TOPIC: 2023 Ultra Rare Beta Token Images

Bead of Abundance: I was hoping for a "Bead of Good Fortune" but loot is loot. Will this new bead be part of a new TE transmute path?

Endgame wrote: A quick response with my primary concerns:

Primary Concerns:
The Lenses of Greater FoeSight are now one of the of the highest damaging tokens in the game at +8 (legendary bogs and ralsons has it beat) While the full +8 has restrictions on a rogue sneak attack, I think this is probably too much.

The base +melee damage would be fine at +2 as it would immediately become BiS at +2 once players had reached their target +hit. Please also note that Melee rangers and Monks double dip on this damage, so +3 feels even larger for those classes.

If melee rogues need a buff, maybe split this into 2 tokens, one that buffs Rogue sneak attack and the other with the broad + damage? It's also possible that Rogue may just need a card level change vs being "patched" with a single slot providing +8 damage on a single UR token.


Deadly Gloves:
Does this 4x Crit for a Dwarf Fighter? That could be... a lot of damage for an Io's Dwarf. I don't know if it's really an issue or not, but pointing it out.

Agreed on the lenses. The extra sneak damage also doesn’t appear to have to be melee. That would make it BiS for rogues for both melee and ranged builds (assuming cranston’s to allow 2 eye items with agility as the other.)

The deadly gloves is an interesting work around to the assassin’s crossbow problem. Because the crit range is defined, that overrules the expanded crit range of the rogue legendary.

By RAW, anything that doubles damage that is already doubled means x3 then x4. So a x3 doubled becomes x4. Barbarians w the death flail would get x4 on a nat 20 as well as dwarves.

How about Bead of Bounty to mirror the alliteration in Ring of Riches? They are both +3 treasure, and I love me some alliteration

Still hoping for a swap of the Archerin gloves for a reprint of the +2 Assassin's Crossbow.

Will the Lenses of Greater Foesight add to a ranged AND melee Sneak Attack, or only the melee?

It feels like Acherin’s Deadly Gloves should work across a rangers entire crit range on ranged attacks only. Maybe add “Rangers:All ranged crits do x3 damage instead of x2.” So it works on more than just a Nat 20 for a ranger. Similar to how some classes are seeing class specific kickers added on rare tokens. It would help bridge the gap between a ranged ranger and a ranged monk, and make ranged combat more attractive for a ranger vs melee. Also tempted to say the gloves should say all except Monk.

Bead of Abundance, I assume the arcanum link is a mistake?

Book of Useful Scrolls, feels underpowered maybe allow rare spells?

I love the funnel, always thought NPC inspired tokens would be good as a completion token, just something to consider in future development.

Grizwald wrote:

Wade Schwendemann (Dr. Uid) wrote:
Please consider taking FOB off the Sun Scimitar. Monks are likely already the most powerful class in the game.

Cube is fine. I'm not too excited by this effect, but a 00 player would be for sure.

If I were a new player that selected Monk and opened a Scimitar, I would feel pretty bad when the coach tells me I can't use it to Flurry. It's weird to have UR weapons that Monks can use, but not Flurry with.

Reminder that the Scimitar is a 00 in exactly one out of every two thousand 10-packs. Multiplied by the number of ticket sold at Gen Con, and you're looking at, on average, a total of *four* of them being opened in coaching. How many of those four are going to be opened by new players who are also Monks?

Even opening this up to other conventions, you're looking at a sample size of six or seven, most of which aren't Monks. You're talking about a scenario that will happen somewhere between zero and one times.

EDIT: Besides, isn't Flurry of Blows usually defined in D&D as "unarmed strikes"? A new player probably isn't going to think you can do that with a sword anyway.

For the most part I like these tokens a lot. I just have a couple of concerns:

Bead of Abundance: I'd rather see this dropped down to 2 treasure. Getting 3 more feels exciting until I realize that expanding max treasure from 23-26 just means that the treasure mix will get that much more diluted, and leave less equipped players feeling even more like treasure isn't a big deal. I'd almost rather see repeats of older treasure enhancers to allow newer players to catch up, rather than further pushing out the max.

Book of Useful Scrolls: This feels pretty weak for an UR. Being able to use a $.50 scroll 1/game without consuming it doesn't seem to be worth the $100 for a PYP. (Yes, they're going for less than that at the moment, but I feel like the price warping right now is an aberration that'll be going away). If I pulled one I might decide to keep it because I like the concept, but I'd never grab it as a PYP.

I'm pretty happy with the rest. Love the reprint of the death die, love the arcane charm, and I'm thrilled that there's a new robe I can get to replace my current rare one.

Allen John wrote:
EDIT: Besides, isn't Flurry of Blows usually defined in D&D as "unarmed strikes"? A new player probably isn't going to think you can do that with a sword anyway.

D&D Monks can flurry with unarmed attacks or Monk weapons in 3/3.5 and proficient weapons on 5e. This can include swords.

Ooh...can we get the other bead art for the Bead of Abundance, the one that was on the Bead of Good Fortune with the golden spiral bands!

I like it better than this one which is the old Bead of Stout picture.

This is looking good, a few thoughts below:

Archerin's Deadly Gloves
Seem like this version may be just a little too downpowered to equip over other UR gloves, while the previous one was likely a bit too strong. Could this be changed to somewhere in between, where an expanded crit range of 19-20 is granted but you only get x3 damage on a natural 20?

Bead of Abundance
Wouldn't this be fine at +2 Treasure Chips? The last 3 nuggets have shown that +2 treasure chips is already enough to make a token in an readily available slot a must-have.

Lenses of Greater Foesight
Seems too strong at +3 melee damage, when comparable UR tokens only grant either +2 to hit or +1hit/+1dmg. Please can the static bonus be reduced to +2 dmg, this will still make it a very strong token for melee builds.

Also, please could we get an update on how the Rogue ability works as this will help correctly judge the power level of the token. I assume this can be used on Ranged SA, but does "+5 to Sneak Attack Total" mean

• +5 damage after all modifiers have been applied, including crits, so the +5 can never be doubled on a crit regardless of other abilities.
  
• +5 damage to the Sneak Attack bonus itself, meaning it is not doubled on a crit unless you have a Viper/Nightshade effect.
  
• +5 damage while Sneak Attacking, doubled on a crit in the same as any other damage bonus.

If it's the second option, +5 seems fine to me as it'll not benefit Assassin's Crossbow builds much (they already have to give up +3 to hit to equip this, and the 5 damage wouldn't be increased on a crit), and Nightshade's Throwing Dagger and melee builds could use the boost. The first option would likely be great for melee Rogues benefiting from the other bonus, but not so useful to Ranged Rogues, while the third option would be much too powerful due to Assassin's Crossbow builds getting 15 damage out of it.

Sun Scimitar: Would it make sense to move this to sacred damage vs. fire damage? Would also give it another differentiator from the flaming Blade.

So I did some more math on this version of Acherin's vs Gloves of Greater Archery with a couple different scenarios and how that changes your Damage EV for a ranged ranger with Io's in the table below. I assumed that no matter what the crit chance was in each scenario, that the 18 and 19 crits were equally as likely as the nat 20 crit for simplicity purposes (larger crit ranges for 18 & 19 would favor GoGA as it would increase the non-nat 20 damage EV. In all scenarios, Acherin's underperforms GoGA. Breakeven +damage in the Flat scenario is +77, Breakeven + damage in the 1 immune monster scenario is 102, and it's 117 in the mixed crit chance scenario. This is without regard to any DR of course. DR widens the gap as it effectively reduces +damage.

Once again when we discuss tokens, this outlines the difficulty of defining purely objective numbers for proposed token comparison. More or fewer encounters will also impact this analysis. For example, at a 5% crit chance, you don't cross over the 50% threshold for chance for 1 nat 20 crit in a dungeon until you hit the 14th round of combat. With a flat 5% crit chance over 12 rounds, the break-even crit chance is 8.79% at the static +44 assumed damage level.

I fully agree that care should be taken with this token because we can see where damage creep changes the math given the breakeven amounts shared above. Because of Muk's and 2 damage charms, ranged picked up something like 13 damage last year, which I imagine to be an outsized year for damage increases for a BiS build. Even at that rate, it would take 6 more years of tokens for this to become viable as printed. I think the token has room to get something else to make it more attractive.

Ring of Sacred Wrath seems not great for the very competitive ring slot.