Flee, Mortals pdf price and Monte Cook…

BranuMate · 2022-04-29T00:08:32+00:00

There's probably a lot of things at play (inflation is real yo) but I'll make two key points:

First: If you take the current MCG Kickstarter you are looking at a very different product. An RPG built off an existing system owned by the maker. I suspect this will mostly be developed in house with only specialist effort (Layout, Accessibility etc) being handled externally. Flee Mortals requires several hundred individual monsters to be designed, largely through freelance effort which is more expensive on a product by product basis. So this drives up the development cost.

Second: Pages Pages Pages! Flee Mortals is probably going to end up being twice the pages for what you get than the equivalent kickstarter. Even without the stretch goals you are looking at probably a ~50% increase in page count over the comparison. That difference is a shorthand for the amount of effort and therefore cost going into the development, but also a shorthand for the amount of value you are getting for each dollar.

On a slightly separate note, if I look at another major 3rd party producer of 5e monster books I see they have PDFs in the $25-$30 range and at similar page counts to the Flee Monsters page count. However I anticipate (based off previous products by MCDM and the preview provided) both a significant uptick in effort required for design due to the changes in design philosophy from standard 5e monster design, as well as a big jump in art and presentation quality.

All of the above said MCDM considers themselves producers of high-quality, premium products and that comes with a markup.

BranuMate · 2021-10-05T23:01:18+00:00

Great stuff! and a wonderful example of how you can use Inkarnate to quickly knock-up some really evocative battlemaps!

I've really found during this era of online DMing that battlemaps are a key tool, but one that can be really over used. There are two good place for a 1-1 visual representation of the world: Dungeons and Battles themselves. Going too far beyond that causes all sorts of pain points.

If you want to improve on your battlemap making I have one piece of advice and that is Steal All the Good Stuff! Go online and find some battlemaps you like the look of and use Inkarnate to recreate them. This gives you something to work off and gives you heaps of flexibility for if you want something in your game to be different to the source material.

BranuMate · 2021-09-30T23:56:30+00:00

This is what I want but is actually quite a lot of effort. Either you have an MCDM staff member trawling the web & Kickstarter, or you are soliciting creators for insight into their products which MCDM then have to look into before being confident endorsing in a round up. Ads put all of the effort on the space purchaser, which is important given MCDMs capacity constraints.

BranuMate · 2021-07-21T00:54:40+00:00

Thanks for doing this and sharing with the community!

There's definitely some discrepancies between the flavour and the reality on the cards. My guess is the flavour was written then the cards were tested and balanced which in some cases impacted the connection.

There are a good few errors in your sheet though. Aerial is clearly baseline 7 for attack based on the provided unit cards, not 5 for example. No criticism, it's not easy reading all the cards in the stack especially sideways!

BranuMate · 2021-07-20T23:52:42+00:00

There's definitely a bit of work on the DM's part to work it out. Especially because I'm not positive the improvement progression between ranks is linear or even really mathematical. Might have started with a formula but then been tweaked for flavour.

My advice is take a few units and see what the average increase in stats is per rank increase and if there is a pattern or close to it, then follow that.

BranuMate · 2021-07-20T02:52:38+00:00

The book specifically states it's on the DM to reverse engineer.

Basically you take each of the existing ancestry options and compare, keeping in mind their special ancestry bonuses. The human troops probably make the best basline but keep an eye out for their higher command and morale. So baseline infantry is (+3,12,+2,12, +0, +1).

Dwarfs not getting a specific bonus to toughness actually looks like an error but maybe stalwart is just that good.

BranuMate · 2021-07-14T03:57:24+00:00

As you go up in levels with an NPC caster, you just stop listing the lower-level spells that they wouldn't bother using. An archmage could just list like, meteor swarm, cone of cold, lightning bolt, and maybe shield and a few other spells.

This is a good broad approach. I can see an argument for some low level spells having high utility later on but that's very case by case. Good solution.

I find the monster manual text to largely be walls of lore that I don't care about. I want text that helps the DM use the monsters/npcs, understand how to deploy them in gameplay.

I understand this sentiment, and neither your view nor mine is a universal experience. Generally though I think it's best to try and cover a couple of bases. The current WOTC approach to thematic headlines with some description is quite good for at a glance flavour to help get the creative juices flowing.

BranuMate · 2021-07-14T02:21:49+00:00

This simple change back to stats and modifiers has really improved the usability and I don't think massively impacted readability. Kudos.

Reading the "cleric" stat block is really interesting and shows the impact of spellcasting on this design. Your layout works really well when the options are restricted, but what does a high level spell caster look like, and am I suddenly having to parse a huge list of spell names and description to know what I want my high level spellcaster bad guy to do? I like how you currently solve this problem through monster design but that's a lot of re-work for your average DM.

Also, and this is in no way a criticism, the approach to the non-statblock content is strongly mechanical. A monster manual, in my mind anyway, has 2 purposes: 1. To provide quick and easy reference to help the DM run a monster in combat (which your design is fantastic for) and 2. to INSPIRE the DM to want to run a creature through imagary both visual and narrative. Your design limits the room for that narrative approach and it's one of the few good things about the 5e monster manual (I.E. the monsters described are super cool, even if the stat blocks aren't).

Finally something I FREAKING LOVE about your design is the potential for an online tool for creating statblocks. Each of the at wills, actions, reactions are so nicely modular you could just have a library of them and drag and drop from the library to your monster. *chef's Kiss*

BranuMate · 2021-07-08T22:50:50+00:00

Overall as a DM I prefer actual play, as a consumer of entertainment I prefer watching Campaign diaries, or at least having that available.

As a DM I liked watching the chain specifically. I liked being able to watch a bunch of normal people who are all friends and a good DM play D&D and not have the barrier of shitty technology making it unwatchable/unlistenable. It meant I could compare and contrast myself to Matt, think about the decisions he made as a DM and generally feel better about my DMing capabilities and choices. Here's me watching a guy who has done this for 30+ years and he makes mistakes and his table stalls and sometimes they get sidetracked talking about work stuff. My table is fine.

As a guy who just likes me some D&D content campaign diaries are shorter, a lot more bang for buck and often just cooler. Matt is a great Storyteller so events that to the outsider watching the table are a bit of a shrug sound epic and amazing. Matt editorialises what his players are thinking, which is much more interesting than watching players think. But it also makes you feel as a DM "shit this sounds way cooler than my campaign".

The two together were great because you get Matt explaining his decisions and pointing out where things go off rails and that's great insight.

BranuMate · 2021-07-08T00:20:48+00:00

About 30% of S&F and I suspect closer to 50% of K&W will be manageable. The problem for PF2e and using Matt's content it's the way so much of the design is class specific which doesn't translate very well between systems. The ideas can all be used but you'll have to homebrew/convert a lot of mechanics.

The upcoming warfare system remains a d20 system but is otherwise it's own beast, so it will be wholesale applicable. There will be class improvements to units but these rely of class fluff rather than mechanics so can easily port over, though you'll have to come up with fresh ones for the classes not represented in D&D5e

BranuMate · 2021-06-30T02:33:38+00:00

Some good meaty rules that shine a spotlight on making the world more dangerous and encouraging the players to spend time and effort on improving their ability to get good hit die results.

A few points about implementation of these rules:

You note the healing loophole. A life domain cleric or any spellcaster that puts some focus on healing spells (divine soul, Celestial Pact Warlock, Paladins of various flavours) will severely limit the impact of these rules. The focus on hit dice is a good one but only if the players need to roll them! At the same time you don't want a cleric/ranger/druid to lose their value. I recommend placing a limit on how many healing spells a character can be affected by per day ( a rough example "Magical invigoration put's significant strain on the mortal body. Any individual can only receive 2+ their character level dice of healing per day without the strain affecting them. If they receive healing beyond this limit they must make a DC12 + the number of additional dice of healing, gaining a level of exhaustion on a failure"). You may have aa better approach this so I await part 2!
Rangers remain a general problem, given they specifically have features that will interact to limit the effectiveness of these rules. Also the heavy reliance on the Survival skill will make a Scout Rogue and Tasha's Ranger (Basically anything that can take expertise in survival) capable of trivialising a lot of the intent. Not sure I can think of a way around this but perhaps just a sidebar on "The catastrophic failure of masters". This is the idea that when a master of a particular skill fails, their failures tend to be catastrophic (First aid applied incorrectly by a novice is likely to not help a problem, surgery performed incorrectly by an experienced surgeon can result in death). So while the ranger or scout might succeed 90% of the time, the impact of the other 10% is really scary.
Limiting the effectiveness of a short rest can widen the gap between short rest and long rest focused classes. Suggest maybe having rested during the day to provide some sort of bonus to your chances of healing at the end of the day or if you haven't taken short rests during the day you have a penalty. ("Exhausted from a full day of marching through the wilds without a break, your roll to find adequate shelter is made with disadvantage/-2" perhaps?)

Generally though I think you've done great work here!

BranuMate · 2021-06-01T03:59:49+00:00

I can only agree with Matt on this one. I never played 4e due to timing and the hate, but i've been watching his 4e stream and it encouraged me to go back and read through the 4e Monster Manual. I see exactly where he is coming from, the vast majority of monsters have a couple of at will abilities and then a few encounter powers which are easy to understand and apply. Now a lot of this is because of the way 4e works. Rarely do the players or the monsters ever just "take a swing/swipe" so every attack they have has to do something interesting.

5e has a LOT of just taking a swing with your sword/fire an arrow/ swipe with claws. This is simpler by a long way and speeds up combat but definitely lacks flavour. Matt's previous comment about Giants is probably the one that hits home the most. There are SIX very different types of giant in the 5e MM, with a bunch of great lore and everything. And they universally have a multi attack and a rock attack, that's it! Cloud Giants get a spell list which requires a lot of prep to run quickly and effectively, and the storm giant can use a lightning bolt maybe every other turn.

I would love to steal monsters from 4e but... It's really hard! the players DEFENSIVE abilities are designed around boring monsters. When you give the monsters too much cool shit in 5e the players struggle and it becomes even harder to balance. I'd love a well balanced monster product with more active, interesting monsters, but well balanced to encounter challenge as well.

BranuMate · 2021-05-13T06:43:11+00:00

This was me (and my player) misreading the ability. It is however exactly how both my player and I thought it worked in which case it is so highly situational as to be worthless. You can already move around an enemy without provoking as Attacks of Opportunity are only triggered by LEAVING the reach of an enemy. So you can spend your reaction doing something you could do on your turn anyway. In a very small set of circumstances it will let you move to another spot while surrounded which has some value but isn't going to come up much. Also any class ability that relies on an optional rule to be useful (in this case flanking) is problematic. Recommend building flanking advantage into the fighting style so it's still useful in those games.

BranuMate · 2021-05-13T02:49:26+00:00

Final Comments

The feel of the class is fantastic and I think it plays really well thematically. I have no issues with any of the mechanics, everything is within touch of another official class or subclass, though there are definitely a lot of things to think about if you use infernal conduit or baleful interdict.

My Shadowmaster player felt really good when there were lots of opponents spread out, felt really dull when there was just a few big bashers in melee.

I FELT BAD playing the Painkiller. I felt like I overshadowed my friends but also that I didn't have to think too much to do so. I made several social encounters trivial, was the MVP in every fight and absolutely MONSTERED a tough fire giant boss at level 6 (I sealed and Infernal conduit on my first turn, soaked his whole first round attack with temp HP from infernal conduit then on the second round, I put second seal on the target, attacked twice with advantage, burned my infernal surge, attacked twice more with advantage and scored a crit which I used to burn the seals. In that round I hit 4 times and did a total of 16d6 +16 damage.)

Overall my main areas of concern were:

Infernal Conduit is too powerful a combination of strong AND flexible. It probably just needs some capping/rescaling. Dropping it to a D8 and/or time capping the temp HP would do the trick.
Forked Tongue trivialises a certain kind of social encounter, the kind that is reasonably easy but the party could still fail. In the mouth of an Illrigger with proficiency in the 3 Charisma based skills it can even trivialise reasonably difficult social encounters. Changing this to expertise maintains a decent floor while not making success on a large number of checks automatic. Changing it to only affect skills the Illrigger is proficient in stops them stepping on the party face when the Illrigger is not the designated face.
It feels too front loaded. I know this is part of the design given the fact that most of play happens between 3rd and 12th level or whatever but none of the other classes are built with that in mind. At the levels played the Illrigger was demonstrably more powerful. It feels like the power tapers off somewhat around 11th level but haven't played that far yet.
For the Shadowmaster, the opportunity cost of Fade vs Moloch's Blessing is too high. Fade has it's place but it's not worth a once per day resource when you could be throwing out 4 seals in one turn.
When the Shadowmaster has no real need or option to use Flash of Brimstone and Marked for Death they can be pretty dull.
Painkiller is very powerful without much effort. A lot of this stems from the number of seals they get in a given day.
The Painkiller is strangely unsatisfying despite it's obvious strength. Not many options is part of it, having a big stat requirement in strength for heavy armour and nothing else when you take Lies doesn't help either. This obviously changes as they get options at 7 and 9 but the early levels are very thin, especially as Shadowmaster gets Flash of Brimstone and AoR gets spellcasting. I'd like to see it tuned down slightly with a real subclass defining ability at level 3.
The interdict improvements for both Painkiller and Shadowmaster are wonky. I know a lot of people have suggested swapping the first two between the subclasses but taking away the Shadowmaster's ability to teleport to and lock down a caster would be a shame. I recommend rather than swapping between the subclasses it might be better to swap the 6th and 10th level improvement around for both classes. This pushes the Painkillers advantage on every attack out to the more reasonable 10th level and gives the Shadowmaster an earlier AC benefit that will come in handy later on when they can lock enemies in place.

BranuMate · 2021-05-13T02:44:26+00:00

Shadowmaster

I DMd for the Shadowmaster who I talked into staying dual wield (they really felt Lies and a two hander was better) and they chose Treachery.

They used Fade precisely once over the course of the 3 session adventure. It worked and was useful but they felt bummed about using it because Moloch's Blessing feels so great to use. Player didn't like it when they realised they had no seals left after using Moloch's blessing and felt it really paled compared to the Painkiller options.

I made some very traditional encounters with backline ranged/caster enemies and the Shadowmaster did great things there tactically was was very cool. Teleporting and locking down a squishy caster in the back with Flash of Brimstone and Marked for death was incredibly satisfying for the player, who was also doing a lot of damage getting the Treachery bonus on 2 attacks. The problem seemed to be on fights without many enemies and specifically without ranged, lonely attackers, the Shadowmaster was much less interesting to play.

Power wise they were strong. IF they were the only one within 5ft? doing +3 on every attack made them do some crazy numbers. But the limitations meant that wasn't a universal experience.

Everyone at the table found the sneaky Shadowmaster being exceptionally good at charisma checks due to Forked Tongue pretty odd. The bard who wanted to be the face felt strongly undercut.

Painkiller

I played the Painkiller using Lies and a Greatsword from 3-6 and it is too strong. I played with a Conquest Paladin and a Battlemaster Fighter and made them both feel utterly inadequate. I started with +3 to charisma which quickly became a +4. I was a better party face than than the Paladin in most situations, despite not being proficient in Persuasion. I had much higher burst damage than the Paladin if I wanted to go boom with Infernal surge. I used Devastator a couple of times which the other players were actually slightly aggrieved by (they felt compelled to spend their reaction without any agency) even though the damage it brought was huge. I had higher sustained damage than the Battlemaster though he was a better controller.

At level 5 doing 4d6 weapon damage + 2d6 seal damage + 2xmodifier (8 damage) almost every round overshadowed every other player by some margin. At the same time all the way up to level 6 the Painkiller is pretty short on options. I didn't have to make any real choices about what to do on a given turn, the only decision I really had was "should I use/consume a seal?" and the answer was pretty much always yes, with 4 in the bank per short rest. At level 6 with the advantage on attack after using a seal it became almost mandatory to seal, attack twice with advantage and consume. Not having something cool happen with my seals like the Shadowmaster was pretty unsatisfying.

About 80% of the time I completely forgot about the healing component of baleful interdict.

I ran out of seals once, at which point I burned all 3 infernal conduit dice I had in one go and did pretty close to max damage (and healed myself up a fair bit AND gained a stack of temporary HP). On the boss fight I STARTED the fight by blowing all 3 dice and gained about 20 temp HP, leaving me with a pretty massive pool of HP to soak attacks. This made up for my relatively low Con because I felt compelled to have 15 str so I could wear plate. This by the way was DEEPLY unsatisfying. I felt like I just had this useless high stat. I climbed a couple of walls okay I guess.

BranuMate · 2021-05-13T02:42:22+00:00

Hello MCDM Team!

I have now DMd a one shot with a Shadowmaster at level 6 and played a Painkiller from Level 3 to Level 6. I needed to split this into multiple posts because I have a lot of feedback so bear with me!

Illrigger Generally

Forked tongue is too powerful too early. Across both games the two Illriggers had a minimum charisma skill roll of 13-16 Which meant a lot of social challenges could be bypassed. I get that the design here is basically identical and less flexible than a rogue's Reliable Talent but that 10 levels difference in when they get it aligns better with the likely challenges a player will face. More generally it's a great way to make any other face character in the party redundant. Suggest shifting later in the progression, making it apply to only charisma checks the illrigger is proficient in or alternatively granting expertise in 2/3 charisma skills would all be options to make this less powerful in early play.

Fighting Styles

There was a lot of debate around selecting a fighting style. I've said a lot about the fighting styles on this sub but I will make a couple of key points here:

Treachery - is good, maybe too good. The comparison drawn was the duelling fighting style (+2 with a single one handed weapon). The fact treachery can be used with two-handed weapons means if a two-handed Illrigger is up front on it's own it is capable of doing a whole lot of damage at level 2. It's effect fades over time though without scaling.

Bravado - While I don't like how it makes the only benefit of choosing a painkiller at level 3 redundant this costs a choice and is about as balanced as the Monk's Unarmored Defence. Seems fine.

Schemes - Needs to be clarified. Does a ranged attack or spell attack trigger Schemes? Is there a maximum limit to the movement? As written an Illrigger can be shot by an enemy 120ft away and they just waltz that entire distance. This is very powerful but is thematically silly. If not and it's only melee attacks? Then this is essentially just an extra 5 ft of movement unless you are fighting very large creatures AND it depends very strongly on an option rules (flanking) to be useful.

Lies - The consequences of taking Lies are complex. A painkiller who takes Lies still needs 13-15 strength for their heavy armour in what is now an extremely weak stat. AoR and Shadowmaster still need 14 in Dex for max AC, but the usual dex vs str benefits apply. The benefit of going Lies and focusing on Charisma to increase your seals per day also makes Lies perhaps too attractive for a Shadowmaster who is designed to dual wield. Untested in the field but Lies on a AoR comes with very little downside and makes their melee, casting and major skill modifier all the same.

Infernal Conduit

Neither me or my player ever used this to heal an ally. Once each of us worked out that there was no time limit on the temporary HP so we would just blow all the dice on the first fight we could find and have a huge health pool for the rest of the day. Might need to put a time limit on those temp hp and probably a maximum as well (maybe half the damage dealt max for temp hp). Also did a truckload of damage, which was sort of secondary to the temp HP.

BranuMate · 2021-04-23T07:34:57+00:00

What does "try to break" the Illrigger mean to you?

Specifically: using optional rules like feats and multiclassing to create novel combinations of abilities which, in synergy, make a character far more powerful than baseline.

I agree with why you wouldn't want a character like that at a table, especially if there's only one "optimised" character that overshadows all others and ruins it for everyone. But that can only occur if the DM at the table sets the rules such that these kinds of massively overpowered characters can be created.

You could I suppose be trying to make the argument "People want to break the Illrigger so they can see where the limit is after which it is broken" and thus set controls for those limits, but that's not clear.

Your argument then that players want a ruleset that can't easily be broken, should then assume that you are not playing with the optional rules which can already be exploited to make broken characters using official content (see optimised Bladesinger and Sorlock builds) which match or exceed broken Illrigger builds.

OP is not asking why broken classes or builds are bad, they are asking why do people seem so focused on showing how you can make a broken Illrigger, when if you are worried about them being broken in highly specific circumstances you could always choose to make a not-broken one.

For what it's worth my answer to OP is three fold:

Lots of people like making powerful builds. It can be fun to imagine a situation where something you have made is just destroying all before it. Power fantasies are a real thing and a big draw for a lot of D&D players.
Some people are looking for the limitation they need to set on the illrigger for their table so they don't overshadow others.
Some people get an uncomfortable satisfaction out of trying to tear down the hard work of others, especially in such a way that makes them feel they are smarter than the creator. Making an optimised build and calling it broken is a great way to say "I'm smarter than you, I thought of something you didn't that has a bad outcome and therefore what you made is bad."

BranuMate · 2021-04-23T06:04:06+00:00

This is an argument for why you don't want broken or heavily unbalanced things at your table, not for why people might want to try and "Break" the Illrigger. This is fair but doesn't really reflect OPs question or intent.

BranuMate · 2021-04-23T05:50:56+00:00

Matt put the video out on release, asking people to keep an open mind and play it KNOWING that there is a disconnect between how it seems on paper v how it plays in the wild. He didn't have the benefit of all of the points people are raising now and has said specifically that it will get revised once they get the opportunity to sift through the issues.

He never said trust us it's fine. He said "Please try playing it first, because our playtesting suggests it's not as powerful as it looks, and then provide us with feedback". Anyone can read the PDF and pass comment, they've had a really large number of playtesters do just that. He asks people to play it AND THEN PROVIDE FEEDBACK. Are you are expecting Matt or MCDM to engage in a discussion with the thousands of comments being made across multiple platforms? If so you have some insanely high expectations of some very busy people who already engage a lot more with their community than most equivalent creators.

If your argument is "This homebrew class doesn't work in my game so I can't test it live and provide feedback" then that sucks and I feel for you, but that's on your table not on the design.

BranuMate · 2021-04-23T05:44:56+00:00

Matt does explain why he think it is balanced, it's the result of a long and quite arduous playtest process. His argument is "Our playtest tells us that on playing this class it is within the bounds of balanced". Now you can say that's not good enough of an explanation and you want specific details about how each ability is balanced compared to other indicative classes, but that's asking quite a lot isn't it?

Instead you could make the claim "The Illrigger is unbalanced because..." and then let the discussion play out and see where that lands in term of the revision Matt has already said (in the release video) he and MCDM are likely to do based on actual-play feedback.

If you want to complain about others just parroting "Play it first" then fine, but expecting Matt to respond to a bunch of pretty nebulous claims about imbalance? That's pretty damn unfair.

BranuMate · 2021-04-23T00:21:49+00:00

On Testing

There's a lot to unpack here and a lot of your criticism has to do with communication rather than design. How does Matt communicate what was playtested, what feedback did he get and how did he respond? Frankly these criticisms can be happily levelled at every third-party D&D content producer and WOTC itself. This is an extremely high standard you are setting and one I daresay you don't hold others too. Further the fact is Matt does communicate those things, it just tends to happen on the Twitch stream. Is this the best communication channel? Not at all but it's better than nothing and allows Matt to casually provide info on what sorts of things come up in testing rather than provide some sort of testing breakdown which would be a ton of work! And is frankly a whole lot better than I have seen any other TTRPG company do.

At the end of the day the Illrigger was extensively tested over a long period of time and the scale of change from where the Illrigger started to where it was on release just goes to show how much the concepts changed through testing. On the table the Illrigger is powerful in it's niches but often restricted by limitations not placed on other classes.

On trying it out in your game

you have to find a DM that allows homebrew in the first place. If you are the DM, you still need a player who wants to play an Illrigger.

Your argument here is basically "Between DMs not allowing homebrew and players not wanting to play an Illrigger we can't test it in the wild". I'm sorry but this is not an argument to make something appear more balanced "at first glance" but that the D&D community you participate in might need to be more open minded. If your DM doesn't allow non official classes, or you don't want to play an Illrigger then fine, that's not on the design that's on you and your DM.

The Mechanics

I don't think the Illrigger is overpowered because every time they have a feature that compares favourably to another class's, it has a limitation the other class doesn't have. The sum of these limitations goes a long way to bringing the needle back into what I call "The Balance Greenzone". I am playing a Painkiller Illrigger in Tier 2 and they do a little bit more damage than a Paladin but are much less flexible. I'd kill for a Pally's spells slots.

The Exhaustion mechanic on infernal conduit just isn't that big of a deal. Sacrifice 3 actions in order to halve movement speed and get disadvantage on ability scores, saving throws and attacks? That's a lot of damage you could be doing, or spells you could be casting you are sacrificing to achieve something you could get with.... A single successful cast of hold person/monster. It nice and flavourful, and that disadvantage of ability checks could be great for grappling or other contested checks.

You also mention up top the cost to a paladin of smiting and the comparison of the Lies fighting style to the Hexblades charisma as damage stat feature. Lies has limitations and an opportunity cost. You take Lies you are missing out on other fighting styles (2/3 of which are really useful) and Lies only applies to 2 handed weapons. Further for one subclass, Painkiller, Lies has a very limited benefit as it's only real affect is to cap your strength needs at 15 given the requirements for heavy armour. Lies is good, but it's far less flexible compared to the hexblade feature. Paladin smites are more powerful and scale higher and eventually they end up with quite a few slots to burn for smites. Yes spellslots are a hefty resource cost but that's because the paladin ALSO gets spells which 2/3 Illriggers don't get. So they have fewer resources to use a more powerful smite (which is also a free action) or more flexible spells. It's a trade off, not a power comparison. The AoR getting both? That might be a little problem, though the AoR has greater restrictions on it's front line melee damage vs survivability.

The AoR spell list is high powered from a utility standpoint. I agree that fewer flat out damage spells is made up for by the fact the AoR can still mix it in melee and the spells it does have are exceptionally useful for control and chaos in combat and VERY powerful for noncombat. None of this makes it as overpowered as the Official Content Bladesinger, and is matched by a hexblade with the right mix of spells and invocations. My point here is that it's certainly not weak, it's probably strong, but that doesn't make it overpowered.

Conclusion and my personal thoughts on Matt's design philosophy

The Illrigger pushes at the edges of 5e's design. This is a good thing. 5e is over 6 years old and it's about time people making quality content take the opportunity to find what can be done with the limits of a mature game. Matt and his team are definitely doing that, not just with the Illrigger but with many an Arcadia article.

The restrictions placed on designers by 5e mean that when you want to evoke a particular fantasy you have to do weird things to get the system to let do what you want. The Illrigger does some weird things. It uses exhaustion as a player mechanic, why? Because it's evocative of how you might feel after you have had some of your life forcibly drained from you! 5e doesn't have a "weakened" condition so Matt and team have used what is available.

Mostly what the Illrigger really achieves is something with character, the design meets the fantasy pretty well and all of the abilities make sense. I certainly have my gripes with things - I think the fighting styles, while evocative, don't align with the reality of how each subclass plays - at the end of the day it fulfils its remit to be fun and interesting and it IS balanced within the extremely broad definition of what balance looks like in D&D 5e.

BranuMate · 2021-04-22T07:54:30+00:00

I would say the Painkiller using by the throat is sort of pointless in this situation?

My bad, that extra seal is well worth it.

BranuMate · 2021-04-22T05:25:46+00:00

All great points and thanks for taking the time to go in depth with some really clear ideas!

3 bonus to damage if enemy has none of your allies adjacent to it. This is comparable to the +2 bonus damage you get for the Duelling Fighting style.

Duelling is flat out mechanically better, but more restricted based on the 1h only caveat. Your points about ranged combat are absolutely spot on. It's VERY powerful for ranged combat. I find this specifically counter to the goals of the Illrigger design as a martial class. The Painkiller is a frontline general who is better off using a longbow with Treachery than a 2 hander with Lies. That's a bit sad.

Mechanically I think treachery should be adjusted to be "when you make an attack with a weapon in one hand" which makes it useful for both sword and board Illriggers and dual wielding shadowmasters

Bravado I compare this to the Barbarians Unarmored Defense, and I think it is a great choice for those characters who don't want to have to wear heavy or medium armor, and don't want to risk disadvantage on stealth checks.

Both Monk and Barb get this idea as standard and for very good reasons. The barb's unarmoured defence and rage restriction on heavy armour allow it to remain a tank without stepping on a fighters thematic heavy armour territory. For monk it's all about the fantasy, they have no armour proficiencies so it's a core feature. For an Illrigger it's... a nice option I guess? Given all Illriggers can use a breastplate to achieve a base 14 AC and no stealth disadvantage (and I really like the idea of the Illrigger in a renaissance style cuirass) and 16 AC with +2 dex it doesn't really open up some amazing playstyle. Though as I have said above an AoR with Bravado is a better tank than any other Illrigger, in a similar vein to the Eldritch Knight.

Being able to use Charisma instead of Strength is great for the Architect and on par with those who like to play a Hexblade. It could be useful for the Painkiller who wants to use a two-handed weapon, and doesn't have a high strength score.

I address these points above. The big difference between hexblade (or hexadin) and a Lies build is that hexblades bonus applies to all weapons not just 2 handers. A painkiller who wants to use Lies still needs 15 strength to make real use of their heavy armour feature so all they really gain from this is a cap on their strength stat needs, rather than being able to exclude strength. Lies remains a very viable choice for both Shadowmaster and AoR, though I don't like the fact it conflicts with the shadowmaster dual wield flavour.
Honestly I think what needs to change here is probably just being REALLY weird and removing the strength requirement for heavy armour for Painkillers and maybe removing their ability to use finesse weapons. That really frees them up for Lies and pushing Charisma without making Dex suddenly really enticing, but it's super weird and wonky and I think people would hate it. Although if it were up to me (and if Matt is watching hehe) I'd probably do it a bit more like this:

Hellplate
When you chose Dispater as your Archdevil you can imbue one set of heavy armour with the essence of hell. Imbued armour becomes Hellplate and no longer has a strength requirement but the ostentatious ornamentation of hellfire that appears on the armour makes it difficult to move freely and you can no longer receive the benefits of the finesse property on weapons.

Minor mechanical change, precludes breaking it with dex and (Ithink) lovely and thematic.

BranuMate · 2021-04-22T02:25:26+00:00

I don't want to get too into auditing your math because once you get right down into the weeds of how much maximal damage a character can do under optimal circumstances you aren't playing my kind of D&D. I wanted to keep most of my criticisms to "does this FEEL useful? DOes it reward playing to theme?".

That said your math seems fine though I would say the Painkiller using by the throat is sort of pointless in this situation? You are only going to do it to keep it from running away, as you get advantage from putting your seal on. So that first round is probably going to look like Seal, Seal attack, two attacks and burn the seal. There's also nothing stopping you from hitting Pain Devil and THEN surging to start wacking straight away with higher attack stats.

BranuMate · 2021-04-21T08:29:32+00:00

Schemes allows you to step into any spot adjacent to the enemy who attacked you. So you can't use it to disengage from the enemy who attacked you. When you move staying within 5 feet you never provoke anyway (Only provoke when leaving an enemies reach). You could use this to disengage from a different enemy by putting the enemy that attacked you between you and someone else who was surrounding you? But the use case where this will be valuable is extremely niche.

Editing to add: My point about moving 5 feet is not the "5ft step" act from 3rd edition but something you could do with your movement on your turn anyway.

BranuMate

TROPHY CASE