[.11] A case for "Prepare to Die" incants

I don't think that works. Specifically, from the ARB: "Carrier attacks can never give a beneficial effect to the recipient." And any called number in a weapon swing is considered a carrier attack.

Yeah, what DiscOH said. Potion coatings are delivered via the verbal “Spell Strike <effect>” unlike poison coatings. :)
 
Every playtest I've participated in thus far, and I fail to think this will be different since fighter skills are still PTD-less, Magic Armor has been useless.

As a caster, I have no plans on memorizing it with *either* tree. It's far more build efficient to take repels and healing, and just spend the xp on a shield.

Magic Armor in 2.0 is useless.

I think it has a niche use on shield users, if only to protect them from Weapon Strike Shatter/Disarm without blowing a Parry.

Outside of that, I agree that it’s basically not worth it.
 
....Anyone else planning on using Potion Coatings with Cache to emergency backup people?

...Because I am...
Emergency backup? I'm using it as a primary healing tool/surprise purify delivery system. It gives you a little reach when your people starting running after a fear strike to drop that awaken on them.
 
We just ran our first play test. Fighters and Rogues loved that removal of PTD. They could easily wait until they could land a good shot, and hit the NPC with enough to usually drop it. Some times it would be negated by a skill, but more often than not, they could land it. I was on the receiving end of several 500 Body and several of the Slays/Assassinates that I had to either eat, or negate (or a minion was close enough to me to Intercept). But even when they did not land, most players had Mediate III and could go get it back during the fight (1 minute) and come back in to try to land the hit again.

It really is something that players must playtest. Theory-crafting it does not do it any justice in the least.

How did your casters feel about it?

How did PCs who were on the receiving end of NPC slays? (It’s a very different feeling to get randomly dropped depending on which side of the fence you’re currently on.)

What you shared is great feedback but it’s not the whole story — would love to hear more.
 
Yeah, what DiscOH said. Potion coatings are delivered via the verbal “Spell Strike <effect>” unlike poison coatings. :)

Ah, my mistake. I got confused by this line:
" Keep in mind that Weapon Carrier attacks cannot give beneficial effects – which means that an Earth Spellsword who uses this skill to expend a 4th level Cure Wounds as “20 Weapon Strike Healing” would not heal a living target struck by their weapon."

The subtlety I missed was that ability was making the healing be a weapon strike not a spell strike. I apologize for my confusion.
 
I can confirm that most of our PCs seemed to prefer the lack of PTD at the playtest; Weapon Shields were still about as plentiful as in our usual games, although as you're all saying they tended to be used up more on regular damage swings than big calls and skills, but no one seemed to mind that because for the most part their teamwork was top-notch and anyone who got smacked with a big call was healed and repaired (and in some cases re-protected with a fresh batch of Shields) within a minute, then back out on the field to wreak their own havoc.

They did start running out of steam near the end of the final town fight of the weekend, but that's kind of a sign (at least to me) that everything was balanced overall, and aside from those who were tapped out mostly sitting and watching the last of the fighting, I don't recall anyone indicating that anything in their repertoire of spells or skills felt particularly useless.

It may just be that we lucked out on this playtest, but we'll have more data after our next one. :)
 
I see alot of assumptions that monsters are going to come out with a lot of fighter/rogue skills. As head of plot in Oregon, I say trust your plot teams. Just like reducing body, reducing static damage and reducing defenses, there was also a reduction in abilities on monster cards. Trust we won't just cram a crap load onto the card because "we wanted to".

Thank you. :)
 
How did your casters feel about it?

How did PCs who were on the receiving end of NPC slays? (It’s a very different feeling to get randomly dropped depending on which side of the fence you’re currently on.)

What you shared is great feedback but it’s not the whole story — would love to hear more.

Most of the Monsters did not have slays, and the few that did, we did not hear any "grumbling" from the PCs if they were hit with a big slay or any other PC skill (in fact, we had players request that more NPC monsters should get a few of those skills to test against, which we will add in next playtest). Casters know that they are 2 hits away from death at any moment (1 hit to take out WS, another big hit to blow through armour and body), but that could be said for fighters and spells being slung at them. All-in-all it seemed pretty well balanced. The Monster dbase folks did a great job on the 2.0 monsters.
 
Fun fact. I only have data on the first day of the most recent playtest.

But of the 53 total 2nd level spells memorized, 33 of them were weapon shields. (62% of 2nd level spells were Weapon Shields)

It's possible people didn't get their moneys worth, people might not memorize the same way given more time. But right now, it still appears people value them.
 
To be fair, that could just be a mental holdover from 1.3. Like Sarah, I suspect that 2nd level memorization will change as people develop new tactics for 2.0.
 
It really is something that players must playtest. Theory-crafting it does not do it any justice in the least.

Im not theory crafting. I played Nero when PTD wasn't a thing.
 
When PTD was introduced it cheapened the fighter skills. People learned to play around the magic armor.
The same thing will happen with 2.0.
I'll give everyone a hint. When the npc gets close to you, they are gonna big skill you. Mainly becaus they don't want to miss.
 
Out of curiosity, what was the APL and PC:NPC ratio for these events? I have a theory (no its not bunnies) that higher PC:NPC ratios and higher levels may favor the old PTD style.

Personally, in our current 1.3 game, I tend to consider a Magic Armor (MA) well used if it prevents more damage than it could have been used to cure. In 1.3, that is 5 dmg; in 2.0 that'll be 10 dmg - and static damage numbers went down. So it wouldn't surprise me if MA became less dominant.
 
From my perspective, if something that had been dropping 110 slays during combat comes at me, I'm going be even more careful and tense around it because I don't know if it can do that again or how many it has, and I know I won't have a warning before hand. Yes, as a scholar I have survived mods because I could incant my magic armor faster than the voice radius eviscerates (que angry glare at my plot team) were going out. It feels good to pull that off for myself or for my fighters, but any tool that we have is also a tool the NPCs have and in the end the NPCs have access to a lot more of them. Having been a fighter before, it really sucks when one of you 2 slays gets eaten by a magic armor, especially when it was cast while you were saying your PTD. I can appreciate that a single enemy won't be able to make 1600 build worth of very tired front line fighters back a set up with a nice loud prepare to die, but in the end I know that I'm going to be a lot more cautious around enemies in general knowing that their next swing could be for 5 normal, or 500.
 
Based off of the changes made to PTD skills. I’m curious as to how an Intercept based Spellsword will workout with Weapon, Poison, Spell and Elemental Shield. In theory, a well played one would be a viable solution to the “surprise! 10 Magic, 500 Magic!” style of fighting we are likely to see. A walking smart defense, essentially.

PTD skills, in my opinion, were excellently dramatic in almost every situation I saw them in. The experience would be best described as a sudden rise in tension, instead of the surprise feeling of somebody slashing you for 110 Normal out of nowhere. I’d rather PTD skills have a shorter start up than “Prepare to Die” but maintain their “present until used” aspect. A healthy mix of both words, perhaps?
 
Last edited:
Every playtest I've participated in thus far, and I fail to think this will be different since fighter skills are still PTD-less, Magic Armor has been useless.

As a caster, I have no plans on memorizing it with *either* tree. It's far more build efficient to take repels and healing, and just spend the xp on a shield.

Magic Armor in 2.0 is useless.

Not useless. It just requires different usage than before to optimize. One of the better uses should be casting magic armor on a PC with Intercept. Since PCs almost always outnumber NPCs (precise situations may vary), it isn't hard for a fighter with intercept to hang back a little and Intercept the big hits on a pre-cast magic armor.

-MS
 
Based off of the changes made to PTD skills. I’m curious as to how an Intercept based Spellsword will workout with Weapon, Poison, Spell and Elemental Shield. In theory, a well played one would be a viable solution to the “surprise! 10 Magic, 500 Magic!” style of fighting we are likely to see. A walking smart defense, essentially.

I’m interested in a polearm user using it to protect his front fighter.
 
Not useless. It just requires different usage than before to optimize. One of the better uses should be casting magic armor on a PC with Intercept. Since PCs almost always outnumber NPCs (precise situations may vary), it isn't hard for a fighter with intercept to hang back a little and Intercept the big hits on a pre-cast magic armor.

-MS

Then that's what a scroll or potion is for, niche situations. Spell slots are limited resources, and since a Weapon Shield will always be used, it's not something you can meditate back if you miss with it. Nope, still far more efficient use of slots to make a monster stay 10 feet back or grab 10 points of healing.
 
Personally, I’m a little glad for the change, because MA was definitely too powerful compared to the other 2nd level spells, purely because it basically made PTDs super easy to block.

It has really good synergy with Intercept, however, which means it still has a place. Plus, it’s still worth always having it on you, for that moment that someone makes a mistake and opens up with that Big Shot.
 
Fighters should be really good at blocking physical attacks, and scholars should be really good at blocking magic attacks. With Rogues being an interesting mix. That was the paradigm laid out to me.

I would argue with evade being upgraded to a parry, and having less prereq cost then parry or dodge. Rogues are much stronger against Physical attacks then fighters.

And with the adding of mettle, and spell parry being still a thing tied to parries. That fighters are much better at blocking magical attacks then Scholars. Scholars might have stacked spell defenses but they are much more specific. Personally, I think scholars are just meet to either fighter or rogue at this point.
 
Back
Top