Traits Revamp - Everything Changes

Hey everyone, get ready for one of the biggest revamps of the system so far! Not only have we close to tripled the number of traits in the system, we've used the extensive playtesting from the previous traits beta you've all been playing with these past months to rebalance just about everything. There have been mostly buffs across the board, most traits are new and improved on the power scale and quite a few are going to enable brand new strategies never before possible. Check out the new Pet section of traits - they let you conjure a creature automatically the moment you roll initiative and you can take a whole bunch of traits to power it up as you gain levels.

Enjoy the beta. We have no doubt that a lot will be changed going forward, but either way - it's definitely going to be fun.

Combat Traits - Beta

What I see:

Dangerously Talented
You gain an additional combat talent and may bring an additional combat talent into battle with you. You may take this trait multiple times.

How I feel:

I don't see why Lightning Reflexes requires having Fleet Foot first.

Assuming I'm reading Vital Surge right and you get the temp HP before the damage is dealt that's... really friggin strong. As in makes most minion attacks pointless. If it were once per round or had some limit of some kind it'd be ok.

As stated privately before I think the Improved Defense tree should just be removed entirely. It's just way too strong.

Healer's Grace should probably renamed to avoid confusion.

Vital Surge
Whenever an enemy attacks you, you gain 1d6 temporary hp.

-Is this a reaction, or interrupt?

Cutscene Immunity [Created by Zarhorn]
Your conjurations cannot be targeted by enemy attacks until the end of their second turn.

- Does this affect ALL of the new conjurations, including reaction-trait summoned ones, or those summoned at the start of initiative?

- Can the spectral warden protect any/all of the new trait-made conjurations?

- Do bonuses to saving throws stack with each other? (E.g. Iron Will, Bling, and the +3 ring trinket)?

Ramsus wrote:Assuming I'm reading Vital Surge right and you get the temp HP before the damage is dealt that's... really friggin strong. As in makes most minion attacks pointless. If it were once per round or had some limit of some kind it'd be ok.

Yeah that's actually a pretty good point.

This is basically giving yourself Resistance 6 to all attacks, plus every time you're attacked and they don't overcome your Resistance you gain a few temporary hp.

1d6 is very different than resistance 6

It is a reaction. Edited now for clarity.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:1d6 is very different than resistance 6

*failure trumpet noise*

It still might be a bit too powerful of course. We'll be keeping a close eye on it. But at least it isn't resist 6. =)

As stated privately before I think the Improved Defense tree should just be removed entirely. It's just way too strong.

Some players really, really missed being able to make enemies truly miss them with attacks. Attack rolls suck to make yourself, but some players enjoyed being able to make a player that was seriously hard for the DM to hit. The Improved Defense tree provides this for them. Also, I don't think it's too strong. Having a 1/6 chance of dodging an attack for a trait, or a 1/3 chance for 2 traits and a 1/2 chance for three traits is pretty reasonable. I might change it to the DM having to roll the d12 though, it might feel better to the players than whiffing if they roll themselves (though having a chance of triggering a special when you're attacked it pretty cool). We'll leave it as is for now and if it needs any form of nerfing we'll change it to the DM rolling so you can't trigger the special.

Warlord’s Special
Whenever a creature rolls an 8 on a d8, 10 on a d10 or 12 on a d12 with a talent that you granted them, you may also activate your special move as though you had rolled the die.

Does this activate in conjunction with Royal command?
As you grant actions with Royal Command, not talents, like go get that bastard, I'm thinking no, but I dearly want it to be yes...

Sadly no, as you granted them an action not a talent. If it did, it'd be a tad bit too broken. =)

Yeah, Duelist was *way* too strong in the previous versions. Kindulas loved it to pieces, but even he agreed that it needed to be nerfed (Kindulas is on the design team). His characters kept breaking things with it after all.

Glad you like all those others too. Clarification, what do you mean when you ask, "Does improved defense work with..."?

1) Basically an offense-oriented trait is only supposed to give you about 13 extra damage over 5 rounds. Using a simple 1-extra-attack-a-turn with a minor action attack or similar, you could easily create 20 extra damage when duelist gave you +2 damage. If you worked in the occasional 3 attacks, you could go even higher. This made it way, way above the curve.

2) Absolutely.

Fleshrender is a static effect. The fact is you have two different effects that say you get to increase ongoing damage by two one the trigger of dealing damage to an enemy - but they're redundant. They both do the same thing, they don't stack.

Because effects like that have never stacked in this game?

Because it's a static effect. It's not giving you a bonus or letting you deal extra damage, it just provides a new game rule that says "when you hurt someone, you also increase their ongoing damage by 2". Extra copies of this are redundant. One doesn't trigger and then wait for the other to trigger.

However, if that's still confusing - you can't take two fleshrenders for a whole other reason stated in the item doc.

The Diversity Rule
In order to encourage trying out lots of different items, you can’t have two of the same items equipped at once. This means you can’t buy three pairs of running shoes to increase your speed by three, you can only have one on at a time. Also, you can’t get a bonus from the same game element more than once at a time. In english, this means that if three of your friends each have an item that gives +2 to allies’ saving throws - you can’t stack them up to get +6. You still only get +2. However, if it’s an activated power we’re talking about (such as someone spending their healing staff to help you) each activation is happening separately... So your allies can all take turns using their item combat-talent powers to help you out. Enjoy. Now let’s get on with the shopping!

Absolutely. Each time you attack, the static effect applies.

Conjuror's Pet states to pick one of two stat blocks, but it only has one stat block, just FYI. (Maybe did you mean one of two abilities?)