So I think I procrastinated about this contest so hard that my brain actually just repressed it out of my memory. Oops.
But I'm back now, so let's get back into things
This makes a whole bunch of sense, the talisman system was kind of thrown onto the Occultist after I scrapped some of the original theming, so it feels rather disjointed from the rest of the class. I think the best way to fix this problem is to effectively make the talisman system into a class by itself, getting rid of the rest of the occultist entirely. But as this is effectively starting from scratch, I'm not sure how well I'll actually be able to do so with only ~2 weeks until the deadline. Additionally, I think this hypothetical class would work well if the talisman system effectively replaced normal spell casting (which would probably work better for a theme like Spells Without Slots rather than Partial Casters), so I think what I'm going to do is resign from this contest. I don't have the time to do what I want to with my class, so I'm just going to leave it, especially as stuff has been a bit hectic for me recently.
Good luck to the rest of you though!