I'm looking to broaden the palette of Improvisation choices for one of my players who's playing an Envoy. As they level up we're finding the existing selection not always useful or especially tantalising. I've come up with a few ideas, most of them repurposed from "Ambassador Gambits" in Hyperlanes (the lesser-known D&D 5e counterpart of Starfinder, for those who may not know).
See below. Feedback and critique is appreciated. Do you have any homebrew Envoy Improvisations of your own?
Fast Talk (Any Level)
You are gifted in the use of speech patterns that baffle and boggle the mind. If you initiate a conversation with a sentient creature outside of combat rounds, you may keep them from moving and/or attacking for so long as you continue to speak.
If a creature engaged in this way is confronted with danger, they may escape your entrancement, but only after succeeding in a Will save against a DC of 10 + half your Envoy level + your Charisma modifier. This ability may be used at vehicle or starship scales if you are in communications with the target.
Go! I'll Cover You! (Any Level)
When performing Covering Fire or Harrying Fire actions in combat, the circumstance bonus your allies derive from the action is equal to your Charisma modifier rather than being the standard +2.
Leadership (2nd Level)
You are a natural leader capable of bringing out the best in a team when the chips are down. As a standard action in combat, you can roll to aid another on a skill check or attack roll; if successful, your bonus also applies to one additional ally attempting that same skill check or attack. At 13th level and above this becomes a move action.
Rousing Speech (2nd Level)
Beginning at 2nd level, you can spend 1 Resolve Point and use oration to help revitalize your wounded allies during a full rest. If you or any allies who can hear your speech regain hit points at the end of a full rest, each of them regains additional Hit Points equal to your Charisma modifier. At 9th, 13th, 17th and 20th levels, you can an addition +1 bonus to HP healed with this ability.
I Believe in You! (6th Level)
Your ability to inspire others with your stirring words now allows you to gift them with Inspiration bonuses on skill checks, attack rolls or saving throws. As a standard action you can spend 1 Resolve Point and select any ally who can hear you within 60 feet; that ally gains a d6 Inspiration die to be used for any skill check in which they have ranks, or for any attack roll or saving throw, within the next ten minutes.
These Inspiration die function like Expertise die for the Envoy: the ally can roll the die and add the number rolled as an insight bonus to one skill check they make. The ally can wait until after they roll the d20 before deciding to use the Inspiration die, but must decide before the GM says whether the roll succeeds or fails. Once the Inspiration die is rolled, it is lost.
An ally can have only one Inspiration die at a time. At 9th, 17th, and 20th levels, allies add a further +1 to this Inspiration die (cumulative). At 13th level, the die becomes a 1d8.
Envoy For All Seasons (8th Level)
Your experience with people from many different walks of life and disciplines gives access to abilities you would not otherwise have. In place of an Improvisation, you can select a bonus Combat Feat and a 2nd-Level Operative Exploit.
Taken again at 14th and 20th levels, this allows access to one more bonus Combat Feat each time and a 6th and 10th-level Operative Exploit respectively.
Improved Leadership (8th Level)
Your use of Leadership is now a free action equivalent to combat banter, and it confers a circumstance bonus on the associated skill checks or attack rolls equal to your Charisma bonus.
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Fast Talk (Any Level)
You are gifted in the use of speech patterns that baffle and boggle the mind. If you initiate a conversation with a sentient creature outside of combat rounds, you may keep them from moving and/or attacking for so long as you continue to speak.If a creature engaged in this way is confronted with danger, they may escape your entrancement, but only after succeeding in a Will save against a DC of 10 + half your Envoy level + your Charisma modifier. This ability may be used at vehicle or starship scales if you are in communications with the target.
This one is pretty broken. It should require the save or a successful skill check to fascinate / immobilize them to begin with, and then they automatically break free if in obvious danger or attacked. Requiring a save to break out when in danger would be a higher level upgrade requiring a second slot spent on it.
Go! I'll Cover You! (Any Level)
When performing Covering Fire or Harrying Fire actions in combat, the circumstance bonus your allies derive from the action is equal to your Charisma modifier rather than being the standard +2.Leadership (2nd Level)
You are a natural leader capable of bringing out the best in a team when the chips are down. As a standard action in combat, you can roll to aid another on a skill check or attack roll; if successful, your bonus also applies to one additional ally attempting that same skill check or attack. At 13th level and above this becomes a move action.
I'll Cover You seems fine. Leadership I would actually change in either of the following ways...
A. Aid Another is a move action for you. At 13th level, you can Aid Another as your reaction when an ally takes an action you wish to Aid.
or
B. As a standard action, you can Aid Another and grant two allies a +2 bonus to their actions. These do not have to be the same action. At 13th level, you can do this as a move action.
Rousing Speech (2nd Level)
Beginning at 2nd level, you can spend 1 Resolve Point and use oration to help revitalize your wounded allies during a full rest. If you or any allies who can hear your speech regain hit points at the end of a full rest, each of them regains additional Hit Points equal to your Charisma modifier. At 9th, 13th, 17th and 20th levels, you can an addition +1 bonus to HP healed with this ability.
This works kind of weird. You get your resolve points back after a full rest anyway, and I also have trouble seeing someone giving a rousing speech for 6-8 hours. It'd be more useful and make more sense if you were able to help people heal hit points during a short rest, which is something that they normally can't do. Maybe spend a resolve point during a short rest, and everyone who spends a resolve point to heal during that rest also gets to recover Hit Points equal to their level + your Charisma modifier.
I Believe in You! (6th Level)
Your ability to inspire others with your stirring words now allows you to gift them with Inspiration bonuses on skill checks, attack rolls or saving throws. As a standard action you can spend 1 Resolve Point and select any ally who can hear you within 60 feet; that ally gains a d6 Inspiration die to be used for any skill check in which they have ranks, or for any attack roll or saving throw, within the next ten minutes.These Inspiration die function like Expertise die for the Envoy: the ally can roll the die and add the number rolled as an insight bonus to one skill check they make. The ally can wait until after they roll the d20 before deciding to use the Inspiration die, but must decide before the GM says whether the roll succeeds or fails. Once the Inspiration die is rolled, it is lost.
An ally can have only one Inspiration die at a time. At 9th, 17th, and 20th levels, allies add a further +1 to this Inspiration die (cumulative). At 13th level, the die becomes a 1d8.
Envoy For All Seasons (8th Level)
Your experience with people from many different walks of life and disciplines gives access to abilities you would not otherwise have. In place of an Improvisation, you can select a bonus Combat Feat and a 2nd-Level Operative Exploit.Taken again at 14th and 20th levels, this allows access to one more bonus Combat Feat each time and a 6th and 10th-level Operative Exploit respectively.
I Believe In You seems fine. Envoy for All Seasons though, whew. A bonus feat AND a class feature from another class? Just make it the latter.
Very useful feedback. Thank you!
I think you're way better off fixing the improvisations we have, first. For example, most of yours rely on the Envoy's Charisma - something most of the current talents ignore or seriously downplay. Envoys would be in a far better place if they were designed to rely on good charisma scores, instead of primarily relying on them for resolve points.
Just taking the L1 Improvisations:
Clever Feint is basically Greater Feint with a LOT of nerfs heaped on - it's range limited and sense dependent. The other benefits of the ability reward failure, rather than success, on the check - the total opposite of how a good ability should be defined.
Dispiriting Taunt shares Clever Feint's overall problem, although the specific nerfs are worse, and it does increase your demoralize range.
Both of the above should be redesigned to revolve around an envoy who is good at Bluff and Intimidate, and should focus on improving Feint and Demoralize.
Don't Quit, Get'Em, Look Alive, and Watch Your Step ignore the Envoy's Cha bonus. WHY? Makes absolutely no sense, and totally unnecessary - Get'em, Look Alive, and Watch Your Step all provide a numerical bonus, and Don't Quit, Look Alive, and Get'Em have durations. Plus, Don't Quit suppresses conditions from a menu, so it could have a way to suppress multiple conditions without fundamentally changing flavor. It's not like there's no way to make these use a better charisma score to be better.
Expanded Attunement and Universal Expression are special cases, but it seems very strange for the first to be ally specific and the latter to be enemy specific - I seriously doubt, for example, that it would break Universal Expression to allow it to work on allies, too.
As I said, most of the improvisations that exist are fundamentally designed around dump-statting charisma, and that's the low-hanging fruit for improving envoys, I think.
I was tempted to agree with the above, but actually on review of the RAW Improvisations there are only about seven of them that I think require an over-specific set of circumstances that would make them not worth taking, or of questionable value:
- Expanded Attunement,
- Duck Under (a super-specific-set-of-circumstances one, although I guess it depends on how important the Reposition combat maneuver is for your play-style),
- Watch Out (the reason for this whole exercise),
- Heads Up,
- Desperate Defense (surely you're screwed if you really need this one often enough to justify taking it),
- Situational Awareness (built for a very specific play style) and
- Sustained Determination (usefulness would depend strongly on party composition).
I went into some detail about the ins and outs of this but the board ate the post, so you get the short version. ;) I do agree that more Envoy powers could leverage CHA more directly but actually looking at the way most of the existing ones are built, I can't find fault with them (don't agree with you about Clever Feint for instance). Adding powers to compensate for the Questionable Seven above, and hopefully broaden selection beyond that, would seem to be the way to go for me.
Here's the version of the new Improvisations that I posted in my game. I'll report back on how they work out.
Report-back #1: So, my group just did a first run with the use of Leadership as outlined in the "final" draft document linked above. It proved to be a useful, even decisive, ability for the Envoy, who was able to employ it at just the right times for the maximum effect for his comrades. I kind of screwed it up a little, strictly-speaking, rules wise because I forgot it was a standard action and not a move action, but I can already see how it will still be a key ability moving forward once we've corrected that. Very much on-brand for an Envoy who's also captaining the group's starship.