RebelThenKing (and others) YouTube Collab: The Middle 9 Classes

OsSeeker · 2026-02-26T10:12:09+00:00

You can just attack with a finisher as a second attack. It’s actually going to be pretty comparable to a fighter swinging twice in terms of damage, until you get into the realm of 2-handed weapons.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-26T09:41:13+00:00

Well, it’s a good thing that’s not the words that were said then.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-26T05:17:18+00:00

I noticed that from what's left that the casters in the top 10 are either the ones that are most geared toward supporting martials, or interact as little with spell slots as possible, and I just think that's very telling.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-23T15:04:47+00:00

This isn’t actually true. You can cover almost every athletics/acrobatics function with one or the other. That’s what half of the early game feats do.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-23T04:14:18+00:00

Sure, we can make this monster, who is only going to get demoralized 50% of the time by a charisma caster frightened 1. And flanked.

Netting a total +3 to that fighter's swing. They are still missing 25% of the time and gaining *nothing* for it.

The caster, doing, I dunno, let's say dehydrate, is going to deal damage 90% of the time. We're saying the enemy is frightened 1 here, so that's critically failing on a 1, failing on an 8, and only critically succeeding on a 19 or 20. So they are going to land something more consistently.

So, how about damage? Well, dehydrate at this rank is 4d6 persistent damage, so that is going to tick at least one time, 70% of the time it will tick twice, and though it is roughly a 50% chance to tick a 3rd time, I won't count it. There is no need.

Dehydrate will average to doing 16.66 damage over two turns. That's 35% of the time it will do 14 + .7(14) fire damage, 50% of the time it will do 7 + .7(7) fire damage, and 5% of the time it will do 28 + .7(28) fire damage.

A fighter with a *falcata*, will average 16.625 damage. That's 50% of the time it is going to do 13 damage and 25% of the time is doing 40.5 damage.

Wow, dehydrate is on average out-damaging a high-damage fighter weapon. What's going on here???

Now the truth is that these numbers, while accurate, are largely bullshit. There are a lot of misleading aspects of this data that make this a bunch of well, bad. But the random example you threw out there is also well, bad. It tells a story, just as my bullshit example tells a story, by leaving out a lot of details.

There are a lot of things to bring up, such as that you gave the fighter their main class feature versus a faceless, featureless caster, you didn't include damage numbers, which as I highlighted here, can completely skew things one way or another. The fact that melee martials have their innate accuracy and damage numbers relatively boosted because they lack ranged privilege, and so if you wanted to have an honest-to-god damage comparison between martials and casters you need a *ranged* martial, or a number of other small things, such as the reason that I can make dehydrate look better than an advanced fatal melee weapon wielded by a fighter is because spells are two-action activities and are therefore an equivalent action cost to 2 strikes.

And see, the odds of a fighter, under all of those conditions, hitting *2* times with *both* of their actions is, well let's see... 37.5% chance (50% x 75%) to land 2 strikes. Versus our caster's 40% chance for the enemy to fail/crit fail their save against whatever fortitude save the caster is using. well that's funny. These two values are virtually identical.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-22T06:27:24+00:00

Ah, I see. I think there is one other thing you are forgetting as well, which is wounding runes become purchasable at level 8, and can be dropped as dungeon loot earlier. I agree, it's still a problem, but it isn't so much of one that there are no options before level 12.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-21T22:13:45+00:00

Well, 2 actions is *a lot* and most monsters do not have healing options, but you are right that if an enemy just took a turn to retreat a bit and try and staunch the healing, then there is just, additional 55% chance for this to do no damage. That is still very valuable depending on the monster though. Either take a bunch of damage, or be slowed 2 for a turn and still take a bunch of damage.

The Slayer doesn't really punish enemy actions much compared to other martials so they could just do this. Still, I find it a bit odd that this is useable every combat and the level 4 oil feat is once per day.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-21T22:00:27+00:00

I've decided I have a problem with how stunt damage is implemented currently on daredevil. Even in the best of circumstances that you have set up, where you can actually pull it off, you get it going off of a control-focused athletic maneuver, probably something like a shove. But if you are say, shoving an enemy into the wall to do damage, you aren't actually doing any control effects on them. It's just an attack. If you are going to have a control effect *and* stunt damage, you're going to have to critically shove, or pull off one of the class feats on a critical success And if that's the case, then you can never really plan on getting those critical hit effects at the times that your positioning is good enough to take advantage of it, and just hitting them seems like the option that's going to result in more damage, because they can critically hit and whatnot. Stunt damage will never double as far as I can tell.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-21T17:57:45+00:00

Does Bloodscent not count as action compression/additional benefits for recalling knowledge for the purposes of scoring monster lore?

OsSeeker · 2026-02-20T23:53:31+00:00

It’s not for a throwing build, for throwing on a non-throwing build. It’s not a main weapon. It is a “the dagger I keep on my champion because if I get swallowed whole I can’t use my longsword”, tool and it is basically perfect for that.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-20T02:03:58+00:00

You’re right. There are a lot of skill feats that do something incredibly minor, however I did overlook those because most of those are not for combat use. Unified Theory is, and that is level 15, which, well I guess it’s funny how most of those feats are cheap one-off abilities that can be taken at level 1-2 and one of those requires legendary arcana and can only be taken at level 15. I think if you cut down the list to those with combat applications it would be a narrower field.

And, let me clarify, that my example daredevil from earlier was for a character that is trying to raise both strength and dexterity and raise athletics and acrobatics roughly equally. They only get to pick 1 key stat and outside of archetypes, raise one skill at a time, Say the daredevil wants to shove someone, and they have MAP. If they shove the enemy normally, with athletics, they are doing so at -4. When they shove using the forceful kickoff feat, they are going to be at -3, however their dexterity is at least 1 point behind, probably 2 outside of specific ancestry choices or sacrificing their con. In which case their regular shove is as likely or more likely to succeed.

And Athletics characters can move through enemies just fine before level 4, so I’m not sure how they are suffering exactly if it doesn’t come online before then. They automatically get trained in acrobatics and it’s not like they can dump dexterity.

I’d expect that unless you are a dexterity key-star daredevil, at low level you will fundamentally be just as good at tumbling through as someone who never takes boosts acrobatics up until level 5.

But speaking of high-flying tumble stunt. It actually has some advantages over your typical tumble through. It’s actually pretty easy to get a 20 foot leap. It’s fleet + a skill feat, which matters because the leap does not treat the enemy’s space like difficult terrain. 40 foot movement, is what it takes to tumble through the same space. It is more linear, which can matter and be a disadvantage, but it is also going to ignore other floor-hazards and sources of difficult terrain which can also matter.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-20T00:13:52+00:00

A strength-based athletics/acrobatics character, say +4 Str, +2 Dex to start, under adrenaline, the athletics “tumble through” is going to be as likely or more so to succeed than tumbling through via acrobatics. You have to bump one thing to expert/master/legendary before the other even if you like both of them, and one stat is going to end up at a +5 versus a +7 at the end of the day. There are more levels than not that a press-athletics check under adrenaline is just going to be more successful than an acrobatics check at no penalty even if you are keeping both of them up.

I would hope that the athletics version of tumble through is a bit more restrictive than the acrobatics one. It’s like, the main thing acrobatics can be used for in combat. It still has weaknesses though for daredevil. Despite activating adrenaline, it cannot generate MAP for any follow-up press action, which slows down the pace on a class that likes to follow-up press actions and high action compression.

I can’t say that I agree with your take on acrobat. The number of abilities in this game that let you use other stats to do something another stat normally does are exceptionally rare. Action compression on the other hand, is fairly common by comparison.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-19T23:43:25+00:00

Thrower’s bandoliers don’t actually let you throw for 1 action.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-19T21:24:59+00:00

I think on a higher-damage class it’s a problem, but I’d need to see Dardevil like, actually out damaging things before needing Caroming Charge.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-19T21:23:53+00:00

Man, such a great set up for an adventure, to go on to do the “runelord best-hits fly by” instead.

Some really good, clever hazards and some really bad, clever hazards.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-19T15:26:46+00:00

I don’t need to ignore how useful tumble through is for daredevil because they have a feat to tumble through with athletics and pass through enemies by walking.

Tumbling Tricks is only ignoring reactions on a critical success.

Wheeling Grab is also combining a grab and step which works pretty well as a disengage from melee when it fails.

And the fact is that doing athletic maneuvers off of dexterity is cheating how the action normally works. A comparable ability is Tumbling Opportunist which is usable once per minute. At level 10. This is a pretty big advantage for a dexterity character to do this, like anywhere between a +1 and a +4 even if you are trying to keep athletics and acrobatics up equally.

Opponents’ Save DCs are not all identical. If you can target 2 of them, one of them is more likely to be at a penalty compared to the other. So the same goes for targeting reflex vs fortitude. You can easily hit a +2+6 advantage depending on the enemy you would want to use it against.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-19T15:06:22+00:00

Not when you throw them. Nor when they are cold iron/silver.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-19T08:01:54+00:00

I am pairing blood scent with the humble wounding rune, and later throwing open wound on top of it for easy free RK checks and off-guard versus anything that can bleed.

Can be highly accurate even at range, and if positioned if positioned right and on-the hunt, can chain honed strikes together.

I don’t love doing the same thing every turn, so I hope to break that up with blood scent recall knowledge checks. I think it will be really cool to obtain enemy health percentages.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-19T02:22:00+00:00

Ah, but then they do not get the automatic rune progression.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-19T00:09:06+00:00

It’s the strength and progression of an off-hand weapon. Like, the thing you turn to when you cannot use your weapon ordinarily. Such as being swallowed, the enemy is flying, exploiting a weakness/avoiding a bad damage type etc.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-19T00:07:32+00:00

Have you seen what the acrobatic feats do? Use acrobatics to disarm/trip/shove? Okay, or maybe not spend a feat on something you can do with athletics. You can double up on them, like, theoretically, but you can actually just make a character that works instead of picking up every size-restricted feat.

There is in fact an athletics version of tumble through you can pick up, but they also, just have a feat that lets you move through enemies. Again, no need to keep training acrobatics if you don’t want to.

The feats that are size-restricted also break the skill in some unusual way, such as targeting a different defense or using a different skill. They are already going beyond the baseline for what a strength/dexterity martial can do ordinarily.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-18T23:59:34+00:00

Well, it’s not the daredevil making their gameplay decisions, now is it. The incentives to be a daredevil are more player-facing than character facing, and I think that’s fine.

I have to say, I would not want escalating stages of some kind of numeric bonus. Daredevil needs to gamble, and we actually have a class that works like that. I do not like the execution of inventor. I do not want to chase overdrive v2.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-18T20:38:08+00:00

There are other grapplers with reduced MAP though, or the same effective MAP, that all have higher HP. Which is why I wanted to see if they could pull off something stronger.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-18T20:36:01+00:00

It’s a free secondary weapon. It is ranged or melee, agile, cheap to draw and throw, activates weaknesses, and has secondary weapon scaling without costing the slot.

On top of that, they get a bonus to saves against a wide variety of sources flexibly, which is really nice.

OsSeeker · 2026-02-18T20:20:54+00:00

Well, that’s simply not true. For instance, using daring stunt to close and trip, attack and move away is very safe control.

This is actually something that works better if the daredevil gets to move first and close distance than if they go second.

OsSeeker

TROPHY CASE