- Joined
- Aug 3, 2021
I've done Lich -> Legend (retarded EK gish), True Aeon (Aldori Defender -> Duelist), and Azata->Devil (Magic Deceiver -> Arcane Trickster). Which was also my order of least-to-most enjoyed.
Legends that use fused spellbooks get to keep the spells they know, which means you get to keep the lich and angel spells that trivialize the game. Legend feels like a fun end to the game, but it's kindof impossible to fuck up making a retardedly strong build with that many levels. Lich gishes get to do a million attacks a round with vampiric blade on, which meant I wound up soloing Areelu long after everyone else was on the floor, healing for hundreds every round. Lich as a path has a lot of narratively interesting things going on even if you go legend, and the 'redemption' angle feels pretty good. The trouble is that merged spellbooks make this game's difficulty curve stupid - act 3 is way too easy when you can just feast of blood an entire crowd.
Aeon is conceptually interesting but it really doesn't have any payout beyond a small handful of story beats, and its bonuses are so obviously-good that there's not really any building to be done with it. Duelist tank is a fun build, though, because of a lot of Owlcat changes. Martial disciple as a background makes getting crane riposte less feat-taxing and "No Retreat" was homebrewed from doing literally nothing to +1 AoO and +2 to AoO rolls. You get the crane riposte counterattack, the parry counterattack, and the aldori defender counterattack alongside the usual outflank cheese, so plenty of places for that +2 to put in work. Which does juice some value into Aeon's bane, but eh.
Magic Deceiver is their homebrew arcanist that uses CHA whose whole thing is fusing spells up to sixth level. It fully works with EK and AT - though I have no idea what you'd really do with EK. Arcane Trickster, at least when I did the run, applied its sneak dice on both aspects of the fused spell, which led to retarded amounts of damage. And since AT gets sneak on AoE spells, its fireballs become room-clearing one-shots. But more than that, Azata is idiotically powerful for this class, because it gets the ability to twincast fused Chain Lightning + Disintegrate, with disadvantage imposed on the saves (and keeps it into devil). The class starts off weak as shit, especially dipping for sneak die, but it winds up ending most fights in a single round by the end. My only recommendation is to use eldritch scoundrel for the sneak die, since deceiver doesn't naturally have cantrips (though I also recommend tabletop-tweaks, which fixes the fact that ES isn't supposed to get a sneak die at 1).
Thematically, while Azata is annoying as hell and Devil doesn't really give you anything that useful until cast-at-will hellfire rays, the fact that you get to kill all of the annoying azata people makes it worthwhile. Owlcat just needs to fix the fact that Devil has to skip like 3 months in Act 5 before its chain starts, it being the slowest of any path afaik.
Legends that use fused spellbooks get to keep the spells they know, which means you get to keep the lich and angel spells that trivialize the game. Legend feels like a fun end to the game, but it's kindof impossible to fuck up making a retardedly strong build with that many levels. Lich gishes get to do a million attacks a round with vampiric blade on, which meant I wound up soloing Areelu long after everyone else was on the floor, healing for hundreds every round. Lich as a path has a lot of narratively interesting things going on even if you go legend, and the 'redemption' angle feels pretty good. The trouble is that merged spellbooks make this game's difficulty curve stupid - act 3 is way too easy when you can just feast of blood an entire crowd.
Aeon is conceptually interesting but it really doesn't have any payout beyond a small handful of story beats, and its bonuses are so obviously-good that there's not really any building to be done with it. Duelist tank is a fun build, though, because of a lot of Owlcat changes. Martial disciple as a background makes getting crane riposte less feat-taxing and "No Retreat" was homebrewed from doing literally nothing to +1 AoO and +2 to AoO rolls. You get the crane riposte counterattack, the parry counterattack, and the aldori defender counterattack alongside the usual outflank cheese, so plenty of places for that +2 to put in work. Which does juice some value into Aeon's bane, but eh.
Magic Deceiver is their homebrew arcanist that uses CHA whose whole thing is fusing spells up to sixth level. It fully works with EK and AT - though I have no idea what you'd really do with EK. Arcane Trickster, at least when I did the run, applied its sneak dice on both aspects of the fused spell, which led to retarded amounts of damage. And since AT gets sneak on AoE spells, its fireballs become room-clearing one-shots. But more than that, Azata is idiotically powerful for this class, because it gets the ability to twincast fused Chain Lightning + Disintegrate, with disadvantage imposed on the saves (and keeps it into devil). The class starts off weak as shit, especially dipping for sneak die, but it winds up ending most fights in a single round by the end. My only recommendation is to use eldritch scoundrel for the sneak die, since deceiver doesn't naturally have cantrips (though I also recommend tabletop-tweaks, which fixes the fact that ES isn't supposed to get a sneak die at 1).
Thematically, while Azata is annoying as hell and Devil doesn't really give you anything that useful until cast-at-will hellfire rays, the fact that you get to kill all of the annoying azata people makes it worthwhile. Owlcat just needs to fix the fact that Devil has to skip like 3 months in Act 5 before its chain starts, it being the slowest of any path afaik.
