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I’ve been thinking about Life Tap. It is a spell that I like, so I want to judge its power to see if it’s actually weak or not. And then I remembered Soul Siphon exists and is the perfect analogue.

Soul Siphon does 1/2 1d4 void damage per rank on a successful save, 1d4 void damage per rank + drained 1 on a failed save, and 2d4 void damage per rank + drained 2 on a critical failure. The spell grants temp HP equal to half the damage it does including drained.

Compared to Life Tap that is

1.125 vs 1 damage per rank on a successful save
3.5 vs 2 damage per rank on a failed save
7 vs 3 damage per rank on a critically failed save

And

.625 hp (rounded up) vs 1 hp healed per rank on a successful save
1.75 vs 2 hp healed per rank on a failed save
And 3.5 vs 3 hp healed per rank on a critically failed save.

Okay, so it looks like soul siphon easily had the advantage in damage, while life tap has the advantage in healing between the additional flexibility and mostly better numbers.

…

Except Soul Siphon is only one action. I think that really illustrates the problem with Life Tap. These abilities shouldn’t be roughly equivalent while Soul Siphon has half the action cost. Life Tap either needs its damage/Healing buffed or its action cost nerfed.

I would prefer the former because I would rather not have a near carbon copy of Soul Siphon on two different classes.

I think the problem with Taunt is that you are only politely asking the enemy to hit you. Make Taunt only a -2 penalty, no saves. But if the enemy does not attack you, you get a reactive strike against it.

At the table there is a big difference between "please hit me" and "I dare you to hit the wizard". The enemy now has a dilemma, attack the guardian with very high AC or attack the low AC wizard and eat a reactive strike.

That’s just Paladin with extra steps. It’s nice, but we already have Paladin.

I don’t want Guardian to have a charisma dependency frankly. Champion already has that for their divine smites and whatnot and I would rather that not all big knight defender classes in the game need it.

I feel like the commander should be able to command their horse, but the minion rules don't seem to allow that. If that is the case, and the commander can command their horse, then I can see why their mount animal companion progression would be somewhat delayed, because they would have the action compression of moving their mount and using a tactic on their allies from level 1.

I have a couple of questions, please, if you don’t mind:

1. Is there a replacement for the Bulette? I know the Krooth is relatively similar but I was curious about if they made a full replacement.

I didn't see a 1 to 1 analog, but the adamantine dragon does the bulette's gimmick. They have an ability to burrow through the ground, leap out and bite something.

Water:

--- Conclusion: I'd take this for the healing and/or forced move. One of the auras is also pretty nice from a debuff standpoint... though the heavy use of overflow (and three-action overflow specifically) makes liking it for its auras not necessarily all that great. Everything else would be something that I adjusted to because I wanted those things, rather than being a thing I wanted for itself.

No one has really talked about water yet, so I wanted to contest this.

2 action overflows that leave you an action to recover your aura/stance. These are fairly self explanatory. You can use these and still put your aura back up.

Then there are 3 action overflows which don’t. All of them, including the composite 3 action overflow, have a range of at least 120 feet. Water is the only element that consistently has effects at this range, as most elemental impulses sit around 30-60 feet. And this is well outside the range in which Winter Sleet, Water’s main combat stance is relevant.

The 3 action impulses impair vision and/or affect movement that slow down enemy approaches and make ranged enemies miss. The exception is the non-flavor capstone which is a gap closer.

In close range, water switches gears, enters one of its really good stances and sticks to 2 action overflows which are on more of the short range side in order to continue to mess with enemy movement, provide off-guard, and fish for slows on as many enemies as they can.

A more dedicated healer might use sea glass instead, but I think water needs outside support to manage it, medic dedication or wood.