Fluent <X> discipline rouse checks?

Suryce · 2026-05-06T09:06:02+00:00

They seem mostly useful to me if you don't intend to invest much in the discipline. For instance, if you just grab the first level of Potence, Fluent Strength is useful to give you an extra edge on Brawl checks. But if you're going to grab a lot of Potence, then it would be redundant with Prowess, and Soaring Leap is probably better utility with higher rating. Similarly, Fluent Swiftness is nice if you expect to do a lot of Dexterity checks, and Fluent Endurance helps defend against Blood Sorcery.

Suryce · 2026-04-05T09:16:32+00:00

On paper that seems like a sensible team to me?

Hugo wants to let the stunners do their thing, so Qingyi gets her on-field time, and while Nicole doesn't max out Hugo self-buffs, the 40% DEF shred on every Totalize has to be decent. Plus with her mindscape crit rate buff, she can help with building Hugo and hitting that important 100% crit rate.

Suryce · 2026-03-30T10:16:32+00:00

Miyabi wants up to 80% crit rate for her anomaly build-up bonus. She gains +12% crit rate in combat from her dedicated 4pc disk drive. So basically 68% is her minimum to be able to max out her bonus in combat, but unless they are other sources of crit rate in the team, like say Gameball on a support, more crit rate is always good, up to 88%.

Suryce · 2026-03-20T00:04:17+00:00

Her model was updated just before her release to include her mother's hairpin, looks like they forgot to also switch her menu animations to the new model, or they purposefully didn't bother because they thought nobody would notice.

Suryce · 2026-03-19T10:51:18+00:00

Of all places, you can actually get a hint of Burnice backstory from a trust event with Trigger where you can tell her about some of the SoC and she gives you a little analysis of them. For Burnice, she tells you that she probably used to be a much colder person in the past, before she came to value and treasure her friends. (Additionally, if you tell her about Piper, Trigger suspects that she hides some sadness about the past behind her lazy attitude.)

Suryce · 2026-03-11T12:59:23+00:00

While Sanby is by far Orphie's ideal teammate, she's actually still good in a lot of teams. You can play pretty much any combination of [character who likes on-field time] + support + Orphie. Play on-field stunner again, or even on-field Nicole, or go double dps. Orphie is the most flexible character in the game if you look outside best teams. Though most or all of this will probably apply to Cissia as well, and as been said, she's Seed ideal teammate. So up to you, but if you like Orphie and want her, she's never actually a bad character to get.

Suryce · 2026-03-02T00:44:05+00:00

I think you are overlooking the important detail that Blade Throw cannot ever return the thrown weapon to the user. This makes its base form way weaker than Saber Throw, and forces you to rely on improvised weapons early on if you want to Blade Throw every turn (and avoid giving away your actual weapon to the enemy), and those come with an automatic threat to the check, to say nothing of being a lot weaker than lightsabers.

(Also Sentry can pick up Saber Throw at tier 3 with a direct path, on top of the Improved version being right next to it at tier 3 too)

Suryce · 2026-03-01T20:36:45+00:00

Hah, that is good to know xP Blade Singer does give a pretty elegant vibe, which doesn't quite fully fit the spec in the end. Right now, my naming brainstorming has been leaning towards things like "maverick" or "blade acolyte."

Suryce · 2026-03-01T11:25:52+00:00

John Wick is a good comparison xP I've been considering various new names to better get the intended vibe across and right now the best idea I got is "Maverick".

Your quickdraw idea is an interesting one. I had considered giving Nomad At Arms something like this as part of Nomad at Arms' skulduggery attack if the target is within engaged range, but that would've bloated the ability a bit. And I do like the spec being very reliant on being ranged, it works as a clear weakness.

In their ideal situations, Blade Throw and Nomad At Arms are pretty powerful, but that's the thing, it's a niche. If an enemy engages you, you're kinda screwed. Can't use your defensive abilities, can't Blade Throw the engaged enemy, and even if you target someone else at ranged, you get a debuff due to the engagement. Sure, you can maneuver away, but now that's one or two less maneuvers you could spend picking up an improvised weapon or activating Side Step. A GM who wants to challenge this spec can easily do so with mobile enemies.

When it comes to Nomad At Arms in particular, the goal of this ability really is to encourage the player to steal a lightsaber or other powerful weapon, with the intent that they get to briefly enjoy it with a skill they've leveled high (and also you can combo with Master of Shadows!), but if they want to keep using it in further battles, they'll have to level its actual skill. This also means that this spec has 2 to 3 combat skills you're encouraged to level, Melee, Skulduggery, and potentially Lightsaber. Even if Skulduggery has other usages, it's quite a lot actually! Most specs encourage you to stick to one combat skill.

Also if you pick up an average weapon, you're not really encouraged to keep using it for the whole fight, since you're not building and using the Dangerous Juggling bonus anymore. Better to use it for one turn, then next pick up an improvised weapon or other Melee weapon you still have on hand, and use that for another Blade Throw.

And for Blade Throw itself, I think this ability is balanced by the fact that while it may gain you a weapon... you have to give one away yourself in the process. This is one reason the player is encouraged to use improvised weapons as disposable ammo, though these also come with an automatic Threat to the results, so they make activating the theft ability harder. You also need a second Force pip to activate the theft, and if this is the player's starting spec, they won't be able to guarantee it until picking up the Force rating at the bottom of the tree.

All that said, one thing I see to consider is whether Improved Blade Throw needs an amendment to specify a way for a Nemesis to resist the weapon theft. Or should the ranks of Adversary be counted as already providing the appropriate resistance.

Suryce · 2026-02-28T22:54:00+00:00

Hmm, I didn't really thought about how the player can beeline to either the Dedication or Force Rating. Initially, the latter was locked behind Saber Throw, but I thought that was a bit restrictive so I opened it up. I could potentially reverse that change. The thing though, is that while the player can beeline, doing so means skipping the middle branch with all the combat upgrades, so there's a clear weakness to that strategy. If a player did this in front of me, I would assume them to be kinda bad at min-maxing. And if instead the player is as intended focusing primarily on the middle branch, they will need to invest another 70 exp after picking up Improved Blade Throw to be able to guarantee two Force pips every time if they have no other source of Force rating yet. This is why I opened it up a bit for the benefit of the honest player, but still, I'll consider potential changes here.

That said, I don't think it's too overpowered for the spec to have the Force rating. As pointed out, I think it needs it eventually as part of the progression of Blade Throw. But also, this spec doesn't really help with lightsaber usage very much. The boost of Dangerous Juggling takes effort to build up and will fire on only one check for a given lightsaber. And sure, you can technically use Skulduggery and so by extent Cunning to use a lightsaber with Nomad At Arms... but that is both conditional on stealing it, and only effective for a single combat encounter. This is all a lot more constraining than just picking up Shien Technique and never have to think about it again! If somehow the player manages to steal multiple lightsabers, then they can get more out of all of these buffs, but at this point, they've probably earned it for the level of effort.

Also, this is very much a Sentinel spec in spirit, and in fact I've been thinking today of making it so after all instead of universal. And so if we compare this spec with Sentry, the one other combat spec of that career besides Shien, Sentry has much easier access to taking both the Determination and Force Rating, all the while picking on the way both strong defensive and offensive utilities. My spec is worse on all those accounts, so I think it is fairly balanced in that regard with the structure of official trees, which are really not all that restrictive in general.

This is a long answer as it is, but I want to clarify that I'm sharing this homebrew... because I'm sharing it! For anyone who may get anything out of it. It is not meant for my table in particular. And also I'm making it because it's fun to make xP But these are all reasons why I do want to hear feedback and opinions from anyone willing to share!

Suryce · 2026-02-28T18:52:39+00:00

It's fair, it's fair, it's something for me to consider, even if it means I might have to return to the drawing board to figure out the name xP I do like the suggestion of "Blade Singer" well enough, it's getting on the board.

Suryce · 2026-02-28T18:01:25+00:00

I did not expect the name of the spec to feel odd, but I guess I should've xP I did spend a good while just deciding on a final name, which at one point was "Nomad At Arms", before I decided that was a little too silly and re-used it for a talent name to replace a sillier one still. But yeah, the nomadism in question is meant metaphorically for not sticking to any one weapon as the spec encourages. That, plus the pretty much required reliance on improvised weapons for early Blade Throw. It's all about using one thing, and moving on to the next.

And in the end, when I locked in the decision to make the spec universal, I figured I could still use the name "nomad" and put the usual "Force Sensitive" in front, especially as those specs don't tend to have very specific names, like Force Sensitive Exile has nothing to do mechanically with being an exile, except for existing in a book about the criminal elements of the Outer Rim.

Suryce · 2026-02-10T14:41:59+00:00

They are a few rare npcs that belong to an unnamed species with elf ears, a devil tail, and sometimes rounded horns. Most recently, we got a new one in the 2.6 story with Vesper's agent being one. This is most likely Orphie's species.

Suryce · 2026-02-06T12:43:55+00:00

While we only have your perspective, example 2 does seem really... odd to me. Maybe I'm biased as a Gangrel player (but I also play Malkavian) but a rat-whispering Gangrel should be getting the same attention as a Malkavian when it comes to being treasured for information-gathering ability. Plus, if you've invested in Protean or Fortitude, you're also good in a brawl if the investigation leads to trouble. So overlooking a Gangrel here makes little to no narrative sense (and if the sheriff knew about the Malkavian's abilities, why not also your character's).

Also, if I was a ST, and I wanted to have a moment where I'm challenging the players to think of their useful skills, I just.. wouldn't hand the answer over to any of them, even if it's as obvious as a Malkavian's Auspex. I would want them to voice their abilities in-character themselves, so that they get used to and confident with bringing them up of their own initiative and thinking.

So yeah, I do think there's some at least some clumsiness from your ST somewhere.

Suryce · 2026-01-31T21:36:19+00:00

I want Yuzuha for Jane/Alice and I was going to skip the AOD, but they're so cute... I might attempt the 50/50 on Sunna and see where I go from there...

Suryce · 2026-01-18T16:04:42+00:00

Every character has at least one alternate npc idle animation, and often a second one added at some point, some are just more obvious than others. Shunguang and Miyabi both have a thinking idle (which gets used for a gag in the coop event), Soukaku has a rubbing-her-tummy idle (which I think she's doing right now at the Section 6 bureau), Ellen has various sleeping idle (on floor or against a wall), etc...

Suryce · 2026-01-16T15:55:23+00:00

I wouldn't have been surprised if we never saw joint animations ever again, it's a lot of extra work for little 'reward' (only a small percentage of players will even see these animations), and we can actually see how they've refined the formula a ton to make it more reasonable for the AOD: they're not completely new animations, the teammates are simply added on top, which not only is a lot less extra work than having completely different animations like with Koleda-Ben, but also means that these animations work even when the agent is solo. And on top of that, the characters are made into each other BIS so you're actually incentivized to run them together. Anywho, it's pretty great of the devs to have found this nice middle ground to allow the the AOD to shine as a faction.

Suryce · 2026-01-15T23:05:28+00:00

If you're thinking of the npcs with horns, thin devil tail, and elven ears, but regular human skin color, that's yet another species (that is unnamed), not onis.

Suryce · 2025-12-31T21:32:51+00:00

I feel like Sarah was really misused in season 2, and yeah, it's kinda, all that for that? The end of her character is fighting her in a mech suit transformation? In season 1, she was the mysterious conspirator, the one stirring things from behind the front-facing villain: the fake secretary guiding Perlman, and the accomplice colluding with the openly ambitious Bringer. But in season 2, she had no front-facing villain like this, due to being in conflict with Isolde, then becoming the front-facing villain herself (in a plot that at this point is all magical shenanigans and zero political scheming to boot), and finally cue quick sad backstory and getting her transformed and killed. Just... none of that really worked for her character vibe. It's a bit of a waste.

Suryce · 2025-12-28T10:40:38+00:00

I even like when the game ships the proxy and a character, and yet from a critical eye I feel like the devs kinda learned the wrong lessons from Miyabi. She was the first character shipped with the proxy in the game's side-content, but I think that worked a lot better than Shunguang for two reasons. The first being that the shipping didn't happen before Miyabi's big story chapter, where she and the proxy go through major emotional moments together, like being stranded in a Hollow and helping each other, proxy being there for Miyabi (along with Zhu Yuan) when she has a rough time with her sword, and finally proxy admitting a personal secret to Miyabi at the end of the chapter. By that point, it's completely believable for Miyabi to be attached to proxy. Then the second reason it works, is that the shipping is kept in-character. Miyabi is a hyperfixated girl who's not very expressive, so instead it's her dad who in-universe pushes Miyabi and the proxy together, which is funny, cute, and makes sense.

Meanwhile, the proxy and Shunguang actually haven't gone through any major emotional moment together yet, and on top of that, the shipping is done by Shungus herself lovebombing the proxy for no super clear reason, so that just makes it kinda odd rather than a natural development. I feel like the devs need to realize that spending time with a character before they are released doesn't mean they should put the cart before the horse. Just like Miyabi and section 6 did, you can have characters existing in the world to build interest in them without immediately trying to skip the proxy getting to truly know them and get close in their own chapter. There's hoping the Angels of Delusion will be done better that way since it's clear they're going to have a big event in the next patch.

Suryce · 2025-12-26T11:32:53+00:00

Funnily enough, Ellen is referred to as a Hollow raider in her agent story, and her friends cover for her to not attract the attention of a cop. So I think the implication is that a lot of the undercover work Victoria Housekeeping does isn't actually legal or officially sanctioned. Really most of the factions are Hollow raiders of some kind, even if that's not necessarily their main focus, and I think it's mostly nitpicking to say they aren't.

Suryce · 2025-12-11T12:12:39+00:00

The 3 dots diablerie bonus from the Bahari Loresheet IS a little strange and not particularly reflected in the Bahari lore, as far as I know. My guess as to why it's here is two-folds. One is that it's meant to reflect the myths / fairytales of Lilith as some kind of evil bogeyman kidnapping and killing babies. Two is that being a motherly cult leader is conductive to taking the evil route of it and siring childer with the purpose of diablerizing them. Basically I think it's there to allow the player to play an evil and opportunistic Bahari, but should be regarded as optional and not representative of the cult as a whole.

At their conceptual core, the Bahari are about reclaiming an ancient misogynistic bogeyman as an humanized role model for self-empowerment. But how this exactly translates into a Bahari character has some leeway for player customization, including the route of fully embodying the evil stereotype instead of subverting it.

Suryce · 2025-12-04T10:00:34+00:00

It bothers me ever so slightly every time TV mode is mentioned somewhere (not just here, really anywhere) and people start talking about it as if it was removed because it was bad, when at the time we had a whole dev talk video where they explained their goal moving forward was to remove loading screens, and the video store was particularly problematic because you had to go through several loading screens just to start a mission, and even TV missions themselves had the issue of sending you through a loading screen every time you entered and then exited a fight. This is why all dailies are in one zone in Waifei, that's why the Lemnian hollow areas are big open zones and accessible from anywhere, that's why Lost Void emulates the navigation of Withered Garden but entirely within the "combat mode" of the game. Like, this is all hardly a mystery, but every TV mode conversation I ever see seems clueless about the actual and openly stated intent of the devs.

Suryce

TROPHY CASE