When I was reading the Inventor with the rest of my group of players, there where no complains about the INT bonus part. The problem was the Unstable characteristics. The player that tried Inventor during the playtest was quite down with that changes. I tried to persuade him that it was basically a high risk Focus mechanic. But he said that you can get until 3 focus points, but only 2 unstable (more or less) and specially, there are way too many feats with unstable for something that basically is only 1-battle. And I had to concede the point, honestly.
Most of the Unstable abilities are situational or once per battle abilities anyway. Unless your player wanted to use Unstable Megaton Strike as its default attack.
Also, Focus powers are meh... Unstable powers are on par with the strongest focus powers.
And unlike casters, your main schtick is to bash things with a stick, which doesn't cost you any resources. As a side note, it may be the reason why champions only get 2 focus points per refocusing at most.
Also, in addition to the action failure ( you lose an action because you tried ) you get a penalty which stacks the more you push.
I don't understand that sentence. What penalty? And what action failure?
Well, same could be said about the ranger and the monk
I hardly see a Ranger ever taking even the first one. Its focus powers are mostly buffs or situational. The Monk is the only martial who has real reasons to get to 3 Focus Point per refocusing.
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Also, in addition to the action failure ( you lose an action because you tried )
No you don't. You make the check after resolving the action's effects and you can't attempt a second one at all if you fail that check.
You never lose actions, although sometimes you'll take fire damage.
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The 18th level armor power that allows you to reduce damage by 50 with an unstable action is pretty powerful. Doing that 2x or more per battle makes armor inventor the most defensive character in the game at that point imo.
Even without going up to 50 damage reduction, 15 for just a reaction is already a lot on a character that can get a resistance to nearly every type of damage.
In my opinion, a level 18+ Armor Inventor is nearly unkillable.| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Also, in addition to the action failure ( you lose an action because you tried )No you don't. You make the check after resolving the action's effects and you can't attempt a second one at all if you fail that check.
You never lose actions, although sometimes you'll take fire damage.
"Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you're on fire."
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I will say that one of my players has gotten Statistically unlikely lucky with their unstable checks, she keeps rolling high, and one time even managed to chain 3 Searing restorations in a roll, and another time chained 2 of them. So the Flat Check is pretty high but it could in theory give you more uses then focus spells in a fight, and in theory much sooner. I know this is like an anomaly but it is possible.
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Just a mention for those who say megaton is unstable.
It's not.
Its default is basically like power attack, then it has a booster effect that makes it even better if you add the unstable trait to it.
I really like that, think it's amazing:
https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3059
I will say that one of my players has gotten Statistically unlikely lucky with their unstable checks, she keeps rolling high, and one time even managed to chain 3 Searing restorations in a roll, and another time chained 2 of them. So the Flat Check is pretty high but it could in theory give you more uses then focus spells in a fight, and in theory much sooner. I know this is like an anomaly but it is possible.
20% chance means statistically you should be milking a second use out of it every 5 battles, which feels roughly comparable to being able to spend a second focus point once per day. (5 encounters a day isn't an unreasonable baseline.) So in practice you're probably comparable to a character with two focus points until level 12. Luck pending of course.
I kind of wish the armor innovation had the comfort trait. One of my players wanted to have his armor built into his body. I handwaved the sleeping issue, because it is a pretty small balance concern. But I think the small buff would have enabled a few more concepts.You can treat it like the Automaton feat Reinforced Chassis "You can never wear other armor or remove your chassis; however, you still don't become fatigued from sleeping". What's interesting is the Conrasu heritage Rite of Reinforcement as it runs into the same issue: it's exoskeleton is medium armor but it's not given the ability to rest in armor.
It has the comfort trait. Look that up.
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I have played, and seen people play, characters who voluntarily start with a 16 in their "attack stat' and it's more or less fine. Like if your Gnome Champion does not want to spring for voluntary flaws in order to start with an 18 Str, you'll be fine seriously.
Now if you want to play a Str/Dex Inventor with an Ancestry with a Str/Dex flaw, you might need to use voluntary flaws but a 16 is fine.
I kind of wish the armor innovation had the comfort trait. One of my players wanted to have his armor built into his body. I handwaved the sleeping issue, because it is a pretty small balance concern. But I think the small buff would have enabled a few more concepts.You can treat it like the Automaton feat Reinforced Chassis "You can never wear other armor or remove your chassis; however, you still don't become fatigued from sleeping". What's interesting is the Conrasu heritage Rite of Reinforcement as it runs into the same issue: it's exoskeleton is medium armor but it's not given the ability to rest in armor.It has the comfort trait. Look that up.
I know what the trait does, I just missed that trait when I glanced at the entry.