Lavieh's page

So ready is Concentrate, does that mean a raging barbarian can't do it?

I think he just wanted clarity on how Brutal critical works, I don't think he was asking if the Gargantuan Great Axe gains damage.

Where are the rules on Readying an action?

Also you can use the Seek action to "sense" the things iirc. The poison is particularly brutal for them though.

Without the Two handed weapon fighting feats, there is just no real point to fight with two weapons outside of covering multiple damage types or having two different property runes and using a Twin weapon(Sawtooth sabre).

There are some neat things about TWF such as the Doubling Rings.

When you transform into any form it should let you apply the Potency rune from one of your weapons to your attacks. Or could you, at the very least, use the Might fist wraps to amplify the natural melee attacks in animal and dragon forms?

You have to read the crit rules for it but it would become 3d12+12 and the target gets a Bleed at 1d12

For comparison purposes, I meant to imply that since if you are going animal companion focused in either class you are going to make the appropriate choices.

But yeah the major complain is that Druids get a free heal spell, additional stats, fully grown at an earlier level and a free action(if no command given) over a Ranger. This all while maintaining their primal spell casting ability. The martial difference between Druid and Ranger is also really small because of how small the gap is between Trained and Master. If anything the Druid may pull out ahead because of self buffs.

Don't forget that your pet is literally going to be weaker than the Druids pet. Ranger also gets little in terms of Archery. Too many feat selections are wasted on flavor items that should just be baked into class.

I am going to bring a ranger into the level 4 campaign playtest this weekend with Xbow Ace, Quick Swap and Running reload. Hoping to split my combat with the Xbow and melee 2hander. The abuse on action economy feels good, but it doesn't look like anything special. Any other build I ran just felt flat out inferior to any other options available.

The campaign was designed for 4 characters so if you had 5 characters you most likely had an easier time.

I agree with your line of logic and if you follow the fighter feats there is a clear build for Agile weapons and non-agile weapons when it comes to TWF.

But yea Parrying with some daggers will be less effective than parrying with two hammers or w/e.

On the topic of the Dragon form doesn't something like 2d10 (Bludgeon) +6 seem incredibly weak at level 16, especially when you could be wielding at +3/4 weapon at this point which would be like 4/5d12+4/5 for a two handed weapon?

I feel like this is a pretty big oversight, you should feel a lot stronger when you turn into a dragon, not significantly weaker.

The Ranger isn't suffering from a lack of choices, it's suffering for a lack of feats to pick up those choices. A competent companion costs four feats when it used to cost one. Wild Empathy is now a feat.

Compared to what a druid can do with an animal companion, I'm not sure I would consider the Rangers to be "competent".

My main attack schtick is casting Shillelagh on my Great Club. And using the Work Together Bear benefit of 1d8 slashing damage from the bear getting 2d10 Shillelagh and 1d8 slashing per hit. Next comes in Savage Slice to grant me another attack doing 3d10 Shillelagh and 1d8 slashing, this routine can last for about a minute.

Is this a loose interpretation of Savage Slice where the Work Together Bear Benefit makes your Weapon strike Slashing? I took it as the 1d8 was additional damage but not the strike itself, which is still blunt. Pretty sure Savage Slice has that specific requirement to prevent any use with Shillelagh.

Also really curious to where it states that you and your pet share the same multi-attack penalty.

I don't think others should have to spend RP to consume your infused alchemy items either. I mean casters don't penalize the receivers of their buffs, why do Alchemist need to differ?

Given the wording on the Grey Maiden Archetype, you need to gain its proficiency through feats. If you invest three feats in the plate, it actually doesn't look too bad - only at the cost of three feats.

I feel like a lot of classes fit their identities quite well. Maybe there is a bit of blur between something like Sorceror and Wizard?

I actually feel like the class identities are a little too restricting like for Ranger.

Fighter is pretty much a catch-all "I can fight" but the grip switch feat looks pretty neat, would be a good addition.

I guess our GM missed that detail, regardless we had to rest after the quasit fight and the sneak attack would have just killed one person and we most likely still would have beaten drakus. He only missed its damage on one roll and would have had to roll a 3+ for it to have made a difference.

I think you run into an issue where the feats are just generally weaker at that point. Looking at it now you could definitely just do single handed weapon fighting and/ or switching between a bow and another weapon for your combat.

Looking at the Feats now there is also a huge problem with Triple Threat requiring three feats to be usable and none of them really work together.

You go

- Use an Action to give your ally hunt target.
- Pick two Hunt targets
- Now you can Pick two, or Pick one and give it to an ally
- Now you can pick one target and two allies or two targets and one ally.

I really think Shadowhunter is probably the best feat for level 20, but still why waste so much space?

My group personally created a choke point in the hallway with the statue. and just whittled away at him while he (nearly) killed our goblin. We honestly got really unlucky on a lot of rolls but not many criticals just a lot of low attack rolls on our end. We were full health with one Heal cast left. We also didn't use Hero points at all.

My only problem with fighter is how the Two weapon fighting finisher can't be used with the Agile Grace feat.

I think Barbarian comes together pretty nicely. Someone mentioned that Rage powers function out of combat but the fact is that you can rage for 3 out of every 4 rounds now so depending on the task at hand raging to over come exploration situations is pretty plausble.

The Anathema on the superstition totem is really hurts you though.

I don't really see how Ranger is tied to just Crossbow because they get a feat or too that support it. You could easily roll with a composite bow. No support for two handed weapons is a little offputting.

Overall rangers just seem super weak though. They are mostly skilled but their actual impact on combat seems relatively low. The Animal companion path also seems really weak when you compare it to what the Druids get.

A lot of uses of the skills are locked behind some level of proficiency. And their uses are expounded based on the skill selection. A Barbarian may have an Arcana score of 15 or something but a Wizard with a Mastery of Arcana and the appopriate skills can discern information a whole lot faster than that barbarian.

That being said I still think there should be an upper proficiency level with skills based on how trained you are.

Doesn't power attack get better at higher levels? It is really weak at lower levels but once that second part kicks in at level 10+ it seems to get a lot better.

Shouldn't the initiative use the original stealth/ perception roles? The one were you beat him?

I took the changes as a means to reduce some rolling and you have already decided that you have gone unseen and are going to make the first attack.

Why would you roll again?

I think just removing the "It counts as two attacks" verbage on power attack would fix it.

Not sure if my group has fully finished the encounter but we killed Drakis.

Party
Goblin Barbarian
Halfling Druid
Elven Rogue
Human Wizard

Can't comment on the Goblin fight as we had a Goblin in our group(myself) roll a nat 20 on a diplomacy check to avoid the fight.

The Centipedes were only easy because we created a choke point for them accidentally. This fight would have been have felt more balanced if we were out in the open.

The Quasits were just too strong though. They were incredibly hard to hit, had a really high two hit as well as a lot of skills that made them annoying. The poison itself is pretty lethal and forced our first downtime (before the Centipedes).

Drakus... was rough. We started the fight with our Goblin Barbarian breaking down the door. Drakus fortunately missed his first few swipes but hit his AoO as the Goblin retreated into the hall way. We had a bit of positioning snaffu where the druid wouldn't see Drakus around the corner so it made him take a bit less damage. Our rolls were also really low. We beat it with the Goblin on Dying 3 one turn away from Dying 4 before a medicine check stabilized him.

Our DM forgot to apply Sneak attack to the grabbed attacks.

I think he was pretty imbalanced for a level 1 encounter, if our DM remembered sneak attack the fight would have been a lot worse then what it was. The rat just made things even more annoying but the choke helped us deal with that.We had a lot of bad rolls though so I think without Sneak attack and AoO it would have been a balanced level 1 fight.

The dying rule felt very very bad. Having to beat a 16 with only a +3 felt nearly impossible. No idea how to make it better.

We still haven't found the treasure yet, so trying not to spoil that but overall it felt a bit overtuned, but maybe that was intentional.

Also the way its worded Two-Weapon Flurry can't be used if you get the Agile Grace trait which is pretty poor design and bad feeling imo.

If you look under the Free hand section it specifically mentions Manipulate actions and not necessarily Somatic actions. I wonder if this just needs clarification. When I originally read Warded Touch it read like it removed the free hand requirement.

Some clarification would be nice because this is a pretty deal for paladins.

Swipe lets you use one attack roll to hit up to two creatures that are adjacent and in melee at the cost of two actions. It counts as two hits.

Whirlwind lets you hit whoever is in your melee range, rolling for each hit but not subtracting the multiple hit penalty.

So lets say you are surrounded by three enemies and you want to hit them both.

Normally you would attack one at normal attack, the second at -5 and the third at -10.

With swipe you make one attack at normal attack that can hit two of them if they are adjacent and then a third attack at -10.

With whirlwind you can make all three attacks at each enemy with your normal attack roll.

So it basically just increases your accuracy in multi-target situations.

Anyone else a bit confused about the Animal companion relationship? The rule book mentions Command a Minion a few times but never elaborates on it and Command An Animal requires you to "Handle an Animal". I have looked for all instances of Minion and Command an Animal throughout the rulebook but I can't find any direct clarification. For the purposes of Command An Animal is a minion considered always "Obeying" You?

That makes sense to me, but I couldn't find anything that directly said that.

The two weapon fighting builds for Fighter are really confusing too, the finished is so disconnected from all of the other choices.