Skybreaker Radiant Path Optimisation Guide for the Cosmere RPG

Uphold the law with the powers of gravitation and division.

About skybreakers

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

Skybreaker 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 (awareness is better for a skybreaker though).

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

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 due to it’s association with the gravitation surge). 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.

Gravitation surge (5/5)

Flight is regularly useful and really helps you at scouting, escaping deadly foes and even means you can keep up with other flying creatures.

Highspren 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.

Soaring destruction (4/5)

An extra action for a division talent is really good and a focus is a reasonable price to pay for that. This gets better as you gain talents like spark sending and inescapable spark for ranged division talents you can launch from the skies.

Grabbing master of the skies will mean you can basically do this whenever you like and flying ace will mean you get a free attack while flying too for loads of potential attacks and actions.

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 on 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.

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 on fire.

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 too.

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.

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.

Gravitation

Level 2 talents

Flying ace (5/5)

40ft fly speed and you can make a free attack when maintaining gravitation and moving. This means it’s not just the turn you activate this, but every turn you move with gravitation that you can make a free attack. This can be used alongside the strike action and even another action that allows attacks (including dual wielding weapons).

This makes it easy to move where you need to be and make 2-3 attacks in a turn. This is a really strong, low level dip for a skybreaker.

Gravitational slam (4/5)

This is really for using when lashing adversaries. Slam them into a wall, or even better, a ceiling. If you have flying ace, you can move them 40ft (which is 4d4 damage) and then let them fall for some extra damage (if the ceiling is just the right height).

More ranks in gravitation will mean higher damage dice. Get to 5 and you’re dealing 4d12 damage with this and moving the enemy out of the way and potentially causing fall damage too (average of 14 damage plus any fall damage). You could even send an enemy diagonally into a wall to give them some height to fall from.

Level 3 talents

Stable flight (4/5)

Ranged attacks while flying can be really problematic for adversaries, especially if they lack flight or ranged capabilities. Just fly out of reach of that chasmfiend and hail down arrows. Your allies might be in trouble, but at least you won’t be.

Multiple lashings (4/5)

Send enemies higher and get them out of the way longer. 3 lashings with flying ace will launch them 120ft in the air! That’s 12d6 fall damage.

Lashing shot (2/5)

I think this is less good than just using gravitational slam to lash the individual and launch them into a wall. However, ranged attacks are safer and with decent ranks in gravitation, you quickly outperform the average ranged weapon. Your only problem is this takes 2 actions and a strike takes 1. This also costs investiture and a strike doesn’t so the price is fairly hefty.

Level 4 talents

Group flight (3/5)

With a decent rank in gravitation, you should be able to take the whole party on a flying trip. Sadly, it’s no good in combat making it more a matter of convenience. Bring along the party scout into the skies to explore, launch everyone to the top of Urithiru or just traverse Roshar easily. It’s a talent of convenience more than one that’s going to significantly alter your gameplay.

Master of the skies (5/5)

Always on flight is great and means you can save your investiture for other things like healing and enhancing. This also means something like flying ace is easier to be using too.

It’s worth being aware that there isn’t an interaction here with group flight as that only activates when you use investiture for a basic lashing, not when you do so without expending investiture.

Level 5 talents

Aerial squadron (5/5)

Now you can use group flight in combat. This can be tactically quite powerful. Get your less resilient allies into the skies to stay out of reach of some enemies and keep everyone involved in the fray against other flying enemies. The investiture cost is fairly cheap here too.

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Building an optimised skybreaker

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

Ancestry

You can choose a Human or Singer ancestry for an optimised skybreaker.

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 skybreaker 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, warform, direform, stormform, relayform and nightform are all good options for a skybreaker.

Attributes

Recommended attributes

Speed: An option for weapon attacks which you should be making a lot of, especially with flying ace. It’ll also up your defense significantly. As a strong option for a scout, this will help with the likes of stealth and thievery too. You may need the movement speed less as you take more levels in gravitation, but it’s still an important attribute.

Strength: Your other option for physical attacks. It’ll also help with your physical defense and increase your HP.

Awareness: As a natural scout, you’ll likely want a strong awareness. Add to this the fact that if you want a decent amount of investiture, you’ll need a high spiritual attribute. You’ll also need this to empower your gravitation talents.

Intellect: Intellect is important for your division talents, making them more potent and allowing you 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 skybreaker so avoid investing too heavily in this.

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

Skills

You’ll want to focus on skills that lean into your strengths as a skybreaker. 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 strength, 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 skybreaker 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 or heavy weaponry: Really important for skybreakers that will typically want to get up close and personal but may also want to shoot projectiles from afar. Either way, strong attacks will help out a lot. Your choice here just depends on which of strength or speed is your strongest.
• Agility or athletics: Will help you avoid the danger you’re hurtling into. You’ll only need one of these though. They do a lot of the same things so you can just pick whichever is associated with your strongest attribute out of strength and speed.
• 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: Skybreakers 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.
• Gravitation: You’ll need gravitation ranks to handle tricky gravitation maneuvers, to succeed at gravitational slams, to lash more allies for group flight, to make lashing shots and to use multiple lashings. Invest in this if you want to excel at gravitational talents.

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 need some decent defenses for all the melee fighting you’ll be getting into, especially early in your division progression when you lack ranged division talents. And radiant shardplate won’t come until you reach at least level 13+ (unless you take the shardbearer warrior specialty, and even then, you shouldn’t normally be receiving shardplate until tier 3). This means grabbing expertise in some armor. Chainmail is likely your best option if you’re high speed and only some strength (if you grab expertise). You can go for half plate or full plate if your strength is high.
• Weapon expertises are going to be your most important: Skybreakers are generally built a fair bit for direct combat. Match up your weapons and your expertise with the kind of fighting you want to engage in and the effects you want and make sure you prioritise grabbing these. This is especially the case with talents like flying ace, but technically you can focus your talents into division for attacks depending on your heroic path.
• Utility expertises will largely depend on your heroic path: As an intellect specialist, Skybreakers 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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Gravitation is a really useful and flexible surge while division can be devastating for your enemies. This makes Skybreakers quite a potent fighting force.

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

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