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I'm in with the Patreon pledging.
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Jan 14, 2016 23:46
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 05:39 |
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It's worth noting that the players in your game are fairly more powerful than regular pcs under houserules.
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Mar 30, 2016 18:38
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So, the Dancer's step charts use the Move Action, so any effects that increase movement squares don't do anythingif the dancer is using one of the charts, right? Pretty sure that's the case, just want to check. Related: Are the squares after the first square of movement considered shifting, for the purpose of something like the Slippery feat? CaPensiPraxis fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Jul 30, 2016 |
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Jul 30, 2016 22:25
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Jimbozig posted:Yeah, as GM, Defenders are frustrating. But at the same time, that's literally their job. If they aren't frustrating me at least a bit, then they're not working as intended. Illusionist in our campaign (where I do not play the illusionist... but also in the one where I DO) leans very heavily on the Invisible Assailant/Impenetrable/Contagious combo. Almost exclusively. Invisible Assailant, Lure, and False Enemy are the clear winning picks in every Illusionist role combo. I've tried out a bunch of the other at-wills of the class and settled on either using lure or invisible assailant for all of my at-will attacks: -False enemy is neat and potentially powerful depending on how encounters are designed, but doesn't play well with roles or fit in with the rest of the class very well. It's just a big wildcard and if the opponents have lots of special features their at-wills key off of, it falls flat. It also increases design complexity a lot to have one side be able to at-will use abilities designed for the other team. -Blind spot is too heavily reliant on turn order for its tiny degree of protection, and also assumes that the encounter itself doesn't require moving about to avoid (or enter) particular zones. More importantly the defensive nature is overshadowed by Lure, which also works if situation changes. The 4 square blind zone might not apply, but disadvantage to all attacks unless you move to a spot of caster's choosing pretty much always accomplishes something. Not sure how blind spot interacts with contagious illusions either: do all the victims share the exact same zone or are they chosen as the effect spreads? If one victim is attacked from inside the blind spot, does it break for everyone or just that one victim? -Illusory Attack just doesn't seem to fill a niche. It looks like it's meant as a disengage, slide them a space away to hopefully break melee and distract them to negate their opportunities. This is served just as well, if not better, by Invisible Assailant's Grab condition. Plus spreading it around with contagious illusion is nowhere near as good as spreading around grab. Lure and Invisible Assailant win out pretty heavily. Lure is a useful defensive and positioning tool, forcing an enemy to either step away from you (and ideally into the line of fire) or take disadvantage to hitting everything. Invisible Assailant is great for bogging down big groups if you're playing blaster or use contagious illusions. It also lets you escape potentially sticky situations by stopping your foe and skedaddling. On the other hand if you have any continuous effect zones (like Blaster's "Friend Zone") getting a lucky streak on escape saves against a troublesome foe and locking them in your zone is a BIG offensive tool. Multipurpose! Of the other powers: Class Features Close-Up - I can see what this is for, some of the roles can use this with the defensive at-wills. Something like a defender with close up and lure who forces foes to step away (and eat a thwack) or suffer disadvantage and harried. Not my cup of tea, but sensible. Impenetrable Illusions - If not for Invisible Assailant letting you grab bosses, eh. It doesn't work on your big statuses from encounter powers and the only one really worth writing home about in at-wills is grab? Contagious - .Just a bit of a bookkeeping nightmare, but not sure how to make it simpler without problems. Isolating - I picked this one as a blaster, trying to make big groups of minions crumble as they hit each other. I did occasionally wish it worked the other way around, with the afflicted treating *others* as foes instead of others treating the afflicted as a foe. Level 1 Encounters I tried both Illusory Wall and Illusory Flame. The Wall was the most useful even though with a blaster role I already could summon a mostly superior physical wall. Illusory Flames' bit about causing foes to throw you in is heavily dependent on the monster team combat design, and I never got any use out of the other portions - just never came up, there was always somewhere better to throw them than in the fire. Obscuring vision was almost always useful even with other tools to do so, and it was pretty easy to keep up the entire fight if used well. While I had Illusory Flame on my sheet I think I used it once while Illusory Wall came out every single fight. I never tried out Mirror Images. It had too many caveats and was far too dependent on encounter design: lots of small obstructions in the field constrain your movement if you want to get full effect, too much aoe on the enemy team will quickly clear the Mirror Images, etc. It's neat but the fantasy would be better served by simplifying it back to the source rules: "You have mirror images. When an attack specifically targets you roll a dice with sides equal to your remaining clones. On a 1, you are hit and the clones vanish. At any other number, a clone vanishes." I never got the sense I would get lots of value out of it, certainly not to justify the effort of using it. Level 3 Encounters I don't get what Seed of Control is doing there except saying "Illusionist is Necromancer 2.0". The enemies that won't auto-save off the effect aren't worth spending the slot to Dominate for 1hp, especially with False Enemy sitting right there as an At-Will. Might be neat to have some kind of "implanted illusion" type fantasy here but a different effect, where whatever they're hit with next turn recurs periodically (for example: if they get grabbed, they have to save the grab and then also save the seed of control or at the end of their next turn the grab comes back as the illusion re-asserts itself) Level 7 Encounters Total Visual Subversion is neat but a bit of a headache. When this effect spreads via contagious you can easily end up with a big tangle of who can see whom? I'd just go for "Blind (save ends), once the first Blind has been removed, Blind (Save ends)." or the like. Side note: I found myself using the "If you choose not to make your attack a blast you may..." clause of blaster far more than the blasts themselves. Beam blaster was a huge feat/choice for me, I was much more easily able to hit two targets or more with beams but found it near impossible with blasts. This may just be up to combat design style from the DM(s), but I think it's also a feature of the general tactics. The standard blast might be more area, but enemies don't tend to congregate in blocks but want to conga line out to project threat over an area. It's easier to find squiggly lines of enemies than big clots. I don't really get a mechanical or thematic feel for what Illusionist is meant to be like overall though, in combination with any role. One thing I think would be neat is playing up the little status then BIG STATUS feel that a few of the encounter powers have like Psychedelia. What if more of the attacks had a similar mechanic, where failing a save against the effect results in a temporary stronger effect. For instance, tone down Invisible Assailant to slowed with grab for a turn on save failure. Blind spot could grow or re-establish on every save failure, that kind of thing. This represents getting entangled in the illusion, believing it. Could even provide an option on these to not save (and just suffer a lesser status for a while) or provide some other means of generating a "safe" save that doesn't trigger the failure state. Something like using an action to "disbelieve" the illusion and attempt a save. Could also have one of the class features allow the illusionist to use an action to "enhance" an illusion and actively trigger the fail condition on a target.
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Sep 14, 2021 09:31
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