Priest (Monk stuff)

question

#1

I’m looking at the Priest class and I have some questions.
There is two milestone abilities that have a monk flavor to them but I can’t figure out why you would pick one over the other.

IRON FIST: Your fists and feet are hardened with focus, doing WEAPON damage.

MASTER: Your skill is legendary. Inflict MAGIC EFFORT with bare hands and
feet. Also, if an unarmed attack inflicts 10+ damage, cast a WIS SPELL instantly
with no roll.

Am I reading these right or am I missing something?
Master seems to deal more damage and has a 2nd ability, why would I pick Iron Fist?

Part 2

Picking the Milestone “Chosen One” with the WIS SPELL “Yogi Stasis” makes you an amazing companion for a barbarian.

CHOSEN ONE: Choose 1 ally. As long as you live, they cannot fall below 1 HP
YOGI STASIS: Assume a cross-legged posture, and enter meditation. In this state you are immune to harm and require no food or air. No duration limit.

Not a question I guess for part 2, but thought it was something to talk about.


#2

Hey LoComm,

Iron Fist deals WEAPON damage (D6). This boosts your damage type from D4 (unarmed) to D6. Your GM might also allow you to add any points from Weapon Effort to this damage - I would. Great for the non-magical pugilist.

Master deals MAGIC EFFORT damage - this is equal to the number of points you put into Magic Effort. That is, you don’t roll damage. You look at the value of your Magic Effort and deal that amount of damage. This is great for more spell focused priests.

Hope this helps!

AC


#3

Basically, you can avoid picking the IRON FIST and wait for the mastery to be unlocked. In that case - just like Anthony said - you’d stick to BASIC effort until you unlock the mastery’s upgrade.

About the STASIS: Sure, that’s a strong combination. You could just stay “at home” and let your friends play while you sit in meditation :smile: Depending on the table style that’s more or less desirable behavior.


#4

Well, because not everyone min-maxes. When I see that list of possibilities, it just makes sense to me that as a monk type character progresses, he would go from d4 hand to hand damage to d6 and then eventually d10 when he becomes a master. Not everyone jumps to “I’ll start out doing magic damage with my hands,” but you totally could bypass iron fist if that is the type of character you wanted to make.

This is a great synergy. I have personally used it in a game. My character, Master Grosz, picked his protege, Kraal, as the chosen one. As long as Master Grosz lived, Kraal could not fall below 1 HP. During an epic battle with a lake serpent, Master Grosz entered Yogi meditation and sank to the bottom of the lake while Kraal dealt with the fanged serpent, Kil’Vastri. It was super epic.


#5

Thanks! I knew I was missing something reading those.


#6

My ex wife is one of our rotating DMs, it might be fun to lay back and let one of our less experienced players take out her next big bad.


#7

That sounds like a truly epic battle!
I do think if I was the DM I might push for a spell check roll every now and then to give the player something to stress about or burn a hero coin.


#8

All damage is “Effort” and “Effort Roll” so this interpretation, that you only apply Base/Loot Effort Bonus with no MAGICAL effort roll, is confusing to me. As a counter-point the Warrior’s “Power Strike” says to “do your maximum EFFORT” on a modified 15+. This is clearly referencing the maximum Effort die roll (with Effort bonus from Base/Loot applied).


#9

There is some room for interpretation. I still would argue that “effort” is referencing the stat itself. Otherwise, the abilities make no sense. Unless of course you lock the more powerful milestones behind others. Your call as GM.

AC


#10

I don’t disagree that it could be interpreted or ruled that way. GM fiat is always in play of course! I just find it odd interpretation of the wording considering effort and effort die are used interchangeably in the text everywhere else.

TBF I don’t find the earlier conclusion that “Inflict MAGIC EFFORT…” means “EFFORT DIE” satisfactory either for exactly the reason you point out: it seems to make little sense to offer two abilities that improve the exact same action type (hand and feet attacks) with 1 simple milestone selection where one is overwhelmingly the better choice 100% of the time, unless you willfully choose the lesser choice for “RP reasons”. All the other options are sufficiently different that there is an interesting choice in taking one over the other for more reason that to avoid “min/maxing”.

Ultimately not a big deal of course because, as you suggest, a GM can just make a call to “fix the glitch” if it’s perceived as such. In my case it feels like a glitch to offer two choices that overlap as these do and have one be so overwhelmingly superior.


#11

I was going to report this as a copy-edit problem, but I remembered to search if it had been mentioned. I was wondering if this got switched with the Mastery ability, but that is pretty boss too.
It completely makes sense that Iron Fist is a prereq for Master, and I intend to play it that way, but no other type has a progression like that. Or you could have the lower effort paired with the sometimes-free spell so it is a trade-off.
I do not think it is fair to accuse someone of the MM sin for picking a thing on a list that is better than another thing on a list - that is a problem with the list. Easy for the DM to fix of course, but it stands out in a game with so few other glitches.


#12

Maybe. It’s still a bit min-maxy to favor mechanics on a list versus the flavor of your character. It’s also a bit cheesy to choose to skip iron fist, choose to be a “master” and elect to have “legendary skill” at your first milestone, especially where master is the last milestone on the list. There is an implied progression there.

And there are a few prior cases, for sure. For example, a healer could choose healing nova at level one and heal all of her allies. It would definitely be min-maxy to skip healing touch in this fashion. Or she could jump straight to resurrection and bypass healing altogether. Also kind of a min-maxy move.


#13

I really do not mean to be the guy who argues on the internet - I am just a new reader, having bought the ME a couple weeks ago, inspired to start DMing for the first time since the 80s. We are not poring through the rules looking for exploits - that’s how I would define min-maxing (I hate that term - we used to call it “playing the rules not the game”). I did not notice this at all until a player asked for it. I gave some consideration when they asked, and I agree - there is kind of an implied progression - so I said no (or “not yet”).

But it is an implied progression - is there any advice on stuff like that? I certainly could have missed something. Elsewhere there are tier 1-4 path rewards and mastery abilities, but no levels or sequence spelled out here. I do not think any of the other types’ milestones are a similar case, but I have not seen them in play. You mentioned healing spells - but those do have trade-offs: a hard roll, needing perfect safety.

Thank you all so much


#14

I always thought the Master abilities were direct upgrades of the basic abilities.

So if you pick Iron Fist, then 20 natural 20s later, you jump from WEAPON to MAGIC damage and gain the ability to trigger a wisdom spell.

I guess it’s a matter of preference, but I assumed the MASTERY abilities were locked until you earn them.

(Edited to add) I double checked and those are regular milestones, not MASTERY abilities, so I just didn’t understand the context.