2e:Primal

The wild places of the world hold a strange allure for some, with their untamed magic and fearsome beasts. Most maiesta shy from these domains, but for a few, the deadly wilderness hides a path beneath the tangle of vines and moss. Priests, shamans, runaways... the path of the Primal might call to any of them. Whatever kindled the spark of their devotion to the wild way, these maiesta have roused it to an inferno of power, wielding primordial energy to alter her environment - and herself - at the whim of the spirits she wields.

How to play a Primal
Primal splits itself between two roles, and plays very differently depending on which role is taken. On one hand, it can be an explosive glass cannon of a damage dealer, able to dish out damage unmatched in quantity or area with proper setup. On the other hand, it can lean on its Geomancy options, shaping the battlefield more and more as the fight progresses to stymie enemy advances or to support allies.

As a damage dealer, its explosive damage potential comes from its Wild Magic passive, which takes good attack rolls and turns them even better by having dice that come up the maximum result add another silver die to the pool. This makes their damage somewhat temperamental without setup to help mitigate the randomness, but also means it scales abnormally well with sources of offensive support that grant lots of small additional dice, such as a Brood Mother’s broodlings or a Rage Bearer’s Escalation ability. They also get several options to deal this damage over a wide area, one of which is a Basic, but these options are not inherently selective in targeting and some of them can even hurt the user if they’re caught in the blast radius, so they need to be mindful of where those blasts are aimed.

As a Geomancy user, the Primal essentially draws lines of special terrain on the map with varying effects, from making those hexes impossible to move through, to allowing teleportation at end of turn from one hex containing that type of special terrain to another, to sharing and empowering healing between party members that are connected by the line. These lines remain for the entire encounter once placed, and can be further used as anchor points for resource replenishment and deploying conditions onto enemies.

Both types can survive a few hits if they have to, thanks to Ley Armor giving them an artificially inflated Vitality pool in a sense, but their low actual Armor means that each hit they take will sting, and they will wither under sustained fire. As such, Primals generally want to do one of three things: act from the back lines where the amount of attacks that can reach them is lessened, destroy their targets in one go to prevent any possible retaliation, or burn their own Vitality for Ley Sacrifice to limit how much actual damage they take in one round.

How to hybridize a Primal
Primal is reasonably flexible as far as Hybrids are concerned. While its base stats are slightly below average, it has broadly applicable Basics and most pairs are valid for Primal secondary, with the only invalid pair being Wild Magic and Ley Armor together. Moreover, few of its abilities require specific Basics in order to function.

For the most part, Primal benefits classes with good damage and Armor, or ones that need help managing their Gravitas pool. Rage Bearer makes an excellent candidate for all of these traits, though Brood Mother can work reasonably well with a Primal secondary for the same reasons. Likewise, Primal benefits from classes that can offer additional damage and Armor dice, or from classes that can self-heal easily, as the major flaws of Primals are their temperamental damage output and relative fragility. Shield Mother makes a good partner in this respect, being able to offer all of these things as well as offering a bit of potential Size management to help deal with the buildup from Wild Magic and Evocation.

Geomancy is more of a standalone aspect, not requiring any particular Basic but also being difficult to support properly due to its esoteric nature. Still, it can benefit from options that grant extra action economy in order to get more special terrain laid down sooner, such as Alchemeister’s Rush of Genius, Rage Bearer’s Berserker, or the Multitask racial active option, and in turn can work well with builds that specialize in battlefield control and manipulation to give them long-range, long-lasting options.

Attribute Advances
Any maiesta can purchase the following abilities. Additionally, they gain one of their choice for free upon reaching thresholds of 200, 500, 1000, and 2000 total XP spent on advances.

Basic Abilities
The primal begins the game with these abilities, without requiring the expenditure of any XP.

Novice Abilities
Any primal can purchase the following abilities.