|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Howdy! I'm currently in the process of playing through/just finished a speedrun of the Slithering Module with an Exemplar. My build was running the following feats/options from levels 5-7:
-Noble Branch Ikon (Bec de Corbin, picked up Shifting at 6 to swap Polearms as needed; Born of the Earth Epithet later taken)
-Thousand-League Sandals Ikon
-Scar of the Survivor Ikon (With Mournful Epithet)
-Vow of Mortal Defiance (taken at fourth)
-Claim Domain Initiate (Trickery)
-Tested with both Motionless Blade for Level 6 and Reactive Strike at Lv 7.
Noteable character options that worked with the build were my racial feats (Orc Toughness, Mist child to boost Concealed miss chance to DC6 against me), the Tomb Born background (Reaction to Strike when hitting unconscious)
General thoughts:
-The class is fun! Rare for a playtest! I really enjoyed the more active thought required here in regards to most martials. One thing that stood out to me in character building and in play was that due to the class's action economy and base power, I didn't really find myself wanting to use many abilities outside of my core class option loops. Some more options for Weapon Transcendence would be appreciated for lower levels to add a bit more versatility. Maybe something to encourage doing Atletics checks with the weapon, so that you could Trip/Grapple/etc while still doing your rotations? Had a Necklace of Fireballs, didn't want to use it that much due in part to it not contributing to my Ikon cycling (and partly due to being limited to Polearms and not having the free hand).
-Not sure why Spirit Strikes come online 2 levels earlier than Weapon Spec. I'll take it I guess.
-Skills bad, not sure if I'm a fan of them being Paladin skills but I'm not too torn up over it.
Thoughts on the build feats:
- Mournful Scar is excellent and feels great as a survivability tech. Half Level*d8 healing plus auto Dazzle one target is amazing in 1-v-1's (especially with Mist Child boost). All around amazing option, and was effectively allowing me to 1v1 a Jungle Drake that had me grappled and flown away from the party. There was an extended section of Part 3 where I was in a grudge match with an Aurumvorax that had me grabbed and prone while the other party members were desperately trying to slow Cursebreaker; the Ikon effectively enabled me to tank it's insane rake for a lot longer than I was expecting.
- Noble Branch is kinda bad compared to the other weapon ikons. The raw damage with no save/no attack roll is neat, but the Transcend ability relying on your first strike having hit is bad. As-is, I'd much rather just have the Power Attack analog from the Hammer Ikon, since it does a functionally similar effect for the same functional action economy and still changes your ikon on a miss. There were a lot of rounds where I was forced with Branch to either waste my last action to swap Ikons, or attack with Map and be forced to stay in Weapon Ikon. Just feels like a weaker choice than Hammer and I'm not a fan.
- Thousand League Sandals are great, full-stop. GM thought they were maybe too strong when compared to similar effects; as-is I think it's fine since Loose Time's Arrow exists for similar action investment at level 3, without burning the party's Reactions; especially noteable for our Champion when they were using it to engage. Depending on the GM call, it can end up being a bit weaker if they don't let your party generate Reactions until their first turn, so YMMV a bit.
- Motionless Cutter is also bad. I asked the GM to retrain it out for the ole' reliable Reactive Strike between Parts 2&3 due to it requiring too much investment to function. Unlike a standard 3a, you have to already be in position for 2 (4?) enemies to be within your range while also being in Weapon Ikon already. This is already a lot of setup, but on top of that bad rolls ruin the effectiveness by stopping you from doing the full bevy of attacks. The one time I was able to use it through the difficulty of setup, I ended up only using it to chop down a single mook (the villain of the encounter used a Reaction to throw said mook in the way of my first strike, then bounced strike 2 to that same mook, strike 3 to a different mook, and strike 4 back to Poor Bastard) and it required burning a hero point midway through to get the last two attacks off. I'm not a fan of an ability requiring a hero point to feel reliable. As-is, I feel like there could almost be like a stacking damage bonus applied to the later attacks and it would still feel questionable.
-Due to circumstances, I was only able to use Born of the Earth once, but it was enjoyable in that instance.
Thoughts on feats I didn't take and why:
- Peerless Under Heaven: I hate it, read the thread, it sums up why. Flavor-wise it's the best for this character but it's transcendence is just... bad.
- Hurl at the Horizon: Would have taken but the lack of Returning made it a hard pass. I want to throw my polearm but not if it takes two actions to retrieve.
Wasn't interested in a ranged build, maybe later.
Will playtest more in the future. Good first impression overall!
|
|
Thanks for the write up. Been thinking about Noble Branch... as you say the damage is pretty weak compared to the the other options, but also the transcend not being guaranteed. I've been thinking about this second point a bit.
Since transcending is generally strong for its action economy, and its a limited resource (1/turn), a turn where you dont transcend is a "bad" turn. With Noble branch, activating it is not guaranteed, which can essentially waste your spending the resource. It can also throw off your next turn because it messed with your ability to move the spark.
Much has been said about Reap's terrible mechanics, but it also needs dtating that it has the issue of not being a guarnteed use of your spark.
I guess the one current benefit of Branch over Axe is that if you miss the initial strike, you can 1a swap spark to a different Ikon and still have the action to Transcend it, whereas with Axe your miss was your transcendence so you wasted the 1/round already. Pointing this out since I did at least have reliably good fallback options in regards to Mournful Scar and TLSandals, although I generally found these turns still felt like the lowest points of Mt experience given how often they were coming up due in part to awful rolling (and three rounds spent unsuccessfully trying to roll a 14 while pinned to the ground by an Aurumvorax). Personally I'd prefer the option to transcend out of the weapon even if the previous strike hadn't hit (maybe something like reducing the damage output but make it push the target back 5ft automatically with no hit requirement or 5/10ft any direction if the previous strike was a hit, leaning into the flavor of the Polearm Crit Spec default option?)
Side note, but we actually got a surprising amount of mileage out of using the Sandals speed boost to increase Leap distance, since spe30 increases a horizontal leap distance by 5ft. This was likely due in part to having an Animist in the party (Sustaining Dance is a heck of a drug), but it also made for some clean navigation around field hazards in a surprising number of instances.
|
|
I started a separate thread to discuss the issue of the spark being stuck where you don't want it when you miss with the initial attack.
My quick response is that if you really wanted to Transcend Body or Item in a turn when it started in the Weapon, you could do that regardless of having Noble Branch. The only benefit of Noble Branch is in the niche where you think the Transcend damage is more valuable than doing other action X, but other action X is better than just a second Strike. So if you hit you transcend, but if you miss you do X. I find it hard to believe there are many scenarios where you can find this action X.
Agreed, generally. The other action X in our run and confounding factor for this example was named [Mournful] No Scar But This. There were almost no turns where I figured that attempting a second Strike with MAP would be better than flexing to Scar and using its Transcend to both Dazzle my opponent and heal with no check required. That said, I don't know if by this logic I would have even been better off using my Weapon Transcendence in the first place unless we were desperate to finish off an enemy, as the extra survivability is just that good.
So in the game, it might be better to classify No Scar But This as an Action A, an action you're better off taking in all circumstances over an option that ranges from niche use to trap option.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just wanted to stop by and say a big thank you to Falgaia for taking the time to write up their playtest. It makes so much more sense when you can see things being applied “live” rather than white room/theorycraft.
Every class needs to "sell" itself to every potential player. Before experimenting with which class to take, every player analyzes it by theorizing its abilities first, and only then can try it out in practice. Especially if we consider that in the vast majority of games you cannot change characters at will.
So for me, both theorycraft and actual gameplay are important. There's no point in a class being cool to play, but failing to pass this information on to what it could be, or being cool in theory but bad in practice.