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View Full Version : Pathfinder Walking the Paths of those before us (Base Class, Incomplete)



Jadev
2015-05-02, 12:46 AM
So, I'm not even certain at this point how long I've had the idea for this class. It's a part of a campaign setting I'm putting together for a while now (which is why there are references to Orcs acting all druid-y), and I know I started the basics of that more than a year ago...

Anyways, I wanted to post what I've got so far (which is about half of the material, though the skeleton of the class is firmly in place).

Without further ado, the Pathwalker!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p49i_TTshhOHap7jagDnQeWfAxlhYf0TwQClov9kOTc/edit?usp=sharing

So, as you can probably see, I have a lot of work to do. I have an idea of what I want all the Surges to be, and I have some ideas for higher-level Boons and a good amount of Shifts. Still, if anyone has any ideas or critiques, let me know. One thing-- I don't want Boons that can do damage without some kind of environmental trigger. Since most Boons allow unlimited usage, except those I think could be easily exploited, this could cause problem, especially since aside from the Sun Walker the Pathwalker really isn't meant to do much damage.

Extra Anchovies
2015-05-02, 02:40 AM
First off, if you aren't super attached to the name you might want to change it. Pathwalker is also the name of DSP's maneuver-using psywar archetype. Anyways, feedback.

I don't like how unequal the Mendings are.
Sky is pretty good, requiring a full-round action but always healing for 1d8/rank, and stabilizing bleeding allies.
Soil takes two standard actions, which means two rounds (and that extra round could be long enough for a critically injured ally to bleed out, especially if you have more than one party member in negative HP). Even if it healed 2d8/rank it would be bad. Standard action to pull, move action to apply would fix this.
Sun is at least better than soil, taking a standard action, healing for 1d6/rank, but probably removing the ally from combat for a round because that save is brutal. If you want it to be noncombat healing just make it a full-round action.
Sea is okay, but the lower effects from carrying water means your party will have to stay by a river for your mendings to be useful.
Life is quite good, with standard-action healing for more than any of the other classes are capable of.
Death is by far the strongest because the temp HP have no duration and don't explicitly not stack. Given a few days of downtime, your whole party has massive temporary-hp shields. If a duration is applied and/or it is made to not stack, it becomes absolute trash because the temp hp will be worthless. In-combat healing is not worth the action economy, with the exception of Paladins and Warpriests healing themselves.

Sun surge could be a direct-damage effect, maybe enemies in a radius around the Pathwalker take damage every round or something.
Soil surge could be something that creates/removes difficult terrain in an area, and maybe have enemies in the area save vs entanglement as the ground tries to suck them in.
Sea surge could be a repositioning ability, like a wave of water that pushes enemies around.
Sky surge looks kinda useless except for the no-save, no-attack-roll lightning. However, that lightning is awesome and makes taking the Sky path totally worth it. At 20th level, it's 40d8 points of no-miss damage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_DqV1xdf-Y). Getting to unload that on somebody's ass would be so cool, even if it's just once per day. It also would be pretty fun to play a Sky Pathwalker just so I could shout "lightning bolt! lightning bolt! lightning bolt! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw)" every time I use the surge. So it's useless until level 4 (unless fighting a weather-specific monster, like a werewolf or fire elemental or something), after which it becomes a lightning machine until you can finally create superstorms at level 12.
Life surge is good where it is, I guess. Not too big a fan of healing-based classes but that's what this path is all about.
Death Surge should probably just replicate a Plague of Undead (with your class level in place of caster level) that lasts for one hour or something.
None of the surges are actually unbalanced next to the others, though.

The senses are pretty unbalanced.
Sun sense is pretty weak. I'd let it detect body heat of living creatures, with the exception of plants, non-fiery constructs, non-fire elementals, non-fiery undead, and some outsiders.
Soil sense is alright, about where they should be.
Sea sense is useful but situational. Maybe also allow it to detect creatures that are primarily water (most non-plant living creatures, except for most outsiders)?
Sky sense blows all of the others away (pun intended). Maybe have it not work when there's no air movement, so it can be shut down by a still day or an unventilated room, and then reactivated with a wind-control effect? Then it has a limitation like the others.
Life sense is pretty good, doesn't pick up on constructs or undead. I'd argue that outsiders should be excluded too. The type sensing is way too strong, though - it becomes impossible to disguise yourself as another type/subtype around one of these guys.
Death sense is trash. don't know how to make it good; possibly apply it to constructs, undead, and outsiders, and then let Death pathwalkers with the sense know the hit point total of any creature they can see with their other senses?

Suggestion for the boons: include a boon of each of the higher levels that grants an elemental ally of the next step up (Major gives a Medium elemental, Greater gives a Large elemental, High gives a Huge elemental).

Also, you don't list High Boons on the table, and it's worth noting that warlocks gain new invocation ranks at levels 6/11/16 while pathwalkers get new boons at levels 5/10/(presumably 15). Not sure if that's intentional.

Overall, though, I like the concept, the only issues are in how the paths are balanced against each other.

Jadev
2015-05-02, 08:09 AM
First off, if you aren't super attached to the name you might want to change it. Pathwalker is also the name of DSP's maneuver-using psywar archetype. Anyways, feedback.

I don't like how unequal the Mendings are.
Sky is pretty good, requiring a full-round action but always healing for 1d8/rank, and stabilizing bleeding allies.
Soil takes two standard actions, which means two rounds (and that extra round could be long enough for a critically injured ally to bleed out, especially if you have more than one party member in negative HP). Even if it healed 2d8/rank it would be bad. Standard action to pull, move action to apply would fix this.
Sun is at least better than soil, taking a standard action, healing for 1d6/rank, but probably removing the ally from combat for a round because that save is brutal. If you want it to be noncombat healing just make it a full-round action.
Sea is okay, but the lower effects from carrying water means your party will have to stay by a river for your mendings to be useful.
Life is quite good, with standard-action healing for more than any of the other classes are capable of.
Death is by far the strongest because the temp HP have no duration and don't explicitly not stack. Given a few days of downtime, your whole party has massive temporary-hp shields. If a duration is applied and/or it is made to not stack, it becomes absolute trash because the temp hp will be worthless. In-combat healing is not worth the action economy, with the exception of Paladins and Warpriests healing themselves.

Sun surge could be a direct-damage effect, maybe enemies in a radius around the Pathwalker take damage every round or something.
Soil surge could be something that creates/removes difficult terrain in an area, and maybe have enemies in the area save vs entanglement as the ground tries to suck them in.
Sea surge could be a repositioning ability, like a wave of water that pushes enemies around.
Sky surge looks kinda useless except for the no-save, no-attack-roll lightning. However, that lightning is awesome and makes taking the Sky path totally worth it. At 20th level, it's 40d8 points of no-miss damage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_DqV1xdf-Y). Getting to unload that on somebody's ass would be so cool, even if it's just once per day. It also would be pretty fun to play a Sky Pathwalker just so I could shout "lightning bolt! lightning bolt! lightning bolt! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw)" every time I use the surge. So it's useless until level 4 (unless fighting a weather-specific monster, like a werewolf or fire elemental or something), after which it becomes a lightning machine until you can finally create superstorms at level 12.
Life surge is good where it is, I guess. Not too big a fan of healing-based classes but that's what this path is all about.
Death Surge should probably just replicate a Plague of Undead (with your class level in place of caster level) that lasts for one hour or something.
None of the surges are actually unbalanced next to the others, though.

The senses are pretty unbalanced.
Sun sense is pretty weak. I'd let it detect body heat of living creatures, with the exception of plants, non-fiery constructs, non-fire elementals, non-fiery undead, and some outsiders.
Soil sense is alright, about where they should be.
Sea sense is useful but situational. Maybe also allow it to detect creatures that are primarily water (most non-plant living creatures, except for most outsiders)?
Sky sense blows all of the others away (pun intended). Maybe have it not work when there's no air movement, so it can be shut down by a still day or an unventilated room, and then reactivated with a wind-control effect? Then it has a limitation like the others.
Life sense is pretty good, doesn't pick up on constructs or undead. I'd argue that outsiders should be excluded too. The type sensing is way too strong, though - it becomes impossible to disguise yourself as another type/subtype around one of these guys.
Death sense is trash. don't know how to make it good; possibly apply it to constructs, undead, and outsiders, and then let Death pathwalkers with the sense know the hit point total of any creature they can see with their other senses?

Suggestion for the boons: include a boon of each of the higher levels that grants an elemental ally of the next step up (Major gives a Medium elemental, Greater gives a Large elemental, High gives a Huge elemental).

Also, you don't list High Boons on the table, and it's worth noting that warlocks gain new invocation ranks at levels 6/11/16 while pathwalkers get new boons at levels 5/10/(presumably 15). Not sure if that's intentional.

Overall, though, I like the concept, the only issues are in how the paths are balanced against each other.

Well, thanks for the feedback! This is all actually really helpful. I didn't actually realize that I didn't have High Boons on the table-- this was all on a Word document before I transferred it to Google Docs, and I missed a few things.

Some responses:

Soil Mendings are a bit tough with the two standard actions thing, but the idea is that the Soil Pathwalker pulls his gems early in the day, when the spellcasters are preparing themselves and they're getting ready to venture out, and uses them individually. In fact, while I don't have any of the Shifts written up yet, there's a low-level one I have in mind that will remove that restriction on only them being able to use it, so they can pass around a couple of healing crystals for the party.

I just decreased the Sun Mendings DC pretty heavily, so it only reaches up to 17 at max, still potentially annoying but not debilitating, especially for warrior classes.

I really need to fix Death Mendings, somehow. I'll probably just apply a duration, or perhaps a caveat that it doesn't function properly if there's no wounds on the person.

As for Sea walkers, yes, that can be a problem, but I'm planning to throw in a couple of Boons and Shifts to help with that. And I'll probably remove that restriction on carrying water-- that was mostly to make it so city water wasn't useful. Which is weird, because most races don't have huge cities in the campaign setting I'm making.


I have an idea for the Sun Surge already. It involves large globes of flame and lots of burning. Though I might add the DOT effect as a Shift.

I personally think the ability to make a battlefield-spanning Fog cloud for your rogues is pretty useful, especially if you've got someone who can throw out faerie fires or something else that marks them. I do feel I should burst your bubble a bit with the Lightning bolt-- you can only use it when it's sufficiently cloudy (which I will clarify in the Doc), so you've at the very least gotta throw out one point to obscure the skies when the weather's not already obliging you. Fun Fact-- That is the WEAKEST a natural lightning bolt is in Pathfinder, and they also allow no saves. And I hate to sound like a broken record, but Shifts for this have plenty of opportunity to pump it up.

Also... you can't use the Surge until level four anyways. You get the ability at level four.

Death Surge is a mass undead summon, using either nearby corpses or a special Death Walker ability that lets him set up contracts with spirits (primarily dead Orcs who want to keep on fighting) so he can summon them into combat. Aside from the fact that Negative energy elementals are a bit overpowered for a constant companion, this is the main reason that the Elemental ally Boon doesn't work for Death Walkers.

The main idea I had for the Sea Surge was a kind of mass water creation, allowing them to use all those pretty Boons that mainly help when they're swimming around, with Shifts to allow for currents. It saves the problem where a lot of water-oriented classes don't use their abilities often unless they're in the aquatic campaign. Funnily enough, I used to have an ability like that planned for the Sea Walker, back when this class was a different animal. I'll probably still have one, through Boons.

That's actually a pretty good idea for Soil. I'll give it some thought.


During writing this, I have a couple times already gone over and implemented your suggestions (for Life and Sky, if you must know.) I'm thinking of the same thing for Sun, though I might just go the Predator route and give them Thermal vision at this point.

For Death... I dunno, I don't like giving numerical health information. Maybe an ability to sense creatures that are Bloodied (even thought that condition doesn't exist in Pathfinder), plus the Death Sense (because I like it thematically) and the Undead sense. I don't like the idea of sensing Constructs and Outsiders, mostly because it doesn't make much thematic sense-- Constructs aren't alive, and therefore can't really know Death, and Outsiders don't die either.


I do have that Boon set planned, actually. It's one of the reasons I have that bit where you can exchange boons.
A quick clarification on the Life Walker: I know I make it seem like he's all healing, and so far he is, but once we get into the Boons and Shifts he's actually got a fair bit of buffing power and utility.

Extra Anchovies
2015-05-02, 08:29 AM
Well, thanks for the feedback! This is all actually really helpful. I didn't actually realize that I didn't have High Boons on the table-- this was all on a Word document before I transferred it to Google Docs, and I missed a few things.

Glad I could help!


Soil Mendings are a bit tough with the two standard actions thing, but the idea is that the Soil Pathwalker pulls his gems early in the day, when the spellcasters are preparing themselves and they're getting ready to venture out, and uses them individually. In fact, while I don't have any of the Shifts written up yet, there's a low-level one I have in mind that will remove that restriction on only them being able to use it, so they can pass around a couple of healing crystals for the party.

Ah, didn't notice that they could be prepped beforehand. That makes Soil pretty okay; they'd still need to use a full round to draw and apply the crystals, but that's a lot better.


I personally think the ability to make a battlefield-spanning Fog cloud for your rogues is pretty useful, especially if you've got someone who can throw out faerie fires or something else that marks them. I do feel I should burst your bubble a bit with the Lightning bolt-- you can only use it when it's sufficiently cloudy (which I will clarify in the Doc), so you've at the very least gotta throw out one point to obscure the skies when the weather's not already obliging you. Fun Fact-- That is the WEAKEST a natural lightning bolt is in Pathfinder, and they also allow no saves. And I hate to sound like a broken record, but Shifts for this have plenty of opportunity to pump it up.

Ah, thanks for pointing that out. Also, if 4d8 is the weakest, you clearly need to buff the damage to the full 10d8 per bolt


Also... you can't use the Surge until level four anyways. You get the ability at level four.

Sweet! Lightning bolts from the get-go (as long as it's cloudy).


Death Surge is a mass undead summon, using either nearby corpses or a special Death Walker ability that lets him set up contracts with spirits (primarily dead Orcs who want to keep on fighting) so he can summon them into combat. Aside from the fact that Negative energy elementals are a bit overpowered for a constant companion, this is the main reason that the Elemental ally Boon doesn't work for Death Walkers.

Yeah, Plague of Undead creates 4*CL HD of undead with max HP. Might be a bit too much, though.


For Death... I dunno, I don't like giving numerical health information. Maybe an ability to sense creatures that are Bloodied (even thought that condition doesn't exist in Pathfinder), plus the Death Sense (because I like it thematically) and the Undead sense. I don't like the idea of sensing Constructs and Outsiders, mostly because it doesn't make much thematic sense-- Constructs aren't alive, and therefore can't really know Death, and Outsiders don't die either.

Maybe % remaining health, then? That makes sense in-game ("he is halfway to death", etc).

Jadev
2015-05-05, 11:25 PM
And, it's updated! I've actually been gradually updating since I last posted, but I think I'm far enough along to make another post about it. I've added some Shifts, most of the Minor level Boons (most likely all of them unless I think of a few more), and added Surges for the Sun, Sea, and Death Paths (all of which I have some misgivings about, but I still like them thematically).

Now, for something I feel I should talk about: The classification of Boons as a Supernatural ability. I've had to do some research as I was creating this class (Pathfinder SRD is your friend) and I decided that rather than a Spell-like ability, the Boons should be supernatural, thereby becoming immune to dispel magic and spell resistance, but not to antimagic fields. To me, this made sense, as the Pathwalker isn't summoning internal magic or pulling power from a divine source, rather he is kind of... talking to nature, and nature is obliging his requests. The one exception, really, is the Surges, which are more him telling nature what to do in the vein of a more traditional caster, but these are so potent that they can't be dispelled, and they're still not entirely normal magic, so spell resistance doesn't really work on them. However, this caused a problem-- Supernatural abilities don't provoke attacks of opportunity. This doesn't really make sense for my Pathwalkers, since most castings of their abilities are very physically involved, and require concentration. Now, when I run my first campaign with Pathwalkers, I'm going to houserule this part out, making them vulnerable to attacks of opportunity, but I don't like flagrantly breaking game rules in-class, so I thought instead I'd bring this up here in case anyone wants to use the same houserule.

dragonjek
2015-05-06, 11:55 AM
You mention Familiar Elementals in the Paths section, but they don't appear and aren't described elsewhere.

Sun should probably be reworked. It's almost ridiculously powerful at this point; you should reduce the number of suns it creates, because the buff they provide is huge and its area is colossal, so almost everyone will get the full bonus all the time. Additionally, directly attacking with the suns is a terrible decision compared to taking advantage of that huge bonus to damage. You also don't get the "mass bombardment of miniature suns" effect you said you created it for; you can only attack with one sun at a time, and they don't have very good range.

You don't say how long the effect (or the effects of surges in general) lasts.

You don't list the Favored Weapons of Sky Walkers.

Jadev
2015-05-06, 03:30 PM
You mention Familiar Elementals in the Paths section, but they don't appear and aren't described elsewhere.

Sun should probably be reworked. It's almost ridiculously powerful at this point; you should reduce the number of suns it creates, because the buff they provide is huge and its area is colossal, so almost everyone will get the full bonus all the time. Additionally, directly attacking with the suns is a terrible decision compared to taking advantage of that huge bonus to damage. You also don't get the "mass bombardment of miniature suns" effect you said you created it for; you can only attack with one sun at a time, and they don't have very good range.

You don't say how long the effect (or the effects of surges in general) lasts.

You don't list the Favored Weapons of Sky Walkers.

First off, thanks for the feedback. I really wasn't certain about the Sun Surge, and it's probably getting a rework-- I just need to think about it for a while. Honestly, the whole Sun Walker Path is weird for me-- I need to include it if only for thematic reasons and I like some of it, but it's really hard to make fire into a support tool, since there's not much it does other than burn people, and I can only make so many light effects that are actually useful.

As for the effects of surges in general, each one has a different duration, since they're all very different abilities. The duration is listed in each of the Surge descriptions (though I guess I forgot it for the Sun Surge), excepting the Life Surge which is clearly an instantaneous ability with no duration.

As for the favored weapons of Sky Walkers? I'm an idiot and forgot. It's mostly because the Path of the Sky was the last one I actually wrote up-- all of the other Paths had been written up in a Word document before I made the transfer to Google Docs. They'll be up soon.

On a side note, I'm planning to change the name of Surges, since I've just read through Mythic Adventures again and I realized that there's an ability in that book called Mythic Surges, which is universal for Mythic characters. If anyone has any suggestions for the new name let me know.

EDIT: Oops, forgot your first comment. Those were the elementals for which the Elemental Experience bonus applies in full. I've renamed those sections as "Elemental Experience" for clarification.

dragonjek
2015-05-07, 02:29 AM
First off, thanks for the feedback. I really wasn't certain about the Sun Surge, and it's probably getting a rework-- I just need to think about it for a while. Honestly, the whole Sun Walker Path is weird for me-- I need to include it if only for thematic reasons and I like some of it, but it's really hard to make fire into a support tool, since there's not much it does other than burn people, and I can only make so many light effects that are actually useful.
Fire has symbolic importance, too. Fire is used to purify the unclean and impure. Fire also represents energy, so it can be used to empower someone.


On a side note, I'm planning to change the name of Surges, since I've just read through Mythic Adventures again and I realized that there's an ability in that book called Mythic Surges, which is universal for Mythic characters. If anyone has any suggestions for the new name let me know.
How about Investments? They invest the ability with a more specific aspect of nature rather than the broad concept of "sun", "earth", "life", etc.