The Final Draft In YOUR Hands!

It works. Summon Berserkers is awesome, by the way.

I did notice one typo: in the Blast Spells table, under Effects, the cost for Maximum 1d damage is listed as “x0.144*.1”.

Well, I’m digging the Note for Judges at the beginning. That’s a nice thing to have up front in any supplement. I quite like Burning Hands; it’s a lot of area, which means it’s enough to potentially light the rest of your party members on fire, and also good for igniting oil at range. Potentially an Elementalist 1st-level DM-assigned L1 spell instead of Magic Missile, methinks. Deathless Minion is interesting; attractive thematically to the aspiring necromancer, but probably a bit situational.

Scouring Wind - “Creatures of ogre size or larger may move normally within a gust of wind.” should maybe say Scouring instead of Gust of.

Is there any particular reason summoned berserkers and heros are vulnerable to dispel evil rather than dispel magic? Overall though, I really like the summoning spells; beat the tar out of “fiendish badger that lasts for one round” from 3.x.

Swift Sword - wow. That’s a pretty nice spell, there.

Uncanny Gyration - not sure about this one. Guess I just won’t let it fall into the hands of my players.

Overall, good update. I the extra flavors of spell creation are excellent, especially summoning; I look forward to making some Summon Undead equivalents for my party’s Black Lore mage.

If this is a D&D version of Phandall’s Gyrator I am going to laugh myself sick.

Thanks for the feedback!

Overall Level of Power: One of our objectives in adding the new spells was to add spells that were good enough that they'd be used in preference to the old standbyes in certain situations. So Burning Hands and Summon Berserkers are meant to be viable alternatives to a 1st level mage's selection of Charm Person or Sleep, for example.

Burning Hands: If you review the templates, you'll notice that most of the Elementalist templates now have Burning Hands as their 1st level spell selection. 

Scouring Wind: Good catch, thanks!

Summoning and Dispels: No particular reason other than that I muffed up.

Swift Sword: Yes, definitely a good buff.

Uncanny Gyration: Are you worried its too powerful, or annoying, or what? My thinking was that it is less powerful than Hold Person, which is a spell of comparable level, since the gyrating target can still actually perform some activities, albeit at penalty. 

I really like Uncanny Gyration - very flavorful and a fun spell. At the moment I would consider it a bit more powerful than hold person - while the duration on hold person is much longer and pretty much a save or die effect, that spell is limited to humanoid creatures at level 2. Hold Monster is a level 5 arcane spell. Currently, you can pick up and toss around an ancient dragon or a titan with uncanny gyration if it fails its saving throw.

Two things I might do. First, add a size or weight limit to the spell. Second, I might note in the description that flying creatures may move normally while under the spell’s effects and do not suffer attack penalties since they can stabilize themselves in the air. They may even be immune to its effects entirely.

And yikes! What will the looks at the table be when that shaman first summons a dragon to join the fray?

Moorcys - great feedback. I wrestled with whether I needed to discuss flying creatures. I'll do so. There actually should be a weight limit to the spell, but I made the same mistake I did on Levitate of forgetting to include it.

Tavis Allison, who has a mind that's been scientifically engineered for the odd and uncanny, actually came up with the spell concept, so I'll let him know you dig it.

 

Thanks, and I’m really loving how the Player’s Companion has turned out. Great material all around, from the classes and templates to the class and spell building/magic research rules to the spells themselves… thorough, balanced, and creative. Chocked full of goodness.

Do you have any idea when these babies will ship? I’m getting transferred to the UK for a year, so if they don’t show up soon I’ll have to hunt Alex down and hand him a $15 check for the international shipping. Kickstarter is still listing July as the estimate, which gives me hope, but if you’re just going into layout now it sounds less likely.

Is this also available to preorder customers? I preordered it in April after missing the Kickstarter, and was given a download link for v7. Can I now download the final draft, or do I need to wait for it to go to print?

Player's Companion is in layout and design now. But production takes a while. I'd guess the PDFs will be available in August and the hardcovers in September.

The Domains at War Free Starter Edition and the Domains at War Backer PDFs will be available as a PDF in August. The Domains at War Kickstarter will be in September. 

 

I’m curious about this too. I got in the kickstarter via paypal. I got one email from tavis back in February with a link to the V3 version but have not gotten any updates since. What can I do to get the latest draft? The V3 link no longer works.

Hey, minor typo found - on the Elven Courtier and Elven Enchanter spell progression tables, they’re labelled as Eleven rather than Elven.

Some elves just need more dial than “ten” to contain their awesome.

Thanks! Great catch.

One last note: The bladedancer spell list was slightly modified.

At 1st level, Bladedancers gained Angelic Choir but give up Command Word. 

At 2nd level, Bladedancers gained Enthrall but gave up Find Traps.

At 3rd level, Bladedancers gained Cure Disease and Winged Flight, but gave up Cure Blindness and Locate Object.

Angelic Choir (because it's music-themed) and Enthrall (performance-based) were obvious fits for the class. Ianna is commonly portrayed with wings, so Winged Flight was another natural choice. I balanced this with the removal of Command Word (a 1st level staple) and the removal of Find Traps and Locate Object to make them less utilitarian. 

Cure Disease was simply a more useful spell in any game of ACKS than Cure Blindness. I wanted to ensure that a group in which "The Bladedancer IS the Cleric" had access to at least the basic staples of curative spells.

Speaking of different spells for different clerics, what are some good guidelines for building spell lists for clerics of different dieties/religions?

It's actually left wide open.

You could, if you wanted, make a divine class that played very differently from the traditional Cleric. The Witch and Shaman in the Player's Companion are fair examples.

On the other hand, the Bladedancer is "cleric like" with just some changes. When seeking to make a "Cleric like" class, I generally retain the key divine spells such as cure wounds, restore life and limb, and flamestrike, and then sub-out spells of various types around that. So for example the Bladedancer gave up some a lot of divination spells (augury, find traps, locate object) in favor of personal enhancement spells (shimmer, swift sword, winged flight).  

 

 

So generally we’re talking about making up new spells, rather than subbing out for a big list? That aside, supposing I wanted to borrow certain spells from the arcane spell list as a shortcut alternative to making a bunch of new spells, is a good rule of thumb to make the divine version 1 spell level higher?

Raising level by 1 seems to be what was done with all the Witch spells which are also on the Mage list, so that’s guideline supported by the text.

As a "rule of thumb" you can simply raise the spell level by 1.

If you want to take a more technical approach, check the Source modifier for the type of spell, as detailed in the Spell Creation guidelines. For the most part it works out to +1 level, but it does vary a bit.