I really appreciate how there is some intended synergy between wandering feats with lore requirements and the apparitions that give those lores. I would love to hear about how people have used some of these.
The one I really want to like but it doesn't work is Roaring Heart with River carving Mountains. Neither one of these abilities on their own is anywhere near the top power levels of what Animists can do, so it is a real shame that you can't benefit from using these two abilities together or even in the same round. Which is too bad because Roaring Heart does kinda work for Earth's Bile: You can move and push a 2 foes into places to take advantage of your area of effect spells. Right now I don't think most players are looking at that as an option because players are racing to just want to throw down 2 or 3 Biles as fast as they can and then they are stuck spending too many actions a turn to do any 2 action activities. With Earth's Bile, I strongly suspect that the fix is going to be that you can't over lap areas to affect the same target more than once in a round, which will also de-incentivize trying to spam cast the spell and just sit around sustaining as many versions of the spell as you can every single encounter. I don't think this because I think it is too powerful an option (if it is, it is only so by a small degree), but because doing exactly the same thing with every action for an entire encounter is boring class design.
But it would be cool enough to actually see happen in play if the benefits of River Carving Mountains could apply to the movement of Roaring Heart. Yes the +5ft status bonus to speed stacks, but status bonuses to speed are a dime a dozen and +5 from level 1 to 20 is not great. Roaring heart takes 2 actions so any round you want to use it while sustaining your River Carving Mountains, you basically get nothing. People generally don't love battlefield control options that only move people around or create difficult terrain, so I don't think we'd be exceeding any power options by letting a character gain the difficult terrain benefit from River Carving Mountains while completing the move and push options form Roaring Heart.
Any way, what are some of the combos you've tried or want to try or wish you could try?
I know Embodiment of battle and Grudge strike has been getting a lot of talk. And Spirit Walk and discomfiting whispers would be good together against haunts if you ever were going to trigger haunts with Spirit walk, if only because making haunts/traps roll twice and take the lesser roll is about the most effective way to keep them from critting everything to death.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm not really a fan of the Embodiment of Battle and Grudge Strike combo. Especially if that is all that is taken. Embodiment of Battle takes one action to sustain, and Grudge Strike takes two actions to use. That leaves nothing left.
So it then becomes nearly mandatory to also take Sustaining Dance and probably some Leap distance improvements in order to keep any enemies in range for your one attack.
And now we are looking at an Apparition choice, and at least three feats. That is a lot of build power to sink into the one tactic. A tactic that also feels very much like a one-trick. Is this something that the player is going to change up regularly as the needs of the adventure change? Or is it instead the hammer that they use to treat everything like a nail?
-----
The one I like the look of the best isn't necessarily a synergy with my own abilities though. It synergizes with allies.
I like Spiritual Guidance. A once per battle reaction to retroactively add a fortune effect to a failed attack roll. My Swashbuckler and Magus allies will love that.
I want there to be a cool way to use discomfiting whispers and Shadows within Shadows together in class, because they feel like they were designed to fit together but right now the only way is to cast invisibility. That is a good one, and one you can use a lot by the point you get shadows within Shadows, so maybe it is enough. Some kind of mist type spell or feat to hide in plane sight feels like it would be really cool too, but maybe just unnecessary.