Liegence's page

It’s “you could bleed out / die in 6 seconds” as opposed to “you bleed out / die possibly immediately”

The rule establishes that you get about 6 seconds from a fatal wound to the first check in terms of time per round.

Liegence wrote:

Wheldrake wrote:

No human sacrifices to an evil god? No cannibalism? No gratuitous infliction of suffering on helpless kitten-analogues?

Can't be *that* evil.

She keeps a sentient creature gifted to her as property magically bound to a talisman that she proudly displays, and considers that saving her?

Maybe I misread but that sounds pretty egregious to me.

And I take it you're one of those folks who thinks we should abolish prisons too?

Some people are unquestionably evil and need to be locked up for the safety of themselves and others. This scenario is really just an extension of that. In any case, what is she to do? Smashing the amulet would just kill the prisoner. Using a freedom ritual would be dedicating resources towards releasing a most dangerous evil upon the world. Only the most naive fool would ever consider condoning such an action.

She displays it not as a matter of pride, but as a means of personal protection, much like how some prisoners get prison tattoos for the same purpose.

What? No. Why would you think that?

Your description did not indicate she was a warden of any kind. She traded an object of power to possess a person through negotiation with that persons clearly evil mother. This was not described as a crime and punishment event! She isn’t a caretaker, she holds her against her will and by her own judgment for what is only described as personal reasons. If there’s more to it I don’t see it in the provided background.

Under what jurisdiction is she an apt warden - her own? By what right, other than she traded a sphere of annihilation for, does she hold jurisdiction over this persons fate? What social violation warranted the incarceration, apart from suicide and heir to a probably evil house? Was she found guilty and judged by her peers, or does the Pc have sole authority to judge, jury and imprisonment?

No human sacrifices to an evil god? No cannibalism? No gratuitous infliction of suffering on helpless kitten-analogues?

Can't be *that* evil.

She keeps a sentient creature gifted to her as property magically bound to a talisman that she proudly displays, and considers that saving her?

Maybe I misread but that sounds pretty egregious to me.

Ventnor wrote:

In response to one of the response videos, the Taking20 guy unironically tweeted the "destroy them with facts and logic" meme.

It's wild to me that a guy can complain about his group getting continuously TPK'd while also being absolutely certain that they have full mastery of the system

Especially when he insists his Druid player was only taking the optimal path by always wild shaping into specifically a T-Rex... did he perhaps try casting other spells? This is a full caster and going Dino does limit your options.

I have the players roll 20d20 each time they level up and write the results on a sheet that also has space for their relevant skill modifiers (stealth, perception, etc.). I then refer to it in game as necessary. It works quite well and the players do not even know when I am using them most of the time.

To prevent possible gaming the system (not that my players would do it intentionally) I put them in two columns of ten and randomly determine which column to start with for each player and whether I go up or down the list.

The bottom of the list also has a list of the checks that could possibly be secret checks, to remind both them and me lest I forget.

You can see what it looks like here.

I tried something like this in the past - instead of d20s each level, at the start of game I had each player roll 3d20 and I’d jot the result down for each player and reference it for secret checks or incoming saves where players were not immediately aware. It actually worked pretty well but I found there just typically weren’t that many secret checks needed. Some players would even take those results and use them to play their character accordingly - were they sharp and focused or lazy or agitate just as a general mood.

Keeping vital stats handy, on an index card or in a spreadsheet on the side in a VTT, is fairly common and useful practice. If you’re feeling a disconnect between GM and players when making checks alone, just ask a player to toss a d20 for the group and add the modifier yourself and keep the why a secret. You can alternate making those checks impactful or not impactful if you’re worried they’re catching on

Complete opposite experience tbh. Playing three games a week, I’m seeing a huge diversity of character types, class progression and even turn-by-turn combat actions and variance.

To say a system (any system really) is not a system for 1st person narrative is honestly a ridiculous proposition. Also not sure why any content producer would feel the need to actively disassociate with a product in their genre, and not the first time for this guy (essentially wrote a breakup letter with roll20 as well)

It’s honestly just weird - I guess he’s just dropping flashy tag line for views.

You can’t use Dex to modify maneuvers with finesse weapons? Aw man. That makes the Witch prehensile hair even worse - as if it wasn’t basically a waste already. At least with Dex as maneuver I could use it to trip with some success in a bind, and Dex was still a relevant stat.

So wait you can’t even Disarm with a Rapier using Dex? How does that make sense at all?

Ready an action to melee strike when an enemy is in range, then leap?

I would think that would work. If you have to High Jump or Long Jump I think it’s fair to say swinging in the middle of those actions wouldn’t normally be doable. To go that far you’re putting your whole body into it and following through the jump - attacking would require specialized training

Definitely Standard DCs by level, they follow an unintuitive progression and are required for Recall Knowledge checks.

Humbly,
Yawar

If I recall correctly, standard DC is 14+level +1 for every 3 levels. So for example, level 16 standard DC is 14+16+5 (1 for 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th and 15th)

Once you figure the formula out it’s easy to calc on the fly without the chart. Hope that helps!

I would say RAW no - Engulf is a creature ability that confers grabbed and immobilized. That is to say, if there are actions that could get you out of immobilized or out of grabbed they won’t necessarily help you if you are engulfed outside of a GM ruling to the contrary. The only way out of Engulfed is by the means written in the creature ability text (escape by engulfed PC, or the monster engulfing is ruptured). As written, dealing damage to Rupture is only an option for engulfed PCs barring a GM ruling

Also trying to physically pull someone out of a Gelatinous Cube, although desperate, sounds incredibly unwise

With Bane, every creature in the radius not yet affected saves again when you sustain the spell. It doesn’t happen automatically.

Also if you are Cloistered you probably shouldn’t focus on buff spells. You’re going for high Wis high DCs. There are some good spells out there.

Calm Emotions is excellent. You can take a group of mooks right out of the fight.

All that said, Divine Font is your best advantage as a Cleric. No one can consistently combat heal like you can. If that’s not what you’re in for you should probably look elsewhere.

I very much disagree that Warpriests fall off at higher levels. They remain a very strong class at any level; yes, you won’t be dealing as much melee damage in combat as a straight martial, but you bring so much to the table. If you’re built well, you can very well foundation the whole party.

But, I digress as this is a cloistered Cleric to be discussed. Forbidding Ward, Bless/Bane, Guidance, Protection are all good starter buffs. You don’t want to go too deep in sustains, though. 2nd is kind of weird because it doesn’t have many buffs but does have some restorative powers; Dispel Magic is generally a pretty safe slot. At third Heightened Disrupting Weapons can be excellent if you know you’re up against undead. Circle of Prot (uncommon) is a pretty reliable AoE AC boost - both of those are touch an ally and then they move in and the spell stays with them so not putting you in the front. Heroism gets put down a lot but I still like it if you’re Bardless - 10 minutes may cover multiple combats, it’s ups quite a few abilities (attack, saves, perception = initiative) and you can typically land it before combat starts. At 4th plus the buffs become more evident with like Air Walk, Freedom of Movement, Death Ward etc

Check your deity bonus spells too some give solid spells like Haste. If he’s ranged he probably wants Bane over Bless (also tip because people tend to miss this - you do not have to sustain Bless or Bane to keep it up).

I should add that until your martials get striking runes, magic weapon is probably the best buff spell

Thanks!!!

Honest question - where is the rule that you roll each round? Just couldn’t find it.

Keep in mind Surprise Attack doesn’t apply only to the first attack - if you hide and sneak attack to target a flat footed opponent, that’s two actions for one sneak attack - you couldn’t attack again for another sneak attack. If you start hidden, you could attack, hide and attack again max two sneak attacks.

With surprise attack, you could fire off three sneak attacks without moving. Also, you get those sneak attacks even if your stealth doesn’t beat their perception DC (in cases where you both roll low initiative)

The irony here is that you're expressing frustration with what are essentially the three best full casters in the game...

If you expect your Bard to be as good as a fighter in combat, your expectations are too high. It would be completely imbalanced for a full caster to be a martial equivalent - and I know that's the case b/c I played PF1.

The other problem here is that you are probably facing threats too high. Fighting a boss should be like once a story arc, and by the very rules of the game it should be an encounter that you are not only fully prepared for, but that you know is a boss encounter and are encouraged to throw everything you have at the enemy. The average combat in PF2 is a number of enemies equivalent to the party at CR -2.

I think there was another thread about whether or not shove ends a grapple, but the rules as written for grapple state if you move the grapple ends. Shove targets a creature and moves that creature if successful. The target of a grapple only ends the grapple if it escapes, so while shoving the grappled character off may make more sense (or be mechanically easy if the targets not a physical character and lower level), I find that one to be frankly more dubious. There is no rule that allows you to drag a character you are grappling with you if you are moved.

The most obvious use of Shove is when if it succeeds it outright wins the battle, as in off a cliff, etc.

Shove can be used defensively to push back an enemy that threatens AoO particularly if the threatened character is like a Wizard or other that is squishy and needs to manipulate. If you aren’t in range to kill it you can play defense.

Lastly, getting Shoved forces a grapples end. That might matter more than raw damage in the moment. Actually a few games back I shoved a vampire off our Bard and then slapped it with a ranged heal. Turned out to be pretty clutch.

One thing I like about the power scale is that system manages to keep combat at about the same pace because damage scales so high and bonuses to hit don’t make it a miss-fest. Even at high levels combat can be quick, deadly - and well gritty.

One problem I have with bounded accuracy systems is that high levels just pile on a ton of hit points. Even if ability to hit is consistent, you have to hit much much more. And while casters can get potentially combat ending one save and done spells, martials get stuck in a quagmire of having to hit more and more.

I'd like to go with the former, where he gets a round to live, on the grounds that the dying rules are meant to produce that effect in general. But that would mean that any spell he had been Sustaining earlier, but hadn't Sustained on that turn, would fail to end until his initiative came around again, which is clearly bogus. So I'm afraid he does have to go through the end-of-turn steps, which kill him. I will be delighted if someone can show this is wrong!

This conundrum happens normally when a character goes down not on his turn as well in terms of pure initiative counts. For ex, presume enemies turn is count 2 and then player would be count 3, then 100 other characters take initiative counts 1 and 3+.

If enemy downs player, then the need to sustain a spell before it expires, RAW, skips 100 initiative counts. That’s essentially the same thing as what you’re saying is bogus in the above.

Is tricky though. Comes down to how you define immediate I guess. If it’s immediately not your turn because your turn is later, then why are you taking turn steps?

I think this falls into GM call, and I prefer the suspense of looming death over “write a new character”

From my perspective, I do note that there are currently no item bonuses to spell attacks or saves. If you truly feel spellcasters are underpowered, you could always homebrew an item bonus as an easy non-disruptive way to gauge the impact on power. Easier than re-inventing the wheel and trying to teach it to all players

Almost through book 1 and it’s been a lot of fun. Highlight of the adventure so far for me was their investigation of Hawfton Mill. They were -so- smart and cautious (at first, as you may have guessed). They wanted to stalk the perimeter stealthfully - noted the webs in the garden and the Druid used their knowledge to successfully ID what spiders it could be and decided wisely to avoid them. They circled around the wheel and carefully up the cliff to spy the rooms through the windows. Snuck into the girls room to investigate, snuck into the miller’s room to investigate. Readied actions against what was in the closet and smashed it immediately (which OOC was a loss but they had no reason to know that) - when I noted to the Druid knew that these Mephits were neutral she correctly pointed out that the last time they encountered them they were immediately hostile and almost killed them so no chances would be taken due to their power and prior aggressions - fair enough. They found the lockbox and held it “for safe keeping”. And at that point I knew Hawfton Mill was done - nothing else was there to find. And they had basically stealthed to the end of the dungeon fairly successfully. They were at the parents room door and I described how wasps were crawling in under the door but not fast enough to swarm. They headed back to the kids room... then ofc they were like f-it let’s kick down the door and use our AoEs against the swarm so they got their vials out and the barbarian smashed through the door ... swarm won initiative, covered two of them on their first turn and did a ton of damage. Our brave adventurers immediately ran out the mill slapping themselves and screaming “Swarm!!! Swarm!! Ruuuuuun!!” as they leapt into the river!

LMAO

Oh by the way, fair warning to new DMs. When my player group met Cubby for the first time they got unreasonably upset with me “How did we not know there was a taking dog at our circus!!!!” So maybe introduce the sideshow as part of the backdrop :)

Also fun thing my group did is after they killed the Boar they spent the rest of the day finding a way to haul it back to the circus. They picked some apples too, and immediately proceeded to set up a pig pickin for their roustabouts and fellow performers. Even prematurely cracked open the ale they bought for concessions to give everyone a relaxing time the next morning when the pigs were cooked. Was a real nice touch to build comeraderie with their troupe and a very nice display of leadership

Just a point of clarity, if you break line of sight with the caster the frightened condition of Evil Eye can be reduced to zero because the spell states so specifically in the text.

Liegence wrote:

“Conditions are persistent. Whenever you’re affected by a condition, its effects last until the condition’s stated duration ends, the condition is removed, or terms dictated in the condition itself cause it to end.“

Can’t find any reason why the Frightened condition would end immediately upon choosing not to sustain the spell.

If you want, you look for Dirge of Doom duration and you have pages of endless debate to fuel your curiosity.

Don’t see the need since the RAW here seems so clear...

“Conditions are persistent. Whenever you’re affected by a condition, its effects last until the condition’s stated duration ends, the condition is removed, or terms dictated in the condition itself cause it to end.“

Can’t find any reason why the Frightened condition would end immediately upon choosing not to sustain the spell.

You always take persistent damage at the end of your turn. Enervation would not do any damage on the caster’s turn.

If you fail the save, you immediately lose HP from the drained condition but that is not “damage”.

I’ll also add that even though it doesn’t do immediate damage, this spell is very strong

Hostile Actions
Source Core Rulebook pg. 305 1.1
Sometimes spell effects prevent a target from using hostile actions, or the spell ends if a creature uses any hostile actions. A hostile action is one that can harm or damage another creature, whether directly or indirectly, but not one that a creature is unaware could cause harm. For instance, lobbing a fireball into a crowd would be a hostile action, but opening a door and accidentally freeing a horrible monster would not be. The GM is the final arbitrator of what constitutes a hostile action.

Ultimately GM call based on the circumstances, but I think the rules are pretty clear that without conceal spell it can’t be concealed, and is spoken with a powerful voice and dramatic, overt gestures

Errata I would propose is making it unarmed strikes. I think the general question of the thread is if you can do this without unarmed strikes does it become unbalanced (assuming with unarmed it is balanced)

And demon321x2, I do believe as written there’s nothing that prevents you from using it with a bow.

I do, however, look forward to the day where as a rogue i Path of Iron on turn one where all enemies are flat footed and a no-MAP sneak attack three enemies.

As for stride distance, if you’re 20/25 feat obviously not a great option. But you can hit 30-40 pretty easily, and boosting speed can be done with other magic options as well. And that’s not just for PoI synergy, just stacking speed boosts in general is very useful.

Re: being one stride from powerful enemy - keep in mind as written I’m saying this is a good feat for any melee, be it fighter or tank. Being one stride away may be exactly where you want to be - generally someone is up front; having avoided an AoO and being a distanced enough to require more than a step action from the enemy can be favorable enough to be useful in a solo encounter.

Yeah, but Triple Shot is -4 to each attack, or -2 in the stance (which is two feats and an action to take stance). This is no penalty to any attack.

Also, I know this generally falls under “too good” but worth noting, the action only states Strike. A strike is from either a melee or ranged weapon - there’s no requirement that the strikes are melee RAW. So as written, compared to triple shot, this is stride and make three strikes without any MAP, and all movement doesn’t provoke reactions

It does sort of run into the cleave/swipe problem of "how often are the enemies going to be lined up where I can maximize this".

That’s the thing, since the APG has been out I’ve been watching out for that in games and it seems to come up regularly. Two happens all the time, and even move/attack/attack/move without MAP or AoO is still good. Even against one enemy it’s still Spring Attack, so it’s not useless if you can’t get three enemies lined up, I think for many melee builds it still offers a preferable option in most combats

I do believe Path of Iron with a d10 reach weapon is significantly better than PoI with unarmed only.

I understand spreading around damage may not be optimal, but typically if you’re trying to say safe, setup reach, move/attack/move is your turn. Throw potentially two more attacks on that seems worth a feat.

In PF2, attack bonus adjustment mean a lot. This is a game where people value a +1 attack. Making those 2nd and 3rd attacks without MAP with 3d12 striking weapon can be a big difference on your damage that round, on top of getting you in and out safely. And typically, the damage still needs to be done, and other allies will typically have AoE access.

And no limit on how you move, or when the attacks need to be made - you could be surrounded by three enemies and make three attacks at full attack bonus then move out without incurring AoO

And we’re also talking about just the feat - not a class feature. How does it compare to other generally available combat feats?

I am definitely not saying it’s three full strides, just that it allows move/attack/move, etc. I realize it does not provide a bonus to movement. But in PF2, moving even 5ft is an action. With the ability to ignore reactions, it is more like step, attack, step etc except those steps could be more than 5’ each

It's fine.

I'd expect that it will eventually see errata to only work unarmed to fit the theme of the Archetype, and would suggest instituting that in advance of official errata if you think it's too powerful, but distributed damage is weaker than focused damage and it is only once per combat.

And it's four actions, not six. It gives one Stride's worth of movement, not three. I don't really know where you'd get the idea it gave three Strides, honestly.

It’s one strides distance in movement, but you can break it up between attacks. You could do the equivalent of stride, strike, stride, strike, stride, strike, stride. Potentially 7 actions really, which also has the benefit of potentially putting you into melee, taking three attacks, and putting you more than a step out of melee if you’re building for bonus speed and with a reach weapon sets up your AoO reach attack. Compare that to stride, strike, strike against two opponents, and yet you’re still in melee reach of two opponents, and the second hit has MAP.

Was doing some theory crafting today when I noticed something very interesting - Path of Iron, the Martial Artist level 14 capstone, does not actually require you to make unarmed attacks...

PATH OF IRON [three-actions] FEAT 14
Prerequisites Martial Artist Dedication Frequency once per minute
With a burst of effort, you weave a path through your enemies, striking each in turn as you move past them. You Stride; this movement doesn’t trigger reactions. You can Strike up to three times at any point during your movement, each against a different enemy. Each attack counts toward your multiple attack penalty, but your multiple attack penalty doesn’t increase until you have made all your attacks.

So basically for three actions you can interweave strides and strikes while your strides avoid reactions and you don’t take MAP on your attacks as part of this action. The downside is you have to strike different targets. But is that enough? There’s no unarmed attack requirement, you could Path of Iron with a Maul or a reach weapon - so long as you’re spreading the love you can get effectively six actions, avoid AoOs and MAP. The other downside is the once a minute limit, so it’s essentially a once per combat trick ... but for comparison, if this was a focus spell I would definitely take it

For a level 14 feat! And it has only one prerequisite - the dedication, which by itself isn’t useless for any fighter (always nice to have a lethal unarmed option as a fall back).

What do you think - two feats including your dedication for Path of Iron worth it? Am I going to see every high level fighter take this as meta?

Highly recommend Directed Channel - turn Harm into a 60’ cone. Selective Energy even better as you can pretty much throw them out without needing your allies to be out of the way. 60’ cone is huge, and lets you sit in the back and blast away.

Doesn’t work with Cast Down which is your ST damage dealer, but does work with Harming Hands.

Not sure your Sorc blood but if you go undead you get access to healing allies with Harm

It is different in that the old feats say “for the purpose of determining proficiency”

Scales stacks with Bracers or Mage Armor. It would not stack with another AC status bonus like mountain stance.

The real boost to AC for unarmored with Scales is the Drakeheart mutagen

Pharasma is my favorite Pathfinder deity. I love the idea of a Death Goddess holding court for the contested souls of mortals.

Pharasma has heavily influenced my home brewed goddess of Death, Yrune, who is much like Pharasma except that she’s childlike (complete with childlike wonder and innocence, and also creepy like horror movie pale children), and the Fates (three artists) perform for her the deeds of a soul to be judged.

Clerics provide a very good source of in combat healing - having one in the party really changes things IMHO. Not only can you heal, and act (attack, demoralize, athletics maneuver), your in combat heals are very strong. They really shine in “boss” type encounters where your heal can basically work to overcome damage dealt in the average round, or in encounters versus a lot of undead where your AoE burst harms all undead and heals all allies. And you get 1+Cha mod free highest level spell slots a day dedicated to heal (if positive). Maybe just my experience, but Clerics play very strong.

Out of combat, there are tons of healing options for really all classes - someone should do it. Most common means is keeping proficiency on Medicine and taking the Continual Recovery and Ward Medic feats. No slot spells, focus spells, or class feature usage required. Medicine is just a good skill on anybody.

Slight necro, but I figure it's threadworthy:

As of the APG, I'm pretty sure an Unseen Servant is an excellent candidate for receiving a Final Sacrifice spell. It is a low level spell slot that can be cast before encounters, mindless, summoned (so it has the minion trait), flies, and it's naturally invisible, making it harder for enemies to smack.

Boom.

Totally. Since it is a sustained spell, you could keep it up while in Exploration Mode to act as the de facto door opener - and if combat happens, send him in and blow ‘em up

We’ve been known to make it drag blocks through the dungeon as well to trigger traps if your GM will allow

The best is when you’re in a group with other devotees - I’ve even had other players have their PCs sing hymns with me in games past.

And I’m not a religious person - I just play one in a game. But there’s something incredibly fun about screaming “For X god!!” and it’s even better in PF2E because that’s how I demoralize in combat - a shouting, zealous nemesis bringing doom as the hand of a deity!

Also really enjoy the character development - growing with your other PCs in or out of faith, converting the repentant, inspiring the faithless, and weighing your own actions against that which you serve.

And ofc, when I role play I try as best as I can to fit into a role that’s not me.

For whatever reason, when it comes boats our group totally loses all seriousness. Our last two boats were named “Cirrhosis of the River” (more a barge technically), and the “Unsinkable II”

Bon Mot being the obvious one.

I personally think the Catfolk and Kobold both push the strength of ancestries, but not enough play experience yet. And it’s not like they’re way overbalanced they just seem a bit overturned compared to what ancestries typically get

If I were you, I wouldn’t change anything and just run it as is. There are going to be parts where your players will still have close calls, it just won’t be as often. IMHO, that’s fine. If your players start rolling content without difficulty, then you might look at adding the elite template to a monster in the encounter

Liegence wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

I'm really liking what I'm seeing of the witch so far. Just finished my first game playing one in Plaguestone.

When one of the PCs got surrounded by three enemies and was getting mauled by their three-action attacks, I was able to use evil-eye actions on all three to cause their nine attacks to all miss. I wasn't able to maintain all of them, but that didn't matter as the rest of the party was able to come to his aid and put down two of the three threats. I was then able to maintain the penalties on the third remaining enemy.

When a big boss showed up, I was able to keep him debuffed the entire fight.

Cackle is also great for stretching out that debuff on a round in which you need all your actions for other things. It's also great for getting as many as three summons out at once.

Did they use Evil Eye three times? If so, that's a no-no. One hex per round until you get Split Hex at level 18.

Curious how this worked out as well. And all 9 attacks missed by 1 or 2?

And how are you getting three summons out? I can see two (full round summon, then next turn Cackle and full round summon) but how do you sustain 2 and then three-round summon again? Cackle affects one hex until level 20, and summons aren’t hexes anyway (level 20 cackle has to target a hex to get the clause to affect all hexes - cackle on a non-hex does not extend all spells or even all hexes)

Cackle effects spells, not just hexes. Since hexes are focus spells, they qualify under that umbrella as well.

To sustain two spells you would need to cackle more than once so you'd need the focus points for it though.

Round 1: Cast summon spell
Round 2: Cackle to maintain, cast 2nd summon spell
Round 3: Cackle twice to maintain first two summon spells, cast 3rd summon spell.
Round 4: Pretend to be a statue while you maintain with all your actions and let your summons do the work.

EDIT:...

Comment about Cackle and non-hexes is specific to the level 20 feat only. You can definitely Cackle to get two summons.

The level 20 feat that sustains all hexes only works if you use Cackle to sustain a hex as written. So if you had two hexes and a summons out, if you Cackle, with the level 20 feat, affecting the Summons then that cackle would not sustain the other two hexes. If you Cackle to sustain one hex, it affects the other hex but not the summon. You could ofc sustain as an action and Cackle

Zapp wrote:

My point was that casters don't have anything nearly as significant to look forward to (in loot or in spending gold). That's not fun.

Staves, wands and scrolls. They aren't always on like a striking rune is but they aren't chopped liver and are a big part of expanding a caster's options.

They’re definitely not chopped liver, but they function very differently. Having a staff or wand expands your ability to function during an adventure day by giving you additional once per day abilities. It does not increase the power of your other abilities. Which is not what a striking rune does for a melee - for a melee character, that striking rune increases the power of your bread and butter attacks, and goes all day long. And I think that distinction makes the striking rune unique for purposes of this discussion

Ravingdork wrote:

I'm really liking what I'm seeing of the witch so far. Just finished my first game playing one in Plaguestone.

When one of the PCs got surrounded by three enemies and was getting mauled by their three-action attacks, I was able to use evil-eye actions on all three to cause their nine attacks to all miss. I wasn't able to maintain all of them, but that didn't matter as the rest of the party was able to come to his aid and put down two of the three threats. I was then able to maintain the penalties on the third remaining enemy.

When a big boss showed up, I was able to keep him debuffed the entire fight.

Cackle is also great for stretching out that debuff on a round in which you need all your actions for other things. It's also great for getting as many as three summons out at once.

Did they use Evil Eye three times? If so, that's a no-no. One hex per round until you get Split Hex at level 18.

Curious how this worked out as well. And all 9 attacks missed by 1 or 2?

And how are you getting three summons out? I can see two (full round summon, then next turn Cackle and full round summon) but how do you sustain 2 and then three-round summon again? Cackle affects one hex until level 20, and summons aren’t hexes anyway (level 20 cackle has to target a hex to get the clause to affect all hexes - cackle on a non-hex does not extend all spells or even all hexes)

The issue is the dramatic shift in power level, not if its 3 or 4... maybe I’m being imprecise, but I can tell you if you’re heading into the boss fight at the end of level 4 without striking runes you feel it.