Dreamscarred Press Introduces: Akashic Mysteries

[Ssalarn]

Had a few last minute issues with some mechanical interactions and a formula missing an important component get brought to my attention; I think I've hammered those out but I'm probably not going to get the final docs up tonight. I'll do my best to get them to you ASAP, but I tend not to have a lot of time or opportunity to update Dropbox during the week.

Have a good one guys, and good night.

[Fallenreality]

Would you say the Guru is near complete? Or does it have more work required?

Just curious as I'm planning a build out.

[stack]

It is due to be released soon, so you should be fine.

[Fallenreality]

Hmm. Just my thoughts on it so far. It seems like it has very high essence requirements. You have to have essence in your Gentle Touch, your veils, Seal Wounds, and available for essence burn. The Akasin philosophy can generate a temporary essence pool which helps with the burn. Possibly allow something similar with the other philosophies?

For example with the Sin Eater

Allow excess sin devoured to be stored as temporary essence. You may only have only have up to 1/2 your class level in temporary essence at a time.

It just seems at the moment that it has too many places to put resources and not enough resources to spread around. It seems a tiny bit beyond the normal point of recourse management for the other Akashic classes. I could be wrong as I haven't playtested it in an actual game, this is just from reading over it.

Other than that, really fun looking class. I like the non-lethal damage idea and the Sin Eater is a really cool concept.

[PsyBomb]

Fallen, Gurus have a lot of places to put Essence, that's true... however, they mitigate it a bit. They will typically not need to fill more than 2-3 receptacles at once.

With builds normally ending up at 22-24 Essence, this is enough to fill 3 with a hair left over for burn abilities.

[Fallenreality]

Fair enough. As I said, this was mainly from me just looking over the features.

Edit:
Do you have any suggestions for boosting the Guru's attack bonus?

[PsyBomb]

Fair enough. As I said, this was mainly from me just looking over the features.

Edit:
Do you have any suggestions for boosting the Guru's attack bonus?

Depends on what kind of Guru, really. Akasin plays like light-armored Paladins, but can activate Lambent Blades to ignore some AC (usually). Vayist and some Sineater builds can go Finesse into Deadly Agility. Other Sineater builds can dip a level of Soulknife (Deadly Fist) and drop a feat to grab Focused Offense to use WIS.

Check my DPR sim a couple of pages back for a Dex TWF build, if you want.

[Fallenreality]

Hmm... The Soulknife thing would work really well with the gestalt I'm working on. Soulthief Vitalist//Guru

Going to be the ultimate torturer pretty much. Use gentle touch and soulthief powers to cause as much pain as possible without damaging the body. Use gentle touch to hurt without risking killing and Vitalist stuff to keep the target above the threshold of being unconscious. Adding on a level of Deadly Fist would be rather useful.

Edit:
Going to be an Aasimar just because I want to play a slightly evil aligned Aasimar. He didn't so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards... Points to anyone who gets the reference.

[Ssalarn]

Guru is probably the most technical of the three classes, and it's one where I really expect the player to be taking advantage of that swift action essence reallocation. The Guru is almost a complete class without it's veils, so you're supposed to be playing just a little bit tight with your allocation there (the assumption of course being that maxing out Gentle Touch will generally be a given, and a few points will be dedicated to burn cycling, unless you're an akasin).

[Ssalarn]

Hmm... The Soulknife thing would work really well with the gestalt I'm working on. Soulthief Vitalist//Guru

Going to be the ultimate torturer pretty much. Use gentle touch and soulthief powers to cause as much pain as possible without damaging the body. Use gentle touch to hurt without risking killing and Vitalist stuff to keep the target above the threshold of being unconscious. Adding on a level of Deadly Fist would be rather useful.

Edit:
Going to be an Aasimar just because I want to play a slightly evil aligned Aasimar. He didn't so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards... Points to anyone who gets the reference.

You pretty much have to take Veiled in Purity for this build.

[Fallenreality]

You pretty much have to take Veiled in Purity for this build.

Innnnnteresting... I had forgotten about that. Thanks!

I really do like the mechanics of Guru. The focus on non-lethal is really interesting.

Are there any plans for Guru archetypes? I could see an archetype that added flurry and the monk AC Bonus but you could only use unarmed attacks for your philosophy weapon.

[Ssalarn]

Innnnnteresting... I had forgotten about that. Thanks!

I really do like the mechanics of Guru. The focus on non-lethal is really interesting.

Are there any plans for Guru archetypes? I could see an archetype that added flurry and the monk AC Bonus but you could only use unarmed attacks for your philosophy weapon.

Yeah, something along the lines of a Guru/Monk MCA is definitely in the works. Haven't had much computer time and everything I've been able to do the last couple days has been either done on tablet or phone, but I'll try and elaborate on that (or just post it) as soon as I get the chance.

With the Veiled in Purity thing, I just love the idea of this quietly smiling aasimar who dings as lawful good and uses what are essentially "holy" veils, but who's actually a brutal and evil sadist who specializes in torturing subjects while still keeping them alive and relatively whole so they can stand trial or whatever fate he has planned.

[PsyBomb]

Edit:
Going to be an Aasimar just because I want to play a slightly evil aligned Aasimar. He didn't so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards... Points to anyone who gets the reference.

Good Omens is a great book

On the Swarm Master archetype, are Akashic feats being added to the Bonus Feat list? Stack is making one for the playtest and the question popped up

[Ssalarn]

Good Omens is a great book

On the Swarm Master archetype, are Akashic feats being added to the Bonus Feat list? Stack is making one for the playtest and the question popped up

Yeah, I haven't gotten around to it yet, but since we've removed the manifesting component completely the Akashic bonus feats pretty much have to be added.

[Fallenreality]

Good Omens is my favorite book. I don't know if that says anything about how I play characters >.>... Let's not dwell on it. Just keep my character away from house plants.

Edit:
And babies.



Feel free to give him a car with a Best of Queen album though.

Or a cart and a bard cohort as the case may be for high fantasy. Any bard cohort that travels with me for more than a fortnight morphs into Freddie Mercury?

On topic edit:
Is there any reason that the Guru DOESN'T have the monk's AC Bonus feature? It would actually fit the class fairly well.

[stack]

Should there be a specific feat to boost the DC's of a veil, or is that just covered by enhanced capacity?

[Ssalarn]

Should there be a specific feat to boost the DC's of a veil, or is that just covered by enhanced capacity?

I figured Enhanced Capacity would be sufficient for that. The DCs are already generally very good considering the abilities are basically at-will.

[Ssalarn]

On topic edit:
Is there any reason that the Guru DOESN'T have the monk's AC Bonus feature? It would actually fit the class fairly well.

Couple reasons:
1) The Guru already has about as much overlap with the monk as I'm comfortable with.
2) Guru has light armor proficiency, which should generally scale on par with that feature anyways.
3) Debuffs and veils provide a lot of non-AC defense options for the Guru.

Basically, he doesn't have it because I didn't want anymore overlap with the monk and he really didn't need it. There's still a ton of synergy between the Monk and Guru though, so if you dip to grab it you're probably still in good shape.


Hmmm.... Should the supplemental release include an MC feat allowing monks to flurry with Philosophy weapons?

[PsyBomb]

Flurry with Philosophy is generally a good idea... Except on Akasins. You become something approaching a Sohei or Zen Archer really fast.

[Ssalarn]

Flurry with Philosophy is generally a good idea... Except on Akasins. You become something approaching a Sohei or Zen Archer really fast.

Instead of excepting Akasin, maybe we should threshold the feat at about the same place the Sohei's Weapon Training kicks in (roughly 6th level)?

Or more like 7th since few builds will have a floating bonus feat at 6th level, and that puts an extra block of space in between to keep the Sohei's ability unique and primary. That's a long wait, but it seems like in the meantime akasin monk/gurus would still be fairly strong, able to flurry with UAS adjacent while threatening at reach with a philosophy polearm, and Sineaters and Vayists would still have some options natively to utilize flurry with Philosophy weapons (since they both have Philosophy weapons with the monk property).

[Fallenreality]

It seems like either a dip into Deadly Fist, or Monk really helps the Guru. One build I was looking at was a Master of Many Styles dip to stack Mantis and Scorpion style stuff for a very solid debuffer using Stunning Fist.

[Ssalarn]

Anyone seen Spheres of Power from Drop Dead Studios yet? I started a thread on it but no one has responded yet.

I think it's ridiculously awesome (one of my pre-alpha testers noted some similarities between it and another class that's in the works), and is probably now as inextricably entwined with all of my games going forward as Ultimate Psionics or Akashic Mysteries. I may not even need the Class sections of my Paizo books anymore

Anyways, one of my buddies asked me to help him make a 12th level character that plays like a Fighter but drops some serious hurt in big flashy bursts with a transformative weapon, and I was trying to help him nail down the differences between a Daevic (Justice) or an Armorist / Vizer. The Armorist is a Spheres of Power class that's basically Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail. I know the route we want to go is big Vital Strike hits with Armory of the Conqueror, but he wants to have a back-up plan in case his DM turns down the Daevic since it's technically still in playtest (he already got Armory of the Conqueror okayed when he proposed the Armorist / Vizier concept).

[Fallenreality]

Looks interesting. I always like good 3rd party, especially 3rd party that adds a ton of classes.

I usually only go back to core Paizo stuff for Bard, Alchemist, and Magus nowadays. Possibly Investigator as well.

[PsyBomb]

Any word on the polish fixes for Daevic? Especially the new Throwing feats and the modification to Benevolence? This may or may not have bearing on a miniboss coming up in the playtest >.>

[malonkey1]

Any word on the polish fixes for Daevic? Especially the new Throwing feats and the modification to Benevolence? This may or may not have bearing on a miniboss coming up in the playtest >.>

I think they'd fix the English version before the Polish one.

[Ssalarn]

Any word on the polish fixes for Daevic? Especially the new Throwing feats and the modification to Benevolence? This may or may not have bearing on a miniboss coming up in the playtest >.>

They'll be up tomorrow :)

[Fallenreality]

Love ya Ssalarn xD. Sorry to beat a dead horse, but any news on archetypes?

[PsyBomb]

They'll be up tomorrow :)

Awesome. That opening dungeon is fully written, just waiting for players to get past the foyer to start gathering info. Stack is running a Halfling Swarm Master there, should be fun.

EDIT: Working on expanding the Feats section to include Style feats, once PoW:Ex comes out. It'll also include other content from the book, since diping the system is good for both Guru and Daevic (Viziers want their capstone too much for that, if 20 is even a remote possibility). Archetype/PrC/etc document also slowly in the works, but I haven't played much of some of the base classes to be able to chime in.

[Fallenreality]

Ssalarn, when you get the Sculptor up I have some fun ideas for what to do with it using the spheres.

The feats to give it low caster progression and the telekinesis/creation spheres would be pretty fun.

[Ssalarn]

Sorry for the delay guys. Every time I tried to post the update, the Dropbox link broke. I'll be taking another stab at it tonight.