Things Comment/Suggest ??
Things Fix
Character set
you seem to use a lot of iso-8591-1 characters, most notably the quotes and dashes; it makes the text a bit hard to screen-scrape >||| so I had trouble making pretty typeset things >|||
"Use Magical Device"
skill is "Use Magic Device"
"a particular weapon and suit of armor -- respectively referred to as her Costume and her Device"
switch order of "Costume" and "Device"
Enhanced Armaments
capitalise "Radiant armaments" properly, probably
Sunlight Apotheosis
Can the illumination gained be changed upon gaining a permanent evoker level?
"Radiant armaments"
change to "Radiant Armaments"
Merciful
zodiac needs the feature description.
Complex Formula
- assume "She may always access any of her complex formulae known" means they're always readied? possibly clarify that, and whether they count toward readied illuminations.
- actually, also clarify whether they count toward known illuminations.
- assume "A zodiac may alter or replace any of her known illuminations freely whenever she gains a permanent evoker level" in the feature description is intended to apply to complex formulae?
"may at times fall of deaf ears"
change "of" to "on"
Luminous Reservoir
I assume that motes need only be taken from the reservoir when the usual mote pool is insufficient to cover it? probably needs clarification.
Shining Schemata
I'm giving this its own section.
Barrier augmentation: Radiance
is not clear what "the radii of bright light and shadowy illumination each increase by 20'" is supposed to mean -- the distance between bright and no light is a constant 20'? or should it increase by 20' with each rank?
Radiant Armaments
(Su) as a feature, but, uh, what happens to them in AMF? do they vanish? do their effects get suppressed? clarify!
Device Effect: Enhanced
what happens if a device is Enhanced, then given a special ability, and then Enhanced is unselected?
Costume Effects
"1st" on the table is wonky.
General Feat: Practiced Evoker
"Your evoker level [for the chosen evoking class] increases by two. This benefit can't increase your evoker level higher than your Hit Dice. Even if you can't benefit from the full bonus immediately, however, if you later gain levels of non-evoking classes, you might be able to apply the rest of the bonus." (with or without "for the chosen evoking class") seems like a better way of wording it, especially considering that one can have multiple evoker levels.
General Feat: Mortal Miracle
probably should require a constitution score, or at least require to be alive, because non-alive things are destroyed at 0 and setting to -9 is ... not helpful.
Things Comment
Font of Life
is actually fine, I guess.
"a Native Outsider with one alignment subtype of her choice"
any single subtype, which doesn't actually depend on actual alignment, I presume. is interesting, suggest keep it that way, actually.
Astral Celerity
untyped? eh, I guess it's not something that can break things that hard, but untyped bonuses in general are kind of scary, especially with unique names. but probably not broken.
Sagacity
"relevant" means "DM's discretion", right?
Grace of Aeons
untyped bonus is untyped! but also probably not broken.
Starlight Apotheosis
okay, so, the illuminations can't be suppressed by AMF, but, like, every other feature other than sagacity is. not unreasonable, but seems a bit incongruous.
Illuminations
okay, so I understand the reasoning behind the "may only use spend a number of motes up to her evoker level on illuminations of a given base type (Blasts, Barriers, and Surges) in a round" but I don't understand why the restriction can't just be against using more than evoker level in a single illumination; doubling up on barriers or surges instead of taking a standard to use a blast doesn't seem that bad; and in any case, extra-action effect aren't that common and the total motes-per-turn restriction is still in effect, so I don't see why the limitation is by type of illumination.
Barrier augmentations: Vitality, Courage, Sanctity
not understanding why these aren't surges.
Barrier augmentation: Borders
does this have to be up/down?
Barrier augmentation: Ramparts
is falling movement? I mean, it's not really a movement action, but uh, I don't know, logic?
Barrier augmentation: Visions
this one makes me sad that there isn't an augmentation for maintaining barriers indefinitely beyond recasting every round. not that recasting every round does work.
Surges
all of these are expensive, so pretty much no swift-action buffing and debuffing until ... 2nd level, for zodiacs, once per encounter.
Costume Archetypes
I see you've removed the class restrictions, was this intended?
Costume Effects
there's no Enhanced equivalent for the costume?
Power of Friendship
right, so the huge bonuses for not actually being the captor?
Power of Friendship: Aligned Essence
perhaps would better be -5 if you're dragging it back to the alignment corresponding to its subtype?
Things Suggest
Enhanced Armaments
should this really be (Ex) when it depends on a (Su) feature? Suggest change to (Su).
Class tables
- features are usually written in alphabetical order, with only the first word capitalised (except in proper nouns and such).
- dead levels are usually filled with "---"
- I suppose writing "Complex formula (2 known, 3/encounter, +3)" would be too much words? Maybe it should just have its own column?
"Knowledge [Any] (Int)"
is usually written "Knowledge (all skill, taken individually) (Int)"
Shining Schemata
There are two basic problems here:
- like with the warlock's class feature, this doesn't actually care about the level of the spell.
- it is the Shining Schemata feature itself which allows evoker level to be used as a caster level for qualifying for item creation feats.
1 makes it possible to, say, create 9th level scrolls at 9th level; this is not necessarily an actual problem, since, unlike with the artificer, the feature is not the central focus of the class, so it is probably usual to be simply paying full crafting costs anyway; after all, warlock isn't usually considered overwhelmingly broken even with that feature, and it's even a bit more of a play-with-magic-items class than the zodiac.
2 is almost certainly a problem though; since Shining Schemata is placed at Zodiac 6, it is, at ealiest, gained at 6th level. because of the order of operations at level gain beyond 1st level, it is impossible to take an item creation feat before 9th level without having gained caster level by other means beforehand, or leaving the class to gain a bonus feat earlier.
this is a problem the warlock does not also have, because the warlock does actually have a caster level from its SLA's gained earlier in the class; it just doesn't have much in the way of things to do with item creation feats in conjunction with them; but it can take an item creation feat at 12th level and immediately begin using it.
solutions to problem 2 may include, but are not necessarily limited to:
- have evoker level count as a caster level without need for the Shining Schemata class feature. this is probably simplest; if not restricted to qualifying for item creation feats, however, it can create unintended interations in certain ways, though -- with the mage slayer line, for example, and possibly with practiced spellcaster.
- have zodiac evoker level count as a caster level for qualifying for item creation feats; this is a bit strange, but since we already have special Power of Friendship things for each evoker class, it wouldn't necessarily come off as altogether that strange.
- specify in the Shining Schemata feature that the character can take an item creation feat on the level it is gained, if eligible to gain a feat on that level; this is klugy and hijacks the level-up order of operations, which is probably bad.
- specify in the Shining Schemata feature that the evoker level can be used to qualify for item creation feats even before 6th level; this is a bit strange in that it allows a class feature to take effect before gained.
- provide an inconsequential SLA before 6th level -- candidates might be, say, dancing lights, flare, light ... know direction, possibly even, it sort of sounds pretty with the zodiac fluff with stars and constellations, after all -- at caster level = evoker level is probably most consistent; this provides the caster level necessary to take item creation feats. ... this isn't actually all that bad an idea, although it is an extra feature which doesn't necessarily fit into the evokers-are-supernatural paradigm.
- provide a bonus feat with the class feature. this is probably bad, because bonus feats are precious and all; but, well, it's not like they don't fit.
- leave it as is. getting a caster level before 6th level is the player's own responsibility if it wants to be using shining schemata before 9th. (and then every zodiac is a silverbrow human or a gnome, I guess. or takes those CArc feats.)
Other Things
- Burdens surge made me think about ectoplasmic cocoon -- because reflex SoL is ... not that common, really, after all.
- okay, I'm assuming the healing only for undead thing is intentional.
- okay so, I mentioned combat fixation; time to substantiate by assertions.
- combat roles -- the Champion seems to do the BSF thing reasonably, blast illuminations ... are acceptable blasting. BFC, buffing, debuffing, are done reasonably by barriers and surges.
- utility effects, however, are rather lacking:
- the Visions barrier augmentation does illusions, which are useful.
- the Might surge augmentation can help in social and skill events.
- the Temporal device effect can help in some stealth and social events.
- Power of Friendship is ... an interesting mechanic?
- Sagacity doesn't really do anything better than social skills on an Cha-based character.
- that ... is more or less everything I can imagine used out of combat.
- the Champion as it stands, I'd say, then, fills the role it's trying to fill, "flexible and powerful combatant," it works. it could use some more synergy between blasts and non-blast attacks, but then, we have the Assault augmentation. it's just not much other than a combatant.
- the Zodiac ... can't really fill a caster role. it can do a few of the things normally associated with casters, but really, does more or less the same things as the Champion, except less costume options and more illumination options. so, also likely to be useless in a large category of situations.
- so, both I'd judge to be somewhere in the territory of tiers 3 and 4, leaning toward 4. which is probably fine, really.
- it totally makes sense to have a barrier effect to walk in and teleport, barrier effect to telecommunications, barrier effect to look at things, barrier effect to block divinations, barrier effect for anti-magic, ... surge effect for bonus to checks or rolls or whatever (actually, that also works as a costume effect -- and providing rerolls is also not a horrid thing for a surge, other than the, costume effect already does that things) ... dispelling blasts! ... actually, a dispel effect on a blast doesn't sound that bad, sounds like a neat effect, even. ... okay, I'll stop with terrible ideas.
- it kind of bugs Prism's energy type must be chosen when on crafting (i.e. at level up), while the Primal costume effect's energy type can be chosen with five minutes. I feel like the illumination augmentations would do well to be consistent with the costume effects: the augmentations are set, but if there are choices to be made within the augmentation, those can be chosen when the illumination is readied. maybe just for some of them?