This is the unified “How it Works” section for all the Tome of Battle classes. That’s the Crusader, the Swordsage, and the Warblade.
Tome of Battle is, far and away, the best book WotC has ever released for 3.5, and the one that finally resolves some of the crushing legacy issues that have been haunting melee classes since the beginning, when Fighter was a punishment class for people who didn’t roll good enough stats to be anything else and the wargaming days when warriors were mooks only valuable en masse while casters were leader units with amazing powers.
ToB is, in simplest terms, a book of martial arts. Actual, involved combat techniques that advance with level rather than the same homogenized, “attack, full attack, charge, trip, grapple,” that every melee’r from the kobold mook to the 20th-level Barbarian uses with minimal variation at ridiculous cost.
The linear warrior, quadratic wizard issue- in which a warrior class’s power tends to rise at a constant rate, while a mage’s power increases at an increasing rate- is long established. This is a major problem, because it’s the very definition of unbalanced, other than in a narrow range where the two are comparable in power. Outside of that range, the game breaks; one is overpowered, the other under. In this case, the two are more of less balanced around levels 1-6 and then mages explode.
What’s more, the defined power scale that PCs are supposed to follow is exponential, not linear; characters are expected to double in power every two levels. If you’re expected to be able to take on a T-Rex (a CR8 encounter) at level 8, then you’re expected to be able to take on two T-Rexes (a CR10 encounter) at level 10. A traditional warrior’s linear progression just can’t keep up without really twinking out on an ubercharger or some such. They carry less and less of their share until they may as well not be there.
Tome of Battle comes to this situation and cuts the Gordian knot. It uses mechanics known to keep pace with the power scale- the spellcasting model- and revises them to represent martial combat techniques, actually adding nuance to melee combat beyond, “Find the right place to stand and then spam the one trick I’ve kitted myself out to actually be good at until the fight ends and repeat the process for the next 259 fights until we hit level 20.”
The crux of this system is maneuvers and stances, which have a corresponding level (comparable to spell level) and discipline (comparable to spell school). Just replace “shoot laser beams” with “roundhouse kick” and give the kick appropriate effects, and you’re half-way there.
Stances are exactly what it says on the tin. You take a fighting stance and get some manner of benefit for it. In practice, these are like ongoing buffs that you can switch between as a swift action. Some are fairly simple, like +1d6 melee damage paired with -2 AC or +2 to allies’ will saves. Some are more interesting, like having 5’ steps provoke AoOs or gaining a stacking +1 to hit and damage with each critical hit. Stances tend to be somewhat secondary, as there aren’t a whole lot of them, and even the Swordsage, the class that gets the most maneuvers and stances, only gets six of them by level twenty.
The real bread and butter are the maneuvers, which are various martial techniques. These are split up three ways; boosts, counters, and strikes. Boosts are generally swift actions, and they’re little perks, usually buffs. For example, with Lion’s Roar, after defeating a foe, you can spend a swift action to boost your allies’ morale and grant them +5 damage for the round. Counters are immediate actions that can be used to alter the flow of battle even when it’s not your turn. Shield Block, for example, can be used in response to an enemy attack to grant your shield bonus to an adjacent enemy, protecting them. Then, there are strikes, the most important of the three. These are attacks with some sort of special effect. It may be an attack with a large attack bonus but a penalty to defense, or an attack that smashes through DR, or an attack that strikes multiple targets, or an attack that denies the target attacks of opportunity for a round, or an attack that grants allies a bonus to hit the target for a round, or an attack that grants allies attacks of opportunity against the target, or any number of effects. These are usually a standard action, though some are full-round actions.
These maneuvers are usable at will, with a caveat. You can’t just spam the same maneuver over and over again like a traditional melee type spams their full attack. If you picture a big action scene, maneuvers are the flashy action moves, like the drop kick. Once you do a drop kick, you’re not just gonna do another drop kick and another drop kick; you’re in no position to do so. Thus, after using a maneuver, you have to refresh it somehow to do it again. How that refresh works varies by class.
One important thing to understand is, maneuvers and stances aren’t nearly as powerful as spellcasting. We’re not talking about full casters with warrior skeletons. In fact, in terms of raw power, maneuvers are generally less powerful than the traditional full attack. By and large, they build power outward rather than upward, broadening the melee classes’ horizons while staying true to what it means to be a warrior, particularly in the context of a fantasy world.
More importantly, it breaks the mold of, “Get into position and spam full attacks until something dies,” for every fight forever. Rather, it mixes things up, introduces new effects, forces diversity. Because most maneuvers are standard actions, you’re free to move around without worrying about losing the full attack. Instead of repeating minor variations of the exact same thing, characters gain new techniques every level.
And it adds more desperately needed zots. Consider a single-classed Barbarian. Let’s say this Barbarian is going the path of a front-line two-hander. There’s not a whole lot of differentiation between this Barbarian and any other Barbarian. Things like starting with 16 strength instead of 18 or 20 don’t particularly affect how you operate. Whether you’re a dwarf or an orc, you’re still standing there, raging and full attacking, just with different to-hit values and hit point totals. Skills are rather tertiary. Really, all you have to differentiate yourself from every other Barbarian in the world and do anything different are 1-7 feats, depending on level, many of which will be identical (Extra Rage, Power Attack). That’s it. And if you want to do something other than stand there raging and full attacking, that’s liable to cost several feats. If you want to Spring Attack, that’s three feats. If you want Whirlwind Attack, you’re giving up most of your feats just to eventually do that, and it doesn’t even kick in until level twelve or so. There’s a severe lack of mechanical diversity.
Compare that to, say, a Sorcerer. You can put three enchantment-specialized halfling Sorcerers side by side and they can still function very differently by virtue of their other, fully-functional spells, as well as slightly differing selections within the enchantment school. Deep Slumber and Confusion are very different spells, and if one Sorcerer takes some summoning spells, those spells are not diminished for the effort.
Similarly, Tome of Battle’s maneuver system lets melee characters use diverse and interesting effects by default, with meaningful diversity from level one without requiring six to twelve levels’ worth of feats to get there.
And then, we get to multiclassing. The highest level of maneuver you can use is based on your initiator level. Unlike with casters, this is your initiating level (say, Warblade) plus half of any other levels you may have. Maneuvers known still key off of class level exclusively, but you have a 4th-level Fighter who then takes one level of Warblade, you can learn second-level maneuvers. This makes a structure where you can go all the way to level 20 as a single-classed initiator or multiclass extensively, and either way, you’re not shooting yourself in the foot. This is as opposed to most traditional classes where full casters pretty much never multiclass at all, except for full-casting PrCs, because almost nothing is ever worth losing caster levels over and you’d be shooting yourself in the foot for the effort, while melee classes tend to multiclass extensively because most of them have too many dead or useless levels past the lower levels to justify taking them to level 20 or even level 5. This model could have been a good addition to a better-designed spellcasting system.
This leads into one of the big objections to Tome of Battle classes, in that they replace normal melee classes. Regarding replacement, this both is and is not true for one simple reason. Most conventional melee classes have so few class features that they’re forced to multiclass extensively. Not doing so is often as suicidal as a mage multiclassing extensively at the loss of caster levels. Many conventional melee types take as few levels in base classes as possible, instead escaping to a prestige class that gets actual class features as soon as possible. The last two thirds of most melee classes are already obsolete. Tome of Battle doesn’t change this. In fact, due to the way multiclassing works with Tome of Battle, it can even make more levels in the old melee classes worthwhile.
My biggest problem with Tome of Battle, however, is a lack of material. It gives melee classes all these zots to spend, but there’s not a whole lot to spend them on to the point where a lot of stuff begins to overlap. The PHB has over a hundred pages of wall-to-wall spells. The Expanded Psionics Handbook has about eighty pages, and it’s a bit light. Tome of Battle has less than fifty pages of maneuvers. It could do well with an entire additional supplement, or even the kind of treatment Pact Magic got in Secrets of Pact Magic. It’s really a shame Tome of Battle was just a 150-page lightweight.
Showing posts with label How it Works. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How it Works. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
How it Works: Incarnum
This is a unified “How It Works” section for all incarnum-using classes. That’s Incarnate, Soulborn, and Totemist.
Incarnum comes from Magic of Incarnum, one of the later entries into the 3.5 library and one with fairly little support. Dragon Magic has a few more soulmelds, as do web supplements. I don’t know if Dragon Magazine ever put anything out, but really Magic of Incarnum has nearly all the incarnum material.
So, to start off, what is incarnum? It’s essentially cosmic soul stuff. Incarnum is the energy of all souls, whether they’re living, dead, or not-yet-born. Any mana analogue works, though.
Also, incarnum is blue.
There are a few vocabulary words to know when dealing with incarnum, and really, they’re the hardest part.
Soulmelds: These are the bread and butter of incarnum. Basically, a soulmeld is where you take a bit of incarnum and shaping it into a tool and melding it to your soul (hence the name) for a time. You can think of a soulmeld as a kind of phantom magic item, or a visible buff. Each is associated with a part of the body (those Cerulean Sandals go on your feet), and tend to manifest as ghostly body parts or equipment. They each have a certain benefit, like bonuses to skills, AC, or AB, or more interesting abilities like the ability to spit acid or fly short distances or inflict fire damage on foes who strike you in melee. These benefits improve via the next two vocabulary words. Soulmelds do not have levels, and all meldshaping classes gain access to all their soulmelds automatically. The number of soulmelds you can shape at a time are limited by your class level and your Constitution score.
Essentia: Personal soul energy. Mechanically, essentia’s just a pool of points that you shuffle around your soulmelds (or in some cases, feats and abilities) to improve your benefits. So, the Gorgon Mask increases your fortitude saves by one, and for every point of essentia you have invested in it, the bonus improves by one more. Essentia can be shuffled between your soulmelds as a free action once per round, letting you adapt to changing circumstances. So, when you really need to strangle somebody, you can shunt that essentia from your Gorgon Mask, losing the fortitude boost, to your Girallon Arms, gaining a bonus to grapple checks. Essentia can be gained from race or magic items, but it’s mainly a class feature. The maximum amount of essentia you can invest in a single place is limited by level, going from one at level one to four at level eighteen. Certain feats and class abilities can improve this, up to about seven or so.
Chakras: Every character already uses chakras. They just go by a different name; magic item slots. Normally, soulmelds don’t use item slots, so you can have a soulmeld associated with your throat and still use a magic amulet. However, as your level goes up, you open up chakras, letting you bind soulmelds to them. When you bind a soulmeld to a chakra, it becomes more powerful but uses up a magic item slot. So, for example, Mauling Gauntlets normally grants a bonus to strength checks that scales as you invest essentia. If you bind it to your hands chakra, it takes up a magic item slot but grants you an equivalent bonus to unarmed damage along with the benefits of Improved Unarmed Strike. Which chakras you can bind to and how many soulmelds you can bind are limited by class level.
And, with that vocabulary, that’s pretty much the bulk of it. Just get your eight hours’ rest, do your hour’s spell preparation- in this case, it’s shaping and binding soulmelds for the day- and go about your adventuring way shuffling around your essentia between your soulmeleds as needed. It’s a very simple system.
Characters who don’t take any levels in incarnum classes can still get in on the incarnum game. Shape Soulmeld lets you shape a single soulmeld, and it’s an awesome feat for filling in blanks if you ever have a feat to spare. Almost anyone can put it to use. The Azurin race are basically incarnum-infused humans who get a point of essentia instead of bonus skill points, and an Essentia Jewel is a cheap magic item that can get you a second point. So, if you’re planning a human Paladin of Kossuth (FR’s god of fire), you can go with an Azurin and spend a feat and a few gold to get Shape Soulmeld: Mantle of Flame so that anyone who hits you in melee takes 3d6 damage (2d6 before you hit level 6).
Incarnum has a lot going for it, but ultimately, it has one major flaw. It doesn’t really scale well. Essentia capacity goes up with level regardless of whether you take incarnum classes (though incarnum classes get a little more capacity than non). You get all your soulmelds at level one (or level four for Soulborn, but they suck). All you really get for leveling up is more essentia (which is admittedly very nice) and the higher-end chakra binds, which tend to be underwhelming for the number of levels you have to invest to get them.
On the other hand, incarnum makes for some great dips. 1-4 levels in Incarnate or Totemist get you a huge stack of soulmelds, some essentia to play with, and your basic chakra binds, and you can just multiclass out to some melee class or skill monkey or something with a nice sack of goodies. There are even a great many incarnum feats that are explicitly designed for multiclass incarnum-users, like Cobalt Rage (which you can invest essentia in for bonus damage while raging) or Indigo Strike (which you can invest essentia in for bonus damage on sneak attacks). And while the incarnum dip is not a bad thing- in fact, it's a rather good and interesting thing- the fact that it’s so rough going straight meldshaper is a bit problematic (though it is entirely doable if you know what you're doing).
In addition to multiclassing spectacularly well, incarnum also fares well in gestalt, since it compliments everything. Not much more to say, there.
Incarnum comes from Magic of Incarnum, one of the later entries into the 3.5 library and one with fairly little support. Dragon Magic has a few more soulmelds, as do web supplements. I don’t know if Dragon Magazine ever put anything out, but really Magic of Incarnum has nearly all the incarnum material.
So, to start off, what is incarnum? It’s essentially cosmic soul stuff. Incarnum is the energy of all souls, whether they’re living, dead, or not-yet-born. Any mana analogue works, though.
Also, incarnum is blue.
There are a few vocabulary words to know when dealing with incarnum, and really, they’re the hardest part.
Soulmelds: These are the bread and butter of incarnum. Basically, a soulmeld is where you take a bit of incarnum and shaping it into a tool and melding it to your soul (hence the name) for a time. You can think of a soulmeld as a kind of phantom magic item, or a visible buff. Each is associated with a part of the body (those Cerulean Sandals go on your feet), and tend to manifest as ghostly body parts or equipment. They each have a certain benefit, like bonuses to skills, AC, or AB, or more interesting abilities like the ability to spit acid or fly short distances or inflict fire damage on foes who strike you in melee. These benefits improve via the next two vocabulary words. Soulmelds do not have levels, and all meldshaping classes gain access to all their soulmelds automatically. The number of soulmelds you can shape at a time are limited by your class level and your Constitution score.
Essentia: Personal soul energy. Mechanically, essentia’s just a pool of points that you shuffle around your soulmelds (or in some cases, feats and abilities) to improve your benefits. So, the Gorgon Mask increases your fortitude saves by one, and for every point of essentia you have invested in it, the bonus improves by one more. Essentia can be shuffled between your soulmelds as a free action once per round, letting you adapt to changing circumstances. So, when you really need to strangle somebody, you can shunt that essentia from your Gorgon Mask, losing the fortitude boost, to your Girallon Arms, gaining a bonus to grapple checks. Essentia can be gained from race or magic items, but it’s mainly a class feature. The maximum amount of essentia you can invest in a single place is limited by level, going from one at level one to four at level eighteen. Certain feats and class abilities can improve this, up to about seven or so.
Chakras: Every character already uses chakras. They just go by a different name; magic item slots. Normally, soulmelds don’t use item slots, so you can have a soulmeld associated with your throat and still use a magic amulet. However, as your level goes up, you open up chakras, letting you bind soulmelds to them. When you bind a soulmeld to a chakra, it becomes more powerful but uses up a magic item slot. So, for example, Mauling Gauntlets normally grants a bonus to strength checks that scales as you invest essentia. If you bind it to your hands chakra, it takes up a magic item slot but grants you an equivalent bonus to unarmed damage along with the benefits of Improved Unarmed Strike. Which chakras you can bind to and how many soulmelds you can bind are limited by class level.
And, with that vocabulary, that’s pretty much the bulk of it. Just get your eight hours’ rest, do your hour’s spell preparation- in this case, it’s shaping and binding soulmelds for the day- and go about your adventuring way shuffling around your essentia between your soulmeleds as needed. It’s a very simple system.
Characters who don’t take any levels in incarnum classes can still get in on the incarnum game. Shape Soulmeld lets you shape a single soulmeld, and it’s an awesome feat for filling in blanks if you ever have a feat to spare. Almost anyone can put it to use. The Azurin race are basically incarnum-infused humans who get a point of essentia instead of bonus skill points, and an Essentia Jewel is a cheap magic item that can get you a second point. So, if you’re planning a human Paladin of Kossuth (FR’s god of fire), you can go with an Azurin and spend a feat and a few gold to get Shape Soulmeld: Mantle of Flame so that anyone who hits you in melee takes 3d6 damage (2d6 before you hit level 6).
Incarnum has a lot going for it, but ultimately, it has one major flaw. It doesn’t really scale well. Essentia capacity goes up with level regardless of whether you take incarnum classes (though incarnum classes get a little more capacity than non). You get all your soulmelds at level one (or level four for Soulborn, but they suck). All you really get for leveling up is more essentia (which is admittedly very nice) and the higher-end chakra binds, which tend to be underwhelming for the number of levels you have to invest to get them.
On the other hand, incarnum makes for some great dips. 1-4 levels in Incarnate or Totemist get you a huge stack of soulmelds, some essentia to play with, and your basic chakra binds, and you can just multiclass out to some melee class or skill monkey or something with a nice sack of goodies. There are even a great many incarnum feats that are explicitly designed for multiclass incarnum-users, like Cobalt Rage (which you can invest essentia in for bonus damage while raging) or Indigo Strike (which you can invest essentia in for bonus damage on sneak attacks). And while the incarnum dip is not a bad thing- in fact, it's a rather good and interesting thing- the fact that it’s so rough going straight meldshaper is a bit problematic (though it is entirely doable if you know what you're doing).
In addition to multiclassing spectacularly well, incarnum also fares well in gestalt, since it compliments everything. Not much more to say, there.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
How it Works: Pact Magic
This is a unified ‘How it Works’ section for all the pact-making classes from Secrets of Pact Magic (and those who tap into pact magic through other means). This does not include the Tome of Magic’s Binder, though there are similarities.
Getting down to business, spirit binding is pretty much what it sounds like; you barter, haggle, and coerce spirits into lending you their power- usually four or five abilities that tend to be passive, at-will, or have a five-round recharge- through a ten minute ceremony. Fundamentally, this works in a manner similar to the Tome of Magic version. Every spirit has its own legend, persona, quirks, themes, and all that rot. In fact, they all get their own nice, organized two-page spread sorted by spirit level first, then alphabetically within their given level, because that’s how anyone who’s looking for a given spirit is probably going to look through them anyways. Huzzah. Also, there are charts that are actually useful, giving you every spirit’s name, level, the page it’s located on, and a list of its powers. You know, the information that’s actually useful in a chart for all the spirits.
To form a pact, you make a binding check rolling 1d20 plus your binder level plus your charisma modifier (usually) versus a DC set by the spirit; the higher the level of the spirit, the harder it is to bind, and you need a certain minimum level to bind any given spirit at all. Lots of modifiers can tweak it up or down, but generally, regardless of the result, you get the spirit’s power. The results are as follows:
If you succeed, you get the powers with little consequence. You can hide whatever physical sign is associated with the spirit (like, say, horns) at will and it does not influence your personality.
If you succeed by a margin of ten or more, you gain an additional power, a capstone ability, which is generally the most powerful or significant ability (your mileage may vary). This is a nice reward for a good binding check.
If you fail your binding check, you still get all your powers, however you cannot hide the spirit’s physical sign and it has an influence on your personality, so be careful if you’re not fond of eating babies or being an anarchist for the day or… *looks for a good-aligned one* helping people without hesitation. More inconvenient than it sounds. Failing also impacts some specific abilities and is generally more significant than in Tome of Magic.
If you fail your binding check by a margin of ten or more, well, let’s just say you can expect to eat more babies in the future. Your alignment shifts one step towards the spirit’s alignment, and if you fail a will save, the change is permanent.
Save DCs for granted abilities are determined by your constitution modifier, which tends to make most pact magic users pretty tough regardless of their hit dice.
To make these binding checks, annoying requirements for any given spirit make their ‘triumphant’ return. Granted, most of them are just, “dump a few skill points here,” even if the skill requirements tend to be harsher, but a lot of them get oppressive and annoying. One spirit’s requirement is, “Must be in sight of an elf riding a dragon.” Yeah, there’s a reason I don’t enforce those requirements. You can attempt to bind a spirit without meeting its requirements, but that imposes a -6 penalty on your check and if you fail the check, you outright fail to bind the spirit at all. Adding to the annoyance, there’s no chart listing the requirements, so you have to go digging through the spirits themselves to plan ahead and make sure you actually qualify for the spirits you want. Even if that means… gaining the ability to lay eggs? There’s a reason one of my first feats on my binders is usually Ignore Binding Requirements, if they’re being enforced. If I haven’t made this point clear, I consider this an optional rule to be ignored. And one I’ve spent too much time on already, so it’s time to move on.
All spirits also have an associated constellation (similar to spell schools), a favored enemy, and a favored ally. If you are a spirit’s favored enemy, you take a -4 to your binding check, but otherwise, these don’t have much immediate value and are simply referenced for other feats and abilities.
And then, all spirits offer four tactical bonuses. These are little actions and conditions related to the spirit’s persona. For example, for one spirit, you meet criteria if you drink a cup of tea, fight near a hobgoblin ally, successfully use the spirit’s Dazing Strike ability, or move through rocky terrain. When you meet these criteria, you get a +1 bonus on all d20 rolls for three rounds, and these bonuses stack. It’s difficult, but if you meet multiple criteria, the bonuses can get rather large, especially if you’re binding multiple spirits at once. Like getting a +6 on an attack roll with your bow for having sex with a shape-changing chicken while drinking tea brewed from the blood of infants! A silly example, of course. Actually, unless your spirit has a pretty easy bonus (for example, I believe one grants you a +1 for using a bow), they tend to be a bit contrived and more easily met by villains. Like a fire giant binder getting a +2 for sitting on a throne that’s on fire. And anything that encourages thrones that are on fire is a good thing in my book.
On that note, time to mention binding multiple spirits. Classes from SoPM aren’t like the Binder, who can bind, say, three vestiges of up to 6th-level at level 14. Rather, if you can bind 5th-level spirits, you can bind one 5th-level spirit or any combination of spirits that adds up to five; two 1st-levels and a 3rd-level, a 4th-level and a 1st-level, two 2nd-levels and a 1st-level, and so on. Certain abilities can modify this. In general, SoPM spirits don’t scale quite as well as Tome of Magic spirits, but the way binding multiple spirits works this time around as well as the more well-rounded nature of most of the binding classes this time around, it’s for the best.
There are a great many feats that futz with all these aspects. If you don’t like physical signs, binding requirements, alignment shifts, or personality shifts, there are feats to ignore each of them. If you hate all of them, here’s hoping you have a bunch of bonus feats. If you like capstone abilities, there’s a feat to reduce the required margin of success to five (which really helps as some of the higher-level spirits have very high binding DCs). If you want to play up favored allies and enemies, there are a couple feats to grant bonuses related to them. There’s a feat to make tactical bonuses last longer. There are feats rather more fleshed out than Spell Focus to play up constellations. Various classes tend to play with these aspects a little more.
And then, there are anima spirits. Anima are a little different from the unique spirits that are the default. They’re generic. They don’t have a constellation, or favored enemies, or personality/alignment shifts, or tactical bonuses. They don’t even have a level; rather, you can bind them at any given level, and their abilities grow stronger if you bind them as a higher-level spirit. It costs a feat to access these spirits, but their flexibility and lack of baggage can be very useful, even if they do tend to be a mixed bag.
Finally, there are some ways for non-pact magic classes to dip into the pact-making goodness. The first is an optional rule for trying out pact magic in which spellcasters, instead of preparing spells for the day, you bind spirits up to the highest level of spell you can cast. Since spirits are (generally speaking) less powerful than spells for most purposes, this is generally a raw deal for most save, say, folks who only get up to fourth-level spells anyways, but it’s a good way to sample pact magic in an existing campaign. If you’re not using that variant rule, there’s a feat you can take that has the same effect, as well as alternate class features for the Bard, Druid, Ranger, and Paladin that trade spellcasting (and, in the case of the Paladin and Ranger, additional class features… for some strange reason) for spirit binding at the same rate as they’d normally gain spells.
Then, there’s Minor Binding, a feat pretty much anyone can take to gain a little bit of binding. It lets you gain one granted ability from one first-level spirit. There are two additional feats that improve upon this, one letting you take two abilities and the other letting you bind up to a third-level spirit in this way. Finally, there’s Supernatural Dabbler from web supplements, which lets you trade out spell-like abilities to bind spirits for granted abilities. Not many classes get enough spell-like abilities for this to be worthwhile, making it more useful for monsters than PCs, but some do, and as a DM, I’m all for any ability that lets a succubus trade Detect Good for a laser that renders the target so overwhelmingly horny that they cannot properly defend themselves. And it’s rather scary when that marilith reveals that she has the power to actually eat spells cast at her (gained for a couple minutes at the expense of her Summon Demon ability).
Secrets of Pact Magic and Villains of Pact Magic are available from Radiance House Publishing. The official site is pactmagic.com, which includes information, free samples, and supplemental materials.
Getting down to business, spirit binding is pretty much what it sounds like; you barter, haggle, and coerce spirits into lending you their power- usually four or five abilities that tend to be passive, at-will, or have a five-round recharge- through a ten minute ceremony. Fundamentally, this works in a manner similar to the Tome of Magic version. Every spirit has its own legend, persona, quirks, themes, and all that rot. In fact, they all get their own nice, organized two-page spread sorted by spirit level first, then alphabetically within their given level, because that’s how anyone who’s looking for a given spirit is probably going to look through them anyways. Huzzah. Also, there are charts that are actually useful, giving you every spirit’s name, level, the page it’s located on, and a list of its powers. You know, the information that’s actually useful in a chart for all the spirits.
To form a pact, you make a binding check rolling 1d20 plus your binder level plus your charisma modifier (usually) versus a DC set by the spirit; the higher the level of the spirit, the harder it is to bind, and you need a certain minimum level to bind any given spirit at all. Lots of modifiers can tweak it up or down, but generally, regardless of the result, you get the spirit’s power. The results are as follows:
If you succeed, you get the powers with little consequence. You can hide whatever physical sign is associated with the spirit (like, say, horns) at will and it does not influence your personality.
If you succeed by a margin of ten or more, you gain an additional power, a capstone ability, which is generally the most powerful or significant ability (your mileage may vary). This is a nice reward for a good binding check.
If you fail your binding check, you still get all your powers, however you cannot hide the spirit’s physical sign and it has an influence on your personality, so be careful if you’re not fond of eating babies or being an anarchist for the day or… *looks for a good-aligned one* helping people without hesitation. More inconvenient than it sounds. Failing also impacts some specific abilities and is generally more significant than in Tome of Magic.
If you fail your binding check by a margin of ten or more, well, let’s just say you can expect to eat more babies in the future. Your alignment shifts one step towards the spirit’s alignment, and if you fail a will save, the change is permanent.
Save DCs for granted abilities are determined by your constitution modifier, which tends to make most pact magic users pretty tough regardless of their hit dice.
To make these binding checks, annoying requirements for any given spirit make their ‘triumphant’ return. Granted, most of them are just, “dump a few skill points here,” even if the skill requirements tend to be harsher, but a lot of them get oppressive and annoying. One spirit’s requirement is, “Must be in sight of an elf riding a dragon.” Yeah, there’s a reason I don’t enforce those requirements. You can attempt to bind a spirit without meeting its requirements, but that imposes a -6 penalty on your check and if you fail the check, you outright fail to bind the spirit at all. Adding to the annoyance, there’s no chart listing the requirements, so you have to go digging through the spirits themselves to plan ahead and make sure you actually qualify for the spirits you want. Even if that means… gaining the ability to lay eggs? There’s a reason one of my first feats on my binders is usually Ignore Binding Requirements, if they’re being enforced. If I haven’t made this point clear, I consider this an optional rule to be ignored. And one I’ve spent too much time on already, so it’s time to move on.
All spirits also have an associated constellation (similar to spell schools), a favored enemy, and a favored ally. If you are a spirit’s favored enemy, you take a -4 to your binding check, but otherwise, these don’t have much immediate value and are simply referenced for other feats and abilities.
And then, all spirits offer four tactical bonuses. These are little actions and conditions related to the spirit’s persona. For example, for one spirit, you meet criteria if you drink a cup of tea, fight near a hobgoblin ally, successfully use the spirit’s Dazing Strike ability, or move through rocky terrain. When you meet these criteria, you get a +1 bonus on all d20 rolls for three rounds, and these bonuses stack. It’s difficult, but if you meet multiple criteria, the bonuses can get rather large, especially if you’re binding multiple spirits at once. Like getting a +6 on an attack roll with your bow for having sex with a shape-changing chicken while drinking tea brewed from the blood of infants! A silly example, of course. Actually, unless your spirit has a pretty easy bonus (for example, I believe one grants you a +1 for using a bow), they tend to be a bit contrived and more easily met by villains. Like a fire giant binder getting a +2 for sitting on a throne that’s on fire. And anything that encourages thrones that are on fire is a good thing in my book.
On that note, time to mention binding multiple spirits. Classes from SoPM aren’t like the Binder, who can bind, say, three vestiges of up to 6th-level at level 14. Rather, if you can bind 5th-level spirits, you can bind one 5th-level spirit or any combination of spirits that adds up to five; two 1st-levels and a 3rd-level, a 4th-level and a 1st-level, two 2nd-levels and a 1st-level, and so on. Certain abilities can modify this. In general, SoPM spirits don’t scale quite as well as Tome of Magic spirits, but the way binding multiple spirits works this time around as well as the more well-rounded nature of most of the binding classes this time around, it’s for the best.
There are a great many feats that futz with all these aspects. If you don’t like physical signs, binding requirements, alignment shifts, or personality shifts, there are feats to ignore each of them. If you hate all of them, here’s hoping you have a bunch of bonus feats. If you like capstone abilities, there’s a feat to reduce the required margin of success to five (which really helps as some of the higher-level spirits have very high binding DCs). If you want to play up favored allies and enemies, there are a couple feats to grant bonuses related to them. There’s a feat to make tactical bonuses last longer. There are feats rather more fleshed out than Spell Focus to play up constellations. Various classes tend to play with these aspects a little more.
And then, there are anima spirits. Anima are a little different from the unique spirits that are the default. They’re generic. They don’t have a constellation, or favored enemies, or personality/alignment shifts, or tactical bonuses. They don’t even have a level; rather, you can bind them at any given level, and their abilities grow stronger if you bind them as a higher-level spirit. It costs a feat to access these spirits, but their flexibility and lack of baggage can be very useful, even if they do tend to be a mixed bag.
Finally, there are some ways for non-pact magic classes to dip into the pact-making goodness. The first is an optional rule for trying out pact magic in which spellcasters, instead of preparing spells for the day, you bind spirits up to the highest level of spell you can cast. Since spirits are (generally speaking) less powerful than spells for most purposes, this is generally a raw deal for most save, say, folks who only get up to fourth-level spells anyways, but it’s a good way to sample pact magic in an existing campaign. If you’re not using that variant rule, there’s a feat you can take that has the same effect, as well as alternate class features for the Bard, Druid, Ranger, and Paladin that trade spellcasting (and, in the case of the Paladin and Ranger, additional class features… for some strange reason) for spirit binding at the same rate as they’d normally gain spells.
Then, there’s Minor Binding, a feat pretty much anyone can take to gain a little bit of binding. It lets you gain one granted ability from one first-level spirit. There are two additional feats that improve upon this, one letting you take two abilities and the other letting you bind up to a third-level spirit in this way. Finally, there’s Supernatural Dabbler from web supplements, which lets you trade out spell-like abilities to bind spirits for granted abilities. Not many classes get enough spell-like abilities for this to be worthwhile, making it more useful for monsters than PCs, but some do, and as a DM, I’m all for any ability that lets a succubus trade Detect Good for a laser that renders the target so overwhelmingly horny that they cannot properly defend themselves. And it’s rather scary when that marilith reveals that she has the power to actually eat spells cast at her (gained for a couple minutes at the expense of her Summon Demon ability).
Secrets of Pact Magic and Villains of Pact Magic are available from Radiance House Publishing. The official site is pactmagic.com, which includes information, free samples, and supplemental materials.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
How it Works: Psionics
This is just a unified “how it works” section for all the psionic classes, so I’m not reposting the same thing for every psionic class. That’s Ardent, Divine Mind, Erudite, Lurk, Psion, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, and Wilder.
As D&D’s redheaded stepchild, there’s not a great deal of psionic material. There are only two dedicated psionic books in the 3.5 library; Expanded Psionics Handbook and Complete Psionic, which is generally regarded as the worst of the Complete series (though it is still decent for extra content). Also, there’s the Mind’s Eye, which is a series of WotC web enhancements that amounts to a third psionic sourcebook. Other than that, bits and pieces of psionic material have cropped up randomly throughout the library whenever WotC remembered they exist and probably needed to pad a book a bit. Sandstorm and Races of Stone have psionic material. Eberron has significant psionic material as well.
So, first, what is psionics? Quite simply, it’s a magic system designed specifically for spontaneous casting. Nothing more, nothing less. Some people decry psionics for the very word, yet overall, it’s far truer to most classical depictions of magi in fantasy than Vancian. In fact, other than in Vance’s own works, Vancian is fairly rare, and it’s fairly silly to boot.
Psionics are not science fiction. This is a myth, and it is baseless. If you don’t like the words “psionic” or “manifest,” that’s fine, but they need ever come up in-character. When describing my psionic characters in-character, they’re not “psions who manifest powers,” they’re “mages who cast spells.” That’s not refluffing. That’s what they are. The effects are magic, and unless you want to houserule it, “Psionics are magic,” is an explicitly stated rule. The variant, “Psionics is different,” is basically prefaced with, “This is a bad idea.”
I know this has little to do with how psionics work, but it’s a necessary preface to any discussion of psionics as a whole, so it goes here in the primer. There are far too many people who write psionics off with, “Bester has no place in D&D,” without ever actually looking at the material (or worse, just looking at the pictures of creepy bald dudes with crystal fetishes). Hell, I used to hold that position, and it was blatant idiocy on my part. (And the standard disclaimer: This does not mean anyone who doesn’t have psionics in their games is Doing It Wrong.)
Of equal importance, 3.5 psionics are not 1e psionics. 3.5 psionics aren’t 2e psionics. 3.5 psionics aren’t even 3e psionics. Yes, in the older editions, psionics were totally broken. 3.5 is not the older editions, and 3.5 psionics are not the older editions’ psionics. In another case of “all too often,” people accuse psionics of being broken based on older editions. Or based on someone in their group who ignored a lot of the rules that balance it. Or call it “too complicated” when psionics are vastly simpler than Vancian, and they’re just less familiar with psionics, which is a completely separate issue, and one that’s completely temporary.
Anyways, on to the actual mechanics. First, the vocabulary. “Manifest” is another word for “cast.” “Power” is another word for “spells. “Power points” are the currency that replaces spell slots. “Disciplines” replace “schools” for magic spell, and psionics have their own divisions.
With Vancian, you generally keep track of up to ten pools of points- the spell slots from cantrips to 9th level spells- and every spell costs one point. With psionics, you have only one pool of points, your power points, but powers have a variable cost. Each level of powers has a minimum cost (1 for 1st-level, 3 for 2nd, 5 for 3rd, and so on through 17 for 9th). Thus, five power points are roughly comparable to a third level spell slot. You get so many points per level, and there is a table for determining bonus power points from high ability scores, much like with magic. You can spend your points to cast any of your limited powers known, so long as you have the points.
Manifesting a power works mostly like casting a spell, however powers do not have verbal components, nor do they have somatic components, nor are they subject to arcane spell failure, so psionic characters can legally use armor with little penalty and they’re capable of manifesting powers in a number of situations where magic-users can’t. Like when polymorphed into a housecat. Oddly, the circumstances that force Concentration checks are the same, so you need to make a Concentration check to manifest while entangled, but you can manifest without penalty when completely paralyzed.
For the most part, other than effects like range and duration, powers do not scale naturally. A Psion spending one point to manifest Energy Ray (which is, unsurprisingly, a ray attack that deals energy damage) can only deal one die of damage, whether they’re 1st-level or 20th. What psionics does have, however, is an augmentation system. A one-point Energy Ray deals one point of damage, but a two-point Energy Ray deals two die of damage and a twenty-point Energy Ray deals twenty die of damage. Depending on the power, there can be various augmentations like increased saves, affecting additional creature types, increased duration, and so on. This lets powers age much better than spells, and stay useful for much longer. Even though you’ll have fewer powers than, say, a Sorcerer, it’s not a huge deal since your powers stay useful longer.
This does not mean that a 10th-level Psion with a hundred power points can blow them all on a hundred-die Energy Ray. One of the most important rules in psionics is that you cannot spend more points on a power than your manifester level (translation: caster level), save through a scant few abilities that let you reach a little higher than normal. So no blowing a hundred points on a power unless you’re level 100.
Also, XPH introduces psionic focus. In short? Make a Concentration check as a full-round action. If it’s 20+, you’re focused. It doesn’t really do much on its own, though you can expend focus to take 15 on a single Concentration check (making you not-focused). Mostly, it’s another form of currency that numerous other abilities rely on. Some bonuses are only available while focused, some abilities require you to expend focus. For example, metapsionic feats increase the power point cost of a power (still subject to standard limits) and require you to expend psionic focus, so don’t expect to ever pile on three or four metapsionic feats on the same power, even if you can spend the points.
And that covers the bulk of it. The rest are the details of the powers, classes, and feats themselves.
On the whole, psionics is more streamlined and intuitive than Vancian (and more balanced, to boot), and the way the powers and augmentations work, powers are far more a part of the character that can stick with you from beginning to end than something you just use for a little while only to toss it out for something completely different a couple levels later.
As D&D’s redheaded stepchild, there’s not a great deal of psionic material. There are only two dedicated psionic books in the 3.5 library; Expanded Psionics Handbook and Complete Psionic, which is generally regarded as the worst of the Complete series (though it is still decent for extra content). Also, there’s the Mind’s Eye, which is a series of WotC web enhancements that amounts to a third psionic sourcebook. Other than that, bits and pieces of psionic material have cropped up randomly throughout the library whenever WotC remembered they exist and probably needed to pad a book a bit. Sandstorm and Races of Stone have psionic material. Eberron has significant psionic material as well.
So, first, what is psionics? Quite simply, it’s a magic system designed specifically for spontaneous casting. Nothing more, nothing less. Some people decry psionics for the very word, yet overall, it’s far truer to most classical depictions of magi in fantasy than Vancian. In fact, other than in Vance’s own works, Vancian is fairly rare, and it’s fairly silly to boot.
Psionics are not science fiction. This is a myth, and it is baseless. If you don’t like the words “psionic” or “manifest,” that’s fine, but they need ever come up in-character. When describing my psionic characters in-character, they’re not “psions who manifest powers,” they’re “mages who cast spells.” That’s not refluffing. That’s what they are. The effects are magic, and unless you want to houserule it, “Psionics are magic,” is an explicitly stated rule. The variant, “Psionics is different,” is basically prefaced with, “This is a bad idea.”
I know this has little to do with how psionics work, but it’s a necessary preface to any discussion of psionics as a whole, so it goes here in the primer. There are far too many people who write psionics off with, “Bester has no place in D&D,” without ever actually looking at the material (or worse, just looking at the pictures of creepy bald dudes with crystal fetishes). Hell, I used to hold that position, and it was blatant idiocy on my part. (And the standard disclaimer: This does not mean anyone who doesn’t have psionics in their games is Doing It Wrong.)
Of equal importance, 3.5 psionics are not 1e psionics. 3.5 psionics aren’t 2e psionics. 3.5 psionics aren’t even 3e psionics. Yes, in the older editions, psionics were totally broken. 3.5 is not the older editions, and 3.5 psionics are not the older editions’ psionics. In another case of “all too often,” people accuse psionics of being broken based on older editions. Or based on someone in their group who ignored a lot of the rules that balance it. Or call it “too complicated” when psionics are vastly simpler than Vancian, and they’re just less familiar with psionics, which is a completely separate issue, and one that’s completely temporary.
Anyways, on to the actual mechanics. First, the vocabulary. “Manifest” is another word for “cast.” “Power” is another word for “spells. “Power points” are the currency that replaces spell slots. “Disciplines” replace “schools” for magic spell, and psionics have their own divisions.
With Vancian, you generally keep track of up to ten pools of points- the spell slots from cantrips to 9th level spells- and every spell costs one point. With psionics, you have only one pool of points, your power points, but powers have a variable cost. Each level of powers has a minimum cost (1 for 1st-level, 3 for 2nd, 5 for 3rd, and so on through 17 for 9th). Thus, five power points are roughly comparable to a third level spell slot. You get so many points per level, and there is a table for determining bonus power points from high ability scores, much like with magic. You can spend your points to cast any of your limited powers known, so long as you have the points.
Manifesting a power works mostly like casting a spell, however powers do not have verbal components, nor do they have somatic components, nor are they subject to arcane spell failure, so psionic characters can legally use armor with little penalty and they’re capable of manifesting powers in a number of situations where magic-users can’t. Like when polymorphed into a housecat. Oddly, the circumstances that force Concentration checks are the same, so you need to make a Concentration check to manifest while entangled, but you can manifest without penalty when completely paralyzed.
For the most part, other than effects like range and duration, powers do not scale naturally. A Psion spending one point to manifest Energy Ray (which is, unsurprisingly, a ray attack that deals energy damage) can only deal one die of damage, whether they’re 1st-level or 20th. What psionics does have, however, is an augmentation system. A one-point Energy Ray deals one point of damage, but a two-point Energy Ray deals two die of damage and a twenty-point Energy Ray deals twenty die of damage. Depending on the power, there can be various augmentations like increased saves, affecting additional creature types, increased duration, and so on. This lets powers age much better than spells, and stay useful for much longer. Even though you’ll have fewer powers than, say, a Sorcerer, it’s not a huge deal since your powers stay useful longer.
This does not mean that a 10th-level Psion with a hundred power points can blow them all on a hundred-die Energy Ray. One of the most important rules in psionics is that you cannot spend more points on a power than your manifester level (translation: caster level), save through a scant few abilities that let you reach a little higher than normal. So no blowing a hundred points on a power unless you’re level 100.
Also, XPH introduces psionic focus. In short? Make a Concentration check as a full-round action. If it’s 20+, you’re focused. It doesn’t really do much on its own, though you can expend focus to take 15 on a single Concentration check (making you not-focused). Mostly, it’s another form of currency that numerous other abilities rely on. Some bonuses are only available while focused, some abilities require you to expend focus. For example, metapsionic feats increase the power point cost of a power (still subject to standard limits) and require you to expend psionic focus, so don’t expect to ever pile on three or four metapsionic feats on the same power, even if you can spend the points.
And that covers the bulk of it. The rest are the details of the powers, classes, and feats themselves.
On the whole, psionics is more streamlined and intuitive than Vancian (and more balanced, to boot), and the way the powers and augmentations work, powers are far more a part of the character that can stick with you from beginning to end than something you just use for a little while only to toss it out for something completely different a couple levels later.
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