Lost Spheres Presents: Codex of Blood (Parasite Class/Initiator Archetypes Playtest)

[Thealtruistorc]

Well, here's a project that I didn't think I'd be returning to.

After a whole lot of bouncing around between publishers, I am proud to announce that Codex of Blood is returning under Lost Spheres Publishing, now even more expansive than before.

The Parasite, other Animus Users, and new feats

Archetypes part 1: Martial Champions

Archetypes part 2: Battlefield Terrors and Class Templates

New Disciplines

The Martial Maneuver system from Path of War has been a noteworthy reinterpretation of martial combat ever since it was introduced, and Codex of Blood is intended to expand upon it even further. Enclosed within are numerous options for over a dozen iconic classes which previously lacked initiator options, as well as a new initiator class. What's more, this book contains numerous feats and monsters options as well as three new disciplines which can be utilized by maneuver users of all stripes.

Now let's break it all down.

The Parasite class, an animus-using initiator class which leeches power from its foes and mutates itself into bizarre and powerful new shapes.

The Cutting Blur, a flashy and agile class template for Gunslingers and Swashbucklers

The Bloodmaven, an antipaladin who claims their targets and hampers their capacity in battle

The Fulminant Vessel, a Bloodrager who channels the power of animus to unleash immense destruction on the battlefield

The Hetairos, a Cavalier who combines martial skill with incredible mounted maneuverability

The Evocatus, a Gladiator who blends immense martial force into its theatrical combat style

The Ferine Sentinel, a Hunter who shares her immense combat knowledge and tact with the body of her companions.

The Sublime Warmage, a Magus who blends magic and martial technique into a flowing combat style

The Armsmaster legendary spirit for the Medium, a mighty spirit of an ancient soldier who carrries with them the lore of countless battles

The Hypnotic Duelist, a Mesmerist who takes advantage of his foes' mental weakness to physically dominate them

The Silent Reaper, a Ninja who excels in concealing their identity and capabilities

The Arsenal of the Initiator, an Occultist Panoply which endows the bearer with immense martial skill

The Furinkazan, a Samurai who blends skilled horsemanship with a mastery of iado

The Steel Valkyrie, a Skald who combines primal energies with elaborate martial techniques

The Hero's Bane, a Slayer who excels at countering the wiles of other initiators

The War Scion, a Spiritualist whose spirit is endowed with martial prowess

The Nexus Commander, a Summoner who taps into the power of animus to command a vast army of skilled soldiers

The Climax Blade, a Time Thief who weaves miniscule motes of time into complex maneuvers

The Formcrafter, an Unchained Monk who gathers talents from the entire panoply of martial disciplines to devise his own complex tactics

The Einherjar, a Valkyrie who transforms the triumphs of her allies into a power that keeps them going

The Brutal Crocodile Discipline, a martial discipline built around grappling and brutalizing targets into submission

The Leaden Hyena Discipline, dedicated to breaking the opponent's will to fight with a variety of underhanded tactics

The Mangled Gear Discipline, built around exploiting or damaging the gear that so often ensures a combatant's survival

New Martial Traditions for these disciplines, the Forsaken Does, Primeval Lodge, and Warsmith Brotherhood

Finally, we have Martial Simple Class Templates for monsters, enabling GMs to easily create monstrous versions of every Initiator class.

Enjoy! As this is a playtest, input is always appreciated.

[khadgar567]

İ dont unserstant parasites reason for mutating berserker style currently has. İf you want to create dream scared press version of cu cuhain i think you are looking in wrong angle but if you gents want to create eidonon in can class you might want to look it again one more time. But looks like we have another arcforge fiasco in our hands as some one decides mu homebrew is so good i need to publish it with every one. As whole book basicly thealturisticorc path of war homebrew with token new class to made sure it looked new product. İf i was oderator in this forum i moved this threat to homebrew and ban you for couple of days( just enough to made treat disapear on natural conditions.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Ignoring Khadgar’s wholly inappropriate and rude comment entirely (as should you), I’m interested to see where this goes! New initiator classes are always fun and getting archetypes for some of the lesser-loved classes even more so.

[khadgar567]

Ignoring Khadgar’s wholly inappropriate and rude comment entirely (as should you), I’m interested to see where this goes! New initiator classes are always fun and getting archetypes for some of the lesser-loved classes even more so.

sorry if it feel rude as 95% of the content was already published by alturisticorc on homebrew channel in past and seeing another of his homebrew getting published makes me some how wary that pathfinder might be hitting the limit on great content near future. as i like any other lost sphere content hell i actually join the kickstarter on city of seven seraps book but seeing codex of blood in same stage as arcforge after thealturisticorc get his paws on i feel we dont need another self glorified homebrew published just because you are working on some company. hell i have no problem with any of the content as long as its not homebrew already published in this forum. book lacks content that made codex of blood thats why if i was moderator i put this threat in to homebrew sentence came in previous post.

[Lotheb]

Interesting so far, still looking it over. I like a lot of the Parasite, but the the Vicious Strike animus augmentation feels kind off. As an initiator none of the bonus damage from your maneuvers or stances gets multiplied, and you don't have any class features that interact with a critical hit (critical predator and combat adaptation excepted, and both of those are optional), so a lot of the time Anima Surge will add comparable damage while being cheaper and more reliable. I don't think it's useless, but it doesn't mesh well with the rest.
There's a mutation listed called Purging Recovery with no description.

[Thealtruistorc]

Interesting so far, still looking it over. I like a lot of the Parasite, but the the Vicious Strike animus augmentation feels kind off. As an initiator none of the bonus damage from your maneuvers or stances gets multiplied, and you don't have any class features that interact with a critical hit (critical predator and combat adaptation excepted, and both of those are optional), so a lot of the time Anima Surge will add comparable damage while being cheaper and more reliable. I don't think it's useless, but it doesn't mesh well with the rest.
There's a mutation listed called Purging Recovery with no description.

Purging Recovery was a typo on my part, an alternate name for Parasitic Recovery. I may consider replacing Vicious Strike with something more flavorful/useful.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

I'll take a detailed look at this later, some of the new stuff from when this first made the rounds looks interesting. Always nice to see an Animus user.

[Lotheb]

Maybe make viscious strike part of critical predator? So it's still an option, and so Critical Predator does something on it's own instead of just letting you qualify for other abilities.
Edit:skimmed over the disciplines. Brutal Alligator seems very straightforward, most of the maneuvers are either grapple a guy or deal a bunch of damage to a guy you're grappling, with a little forced movement mixed in and ability damge at higher levels. Overall the damage seems high compared to other disciplinse, presumably balanced by the fact tha most of it only happens against foes you can keep in a grapple for a round, which makes it very all or nothing. Either you grapple them, they don't escape, and you rip their spine out, or you cant get/keep them in a grapple long enough to use your maneuvers. And eventaully you get Gorgonop's Jaws and you skip past the part where they get a chance to Escape. I think Paizo made the right choice when they excised most of the instant death abilities, so I'm not a fan of Neck Snap and Jaws of Death, especially in conjunction with Gorgonop's Jaws. 4 attempts from a full attack to instantly murder anything not immune to crits or percision damage seems like a lot, and that's before haste, TWF, natural weapons or other stuff.
Is Mage Breaker meant to apply to a creature you attempt to grapple or only one you successfully grapple? I would think the second, but once you successfully grapple them you are grappling them so the wording seems redundant, or unclear if you meant the first one.
Lead hyena I love conceptually as a shifty conniving counterpoint to Golden Lion's morale focused leadership. I feel like Taste of Defeat should be higher level, and Feed on Unease is prolly too high.

[legomaster00156]

Glorybreaker (Ex): At 6th level, a hero’s bane gains the ability to deprive enemies of their most coveted and powerful techniques, eventually developing the ability to use these iconic tricks against them. Once per round, when the hero’s bane damages their studied target with an attack, he may cause the struck target to immediately expend a single readied maneuver as if they had used it, chosen randomly from the creature’s readied maneuvers. At 12th level and every 6 levels thereafter, this ability may be used an additional time per round.
This ability replaces the additional sneak attack dice gained at 6th, 12th, and 18th levels.

This is fun and creative, but I would add that if the Slayer knows which maneuvers are readied by the target, they can instead choose to shut down specific maneuvers. Perhaps also throw in some kind of ability to shut down an opponent's ability to enter and remain in stances?

Demise of Heroics (Ex) Whenever the Slayer deals sneak attack damage to a studied target

This is pretty clearly incomplete.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

This is fun and creative, but I would add that if the Slayer knows which maneuvers are readied by the target, they can instead choose to shut down specific maneuvers. Perhaps also throw in some kind of ability to shut down an opponent's ability to enter and remain in stances?

This is pretty clearly incomplete.

I would think getting to choose would be too powerful, unless it was a guess the player makes and fails if they’re wrong (which opens it up to unfun gotcha moments from the DM).
The stance thing I could see as a Slayer Talent building off of this though. Throwing them off balance with your SA to knock them out of stances is cool

[legomaster00156]

I would think getting to choose would be too powerful, unless it was a guess the player makes and fails if they’re wrong (which opens it up to unfun gotcha moments from the DM).
The stance thing I could see as a Slayer Talent building off of this though. Throwing them off balance with your SA to knock them out of stances is cool

There are rules to this. One can learn the disciplines known by an initiator and try and guess exact maneuvers from those. If they guess correctly, they can shut down specific maneuvers, but otherwise the attempt fails. They can also learn exact maneuvers known, but only upon seeing them used.

[Thealtruistorc]

Round of updates is up.

Addressing some requests that the playtest document was too large to be readable/loadable, I have split it up into four smaller documents, each containing some of the original content. They are each listed and fully hyperlinked for your convenience.

Vicious Critical has been made into a talent for the parasite, and the animus ability has been replaced with something more flavorful.

Neck Snap and Jaws of Death have been replaced with new maneuvers I hope folks will find more agreeable: Wing Ripper and Event Horizon.

Taste of Defeat and Feed on Unease have swapped levels with each other.

Clarified some text with the Hero's Bane, enumerating what it is now capable of.

[Alistaroc]

Where is the Valkyrie from? I see the Einherjar archetype for it but I can't find the base class.
Additionally the Champion's Shield and Call to Battle deeds are missing text.

[Thealtruistorc]

Where is the Valkyrie from? I see the Einherjar archetype for it but I can't find the base class.
Additionally the Champion's Shield and Call to Battle deeds are missing text.

The Valkyrie is a hybrid class from Total Party Kill games, combining the Barbarian and the Paladin with a few cleric abilities thrown in as well. It's one of three non-paizo-or-DSP classes I covered in the book (the others being TPK's Gladiator Class and Rogue Genius Games' Time Thief class).

Fixed the missing text issue. Thanks for pointing that out.

[Alistaroc]

Alright reading through the Einherjar again I found this.

In order for the einherjar to recover maneuvers, she must offer a prayer to her patron as a full-round action. Whe she does this, the einherjar recovers a number of maneuvers equal to her charisma modifier, and she and all allies within 30 feet gain fast healing equal to the einherjar’s charisma modifier for 1 minute.

Is this a typo? It seems to me that this alone would make the Einherjar invaluable. Granting the whole party Fast Healing 3 to 5 for a minute as only a full round action? That's pretty powerful, especially at lower levels. I could see fast healing equal to the highest level maneuver recovered, but Charisma modifier seems a little much imho.

Additionally reading through the Bloodmaven;

Claimed creatures take a –2 penalty on damage rolls and to the save DCs of any abilities they may possess. Attacks against Claimed creatures deal an additional amount of damage equal to the bloodmaven’s initiation modifier.

Emphasis mine. This seems a little excessive imho. That's probably 3-5 damage on everyone's attacks. Starting at first level and scaling. Maybe use the same "max level of maneuver" in place of it?

[legomaster00156]

I would suggest, rather than fast healing, giving allies temporary HP equal to the class level + initiator modifier for one minute.

[Thealtruistorc]

Adjusted the Einherjar and Bloodmaven's abilities to stabilize progression more. Maven's claim no longer adds additional damage and the Einherjar's maneuver recuperation grants temporary hit points rather than fast healing (although a certain deed can grant fast healing still).

[Alistaroc]

Adjusted the Einherjar and Bloodmaven's abilities to stabilize progression more. Maven's claim no longer adds additional damage and the Einherjar's maneuver recuperation grants temporary hit points rather than fast healing (although a certain deed can grant fast healing still).

Love the fixes, can't wait to try these out!

Just picked up on a typo in Bloodmaven, don't forget this line.

The penalty as well as the extra damage are doubled at 10th level and again at 20th level.

I like Einherjar's fix, I will definitely be running one and seeing how it feels!
Minor typo in Champion's Shield deed, suggestions in bold.

Champion’s Shield (Su) When they target an ally with a boost or strike, an einherjar may spend a point of triumph to grant that ally fast healing equal to half the einherjar’s initiator level (minimum 1) for a number of rounds equal to the einherjar’s charisma modifier.

[Thealtruistorc]

Minor typo in Champion's Shield deed, suggestions in bold.

Fixed. Nice catch.

[Thealtruistorc]

Edited in rules for class skills in each archetype.

[AlienFromBeyond]

Are we to submit all our feedback here in this thread? I only ask because I'm pretty sure I'm going to hit the character limit and need multiple posts to cover everything I've seen instead of comments directly on the google docs.

[Thealtruistorc]

Are we to submit all our feedback here in this thread? I only ask because I'm pretty sure I'm going to hit the character limit and need multiple posts to cover everything I've seen instead of comments directly on the google docs.

The intention is for all feedback to be consolidated on the thread. If you want to make multiple posts, feel absolutely free.

[AlienFromBeyond]

Okay, well don't say I didn't warn you! If I don't really comment on something, that means I think it's mostly fine or even like it. This will only cover the class/archetypes/feats in the first 3 documents provided, the disciplines themselves in the 4th doc will take longer to look at and give feedback on. I know some of this is just editing nitpicking but it's best to get that cleaned up sooner rather than later, and without direct google doc comments them taking up space like this is just how it's going to have to be.

Parasite

1. I don't really understand the choice of name here. Nothing about it really says "parasitic" to me in any way. I get that the fluff is that they're supposed to be like a sort of parasite on society that feeds off of battle, violence, and war, but I feel like there's something that describes that more correctly. Isn't coming to mind right now though, maybe later.
2. Maneuvers Readied/Granted should be just Maneuvers Readied, just like the Mystic.
3. The Life Drain augmentation seems far too good. Being able to heal half of the damage you deal with a strike, which can be a lot indeed, is just a bit too much at level 4 and only 2 animus. It seems more appropriate for the level 9 section.
4. Speaking of the level 9 section of maneuver augmentations, Animus Endurance is part of why I recommend Life Drain move up and potentially this move down. The amount of healing from Life Drain is far larger, for cheaper, than Animus Endurance is. Purify Form is... fine I guess? It has a problem of needing to initiate a maneuver to use, but many of the truly bad effects you would want to reroll against with it would make that difficult.
5. Siphon seems completely unnecessary. The fact that it generates an animus when used means that a Parasite can generate the resource incredibly quickly, even faster than OG animus-user the Mystic. Twice as fast or more in fact depending on level, while also handing out an attack penalty debuff all with no save.
6. Phage's Resilience is nuts, it is not an okay ability in my book. It's incredibly overloaded, from getting Cha to natural armor (aka AC but stacking with armor unlike Monk), getting Cha to saves like a Paladin, the Stalwart class feature, and a suite of immunities to make even an undead blush.
7. Crippling Siphon let's you add even more debuffs to the already amazing Siphon, and they can happen in such a way to benefit the rest of your attack, like debuffing the save your strike is targeting. I would at the very least recommend breaking the choices up into tiers that require to have a certain amount of levels to start taking, much like Paladin Mercies.
8. Transformation makes Alchemists and any archetype that poaches Mutagen cry. +6 alchemical bonus to [i]any[/b] three stats of your choice? Everyone is just going to take Cha, Dex (or Str, but tbh this class is stronger with Dex), and then whatever the hell they want.
9. Dual Siphon, while fitting and in line with similar abilities such as Dual Tactical Presence on the Warlord, is also far too much once you start being able to apply Siphon itself more than once a round. If anything, I would remove the ability to Siphon more than once a round from that ability entirely, and leave only this as an incentive that want to further their debuff capabilities.
10. Mutations, just, wow. At worst it's Fighter bonus feat progression, but the Myrmidon archetype for the Fighter gives up half of those bonus feats! Not to mention of the plethora of goodies in it, from being able to auto-threaten a crit (very dangerous with x4 crit weapons around), tons of energy resist, extra reach, fast healing at level 4, size changes that stacks with other size changes, and your choice of numerous strong polymorph abilities.
    All put together, in terms of raw combat power, this may be the strongest martial or initiator there is.

Fulminant Vessel

1. I strongly dislike the 1/3/5 progression of the animus augmentation cap. It means you have a serious period of weakness compared to other animus users in the second half of working towards your +2 cap. I can understand keeping the augment progression, but it will just make leveling too painful to limit the animus cap in the same way too. Bloodragers have the slower spell progression, but had full caster level progression, which I liken to the augments gained and animus augmentation cap respectively.
2. The Surging Vitality augmentation makes no sense at all. Bloodrage doesn't give temporary hit points, are you confusing it with unchained barbarian rage? Also limiting the temporary hit points to not stack with ones from other sources seems unnecessary. The value is also iffy. Early on it's fairly decent, but only gets worse in value as you gain levels. Perhaps 1/2 level temp hp stacking with itself instead?
3. Volcanic Burst being a clone of the second ability of the Zealot's Storm of Steel makes sense for a Bloodrager, but the flat cost compared to the scaling "always max cost" the Zealot has makes me wary. It is a very potent ability indeed after all.
4. Only Disruptive Blow at level 16 seems worth it out of the three options given at that level. Explosive Surge is just a bad Fireball (it still hurts yourself even!) and Animus Form simply doesn't protect you enough over doing an offensive augment to just kill what is threatening you in the first place.
5. Animus Healing is really quite bad, and getting more uses of a bad feat doesn't make it feel any better.
6. The archetype doesn't replace the Blood Casting class feature, which is rendered into a dead feature since the class no longer has spellcasting with the archetype. You also need to alter Greater and Mighty Bloodrage to remove the text about casting a spell on yourself with no action when you start a bloodrage, as again the archetype has no casting.

Nexus Commander

1. Intimidate and Stealth should be capitalized in the section adding the new class skills. On a related note, the use of Nexus Summoner should not be capitalized.
2. In the Animus class feature there is a missing word:

   The Nexus Commander may use spell trigger and spell completion items as if he could cast summoner spells, using his initiator as his caster level.

   This is missing a "level" after initiator.
3. Does Grant Maneuver really let you spend say 3 animus to hand out a copy of a maneuver to 3 different creatures in your nexus? And of any maneuver as well, the Zealot (the class many would call the best support initiator in PoW) being restricted to only doing so with maneuvers at least 1 level lower than their maximum, with a scaling cost based on maneuver level, with only a single copy, to a single creature at a time total.
4. Nexus is used as a capitalized word many times throughout the class when stating that an effect affects a creature within your Nexus, but it should be all lower case just collective is for a Zealot.
5. It is not clear if Reconfigure Forces or Gift of Evolution work on non-summoned creatures in your nexus added to it through the use of Open Nexus.
6. The new eidolon evolutions, are those exclusive to the Nexus Commander, or available to all Summoners much like the akashic evolution options? I am a bit worried about them balance-wise. An Eidolon can have a large number of attacks, which can make certain stances and boosts for them incredibly powerful, even more so than a PC.
7. Planar Initiator evolution has a couple of uses of eidolon capitalized in it for no reason. It also mentions "gains additional aegis maneuvers", is this a copy and paste problem? Similarly, to recover maneuvers it mentions "he must realign himself to his astral suit a full-round action".
8. Additional Maneuvers evolution should say "The summoner must be at least 3rd level before selecting this evolution." instead of "Minimum Summoner level 3rd." The use of summoner should also be lower case.

Climax Blade

1. I don't really know anything about this class so my feedback here will be more limited. The name for both the archetype and its resource (climax energy) sound kind of weird and out of place though.
2. Climax Blade capitalization is inconsistent, and it should be lower case.
3. Climax Energy states "A climax blade can spend tempo as if it were animus when augmenting maneuvers from the Elemental Flux discipline." but the archetype does not have tempo, it has climax energy.

Feats

1. Animus Efficiency is good, maybe too good. It might be worth taking even if you could only ever take it once, but I don't know the animus classes as well in that regard.
2. Bred for Battle is kind of strange, but also potentially very interesting. It does allow the option of someone hard dumping their initiation modifier and then bringing it all the way back up to +2 while at level 1. It's probably okay, but is the sort of thing I would keep an eye on just in case.
3. Brutal Crocodile Desolation should turn ability damage into ability drain, not ability burn, as ability burn specifically can't be removed by magical means at all.
4. Lead Hyena Style might be too good, it's like Hammer the Gap except the bonus stacks up with all attacks, doesn't reset if you miss, and also gives an attack bonus per hit as well. Meanwhile the rest of the style chain for this is... not very good at all.

Cutting Blur

1. The only thing I'm not keen on in this class template is the ease of use with the recovery method it has letting you recover all of your grit/panache on demand.
2. You do have gunslinger and swashbuckler capitalized in many places it shouldn't be as well.

Hetairos

1. How come this gets to share its stances with its mount seemingly for free compared to say the Hussar class template?

Evocatus

1. Don't know the class this archetype is for, but it seems okay to me.

Armsmaster Legendary Spirit

1. The seance boon for this spirit is far too good compared to what the rest of the spirits give. I don't really see a reason to make it different from the regular Champion seance boon anyways.
2. Having free choice of both disciplines and maneuvers is a huge amount of versatility. While Archmage does give you your free choice of spells, they are restricted to wizard/sorcerer spells, with the equivalent for this spirit IMO being the disciplines it gives. Thus I feel that it should be a static list of disciplines, or perhaps your choice at level 1 but then they're locked in from now on.

Furinkazan

1. Having Warrior's Claim on top of Challenge as well as any boosts or counters you get from your maneuver means you're extremely strapped in the swift action economy. In fact, having both Warrior's Claim as well as Challenge seems a bit redundant thematically, and losing your order for it feels really bad as well.

Steel Valkyrie

1. Gambit rules text is based on the old version of gambits the Warlord has, you should make sure to look at the errata (gambits are half intiation mod now for instance).
2. Warpath Epic is actually crazy good. You could expend a level 1 maneuver to initiate the level 9 maneuver known by an ally, and then do that over and over again. It also technically allows the "borrowed" maneuver to be a stance if so desired.
3. Spell Kenning isn't altered or swapped for something else, leaving the class with a now dead class feature due to the loss of spellcasting.

New Gambits

1. You should reevaluate these due to the PoW errata and specifically how it relates to gambits and also Warlords in general. For example Tactical Assistance now makes Aid Another affect all allies within 30 ft. instead of using Cha mod for the bonus from Aid Another.
2. Fearmonger's Gambit is better than all the original gambits that give a damage bonus because they only give their damage bonus on the next attack (aka only one attack) made by the Warlord and each ally against a single specific enemy.

War Scion

1. This gets far too many feats! If you keep your phantom in your consciousness you get more total feats than a Fighter (up to 8 from the phantom, 4 more from Lessons of Past and Present). Probably shouldn't get the phantom's feats when it's not manifested.
2. I am also concerned about the phantom duplicating equipment you're using, this is very abusable with equipment that has limited uses per day or even artifacts! Not to mention it means you can manifest your phantom on demand and have it immediately ready for combat unlike other spiritualists, and also because it fake generates an enormous amount of gold in equipment to allow you to effectively fight side by side with your phantom in a way no one else can even come close to affording.

Einherjar

1. Your sidebar on combining Grit, Luck, Panache, and Triumph is wrong. The original text from the Sleuth archetype specifically says you do not add twice your Cha mod to the pool if you have both panache and luck. You're also missing the bit about luck not counting as a grit/panache user for feat prereqs (with triumph added in there of course).
2. Don't know anything else about the class, but the rest seems fine on initial inspection.

Bloodmaven

1. Maven's Claim should not follow a -2/-4/-8 progression for the penalty it inflicts, it should be -2/-4/-6. In addition, this penalty is huge and not appropriate at all. In combination with Malicious Claim you can effectively render any strong-ish enemy's abilities useless by crushing their DCs into nothing. That it also reduces their damage is simply extra. I would in fact cut the numbers in half to -1/-2/-3, and it may still be too good after that.
2. Inescapable Demise should say "may move his speed" instead of "may move him speed" and "This movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity." instead of "This movement does not provoke attack of opportunity."
3. Angelbane mentions "knight disciple" twice instead of "bloodmaven". Also this ability isn't very good compared to how powerful Malicious Claim itself is. Fiendbane from the Knight Disciple wasn't that great, but relatively speaking wasn't as bad because Guardian's Shield can be a bit meh at times.
4. Malicious Claim mentions "bonus damage granted by the Maven's claim ability" when there is no such bonus damage from it, and also maven should not be capitalized here.
5. Cruel Claims needs lower case use of malicious claim and maven's claim.

Huay

1. Skinshifting seems kind of awkward, and is a lot of additional bookkeeping. You will essentially need a sheet for yourself, your animal companion, you skinshifted into your animal companion, and your animal companion shifted into your body. It might also get weird with stances, I'm not sure what would happen if you initiate a stance in one body and then shift over to the other body. The level 10 and 17 abilities are also potentially insane, but the level 10 is limited in forcing you to be in an animal form and thus requiring additional magic just to communicate, and level 17 is where the game gets broken anyways so that's probably fine I suppose?

Sublime Warmage

1. Frankly I'm really surprised this doesn't get Elemental Flux instead of Mithral Current.
2. How this archetype gains maneuvers is strange and makes it hard to evaluate, but it looks like you did it so they could keep casting on top of initiating?

Hypnotic Duelist

1. Claiming Gaze is confusing, it counts as Painful Stare for the purpose of prerequisites but many feats that have that directly affect your Painful Stare (specifically when you trigger it), and so it becomes unclear how say Intense Pain interacts with Claiming Gaze.
2. Use of painful stare in Claiming Gaze is capitalized when it shouldn't be.
3. The multi-Bold Stare capability of Claiming Gaze is very strong, though in this case it may be okay because of being a more debuff-oriented archetype considering the loss of Painful Stare's damage.

Arsenal of the Initiator Panoply

1. I would be careful here, it shares an implement with Trappings of the Warrior, so if you invest as much mental focus as you can into that shared implement (in this case a weapon for Transmutation) you could essentially be a full BAB initiator with 6 casting on top.
2. The ratio of mental focus to maneuvers gained is very favorable, between that and getting to choose how many maneuvers you get and also being redone every day you can be highly efficient in maneuver choices compared to regular initiators. In addition Combat Renewal means you can take out focus and put it back in to change your maneuvers on the fly, making you even more of a batman wizard initiator than the Armsmaster Legendary Spirit is. The rest is fine, and Punch Through might not even be good enough.

Hero's Bane

1. What does the sentence "the hero's bane recovers a single expended maneuver whenever he uses studied target a creature" actually mean?
2. In Stances it mentions hypnotic duelist instead of hero's bane.
3. So focused that it's only good if most of the enemies you are fighting are also initiators.

Formcrafter
Actually one of my favorite things in this, I think it's in a good place letting the Unchained Monk get access to initiating and also what the Master of Many Styles does.

[OgresAreCute]

Parasite
I don't really understand the choice of name here. Nothing about it really says "parasitic" to me in any way. I get that the fluff is that they're supposed to be like a sort of parasite on society that feeds off of battle, violence, and war, but I feel like there's something that describes that more correctly. Isn't coming to mind right now though, maybe later.

In the real world, we call people like that "warhawks" or "warmongers" I believe. They usually don't do much of the fighting themselves, though.

[legomaster00156]

So focused that it's only good if most of the enemies you are fighting are also initiators.

I wouldn't say that. It's still an initiating archetype, which already makes it superior to the base Slayer. I find that it really shines, though, as an enemy of initiating PC's.

[AlienFromBeyond]

I wouldn't say that. It's still an initiating archetype, which already makes it superior to the base Slayer. I find that it really shines, though, as an enemy of initiating PC's.

Being better than base Slayer isn't high marks in my book, if you aren't able to put the anti-initiating stuff to use you should just play a better class instead. Initiating enemies can be frustrating enough to play against as it is, playing against one that also deny your own initiating sounds even worse and not something the archetype should be balanced around IMO.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

In the real world, we call people like that "warhawks" or "warmongers" I believe. They usually don't do much of the fighting themselves, though.

Warhawk does have that “class name” zing to it, though we have so many classes that start with “War-“ already

[khadgar567]

Warhawk does have that “class name” zing to it, though we have so many classes that start with “War-“ already

yet parasite does not give the wuxia master of martial arts feel so +1 to warhawk name

[Thealtruistorc]

Alright, another round of revisions is officially finished.

(miscellaneous grammar and formatting issues)

Thank you for pointing these out. They have all been fixed.

Parasite

The class has gotten substantial nerfs. Most of its abilities have been reduced in power and in a few cases have been outright removed. Something to note is that the parasite does not generate animus from performing maneuvers, unlike the mystic.

As for the name, I am considering several alternatives at this point. Top five are Enyal, Enyalian, Tyrant, Devastator, and Devourer.

Fulminant Vessel

Added a new feature to replace bloodcasting while streamlining the animus progression. Various animus abilities have been tweaked and rebalanced.

Nexus Commander

Rebalanced animus abilities, placing some of the more potent ones at higher levels. Clarified the text on some others.

Climax Blade

The title of the class is designed to indicate its focus on specific moments in time, drawing power from climactic stress points in a fight. That was my logic behind this, at least.

Feats

Tweaked these and added a few new ones.

Cutting Blur

In all honesty, I don't see much of an issue with easy grit recovery. The gunslinger already had plenty of ways to obtain grit mid-fight, and I don't see this variant as making it that much easier so as to unbalance it.

Hetairos

Changed the mount-stance thing into a feat.

Armsmaster Legendary Spirit

Seance Boon reverted to normal champion's. The medium is able to grab quite a bit more than sorcerer/wizard spells, able to freely obtain cleric spells in addition to druid and bard ones with certain legendary spirits. Hence, I don't find it particularly over-the-top for them to be able to grab pretty much any maneuver combination.

Furinkazan

Challenge was removed from this archetype (it says it is replaced in the maneuvers section). As for order, I may consider re-implementing it if folks think it would be okay.

Steel Valkyrie

Gambits fixed, warpath epic nerfed, and spell kenning swapped out for a new ability

War Scion

Removed the overpowering abilities listed above.

Einherjar

Fixed the sidebar

Bloodmaven

Maven's claim nerfed.

Huay

While I understand your issues, I'm not quite sure what the best way to address them is. Reworking the archetype entirely is a possibility.

Sublime Warmage

The idea behind Sublime Warmage's progression was to make it compatible with as many archetypes as possible. For that reason, I decided to make maneuver progression very flexible.

Hypnotic Duelist

Cleared up text with claiming gaze.

Arsenal of the Initiator Panoply

Reworked to reduce on-the-fly adaptation substantially.

Hero's Bane

While it does lose some things, I don't think that the Hero's Bane is substantially gimped. It still has maneuvers of its own, after all, and retains the Slayer's studied target feature for enhanced accuracy and damage.

[AlienFromBeyond]

In all honesty, I don't see much of an issue with easy grit recovery. The gunslinger already had plenty of ways to obtain grit mid-fight, and I don't see this variant as making it that much easier so as to unbalance it.

While true, it also doesn't recover all grit typically, and generally requires being in combat (recovery methods can be used at any time).

Seance Boon reverted to normal champion's. The medium is able to grab quite a bit more than sorcerer/wizard spells, able to freely obtain cleric spells in addition to druid and bard ones with certain legendary spirits. Hence, I don't find it particularly over-the-top for them to be able to grab pretty much any maneuver combination.

Hmm maybe, I don't know Medium as well, and what I've seen has had it be difficult to obtain Legendary Spirits at best. Maybe I've just seen hardass GMs.

Challenge was removed from this archetype (it says it is replaced in the maneuvers section). As for order, I may consider re-implementing it if folks think it would be okay.

Man how did I miss that. If keeping regular challenge is too much, maybe get a crappy mini-challenge that doesn't do much (if really anything) besides counting as Challenge for the purposes of stuff that activates on it like Order abilities or perhaps certain feats. I just don't like seeing classes that have class features that don't do anything.

While I understand your issues, I'm not quite sure what the best way to address them is. Reworking the archetype entirely is a possibility.

I'm not sure either. Reworking may be the easiest way of addressing it, but I assume you're also trying to keep its identity separate from the Ambush Hunter archetype for the Ranger. Maybe you have the companion have maneuvers in a similar manner, and the unique ability is like when you initiate a maneuver you can initiate it from your animal companion's space using your own stats and vice versa. Thus the two can work in concert to threaten a much larger area, without needing to worry about potentially changing stats all the time. The skinshifting is certainly a neat idea, and giving some sort of polymorph effect is fun.

The idea behind Sublime Warmage's progression was to make it compatible with as many archetypes as possible. For that reason, I decided to make maneuver progression very flexible.

Yup that's what I thought. One thing I would point out that I just realized is that Martial Development lets the Magus get far too many stances compared to even full PoW classes. Perhaps it should give an additional stance every second time you take the arcana instead?

While it does lose some things, I don't think that the Hero's Bane is substantially gimped. It still has maneuvers of its own, after all, and retains the Slayer's studied target feature for enhanced accuracy and damage.

I guess, I just don't think highly of Slayer as a class in general, and there is power budget allocated to the anti-maneuver stuff (3 sneak attack dice). I may just be making a mountain out of a molehill in this regard.

EDIT: I may do a followup post about what I think about the changes, I quickly looked at the Parasite and really liked what I saw.