Been trying to make RSD work, because I'm a masochist and whatnot. Will list these in the order of "PLEASE GOD DO THIS" to "Hey, this would be nice"
1: For the love of god, please separate the healing from the other rsd fighter_perk cooldowns. The current cooldown for healing is pretty much fine now that we have herbs. But running around with the fear of sharpening my weapon in case I need to emergency heal is super counterproductive and unhelpful for group stuff.
2: Give an RSD the ability to reactivate their brews after a death/subdual. An RSD becomes an utter liability on lengthy outings if they happen to die, and these massive group fight/duel things in the grotto are amazing but losing your brews after a loss means you need to wait 20 minutes to fight again with your brews? This is one of the most frustrating things about playing an RSD.
3: Make it possible for an RSD to terminate the effects of another persons' herbs (canceling their healing) so they can use their own herbs. True hell for an RSD is having some wizard with maxed heal prevent you from healing for 30-40 rounds while you're getting pummeled.
4; Let the RSD keep their brew slots when they die. It's fine if the rsd loses their (fairly powerful) /c rsd level 8 ability I guess, but losing those extra brew slots is super crippling. When an other PC dies they still have supplies to retain the power somewhat. RSD doesn't really get that luxury.
5. Double (maybe triple?) duration of alchemist's fire when used on weapons.
5: Tweak a few of the brews somewhat, to make some more attractive compared to others which are the obvious choices.
Suggestions for this :
- Regen brew (Make the +2/round cap more clear) but ideally, just make this brew +1/round and bring it up to 2/round if modified CON is above 20. (or just flat out make the brew 2/round?) This means an RSD can hit the 2/round without being a condwarf or sacrificing a ton of other stats just for some basic survivability. I speak from a lot of experience, that +2/round regen is NOT enough to make an RSD unkillable, even with IE and the herbalist touch brew. I still go to badly wounded/near death (and die) on a regular basis. It does however, give the RSD a fighting chance, which is super hard for non-dwarves to get.
- Herbalist's touch - Make this give +10 herbalism. +5 is helpful but doesn't quite get you close enough to make (what I have noted) to be mid-level DCs without having a ton of +skill loot
- Snake blood - add "Use poison" feat. (Maybe double duration of poison as well, similar to poisoner rogue perk?
- Guile of the fox - merge this with "Fearless"
- Mongoose dance - merge this with "flight of the predator"
- Hunter - This currently seems to be bugged and applying to the RSD even when not prepared. I have to say though- It seems like a nice unintentional feature. I suggest keeping this as it is. (always enabled for all RSDs) and removing it as a brew option
- Shield of mystra - Bump this up just a little. 16 base, or something like 14+ level/2?
Empower the Cruzelsd to the point where these points become moot.
I wouldn't touch the rest of the RSD population...
As pointed out, it just works too well with Dwarf/IE/SF:heal, and just doesn't/barely works if most/some of these things aren't part of the build.
Maybe like how spell focuses aid certain spells, could certain feats empower the RSD brews? Have yet to play an RSD myself but they have plenty of room for feats since they are fighters, but a lot of first level only feats to choose from to add flavour could help people make their own specialised variants of RSD and prevent them from power house rotating through different brews if 'everything' is empowered for 'everybody.'
Maybe blooded to count toward the regen cap?
Snake blood feat to provide a boost to Snake blood?
Strong Soul to boost defiance?
Luck of Heroes to boost sharpen? (That was a lucky hit)