Pathfinder homebrew character concepts

Thanks to some holiday sales and a recommendation from my Pathfinder GM, I’ve recently found some Pathfinder homebrew creations that I felt are pretty amazing, and I’d like to go over them as well as some basic character concepts that I think I’d enjoy playing.

First up on the list is Rainbow of Elements, an expansion of the Kineticist class by Eldritch Osiris Games that adds 8 new elements to the class (plus some additional feats and Impulses for the existing 6). These aren’t exactly classical elements, but they are incredibly flavorful themes that expand the options a Kineticist can take.

I haven’t experimented much with multiple-gate builds for the Kineticist, my personal preference is for single-element builds, so I can’t comment on possible gate combinations, but there is one particular element in this PDF that caught my eye immediately: the Void kineticist.

In the remaster, all mentions of a plane of negative energy are replaced by the Void, so it should come as no surprise that this gate deals a fair amount with summoning and supporting undead (and indeed, the kineticist themselves gain the Void Healing trait, so normal healing would actually harm them)

I am, in general, a fan of the “bad powers, good people” trope, and also a fan of the Kineticist design as a new take on a spellcaster (especially for a system that makes use of Vancian magic and requires more out of spontaneous spellcasters) so I am looking forward to hopefully one day combining the two into a single-gate void kineticist that bears a strong resemblance to a necromancy-focused wizard.

Our second piece of homebrew is Player Core 1 Expanded, by We’re Strong Together. This supplement as at least one additional subclass choice and a number of feats to support them for each of the revised classes added in the new Player Core 1 (with the exception of the fighter, which has no subclasses, it gets a variety of new feat choices). When deciding what to discuss here, I took at look at the new options for the characters in my upcoming campaign, the Cleric and Witch, to see if anything appealed for either of those choices. The new doctrine is very cool, thematic towards a secret agent of a religious order, but it doesn’t fit the backstory for my android, nor does the new divine domain within. Likewise, none of the new Patron options fit better for Sehnrael’s story than the one we selected, although the Junkyard Treasurer does appeal to my love of technology themed options. Instead I think for this entry we’re gonna look at one of the new Wizard school options.

PC1 Expanded offers 4 new school options for Wizards to choose from, and two immediately sprung out as fun options. The School of Draconic Design emphasizes spells and magic that emulate or possibly even originate from dragons. The description of the school even notes that a dragon themselves could be one of the teachers you learned from at one of these schools. I love the concept here, and it gave me an idea for an alternate universe-version of a Kobold Draconic Bloodline sorcerer character concept I came up with a while back. Said sorcerer once tried to take over his clan once his powers awakened, but his fellows scoffed and exiled him, so he became an adventurer with the goal of growing so powerful he could return to his former clan and crush any resistance to his rule. This version, however, would have somehow ended up attending a School of Draconic Design, but ultimately attempt a similar takeover after learning the basics, with the same result. An arrogant but still charismatic kobold attempting this is amusing, but the idea of a bookish, nerdy kobold doing the same is downright hilarious.

The other school I was drawn to was the School of Chronomancy. Time manipulation as a dangerous and somewhat forbidden art is a particularly fun trope, so long as it stays on a localized scale. Once a character gets into time travel and mass effecting events it becomes less interesting for me, which I’ve talked about on this blog a fair amount, I believe. Luckily, we generally stay within the realm of localized events with the spells on offer for this school, and while I don’t quite have a full character concept in mind to potentially use here, I think the roleplay potential and combat options look immensely fun.

Lastly on our list, we have Inventors+, a creation of the highly regarded and well known TeamPlus. I don’t recall how much I’ve touched on it here, but I have lambasted the design of the Inventor class on twitter before. It is, for a variety of reasons, a class I have found immensely disappointing, something compounded by the fact that I am an enjoyer of tech in fantasy settings. Partly due to Pathfinder’s somewhat restrictive design choices of the game as a whole, partly due to specific options within the Inventor itself, the class has been an incredible disappointment for me, and was for a long time a primary reason for me being down on Pathfinder as a whole. I am hopeful we see some improvements when the class is updated for the remaster, whenever that might be, but for now, Inventors+ is here, and the new options within go a very long way to making me feel much better about the class when I can incorporate them.

This supplement adds two new Innovation types (effectively the Inventor’s subclass), new feats and modifications to support them, new feats and options for the existing Innovations and the class itself, and new choices to replace the Inventor’s core mechanics of Overdrive and Explode. All of these choices were sorely needed to address a good chunk of my issues with the class itself, and I’ve put together the framework of a character concept that I’m hoping I can run one day to see how much fun I have with it.

The Magitek Innovation is the perfect choice of a subclass for me, as it takes care of my two biggest dislikes with the Pathfinder inventor; the inability to make use of your intelligence modifier for combat skills and a severe lack of support for a ranged combat character. Since the innovation grants you a limited form of arcane spellcasting, supplemented by a chain of feats that grant you spellcasting progression at the same rate as an archetype, this solves both of those issues, although frankly Paizo should look at options to do the same for the core innovations when it comes time to do a remaster update for the Inventor. The “unconventions” are a mechanic that TeamPlus introduced to grant new theming and gameplay options to replace Overdrive and Explode. As I haven’t been a particular fan of Explode in either capacity (I’m not a huge fan of the idea of “ramshackle, barely holding together” design that the Inventor seems to be flavored around, nor do I particularly like not having a non-close range option to make use of Explode with), I was strongly considering going with one of these choices. Cryonization, in particular, offers a truly fantastic pair of options that, in particular, replace Explode with Freeze Ray, a ranged option that trades raw damage for some control options. I was all in on this idea, when I noticed that they also included a level 4 feat that lets you reshape Explosion into a cone, line, or ranged burst. This is amazing, and frankly something that should be baseline for Explode, but this feat certainly helps make it a more attractive option.

I’m still considering what kind of Ancestry and backstory I’d have with this kind of character. The easy options are “Remake Seth” or “Remake Snickit”, and to be honest I’m leaning into the latter, though I’d have to reconsider his whole “secretly an agent of the Alkenstar Duchy” backstory element, I’m not sure how well that would tie in with a spellcasting focused innovation.