It's that time again! The part of the playtest you all know and love: the part where Quid builds some characters!
This isn't a case where I've got a specific existing character concept that could be represented by the new class- I don't usually play "monster slayers", and all my serial killer types are over in Starfinder.
Looking through the signature tools for some inspiration...
- I love getting some physical resistance, so Warded Mail being able to give scaling slashing or piercing resistance is really cool. You need to go hunt something to get that, since starting trophies won't do.
- Chymist's Vials are... underwhelming, but getting special vision does remind me of one of a character concept I had lying around, Old Tom Bones, an old catfolk Eyebiter Mesmerist who would have his eye go around independently. Using Slayer, I can make a one-eyed catfolk that pops different monster eyes into his empty socket for different vision effects. That one definitely requires hunting some specific creatures, because the reinforcement doesn't do anything with a default trophy. Why can they breathe fire? ... Don't worry about it.
- A friend of mine had an idea, but that build will be once they're free to work on it.
Well, let's go ahead and start with the new Old Tom Bones, and see where we get!
Old Tom Bones, Perceptive Catfolk Slayer. We want to play a wily old catfolk who has as many types of vision at his disposal as possible thanks to a collection of monster eyes.
For Catfolk stuff, Nine Lives Catfolk makes a lot of sense for our old catfolk who's lived through it all. Cat Nap gives us benefits for dozing off, and we might want Catfolk Dance to give us a better shot at that fire-breathing doing something if we decide to go Dex-based. Otherwise, Cat's Luck is always good.
Stats: We want an accuracy stat, plus Wisdom secondary to max out our Perception.
For Slayer, obviously we're going with Chymist's Vials. Here's where we take a break to try and figure out what has vision worth collecting.
- Darkvision (this one is such a gimme I'd like it to be included as a default so that the effect does something by default)
- Greater Darkvision
- All-Around Vision
- Heaven's View/Cloudsight/Fog Vision/Mist Vision (there are a lot of different ones for this)
- ... Constant Truesight/True Seeing?
- Magnetic Vision (Asp of Grief, a very specific one- see armor through walls?)
- Smoke Vision
- Infrared Vision (one AP creature only)
- Sandstorm Sight
- Blizzard Sight/Snow Vision
- ... Constant See the Unseen/See Invisibility?
- Painsight
- Status Sight
- Blindsight (one of the most powerful ones available- is this even vision? Is "blindsight" even an ability the game has anymore? It's not defined anywhere in 2e. If you miss the uncommon Graul by the end of 4th level, your next opportunity is a rare 16th-level creature.)
- Sporesight (one rare creature only)
- Greensight
Funny Mentions:
- Curse Sense- see (and normally hear, but that's not vision-based) through any silver you have cursed within one mile.
- Gem Sight- gives you True Seeing! ... but you have to be holding a gem to see at all. Still might be worth it for a while.
Okay, let's see...
- Greater Darkvision feels worth snagging, with over a hundred options for it.
- "See through various conditions" is pretty common. Of those, fog/mist and smoke are the only ones that the PCs are likely to generate themselves. For the former, Air Scamp is the easiest, only something that can be dignified at first level- after that, you need a rare 4th level, or a Young Cloud Dragon at 9th for something common. Smoke Vision is much more forgiving to get.
- All-Around Vision is probably the most regularly useful options, and fits the theme of the character well. It's more than eighty options to choose from, so not too bad.
- Permanent Truesight/True Seeing starts coming online around 8th or 9th level for monsters, with a handful of options even that early. It's generally "stuck" at sixth rank, but considering that's the floor, hunting and killing one of these monsters early is a huge leg up for quite a while. That's enough to make the character really stand out, shredding through illusions and shapeshifting for five or six levels.
- Possibly grab something weird. Magnetic Vision is sufficiently trippy, but you need to be a real jerk to hunt down an Asp of Grief.
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Level 1: Well, Drink Adaptation Serums doesn't really fit most games. Bloodscent is nice for picking up another weird sense, but we'd be going off of tertiary Intelligence to use it. We need a hand free for the vials (well, let's probably go with a two-hand trait weapon), so shields are no good. Saved by Sudden Pounce- this is perfect! Looks like we're investing in Athletics.
Level 2: ... Pack Slayer to scoop up those Air Scamps if we missed them at first is tempting. We care a lot about specific monsters, after all. But since we're already investing in Wisdom and playing somebody called "Old Tom Bones", I think we need to go with Slayer's Tricks for some occult cantrips. What cantrips? Well, we're already breathing fire, so Eat Fire isn't bad- we can look into grabbing Smoke Vision to bypass the drawback to ourselves. ... Should we get a backup ranged attack using our second cantrip? Yes. Am I getting Detect Metal instead because killing an Asp of Grief would feel terrible? Also yes.
Level 4: Condition removal isn't really in keeping with our vision theme, and a minute to remove a condition makes Cure-All unlikely to ever be worth a feat. Probably go with Blood for Blood to make Old Tom Bones sturdier. Well... not that much sturdier, since temporary hitpoints are only half level, but at least it's rolled in with an attack? I don't know that we're hunting quarry enough for Blood Rush, and Apply Spirit Oil is only once a day to spend an action getting something that only does something on a crit.
Level 6: Spell Slates, naturally! We'll have to go look at the occult list.
Level 8: Catalyzing Flask is a big disappointment here. Witch gets a scaling number, and they're potions instead of elixirs. A feat normally gets you four free elixirs. What the heck is going on with getting one elixir for a feat- and then making you pay for it once, so it practically needs to be below your level instead of on-level? Alternatives are quarry-exclusive when-crit reaction, a shield feat we can't use, and a crafting feat. Field-Forged Tools it is, but it feels like a dead level.
Level 10: Share Insight. Precise-sense quarry-detection is hard to argue with, with a possible vision upgrade.
Level 11: Blood-Seeking Blade, probably. Extra damage and two-action accuracy strike.
Level 12: Double Quarry is really nice, and we also want Expanded Spell Slates. We seem to be missing the final spell slates feat to get 7th and 8th rank spells, though? I would take Spectral Lenses, but... Expanded Spell Slates gives me eight hours of See the Unseen, a higher level slot from Spell Slates, and more spells later. It feels like Spectral Lenses should be 10th level.
Level 14: ... Man, Arm Bloodburst Vial is pretty wild, even for a once-a-day. However, I need Double Quarry so I can actually run into a quarry more regularly.
Level 16: Maaan, 30ft. cone is a level 16 feat? Level 16? And it's just a range increase? No increase to d6s, no "you can make allies immune to it", nothin'? Arm Bloodburts Vial it is.
Level 18: Terrifying Bloodlust, I guess? Maybe three-action max-damage strike is better than I'm realizing.
Level 20: These capstones are bad. Quickened as a reaction instead of the usual permanent quickened, or... what, the ability to get quickened on casting only when a creature dies? I guess we'll go with Eternal Hunt and get rid of our Eat Fire cantrip in order to get our fire-breathing or accuracy-stab down to one action and one reaction.
Verdict:
Picking a vision upgrade to hunt down and kill for is... interesting. There are some unique options. The only other personal upgrade to vision seems over-costed at level 12. Also, Old Tom Bones invested in spells, but the usual chain ends earlier than the caster archetypes for some reason, on top of only ever getting expert proficiency. The only Chymist's Vials feat to feel any good was Share Insight.
Having something be once a day is okay if you get value from it, but a once-a-day ability that only does something if you get a crit within a certain window...? Eh. Similarly, quarry-only feats seem like you're going to be missing out on them a lot of the time, and making it further restricted to something like "crit by your quarry" doesn't help.
All in all, neat, but I don't think I would actually play this character, or any other with the vials.
Man, Arm Bloodburst Vial is pretty wild, even for a once-a-day.
And it isn't even once-a-day, it's once per 10 minutes. If you have time to pause between fights you can basically open every encounter with that thing.
Man, Arm Bloodburst Vial is pretty wild, even for a once-a-day.And it isn't even once-a-day, it's once per 10 minutes. If you have time to pause between fights you can basically open every encounter with that thing.
Whoops, conflated that with something else while bouncing back and forth. Nice to be able to get a couple uses out of it in a day!
I missed that the spells have the Relentless trait, which maybe explains the lack of higher rank spells, and why the capstone costs your reaction every turn instead of giving perma-haste. Since I'm building mostly around out of combat utility and the low DCs rather than trying to make combat spells work, I guess it's not very exciting to me, and I'd enjoy actually getting 7th and 8th rank slots as normal. I do get that it's the more boring outcome, though.
All right, let's go for a Warded Mail start instead! Warded Mail is interesting because instead of wanting energy damage to trigger weaknesses, we want piercing or slashing to resist common physical damage. We'll get a little slashing resistance from full plate at 7th, so we'll focus on getting higher piercing resistance from the trophy. Just a quick check- do we get more resistance than a Barbarian? Well, we get it eight levels earlier, and it scales to 11 instead of 7-ish, at the cost of being lower on the secondary. We also get +1 AC from heavy armor. (Obviously, Guardian covers this much better, getting all physical resistances, so we will have to see how well we do on other cool abilities.) Good enough for me!
We're building out a sturdy brute with this, so we'll go with Kholo. Normally, I grab the big bite attack for this sort of thing, but Slayer doesn't want you using unarmed strikes. We'll go with Kholo Weapon Familiarity to get access to the Spirit Thresher and its crit spec.
... Wait, hang on. Even if we get weapon proficiency from our ancestry, we can't make it our bloodseeking blade later without burning a first-level feat that gives us proficiency anyway? Well, let's see if we care about our first-level feat or not. We can always just switch to something martial at 11th or drop the sweep trait that makes up the advanced budget difference.
1st: Spiked Surcoat is just fun. I like the unfairness of dealing plink damage back to enemies. We'll use our starting trophy to add a little spirit damage, in keeping with our spirit thresher theme.
2nd: Personalized Gear is tempting for five feet of movement. Comfort trait is only useful until 7th, but it is style points.
4th: Nothing here is as good as picking up Sudden Pounce to get Off-Guard on closing attacks, but Blood for Blood would be thematic.
6th: Let's see... Relentless Counterstrike is a 10% chance for each attack when we use Armored Shelter to refund us the action. Wall of Will is weird- my quarry probably doesn't want to pick a fight with me anyway, because I've got broad physical resistance against it. Let's go with Relentless Counterstrike, since that's increasing the value of something I'm already doing.
8th: Don't need Armored Fortress- I don't even know what I'm supposed to do while not attacking or moving. Pick up buff spells to cast, I guess? Once again, 8th level feels dead. Go back to first or second level and pick up something we passed up- Instant Enmity, probably.
10th: Share Insight lets me buff allies for a quarry fight with a flat resistance 5 to everything? That sounds nice.
11th: Bloodseeking Blade, obviously. We need an offensive boost to justify being Slayer instead of Guardian. 8th level feat is so dead, we can take a first level feat just to keep the flavor of Spirit Thresher.
12th: Double Quarry tax, obviously. Give up on the Spirit Thresher, reflavor a longsword, keep Instant enmity at 8th, and pick up Endless Enmity. Our allies now have resistance 5 against one enemy every ten minutes.
14th: Bloodburst Phial, even more obviously. Open Wound feels like it needs that bleed support to come earlier- the only place it shows up is 12th, competing with "being able to have more than a single quarry".
16th: Man, these upgrades just feel lackluster. "Get +2 to non-reflex area saves when spending an action" is... well, it's not bad, but it feels like that should be level 8. I want to be able to use it against a haunt and an AoE Fear, get a little mileage out of it. At level 16, it feels like I've just spent a whole lot of levels missing it. I'm just grabbing Open Wound so Bloodburst Phial also makes enemies off-guard.
18th: Obliterate feels better with a d12 weapon.
20th: Spend my reaction to get... let's see, use a reaction for +2 AC and reflex every round? I would be less impressed if it didn't work with a d12 weapon. I guess that gives us Guardian AC. Make a one-action strike with +2 to hit? That's Fighter accuracy. Actually, I kinda like that. We've can flexibly pick which we want, and we still have the actions to do both if we want. Shame that it locks out Haste, though. Oh, we do get to go retrain Relentless Counterstrike while we're at it.
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Verdict: Bloodseeker Blade's 3d6 damage and Bloodburst Phial are the only significant things that we have over just playing a two-handed Guardian who never uses their taunt. That's pretty significant, though. Oh, and better/earlier weapon specialization! I forgot about that part; that moves the damage difference up from 11th to 7th. Guardian doesn't pull ahead on armor proficiency until 9th level, so that doesn't leave any point where we're left wondering why we're playing Slayer instead.
We mainly care about quarry because we can grant the party resistance 5.
Actually, hang on. We don't care about trophies at all after first level. We hunt one thing with piercing damage for resistance, and one damage type for our blade sometime before 11th level. If we want to get a painbow spread for advanced-prep weaknesses, sure, but magical painbow runes area already going to cover that.
In that case... we only really care about quarry for combat effects (mainly ally resistance), so we want both enmity feats instead of double quarry.
Overall, I think this feels better than Old Tom Bones. I might play this, and I think the fun would really start to show once get to start seeing the little unfair damage differences stacking up.