| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So immediately getting into the class (which is wicked) I was picturing a tattoo laden runesmith. But upon reading some of the feats, there are some issues.
It might be intended, but there's no action compression feats for unarmed. It might be intentional, but I would love some kind of compression there. Also there are a few things that are specific to weapons that probably shouldn't be. Runic optimization specifies it only works with weapons (the main reason for this post, really), and elemental revision only works on an unattended item or held by a willing creature, not worn like hand wraps.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I am glad you pointed that out
The class is odd with unarmed, it has these problems like you said but also because of hand economy issues it actually pushes people quite hard towards unarmed in a way
Yeah, an unarmed strike feat like the Magus's Arcane Fists seems conspicuously absent. Even if they fix the gand issues, unarmed support would be welcome- I was also imagining a heavily tatooed runesmith when I brainstormed playtest characters.
I was 100% expecting Arcane fist like feat for Runesmiths. Not gonna lie here.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
*The Warded Man has entered the chat.*
(Peter V. Brett novel, title also The Painted Man in some markets.)
I think engraving strike is potentially a wasteful distraction in some circumstances. It depends on the scaling of your weapon and rune damage at that time, and the target's AC vs fort save. You're gambling on a hit for extra/guaranteed strike damage at the potential cost of losing an action and not sucessfully tracing a rune at all.
For example, consider a 1st level runesmith with a d8 longsword and a 2d6 when invoked fire or thunder rune. If you attempt engraving strike against a level 0/1 high AC of 16, with +6 mod (+3 proficiency, +3 strenth), you hit 55% of the time, adding an average of (7.5 x 0.6) 4.5 damage (including crit chance) on top of your eventual traced and invoked rune.
If your expected 2d6 basic fort save damage from the rune is 10 you're indifferent, if it's more than 10 you want to trace the rune and not try the strike. Since the average is 7, you'll need either an elemental weakness or a significant crit fail chance to favor directly tracing.
But it's not that clear cut, and the wider the gap that develops between your weapon damage and your hit vs save accuracy the less engraving strike is goind for you. At level 1 the average base damage is 7.5 strike vs 7 damage rune on a hit/fail. At level 20 the strike with +5 strength and full damage runes is doing 18+5+6+10.5 or 39.5. The rune is averaging 70. Engraving strike is risking a big pot of damage for relatively smaller gain as you advance.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I was under the impression that Engraving Strike doesn't prevent the strike from dealing damage. This was just an action condenser that lets you combine a strike with a trace.
In addition to the free-hand economy, there are a number of things in the Runesmith that point toward unarmed Strike support: Esvadir (whetstones) and Marssyl (impact) can both be applied to an 'unarmed Strike', Runic Tattoo exists and only really makes sense to use with one of those two unarmed attack runes or Pluuna (illumination) at the level you can take it, and Ghostly Resonance calls out that any 'creature or item' bearing one of your divine or occult runes gets the effects of ghost touch, which would affect such a creature's unarmed attacks.
I suspect the issues with Engraving Strike and Runic Optimization are just oversights in wording. Still worth noting in playtest responses though.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I was under the impression that Engraving Strike doesn't prevent the strike from dealing damage. This was just an action condenser that lets you combine a strike with a trace.
Not quite. It makes the trace conditional on the strike actually landing.
No engraving strike: you can trace, and get the guaranteed benefit of your trace.
Engraving strike A: you can TRY to strike, and if you succeed you get strike damage and trace as one action. Congratulations!
Engraving strike B: you can TRY to strike, and if you miss you wasted an action and get nothing. Don't you wish you'd just saved that dumb feat and traced the rune?
Basically think of it as spellstrike, but only if the spell being used could otherwise be cast for the same number of actions with a guaranteed result.
No engraving strike: you can trace, and get the guaranteed benefit of your trace.
Engraving strike A: you can TRY to strike, and if you succeed you get strike damage and trace as one action. Congratulations!
Engraving strike B: you can TRY to strike, and if you miss you wasted an action and get nothing. Don't you wish you'd just saved that dumb feat and traced the rune?
Basically think of it as spellstrike, but only if the spell being used could otherwise be cast for the same number of actions with a guaranteed result.
I think the feat needs clarification on how it functions. Reading it as explicitly as possible, I agree that it's not great, simply because invoked rune damage so massively outscales Strike damage that without Strike-focused options there is little reason for a melee Runesmith to do anything but single-action Trace, Invoke (or even Trace twice then Invoke if already adjacent to the target).
That said, I get the vibe from the feat that it's intended to provide at least one of the following benefits:
- You don't need a free hand to Trace the Rune if you hit, which opens up the ability to use higher-damage-die two-handed weapons.
- You don't directly Trace the Rune on the target, so the manipulate action of Trace doesn't trigger reactions.
I suspect the first benefit may be the goal, but the second benefit would be a nice option since I'm not seeing any other methods for melee Runesmiths to not get ganked by Reactive Strikes, even at a trade-off.
This feat specifically feels undercooked. It has a 'once per round' Frequency instead of just being a flourish action, Strike is not capitalized in the text, and it is technically ambiguous if the Trace a Rune on success adds to or replaces the success effect of the Strike.
I think engraving strike on a nonzero MAP is inferior to just tracing, but at 0 MAP, why not?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If the target is debuffed/off guard, doesn’t have high AC and does have high (for now) fort save, and your rune hasn’t greatly outscaled your weapon damage them engraving strike probabiybraises your expected damage while increasing your randomness and chance of waste.
There’s also zero chance it saves the hand issue. You don’t need a hand to trace on the enemy, but you do to trace on the weapon you’re going to try to hit them with.
Edit: Bard buffs, Sure Strike (when you don’t have a marginal offensive rune trace available) or Devise a Stratagem via MC can all help make engraving strike consistently pay off.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Ongoing headaches because they decided to mechanically split "unarmed attacks" and "weapons". Wish they would just errata that. Ah well.
I mean, the Runesmith is supposed to be a martial class. One of the things you're supposed to be able to do is "hit people with weapons." You're closer to the rogue here than the bard.
Perhaps the problem is that you can trace runes on hostile targets without having to roll anything, which is a more attractive option than swinging a weapon. So that's probably not ideal.
Perhaps Trace Rune should require a willing target or some kind of roll for the one action version.
You can do strikes if you like the high variance and higher expected damage of Engraving Strike, or if you're stuck in melee range and don't want to eat a reaction. If you don't focus your rune repertoire too heavily on damaging runes strikes will look more favorable, as layering a second or third trace won't be an option, and your defense/utility may not need to be applied right then.
Why do I feel like the unarmed style is like Exemplar they are hdiing it from us just because?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think just like Spellstrike (which does not have manipulate) incorporates Cast a Spell (which does) and therefore the overall activity has manipulate, Engraving Strike by incorporating Trace a Rune must inherit manipulate.
Shield bosses, gauntlets, or whips. What's your d4 poison, friend?
|
I think just like Spellstrike (which does not have manipulate) incorporates Cast a Spell (which does) and therefore the overall activity has manipulate, Engraving Strike by incorporating Trace a Rune must inherit manipulate.
Shield bosses, gauntlets, or whips. What's your d4 poison, friend?
I'm interested in seeing how Runesmith archetype works, because I've had Champions/Warpriests of several free hand weapons (Marishi with Spiked Gauntlet, Suyuddha with Tekko-Kagi) and layering in some minor Rune tracing might be very powerful in those hands.
(Or -- from more of a playtest standpoint -- will having built in Deadly Simplicity on a Free Hand weapon break things? Where is the stress point?)