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simpetar wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

It may be helpful to think of the combination of (sustain+swarm attack) as being roughly equivalent to a cantrip. You're doing something vaguely resembling cantrip damage, and you're taking two actions to do it. Obviously there are a lot of ways in which the details are different, both for and against, but it might be a useful place to start from, mentally, for figuring out the value proposition.

Thank you, that sums up really nicely where my frustration came from. I really do want to like it, the concept is cool, and want to make it work.

When you have to resort to spamming cantrips, you are usually desperately out of resources and scraping the bottom of the barrel. But even then you can choose to take a pause and do something else. Not so much with swarm, you cannot take a "round off", else the swarm will dissipate: 3 action abilities are completely off limits, and if you use a 2 action ability, the remaining action is wasted more often than not. You will be left with 1 action abilities. While those can be strong and impactful (some focus spells, battle medicine, heck even the most basic strike), are rarely as interesting as the other options.

In simpler words: 2 action cantrip (that you can cast whenever you feel like it) is different from 1 action useful swarm attack + 1 mandatory action you cannot forego, lest you loose it.

This is fair... but you're also not seeing the upsides. Like...

- The damage is a little low (usually on a cantrip you'd get another d4), but party-friendly 2x2 is pretty nice as a targeting area for a cantrip goes.
- For a lot of martials (the target audience for this thing) one-action abilities are their bread and butter. Sure, they may have two-action abilities (if they buy them with feats), but their primary limitation of that variety is MAP, rather than the hard limit of only one two-action ability per turn.
- It scales without further investment, off of a stat you already care about. Class...

Thank you, those are all great points, haven't thought of it that way.

It may be helpful to think of the combination of (sustain+swarm attack) as being roughly equivalent to a cantrip. You're doing something vaguely resembling cantrip damage, and you're taking two actions to do it. Obviously there are a lot of ways in which the details are different, both for and against, but it might be a useful place to start from, mentally, for figuring out the value proposition.

Thank you, that sums up really nicely where my frustration came from. I really do want to like it, the concept is cool, and want to make it work.

When you have to resort to spamming cantrips, you are usually desperately out of resources and scraping the bottom of the barrel. But even then you can choose to take a pause and do something else. Not so much with swarm, you cannot take a "round off", else the swarm will dissipate: 3 action abilities are completely off limits, and if you use a 2 action ability, the remaining action is wasted more often than not. You will be left with 1 action abilities. While those can be strong and impactful (some focus spells, battle medicine, heck even the most basic strike), are rarely as interesting as the other options.

In simpler words: 2 action cantrip (that you can cast whenever you feel like it) is different from 1 action useful swarm attack + 1 mandatory action you cannot forego, lest you loose it.

First of all, I love the archetype's concept! I tried to devise few builds on paper and then got to try 2 of them (one based on flurry Ranger, another based on wood kineticist, both using FA) out in a short game.

And I hit a brick wall:

1. The action tax is insane. One action alone is needed to keep the swarm going, each and every round, and if you fail, it becomes unusable for a minute (usually rest of the fight). Another action to make the swarm actually do something offensive.

2. The swarm is very slow. Unless you are fighting a horde of zombies, the swarm will never catch up to enemies who decide to outrun it. If enemies want to move away, even Weaver's Web cannot stop them: they need to end their turn in the web, not start in it. In addition, allies are immune to the swarm's damage, but not effects; your friends will get webbed too.

3. Every offensive action except the basic Bite and Sting has Flourish trait. If you sustain the swam and have it do something fancy, you cannot use other compressed actions to make up for what you lost.

4. The swarm shares your health like an eidolon. However, if you want to capitalize on what it does best (dealing damage to multiple enemies at once) and drop a fireball, you get punished.

In conclusion: if you use the swarm's to its potential, you are precluded from most of your base class's abilities. If you use your strong class abilities, you will be either wasting actions on the archetype or not benefitting from it at all.

Can something be done to make the archetype work? Am I missing something here?

Hampering Sweeps is utterly broken:

1. It is automatic, no check or DC is involved, let alone Incapacitation trait.

2. There is no limit on number of affected enemies, as long as they are within reach. There is no size restriction.

3. It is a level 2 feat: it can be easily and cheaply picked by multiclassing into guardian once that option is available.

Hampering Sweeps is in many scenarios better taunt than Taunt, the class feature. As long as guardian's allies can keep their distance (either with using ranged attacks / abilities, or reach weapons), the hampered enemy or enemies have virtually no other option but to attack the guardian or use ranged abilities themselves (which is rare). Unlike Taunt, enemies don't get any bonus to do so and they are physically unable to attack allies, instead of getting penalty.

The only time I wouldn't would be for something that has a really large addition bonus (so something on the scale of: a feat that doubles your reach distance instead of just adding to it, combined with the Extending rune).

Well, the hatchet example was a simple one, in order to illustrate the query. The example could go far beyond that, grabbing Axe Thrower from lumberjack (another +10 ft), Impossible rune (another x2), and who knows what else. At what point does that fall into the "this is too much" category, even though the build spent 3 feats from 3 different classes or archetypes, and 70k gold on a lvl 20 rune, that all do essentially the same thing :)

I can't help it, but I'm bit puzzled by the Subtle trait. It has a nice description alright, but doesn't imply interaction with other game mechanics. Counterspell may be off the table, but what about Reactive Strike? The Subtle trait doesn't say it suppresses Manipulate or Concentrate traits for purposes of triggering reactions. If I use Conceal Spell, and then my enemy interrupts the casting (that they were supposedly unaware of), the feat failed its job.

It would be nice to have more clarity on what the trait and feat(s) can and can't do.

Hi,

can someone please shed some light on the order of operations when different modifiers affect an ability?

example 1: I have a hatchet with Thrown 10 ft trait. Then pick up Strong Arm from rogue (+10 ft), and Far Shot from ranger (x2). What is the final range increment?

example 2: Kashrishi with +3 con can hold breath for 8 rounds. Then the character picks up Mental Sustenance (+5 rounds), and then Breath Control (x25).

There are many examples like that (for instance the new shield runes and champion Shield Ally increase, and more), too many for my taste for a generic "Ask Your GM" ad hoc ruling. All I could find on this topic was a general rule on more than one multiplication, but nothing on addition.