Overdrive and reliability

[Dubious Scholar]

I'm writing this coming off a playtest session of 1-14 with two inventors in it.

Between them, I think they failed 2/3 of their overdrive rolls. One of them hero pointed to dodge a crit fail (and mercifully flipped it up to success).

I don't like that this class feature is unreliable. Yes, variance in outcome is thematically appropriate, but the failure rate and failure states are awful. At level 3, I believe the best possible roll is +11 against DC 18. That still leaves a 1/3 chance you spend an action for literally no result.

Adding 2 damage for a minute is a strong outcome, for sure. The crit success of 4 damage is extremely good, and there are nice class feats to support this, leading to a capstone of being able to overdrive the entire party at once... although the scaling of the ability makes it much less exciting at that point.

For a bit of comparison, look at the Precision Ranger. They get 1d8 bonus damage on their first hit each turn against their prey. That's 3.5 on average. This requires no skill checks and is active indefinitely for a single action that doesn't even have to be used during combat depending on the situation. They can share that for an action per turn at level 8 and permanently by 14 with Shared Prey. It scales up to 3d8 by 20, which vastly outperforms Overdrive's mere 3/6 damage cap (and applies lesser dice on subsequent hits still). Overdrive is behind at level 3 and can't even compete at 20 (the action economy of Hunt Prey isn't a major drawback with two-for-one strike actions and such coming at level 1). I will grant, though, that rangers are more martially focused, so a stronger damage boost is perhaps acceptable.

So this leads me to two issues I have with Overdrive. First, it isn't reliable. Watching a party member burn their whole first turn just powering up their core damage buff because they got unlucky is painful. Second, it doesn't scale well. If you've got 18 int it's a decent boost, but with 16 or less I'm not sure it's even worth using at level 3 (and inventor has lots of stuff that doesn't care about that). And at higher levels I'm not sure it's ever worth the action and roll against a scaling DC that basically requires crafting be taken to master+.

[shroudb]

Precision ranger is not a good comparison since you need to spend an action for each enemy for 1 hit per round, as opposed to 1 success for the entire combat.

a much better comparison would be something like Rage.
Given the drawbacks of rage, we can't expect it to be an equal amount for sure, but still, comparing to the basic rage (fury instinct) both start at 2 damage, but fury caps at 12 while overdrive at 3/6 (by level 15 you should have a very good chance of critting the roll, having around +30 vs DC of 34, so 15% of 0, 50% of 3 and 35% of 6 gives us an average of 3.6damage for 1 action)

if we could somehow guarantee the scaling to be around ~6-8 damage at those levels instead of 3-6 i think it would be a much "fairer" action for its action cost.

Going by this logic, if early levels it's "fine" but it only falls off in higher levels, maybe a small addition with Crafting ranks would help bridge the gap, like:
"if you are Expert in Crafting add 1 additional damage on all results except critical failure, if you are Master add 2, if you are Legendary add 3"

That way it also gives a tiny bonus even if you fail (but not critically fail) the check at higher levels to alleviate the feeling of spending an action for literally nothing.

that increase would also bump the average damage up from 3.6 to 6.45 which i feel is a good amount for level 15

[Loreguard]

@shroudb
I kind of like your idea, however alternately I also was wondering if it would be better for Overdrive to be more consistent on what it provided via damage in general. Having crit succes instead of doing more damage, have the effect last longer. That way it would be easier to add a note at the end of the weapon attack block line saying +2dmg if under overdrive.

Instead of having overdrive do 1/2 INT bonus on success, and INT bonus on critical success, potentially have overdrive provide 1/2 INT bonus to damage on 1 handed weapons and unarmed strikes, and INT bonus damage to 2 handed weapons, or weapons with the two-handed property used 2-handed.

Alternately, if you wanted to give a crit success something in overdrive something other than lasting longer, give it a status bonus to hit, or let the bonus apply as an item bonus to attempts to use a weapon that has a trait that enables one of the combat maneuvers. or have a flavorful option an inventor chooses for their overdrive at 1st level that affects their crit success overdrives.

[Lethoras]

I feel like Overdrive needs to pack more of a punch considering that it works essentially like a barbarian rage with a failure chance.

I would suggest that it should give the INT bonus on a success and reset your invention for unstable actions on a critical success?

[Loreguard]

Resetting Unstable status is an interesting option to reset unstable. I am going to guess that with the options at higher level to push the number of unstable activations they can use without a roll for failure, they might not want to reset all those activations, but stepping it down one might makes sense as a bonus.

I'm wondering if another bonus that Overdrive might be able to grant would be allowing the Overdrive bonus to count as an Item bonus for Combat Maneuvers that the Innovation (weapon or construct) has the corresponding trait. (allowing the overdrive bonus to be applied to disarm rolls if it has the disarm trait, etc)

This would give the Inventor boosts on being able to preform some of these maneuvers, if they are properly prepared for to preform them. Such actions generally don't cause damage, so the bonus would otherwise not apply to them. Yet one of the key features of the class is to grant their innovations some of these traits. This might give the inventor a bit more reliable uses of their features in general.

Perhaps, armor innovations choice might tie specific maneuvers to their chosen invention, and allow the boost to increase the DC of that maneuver check against the wearer during overdrive.

Of note, the failure state on Overdrive means that you spent an action, but no damage was done to you and you can try again, potentially immediately.

I didn't get to play enough to actually experience missing the Overdrive check, in fact just missed a critical by one on my first check. But the experience wasn't otherwise memorable, and forgot to apply the damage bonus. (used the action for it because I didn't feel like moving up to the monster to just let them attack me without them moving, since I couldn't attack them that round)

A couple other options that might make it feel like it would be more worth it as an action (more reliable) would be one of the following. Make the Failure action provide a +1 bonus until the end of your next round. It is nothing to write home to mom about it, but it is at least a slight bonus. (continue to allow the action to be retried again)

Another option, as an Unstable Reaction, when the inventor makes their Overdrive roll and gets something other than a critical (success or failure), they have the option to treat it as if they had just used their unstable ability once, and improve the degree of their success by 1 step. This could make Critical Successes more common, but at a cost, and could avoid failures in key moments, but again, at a cost.

[Var Sardos]

My big problem with Overdrive is that, as a class feature, it only gets marginally better as you level.

If you start with a 16 Int as an Inventor, you're looking at +1 damage on a success (+3 on a critical success) until level 5. And then the value never gets better (failing acquisition of an Apex item).

And if you start with a 18 Int, it's +2/+4 until you hit 10th level, at which point it's +2/+5, and then 20th level, where it's +3/+6.

The problem is, as the success of it is based on the standard DC for your level, at best, you have a 25% chance of it failing. Yes, even at 20th level.

Okay, technically, at 20th level, if you have a 22 Int, you have a 5% chance of a critical failure, a 20% chance of a normal failure, a 50% chance of a success, and a 25% chance of a critical success.

[Captain Morgan]

Var Sardos wrote:

My big problem with Overdrive is that, as a class feature, it only gets marginally better as you level.

If you start with a 16 Int as an Inventor, you're looking at +1 damage on a success (+3 on a critical success) until level 5. And then the value never gets better (failing acquisition of an Apex item).

And if you start with a 18 Int, it's +2/+4 until you hit 10th level, at which point it's +2/+5, and then 20th level, where it's +3/+6.

The problem is, as the success of it is based on the standard DC for your level, at best, you have a 25% chance of it failing. Yes, even at 20th level.

Okay, technically, at 20th level, if you have a 22 Int, you have a 5% chance of a critical failure, a 20% chance of a normal failure, a 50% chance of a success, and a 25% chance of a critical success.

The main improvement is probably that you have a higher chance to crit succeed, I imagine.

[Exocist]

Not sure how you’re calculating that failure chance - are you forgetting to account for an item bonus to crafting? At level 20 you should have +37 (+20 level, +8 legendary, +6 int, +3 item), meaning a 10% failure (of which 5% iis crit failure) chance. The problem is, for one action, it just doesn’t do anything at level 20. +3 damage is pretty much nothing by then, +6 is slightly better but it’s still unlikely to crit (better than at level 1 by a lot, but still only 40%).

[Var Sardos]

Exocist wrote:

Not sure how you’re calculating that failure chance - are you forgetting to account for an item bonus to crafting? At level 20 you should have +37 (+20 level, +8 legendary, +6 int, +3 item), meaning a 10% failure (of which 5% iis crit failure) chance. The problem is, for one action, it just doesn’t do anything at level 20. +3 damage is pretty much nothing by then, +6 is slightly better but it’s still unlikely to crit (better than at level 1 by a lot, but still only 40%).

The Standard DC at level 20 is 40.

Without an item bonus (and I'm not sure what item would give me a +3 to Crafting checks while in encounter mode, but I haven't gone over every item in the books), you get a +34 to Crafting checks (+20 from level, +8 Legendary skill, +6 Intelligence.)

On 1, you get a critical failure. 5% chance
On a 2-5, you get a failure. 20% chance
On a 6-15, you get a success. 50% chance
On a 16-20, you get a critical success. 25% chance.

If you are able to get that +3 item bonus in combat, then yes, it removes 15% from the failure chance, and adds 15% to the critical success chance.

But yes, overall, Overdrive is underwhelming. I sort of understand that it can't be automatic, given that there are feats to grant the bonus to one or more allies, but it wouldn't hurt it to have automatic improvements.

Like, make it a free action, tryable once per round (unless you critically fail). Or add +1/+2/+3/+4 to your damage bonus based on your skill in Crafting.