Stoneward Path Optimisation Guide for the Cosmere RPG

Become a protector with this defensive radiant path for the Cosmere RPG

About stonewards

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

Stoneward 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.

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

Cohesion surge (2/5)

You can basically mould stone into a simple shape of your choice. I can’t think of many uses for this if I’m honest. Perhaps if you need to pass through a wall that isn’t too deep, you could make the wall malleable and scoop it out this way or with preparation time and plenty of investiture, you could create a pit. This perhaps wouldn’t take a really long time, but it is limited to stone. This means material like brick or even mud is off limits. The transformation surge can handle this kind of thing much better.

Tension surge (5/5)

Nearly never be without a weapon with tension as you can just make your own out of cloth or other soft materials. More importantly though, you have an easy way to enhance yourself and allies by basically granting +2 physical defense when you apply this. This is a big boon. Not only that, but you can basically create any kind of object you like temporarily with this. One example the handbook gives is by shoving a handkerchief in a keyhole to create a key of the correct shape to unlock a door.

On its own the extra defence is excellent, with extra benefits, this is a really versatile surge!

Peakspren 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.

Cohesive teamwork (3/5)

An extra advantage for an ally when taking the gain advantage action is pretty handy and makes it more worthwhile, especially when teaming up on an opponent. Not being moved while on stone is probably quite situational, but fine as a secondary feature.

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 (which stonewards often will be), 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 still really good though!

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 (3/5)

Cohesion and tension aren’t really reliant on your spren bond range, so this really only affects the distance and focus costs of activities you set your spren to doing. This aids scouting a bit and maybe a few other things, but won’t really help much else for you.

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.

Cohesion

Level 2 talents

Stone spear (3/5)

A decent ranged attack with solid distance, scaling damage and the potential to knock prone. It does require 2 actions though.

Memories of stone (3/5)

Being able to speak to the stones will allow you to do some decent investigative work. The fact it can show you images and whispered communication is potentially quite useful for investigative activity. The drawback here is it’s probably also going to be a bit vague or unclear in communication.

This is one of those where what you gain depends on a bit of luck and how generous your GM feels. They might just tell you footsteps were felt here or you may learn descriptions of the bandits that walked by including numbers, insignias and things they said to each other. Has the potential to be excellent, but could also be vague and useless, but I do quite like what this talent does.

Level 3 talents

Sinkhole (4/5)

Really great way to nullify a bunch of enemies, especially as your ranks in cohesion increase and the area you affect also grows. Immobilised is strong and many enemies may not have a great rank in athletics. Just be aware that this doesn’t generally cause a creature to be restrained. It seems that creatures are buried somewhere along their legs rather than their arms.

Level 4 talents

Tunneling (4/5)

Now you can properly move through walls and allow others to follow. This doesn’t require actions (just initiating the infusion of investiture requires an action). Instead your movement is slowed. Great for getting into places you’re not meant to be; or out of them.

Through the stone (4/5)

Ranged cohesion is pretty useful, but primarily, this affects sinkhole as most of your other talents don’t benefit or allow a ranged component to them. It can also affect your true stoneshaping so you can potentially create walls at distance or even cages.

Level 5 talents

True stoneshaping (4/5)

Now your natural cohesion gets quite interesting. You’re not just moulding rough shapes, you can instantly reshape the stone into walls or pits. Great for blocking line of site or trapping enemies.

Unbound cohesion (4/5)

Taking away the stone requirement and allowing you to reshape anything solid and non-living makes cohesion a whole lot more flexible. Now you can manipulate earth and dirt or brick and mortar.

Level 6 talents

Flowing earth (4/5)

As part of other cohesion talents, you can now also move yourself in any direction by pushing yourself with stone. This could be upwards out of reach of enemies or sideways to gain a bit more distance. You likely have at least 3 ranks in cohesion at this point, if not more, so the distance should be decent. Handily, it doesn’t allow reactive strikes against you either making this good for more evasive characters.

Tension

Level 2 talents

Tension parry (4/5)

Basically the defensive aspect of the tension surge as a reaction, and this can be maintained through continued investiture. It means an attack’s damage can be prevented and the effects of graze negated. Pretty handy and can keep your actions you’d ordinarily use for this a bit more free.

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.

Level 3 talents

Rigged weaponry (4/5)

Extra reach is often handy. If you’re a frontline specialist, this makes it easier to reach your foes (and 10ft is a decent extension). If you’re more of a hit and run build, this makes it easier to make melee attacks without getting stuck in the fray.

The other side of this is the effects you can cause an enemy you hit. Applying tension to their clothing will cause them to be slowed and have disadvantage on physical tests which is decent.

Extended tension (4/5)

Make your investiture go much further and be able to do far more with your tension talents. The more ranks you have in tension, the longer a single use of investiture will last.

Level 4 talents

Cloth mastery (1/5)

Most uses of your tension surge are likely simple like enhancing clothing for better armor or creating a weapon. Sometimes, you may need something more complex like a key or grappling hook. Usually, when this is the case, you’ll have more than a single round of combat. Shaping intricate objects only requires an additional action anyway. So while instantly producing a tensed, intricate item will sometimes be helpful, I’m not sure it will happen much, and when it does, you maybe saved an action.

I actually think part of the problem with this is just how flexible the main tension surge already is.making this not that much more useful.

Surface tension (2/5)

Water you can walk on is sometimes useful, but not really often. I’d consider this quite situational and not nearly as useful as something like gravitation which would let you fly over the water.

Level 5 talents

Fine control (3/5)

Kind of a fairly long extension of yourself. The range is 25ft so enough for quite a lot of things, but remains only useful for a limited number of things, even if it can make skill tests.

There’s a bit of a mix of capabilities in combat. You can attack from 25ft away which is a decent distance, and the damage is decent. The problem here is you’re getting mid ranged attacks, but need 2 actions to setup and to use up investiture. The investiture is less of a problem if you already have extended tension, but I’m not sure this is worth it in combat unless you have 2 spare actions at some point.

Clothsmith (5/5)

The extra defense from your tension surge is big here at +4 and your improvised weapons are getting a decent upgrade as well. Really strong for attack and defence.

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Building an optimised Stoneward

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

Ancestry

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

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 stoneward 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. Warform, workform, direform, stormform and decayform are all good options for a stoneward.

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 stoneward, I’d recommend the following heroic paths and specialties:

• Envoy: They’re possibly not the best fit of all the heroic paths, but envoys with a strong willpower can work for a stoneward. The mentor, who can be built more into a frontline combatants probably fits the bill best here.
• Leader: Specifically a champion as they like to focus on strength with a focus on athletics, damage dealing and resilience that’s needed from a strength build.
• Warrior: All warrior specialisms work well for a stoneward, but this is especially the case with the duelist and the soldier who benefit a lot from both strength and willpower. Stonewards work great on the frontlines of combat as your tank and warriors are the best fit for this role.

Attributes

Recommended attributes

Strength: Important for your tension surge, but will also help your physical defense and your attacks. Stonewards tend to make strong frontline warriors and this is an important attribute for enabling this.

Willpower: The strength of your cohesion surge talents is reliant in part on your willpower. This will help you have plenty of focus too for while you’re not using invested talents.

Awareness or presence: One of the challenges for a stoneward is the lack of a natural spiritual attribute which means the amount of investiture available to you is limited. You’ll need to invest in one of these if you want some reasonable levels of investiture. Which one may depend on your heroic path and the gaps in the party’s capabilities.

Attributes to avoid

There’s no room for intellect with a stoneward so an instant option to dump. Likewise, you’ll struggle investing in both awareness and presence so I’d pick one and dump the other.

You don’t need speed to be a competent stoneward, but a bit of investment can help with your physical defense and some other skills too. This makes it one to consider, but as a minor option.

Skills

You’ll want to focus on skills that lean into your strengths as a stoneward. It’s generally better to have specialists in different areas in a party than lots of generalists.

Primarily, this means you’ll want skills related to strength and willpower. Of course, much will come down to your chosen heroic path as well, but the best heroic paths for a stoneward will share many of these aspects in common.

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

• Heavy weaponry: You’ll need strong attacks as a radiant path built for combat and heavy weaponry is a better option than light weaponry due to your inclination towards strength.
• Athletics: If you want some physical capabilities in the skill department, then athletics will help you with all your physical activities like climbing, jumping, lifting and so on.
• Discipline: Discipline is good for holding your nerve, and with a strong willpower, stonewards can be quite good at this.
• Intimidation: You may want to be able to join in with social encounters and this is the best option for getting involved here.
• Cohesion: Ranks in cohesion will help you shape larger areas of stone and make your cohesion attacks and other talents like sinkhole more reliable.
• Tension: Ranks in tension will make your attacks through these talents stronger, allow you to tense larger areas of material and simply make your tension talents stronger and more reliable.

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: As a frontline combatant, most stonewards will want the best armor they can grab. Because your strength should be quite high (I’d generally recommend this be your most important attribute), then grabbing half plate expertise will allow you to wear this without being encumbered even if you’ve 3 strength (rather than the usual 4). Half plate is fairly expensive though, but much more affordable than full plate which is quadruple the price. Full plate should probably be your eventual goal, but only once you have the strength and the funds for it.
• Weapon expertises are going to be your most important: Stonewards will likely be using weapons a lot. Even when using tension, you often combine this with weapon attacks. Weapons with extra reach might feel fun for a stoneward, but you’re already very good at this so I’d steer towards high damage options with other traits like deadly from a greatsword or momentum from the hammer. If you’d rather be more defensive, expertise in a longsword will allow you to wield it with a shield, or you can combine this with expertise in an axe for offhand attacks too.
• Use utility expertises to fill expertise gaps in the party: Stonewards are more about combat so utility expertise aren’t overly important to them like they might be for other paths. As such, I’d focus on filling party expertise gaps.
• 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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Stonewards are the fighters and barbarians of the Cosmere universe. They make excellent frontline combatants and party tanks. You’ll want to build for both defence and attack with this radiant path. There’s also some decent utility in the mix here too, allowing them to contribute outside of combat too.

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

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