So I have some thoughts about the Vyanth in my campaign world. Specifically the mechanics and nature of their warrior types. There is a fighting style specific to the warriors of Vyanthnem represented by the Talon Blade Duelist feat in my campaign book. The talon blade is a culturally favored weapon modeled after our world's falcata and the fighting style focuses on using a buckler and the talon blade and being agile stuff. I don't have a plethora of information written down about the Vyanth and the culture of Vyanthnem because no one seems to really favor them, but I do have a decent amount about them rambling around in my head. Now, I envision there being an elite guard of Vyanth warriors serving as the Silver King's bodyguards and honored soldiers and such. I imagine these warriors being Magi, with the majority being of the Kensai archetype, though that name is a bit more eastern themed than is appropriate for my world and if people in my game world ever referred to themselves by their class, it would probably be called something different. These warriors are drawn from the Silver King's most loyal lords and such.
The problem with the Magus class and this whole elite guard thing is that the Vyanth are not a very disciplined society. They are definitely a very sorcerously inclined race, but the spellcasters of the race are primarily composed of intuitive casters like BardS, Sorcerers, and Summoners, rather than Alchemists, Magi, Witches, or Wizards. So these elite warriors, these paragons of Vyanthnem culture, being Magi seems to be somewhat out of character for the race. What I'm thinking is kind of a cheat, but I want to make a Magus archetype based on Charisma and intuitive casting, rather than based on Intelligence. It basically amounts to keeping the spell list, but pulling out the current spells per day table and replacing it with the spells per day and spells known tables from something like the Summoner, which is another middle power spellcasting kind of hybrid class. The switch to Charisma extends to Magus class features of the class that involve spells or spell-like and supernatural effects as well, the arcane accuracy Magus arcana for instance.
I do have one concern that the increased spells per day of an intuitive caster in comparison to the baseline learned caster spells per day might offer a slight advantage with the Magus' spellstrike abilities, but I don't see it being too a big deal game breaker though. One interesting thing I've noticed is that there is a line in the Magus arcana abilities, specifically each of the ones related to metamagic feats, stating that the use of the ability does not increase the spell level or casting time of the spell. Which is odd, because learned casters like the Magus do not increase the casting time of spells enhanced by metamagic feats, but when an intuitive caster like a Sorcerer uses them it increase the casting time from a standard action (assuming the spell doesn't already have a longer casting time) to a full round action. It's kind of a weird thing to include in a class where it would not really be relevant. Make me wonder if they were initially going to make the Magus an intuitive caster, or perhaps were planning at one point to include an intuitive caster archetype for the class. Which isn't that odd of a thing to include. If you look at some of the Sorcerer bloodlines, a few of them switch the casting statistic from Charisma to Intelligence or Wisdom.
Pause for a moment while I scream myself hoarse into a pillow because my Blogger app had an error and I lost the second half of this post.
Ok, so what I wanted to say was that I am considering making an additional restriction to the Sorcerer class based on only certain races being able to be members of the class. The races allowed to be members of the class would be Fallen, Fell Human Descendants, Fell Humans, Fell Soulless, Sereth, Soulless, and Vyanth. Each of these races has a long established tie to sorcery in my campaign material, so it is consistent with my background material and each race fitting the criteria of having some innate tie to magic that might manifest is wild and somewhat uncontrollable power.
I was considering adding a similar restriction to Bard and Summoners, as those classes are intuitive casters as well, but the material about their magic is somewhat different than the material for the Sorcerer. If you read through their class descriptions there is nothing about magical ancestors, just some stuff about inborn talent and cunning and that sort of thing. My take on that is that the Bard and Summoner have the talent for magic the same way a Wizard initially does, but they rely on their talent and specialization with that talent, and other abilities instead of pursuing magical learning and expertise the way a Wizard does. The Sorcerer on the other hand has an extremely potent and difficult to control spark bestowed on them by a magical ancestor like a dragon or elemental or troll. I dunno, that's just my interpretation of the classes. Regardless, it is kind of irrelevant since the various bloodline abilities and defenses that Sorcerers gain as they increase and level are not granted by a magical ancestor in my world. They're just the side effects of messing with sorcerous energies warping your flesh over time.
I was thinking of adding an additional restriction to the class as well based on each race only being able to select certain bloodlines during character creation. For instance, Soulless and Fallen are pretty sorcerous in natures (despite never exploding because of unreliable magic), but it would be odd for them to suddenly manifest some of the Aberrant bloodline abilities like suddenly having longer arms like the Sereth and Vyanth. I have several ideas and whatnot about all of this, but I still need to run through all the bloodlines and figure everything out.
Writing all of this out brings another thought to my mind. My world has a lot of restrictions on stuff. Lots of little noes in all of the campaign material related to rules that restrict this or that or the other. Don't get me wrong, I love all my little restrictions and refusals and noes. They are consistent with all of my background material and they help me represent Hekinoe with the Pathfinder rules in a truer and more pleasing fashion.
So fine, cool, I like all of the restrictive rules that I made up to make Pathfinder Hekinoe look like In My Head Hekinoe. I pile on all these little rules and tweaks that make sense to me and because I have all these preconceived notions of what Hekinoe is and I am so heavily invested in the world, I'm all too happy to take a machete to the mechanics of Pathfinder. I guess it just concerns me that my game world and all its restrictions and special rules make the game a little inflexible and allow a little bit less creative freedom than a more typical Pathfinder campaign. I haven't heard anything like angry mutters or grumbling from my players (much), but it is still something I am now worrying just a little bit about.
Just a couple thoughts on some stuff on my mind I guess.
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