Boneseller38: Does anyone know how the rules for tertiary weapons are meant to work? We had an argument at the table last night since it reads like they're supposed to be a last resort thing you can't use very often but it doesn't put any clear limits on how often you can use them? If I'm playing a caste with good tert pics why wouldn't I just use them every turn?
Josh_Shrubbery: Check the forum rules, dipshit. You need to post the section you're talking about so we actually know what ruleset and expansions you're going by. This is just clogging the category.
W0r1dB4N3: Kinda rude but we do need the specific quote, those rules get changed up a lot. Terts have been a balance nightmare in every edition.
Boneseller38: Sorry, I'm back, dealing with life shit. We're running 4th Edition with the Still Water, Soft Rains expansion but none of the later ones since they'd break the module. Here are the two parts that confused me.
"Unlike their natural and wielded weapons, the tertiary weapons of a Stranger represent the culmination of their mastery, drawing directly on their lifeforce and knowledge to force patterns onto the world around them. They follow the same rules as Riddle Engines, as they operate under the same principles, but are not consumed when used, instead leaving the user drained both physically and psychologically. "
"During a Stranger's second combat phase, they can make attacks with wielded or tertiary weapons equal to their Attacks stat, or use a consumable with the Thrown, Ranged, or Riddle Engine keyword."
First quote makes it seem like they're supposed to be a rare special move but there's no mention of any kind of actual limitations. Yeah there's a bit of self-damage and usually a status effect on the weapon statblocks, but I picked Tidebreaker Caste and Secret of Rime at level 1 so they literally just don't affect me. Is there something I'm not getting? Why wouldn't I just spam it every turn?
Josh_Shrubbery: You can't just run a cheese build and then act confused when it's a cheese build.
Boneseller38: It's literally one of the example characters.
W0r1dB4N3: Running 9 Gates? Nice. Yeah, 4thE was kinda weird about that. A lot of people got really mad about how tight the limits were in 3rd, especially since the short stories have Strangers using what would be terts IG multiple times in a row (at great cost, of course), so they tried to do something like that but balance it around the "average" caste. I don't think they actually expected anyone to spec survivability just to spam them. SWSR made it way worse with Tidebreaker. I think they erratad some of the self-damage numbers higher but you can still totally do it with 1-2 extra defensive secrets, tertspam is THE classic 4thE meme build.
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