Considering a Vanguard slayer. What are the best teamwork feats for the tactician ability?
I'm thinking Duck-And-Cover, Outflank, and Precise Strike.
Coordinated charge. At least if you have at least 3 people doing melee. Even better if someone has a pet like a wolf.
Coordinated charge allows you to charge as an immediate action when an ally with the feat does a charge. Since you move outside of your turn and end up next to the enemy you want to attack, this can end up as a pseudo pounce.
With tactician, everyone has the feat. So one person bites the bullet and does a normal charge, and everyone else gets a free charge. Again- even better if there is some pet that has less DPR that can sacrifice its full attack so everyone else can charge. Even better if it is a pouncing tiger. If someone has actual pounce...they don't benefit, but they are perfect for helping everyone else benefit, so little actual loss since 'no one is left out'.
Overall, a fairly strong option. And it is an 'option'. You need to wait until level 10 to get it, so you can grab other options too. Maybe the battlefield isn't good for a lot of charging, or the enemies are already up close in an abush. Then, you should give a different teamwork feat. But having the option to just have everyone charge outside of their turns is great.
Stack Harrying Ally with Covering Fire, plus the abilities like the Bodyguard feat and all the buffs out there to grant all allies something like +10 AC against a BBEG each round.
Yeah... coordinated charge is kind of your mini-capstone. The midlevel capstone, which is about the level most games will reach in their later stages. Still, it is something to look forward too.
Not really a good use of tactician, but I always thought it was neat that Vanguards have Ever Ready at 7th level. Usually a good idea to suggest the Lookout feat for him and everyone else. Suddenly, everyone with Lookout always acts in the surprise round -and- with a Full-Round Action to boot.
I'm a huge fan of Lastwall Phalanx.
Prolly better with Undine Loyalty.
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Tactician is a somewhat awkward ability that is especially challenging for a PC to use effectively.
Here are the challenges I see with it:
1. Most teamwork feats really aren't that good and some of the ones that are (lookout) can't be effectively used with Tactician.
2. Tactician will usually want to be used early to have maximum effect, but your first action in combat is usually your most effective. What's better, a spirited charge that takes out bad guy or giving everyone an extra +2 to hit when flanking? How about getting in the enemy wizard's face and forcing him to cast defensively or disrupting the enemy formation?
3. Bonus teamwork feats are going to be extremely party dependent. Coordinated charge? Awesome if you have a cavalier, a magus, a battle cleric, and a druid with a pouncing animal companion in your party. Pretty useless if you party is a standard wizard, a healing focused non-combat cleric, a fighter/rogue archer and you.
It is actually much easier for tactician to be powerful on an NPC.
1. The DM can just pick the good ones.
2. You only need to be a 1st level cavalier/etc to have tactician. One low level NPC's action doesn't need to be worth nearly as much as a PC's does.
3. The DM designed the whole encounter, so all of the opponents can be designed to take advantage of the teamwork feat.
For PCs, some of those challenges can be answered too:
1. Pick the good ones. Coordinated Charge, Intercept Charge, Volley Fire, Precise Strike, etc.
2. This gets significantly better when Tactician gets upgraded to only cost a move action but until then, it's important to have useful abilities to do with your other actions. Studied target, challenge, bardic inspiration (for battle heralds), reach weapon positioned to generate AoOs etc. When the choice is "do your standard action/full round action or give tactician" it's a lot harder for it to be a good choice than it is if your choice is "... or tactician plus inspire courage and challenge or tactician plus studied target"
3. This is the hardest challenge for PCs to overcome. In some parties, it will mean that tactician becomes a backup plan rather than a primary strategy. For example, in a party that doesn't have much ranged capability, using tactician to grant everyone volley fire would not come up too often but would go a long way towards making the party able to compete when forced into a ranged engagment. Likewise, Precise Strike might be a way to help a party that is weak in melee hold up when forced into a close range battle.
It's a little unclear if tactician actually makes noise, but it still may work well with the stealth synergy feat. The hardest thing about stealthing a whole party is that with enough players, someone is bound to roll low. And with stealth synergy everyone is all but guaranteed to roll high.
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It's a little unclear if tactician actually makes noise, but it still may work well with the stealth synergy feat. The hardest thing about stealthing a whole party is that with enough players, someone is bound to roll low. And with stealth synergy everyone is all but guaranteed to roll high.
Limited use due to the duration, but definitely useful. My last game session, my players failed to sneak up on a hobgoblin fortification precisely because two or three members rolled very low. They didn't need to roll high--they just couldn't afford to completely botch it. And they completely botched it.
That's a capability that most parties won't have without tactician. Also, for a party where everyone is already good at stealth, it will almost guarantee mass surprise. Good for PCs. Great for NPCs. (Now I need to scheme an encounter with NPCs who use cavalier granted Stealth Synergy on my players).
Your party members are your companions, and unless somebody's a construct, they're all creatures. Right? ...right?
Was worth a shot? ^^