Immanence Your vision sharpens and allows you to sense an enemy's attack almost as soon as it begins, granting you a +1 status bonus to Perception checks and a +2 status bonus to your AC against ranged attacks.
Transcend--A Moment Unending (A) You take in every movement around you, allowing you to react to things you ordinarily couldn't. You gain the Reactive Strike feat until the beginning of your next turn.
I've seen a lot of chatter around this one and figured a thread might be nice to have.
Personally, this one's not my favorite for a few reasons, mostly related to the Transcend ability:
(1) Using an action to get the chance to use a reaction at the very least feels awkward;
(2) Actually, a lot of times it isn't just the one action, it's got setup beyond that to make sure you have your spark in the body ikon (either using another transcend ability, which precludes using GSaS this turn, or using an action to put your spark into the body ikon);
(3) There's an opportunity cost to using this, because if you do you're not using your worn or weapon transcend that turn;
(4) You can get Reactive Strike as a level 6 ability--I'm not sure you can retrain out of a body ikon, so a better version of this action comes at level 6 unless you're really thrilled about the +1 perception (nice)and +2 AC vs ranged (situational);
(5) Getting Reactive-Strike-but-kinda-worse is already a thing Thaumaturge gets with their weapon implement. This class is already sort of doing its own items of power thing, so I'm wondering if there's just more design space that could be utilized here;
(6) Obviously we don't have every ability that'll go live and they want feedback on what we have, but this having no interaction with ranged weapons is kind of a bummer. There's no real precision build possible with this.
I like the concept of super-duper eyes. I'm wondering, though, if it would be better to take Reactive Strike out of the equation and do something else. Other body ikons are defense-oriented, and the immanence ability of this one is all about having such good vision that things sorta move in slow motion--maybe there's something there?
I do think it's weird that your body Ikon can get Reactive Strike as a transcend ability but then you can get it all the time as a class feat at 6. I know there's a similar overlap with Diehard if you have the Scars Body Ikon and I'm not sure I like these kind of nonbos in general but feels worse for Gaze than Scars as this specifically shows up as a class feat.
Special: If you have Reactive Strike from another source, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to hit with Reactive Strike until your next turn
Also, allow Reactive Strike with ranged weapons within 15'.
I think I'd boost melee reactive strikes by +1/2 (Leaning +1 since that's still sorta big) if you have both.
As for Ranged Reactions, I think giving them reactive strikes with ranged weapons is already pretty powerful on it's own (snap shot is a lvl 6 feat for Rangers or 8/10/12 depending on your archetype) but giving them additional range atop that feels like it'd be all a bit much to me. I think I'd be cool with them just plain getting Snap Shot once they get reactive strike with the Gaze Ikon; that'd put them on par with Rangers then.
I wasn't looking at the ranged angle at all, but now that you mention it? It is really weird that the most thematically appropriate body icon for an archer has an active ability that doesn't interact with ranged combat at all.
I'd personally just go away from Reactive Strike entirely. This feels much more like a defensive ikon that should allow you to deflect attacks. This just screams "Matrix dodges" and "cut the arrow out of the air" to me. If the "1 transcend per round" was relaxed so that you could actually use a reaction like this, that'd be a really cool ability.
I like the suggestions! I also agree with getting out of the Reactive Strike space. It seems like they might be designing these abilities to be actions on the player's turn with transcendence frequency limit, but I wonder if that's too limiting and clunky.
If the abilities are balanced appropriately I don't see much issue with a rotation that lets me plop my spark onto the body ikon and have the chance to use a reaction transcendance ability on it. If I don't do the transcendence reaction I still either need an action to put it on weapon or worn, or else just keep it on body.
But for this one specifically it's kinda weird that it's the only actually offensive ability for body (Reactive Strike is still a strike, fascination is more utility than offense). A reaction to increase AC against an attack, then to fit the super sight/Neo speed idea maybe if the extra armor causes the attack to miss you get to make a step, or get quickened for the next turn?
Blind Fight as a level 1 feature could also be pretty potent, and at least it'd be sorta similar to Starlight Span's focus spell.