SangoProduction
2020-11-20, 09:28 AM
I was researching the different SoM spheres when doing the Bear sphere review. The one that caught my eye was definitely Open Hand, so I'm reviewing it, and hoping to suss out any potential nuggets of gold.
Obviously being a Trip specialist means you benefit in the extreme from the Grease formulae from the Alchemy sphere. If no one wants to do alchemy, just dip in, grab that formulae, and hand it to the party wizard who is more than happy to conserve spell slots while feeling like he's helping.
Ranking system:
(S) Superb: You always want this. It's awesome.
(G) Good: You would certainly not complain about having this, especially in the right builds / situations.
(B) Bad: While perhaps better than nothing, you are giving up something for it, so probably shouldn't without a good reason.
(N) No.
(C) Cheese: A talent so broken that it will be instantly banned if you use it as you could.
(I) Impossible: Can't be rated because it is just not defined enough to give a meaningful rating - it depends too much on DM ruling, or personal use. I'll just place it where I guess the average result would put it.
<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
Mechanics
Unarmed Damage: Taking talents in Open Palm (and a few other, less good sphere) increase your unarmed strike. At 12 talents, you're hitting as hard as a great sword. Congrats.
Sweep(G-S): Move action trip that doesn't provoke. Only drawback is the -2 to succeed. That's still a win.
Snap Kick (S): So, doing your normal thing makes them provoke an attack of opportunity, and and if you hit, they must save or be staggered. Huh. Neat.
Sweeping Kick (S): Immediate action trip attempt on hitting an unarmed strike with an attack action.
Aquatic Stalker (<G>): Allows you to trip in water.
Counter Balance (G): Immediate action trip in exchange for martial focus.
Rising Leverage (G): Tripping while prone lets you free action stand up, and restore martial focus. Dropping prone is a free action. If you can eat that melee attack penalty (like being an Infuser Sage), this can make for a nice focus cycler.
Hurricane Kick (B-G): It's a pseudo-cleave. Very meh.
Cooperative Clothesline (<B-G>): If you've got a secondary trip buddy...Well, trip doesn't stack, so you're kinda stepping on each other's toes. But hey, you can grant someone else a trip attempt for a swift action.
Judo Throw (B-G): Standard action trip which packages up a reposition. Neat. I guess.
Hard Landing (B): When you trip, they are battered, giving them -2 to CMD, and no AoO. But you already tripped them. And they take -4 to attack while prone anyway.
Greater Trip (N-): You'd need to be level 4 before this even competes with Improved Trip, and then level 12 for it to be equal to also Greater Trip. It doesn't beat them until level 16. If you're full BAB. Holy hell no.
Featherlight Positioning (G-S): Adds an immense amount of mobility, even out of your turn. Add some reach and increase AoOs, and you're basically impossible to melee.
Spinning Heel Kick (<G-S>): Basically doubling up on your Attack-Action attacks with cleave. If you often face mobs, and you prefer to deal damage to tripping, then this is great. Throw in Dual Wield sphere and the Emperor motif.
Kick-Off (<G>): If you have massive reach, this can help you maintain distance. That's the only real, good usage though. But it is a good usage.
Grasping Hand (<G>): Immediate action grapple check? Huh. OK. I guess. There's no good way to get both a good Grapple and Trip score though, and this grants penalties. It works if you're an Infuser Sage
Leopard’s Gambit (G): Gives an attacker advantage to hit, and then they provoke from you. More damage, and you don't even guarantee they hit.
Shattering Palm (<B-G>): Why you would need a second disarm after succeeding a disarm is kinda beyond me. Maybe you're fighting a Hekatonkheires.
Up High, Down Low, Too Slow (I): It doesn't give a duration on the battered condition. So, you crippled someone for life...or until they go full defensive. Whichever comes first.
Suppressive Rush (S): I don't care if it's not optimal, it's really freaking cool. Blast them with touch attacks, or they can choose to take relatively large penalties until they shut up and go full defensive.
Thunderous Punishment (S): You have a lot of ways to force someone to take attacks of opportunity, and you just get to stack on Staggered (and eventually Daze) just because.
Swinging Swap (G-S): On successful unarmed strike, swap places with the enemy. On consecutive uses of this, confuse the target on a failed will save. You'll obviously want attack actions that offer multiple attacks to make consecutive swaps even possible, but otherwise this has no cost to you.
Tear Flesh (<G-S>): If you ever face monsters, rather than humanoids, you can very often make good use of this. Oh, and the flexible damage type is nice for DR as well.
Joint Lock (<G>): Note that this doesn't say "A creature you are grappling" it says "a grappled creature." This works even if you have someone else who wants to grapple. And it hurts their ability to break the grapple
Rippling Blow (<G>): -2 to attack rolls when attacking someone to make them provoke from you for an extra attack. I mean...neat. It's especially useful for an Infuser Sage who doesn't care at all about the penalty. And it's less of a penalty when you have a Fate sphere specialist.
Axe Kick (<G>): Increase strength to damage of unarmed strikes by 0.5x, or 1x against prone foes. Great for damage-focused strength builds.
Focusing Breath (B-G): Regain martial focus as a move action. Meh. Incredibly stock standard.
Withering Defense (B-G): Spend AoO to cause 1 round of fatigue. Not a fantastic condition. Less so when it lasts only 1 round.
Palm Block (B): Spend a move action to reduce the damage of an attack by your unarmed attack. Admittedly that could be a lot of effective health...but the deal is...there are more effective ways to use your move action to defend yourself, like the Athletics sphere.
Mystic Fists (B): Unarmed damage count as magic for purposes of DR... And for incoporeal creatures. yay! Also up to 4 different materials by the time you're level 20. Or you could just...invest in a couple stabby bois and save the feat.
Capoeira Spin (B): Reduces penalty to attacking from prone, and do an immediate action to stand from prone when you make an attack, and deal +2 damage. Woo...
Iron Fist (N-B): Ignoring a small amount of hardness. Woo... You could also just like...get an adamantine greatsword instead. You'd need to be at least level 20 for this to compare to that, by which time the cost of the talent is greater than the greatsword.
Vibrating Impacts (N-B): Conditionally, your attacks count as continuous damage. Which is only useful against mage-type enemies.
Waving Hand (N): There are so many better things to do with your swift action.
Fading Slide (N): Lets you immediate action to attack. You then fall prone.
Lotus Touch (N-): You spend your standard action, dealing tiny damage, to enable a tiny chance to double damage of the next attack. Optimistically you're affecting someone with a 16-20 crit range already (25% chance to crit), so you're giving up 100% of an attack (assuming you didn't have multiple attacks / rider effects), in exchange for a 25% of an attack for every +5 BAB. No. Just no. Screw that. Even if that attack had elemental burst enchants, that's still a terrible exchange, as you don't even stack the crit chance increases.
Obviously being a Trip specialist means you benefit in the extreme from the Grease formulae from the Alchemy sphere. If no one wants to do alchemy, just dip in, grab that formulae, and hand it to the party wizard who is more than happy to conserve spell slots while feeling like he's helping.
Ranking system:
(S) Superb: You always want this. It's awesome.
(G) Good: You would certainly not complain about having this, especially in the right builds / situations.
(B) Bad: While perhaps better than nothing, you are giving up something for it, so probably shouldn't without a good reason.
(N) No.
(C) Cheese: A talent so broken that it will be instantly banned if you use it as you could.
(I) Impossible: Can't be rated because it is just not defined enough to give a meaningful rating - it depends too much on DM ruling, or personal use. I'll just place it where I guess the average result would put it.
<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
Mechanics
Unarmed Damage: Taking talents in Open Palm (and a few other, less good sphere) increase your unarmed strike. At 12 talents, you're hitting as hard as a great sword. Congrats.
Sweep(G-S): Move action trip that doesn't provoke. Only drawback is the -2 to succeed. That's still a win.
Snap Kick (S): So, doing your normal thing makes them provoke an attack of opportunity, and and if you hit, they must save or be staggered. Huh. Neat.
Sweeping Kick (S): Immediate action trip attempt on hitting an unarmed strike with an attack action.
Aquatic Stalker (<G>): Allows you to trip in water.
Counter Balance (G): Immediate action trip in exchange for martial focus.
Rising Leverage (G): Tripping while prone lets you free action stand up, and restore martial focus. Dropping prone is a free action. If you can eat that melee attack penalty (like being an Infuser Sage), this can make for a nice focus cycler.
Hurricane Kick (B-G): It's a pseudo-cleave. Very meh.
Cooperative Clothesline (<B-G>): If you've got a secondary trip buddy...Well, trip doesn't stack, so you're kinda stepping on each other's toes. But hey, you can grant someone else a trip attempt for a swift action.
Judo Throw (B-G): Standard action trip which packages up a reposition. Neat. I guess.
Hard Landing (B): When you trip, they are battered, giving them -2 to CMD, and no AoO. But you already tripped them. And they take -4 to attack while prone anyway.
Greater Trip (N-): You'd need to be level 4 before this even competes with Improved Trip, and then level 12 for it to be equal to also Greater Trip. It doesn't beat them until level 16. If you're full BAB. Holy hell no.
Featherlight Positioning (G-S): Adds an immense amount of mobility, even out of your turn. Add some reach and increase AoOs, and you're basically impossible to melee.
Spinning Heel Kick (<G-S>): Basically doubling up on your Attack-Action attacks with cleave. If you often face mobs, and you prefer to deal damage to tripping, then this is great. Throw in Dual Wield sphere and the Emperor motif.
Kick-Off (<G>): If you have massive reach, this can help you maintain distance. That's the only real, good usage though. But it is a good usage.
Grasping Hand (<G>): Immediate action grapple check? Huh. OK. I guess. There's no good way to get both a good Grapple and Trip score though, and this grants penalties. It works if you're an Infuser Sage
Leopard’s Gambit (G): Gives an attacker advantage to hit, and then they provoke from you. More damage, and you don't even guarantee they hit.
Shattering Palm (<B-G>): Why you would need a second disarm after succeeding a disarm is kinda beyond me. Maybe you're fighting a Hekatonkheires.
Up High, Down Low, Too Slow (I): It doesn't give a duration on the battered condition. So, you crippled someone for life...or until they go full defensive. Whichever comes first.
Suppressive Rush (S): I don't care if it's not optimal, it's really freaking cool. Blast them with touch attacks, or they can choose to take relatively large penalties until they shut up and go full defensive.
Thunderous Punishment (S): You have a lot of ways to force someone to take attacks of opportunity, and you just get to stack on Staggered (and eventually Daze) just because.
Swinging Swap (G-S): On successful unarmed strike, swap places with the enemy. On consecutive uses of this, confuse the target on a failed will save. You'll obviously want attack actions that offer multiple attacks to make consecutive swaps even possible, but otherwise this has no cost to you.
Tear Flesh (<G-S>): If you ever face monsters, rather than humanoids, you can very often make good use of this. Oh, and the flexible damage type is nice for DR as well.
Joint Lock (<G>): Note that this doesn't say "A creature you are grappling" it says "a grappled creature." This works even if you have someone else who wants to grapple. And it hurts their ability to break the grapple
Rippling Blow (<G>): -2 to attack rolls when attacking someone to make them provoke from you for an extra attack. I mean...neat. It's especially useful for an Infuser Sage who doesn't care at all about the penalty. And it's less of a penalty when you have a Fate sphere specialist.
Axe Kick (<G>): Increase strength to damage of unarmed strikes by 0.5x, or 1x against prone foes. Great for damage-focused strength builds.
Focusing Breath (B-G): Regain martial focus as a move action. Meh. Incredibly stock standard.
Withering Defense (B-G): Spend AoO to cause 1 round of fatigue. Not a fantastic condition. Less so when it lasts only 1 round.
Palm Block (B): Spend a move action to reduce the damage of an attack by your unarmed attack. Admittedly that could be a lot of effective health...but the deal is...there are more effective ways to use your move action to defend yourself, like the Athletics sphere.
Mystic Fists (B): Unarmed damage count as magic for purposes of DR... And for incoporeal creatures. yay! Also up to 4 different materials by the time you're level 20. Or you could just...invest in a couple stabby bois and save the feat.
Capoeira Spin (B): Reduces penalty to attacking from prone, and do an immediate action to stand from prone when you make an attack, and deal +2 damage. Woo...
Iron Fist (N-B): Ignoring a small amount of hardness. Woo... You could also just like...get an adamantine greatsword instead. You'd need to be at least level 20 for this to compare to that, by which time the cost of the talent is greater than the greatsword.
Vibrating Impacts (N-B): Conditionally, your attacks count as continuous damage. Which is only useful against mage-type enemies.
Waving Hand (N): There are so many better things to do with your swift action.
Fading Slide (N): Lets you immediate action to attack. You then fall prone.
Lotus Touch (N-): You spend your standard action, dealing tiny damage, to enable a tiny chance to double damage of the next attack. Optimistically you're affecting someone with a 16-20 crit range already (25% chance to crit), so you're giving up 100% of an attack (assuming you didn't have multiple attacks / rider effects), in exchange for a 25% of an attack for every +5 BAB. No. Just no. Screw that. Even if that attack had elemental burst enchants, that's still a terrible exchange, as you don't even stack the crit chance increases.