Reducing Redundancy

[Golurkcanfly]

While the Exemplar's Ikons have many flavorful abilities, quite a few are redundant with existing feats already available to the Exemplar, either by temporarily granting the feat or by granting a similar benefit to an existing feat. While class features/feats that grant other feats are nothing new, the fact that these other feats are granted temporarily changes things. Temporary feats don't count for prerequisites and taking the feats permanently results in "wasted" abilities, which never feel good.

Some of these effects, like the Gaze Sharp as Steel's Transcend ability (which grants AoO/Reactive Strike) are powerful, but the Exemplar already has native access, so if you take the Reactive Strike feat (which is pretty much a must-have for melee martials), it feels underwhelming to have one of the main benefits of your Ikon be completely pointless. Instead, these Ikons should either grant more unique effects or improve the effects of the feat if the Exemplar already has them.

An example where this could be applied would be Skybearer's Belt, which grants an effect similar to the Titan Wrestler feat. Unfortunately, any character already interested in using Athletics maneuvers is likely going to take the feat anyways, and the feat actually ends up better once you hit Legendary in Athletics. Rather than granting a redundant effect, the Ikon could grant the feat or give a +X to those Athletics maneuvers if the Exemplar already has the feat.

[ElementalofCuteness]

That is one of the silyl things I have noticed from Exemplar, many abilities seems to either try to enhanced the character buy opening more feat options which just add to the whole, power-creep from people been saying bout it but also makes it feel less specialized which is it's self an issue.

Some effects are just plan bad like Gaze Sharp as Steel Transcended ability feels pretty mediocre but where I think the real kicker is is Skin Hard as Horn, forced DR against 1 damage type of Slashing, Bulgeonign ro Piercing...So you roll a 1d3 your opponent will have a damage type you can reduce.

Not to mention on Stream they mentioned, the Hero in just a Toga or unarmed heroes...Where are those options?

[Falgaia]

Golurkcanfly wrote:

Some of these effects, like the Gaze Sharp as Steel's Transcend ability (which grants AoO/Reactive Strike) are powerful, but the Exemplar already has native access, so if you take the Reactive Strike feat (which is pretty much a must-have for melee martials), it feels underwhelming to have one of the main benefits of your Ikon be completely pointless. Instead, these Ikons should either grant more unique effects or improve the effects of the feat if the Exemplar already has them.

An example where this could be applied would be Skybearer's Belt, which grants an effect similar to the Titan Wrestler feat. Unfortunately, any character already interested in using Athletics maneuvers is likely going to take the feat anyways, and the feat actually ends up better once you hit Legendary in Athletics. Rather than granting a redundant effect, the Ikon could grant the feat or give a +X to those Athletics maneuvers if the Exemplar already has the feat.

Agreed. Redundant effects should stack, especially if they are redundant with later class abilities. Perhaps the Gaze Sharp as Steel could improve the AoO to interrupt on a successful Strike, rather than a crit (see Inventor's Unstable Distracting Explosion (lv 10) for a potential precedent) or similar boost. The Titan Wrestler example works well; the Leap the Falls feat is similarly weak in this regard, as it gives you two skill feats only while sparked, so it could potentially stack with those feats to add additional Leap range without being too busted, imo.

[OceanshieldwolPF 2.5]

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

Not to mention on Stream they mentioned, the Hero in just a Toga or unarmed heroes...Where are those options?

Someone mentioned in another thread that Michael Sayre said the unarmed hero is/will be fully supported, just not in this playtest packet.