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View Full Version : Pathfinder [Akashic Mysteries & Path of War] Akashic themed Zealot Archetype



sage20500
2019-09-05, 06:29 PM
So after looking around and seeing that there wasn't very much available in the way of interesting archetypes for Zealot, I decided to try my hand on making a Zealot archetype in the theme of the Veiled Lord to see about making a Zealot that has some increased options in party buffing at the cost of loosing out on some of the potential damage the base Zealot could potentially put out;

Any suggestions or critiques to balance this archetype to where it can be seen as a viable alternative to the Zealot without crossing the territory of being strictly better would be appreciated; also any help with either naming the Archetype or adjusting the names of its abilities to fit the name scheme better would be appreciated.

-Edit-
Without further ado ladies, gentlemen, and others of the playground I'd like to introduce you all to the Vajra (Version 0.2);

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cejYtCzsunIdAijGUARvCAV76ApicVD442p8FnXwpZc/edit#

If anyone here wishes to take the archetype for a spin in a game they are in please feel free to; I would love to be able to get some feedback from it in actual play to see how things stand numbers wise and if any mechanics need to be changed or tweaked. Any and all feedback is extremely welcome and if anyone has any suggestions for tweaks (or if they want to help with renaming any features that sound bad or lazy to make the flavor feel better because I am terrible at coming up with names) I would be extremely grateful.

Version Updates: 0.3
Essence Zeal: This feature may no longer be used outside of combat to gain Temporary Essence

0.05
Flavor text for the class has been added but is still a work in progress

Defiance has been completely replaced with a new ability called "Bonds of Battle" (Name still under consideration)

Castilonium
2019-09-05, 09:36 PM
As the ragamuffin who wrote the guide to Zealots, I think this looks pretty good :smallsmile:. I like how it gains slowly power over the course of combat. And it looks like you actually have to do a lot of active essence management, unlike a lot of other akashic classes.

Conviction, Essence Pool: I think a 1/2 level pool of essence might be too much. You're already getting a bunch of free essence from Radiant Dawn, one from Essence of the Immortal, and a lot from Essence Zeal. A 1/3 level pool might be better balanced. There's a Rogue talent that gives that amount. You don't want to have so much essence that you simply cram it into all of the receptacles without thought. I also think it's safe to make this conviction available at level 2 rather than 10.

Brotherhood: You might want to limit the chosen veils to the slots listed in the Shape Veil feat. Otherwise the Zealot will be able to shape Blood, Ring, and Title veils.

Community: The focus expending ability is hard to judge. The abilities from other missions are either instant or last 1 round, but Community's provides a scaling buff for several rounds that can eventually be put on the whole party once the Zealot is able to quickly recover psionic focus. It's definitely the most powerful of those abilities, compared to other missions.

Empowerment: The first augment needs a duration. Also, its maximum bonus should scale as you level up rather than allowing +4 max at level 8. Look at other akashic classes and you'll find that they increase their essence capacities very slowly. Also, no akashic class increases their capacity by more than 3.

Defiance: Essence of the Immortal is definitely better than Diehard, but I don't think it overpowers the archetype by itself.

Compared to other Zealots, I think it's a tad too powerful. You said that you want it to have a cost of losing out on some damage potential, but this archetype doesn't at all. In fact, it has an even greater damage potential because it has more essence than a regular Zealot can have. A Destruction Mission Zealot doesn't have increased damage, they simply allow allies to ignore DR and can make their strikes lines and cones. There's nothing stopping your new archetype from dumping all of their essence into the class features and then simply using high damage strikes from a non-Radiant Dawn discipline.

sage20500
2019-09-05, 10:26 PM
As the ragamuffin who wrote the guide to Zealots, I think this looks pretty good :smallsmile:. I like how it gains slowly power over the course of combat. And it looks like you actually have to do a lot of active essence management, unlike a lot of other akashic classes.

Conviction, Essence Pool: I think a 1/2 level pool of essence might be too much. You're already getting a bunch of free essence from Radiant Dawn, one from Essence of the Immortal, and a lot from Essence Zeal. A 1/3 level pool might be better balanced. There's a Rogue talent that gives that amount. You don't want to have so much essence that you simply cram it into all of the receptacles without thought. I also think it's safe to make this conviction available at level 2 rather than 10.

Brotherhood: You might want to limit the chosen veils to the slots listed in the Shape Veil feat. Otherwise the Zealot will be able to shape Blood, Ring, and Title veils.

Community: The focus expending ability is hard to judge. The abilities from other missions are either instant or last 1 round, but Community's provides a scaling buff for several rounds that can eventually be put on the whole party once the Zealot is able to quickly recover psionic focus. It's definitely the most powerful of those abilities, compared to other missions.

Empowerment: The first augment needs a duration. Also, its maximum bonus should scale as you level up rather than allowing +4 max at level 8. Look at other akashic classes and you'll find that they increase their essence capacities very slowly. Also, no akashic class increases their capacity by more than 3.

Defiance: Essence of the Immortal is definitely better than Diehard, but I don't think it overpowers the archetype by itself.

Compared to other Zealots, I think it's a tad too powerful. You said that you want it to have a cost of losing out on some damage potential, but this archetype doesn't at all. In fact, it has an even greater damage potential because it has more essence than a regular Zealot can have. A Destruction Mission Zealot doesn't have increased damage, they simply allow allies to ignore DR and can make their strikes lines and cones. There's nothing stopping your new archetype from dumping all of their essence into the class features and then simply using high damage strikes from a non-Radiant Dawn discipline.

First off, thank you so much for taking the time to look at this and giving me some feed back; I went ahead and made some edits where you suggested, Essence Pool has been cut to 1/3rd class level, Both the Shape Veil Conviction and the Brotherhood level 1 veil has been giving the caveats on where that veil may come from as well.

Community (really need to think of some betters names X(
So Community has been an interesting pickle for me. I liked the passive feature mostly because the original inspiration for this class came from the Veiled Lord archetype that was put out for an akashic warlord (part of the reason why I didn't have the limits on Brotherhood and Shape Veil was because I was directly copying from the Veiled Lord ability that gave them up to 3 veils they could shape and they had the same wording of "any veil" so I wasn't really thinking about that, thanks for mentioning that so I could nip that potential problem in the bud); and one of the big things that annoys me with Veiled Lord is that they receive temporary essence for doing gambits, but unless you invest in the Rajah feat that allows you to reassign your essence every turn you end up having either a class feature you never use because of action economy limits, or a class that is very slow playing out because their having to spend every other turn investing that temporary essence. I figured that by having the passive ability being able to emulate a feat that was practically required to make the other archetype function correctly with the trade off being that it costs you some of your daily resources then that could lead to some potential fun and good game play. The pickle though comes from the active side where you expend the psionic focus. I originally again thought it be fun to emulate the warlord's ability where they gave up the ability to share teamwork feats but instead are able to share Veils, except a friend of mine just mentioned that for the most part a lot of the veils that this archetype might consider picking up don't actually do very much for anyone else on the team if shared. Like for a test character I'm making for a friends Resident Evil game; at level 3 my character currently has 2 veils that they shape (Playing a Daevic in that one), and the first veil is the Crimson Totem as a weapon, and the 2nd veil is the Breastplate of the Righteous from Akashic Trinity. With the Zealot archetype I have if I wanted to take those same veils for here almost no one else in a traditional party they might be in would actually be able to possibly use them. Most melee's would have a much better weapon by then and unless they've been dumping dex and not keeping up with their armor the Breastplate won't do very much.

So with that thought in mind I'm trying to figure out what I could possibly change the active component to do to where it could still be support like for a group but keep with the Akashic theme. I'm wondering if there's a way to maybe mess with the terminology to be instead of lets say sharing a veil with someone, instead maybe you could share an akashic feat with someone, like either one of the Fort, Reflex, or Will Saves, or like the Power Attack feat. With those I could see it potentially becoming much easier to support a more general party since you can pick up feats that others could definitely use; and having those only last a single round isn't something that should be too big of a hindrance. Since as of now the action economy to do this is set for a free action, the save feats especially to me could be seen as tempting because you could potentially share a save booster with an ally that's being hit with something nasty before they roll; but I'm not sure if something along those lines might be considered over powered or game breaking.

If you've got any idea's for a replacement I'd love to hear it so that I can make this archetype be as functional as possible while also being fun to play. :)

Empowerment:
Duration added; I could have sworn I put that down when I first wrote it but I totally missed not putting it there; thanks for the catch! Do you think where its currently at might be a sweet spot or should I lengthen/shorten it? Original idea was Initiator mod rounds with no scaling beyond that; but I wasn't sure how potentially broken that could become.

Also decreased the scaling on it and made it happen gradually. Wasn't thinking about the fact that all of the other veil weavers that had an ability like this capped at 3; so I went ahead and lowered the maximum to 2 so that it wasn't as good as a full weaver would be; also made it to where you get the ability to spend 4 power points to get a +2 increase at 12th zealot level. Not sure if I should keep the increase at Zealot 12 or potentially bump it up to instead be Zealot 16...

Overall:
Yeah, that's what I was mostly worried about; trying to find the sweet spot between the class is both functional and has a lot of potential flavor and fun for playing it, while not breaking the barrier of over shadowing the base class. Aside from the updates I've made so far is there anywhere else you can see that might need to be scaled back or tweaked to lower the gap so that I can find exactly where the sweet spot might be?

Castilonium
2019-09-06, 12:25 AM
You're welcome, glad I could help ♥

Just a few cleanup tweaks:

You can delete the "The Zealot must be level 2 before they can select this conviction" line from Essence Pool because that's the level that Zealots get convictions.
Put a note that Essence Zeal can only grant temporary essence once per round, lest people use multi-attack strikes or Riven Hourglass shenanigans to get more essence.
Did you intend for Essence Zeal to not activate the morale bonus when using Aid Another? I think it'd be fine if Aid Another activates it.
Note that Community's active ability can be used as a free action even if it's not your turn. Example text in the Protection mission.
Make Empowerment's first augment scale at level 14 instead of 12. Every akashic class has at least a 6 level gap between increasing their capacities.
The durations you listed seem fine.


After consideration, I think Community is fine as it is now. This archetype has better action economy, better essence reallocation, and far more essence than a Veiled Lord, so the single target and 1 round duration of its veil sharing make it a tactical choice instead of a blanket buff. I think sharing veils is more fun and interesting than sharing akashic feats. Unfortunately, it's going to be utterly impossible to force this archetype to have less damage potential than Creation or Protection mission Zealots because of how versatile veils are and how essence improves them.

Compared to a Daevic, this archetype can be more choosy about what veils it picks. Many Daevic builds need those weapon and armor veils to perform their party role because the veils are their main class features, but Zealots have maneuvers and other great class features to fall back on. So Zealots can pick more supporty veils if they want. Or they can go ham with things like Hand Cannons or Armory of the Conquerer for more damage.

sage20500
2019-09-06, 12:41 AM
You're welcome, glad I could help ♥

Just a few cleanup tweaks:

You can delete the "The Zealot must be level 2 before they can select this conviction" line from Essence Pool because that's the level that Zealots get convictions.
Put a note that Essence Zeal can only grant temporary essence once per round, lest people use multi-attack strikes or Riven Hourglass shenanigans to get more essence.
Did you intend for Essence Zeal to not activate the morale bonus when using Aid Another? I think it'd be fine if Aid Another activates it.
Note that Community's active ability can be used as a free action even if it's not your turn. Example text in the Protection mission.
Make Empowerment's first augment scale at level 14 instead of 12. Every akashic class has at least a 6 level gap between increasing their capacities.
The durations you listed seem fine.


After consideration, I think Community is fine as it is now. This archetype has better action economy, better essence reallocation, and far more essence than a Veiled Lord, so the single target and 1 round duration of its veil sharing make it a tactical choice instead of a blanket buff. I think sharing veils is more fun and interesting than sharing akashic feats. Unfortunately, it's going to be utterly impossible to force this archetype to have less damage potential than Creation or Protection mission Zealots because of how versatile veils are and how essence improves them.

Compared to a Daevic, this archetype can be more choosy about what veils it picks. Many Daevic builds need those weapon and armor veils to perform their party role because the veils are their main class features, but Zealots have maneuvers and other great class features to fall back on. So Zealots can pick more supporty veils if they want. Or they can go ham with things like Hand Cannons or Armory of the Conquerer for more damage.

Change's have been made; and yeah, I see where your coming from on sharing veils; part of the reason why I was wanting to make this archetype was that especially with City of Seven Seraph's continuing support for Akashic mysteries they're are some extremely fun veils that are now floating around that I think would make for some interesting support Zealot builds X); I think for now the only other thing I'm currently looking at is whether I should keep the 10th level increase to temporary essence that Essence Zeal is capable of generating, mostly worried about Zealot's potentially being able to start running away very quickly depending on what veils they pick up;

sage20500
2019-09-06, 02:44 PM
Kind of wish I could change the name of the thread now; Finally decided upon a name for the archetype; am going to go with this archetype being called the Vajra.

sage20500
2019-09-07, 02:36 PM
You're welcome, glad I could help ♥

Just a few cleanup tweaks:

You can delete the "The Zealot must be level 2 before they can select this conviction" line from Essence Pool because that's the level that Zealots get convictions.
Put a note that Essence Zeal can only grant temporary essence once per round, lest people use multi-attack strikes or Riven Hourglass shenanigans to get more essence.
Did you intend for Essence Zeal to not activate the morale bonus when using Aid Another? I think it'd be fine if Aid Another activates it.
Note that Community's active ability can be used as a free action even if it's not your turn. Example text in the Protection mission.
Make Empowerment's first augment scale at level 14 instead of 12. Every akashic class has at least a 6 level gap between increasing their capacities.
The durations you listed seem fine.


After consideration, I think Community is fine as it is now. This archetype has better action economy, better essence reallocation, and far more essence than a Veiled Lord, so the single target and 1 round duration of its veil sharing make it a tactical choice instead of a blanket buff. I think sharing veils is more fun and interesting than sharing akashic feats. Unfortunately, it's going to be utterly impossible to force this archetype to have less damage potential than Creation or Protection mission Zealots because of how versatile veils are and how essence improves them.

Compared to a Daevic, this archetype can be more choosy about what veils it picks. Many Daevic builds need those weapon and armor veils to perform their party role because the veils are their main class features, but Zealots have maneuvers and other great class features to fall back on. So Zealots can pick more supporty veils if they want. Or they can go ham with things like Hand Cannons or Armory of the Conquerer for more damage.


Questions on your thoughts about a potential update to defiance I was looking at. So base Zealot's defiance works so well because in addition to their Con score + Zealot level in negative hp before they die they also receive diehard as a bonus feat which allows them to act while they are at negative hp. Because Vajra no longer receives die hard as a bonus feat and instead gets Essence of the Immortal, the Con score + Vajra level in negative hp only means that they just are able to spend a longer time unconscious waiting to be stabilized before they have to worry about death. So instead of that feature what if they instead gained the ability to when ever they would receive damage that would drop them below 0 hp, but not out right kill them; they would be able to expend an amount of power points to immediately stabilize themselves?

sage20500
2019-09-11, 09:17 PM
Version 0.5 is now out;

Flavor text for the Vajra has been added; though the flavor is still a work in progress as I attempt to figure out how to make it sound as good as what Paizo, DSP, or Lost Spheres has been able to come up with using their own material.

Defiance has been altered. Swapping out gaining Die Hard as a feat for Essence of the Immortal ended up making the second half of Defiance not really useful aside from just giving the Vajra a slightly higher window of time to be able to stabilize themselves while their unconscious; and since I couldn't really think of a way to change the second half of the ability into something that could be used with Essence of the Immortal without potentially breaking the feat; I instead decided to scrap the entire ability together and change it into being an action resource that they could use to help their allies. Since Zeal covers giving bonuses to Attack, AC, and Skill checks made with aid another, I decided to see how the archetype would fair with being able to once per round as an immediate action being able to grant an ally an insight bonus to a single saving throw roll equal to the amount of essence invested into the class feature. Further tweaking on this ability will probably need to be done to see if the type of bonus needs to be changed or if any changes need to be made on the current time frame (can be used after the roll has been made, but must be used before the result has been revealed); but with the current set up I felt that it gave the Vajra a bit more to consider about when it comes to where they might be investing their temporary essence or permanent essence they've gained from Radiant dawn/any akashic feats; and it also requires them to consider the pro's and cons of using counters or boosts that they may have readied due to possibly needing to use this ability to save an ally from a potentially devastating effect.

That and I need to come up with a better name for the ability; Not too sure if "Bonds of Battle" would be appropriately thematic as a name for an ability like this.