Fantasy AGE 2e Character Creation - Light Blades Damage

Step One - Create a character concept

While the rule book suggests creating a concept before going into the meat of class and ancestry, I would suggest you at least pick which class and ancestry is part of the concept. Knowing what your class is focused on and what benefits you might pick should influence how your starting ability scores are determined.

My character concept here is an experiment in how much of a light blades beast we can create with the goblin talents and mixed weapon, dual weapon, throwing weapon, great hunter aspect warrior talents.

  • Goblin Rogue/Warrior

Step Two - Ability Scores

Derived from my blog post on starting abilities, using a standard array for a total of 13 abilities. I am choosing to put 2 points into Intelligence for the level 10 "Lethality" bonus. Sure a bit far away but why not set myself up for it.

  • Primary
    • 3 Accuracy
    • 0 Communication
    • 1 Dexterity
    • 3 Perception
  • Secondary
    • 2 Constitution
    • 1 Fighting
    • 1 Intelligence
    • 0 Strength
    • 2 Willpower
Notes
  • I ended up swapping INT and CON, DEX and WIL so I could meet the Aspect Warrior Talent requirement. I know I don't have to but I don't agree with that hand waving at level 1.

Step Three - Choose Ancestry

As mentioned at the start, one might want to choose ancestry before ability scores so they can invest ability scores into things that back up their ancestry. The only reason the rules don't is so they don't have to factor in ability scores from ancestry into their ability score logic. Frankly it doesn't matter and I would recommend picking class and ancestry first to get.

By picking a class with the same weapon group option as the ancestry benefit you instead get the focus. This is incredibly powerful at level 1 as classes don't have a focus for their starting weapons. Such class and ancestry pairs are:

  • Warrior Dwarf for axes
  • Warrior or Rogue Elf for bows
  • Warrior or Rogue Goblin for light blades
  • Warrior Orc for bludgeons
  • Warrior or Rogue Wildfolk for Brawling and Natural Weapons
    • Choosing "Strong Features" benefit for "Feline" and picking Brawling focus and natural weapons
For that reason I am going with Goblin Rogue for the Light Blades bonus. Additionally Goblins have combat natured ancestry talents which may offer and defensive and offensive boost and will be interesting to see which of those plus all the weapon talents are possible. I would also pick swift for the +4 speed.
  • Goblin

Step Four - Social Class and Background

There isn't too much that social class and background can do to help our character. Here are some that stand out for their combat useful focuses:

  • Hermit - Constitution Stamina
  • Laborer - Constitution Stamina
  • Wanderer - Constitution Stamina
  • Soldier - Accuracy Brawling
Depending on how well the light blades talents go I may not have much left to spend on "Unarmed Style" however the expert and master levels are pretty good and go with a dirty fighter build. Let's take that for now and keep hermit/labour in the back pocket if it doesn't work out for the defensive bonus.
  • Soldier, Lower Class

Step Five - Class

This will either be a rogue or warrior class as those are the only classes with access to weapon talents. Here is the list of pros for each class when building this combat beast:
  • Armor Bonus - Winner Warrior
    • Rogue
      • Rogues Armor - Heavy Leather 4 AR with no penalties at all
      • Rogue's Speed gets an additional +2 speed (a total of +6 speed with goblin swift)
    • Warrior
      • Warrior gets Novice Armor Training which is up to 7AR with heavy mail and we have already +6 speed which completely negates the -3 armor penalty for speed.
    • Overall
      • I think the additional 3 AR (4 versus 7) is worth decreasing speed bonus from +6 to +3
  • Starting Talents - Winner Warrior
    • Rogue gets exploration talents
    • Warrior gets access to two weapon talents and gets armor training.
  • Class Abilities
    • Rogue
      • Vital Blow - Since we are already speccing for high hit chance we can use this ability to completely negate any armor. Based on an older analysis on Armor in Adversaries most advesaries will have around 4AR and the super tough ones 8 or more. So this could be a good damage boost of 2-4 on average
      • Stunning Attack - good synergy with the dirty fighter theme
      • Lethality - a likely 2-4 damage bonus
      • Slippery - could be cool defensively
      • Stunt Die to Damage for pin point attack - situational at best, unless we put in at least 3 or 4 into DEX to get a majority of opportunities, 3-4 damage bonus
    • Warrior
      • Improved Armor Rating - means we can scale down to heavy leather and have the same overall bonus and claim back some of our speed
      • Expert Strike - Free 1d6 damage with no constraints, just better than pinpoint
      • Quick Strike - Free minor action attack, no additional talents needed... hmmm
      • Stunt Die to damage all the time
    • Overall
      • Expert Strike is just better than pin point (but at level 10)
      • Pinpoint Attack is level 1 but inconsistent with DEX constraint
      • Quick Strike replaces all talents that grant a minor action attack (but at level 15)
      • I think it will come down to the effectiveness of the weapon style talents and how they perform. Warrior might be the best on paper in the late game, rogue might be better early game.

Step Six - Equipment

Short Swords and Throwing Daggers. I suppose the armor is also important but no real choice after choosing class.

Step Seven - Defense and Speed

Defense is at least 12, and speed is 10 + 2 + 6 = 18 before armor.

Step Eight and Nine

Not necessary for this combat experiment.

Advancement Choices

If we picked warrior class the starting talents would be Dual Weapon Style and Throwing Weapon Style as they get us ahead in the talents we want. Rogue has no starting talents of interest so we can start looking at the general talents and stunt talents.
  • Weapon Groups
    • Light Blades
    • Dueling (for Duelist Specialization)
  • Stunts - Winner Warrior
    • Rogue
      • Finesse Combat Stunt (Lightning Attack, Level 2)
      • Perforate (level 4)
      • Dual Strike (level 6, warrior)
      • Storm of Strikes (level 12, warrior)
    • Warrior
      • Favored Combat Stunt (Lightning Attack, Level 2)
      • Dual Strike (level 4)
      • Perforate (level 6, rogue)
      • Storm of Strikes (level 8)
      • Favored Combat Stunt (Might Blow, level 10)
    • Overall
      • Warrior wins on paper since it can get all the stunts by level 8
      • But really a tie since both get +1SP lightning attack
  • Talents
    • Level 2 - Dual Weapon Novice
    • Level 4 - Unarmed Style Novice
    • Level 6 - Dual Weapon Expert
    • Level 8 - Goblin Novice
  • Specialization
    • Level 1 - Aspect Warrior Novice - Great Hunter (+1 to hit)
    • Level 3 - Marked Novice - Beastmark (1SP Lightning Attack as Brawling)
    • Level 5 - Duelist Novice - +2 damage (light blades or brawling)
    • Level 7 - Aspect Warrior Expert - Great Hunter (1SP Lightning Attack)
    • Level 9 - Marked Expert - Mark of Might +2 dmg
    • Level 11 - Aspect Warrior Master - AR is now 2 + Willpower so it's at least 4 without actual armor. I have to rethink the Armor debate now
    • Level 13- Marked Master - More Armor, Spidermark
    • Level 15 - Holy Warrior Novice - +Willpower to Mighty/Lethal Blow

Conclusion

I went into this assuming Goblin Rogue would do all the stabby stabby and I would build something interesting with multiple weapon styles. Instead I learned that there are a lot of ways to gain extra attacks like perforate and quick strike, lots of ways to reduce lightning attack SP cost. Stunt are interesting and take the place of weapon talents, as well as specializations. I stopped weapon talents pretty quick as I was pretty much uninterested after three. The mixed weapon and throwing weapon just didn't offer as much interesting as the specializations.

I really like the "favour" class stunts but found there was too much similar between rogue and warrior. They both did the same thing except for in a different order. I think this points to a "combat" style rather than a warrior or rogue. Maybe we need the pillars to guide characters and not classes. Combat, exploration, social. What you are good at is what you pick, not what you are constrained to.

Armor penalties are ineffective. I stopped playing with armor since I could get a lot from specializations.

I don't know. I thought this would be a crazy build and instead I got trapped splitting hairs but realizing it didn't matter in the end. I need to make that go away, no reason to go down the wrong path because of constraints that don't matter in the end. Make them not exist in the first place.

I didn't add up the early bonuses but I think with 3 ACC, ACC (light blades), Dual weapon style, aspect warrior I was at +7 to hit with my short swords. If you were a dwarf with axes you could have +6 to hit with 2h axe. That's a lot.

Other Notes

  • Fey Heritage Expert talent grants the character a wildfolk species bonus, which could be used for any character wishing to buff their brawling damage
  • Soldier background has Accuracy Brawling for a combat boost at level 1

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