Quadratic W's page

I'm having the same issue with part 2 of the ruby fists. I can get the file with the chapters divided up into differen pdfs, but I can't get a single pdf.

Same here.

Mountain Stance seems a bit concerning.

It seems like it's the support feat for Strength-based monk builds.

But then why does it provide a static +4 bonus instead of just letting you add your strength modifier? Ability boosts seem rather generous from the playtests, and if there are any magic items that offer stat boosts, it'll just make the gap even bigger.

Why is it a stance? If you're a strength based monk, should you really need to take a big hit to AC just for trying to use any of your other stances?

Where is the payoff? The example PC lowered their Dex and raised Strength just to take full advantage of the Mountain Stance...and for what? A dexterity based monk with 18 dex would have the same AC, and they'd deal more damage since they could switch to Dragon Stance without losing any AC.

I wrote a thing about some of the most powerful and weakest options I've seen in 2e.

Just make the options something that makes playerrs go "Oh, that's cool" instead of "Oh, that sucks."

TRACKLESS STEP

When you move through natural terrains, you are difficult
to track. You and up to eight other creatures always gain the benefits of the Cover Tracks action in such terrains.

NATURE'S EDGE

You treat enemies in areas of natural difficult terrain, or in difficult terrain resulting from a snare, as flat-footed. You gain a +2 bonus to AC, TAC, and Reflex Saves while in all forms of difficult terrain.

WILD STRIDE

You can ignore the effects of difficult terrain and greater difficult terrain.

You have Resist 20 against the effect of hazardous terrain effects.

***********

Okay, now all of those? Those still aren't good. I've been playing RPGs for years now as player and GM and not once has "Did we leave tracks through the forest?" come up.

A +2 defense bonus that relies on you being in difficult terrain is still situational and it's not going to break the game, especially not when classes like fighter or paladin can just get always on bonuses to armor.

Even wild stride functioning against magical terrain and helping you wade through acid pools isn't that great.

But they're more fun. They paint the image of the Ranger as being competent, an expert in his field. He's the f!#+ing Ranger, not "some guy with a bow and a pet".

EDIT: BAsically, power attacking is the equivalent of going to Vegas, playing roulette, and calling a single number over just calling red or black.

Not quite. In that case, if your number comes up, there is a huge payoff.

It's more like being able to double your money by betting on the right color, black or red, and there's a green slot so the house can stay ahead. You're always betting on black.

Then someone takes the time to count the colors on the wheel.

"Uhhh...there are 70 reds and 30 blacks. You'll make money over the long run if you bet on red."

"Ahhh...but you won't know what it will land on until the wheel spins!"

Another problem is that it's very asymmetrical.

Enemies get persistent damage, take it once, then die because it's round 4 of the combat.

Players get persistent damage, fight through it during the combat, then struggle not to die after the combat as they're rolling around, rubbing sand in it, etc.

That is, the only way for a character to get the full bang out of their persistent damage, whether they're a pc or npc...is to not kill the target. npcs are good at doing that, because killing PCs tends to drag the game to a halt.

PCs on the other hand, when they're in a combat, their plan is to reduce the foes to 0 HP, and it's hard to strategize around not doing that just to...inflict some extra damage.

That's not at all what the rules say.

https://vgy.me/C48Gg4.png

It says it adds weapon dice, not "increases your weapon die". And increasing your weapon die by adding more dice would be more than a bit counter-intuitive.

Note that even with a 1d12 weapon, you're going to be better off making a normal attack followed up by a -5 attack in nearly every situation, since not only do you lower the chance of overkill, you DEAL MORE DAMAGE ON AVERAGE.

The only niche use of power attack is when you're stuck attacking an enemy resistant to your damage type, where dealing a bunch of damage at once is more optimal.

I agree with this, and to summarize the point simply

All classes receive the same base amount of general, ancestry, class, and skill feats. Rogues get some extra skill feats.

The variety within the classes come from their class feats, features, and spellcasting.

Spellcasting is awesome. The class features that other classes receive instead of them are garbage by comparison.

So it's the scaling DCs of 4e...but with a static DC table too. One based on a "how difficult is this?" back of the envelope question rather than a "let's add up all these modifiers and see what comes out" approach.

Honestly, that's so elegant I wonder why 4e never thought to use it.

After the really cool feats we've already seen, this seems like a massive step backwards.

Is a critical success for balancing on a moving ship or swimming going to matter compared to a normal success most of the time? I think a pirate would care more about not failing, turning a normal failure into a success.

Holding your breath for a few minutes is fine but taking a feat for that is a huge investment when you're going to want to use waterbreathing magic 95% of the time anyways.

Boarding Action is just absolutely awful. You have a slightly upgraded version of the charge feat...that only works once in an encounter...and it has to be on a boat...and you have to be the one boarding the other ship. It's near prone shooter levels of bad design.

"It lets you close the distance to your foes, and if you move from one ship to another during this move, you can make a strike that deals extra damage!" Yeah, being able to Stride twice is good for closing the distance...but you could also spend those two actions it costs to...Stride twice. Or one action to swing on a rope!

Compare

Take the 4th-level feat Quick Reversal, for example. If you are being flanked and you miss with your second or third attack against one of the flankers, this feat lets you redirect the attack to the other target and reroll it, possibly turning a miss into a hit!

to

Lets start out with a few classic concepts. At 1st level, you can pick up a feat that allows you to spend your reaction to counterspell any spell someone else casts as long as you currently have that spell prepared. If that isn't to your taste, you can take a wizard feat to recruit a familiar instead. Every day, you can select a pair of abilities to give this loyal companion, some of which grant you boons as well. At high levels, your familiar can even grant you an additional spell slot, as long as it is 3 levels lower than the highest-level spell you can cast. At 8th level you can select from a series of feats that enhance the power of your arcane school, increasing your pool of Spell Points and granting you an extra spell you can cast using that pool. One of my favorites is the necromantic power called life siphon, which lets you draw some of the magic from a non-cantrip necromancy spell you cast to regain 1d8 Hit Points per level of the spell.

The exciting Fighter feat they showed off was Quick Reversal, a godawful feat that requires a ton of luck and pity from a GM to activate with a frequency of more than once a campaign, while the feats that wizards are getting let them shut down other spellcasters, cast bonus spells--imagine how broken a feat that was simply "once per day, your fighter can cast Haste" would seem to people--and other powerful effects that are relevant and easy to find a use for.

If the design goal really is to narrow the gap between martials and casters, it seems like there's a big missing piece of the puzzle.

So it looks like at third level, a cleric will have

Channel Divinity and Domain Powers
Two class feats
3 1st level spells
2 2nd level spells
X number of cantrips

Meanwhile, from the Fighter Preview, it looks they get

Attacks of Opportunity
+1 bonus to attack rolls
2 class feats

That can't be right, can it? My impression was that right now classes gain a class feat on even levels, class features and skill feats on odd levels. But I'd assumed that spellcasting would cut into the resources of a class, but it seems to be given about the same weight as a slightly larger hitdie.

The biggest concern would be that with the way higher power spells have an easier time overcoming lower level spells, the gap between full-casters and everyone else might grow a bit more. As well, if a Fighter or Rogue gain access to a cantrip in 5e, that cantrip grows in power as they do. But because those classes generally don't gain caster levels, it seems like those classes would be stuck with a 1st-level version of cantrips for the whole shebang.

I have some concerns.

The wording of Quick Reversal makes it sound something like

"Once per round when you are flanked and miss an attack after your first one, you can make another attack against the enemy opposite of your target with the same penalty."

Best case scenario, you're getting an extra attack every single round, which sounds great.

But! You've got some real hoops to jump through to benefit.

1. You need to fight more than one enemy. Let's put the probability of that at 66%, with 1/3rd of encounters being up against solo threats or when you're on the last rounds cleaning up the final enemy.

2. When you are up against two or more enemies, you then need to draw the attention of at least two enemies. Let's put this at 40% because even if you can sudden charge, enemies are going to want to go after the squishies, not waste their attacks on the muscle-head.

3. Now that you've got their attention, you need them to flank you. Flanking gives a +2 bonus, so we can make this 75%. A#+!+#$ DMs could of course avoid flanking you altogether so that you couldn't ever trigger the feat, but we'll not think about that.

4. Now that you're flanked, you need to attack and miss. -5 and -10 penalties, so this should be pretty easy. Let's put it at 65% chance to miss.

5. Okay, your feat has triggered! You finally get to make that extra attack! Unfortunately, you've only got a 35% chance to hit with it.

Combine all of these (what I think are pretty conservative) probabilities together and you end up hitting with an extra attacks worth of damage once every twenty rounds.

Compare that to a +1 damage bonus that could trigger multiple times per round, and as cool as the flavor of this feat might sound, it screams TRAAAP to me.

1. As the existing ability, but activating the power that grants you an extra turn requires you to expend 2 uses of your mythic power.

2. The bonus to your initiative changes to an amount equal to your mythic tier. In addition, you can spend one use of your mythic power to gain an extra standard action on your turn.

3. You can spend one use of your mythic power to gain a +20 bonus to your initiative check. At any one time during the combat, you can decide to take an additional standard action on your turn. After you do so, you initiative changes to what it would be without the +20 (you do not get an additional turn that round, your initiative just moves).

4. As option 3, but the bonus you gain to your initiative is +10 and your spot does not move after you spend your one free bonus standard action.

1. Definitely a step in the right direction.

2. My only problem is that then unfairly benefits casters because it takes away the ability to perform a full attack. But, it does cut down on bookkeeping. Maybe you could change it so that the extra standard action spellcasters get can only be used to cast a spell 2 levels below their maximum?

3. Kind of confusing and fiddling with initiative is not really fun.

4. The main problem with 3 and 4 is that you have to decide if you want to use the ability before the combat starts. Ideally, it should be something you can activate if something unexpected happens.

My suggestion:

You may spend two uses of mythic power as a free action to change your position in the initiative to the last in the round. You take your turn as normal, take another turn at the end of the round, and take your turn last on every following round.

Easy to track, still incredibly powerful, but a bit more expensive and not something you can spam even with points to burn.

I think that with Mythic abilities, it should be about doing things that you just can't normally do. So boosting a skill check isn't really mythic, because there are plenty of feats, class features, and especially magic items and spells that will boost your skills already. Anyhoo, contributing!

In the Shadows: By expending a point of mythic power, the trickster may leave the party to continue on their own. At any time in the next 24 hours, the trickster may then reappear before the party, appearing from a concealed hatch in the ceiling, a secret tunnel, or even a normal entrance like a window. The trickster may also reveal himself as any NPC with half his level or lower, explaining that it was him in a clever disguise all along.

Always liked that stunt in FATE.

Treasure Stash: The trickster gains a stash of treasure equal to his current wealth by level in copper and silver coins. He may only use this extra treasure to purchase non-magical goods and services. Whenever you gain a level, your stash increases by the corresponding amount. Many tricksters keep their stash stored in large city banks, personal mansions, or the like.

Just the Thing: By spending a point of Mythic Power, a trickster may pull out a magic item with a cost up to their mythic rank x 1000gp. The magic item is actually a cheap knockoff that they purchased or "purchased" at a bargain and breaks down after five minutes of use.

It seems to be by far the most boring path, which is a shame because it's the one I was the most excited about by a large margin. Lots of its path abilities seem to need a lot of work.

Assured Drinker: Take an extra turn or drink a potion as a swift action. It's an okay ability, but definitely not at the level of the path abilities of the others.

Assured Skill: Not sure of many situations where this would be useful. In combat, you're obviously going to have better options. Outside of combat, most checks aren't that binary anyways.

Astounding Disable: Big step in the right direction. Being able to go from 2d4 rounds to a move action is definitely more mythic.

Critical Skill: Most skill checks don't really take that much time. In most situations, there's absolutely no difference in whether you do something in 10 minutes or 5 minutes, 6 days or 3 days. And most importantly, most of the time you're not going to roll a 20. This is one of the most circumstantial abilities I've ever seen, the point of being almost useless.

Critical Tinkerer: And this one is even more circumstantial.

Defensive Move: It's nice as it is. Rather than being forced to take it twice, why not make it scale with your mythic tier though?

Enduring Elixer: Handy.

Fickle Attack: It works out to a half a point of damage for each d6 in exchange for more than doubling the time it takes you to roll and add up your damage. Not worth the hassle.

Improbable Prestidigitation: Lots of fun. Swipe the amulet and make it vanish. Hide your daggers and smaller magic items as you're infiltrating the prison. And so on. I don't really see the need for the Sleight of Hand check though and it's one of those things I wish would scale with your tier.

Itemcraft: Maybe someone else can see how a 1-5 boost in caster level is worthwhile, but I can't. And what charged items are so valuable that they'd make it worth it to use your mythic power to fuel them?

Majestic Countenance: It fits well enough.

Path Dabbling: Clearly the best path ability ever, not much else to be said.

Ranged Disable: Useful and full of style.

Supreme Stealth: The fact that those senses can make your stealth useless in the first place is harsh enough. Being forced to take this 4 times for full coverage is just painful.

This Might Just Work: Useful enough, except for the whole 1/day or mythic power bit.

Unwavering Skill: It's okay.

All in all, these feel more like rogue tricks or alchemist discoveries rather than MYTHIC powers. In my mind, a mythic rogue should be able to slip out of a forcecage, empty a king's treasury or a dragon's hoard like a magic trick, run along water, walls, falling debris, or even a hail of arrows with ease, and steal thing's like a wizard's name or a dragon's heart without the target even realizing.

In more specific terms, I'd like it if the Trickster had more options that focused on mythical levels of agility, deception, and thievery rather than this kind of weird focus on slightly boosting skill checks and using consumable magic items.

Is it just me, or does Amazing Initiative and Recuperation seem to be a much, much more efficient use of mythic power than the vast majority of abilities that require you to spend points to use them?

I mean, the only time when acting twice in the same round wouldn't be the best use of your points would be if you wouldn't need or be able to act later in the round, say if you knew you were going to be knocked out or paralyzed or killed or simply knew that the party would do the same to whatever threat was in your way. In other words, either situations where you're almost certainly going to lose or almost certainly going to win without effort. Neither should be very common, but in such a situation such "burst" damage from the various abilities might conceivably be able to help.

But in vast majority of situations, just compare. You could use the Champion's Fleet Charge ability to trade a swift action for a move and single attack with a slight bonus. Or, you could spend a point to get a full turn, complete with a swift action and a full attack.

Other abilities don't fare as well. Through Shot is really cool, very cinematic and clever. But unless you're up against a legion of orcs attacking in single file, two volleys of full attack actions is always going to be a better use of your limited resources.

And that's the problem. The bar for any ability becomes "must be worth at least an extra turn within a round" and that's just way too high. Instead of taking these cool abilities, they're dumped in favor of more reliable and boring ones that will at least be of use.

Factotum is already a pretty great class that doesn't require much work.

I would give her the PF Trapfinding and make Opportunistic Piety work the same as Channel Energy.

Then, make Arcane Dilettante give you a new spell at every even level: 2, 4, 6, etc.

Finally, drop Cunning Strike down to level three and make it scale, so that at level 5 you deal 2d6, level 7 is 3d6, etc, with the caveat that you can only use it once per attack.