[Forrestfire Studios] Playtest: The Avowed, a 3pp warlock with a psychic bent

[Forrestfire]

Hi! My name is Forrest Heck, or forrestfire, and you might know me as someone who works for Dreamscarred Press and has run playtests here on GitP in the past. Right now, in addition to the stuff I'm doing with DSP, I've started my own 3pp Pathfinder company where I'm working with some friends and fellow writers to do slightly different ideas that might not fit into DSP's existing pile of material. In particular, though, our flagship right now is a class called the Avowed, which I guess would be something between...

• A class inspired by the warlock from D&D, like many other 3pps have done (it's almost like a rite of passage for some, up there with "making a fighter fix" ).
• A love letter to the warlocks of every edition, along with an expansion of psychic magic's themes and fluff.
• A highly variable class built with the goal of having a set of balanced at-will abilities to choose from, and many different ways to play it based on the choices you make when creating your character.
• A new subsystem that can be expanded through archetypes, prestige classes, and variant rules.

In any case, the class and its subsystem can be found at this link here, which will take you to a PDF hosted on Google Drive. Instead of doing things primarily in Google Docs files, FFS goes an extra mile to provide fully-laid-out PDFs with bookmarks, chapters, and color art, for ease of reading and use in games. Sometimes we'll be doing Google Docs if something gets the PDFs delayed, but for the time being, the layouts are just as fun for me to assemble as the project itself. You can also find, in this Google Drive folder, all of Forrestfire Studios' currently-public playtests and any free PDFs or files we've uploaded for people to use. The links to each of the files in the folder will remain the same, thanks to being able to just upload new versions.

We've been running this playtest for a little while, though it wasn't in full beta form yet. This thread on the paizo boards is where it's been happening thus far, so if you want to go back and see the past changelogs and what's new, you can find it there. We didn't want to post it up on GitP until we were sure we were allowed to, but now we are, so here we go.

ANYWAY! In the above-linked PDF you'll find the following:

• The avowed class itself, a new base class that uses the rules systems introduced in the book.
• A large list of pacts, which are a "subpath" of the class you choose at 1. A given avowed's pact will determine a lot of their class features, and helps enable varying playstyles based on your choice.
• A chapter of the at-will abilities the avowed can get, called clauses. Those familiar with the source material will find this section familiar; we've got the clauses divided into four grades (least, lesser, greater, and final), with 25 of each grade in the PDF. In addition, we have 14 pulse shapes, which are something like blast shapes, but running on a different system that's designed to allow an avowed to branch out or focus on particular shapes as they like, regardless of what clauses they're picking.
• A chapter of feats, including 16 new feats (not all of which are avowed-only), as well as notes on how the avowed interacts with a couple specific feats, and reprintings of every feat referenced in the book.
• A single archetype, called the Tinker, several class feature substutions (think like ACFs), and a magic item for weapon-using avowed.
• An appendix, with reprintings of all the non-core spells referenced in the book, some notes about item and rules interactions, and alternate favored class bonuses for 90 races, spread across 1pp Pathfinder and DSP's published races.
• And finally, an extra section with a campaign variant for buying, selling, and using souls. This section is a preview of a later project FFS will be doing, and includes new feats, magic items, plot hooks, and more.

EDIT: We now also have a second playtest running, as the Avowed 1 project moves towards release. This link will take you to the Google doc for The Avowed: Heart and Soul, which includes two new expansive archetypes for the avowed, new pacts, subpacts, and many new feats. We also included a new race, new traits, and more.

If you're still with me at the end of this wall of text, I hope you enjoy our work, and I'd love your feedback if you have any. This project has been a long time in the writing, and it's great to have it fully ready for eyes.