Gold’s Guide to Hero

Created by Gold Zephzellian

Summary

When the going gets tough, the Hero gets tougher. When it seems like all hope is lost, the Hero comes out and fights against the odds, no matter how tough it is.

The Hero is all about getting tougher and stronger in more difficult encounters. The more the odds are stacked against the party, the stronger the Hero becomes. Of course, this means the Hero’s features range from weak to useless in fights with lower stakes. This, ironically, makes the Hero more vulnerable in easier fights without any help.

If you can work around that, though, the Hero will help you push through even the most dire of odds!

Sub-Archetype Statistics

Ease of Use – ★★★☆☆

Offensive Ability – ★★★★★*

  • Single Target – ★★★★★*
  • AOE – ★★★★★*
  • Disabling – ★★★★★*

Defense – ★★★★★*

  • Passive Defense – ★★★★★*
  • Active Defense – ★★★☆☆
  • Healing – ★★☆☆☆

Support – ★★☆☆☆

  • Offensive Support – ★★☆☆☆
  • Defensive Support – ★★★☆☆
  • Miscellaneous Support – ★★☆☆☆

Skills – ★★☆☆☆

  • Social – ★★☆☆☆
  • Physical – ★★★☆☆
  • Mental – ★★☆☆☆

*: …only getting better when the going gets tough.

Use this Sub-Archetype if you want to…
– Get stronger the more difficult a fight becomes.
– You want a wide range of bonuses that cover both offense and defense.
– You like Cinematic Actions and want to use them a lot in dire situations.
Consider avoiding this Sub-Archetype if…
– If variable effectiveness depending on how difficult the encounters are isn’t your cup of tea.
– If you don’t like having your output limited until Tier 3. You don’t get better output options in Sub-Archetype until then.
– You like building around the effects of a Sub-Archetype. That may be a bit tricky here…

Features

Tier 1 – Against the Tide

Your Armor, Evasion, and DRs increase by 1 for any enemy you can see beyond the number of allies you have or for each Level that the enemy with the highest Level has beyond your own. Each grade of a boss creature counts as an additional enemy for this calculation. The bonus cannot be higher than your Primary Stat Bonus.

Dependent on the difficulty of a combat encounter, gain up to your Primary Stat Bonus in Evasion, Armor, and DRs.

The main draw of the Hero, Against the Tide is a pretty sweet, if a bit inconsistent feature that makes you far bulkier in difficult encounters. So… how does it work?

Well, it scales based off one of two factors, with whatever is better being your bonus:

  1. Enemy Count – For every enemy above your count, gain +1 Bonus. Graded enemies count as their Grade in terms of enemy count. (For example, a Grade 3 Enemy counts as 3 Enemies.)
  2. Enemy Level – For each level the highest level enemy is above yours, gain +1 Bonus.

So… what does this all mean? Well, basically, the more outnumbered you are or the more powerful the strongest enemy is than you, the bulkier you become! This is pretty great, but the issue lies with the fact that it only works when the odds are stacked against you.

As a result, this feature does nothing in fights where enemies are fewer in count or on your level or weaker. Ironically, this leaves you more vulnerable in those fights, since you basically just become a Bulwark character in those fights. Not bad, persay, but definitely flawed. Keep this in mind when building a Hero.

Tier 2 – Hero’s Comeback

Whenever the Vitality of an ally you can see drops below half of their maximum, you can make a cinematic reaction without requiring Narrative Momentum or RP even if you are Restrained. You can use this feature only once per combat.

Once per combat, when the Vitality of an ally you see falls below half, you may make a Cinematic Reaction at no cost, even if Restrained.

A pretty solid little safety net of a feature, Hero’s Comeback gives you a free Cinematic Reaction once per combat. Odds are good an ally will fall below half in most combats, so you’ll probably be able to make use of this! Saving 3 Narrative Momentum and 2RP is a nice bonus.

Tier 3 – Push Back the Tide

The damage of your attacks and Damage Abilities, your attack rolls, and your DR Power increase by the same amount your Against the Tide feature increases your Armor, Evasion, and DRs.

Against the Tide now provides its bonus to all damage, attack rolls, and DR Power as well.

A fantastic Tier 3, Push Back the Tide finally gives Hero some much needed offensive output during tougher fights, allowing it to challenge tougher threats head on! Like Against the Tide, it is unfortunately reliant on the enemies you face, but it’s still great when it works.

Tier 4 – If I Don’t, Who Will?

The Narrative Momentum cost of your cinematic actions, reactions, and bursts decreases by 1 for each ally with less than half of their maximum Vitality that you can see.

Cinematic Actions, Reactions, and Bursts cost 1 less for each ally you can see with half or less of their Vitality remaining.

Holy discounts, Batman! That is a substantial discount to Cinematic actions of all stripes, and one that’s relatively easy to make use of. As of a recent change, Narrative Momentum costs can never go below 1, so it’ll never be free, but this can help reduce those costs substantially so you can have quite the impact when it matters! The fact that it applies to Bursts is baller too; those can be pricey.

Tier 5 – Chosen One

Your Level and the number of your allies count as three lower for the calculation of your Against the Tide feature.

Your Level and ally count is considered 3 less for Against the Tide.

Chosen One? Yea, I think so! This feature all but ensures that everything but fights you were probably gonna win anyways will have some sort of boost towards Against the Tide, ensuring you get all those tasty boosts, and will make you even stronger in fights where the odds are stacked against you. Enjoy, you’ve earned it!

Synergies & Tips

Synergies

  • Anything: I’m dead serious! Hero is such a blank slate in terms of how generic its benefits are, you can make almost anything work. Just be sure to have a maxed out skill, and you’ll be good to go! 
  • Cinematic Action Strategy: Hero has a fun side theme of Narrative Momentum use, and Path of Heroism can give you more of it to use! Use alongside Protagonist and Fate Weaver Multi-Sub-Archetype shenanigans for the best results! It can be very hard to do this in a campaign, though, since it requires a significant amount of investment to work.
  • Weapon Based Strategy: Bulwark provides a decent chassis for weapon usage, so building around it for a Hero is an obvious choice to ensure you remain useful. Weapon Related Sub-Archetypes can help provide you some consistency when Hero fails you.
  • Defense Based Strategy: Bulwark, being the absolute defensive BEAST it is, makes this a great overall strategy for any Hero, with many of Bulwark’s great Sub-Archetypes serving as a great source of consistency.
  • Ability Based Strategy: While not at all obvious, with a bit of setup, a Hero can do Abilities just fine, especially with Caster Affinity and some access to other Archetype’s Abilities, since it’s features help Abilities just as much as Weapons.
  • Other Sub-Archetype Features: Since Hero’s Features can be a bit inconsistent at the best of times, grabbing other Sub-Archetype Features through Multi-Sub-Archetype can help make Hero more consistent more often.

Tips

  • You don’t have to use Hero’s Comeback right away if your ally can bounce back quickly; saving it for a more dire situation can be worth the hassle.
  • Due to your inconsistency, be sure the rest of the party is okay with helping to pick up the slack when your Features won’t help you. 
  • Bulwark by itself is a surprisingly good baseline Feature, which can help in those early levels before you can grab consistency elsewhere.

Sub-Archetype Build Showcase

Basic Build

Swordin’ and boardin’ it as a Hero is a time honoured tradition, and this simple Hero build takes that concept and runs with it. With relatively good bulk all around and defensive abilities to help further cover it, a very accurate Godly Weapon that grants Narrative Momentum when we get a kill with it, and Warrior’s T1 for a bit of offensive flexibility, this Hero can handle themselves just fine in regular encounters. They also benefit greatly from the whole of the Tides features, making them rather impactful in difficult fights. They’re all around pretty great in combat scenarios, and won’t struggle too much in most combats. A reliable Hero that can get stuff done!

Experimental Build

DISCLAIMER, this build is difficult to get going in a campaign. It just takes a long time to get going to a state where you can use it’s best tool regularly, something all Path of Heroism non-Protagonist, non-Fate Weaver starts can struggle with. That all being said, though, once you do… the wait is worth it. A whopping 36 Narrative Momentum is formidable, and with Luck as our primary Skill of choice, we can get pretty creative with Cinematic Actions to do a wide variety of things. Defensive Stance helps us not be paper in less difficult encounters, and bulkier in tougher ones, since we largely work around its normal downsides. With the sweet combo of Endurance Adept and Heroic Comeback, we actually have even more Narrative Momentum than our already ridiculous supply would suggest.

That being said, our skills outside of Narrative Momentum and Luck are pretty pathetic, with us falling apart like tissue paper without Armor. At least we have Bulwark Vitality, but we still have to be careful.

Conclusion

Overall, the Hero is a sub-archetype with some high highs, but some low lows. Learning to deal with situations where your features don’t work is key to playing the Hero well, but when you get into situations where you thrive…? Nothing else comes close. Thanks for reading! If you have any fun builds that could help show off Hero more, feel free to send them to me on Discord at goldzephzellian!