[Studio M—] The Soulforge Open Playtest - A new akashic class!

[Mairn]

The Soulforge
By channeling the power of ancient souls stored within the akashic record, the soulforge can utilize their powers and wield their ancient armaments as akashic veils!

The soulforge is a new martial-focused akashic class that utilizes a new mechanic, souls, allowing it to easily fill whichever role is needed by their party on any given day. This ability eventually expands as they grow in power, allowing them to retrain their combat feats and even swap their Dexterity and Strength as part of preparing their veils each day!

A soulforge's soul grants them a selection of veils they can shape and new powers each day drawn from one of Pathfinder's core eleven classes, as well as granting them skill ranks to choose from the soul's associated skills to help expand their utility and out of combat options!

The soulforge also wields powerful weapon and armor veils, allowing them to focus their akashic might directly into their combat potential!

You can find the open playtest for the soulforge here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jyF40pjGHEXSQBqdY2lOXq1SsUFSsne8H0NPtKMpsF0/edit?usp=sharing).

I am excited to see your comments and suggestions so that this class can be the best it can be!

[Kris Moonhand]

Oh hey, it's the Medium done right! I always liked the idea of Medium, just not its... everything...
Being able to change feats is huge for a variable class like this, so I'm glad to see it. Same with the Str/Dex switch thing. Enchanting your own soul and applying that to the weapons is cool and flavorful. Twin Soul is a fantastic ability and I wish Mediums got something similar. Twinveil Forge, love it. Being able to use two different weapons at max power, especially since most weapons share the same slot, is really nice. Higher level abilities are, perhaps, a bit generic at this point (most 3pp classes give limited immortality these days), but I'm not gonna say no to it. And being able to use your magic even in antimagic fields is quite flavorful.

As for the Souls and veils, I'll probably give them a more thorough look later, but I don't really have time right now. Keep up the good work!

[StSword]

The ability to enchant their soul any number of times is certainly neat, but in a cash poor game or a game that enforces wealth by level, it's going to be neat but impractical to actually take advantage of.

Having a class feature that one is too poor to take advantage of would be annoying.

I suggest thinking of some way to get around it. Sacrificing unwanted magic items to fill up a virtual gold pool, sacrificing experience points like magic item creation works in 3x, a magic armor creation pool that goes up as they level like the Eberron Artificer class, something.

And if you are going to have the forged souls be based on classes, you really should add like some suggestions for "DiY" soulforging.

Otherwise it's going to be disappointing for games that have more classes, and frustating for games that don't use all the basic classes.

How is a Soulforge going to channel an ancient Fighter or Wizard in a game that has neither? And for any game that has additional classes, it's just going to seem odd that everybody of the additional classes somehow failed to be good enough to channel for soulforging.

[Mairn]

The ability to enchant their soul any number of times is certainly neat, but in a cash poor game or a game that enforces wealth by level, it's going to be neat but impractical to actually take advantage of.

Having a class feature that one is too poor to take advantage of would be annoying.

I suggest thinking of some way to get around it. Sacrificing unwanted magic items to fill up a virtual gold pool, sacrificing experience points like magic item creation works in 3x, a magic armor creation pool that goes up as they level like the Eberron Artificer class, something.

And if you are going to have the forged souls be based on classes, you really should add like some suggestions for "DiY" soulforging.

Otherwise it's going to be disappointing for games that have more classes, and frustating for games that don't use all the basic classes.

How is a Soulforge going to channel an ancient Fighter or Wizard in a game that has neither? And for any game that has additional classes, it's just going to seem odd that everybody of the additional classes somehow failed to be good enough to channel for soulforging.

Hmmm having a disenchant/enchantment transfer thing could be neat, as would a pool of GP each level for enhancing. Will brainstorm it more.

As far as the souls go: I plan to *eventually* expand on them as Patreon content / an expansion book. There isn't really a set way I make them that a guideline for "DIY" would work. Some class features are just way stronger to steal than others. The core 11 souls were chosen because they all filled different niches without a lot of the overlap that would come from ACG classes or 3rd party classes. I also wanted to limit the scope of the project slightly, otherwise I would just keep writing forever and never actually release it!

I try to balance my content around the "expected" usage of the system, so for Akasha that is PF1e Core + Akasha-specific Books (Trinity, Mysteries, Zodiac, Stormbound, Realms, etc). If someone is using house rules that change these (such as disallowing any of the CRB classes) I can't really balance around those decisions. In such a case anyways, it would be easier to just rename the soul to something else for your game.

[StSword]

Hmmm having a disenchant/enchantment transfer thing could be neat, as would a pool of GP each level for enhancing. Will brainstorm it more.

As far as the souls go: I plan to *eventually* expand on them as Patreon content / an expansion book. There isn't really a set way I make them that a guideline for "DIY" would work. Some class features are just way stronger to steal than others. The core 11 souls were chosen because they all filled different niches without a lot of the overlap that would come from ACG classes or 3rd party classes. I also wanted to limit the scope of the project slightly, otherwise I would just keep writing forever and never actually release it!

I try to balance my content around the "expected" usage of the system, so for Akasha that is PF1e Core + Akasha-specific Books (Trinity, Mysteries, Zodiac, Stormbound, Realms, etc). If someone is using house rules that change these (such as disallowing any of the CRB classes) I can't really balance around those decisions. In such a case anyways, it would be easier to just rename the soul to something else for your game.

Fair enough.

I considered recommending a more generic system like roles like defender, tactician, etc, but I happen to like the class system.

I just want more of it. :)

Just when I read it my mind went places like-

Akashic is one of the big trinity from DSP, so a game that has akashic probably has psionics and/or path of war too

Akashic is integrated into Lost Sphere's City of 7 Seraphs with it's Echos, Aethernauts, and Shadow Weavers

I understand Lost Spheres picked up your Spheres of Akasha book, so I imagine when that comes out some Spheres fans will take another look at Akashic.

Legendary Game's Arcforge setting includes includes psionics, akashic, path of war, spheres, and Starfinder classes.

I however thought that a request for dozens of more classes would be unreasonable, even if I find the image of a Soulforge channeling a Solarian in Arcforge an awesome mental image or a Soulforge zooming around channeling a Psionic Voyager.

But if you feel that DiY suggestions aren't feasible, I won't argue with you, you would know better than I what is feasible in your book, after all.

I just wanted to explain my reasoning though.

Maybe you can come up with something that is feasible, but I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here.

Oh and backed the kickstarter, by the by. So good luck with that.

[Mairn]

Fair enough.

I considered recommending a more generic system like roles like defender, tactician, etc, but I happen to like the class system.

I just want more of it. :)

Just when I read it my mind went places like-

Akashic is one of the big trinity from DSP, so a game that has akashic probably has psionics and/or path of war too

Akashic is integrated into Lost Sphere's City of 7 Seraphs with it's Echos, Aethernauts, and Shadow Weavers

I understand Lost Spheres picked up your Spheres of Akasha book, so I imagine when that comes out some Spheres fans will take another look at Akashic.

Legendary Game's Arcforge setting includes includes psionics, akashic, path of war, spheres, and Starfinder classes.

I however thought that a request for dozens of more classes would be unreasonable, even if I find the image of a Soulforge channeling a Solarian in Arcforge an awesome mental image or a Soulforge zooming around channeling a Psionic Voyager.

But if you feel that DiY suggestions aren't feasible, I won't argue with you, you would know better than I what is feasible in your book, after all.

I just wanted to explain my reasoning though.

Maybe you can come up with something that is feasible, but I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here.

Oh and backed the kickstarter, by the by. So good luck with that.

Yeah! I definitely want to support more classes with Souls eventually, its just starting to get outside the scope of what I can actually afford to get put in the book lol

Self-publish costs when you don't have a huge library of already purchased stock art can get expensive X)

I do generally expect Akasha to be allowed in a game alongside Psionics, I just find Psionics just isn't quite as popular as it used to be, but PoW is iffy considering its notorious balance problems. Cot7S is also cool, but its balance is a bit... all over the place, so I try to avoid balancing content against that either.

Thanks for supporting the kickstarter as well! I really appreciate it <3

[StSword]

When you rewrite Twinveil you might want to consider some points-

Were you picturing having multiple armor veils bound, were you picturing switching out of them through essence redrestribution ala a Ben 10/Max Steel henshin hero kind of thing, or being able to enjoy the benefits of more than one armor veil at a time? Honestly I don't think it would be a big deal if they could wear multiple armors this way, considering armor and enhancement bonuses to armor would overlap, not stack. But henshin hero shapeshifting would be cool too. :)

What happens when a Soulforge has more weapon veils than hands to hold them? Are the excess veils stored waiting to be drawn? Do the weapon veils merge into a composite weapon? Is it treated like a shapeshifting weapon as the Soulforge shifts essence between their veils?

[Mairn]

When you rewrite Twinveil you might want to consider some points-

Were you picturing having multiple armor veils bound, were you picturing switching out of them through essence redrestribution ala a Ben 10/Max Steel henshin hero kind of thing, or being able to enjoy the benefits of more than one armor veil at a time? Honestly I don't think it would be a big deal if they could wear multiple armors this way, considering armor and enhancement bonuses to armor would overlap, not stack. But henshin hero shapeshifting would be cool too. :)

What happens when a Soulforge has more weapon veils than hands to hold them? Are the excess veils stored waiting to be drawn? Do the weapon veils merge into a composite weapon? Is it treated like a shapeshifting weapon as the Soulforge shifts essence between their veils?

Hmmm... will have to decide what I want to do with Armor veils, whether I want the effects to be swappable when you invest essence, or if they "combine" somehow. Whatever I decide I will change it / errata the previous printings of Enhanced rulings. Will most likely be swapping armor on essence investment tho.

Weapon veils are all individual effects that only work when drawn and used, but because you can draw/sheathe as a free action you can use them for utility easily. I.e, firing with a bow veil on your turn, and then dropping it for a melee weapon outside of your turn for AOOs. Or combining multiple weapon veils as part of a single full attack by swapping them between each attack.

[StSword]

Okay, good to know.

Looking it up, I saw that weapon like veils are dissapated when dropped and can only be resummoned as a free action as soon as the following turn.

Considering the Soulforge has a class feature to avoid their veils being dissapated by sundering or anti-magic suppression, it seems that class feature should cover "dropped" veils as well so a Soulforge can summon "dropped" veils on the same turn.

[Mairn]

Okay, good to know.

Looking it up, I saw that weapon like veils are dissapated when dropped and can only be resummoned as a free action as soon as the following turn.

Considering the Soulforge has a class feature to avoid their veils being dissapated by sundering or anti-magic suppression, it seems that class feature should cover "dropped" veils as well so a Soulforge can summon "dropped" veils on the same turn.

You can re-summon a Weapon at any time during your turn as a free action, and aren't only limited to once per turn.
Being able to re-summon your weapon even outside of your turn would lead to weird situations where you could shape a veil with reach and a non-reach veil, and then drop+resummon as needed, and would also completely negate steal/disarm as an option.

[StSword]

Being able to re-summon your weapon even outside of your turn would lead to weird situations where you could shape a veil with reach and a non-reach veil, and then drop+resummon as needed, and would also completely negate steal/disarm as an option.

Negating disarm is a problem but the fact they already negate sunder and anti-magic isn't?

I'm afraid you'll have to explain that reasoning to me.

[Mairn]

Negating disarm is a problem but the fact they already negate sunder and anti-magic isn't?

I'm afraid you'll have to explain that reasoning to me.

Because I don't want them to be immune to every way of removing their weapon, especially considering how niche Disarm and Steal already are.

[Mairn]

Hey there friends!

The kickstarter for the Soulforge has officially met its funding goal!

If you want to join in and back it, you still have 6 days!

[StSword]

Congratulations are in order then.

[Mairn]

Playtest Update: Reworded a few class features to better clarify them, added an Orc FCB, Changed Dwarf FCB to benefit Cleric/Paladin instead of Cleric/Fighter. Orc is Barbarian/Fighter.

All 11 souls now have a race supporting them with an FCB (Paladin was missing before).


Other News: Kickstarter paid me the funds finally, so I got all the art properly ordered with a due date of the end of June for the artist! This gives the book a tentative release date of July!

Discussion: I am debating moving the 1st-level non-soul veil to 2nd level, since I feel like the class is awfully frontloaded right now. Two veils, a poached class feature, and a bonus feat on a d10 Full-BaB class feels a little much. What do you folks think?

[StSword]

Yes, it's more than a Vizier gets, it's true.

[Ramza00]

Someone make a Hardlight Bulwark (tower shield wrist), Crusader's Shield (any shield or bulwark, hand), Stance of the Sunlight Shield (radiant dawn 5th level stance), Aegis please!

I am all the shields :smalltongue:, providing total cover in multiple directions including affecting my allies?

————

Serious question can you use Hardlight Bulwark and Crusader Shield on the same shield or do you need two shields? And perhaps multiple arms (which aegis provides for some customization points) to have two shields plus a weapon.

[StSword]

Serious question can you use Hardlight Bulwark and Crusader Shield on the same field or do you need two shields? And perhaps multiple arms (which aegis provides for some customization points) to have two shields plus a weapon.

You would need two shields, but yes, doable.

[Mairn]

Serious question can you use Hardlight Bulwark and Crusader Shield on the same shield or do you need two shields? And perhaps multiple arms (which aegis provides for some customization points) to have two shields plus a weapon.


[Enhanced] Shield veils don't apply to or enhance a existing shield, they grant you their own shield to use, so if you shape multiple [Enhanced] veils that grant a shield they are granting you two separate shields.

Actually, I just completely misunderstood the question I think. You can use Crusader's Shield on the shield created by Hardlight Bulwark, since Crusader's Shield affects a shield you are wielding and Hardlight Bulwark provides said shield. Crusader's Shield isn't on the Soulforge veil list though, so you would need to dip a feat/level for it. You would not be able to combine Hardlight Bulwark's ability to project its cover with the wall provided by Crusader's Shield though, since they are different effects.

[StSword]

[Enhanced] Shield veils don't apply to or enhance a existing shield, they grant you their own shield to use, so if you shape multiple [Enhanced] veils that grant a shield they are granting you two separate shields.

Actually, I just completely misunderstood the question I think. You can use Crusader's Shield on the shield created by Hardlight Bulwark, since Crusader's Shield affects a shield you are wielding and Hardlight Bulwark provides said shield. Crusader's Shield isn't on the Soulforge veil list though, so you would need to dip a feat/level for it. You would not be able to combine Hardlight Bulwark's ability to project its cover with the wall provided by Crusader's Shield though, since they are different effects.

According to the library there is apparently an enhanced and a non enhanced version of Crusader's Shield.

I was using the assumption that if a game is using enhanced veils, which it must be if it includes this class, then it would be using the enhanced version.

I suppose nothing actually stops a game from using both versions.

[Mairn]

According to the library there is apparently an enhanced and a non enhanced version of Crusader's Shield.

I was using the assumption that if a game is using enhanced veils, which it must be if it includes this class, then it would be using the enhanced version.

I suppose nothing actually stops a game from using both versions.

Yeah, if they use the enhanced version then they would have two unique shields.

This wouldn't be the first time I have seen someone want to combine things like this though.

[Mairn]

Added the Soul Extractor item to the doc, which allows the owner of the item to extract enhancements from willing or helpless creatures or from corpses.

This should help solve some of the issues with a soulforge dying and suddenly the party losing a ton of wealth, or from NPC soulforges not being able to provide proper treasure based on the gold invested in their veils.

Also shifted their 1st level non-soul veil to 2nd to help balance it a bit more. The class felt way too front-loaded to me.

[Mairn]

Major update 1.1 to the playtest is now live!

You can find a list of the changes here. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/18OGsaBcYH4RlvVpbsVcRyFeYhq4_hkHpsT1B6v56ObM/edit?usp=sharing)

[Mairn]

Major update 1.2 added to the playtest!

This will likely be the last major update before release, so now is the chance to get any final comments/concerns in!

You can find the changes here. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/18OGsaBcYH4RlvVpbsVcRyFeYhq4_hkHpsT1B6v56ObM/edit?usp=sharing)

I am hoping to get this book released in the next month or two, some real-life things happened to delay things for both myself and my artist, so we are a bit behind plans. Things are starting to pick back up now though!

[Kris Moonhand]

Looking forward to it!