Form Blazing Sword! – Bringing Your Own Toys: The Conduit

 

Melee characters often get the short end of the proverbial stick. Fighters have a broad-base of weapon proficiency and end up holding most any martial weapon they get that has a half decent enchantment on it early game. There are however, other paths, that are never without their own specialized weapon. So over the next few days we will take a look at Pathfinder Roleplaying Game classes from third party sources that bring their own weapon to the fray… We present: Form Blazing Sword!

Form Blazing Sword! continues as we compare today’s class, Amora Game‘s conduit (designed by Mike Myler)!

But wait you say didn’t we have that class in Rogue-ing in the New Year? Yes. But the class’ mystical weapons class feature earn it a spot here too! Here’s how it stacks up to our benchmark soulknife from Dreamscarred Press:

Form Blazing Sword! – The Conduit

Secrets of the Forge: What is our sword made of? When we Form Blazing Sword, our conduit “creates a melee weapon out of raw magical energy.” It has no listed hardness or hit points but has a duration expressed in minutes. As GM we might be inclined to treat them as supernatural effects and have them be immune to sundering, but as written there is a case for sunder rulings going either way. Our conduit can absorb magical spells (or wrack her body for more energy with desperate measures) and shape more weapons if they run out or were destroyed. NOTE: We keep referring to the weapons the conduit creates in the plural. That is because they can make more than one with a single ability usage. The conduit might be one of the BEST two-weapon fighter options for creating your own weapons.

Magic of the Blade: The mystical weapons get a +1 enhancement bonus at 4th level by expending an additional conduct point ramping +1 every 4 levels after with no additional cost. It gains options for other enchantments and begins being able to add them around 10th level. The “pool” of additional enchantments is unrestricted in selection but must be paid for by additional points equal to the adding abilitiy (an additional 2 points for flaming burst for example for our +2 flaming burst greatsword clocking in at three points). You also cannot exceed your base enhancement. The base enhancements hit a cap of a maximum of +5 at 20th level. Our “omega weapon” is a +5 weapon(s) with +5 of variable enchantment for an effective +10 weapon(s) we never are without at 20th level. Again multiple weapons can be enhanced and enchanted.

• Conduit – Omega Weapon (Greatsword) or (Bastard Swords)
• Attack: +15+STR+5 (7 if bane is selected for correct enemy) or +13+STR+5 (7) with 2
• Damage: 2d6+(STRx1.5)+5 (7)+ bane (2d6) and 4 bonuses worth of enchantments
  • OR
• Damage: 1d10+(STR)+5 (7)+ bane (2d6) and 4 bonuses worth of enchantments x 2

Secret Arts: The supporting conduit powers of the class are going to be more about general combat enhancement rather than specific sword related techniques but with the strength of the core ability and the conduits other supporting abilities (see below) the lack of specific sword/weapon based augmentations aren’t really an issue. With the wide open ability to add other enchantments at 10th level a lot of the soulknife‘s techniques can be matched.

Off-Hand Action: What else does the class get? Magic absorption. Deflective shields. Energy blasts. Permanently imprinted low-level spell effects.  Area-of-effect negation. Self-Heals. The class has an amazing array of other abilities to support a weapon focused outlook and can save the party a lot of suffering via its mitigation abilities.

Conduit scales pretty well against soulknife‘s standard sacrificing only in the BAB department to gain numerous other advantages, its blazing sword could be the perfect “anti-mage” option for your next character. Still looking? Comeback tomorrow and see how our next contender fares as Form Blazing Sword continues with – Armorist!

Don’t forget ANY melee character can benefit in mythic games from the Godhunter mythic path from Mythic Paths of the Lost Spheres and you can get it on: RPGNow or Paizo or d20.pfsrd.com!