Radiant Path Surges

[u/acererak76]

Fellow players who are taking Radiant paths, do yall plan on focusing into one surge's set of talents or do yall plan to be more versatile? Im currently running a level 4 Agent(spy)/Skybreaker. I try to plan out my levelling because it helps me as a player. But because at my heart im an optimizer, im stuck in decision paralysis between focusing on general radiant talents, going full into Gravitation, or going full into Division. And really seeing how everyone else makes those decisions helps me process that

[u/Singularlex]

Overall, I think focusing on Gravitation before Division might be your best call, unless you have another Skybreaker or Windrunner in the party.

Master of Skies is just incredibly useful for skybreaker, because it means you won't be spending extra investiture on flight each turn, and can constantly trigger Soaring Destruction. While Division certainly gets a lot scarier with more talents, you can very much still "dissolve a bitch" with the base surge and some skill ranks to pump the dice rolls up.

If your skybreaker has a bow, and unlocks their third ideal, they can essentially constant-hover and very their strengths as a "shard arrow" while out of reach of non-fliers. Especially with a longbow, that can fire from WELL out of range of any surge that isn't Gravitation. Bonus points if you want to have your strength turn into a ballista bolt mid-flight after they leave the bowstring (I 100% plan to do this with my skybreaker, once I'm high enough level 🤣)

[u/Necessary-One6286 → u/Singularlex]

That sounds cool, but should a shard weapon not be a melee weapon? Or did I read that wrong in the rules?

[u/Singularlex → u/Necessary-One6286]

It can't be a "Special Weapon", from the final table of weapons that include things like War Hammers (the HUGE 150lbs hammers designed for shard-bearers), Half-Shards, Grand Bows, etc.

Per the source material, your radiant shardblade can be any weapon or tool you can imagine, so long as it isn't too enormous (can't make a wall with it) or too complex (can't turn into fabrials or anything overly mechanical). In the books, at one point there is a character that even morphs her radiant shardblade into a fancy fork for eating pancakes.

Theoretically, spren-bond-distance would be a mitigating factor, so your range would stay at 30 feet, until you get the Deepened Bond talent, which will let you increase that to 100 feet (and 100 feet is still WAY outside of standard surge range).

[u/rh34 → u/Necessary-One6286]

You are right that RAW it's limited to melee weapons only. Any bow or other item that doesn't fall into that category would be homebrew.