the replicated spell might have. The nightblade must be at least 15th level before selecting this art.

Deaden Senses (Ex)

A nightblade with this art is able to hide even from those with extraordinary senses. She can use Stealth to hide from creatures with blindsense as if they didn’t have that ability. At 9th level, she can hide from creatures with tremorsense, and at 15th level, she can hide from those with blindsight. The nightblade must be at least 6th level before selecting this art.

Shadow Motion (Su)

The nightblade can spend a shadow surge as a swift action to bend the space she is in by partially moving into the Plane of Shadow. Until the end of her turn, she gains a 30-foot increase to her speed and can roll twice on any Acrobatics, Climb, or Swim checks she makes and take the better result.

Paths of Magic Development Blog #15 - Magic Items

In this week’s update for Paths of Magic, we’re looking at new and improved magic items! This post will be a bit shorter than the others, given the nature of magic items is pretty straight-forward and doesn’t need a lot of explanation.

Staves, by Bryon Oshiro

Staves, by Bryon Oshiro

Paths of Magic adds both metamagic rods and staves to the mix, neither of which were included in our previous books. There are five metamagic rods, one for each of the new feats in the book (those being Metallic, Volcanic, Reinforced, Beastlord, and Twilight Spell). We’ve also added in a dozen new staves for spellcasters, each of which has at least one new spell from Paths of Magic. The golemancer’s staff, for example, gives a large number of spells for controlling constructs, while the unnerving aberrant beacon gives spells centered around eldritch powers, including the ability to summon the spawn of Yog-Sothoth!

Like the previous books in the Path series, Paths of Magic includes weapon/armor properties, unique weapons and armor, rings, and wondrous items; all of the items from the previous books are returning and many have been updated for better balance or pricing (a lot of the early items, especially in Path of Shadows, were too expensive for most players to consider purchasing).

There’s also more unique weapon and armor properties which can help certain build ideas work a bit better. The brutal weapon property, for example, multiplies your weapon’s enhancement bonus to damage when using Vital Strike feats, which should help even the score a bit (Vital Strike users could use the help, believe me). Each new weapon and armor property in the book also has a unique piece of equipment that uses that property in some way, all of which have their own artwork to bring them to life. One of my favorite new weapons is the ocularius, a flail that’s covered in glass eyes. Not only does it work as a focus for divination spells like scrying, but when it scores a critical hit against a creature you can steal its extraordinary senses (like lifesense or tremorsense)!

The majority of the new wondrous items and rings are tailored to the new classes in Paths of Magic, with each class having a couple of unique items and/or weapon and armor properties for their use only. The shaper’s fold, for example, can boost the effect of the shaper’s ability to see magic and also lets them seem ethereal/incorporeal creature across planes. The armiger’s pauldron is a new variant of the cloak of resistance for the vanguard, which lets them grant their construct companion their own saving throw bonus a few times per day for when it really counts.

As a send off, here’s a couple of the new equipment properties you’ll find in Paths of Magic, which should open some interesting new options for players. See you all next week!

FETTERING (+2 Armor Property)

Armor with the fettering property is wrapped in numerous chains and shackles which latch onto nearby creatures. The wearer adds the armor’s enhancement bonus as a competence bonus to his CMB when attempting a grapple and as a bonus to his CMD against an opponent’s attempts to escape his grapples (be that by a combat maneuver check or Escape Artist check).

CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS
Cost +2 bonus; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, animate objects, chain gang*

BLACKOUT (+2 Weapon Property)

Blackout weapons are used by assassins and scoundrels to strike down foes while remaining concealed. Attacks with a blackout weapon can deal sneak attack damage (if the wielder has it) to a creature with concealment or total concealment. Additionally, the first time each round a blackout weapon strikes a creature, it must make a DC 14 Will save or lose the benefits of its low-light vision, darkvision, and see in darkness abilities for 1d4 rounds, if they have them. The duration does not stack. A creature that succeeds on its save is immune to this effect from a particular blackout weapon for 1 minute.

CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS
Cost +2 bonus; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, sensory deprivation*