Page 91: Flash of Grandeur’s duration could be far too short in many situations. Change the final sentence to “Until the end of your next turn, the attacker is affected by revealing light.”
So if I read that right.
Turn order for round N+1 (any turn past round 1):
PC 4 - 21
Bandit 1 - 20
Grand Champion - 19
Bandit 2 - 18
PC 2 - 17
PC 3 - 16
init 20:
Bandit attacks PC 4 as last action.
Champions uses reaction. Champ has the feat that applies off-guard
init 19:
Champion does something
Grandeur expires, off-guard expires
Rest of turn: None of Champ's allies can take advantage of the off-guard, conceal effect never did anything.
Given that Champions tend to have low initiative, they're very likely going to go 'after' any given attacker, on the round they use the reaction, so the effect will often expire before it can benefit the team.
That seems like a very hard nerf.
Seems like the only way to make playing a Grandeur viable as an option to play is if you can always reshuffle turn order such that:
4 - Any hostiles
3 - Any Allies
2 - Champion
1 - Any hostiles
Any hostile that acts in between 3 and 2 is best ignored - let the victim eat that hit and force your allies to delay into the 'right' order or eat hits.
Otherwise it's a trap choice to play.
I'd argue the main perk is not the damage mitigation - that's a small number of HP. And even the Dazzle has limited impact. But the off guard that comes with the added feat is why you'd go into Grandeur, as it's a potent support ability, especially in combo with the dazzle. Each alone would not make the choice worth it. Together they do.
But this errata makes it a very limited thing that will only work if your entire party is onboard with spending round one playing initiative reshuffle.
Grandeur was worse before, in that it used to end the effect of revealing light at the start of the Champion's turn.
However, it's still bad.
Honestly it would have been fair to simply have the reaction effectively "cast" Revealing light spell such that on a failed save the enemy is affected for 1 minute, which would make the following effects (Relentless and Exalted Reactions) useful.
As it sits now (and before) it was something I would avoid completely.
As mentioned, the change wasn't a nerf. But it's still constrained by the timing on these things. I definitely don't find it useless, though the timing issues make it feel really variable.
It'd be better if it lasted for 1 round, where that means "the next time the same initiative count as when you used it happens" You're getting the same amount of time out of it in that case regardless of the timing of when you use it since that's always 1 round's worth of turns.
But that isn't something unique to this ability.
In both cases, the Champion can choose to delay his turn to be more strategic and help PC 2 and PC 3 with his revealing light.
You can't Delay to extend the duration of effects. They would still end at the moment you Delay.
[free-action]
Source Player Core pg. 416 2.0
Trigger Your turn begins.
You wait for the right moment to act. The rest of your turn doesn't happen yet. Instead, you're removed from the initiative order. You can return to the initiative order as a free action triggered by the end of any other creature's turn. This permanently changes your initiative to the new position. You can't use reactions until you return to the initiative order. If you Delay an entire round without returning to the initiative order, the actions from the Delayed turn are lost, your initiative doesn't change, and your next turn occurs at your original position in the initiative order.When you Delay, any persistent damage or other negative effects that normally occur at the start or end of your turn occur immediately when you use the Delay action. Any beneficial effects that would end at any point during your turn also end. The GM might determine that other effects end when you Delay as well. Essentially, you can't Delay to avoid negative consequences that would happen on your turn or to extend beneficial effects that would end on your turn.
Yep, no shenanigans lets you get around taking negative effects or extend the duration of turn based things.
Seems like the only way to make playing a Grandeur viable as an option to play is...
Well, as I said in a different post on this same subject: a better fix is to change the definition of a duration measured in rounds to be tied to the initiative count that the effect started on rather than tied to any particular character. Then something that lasts 'one round' will always last one round and every character will have a chance to be affected by it.
That also has drawbacks in the amount of bookkeeping that is needed.
Another option is to have the duration tied to the character whose turn it is when the effect is started.
That has drawbacks in that the character that created the effect no longer has control of when it ends.
So if the current rules for duration measured in rounds is not satisfying, feel free to use one of the alternatives if you can convince the other players that you are with to do so.
But this errata makes it a very limited thing
No, it was always a limited thing, the errata just made it slightly less limited.
Like I agree that short duration effects get really frustrating when initiative quirks make them last much shorter than they might otherwise, but I don't understand why you keep saying the errata made it worse when the errata made it last longer in all circumstances.
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In both cases, the Champion can choose to delay his turn to be more strategic and help PC 2 and PC 3 with his revealing light.You can't Delay to extend the duration of effects. They would still end at the moment you Delay.
Actually, you misunderstood. You delay until just before the focus fire target damages a buddy. Then your reaction lasts the whole round. I agree you can't delay after the reaction to extend it.
I meant more in the sense of positioning your self in a good turn order to take full advantage of it, not in the sense of delaying AFTER you use the reaction to extend it.
In the same way that you may want to delay yourself after an enemy before Demoralizing him in order for the whole party to take advantage of that.
Ha ok, I misunderstood your point. But it's hard to do it then as you need the combat to be extremely stable (and if the GM is nasty, monsters can also Delay once they understand how your power works).
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Ha ok, I misunderstood your point. But it's hard to do it then as you need the combat to be extremely stable (and if the GM is nasty, monsters can also Delay once they understand how your power works).I meant more in the sense of positioning your self in a good turn order to take full advantage of it, not in the sense of delaying AFTER you use the reaction to extend it.
In the same way that you may want to delay yourself after an enemy before Demoralizing him in order for the whole party to take advantage of that.
“Why are none of you doing anything??!”
“Gotta delay to fix the paladin, boss”
“But his allies aren’t delaying, are they? They’re carving you apart.”
“Might be a flaw in the plan, boss.”