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Creative Corner => The Book of Seven Secrets => New Mechanics and Subsystems => Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) => Chapter 1 - Remnant Magic => Topic started by: TheGeometer on June 29, 2012, 01:16:47 AM

Title: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on June 29, 2012, 01:16:47 AM
This will be the only thread in this sub-board in which you will see any usernames besides mine in the top-left corner of a post. I'm going to lock all of the other threads, simply because I would like them to look as clean and ordered as gleaming toys in factory-sealed plastic boxes. Please do not hesitate to voice any questions, comments, criticisms, suggestions, and miscellaneous reactions you might have as a result of anything you read in this board. And... go!
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: veekie on June 29, 2012, 01:34:38 AM
Just a note, if you want any of your earlier threads moved here, just drop us a request with the thread link.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on June 29, 2012, 10:45:00 AM
I'm glad you took my advice.   :)
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on June 29, 2012, 10:15:34 PM
Just a note, if you want any of your earlier threads moved here, just drop us a request with the thread link.

Thanks, but I think I'll start from scratch. Copying and pasting the earlier classes over here will allow me to make the necessary changes while also getting rid of the other posts.

I'm glad you took my advice.   :)

Thanks for the advice in the first place!
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on June 29, 2012, 10:19:25 PM
You're welcome, glad to see that everything will be all organized.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on June 30, 2012, 12:16:47 AM
The list of base classes is up in the Magic of Residuum section, as well as notes on the multiclassing issue that I had avoided for so long. Feel free to check if you werre curious about the other 2 classes that had not been revealed until now. Tomorrow, I'll move the Residuon and Priest of Legacies over to this board, making changes as I go, and finally get around to posting the completed Spellknight.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: sirpercival on June 30, 2012, 01:07:24 AM
So when do you and I build a Residuum/Rituals hybrid?   :smirk
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on June 30, 2012, 01:21:58 PM
So when do you and I build a Residuum/Rituals hybrid?   :smirk

Hmm... when I finish the base classes, we'll see what we can do about making a... Resitualist. :) I'll add that to the list of dual-progression PrCs planned for this system, along with the ones that progress arcane magic, divine magic, psionics, incarnum, and binding. Man, it's going to be hard to come up with enough single-progression PrCs to top that.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on June 30, 2012, 03:26:53 PM
I know the feeling. Looking back at MaI, I had about 8 different dual progression classes and only 2 or 3 single progression PrCs.

Some ideas, if you're looking for residuum-only class inspiration...
- Building up wisps of residuum into full-fledged spell-like effects that actually take actions to use.
- A summoning-focused class. There are enough summoning techniques, you can probably do something interesting.
- A sort of anti-residuon with a lot of counter spells and anti-magic, possibly also getting some bonus residuum from negated spells.
- A multi-elementalist. Unlike normal elemental mages who like to focus on only one, the residuum elementalist takes dregs and scraps of all elements and smushes them together.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on June 30, 2012, 04:04:20 PM
I know the feeling. Looking back at MaI, I had about 8 different dual progression classes and only 2 or 3 single progression PrCs.

Some ideas, if you're looking for residuum-only class inspiration...
- Building up wisps of residuum into full-fledged spell-like effects that actually take actions to use.
- A summoning-focused class. There are enough summoning techniques, you can probably do something interesting.
- A sort of anti-residuon with a lot of counter spells and anti-magic, possibly also getting some bonus residuum from negated spells.
- A multi-elementalist. Unlike normal elemental mages who like to focus on only one, the residuum elementalist takes dregs and scraps of all elements and smushes them together.

Thanks, Garryl! The first idea is actually really similar to an idea for a PrC I already had, the Arch-Residuon. It's the Archmage of the Residuum world, as the name would suggest. It learns "greater techniques" that cost way more than 9 RP, and are a lot closer in power to spells, but I think I'll keep those as free actions. The other 3 ideas sound really good as well - I'll definitely end up using some of them.

By the way, the Residuon is now up. There are some more techniques I'd like to change, which I've removed for now. I'll work more on that later.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: sirpercival on June 30, 2012, 04:08:26 PM
How 'bout an evil class a la necrocarnate that destroys residuum?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on June 30, 2012, 04:21:17 PM
How 'bout an evil class a la necrocarnate that destroys residuum?

Not bad. I'll definitely have some sort of evil PrC - after all, I wrote in the "Residuons in the World" section of the class that they are often ridiculed and sometimes want revenge. Mwahahahaha!

Spellknight-based PrCs seem to be the easiest to come up with. One that rages and one that steals spells and turns it into residuum are the first that come to mind, though the latter might be better as a feat for multiclassing Spelthieves.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Wrex on June 30, 2012, 04:50:10 PM
How can youd estroy residuum? Isn;t more created whenever someone casts spells? Would such a class/PrC focus on manipulating Dead Magic zones, by way of voiding all energies from a location by drawing residuum away from it?


I just had an idea. What if there was a Sort of Necromantic Residuon, who used the residuum of life? He would have a book or tome or recording medium of some sort, in which he puts down the names of creatures, probably with some form of material component for the ink. Then, he can call forth these creatures as diffrent forms of Undead, for a residuum investment. If it dies, he is unable to use that portion of his capacity for a period of time. He would also get a small number of buffing techniques, and probably Pain for healing his minions, to spend any spare Residuum on.


I dunno, just a random idea I had.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 01, 2012, 11:09:23 AM
Not so sure about the book or the life-stealing, but the focus on undead seems to be a good idea, especially with the newly improved Undeath technique.

On another note, the Priest of Legacies is up. After I make a few more changes to the techniques, the Spellknight will follow.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 02, 2012, 12:26:32 AM
I just posted the Spellknight, and the technique list will be up by tomorrow. As this is a new class, I would really appreciate any comments and criticisms about it that you can give me. Thanks!

EDIT: I just read through the Spellshaping Codices' Sublime Shaper (great job, by the way, DonQuixote) and noticed quite a few similarities to the Spellknight, especially the quote at the top. Before anyone else sees the connection, I swear I didn't plagiarize, and it was an understandable coincidence, since the ideas are both so close thematically.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: sirpercival on July 11, 2012, 06:54:07 PM
Hey Geometer, I just added Residuum to my list of pre-approved homebrew in the High Arcana (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?board=114.0) game.  You're welcome to come join and give it a test-drive, if you like.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 12, 2012, 01:23:53 PM
Hey Geometer, I just added Residuum to my list of pre-approved homebrew in the High Arcana (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?board=114.0) game.  You're welcome to come join and give it a test-drive, if you like.

Thanks, I'm flattered that that you like my homebrew that much. The system isn't even close to finished, though. It won't even be playable until I post some feats. I was kind of waiting for more feedback on the Spellknight (isn't it too dippable?) before posting the Magician and the feats, but I might as well put them up now anyway.

As for joining High Arcana, it sounds really interesting, and I might in the near future. I'll add more to this sub-board first, though. I feel like I have an obligation to get this done and make Residuum a complete subsystem.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: VennDygrem on July 12, 2012, 09:45:23 PM
I'm really interested in these classes and system. If you just get the feats up, I think that at least makes the classes that are posted playtestable, as I might be interested in giving one of them a shot in High Arcana if another of my ideas doesn't pan out.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 21, 2012, 12:52:01 AM
The Magician and a list of Residuum Feats is finally done, which means that this system is now finally playable! I'm going to quickly go over the previous classes to change anything inconsistent. Meanwhile...

Can I get some feedback on the Magician and the feats? Anything too strong, or too weak? I especially would like to hear about the Magician's Secrets, and whether anything about that should change.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on July 21, 2012, 02:50:17 PM
Magician

Seems odd that the Magician is Cha-based for implementing, but uses Intelligence for Magician's Secret, but then uses Charisma again instead of Int for the Extra Secret feat.

Magician's Secret should spell out the save DC. Since it's an SLA, it's presumably Cha-based, but it should be stated explicitly for ease of use. Ditto Spell Mimicry, although since it isn't an SLA, which stat is used is up in the air.

The RP cost for Counterspell seems a bit low. RP are a lot less valuable than spell levels. Since techniques have neither schools nor subschools, I don't think this ability works at all as written, though.

What's the action cost to use Arcane Surge?



Feats generally look good. A few issues, though.

Modify Metamagic is a bit unclear on how many RP is costs to reduce a metamagic's cost for more than 3 levels. Assuming that people will follow an undefined pattern is a bad idea, and any mathematician will tell you that if the first three numbers are 5, 10, 20, then the next one could just as easily be 40 as it could be 0 or -397 or pi. If there are ever any PrCs that let a spellcaster progress alongside an implementing class, Modify Metamagic will be too strong. The amount of metamagic reduction it can grant is on par with the 10th level capstone of several PrCs (Dweomerkeeper, Incantatrix), with the potential to be even greater with more than 5 RP. Since you get your RP back every turn, the cost is negligible, and since prepared casters apply metamagic at the time of spell preparation, they don't even pay that momentary cost in combat. Finally, the feat needs text to stop it from lowering spell slot adjustments below 0.

Pray for Health is a bit open ended, and can get relatively high level spells at relatively low level (Cha 22 at level 1 is easily achievable, and someone in Sirpercival's High Arcana game is shooting for a Cha of 40 at level 6). The wording implies a replacement of the spell's normal targeting, which may have unintended consequences (like multitarget spells getting the shaft, or spells that target by type being applied to creatures of a normally invalid type). The targeting selection requires neither a willing creature nor an ally, so beware of offensive uses of this ability (at the least, Cure spells on undead, and at the most, homebrewed offensive healing spells (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1061.0;msg=7300)). Finally, healing is a subschool, not a descriptor.

Technique Mastery should say "Choose a technique for which you have the Favored Technique feat". Also, having an ability modifier of +17 requires a score of 44, which I don't think is intended. Should that requirement be "Primary implementing ability score 17" instead? I would be very careful with this feat , as choosing a single, expensive technique would have ridiculous benefits (spend 18 RP to get the benefit of 117 RP, for example).

Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 21, 2012, 09:32:29 PM
Wow, thanks for all of those finds, Garryl! I did actually mean for Magician's Secret to be based off of Int to limit the power of it, so if it says Charisma anywhere, that needs to be changed. I'll write out the saves for the secrets and anything copied with Spell Mimicry.

For the Counterspell ability, I intend at some point to write out the schools and subschools of each technique (I needed to do that anyway, so that the Illusion technique would count as a Glamer and some of the ones that clearly affect minds would be officially labeled Mind-Affecting). As for the cost, would it be better to require 1 RP per [spell level]^2?

Arcane Surge takes no action to activate, though I'll specify that.

I'm glad the feats had as few problems as they did. For Pray for Health, I'll change it so that it scales with level, rather than with Charisma. I'll also change Technique Mastery from modifier to score; that was my intention from the start. Does anybody know how I could stop Modify Metamagic or Technique Mastery from becoming too powerful?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on July 22, 2012, 12:03:07 AM
If you're going to make Magician's Secret entirely Int-based, I'd suggest throwing in a little more use for Int elsewhere in the class so it doesn't feel so out of place. Don't go so overboard with Int that the Charisma-based implementing becomes the thing that feels out of place, though.

Modify Metamagic: First, never let it reduce the total spell level adjustment of a spell by more than one. There are a few feats that already do that, and they're okay. Arcane Thesis is borked because it does -1 per metamagic applied (even the ones with +0 level), but it's only for 1 spell so we love it for fun builds and Shadowcraft Mages rather than calling it crazy broken (only slightly broken). I'd also recommend modulating the cost based on the level of the spell, and possibly alsothe adjustment of the metamagic used, but that's less vital and probably more of a hassle than its worth. Finally, it needs some way to stop prepared casters from getting the metamagic reduction without paying the RP. Maybe, you can apply the reduced cost metamagic but you only have to pay when you cast the spell, and if you can't pay for whatever reason, the spell goes off without that metamagic applied (possibly rendering other metamagic ineffective) or maybe fails entirely.

Technique Mastery: Instead of [stat mod] additional instances of the technique, how about a number of extra RP each round that can only be spent on the chosen technique (and also not counting against RP/day and other RP limitations)?

Oh, and Spell Mimicry should probably be unable to mimic spells cast with Spell Mimicry or that you cast, just so you don't run into the weird situation of a gestalt Magician 20//Residuon/Wizard (or other implementer + spellcaster combo on the non-Magician side) casting a spell once and then mimicking it once per minute for the rest of the day to keep casting it repeatedly off of one spell slot. Or, you know, the more likely situation of just recasting one spell a few times off of your own mimicry of the original. Or two Magicians bounding the same spell around. Whatever.
   (Although that does give me a neat idea about a Spell That Must Be Cast, the spell that must be cast every so often or else the world ends, and no caster alive today actually knows how to cast it so it's being maintained by a cabal of Magicians just mimicking it off of each other, desperately trying to sustain it once a minute before the chain is broken and it becomes forgotten forever.)
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: VennDygrem on August 03, 2012, 01:49:44 AM
I have to agree with Garryl on Technique mastery. As it is, you can spend points on a high-RP technique at relatively low levels and boost its effects by a ridiculous degree. A third level Residuon with an Int of 18 should have enough RP to implement Enervate once per round; however, with Technique Mastery, they gain an extra 4 implementations. Assuming the low-level creatures they're fighting fail the fort saves, the target will either die outright from hp loss or from simply having more negative levels than HD. That's just one example, of course.

I'd just go with something closer to what Garryl suggested, or simply follow the Spell Focus/Greater Spell Focus model and make it just one extra implementation on top of Favored Technique, which would potentially be even more of a nerf than Garryl's suggestion depending on how many RP you'd be granted for that purpose, but is easy to manage for bookkeeping and balance issues.

-----------------
Also, can you elaborate on the saving throw numbers? Most characters aren't going to be min-maxed to increase their primary stat through the roof, meaning the save DCs will be pretty low compared to what a full caster can put out. Is the idea to simply overwhelm the targets by battering them with a lot of small-DC effects, and just hope that they don't succeed on most of their saving throw(s)?
------------
And one more question: Do characters retroactively gain extra techniques known for gaining higher primary implementing ability scores? Or are those simply set at the ability score possessed when taking the first level of the respective class?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 07, 2012, 06:37:57 PM
Sorry that I haven't been working on this stuff for a while, but I intend to get the system working, and working well.

I need to go through each class and fix all of the little problems with the class features and such, modify a few of the feats (I've looked at all of the suggestions I got, a lot of them are going to see use in the upcoming changes, so thanks!), and finally, I need to create a thread with descriptions of all of the techniques. This will provide a reference base for techniques, even those  that are independent of any particular class, and it will let me edit just one thread whenever I need to balance a technique, without any conflicting information.

These changes may take a while, but I'm determined to get at least a bit done every day from now on. I kind of procrastinated on some work from back in June, and now it all needs to get done, so I won't be able to spend as much time on this site as I did when I started this system. By the end of the summer, though, I hope to have the entire system be fully playable. And then will come the supplementary classes, PrCs, items, monsters, more PrCs, bonus feats, races, and a lot more PrCs.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: VennDygrem on September 04, 2012, 12:07:25 AM
If you've got a moment, I've got a question.

Some techniques follow a progression based on the number of like techniques you implement in the same round. For instance, here is Monster:

Quote
Monster
Range: Close
Duration: 1 round + 1 round/3 levels
As the spell Summon Monster I. Implementing this technique twice in the same round can create a single monster from the Summon Monster II spell list, implementing it 4 times can create a single monster from the Summon Monster III spell list, and so on. All of these effects have the range and duration above.

My question is, what is the "and so on"? The progression listed is of low value and thus vague in defining the later stages' costs. Does it cost 6 points for Summon Monster IV, or 8, or 16? It's not as self-evident as it might seem. There might be some others that do the same thing, I can't quite recall. I think spreading out the value of the examples would help define the cost structure a lot more clearly.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on September 04, 2012, 08:23:59 AM
If you've got a moment, I've got a question.

Some techniques follow a progression based on the number of like techniques you implement in the same round. For instance, here is Monster:

Quote
Monster
Range: Close
Duration: 1 round + 1 round/3 levels
As the spell Summon Monster I. Implementing this technique twice in the same round can create a single monster from the Summon Monster II spell list, implementing it 4 times can create a single monster from the Summon Monster III spell list, and so on. All of these effects have the range and duration above.

My question is, what is the "and so on"? The progression listed is of low value and thus vague in defining the later stages' costs. Does it cost 6 points for Summon Monster IV, or 8, or 16? It's not as self-evident as it might seem. There might be some others that do the same thing, I can't quite recall. I think spreading out the value of the examples would help define the cost structure a lot more clearly.

Well, it's supposed to be based on exponents of 2, but if I say that every 2^n techniques implemented combined have the effect of a Summon Monster spell of spell level (n+1), it just sounds too mathy. Is there a better way to phrase it?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: sirpercival on September 04, 2012, 08:33:57 AM
Just say each higher level costs twice as many implementations.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on September 04, 2012, 08:36:51 AM
"By implementing this technique twice, you can instead create a single monster from the Summon Monster II list. Each subsequent doubling of the number of implementations increases the level of the list you can create monsters from by 1 (to a maximum of Summon Monster IX by implementing this technique 256 times)."
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: VennDygrem on September 04, 2012, 09:11:34 AM
How would a Residuon ever implement that technique 256 times? They just don't get enough RP.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on September 04, 2012, 10:09:15 AM
A level 20 Residuon can have Practiced Technique + Perfected Technique to lower the cost of Monster to 1 RP, base 64 RP + 20 from Int 34, Improved Residuum Reserve to double that pool, and suddenly you have 168 implementations already (180 if you add in Favored Technique). Just 76 to go, which you can get from a "mere" 36 more points of Int (that is, a total score of 70). Think the CO board can do it?

Speaking of which, Favored Technique says to "Choose a feat for which you have the Favored Technique feat". It should be "Choose a technique" instead.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: VennDygrem on September 04, 2012, 01:59:18 PM
The thing is, that's all assuming you focus just on that one technique for all those things. You can't build a class with the express intent of expecting only extreme Optimizers and silly tricks in order to make the class work.

There are other ways of lowering the requirements while making sure Optimizers can't break it too hard.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on September 04, 2012, 08:34:45 PM
Wow, lots of input all of a sudden. Garryl, your definition is perfect, so I hope you won't mind if I just copy and paste it. I appreciate all of your comments, and I agree that a lot of this needs fixing, but I can't start fixing it until I receive more feedback on THIS (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=6951.0). Could some of you post to tell me what you think and whether I should proceed?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on September 05, 2012, 01:02:04 PM
I wouldn't have posted it in quotes if I minded. :)
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on September 22, 2012, 12:46:18 AM
I just changed the introductory thread using the new name for the system, Remnant Magic. The classes and feats will quickly be similarly translated, and then I will finally begin sorting out the issues with the system. Sirpercival, now that the name change is official, you should probably change the name to match in the list of allowed systems for High Arcana.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on June 27, 2013, 03:40:59 PM
I LIVE AGAIN! That's right, I'm back to finish what I started. You didn't think I would leave without even 1/7 of my work complete, did you? Well, I've already fixed the Remnant Mage, and I should have the rest of this system up and running in no time. Please tell me if there are any issues, especially balance issues, with the new material.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on June 27, 2013, 09:51:25 PM
Just last week I was wondering where you'd gotten to and what was going to happen to this project, glad to see you're back. :)
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on June 29, 2013, 01:42:12 PM
Thanks, Nanshork! It's good to be back, though I'm worried that, like last year, I won't have the time to stay on the forum once the summer ends.

Anyway, I just finished updating the Divine Shard! Please tell me what you think, etc., etc.. Anyway, if you've noticed that the spell remnants are not updated yet (they're still called "techniques"), don't worry. I will get back to those and make a thread containing all of them once I've finished with the other major classes. Then I'll work on the feats and finally get around to some prestige classes and supplementary classes.

But PLEASE let me know what you guys think of what I have so far. Any input would be very appreciated.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 01, 2013, 12:53:14 PM
The Spellknight and Magician are both finished! Though in the name of balance I was forced to do the unthinkable and give the Spellknight... *sob*... a cleric BAB. I also nerfed the Magician's Secret somewhat, stopping at 4th level with Polymorph as the most powerful secret.

Please remark on them, if only to tell me what a great job I'm doing. Or if you find problems, be sure to tell me those. Feats are coming up.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on July 01, 2013, 09:57:05 PM
Anyway, I just finished updating the Divine Shard! Please tell me what you think, etc., etc.. Anyway, if you've noticed that the spell remnants are not updated yet (they're still called "techniques"), don't worry. I will get back to those and make a thread containing all of them once I've finished with the other major classes. Then I'll work on the feats and finally get around to some prestige classes and supplementary classes.

So that's where the Priest of Legacies went... What's new in this version? On the other hand, it's been so long since I read the original, I'll be looking at it with fresh eyes even if you gave me a change log.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 02, 2013, 04:01:43 PM
Anyway, I just finished updating the Divine Shard! Please tell me what you think, etc., etc.. Anyway, if you've noticed that the spell remnants are not updated yet (they're still called "techniques"), don't worry. I will get back to those and make a thread containing all of them once I've finished with the other major classes. Then I'll work on the feats and finally get around to some prestige classes and supplementary classes.

So that's where the Priest of Legacies went... What's new in this version? On the other hand, it's been so long since I read the original, I'll be looking at it with fresh eyes even if you gave me a change log.

Yep, this is the new, more streamlined version. I replaced the extra abilities that you can use Prayer for with minor bonuses to the ability itself, opting to leave the other possible uses of Prayer to feats like what happened  to Turn Undead. The old ability that allowed people to analyze "legacies" was relabeled "Trace Aura," and expanded to include objects with magical auras. An ability that gains RP from auras was added and tracking people based on auras was bumped forward in the class progression. And finally, Remnant Sense/Sight/Greater Sight was added to enforce the idea that Divine Shards are as familiar with Remnants as the namesake Mages.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on July 04, 2013, 11:50:10 PM
Tangentially related, but do you have any plans for the other 6 chapters of the Book of Seven Secrets? "The Book of Just One Secret For Now" doesn't have the same ring to it.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on July 05, 2013, 11:59:21 AM
The Divine Shard's 8-point techniques spoiler is broken.  The domains are neat.



Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 06, 2013, 09:32:31 PM
Tangentially related, but do you have any plans for the other 6 chapters of the Book of Seven Secrets? "The Book of Just One Secret For Now" doesn't have the same ring to it.

Yes, I already have every class and system planned out. It's just a matter of getting it all down. For the sake of completeness, I have to make sure Remnant Magic is done before I work on the others, though. Once I get the Spell Remnants thread and Feats thread done, the system will at least be playable,so after that I plan to begin work on the second "secret" of the book. In between working on that, for a change of pace, I'll come back to this and add some prestige classes, monsters, magic items, races, ACFs, etc. Hopefully.

EDIT: Fixed the feats. Feel free to comment on them. By the way, this by no means the end of the feats that I'll come up with for this system. I haven't even made feats for combining remnants with psionics or invocations yet, or made fighter-based bonus feats for the Spellknight. I'll come back to this and add some stuff. I just want to make sure that what I have so far is sound.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 19, 2013, 10:57:11 PM
Just one more update before the system finally becomes completely playable. I'm struggling to type up all of the remnants, but once I'm done, there will be more than 50 of them, including some that are newly made since the revision. In the mean time, I've fixed some balance issues with the classes, shooting for about tier 3. RP now progresses linearly rather than quadratically for all classes, which keeps the effective DCs (when taking into account the mechanics for saving against multiple techniques) a lot closer to the linear progression of spellcasters. Once again, make sure to let me know if you find any problem with any class, feat, or concept.

EDIT: The remnants are done! It took almost a month, so I'm sorry about the wait. There are 70 of them so far, but I have a few additional ideas, and I think it'll end up closer to 90. In the mean time, I'll write up the remnant lists for the individual classes and copy/paste them into the threads for each class. I also have a few ideas for new feats that I'll write in, and then I'll work on the prestige classes.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on August 15, 2013, 10:13:36 AM
Does this mean that minus potential future tweaking it is all worked out and finished?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 15, 2013, 12:29:46 PM
Does this mean that minus potential future tweaking it is all worked out and finished?

Hang on, I'm adding the next 15 or so remnants now. But finalizing these remnant lists really shouldn't take too long. I should have the first prestige classes up by the end of today. So, to answer your question, yeah, Remnant Magic is playable now.

YAY!
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on August 15, 2013, 12:31:26 PM
Does this mean that minus potential future tweaking it is all worked out and finished?

Hang on, I'm adding the next 15 or so remnants now. But finalizing these remnant lists really shouldn't take too long. I should have the first prestige classes up by the end of today. So, to answer your question, yeah, Remnant Magic is playable now.

YAY!

Congratulations!

When are you going to get to work on the other magic systems?  :p
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 15, 2013, 05:48:14 PM
Does this mean that minus potential future tweaking it is all worked out and finished?

Hang on, I'm adding the next 15 or so remnants now. But finalizing these remnant lists really shouldn't take too long. I should have the first prestige classes up by the end of today. So, to answer your question, yeah, Remnant Magic is playable now.

YAY!

Congratulations!

When are you going to get to work on the other magic systems?  :p

Way to spoil my celebration. :) I still have to finish the PrC's for this system (I have 4 in mind), and once I'm done those, the monsters, the magic items, and maybe a small thread about the League of Alborard, I'll get started on the next one.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on August 15, 2013, 06:00:20 PM
Does this mean that minus potential future tweaking it is all worked out and finished?

Hang on, I'm adding the next 15 or so remnants now. But finalizing these remnant lists really shouldn't take too long. I should have the first prestige classes up by the end of today. So, to answer your question, yeah, Remnant Magic is playable now.

YAY!

Congratulations!

When are you going to get to work on the other magic systems?  :p

Way to spoil my celebration. :) I still have to finish the PrC's for this system (I have 4 in mind), and once I'm done those, the monsters, the magic items, and maybe a small thread about the League of Alborard, I'll get started on the next one.

What can I say, I like your work and want to see more of it!
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 15, 2013, 09:46:02 PM
Thanks! Did you check out the Balance and Gameplay (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=11034.0) thread yet? That's new, too.

Oh, and I just finished posting the last of the spell remnants! There are now 90 total, which is a nice round number, especially for a system so centered around the number 6. I checked every spell in the SRD and now I honestly can't think of any other spell effects that I would want to have. So, in a few hours, I should be able to take all of those remnants and fit them into the right spell lists.

EDIT: Remnant Mage Remnant List Done
EDIT: Divine Shard Remnant List Done
EDIT: Last Bugs in Remnant Mage Fixed
EDIT: Last Bugs in Divine Shard Fixed
EDIT: Spellknight Remnant List Done
EDIT: Last Bugs in Spellknight Fixed
EDIT: Magician Remnant List Done
EDIT: Last Bugs in Magician Fixed
EDIT: Cantrip Caster Done
EDIT: Priest of Legacies Done
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 16, 2013, 07:14:02 AM
An odd bug...  but according to the section on Remnant Magic, remnants require no components, which makes Conceal Remnant seem kinda pointless...  Is there something I'm missing?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 16, 2013, 12:44:37 PM
Quote
Each remnant is a use of the magic that exists in the air around the caster. Though similar to a spell in that it requires somatic and verbal components to manipulate the magic, it is much simpler in practice. While casting spells involves creating magic, often in great proportions, casting remnants is merely moving small amounts of magic that have already been created. Consequently, casting a remnant takes a free action, does not provoke attacks of opportunity, does not incur an arcane spell failure chance, and never requires concentration or any other components.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 16, 2013, 06:02:45 PM
Ah.  That would do it.

Has anyone playtested this yet?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 16, 2013, 10:48:21 PM
Ah.  That would do it.

Has anyone playtested this yet?

That's actually a good point. I playtested it before I made all of these changes to the system (which prompted me to make them in the first place), but now that it works so much differently, it should definitely be playtested again. It's only been a day since this has been playable, and barely a few hours since I got all the bugs out of it, so there hasn't really been a chance to playtest it yet.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 17, 2013, 12:42:44 AM
Figured you may have been updating it after playtests.

I've only been looking at the Remnant Mage, and the biggest potential breakage is the fact that the abilities are free actions.  Assuming you are just working on blasting, you can easily end up with more damage than a blastificer, and potentially more damage than the mailman.  I may be missing something, so I'm just gonna suggest that you try it out.  Make a remnant mage, dedicate all your non-remnant feats to blastificer shenanigans, and see what you end up with.

About your new prestige class...  First, what does "+1 to arcane remnant casting class" actually do?  I'm guessing you get 3 more RP per round, and 1 more known remnant, but I figure I should check.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 17, 2013, 02:56:42 AM
Figured you may have been updating it after playtests.

I've only been looking at the Remnant Mage, and the biggest potential breakage is the fact that the abilities are free actions.  Assuming you are just working on blasting, you can easily end up with more damage than a blastificer, and potentially more damage than the mailman.  I may be missing something, so I'm just gonna suggest that you try it out.  Make a remnant mage, dedicate all your non-remnant feats to blastificer shenanigans, and see what you end up with.

About your new prestige class...  First, what does "+1 to arcane remnant casting class" actually do?  I'm guessing you get 3 more RP per round, and 1 more known remnant, but I figure I should check.

I did actually test the blasting, and that aspect hasn't changed substantially. It's not really that bad: at its best it's about 50% more than an Eldritch Blast after accounting for the save. Obviously, I'm using Eldritch Blast as my (somewhat too weak) standard for damage every round. The Magician does way more, because it's supposed to, and it can get up to twice or a bit more than twice as much as an Eldritch Blast (So, your standard Fireball) per turn if it really tries. But it's also limited by the day, so if it makes the equivalent of a Fireball, I'm okay with that. Playtests may reveal that I should tone down blasting power, but in theory it doesn't seem too game-breaking.

As for prestige classes, you're getting a little ahead of me there. I'm going to try to add a section about prestige classes to Remnant Magic tomorrow. But yeah, you're basically right. You get the same increase to RP you would have gotten, plus an additional remnant or 2 if you would have gotten them normally.

What concerns me is how deal with multiclassing. If a remnant caster loses out on a few more RP per turn, it's a lot worse than if a wizard loses some CL. That RP per turn also determines saves, so if a remnant caster loses enough RP per turn, he's not going to hit anything of his challenge rating. So how do I keep remnant casters powerful enough if they multiclass? Any ideas, anyone? This could be a big problem.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 17, 2013, 03:20:28 AM
I've looked through it...  if you were getting 50% more powerful than the warlock, blasting-wise, then one of us is missing something...

Say we take Slash.  Make it the practiced remnant at level 2 (so it now costs 1 RP).  Then we are using all of our RP on it.  At level 10, with a starting int of 16, a headband of int+4, and putting both of your level-up increases into int, a Remnant Mage can have 35 RP.  Give him a 14 starting dex, and bracers of dex+2, and take into account his BAB, he's got a ranged attack of +8.  Let's say he gets a 10 on the roll.  Average touch AC for a CR 10 monster is 9.26, according to this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=172050).  So, we'll round up to say 10, and our Remnant Mage is beating them by 8.  So, we get 26 attacks through.  The total deals 26d6 damage.  More than five times what a warlock of the same level does.

So...  is the above wrong?

Even if we don't make it the practed remnant, we still do 17d6 damage, although the average is a bit weirder, because 10 gives us the maximum result.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 17, 2013, 11:27:52 AM
I've looked through it...  if you were getting 50% more powerful than the warlock, blasting-wise, then one of us is missing something...

Say we take Slash.  Make it the practiced remnant at level 2 (so it now costs 1 RP).  Then we are using all of our RP on it.  At level 10, with a starting int of 16, a headband of int+4, and putting both of your level-up increases into int, a Remnant Mage can have 35 RP.  Give him a 14 starting dex, and bracers of dex+2, and take into account his BAB, he's got a ranged attack of +8.  Let's say he gets a 10 on the roll.  Average touch AC for a CR 10 monster is 9.26, according to this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=172050).  So, we'll round up to say 10, and our Remnant Mage is beating them by 8.  So, we get 26 attacks through.  The total deals 26d6 damage.  More than five times what a warlock of the same level does.

So...  is the above wrong?

Even if we don't make it the practed remnant, we still do 17d6 damage, although the average is a bit weirder, because 10 gives us the maximum result.

First of all, that is an awesome table and I wish I had known about it sooner. And second, I was actually only talking about Flare and the other elemental blasting remnants. :p Bludgeon and co. are new as of a few days ago, so I've never actually tested them. But based on what you're saying, they should definitely be revised. Any specific ideas of how to fix them?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 17, 2013, 08:57:11 PM
Well, let's say we have a 10th level RM.  He uses his slash power, which costs N remnant poitns, as often as possible, floor(35/N).  He rolls a 10 on the attack roll, netting him min(floor(35/N), ceil(floor(35/N)/2)+8) hits, assuming a +8 to hit.  We want that to be somewhere around 7 or 8 hits.

So...
N = 1, 26 hits
N = 2, 17 hits
N = 3, 11 hits
N = 4, 8 hits
N = 5, 7 hits
N = 6, 5 hits
N = 7, 5 hits
N = 8, 4 hits
N = 9, 3 hits

Clearly, we want the power to cost either 4 or 5 RM.  If it's 4, then using practiced remnant on it allows the user to hit for 11d6 damage.  If it's 5, then using practiced remnant on it allows the user to hit for 8d6.

The biggest culprit in balancing all of this seems to be practiced remnant.  But...  I'm not sure what to do with it.  The Favored Remnant feat kinda sucks for a lot of powers, since +1 CL doesn't affect much, and +1 DC affects some powers, but you're better off taking Remnant School Focus then, which gives it +1 DC to all powers of that school.

The other thing that this doesn't take into account is the remnant reserve feats, and the meta-remnant feats.  If a player takes these feats, then their first round of combat does a lot more damage.  Assuming they have: Improved Initiative, Knowledge Devotion, Empower Remnant, Weapon Focus(Whatever Slash counts as), Remnant Reserve, Greater Remnant Reserve, Maximize Remnant, they start combat with 52 RM, which they then empower and maximize.  Assume they get a +2 to hit off Knowledge Devotion, they open combat with
Cost = 1 RM, 36 hits
Cost = 2 RM, 23 hits
Cost = 3 RM, 17 hits
Cost = 4 RM, 13 hits
Cost = 5 RM, 10 hits
Cost = 6 RM, 8 hits
Cost = 7 RM, 7 hits
Cost = 8 RM, 6 hits
Cost = 9 RM, 5 hits
Where each hit deals 6 + d6/2 damage (average 7.75).  If we cost it at 4, they deal, on average, 100.75 on the first round, and practiced remnant knocks this up to 131.75.   If we cost it at 5, they deal 77.5 damage on average, and this increases to 100.75 if they apply practiced remnant. 


While I'm fidgeting with numbers, let's take a level 10 human remnant mage who instead focuses on summoning.  He takes practiced remnant on Monster, and the feats: Spell Focus(Conjuration), Augment Summoning, Improved Initiative, Extend Remnant, Remnant Reserve, Greater Remnant Reserve, Improved Remnant Reserve.  He has the same +6 modifier I've been giving the previous guy, so he has 35 RP per round.  For the first round, he has 70 RP, so he uses Monster 35 times...  or he would, but a SM IX costs 25 uses, so that's all he needs to do.  He now has a creature off the SMIX list, which is stomping around and crushing combat, especially when it's backed up by whatever buffs the remnant mage has in wand form, and can get some extra movement from the excess RP the remnant mage has and the shift power.

Even without practiced remnant, he can still use Monster 23 times in the first round, which is enough to get a SMVIII creature.  After which, he has to use up most of his RP every round sustaining it, but he does have wands to play with.  Next level, he gets the extra RM he needs to summon a SMIX creature.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 17, 2013, 09:36:17 PM
I want to start by saying that I can tell by the fact that you did this math that you're an awesome person. We're friends now.

I also want to clear up a misconception that everyone seems to have (which I should clear up with more specific wording in a few places): Remnant Reserve doesn't just double your RP. It gives you a separate pool with as much RP, if you take all of the feats, as your first pool. This means that if you cast Flare out of both, the opponent saves twice, making it a lot weaker than if you just cast it twice as many times from one RP pool. And if you cast Monster out of both, you can't combine them and make a single monster, since they have to be in different groups. Yes, two monsters from Summon Monster VI is still strong at level 10, but then your reserve will be depleted and you won't be able to do that for a while, and Practiced Remnant makes it unnaturally strong. Without it, you're summoning 2 monsters from Summon Monster IV, which is about as balanced as you can get for level 10. I get why people would think otherwise about Remnant Reserve; the fact that I haven't emphasized the distinction is completely my fault.

On Practiced Remnant, the whole remnant mechanic makes it one of the most infuriating things to work with. Every time I make a remnant, I have to consider it, and often I don't consider it enough. I'm considering raising the minimum RP to 4. At RP costs higher than that, it doesn't seem to cause as many problems. Alternatively, I could just say that it lets you cast the remnant 25% more times for any given RP cost. That way, all remnants will act like the much less problematic conversion of 5 RP to 4.

Your analysis of Slash was very well done, and I don't see any problems with the math. One option is just to revalue Slash, Bludgeon, and Pierce to 4 RP, which, with the above change to Practiced Remnant, should be pretty balanced. The other is to just remove all checks but saves from Remnant Magic. I've already proven the balance of saves, and there are only 9 out of 90 remnants that require any check that isn't a save. I could easily just change these remnants so that they have Reflex saves rather than touch attacks.

As for metaremnant, you have a point. There is definitely a danger of people using them all at once like that. I have to make them naturally limiting somehow, but adding to the RP costs will just make them too easy to avoid. I'll ponder that problem a bit.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 18, 2013, 12:47:55 AM
OK...  much better regarding the remnant reserve feats.  That's a lot better.

So, to tackle saving throws...  At level 10, the average fort, ref and will saves are 11.63, 8.58 and 9.11.  To make the maths nice, I'm rounding to 12, 9 and 9.  Therefore, the sections on Reflex and Will saves will be equivalent, and will therefore be merged.  I'll use the same +6 modifier as earlier, so the DC is 16, and the RM has 35 RP available in a round.  In each case, I'll cover what happens if they roll a 10, and what they need to roll to avoid the effects entirely.

Fort saves:
Cost = 1 -> Roll a 10 = 12 hits, cannot be avoided entirely.
Cost = 2 -> Roll a 10 = 3 hits,  13 avoids entirely
Cost = 3 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 10 avoids entirely
Cost = 4 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 8 avoids entirely
Cost = 5 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 7 avoids entirely
Cost = 6 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 7 avoids entirely
Cost = 7 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 7 avoids entirely
Cost = 8 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 6 avoids entirely
Cost = 9 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 6 avoids entirely

Ref/Will saves:
Cost = 1 -> Roll a 10 = 15 hits, cannot be avoided entirely.
Cost = 2 -> Roll a 10 = 6 hits, 16 avoids entirely
Cost = 3 -> Roll a 10 = 3 hits, 13 avoids entirely
Cost = 4 -> Roll a 10 = 1 hit,   11 avoids entirely
Cost = 5 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 10 avoids entirely
Cost = 6 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 10 avoids entirely
Cost = 7 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 10 avoids entirely
Cost = 8 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 9 avoids entirely
Cost = 9 -> Roll a 10 = 0 hits, 9 avoids entirely

So...  for reflex and will saves, you've got it right, 4 is a good cost (at least at level 10).  Funnily enough, it doesn't hurt all that much to be wishing for save-or-suck powers.  Fort saves are a bit off, but they were always wonky.

Finally, the Practiced Remnant problem...  Why not give each Remnant Spell a "augment" which is only picked up by taking the Practiced Remnant power.  For example, damages might go up a size, wish might allow you to copy 6RP powers, Monster might pick up Augment Summoning for free, etc...
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 18, 2013, 11:05:57 AM
Finally, the Practiced Remnant problem...  Why not give each Remnant Spell a "augment" which is only picked up by taking the Practiced Remnant power.  For example, damages might go up a size, wish might allow you to copy 6RP powers, Monster might pick up Augment Summoning for free, etc...

Well... that sounds like a lot of work... Plus, I like things simple, though my formulas for checks might suggest otherwise. This isn't one of those types of magic with different rules for stances and strikes and augments and chakras, just remnants and that's it. I want it to have a kind of elegance to it. And it doesn't seem like a good idea to add an aspect to every single remnant just for one class feature of one class.

No, I'll probably go with "Whenever you cast the chosen remnant, treat the amount of RP spent as 25% greater (rounded down) for the purposes of determining how many times the chosen remnant is cast." Anyway, the main issues in Remnant Magic are still

1) Metaremnant Feats: how do I make it possible for people to use multiple feats on a single remnant while discouraging it, imposing a limit by necessity on the number of metaremnant feats used at once?

2) Multiclassing: how do I keep the effective DCs of remnants high if a remnant caster loses class levels?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 18, 2013, 07:06:24 PM
Make each metaremnant feat cost RP dependent on the cost of the remnant spell.  For example, by making empower use up two copies of that remnant spell, maximize use up three, etc...  If they use up too many copies on metaremnanting, then there aren't enough base copies to matter.

As for multiclassing, there were some other problems I was looking at, and I realized the solution to all of them can be hit at the same time.

Change 1: A remnant caster's RP is dependent on character level, not class level.

Change 2: Each remnant gains a minimum level at which it can be used.

Effects:  First, a second level remnant caster can no longer get a save-or-lose at will, as a free action.  The system as is kinda breaks at low levels.  Hell, a two-level dip in remnant mage gives all kinds of cool options, such as making a wall to stop enemies running away from you, making a wall to stop people from approaching you, benign transposition at will, summon a flanking buddy at will, etc...  Free action casting works really well as a dip...

Second, there is a difference in the strategies between a first level remnant caster, a tenth level remnant caster and a twentieth level remnant caster.  Just like there is a difference in the strategies for any other class at those levels. 

Third, you still have reason to stay in the class, but you aren't penalized as heavily if you leave.  i.e. it does exactly what you are wanting it to do.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 19, 2013, 01:05:36 AM
For metaremnants, I was actually thinking something along those lines already. But having it count as a number of spent remnants makes it weigh unfairly on the higher-RP remnants. I think each feat should cost an amount of RP itself, like how a metamagic feat costs a constant number of spell slots higher, rather than scaling with spell level.

I'm less convinced about your idea for multiclassing. I mean, the remnants are intended to be equal in overall power, with the differences in saves and number of castings balancing out the usefulness of each ability. So it doesn't really make sense to me to make some remnants only available after a number of levels. They wouldn't scale in power like a wizard's spells would, either. What I do agree with is that RP per day can't decrease, at least not substantially, without reworking the mechanics for checks.

How about this idea: as you deviate from your studies of remnant magic, your movements and words when casting the remnants become slower from lack of practice. You have to spend 1 move action per class level taken outside remnant magic when casting a round's remnants. You may only cast the remnants after you have spent all the necessary move actions. These move actions need not necessarily be taken on the same turn, though all rounds in which move actions are devoted to the same turn's worth of remnant casting must be consecutive. What do you think, too harsh? Maybe Swift actions are also possible ways to get the necessary number of actions? That might be too lenient.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 19, 2013, 01:51:43 AM
I've been thinking that the class should be using it's abilities as a swift action anyway...

As for your idea...

Give them their RP from their real levels, and they can gain 3 RP every round they spend their move action on.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 19, 2013, 02:44:38 AM
That's good! Yeah, that lets them act at a penalty if they need to, giving them more versatility in combat but not making up for the clear decrease in power that comes from skipping some casting levels. And just like in real casting, skipping only one level makes barely any difference, but there's really an incentive to keep from doing it too often. It's perfect!

By the way, I have been doing some behind-the-scenes thinking and discovered the problem of the high ability score bonus RP/turn. The fact is, these extra points are extra iterations on top of saves, which makes them way more powerful than they should be. It turns Chill from 22 damage to 32 damage at level 10. I fixed it with a few tables that I wrote into the stickied Remnant Magic thread, making the bonus RP much less substantial, but still enough to matter. I also checked the new results against the calculations for saves, and it doesn't change them much. So, I think it ended up being a good compromise.

I'm quite frankly amazed at how easily these critical problems of Remnant Magic are being solved. There are only a few left, and they take the form of simple remnants. Namely, Grapple, Disarm, Push, Trip, and Drain. I sort of haphazardly guessed when assigning RP values to these remnants, and now it's finally time to do the math and figure out how broken I actually made these things. I'm guessing that there are at least a few problems with them since they were made so sloppily, but for all I know, they're fine already. But more likely, their RP costs need to change, if not their wordings.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 19, 2013, 05:19:01 PM
I touched on this earlier, but there are still some balance concerns after you fix these.  Free action, at-will casting means that a divine shard can do great battlefield control by focusing on strength over wisdom, tripping them and walling them off, possibly condensing the escape route.  And if he picks up the nature path, his animal companion can trip things too, as well as grapple them.

Sorry to disappoint, but it isn't fixed yet.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 19, 2013, 05:38:48 PM
I'm not entirely convinced that this is unbalanced. Yes, a Divine Shard or another kind of remnant caster can spend their actions doing some melee in addition to casting. Hell, that's what the Spellknight is supposed to do anyway! If the Divine Shard specifically shouldn't be allowed to do that much compound destruction, I'm more than willing to lower its BAB to the level of the Remnant Mage and its HD to d6. That way, people will be forced to choose between powerful fighting and weaker remnants (Spellknight) and weaker fighting and stronger remnants (Remnant Mage/Divine Shard). I have no problem with all remnant casters being gishes to some extent.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on August 19, 2013, 05:41:41 PM
For the record I'm not convinced it is unbalanced either.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 20, 2013, 01:26:00 AM
Well, depending on how multiclassing is handled, imagine a fighter 8/Remnant Mage 2.  In addition to his usual tripping mechanic, he gets 6 remnant points that he can use to shift, wall or transposition as a free action.  With a horrible chasis on Remnant Mage, no less.

Consider Wizard 3/Remnant Mage 3/Cantrip Caster 4.  Black Tentacles locks down, say, half the monsters he targets, and then uses his 21 RP to screw over the other half, doing things like Wall-ing the enemies so they can't get out of the tentacles for next time.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on August 20, 2013, 09:46:45 AM
When you're talking about double digit levels spellcasters can already pull out multiple spells a level with stronger tricks than what you're mentioning.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 20, 2013, 01:20:39 PM
Well, depending on how multiclassing is handled, imagine a fighter 8/Remnant Mage 2.  In addition to his usual tripping mechanic, he gets 6 remnant points that he can use to shift, wall or transposition as a free action.  With a horrible chasis on Remnant Mage, no less.

Consider Wizard 3/Remnant Mage 3/Cantrip Caster 4.  Black Tentacles locks down, say, half the monsters he targets, and then uses his 21 RP to screw over the other half, doing things like Wall-ing the enemies so they can't get out of the tentacles for next time.

For the fighter build, my question is: is that really that much better than just taking Fighter 10? I mean, the latter gains another feat and 1 more BAB, while the former gets the ability to do some minor effect, like switch places with an ally or make 3 walls (effectively just forcing a single enemy to waste 5 feet of movement getting out), once per turn. It seems like a pretty even trade-off to me.

Your second example has more of a point. I'm also worried that Cantrip Caster and Priest of Legacies are going overboard with their full casting. While Mystic Theurge just gives the character more options (cast this divine spell or that arcane spell), these prestige classes give them more options and more power, since everything can happen on the same turn. I've been considering changing it to a both-remnants-spells-both-remnants-spells-both-remnants-spells-both progression. That would limit the Wizard in your build to an effective level of 6, rather than 7. A Remnant Mage 3/ Wizard 3/ Cantrip Caster 10 would be a level 16 character with 5th level spells and 30 RP/turn with the change and with 7th level spells and 39 RP/turn without it. A Wizard 16, by comparison, can cast 8th level spells. I'm honestly not sure which version is more balanced.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 20, 2013, 07:53:19 PM
Let's say that I'm an uber charger.  I charged last turn, so this turn, I need to gain some distance.  I shift two spaces back as a free action, and then charge again.  That seems like a worthwhile round to me, and I'd be willing to sacrifice a feat for it. 

Let's say I'm playing a tank.  Walls make my lockdown more effective, and if some nasty got past my lockdown, I can switch places with whoever he hit and full attack him again. 

Let's say I'm a rogue.  Now I'm also giving up +1d6 sneak attack.  In exchange, I'll pick up drain, allowing me to deal +1d10 damage, or I can SMI for a flanking buddy if I need it.

I'm not seeing how any of the above is a bad deal.

Edit: It gets worse.  The Divine Shard with the War Domain gives them a bonus feat: Exotic Weapon Proficiency.  So, now they are giving up +1 to hit in exchange for only having one trick, as long as they were going to take EWP anyway.  Alternatively, they can have +1 initiative and AC, or fast healing 1. 
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 20, 2013, 07:53:47 PM
double post ignore me
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 21, 2013, 01:12:55 PM
C_R, I agree that these are all decent uses of a 2-level dip into remnant magic. They might even be better than any other options, the ones that don't involve remnant magic. But providing characters with better options for dips doesn't necessarily constitute anything game-breaking. I mean, a lot of my builds involve 2-level dips into Fighter, which is almost always the best possible action, given that it has flawless BAB and 2 whole extra feats. Yet I've never heard anyone insinuate that the Fighter class is broken.

I am actually thrilled that people would consider taking dips into remnant magic for serious builds. I don't want this system of magic to be as useless to characters that don't take the full progression as Incarnum is (no offense, fans of Incarnum out there, but I've never found anything useful in Incarnum except Midnight Augmentation and maybe a soulmeld or two). The point is, the abilities you've described seem powerful, but not unbeatable. And you know what, with fighters so much farther down the tier ladder than wizards, I have no qualms about giving melee characters some new tricks up their sleeves.

That said, I am currently in the process of fixing some remnants. Mainly, I'm talking about Wall, Plants, and Silence. Wall, despite the closed loop rule, can still be used to trap someone, and that was never my intention. I'm changing it to say that no string of connected walls can exceed 20 ft. in length or form a closed loop with other Wall remnants or mundane walls. This does a nice job of maintaining its purpose of limiting enemy movements while not letting anything be trapped completely. I'm not as sure about Plants and Silence, but I've decided I don't like the increasingly difficult save mechanic or the fact that Remnant Magic has enough ways to slow enemies down without Plants making it even easier. I'm still constantly making changes.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 22, 2013, 12:21:58 AM
I would love to use it.  Several players/DMs I know don't like the sheer power of T1 casters and the lower tier casters aren't filling the hole, so I'm investigating other possibilities.  Spellshaping is already popular, but it is missing some things.

I'm of the opinion that this might be balanced, but I'm still kinda skeptical about the free action casting, especially with UMD on class lists.

(Also, Incarnate 2 would be a good dip...  except that Shape Soulmeld usually does the job you need without taking up class features.)

Currently, Wall and Condense can trap someone rather thoroughly since they can still escape through the condensed areas.  I'm also somewhat concerned about making the target save against two different effects (but weaker because there aren't as many).
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 23, 2013, 06:03:16 AM
TL;DR version - The maths favors splitting your RP between multiple spell remnants, at least as far as save-or-suck effects go.  This gives an effective +3 to the DC.

So, to back my claim up.

OK...  So, taking some slight modifications into account.  First off, that RM with 22 int now has 32 RP.  Let's say he wants to use a 4 RP effect.  The typical opponent has a +9 to the save, and his DC is 16.  He can use the RM 8 times, so the enemy needs to effectively get a 20 on the save.  That is, he needs to roll an 11.  So, the enemy has a 50% chance of succeeding.

However, he looks at his remnant spell list and realizes he'd be ok with getting some other 4 RP effect.  So, he splits his RP into two sections.  He uses 4 of effect 1 and 4 of effect 2.  So, now the enemy needs to make two saves, each with a DC 18.  So, a 9 passes.  That means that the enemy has a 60% chance of success on each roll, and therefore a 36% chance of succeeding on both.  Since the remnant mage is fine with either effect, this effectively means that the enemy has a 64% chance of failing.  This is equivalent to the enemy needing an 8.  This is assuming he's targeting two saves each with a +9 (the average for reflex and will).

It is of course possible that he is targetting fort with one of those.  That means the opponent only needs a 6 to pass.  So...  60% chance and 75% chance, meaning 45% chance of succeeding on both.  So, there's a 55% chance of the enemy failing at least one of them.

Finally, it is possible that there are 3 effects that he is happy to use.  So, he throws off 2 of each, and leaves 8 RP for some other effect.  The enemy now requires an 8+, an 8+ and a 5+.  Chances of succeeding on all 3 are 65%*65%*80% = 33.8%.  Which means there is a 66.2% chance of failing at least one. 

So... assuming the enemy has average saves for his level (Fort+12, Ref+9, Will+9), there is a 50% chance of success if the RM throws off an effect that requires just a will save/reflex save.  But, there's a 64% chance of the effect getting through if he targets ref and will, 55% if he targets ref/will and fort, and 66.2% if he targets all 3.  66.2% is a bit more than 65%, which is effectively a +3 over the original 50%, so targetting all 3 is like getting a +3 to the DC of your effect.

Furthermore, I'm not sure how things work if a RM throws off a confusion, a fear, and a sleep.  Do they make three seperate saving throws?  It's the only thing that makes sense, but the section on how these things work says that, if the enemy is supposed to make 3 will saves, he makes one save and uses the result to determine how many effects hit.

These are all concerns that throw off your balance a fair bit (64% chance of getting through is pretty good.  If we tack on a trip, disarm, etc..., we might get even higher).  I'm also still assuming that 22 int, even though it's possible to have 26, which would mess with the numbers further.  (I went with 16 int, +2 from levelups, +4 from an item.  It is possible to have 18 int, +2 racial, +2 from levelups, +4 from an item.)

TL;DR version (again) - The maths favors splitting your RP between multiple spell remnants, at least as far as save-or-suck effects go.  This gives an effective +3 to the DC.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 24, 2013, 10:26:31 AM
The maths favors splitting your RP between multiple spell remnants, at least as far as save-or-suck effects go.  This gives an effective +3 to the DC.

That's a good point, and not really something I had considered. How about this? I change it to say that the opponent makes only one d20 roll and applies that to all checks involving remnant magic that it has to make in its next turn. So, if you use 2 effects, one requiring a reflex save and another requiring Will, the opponent needs to just roll that 9 once, and it should let him save both times. Which then obviously makes casting a single remnant more optimal than splitting in the case of one opponent.

In the case of multiple opponents, the situation hasn't really changed. If you force each opponent to make a DC 18 save, you'll have a greater chance of one of them failing than if you just target one of them with the DC 20. I don't really think I have a problem with that. Remnant Magic should be useful in some cases for its ability to produce multiple smaller effects rather than a single large effect.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 24, 2013, 11:33:56 PM
I've been focusing on mid-levels for a while now, but I want to check a few other details.

First, at level 1, a remnant mage can, at will, blind someone and fire a crossbow bolt at them, all in one round.  Surely, you can see the problem there?  A divine shard gets worse: Take the animal domain, and you can blind someone, shoot them with a crossbow, and then have your pet fighter attack them too.

Second, I can't see what a level 20 remnant mage does that's all that different to a level 10 remnant mage.  Sure, there are some bigger numbers involved, but other than that, I can't see what I'm supposed to get excited about...

My first solution to both of these was shot down earlier (min level prereqs).  So, I'll offer an alternative now.

First, a remnant mage/spellknight/magician knows 2 effects at first level, and learns one new effect every level thereafter.  Second, remnants now belong to chains, like feat chains.  You can't take blind without knowing some (weaker) effect.  Make the chains 5 long, and then you can make wish require 2 other chains completed, meaning it won't be available too early (which would kill the point of this). 

As for the divine shard, each domain now contains a list of effects that the divine shard has access to, based on his/her level.  A divine shard can only get the effects that his/her domains allow him/her. 

Assuming that save or sucks are at least 4th in the chain, and only accessible by 3rd level of a domain, that means that remnant casters will only be using them at the same time that wizards get glitterdust.  Additionally, a 20th level remnant caster will have at most 4 chains complete and the wish power to pretend to have most other chains.  A 10th level remnant caster will have 2 chains complete at most.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 25, 2013, 12:37:15 PM
I want to start by saying thanks a lot to C_R. Honestly, you've been a big help, and probably found more holes in Remnant Magic in 2 weeks than anyone else found in the last year. So while I don't agree with a lot of your fixes, I'm still grateful for the suggestions.

Anyway, while Divine Shards technically can't get an animal companion until 2nd level, I get that this system is a little overpowered at level 1. Warlock seems to have the same problem: summoning swarms at will at level one is just stupidly good (and Remnant Magi can do it at level 2). This seems to be a problem not just for this system but for at-will casting in general. There really should be a solution.

Still, I don't think your chain idea is going to work out, since I really intend for all remnants to be of equal power. If they aren't, their RP cost should be tweaked. The real focus of the issue is the linear RP increase, which makes remnant casters much more powerful than regular casters at level 1 and much weaker by level 20, much like fighters. This explains why level 20 is a bit underwhelming and level 1 a bit overwhelming.

The best way I can see to fix the issue is to start off with 1 RP at level 1, with a more quadratic increase until it levels out to a linear increase by about level 6. I'm hesitant to do that, though, since I like the symmetry of having a steady progression.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 25, 2013, 07:10:55 PM
The thing is...  there is a solution.  Warlocks having swarms at level 1 might be a valid concern, but it is a lot better than them having access to all their powers at level 1.  Instead, they gain access to different powers as they level up.

Think of it like this: Can you really say that an RM can learn to mess with peoples heads a lot by confusing them without knowing how to mess with their heads a bit by deluding them?  It seems like learning to run before you can crawl.

Delude/Enlighten -> Confuse -> Compel/Charm

Fluff-wise, this makes sense.  Delude just messes with someones mind in a minor way.  Enlighten messes with things in a different, but still minor, way.  Confuse turns the brain into chaos.  Compel and Charm make a bit more order out of it.  It isn't that any one of them is more powerful than the previous.  It just means that you need to know the basics of mind-messing before you can mess with their heads a lot.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 26, 2013, 01:28:56 AM
That might make sense fluff-wise, but not game-wise. Even if you do that, you'll still have Confuse (a pretty bad effect on a missed save) when you get to level 2. Really, that's not much of a difference at all. Same with Blind. You might be able to put it off with the chaining by having Light/Darkness or Deafen come first, but it'll be there soon enough, and you still are basically insinuating that one is better than the other. One of the things I love about Remnant Magic is that you can cast anything by level 3, but there's still a clear increase in power with the increase in level. There aren't supposed to be more powerful effects or any limiting factors. Changing the progression to quadratic again should fix the problems that you're talking about, and that is something I am a bit more willing to do. It does, however, screw up the saves, making them very easy at lower levels and near-impossible at higher ones, which is not an effect I would like.

I think the whole problem really revolves around at-will casting versus limited casting. Yes, a 1st level Remnant Mage with a fixed RP/day would still be able to save-or-screw something, but she would think twice about it. Limiting by the day keeps tons of things in line. I hate to say it, but maybe making the entire system RP/day is the way to go. The Magician will still be different in that it has more power per turn, but less per day. Thoughts?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on August 26, 2013, 03:00:01 AM
It would be nice to see some more remnants that grow and evolve as you gain levels and can use them more, rather than just becoming the same thing with larger numbers. Monster is a good example, summoning more powerful creatures with different sets of abilities.

Speaking of Monster (and Animal and Animate, as well), the quantity and quality of the effect seem to be mildly borked. For 25 castings (1 + 3*8), it seems that you get 25 monsters (one per casting) from the SM9 list (SM1 + 8 SM levels for 24 extra castings). I'm not exactly sure what kind of scaling you were trying to accomplish, so I can't offer a proper fix.

Should Open maybe affect the Open Lock or Disable Device DCs as well as the break DC so you can actually open things instead of shattering them with one well-placed blow? Likewise with Close also locking things instead of just making them very solid.

Bludgeon, Pierce, and Slash are all force effects, so they ignore DR anyways.

Is there any reason that Health and Pain do so little? They're doing 1.5 hp/3 RP at touch range. By comparison, Bludgeon, Pierce, and Slash do 4.5 hp/2 RP at touch range (or 6.75 hp/3 RP, a 350% greater return), and can also be used at range. If it's to balance out the healing potential, then almost any amount of at-will healing is enough out of combat (be it 1 or 100 hp/round), but in combat healing is weak even when it's on the 1d6/level scale.

Light's damage is much greater than other remnants if I'm reading it correctly. But, it seems I'm not, as on re-reading, it appears that you need 3 castings to create a radius larger than 10 feet and thus deal damage. So I'm just going to go with it being mildly confusing and unintuitive, then. I think.

Life should have the standard clauses from Raise Dead and/or Resurrection about what creatures can be revived. Most importantly, that the creature's soul needs to be free to return, that it knows who the caster is, and that it must be willing to return.

Shield incorrectly refers to itself as Resistance.

Why do Sound, Spark, Flare, Chill, and Acid all have different damage values? I understand Sound being smaller, because few things resist sonic energy damage. Why is Flare larger? Fire is resisted more than cold, but not terribly so, especially compared to electricity. If you want the differing damages, maybe take a cure from psionics and have both fire and cold increased in damage (1d4), but have cold target Fort instead of Reflex, electricity give +2 vs. SR and on save DCs (although that might not work out quite right given that SR/AC/Saves are effectively part of the damage expression for remnants), and sonic doing reduced damage (1d2) but ignoring hardness? Acid can sit kinda blandly (possibly ignoring SR or hardness as well, if you so choose) at the mid-range damage (1d3, like electricity).
   Also, why the unusual areas? Why not just a simple 5' or 10' radius? Or targeting a simple 15' cube? Picking a 5' cube, and then centering an area around that cube's center, an area that's defined by a diameter rather than a radius, just seems needlessly complex and inconsistent.

Charm's RP cost is unusual. What happens if you think you have enough RP but actually don't when you try to cast it (for example, you think you're targeting your old drinking buddy, but you're actually targeting a Rakshasa disguised as him who has just noticed your party's Rogue preparing to slip a knife under his purse strings)?

Protect incorrectly refers to itself as Resistance. Also, it needs a better definition of its granted DR. Is it supposed to be DR 2/-, except only applying against one of piercing, bludgeoning, or slashing damage of your choice (which, it should be noted, is slightly different from your choice of DR 2/slashing or bludgeoning, DR 2/piercing or bludgeoning, or DR 2/slashing or piercing when stacking multiple types when multi-damage-type weapons like morningtsars and natural weapons come into play)?

Resist incorrectly refers to itself as Resistance.

If a creature partially resists a multi-option remnant, such as Weaken, how do you decide how many castings of each selected option of the remnant still affect the subject? For example, if I Cast Weaken 6 times (Str x3, Dex x2, Con x1) and only 3 of them get through, does the subject take a -2 penalty to just Str (Dex x2 and Con x2 successfully saved against), Str and Dex (Str x1, Dex x1, and Con x1 saved against), Str and Con (Str x1 and Dex x2 saved against), Dex and Con (Str x3 saved against) or all 3 stats (Str x2 and Dex x1 saved against)?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 26, 2013, 05:31:59 AM
It would be nice to see some more remnants that grow and evolve as you gain levels and can use them more, rather than just becoming the same thing with larger numbers. Monster is a good example, summoning more powerful creatures with different sets of abilities.

I actually like this idea, now that you mention it.  I'm gonna tackle three of your questions first, and then present a new idea!

Speaking of Monster (and Animal and Animate, as well), the quantity and quality of the effect seem to be mildly borked. For 25 castings (1 + 3*8), it seems that you get 25 monsters (one per casting) from the SM9 list (SM1 + 8 SM levels for 24 extra castings). I'm not exactly sure what kind of scaling you were trying to accomplish, so I can't offer a proper fix.

It's trying to say that instead of getting 25 castings of SMI, you can have 1 casting of SMIX.  Or that's how I interpreted it.

Light's damage is much greater than other remnants if I'm reading it correctly. But, it seems I'm not, as on re-reading, it appears that you need 3 castings to create a radius larger than 10 feet and thus deal damage. So I'm just going to go with it being mildly confusing and unintuitive, then. I think.

You put in 3 castings to get one ball of light, then another 3 castings to get another ball of light, etc...  So, it's 4d6 damage for 18 RP, but with no save and no damage type, and only SR stops it.

Charm's RP cost is unusual. What happens if you think you have enough RP but actually don't when you try to cast it (for example, you think you're targeting your old drinking buddy, but you're actually targeting a Rakshasa disguised as him who has just noticed your party's Rogue preparing to slip a knife under his purse strings)?

Then it fails?


So...  new idea.  First...  Monster, Light and Animal get changed as follows:

Animal
Conjuration (Summoning)
RP/class: DS 3
Range: Close
Duration: 1 round + 1 round/3 CL
Target: Summoned creature
You summon a single creature from the Summon Nature's Ally I list per casting of this remnant. At the end of the duration, any and all summoned creatures disappear.
Augment: For every 9 additional RP you use to pay for this spell remnant, you may use the next level list.  (So, by using 9 more RP, you can cast from SNAII.  By paying 18 more RP, you can cast SNAIII.  Etc...)

Light
Evocation [Light]
RP/class: RM 6, DS 6, Mg 7
Range: Close
Duration: 1 round + 1 round/3 CL
Target: None (SR)
A ball of bright light appears that sheds bright light for 5 feet of this remnant in every direction, and dim light for another 10 feet beyond that.
Augment: For every 6 RP used to pay for this spell remnant, the radius of the bright light increases by 5 feet. If the bright light extends beyond 10 feet, a region of intense light appears around the ball of light with a radius equal to the number of feet beyond 10 that the bright light extends. Any creature within the region of intense light at the end of one of your turns takes 4d6 damage and is dazzled for 1 round. Undead take 8d6 damage instead. Overlapping regions of light caused by multiple separate castings of this remnant can stack to increase damage.

Monster
Conjuration (Summoning)
RP/class: RM 3, Sk 3, Mg 4
Range: Close
Duration: 1 round + 1 round/3 CL
Target: Summoned creature
You summon a single creature from the Summon Monster I list per casting of this remnant. At the end of the duration, any and all summoned creatures disappear.
Augment: For every 9 additional RP you pay for this effect, you may use the next level's list.  (So, paying an addition 9 RP lets you use the SMII list.  Paying an additional 18 RP lets you use the SMIII list, etc...)


As stands, this doesn't work properly for the magician, since he is supposed to be paying 12 extra, but I'm sure we can tack on a way to fix that if it's an actual problem.  This, however, does allow for us to create some potent ways of bypassing our problems.  For example:

Weaken
blah blah blah
Augment: A remnant caster of X level or higher may pay an additional Y RP to turn this remnant spell into enervate.

(Reword this, of course).

So, now, a RM has reason to get to Xth level.  At higher levels, he can aim for higher effects, even.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 27, 2013, 10:45:56 AM
Wow, lots of good points. I'm currently in the process of revising the remnant list, and have already made about 10 alterations. I had hoped it wasn't going to come to this, but I might have to just replace the entire list and redo all the individual lists from scratch. I will definitely improve some of the wording, to say that Slash and co. are susceptible to DR, for instance.

Any thoughts about making RP per day universal? I talked about it in my last post.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on August 27, 2013, 12:52:28 PM
Everything being per day instead of at will can work fine, you just have to balance things around it.

Another thought of how to implement a daily limit, rather than a strict limit where you are at full power until you run out or ration yourself, would be a slower reduction of power. I was just thinking that it might be interesting, and would fit the concept of remnant magic to a tee, if eventually you run down to the dregs of the dregs, slowly reducing your available RP per round until you run out entirely. So instead of having a daily limit of ([4.5 * level, rounded down] * (level + 4)), with a maximum of [4.5 * level, rounded down] RP/round, as the Magician currently has, you might instead reduce your RP/round by 1 for every (level+4) RP you've spent during the day.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 27, 2013, 01:02:27 PM
Interesting, but the main flaw of that idea is that after the first few times you use it, the effective DCs of all of your effects become easier to overcome. It would doom the caster to minor utility roles for most of the day.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 27, 2013, 09:52:15 PM
As the day goes on... they can't rely on their high DCs, and you'll want to give them some buffs to make up for this.  At that point, you have someone who can debuff at the beginning of the day, and as the day goes on, he can use his buffs/battlefield control options instead.  You keep focusing on the DCs of your abilties, while in the meantime, the battlefield control options available are quite good.  Tack on some buffs and the debuffs/save-or-dies aren't a giant concern anymore.

In any case...  I think I need to get an important question out of the way...  Geometer, what tier are you aiming for here?  At the moment, it's very solidly a high Tier 2, especially at lower levels.  At higher levels, it might get to Tier 3 category (increased versatility, but the power is linear while Tier 2 requires quadratic growth).
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 28, 2013, 01:06:55 PM
High Tier 2 sounds about right. I am aiming for anything lower than 1 and higher than 4: aka very useable, but not broken. I'm sort of hoping for a fix for the higher and lower levels that doesn't involve changing the at-will casting, the progression, or any augment-like additions.

On that note, one thing that we've all (or at least I've) overlooked is duration. Monsters summoned, blindness inflicted, and confusion produced by a 1st level Remnant Mage are all subject to the (purposefully) terrible duration of 1 round + 1 round/3 CL, or 1 round only at 1st level. This means that all a Remnant Mage can do with its magic at first level is make sure that someone stays blind, and even that won't work perfectly due to some successful saves. Alternately, it can keep 2 walls in existence or shift them around, but can't do any other magic and can't sustain them past that round. Maybe first level isn't as overpowered as we thought.

A concept that's been rolling around in my mind to fix the higher levels is the concept of Spell Constructions, or larger spell effects composed of lots of different remnants pieced together. Basically, you would cast Chill 3 times, Spark 3 times, and Wind 3 times, and summon a storm or something (net RP: 33). Since they would be composed of other remnants, they would essentially have the same prerequisite-like properties as the paths that C_R was talking about. That would add some interest to Remnant Magic that would spice up the higher levels. Lower levels naturally won't have access to enough RP to use these. It fits easily with what I've already made. It could mean that Monster will simply summon a creature from Summon Monster I, and the Advanced Monster construction can require a number of castings of Monster to make the more powerful creature appear.

Most likely, these constructions will require the necessary remnants to be cast every turn for a number of turns, and the effect begins when the caster expends a standard action. I'm less clear on how remnant casters would acquire these. A feat probably wouldn't be worth it unless you got 2 or 3 constructions per feat, but just getting one every few levels seems very limiting. Maybe both? Remnant classes could get a construction at every level divisible by 6 or as a feat, maybe. I need to think it through a bit more. And come up with a better name. What do you call something built from a lot of small pieces? A mosaic? :p
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on August 28, 2013, 10:26:35 PM
Speaking of DCs, I'm kinda concerned about how they work out. The math works fine for saves against all-or-nothing effects, where the effect is the same for 1 or 100 remnants taking effect. This breaks down when you get to SR and touch attacks, or to remnants that model save half/partial, rather than save negates.

Since a save, attack, or CL check vs SR exactly at the DC means only half get through, +/-1 per point above or below, an all-or-nothing effect effectively has a save DC of +1/2 castings. However, it also effectively has +1/2 castings to CL when determining whether at least one of them bypasses SR, and +1/2 castings to the attack bonus vs. AC to see if at least one hits, and so on. SR also has unusual effects when you consider such a remnant that is both affected by SR and allows a save.

A concept that's been rolling around in my mind to fix the higher levels is the concept of Spell Constructions, or larger spell effects composed of lots of different remnants pieced together. Basically, you would cast Chill 3 times, Spark 3 times, and Wind 3 times, and summon a storm or something (net RP: 33). Since they would be composed of other remnants, they would essentially have the same prerequisite-like properties as the paths that C_R was talking about. That would add some interest to Remnant Magic that would spice up the higher levels. Lower levels naturally won't have access to enough RP to use these. It fits easily with what I've already made. It could mean that Monster will simply summon a creature from Summon Monster I, and the Advanced Monster construction can require a number of castings of Monster to make the more powerful creature appear.

Most likely, these constructions will require the necessary remnants to be cast every turn for a number of turns, and the effect begins when the caster expends a standard action. I'm less clear on how remnant casters would acquire these. A feat probably wouldn't be worth it unless you got 2 or 3 constructions per feat, but just getting one every few levels seems very limiting. Maybe both? Remnant classes could get a construction at every level divisible by 6 or as a feat, maybe. I need to think it through a bit more. And come up with a better name. What do you call something built from a lot of small pieces? A mosaic? :p

I very much like the idea of spell constructions. From what you're describing, I'd like them to be a core component of remnant casting, as it's a perfect way to let the remnants evolve into more potent, higher-level effects. Just combine this and this and that in some combination to produce is level-appropriate effect. I'd like to see the constructions be fairly accessible, either with a decent amount known based purely on class level, or with just all of them available to anyone who can produce the required remnants all in one round.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on August 29, 2013, 10:11:37 PM
Constructions sound fun, depending on implementation.  I wanna see how it looks before I start talking a lot about it.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on September 01, 2013, 04:38:11 PM
Sorry for the delay, but I've been thinking about how to solve the high-level problem, and I've come to the conclusion that constructions make the system needlessly complicated and are thus better suited for a prestige class (don't worry, it's coming soon). Here's my alternate proposal:

1. Bonus RP/turn is now called Talent. I've already considered having a few other systems in the BoSS have "pseudo-abilities," and now I think it's time I formalized it and made all of them officially have one. Spirit Magic, once I get around to it, will have a new ability called Devotion. At any rate, the naming is necessary because Talent will now be a much more important part of Remnant Magic.

2. Talent will now scale equally for all characters, using the graph currently being used only for 60 RP/turn classes. This might be a little strong for the Spellknight, but gish classes are generally MAD anyway, so I'm not expecting Spellknights to be able to get their Charisma high enough to make full use of this. It might also be a little weak for the Magician, but it's a difference of maybe 2 RP/turn at level 20, which really doesn't matter all that much. This change is crucial to keep step 3 from being unusable.

3. This is what all of these changes are really about. Individual remnants will have additional effects based on Talent. For instance, Shift will say at the bottom of the description that once per day for every point by which your Talent exceeds 2, each iteration of this remnant cast in the same turn can move the target up to 50 miles instead of 5 feet. You do not need line of sight or line of effect for this use of this remnant. The target appears 100 x 1d4 feet from the intended destination in a random direction.

This is how I'm going to make remnant magic scale up with level. Looking at the chart that determines Talent, you can see that the bare minimum stat will give you this ability at level 13 (as a 7th level spell), while the best-optimized characters could get it much earlier, as the equivalent of a 4th level spell, for instance. The spell that this mimics, Teleport is 5th level, but more powerful, so it's easy to see that this can be fairly balanced. I'm sure that there are ways to get high enough stats to use this at level 1, but I doubt that this is much more broken than any other spellcasting-based application of a Charisma score of 40. If you think that this idea needs some work to be more balanced, please suggest how I can fix it. All other comments are still welcome.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on September 01, 2013, 07:01:02 PM
The proposed usage of "Talent" rubs me the wrong way. It feels like it's giving ability scores a greater influence on the potency of your abilities than your actual character level and class level. I'm also worried that the number of daily uses of various things will get ridiculous with each individual remnant having it's own pool of per day charges of awesomeness.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on September 01, 2013, 08:44:51 PM
The proposed usage of "Talent" rubs me the wrong way. It feels like it's giving ability scores a greater influence on the potency of your abilities than your actual character level and class level. I'm also worried that the number of daily uses of various things will get ridiculous with each individual remnant having it's own pool of per day charges of awesomeness.

Yeah, I guess so. I agree that this change would make the system way too reliant on ability scores. I still like the concept of Talent and the effects associated with it, but it should be implemented differently, separately from ability scores and Bonus RP/turn. Also, if it's based on level, rather than casting modifiers, it should probably be called something other than "Talent."
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on October 14, 2013, 07:32:12 PM
Huh.  Didn't notice we abandoned constructions.  Thought you were working on that for some reason...

Not a fan of talents for the reasons given above.

Edit: Any thought to the augments I wrote earlier on?  More importantly, could we give augments that are accessible at certain levels?  e.g. Make a fire effect a larger AoE at higher levels?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on October 23, 2013, 05:26:48 PM
Wow, it's been a month and a half already? Well, despite the work that comes with the end of the summer, I don't intend to let this whole project fade away for a whole year like what happened in 2012. A brief update on my plans for this system:

- The new remnant list is nearly done. I have already fixed all of the issues that Garryl and others pointed out, and though I'm very reluctant to add augments into the mix when casting a remnant more than once will do the trick, I have added a number of level-dependent effects, as per the recommendation of chaos_redefined.

- Constructions: not sure yet, but still an option. I'm currently leaning toward adding it as a variant. That way the people dissatisfied with the current system at high levels can throw it in for a twist. I thought of an interesting idea that makes them work well within the existing framework of Remnant Magic.

Basically, to make a Spell Construction (still looking for a better name for these things. Any ideas?), you cast a few remnants specific to that construction once per round for a minute. This makes it near-impossible to construct one on the fly in battle, but you can make any number of them before battle with a still-limitless RP supply (unless you're a Magician). The new factor I came up with that reigns in their power is the concept of decay. Every turn, 1/10 of the Construction decays into the pieces of magic from which it was formed, and if it decays to 0 (after a minute), it fades away completely. To prevent this from happening, you can cast those same remnants that you used to construct it in the first place. You can do this as many times as you want per round to restore any amount of decay (though you can't restore more than the amount of decay in any one Construction).

For example, Elemental Blast could be a Spell Construction that costs 2 Flare, 2 Spark, 2 Chill, 2 Sound, 2 Acid. To make it, you spend a minute casting this combination of remnants every turn (for a total cost of 100 RP over the course of the minute). After you make it, it immediately begins decaying, and the next round it decreases to 9/10. You can cast Flare twice, Spark twice, etc. that round to bring it back to 10/10 until the next round. You can't cast it unless it's at 10/10. If you decide not to restore it that round, it will be at 8/10 next round. At that point, you could cast Flare, Spark, and the others 4 times each to get it back to 10/10.

That's the general idea. There are nuances like the fact that Magicians do not deduct the RP costs of restoring Spell Constructions from their RP per day, but still deduct them from RP per turn. I think it's fairly balanced, since the number of Spell Constructions you can have with you is pretty much limited to the amount of RP you have per turn. You would have to keep diverting RP into them to keep them from decaying away, so either your spellcasting would get weaker or you would have to not cast in some turns. It has a nice parallel with the rest of Remnant Magic in that you can have a lot of weaker ones or a few larger ones, and it also scales directly with RP.

Unlike remnants, these would definitely scale in power, not just quantity, with level. Either I would just have a flat rule saying something like "you must have RP per turn greater than or equal to twice the RP cost per turn of a Construction to learn it," or each Construction would have a minimum number of ranks in Spellcraft needed to learn it. Get it? Because you're crafting spells. Spell-craft.

Anyway, I hate to come up with so many ways to try to fix this troubled system, but I think it still has the potential to come together into something that could make D&D even more awesome. So I'm going to stick by it and keep improving it until it works.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on October 23, 2013, 06:05:12 PM
Have you done anything about how saves, touch attacks, and SR work? In particular how each layer of defense effectively halves the number of remnants getting through unless the remnant caster gets a result vastly above the defender's defense (so having SR makes "saving" really easy even if the penetration roll is high enough), or how multiple castings of a remnant effectively function as bonuses on the SR penetration roll or touch attack when dealing with no save remnants?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on October 24, 2013, 04:16:17 PM
Have you done anything about how saves, touch attacks, and SR work? In particular how each layer of defense effectively halves the number of remnants getting through unless the remnant caster gets a result vastly above the defender's defense (so having SR makes "saving" really easy even if the penetration roll is high enough), or how multiple castings of a remnant effectively function as bonuses on the SR penetration roll or touch attack when dealing with no save remnants?

I will modify the rules of Remnant Magic to say that SR comes into play only after all other rolls. If you think about it, this is basically the same effect as having an additional caster level check. Say you manage to get 6 Flare effects through, and then roll a caster level check exactly equal to the monster's SR. Then the monster takes the effects of 3 Flare remnants. This is exactly the same effect as if this 6-Flare effect was a spell, since on average, if you keep rolling exactly the value of the SR, you will do 6 Flares half the time and nothing the other half of the time, or 3 Flares on average. Yes, adding or subtracting 1 for each point above or below is just an approximation for the multiplicative processes that actually take place, but it's a good approximation, and it's easier for the average player to calculate.

I think you'll find in practice that even though saves, touch attacks, SR, miss chances, etc. seem to stack and make it very difficult to hit anything, it's really just the average effect of what multiple spells would have done. That's pretty much what I was going for.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on November 01, 2013, 06:12:55 PM
After a lot of thinking, I asked myself, "what's the simplest way to make a free-action spellcasting system? Is that what I've made?" That is, after all, the goal of this whole project: new and interesting, but still as simple as possible. And it dawned on me that if I make the changes I've talked about, what I'm going to end up with is a system of remnants that progress with RP and level in addition to a totally different system of constructions that progress with RP, level, and remnants.

The only reason that constructions are needed is because the system doesn't progress well in the higher levels, and it only doesn't progress well because it's based on the idea that all remnants should scale with level and never become intrinsically less useful. What I need is an addition to the system that creates new, level-based effects without having so much depth that it detracts from the actual object of the system: the remnants.

So, here's the idea. The last idea. I don't think I have enough time or you patience for me to keep being indecisive about how remnant magic is going to work. The idea is to introduce a new class of feats, Combination Feats or something like that. Each feat details 3 new combinations that the character can use, and each one of those combinations involves using the listed remnants in a single turn to produce the desired effect. Each combination also specifies a number of turns that the character has to wait before using them again. That's it.

For example, one combination feat could have a combination that lists Water x2, Gas x1 as the component remnants and produces a raining cloud every, say, 2 turns. So every other turn, by spending 16 RP, the character can make the cloud, which will be about as useful as a 2nd or 3rd level spell (because a character can cast it at around level 5).

It simplifies existing remnants as well. For instance, Monster now has none of those confusing ways to turn multiple iterations of the remnant into a single, more powerful monster. Now there can be a feat with a combination in it that has Monster x(3N) as the component remnants which says that it summons a monster from the Summon Monster [N] list. Yes, this will make remnant magic a little more feat-intensive, but I needed to curb its power a bit anyway.

If you see any problems with this plan, please post about it. That's what this thread is for. Thanks!
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on November 01, 2013, 09:48:34 PM
That actually sounds pretty interesting, a system that functions similar to the Drow SLA feats in Drow of the Underdark.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on November 06, 2013, 01:46:48 AM
Sounds like it might warrant some bonus feats.  Also, please, for the love of god, add a Remnant Caster Level prereq onto the feats, so that they can scale properly. 
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on November 06, 2013, 11:10:16 AM
You don't think they'll scale properly just because they'll require you to cast an amount of RP per turn? I mean, if you have a feat that gives you an ability that costs Wish x5, you're pretty much not going to be able to use it until level 14 or 15 or something.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on November 10, 2013, 06:30:07 AM
There are two results:
1) You say "you need this many RP to enter", and then someone will find a way to get that many earlier than you expected.

2) You say "you need to be this level to enter", and you are guaranteed that noone will cheat their way in.

I tend to prefer the latter.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on January 16, 2014, 11:23:42 AM
And after 2 months of inactivity, I have good news for anyone still following this or remotely interested in its outcome, and that's that I've been working on the material for Remnant Magic this entire time! I have already (finally) perfected all of the remnants and made a fix for the Magician's Secret class feature that makes it more distinct from the abilities the class already gets through remnants. And I'm halfway done with the new feats, which I have named Spellform Feats. I should hopefully be able to post this stuff within a few days, but the Spellform Feats will wait until I've completed all 10 of them, for 30 spellforms in total. Some of them also reference new Remnant-based monsters that I have not yet made, so hopefully those will follow.

This post doesn't guarantee that I'll be consistently devoting time to this from now on, unfortunately. College classes are starting again, so it's going to be hard to work on this. But I really want to finish this properly and move on to some of the other 6 subsystems, and hopefully it won't take me until the summer to do that.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on March 28, 2014, 09:19:02 AM
Ooh.  New post.

Spellforms...  Interesting.  Standard activation fixes a lot of potential breakages.  I like that.

Going through them...  The list is mostly fine.
You mistakenly wrote "Cold" for fire snow, which I assume should be chill. 
How does Apparent Strength interact with someone trying to lift an actual person?
Shadowy Bodyguard might need a clause saying you need to be aware of the potential attacker.  Not certain if it's necessary, but my spidey sense is tingling.
Illusory Monster should either be CR-based, or have a no-template clause. 
What's a thunderbeast?
Reciprocate Spells seems...  weird.
Although difficult...  I'm worried about Persistent Hypothetical Future.  It does require me to find a way for a sorcerer to have 14 6th level spells available in a day, so it should be ok.
Dead Eyes is probably a bit powerful, as a second level save or lose with a lesser lose on a successful save.
Change Form...  Umm...  Really?  You took one of the most powerful spells in the game and included it in your system?  :(  Could I talk you into having a list of monsters you can turn into instead?  Maybe a bonus to attack based on CL or something like that to make up for the lack of scaling?  That way, you can use the newer polymorph rules.
Phase Transition...  So, at level 12, I can take 12 10 ft cubes of air and transform them into a prison for whatever creatures where inside it, and those creatures start suffocating?  With no save?  I'm clearly not reading this right.

So...  Change Form and Phase Transition are...  problematic at best.  There's some potential abuse I can see on some other spells, but it seems difficult at best.  (Illusory Monster could actually be fine as an AoE will-save-or-die, since you have to be level 18 to even cast it).  The way metamagic works at the moment means that you can start casting metamagic'd versions of spells as soon as you get them, which might be problematic.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on March 28, 2014, 09:24:25 PM
Ooh.  New post.

Spellforms...  Interesting.  Standard activation fixes a lot of potential breakages.  I like that.

Going through them...  The list is mostly fine.
You mistakenly wrote "Cold" for fire snow, which I assume should be chill. 
How does Apparent Strength interact with someone trying to lift an actual person?
Shadowy Bodyguard might need a clause saying you need to be aware of the potential attacker.  Not certain if it's necessary, but my spidey sense is tingling.
Illusory Monster should either be CR-based, or have a no-template clause. 
What's a thunderbeast?
Reciprocate Spells seems...  weird.
Although difficult...  I'm worried about Persistent Hypothetical Future.  It does require me to find a way for a sorcerer to have 14 6th level spells available in a day, so it should be ok.
Dead Eyes is probably a bit powerful, as a second level save or lose with a lesser lose on a successful save.
Change Form...  Umm...  Really?  You took one of the most powerful spells in the game and included it in your system?  :(  Could I talk you into having a list of monsters you can turn into instead?  Maybe a bonus to attack based on CL or something like that to make up for the lack of scaling?  That way, you can use the newer polymorph rules.
Phase Transition...  So, at level 12, I can take 12 10 ft cubes of air and transform them into a prison for whatever creatures where inside it, and those creatures start suffocating?  With no save?  I'm clearly not reading this right.

So...  Change Form and Phase Transition are...  problematic at best.  There's some potential abuse I can see on some other spells, but it seems difficult at best.  (Illusory Monster could actually be fine as an AoE will-save-or-die, since you have to be level 18 to even cast it).  The way metamagic works at the moment means that you can start casting metamagic'd versions of spells as soon as you get them, which might be problematic.

Yes! Feedback! Okay, in order:

"Cold" will be changed to "Chill." Thanks.
It would make the person able to lift him, since that is a use of strength that influences another creature. I suppose it might be a bit subjective. Any ideas to make it clearer?
Thunderbeasts are remnant-based monsters. I'll post the list of them soon, at which point I'll put a link to it there.
Hmm... maybe the bodyguard is aware of it even if you're not? Nah, I'll change it.
I'll definitely add the no-template clause. I'm less sure about the CR change, but it does make more sense.
Yeah, it's a little weird. It doesn't work on most spells, but it's worth it for Baleful Polymorph, Irresistible Dance, etc.
If you can make Persistent Hypothetical Future given how hard I made metamagic on spellforms, that's fine by me. It's an entertaining, though not entirely invincible, build.
Is it really that bad, given that the duration is 1 round in every case?
I put in Change Form because the whole point of spellforms is to give remnant casters access to more powerful spells, spells they can't make just by combining remnants and spells that people would miss in their casters. I think I'll keep it in as it is, and the GMs with a problem with it (most of them, from what I hear) can nerf it as they see fit.
On Phase Transition: yes, it can drain all the air out of a room, but really that's not much of a concern for most creatures as they'll last several minutes. I'll add a clause to say that the created solid cannot occupy or surround the space of a creature so that the prison issue doesn't happen. Phase Transition is just supposed to use a common theme to simulate the effects of lots of different lower-level spells (Fabricate, Transmute Rock to Mud, Cloudkill, etc.). It may be a bit too powerful as it is, so my quick-fix solution might just be to shift it up to level 7.

I'm glad the system as a whole doesn't have too many problems. I like it, but I don't want it to be too weak or so powerful that it overshadows remnant magic. Also, is the way you calculate the number of uses per day a bit too complicated? It's phrased oddly, but I don't have a much better way to do it or a simpler way to state it.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on April 02, 2014, 09:46:00 AM
For Apparent Strength...  it's weird...  I like the idea and all, but maybe just limit it to a +2 to hit and +2 to damage unless they fail a will save.  It's not a perfect representation, but it works well enough for what you wanna do.

For Illusory Monster, CR, I think, is a better measure of strength than hit dice.  It's dodgy in a lot of cases, but it's better than "a pixie and a commoner are as powerful as each other".  I'm also wondering about things like summoning high-level cleric wannabes to heal/buff, and voluntarily failing your will saves.  Not sure if that's a real problem or not though.

Reciprocate Spells is weird, but not good or bad.  I'd have to see it in play first.  Which I'm hoping we can do sometime soon.  Might weaken a few remnants if this ends up good enough.  (Essentially, at low levels, you remnant, and at high levels, you spellform and remnant with the leftovers).

If there is a way to get Persistent Hypothetical Future, then the cheese is in the method of making it persistent, so I suppose it isn't really a problem.

Didn't notice the short duration on Dead Eyes.  That just begs for extending...  might be ok still though.

I'm now half-tempted to make a homebrew Polymorph I/II/III/etc...  that uses the new polymorph rules and a summon monster style list...  But yeah...  Maybe offer an alternative to Polymorph for groups that don't like polymorph?

For Phase Transition, the prison was what broke it for me...  Fix that and we should be good.

As for the method of calculating the number of uses...  it's a tad weird, but...  I could see a formula being used instead.  (5-spell level/2) + bonus from casting mod.  Gives more uses of first level spellforms, and less of high level spellforms.  Use the same table for bonus from casting mod that wizards and the like use.  It is fine as is, if you wanna leave it like that.  But...

"Calculate how many spells of that level a sorcerer could cast per day if there charisma was equal to your remnant casting stat.  You may use that spellform once for every 2 times they can use it."  Seems shorter, at least.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on April 02, 2014, 10:58:55 PM
C_R, all of those are good suggestions, and I think I'll implement all of them with the exception of the simpler formula for the number of spellforms per day. The one problem is that it doesn't take into account the caster's level, which is just as important as spell level in determining uses per day. The formula I decide on should incorporate that element while still being linear (to give metamagic feats effectively the same balance). Also, I think I'll lower the number of uses per day. This is supplemental, after all.

How about uses/day = (CL/2 - SL)/2, rounding up in all cases? You still get 1st level spells at 3rd level, 2nd level spells at 5th level, etc., just late enough to make them of sideline importance. Based on this formula, a 9th level character would get to use 1st-2nd level spellforms twice a day each and 3rd-4th level spellforms once each. It might seem a bit too weak, but considering they've already got the full power of a spellcasting class and that these stack with each spellform feat they get, I think it's actually perfect. What do you think?

EDIT: uses/day = (CL/2 - SL+1)/2 bumps it up to a wizard progression, so that might be preferable. On the other hand, giving 10th-level remnant casters access to just as many 5th-level spells as a wizard of their level at the cost of only a feat (if that) doesn't strike me as very fair.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on April 05, 2014, 04:46:37 AM
That sounds good.

If you're using all my suggestions, I'll wait to hear the alternate option for polymorph before going into that.  But other than that, we should be fine.  I'll see if I can talk my group into playtesting it at some point, but we play monthly.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on April 06, 2014, 05:48:32 PM
On a completely unrelated note, based on the experience I have with playing D&D campaigns, I've decided that the ability to return to full health after every encounter is too powerful to give out with a 1-level dip. I made some calculations and changed the Health and Pain remnants accordingly. I also set a round/day limitation on the fast healing from the Health domain. At-will abilities can be pretty powerful, but healing is by far the best of them in my opinion.

As for Polymorph, if I change it, how would you suggest I balance it? Would it be enough just to change the HD restriction to an equal CR restriction?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on April 06, 2014, 09:07:00 PM
My suggestion would be to find a set of related spells from the current polymorph school.  Say...  the Dragonshape line.  Then give the player those, allowing him to use the higher ones as higher level spells.  At level 5, they can turn into a pseudodragon (as Least Dragonshape).  At level 11, they can turn into a young red dragon (as Lesser Dragonshape).  At level 17, they can turn into a mature adult dragon (as Dragonshape).  (You don't get the spellcasting for any of these forms)

I'd also give them a non-[Polymorph] spell in there, preferably one that levels kinda well.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on April 07, 2014, 09:28:27 AM
I actually really like the scaling Dragonshape idea. Mind if I just use that?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: chaos_redefined on April 08, 2014, 01:34:21 AM
Go for it!  Books are Dragon Magic and Player's Handbook II.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on April 29, 2014, 07:33:05 PM
A new prestige class, the Shattered Soul, is up! Remnant monsters, magic items, organizations, a supplementary base class, alternate class features, and at least 2 more prestige classes are to come soon.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on May 05, 2014, 02:00:49 AM
And now the Warblaster is up, too! Only a few more prestige classes to go, so I'll either start writing those, or I'll shift my focus over to monsters and magic items for now.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 11, 2014, 10:23:53 AM
With Remnant Monsters (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14053.0) now up, this chapter of the Book of Seven Secrets is nearing its close. Only 5 more short posts to go, and then I can move on to Spirit Magic! Start the countdown! 5!
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 15, 2014, 02:49:35 PM
Only 5 more short posts to go, and then I can move on to Spirit Magic! Start the countdown! 5!
4! (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14155.0)
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on July 15, 2014, 07:32:59 PM
Spellmonk looks pretty cool. Aura of Calm should clarify what the action to suppress it is, and how you resume it once suppressed (presumably the same way, but I'm a nitpicker). Creatures that are already enraged/frenzied when they enter your aura stay enraged, right?

The only potentially problematic thing I see is the Remnant Flurry and Mystic Focus. You can combine Remnant Flurry's many attacks with size increases (whether actual or effective) to still increase the damage. A Remnant Mage, Magician, or Spellknight entry has access to Enlarge, which can easily increase 2-3 size categories. I have to do the math on how it compares to just a regular flurry with a quarterstaff or something, though. Mystic Focus has the potential for tremendous burst damage at the start of a fight if you can stack it across multiple uses in the past minute. It's certainly fine if only only the greatest number of extra attacks from spare RP used in the last minute applies. I think the current wording is the former (all uses stack), but I'm not sure what your intent is.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 17, 2014, 01:25:22 PM
Spellmonk looks pretty cool. Aura of Calm should clarify what the action to suppress it is, and how you resume it once suppressed (presumably the same way, but I'm a nitpicker). Creatures that are already enraged/frenzied when they enter your aura stay enraged, right?

I'll specify that it's a Swift action to suppress and resume. I don't want this ability actually eating up your actions. As for creatures already enraged, I'll clarify that they actually calm down immediately, which was what I was going for. Thanks, nitpick away.

The only potentially problematic thing I see is the Remnant Flurry and Mystic Focus. You can combine Remnant Flurry's many attacks with size increases (whether actual or effective) to still increase the damage. A Remnant Mage, Magician, or Spellknight entry has access to Enlarge, which can easily increase 2-3 size categories. I have to do the math on how it compares to just a regular flurry with a quarterstaff or something, though. Mystic Focus has the potential for tremendous burst damage at the start of a fight if you can stack it across multiple uses in the past minute. It's certainly fine if only only the greatest number of extra attacks from spare RP used in the last minute applies. I think the current wording is the former (all uses stack), but I'm not sure what your intent is.

Yikes, you're right. Will specify that every use of Mystic Focus overrides previous uses within the same minute. Still, I had considered this more of an in-battle ability when I tried to balance it, but I guess that a 1-minute duration is still plenty of time to charge up before a battle. There's got to be a way to fix it so that Spellmonks don't use the ability to add a free 10d8 damage to their first attack at level 15. Is it okay to literally write "the Valdoran Spellmonk loses the bonus attacks from any active Mystic Focus effect when she begins a new encounter"?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on July 17, 2014, 03:58:57 PM
Why do you want to precharge Mystic Flurry, anyways? Why not have it apply only to your next flurry in the same turn?

If you do want it to be prechargeable, why do you want multiple in-combat rounds to stack the charging?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 18, 2014, 04:16:24 AM
Why do you want to precharge Mystic Flurry, anyways? Why not have it apply only to your next flurry in the same turn?

If you do want it to be prechargeable, why do you want multiple in-combat rounds to stack the charging?

Well, the thing is that 5 RP at level 15 won't get you much. If you chuck 5 Flare at someone, they'll almost certainly save and avoid the whole thing. Whereas adding an extra attack to your Remnant Flurry means that you're guaranteed that extra 1d6 damage, assuming you could hit with your Remnant Flurry already. So I wanted to give the Spellmonk an ability that would take the spare RP that she usually can't use well and give her an edge with it. And I think that works better if she can charge it for subsequent turns.

But I specifically don't want everything to stack so that she gains a billion extra attacks, so what I think I'll do is that instead of having each turn's Mystic Focus override the previous turn's, I'll set a cap of [class level]/2 extra attacks that can be added to a Remnant Flurry due to the Mystic Focus ability.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 19, 2014, 02:19:25 PM
Only 5 more short posts to go, and then I can move on to Spirit Magic! Start the countdown! 5!
4! (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14155.0)
3! (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14183.0)
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 25, 2014, 09:28:37 AM
Only 5 more short posts to go, and then I can move on to Spirit Magic! Start the countdown! 5!
4! (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14155.0)
3! (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14183.0)
2! (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14214.new#new)
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 31, 2014, 04:50:54 AM
Only 5 more short posts to go, and then I can move on to Spirit Magic! Start the countdown! 5!
4! (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14155.0)
3! (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14183.0)
2! (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14214.new#new)
Screw the countdown! FOUR (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14255.0) POSTS (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14256.0) AT (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14257.0) ONCE (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14258.0)!

And with that, every Remnant Magic post is up. I'm going to make a few final tweaks to the main sticky'ed thread, add the remnant list for the Remnant Adept, and formally wrap this all up. PLEASE say something on this thread if you have any comments or notice anything that should be fixed; while the editing process for this system will continue even after it's done, this is the best time to make changes to it. Thanks!
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on July 31, 2014, 09:37:51 AM
Shard of Life (and its psionic version) is missing the standard "The subject can have been dead for up to {time}" clause that all other resurrection spells have. The nearest equivalents would be 1 round (Revivify) or 1 round/level (Revenance, which is basically the same spell but 1-2 levels higher and 1 minute/level duration). It should also function as one of the standard resurrection spells (likely Raise Dead) to deal with all sorts of other resurrection-prevention issues (like the condition of the corpse, dying from Death effects, refusing to be returned to life, the soul being trapped or destroyed, old age, nonliving creatures, etc.). The open-ended way that it's written means that it bypasses (and essentially undoes) all of those things, allowing a subsequent resurrection spell to work on a willing creature regardless of the original death; you could use Shard of Life and following it up with Raise Dead to revive a human from a billion years ago who died of old age and had his soul completely obliterated, something that even a Miracle spell usually only has a 50% chance of doing, if it can do it at all.

Combine Psionics should cost 7 PP as a 4th-level power, not 9, and Shard of Life (Psionic) (which should be called Psionic Shard of Life or Shard of Life, Psionic to follow convention) should cost 5 PP, not 7.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 31, 2014, 11:21:36 AM
Fixed and fixed. Thanks, Garryl.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on July 31, 2014, 12:54:01 PM
Combine Psionics says spell instead of power in the first augment. It's also overly efficient in PP with the augments. Spending +8 PP (total 15) gives you that same 15 PP-worth of powers (3x 3rd-level or 5x 2nd-level), but with some amazing action economy. Even at +4 PP (11 total), you're getting 9 PP-worth of 2nd-level powers, so it's 2 PP for the ability to throw out two extra powers in the same turn.

Shard of Life (and the psionic version) should have a shorter revival threshold. 1 day/level may seem appropriate from Raise Dead, but the actual analogue is Revenance (4th level spell, revives for 1 minute/level, can be dead up to 1 round/level) and the big thing to consider how this temporary revival effectively extends Revivify's revival threshold (5th level spell, revives permanently with no level loss, but can only be dead up to 1 round flat). I would recommend 1 round/level at most.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on July 31, 2014, 03:01:28 PM
I... completely forgot Revenance existed. That spell was basically what I was going for with Shard of Life, albeit with a longer duration. I think I'll just cut it and its psionic counterpart out, but that's going to make the spell and psionic power list a little sparse. I don't think it'll be a problem replacing them, though (any ideas would be helpful).

As for Combine Psionics, I'll just get rid of the option to add more than 3 powers, and I'll change the augment to 6 PP to keep the total PP the same.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 02, 2014, 07:50:54 AM
The spells/powers/domain thread is now fully updated and fixed up, and I've also added the first ever post on the Book of Seven Secrets main subforum, which is kind of like a preface to the "book."

As of now, Remnant Magic is officially done! Nevertheless, please let me know if you find anything game-breaking, erroneous, vague, unusable, or even misspelled in anything in this chapter.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on August 24, 2014, 10:04:44 AM
I just finished a Remnant Mage playtest, which led to a few fixes. The bonus RP is now more limited, and the Weapon, Swarm, Monster, and Animate remnants now have a clause added that prevents people from just dismissing them and then immediately making another monster at full health appear. Animal has been changed similarly and its name has been changed to Ally. Finally, the wording for the mechanic of sustaining now says that half of the initial cost of the remnants is subtracted from your RP/turn, rather than spent each round, in order to account for the by-day limitations of Magicians and Remnant Adepts.

If I make any other changes, I'll post them here, but I'll be focusing more on Spirit Magic from here on out.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: YouLostMe on September 14, 2014, 03:48:09 PM
The Monsters link in the remnant magic thread (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=5885.0) links to items instead of monsters.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on September 15, 2014, 01:43:23 AM
The Monsters link in the remnant magic thread (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=5885.0) links to items instead of monsters.

Good catch, thanks. It's fixed now.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: CKirk on September 25, 2014, 12:18:23 PM
I've been looking over the Spellform feats, and I'm kinda confused about the formula for uses/day.
The Formula as written results in negative spells per day no matter the caster level for any spellform with an effective spell level of 3 or higher, and results in a NAN value for effective Spell Level 2, so...what gives?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Garryl on September 25, 2014, 02:02:24 PM
I've been looking over the Spellform feats, and I'm kinda confused about the formula for uses/day.
The Formula as written results in negative spells per day no matter the caster level for any spellform with an effective spell level of 3 or higher, and results in a NAN value for effective Spell Level 2, so...what gives?

The formula I see here (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=12980.0) is ((character level / 2) - spell level) / 2, with an effective minimum of 0 due to only being allowed to use the spellform if that results in 1 or higher. After all the rounding up, that works out to 1 use at level equal to 1 plus twice the spell level, with one more use every 4 levels thereafter (which is probably a simpler way of defining it). In any case, there are no NAN values because you're always dividing by 2, not some changing value that could be 0.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: CKirk on September 25, 2014, 04:15:34 PM
I've been looking over the Spellform feats, and I'm kinda confused about the formula for uses/day.
The Formula as written results in negative spells per day no matter the caster level for any spellform with an effective spell level of 3 or higher, and results in a NAN value for effective Spell Level 2, so...what gives?

The formula I see here (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=12980.0) is ((character level / 2) - spell level) / 2, with an effective minimum of 0 due to only being allowed to use the spellform if that results in 1 or higher. After all the rounding up, that works out to 1 use at level equal to 1 plus twice the spell level, with one more use every 4 levels thereafter (which is probably a simpler way of defining it). In any case, there are no NAN values because you're always dividing by 2, not some changing value that could be 0.
Thank you! I misread the Order of Operations on the formula, apparently forgetting divide before subtracts, so....
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Versatility_Nut on July 22, 2017, 10:10:13 AM
I'll have this first post be Spoiler-divided to keep things smaller and more easily understood:

(click to show/hide)

(click to show/hide)

(click to show/hide)

Thoughts on anything in this post?
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on July 22, 2017, 01:29:19 PM
TheGeometer hasn't posted since May so I don't know when you'll get a response.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: TheGeometer on October 27, 2018, 06:09:43 PM
I'll have this first post be Spoiler-divided to keep things smaller and more easily understood:

(click to show/hide)

(click to show/hide)

(click to show/hide)

Thoughts on anything in this post?

Whoa, I'm glad someone put so much time and thought into looking through this (I sure haven't, at least not for a while). Let me try to answer as well as I can.

Mis-schooled Remnants:

Not much to say about this. I guess I was thinking more about force effects on a lot of these, but the distinction doesn't matter too much. The fact that healing is conjuration and Contingency is evocation is proof enough to me that these categories are all that rigid (I wouldn't see a problem with Telekinesis being evocation, but maybe that's just me). Relabeling Acid messes with the Warblaster prerequisites a bit, but that's not a huge issue. Really, you could make all the changes you suggested with good reason, but I'm not convinced they're in urgent need of changing.

Remnant Mechanics:

1) I honestly don't understand what these sentences are saying. I've read them like five times and I still don't know what you mean. What line from Psionics, what statblock? I'd like to make the Remnant lists better-organized, but I literally don't understand what your suggestion is.

2) Looking back at Build, there's a lot I don't like about it. A minute per week of normal time would probably be more appropriate, and the last line about making Craft checks in addition to the effective Craft DC of the Remnants seems... out of place, if not just badly worded. I don't think it's more broken than Fabricate in its current form, but I'd still like to rework it.

3) I agree that in practice, casting only 1 group of remnants per turn is usually the way to go. It gives you a lot more damage and larger effects on saves, and if you split up your RP, you'll find your effects fizzling out. The main times when you would divide them would be sustaining effects and in non-offensive cases. Putting up a few small walls, healing a bit of damage, and moving over a bit, all in the same turn, can be really useful. They're not meant to be combined more than that except in spellforms (which, as you point out, have their own set of problems).

Keep in mind that damage from Weapon still obeys the remnant damage rules (though now that you've drawn my attention to it, I should add that they explicitly don't add any size modifier to their attack rolls). A CL 7 Remnant Mage can indeed make a cluster of 21 fine greatswords that attack at +7, but if you're up against a pretty standard CR 7 monster with AC 20 and you roll a 10, let's say, you'll be dealing 7d4. So, it's a fairly typical damaging spell for its CL. I should also explicitly say that the weapons don't deal with natural 1s or 20s normally, since a 20 in this case is already 17d4, and I don't want anyone to think that a crit doubles that. So thanks for mentioning falchions - wouldn't have caught that otherwise.

4 and 5) Aw shucks, thanks.

6) Note that in the introduction, I mention that all remnants must be cast in the same action per turn. That means you specifically can't use a remnant in between every action, only between every turn. As for the examples you gave, none of them seem unbalanced to me. A 1-level dip in Remnant Mage could let you Shift 5 feet every turn. Pretty reasonable for a dip - an extra 5-ft. step every turn seems to me like something a good feat would let you do. As for Shift and Ascend being used to fly... yeah. :p Remnant casters don't have any other way to fly. They were absolutely intended to be used together like that.

Spellform idea:

I like your concept (if I'm understanding it right) of a Spellform being a customizable plug-and-play spell-creation system, where you can create any number of slightly different spell effects by swapping out the component remnants. If you can make something like that work well mechanically, I encourage you to post it as homebrew (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=14271.0). As is, though, other than some potential balance tweaks with how strict the Remnant component requirements are and how many unique effects are worth a feat, I don't see any way to modify my current system slightly to increase the flexibility. Making a variant partially or completely from scratch seems like the way to go if you want to flesh out your idea.

TheGeometer hasn't posted since May so I don't know when you'll get a response.

Late 2018, apparently. :) I have to say that the days when this was my main creative outlet are in the past, so I won't be hanging around here constantly like I did back then. That said, I still play D&D 3.5 a lot, and this post is proof that I do occasionally still remember Remnant Magic. I still have all of those other 6 big magic system ideas, plus a few more since then, rattling around in my head, and it's a shame that I don't think I'll ever be able to write them all out like I did for this one. But I'm sure that at some points, I'll be struck by the need to share one of them in a smaller capacity, and when I do, I'll be sure to check back here.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Nanshork on October 27, 2018, 08:24:34 PM
Well I'm glad to see you're still alive if nothing else.
Title: Re: Discussion
Post by: Versatility_Nut on October 31, 2018, 09:27:05 PM
Remnant Mechanics:

1) I honestly don't understand what these sentences are saying. I've read them like five times and I still don't know what you mean. What line from Psionics, what statblock? I'd like to make the Remnant lists better-organized, but I literally don't understand what your suggestion is.
This line (using Body Adjustment (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/bodyAdjustment.htm) as an example):
Power Points:    Psion/wilder 5, psychic warrior 3

When I read the threads originally, I actually missed that you'd actually already done pretty much everything I'd suggest. The Remnants are listed alphabetically, have a line for per-class RP costs and the class lists are in the thread with the classes. The only real improvement would to be hitting up the more advanced table guides to get them into a sortable table, so that you can organize them by any single value you want (the Martial Discipline Compendium (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=6265.0) uses such a table).

Quote
2) Looking back at Build, there's a lot I don't like about it. A minute per week of normal time would probably be more appropriate, and the last line about making Craft checks in addition to the effective Craft DC of the Remnants seems... out of place, if not just badly worded. I don't think it's more broken than Fabricate in its current form, but I'd still like to rework it.
Just making the Craft check with a DC bonus based on how many instances are used should be balanceable, as it does give earlier access to crafting stuff like plate mail, but you still need the money to pay for materials. And mundane crafting has a tiny, barely mentionable, profit margin (though they do have one by RAW, unlike magic items). Having the DC boost for multiple uses per turn be mandetory prevents extremely rapid construction because you get confined by one check per interval, meaning it only gets faster when you have the Epic Level Handbook rules in play and make up for the +10 DC for accelerated construction.

Quote
3) I agree that in practice, casting only 1 group of remnants per turn is usually the way to go. It gives you a lot more damage and larger effects on saves, and if you split up your RP, you'll find your effects fizzling out. The main times when you would divide them would be sustaining effects and in non-offensive cases. Putting up a few small walls, healing a bit of damage, and moving over a bit, all in the same turn, can be really useful. They're not meant to be combined more than that except in spellforms (which, as you point out, have their own set of problems).

Keep in mind that damage from Weapon still obeys the remnant damage rules (though now that you've drawn my attention to it, I should add that they explicitly don't add any size modifier to their attack rolls). A CL 7 Remnant Mage can indeed make a cluster of 21 fine greatswords that attack at +7, but if you're up against a pretty standard CR 7 monster with AC 20 and you roll a 10, let's say, you'll be dealing 7d4. So, it's a fairly typical damaging spell for its CL. I should also explicitly say that the weapons don't deal with natural 1s or 20s normally, since a 20 in this case is already 17d4, and I don't want anyone to think that a crit doubles that. So thanks for mentioning falchions - wouldn't have caught that otherwise.

Missed the "same action" clause and that Weapon uses the general rules (you forget to mention that it targets AC with those rules, though), though the situation with building up damage over time (as Weapon has a duration) still holds true.

Quote
6) Note that in the introduction, I mention that all remnants must be cast in the same action per turn. That means you specifically can't use a remnant in between every action, only between every turn. As for the examples you gave, none of them seem unbalanced to me. A 1-level dip in Remnant Mage could let you Shift 5 feet every turn. Pretty reasonable for a dip - an extra 5-ft. step every turn seems to me like something a good feat would let you do. As for Shift and Ascend being used to fly... yeah. :p Remnant casters don't have any other way to fly. They were absolutely intended to be used together like that.
All-day flight for two picks with a level-scaling speed is a pretty good out of combat capacity, and taking away from the speed is a good cost for bursts of high effectiveness.

Quote
Spellform idea:

I like your concept (if I'm understanding it right) of a Spellform being a customizable plug-and-play spell-creation system, where you can create any number of slightly different spell effects by swapping out the component remnants. If you can make something like that work well mechanically, I encourage you to post it as homebrew (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=14271.0). As is, though, other than some potential balance tweaks with how strict the Remnant component requirements are and how many unique effects are worth a feat, I don't see any way to modify my current system slightly to increase the flexibility. Making a variant partially or completely from scratch seems like the way to go if you want to flesh out your idea.

Hmm... This makes me think of a slight adjustment, as what I was considering was, itself, an adjustment to the existing setup of a specific, set list of Remnants used in it, differing by use of precasting and scaling parts of the effect, rather than genuinely plug-and-play. This also makes it easier to justify a Feat, as instead of just replicating Call Weapon off the Feat, you'd be able to replicate a wide array of admittedly-simple weapon enhancements in a way that synergises better than normal, meaning you can make a good weapon at a good cost and pile on upgrades to what you already have. An issue does arise with reams of interactions to be specified, but condensing it into bullet points listing a variety of Remnants, then their similar effects, could get the point across.

For example, the Call Weapon analogous feat could list Acid, Chill, Flare, Sound and Spark together, stating of all of them that they add some amount of damage of their damage type. This means you take five subsets of the effect and turn them into a two-sentence or so description, allowing the feat to cover a lot of ground. This also means all of the borrowed effects can be listed together, possibly under a genericised heading like Compounds to denote those offer their listed Remnant effect, modified as specified. Such as becoming on-hit effects with the number active reduced to one-third. In the case of a Call Weapon analogue, Enhance and other Remnants that already alter weapons/objects wouldn't need listed interactions because Remnant usage is a Free Action, so you can just use them the instant after your Spellform finishes. The same holds true for other effects, so listing them becomes unnecessary.

Though given the fact they're different in nature and goal, a different name is in order. Spellforms are there to offer higher-level spell effects than Remnant casting would otherwise allow, while the setup I'm considering is there to open up versatility with variable effects that let you adjust the details of the effect as the situation reveals itself. Trading action economy for effectiveness is a common element, and Remnant casting currently has no form of doing so in many cases, drawing on external systems to do so. Being able to expend actions on more complex and, generally, more powerful Remnant effects would make the Remnant "Full Casters" considerably less open-action, as otherwise Remnants being Free Action means they'd Run every round their Con score permits. By giving them useful options that eat Standard actions, they're playing by much more similar dynamics to regular classes. The activation itself being a Swift Action both ties up the Quicken part of the round, for Remnant/Vancian duel casters, and lets the Spellknight still have Full Attack access when they set it off, while the pure Remnant casters have the actions to spend on setting up more mid-combat without impacting direct Remnant use.

If a melee-oriented Spellknight (as they have the effects to go Archery) finds themselves frequently out of range, they can use the same abilities to get or stay in range more easily or have something better to do with their Standard Action than make a single melee attack. On top of the existing Remnant usage mobility. Which makes them ludicrously hard to actually keep out of attack range, but they're eating quite a lot of actions, and charge rate restrictions (possibly relying on upkeep costs for having prepared being a fraction of the cost to activate) could then cover some of the issues. A longer-range Teleport's upkeep cost would be more RP efficient than Blinks of the same distance, meaning more damage on the next turn than you'd get by using Blink to close the distance.