New Paths

[pawsplay]

Comments welcome.

Path of Cold
Cold I: You gain cold resistance equal to three times your Steps on this Path.
Cold II: You may convert your melee and unarmed attacks to cold damage. You may cast Deadly Draft I once per scene.
Cold III: You may cast Polar Ray II once per scene. Once per scene you may cast a variant of Conjure Elemental II that summons a creature of blackflame (like a fire elemental, but inflicting and immune to cold damage, with an Achilles' heel to fire and heat).
Cold IV: You may cast Elemental Shield (cold) and Wall of Ice once per scene.
Cold V: You may cast Deadly Draft II and Polar Ray III once per scene.

Path of Making
Craft I: Your Threat with any of your Crafting focuses increases by your number of Steps on this Path. You gain 1 rank of Crafting, not to exceed your maximum ranks.
Craft II: You gain the Crafting Basics feat.
Craft III: You gain the Crafting Mastery feat.
Craft IV: You gain the Crafting Supremacy feat.
Craft V: You gain the Essence Basics and Charm Basics feats.

[Sletchman]

I like the Path of Cold, and I'd definitely allow it at my table.  I assume that Cold II has a slight typo (Deadly Draft II should be Deadly Draft I, otherwise it it makes Cold V slightly redundant - at least by the RAW (so as an alternate, write that you gain another use of Deadly Draft II, just for clarity's sake)).

Path of Making is mechanically ok - I would allow it, but I'd never take it myself just because it's kinda boring - it's just as easy to pick those feats up with levels and save the Path steps for something more unique (or harder to get).  I'm just not sure how to replace it, since most the stuff I'd want to tie in are the benefits those feat provide anyway (faster and/or higher quality making).  Maybe Tinker spells, but that's like 1 Step.

Something totally off the cuff, in an attempt to avoid it being just a chain of feats:

Path of Making
Making I: The maximum complexity of any object you may craft increases by your Making Step.
Making II: You gain an Insight bonus to Craft checks equal to your Making Step.  You may also cast Tinker II once per scene.
Making III: Once per session you may reroll a Craft check, keeping the new result only if it is higher then your original.
Making IV: Your critical threat range increases by 4 on all Craft checks.
Making V: Weapons and Armour you have crafted yourself can not be Destroyed, only Broken.

[pawsplay]

The Path of Making is supposed to be for masters of the elves and dwarves. I avoided a flat +5 to Crafting because it didn't work well with Metal, which already grants a +5 to Crafting (metal). Making V is supposed to be the pinnacle of the art and help the character jump off into higher feats, if desired. It is a little boring on paper, but I want to avoid the Tinker spells. Considering how different a Priest with this path would be from a Keeper, I'm not sure how boring it would be in practice. It's certainly a superior path for a Priest who wants to make lots of stuff. I could ditch Making V, squee in a free reroll, and move either Mastery or Supremacy down, but I'm not sure how much that adds.

EDIT: Trying to do it the other way pretty much gets you to this, time and time again:
http://fantasycraftdb.com/character-options/paths/186-path-of-craft

[Morgenstern]

Something totally off the cuff, in an attempt to avoid it being just a chain of feats:

Lets have a look .

Making I: The maximum complexity of any object you may craft increases by your Making Step.

That is sexy. Simple to discribe but rich in possibility.

Making II: You gain an Insight bonus to Craft checks equal to your Making Step.  You may also cast Tinker II once per scene.
Making III: Once per session you may reroll a Craft check, keeping the new result only if it is higher then your original.
Making IV: Your critical threat range increases by 4 on all Craft checks.

Most of those end up being pieces of the Skill Mastery chain. With those feats as a baseline the steps are definitely a bit on the weak side.

Making V: Weapons and Armour you have crafted yourself can not be Destroyed, only Broken.

Creative. I like it a lot, but right off hand I think I'd move it down to step IV, possibly III if neccessary to fit in another similary inventive effect of greater game-impact. With 2 gems off the cuff, I'd be quite interested to see what you've got after a little deeper rumination . If you go with more spell casting, I'd throw out the idea of a version of the locate object spell that only applies to you own creations. When the true maker 'puts their soul into something', it might be literal .

[Mister Andersen]

For step one, I'd make it either equal to twice your step, or that you get to add your entire crafting bonus rather than just your ranks when determining complexity

[Bill Whitmore]

...or that you get to add your entire crafting bonus rather than just your ranks when determining complexity

Adding your Crafting bonus rather than ranks is the standard rule in the book.

Pg. 72, Build or Improve Object: the character must have a combined Crafting skill bonus + Career Level of at least the object’s total Complexity (including upgrades).

With regards to Making I, if Path Steps are roughly equivalent to feats than it seems the feat to compare it to with regards to increasing max Comp while crafting would be Crafting Basics.  Crafting Basics doubles silver value for crafting and adds max Complexity equal to number of gear feats.

I can see "number of gear steps" and "Steps on the Making path" being roughly equivalent, so I agree with Mr. A.  I think either increasing Complexity by twice path step or adding some other minor secondary ability would be more appropriate for Making I.

[pawsplay]

Something that is addiditive with other traits may be worth more than its theoretical "feat value." War just adds +1 damage at War I and +5 at War V, which means it takes the whole path just to catch up with the raw damage feats from the AC. Metal just adds +5 Crafting with metal, when by my reckoning step I is usually good enough to justify +5 to an entire skill, BUT you can combine it with Skill Mastery Basics, enlightened skills, and so forth. Small DR bonuses cost more than thick skin because they can add.

[Bill Whitmore]

Something that is addiditive with other traits may be worth more than its theoretical "feat value." War just adds +1 damage at War I and +5 at War V, which means it takes the whole path just to catch up with the raw damage feats from the AC. Metal just adds +5 Crafting with metal, when by my reckoning step I is usually good enough to justify +5 to an entire skill, BUT you can combine it with Skill Mastery Basics, enlightened skills, and so forth. Small DR bonuses cost more than thick skin because they can add.

Which raw damage feats from the AC are you talking about?  The ones I am seeing add 3 damage if you spend a point of edge or add 1d4 (average 2.5) damage to specific attacks.

So it only takes about 2 and a half levels of War to catch up with its feat value.  By War V, it's adding about twice the feat value in damage.

If Making I increases maximum Comp by 2 per step, it'll still be less than twice a feat value as it lacks the double crafting silver value.

Also, I have had some pretty heavy craftspeople in the games I have run and in my experience, increasing maximum Comp by a few points is not a big deal, nowhere near as good as adding raw damage.

[Morgenstern]

With regards to Making I, if Path Steps are roughly equivalent to feats than it seems the feat to compare it to with regards to increasing max Comp while crafting would be Crafting Basics.  Crafting Basics doubles silver value for crafting and adds max Complexity equal to number of gear feats.

Fair point and an example I had forgotten. I agree bonus equal to twice your step is more in scale with the alternatives. Might even go so far as double and a very small secondary benefit. Possibly a bonus crafting specialty.

[pawsplay]

Something that is addiditive with other traits may be worth more than its theoretical "feat value." War just adds +1 damage at War I and +5 at War V, which means it takes the whole path just to catch up with the raw damage feats from the AC. Metal just adds +5 Crafting with metal, when by my reckoning step I is usually good enough to justify +5 to an entire skill, BUT you can combine it with Skill Mastery Basics, enlightened skills, and so forth. Small DR bonuses cost more than thick skin because they can add.

Which raw damage feats from the AC are you talking about?  The ones I am seeing add 3 damage if you spend a point of edge or add 1d4 (average 2.5) damage to specific attacks.

So it only takes about 2 and a half levels of War to catch up with its feat value.  By War V, it's adding about twice the feat value in damage.

Sorry, you're right about that. For some reason I was halving the damage in my mind as though the Path bonus were a die roll or something. But anyway, as long as you have two Steps or less, my point is the same; it's a small untyped bonus.

[Nuaurpy]

My only issue with an entire chain of feats is that if I want to be a crafter I can either grab crafting basics or the artisan specialty (a popular choice for crafters) and then have crafting mastery and supremacy by level 3 then grab charm and essence binding at 6 and 9 if those are really important to me and this tree has done exactly what I can do myself only slower. It has the benefit of not using up a limited resource (feats) at the expense of another very limited resource (path slots) I'd have the tree grant essence binding at first so that it's not a feat that's easily over written by an option the character is likely to take anyway and then grant other crafting related bonuses for the rest of the tree. Maybe even ending in giving you essence and charm mastery. so something like

Making I: You gain the Essence Binding Basics Feat
Making II: You gain an additional crafting focus. Once per session you may reroll a Craft check, keeping the new result only if it is higher then your original.
Making III: You gain the Charm Binding Basics Feat and you gain an Insight bonus to Craft checks equal to your Making Step.
Making IV: You may make more then one item when you craft during a single downtime.
Making V: You gain the Essence Binding Mastery and Charm Binding Mastery feats.

Or maybe use that really cool weapons you make cannot be destroyed step that Sletchman came up with for one of the middle steps. I just know that I wouldn't want to feel like I'm actually holding myself back by taking the Making path since it offers me a choice. I can have Crafting Basics by level 3, or I can have Crafting supremacy by level 3. There isn't really a Specialty that grants one of the binding basics feats at first level (That I'm aware of) so you don't have to not take an option because you're planning on picking up Path of Making and most people like to crawl before they walk anyway, by grabbing the crafting feats before binding feats, So they won't feel like they have to wait for the path to catch up to where they are in the feat trees.

[Catodon]

The lord of Darkness in my campaign is 'The Cold Tyrant' so...

Path of Cold? yes please thank you very much.

[Coyote0273]

One thing you might do to make the Making more useful also is have it give you a bonus to the complexity of the item you can make. So you can make the more complicated items at a lower level than normal chars.