Is Taste Blood worth it on a gymnast?

[ThatGuyDM]

Considering a 3 feat tax line down the dhampir path. While I'd happily take it with Ancestral Paragon, without it I'm not sure how good it is, especially since fangs can't precise strike. The grapple trait would enable me to potentially grapple three foes at once for what that's worth.

I could see it as part of a crit-grab, finisher/strike, tb action routine, though lining those up seems pretty rare.

The other difficulty is that the base ancestry the dhampir is attached to, Shoony, has Scamper underfoot that seems pretty good. What do y'all think? Is it worth the lineage feat tax to get Taste Blood further down the line for a gymnast, especially when they could've started with +1 Tumble Through instead?

[breithauptclan]

Whether it is worth it or not depends on exactly what you are trying to accomplish. I've said before that combat optimal isn't always the same as fun optimal.

There is definitely some anti-synergy going on with the Fangs not having either the Agile or Finesse traits that are needed for Swashbuckler Precise Strike to work. That puts Confident Finisher and Bleeding Finisher (and perhaps a couple others - I haven't checked them all) as being unusable with the fangs as well. Those Finishers require that the attack used qualifies for Precise Strike damage. There are other ones that don't such as Unbalancing Finisher and Impaling Finisher.

So with that in mind, this feels like an alternative to do when you either don't have panache or don't want to try to gain it. You can instead make a fangs attack and gain some temp HP. More options is generally a good thing. But I don't know if it would be better than a +1 to Tumble Through. That is a judgement call for each player to make.