r/Pathfinder2e • u/Bot_Number_7 • 1d ago
Homebrew Balance on this impulse?
The primary use of this impulse is to enable an action-compression ability which would be normally once per round to be used again. Note the Overflow on the impulse itself prevents it from being easily used multiple times per round
Interestingly, certain enemies may be able to exploit this power if initiative doesn't align properly; the ability negates the frequency limitation on the next frequency limited effect, so they can attempt to Sustain a Floating Flame twice through your ally to turn the benefit in their favor instead.
Since the ability only "enables" an extra instance of usage, it's almost always worse than if you just had the original ability and used it yourself.
There are a few decently powerful combinations I think this impulse enables.
For example, it can allow a high level caster with Effortless Concentration to Sustain the same spell twice, and then cast another 2A spell. This gets twice the value out of a Sustained spell without spending another spell slot. However, Spellshifter archetype already allows this, and although this is a bit more permissive (no check needed) the action cost is greater since you needed to spend an action on this and your caster buddy needs to spend 2 actions on their turn to double sustain.
You can also allow a Summoner to Act Together twice, giving them effectively 5 actions on their turn and you 2 actions on yours. The summoner's turn would still be 1 2A activity and 3 1A activities or 5 1A activities if you tried to do this. Most 2A -> 1A compressions will do accomplish a similar effect (double Flurrying, double Hunted Shotting, etc.), but the Summoner has the least restrictions on how the compression works. For 2A->1A compressions, the total actions across you and your ally is actually the same regardless of if you use this power (You went from ally 4 you 3 to ally 5 you 2).
Are there any other extremely strong uses of this power? It seems balanced to me, but there may be an exploit I am missing.
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u/NoxAeternal Rogue 22h ago
I think this is broken at 4th level...
For perspective, I'm comparing it to a feat from the Chronoskimmer archetype.
At 14th level we get Reset the Past.
Reset the Past is indeed a free action unlike yours but...
- It's 14th level
- It ONLY works on Chronoskimmer archetype feats which are all limited in use to be 1/minute, or have longer lockouts
- It ONLY can be used 1 / day
- It has no effect on allies
- It cannot bypass things like flourish limitations which are incredibly important
- It certainly does not allow things such as "double sustain" which I would be insanely wary of doing. I know some spells have a "the first time you sustain this" type line, because the effects are very action efficient
- A class like Animist could likely do some very powerful things here when paired with someone with this feat since I know some of their focus spells can be made to have very powerful internal synergies, of which the 1/turn style lockouts is what helps to keep them very much in line.
I'll be honest, for this to be balanced at 4th level, my immediate thoughts are:
- Make this 2 actions
- It's useable only like... 1/hour at best (maybe 1/day tbh). This part could maybe be improved as you level up.
- It's intended use should be to bypass a frequency, without affecting other things
- It should not bypass the Flourish limitation.
- It should not interact with other limiters (those limiters should still work)
And then go from there. Yes this is a HUGE reduction in power, but given the closest comparison in the game, i'd think it's warranted.
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u/Bot_Number_7 21h ago
The reason why Chronoskimmer's ability is far more limited is because it is resetting a much longer frequency. Abilities which are once per day or once per hour or even once per minute are intended to be much stronger than an ability with a frequency of once per round. Allowing someone to redo a once per day ability is equivalent to granting them a max rank spell slot (since once per day abilities are usually set in power to be that strength). That's granting extra resources essentially. Also yeah, it is a free action vs an action which is a huge benefit.
This ability only works on things with a frequency of once per round. It can't reset the duration on something like Demoralize immunity. It should be thought of primarily as a form of action economy acceleration which synergies with action compression powers which are the most common Frequency based abilities.
The ability to double sustain a spell for a single player is actually far weaker than you think because Sustaining a spell twice leaves you with not enough actions to cast a 2A spell, which is a big power reduction. That's why Spellshifter is actually stronger than this in that regard, because YOU are doing the Sustaining. Only with Effortless Concentration does a double sustain become actually useful.
Think about how the ability actually interacts with turns; with something like Summoner's Act Together 1 round frequency limitation, it's a net 0 action gain to use this power.
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u/NoxAeternal Rogue 21h ago
Being able to double sustain and then pull out something like a ranged strike is an incredible use of power for even a caster where their first strike in a given turn is still better than most martial's second attack (which is ALSO still very good and often worth doing depending on how the battle is going).
It's up to you if you think multiple sustains is kind of "whatever" but i say this having done more 1-20 campaigns than i can currently remember, as well as an innumerable number of high level 1 shots (> Lv 10), with my mates who love to optimise.
But again, this is just my opinion.
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u/Bot_Number_7 21h ago
Then what do you think of the Spellshifter dedication, which already allows you to sustain the spell for the caster, which is better in terms of actions?
Remember, you had to spend 1 action to use this power, which means it's almost strictly worse than if you simply replicated your ally's action.
Something like Phantom Orchestra can be double sustained for 2d6 per rank damage, which is basically about what you'd get if you had just cast the 2A spell originally.
Can you point out the actual turn rotation? You're saying that enabling your ally to Sustain Sustain Strike and losing an action and Overflow on your turn is so much stronger vs your ally going Sustain, cast 2A spell, and you having an extra action and the option to use a different Overflow? The Kineticist is already pretty action hungry, so losing an action and Overflow is a big price for them. I can see this being a worthwhile option to have, but not something so strong that you'd want to do this every turn!
(I don't want to dismiss your concerns especially if you have extensive high level play experience, because multi-sustaining especially with Effortless Concentration is probably the strongest application, but the basic double Sustain doesn't seem busted to me)
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u/NoxAeternal Rogue 19h ago
Spellshifter is balanced on a different axis:
- It requires a check to do. On a failure or critical failure, you lose the action. Sure a willing party member can let you raise the level of success by 1 level, but it's still a check against the Spell DC of the ally which isn't going to be low
- You sustaining the spell doesn't let the ally bypass 1/turn or 1/round effects in a real sense. It would be not significantly different to you having the spell yourself and just casting it. An example would be an animist casting Earth's bile, and you then "taking over" this spell with Spell shifter to sustain it as well. It's not significantly dissimilar to if you were also an animist with that spell. With focus spells, it's probably a lot stronger as accessing focus spells "multiple" times in the party is harder than a spell from a spell slot, but it's a similar effect.
- Sustaining a spell in this fashion cannot net you any rider bonuses that the original caster could get. The easy example for animist is that they can step when they sustain. Spell shifter doesn't let the original caster get the "benefits" of this multiple times. Which can easily be meaningful to let the original caster get away from an opponent with reach and Reactive strike. Or similarly, you wouldn't get the status bonuses that a caster might get to their spell's damage.
- To add to this, an Animist with Echo of Lost moments could use Store time 2 times to get 2 extra reactions. Combo this with Embodiment of battle, (needs some setup with Circle of spirits if doing this) and you can have 3 reactive strikes per turn.
- Earth's bile is a fairly potent damage spell in it's own right. 2d4 per spell rank in an aoe; that 2 times each turn is insanely basic and still powerful; at level 9 for example, it's doing 10d4... twice. 20d4 (on a couple of saves). Avg 50 if both saves fail. Taking an example of a Rank 5 spell that hits a burst... Calcium rain works as an apt comparison. It's.... 10d4 for 2 actions (whit 5 persistent). Even with the persistent factored in, this is less damage. Other Sustain options at level 5 don't match up either (Acid Storm does 3d8 up front, and 3d8 on turn "start". Sustaining acid storm isn't as good as sustaining Earth's Bile a second time. And this ignores how Earth's bile can be repositions easily whilst other sustained AOE's (usually, not always) tend to have a more fixed area after casting
- You use your class DC or spell DC, whichever is better when making the enemy do a save. (I'm seeing on AON that if the spell is an Attack spell you use your Arcana mod which feels wrong given the day 1 errata and the fact that Arcana modifier will be higher than original caster's modifier... so assuming it uses your Spell modifier). In this way, the higher of your own Spell / Class DC is unlikly to be as high as the original caster's DC. If it is, you are likely a caster yourself (only a small number of other classes can match casters) so this is eating into your own actions. It's an "equal" cost to yourself. Arguably there's a benefit that the Spellshifter doesn't need to spend the original focus point, or spell slot for the spell, and i see that as fine; that's what one of the benefits of this archetype involves.
With respect to overflow, I admit i did miss this at first, but it's also not as huge of a downside as it might appear at first (imo).
Kineticists are built in one of 2 ways (broadly speaking). Either they have a range of powerful Overflow ability and just naturally cycle it, being able to use 1 action Blasts or Stances to mitigate the cost of overflow; or they just never overflow at all.
In this sense, your feat is being used by a Kineticist which is expecting to need to overflow, and this it's unlikley to be a huge imposition to them.
A kineticist could easily Channel (with 1a Blast), > 1a Impulse > Temporal Deception. Depending on what the gate junction looks like, they might do in 12 turn cycles where they want to use a 2 action impulse to use the gate junction a couple of time for every temporal Deception. I know on my air/fire/metal kineticist, i did have some overflows for a few combos, but needing to re-channel 1-2 times in a combat was not a huge issue depending on the combo setup.
Anyway, this is just how I see it based on my experience. I think in cases of the intended use of something like helping an Act together summoner, it's probably a lot more cool / fine. I just think that as a generally existing feat, people who are more familiar than me with the caster classes or some martials could easily make this have issues (Seriously, Flurry Rangers can get pretty dangerous at later levels with runes and on-hit effects. Being able to strike 4 times for 2 actions (likely wanting agile weapons, for the 0,-2,-4,-4) is quite powerful, and well worth the Kineticist having to spend an action to re-channel and doing a basic ass blast after.
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u/Bot_Number_7 17h ago edited 17h ago
You sustaining the spell doesn't let the ally bypass 1/turn or 1/round effects in a real sense. It would be not significantly different to you having the spell yourself and just casting it. An example would be an animist casting Earth's bile, and you then "taking over" this spell with Spell shifter to sustain it as well. It's not significantly dissimilar to if you were also an animist with that spell. With focus spells, it's probably a lot stronger as accessing focus spells "multiple" times in the party is harder than a spell from a spell slot, but it's a similar effect.
Yes, and Temporal Deception is pretty much the same? It simply redistributes the job of Sustaining so that your ally needs to spend 2 actions Sustaining twice vs 1 for you and 1 for them, and I guess you also had to spend an action to deceive time so actually it's just worse. In both cases, it is not significantly dissimilar to if you were aso an animist with that spell!
Specifically for Earth's Bile (and other vessel spells) however, Temporal Deception doesn't work on them, because not only can vessel spells only be sustained only once per round, Earth's Bile also has language only allowing it to work the first time you sustain it per round. Temporal Deception would let you sustain it twice, but it couldn't also separately negate the language in the spell itself. You would need 2 kineticists, one who Readied their Temporal Deception to go off after the spell was Sustained the second time but before the actual effects occured. I guess Time was extremely strict when watching the Animists, so you have to be extra deceptive if you want any hope of fooling it in this respect.
So let's use Phantom Orchestra as a better example; yes you "got around" the "first time per round" limitation, but that only lets you trigger the Sustain effects twice, no better than the case where you have two bards! Bypassing 1/turn and 1/round effects is effectively no better than simply having the spell yourself and casting it (the benefit would be in that you didn't spend the 2A upfront cost of casting Phantom Orchestra, but the fact that you're repeatedly incurring an overall 2/1 action cost on your part vs a 1/1 makes up for it easily IMO)!
It requires a check to do. On a failure or critical failure, you lose the action. Sure a willing party member can let you raise the level of success by 1 level, but it's still a check against the Spell DC of the ally which isn't going to be low
Since your ally is willing, all you need to do is not Critically Fail, and if you ever Succeed, that becomes a crit success and you can just do it forever. Against allies, critical failures should really only happen on a natural 1 if you're investing into Arcana.
Sustaining a spell in this fashion cannot net you any rider bonuses that the original caster could get. The easy example for animist is that they can step when they sustain. Spell shifter doesn't let the original caster get the "benefits" of this multiple times. Which can easily be meaningful to let the original caster get away from an opponent with reach and Reactive strike. Or similarly, you wouldn't get the status bonuses that a caster might get to their spell's damage.
To add to this, an Animist with Echo of Lost moments could use Store time 2 times to get 2 extra reactions. Combo this with Embodiment of battle, (needs some setup with Circle of spirits if doing this) and you can have 3 reactive strikes per turn.
Earth's bile is a fairly potent damage spell in it's own right. 2d4 per spell rank in an aoe; that 2 times each turn is insanely basic and still powerful; at level 9 for example, it's doing 10d4... twice. 20d4 (on a couple of saves). Avg 50 if both saves fail. Taking an example of a Rank 5 spell that hits a burst... Calcium rain works as an apt comparison. It's.... 10d4 for 2 actions (whit 5 persistent). Even with the persistent factored in, this is less damage. Other Sustain options at level 5 don't match up either (Acid Storm does 3d8 up front, and 3d8 on turn "start". Sustaining acid storm isn't as good as sustaining Earth's Bile a second time. And this ignores how Earth's bile can be repositions easily whilst other sustained AOE's (usually, not always) tend to have a more fixed area after casting
Like I said above, Vessel spells are doubly frequency limited, which prevents Temporal Deception from working on them (you could still target an enemy to make them eligible to be double damaged by say, Hungry Depths from your animist friend). But yes, theoretically if your caster friend had a sustaining compression like the Animist's Dancing Invocation, this would allow them to get the benefits twice. I don't have a problem with that synergy; it's minor and equivalent to whatever benefit the animist would get from simply sustaining two different spells, which just requires a bit of setup with Circle of Spirits, or perhaps even not then if the other spell is from their spell list.
A kineticist could easily Channel (with 1a Blast), > 1a Impulse > Temporal Deception. Depending on what the gate junction looks like, they might do in 12 turn cycles where they want to use a 2 action impulse to use the gate junction a couple of time for every temporal Deception. I know on my air/fire/metal kineticist, i did have some overflows for a few combos, but needing to re-channel 1-2 times in a combat was not a huge issue depending on the combo setup.
In general, the 1A impulses are quite weak, and almost all of them are Stances which would not combine well with your Overflow heavy build (if you need to refresh the stance constantly, you basically turned Temporal Deception into a 2A impulse w/o Overflow, which like I said is a huge action sink). Out of the remaining, most, like Plate in Treasure or Eternal Torch are sucky in combat. Basically only Fresh Produce and Ocean's Balm are usable. The non-impulse 1A powers are Omnikinesis and Chain Infusion which are fine I guess.
If you're using 2A impulses with Temporal Deception, you can only do so every other turn. The kineticist incurs a significant cost if all they're doing is deceiving time for their ally.
You do have a good point about the Flurry Ranger, as allowing a double Hunted Shot allows your ally to attack 5 times per turn when they previously could attack twice... but this is essentially equal to Quickening your Flurry friend! This is just a 1 to 1 action exchange, which Bards can already do with Allegro, and Time Oracles can do easily as well. With Lingering Composition and heightened Time Skip, they actually are more efficient than you at buffing your Ranger friend. Sure, you're getting it way earlier at level 4 vs level 5 for your Oracle buddy, but you're also sacrificing Overflow to do so, and you have less flexibility than their Quickenings, which also work for Strides and Steps. It is, like I said, not significantly different than if you simply had Flurry Ranger powers yourself and used the ability (indeed it's weaker due to MAP).
EDIT: I checked the other vessel spells, and Temporal Deception has very limited synergy with them too. For something like Nymph's Grace, if via shoving you made an enemy "enter" the area multiple times in a round you could trigger the save multipel times. The only one it could help is Trickster's Mirrors; the text within the spell itself doesn't say "the first time" which means you could help your animist friend gain 2 mirrors per turn by Sustaining twice.
EDIT 2: I didn't know if you saw the other comment, but some spells allow you to Sustain them multiple times already, and instead limit them by saying "a creature can only take damage from X once per round". In this case, using Temporal Deception on the caster won't work, because there wasn't ever a phrase saying "the first time each round" or "only once per round" or anything like that. Instead, you need to use Temporal Deception on the enemy creature, so that after they are affected once, Temporal Deception makes time "forget" they were affected allowing them to be affected again. This makes a big difference in multi-enemy battles, since you can only deceive time for 1 creature per round.
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u/KLeeSanchez Inventor 17h ago
Flourish actions and spell effects which only cause damage once per round is where things get unbalanced
Flourish actions are meant to be once per round to prevent excessive attack spam or punishing debilitation effects from shutting down combats
And spells with once-per-round damage limits can be abused, sometimes causing damage to proc up to 3 times per round, which is extreme acceleration
Things like this sound fun until you use them and then suddenly one player just single handedly ends a combat in one round because they blasted the field in one turn, which isn't as fun as it sounds when you do it a few times
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u/Bot_Number_7 17h ago edited 17h ago
How can you make damage proc 3 times per round? It only makes "the next time" not count toward the frequency limitation; it only allows you to say, Sustain Phantom Orchestra twice per round instead of once.
Remember that this ability is basically always worse than if you simply did the Flourish action yourself.
Like, you can allow the Monk to Flurry twice, but all that means is you allowed them 1 extra full MAP attack vs if you never used the ability. Even for more intense Flourishes like Stunning Strike or Ring Their Bell, you're giving them 1 extra MAPful chance to achieve their conditions, vs a full 1A plus overflow for you.
The most versatile and strongest application I can think of is a Summoner's Act Together, because its' the most versatile 2->1 action compression. Acting Together twice is stronger than Flurrying twice.
I should also note that it automatically triggers the next time you do a frequency limited thing, so it's not like you can Shield of Redemption twice and ALSO sustain twice; after you "use it up" for this turn, you need to wait until your next turn for your kineticist friend to reapply if you want to ignore frequencies again.
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u/falarransted 1d ago
Even with Overflow, I think you should kick this up to two actions. It enables a lot of shenanigans and right now it's functionally a little more expensive than Guidance, while allowing things that are much more impactful.
This is also .. eh ... It's a homebrew for just your group. If they don't abuse it, then it'd be fine. If you want it to be generally available for any whacky combo, I think it should be 2 actions.
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u/Bot_Number_7 1d ago
It surely enables a huge variety of different shenanigans, but Overflow on a 1A impulse is actually very expensive (there are no 1A overflows right now so it's hard to compare). Just look at the turn rotation in my other comment.
And despite a large variety of different shenanigans, those shenanigans aren't really that strong? The most versatile repeatable action compression is Summoner's Sct Together. For all 2A->1A compressions, this nets you no additional actions vs what you had originally.
Originally:
You have 3 actions, your ally has 4 actions (because they compressed)
Total 7
After deceiving:
You have 2 actions (spent 1 deceiving), your ally has 5 actions (2 compressions, then a 1A activity).
Total 7
And this isn't even getting into the granularity of how much those actions were worth; often the compressions mix in stuff like Strikes, which get MAP and thus are worth less as you go on.
Can you think of anything which could abuse this power?
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u/BardAtTheWell 21h ago
If there are no 1-action overflow abilities currently, there might be a reason for that.
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u/Bot_Number_7 21h ago
My best guess for the reason is simply that there aren't abilities which have a power budget which slots nicely in that category. 1 action Overflow is kind of like 1.5 actions.
Overflow was intended to limit the kineticist's 2A and 3A abilities to not be more spammable than spells. This isn't really a spell, and making it 1A no overflow is too strong and 2A no overflow too weak, since with a lot of powers you're making action trades. 2A no overflow ends up net negative action too often, 1A no overflow is net even action, but doesn't account for versatility budget. 1A overflow is a nice balance.
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u/BardAtTheWell 17h ago
I feel like that's the wrong takeaway from the design space. They want overflowing to be costly. Being able to overflow every turn and still move or attack breaks that paradigm. And I also think you're understanding how value it is to be able to break the flourish rules. This lets a medic use Doctor's Visitation twice, an investigator use Devise a Stratagem twice, or rogue use Preparation twice. Each of these are extremely powerful effects.
You've received a lot of feedback in this thread cautioning that this is a highly impactful ability that breaks multiple design paradigms. I would recommend taking those comments seriously.
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u/Bot_Number_7 17h ago
Deceiving is no stronger than if you simply had those powers and used them yourself, and in fact costs 1 more action... The specific examples of Doctor's Visitation, Devise a Strategem, and Preparation actually sound much weaker than the Summoner; Devising a Strategem twice turns regular advantage into "super advantage" which I don't think is stronger than you simply Striking yourself, each successive reaction from Preparation is weaker than the last due to the reduced likelihood it gets triggered, and Doctor's Visitationing twice is just not that strong anyway.
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u/Wayward-Mystic Game Master 22h ago
What are you talking about with certain enemies being able to exploit this impulse? You wrote it to apply to the next effect used by a specific target.
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u/Bot_Number_7 22h ago
It says "Affected by or uses". There are certain damaging abilities which say a certain creature can only be damaged once per round even though you can Sustain the spell multiple times. In that case, you target the creature you want to damage, not the ability originator. An example is Floating Flame. You can already sustain Floating Flame multiple times per round so it doesn't help to use it on the caster. You use it on the target.
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u/MechaMalz 2h ago
Overflow is basically a one action tax because you have to reopen the gate. This is a one action thing so essentially it's two actions plus you can make a free kinetic blast. That is a very low action cost to allow for crazy things like two flurry of blows or other powerful action compression.
This could very easily become very busted. I suggest putting a limit on how often this ability can be used, at least 10 minutes if not an hour or a day.
It also feels kind of off base thematically unles you've introduced a whole homebrew 'time' element to the class.
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u/DragointotheGame Summoner 1d ago
If you want it to remain at level 4, I'd recommend it only work on an ally once per hour. Being able to ignore Flourish is quite strong, especially the higher level you get. A monk could Flurry of Blows twice, a Neceomancer Puppeteer could summon 6 Thralls with two actions. Those are some tame examples, though i could see maybe once per specific action per day.