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In forgotten towers, lost libraries, and hidden temples there are those that seek the true confluence of all magic. Where one sees a wizard's spell and a cleric's spell as fundamentally different, the Omnimancer sees a connection. Their theories are usually seen as either mad (at best), or Heretical (at worst), Leading to their study isolation. Their minds are sharpened with psionics, the art they believe to be the root of mortal magic (given its inner focus and lack of outward components). Their study of the arcane has lead to the understanding of the pacts that empower warlocks, and they learn to extract a small amount of that power without binding themselves to the dangerous and obscene pacts that hold warlocks. Their study of the divine allows access to the mystical soul energy that is incarnum. And their studies into the primitive powers gained by barbaric dragon worship has given them a small measure of that power too. The arts are strange bedfellows, that don't seem to hold together when examined by a casual observer, but to the Omnimancer each is but a small part of an elegant whole, their challenge is to use them in concert to achieve whatever goal they set before themselves. While they see the powers of Binding, Shadow Casting, infusions and Truenaming, they find the first two rather specific and limited, the third being solely derivative of magic item creation, and the last to be too obtuse, with even those that utilize it being incapable of understanding it. There has been some talk of the study of the martial magic of the sword sages and their ilk, but so far the various orders have found them too taxing on the rather scrawny bodies of their scholars, though undoubtedly a few have tried, but to no success yet.
Role: Your job within the party varies, though it is usually somewhere between the wizard, cleric, and rogue. Your may not have as much raw magical power as a wizard (in fact still shy of a bard), but your portfolio is far wider.
Abilities: Intelligence is by far the most important of your abilities, determining Save DCs, bonus spells and PP, and Fueling your skills. Constitution is second, allowing use of incarnum, and putting extra HP between you and dead. Dexterity falls third, giving you the ability to hit with eldritch blasts, ray spells and giving you a little extra armor class.
Races: Gnomes Elves and Humans are likely studiers of these arts. All three races are curious about all things magical, and are willing to devote the time and energy. Most other races see this type of pursuit as a waste of time given the greater gains they think they can make studying one, as opposed to all.
Alignment: Most omnimancers tend to develop an affinity to a certain alignment, especially given the noted attention paid to it in both divine magic and incarnum study. The only noted counter-examples of this are the Cult of Baccob, who is both neutral and a patron of magicians.
Religion: Most omnimancers are only interested in the divine in a clinical sense, they wish to understand their correlation to the greater works of the worlds magics, though gods of magic frequently find worshipers among this idiosyncratic lot. In greyhawk the cult of We Jas has been known to draw a few omnimancers though they rarely have the raw power so valued in that cult, they can contribute a versitility and general sphere of knowledge that is hard to replicate. The majority of religiously inclined omnimancers find their way to the Cult of Baccob. Taking their cue from the "Lord of All Magics" title and seeking to emulate his mastery of all things magical, they see omnimancy as the only profession for a true devotee, and a dispassionate study of magic without pretense or favoritism to be the most fitting outlook for the faithful.
Open Heart Chakra, Draconic Aura(+3), Invocation(dark), Eldritch Blast(5d6)
Hitdie:d6 Skill Points:2+int(x4 at first level Class skills:Concentration, Spellcraft, Psicraft, Knowledge(any), Craft(any), UMD, UPD, Decipher script, Autohypnosis, perform.
Class features
Proficiencies - As Sorcerer Arcane spells
Spoiler
The Omnimancer casts arcane spells in the same manner as a wizard with the following exceptions Spell Book - the Onimancer's spell book contains all cantrips, but no other spells (initally)
[u]Automatic spells[\u] - Omnimancers gain 1 spell every level (as opposed to 2) starting at second level Spells per day - Omnimancers follow their own progression of spells known, depicted on the following table
Level
0
1
2
3
4
5
1
2
-
-
-
-
-
2
3
0
-
-
-
-
3
3
1
-
-
-
-
4
4
1
-
-
-
-
5
4
2
0
-
-
-
6
4
2
1
-
-
-
7
4
2
1
-
-
-
8
4
2
2
-
-
-
9
4
2
2
0
-
-
10
5
2
2
1
-
-
11
5
2
2
1
-
-
12
5
3
2
2
-
-
13
5
3
2
2
0
-
14
5
3
3
2
1
-
15
5
3
3
2
2
-
16
5
3
3
3
2
0
17
5
3
3
3
2
1
18
5
3
3
3
3
1
19
5
3
3
3
3
2
20
5
3
3
3
3
2
Divine Spell Casting
Spoiler
The Omnimancer casts divine spells in the same manner as a Archivist with the following exceptions Spell Book - the Onimancer's spell book contains all Orisons, but no other spells (initially)
[u]Automatic spells[\u] - Omnimancers gain 1 spell every level (as opposed to 2) starting at third level Bonus Spells - Omnimancer bonus spells are based on INT Spells per day - Omnimancers follow their own progression of spells known, depicted on the following table
Level
0
1
2
3
4
5
1
2
-
-
-
-
-
2
2
-
-
-
-
-
3
3
0
-
-
-
-
4
3
1
-
-
-
-
5
4
1
-
-
-
-
6
4
2
-
-
-
-
7
4
2
-
-
-
-
8
4
2
0
-
-
-
9
4
2
1
-
-
-
10
4
2
1
-
-
-
11
5
2
2
0
-
-
12
5
2
2
1
-
-
13
5
2
2
1
-
-
14
5
2
2
2
0
-
15
5
2
2
2
1
-
16
5
3
2
2
2
-
17
5
3
3
2
2
0
18
5
3
3
3
2
1
19
5
3
3
3
3
2
20
5
3
3
3
3
2
Psionics
Spoiler
Omnimancers manifest psychic powers in a manner similar to Psions. However they do not gain discipline powers (unless they take Expanded Knowledge), and their powers known, PP pool, and highest known power level, instead follow their own progression in the following chart
Level
Powers Known
PP
Highest Level
1
1
0
1
2
1
1
1
3
2
2
1
4
2
3
1
5
3
4
2
6
3
6
2
7
3
8
2
8
4
10
2
9
4
13
2
10
5
16
3
11
5
19
3
12
5
22
3
13
6
25
3
14
6
30
3
15
7
35
4
16
7
40
4
17
8
50
4
18
8
60
4
19
8
70
4
20
9
80
5
General Trivia - As bardic Knowledge
Meld Shaping
Spoiler
Omnimancers shape soulmelds in a manner similar to Incarnates, except as noted. Alignment:An omnimancer may be any alignment. They may still not shape soulmelds with an alignment that they lack, and if they are aligned on both axis, they must choose one to be the primary alignment for the purpose of soul melds. True neutral omnimancers may emulate the alignment of their choice with a DC 20 UMD check while shaping their soulmelds, on a failure they may not shape any aligned soulmelds. You may not emulate opposite alignments at the same time(ie you cannot utilize and evil soulmeld and a good one, but you can use an evil soulmeld and a lawful one), and you may not shape necrocarnum soulmelds without the Necrocarnum acolyte feat (even if you are evil). Melds, Essentia, Chakra Binds - Omnimancers follow their own progression for Total Melds Shaped, Essentia, and Chakra Binds, demonstrated on the following table
Level
Melds Shaped
Essentia
Chakra Binds
1
-
-
-
2
-
-
-
3
-
-
-
4
1
0
-
5
1
1
-
6
1
1
-
7
2
1
-
8
2
2
-
9
2
2
-
10
3
3
1
11
3
4
1
12
3
5
1
13
4
6
1
14
4
7
2
15
5
9
2
16
5
10
2
17
5
11
3
18
6
12
3
19
6
13
3
20
6
14
4
Bonus feat - You may select any feat that you meet the prerequisites for from the following list.
Spoiler
any item creation, any metamagic, any metapsionic, any psionic, any incarnum, martial study, martial stance, expanded knowledge, bind vestige, Improved bind vestige, extra slot, extra invocation, and obtain familiar.
Invocation(Least) - You may select any least invocation from the warlock or dragon fire adept list, it is usable at will
Draconic Aura - You may learn one aura of your choice from the Dragon Shaman List, Your aura bonus is equal to the number of times you have gained this ability. Your aura bonus stacks with any aura bonus you may have from the dragon shaman class.
Magician's Sight - You may use Detect Magic as an SLA at will
Open Least Chakra - You may bind soulmelds to your Crown, hands, and feat chakra.
Magician's literacy - You may use Read Magic as an SLA at will
Lesser Invocation - You may select any lesser invocation from the warlock or dragon fire adept list, it is usable at will.
Open Lesser Chakra - You may bind soulmelds to your arms brow and shoulder chakra.
Open Greater Chakra - You may bind soulmelds to your Throat and waist chakra.
Greater Invocation - You may select any Greater invocation from the warlock or dragon fire adept list, it is usable at will.
Dark Invocation - You may select any Dark invocation from the warlock or dragon fire adept list, it is usable at will.
Open Heart Chakra - You may bind soulmelds to your heart chakra.
NOTE: your caster level, manifester level, invoker level, and meldshaper level are equal to your level in this class.
Design Notes
Spoiler
The class is designed as a mash-up of all of as many various fun magics as I could squeeze together in a semi-organic way. If your favorite magical sub-system is not a part, it is likely that I don't understand it well enough to implement it as part of this class. Immediately leaping to mind
True naming - I don't understand it well, and it is very prone to abuse (or so I have heard). Given I have seen it used once and I am the one that did it, and I didn't get it, I do not feel qualified to include this system in a class that is already filled with potential misuse.
Shadow Casting - I'm not going to lie, I find the system silly and highly derivative. It is more a midpoint between sorcerer and warlock design, than it is original thought. I am not likely to pollute my home brew with material I don't like
Binding - I like binder I really do, but I cannot for the life of me find my ToM, and even if I could I can't come up with a good way to retard it's progression, Though a few quick feats could give you some of that ability if you find it's absence too jarring, and bonus feats were included primarily for the addition of more magics, though I know that is rarely how they will be used in practice.
ToB - My knowledge of Imitators is fairly limited, though I know enough that I probably could have given it some of that, but given the classes intense focus on things that do not involve pointy sticks, i felt that this was out of place, If you disagree I again point to the bonus feats, which give you a small amount of that ability, fitting with the unfocused, dabbling aspect of this class. Unlike the others I am considering a prestige class that will grant some proficiency in these martial abilities, though I am having a hard time metering out exactly what kind of progression the stuff the base class does will be present in the PRC.
On higher level prowess: No surprise, at higher levels you are paying for the lack of focus that other classes derive strength from. This can be a distressing fact. The points that salvage your ability to wage war are limited, but are infact present. The highest level Psionic powers are barred to you, but your augmentation is limited by class level, not highest available power level, you can still apply metapsionic feats as though you had psion level powers. You can quicken fairly easily, or just fully augment the powers, to much better effect than the free scaling of you spells, my advice is use this to your advantage, you don't really need utility powers since that is nearly inevitably covered by arcane and divine casting, so Psionics is where your big guns should be. You are rather limited in your ability to fire said big guns, but they are in your there for when it absolutely must be dead now. and @ 20 you get a Dark invocation, which should be selected for it's combat resolution capacity. And the limits on essentia investment into your soulmelds are based on total level (not anything I can limit in class entries), so you may still have full powered soulmelds, though the restricted access to binds can be limiting. The real bottom line is that you are not a primary combatant, or nuker for that matter, you are a dedicated problem solver and should keep that in mind. With careful spell selection, and smart choices on other levels, you can level the playing field, and you should be on the look out for more uses for old spells, they may win the day.
What? No Truenaming? No Binding? No Mysteries? No Incarnum? No Blade Magic?
FOR SHAME.
( )
In other news, interesting effort. Tried it before myself, but I've come to realize that combining a lot of things for a base class doesn't ever really seem to work. Might have to give this some thorough looking-into to see if this does work.
EDIT: No infusions?
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This just seems cool. Although wouldn't turn into a situation where your not great at anything. I mean, you have the powers of a lot of things, but your not as good at them as anyone. Even so, I like to the idea a lot.
EDIT: Guessing I ever looked it somewhere, but what about spells known. You have per day listed, but not known spells. And I'm not sure if you put the wrong one up, but the soulmeld table is wrong.
What? No Truenaming? No Binding? No Mysteries? No Incarnum? No Blade Magic?
FOR SHAME.
[...]
EDIT: No infusions?
There, fixed it in the fluff. I don't know enough about the ToB, ToM, or Artificers to make a watered down progression for them, and really the class is already really busy. I you can add some Binding and/or sword magic via bonus feats, and I think you can with mysteries too. I may add true naming to the class skills, but I can't justify that more of that broken mechanic in an already dicey class. I know nothing at all about artificers (except they make stuff and use infusions to buff said stuff), but you can take Item creation feats, does that count.
So my actual answer to your first point is: Bonus Feats!
On the subject of doing everything, I wanted somebody to do everything, and I tried a prestige class to combine the various magics, and found that I wanted to get in on this from the beginning.
They gain 1 automatic spell (well one for each), at every level. They may gain additional spells in the same way that wizards and archivists do. I figured as screwed on upper level spells as they are, they may as well be the best there is at lower level stuff.
Also the class has a little bit of boom-boom. They may Augment powers up to their level (Though obviously not often), and they get a Dark invocation. Though they aren't much, they do have a little bit of high level stuff, and the essentia capacities for soul melds are based on total level.
Please forgive my total inability to understand psionics, but the way the chart reads, since you have zero PP, doesnt that mean that even with access to a power at level one you cant use it?
Please forgive my total inability to understand psionics, but the way the chart reads, since you have zero PP, doesnt that mean that even with access to a power at level one you cant use it?
That depends on the class, psions use int, wilder use cha, psywars use wis, etc. Its like bonus spells per day. Since this class manifests like a psion, I think it would also use Int.
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Last edited by demidracolich : 07-10-2010 at 12:14 PM.
Basically everything is based on INT, except for the maximum number of soulmelds that can be shaped at once, which is universally CON. The 0 pp and any point where zero spells(0 not -) are given are considered to be bonus spells/pp only. I briefly considered giving them cleric style WIS based casting and basing soulmeld DCs on WIS, but given they already have a small CON dependency in addition to INT, I thought best to mitigate the MAD, especially given the lack of nukes they get. I need to play test this out a bit. I ran a few tests with a LVL6 character, and it works out as a slight edge over warlock, but less than cleric and barbarian. UMD shenanigans abound though. Though I indicate the opposite, I generally house-rule psicraft and use psionic device away as part of Spellcraft and UMD respectively, leading too a slight improvement to the class (effectively +2 skill per level). I have constructed a level 16 omnimancer, and the first test indicates that the divine and arcane are nearly pure utility casting by that point, and the only nuking power comes from fully augmented Psionic powers, which is very restrictive (low PP). There is still some shenanigans from learning spells from paladin/ranger/domain lists, but smart GM'ing can limit this (archivist requires sharper GM'ing than wizard ever did). and given only 5th level spells it becomes harder to abuse. It also seems that ideally a larger percentage of WBL going into scrolls (to transcribe), is the ideal choice (especially at lvl 6). I also probably need to give scribe scroll at first level (since wizard and archivist both have it, justified by that being how they write their spell books) though I can delay it till level 2 given the automatic nature of cantrips and orisons. I am curious what to do about dispelling since they have no access to greater dispel and dispel magic becomes relatively useless after level13 or so. I probably need to have a full play test with other players behind the wheel before I can pronounce it balanced since my homebrewer's balance sense is not so attuned as to be able to simply read and appraise.
So after a long break from home brew related work I settled down and did some testing with this class. While being a pure spell caster his party role is firmly on the side skill monkey. He lacks the stealth, but has a spell for anything that isn't making things dead.
So after a long break from home brew related work I settled down and did some testing with this class. While being a pure spell caster his party role is firmly on the side skill monkey. He lacks the stealth, but has a spell for anything that isn't making things dead.
Just so you know, thread necromancy is generally avoided on this forum. If you really want people to take a look at your revisions, you should probably repost this as a new thread.
Just so you know, thread necromancy is generally avoided on this forum. If you really want people to take a look at your revisions, you should probably repost this as a new thread.
In Homebrew, people can bump their own threads indefinitely. Yes, that is in the rules. No, this post does not contain a quotation of the exact rule.
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In Homebrew, people can bump their own threads indefinitely. Yes, that is in the rules. No, this post does not contain a quotation of the exact rule.
Really? Huh. Got called out on that once.
Now, for my actual opinion:
This class seems nice enough, wide range of abilities (meaning different types of magic and what not), and seems to be okay in combat. However, with the wide range of abilities comes the diluted power. So, an omnimancer, when he gets into the higher levels, is not going to be quite on par with other characters of the same level, or so it appears to me.
I really don't like this idea.
You can get double progression from theurge style prestige classes from this... and you can probably mange an early entry as well.
There are plenty 'I do everything' classes without actually doing everything.
Nice try, just not my thing, really.
As a note, after I first saw this, I recalled an idea I had for how to combine magic systems a while ago, and ended up creating the Dabblemaster. What's your opinion of it, Darth Stabber?
I think the best thing about it is that it doesn't really benefit from Theurge classes (if they would work at all).
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Okay so I am sitting down with all my books and pdfs and working out bonus feat list, to force players to use those feats to focus on magic (and to give some lip service to the magic systems that were excluded).
Currently I have item creation, metamagic, metapsionic, any psionic, any incarnum, martial study, martial stance, expanded knowledge, bind vestige, extra slot, extra invocation, and obtain familiar.
I am also considering putting true speak on the skill list and minor utterance on this feat list. Is that just pollution, or does it really need to be there for completism's sake? Also is there a feat for gaining mysteries (shadow magic), or do I need to brew one? Ditto that with infusions.
I am also considering putting true speak on the skill list and minor utterance on this feat list. Is that just pollution, or does it really need to be there for completism's sake? Also is there a feat for gaining mysteries (shadow magic), or do I need to brew one? Ditto that with infusions.
The only magic systems you can gain access to solely through feats are Psionics (Hidden Talent), Binding (Bind Vestige), Truenaming (Minor Utterance?) and Incarnum (Shape Soulmeld, Bind Least/Lesser/Greater Chakra).
It depends a lot one where you want to take this, because it could get very cluttered (as I felt with the Dabblemaster, which is why I haven't continued work on it even after considering it a few times). The name "Omnimancer" would only truly be deserved if it could do it all though, I suppose - unless "mancing" would only fall to spellcasting and psionics, meaning you'd only still need shadow magic and possibly infusions (latter not necessary with Craft feats I'd say though).
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Why only Warlock Invocations? Allowing them access to the DFA list too would hardly break the game and there's a few nice utility ones on there like Magical Insight (<3)
So when the revision comes down I'll give them access to DFA invocations as well.
I am amazed at the power available through the bind vestige feat. It has been a while since I went over pact magic, and I gotta say that you can get effects beyond the normal ken of a feat, and change it every day. That being said, the rp risks are pretty high. Maybe give them bind vestige as automatic bonus feat with some extra stuff attached (they really don't need to be victim of a bad pact every day, and since charisma is their dump stat, they really need some sort of help.)
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3.5 Base Class: Omnimancer (PEACH)
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