Dragon #382 - Class Acts: Invoker - God Fragments

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

A new article is up and I finally got the PDF to download.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Class Acts: Invoker)

The article introduces a new type of feat, "God Fragment" feats. It provides the character with a constant benefit and with an ability that he can use once per encounter when using an encounter or daily attack.

Thematically the God Fragments exist due to the way the Invoker "connects" to his god's power. A small fragment of his god, a divine spark resides in him and he can awaken it to tap into his deities power.


I haven't analyzed the power, but am looking more at a "general" aspect of the feats. It describes a subsystem that could be generalized further.

By combinging a constant benefit with an encounter effect, it opens up an interesting design space. Similar as with races or paragon pathes, you have to pick the entire "package" of abilities. This means the designer can balance the feat "internally" - give a strong constat effect but a weak encounter power or vice versa.

 

[Mengu]

Mechanically, they are nearly identical to familiars. There is a constant benefit, and an encounter benefit. So not really a new design space, more like re-use of an existing design, but I wouldn't mind seeing more feats like this.

And as you say it's nice to have a design where you have two knobs to tweak the power of the feat.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd think that occupies a design space pretty similar to CD feats. Certainly pretty similar to the domain based ones in DP. Not that CD feats seem to actually give a constant benefit in general, but nothing stops them from doing that. They do grant you a separate encounter power, so its not exactly the same mechanics, but not really all that far off conceptually. You could certainly get close to what the god fragments do.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Mechanically, they are nearly identical to familiars. There is a constant benefit, and an encounter benefit. So not really a new design space, more like re-use of an existing design, but I wouldn't mind seeing more feats like this.

And as you say it's nice to have a design where you have two knobs to tweak the power of the feat.

The "two knobs" is my primary point. But you are right, Familiars have something similar.

I wonder if we will see a "martial" equivalent, maybe weapon-based?

 

[Mengu]

The "two knobs" is my primary point. But you are right, Familiars have something similar.

Yeah, but even with two knobs, they managed to muck up some of them. The Raven Queen one gives you intimidate which is difficult skill to get good bang out of (unless you picked a suitable race toward using it like Kalashtar, or suitable background) for an invoker and not very useful untrained with a low stat, endure elements cold is super situational, and slow is the weakest and most situational condition, though it's not a complete waste if you are using it with something big like Fourfold Invocation of Doom (dazed and slowed targets can be pretty easy to avoid).

Compared to Corellon's benefit, where you get bonus to 2 easy to use skills that you already potentially get big bonuses to from stats, and you get a free teleport once per encounter that you can combine with things like Silent Malediction which would otherwise leave you dazed in front of the enemy line, I think they could have used those knobs a little better.

I wonder if we will see a "martial" equivalent, maybe weapon-based?

There is plenty of weapon based martial stuff. Maybe something armor/shield based could be more interesting. Or something more discipline based, I can certainly see that.

 

[Jack99]

Weird, I keep getting a corrupt PDF - anyone else has issues?

 

[Piratecat]

Jack, try clearing your cache and then try again.

 

[Jack99]

Jack, try clearing your cache and then try again.

Gracias, that worked. It hadn't occured to me to try clearjng the cache, because I could easily DL the other PDF's.

 

[Eric888]

I would have prefered if god fragments had been linked to domains instead of gods. Expecting a whole series of these for FR or other pantheons when they are such a specific niche for a single class (MC notwithstanding), seems like an inneficient use of design resources.

 

[Rechan]

Am I the only one that thinks these are a bit weak for a PARAGON feat? Heroic I can see, but PARAGON?

I do like that it plays with the god fragment in the Invoker.