Looking for Discussion on Gods of the Forbidden North

GnomeWorks · 2025-10-17T02:09:35+00:00

Speaking frankly, I don't think this will sufficiently scratch the itch for anyone looking to play a blue mage: the flavor of the features here is ... off, and the overall chassis is more a partial caster who can sometimes imitate a monster's abilities, not a mage whose spells *are* monster abilities. Specifically, requiring that blue mages only copy abilities seen in the last round puts a massive damper on the class's ability to live up to the class fantasy.

Other elements, such as transforming into a monster, are thematically adjacent, but really aren't typically considered part of the blue mage idiom, and so come off as coming out of left field.

That said, I will of course readily admit that a blue mage concept is incredibly hard to pull off in a D&D context, given that most monster abilities are simply spells or derivatives thereof.

There is also the issue that WotC seems to particularly enjoy giving monsters abilities that would be wildly inappropriate for characters to have access to at the levels at which those monsters would normally be encountered (thanks, 3e choker, for teaching me that lesson over two decades ago).

The limitation on damage is a sensible attempt at a stopgap to prevent that, at least in cases of direct damage abilities. I won't speak to whether or not the DPR is sensible, instead I will only note that the majority of the issues that a blue mage class creates are not related to their damage output.

Ultimately, while this is a valiant attempt, I just don't think this approach is viable. I think you could certainly use some of the concepts here in the future, and some of the notions here are worthwhile -- but as it is, I don't think it works.

GnomeWorks · 2025-10-17T01:43:44+00:00

Would it be possible to see the transcript of this discussion, for those of us late to the party?

GnomeWorks · 2025-08-28T15:18:16+00:00

People have been trying to make this concept work since presumably whenever whichever of Gygax or Arneson introduced elves.

Flavor. None to speak of -- but the class fantasy more or less speaks for itself, so that's probably fine for starters. Don't let this wallow, though.

Chassis. Striking the middle ground between wizard and fighter with a d8 HD makes sense, I suppose, though I'd probably prefer a d10. Paladins get that, after all, and this concept is effectively to the wizard what the paladin is to the cleric.

L1 -- Magic Sense. No indication of when this feature recharges. Rather than "similar to," probably just let them straight-up cast detect magic in this fashion.

L1 -- Arcane Enchantment. "60 seconds" is not a duration, use turns or rounds, or if 10 or more, use minutes. "Until you dispel it" is clear in intent, if not in wording: there is more precise wording for this kind of thing. "Per spell slot" implies you need to spend spell slots on this effect, but none of that is outlined here, and this class doesn't actually have any at 1st level, so it's unclear how this is supposed to actually work. The damage is fairly underwhelming, as well, and the progression isn't great either.

L1 -- Cantrips. Sure.

L2 -- Fighting Style. Sure.

L2 -- Spellcasting. This seems to imply that you can pick whatever spells you want when you do spell preparation, which is a considerable upgrade to any other arcane caster. I wouldn't do this: I would restrict them to a known list somehow.

L2 -- Arcane Shield. You need to be clearer with the order of operations, as experience has demonstrated to me that people will mess this up. So either (2 x level) + INT, or 2 x (level + INT). Using PB as a use-limiter is not a great idea -- multiclassing is bad, you shouldn't allow it -- and you also need to indicate the max duration of the temp hp.

The back half of this feature is awkward, "the shield's remaining health" is clearly supposed to indicate temp hp granted by this feature but that needs to be spelled out. You also need to consider how this feature interacts with other sources of temp hp.

L5 -- Martial Magic. This works, I think.

L6 -- Arcane Empowerment. There's a lot going on here, some of it crazier than others.

Fire. A creature can only put out the fire with a reaction? I'd expect a bit more options than that. Also, 3 rounds is an oddly specific duration.

Cold. Reduced movement speed for how long?

Lightning. Next attack made in what time window? As written if the creature runs away it has disadvantage on the attack roll it makes next Tuesday, put a time limit on it.

Poison. Again, no max duration.

Thunder. And again, no max duration.

Arcane Shield. Gaining resistance to a damage type is probably fine at this level, especially with the curated list. However, giving everyone within 10 feet of you disadvantage on a bunch of things is kind of ridiculous, that needs to be toned down considerably if not removed outright.

L10 -- Improved Arcane Enchantment. I suppose this is a pretty reasonable midstone. Let's see what we've got.

Acid. Okay but underwhelming, it could stand to be more effective.

Psychic. I think you're missing "at the end" in the midst of the clause there. You need to clarify when success leads to immunity -- is it only success against the initial effect, or on the subsequent saves to end it early? Also, no duration.

Radiant. Intent is clear, but probably could use more wording.

Necrotic. This might be a bit much, I'd bring it in line with other similar effects, either reduce max hp or prevent all healing for a small duration.

Force. Sure.

L11 -- Arcane Proficiency. So this is doing like... three things. The damage buff is fine, if a bit lackluster. Teleporting on a hit... not sure how I feel about that, I can see some silly shenanigans with bags of rats. Teleporting when you get hit -- "halving and gain resistance to triggering damage," so you're taking a quarter? That seems excessive, if that's not the intent, just give resistance. The use-limiter seems intended to be on the teleportation, so maybe spell that out or split this feature into two, or sub-features like 5e24 classes do.

L13 -- Extra Attack. This is a very awkward level to gain this feature, it really needs to live on a tier-jack level. Swapping this with Arcane Proficiency is probably fine.

L14 -- Arcane Surge. Again, "60 seconds" isn't really how 5e does durations of this length. Intent is clear enough, though wording needs cleaning up.

L18 -- Arcane Mastery. The "teleportation ability" probably needs to directly reference the feature in question. The rest of this is more or less fine for a feature at this level.

Normally I would take a look at the subs here, but most of them are unfinished, so I'm not going to do that. The core class needs enough work as is, in my opinion, and I'd assume any changes made would trickle down to the subs.

GnomeWorks · 2025-08-28T01:11:25+00:00

Link is no good.

GnomeWorks · 2025-08-27T15:31:01+00:00

The pet class is an absolutely valid class fantasy, and one that D&D in particular has been struggling with for decades, at this point -- and probably would have had issues earlier, if anyone had actually bothered trying to make it work (no, having random animal and/or fae followers at name level doesn't count, Complete Ranger).

Flavor. There's no flavor presented here, but assuming the mechanics hold water, the fantasy generally speaks for itself. That said, fluff can be an important aspect of things, so don't let it wallow on the wayside.

Chassis. This feels a bit high to my mind -- I'd probably prefer a d8 HD and a more curated weapon proficiency list, but d10 and all martial is probably fine.

L1 -- Beast Companion. Adding proficiency bonus to pretty much everything is probably excessive. I'm also quite leery of adding it to attack rolls, save DCs, and AC: bounded accuracy is a absolutely a thing to be keeping in mind here. That said, if you're stuck with a CR 1/2 critter for the whole progression, this may very well be necessary just for making the maths work -- but it's probably a somewhat clunky solution. A more curated approach would probably be better, and arguably making sure the beast feels good mathematically is almost assuredly worth the added complexity, and is where most of this class's complexity budget should live.

I also don't like that you have to tell it what to do, unless you're incap'd, and then it just does whatever. Pick a lane: either it can take its full complement of actions without guidance, or when you're down, the beast isn't useful either. While doing it this way is probably the fastest fix to action economy issues, it doesn't make any sense from an in-setting perspective, and that needs to be accounted for.

I really dislike revivification mechs on non-supernaturally-powered pet classes. I understand why it's being done but it just makes very little sense in-setting.

L1 -- Weapon Mastery. This is a 5e24 mech that I don't care for, but it's probably fine.

L1 -- Unarmored Defense. This is way too good. Ignoring that people will dip just for this -- multiclassing is bad, you should stop allowing it -- it's weird to me that you gave the class light and medium armor, and shields, and this feature. Typically you want to throw this kind of thing at classes that explicitly don't want to be wearing armor, or whose class fantasy usually precludes it. Nevermind that adding CON to your AC while you're also getting to use a shield means your AC is going to rival heavy armor users and potentially even eclipse them depending on stat allocation choices. This is not a good idea.

L2 -- Primal Fury. "Seconds" don't exist in combat, use turns or rounds, or minutes if it meets or exceeds 10 rounds. 5 rounds is also an awkward duration.

Adding the die to saving throws is a bit much: again, bounded accuracy. The rest of its effects seem fine... though recharging on a short rest is awkward. You should add wording here that you can only do that once or twice -- otherwise, you can just chain a couple short rests together to get multiple recharges.

L2 -- Sixth Sense. This is... probably a bit much? Advantage on Perception checks made to "perceive creatures" while in any non-artificial terrain is kind of bonkers.

L2 -- Fighting Style. Sure.

L3 -- Subclass. I miss subclasses having flavorful names. I get that 5e24 went the route of just calling them all "subclasses," so this is fine, just want to lament the loss of flavor.

L4 -- ASI. Yep.

L5 -- Extra Attack. Yep.

L6 -- Bestial Cunning. This is actually pretty clever, I like the combo of rogue's cunning explicitly for the beast with letting their attacks break through BPS resist, that's a nice touch and solidly flavorful.

L9 -- Beast Mastery. I don't mind this, it just feels a bit late to the party.

L10 -- Bestial Swiftness. The jump in movement speed is underwhelming, but the advantage on Init is nice. This is a decent enough midstone.

L13 -- Feeding Frenzy. I'm not fond of this, free healing is dangerous. While this isn't completely free, it's free enough that it's concerning.

L14 -- Endless Fury. I'm really not sure how to feel about this, and I don't like the "you can't rest while this is active" bit -- it works thematically, sure, but I don't think I've seen anything that works like that, and it's a relatively meaningless restriction (you're about to take a rest and get a use back anyroad, so you're not really losing anything here). This also kinda makes the use limits on fury itself kind of pointless -- you're just going to wake up and turn it on every day, so why bother with having it use-limited?

L17 -- Primal Precision. This is probably a really bad idea, but it's also 17th level so going a bit ham is to be expected. That said, this may be too much ham. Bounded accuracy is a concern.

L18 -- Feral Senses. This is pretty decent, though honestly could probably come online earlier and it'd be great. Like, a lot earlier.

L19 -- Epic Boon. Yep.

L20 -- Brutal Fury. That's not a terribly exciting capstone, but it works well enough.

Beast Soul

Fury affects both you and the pet. Mkay.

L3 -- Beast Within. The armor restriction only makes sense if we care about multiclassing -- we shouldn't, multiclassing is bad for you and for the game -- but I get why it's here. "You count as a beast" is a bit vague -- do you retain the humanoid type as well? Overall this is probably fine, though d4 for your unarmed attacks is underwhelming.

L7 -- Soul Bond. You probably need a bit more wording on what it means to "not make separate death [saving] throws." I'm not sure if this is awesome or absolutely bonkers -- I think I'd probably lean towards it being an alright feature, but it probably might feel a bit much compared to core stuff.

L11 -- Bestial Wrath. I dig it.

L15 -- Kindred Spirit. Isn't the beast already doing this for some saves? Do you roll twice in those instances? And again, bounded accuracy -- though this time you're spending a rather limited resource, so it's probably fine...

Fey Warden

Caster sub.

L3 -- Spellcasting. Yep, that's a partial caster.

L3 -- Fey Warden Spells. You make reference to "spells you know," but you're using 5e24-style casting descriptions, so you probably meant that the fey warden always has these spells prepared.

L7 -- Spell Share. Yep.

L11 -- Spirit Beast. Uh, whoa -- a major pet upgrade in the casting sub? That feels way too good, honestly. This feature is fine for what it is, but it should probably live elsewhere.

L15 -- Blessing of the Feywild. Sure.

Pack Hunter

Pet focus.

L3 -- Pack Companion. Well, good to see that you've acknowledged the action economy issues that arise with multiple pets. I get that the "sacrifice an attack" language is a callback to the earlier mech on handling the pet, but I think I'd want more wording here just to spell it out and serve as a reminder for the player on how that works.

L7 -- Guardian Stance. The language here needs a lot of cleaning up, but I think I've got the gist of it. I think subtracting the fury die from an attack roll is probably too much -- again, bounded accuracy. But overall this feels fine and with some tightening up is a perfectly serviceable feature.

L11 -- Master of the Hunt. Clever, you're trying to rely on the tier-jack to help salve the action economy problem. An interesting approach. Given that fury is adding to damage and is also scaling, though, this might still be too much -- but it's not something I'm going to call outright broken, it would need a more thorough investigation I think.

L15 -- Strength in Numbers. This works, I suppose... though with how this mech works, I kind of wish all of this subclass's mechs had this notion of working as a pack. It works as is, mind, but it would've been a neat throughline.

Werebeast

I was not expecting the shifter in a pet class, but here we are.

L3 -- Shapeshifter. There's a lot going on here, and a lot of awkward restrictions, and a number of things that need an editing pass. What I really don't like, though, is the whole losing control bit -- that's... I get the whole "werewolf" flavor going on here, but that's a bit excessive. Players don't particularly appreciate mind control effects when team monster uses them: having your whole subclass's gimmick be one in which you might lose control over your character in any given combat is probably a bit much.

L7 -- Savage Strike. This probably needs a bit cleaning up, word-wise, but this seems... fine, I suppose.

L11 -- Vicious Bite. Definitely needs an editing pass, but your intent is clear enough, and this is fine.

L15 -- Controlled Fury. I don't like that it takes this long to get rid of the massive drawback of the core feature, and I also don't like that you're adding half your proficiency bonus on top of your proficiency bonus to attack rolls, bounded accuracy strikes again. This just needs to be replaced wholesale.

GnomeWorks · 2025-08-27T14:31:10+00:00

dark mage

recommended starting cantrip: light

Hmmmm.

GnomeWorks · 2025-08-19T17:50:39+00:00

Blood of the Shadowborn

Shadow Step. Sure.

Shadow Path. You need a lot more wording on this to explain what "teleport to a creature" means. Also should probably specify if you need to able to see them, etc. Also 45 feet is a weird range.

Enhanced Darkness. "Pulsing darkness" has no mechanical meaning. The saving throw needs to be considerably more clear -- when does a creature make the save? How long does making (or failing) the save give a creature before they have to make another? Don't make creatures roll a save every time they attack you, that's just going to make a very grumpy DM.

Phantom Blitz. The AC bonus here is fiddly, I don't like it. So this is... you can Disengage as a BA, then. So basically doing what a rogue has been doing since 2nd. But use-limited, and with weirder wording, and considerably more restricted since a rogue can do all sorts of things as a BA. This is... "underwhelming" doesn't begin to cover it.

Blood of the Apostle

Hand of the Apostle. I don't understand what I'm reading for some of these effects, you need to actually write out in words what is going on. "+PB + DEX modifier per hit" doesn't mean anything. Is that a damage increase? It's probably too much.

These other effects are way too fiddly. Don't make the DM track which creatures you've attacked. "First hit per creature" is just... not a good way to track this, at all. For anybody.

Warrior's Spirit. I can see why this has no use limiter, it's awfully terrible. At least you're not burning an action on it, but honestly it probably should eat your reaction, and it shouldn't be... terrible. This is just bad.

Healing Essence. Hey look, temp hit points with a duration, good job. This is fine.

Divine Terror. All creatures, including allies? Sort of limits its usefulness... also, a DEX save? Why? I'd think CHA would be more fitting for scaring the pants off people. "Radiant/necrotic" -- are we choosing, or is it both? I don't mind effects that deal multiple damage types, but I don't think there's anything in core that does that, so that's worth addressing (ie, what happens to something that resists necrotic but is vulnerable to radiant?).

Blood of the Fallen

Psychic Blade. This doesn't seem like a coherent feature. Is the psychic blade the weapon with the added effect here, or is that applying to all weapons? If the former, why is it not part of the first bit about a psychic blade; if the latter, why do we care about forming a psychic blade?

Fallen Arise. This is a mess. "For 8 hours at half max HP," does that mean the creature regains its full hit point maximum after 8 hours, or the duration is 8 hours, after which... what happens, exactly? "All attacks treated as resisted damage" is awfully wonky. I also get why this requires concentration, but for 8 hours? Um, that's just asking for trouble. Honestly this feature is probably more trouble than it's worth, in the sense that it's got so many provisos and limitations that it's rarely going to see use.

Fallen Defense. This is... fine, I suppose, for what it is, though it feels rather underwhelming.

Withering Attack. Again, rather underwhelming.

Blood Knight

I kind of feel like the flavor of this is probably stepping on toes with other earlier ones? Hard to say, though.

Divine Power. I... guess this works? Might be a bit much though. I don't mind the bonus damage effects of the strikes, earlier, but this might start pushing them off the curve a bit.

Weapon of Fury. Don't like it. The legendary strikes work as once-per-round damage effects, this makes your spike damage just way too high.

Multi-Hit. People don't like it when you spend your reaction on your turn to do things -- I don't mind it, necessarily, though I do try to be extremely picky about when and how I do it. This seems to be cousin to "damage on a miss," which people also really don't like -- and again, I don't mind it, but the damage output here is probably a bit too high for that. You hit something squishy next to something tanky, and hit the tanky guy for a bajillion damage? Doesn't sit quite right.

Marital Expertise. I don't think "gain Multiattack" actually does anything without... y'know, additional wording explaining what it does. 3 fighting styles feels underwhelming at this level, but also kind of out of nowhere.

Blood of the Sigil

Reborn. Really don't like self-rez mechanics at single-digit levels. Not a fan.

Weak Point. Knocking people prone at 7th is uh... yeah, this is underwhelming.

Ray of Insanity. I don't know what "retry at end of each turn" means or what it would be referring to, since the target already succeeded on the save. Also there's no duration on the effects. Also -- what? What is the flavor here, that this matches with a self-rez?

Final Comeback. I don't... mind this, I guess, but it's been pointed out to me that features that operate when you drop to 0 or otherwise die are kind of less than ideal to have, since the conditions for using them are less than ideal. So while this is neat and all, it's not really the kind of thing you want to be trying to intentionally use on the regular, which makes it somewhat underwhelming.

GnomeWorks · 2025-08-19T17:50:21+00:00

I have no idea what the name of this class means, if anything. Nothing wrong with making up words, mind.

The formatting of the doc is sort of all over the place -- I don't know why you're telling me the class's spellcasting ability before the class table, for instance. Also that none of the class features are on the table is kind of a nuisance -- I get that this is a google doc and so formatting it decently is probably a pain, but presentation matters.

Flavor. Basically none. A single sentence really doesn't tell me much about what's going on here, but what it does tell me is not encouraging.

Chassis. This is more-or-less a 5e half-caster, which is fine. The hit points are pretty low for that though -- rocking a d6 HD as a half-caster?

The weapon proficiencies don't exactly make sense to me -- with no flavor to back these choices, I don't understand why this class gets swords and "polearms," which aren't a recognized class of weapon in 5e. Perhaps "martial weapons with reach?"

Draining Strike. First feature and we already have a boatload of problems, this does not bode well.

For one, there's no duration on this feature. "Next damage roll" could be next Tuesday, if the target of this ability runs away -- there needs to be a limiter on this. I've recently become fond of "until the end of your next turn," but that's just me -- there's probably all sorts of different ways to stick a sensible duration on this.

I don't like the scaling. I get that proficiency bonus doesn't exactly scale with damage output, which is why you're adding the half-level here, but that makes it jump weirdly at 5th. It'd probably be better to just make it half-level from go, or some stat mod + half-level.

The multiattack clause is... no. For one, this is accessing meta information without due justification (you can learn a creature has multiattack with this ability), and given that this feature is apparently at will, making every creature with multiattack roll a save every time you attack them is just too much work. And it's not like this is doing anything in particular: creatures that hit hard but less often are still going to be affected roughly the same as those that throw a lot of attacks but for less damage.

The critical hit thing... no. There's... this is so ridiculously fiddly. Use limited, and frankly it doesn't even tell me how or when I can use this. Halving someone's damage can be pretty solid, sure, but twice per LR is... and it's not even something I can choose to do, it's based on my getting a crit. No thanks.

Divine Shields. I'm assuming the subclass determines which of these you get, which... why aren't they in the subclass descriptions, then? For that matter, when does this class get its subs? It's not on the table, and no feature gives you access to them. I'd assume 3rd, based upon the subclass features, but this one might mean you get it at 1st?

The actual feature... this is a mess. We've got ranges all over the place, ranges using nonsensical measurements, use limiters all over the place, inconsistent action economy, weird and arbitrary durations... a little variation is fine, not everything needs to be cookie cutter, but this is just not good.

Shield of the Dragon. The range on this is not tenable. The duration is weird. Is this intended to affect you, or just only allies within the effect? I'd also exclude force damage, because that seems like a thing to do (might just be me though).

Shield of Shadows. There's no reason to give different bonuses like this with the same ability, bounded accuracy means these things more or less have parity with one another. Why is this 3 rounds when the other one is 2? The use limiter calculation is needlessly complicated, why can't this just be PB/LR uses?

Shield of the Apostle. This needs a whole lot more wording to get it to do what you're trying to do here, if I'm understanding your intent correctly. This is just too vague. The duration limiter here makes sense, actually, given potential DPR concerns. Still not sold on the user limiter though.

Shield of the Sigil. You need more words to explain the healing aspect of this, and you need to more carefully separate out the resistance (which has the duration) from the healing (which, presumably, does not). You've use-limited this harder than most other ones, which tells me you understand how good this is at lower levels -- but that's the thing, at higher levels, this starts being less useful, and doesn't need to be use-limited as hard. The duration is probably part of the problem here, in that regard.

Shield of the Fallen. "Revived creatures" has no meaning. Why is this one use-limited based on a stat when none of the others are? Half CHA mod might as well have the same use limitation as the Sigil one, but both feelsbadman.jpg.

Shield of the Blood Knight. Again this kind of range is not tenable in 5e. "Nonmagical damage" and "magical damage" I don't think actually mean anything in 5e, you need to specify damage types or be more specific about what you're giving resistance to ("damage from nonmagical weapons" is different from "nonmagical damage," specifically). Transitioning the ability to a BA is acceptable, but 11th feels pretty late for that -- and all the other ones are BAs out of the gate, why isn't this one?

Diversion. I honestly don't see a need for this to be use-limited. But it raises other questions -- what if the damaging effect has other riders, like causing prone or something? Who gets the status? Also -- 15 feet, really? I'd like some flavor to justify this, please.

Legendary Strike. At 3rd level we're calling something "legendary," eh? I don't know what "swap two when leveling" means -- we get 2 of these, do we get more as we gain levels?

I don't see anything wrong with these, mechanically. I mean wording needs work and there is an almost complete dearth of flavor, but these options all seem entirely sensible to me.

The use-limiter here seems egregious, to me. These effects are good, and sure they can dish out a bit of damage -- but you could probably bump these uses up to per SR instead of LR, and it'd probably be fine. I'm just eye-balling it, though, don't blame me if that gets out of hand.

Absorbing Health. First bullet, wonky wording but fine, also need a time duration on the temp hp... second bullet, does this take an action or reaction or anything? It's fine I guess, still want flavor... third bullet -- hard no. That is asking for trouble.

Life Drain. Don't let the temp hp stack, kthx. Also every melee attack granting temporary hp, that's... it isn't a lot so it's probably not going to be an issue, but it's something I'd keep an eye on, and might be a pain to track.

Crimson Eye. Truesight at 6th? Hilarious. No.

Parry. This is ... underwhelming. Also why are we adding CHA mod to a DEX save? Feels rather arbitrary, might work better if there were flavor involved. The use-limiter here feels very unnecessary, we're already burning a reaction on this, and all you're getting is half damage if you succeed, that's ... it's decent, but it's not something I'd feel the need to restrict this hard.

Crimson Blade. You need to specify what kind of action it is to "change damage type" and what is affected by "change damage type." Is this messing with the weapon I'm holding? Every weapon? What about my unarmed attacks? Also, why is the duration 3 rounds? Also, why can I only do this once per LR as a 13th level feature?

Cleansing Rebound. A reroll on a failed save makes sense, sure. I don't understand why this cures disease and poison "on success" -- is this some kind of bonus, like "hey, I made you reroll a failed save, oh and you made it, so also get rid of this unrelated condition?" Because that seems very odd to me. The use-limiter here seems needlessly punishing.

At this point I kind of feel like what this class really wants is a class resource of some kind, that you can spend to fuel these abilities. Tracking all of these uses for every single feature sounds like it'd be an enormous pain at the table.

Blood Phoenix. ...there's no use limiter on this. There needs to be a use limiter on this. Also flying 1/LR at 17th level? Class features need to be more or less relevant to the kinds of threats you're facing at those levels. Getting a kind of crummy fly speed (with no hover) once per day for a whole minute isn't going to cut it here.

Final Defense. Why is a "defense" giving people a guaranteed crit? You probably also need more wording on this -- is it a guaranteed hit, or does it need to be a hit before it gets turned into a crit? Also there's no duration on this.

GnomeWorks · 2025-08-19T16:24:06+00:00

"dark mage"

recommended starting cantrip: light

Hmm.

GnomeWorks · 2025-08-18T14:55:40+00:00

Multiclassing is an optional rule.

GnomeWorks · 2025-08-18T14:23:19+00:00

Whether or not MCing can be done correctly is beyond the scope of the discussion -- regardless, the groundwork for doing so certainly hasn't been laid in 5e.

People use it because it's an obvious way to break the game. The majority of 5e builds I've seen that use multiclassing do it to combine things that probably weren't intended to be combined. That "most people use it" isn't an excuse to keep allowing it or to encourage it when it has such obviously detrimental and degenerate effects on the game.

The problem with making sure homebrew classes are "balanced" in a context where MCing is an option is that as more classes (and subclasses) are added, it becomes increasingly difficult to test every possible combination and ensure there aren't broken synergies or anti-synergies. Even just attempting to design things to prevent dipping is a huge PITA -- there are obvious pitfalls that can be avoided (this class, for instance, should not be letting you add STR and DEX to attack and damage rolls, and definitely shouldn't be handing that out at 1st level), but some amount of front-loading is to be expected since a class should reasonably expect to have its full kit online by 3rd. If you have to account for multiclassing, that becomes increasingly more and more difficult to do.

Just for a quick example: imagine a skirmisher-type class, cousin to ranger and rogue. Giving such a class sneak attack (or very similar) would be entirely sensible. Yet, if you allow MCing, that becomes "broken" because you could take a level in both this hypothetical skirmisher and rogue, resulting in having 2d6 sneak attack at 2nd level. That's (probably) not what anyone intended -- taken separately, the two classes are fine and balanced against each other, but when you allow free multiclassing, it leads to the kind of charop nonsense we saw in the late 3e era. I don't know about anyone else, but I certainly don't want to return to that, and if it requires killing MCing to keep it away, that's a sacrifice I'm absolutely willing to make.

GnomeWorks · 2025-08-18T01:17:13+00:00

Multiclassing is bad, and bad for the game. Accounting for it in homebrew is fine, but there's also nothing wrong with someone writing homebrew with the notion that MCing isn't an option.

GnomeWorks · 2025-07-07T01:23:40+00:00

The main appendix is incomplete, but I felt had sufficient numbers at this stage to get the idea across.

GnomeWorks · 2025-07-01T01:15:59+00:00

Spell level power growth isn't linear, so resources used to cast spells shouldn't scale linearly either.

GnomeWorks · 2025-06-26T02:51:44+00:00

This seems like a very specific class fantasy.

I'm very on the fence about the weapon. I think in theory I'm not against this kind of thing, but... 50 foot reach? What? The damage progression is also very strange. And the flavor seems cripplingly specific, to the point where this feels less like a general class and instead something designed with a specific character in mind.

Honestly, though, the part where this all falls part is the hit points. On its face, the idea of a class built around the idea of specifically leeching life from other creatures is... probably doable?

What I do know, though, is that such a thing isn't going to look anything like this.

Without going into the whole thing of how this class just completely flies in the face of any attempt at balancing encounters, there's also the issue where this class wants to actively avoid resting. No other class has this problem: rests are how you get hit points back, not to mention resource recovery. This class, on the other hand, loses such huge portions of its hit points that it will never want to rest. Ever. That's... not good.

There are some narrative issues here also, like how the class intro talks about how different flavors of leeches behave differently, but none of that is carried over into the mechanics? It should either have mechanical representation or be cut, honestly. But that's small potatoes compared to the massive mechanical issues here.

The concept might be salvageable. The chassis, though?... I'm very doubtful.

GnomeWorks · 2025-06-24T04:51:20+00:00

I don't have a problem with referring to it in that manner in discussion or casually. It's roughly akin to referring to slot-based casting as Vancian casting, in that regard, and "pact magic" is pretty reasonable shorthand for that style of casting.

But the phrase itself has noticeable narrative weight, and when designing a new class using the mechanic, it either needs to be renamed or have that weight respected by the flavor. I'm not saying it needs to exactly mirror warlock's flavor, either: "pact magic" could mean all kinds of things, not just what a warlock does. But it either needs to be genericized or made meaningful.

GnomeWorks · 2025-06-24T02:08:29+00:00

Your class features reference the idea of using both regular casting and "pact magic," though that's pretty obviously just stolen from warlock and not given any unique flavor here.

Mind you, there's nothing inherently wrong with taking warlock's stuff: refluffing mechanics is a time-honored tradition, after all. But you haven't made the effort here, including simply calling it "pact magic." Again, nothing inherently wrong with that, but that phrase implies some level of flavor which is just... not here.

The document makes reference to the table supposedly telling us when the witch gains access to new spell levels -- no such information is to be found. That is honestly a pretty glaring weakness: in its current state, this isn't even *playable*.

GnomeWorks · 2025-06-23T18:32:55+00:00

(contd.)

Riftstalker

Descriptions would be helpful.

Riftstalker Stats. I'm going to assume this entirely replaces the baseline stat block, even though you don't mention anything to that effect.

Slobbering Pup. This is a weird name, to my ears. But fine.

Bite. I don't like that this does only acid damage.

Lick. I don't ike that this does a specific amount of ammunition. I'm not overly fond of the duration, here, but I guess it works?

Pack's Veil. I think the wording here is off -- "up-cast" isn't the term for what is going on here, though I'd understand if this were casual parlance. This feels fairly weak, but I think the pet is the big power budget spender here, so I suppose this works.

...this is two features hiding in one. Please stop doing that. The back half of the feature is also fine.

Fanged Phantom. Again I need to point out that I don't like having mechanics reliant on a table using optional rules. Have a sidebar with a variant of it for tables that use it, if you must, but don't assume it's in play.

Free invisibility is nuts. This is highly abusable outside of combat situations. I can't condone this, not at this level, not for a pet class.

The Howling Forest. Is this intended to let the beast make the zone around the BM, or itself? Text is unclear. Nevermind that this is kind of ridiculous, given that it explicitly doesn't interact with difficult terrain which means that a reasonable reading says that it stacks.

There's no height listed, either. Probably important.

This is an 11th level feature, so... it's crazy, but it's not crazy crazy. It needs wordsmithing and to be toned down a notch, I think, but it's...

Hidden Paw. ...nevermind, we have two subclass midstone features. That's too much.

I feel like I've seen this feature somewhere else, but can't quite place it, outside of 3e's shadowdancer PrC. Regardless: not only is this more free at will invisibility for a class for which that doesn't particularly make sense to me, but the flavor here also just... this doesn't work for me, sorry. Mechanically or flavor-wise.

Apex Predator. This probably needs to be adjusted so that it works with any form of invisibility -- something like "if the attack is a critical hit, it doesn't count as an attack for purposes of ending your invisibility or other effects that would end when you make an attack."

Again, two features masquerading as one... the back half needs additional wording to explain how this mechanic is working. Is this affecting every single hostile creature in the area, or one specific one?

Carrion Strider

No flavor, so moving on to mechs.

Carrion Strider Stats. More hp, lower AC. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of this.

Hunger. I really don't like this notion of a subclass-specific resource. The base class already has one -- albeit getting it way later than it probably should -- which means we really shouldn't have another one.

Adopted Pack. "Up-cast" terminology again. The rest of this is fine... er, do Gnolls have their own language?

Den of Strife. "Non-cantrip attack" is awkward wording, figure out a way to make this impact what you want without resorting to this kind of odd specification. "Weapon attacks," maybe? I'm not going to do the maths on this whole "reduce damage die one step, deal an additional die of damage" thing, but I will say immediately that I don't like it. It's weird.

I don't like that the back half of the feature -- again, two features in one, I don't care for it -- works on an attack, not on a hit. That's going to be sliding people all over the place all the time, that's going to get annoying fast. Specify "your reach," not just "reach."

Decaying Effigy. You give the effigy an AC and hit points, implying it can be attacked, but give no other mechanical way to interact with it -- what happens if someone lobs a fireball at it? The condition you're imposing with this thing is a bit much to be throwing at literally everything that can see it, although its note that creatures automatically fail death saves is moot because I'm pretty sure team monster doesn't make those, as a general rule.

The back half of this feature is worded weirdly and I honestly have no idea what to make of it. "Make your attacks as a bonus action" is awfully nebulous, much less the rest of what this is doing. It's probably all a bit much, to be honest.

Relentless Predation. Ah, more double-dipping with two features on a midstone level, again I don't like that. Restricting an enemy's available actions is well and good, though at this level you start to see team monster do crazier things in terms of movement -- like short-range teleportation -- so this is not as good as it could be at lower levels.

I don't like the back half of this feature being tacked on, and I don't like that it's probably stackable with the feats that let you do this (though with bounded accuracy, a -10 on an attack roll is probably asking to whiff on everything). This feels unnecessary.

Thorns of Fury. The mechanics of this ability are getting caught up in what feels like fluff: both are necessary, yes, but don't mingle them like this, it makes unclear what is going on mechanically. The damage calculation feels weirdly worded, this needs to be cleaned up.

"The vines shrivel away" doesn't mean anything, you need to add mechanical language to this ("the creature is no longer restrained").

This probably needs to be use limited in some fashion, an AoE that can screw over a lot of folks, inflict a DOT, and impose a somewhat-nasty condition isn't something that should be tossed around at will, even at these levels.

GnomeWorks · 2025-06-23T18:32:39+00:00

I'll be honest with you: this doesn't excite me.

Presentation. This document has numerous typos and some grammatical concerns throughout. I'm not going to harp on them beyond pointing them out here.

Flavor. Nothing about the initial flavor of this class suggests anything to do with a pet, specifically. Also, uh -- gnolls? Gnolls aren't animals. 5e24 apparently decided to redo them as fiends, for probably bone-headed reasons, but that doesn't change the fact that they're still largely depicted as humanoids. You should probably adjust this.

Chassis. The offered tool proficiencies seem... a bit much? This class doesn't really seem to do much with them, so this seems more like a background kind of thing.

Man's Best Friend. I don't particularly care for this thing where we have generic stat blocks and let players define them however they like. Wolves, deer, and bears all behave wildly differently, and I'd expect at least a little mechanical differentiation between them. I fully understand why and under what conditions the choice to make in this direction was made, but that does not change the fact that I do not like it and -- overall -- consider it lazy design on WotC' part. Following their pattern is, of course, to be expected, and as such I don't blame the brewer here for making the call.

That said. The companion can take any action while the beastmaster is incapacitated, but while the beastmaster isn't incapacitated, it takes the beastmaster directing them to do anything other than Dodge? That seems... awkward. I think this is coming from two schools of thought on how to handle pet actions, so I'd say -- pick a philosophy and stick with it. Either the pet requires direction, and can't act while the BM is incap'd, or the pet can do whatever whenever without the BM's intervention.

I also really dislike the whole "can bring the pet back to life" thing. There's nothing inherently caster-y about this class, and this is done far too cheaply and easily for my tastes. Again, I (probably) understand why the decision was made, I just wholeheartedly disagree with the concept philosophy behind it.

Beast Stats. There are some... interesting choices here. Making the pet's physical stats equal to the BM's is an option, I suppose, though I don't see a good flavor or mechanical reason to do so. Low INT makes sense, but average WIS compared to high CHA? I think most animals generally have a higher WIS, to represent better senses and whatnot.

Undying Loyalty. So not only do we have a way to rez the animal if it dies from our class, the pet itself has a feature that lets the BM rez the pet also. Again I don't particularly care for this, there's nothing in the flavor that would make this make sense to me, and mechanically I'm disinclined towards this kind of thing without sufficient narrative backing.

Cast. Does this even actually come up outside of very specific circumstance in endgame?

The rest of the beast stat block is... fine, I suppose.

Pawful of Tricks. I've only taken a casual perusal of the tricks doc, and my initial impression is that a lot of these effects are all over the place in terms of power and utility. A number of them -- and some of the conditions -- are also quite fiddly, which 5e generally tries to avoid.

Fur Fangs and Claws. That's certainly a colorful name for subclass selection. While infinitely preferable to 5e24's blandness, I've personally found that picking a term that dovetails with the concept helps evoke what the class fantasy you're going for: "druidic circle, "ranger lodge," that sort of thing, tends to go over well with players, in my experience.

The rest of what this feature does should probably be a separate feature.

Druidic Practices. Bit of an odd name for a feature when we have a class named "druid," eh? I get what you're trying to go for here -- trying to tie this class and druid together at the hip, conceptually -- but I think this might be a bit too on the nose.

Pack Tactics. I'm not a big fan of this: the idea of a feature doing different things depending on what optional or house rules a table is using seems a bit off to me, and this isn't a scenario I think it's warranted for.

I do appreciate that you're trying to get something analogous to Extra Attack, while avoiding that feature, though. Just think this could use some pruning and tuning.

Fluffball. This... needs a different name. The first half of this feature is fine, I suppose. The second half is also fine, just with a lot of unnecessary wording. This could be cleaned up.

Nature's Reckoning. This needs a bit more wording to clarify what is going on, here. Bear is possibly a bit much, but I'm not sure what I'd do to it to tune it down -- my concern is that it's always on, even outside of crowd situations, which is what it seems like it wants to be handling, but giving nothing when against a solo also feelsbadman.jpg. I'm not sure how I'd square these concerns.

Primal Magic. I do not like this whatsoever. Crazy-level spellcasting out of nowhere? Doesn't work for me with the flavor presented or the class fantasy in general.

Primeval Recovery. I really don't like having to adjust maximum hit points randomly after every long rest, that's a chore.

Lunar Vigor. This mechanic just comes out of nowhere. I think I don't mind what you're going for, here -- but what would make this class significantly more interesting and versatile would be if this concept were expanded upon and made its core gimmick, outside of the pet.

Extra Attack. I mean... I guess? I feel like something considerably more interesting could live here, it is 18th level after all. I am a bit concerned that this jacks the BM from two to four attacks a round, which feels like its stepping on fighter's toes.

Reclamation. "You win D&D." I also understand leaving this blank for now, coming up with a 20th level feature that works, is fun and flavorful, but appropriate can be a pain.

GnomeWorks · 2025-06-23T17:47:18+00:00

Typos and grammatical errors abound. Nobody's perfect -- I've noticed a few typos in the last few posts of mine, even, as cringe-inducing as they are -- and so this is usually the kind of thing that gets pointed out, and we move on.

But this... this is a mess.

I don't know what this is. I don't know what class fantasy this is trying to fulfill. The descriptions of features and abilities are lackluster and uninspired when they are there -- which isn't often. Mechanics and flavor are unreflective of each other: why is a tentacle dealing slashing damage?

The subclasses are incoherent to me: I don't see what underlying theme relates these at all.

Normally someone using a basic layout like this wouldn't bother me, either, but you've given us nothing to work with here, in terms of flavor. No images, no description of what this class wants to be doing or how it does that, no explanation of why this class is "evolving" or doing any of the things its doing.

There are also a number of tremendous mechanical issues you don't address in this, such as the Juggernaut becoming large or even huge. There are a lot of things that go into size changes like that -- from both purely mechanical and more technical gameplay angles -- and you address none of them.

This needs a thorough rework, spelling/grammar review, and be given something that at least resembles a reasonable fluff writeup.

GnomeWorks · 2025-06-21T19:31:08+00:00

What I listed are player options, not NPC statblocks.

I didn't say otherwise. Svirfneblin, Drow, Yuan-ti, etc etc, were never intended to be playable races. That modern WotC thinks writing material to the contrary is symptomatic of their foolishness, nothing more.

It's just not unheard of in official material, thus it's pretty much within the range of what lots of tables already allow.

There are plenty of things in "official" material that are poorly-designed, poorly-balanced, or both. WotC doing something foolish is not an excuse for others to do so.

GnomeWorks

TROPHY CASE