|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
These don’t feel very useful right now, outside of the Infosphere Director + Automatic Knowledge trick. Your two main directives, Tactician and Get ‘Em, trigger off of Strike which as a character with martial proficiency is usually something you want to do once a turn at least.
Given Envoy’s rather stuck action economy at the moment (Get ‘Em, Strike, X) and given that Soldier/Operative have a lot of action compression for their main thing, I’d like to see these Acts of Leadership instead become action compression for their related actions.
Give all Envoys the following activity
Take Charge - 1a to 3a Flourish
You use a Directive that takes the same number of actions as Take Charge, and you use one of the actions listed in your Acts of Leadership. You may perform these two actions in either order.
And remove the automatic LBE from acts of Leadership.
This would add some much needed action flexibility to the envoy, allowing them to take their leadership style actions more frequently (and a good buff to the melee envoy who currently struggles to do their thing) while also doing their main Get ‘Em + Strike thing.
Some of the existing Acts of Leadership would probably need to change with this.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Part of the problem in my opinion is that Acts of Leadership kick in really late: if these were 1st-level additional actions you could do to trigger Lead By Example on your directives, the Envoy would have a lot more diversity to their actions and would have more reason to invest in their leadership skill, but as a 6th-level feature, that's way past the point where you're meant to be laying the foundation to your playstyle.
As I've been playtesting the Envoy, I've also been realizing that there are quite a lot of different factors behind their action economy being so rote: directives need to be activated every turn, but also many Lead by Example actions only make sense if you use those specifically, rather than other Acts of Leadership (for instance, attacking a target during Get 'Em! for a damage bonus, which wouldn't apply to most skill checks). For this reason, I'd want to suggest a slightly different implementation from what's suggested in the OP:
And with this, your Envoy would immediately be able to start doing many different things and triggering their directive through various options, with far less constraints on their action economy each turn and many more choices to boot. Effectively, they'd get to play like an actual martial class.
Part of the problem in my opinion is that Acts of Leadership kick in really late: if these were 1st-level additional actions you could do to trigger Lead By Example on your directives, the Envoy would have a lot more diversity to their actions and would have more reason to invest in their leadership skill, but as a 6th-level feature, that's way past the point where you're meant to be laying the foundation to your playstyle.
As I've been playtesting the Envoy, I've also been realizing that there are quite a lot of different factors behind their action economy being so rote: directives need to be activated every turn, but also many Lead by Example actions only make sense if you use those specifically, rather than other Acts of Leadership (for instance, attacking a target during Get 'Em! for a damage bonus, which wouldn't apply to most skill checks). For this reason, I'd want to suggest a slightly different implementation from what's suggested in the OP:
Make directives into stances, so that you only need to spend one action at most across several turns, unless you want to switch directives. This would already free up the Envoy's action economy significantly.
Rework Lead by Example so that it triggers immediately from an act of leadership, and grants a benefit that works no matter which action you use. For instance, using an act of leadership with Get 'Em! could give you a bonus to your check or DC if you direct it against the designated target.
Have each directive, as well as each leadership style, give you a stable of acts of leadership that all trigger Lead By Example at level 1. Either this should entail pruning actions that can be turned into free actions, like Recall Knowledge, or stipulating that you can only Lead by Example by spending at least one action on your act of leadership. And with this, your Envoy would immediately be able to start doing many different things and triggering their directive through various options, with far less constraints on their action economy each turn...
Why do directives need to be a stance? That just makes you only able to use one at a given time. Some of them should be a stance, but I think most of them shouldn't.
Why do directives need to be a stance? That just makes you only able to use one at a given time. Some of them should be a stance, but I think most of them shouldn't.
In practice, that is what you'll be doing anyway, because spending an action using a directive and then at least one other to Lead By Example is already going to be most of your turn. By contrast, having directives be stances means you still get to switch directives from round to round, but if you stay on the same directive, you could Lead by Example and still have most of your turn left on subsequent rounds, which I'd say would unstick the Envoy's action economy and make the class a lot more flexible.