Occult Adventures Chakras

[EisenKreutzer]

I was reading through Occult Adventures just now, and came upon the Chakras section. The system seems interesting, but I'm having a hard time judging it's usefulness.

Have anyone experimented enough with it to form an opinion?

As a sidenote, would allowing DSP's Akashic classes access to it without the Feat prerequisite break anything?

[Milo v3]

It's near useless. Also, akashic classes would need a ki pool to use it.

[Ssalarn]

It's near useless. Also, akashic classes would need a ki pool to use it.

You could maybe let them use Essence Burn in place of adding ki.

[Milo v3]

You could maybe let them use Essence Burn in place of adding ki.

It'd need for each point of essence burnt covered it for several rounds... I mean it uses up ki every single round.

[Psyren]

It uses chakras in the Meditant/Buddhism sense, not chakras in the Incarnum/Akasha sense.

And the system is woefully bad without the Chakra feats, which boost it all the way to poor. Three of the abilities are good (Sacral = flight, Brow = true seeing, and Crown = free rerolls) but the rest suck, and the only one you can use practically is the flight because the others take so long to build up to unless you sink 4 feats in.

Without 3 feats, maintaining the abilities is very difficult. You have to make will and fort saves every round, and you add your Cha modifier - not bonus - which means the class this was most likely meant for (monk) will likely be going in with a penalty to that save because Cha is a dump stat. You also have way better things to spend ki on, though the feats at least give you a buffer before dipping into your main pool.

Unchained Monk can just skip this whole mess and get the flight with a ki power. Wind Jump is a move action and has the same restrictions about landing, but it lasts 10 rounds and grants perfect maneuverability instead of average.

[meschlum]

Concur.

Your ki pool is 1/2 level + Wisdom modifier, so let's be generous and say you have 10 ki available. That's 10 rounds of Chakra use maximum, so let's see what you get!

Remember: activating the chakra costs 1 ki and a swift action, so you have no swift actions available for anything else.

Round 1: DR 1/-, which is almost always worse than the +4 to AC you could get from spending that ki to improve your AC. You also need to make two DC 11 saves (Fort and Will, with Cha added on top), which you'll probably pass (or else you take 1d6 damage (failed Fort) and lose your turn (failed Wis)).

Round 2: DR 2/-, still bad. You also get 1 round Fly speed with Average maneuverability, so unless you've invested points in the skill (which takes levels), it's not going to help you move much. Plus, you need to land at the end of your move, so it's no good against a dragon flying overhead. Save DCs are 13, damage is 2d6, you're still unlikely to fail. Though you now want to have a high Charisma, as well as the rest of your MAD.

Round 3: DR 3/-, not especially impressive. Fly speed, and a 2d8 damage breath weapon (30' cone). Does it have a save DC? Who knows. Energy resistance and immunity does not apply, but it's taken you three rounds (and level 6 or more) to do an average of 9 damage to people close to you. A fireball does 21 at level 6 (10.5 on a successful save), covers a larger area, and can be cast on round 1 rather than halfway through the fight. DC on the saves is 16, which is increasing faster than your saves are. With equipment you are still likely to make the saves, but you might fail one, and that's 3d6 damage (more than your breath weapon) or losing a round (and having to start over at round 1). You could also have used three extra attacks by spending ki, likely doing more than 9 damage if facing a single foe.

Round 4: DR 4/-, almost like creatures with weak DR. Fly speed, your breath weapon does 3d8 damage, or you can heal 1d8+8 damage. 4 ki or more and good odds of blasting yourself lets you heal less than wholeness of body (16 at level 8, costing 2 ki). The DC is now 20, with 4d6 damage. Again, more than you can heal.

Round 5: DR 5/-, no longer important since you're at level 10 where things do lots of damage. Fly speed, 4d8 breath weapon, heal 1d8+10 damage (still worse than wholeness of body). You can stagger one opponent within 30 feet, with a DC of 15 + Charisma (sonic, mind affecting). Guess you want to be MAD, then. Does this require an action, so you spend an action to deprive one foe of an action? The rules don't say. Even if it's free, you're basically costing them a move action (allowing you to get closer or begin to escape), and they can still attack you or cast a spell. Or even do a partial charge. DC is now 25, for 5d6 damage - definitely getting challenging.

Round 6: DR 6/-, first level commoners with clubs can only hurt you on a critical. Wow. Fly speed, 5d8 breath weapon (6th level spells are in play), heal 1d8+12 damage (wholeness of body is 24 for 2 ki, and for 4 ki you'd heal more than the total so far in a third the time). Stagger DC is 16 + Charisma, so it might affect a giant if you're MAD and spending money on Charisma boosts? You get true seeing, five rounds after noticing invisible rogues out to stab you might matter. DC escalates to 31, aka "yeah, right". Enjoy losing your round or taking 6d6 damage unless you're lucky and have optimized your stats and saves.

Round 7: DR 7/-, at level 14? Really? Fly speed, 6d8 breath weapon, heal 1d8+14 damage, stagger DC 17 + Charisma (mind affecting immnuity is becoming a thing), and a second round of true seeing. You find out that up to this point, you were only allowed to use one of the benefits above, so you didn't actually get the DR, fly speed, etc. Now you can use two benefits, including the ability to roll twice and keep the best roll for an entire round. Since you're facing a DC of 38, you are going to take this, and hope you make the Will save (fortitude is just 7d6 damage, so probably a fifth of your hit points?). Otherwise, you get to start over from round 1, with 7 less ki. Do you expect a fight to last seven rounds at level 14? And to make all the required saves?


Yes, there are feats that make things marginally easier (only make one save instead of two, for two feats (also getting 4 extra ki for chakra use)), but even if you made all your saves, you'd still get something terrible out of the deal.

Wholeness of Body is better healing.

Spending 1 ki for +4 AC is almost always better than the DR.

True seeing is something you need right away, not six rounds into a fight.

If you can get multiple tough opponents to stay close to you for 7 rounds, at level 14, breath weapons would inflict 20d8 damage to them. Qinggong Monk gets Dragon's Breath at level 8, doing 8d6 with multiple energy types, and costing 2 ki. So two rounds at level 8 for 24d6 and half the ki. 3 rounds for less than half the time, less ki overall, and 36d6 (in case of successful saves, assuming chakra does not allow saves).

Brief fly speed is almost useful, except you can spend ki to boost your move speed and get a solid bonus to jump that way. With your maneuverability, you're going to be flying in a straight line anyway, and that's what jumping is for. Still, maybe worth it (if you can make the saves to avoid blasting yourself for 2d6 damage and daze each round).

Rerolls on all your d20s is quite impressive, but it takes seven rounds (at least! Better not fail any Will saves, or run out of ki), and what are you going to use it for? You're already blasting yourself with DC 38 saves each round, which the reroll will help but not guarantee, you're likely to make your saves against enemy spells most of the time anyway. A flurry of blows? The big bad has stayed next to you for 7 rounds, waiting for you to power up? Really?


So yes, chakras are something you want to avoid.

[Serafina]

It's utterly, UTTERLY stupid and useless in every single way - so badly that it just makes you think "WTF were the designers thinking?".

It's one of the worst pieces of design I've seen from Paizo. Other things might have had more impact - but at least most of their design was either a questionable choice (caster supremacy) or outright errors (lots of the overpowered stuff) or over-nerfing (lots of errata).
This?
This was just utterly broken right from the start. It's...okay, I can maybe see a glimmer of a good idea there in the abilities it grants, which are actually nice decent add-ons and thematically fitting.
But oh dear lords the execution. Did the person who wrote this EVER look at the ki cost? Or the action economy? That's just....these abilities do not mesh with the mechanics, at all.
Well, at least that's the impression I get. Maybe it was just people meddling with the design process.


At any rate, if you actually want to use this as a monk:
Beg your GM hard for a houserule.
The simplest houserule would be "maintaining chakras does not cost KI, a swift action, or forces a save. Once opened, they stay open until you sleep/fall unconscious or try and fail to open another chakra."
There, now using chakras is a risky gamble that can take quite a bit out of your Ki-Pool if you fail any saves. Each day, you meditate a bit and try to make your energies flow freely. You'll fail occasionally, but such is the difficulty of enlightenment - try to exceed your grasp and fail.

Then some further changes.
Switching between your currently used Chakra now takes a swift action (and maybe a DC and/or a Ki-point if your GM wants that).
Serpent-Fire Breath, Serpent-Fire Healing and the Throat-Chakra now cost a swift action to use (and maybe a Ki-Point if your GM wants that).
Serpent-Fire Breath has a DC of 10+1/2 your HD + whatever modifier determines your Ki Pool (Wisdom if it's none), as does the Throat-Chakra.
Oh, and why not throw that modifier onto the damage of your Serpent-Fire Breath while we're at it.



Combine that with an Unchained Monk and you actually have an interesting T3 class IMO.
You now have an interesting mechanic - you have to decide how many chakras you decide to risk opening. You'll probably do that at the start of the day with some short meditation (the GM might wish to adjust the time that takes, since it's no longer done in-combat). Reaching too far will at the very least cost you the so-far invested Ki-Points, or it might even deal some damage. But in exchange, you gain some nice new abilities - the only thing really powerful would be the last two chakras, and those will be challenging to reach until quite late in your career. Well, and unlimited out-of-combat healing is something that you may not want in every campaign.