PDA

View Full Version : Pathfinder Ascetic Mystic - New Mystic Archetype [PEACH]



kelly R
2018-03-15, 01:23 PM
Ascetic Mystic

Some Mystics take on an ascetic lifestyle, eschewing material possessions, and the weapons that others rely on as a crutch. They spend their time training to focus their animus through a strictly unarmed fighting style.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency:

An Ascetic Mystic is proficient with unarmed strikes and with light armor, but not with shields. When wearing medium or heavy armor, using a shield, or carrying a medium or heavy load, an Ascetic Mystic loses the benefits of their Mystic Arts and Arcane Defense class features.

An Ascetic Mystic is proficient with unarmed strikes, and only unarmed strikes: They may not ever acquire proficiency in any other type of weapon, through feats or even through multiclassing. If an Ascetic Mystic takes a level in another class, they may choose to forego acquiring that class's weapon proficiencies. If they choose to acquire those proficiencies, they lose all the class features granted by this Archetype (Including the base Mystic class's Arcane Defense and Maneuvers).

This feature replaces the Mystic's normal weapon and armor proficiencies.

Maneuvers:

The disciplines available to an Ascetic Mystic are Broken Blade, Elemental Flux, Mithral Current, Riven Hourglass, Shattered Mirror, and Thrashing Dragon. They otherwise learn, ready, and initiate maneuvers as a standard mystic.

This ability alters maneuvers.

Mystic Arts (Su):

An Ascetic Mystic learns how to use their animus to increase the strength of their unarmed strikes. An Ascetic Mystic's unarmed strike is treated as both a manufactured weapon and a natural weapon for the purpose of spells and effects that enhance or improve either manufactured weapons or natural weapons.

An Ascetic Mystic's unarmed strikes can be made with any part of their body. This means that an Ascetic Mystic can make unarmed strikes with their hands full. There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for an Ascetic Mystic striking unarmed. An Ascetic Mystic can apply their full strength bonus on damage rolls for all their unarmed strikes. An Ascetic Mystic's unarmed strikes deal lethal damage, although they can choose to deal nonlethal damage with no penalty on their attack roll. They can make this choice while grappling as well.

An Ascetic Mystic does damage with unarmed strikes as an Unchained Monk of their Ascetic Mystic level, and may count Ascetic Mystic levels as Unchained Monk levels for the purpose of determining this damage, if they also have levels in Unchained Monk.

In addition, they gain the following benefits:


At 1st level, an Ascetic Mystic gains Improved Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat.
Starting at 7th level, an Ascetic Mystic adds their Ascetic Mystic initiation modifier as a bonus on damage rolls with unarmed strikes, and their unarmed strikes are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage resistance.
Starting at 12th level, an Ascetic Mystic adds their Ascetic Mystic initiation modifier as an insight bonus to combat maneuver checks, and to their combat maneuver defense when fighting unarmed.
Starting at 17th level, an Ascetic Mystic adds their Ascetic Mystic initiation modifier as an insight bonus on critical confirmation rolls for attacks made with unarmed strikes.

This ability replaces mystic artifice and font of animus.

Arcane Defense (Ex):

Starting at 2nd level, the sorcerous power within an Ascetic Mystic’s body makes her resilient to the supernatural. These energies defend her from magical and psionic powers, granting her a +1 insight bonus to her AC and saving throws against psionic powers, psi-like abilities, spells, and spell-like abilities. This bonus increases by +1 at 6th level, and again at 11th level, 16th level, and 20th level.

Additionally, whenever the Ascetic Mystic has at least one point of animus in her animus pool, they add their Ascetic Mystic initiation modifier to their AC. This bonus to AC applies even against touch attacks and when the Ascetic Mystic is flat-footed. This bonus is not active until the start of the Ascetic Mystic's first turn in a combat; they do not gain this against attacks made before they act.

This feature alters Arcane Defense.

kelly R
2018-03-15, 01:41 PM
This is an Archetype for the Mystic class from Path of War Expanded (Available on the pfsrd, would link if I could :D)

I threw it together for a campaign I'm going to be playing in shortly. Compare to Aurora Soul (Also available on the pfsrd) to see what I was going for. Basically, I wanted a martial adept that fit the monk ideal, and Aurora Soul was almost what I wanted.

Notes:

- I restricted the weaspon and armor proficiencies even further than Aurora Soul.
~ I removed Steel Serpent and Veiled Moon (The latter because the discipline weapons for it don't include unarmed), and added Shattered Mirror and Mithral Current back to it, from Mystic. Mithral Current doesn't have Unarmed as a discipline weapon, but there's a feat that takes care of that issue (Flowing Mithral Fist).
- That has the side-effect of losing Heal as a class skill, compared to Aurora Soul, since Aurora Soul gets that from the Striking Serpent discipline.
+ I eliminated the Defensive Aura feature, and added the effects of it to the Mystic's Arcane Defense feature. This is a gain over Aurora Soul, which I hope is balanced out by the (much) stricter weapon proficiencies.
+ I changed Mystic Combat, to Mystic Arts. It no longer grants Greater Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat, but it does give the Ascetic Mystic the Unchained Monk's unarmed damage progression. In addition, it replaces the Mystic's mystic artifice and font of animus features, rather than bonus feats. This probably makes it a net advantage over Aurora Soul, but I'm hoping it's not too extreme.