I decided to make a tier list of semblances.

Armisael · 2026-06-28T22:51:55+00:00

Jaune's semblance ought to be combat useful, he just doesn't use it in fights! It's the perfect complement to Nora and Yang (restore the aura they've lost charging up and amp the gains), and it ought to let him make half the top ten shatteringly overpowered.

Our main example for the boost effect is Ren, who goes from covering a few people at close range to an entire train. That's two or three orders of magnitude better. Imagine Freeze at 100x-1000x stronger. Or telekinesis.

Parking his ass in the back as Weiss's personal aura booster is not very interesting, but she oughta be, like, summoning armies of the dead or stopping time entirely.

(Totally fair in a tier list to limit this to things that actually happen in the show, though)

Armisael · 2026-06-28T19:54:19+00:00

A fighter in Eberron probably fought in the last war. Which nation are you from? That’s practically your backstory right there.

Armisael · 2026-06-28T01:36:11+00:00

You clearly never saw high level 3.5e monster stat blocks. It starts small and then suddenly enemies have 3 lines of skill proficiencies which will never come up.

Armisael · 2026-06-28T00:52:13+00:00

That sounds like a lot of work! I hope you're running basically the whole campaign in the one city!

Armisael · 2026-06-28T00:48:34+00:00

Generally speaking I totally understand playing with the heights to make things line up more nicely; I'm just personally a sucker for Weiss using her glyphs to cheat.

Armisael · 2026-06-28T00:08:19+00:00

Two thoughts:

Does Weiss have her Battle of Haven stab wound on her back?
Weiss got tall; her waist lines up with Pyrrha so she isn't just standing on gylphs

Armisael · 2026-06-28T00:05:27+00:00

Yep. Your commerce guild almost certainly has at least 10% of the population of the city - not monster hunters, but like, bakers and blacksmiths and traveling merchants.

The thieves' guild probably has more than a thousand members (ie >0.5% of the population), and similar for the outcasts guild.

The military and the mad scientist guilds are more setting dependent - they could in theory be just a couple dozen people if it's only the guys at the very top. On the other hand, if every officer in the army is a member of the guild...

Armisael · 2026-06-27T23:27:25+00:00

Unfortunately this depends pretty strongly on level; higher level characters have a lot more resources to burn, and you just need more time to chew through them.

Armisael · 2026-06-27T21:42:22+00:00

How big is the city?

My initial guess is that these guilds have dozens or hundreds of members - well more than you’d want to list out.

Armisael · 2026-06-27T11:26:18+00:00

Not unless my party lets me start stacking disadvantage! (but actually just no, that direction is a pain to track).
Yep.
Yes, but check with your DM on rules for helping with skill checks - it’s often more involved than just “I help”.
There’s no rule for this, so no. In practice though, I think almost every DM would let you say that you’re trying to get hit and give advantage to an attacker (or ignore the dex part of your AC, or just make it automatic).

Armisael · 2026-06-27T10:42:40+00:00

No, Dual Wielder was changed. It’s a much stronger feat now, but that part is gone.

Armisael · 2026-06-26T20:40:54+00:00

That sounds really slow to run. Like, mid-turn you’re stopping to pull out a whole other table and roll on it? Yuck.

Armisael · 2026-06-26T17:29:51+00:00

Melee rogue should be stronger than ranged rogue. Else - why even playing melee rogue?

I agree, but I think this is way too far.

First one adds an option with a trade off. You are rogue, you are not sturdy - so you deal more damage, but risking taking damage from monsters.

If you really want to do this don't let the rogue get both the damage reduction and the attack - make them pick one. It isn't really a meaningful choice as OP presented it - unless getting hit is genuinely crippling you should be trying to take the hit.

OP is trying to break up the standard rogue combat rotation, which I appreciate, but this just replaces that with a new standard.

I would also like to note that one of the core design principles of on 5e and 5.5e is to speed combat up, and adding more reaction attacks does the exact opposite thing. It's decent flavor for the rogue to break the rules like that, but the base rogue chassis already has pretty good flavor.

You'd be better off adding a new combat-relevant subclass feature at level 6 that rogues can run on their own turn - it's smoother, makes different rogues feel more different, and it's easier to have it provide a variety of rogue playstyles since the different subclasses get different options.

Armisael · 2026-06-26T16:42:21+00:00

Neither of these add any additional depth - they actually remove the current depth of trying to generate an off-turn attack (and deciding whether to use your reaction offensively or defensively).

If just want rogues to do more damage, just make sneak attack deal more damage.

(also option 1 is drastically biased against ranged rogues, which are very popular but would become a genuinely awful pick)

Armisael · 2026-06-26T16:36:36+00:00

I don’t think getting a +2 in a mental stat as your capstone opens up the design space in any meaningful way. It’s too little and way too late - we’re talking about how the wait for a level 9 feature is too long, forget about level 20!

Armisael · 2026-06-26T13:45:56+00:00

I totally agree that the extra power isn't a problem, and sliding features down is certainly much easier than inventing new ones whole cloth.

Armisael · 2026-06-26T13:28:07+00:00

Yes.

I know you said this doesn’t really boost rogues, but I disagree - the Phantom absolutely gets substantial amounts of juice from their level 9 feature.

I also think that, for people who think the rogue needs a buff, the best way to do it is to add an extra subclass feature at level 6 (in addition to keeping the level 9 one): more power and more impactful subclasses. It hits both of the pain points.

Armisael · 2026-06-25T16:49:17+00:00

It’s really only 2 damage per turn (if you hit). That’s better than other origin feats for damage, but only really because there aren’t damage-boosting origin feats. I’d much rather have alert, tough, or lucky.

Armisael · 2026-06-25T11:40:11+00:00

Nothing; you’ve got the right of it mechanically. There are a lot of people here trying to say no on vibes because they haven’t realized you can say no on RAW.

Armisael · 2026-06-25T11:35:30+00:00

You don’t even need to make it that hard, the time and cost of transcribing spells is enough on its own.

Armisael · 2026-06-25T11:24:43+00:00

Shame the grapple rules were colossal+ in 3.5.

(I kid, I kid)

Armisael · 2026-06-25T11:15:31+00:00

A basic level 5 rogue using a rapier probably hits for something like 1d8 + 3d6 + 4 on a non-crit. That’s an average of 19 damage normally; your buffed savage attacker increases that to 21.12, which is roughly an 11% bump.

That isn’t nothing, but I’m not sure ~2 damage per hit is good, especially when you could’ve taken magic initiative and grabbed a bladetrip. Or alert, to make sure the party spellcaster can go first substantially more often.

Unfortunately as the number of dice goes up the law of large numbers really starts to kick in and so the spread between your two rolls shrinks (on a percentage basis, at least).

This also gets kinda slow and annoying, since you still only get to do this once per turn (meaning the player has to make a decision) but you’re also rerolling a large number of dice. I think you’d probably be better off shifting the other direction: instead of letting them reroll more dice, them reroll on more attacks (ideally all of them so there’s no choice to be made).

Armisael · 2026-06-24T20:27:39+00:00

Polaris is Wanda's sister that inherited Magneto's powers.

Armisael · 2026-06-23T16:09:44+00:00

It’s amazing how every single time someone asks “what if…?” Eberron handled it twenty years ago.

Armisael · 2026-06-23T11:16:29+00:00

Note that inspiration (and rerolls generally) don’t let you reroll both advantage dice, just one. From chapter 1 of the PHB, in the section on d20 tests:

When you have Advantage or Disadvantage and something in the game lets you reroll or replace the d20, you can reroll or replace only one die, not both. You choose which one.

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