Dustbringer Optimisation Guide for the Cosmere RPG

With great power comes great responsibility.

About dustbringers

While dustbringers can vary wildly in personality and characteristics, there are certain attributes that they share in common:

Dustbringer talents

Knowing which talents are best and will work well for your character is more important in the Cosmere RPG than in D&D. This is because you have a lot more choice over which talents you take rather than the more rigid progression found in D&D classes.

To help you pick the right talents for your character, I’ve split them into the various bond and surge talent trees and I’ve also divided them by level. This shows the fewest number of levels you need to gain this talent when following the most direct path down the talent tree (ignoring any talents taken at level 1 through a heroic path). This is just to help you know how quickly you can get each talent.

I’ve also rated each talent to give you an idea of how good I think it is. This is a rough rating. Some builds may find different talents more important or integral to their build so don’t be put off by a low score if you think it’s going to help your character or work for them.

Bond and surge talent trees

To take any radiant path, you must first take the key talent and its associated surges.

Level 1 talents

First ideal (5/5)

So the 3 actions you get to use immediately when you take this talent are breathe Stormlight, enhance and regenerate. Breathe Stormlight is more a practical element for regaining expended stormlight. As long as you have a decent number of marks, it should be hard for you to completely run out of investiture. I’d just make sure you breathe stormlight ahead of combat where possible. You can also do this while unconscious so you can breathe stormlight and heal yourself if knocked down to 0HP allowing for easy recovery if you need it (though it won’t be a lot of HP).

Enhance is going to be quite nice, basically adding 1 to attack tests and other physical tests. Be aware that your movement speed might increase with this too. At this stage, you can only use enhance and regenerate so I’d suggest switching this on early in tricky encounters and keep it switched on for better attacks and defense.

But, if you are getting hit a lot, you may need to decide between healing yourself and the better attack. I’d be inclined towards enhance unless you’ve been knocked unconscious, desperately need the extra HP or have the investiture to do both. Just remember, if you want to have plenty of investiture to play with, a high presence or awareness is going to be needed.

This talent will grant you the surges of abrasion and division once you speak the first ideal, but you’ll have to wait a bit for those.

Abrasion surge (4/5)

You can make surfaces, including yourself, frictionless. This allows a few things. You can skate, which means moving as a free action if you expend 2 focus (you will need to activate abrasion for an action though). It will cost investiture to maintain, but if you want to be doing more on your turn, activating abrasion is a great way to do it.

You can also slip through smaller spaces, escape restraints more easily and make objects and surfaces slippery. This has the chance of causing adversaries to fall prone or drop objects they’re holding (like a weapon or shield).

The best way to use abrasion is by getting a free movement action. But there’s a bunch of situational uses that make it a good utility option too.

Division surge (4/5)

This grows into quite a powerful attack. It starts at 3d4+1 damage, but if you invest in the division skill, this can be 3d8+3 by level 4 or even 3d12+5 by level 6. Of course, that means eschewing all other skills, but it shows how powerful this can be.

You’ll need a decent intellect to land those hits and a decent spiritual attribute to have enough investiture to spend (probably awareness as this works best with the scouting capabilities dustbringers naturally have). Still, this is a powerful combat tool that can be used alongside strikes.

Division can also be used for utility by destroying objects or etching patterns and designs into them. The only drawback is the 2 actions you need to use it.

Ashspren bond

Level 2 talents

Second ideal (5/5)

Enhance as a free action and without spending investiture is really good! That’s extra speed and damage which means better attacks, faster movement, more carrying capacity and better physical skills. All without spending resources. I’d grab this pretty quickly if you can.

Searing dust storm (2/5)

You kick up a dust cloud in spaces you pass through on your turn which last for as many turns as investiture you spend. Enemies hit in this dust cloud take a bit of extra damage (but only once per round). The higher your ranks in discipline, the higher this becomes.

My challenge with this talent is you can’t kick up a dust cloud in spaces that already have enemies. This means you rely on enemies moving into these spaces or being forced into them which can be unreliable to engineer. If you can get enough enemies in the cloud, the damage can be substantial, but it’s also unreliable.

I suppose where this becomes easier is in narrow spaces where you can easily funnel enemies into your dust storm, and the more you can get in here the better. Sadly, I still think this is too situational and a bit tricky to engineer.

Level 3 talents

Third ideal (5/5)

Shardblades are great and will really enhance your melee capabilities with bigger damage and more injuries. This is obviously best on melee-focused characters, especially those that can manage multiple attacks in a round.

Invested (4/5)

More investiture means using more powerful talents and less time taken breathing in Stormlight mid-encounter.

Level 4 talents

Fourth ideal (5/5)

Shardplate is an excellent form of protection and can seriously enhance your durability and attacks. You’ve got 5 deflect plus charges that can increase that deflect value further. You get +2 speed and strength (so even better attacks, speed and physical skills) and it can be easily summoned and recharged. Just be aware, being enhanced by Shardplate won’t increase your HP or physical defense. Shardplate, especially radiant shardplate, is really good!

Wound regeneration (3/5)

Technically situational, but very useful when it comes up. There are other ways to recover from injuries, but it’s harder and takes more time. How much you get injured will likely depend on your GM, but this is definitely a good option to have available.

Deepened bond (2/5)

The extra bond range with your spren is OK, as is the reduced focus cost. However, the true benefits feel a little small. This at least is a little better in conjunction with inescapable spark, giving you 100ft range on division talents.

Take squire (4/5)

Granting others your surges can be useful. However, this will typically be NPCs (most PCs will likely bond a spren of their own).

How good this is will depend on the quality of your squires. I can imagine having multiple squires a challenge to manage, but that doesn’t stop this being good.

Abrasion

Level 2 talents

Frictionless motion (3/5)

10ft faster movement while infused with abrasion and you aren’t slowed by difficult terrain, climbing, crawling or swimming. This essentially makes you a decent bit more mobile than before. Some of these things that might slow you down are a bit situational, but if your GM has any kind of terrain going on their battlemaps, then you should find a decent amount of uses here.

Reverse abrasion (1/5)

Give things more friction making them easier to hold on to. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see how often this will be useful. It might have been useful for grappling, but you can’t use this on other characters, and for handling climbing or difficult terrain, you’re unlikely to impose this on a large enough area to make enough of a difference. So sadly, I just think this isn’t that useful.

Level 3 talents

Graceful skating (3/5)

You can now move freely when skating instead of in a straight line. This is obviously useful for getting more mobility behind your free action movement.

Stormlight reclamation (2/5)

You can now reclaim over-infused investiture on things you’ve infused. This means you can be a bit more cavalier with how you infuse certain things, knowing you can reclaim that investiture with a free action. How often this is going to be useful is the bigger question. I’m not sure it’s going to be loads.

Distant surgebinding (3/5)

20ft reach for your surges and their talents is a decent improvement and means you don’t have to get in melee range when you don’t want to. Note that this works on division surges and talents too (or any you have) so isn’t just limited to abrasion.

Level 4 talents

Slippery target (3/5)

You can’t be grazed by attacks and reaction strikes have disadvantage against you while you’re infused with abrasion. This is handy for a really mobile character, especially one that wants to weave in and out of combat.

Smooth operator (4/5)

Removing the investiture cost for abrasion is going to be really useful to allow you to fuel your other talents. 1 less focus for skating is great too making it much easier to basically get a free move action each turn and do more with your turn.

Level 5 talents

Slick combatant (4/5)

You can use actions between parts of your movement and deal extra damage once per round based on your ranks in abrasion. At this point, your ranks in abrasion should be decent so the damage buff is solid and your turns can be more fluid.

Division

Level 2 talents

Bodily decay (2/5)

Nice if you can easily get opportunities, but fairly rare if you can’t manipulate this. I’d say this is only really good in the hands of an agent, otherwise, it’s likely to rarely come up at all.

Eroding escape (3/5)

Restrained is one of the more common conditions that can be imposed, immobilized less so. I’m not sure how often disadvantage is likely to be imposed making this difficult to fully assess. However, being able to end these conditions is useful.

Level 3 talents

Igniting division (4/5)

So your division modifier is going to be between 1-10 (probably on the higher end if you’re investing heavily in division). You’ll need a high division rank and a high intellect to achieve the higher echelons of damage here though. It’s likely not going to be a huge amount of damage per expenditure of investiture though so I’d only really recommend this for characters with a high division modifier or that want to ignite things.

However, if you have a few enemies next to one another, the fire spread will damage them too (by the same amount of damage). Also note that the fire spreads around the target, so if they move, so does the fire. This means that enterprising enemies might spread their fire next to allies so this could quickly get out of control. I think the intention here is that the area of fire stays around the target rather than remaining anywhere within 5ft of where the target moves (otherwise that will become very hard to track). Be aware of GMs that might make the fire spread though.

Also, I don’t think this fire will affect you on the turn you use it (though it might do so on subsequent turns). This is because on the turn you use it, it won’t be the start of your turn and you won’t be moving into the area of the dangerous terrain. On subsequent turns though, you’re just as vulnerable as everyone else so be careful.

Spark sending (4/5)

Ranged use of division is handy and going to work especially well for non-melee characters. It’ll also help melee characters get a bit more reach on their enemies too. Interestingly, this only works for division surges but abrasion’s distant surgebinding works for division as well, making this a little redundant if you have the distant surgebinding (unless you want to access later talents).

Level 4 talents

Gout of flame (5/5)

This is the fireball of the Cosmere RPG! Get some big ranks in division for big blasts with deadly damage. This is one of the best ways in the game to deal with large numbers of enemies at a time! Naturally, it costs a substantial 3 investiture making it quite costly, but definitely worth it. I’d just try and catch as many enemies as possible in the area of effect when using this.

Inescapable spark (4/5)

This gives divison a range of at least 30ft which can extend to 100ft with the deepened bond talent. Like with spark sending, this is great for ranged characters and useful for melee characters too.

Level 5 talents

Devastating division (4/5)

The higher your ranks in division, the more potent this gets as you get a bigger damage die to add in. This gets even better on talents that affect an area like gout of flame. This is because the extra die of damage applies to each adversary caught in the damage, not just a single target.

Unleashed entropy (4/5)

One action for division makes it even better and much easier to integrate with other actions in combat.

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Building an optimised dustbringer

In this section, I’ll give some advice on which options to consider when building an optimised dustbringer.

Ancestry

Both the Human and Singer ancestries work for an optimised dustbringer.

Human: Humans will get you heroic talents quicker as you’ll be able to choose extra talents from heroic paths as you progress levels. You won’t get dustbringer talents quicker though, but plenty of heroic talents can enhance your radiant capabilities. You’ll get an extra talent at levels 1, 6, 11, 16 and 21.

Singer: Singers get a unique path that gives them different forms they can transform into. Nimbleform, scholarform, stormform, envoyform, relayform and nightform are all good options for a dustbringer.

Heroic paths

Matching up capabilities between your radiant and heroic paths can be important as it allows you to focus more on a few different attributes and skills rather than spreading yourself too thin across many areas.

For a dustbringer, I’d recommend the following heroic paths and specialties:

• Agent: Dustbringers work well as investigators, spies and thieves due to their natural speed and stealthiness.
• Hunter: Hunters can easily be speed based and operate at range which suits a dustbringer nicely. They work well for all the hunter specialties too.
• Scholar: With their natural intellect, dustbringers work well as scholars too.

Attributes

Recommended attributes

Speed: Your most important physical attribute. I’d use this for physical attacks which means investing ranks in light weaponry over heavy. It’ll also up your speed to make you more mobile, allowing you to do things like make bigger dust clouds. It will also up your physical defense and capabilities with skills like stealth and thievery.

Awareness: You’ll need one decent spiritual attribute to fuel your investiture and as a natural scout, awareness makes the most sense here. It’s not essential, but you won’t skate far or blast much without investment in one spiritual attribute.

Intellect: Intellect is important for your division talents, making them more potent and allowing you to blast off destruction across the battlefield. It’ll also help with things like knowledge skills.

Attributes to avoid

While a little willpower may be useful for focus, it’s not otherwise needed for a dustbringer so avoid investing too heavily in this.

Strength can be useful for a bit more physical defense and HP, but you can make attacks with speed and as a ranged/hit and run path, you can afford to be less durable than others.

You have very little reason to invest in presence so I’d dump this attribute.

Skills

You’ll want to focus on skills that lean into your strengths as a dustbringer. It’s generally better to have specialists in different areas in a party than lots of generalists. Primarily, this means we’ll want skills that enhance attacks and that are related to physical skills as well as those for scouting (so mainly those associated with speed and awareness). You might also consider some intellect skills too if you’re investing heavily in division. Of course, much will come down to your chosen heroic path as well, but the best heroic paths for a dustbringer will share many of these aspects in common.

I’d recommend investing skill ranks in the following skills:

• Stealth: If you’re the party scout, you’ll likely want to do a lot of sneaking. High ranks here will help with this.
• Light weaponry: As a speed focused path, you’ll want to make attacks using light weaponry rather than heavy weaponry.
• Agility: Will help you avoid the danger you’re hurtling into. Agility is best for dustbringers due to their natural speed meaning you can avoid athletics entirely (as they do much of the same things).
• Discipline: This will affect how potent your searing dust storm is. If you plan on using this a lot, you might want to invest in discipline.
• Perception: As a natural scout, you may want to invest in perception to stay aware of your surroundings.
• Survival: Survival only tends to be important in campaigns with more exploration, but survival is decent enough, especially for a scout.
• Crafting: Dustbringers can make decent crafter’s if that’s a route you want to take. Especially if you have talents in the artifabrian specialty.
• Lore: Your intellect should at least be decent making you a good source of knowledge.
• Medicine: Good for healing others, but especially good if you have levels in the surgeon specialty.
• Division: If you want to launch powerful, invested attacks against enemies, then a high division is going to really help your damage as well as your ability to hit with these talents.
• Abrasion: Ranks in abrasion are surprisingly less crucial than you might think. If you’re just going to use abrasion to slide around the battlefield, then you can easily just not invest in abrasion at all. However, if you intend to help others with difficult surfaces, make enemies drop items or use slick combatant (which is a higher level talent), then you might want some ranks in abrasion.

Expertises

Expertises can grant some special knowledge or benefits when using certain items. Largely, you can take whatever expertises fit your character, but there are a couple of things to consider:

• You’ll want decent armor until you can grab shardplate: You’ll likely want some decent armor, even if you don’t intend to be in melee combat too much. As a speed path, the best you can manage is by taking expertise in chain so you can avoid the cumbersome trait. If you have invested in strength (3 to be precise), then you can grab breastplate or take expertise in half plate to avoid the cumbersome trait.
• Weapon expertises are going to be your most important: Dustbringers should be investing ranks in light weaponry which means using light weapons. With free movement actions, you’ve got spare actions for things like offhand attacks so you might want to consider weapons like knives and sideswords and grabbing expertise in those for reduced focus for offhand attacks. Alternatively, a ranged build is good. Shortbows can be a good choice or javelins. You can also just use knives and still get that offhand attack at reduced focus.
• Utility expertises will largely depend on your heroic path: As an intellect specialist, dustbringers do well as things like scholars who may want expertises in things like crafting.
• Take whatever cultural expertise you like: You can take whatever cultural expertise fit your character best. You may want to consider taking cultural expertises that fill knowledge gaps in the group, but it’s not overly important.

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Dustbringers make a great mobile option with some nasty division attacks which work best at range. If you’re looking for a hit and run specialist or a ranged build, they can make a great option.

Do you have a strong dustbringer build? How have you built them? Let me know in the comments below.

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