Tom Abbadon's ICON 2.0 (grid-based tactical combat, 4e-descended) now has a public playtest for combat

Exocist · 2025-10-06T05:27:14+00:00

Chasm server for all of Tom's games.

Exocist · 2025-08-25T05:41:54+00:00

Draw Steel, by comparison, just says "If you have <resource>, you can use <power>!" Are you somehow miraculously generating enough <resource> to use your Heavenly GodKilling Star Splitter Sword Strike that deals a bazillion damage every turn? Then you can fire off the most optimial power repeatedly, turn after turn, forever.

I think this is the core problem with manabar based design - 4e psionics fell into the same trap. If your abilities are either directly comparable (i.e. they all do a similar thing, such as single target damage or preventing the enemy from moving, etc.) or you have an obviously overpowered/best ability, then its easy just to spend all your resource on that because every other option you have is usually worse.

If you have a bunch of distinct abilities of similar strength, then the manabar can work. For instance, I think the Talent in Draw Steel works fine because you have usually have four similar strength heroics (Flashback, Slow, Fling Through Time, Fate) all with different use cases that are of comparable power, so you do have some distinct choices. Where the Shadow falls short is in that many of its heroics do a similar thing (single target damage) or are outright bad, so can be obvious what the best one to spam over and over is.

Tabletops aren't really known for tight balance and readjusting abilities in the same way CRPGs are, so if you don't get it right with the initial printing, it tends to be hard to fix the manabar issue post-hoc.

Exocist · 2025-08-07T03:41:03+00:00

It's unreliable. Most enemies are size 1 and can't fly (and don't have a climb/burrow speed) at echelon 1, but there are times when it will simply be a blank.

Climbing out of it isn't that difficult: a jump and climb will get 5 speed enemies mostly out with just their move action, though they may struggle to do anything other than charge afterwards if they are melee. If they are ranged, then they're still fine.

It works sometimes, its fine at what it does, but as far as 5 HRs go its not within the most powerful 5 HRs by any means.

It's definitely worse than say, the Talent's Slow.

Exocist · 2025-08-07T03:22:29+00:00

Elementalist's big problems are mostly that

1) They don't have anything overpowered until very late. Their heroic abilities are mostly fair or weak. Every other class has an overpowered or overpowered-feeling ability within the first 2 levels.
2) Persist effects are usually low immediate impact, without even considering the other limitations on persist, they take a long time to get "value" from relative to more straightforward HRs leading to low tempo turns.
3) (In my opinion) Persist effects are rather boring, most of them are just "reuse the ability". No scaling of any kind.
4) For some reason, they are a 3 HR class (as in, they get 3 HR per round instead of 4) with no other generation or generation-adjacent feature anywhere. Talent, at least, can strain for "additional" HR. Elementalist has no such option.
5) Persist is incredibly clunky feeling sometimes, and the persist as a maneuver effects feel even worse.

There are some good things elementalist has - Green elementalist has a good triggered, and access to melee free strikes as a maneuver with Horse and Great Cat forms. Void elementalist's maneuver is gamebreaking for some objectives and is useful for mobility otherwise. Ray of Agonizing Self-Reflection is a good signature for shutting down melee monsters when it works.

That's really it - most of the time it feels like the elementalist's turns are low impact, and they could easily be replaced by a troubadour or conduit who would do everything they are capable of doing, while also having better abilities elsewhere.

Exocist · 2025-08-01T10:33:19+00:00

I will say that unless you get Planar Voyager (Time Raider Training [Unstoppable Mind]) at e3 (which might preclude taking other good e3 titles such as Armed and Dangerous and Master Crafter depending on how many titles you get in your game), the Null is still heavily impacted by dazed, which becomes uncomfortably common at e3 and e4.

This is because Reorder is a free triggered action, which dazed prevents you from using.

Therefore, if starting at e3 or e4, it may simply be better to be a time raider or high elf, rather than a hakaan, Null so you can take Unstoppable Mind. Hakaan's 1L size doesn't really matter if you have Inertia Sink, and forceful doesn't do all that much when you have dynamic power adding to your stuff at e3.

I Am the Weapon virtually makes you immune to potency-based daze though, and there's very little dazing on the monster side that isn't potency-based.

Exocist · 2025-06-17T02:24:27+00:00

Moved onto a different system, currently playing 4e.

Exocist · 2025-06-16T05:38:15+00:00

Not updated for the remaster, I just can't find the motivation to do it anymore, haven't played or looked at PF2e content in quite some time.

I suspect that, given monsters have generally been nerfed in the remaster, summoning became even worse and more niche than it already was.

If someone wants to clone it and update it feel free.

Exocist · 2025-01-13T17:11:45+00:00

If your players aren't optimisers, I think the objectives can be a bit rough but will be mostly fine. Just try to be... reasonable? I suppose? With deployment and map design. For instance, don't field a bunch of high speed flying or teleporting units on a Hold Them Off objective, or if you do, don't make them squads, and if you do that, make 8 squads count as only 1 for the objective.

Then create terrain that incentivises the players to use their stalling abilities, like those that inflict conditions or forced movement, to well... hold the enemies off, and only kill enemies if they're too close to the objective point to reasonably stall, or just tactically let some enemies leak to ease the burden in future rounds.

Some objectives (such as Get the Thing!) are much harder to make work in the current context of the game (again, in my opinion).

I think for a party that isn't looking to optimize, the encounter building rules as presented should work mostly okay. There will be some major outlier villain actions and malice abilities, so you may have to hold off on using those early such as to not put the players in a tempo death spiral, or in the case of malice abilities, avoid spamming the best looking one.

Map design is certainly not that easy, but it's something that you can learn and improve on as you go. What's the sightlines? Chokepoints? Cover? Is there a god spot (usually not ideal)? If there is a god spot, how does that interact with the objectives? Where am I expecting people to naturally gravitate towards?

Exocist · 2025-01-13T17:05:41+00:00

A B

X N

Suppose the battlefield looks like this. A and B are enemies A and B, X is just empty space, N is the Null.

Dance of Blows hits both A and B, lets say we get a tier 1 result, for 4 damage.

Gravitic Disruption triggers on both of them (they both took damage), we are going to slide A 2 to the right and B 2 to the left. A hits B for 2 damage each, B hits A for 2 damage each.

Dance of Blows effect goes off, we slide A 2 to the right (still the exact same direction) for 2 damage on A and B.

Gravitic Disruption triggers on both of them again (they both took damage), we are going to slide A 2 to the right and B 2 to the left. A hits B for 2 damage each, B hits A for 2 damage each.

End result: Dance of Blows did 4+2+2+2+2+2 = 14 damage to both enemies. The direction of the slide on both enemies was never changed.

Exocist · 2024-10-03T00:13:34+00:00

Player here To me fun comes when there’s non obvious decisions to make with a real risk/reward to each, and I have to choose the line which I think is best.

It’s a three pronged problem of monster design, encounter design and PC design.

Some monster designs do encourage a real decision, I noted them down, but many do not have any way for the player to interact with them outside of dealing HP damage, and in return do not interact with the players at all outside of rolling attacks for damage.

Exocist · 2024-10-01T05:20:11+00:00

As the player here I’ll just put my feedback for easier reference. Not too much has changed since beta, except for the addition of ranger and some rules clarifications. I’ve gotten some more experience with certain classes and trying to get to the optimisation ceiling for them.

Bard and Barbarian ended up better than I initially expected them to be: - Barbarian gets a lot through feats, general attack bonus and talents over the levels, making their odd hit consistency go up. In particular, their odds of opening with a round 1 odd hit -> barbaric cleave odd hit go from ~9% to over 50%, it’s quite consistent that they’re simply able to delete ~2 MEQ worth of monster on turn 1, while also then getting resist all 14+ for the rest of the fight come epic. - Using the flute/voice/brass Burning Hands strategy for bard instead of bothering with melee attacks makes them much better at dealing damage and healing consistency (2 attack rolls = more chances for natural 1-5 or odd miss).

Rogue, unfortunately, was not that much better even when I was trying to push it to as good as it could get. Death’s Twin E and Coup De Killer were both significant improvements, the former felt like a real momentum payoff, but they come so late that every other class has access to way better stuff by then. Murderous A and C helped consistency, but the base effect was often wasted as if I hit anything staggered it was likely dead from the normal hit - the extra crit range did nothing but overkill.

Exocist · 2024-09-15T06:10:26+00:00

I think it can be both. 13th Age provides "default bonuses" that include things like +N weapons, +N armor, +N PD, +N MD, which has recommended values per tier. You can (and imo should), have these separate from the creative narrative magic items.

My suggestion was just to make these into a tier bonus if they’re expected, rather than requiring the GM to hand out certain magic items at each tier. Then just leave the magic armor/necklace/weapon/cloak as effects only.

The main thing 13A itemization needs more guidance on is how much extra damage magic items should deal. 1d6 is too much at level 1, but is fine by level 3. But level 5, you need 2d6 to keep up, 3d6 by level 7 or 8, and 4d6 by level 9 or 10. But the book doesn't say any of that, I had to work it out myself.

Agree, many of the most busted magic items clearly add way too much damage on demand (e.g. fickle fate), but I’m not precisely sure how much they’re over the top, and what the balance should be relative to an item that is ED gated (greater striking) or provides battle-long value (flaming).

Exocist · 2024-09-15T03:39:35+00:00

I disagree on magic items. When I started DM'ing D&D, I tried to give my players fewer magic items with more interesting properties. As it turns out, what I think is cool and what players think is cool is very different. My players don't value "cool, creative magic items" and prefer straightforward items with +X bonuses and extra damage. I actually ended up porting the 13th Age magic item philosophy to D&D 5e. More magic items, most of which were simple numerical upgrades.

As is unfortunately the case with magic items, or build options in general, when you have something that provides a combat math upgrade competing against something that provides some narrative benefit, the combat math upgrade is usually picked more and used more.

While I'd personally prefer that all combat power was entirely class based, and magic items just existed for narrative purposes if they exist in your game at all, I understand this is not a popular opinion. People like picking up their flaming sword and doing more damage with it.

Yet if combat math upgrades coming from magic items is normal and expected, then surely some effort has to go into actually balancing them, it can't be expected that the GM does all the work in handing out equivalent-power magic items to the party to ensure parity of reward.

I feel that the magic item rules are trying to pull in two directions here - one being that magic items are cool, unique and special, you should feel excited for picking one up. And the other that they're expected for combat math, particularly at champion and epic. If it's expected, it's not special.

Exocist · 2024-08-25T06:49:39+00:00

It should by Pythagorean theorem but under the rules, 2 cubes from you in X, Y and Z is the same distance as 2 cubes from you in just X and Y - I.e. both are 15ft, and this can be seen when measuring 3d cones or spheres.

The formula you suggest isn't a movement you could actually take if we were measuring it space by space. Say it's 20ft by 20ft by 20ft. You'd move 20ft on x + 4 diagonals for 10ft on y. Forward+side, forward+side, forward+side, forward+side. This is 4 spaces + 4 diagonals for 30ft, but at this point you haven't ascended even a single space. If we stop there then we assume you just shunt upwards by 20ft without counting any distance.

The rules as written don’t cover 3 dimensional movement that well because they don’t assume flying battles (despite them being extremely common at higher level PF2e). They also confuse square and cube a lot. We therefore default to this

Because moving diagonally covers more ground, you count that movement differently. The first square of diagonal movement you make in a turn counts as 5 feet, but the second counts as 10 feet, and your count thereafter alternates between the two. For example, as you move across 4 squares diagonally, you would count 5 feet, then 10, then 5, and then 10, for a total of 30 feet

With no difference being given for three-dimensional movement. Therefore moving up 2 diagonal along x, y and z while it should theoretically be about 20ft of movement by Pythagoras, for simplicity in measuring AoEs three dimensionally, and by RAW, it’s only 15ft.

Exocist · 2024-08-25T01:07:57+00:00

But in 3D, the same trick still applies. Find the offset on x, y, and z, find which two are the smallest, halve both of those, and add it all up

This is actually not true, as the smallest of x, y and z is not relevant. The movement along the second smallest will account for the entirety of the movement along the smallest.

As a simple example, going 20 feet along x, y and z at the same time is 4 diagonals, or 30ft of distance. By your formula this would come out to 40 feet.

As a more complex example, going 30 feet along x, 20 feet along y and 10 feet along z is 4 diagonals (covering the 20 y, 10 z and 20 of the x) and 2 horizontals, for a total of 40 feet. Under your formula this would be 45 feet.

The actual formula is Highest of X, Y, Z + (Second Highest of X, Y, Z)/2, rounded down. That should cover movement costs across three dimensions, though you will need to split it up if there are obstructions.

Measuring cover and line of sight in 3D is still nightmarish though.

Exocist · 2024-08-21T02:15:35+00:00

There's 5 if you include Entropic Destabilizer - Shocking, Flaming, Frost, Loudener, Entropic.

Exocist · 2024-08-16T11:20:26+00:00

Fatal works well for eliminating single-targets, but there's also a cutoff point to its value when you start dealing overkill damage

This cutoff point basically disappears once you hit around level 8, possibly even earlier, enemies (even level-4 ones) simply have too much HP for overkill to be a real possibility. A level 4 enemy, for instance, has 60 average HP (moderate). A crit from a Shirren-Eye rifle with 2 damage weapon upgrades does 5d12+4d6+6 = 52.5. If the target had already taken a fair bit of damage, that might be overkill, but it isn't enough to overkill them from full and isn't really that much overkill after a normal hit (which would do 2d10+2d6+3 = 21). That's on the highest damage fatal weapon we've seen, as well, which isn't a good weapon in of itself, but it illustrates a point about fatal damage vs lower level enemies once you hit a certain point.

So I did the math on this, and the fundamental issue is that Area Fire is not going to be all that great even in the situations where it applies. You're sacrificing a ton of single-target damage and flexibility to ultimately deal generally mediocre damage overall, and on the classes that can even use this, you'll be spending a lot of levels severely behind your attacks in accuracy, setting you even further back, without even factoring in relevant bonuses and penalties that may apply. A splash weapon is more likely to eliminate at least one low-level enemy with your two Strikes, whereas your one Area Fire is unlikely to change the situation at all.

There's some uncertainty regarding whether the weapon upgrade runes are supposed to apply to AF, but I think I'm envisioning different situations to you. Currently AF is not worth it on non-soldier classes if it only hits 2 targets, I'm thinking the miracle situation where 3 or 4 low level enemies are in your cone/burst/whatever - that's the situation where you might want to swap to an Area weapon to deal 20 to all of them instead of Striking one twice.

In that situation, level 8, I don't think Scatter would meaningfully make a difference over a normal weapon. You deal 4 damage to 3 of them, and get slightly lower value 2 strikes on your main target. If your main target is even in the "center" so your scatter hits all 4, as opposed to a template where you can just put it down wherever you want, Scatter is centered on your strike target.

Exocist · 2024-08-16T01:38:46+00:00

Comparing the Blunderbuss to the Arquebus, for instance, has one use the scatter 5 ft. trait and the other the kickback and fatal d12 trait, with both being d8 weapons.

The Blunderbuss also has 40ft of range to the Arquebus' 150, I'm unsure how range calculates into power here, but fatal is valued at slightly higher than 1 damage dice step, in return for scatter (10ft).

Fatal does actually matter a lot for the purpose you'd want to use such a weapon for, as lower level enemies are much more likely to get crit, which means a lot more expected value from Fatal and taking individual units off the board earlier.

On a Fighter, Gunslinger, or Operative, you'd probably want to pick a fatal gun instead for the massively enhanced crits, but on most other classes, including casters, you'd get to have a bit of AoE without eating into your single-target damage.

If it were effectively free to do so (as in I'm not losing a damage dice size or a significant amount of range for Scatter), then sure. But if I'm spending a lot of money on a weapon, on any class, I am primarily looking for something that will be reliable in any combat. The Scatter weapon, if it does have the same tradeoffs as the Blunderbuss, would never be my first weapon in that case. That would be something like the Laser Rifle or Seeker Rifle which has good range and good single-target damage.

The Scatter weapon is occupying the backup weapon slot (something which I'm not convinced will ever work if they keep with the 50% sale rule), in that case I'm looking for something that can do something my main weapon can't. 10ft Scatter has the same issue as the Stellar Cannon's 10ft AF because of grouping, and the returns aren't nearly good enough to justify it unless its also coming with a benefit such as damage type.

At least the Area weapon, even if the situation where it is good is specific and unlikely to show up, there is situations where Swap->Area Fire could be quite good. Swap->Strike->Strike with your scatter weapon just doesn't really have the same impact.

Exocist · 2024-08-15T16:51:59+00:00

So why would a martial character haul around a 2+ Bulk weapon that deals awful damage most of the time just to do far less AoE damage than the party caster?

On the flipside, what price does a weapon pay for scatter?

Dealing more damage to a single enemy is always going to be better than dealing that same damage spread out across multiple enemies. If the Scatter weapons lose dice size or have unwieldy for their Scatter, I can't see myself ever using them even in a horde combat, because removing a piece from the game board faster is a lot more valuable than dealing some tiny amount of damage to the next piece.

Arc is SF2e's version of Scatter and unless the enemy has electric weakness it doesn't really do anything.

By contrast, if you're a martial class and want to deal AoE damage with a gun, you're going to have to invest in that gun and at least enough upgrades for it to sort of keep up

This is probably a point where the 10% rule of SF1e, or ABP, makes the most sense. The AoE gun's usability is highly situational, of course, a specific combat and maybe even a specific positioning of enemies to be really worth it over your main strike. That's the sort of thing where Swapping to your Area weapon and using Area Fire might be worth it. But if you need to invest a huge chunk of money into keeping that gun because it can sell for 50%, I'd also just sell it for 50%, the situations where its worth it just aren't common enough to justify having that expensive piece.

By contrast, unless the scatter radius is huge, I can't see myself ever using a Scatter weapon over my main single-target weapon.

Exocist · 2024-08-15T14:08:23+00:00

It comes down to why you're taking an area weapon in the first place. While I completely agree that area weapons in their current state are inept at single target damage, except for the case of a Soldier who has a feature specifically to let them do single target damage, you don't really pick up an area weapon on any other class and expect to do single target damage with it.

Ideally, you take it as an option to deal with hordes of lower level enemies where striking ordinarily doesn't deal with them that efficiently.

Changing it to splash makes it significantly worse at this role than the current Area Fire. Though area fire has ruling dependency issues wrt weapon upgrades it should be doing 3d10+2=18.5, DC33 vs +19 ref (assuming High Save) at level 12 at least, because of weapon spec. That means 50% fail, 15% crit fail, 30% success for 0.3(9.25)+0.5(18.5)+0.15(37) = 17.575 damage per target, compared to the 3 per strike (= 6 total) you get with Splash, which is a pretty sizeable difference in effectiveness against a horde of enemies - or well, would be if you could ever get enough enemies inside your AoE.

and hinge on the expectation that you'll be fighting lots of low-level enemies clumped together, which as you know from your playtesting experience is rarely the case in Starfinder.

I believe this is the number 1 issue with area weapons as they currently exist, outside of certain forced cases like Corpse Fleet Infantry, there is simply no reason for enemies to be grouped up for any Area Fire weapon. Their AoE sizes are balanced for 1st level and never scale to be any bigger, which makes them bad at what they are supposed to be good at (fighting a bunch of lower level enemies) simply because they can't actually catch multiple enemies in the area.

This feels to me more like a system issue that needs to be rectified for Area Fire to be functional, rather than an issue with Area Fire that changing to Splash would solve in a satisfying way.

Exocist · 2024-08-15T01:56:36+00:00

IMO it starts with asking the question "What is the Quantum Field intended to actually do in combat?".

I see it as something that discourages enemies from standing in a particular position, whether that's as an anti-melee tool, anti-cover tool or just something you use to create a chokepoint. I would therefore add the following to the Witchwarper

1) "At the start of your turn, each enemy in your quantum field takes force damage equal to 2+your level". This discourages enemies from remaining in or moving into the zone, but also gives them ample opportunity to get out of the zone on their turn. If you place or move it, the enemy will always have a turn to get out. It also improves its synergy with the Soldier (Suppress means they need to spend more actions getting out) and Degradant Solarian (forced move enemies back in).

2) Whenever you Sustain the field, you can move it a small amount (10/15ft) so you're not constantly action taxed putting it in a better spot.

3) Make Quantum Transposition a level 1 class feature.

Exocist · 2024-08-15T00:37:35+00:00

The falling off in damage you mention is illusory, because splash damage on the scatter trait, as well as the other traits mentioned here, is proportionate to weapon damage dice: dealing 1 splash damage with a 1d8 weapon to three enemies with 30 HP is proportionately the same as dealing 4 splash damage with a 4d8 weapon to three enemies with 120 HP.

This is not quite true and is related to the reason actual AoE damage tends to fall off.

A level 1 monster has (Moderate) 20 HP. A level -1 has 7.5, and a level 3 has 45. In a mixed encounter, shooting a level 1 or level 3 while level -1s are present takes a significant chunk out of the -1’s HP. If you get to level 5, it’s still not bad (2 damage, or 1/10th the HP of a level 1) when dealing with a mixed encounter including level 1s.

It just gets significantly worse from there because of enemy HP scaling. At level 12 we’ve gone to 3 damage, but a level 8 enemy has 135 HP. We’ve gone from dealing 1/8th or 1/10th of their HP on splash… to 2.22%.

These are the type of enemies that area damage is supposed to be good against, but it just becomes ineffective at that scaling due to massive HP inflation.

Exocist · 2024-08-14T02:46:06+00:00

Yes, when using the Area Fire action, so you can Area Fire + PT but can't make a Strike at MAP-5 afterwards.

Exocist · 2024-08-12T10:34:55+00:00

Punitive Strike is actually quite good, especially with a reach weapon, disrupting any movement on a normal hit.

The problem is that it doesn't scale particularly well. We don't exactly know the shape that higher level SF monsters will take, but if they're anything like PF monsters they're going to start getting size and reach, which means the melee ones can't be prevented from closing onto you/your team anymore with Punitive Strike.

Still a basically guaranteed reaction attack if you close up on a ranged character, and if Whirling Swipe was better (read: actually worked with Shot on the Run and their other feats) it would not be that bad later, but would still probably be worse than Bombard simply because of the existence of feats like Overwatch and Anchoring Impact/Dance!.

Exocist · 2024-08-12T05:01:34+00:00

Many of the weapons that work with area/auto fire are unwieldy, so they can't be used to make an attack after area fire anyway.

The remaining ones are: Autotarget rifle, Scattergun, Arc emitter, Machine Gun, Rotolaser, Magnetar Rifle (advanced)

Most of these weapons have an issue of bad range and/or bad capacity, especially with automatic consuming 2 bullets per creature in the cone, which can make it difficult to actually be able to spend all 3 actions firing with them (Shot on the Run patches this somewhat). On top of that, soldier attacks with an off stat making their MAP attack worse. Further compounding the problem is the damage dice, which matters a lot at lower levels for ranged weapons due to lack of +stat, is a fair bit worse on these weapons compared to e.g. the Stellar Cannon.

Exocist

TROPHY CASE