A place to look at everything that is non-Paizo. Reviews, suggestions, impressions etc.

So with Path of War Expanded, we have two initiators for every mental ability, prestige classes for just about every specialized need, and at least a couple archetypes allowing some initiators to change their key attribute.

With Spheres of Power, we can "and nothing of value was lost" the entire Vancian arcane/divine construct.

With Occult Adventures, we finally have a book full of flavor for psionics that isn't crystals everywhere, which is the only thing I am not 100% all about re: psionics - it goes great in a fantasy setting so long as it's the ONLY magic, but I hate how the aesthetic clashes with a mostly arcanodivinatory world.

Is anyone else getting really excited that it's finally possible to play full-featured games in Tier 3 without referencing Paizo's mechanical morass at all?! I AM. "Core is banned" games were my favorite kind in 3.5, when you could shovel aside all the dross and play without worrying if your fighter was falling behind the druid's animal companion or if being a rogue was meaningful in a world with greater invisibility and silence, and I'm really glad that we're finally reaching that point in Pathfinder as well.

I've never played in a "core is banned" game. Sounds interesting though. Do you use a homebrew setting as well?

I was just thinking how interesting to be to play a "dimension hopping" game where the different realms didn't just have different flavors but ACTUALLY different mechanical rules. So you'd be trying to play a Pathfinder character in a D&D 3.5 system.

"Roll Spot check"
"I don't have the 'Spot' skill"
"Then roll a d20 and add wisdom and hope for the best..."

So one idea would be that you have a realm full of 3PP stuff while the players are all restricted to Core (or vice versa).

I'm curious about Spheres of Power. I'very heard a bit about it from a friend, and it sounds pretty flexible. But I'm wondering how it measures up for flexible casters (those who pick up lots of different types of spells fron lots of schools). Any thoughts?

It's better in every way except in terms of raw power, outside of certain abuses of Conjuration. You're flexible in how you build your character but won't command anything like the absolute cosmic power of a wizard. It's upper Tier 3 and works great as a drag-and-drop to replace the entire scope of arcane and divine magic and psionics. I strongly recommend it for that purpose and not as a supplement to Paizo's existing systems for the same reason I might strongly recommend antidepressants for someone who was depressed but not if they were self-medicating with near-fatal doses of heroin.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:43, Tue 01 Dec 2015.

Interesting. Do you feel "crippled" compared to a default caster?

I would LOVE a system that would make casters a bit beefier at lower levels but caps them at mid-to-high levels.

Not in the least. You get a pretty good progression of options and you have always-available out-of-the-box stuff that feels very solid. You can do pretty much anything an ordinary caster can and then some, but you're drawn to specialization by enticement and a little necessity, and nothing you can do is going to match up to the high end (except Conjuration, for the usual reason messing with the action economy is hard to regulate).
This message was last edited by the player at 17:42, Tue 01 Dec 2015.

Hmm. You mention specialization by enticement and a little necessity. So does the power grow more organically, keeping with a theme?

For instance, a regular caster could have most of their lower level spells as evocation and enchantment, but once they get 4th level slots, they might branch out into conjuration and necromancy, instantly having powerful spells from those schools without having cast a single spell from those schools before.

Would a sphere caster (apologies if the term is incorrect) be able to do similar, or would they need to start with lower powered spells from new spheres, building their way up slowly?

They don't have spells. There are 20 spheres with names like Alteration, Death, and Mind, each of which gives you one or two base abilities. Warp lets you teleport yourself or someone you're touching to somewhere in Close range as a standard action. Time lets you touch people to grant bonus attacks (haste) or stagger them (slow) as a standard action. You can do these things all day and forever.

What you get as level up is access to talents, which either unlock a new sphere for you or improve on or add to your base abilities. Fate can learn to apply penalties to enemies alongside the bonuses to allies it begins with. Darkness can learn to apply a Constitution-damaging drain to their pitch-black playgrounds. These aren't usually level-locked or prerequisite-bound, so the more you invest the better you'll be overall at a sphere, but if you switch from focusing on Weather to focusing on Illusion halfway through your career you're not missing out on high-level effects or being forced to select low-level ones. Normal Pathfinder casters are multiplicative: one 9th level spell is worth like a hundred 1st level spells. Sphere casters are almost completely additive. Your 20th talent is as good as your 1st was, and the difference is just which order you picked them in.

The almost is Advanced Talents, which are an optional rule: these are noticeably more powerful than base talents. But they're usually just level-locked, so you can spend your first 13 levels learning Nature and Life and then buy an Advanced Talent in Protection without needing to do anything special except know Protection.

They have like ten classes built around various themes, from the mageknight to the psionic-themed symbiat to the shifter (yes, there is a whole class for shapeshifting that isn't messing around with per-day anything, it's great) to the fey adept. Their signature class, the incanter, gets 32 talents overall in a 1-2-1-2 progression (everybody gets two "free" talents for being a sphere casting class) and the opportunity to trade out some or all of their many bonus feats for various sphere specializations. Most everybody else has either 10 or 15 talents. Caster level scaling is a big deal also, and most everybody else has either max 10 or 15 of that as well.

They do have spell points, which are a resource they can expend for advanced effects or to supercharge things If you know Time, Warp, and Telekinesis, you are never unable to stagger, teleport short distances, or pick up rocks with your mind, but you might not be able to steal other people's time or teleport long distances or throw ogres over cliffs against their will.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:37, Tue 01 Dec 2015.

Ahhh, so it reminds me a bit like a super powered witch's hex or a cleric domain/wizard school ability but with unlimited usage and modifiers without being an actual "caster" in a traditional sense.

Then again I really like that. Just being Buff Boy (i.e. Cleric of Luck) is a lot of fun...

Interesting. I'll definitely have to look into the details. Thanks so much for the extensive explanation, SD.

I was wondering if we had any gm's who would replace the vancian magic system with the Spheres of Power from Drop Dead Studios?  What are y'alls thoughts on this product?

Personally, I have some mixed feelings on the product. It's good, but it needs some polish. If you're up for providing that polish, I think an experiment in replacing vancian casting would see some good use out of Spheres of Power. (I think there were a few rather key rules missing, but most GMs would be able to figure it out based on context.)

I have loathed Vancian magic since before I knew what "Vancian" even meant; my expectation into D&D was that there would be mana, and I was bitterly disappointed to find you could actually just "run out" of spells.

I think it's a better system than the default, and so much less broken, but there is some elbow grease that needs applying in places, and Conjuration in particular needs watching (in the specific case that someone starts talking about multiple summons at once; Summoner one-awesome-thing route is fine) because "so much less broken" doesn't mean "can't be broken at all," alas.

Psionics is the other really good replacement choice. It's basically just arcane magic without some of the broken stuff and non-Vancian.

Akashic magic is great, but it's not really an arcane magic replacement candidate per se. If you remember Incarnum, it's the update for that, and like Incarnum it's more about self-buffs and self-expansion than reality-warping.

Hero Labs. Is it good? Filling out character sheets on both roll20 and on rpol is quite complicated, I've gotten the impression that it's easier to use and browse sheets on hero labs. Is that right?

The AP parts of hero labs, is it useful, does it add much compared to scrolling a pdf of the AP?

From what I've seen Hero Labs uses a lot of drop down menus and is good for telling you what you're missing.  Like any program, familiarity will help.  One of the guys I play with swears by it and has invested heavily into it.

That said, I'm not sure how set up Hero Labs is for APs, though I imagine it should work just fine.  If I played more often I'd give serious thought to getting the program.

Honestly, setting up a Google document with your character information (or just using the blank space of an RPOL sheet) gets you the same result for the final cost of "free," and IMHO takes about the same amount of time. The hard part is the choices you're going to make, not filling them in.

I am a big fan of PCGen. Very handy for making characters.

In reply to Sleeping Darkness (msg # 17):

Tried google documents too, handy in some ways but really bulky and hard to navigate sometimes. And filling out a blank, simple text editor like what's offered here is a nightmare for pathfinder characters :P

@Kegdrainer I'll have to check that out!

Still very curious about the adventure path material that can be bought in hero labs though. Just yesterday I had a fight with three bosses and several commoners vs the PCs, gets a bit annoying sometimes to flip back and forth in a pdf :P

Hero Labs is EXPENSIVE if you want to keep up to date. It is stupid expensive to keep up as even the big bulk buys are hundreds of dollars in data files.

That being said, it's pretty awesome if you can afford hundreds of dollars. I use it for the following:

• Feat/Trait finding - keyword searching ALL the traits and ALL the feats makes selecting stuff super nice
• Creating complicated monster templates - it does the math for me which is nice
• Tracking resources - there is an "in play" function that makes it easy to track resource pools from ammunition to X per day stuff

That being said it's a question of "how much time do you want to spend on character sheets" versus "how much money do you want to spend".

If you can afford like $500 or if you're fine just limiting it to core and a couple of books (~80-100 depending on options) then Hero Lab is AMAZING!! If you think of that price and say "noooo wayy" then yeah there are other things available. I know a lot of people use myth weavers and you can find other sites that are mostly complete or you can just study the rules and do it however you like.

However for me personally, I don't like to spend a lot of time figuring out how a character works and I am kind of paranoid that I'm doing it wrong so Hero Lab makes character creation a blast.

+1 for PCGen, it has it's flaws, but considering it's $500 less than HeroLab (read: free), I think that the flaws aren't that big.

In reply to praguepride (msg # 20):

I figure I'd go with a core set and a class set, or so... But would probably be frustrated at not finding all the feats I want... Have you tried the AP part of it?

Hero Lab is pretty awesome, and you get a number of licenses; my tabletop group all threw in together and bought it and shared it among all the players.

I paid for the players guides for things like traits but not for the encounters. Encountere and NPCs are super easy and fun to build and tweak it didnt seem worthwhile. If you buy all the bestiaries then no need imo. As for NPCs I like to tweak them and at the least building from scratch means I know all their features.

Their encounter builder is nice because again keyword search all monsters in one list sortable by CR. Makes me feel like Batman yelling at my screen.

“COMPUTER! Show me all Fey. Show me fey between CR 3 and 5. Sort by name. Yep that is the bad guy I am looking for.

Wo hooooo!!! Blade Devil for the win!
https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...c-novel/x/23200724#/

My tabletop crew loves Dreamscarred Press stuff, and I've slowly been soaking into it.

And lately, I've come up with a silly concept that would be a damn interesting concept to play that works with a few different levels.

Ideal Race: Witchborn Changeling, Peri-Blood Aasimar, or a Human getting +2 Int and Cha

Classes: Multiclass Cherished Archetype Highlord (A Psionic Support Class by Dreamscarred) at least 2nd level plus Vizier (Path of the Ruler) (Dreamscarred Veilweaver) (As many levels as possible)

The core of this idea is mixing the perks of First Impression (Making all creatures one degree more friendly to you default) and the Cuirass of Confidence Veil (a 60ft range veil with a Will Save that ALSO raises default attitude)

With both effects, indifferent folks become helpful if they fail the save vs First Impression. Hostiles become Indifferent.

If you have Mythic Tier 1, it gets even more stupid, by taking Trickster Path, Persuasive Countenance, and Extra Path Ability feat -> Path Dabbling -> Calming Presence from Overmind.

That gives you 4 'initial attitude improvement' though one of those doesn't apply vs mythic creatures.

If you want to get really dumb, and can wing it, grab the Suzerain Template, which adds ANOTHER save DC based improvement (and great stat boosts... honestly, I'd be willing to give up half of what the template gives to keep those).  Assuming the people fail their saves, that's turning Hostiles into Helpfuls.

That's even before considering Path of the Ruler's AoE will save penalty, and you can potentially squeeze some multiclassing in for, say, mesmerist stare or witch for Evil Eye hex. (Seducer Witch isn't bad either, charm hex can be used in the case of people who manage to make some of their saves for extra 'chances' to make them helpful.) If you're higher mythic tier, dual pathing  marshal or trickster and Overmind allows you to pick up Persuasive Countenance, Calming Presence, and Bypass Mental Defenses so you can affect mind-affecting -  Immune Creatures though it costs 1 Mythic per ability to apply on them.

This probably is a weird and silly idea, but it's one I just kind of love as a thing you can try to mechanically do XD.

Idea is even more amazing in a Gestalt game. I could easily see it breaking some games pretty hard, but in others, it could make for an interesting character. A lot of effects don't have descriptiors they probably should have, alas.

Hindered a bit by Mythic creatures, Mind-Affecting Immunity, so there are ways to play with it a bit.

Idea ends up also able to use veilweaving for Cherished Highlord you go, can get some nice perks to help allies out, too.

I don't know if I've ever asked this here, but is there anything published other than Green Ronin Games' Blue Rose/True20 that makes classes modular so you can build your own and advance it?

Like some kind of point based class build with all the various abilities?

If anyone is interested, Pinnacle Entertainment just started their Kickstarter for Savage Worlds Pathfinder.
Just hit the site and search Savage Worlds Pathfinder for it.

@Jobe00: Sorry but besides those two I am not aware of anything. There probably is more out there but it is buried.

Also thanks for the shout out to Savage Worlds KS.

Hi all.  I've been enjoying TreasureTrove's new online Pathfinder character generator:  https://www.trovetokens.com/anvil/

He used to have a Flash one, but now that Flash is gone, he's started this one built with Vue.js.  My only connection to this is that I'm a supporter on Patreon.  I don't get anything from advertising this here other than, if I do drum up more support from here he'll be more inclined to make RPoL-specific features.  I've been chatting with him on his Discord channel and I've already planted a bug in his ear about an RPoL-friendly output.  Maybe if other people support him and also ask, he'll feel more disposed to make something.

He is still early in development, and he doesn't consider it MVP yet (Minimum Viable Product).  But I found it to be functional and useful.

One feature I really like is that he allows for non-standard features.  For instance, the GM in a game I'm playing gave everyone a couple of free feats.  Most online character generators don't have any way to support that sort of non-standard feature, but his has the ability just to add additional feats and to define what they affect.

If he's interested in meeting other GMs I am semi-active on Discord. PM me if he wants to talk. I can share some stuff about the more technical aspects of GMing on RPOL.

He was polite when I suggested features, but I'm not sure if he was just being polite or really soliciting feedback.  :-)

Fair enough. I'd be greatly interested in assisting if he is looking for input. I work in IT on app development so I've got a pretty good handle on how to talk to developers.

Oh, we're comparing nerd credentials then.  :-)

I'm a senior software architect in a company that does web application development.

Oh a SENIOR architect? And here I thought you might actually do work :P

LOL.  No, of course not.

In reply to praguepride (msg # 35):

Harsh. Accurate but harsh.

In reply to Jobe00 (msg # 37):

Hey, at least you are not a Project Manager. ;)

Really good project managers work like crazy.  I never want to work that hard.  I do the fun stuff, designing a solution in Entity Relationship Diagrams and such, and then we pay people to implement it.

In reply to Zag24 (msg # 39):

LOL, really. (Been a PMP certified since 2008)

I have been part of almost every step of the SDLC. Being the business partner is the easiest because all you have to do is know what you want and articulate it clearly. It always amazes me how many people stumble on both those points.

What I was wanting has been created: Play Manga d20 (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/p...90878/Play-Manga-d20) with Fantasy Manga d20 Expanded (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/p...y-Manga-d20-Expanded) and Masters of the Occult: Play Manga d20 (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/p...ccult-Play-Manga-d20).

They break down the classes into abilities which lets you build your own classes or modify them more easily.

The only classes left for a supplement are the Hybrid Classes, but I believe those are planned to be done in the near future.