Voidborn's Be Smart

[jmvbento]

So, I haven't played any version of the game yet, but I've seen some character creator videos, and I have a question regarding Voidborn's Be Smart:

Does it preclude the need to have Fellowship at all? Or do you still need it for tests and skills and other stuff?

[jmvbento]

HAHAHAHA, oh gods, someone please tell me Stratagems work with Contagious Luck, because if they do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! XD

Oooof, Blitz Stratagem is gold! Werglia wants to use it to extract squishies and all I can think of is how I can use it to make melee DPS'rs bypass enemy guardians to reach the ENEMY squishies for free and tear them several new throats.

Uh. Are... are attack considered Characteristic Tests by the rules? Because, uh, if they are, uh, Trenchline Stratagem is an excellent candidate for first pick into Grand Strategist.

Lol, Diversion Zone is just broken.

He misread Crossfire Zone. It definitely does not do what he said. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to use it with a mixed weapons team to avoid friendly fire.

Adjusting Frontline is huge. Extremely versatile with great bonuses.

Strongpoint is awesome. One free AP per round, basically.

I'm pretty sure he also misread Personal Combat Zone. Still, usefulness dubious.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, what even is Critical Zone? What's this ridiculousness?

Supporting Zone is basically mandatory, depending on how big the combat areas are in the game.

WHAT THE UNGODLY CHAOS GOD OF CHAOS IS STRATEGIC PERFECTION?! O_o

Sniping Zone is a thing that exists alongside Critical Zone and Diversion Zone, and I am crying here.

Opening Strategy making Strategic Perfection somehow even more ridiculous than it already was.

Overcoming Zone is the trolliest talent in this game. Like, if this game were PvP, it's the sort of thing that makes your opponent not only ragequit but throw his computer at the wall.

Grand Strategist is looking the sort of thing Chaos Marines threaten their kids with if they start misbehaving, and that's if Stratagems don't trigger Contagious Luck. If they DO, then a Voidborn Grand Strategist can take a single squad of Imperial Guard and their flashlights and just go curbstomp Tzeentch on their lunch break.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by jmvbento:

Yeah, since you were forced to go Vanguard in the beta, you might as well take Psyker and just treat Vanguard like Psyker instead.

Strategist video is out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdgybDaEJko

Thanks again here's my thoughts:

Combat Tactics - Having two Grand Strategists, one with super high Fellowship, and one with super High Intelligence (let's say, using "Be Smart" Voidborn talent), benefits all strategists in the group when it comes to Combat Tactics areas/zones. So if Cassia doesn't have a Be Smart like ability (I think she has one for Willpower), then a Voidborn Psyker could definitely pick it up and focus on Int advancement instead of fellowship advancement. Maybe let Cassia be your your main face. Based off my own RT having 163 Coercion, 165 Commerce, 188 Persuasion in Beta, I could probably afford to have less Fellowship lol.

Grand Strategist and Psyker Abilities/Talents - There's a lot of synergies here, but there's so many goodies in so many things the entire leader/strategist/Psyker mechanics are beginning to form my actual entire team composition. A situation where you just can't "have it all" on one or two characters. There is also still the question of whether or not one should just focus on Officer/GStart and just only use Psyker/Origin talents to buff those core abilities further. Although the abilities/talents are really nice for GStrat, they're constrained to zone choice. These types of things always work better in planning than they do in reality unless your team can really stand its ground and make the enemy come to them. :p.

Assuming it is beneficial to stack all this AoE buff stuff together, taking three leader/strategists (RT, Cassia, Jae if shes still a leader/officer) might be OP. Cassia with high Fellowship, RT with High intel with Be Smart, with both being Officer "Psykers" mainly (since Cassia Navigator abilities and talents are basically pseudo Psyker but better). Jae takes Officer and GStrat abilities/talents you need, but don't have enough space on RT and Cassia for.

RT and Heinrix take Sanctic Psyker to stack Word of the Emperor + further Word abilities with Strategist areas. Hoping that having two Word buff "bubbles" will cover both frontliners and backliners when casting Light, Hammer or Shield of the Emperor.

Argenta is where all the damage comes from (like it was for Beta), followed by Pascal (your AoE debuffer and spike damager). So that means you're hitting Argenta with 3 extra turns per wound. Combined with all the Resolve/Momentum generation including her War Hymn mechanics, she should be supercharge with her ults, which by extension buffs 3 other members of the party who will also be generating tons of momentum. Which means even more turns and more turn proliferation on Argenta. Everything will die to her Bolter!

I think it "could" work well lol. I will have to go over Psyker abilities yet again and work out what to take each level... of each Officer companion + Heinrix.

[jmvbento]

Oh, I had another question about levelling. Are characteristic advancements limited by pick or by type?

What I mean is, if you pick Noble, can you ALWAYS go +5 Fellowship whenever you get a charateristic advancement, or does it just add one time to the amount of times you can advance Fellowship?

EDIT: Ok, this would still be interesting to know, but it's not really relevant in practice because Be Smart lets you pick Intelligence to advance every time.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by jmvbento:

Oh, I had another question about levelling. Are characteristic advancements limited by pick or by type?

What I mean is, if you pick Noble, can you ALWAYS go +5 Fellowship whenever you get a charateristic advancement, or does it just add one time to the amount of times you can advance Fellowship?

EDIT: Ok, this would still be interesting to know, but it's not really relevant in practice because Be Smart lets you pick Intelligence to advance every time.

Yes and this is how it works for total clarity:

For Origin, there's the base passive bonuses and penalties much like Homeworld passive bonuses. But then there's a list below all the feature/talent showcases under "The following features will be available for upgrade during level up," listing what features you can level up in addition to any archetype based choices. For example:

Noble - Unlocks Fellowship (+5 per rank) and Persuasion (+10 per rank) as picks forever regardless of archetypes.

Psyker - Unlocks Willpower (+5) and Warp skill (+10) as picks forever regardless of archetypes.

Basically Be Smart, in addition to it's other gimmick, treats your Voidborn Heritage like a pseudo Intelligence Origin.

Be Smart Voidborn - Unlocks Intelligence (+5) as a pick forever regardless of archetypes.

So when prompted on level up, you will likely see a list of archetype unlocked choices in the UI, followed by a list of origin unlocked choices, then followed by choices unlocked by talents (like Be Smart).

Edit: The only thing to watch out for would be any possible "caps" to how many times you can take a rank up due to say level restrictions. If there's any such type of restrictions on release, it could really muck up stacking a characteristic really high.

[jmvbento]

Originally posted by Balekai:

*stuff*

Thanks. Guess that's just ANOTHER reason (as if I needed it) to make Be Smart the absolute first talent pick.

From what it looks like, the only thing I'm less than happy about with my currently-intended character is Persuasion at a measly 40.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by jmvbento:

Originally posted by Balekai:

*stuff*

Thanks. Guess that's just ANOTHER reason (as if I needed it) to make Be Smart the absolute first talent pick.

From what it looks like, the only thing I'm less than happy about with my currently-intended character is Persuasion at a measly 40.

I have the exact same issue if i go with Be Smart. It hurts my feels thinking my Rogue Trader could be terrible at Rogue Tradery Fellowship stuff as an Officer lol.

You're now Cao Cao instead of Liu Bei. :D

I'm going to try and find a list of Cassia Navigator Talents and see if she has a Be smart ability on her. She's pretty much a "must bring" Party member and it would fit her more to be the anti social super intelligent officer.

It's not a biggy. It just changes the feel of my character's personality RP wise. There's enough specialization opportunity to get someone else to cover high persuasion, coercion and commerce including Cassia. It's just a headache making sure they're always in the group (also those times you need high rank to pass solo skill checks on MC when alone).

Edit: Alrighty just checked. Her super OP beta talent, among others, was "Mind Over Matter." It allows her to use her Willpower vs. all resistance checks if it's higher than the base characteristic. It also allows her to use her Willpower for wounds (hit points) if its higher than Toughness.

Again OP, but nothing to do with intelligence.

[jmvbento]

Originally posted by Balekai:

Again OP, but nothing to do with intelligence.

OR Rogue Tradering.

[jmvbento]

Alright, just had confirmation from the devs:

Stratagems don't trigger Contagious Luck (booo, but working as expected);

Seize the Initiative + Grand Strategist gives you two turns back to back at the start of every combat before anyone else (well, if you don't count the murderbunnies you give extra truns to with Seize the Initiative's turn), so get ready to burn away a chunk of the enemy ranks before they ever get to do anything.

[jmvbento]

@balekai: Werglia's Psyker origin video is out, and he tends to make in-depth videos of abilities, so that might be more useful to you than Mortismal's.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by jmvbento:

@balekai: Werglia's Psyker origin video is out, and he tends to make in-depth videos of abilities, so that might be more useful to you than Mortismal's.

Thanks I will check it out. I'm getting distracted by the new DLC for AoW4 though and it's new faction. Trying to figure it out lol.

Nice that you got some dev confirmation on some things. That's really helpful for making some decisions going forward. The strategem news makes sense honestly (we're targeting the areas, not actual allies I guess?). It will be interesting to see if there are other limitations to other AoE buff types.

[jmvbento]

Originally posted by Balekai:

The strategem news makes sense honestly (we're targeting the areas, not actual allies I guess?). It will be interesting to see if there are other limitations to other AoE buff types.

Yeah, as written, it's how I expected it should work, but in cRPGs there's always the additional question of "but is that how it's been CODED?"

It doesn't really change the build, though - a Voidborn Officer Grand Strategist is still raising nothing but Intelligence at every opportunity* thanks to Be Smart, Contagious Luck is still bonkers good, and Stratagems are still either breaking your enemies or making your allies preposterous.

*I'm gonna take Know-It-All just for the lols, even though it doesn't really help the build in any way whatsoever

[Balekai]

I just wanted to update something here: I finally got around to creating my build on paper for Release last night. Mid way through I noticed that I screwed up when I was checking Cassia to see if she could fulfill the role of a Be Smart Officer/GStrat. I checked her Navigator Origin for some similar mechanics and forgot that her Homeworld is actually Voidborn as well (my brain was thinking Navigator was her Homeworld for some reason).

So she can be the Be Smart GStrat and our RT can remain Fellowship if need be (or convert both to INT).

This is a big deal for Cassia too because as mentioned above, she can already pick up the Navigator Talent "Mind Over Matter" that allows her to use Willpower for Resistance, and total Wounds (instead of toughness). Or Pass Unscathed converting dodge chance to Perception from Agility. She can basically be whatever you want her to be including a tank using INT/PER/WILL and offensively with her stare. Cassia essentially has access to DnD/Pathfinder shenanigans of Paladins, Oracles, Monks and the like lining up a whole bunch of mechanics like saves, AC etc. under one or two stats.

I guess the next thing to do is build a Be Smart Cassia and see if it works. :p