DrFE Steam Breath

[mattlistener]

My current DrFE is a cyan-grey Draconian with steam breath. Some things I've learned about steam:

Steam kills things even after the early game. I had gotten the impression it does next-to-no damage.

Breath comes off cooldown very quickly. It's usable every fight, or multiple times in a fight if there's kiting or late joiners.

You can use steam to make a smart monster walk into a flame cloud in the open. The turn before it would step around the flame cloud, drop steam on the monster. There is no monster AI that is smart enough to step *out* of a bad cloud into clear air in order to strike you, when the most direct path involves stepping from one bad cloud to another.

Something tells me I'm going to get challenged on that last bit. If a smart monster is approaching from the North and you drop a flame cloud on the square just North of you, the monster's last move will be to the SE/SW in order to attack you on a diagonal without going in the flames. However if you drop steam on it the turn before, its last move will instead be to walk directly S to attack you from inside the flame cloud.

[edgefigaro]

I think i remember someone ranking Drs once: Grey draconian are considered the best draconian. Its because of steam breath.

[Siegurt]

My current DrFE is a cyan-grey Draconian with steam breath. Some things I've learned about steam:

Steam kills things even after the early game. I had gotten the impression it does next-to-no damage.

Breath comes off cooldown very quickly. It's usable every fight, or multiple times in a fight if there's kiting or late joiners.

You can use steam to make a smart monster walk into a flame cloud in the open. The turn before it would step around the flame cloud, drop steam on the monster. There is no monster AI that is smart enough to step *out* of a bad cloud into clear air in order to strike you, when the most direct path involves stepping from one bad cloud to another.

Something tells me I'm going to get challenged on that last bit. If a smart monster is approaching from the North and you drop a flame cloud on the square just North of you, the monster's last move will be to the SE/SW in order to attack you on a diagonal without going in the flames. However if you drop steam on it the turn before, its last move will instead be to walk directly S to attack you from inside the flame cloud.

This works with any "bad" cloud, not just steam breath, poisonous vapours is better than it appears for that reason (And even without conjure flame it's still pretty good.) mephitic +conjure flame is a pretty devestating combo (One of the reasons why wizards are good)

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Steam is also great for breaking LOS. This is great against Orc Wizards/Priests, Centaurs, etc. It's fairly easy on a Dr to be a little stealthy, due to no ER, so it can even be used to completely shake off brainless enemies, like Killer Bees.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I am not sure steam breath is that great when you are a FE and can cast some fireball or throw flame instead.

[nago]

Well as already said you can get monster easier into flame clouds (which are better than any other starting fire spells) and have a semi-unlimited source of pseudo-frog which is absolutely great at any point of the game.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I wonder if we can have a species with "Summon Frog" racial ability (obtained at XL 15 not to be OP I think).

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Frogs are amazing.