Trickster/Nalpazca ideas

[gkathellar]

I'm pondering an unarmed, high-deflection monk who uses Nalpazca and Dance of Death to generate a constant flow of Wounds while Trickster does everything that Trickster does. Part of the goal here is to get good mileage out of Tuotilo's Palm. All that said, I'm pretty uncertain about the end result, and I'd love any feedback people could give me on it.

 

Here's what I've got so far. (Assume Ripple Sponge spam.)

 

Race: Nature Godlike (for the +1 PL, mitigating the penalty to Transcendent Suffering for multiclassing)

 

Might: Flat

Dexterity: Flat

Constitution: Dump

Perception: Max

Intellect: High

Resolve: Max

 

1: Crippling Strike + Swift Strikes

2: Escape

3: Backstab

4: Weapon & Shield Style + Dance of Death

5: Dirty Fighting

6: Two Weapon Style

7: Swift Flurry + Riposte

8: Soul Mirror

9: Blade Turning

10: Shadowing Beyond + Enduring Dance

11: Rooting Pain

12: Persistent Distraction

13: Deep Wounds + Duality of Mortal Presence

14: Adept Evasion

15: Thunderous Blows

16: Uncanny Luck + Flagellant's Path

17: Turning Wheel

18: Enervating Blows

19: Deathblows + Heartbeat Drumming

20: Crucible of Suffering

Edited July 15, 2018 by gkathellar

[grasida]

I would question the following choices, though I would also defer to more experienced players if they have good reasons to say they're useful:

 

1. Backstab -- This plus shadowing beyond is a lot of guile spent for a minor bonus in the greater scheme of things. As a trickster, you already have plenty of use for guile. Even for a normal rogue, some extra uses of crippling strike is probably better.

2. Blade Turning -- Between tuotilo's palm, llengrath's displaced image, mirrored images and ryngrim's repulsive visage, you probably have all the defense you need. This has a nice synergy for nalpazca, but I'm not sure it's necessary on your build.

3. Shadowing Beyond - See backstab. Also, the deflection bonus ends when you leave invisibility, so it doesn't seem worth it as a defensive tool.

4. Rooting Pain -- I guess this isn't bad. You do generate wounds fairly frequently. I'm not sure it's worth it, though.

5. Uncanny Luck -- The effective amount this will increase your crit rate is very low. And I'm not sure the defensive benefits are worth it, either.

 

Instead of those, especially instead of backstab and shadowing beyond, I'd take toxic strike (very powerful with duality of mortal presence) and maybe one other dot on the rogue. Efficient anguish or raised torment might be a good investment also. Sustainable primary attacks are good for this build, since they benefit from the speed of dual wielding, but avoid attacking with the shield. At very high level, with implements of pain, you should be able to spam efficient anguish nearly non stop. That's a big boost to damage and defense. Not only are you keeping everything away from you and interrupting them, you're avoiding using your shield and force of anguish benefits from the hidden power level multiplier weapon attacks get.

[gkathellar]

You make some good points re: Blade Turning and Shadowing Beyond/Backstab. I was mainly thinking about their synergy with Dance of Death, but I'm probably over-investing in defense as is.

 

With Toxic Strikes, does it make sense to drop Enervating Blows?

[grasida]

Toxic strikes costs 3 guile, so I figure you’ll typically only use it on a single priority target per fight so you still have guile to keep up your defenses and disable enemies. If that’s the case, I’d still find enervating blows useful. I’m honestly not sure how important the con afflictions are against average targets, rather than big damage sponges, though.

[whimper]

Looks pretty good! Were you thinking of this for a solo run, or as part of a party? 

 

For a solo run, two potential weak points might be (1) a lack of AOE attacks to deal with large crowds, and (2) fights that last so long that you have to burn up multiple doses of drugs to finish the fight, or even run out of drugs entirely. 

 

The first weak point might be patched up with a reasonably heavy investment in Arcana or Explosives skills. That might also speed up fights, patching up the second weak point as well. (Alternatively, perhaps some AOE weapon you can switch to?)

 

In a similar vein, you might also consider boosting your Dexterity a bit more to allow you to take advantage of the high-perception deathblows-boosted attacks you'll be handing out (which would also help to speed up fights). I guess you could consider trading some Intellect and/or Might for extra Dexterity?

 

(I think trading Might for Dexterity should net an increase in DPS once you add up all of the damage bonuses you get from things like Deathblows. And since Might doesn't boost drug healing anymore, and you don't have class abilities that heal, damage is all Might is good for. And Intellect is nice, but maybe something you can afford to drop a bit given plenty of guile to spam defensive spells, even if they don't last quite as long, since you don't need to use guile to activate Deathblows (given Distracting Presence). And, again, since Intellect doesn't boost drug duration anymore, it's not quite as important for Nalpazca monks at it used to be.)