Acolyte of the Ego, Cadence Mastery and Cadence of the Thunder Drake Spam.

[mabriss lethe]

OK, Deep diving into yet another bad class. This time, I'm zooming in on the Acolyte of the Ego from ToM. Yes. It is a hot mess. In particular, I'm examining the Cadence Mastery class feature as it relates to one of the only purely offensive cadences, Thunder Drake. (For those who are rusty, the cadence grants you a sonic breath weapon that deals 2d6 points of damage per cadence known, and mastery lets you string together multiple cadences into a single action by bumping the dc up by 5 per cadence added)

After rereading the class, there doesn't seem to be anything that would keep an Acolyte from combining multiple instances of Thunder Drake into a single action (other than making the Truename check) The ability is vague enough in its wording that it doesn't call out that the cadences must be different, it only uses the word "multiple" in the description. So unless I'm missing something (and I may very well be) this could actually wind up being one of the more powerful breath weapon attacks a pc could normally attain.

[RSGA]

Just off the top of my head, first thing against it is that the effort needed to get your Truespeech high enough to regularly do this probably would have paid quicker and better gains elsewhere. The second is that it doesn't seem to make them one utterance/cadence so that means that each one has a chance to get saved against which is likely to drag the damage down some.

Also potentially either having to deal with SR or getting multiple charges instead of a rapid fire depending on how the very badly done rules are interpreted.

[mabriss lethe]

Just off the top of my head, first thing against it is that the effort needed to get your Truespeech high enough to regularly do this probably would have paid quicker and better gains elsewhere. The second is that it doesn't seem to make them one utterance/cadence so that means that each one has a chance to get saved against which is likely to drag the damage down some.

Also potentially either having to deal with SR or getting multiple charges instead of a rapid fire depending on how the very badly done rules are interpreted.

Obviously there are going to be issues with truespeech checks. that whole system is just garbage. And this little dive really doesn't have any real relevance to what else you could do instead. It's about picking apart the underpinnings of a relatively weak and unpopular class to see what makes it tick and how it can be manipulated.

That said, there are some ways to fudge the numbers. Aside from the normal ways in which a character can boost Truespeech, Cadence mastery bases its Truespeech check on the first cadence in the series. If you wind up jacking the dc too high from multiple uses of Thunderdrake, you can lower the dc by having a cadence you haven't used as much start the sequence. So the first few times you use it it's just X2 or X3 iterations of Thunder Drake (depending on what your Truespeech check can support. As the DC skyrockets (and multiple iterations will cause it to skyrocket fast) It will then be easier to make a check if you tack that original series onto the tail of another Cadence, preferably one you haven't used yet. After only a single use of a 3X thunderdrake, (adds +6 due to law of resistance, +10 for mastery, ) it becomes easier to hit a X4 combo that leads off with something else. (+15 for mastery and no increase to the DC for resistance)

And yes, it is an SP ability, so SR would be a problem. since it's literally just spamming multiple cadences over a single action, it would require multiple saves. That's both a good and bad thing. It means that while there's a chance that overall damage can drop, it also means that you can still manage damage against foes with SR or above average Ref saves since you'll be testing it multiple times as part of a single action. Additionally, the save formula that it uses is pretty robust. (10+Con+Class level+#of cadences known). The save can be further improved by +3 with Resonant Voice. And that, alongside of the base damage, can be beefed up even more with a little cheese from uncanny trickster or legacy champion, if you really want.

[Falontani]

the feat Reverberation can be used to increase the DC by 2, Ability Focus: Breath Weapon for a further 2. Heighten Breath could be used, but it would kill the combo's idea if I'm reading this correctly.