SangoProduction
2021-01-25, 04:27 AM
I was always just a tad bit frustrated in the Fencing sphere, because it acted like Sneak attack, in every way, except scaling best with full BAB, rather than bluff. This means that the classes actually associated with fencing and sneak attack don't get as much benefit from this sphere as the dwarf who's wearing 500 pounds of rocks as armor.
But I want to take a more enlightened view at this sphere.
Post-Review Analysis: This sphere really didn't want to rock the boat. It seemed very scared to do very much whatsoever, without requiring huge nets of feint talents interacting together. Didn't even really improve the feats it replaced, nor condense them. I get it, move action feint is much less terrible in SoM than S.PF, but it's still terrible.
The (exploit) talents are at least pretty cool. However, even they were scared to do much.
Let's be honest, though, it's adding rider effects to attacks. And there are plenty of ways to get enough attacks to apply every exploit talent in the opening round. So fair enough - it comes with the territory of being able to interact with anything that grants extra attacks.
Full or Partial BAB: Aside from accuracy, and Skewer talent, you'll be waiting around until no less than level 5 before you get any benefit from full BAB. So feel free to be partial BAB here. Granted, if you don't hit, you don't get any benefits, so high BAB is nice.
Casters may get rounds/level and feel bad, but you get a round per 5 levels, and feel great because Pathfinder trained you well. Aren't you special?
Flex Talents: Group Cover is nice for bonus AC when you've run into a swarm of goblins. Footwork is great for when you know your foe will want to run away. Read Foe for when you suddenly need Sense Motive.
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.
<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
- Special Ratings:
(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.
(F) Flavor: This indicates that the main draw to the talent is going to be its inherent fluff or flavor, rather than raw power or utility.
Base Sphere
Bonus Skills: Gain up to 5 ranks in Bluff per talent, up to your current level. Neat.
Fatal Thrust: It's a sneak attack, but less than half the scaling speed. But only for full then BAB. Then again, who really cares, as it won't change until at least 5 levels in regardless. So just don't consider it to scale at all and it feels a lot better to simply get +1d6 damage.
Plus with it's pretty easy to have massive numbers of attacks within a single attack action between barrage and dual wielding, and a few other options. And yes, you can simply play one of the new SoM archetypes for ninja or rogue and get both those options and good scaling, but who cares. That's their shtick. ...So why make a sphere effect that simply apes the shtick but worse, and brings nothing new to the table? OK, let's move on. It's fine.
Exploit Talents: You get to apply the effects of an exploit talent when you use Fatal Thrust.
Pace Setter (<S>): Nearly the last of the general talents, and the first to interact with the base sphere in any way. And actually... pretty neat. If you can find a way to reliably get sneak attack off on AoOs, then you're golden for area lock down, as you just need to hit - not even make a CM check. In combination with many attacks in an attack action, and very good reach... this might be a reason to take the feint talents. I'd be very dubious on that, but it's an option. Probably a build enabling one at that.
Group Cover (<I>): This is nice against hordes of less threatening enemies. Very conditional, but potentially potent. So its usefulness will basically be entirely dependent upon your DM's combat style.
Unlikely Feint (G-S): If you're dead set on using feint...ask your DM to just give you this one kindness for free. I don't know why animals have resistance against recoiling against false attacks. And apparently mindless creatures either have no sense of self-preservation, or can read you perfectly, by default rules. Very skilled for mindless folk.
Skewer (G): Grants full SA progression for those with full BAB... for one attack. But also enables 2 exploit talents, which is the main draw.
Footwork (<G>): Man this sphere loves to use a lot of swift actions. But this is a strictly better form of Step Up / Following Step feats, and immediate action movement is pretty cool, whether for kiting, or keeping up with a fleeing foe.
Expert Fence (<G>): Huh. Neat. +2 to AC and reflex saves as a swift action. Plus there are uses for cover aside from those strict bonuses. It's basically a directional Dodge+ & Improved Reflexes in one talent...at the cost of swift action. If your swift action isn't already being called upon, this makes a neat, if boring, pick up.
Feint Strike (<G>): Getting an extra attack is definitely a good benefit to feinting. If your swift action is open, and you are set upon feinting, then go right on ahead.
Verbal Feint (<G>): Need ranged feint? Here's a ranged feint. Feinting still is generally not a good use of your time, but yay gunslingers hitting AC 10.
Focusing Feint (B-G): Sure, the sphere might not have good uses for the focus, and it's tied to feinting, you have to give credit to swift action restoring of focus. It's most useful if you're allowed to delay
Masterful Defense (B-G): Huh. Neat. Fighting Defensively was even more garbage than I though. But with this, you can trade -2 to hit for +3 to AC, which isn't horrible, in concept. Especially if you target touch attack.. Although this did cost you a feat-equivalent.
Lunge (B-G): I'll be honest, I've not seen much point in the Lunge feat. Trading the trivial AC penalty for a penalty to hit doesn't make me any more enthused about it. But I know some people who swear by the feat, so I'll give it some credit, though I'm still dubious on it.
Darting Cane (stance) (B): Stances take a swift action to maintain. But if you are doing that, and then someone misses a melee attack against you, you get an AoO against them. I don't see what advantage this has over all the other ways of doing that, aside from perhaps being in a sphere you wanted to take.
Death From Afar (B): Gain range on Fatal Thrust alone, not sneak attack in general. Not horrible. Nothing spectacular either. At least it's passive.
Fast Feint (B): Making your feint attempt a move action is more impactful in SoM than normal play, because you still have your attack action. Still, feinting is unreliable and depends upon your enemy.
Parry And Riposte (B): Eh... Expend martial focus to potentially negate an attack.
Fatal Opening (B): Relatively flavorful, and gives a decent reason to want to feint. However...Improved Critical is a thing...which is just passively available, unless you want to do crit fishing with multiple different weapons. No idea why you would, as that relies on particular weapon stats to be useful...
Expert Feint (N-B): Feint attempts are generally pretty useless. But hey, you might be reducing their AC by as much as 2 or possibly even 4, if you're targeting snake people. Maybe your party would appreciate it. But there are so many better debuffs to inflict with your standard action, which aren't reliant on your enemy having high dex.
Impassable Defense (N-B): Makes Total Defense not simply be a bad delaying tactic. Instead it makes the action for frontline tanks who use AoO to protect their squishies. Still a pretty bad idea to give up your entire turn for +4 AC, and to rely solely upon AoOs, but it does at least have some use.
Read Foe (N): Here. Take some skill ranks. No, there's nothing else. We had a word limit per talent.
Open Guard (N): Battered on feint. Hah. Hah... Oh, you're serious?
Note: If you have a lot of followers/summons/etc. spamming Greater(/Expert) Feint, so that you can deny enemy AC, and enable Fatal Thrusts for you front liner... Feinting is suddenly pretty good, up until the DM bans your minionmancy, even though it's doing less than if the minions simply swarmed the enemy. Might be the 20 bluff checks you're making every round? Nah. The DM's probably a douche. Surely.
It's also nice, if you find some magical way to make it AoE.
I have no idea where you would get all the talents necessary to make it work on a single character. But...you can definitely try.
Ankle Strike (<G-S>): A free trip attempt while damaging them. At its peak, where you can reliably Fatal Thrust anyone moving through your threatened area...well, this would basically be a very conditional trip build with a higher talent cost, but you get to do some damage too. But tripping while you attack from a flank is still useful. And with the Open Hand's AoO on trip, this basically refunds itself for yet another Exploit.
Repositioning Strike (I): I mean. Free action movement is nice. Must stay adjacent to the target, even if your reach is extreme. So.. weird. PF is a very static game, where once you're already in a flanking position, you have little to no reason to move to another one. But I guess between Footwork and this, no one can ever escape from you, so long as you can somehow manage to deny their dexterity without a flanking partner, and have some AoOs. But then no one even tries to escape, and then you're sad.
Chest Strike (G): Sickened is a -2 to basically everything. Nice.
Face Strike (G): Gives his attacks 20% miss chance for a round. Nice.
Hand Slash (B-G): Eh. You may basically only be able to target humanoid enemies, but those are common enough, and at least you're getting the disarm in addition, rather than in place of, your attack. And that's a definite improvement.
Arm Strike (B-G): Give a -2 attack penalty for a few rounds, if you're lucky. Neat. It's not a bad debuff to choose in your attack sequence of 20 debuffs, and you've run out of the rest.
To The Hilt (<B-G>): There's no such thing as Damage Resistance in Pathfinder. Oops. But a favorable reading of the intent was that you reduce the DR of someone. An extremely favorable reading even reduces elemental resistances. By very small amounts. Incredibly small amounts. For 1 round. I mean. I
Wide Open (B): Gives a -2 to AC... for 1 round. Why...why does this last less long than Arm Strike, let alone Chest Strike? That is so strange. But I guess you can just apply it as yet another penalty in your Dual Wielding combo.
Belt Cutter (B): Just like disarm, you'd still have very limited targets, and even more limited uses, but maybe you'll frustrate a mage. Who knows. I personally roll the two maneuvers into one.
Distracting Blades (N): You make them lose an attack of opportunity! Great trade!
Leg Slash (N): No.
But I want to take a more enlightened view at this sphere.
Post-Review Analysis: This sphere really didn't want to rock the boat. It seemed very scared to do very much whatsoever, without requiring huge nets of feint talents interacting together. Didn't even really improve the feats it replaced, nor condense them. I get it, move action feint is much less terrible in SoM than S.PF, but it's still terrible.
The (exploit) talents are at least pretty cool. However, even they were scared to do much.
Let's be honest, though, it's adding rider effects to attacks. And there are plenty of ways to get enough attacks to apply every exploit talent in the opening round. So fair enough - it comes with the territory of being able to interact with anything that grants extra attacks.
Full or Partial BAB: Aside from accuracy, and Skewer talent, you'll be waiting around until no less than level 5 before you get any benefit from full BAB. So feel free to be partial BAB here. Granted, if you don't hit, you don't get any benefits, so high BAB is nice.
Casters may get rounds/level and feel bad, but you get a round per 5 levels, and feel great because Pathfinder trained you well. Aren't you special?
Flex Talents: Group Cover is nice for bonus AC when you've run into a swarm of goblins. Footwork is great for when you know your foe will want to run away. Read Foe for when you suddenly need Sense Motive.
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.
<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
- Special Ratings:
(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.
(F) Flavor: This indicates that the main draw to the talent is going to be its inherent fluff or flavor, rather than raw power or utility.
Base Sphere
Bonus Skills: Gain up to 5 ranks in Bluff per talent, up to your current level. Neat.
Fatal Thrust: It's a sneak attack, but less than half the scaling speed. But only for full then BAB. Then again, who really cares, as it won't change until at least 5 levels in regardless. So just don't consider it to scale at all and it feels a lot better to simply get +1d6 damage.
Plus with it's pretty easy to have massive numbers of attacks within a single attack action between barrage and dual wielding, and a few other options. And yes, you can simply play one of the new SoM archetypes for ninja or rogue and get both those options and good scaling, but who cares. That's their shtick. ...So why make a sphere effect that simply apes the shtick but worse, and brings nothing new to the table? OK, let's move on. It's fine.
Exploit Talents: You get to apply the effects of an exploit talent when you use Fatal Thrust.
Pace Setter (<S>): Nearly the last of the general talents, and the first to interact with the base sphere in any way. And actually... pretty neat. If you can find a way to reliably get sneak attack off on AoOs, then you're golden for area lock down, as you just need to hit - not even make a CM check. In combination with many attacks in an attack action, and very good reach... this might be a reason to take the feint talents. I'd be very dubious on that, but it's an option. Probably a build enabling one at that.
Group Cover (<I>): This is nice against hordes of less threatening enemies. Very conditional, but potentially potent. So its usefulness will basically be entirely dependent upon your DM's combat style.
Unlikely Feint (G-S): If you're dead set on using feint...ask your DM to just give you this one kindness for free. I don't know why animals have resistance against recoiling against false attacks. And apparently mindless creatures either have no sense of self-preservation, or can read you perfectly, by default rules. Very skilled for mindless folk.
Skewer (G): Grants full SA progression for those with full BAB... for one attack. But also enables 2 exploit talents, which is the main draw.
Footwork (<G>): Man this sphere loves to use a lot of swift actions. But this is a strictly better form of Step Up / Following Step feats, and immediate action movement is pretty cool, whether for kiting, or keeping up with a fleeing foe.
Expert Fence (<G>): Huh. Neat. +2 to AC and reflex saves as a swift action. Plus there are uses for cover aside from those strict bonuses. It's basically a directional Dodge+ & Improved Reflexes in one talent...at the cost of swift action. If your swift action isn't already being called upon, this makes a neat, if boring, pick up.
Feint Strike (<G>): Getting an extra attack is definitely a good benefit to feinting. If your swift action is open, and you are set upon feinting, then go right on ahead.
Verbal Feint (<G>): Need ranged feint? Here's a ranged feint. Feinting still is generally not a good use of your time, but yay gunslingers hitting AC 10.
Focusing Feint (B-G): Sure, the sphere might not have good uses for the focus, and it's tied to feinting, you have to give credit to swift action restoring of focus. It's most useful if you're allowed to delay
Masterful Defense (B-G): Huh. Neat. Fighting Defensively was even more garbage than I though. But with this, you can trade -2 to hit for +3 to AC, which isn't horrible, in concept. Especially if you target touch attack.. Although this did cost you a feat-equivalent.
Lunge (B-G): I'll be honest, I've not seen much point in the Lunge feat. Trading the trivial AC penalty for a penalty to hit doesn't make me any more enthused about it. But I know some people who swear by the feat, so I'll give it some credit, though I'm still dubious on it.
Darting Cane (stance) (B): Stances take a swift action to maintain. But if you are doing that, and then someone misses a melee attack against you, you get an AoO against them. I don't see what advantage this has over all the other ways of doing that, aside from perhaps being in a sphere you wanted to take.
Death From Afar (B): Gain range on Fatal Thrust alone, not sneak attack in general. Not horrible. Nothing spectacular either. At least it's passive.
Fast Feint (B): Making your feint attempt a move action is more impactful in SoM than normal play, because you still have your attack action. Still, feinting is unreliable and depends upon your enemy.
Parry And Riposte (B): Eh... Expend martial focus to potentially negate an attack.
Fatal Opening (B): Relatively flavorful, and gives a decent reason to want to feint. However...Improved Critical is a thing...which is just passively available, unless you want to do crit fishing with multiple different weapons. No idea why you would, as that relies on particular weapon stats to be useful...
Expert Feint (N-B): Feint attempts are generally pretty useless. But hey, you might be reducing their AC by as much as 2 or possibly even 4, if you're targeting snake people. Maybe your party would appreciate it. But there are so many better debuffs to inflict with your standard action, which aren't reliant on your enemy having high dex.
Impassable Defense (N-B): Makes Total Defense not simply be a bad delaying tactic. Instead it makes the action for frontline tanks who use AoO to protect their squishies. Still a pretty bad idea to give up your entire turn for +4 AC, and to rely solely upon AoOs, but it does at least have some use.
Read Foe (N): Here. Take some skill ranks. No, there's nothing else. We had a word limit per talent.
Open Guard (N): Battered on feint. Hah. Hah... Oh, you're serious?
Note: If you have a lot of followers/summons/etc. spamming Greater(/Expert) Feint, so that you can deny enemy AC, and enable Fatal Thrusts for you front liner... Feinting is suddenly pretty good, up until the DM bans your minionmancy, even though it's doing less than if the minions simply swarmed the enemy. Might be the 20 bluff checks you're making every round? Nah. The DM's probably a douche. Surely.
It's also nice, if you find some magical way to make it AoE.
I have no idea where you would get all the talents necessary to make it work on a single character. But...you can definitely try.
Ankle Strike (<G-S>): A free trip attempt while damaging them. At its peak, where you can reliably Fatal Thrust anyone moving through your threatened area...well, this would basically be a very conditional trip build with a higher talent cost, but you get to do some damage too. But tripping while you attack from a flank is still useful. And with the Open Hand's AoO on trip, this basically refunds itself for yet another Exploit.
Repositioning Strike (I): I mean. Free action movement is nice. Must stay adjacent to the target, even if your reach is extreme. So.. weird. PF is a very static game, where once you're already in a flanking position, you have little to no reason to move to another one. But I guess between Footwork and this, no one can ever escape from you, so long as you can somehow manage to deny their dexterity without a flanking partner, and have some AoOs. But then no one even tries to escape, and then you're sad.
Chest Strike (G): Sickened is a -2 to basically everything. Nice.
Face Strike (G): Gives his attacks 20% miss chance for a round. Nice.
Hand Slash (B-G): Eh. You may basically only be able to target humanoid enemies, but those are common enough, and at least you're getting the disarm in addition, rather than in place of, your attack. And that's a definite improvement.
Arm Strike (B-G): Give a -2 attack penalty for a few rounds, if you're lucky. Neat. It's not a bad debuff to choose in your attack sequence of 20 debuffs, and you've run out of the rest.
To The Hilt (<B-G>): There's no such thing as Damage Resistance in Pathfinder. Oops. But a favorable reading of the intent was that you reduce the DR of someone. An extremely favorable reading even reduces elemental resistances. By very small amounts. Incredibly small amounts. For 1 round. I mean. I
Wide Open (B): Gives a -2 to AC... for 1 round. Why...why does this last less long than Arm Strike, let alone Chest Strike? That is so strange. But I guess you can just apply it as yet another penalty in your Dual Wielding combo.
Belt Cutter (B): Just like disarm, you'd still have very limited targets, and even more limited uses, but maybe you'll frustrate a mage. Who knows. I personally roll the two maneuvers into one.
Distracting Blades (N): You make them lose an attack of opportunity! Great trade!
Leg Slash (N): No.