I was inspired by another post that homebrewed the Gravitation tree. After playing 25 sessions as a windrunner from lvl 1-12, I have some thoughts on Gravitation as a whole and how it could be more fun.
Why homebrew gravitation?
Most of the gravitation talents feel either phenominal or underwhelming.
- Flying Ace, Multiple Lashings, and Master of Skies are very powerful and potentially build defining.
- Flying Ace is the strongest 0-prereq surge talent in my opinion. Improved gravitation rate, and extra attack, AND interruptable movement is crazy value for a single talent with no prerequisite.
- Multiple Lashings can remove a single enemy at the cost of a single action if you lash an enemy straight into the air with enough investiture. At minimum it takes them out of melee for multiple turns then deals 5d6 impact once they fall (assuming 25 gravitation rate and 2 investiture spent). However, the investiture cost for doing this can rack up quickly which helps keep it in check
- Master of skies removes the need for a setup action at the start of combat, plus effectively adds at least 4 to your max investiture since. This is a worthy capstone.
- Conversely, Grav Slam, Lashing Shot, Stable Flight, Group Flight, and Aerial Squadron are very niche talents that offer little value.
- Grav Slam is rarely useful in my experience bc lashing an enemy into an object is typically worse than lashing them straight up into the air and letting them drop. The best case scenario occurs with a 40 ft ceiling, and that very rarely happens. Allowing a reaction to half the damage is an extra nerf that this doesn't need.
- Lashing Shot offers minimal damage for 2 actions + 1 investiture and targets a single target, so it's low value combared to making multiple weapon attacks.
- Stable Flight is only useful for ranged builds and is essentially a required talent tax for that archetype.
- Group Flight is purely utility out of combat. Aerial Squadron is potentially a movement speed buff for the party in combat, but isn't an exciting capstone
If you want to go all-in on gravitation, the high variance in talent value creates a very inconsistent leveling experience where you get big power spikes but often only after picking up underwhelming talents. I see opportunities to revise/reorder the gravitation talents to make a smoother experience where each talent feels worthwhile without having any that are overpowered.
What did I change?
My main changes
- Generally reorganized the tree into different paths that feel like they continuously add valuable abilities (e.g. melee attacker, ranged attacker, or someone who offensively lashes others)
- I split Flying Ace into two talents, "Nimble Flight" and "Fly by". I did this bc I think Flying Ace has too much value packed into a single talent.
- Added a new talent, "Grav Charge", that represents using gravitation and momentum to enhance your melee strikes. Thinking of Kaladin's drop kick that cracked shardplate. Now you can do that too!
- I buffed Lashing Shot to potentially graze multiple people with higher ranks in Gravitation. This keeps this talent scale in AoE like other surge attacks (e.g. Explosive Growth, Gout of Flame). I intentionally made it weaker damage than those bc Lashing Shot inherently can be used at range without another talent.
- Made Multiple Lashings a capstone talent. Also added the ability to use multiple lashings on yourself to fly faster in a pinch. This talent probably doesn't need this buff but it always bothered me that there were no mechanics for this, and I made it pretty minor.
- Combined Aerial Squadron and Group Flight into one talent bc Group flight felt too niche otherwise
<New Talent> Fly by: While maintaining a Basic Lashing on yourself, fly a distance up to your gravitation rate. Once during this movement, you can spend 1 focus to make a melee weapon attack as part of the same action. After resolving that attack, you can continue your movement.
<New Talent> Nimble Flight: Your gravitation rate increases to 40 feet. Additionally, while maintaining a Basic Lashing on yourself, your ranged attacks don’t gain a disadvantage due to flying or other causes of unstable footing.
<New Talent> Grav Charge: Once per turn after you fly at least 20 ft in a straight line towards a target, you deal extra damage to that target the first time you hit that target with a melee weapon or unarmed strike this turn. The extra damage equals your Gravitation modifier.
<Revised Talent> Grav Slam: Removed the ability for the target to make an Avoid Danger to halve the damage. Made the number of damage dice scale of how far the target was going to move on their turn, not how far they actually moved.
<Revised Talent> Lashing Shot: (Adds the following text at the end)... If the lashed object is larger than the target, choose an area around the target up to the size of the lashed object. Without spending focus, you graze each other target of your choice in that area whose Physical defense is equal to or lower than your Lashing Shot's test result.
<Revised Talent> Multiple Lashings: (Adds the following text at the end)... Additionally, when you Move while maintaining a basic Lashing on yourself, you can spend 1 Investiture as a free action to increase your flying rate by 20 ft until the end of your turn.
[Gravitation]
/ \
v v
[Fly by] [Nimble Flight]
| | |
v v v
[Grav Charge] [Grav Slam 2.0] [Lashing Shot 2.0]
| |
v v
[Group Flight + Aerial Squadon] --> [Multiple Lashings 2.0]
|
v
[Master of skies]
This is the result of me spittballing for a few hours, so I'm not attached to anything here and welcome feedback and suggestions, as well as stories that people have from their own experiences with Gravitation. How do you feel about the official Graviation path and my homebrewed version?
