Purrfect Feats (Spheres in Revew)

[SangoProduction]

My review of the Purring feats took just long enough for the storm to pass. Yay. I can go to bed now!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18lihF-9GWgFV5csXIiRxdiM6XxFKlZeAhJ8VLGPGW0A/edit?usp=sharing

Post-Review Analysis:
I am more than a little surprised at how well they held up as useful feats. I really was expecting them to be pure jokes that didn’t really impact much. Indeed, that was my first impression on going over them real quick. Who’d have thought that nuance and total usefulness needs time and intent to process.

[AsuraKyoko]

Wow, I'm impressed by these feats. Generally high quality across the board, and I'm liking the pattern of the feats that get an improvement if you have a certain number of feats in the same category, it really rewards thematic specialization.

I know this is a little off topic for the thread, but I noticed in you Weather review that you were reviewing the Prodigy before you lost all of your work on it. While I'm not going to ask if you would be willing to do the whole thing again, would you be willing to give a bit more explanation on your issues with the class? I've really liked what I've seen of it, and the idea is pretty cool to me, so I'm interested to see what the flaws are.

Also, I'd like to thank you for doing these guides, they have been a huge help to me and my friends, as we've recently begun exploring SoP/SoM!

If you find yourself wanting to do another class writeup in the future, I, for one, would absolutely love to see you do it for the Scholar.

[AvatarVecna]

If you find yourself wanting to do another class writeup in the future, I, for one, would absolutely love to see you do it for the Scholar.

I'll second that.

[SangoProduction]

Wow, I'm impressed by these feats. Generally high quality across the board, and I'm liking the pattern of the feats that get an improvement if you have a certain number of feats in the same category, it really rewards thematic specialization.

I know this is a little off topic for the thread, but I noticed in you Weather review that you were reviewing the Prodigy before you lost all of your work on it. While I'm not going to ask if you would be willing to do the whole thing again, would you be willing to give a bit more explanation on your issues with the class? I've really liked what I've seen of it, and the idea is pretty cool to me, so I'm interested to see what the flaws are.

Also, I'd like to thank you for doing these guides, they have been a huge help to me and my friends, as we've recently begun exploring SoP/SoM!

If you find yourself wanting to do another class writeup in the future, I, for one, would absolutely love to see you do it for the Scholar.

Thanks so much for your comment.

Essentially the general issue I have with prodigy is not so much that it's a bad class. Just a bad class for a table top rpg. Specifically because it encourages, and indeed, almost demands, the ability to establish your links each round, or at most having a 2 round cycle for finishers. Despite the number of ways you can set up such a rotation, you're probably going to be doing it over and over again once you've decided which one to take.

You know how turns take a really long time? Yeah, multiply the actions taken by 3-4x. And because of how long a round can take, most games try and limit the number of rounds per combat, except in special circumstances, like boss encounters which take the entire day. So, even if you wanted to play it with less action degeneracy, you never actually get to ramp up like how your class is designed to. So you're literally just a worse version of your chosen specialization. Except you can freely flex into any of the spheres with some levels.

If someone were to take the mantle of truly digitizing PF / SoP, then it would probably work there, since actions could be taken much more quickly and efficiently, allowing for combat to be less exhausting.


I'll second that.

That'll take a while. I'm going into dead week, and still need to work. This was just junk food to keep me busy while nature was being obnoxious.

I'll let you know this much: Scholar's actually really a lot stronger than the base stat table lets on, and is almost a must-pick for alchemy builds.

[EldritchWeaver]

Essentially the general issue I have with prodigy is not so much that it's a bad class. Just a bad class for a table top rpg. Specifically because it encourages, and indeed, almost demands, the ability to establish your links each round, or at most having a 2 round cycle for finishers. Despite the number of ways you can set up such a rotation, you're probably going to be doing it over and over again once you've decided which one to take.

You know how turns take a really long time? Yeah, multiply the actions taken by 3-4x. And because of how long a round can take, most games try and limit the number of rounds per combat, except in special circumstances, like boss encounters which take the entire day. So, even if you wanted to play it with less action degeneracy, you never actually get to ramp up like how your class is designed to. So you're literally just a worse version of your chosen specialization. Except you can freely flex into any of the spheres with some levels.

Prodigy can be optimized to have 4-5 links per round, but I feel that it kinda defeats the purpose of the mechanic if you can fill up the meter basically instantly. Also not a fan of the class, since you both need to keep links and spend them as well. This pulls in to different directions as well.

[SangoProduction]

Prodigy can be optimized to have 4-5 links per round, but I feel that it kinda defeats the purpose of the mechanic if you can fill up the meter basically instantly. Also not a fan of the class, since you both need to keep links and spend them as well. This pulls in to different directions as well.

I do believe I found quite a few free action/AoO links you could build into, which can get many more links (if unreliably).
But yes, I do agree with what you say otherwise.

[AsuraKyoko]

Ahh, I see what you mean. Do you think that a way to mitigate the issue could be to adjust the rate in which you get links? For example, have some link actions add 2, or have the starting length be greater than 1? Naturally, this would be to discourage the action degeneracy, and so would only apply if the action economy wasn't being abused.

[SangoProduction]

That would solve the degeneracy issue, but still restricts the class to only being useful in long, drawn-out fights. That's cool, conceptually, but those are basically only exceptional fights that happen like once or twice a campaign, or during a dungeon crawl where the point is fighting. At least in my experience.

[EldritchWeaver]

I forgot to mention in regards to the review, the purring feats can be acquired faster than level 8. Classes with bonus talents or similar can trade them in and in the worst case there is the purrsician archetype.

[SangoProduction]

I forgot to mention in regards to the review, the purring feats can be acquired faster than level 8. Classes with bonus talents or similar can trade them in and in the worst case there is the purrsician archetype.

I did actually miss that it allows for feat-equivalent class features to also be exchanged for purring feats. Thanks, I'll edit that right away.

But I did say 8 levels worth of feats, not that it would take 8 levels to achieve. Most obvious of level savers being the Human.

[ICN]

Think you're overestimating the usefulness of the Improving feat. It only works for an enhancement you or your equipment is under, so it's not really free or permanent. For the same feat spent on Improving, you could instead pick up Mass Enhancement, which costs an additional spell point but has no range limitations and can apply to as many enhancements as you have the juice for.

[SangoProduction]

Think you're overestimating the usefulness of the Improving feat. It only works for an enhancement you or your equipment is under, so it's not really free or permanent. For the same feat spent on Improving, you could instead pick up Mass Enhancement, which costs an additional spell point but has no range limitations and can apply to as many enhancements as you have the juice for.

I actually got lost in the excessive verbiage, I'll be honest...

Yeah. It only spreads out a currently active enhancement. (I was about to give it to you that there's not actually a bunch of good enhancement talents that you actually care too much about being "all day" or activatable as a swift action. Since it's largely a bunch of combat buffs that last long enough for many dungeons.)

But wow. It is actually trash.

I am impressed how missing one tiny detail like that changes everything so dramatically.

EDIT: Depends on the ruling for the interaction, but actually, Hardness refreshing each round they start in your aura means continuous DR, rather than it wearing off after a few hits... so long as yours doesn't get beaten away... Of course, still not an equal amount of DR to Undead Body until level 10. Except that it's harder to overcome.