Tiny character and Spirit Warrior's Kaiju Defense Oath?

[AIfrebaut]

Just reading through the LOTXCG and I was looking at the Spirit Warrior archetype... am I right in my read that with a tiny character, this would proc on basically... everyone? I was thinking of like a Giant Barbarian Pixie (already a class combination I'd be interested in) with like a passive +14 damage with their main weapon at 4th level... or like a Thaumaturge with a passive +11 at 4th level. Sure, their fists would only be +10 and +7 respectively, but that still seems pretty high. Sure, that's only on your Flourish, which means you can't do it more than once a turn, but that seems pretty damn strong. It's a circumstance bonus, so it wouldn't stack with any other similar bonuses, but I feel like those aren't that common. Am I missing something? Is this as strong as I think it is?

[Mangaholic13]

Well... one issue with your plan might be this:
Regarding Giant Barbarian, if you're smaller than Small, then you can only use weapons 1 size category bigger. That means you'll be using a Small weapon, which might put a damper on your damage.

[Xethik]

Mangaholic13 wrote:

Well... one issue with your plan might be this:

Regarding Giant Barbarian, if you're smaller than Small, then you can only use weapons 1 size category bigger. That means you'll be using a Small weapon, which might put a damper on your damage.

I'm not sure that will do anything to change the damage dealt, but being Tiny does make reach a bit of a problem.

[AIfrebaut]

Mangaholic13 wrote:

Well... one issue with your plan might be this:

Regarding Giant Barbarian, if you're smaller than Small, then you can only use weapons 1 size category bigger. That means you'll be using a Small weapon, which might put a damper on your damage.

Hey, I can't explain why a Small longsword would do +6 damage in the hands of an angry tiny poppet, but mechanically, that's how it would work.

Xethik wrote:

Mangaholic13 wrote:

Well... one issue with your plan might be this:

Regarding Giant Barbarian, if you're smaller than Small, then you can only use weapons 1 size category bigger. That means you'll be using a Small weapon, which might put a damper on your damage.

I'm not sure that will do anything to change the damage dealt, but being Tiny does make reach a bit of a problem.

Yeah, reach does tend to pose an issue, but you can always just share a space. Inconvenient, but technically still doable.

[Red Griffyn]

So its strong but comes with some downsides:

- Tiny PCs have a reach problem and have to spend 5 extra feet getting into positions multiple times. This is particularly annoying for the tiny PCs that are available to you like a sprite because they often come with bad base speeds (e.g., 20 ft for sprite).

- There are a lot of tiny/small/swarm enemies where this won't apply.

- Being tiny comes with a few pain points like getting blown away in a stiff breeze, significantly lower carry capacity (so you could get trapped in a moderately heavy box if someone tried to 'capture you'), etc.

- Some tiny PC options require you to spend your heritage (e.g., awakened animal) so you lose out on various combinations.

- Without reach some of your reactions can become a lot less potent (AOOs don't work well if you only threaten your square lol). So you might have to keep a 1H reach weapon (at the cost of a 1D8 to 1D6 damage dice) if you want to reliably proc those.

I think you can address the first pain point with some careful class/ancestry feat selections (e.g., an inventor with the boost/hyper boost armor modifications can get +5 to +30 speed by L7ish. Swashbuckler or barbarian get some bonuses to speed. But I think fleet, an ancestry stacking 5 ft with fleet, etc. will be hyper important so you can stay in range.

The second pain point really leaves you no worse off than a normal PC (so not much of an issue IMO). But it does mean it won't always be on.

The last 3 are much harder to deal with and necessarily there aren't that many build options for tiny PCs (sprite, poppet heritage, and awakened animal are the only ones that come to mind).

With all that said I think its super funny for a little sprite to punch super hard. If you needed flavour just consider using the same explanation that ant-man does (i.e., an ant's strength to mass ratio is off the charts so you can probably play into that as you being a rare specimen among your kind trained to fight Kajus). You could be completely suspicious of everyone around you and pretend like you're doing a 42 Jump Street High school espionage into the 'den of evil' where everyone is basically a Kaju or Kaju offspring to you since they're all so much larger than you. It could add a very Don Quixote off your rocker vibe to your PC.