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This might just be me, but the transcend-cycling between ikons often leads to a sequence of a great turn followed by a distinctly less great turn.
I used a Gleaming Blade greatsword Exemplar with the Brave root epithet, Palisade Bangles and Skin Hard as Iron. There was only time for a quick 3rd level scenario with my brother, basically a GM-off. Both of us were using multiple characters, one PCs (Exemplar, Fighter, Cleric and Bard) and the other monsters (2x crocodile and 3x weak crocodile). Btw, crocs are really scary once they have you grabbed.
Anyway, I had this hypothesis in my mind already when starting, this wasn't a real party and only a single combat, so take this with more than a whole tablespoon of salt.
Now, what my Exemplar usually did was use Gleaming Blade's transcend action - which is awesome btw - and then go into the Bangles, ending their turn. The last action was usually spend on movement either before or after the transcend. That was the great turn. On the next turn, after the bangles more than once prevented a crit on the Exemplar or the Fighter, you kinda just.. transcend out of your body ikon into your weapon ikon for one action, then usually move and sit there with a regular Strike as your last action. This isn't actually terrible, but compared to the other turn, it doesn't feel like you are really... doing anything. The bangles offer the possibility of getting the enemy to you, but as expected the Fort saves on a croc said "no" most of the time. In any case, the body ikon feels a lot more humble and small than the weapon ikon.
One part of this is that regular Strike. It goes without saying that the two-action transcend activities shouldn't be able to be spammed every round without a cost, such as Shift Immanence as a dead action. But the contrast of the awesome move and then the lame, plain Strike feels bad. My fingers are instantly itching to grab something off of another class to at least have the option of using something more interesting here. I'd like more in-class options here, just so the "off" turn doesn't feel so lame in contrast.
The real problem is when your initial transcend action completely fails, though. This happened only once, thankfully. Because then it basically feels like you have two "bad" turns in a row, as the lack of luck from the first cascades into the second, leaving it feeling even less impressive. You don't have the first impactful turn to prop you up, after all.
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This might just be me, but the transcend-cycling between ikons often leads to a sequence of a great turn followed by a distinctly less great turn.
I used a Gleaming Blade greatsword Exemplar with the Brave root epithet, Palisade Bangles and Skin Hard as Iron. There was only time for a quick 3rd level scenario with my brother, basically a GM-off. Both of us were using multiple characters, one PCs (Exemplar, Fighter, Cleric and Bard) and the other monsters (2x crocodile and 3x weak crocodile). Btw, crocs are really scary once they have you grabbed.
Anyway, I had this hypothesis in my mind already when starting, this wasn't a real party and only a single combat, so take this with more than a whole tablespoon of salt.Now, what my Exemplar usually did was use Gleaming Blade's transcend action - which is awesome btw - and then go into the Bangles, ending their turn. The last action was usually spend on movement either before or after the transcend. That was the great turn. On the next turn, after the bangles more than once prevented a crit on the Exemplar or the Fighter, you kinda just.. transcend out of your body ikon into your weapon ikon for one action, then usually move and sit there with a regular Strike as your last action. This isn't actually terrible, but compared to the other turn, it doesn't feel like you are really... doing anything. The bangles offer the possibility of getting the enemy to you, but as expected the Fort saves on a croc said "no" most of the time. In any case, the body ikon feels a lot more humble and small than the weapon ikon.
One part of this is that regular Strike. It goes without saying that the two-action transcend activities shouldn't be able to be spammed every round without a cost, such as Shift Immanence as a dead action. But the contrast of the awesome move and then the lame, plain Strike feels bad. My fingers are instantly itching to grab something off of another class to at least have the option of using something more interesting here. I'd like more in-class...
I can see this issue, i havent tested the class yet, but I think the issue here lies with the other ikons being a little underwhelming. I do hope they tune them up a bit especially the body ones. I think that also having more feats that give alternate trascend abilities for your ikons could help. Currently building a exemplar and the temptation to pick up an archetype is strong.
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In my mind, a very common desire will be for an Exemplar to find a specific spot to plant themselves and then repeat the following sequence ad infinitum:
Action 1: Shift Immanence from Body to Weapon
Action 2/3: Transcend Weapon, shifting back to Body.
This will let them use their "defensive" Ikon when it's not their turn, and their "offensive" Ikon big ability every turn.
This feels like it runs the biggest risk of the "illusion of choice" of any class to date, at least in my mind, since this rotation would potentially feel almost mandatory if you want to do "the cool thing" as often as possible.
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I don't think the issue is in the core design here, but in how underwhelming some of the non-weapon options and their Transcendences are.
Ideally, you should be pressing one "cool button" almost every round, with the tradeoff that you can't always use the same one. However, Thousand-League Sandals, Skin as Hard as Horn and Scar of the Survivor are the only non-weapon ikons with Transcendances you can reliably use and feel good about using.
With the correct build, you should almost never be manually switching, but it's not hard to build yourself into a trap where both your Body and Worn ikon are super situational (or straight up bad) and you have to manually put your spark on weapon to access the good one again.
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I've run a few playtest combats with an archer exemplar, and the trouble I've run into in my post-weapon transcendance turns is that as a ranged combatant I'm not necessarily within 15' of allies, and I'm not necessarily taking hits. I can turn on Victor's Wreath for more personal accuracy, but it's hard to transcend out of it.
So I'm basically flipping between +damage and +accuracy, which is okay but not exciting. My third ikon is Scar of the Survivor, which I'm mostly going to use for its healing transcendence.
Prior to getting Through the Needle's Eye at 4th level and Binding Serpent's Celestial Arrow there's not a lot of reason to transcend out of Fated Shot since it's not always possible to hit 2 things with a 5' burst. I would take a different ranged ikon if I could.
I don't think the issue is in the core design here, but in how underwhelming some of the non-weapon options and their Transcendences are.
Ideally, you should be pressing one "cool button" almost every round, with the tradeoff that you can't always use the same one. However, Thousand-League Sandals, Skin as Hard as Horn and Scar of the Survivor are the only non-weapon ikons with Transcendances you can reliably use and feel good about using.
With the correct build, you should almost never be manually switching, but it's not hard to build yourself into a trap where both your Body and Worn ikon are super situational (or straight up bad) and you have to manually put your spark on weapon to access the good one again.
I think that the problem is the both in core design and underwhelming of some Ikon.
In core design I think that only able to benefit from just one Ikon per round limits the utility and versatility of non-weapon Ikons too much. If you was able to keep some effect of Ikon that don't are with your Spark (like making Immanence fully passive) or give some ability that allows you the keep one of them working for some extra time (like a "Lingering Composition" to keep them working for 3-4 rounds without the Spark) this would increase their utility a lot.
For other side is possible to simply get better non-weapons ikons and have more non-weakon ikons improvement feats too. But this still keep the problem that you will basically focus in the same Ikon almost all time during encounter and maybe another during exploration mode.
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I don't think the issue is in the core design here, but in how underwhelming some of the non-weapon options and their Transcendences are.
Ideally, you should be pressing one "cool button" almost every round, with the tradeoff that you can't always use the same one. However, Thousand-League Sandals, Skin as Hard as Horn and Scar of the Survivor are the only non-weapon ikons with Transcendances you can reliably use and feel good about using.
With the correct build, you should almost never be manually switching, but it's not hard to build yourself into a trap where both your Body and Worn ikon are super situational (or straight up bad) and you have to manually put your spark on weapon to access the good one again.
I think that the problem is the both in core design and underwhelming of some Ikon.
In core design I think that only able to benefit from just one Ikon per round limits the utility and versatility of non-weapon Ikons too much. If you was able to keep some effect of Ikon that don't are with your Spark (like making Immanence fully passive) or give some ability that allows you the keep one of them working for some extra time (like a "Lingering Composition" to keep them working for 3-4 rounds without the Spark) this would increase their utility a lot.
For other side is possible to simply get better non-weapons ikons and have more non-weakon ikons improvement feats too. But this still keep the problem that you will basically focus in the same Ikon almost all time during encounter and maybe another during exploration mode.
I agree that it's a bit of both. A few things that come to mind:
1) Given that the "Defense" ikon is the one you'd normally want active between rounds, it means that the "Utility" ikon will actually only rarely see use, especially given that-
2) The 15 foot aura of the "Utility" ikons means that you essentially need to be in the thick of things for this to actually provide benefit, but in order to provide that benefit you have to turn off your defense-oriented ikon, meaning you're leaving yourself more vulnerable.
3) There is some minor overlap, but generally speaking the only ikons that grant offensive bonuses are the weapon ikons. Thematically this make sense, but as both the OP, others and myself have noted, this leads to either a "good turn bad turn" cycle, or you run the risk of someone doing the "shift-transcend-repeat" cycle I mentioned earlier to spam out the weapon transcendence every turn.
A few potential fixes I can see
A) Have Ikons grant some benefit when not 'invested'.
B) Increase the base aura radius of the Worn Ikons to make it a little more forgiving.
C) Have several Worn/Body ikons have more slightly more compelling effects.
D) Provide a feat or ability later that allows more than one Ikon to be active at a time.
E) Provide a Reaction option to switch your spark, which would allow you to keep your "utility" ikon active but switch to your "defense" ikon if s*~# starts hitting the fan.
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I think that the problem is the both in core design and underwhelming of some Ikon.In core design I think that only able to benefit from just one Ikon per round limits the utility and versatility of non-weapon Ikons too much. If you was able to keep some effect of Ikon that don't are with your Spark (like making Immanence fully passive) or give some ability that allows you the keep one of them working for some extra time (like a "Lingering Composition" to keep them working for 3-4 rounds without the Spark) this would increase their utility a lot.
I mostly agree with you here. I’m not sure if having all ikons be fully passive or passive for 3-4 rounds would be balanced though atleast as is. It could give you boosts similar to a swashbuckler almost permanently.
I had been thinking what if transcending out of an ikon let the passive to linger until the end of your next turn. I think it’d be likely optimal to atleast use all of your ikons in combat even if one is your least favorite. For this to work the additional ikon feat would have to be reworked though.
isn't every transcend just need 1 action reload after use
if player have 2 transcend they want to switch between than they don't need to pay reload action tax
feel like every other class that require reload
The Magus makes it work by having that "reload" action usually do something as well and by their Spellstrike being very, very powerful. That way, even if you have to spend an additional action (if you can), that cost feels justified. Of the weapon ikons, the only one that is overall comparable in power to a Spellstrike is Gleaming Blade's Mirrored Spirit Strike.
And the Gunslinger simply doesn't really make it work in the first place. At least not to a point where it feels smooth and satisfying to use, not to mention being competitive.
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isn't every transcend just need 1 action reload after use
if player have 2 transcend they want to switch between than they don't need to pay reload action tax
feel like every other class that require reload
I understand what you’re saying. I think the problem is that the only one that feels like its worth using every turn is the attack one, so you’d have to waste an action each turn to use it.
And the other classes like magus for example can recharge their big attack while doing more useful stuff (Like using focus their focus spells) instead of literally wasting an action.
And even if wasting the action to spam power attacks is still viable it’s boring and uninteresting.
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Just by feel, broadly speaking the Exemplar is a single step or two away from a really well-flowing combat performance. Just a few little additions to round things out and a little WD40 and we are golden. You can always adjust numbers to be better, but this part is really impressive already!
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Just by feel, broadly speaking the Exemplar is a single step or two away from a really well-flowing combat performance. Just a few little additions to round things out and a little WD40 and we are golden. You can always adjust numbers to be better, but this part is really impressive already!
I largely agree. I think their should just be more incentive to use the other transcendences. I think if there was a way that you could get the weapons passive without needing to be currently using the weapon ikon, it’d be possible. Because then you’d be doing atleast decent damage (similar to a passive swashy i think), and using the other transcendences for utility or defense will make up for the damage loss.
There could just be buffs to non weapon ikons instead, but i’m not sure if how it could be balanced in a way that feels satisfying, since you’d be paying i heavy damage tax to do it. And that still leaves the “people don’t use other ikons problem”
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My worry is if you try to give some passive bonuses, then presumably the actual Transcend effects would need to be neutered to keep the same power budget. I would rather the designer's buff the other Ikons so you also feel good using them.
I'd be okay purposefully choosing in my turn to give up some of the damage to get a cool support effect. Would be a nice niche bouncing between high damage, high support, high utility since the average would be reasonable. I think right now, maybe it just feels like bouncing between high damage to mid damage + circumstantial benefit.
The way I'm looking at it is in comparison to Kineticist.
"Is This Transcend action equivalent or better than a 2 action overflow"
And in a lot of cases it's coming up short. Especially given how much of the Exemplar's power is focused into the three ikons, 2/3s of which is inactive at any given point in time.
Kineticist has a ton of abilities that are active at all times, while a vast majority of Exemplar abilities only function while a given Ikon is active. And at first blush, even when a given Ikon is active, nothing seems like it's particularly over-tuned.
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E) Provide a Reaction option to switch your spark, which would allow you to keep your "utility" ikon active but switch to your "defense" ikon if s#&@ starts hitting the fan.
I like this one very much though maybe as a Focus spell.
I could also see each Ikon have an Lingering Echo effect that provides a lesser benefit after switching your Spark that would last until the end of your next turn or something like this.
I thought an effect where you keep your immanence effect for one round after you transcend would be cool
But others it's the design of (largely) the transcend effects of most body and worn ikons
They are either niche or weak or both
Being able to self heal is great. It's still niche because someone else could have healed you (I'm aware that this treads a little too close to the idea of one relying on the support character).
Victors transcendence is very powerful but still niche.
In order to create a character that will reliably transcendence and not shift, you need generally useful abilities that are useful enough to warrant using them over shifting back to *stronger double slice*
Even if shift just let you move half your speed it would be a million times better
Being able to self heal is great. It's still niche because someone else could have healed you (I'm aware that this treads a little too close to the idea of one relying on the support character).I mean honestly because it uses dice instead of a flat number there is a chance you're going to need healing even after you use it.
And it's equivalent of single action heal. Still good. But yeah