Sly Flourish and Dragonbane - and my Mage underpowered combat worry

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=te__Wy4E-ZE&t=755s

He does same temple we just did.

I wanna ask… is dragonbane good for aoe blaster mages? Or is it just super fun for GMs and martials?

Sidenote, from here: 

Neomaxim said:

Do you think it would utterly destabilize the game to let players have either the Fleet Footed, or Parry-equivalent Heroic Traits [Heroic action names are called Defensive for shield blocks taking no action costs WP, similar to Fast Footwork which gives Dodge an attack without using Action, WP cost 3] for free?

Not at all.

It actually works better for the game if you do as in the end just speed up the inevitable. Most players will take one of them anyway as soon as the get their first Heroic Ability granted from the GM for a heroic deed (aka milestone advancement...) as they stand heads and should above the rest.

The adventure booklet in the basic box hands out 1-2 if I remember correctly. And Path of Glory assumes that the player start with three of them.

Also you just could play with the Alternative Ability optional rule from the rule book that allows a player to swap out their starting Heroic Ability.

You can compare the basic action economy of the game to low level D&D. A quirk that won't last long and you will spend the majority of your campaign with everybody having them.

A quick high damage Melee build:

• Thief Style
• Heroic Actions taken should be:
• Assassin - WP cost 3 - sneak att does extra d8. (Sneak Attack is automatic if another party member is also fighting them). 
• Backstabbing WP cost 3 - cannot be dodged or parried, get a boon to the roll, number of dice rolled for dmg is incr by one (i.e. 2d8 instead of d8). Must use a Subtle weapon (pg. 74). 
• So, Dagger is subtle, D8. If you have high STR or DEX you get extra d4 dmg I think. So you could do this:
• 3d8+1d4 DEX MOD for every maxed out sneak attack with both heroic actions available. 6WP cost. 
• Fighter Style (note 2 hand means you can't Block, but can still Evade/Dodge right?)
• Weapon
• 1 Hand weapon like Battleaxe or Longsword: 2d8
• Most 2 Hand weapons do: 2d10 
• Heroic Actions
• Dual Wield - WP 3 : 1hand weapon ea. hand, extra attack at a Bane (Disadvantage in 5e terminology)
• Double Slash - WP cost 3-  hit 2 enemies nearby.  Can combine with Dual Wield. 
• So using both you get:
• 2d8 + 2d8 +1d4 for STR Mod on two targets. 6 WP cost. 
• Ranged Style 
• Longbow
• Heroic Actions
• Twin Shot - 3 WP - Roll once to hit with a Bane (disadv). Dmg rolled separately. Arrows can be same target or different. 
• You can use sneak attack if you get surprise to do extra dmg or something with ranged or melee.

Welp, that is 99% of your combat builds right there. Pretty simple system in that sense. 

The only "complexity" I can see is 

• if you lay out terrain to be used effectively, same as any TTRPG with a map, which I do like. 
• swapping inits
• deciding when to block/evade or not (commentors say: monsters have actions as same # as Party members minus 1, so someone can always "do something" other than block-parry/evade.)
• ? Is that it? I think that's almost it. I mean then you decide when to spend WP to do extra damage... but when they Parry/Evade your stuff, that sure sucks. And those fire spells pretty much say you can shield-block-parry/evade whatever except for AOE stuff I think. 

Starting to think people that love Dragonbane love it for a few simple reasons:

• it feels fresh to them b/c they've been playing D&D style for 40 years, and this has the funky "roll low is good" skill system, which takes like 10 seconds to learn, but feels funky. 
• fast moving rounds b/c stuff is simple, less dice to count, less stuff to do (frankly). And normally characters just have one single thing to do, not even 2 attacks until you are maxed out super duper late game stuff that probably never happens
• same reason ppl like shadowdark
• same reason ppl like B/X
• fast rounds means players get their turn sooner
• it's just less combat tactically interesting. I think this is "less crunchy" using the internet term.  :(
• I think you play like d20Roll folks, put all the calculations on a 1 click macro on a computer, and it calculates all the 6 or 8 or more dice all at once super insta style. 
• I LIKE THAT. Sure it's not as fun as rolling dice and watchign them fall... you can still do that for small dice rolls or whatnot. But often the SPEED of it is just better,  you can do lots and still have tactics. 
• it has the DCC/ Shadowdark thing of rolling to cast... and crit failure on spells suck a lot, but those GMs seem to like the chaos of that
• the skills matter much more outside of combat
• swapping inits and that whole minigame is new a different, yeah it is
• they like duck-people... i guess
• oh yeah, the "pushing" to reroll and the "taking a condition" are well done, I will give them that. It seems pretty fun, can be roleplayed, and isn't a forever you are screwed option I don't think. 
• and of course these are folks that enjoy death being super common, for whatever reason.
• and and and... a lot are DMs, who probably like having cooler monsters, less homework on leveling up stuff... and a really cool looking graphical / art system like Dragonbane. 
• I might be being harsh, I mean I did like the game. I'm just biased b/c I like more complexity, and that comes with
• custom char builds
• custom monster builds
• lots and lots and lots of monster variety

My comment on Mage on SlyFlourish's yt:

Dragonbane comment 2 of 2: So I would like to say, as a player and a GM, I tend to really like your take on things. When we are the GM, we want our friends and family to succeed and beat the monsters. We want everybody to have a good challenge, each of the party to have a solid role in combat, and also for everyone to have a lot of fun (including the GM). So coming from that angle, I would appreciate your take on one aspect of Dragonbane that I have reservations on. 

Speaking purely combat-wise, I suspect the Mage class is a little underpowered... but I haven't played enough to have a good feel. What I understand is that in Dragonbane you never truly level up, so you almost never increase hitpoints on your PC. So enemies don't have crazy high hitpoints... ever. Goblins and orcs have 7 HP to 10 HP. Bigger monsters have around 25-45 HP it would seem. Spellcasting costs WP, has a chance to miss, a chance to be parried/evaded, and a chance for a critical mishap. I believe the highest level single damage (or even AOE) spell is 2d6 , same as most attacks, unless you use WP to increase it to 4d6 (you can't do that all that often in a game day). [edit: 2d10 if you get the rank3 Firebird actually. And a correction, a Heroic Ability similar to D&D feats, you can eventually after many upgrades/adventures cast 2 spells in one round (still costs extra WP), but that seems similar to other class Heroic Abilities where they can attack twice, etc.]. 

The Mage is also very squishy, with armor being more important in Dragonbane in many ways than other RPGs I've played. Our very excellent GM who has played exclusively Dragonbane for a year even stated he barely sees anyone play a Mage. It seems like all the other characters are just way more consistent in combat. So... what am I missing or is the Mage just supposed to be 80% utility even if you try to build one out to be a battle mage? 

Maybe there are some blogs out there explaining this, I just haven't found them yet. I will be rewatching a youtuber going by "Cthonic Musings" who loves Dragonbane and seems to have a solid 40 years of experience in TTRPGs, so I hope he sheds light on this specific worry. Example: www[dot]youtube[dot]com/watch?v=jIfSJDs_ojQ [[edit2: I'm starting to think at the very end game scenario, if you are maxed out in magic abilities, have all the Heroic Actions, save all of your WP points for the boss, happen to have rank 3 firebird for 2d10, upcast it spending more WP points to do 4d10... use more WP to cast a 2nd different spell for 4d8 upcasted... yeah you can do a ton of damage in one fight, if those spells aren't parried/evaded and if all 4+ rolls go your way... seems like a lot of ifs! Maybe you can go last in a round to make sure they aren't parried/evaded.... Honestly though, I just wanted something like a D&D fireball so that sometimes you can do a lot of damage with AOE... guess this game just plays differently!]]

Conclusion:

Well, it seems like the Mage is not going to be doing a D&D style fireball very much. And you might get lucky on a big damage double spell against a boss monster... IF you are like super maxed out character-wise with every spell, etc. and you save all your WP for the boss, and wait for a round he can't parry. I think. I wonder if with heroic actions the martials get to do sort of similar damage in a round or two. Hmm.