Is evasion worth raising, and in which cases?

[the_rippy_one]

And if so, to what ratio? Assuming a base attack ration of 2d12+stat…

Hands down, Rogues can benefit flat out - bumping a decent 25% evasion up to 50% if they take proper steps, and they can use a domain ability to go over 80% in the dark. Warriors and Rangers, with access to the Bone domain - and thus Nimble - can also become evasion tanks with 68% success rates, trivially.

(all this ignores Experiences that bolster your to-hit, but even so, the extra +2 or 3 doesn’t negate these numbers enough to say that 5 boosts to evasion aren’t worth it for these 3 classes)

and that’s pretty much it. everyone else, even using leather armor, isn’t going to get to even 33% evasion. And while an extra +2 or 3 from an Experience won’t slow those folks up top down too much, it pretty much will torpedo everyone else. (unless you have evasion-oriented experiences, but that’s another discussion. Assume that you can equally counter an offensive Experience with a defensive one, you are still left with 80%+ of the hits aimed at you coming through if you aren’t the 3 listed up top)

ANYWHO. Point is (And yes, I’m finally getting to it XD ) given how often attacks will get through, not having the extra armor slots is going to seriously start hurting. SO, where’s the balance? And the answer can slide around some, obviously. By level 10, if you have less than 7 Evasion, you take all the hits, period. For something like a Seraph or a Guardian, is it even worth it to lose 1 or 2 Armor slots to get to 8 EV, when that only gets them a 2% chance of not being hit? OR, more pointedly, should they put 5 points in, and never gain another armor slot, to get to 10% evasion, and 7% respectively? I’m pretty sure it isn’t, and I’m almost positive the actual answer is that those two classes should never put a point into Evasion at all, but should concentrate on Armor slots and raising their thresholds instead (which thresholds? different debate XD). With something like Bard, the question is murkier. You can level boost 3, wear Legendary Leather Armor, and get a evasion of 14.5%, roughly, with 6 armor. Are you surviving on that? I’m guessing not, but I’m not as sure. I do THINK you are doing better than 10% evasion with 8 armor, though (Legendary breastplate)…

Thoughts?

[MellieDM]

There’s one thing I think you’ve missed here: The GM rolls 1d20 for adversary attacks (not 2d12, like players do), and does not get critical hits. This gives a much wider range with less of a bell curve, making evasion great for characters like rogues and rangers.

[the_rippy_one]

I did say rogues and rangers were two of the three that should go for evasion…The rogue base evasion is really solid, and Bone gives an undeniable boost to that sort of build.

I did miss that the GM only has a d20 to use, so thank you for that. It does make players buying evasion a lot more valuable.

However, how much more valuable/where to stop buying it in favor of the armor slots is still a question for the other 6 classes

[drumzagames]

Personally, I think evasion has a lot of advantages over armor that make it worth considering even on the classes that aren’t evasion focused.

For one, evasion is not resource dependent in the same way armor is. You only have a limited number of armor slots to block attacks with, but your evasion is just a passive dodge chance. This means over extended periods of combat without rest, evasion will have an advantage since the armor build is likely to run out of armor slots. On top of this, armor orientated builds need to spend downtime actions repairing their armor; by focusing on evasion instead you free up your downtime actions to be spent on other options.

It is also worth noting that any attack evaded is completely prevented, while blocking attacks with armor only reduces the incoming damage. Many attacks may still be able to damage you after spending an armor slot, especially if you are playing a character with low damage thresholds like a wizard. Even if the damage is reduced below your minor threshold, you will still suffer a stress unless you manage to reduce the damage to 0.

With these facts in mind I think most of the classes could potentially benefit from boosting evasion.

As you already pointed out Rogues, Rangers and Warriors have the potential to get incredibly high evasions, potentially to the point that no attacks can land on them, so evasion seems like an obvious choice to boost for them. In particular Rangers and Warriors have access to the bone domain which gives them access to nimble (for a huge evasion buff) as well as many abilities that trigger off of evading attacks. Still I wouldn’t say you are forced to focus evasion with these classes, you could just let their base evasion (plus maybe nimble) avoid some attacks, while focusing armor to block the attacks that do land.

Wizard, Sorcerers, and Bards also could potentially benefit from focusing evasion. Their low damage thresholds make armor less effective to begin with, and they all have decent starting evasions. School of War Wizard and Elemental Origin Sorcerer both even have powerful specialization abilities to boost their evasion. These classes are probably going to be on the squishier side regardless of whether they focus on armor or evasion, but they should be able to get decent enough evasion scores if they focus it.

Druid has better damage thresholds than the other caster. They should be able to get similar evasion to the casters above, but they could probably make armor work pretty well too since there are a couple decent druid/sage abilities that work with armor.

Guardian and Seraph should probably focus armor. They both have good damage thresholds and quite low starting evasion. They also both have access to the valor domain, which has many powerful cards that synergize with armor. The guardian in particular practically has to focus armor since both of it’s subclasses focus on armor.

These are just my thoughts tho, and I still need to actually play several games at various levels of play before I can see how accurate they turn out to be. A mixed approach (between armor and evasion ) also might actually work well for many of the classes. I also didn’t really consider multiclassing, but personally I would guess that multiclassing benefits evasion focused builds more, since it would let any class get access to nimble and other powerful low level bone abilities.