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Why is this once a minute?
This is a level 12 feat. Please realise that a Champion gets a second reaction a round at level 14, a Fighter does two Reactive Strikes at 10, and a Rogue can be using Preparation to get 2 Opportune BackStabs or Nimble Strikes as well.
Intercept Strike is weaker in some senses than the Champions Reaction and both the Rogue options. Intercept Strike is self limiting as you take damage from it. It does not need a Frequency limit at all, let alone one per round. Once per minute is a big nerf to the Guardian.
Are you trying to make us use Intercept Foe? Looking at it closely the Guardian has a lot of reaction options. Most are useful. The trade off between them is interesting.
The fact that the Guardian can get so many reactions I think is the problem. With Boundless Reprisals especially, you could be Striking without MAP once per enemy turn, which under certain circumstances might have you exceed the damage output of even a Fighter. I do agree it makes the feat less exciting than it could be, and contributes to Intercept Foe feeling like a much better alternative to Intercept Strike, but I can understand the reasons behind limiting the counter-Strike to once per minute.
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It doesn't need the -2, that is in built in the weapon proficiencies and it is too high level to be poached
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The fact that the Guardian can get so many reactions I think is the problem. With Boundless Reprisals especially, you could be Striking without MAP once per enemy turn, which under certain circumstances might have you exceed the damage output of even a Fighter.
I don't want to see how you are building your fighter that doing less damage despite its huge hit advantage.
Guardian gets a second reaction at level 8 ....
But these reactions are in general much weaker. You have to consider that the Guardian is taking real damage with these actions. It is redistributing that damage and is in a very real way worse than the Paladins reaction at level 1 - and you are complaining that the Guardian gets it at level 12 once per combat?
Paizo have given us a real soup of reactions here for the Guardian. But the player really needs to pick and choose.
I don't want to see how you are building your fighter that doing less damage despite its huge hit advantage.
I think you do, because it's not that complicated. I just need to pick a regular Fighter, and plonk them next to an ally. Next, I pick a Guardian with Armored Counterattack and Boundless Reprisals, and plonk them next to that same ally. A bunch of enemies attack said ally in melee, so the Fighter doesn't get to use Reactive Strike at all, but the Guardian gets to Intercept Strikes and retaliate every single time. At 20th level, remember that your Strikes are as accurate as those of the average martial, so even with the comparative -2 next to the Fighter, you would still be getting many more hits in. Even at 12th level, that extra reaction from Quick Intercept means you'd get to compress an extra Strike into each additional Intercept Strike (and the Strike, by the way, also renders targets off-guard).
You can get even funkier with this and roleplay a Diver Down scenario, where as the Guardian you pick a reach weapon and place yourself adjacent to all of your allies. If the enemy has no AoE to punish you, attacking any one of your allies would trigger a retaliation from you as well. Yes, these situations are contrived and can be punished, but they still engender situations where your no-limit Armored Couterattack causes the Guardian to start dealing a lot more damage than they should.
But these reactions are in general much weaker. You have to consider that the Guardian is taking real damage with these actions. It is redistributing that damage and is in a very real way worse than the Paladins reaction at level 1 - and you are complaining that the Guardian gets it at level 12 once per combat?
Paizo have given us a real soup of reactions here for the Guardian. But the player really needs to pick and choose.
Taking that damage and mitigating it is still the best-case scenario here, so you would be playing to the Guardian's strengths. I get that we're all feeling sorry for the Guardian and wanting the class to do better, but pushing the class's damage I think is just about exactly the wrong way to go about it. Damage is very much not what the Guardian is meant to be good at, which is why I'd rather not buff Armored Counterattack in this manner.
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Guardian gets a second reaction at level 8.
But like the champion that gets a second reaction at 14, the guardian also gets a second reaction at 14. (3 reactions now)
And it gets an improved version of opportune riposte at 16 as a free action. (Basically 4 reactions now)
And it also gets another reaction at 20. (5th reaction)
All together, Guardian has the most available reactions compared to all classes already, no?
Having one more "free" reaction thing at 12, on top of all those, being limited to 1/min is kinda fair imo.
Not saying that it's too strong, but maybe "more times" is not the appropriate buff on the ability, maybe a damage boost to be a more memorable ability would be better..
The Champion also can get a second Reaction at level 8 if using a shield.
And Fighters can acquire several bonus Reactions too. Guardian should perhaps get more if only because they're defensive so need to respond to enemies. (Hmm, maybe it'd be better if they didn't "need to respond", but could be more proactive w/ what are usually reactive defenses?)| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Guardian should perhaps get more if only because they're defensive so need to respond to enemies. (Hmm, maybe it'd be better if they didn't "need to respond", but could be more proactive w/ what are usually reactive defenses?)
Though perhaps not directly related to this topic, I fully agree with this. Not only should the Guardian feel like they have useful things to do on their turn, they should also be invested in combat even on other character's turns, so that they always feel like they have an opportunity to participate and help their allies. I'd go as far as to suggest baking in the extra reaction feats, like Quick Intercept and Boundless Reprisals, directly into the Guardian's core class features for this exact purpose.
Make Armored Counterattack something they do at level 6. Make it once per round. Instead of making a strike they do key stat in damage to the attacker they intercepted.
Improved armored counterattack would allow a strike to follow the intercept strike or foe. It would allow the G to make a strike but the intercept would take two reactions instead of 1.
Doing it this way allows the guardian to use up reactions they receive that are dedicated to intercept strike and any for guardian only reactions.
These two abilities allow the guardian to contribute damage in a way that is consistent with their concept.
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Just thought of a name for a feat along these lines.
Unkind Intercept- Free Action- Once per round when you intercept strike or Intercept foe you barrel into the foe shoving them 5 feet or 10 ft on a crit. Unkind shove would be a prereq and would apply its damage.
Not sure what level this ability would be balanced at.
Personally I would remove the limit on how often it could be done, and bake it into the level 1 class features, make it so it isn't poachable from Multiclass Dedication. Maybe put a once a round limit on it if necessary, but I feel like it needs to scale to more often as one levels. And since you normally can only do Intercept Strike once per round early on anyway, only able to do it more often from feats as you level, that basically takes care of the scaling anyway.
Also not sure where people are getting 5 reactions per turn?
A guardian can get a 2nd reaction, per round, at 8th level with a feat. This can only be used on Intercept Strike, but Intercept Strike is what triggers Armored Counterattack.
At 14th level with another feat the guardian can get another reaction per round, for three total now, but this can only be used on Intercept Foe. This cannot trigger Armored Counterattack as the rules are currently written.
And at 20th level they could use their one level 20 feat on Boundless Reprisals which increases the number of reactions they have per round by the number of enemy turns. Now at this point I can see how someone might want a restriction of once per Turn on Armored Counterattack since there would potentially be a number of enemy turns where they would have two Intercept Strike reactions to trigger it.
They also gain at 7 a guardian reaction when they roll initiative for combat.
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I missed Clang. Which is technically not a reaction, which is weird. It does require the enemy to critically miss you, not sure how often that would ever happen. Not sure it would come up much, but even if it did I don't think it changes my opinion.
I didn't include the level 7 thing because that for the most part just lets them use one of their reactions before their turn and is a once per combat thing.