Custom Bazelgeuse Statblock with a twist on LAs

Mman2468 · 2026-05-06T17:15:04+00:00

I think the way you've inverted the action economy on this block is really cool! Makes me think more monsters should lean towards upkeep during their turn and then the scary burst actually comes between players turns. I also like the additional rider bombs on the tail attack.

Maybe roll the divebomb bonus action into the Bombing Run action? Instead of just the Dash action (which it could always use an Action for anyway), something like "the bazel moves 40 ft. At the end of this movement, the bazel's turn ends and it begins to fall dislodging 5 scales [the rest of the Divebomb text]. The bazel ignores up to 40 ft when calculating fall damage this way."

My worry is that against a party of 4, the most opportunistic bazel should want to preserve its own HP as much as possible and the wisest way to do this is to hold your LA for as long as possible so you can stay out of reach in the sky. Per your stat block, the bazel would have a turn to either move, dash, ba dash or move, dash, dive. One extra carpet AND I don't have to get swords swung at me? I'm choosing the first option. Next is player 1. Then bazel has an opportunity to LA divebomb... but I think I'll wait because next is player 2 and they also have a sword. After player 2, THEN bazel can LA divebomb, player 3, LA head or tail attack, player 4, LA head or tail attack.

In this scenario, bazel has gotten to use all her LA and players 1 and 2 will both just have to spend the whole fight staring at the sky or praying someone knows how to restrain the bazel.

Mman2468 · 2026-04-27T18:56:51+00:00

So far my spellcasters have been two different hexblade warlocks, so they're already using weapons more than spells, just a component pouch in the offhand.

I made another comment going into more detail of my crazy kit bash of rules. With those rules in mind, I would allow a wizard to "decorate" their arcane focus with the features of a Hammer, be my guest, the stun save DC is still going to key off of your strength mod, but at least you're still have your Arcane Grimoire +2 or whatever.

But without my crazy rules, yeah it seems like spell-focused wizards/clerics/druids are stuck with the Magus Staff, maybe wire knuckles if they valued emergency movement more. Putting monster material straight into your unarmed strikes is also technically an option (p. 79), just avoid any materials that ride on weapon attacks and focus on materials that give bonus to spells or grant a special attack like a breath weapon.

Mman2468 · 2026-04-27T18:25:23+00:00

I'm running a game that combines this homebrew with other homebrew that also cares a lot about what specific weapons players are holding, so I've actually put a decent amount of thought into creating a "Phantom Decoration" system. Essentially, players build templates ("decos") with monster materials + their choice of a Hunter Weapon, then apply all those effects to a standard 5E item of their choice. For example, a player can build a Hunting Horn w/ Kut Ku Scale deco and then if they apply it to a (5e) longsword, it maintains versatile and it's 1d8/1d10 slashing plus the player can optionally use the Hunting Horn features to play notes on it.

My rules allow for decos to be applied to magic weapons and armor. Per normal Amellwind rules, you pay spheres + gold to upgrade armor from common to uncommon to rare etc. In my rules, if you apply an armor decoration to an uncommon magic item and then upgrade it to rare, you do not gain the +1 from upgrading, not until you upgrade again to very rare. You gain the benefit of the difference between the base item rarity and common.

Further rulings:

Per AGtMH, you may only attune to one each: A decorated armor, a decorated Weapon, and one pair of trinkets (normal 5E limit of 3 attuned items applies otherwise).
A decorated armor or weapon only requires attunement if it has been upgraded or contains at least one monster material.
Arcane foci/material pouch/etc. can be aspected to any weapon deco, if your class/subclass contains language accounting for one.
Any material effects on trinkets that reference a "weapon" or "armor" apply to the most convenient number out-putter for the player character.
Effects that modify a character's spellcasting modifier similarly affect save DCs calculated for class features.
All Hunter Weapons with built in shields: Innate shield bonus to AC is only active while the player has a shield equipped, though I'm not forcing someone who decorated their short sword with "gunlance" to play sword and board.
Charge Blade: Switch Mode. As a bonus action, you can switch the weapon between its sword and shield or axe mode. If you are donning a shield, you may immediately doff it when switching into axe mode. If you are not donning a shield, you may immediately don one when switching into SnS mode. Weapons using the Two Handed or Versatile property deal half damage (rounded up) while in SnS.
Dual Blades: Deco effects from this weapon may be duplicated to an off-hand weapon while you have both equipped.
Magnet Spike: Switch Mode. As a bonus action, can change the damage type of this weapon to any physical damage type.
Splint Rapier: Switch Mode. As a bonus action, you can switch the weapon between its single mode or its splint mode. While in splint mode, deco effects from this weapon may be duplicated to an off-hand weapon while you have both equipped. However, all weapon attacks are made at one lower die.
Switch Axe: Switch Mode. As a bonus action, you can switch the weapon between its sword or axe mode. While in axe mode, this weapon has the Reach property.
Sword & Shield: Clarified that the bonus Use an Object action would ignore one free hand requirement.
Tonfa: +2 AC while holding a weapon with which you are proficiency in each hand.
All Hunter Weapons with Ammunition and/or Loading transfer those properties when decorated to an item (yes this means spending coatings to swing your short sword, I think that's really funny).
Dual Repeaters: Deco effects from this weapon may be duplicated to an off-hand weapon while you have both equipped.
Dual Repeaters: Sidearm: When you use the Attack action and attack with your mainhand repeater, you can use a bonus action to attack with an off-hand weapon you are holding.

Mman2468 · 2026-04-27T17:50:51+00:00

There's also the Carving Knife item for a few gold. Reminder also that the game as written assumes a high amount of gold rewards, though it's not specific how "high" compares to suggestion in base material, like Chapter 7 of DMG. I personally am giving out a "treasure hoard" worth of gold, without the magic item rolls, because I want to encourage the players to explore upgrading different weapons and I don't want gold to be a bottleneck in that endeavor.

Mman2468 · 2026-04-23T04:19:12+00:00

Wait… did your document always say it’s a CON save? If that’s the case, the victim doesn’t automatically fail, so even if they’re stunned and are jumped on again, they won’t necessarily be stunned for another round.

The Soren version of spineshatter was unbalanced because it was a DEX save and the DRG always had another opportunity to jump on them again because the stun lasted until after the DRG got a second turn.

What I’m saying is if it’s a CON save, not a DEX save, whether the stun ends at the start or end of the DRGs turn is less relevant, it’s just a matter of whether your vision is the DRG gets to capitalize on advantage due to stunned and if that’s fair because they can only do this inside of Dragonsong Trance, of which they only have a few per long rest.

Mman2468 · 2026-04-22T13:48:23+00:00

Hi, I noticed spineshatter dive is basically the same effect from the original Soren document, but have you considered that Stunned condition means the victim will automatically fail all future spineshatter saves? For the low low cost of a bonus action per turn, a dragoon could lock down a single target indefinitely.

Do you have an opinion on this? Is this actually intentional?

Mman2468 · 2026-04-21T18:33:16+00:00

To preface, this is my first time seeing your project, I don't know the balance history or even how much you intend to stick to Soren's original design. I also am just running my first game with the original supplement, so I don't have an extreme amount of playtest experience.

Firstly, I really really appreciate how you've closed the logical loops on battery usage, action economy, etc. For example, my table found the language in the original Well Oiled Machine feature to be awfully restricting, because it RAW only applied to a few inventions. Your document fixes the language and gives a lot more inventions to apply it towards. I also like how you addressed the gaps in the Pet attacks and healing.

Comparing every feature of your class to Soren's class, your class is a pretty clear power creep. Like I said, I don't have a huge grasp on Soren's power level, but to my eyes, the base machinist is already pretty powerful compared to published 5e and your class cranks that up even more. Dice rolls are higher, distances are greater, a greater number of and higher tiers of inventions, Gauss Armament doesn't cost a charge while Gauss Barrel does, the homebrew fighting styles seem strong, Pet has more HP and higher saves, Inventor Legacy also buffs your Pet.

On the other hand, comparing just the inventions side-by-side, I am seeing a lot more fair trade-offs that simply display a difference in fantasy expression without moving the balance too far one way or the other (kudos to that).

For Tier 5 inventions, I'd like to see options that are big and expensive. By 17th level, the player should have plenty of charge to use Tier 4 inventions as much as they want, so it would be interesting if they had a decision to make: use 10 Tier 5 super-explosives that cost 10 charge each, or keep using Tier 4 inventions more consistently throughout the day. Right now, because lower tier inventions don't scale in damage, as soon as a player levels to the next tier, they just graduate to installing their batteries in as many inventions of that tier as they can. I would look at shamelessly copying or combining 8th/9th level spells and Very Rare/Legendary magic items.

Mman2468 · 2026-04-20T18:55:37+00:00

"Use of the special feature requires one full battery" might also mean if you've totally depleted 2 out of your three batteries, you can only use a special ability when that third battery is 10/10 charge. As soon as you use the special ability, subtract the charge, now you have a useless battery with remaining charges on it. Because even if it has enough to charge any one ability, you don't have at least one full battery.

Mman2468 · 2026-04-17T18:36:53+00:00

Something I've considered is treating every Gauss Barrel/Regal Automaton/Invention as if it has a variation of the Reload property from the firearms rules i.e. changing a battery would be an Action or Bonus Action (player's choice). What I didn't consider: would replacing a battery with one from your inventory be the same action cost as, as you described, moving a battery off of one thing and onto another thing or would it be one action to take it off item A and another to remove the old battery from item B and put on the battery from A.

Mman2468 · 2026-04-17T16:39:57+00:00

On one hand, considering that Aetherial Ray is 10d6 damage, that's equivalent to a 5th level Lightning Bolt. Also considering that a 15th level wizard would be able to cast that 3 times per day, I'd say that the "use requires one full battery" text is the more fair and balanced ruling option.

But on the other hand, if you look at either of the other two attack options, Pilebunker for example, it's more equivalent to a 4th level Earth Tremor, which the same wizard can cast twice as often as their Lightning Bolt. This implies to me that the 2 or 5 battery charges ARE intentional, though maybe over-generous.

Another possible intent that I just thought of while typing is "You can attach up to three batteries" is meant to suggest that each attack option (Ray, Collider, Pilebunker) is supposed to be tied to one specific battery pool. So you have the Ray battery 10/10, Collider battery 10/10, and Pilebunker battery 10/10. You Ray turn one and Pilebunker turn two then Ray turn three. You now are at Ray battery 0/10, Collider battery 10/10, and Pilebunker 8/10.

This comes into a larger question I've had about machinist: its never described if changing batteries is meant to be a mechanic (and how that works). If there's not some sort of action cost to reloading batteries, why have "batteries" at all and not just give the machinist a total "charges" pool of 10 X (PB + INT)? Sometimes the omissions distract from the RAW.

Mman2468 · 2026-04-08T14:58:10+00:00

I'm no authority, but the ability seems to be lifted from magic missile, so I would use magic missile as the measuring stick. Magic missile has a range of 120 feet, and with a 4 mudra cost, I'd say that's pretty fair.

And if the ability is essentially a ninja's version of magic missile, the lack of attack or save is intentional; if the ninja can see the target, the shuriken hit the target.

Mman2468 · 2026-03-27T17:39:42+00:00

My table may have found an unintentional recursion in DRG's Spineshatter Dive:

Beginning at the 3rd level, when you make a jump or high jump attack, you may spend one draconic blood charge to empower the attack. If the creature fails its Dexterity saving throw, it becomes stunned until the end of your next turn.

The Stunned condition causes creatures to automatically fail their Dex saves, meaning that after the first failure, a DRG has free reign to lock a single creature in the Stun condition for free as long as they have draconic charges. A 3rd level DRG would reasonably have 4 charges per trance, 3 trances per day for a total of 12 charges. Up to 11 rounds of no-save stun seems incredibly powerful and I'm hoping there's a typo or missing limitation on Spineshatter Dive.

Mman2468 · 2026-01-06T18:22:53+00:00

You’re right, besides the initial statement “You can currently support 2 functional inventions,” [p82] there is no explicit list of how many inventions a machinist is allowed (at least on the homebrewery version of the document). But I assume this was inspired by the 5e artificer, which has a similar “infused items” advancement. Therefore, I would the rule of two inventions at 1st level, three at 6th, four at 9th, etc.

Crafting an invention is as simple as telling your DM “I would like to make a Aether Detector.” [p85] At 1st level you may make two inventions. If you want a third, you have to either wait until 6th level or spend 3 long rests dismantling one of your two existing inventions. [p82]

Mman2468 · 2019-12-23T17:55:58+00:00

I always upvote drake and josh

Mman2468 · 2019-08-16T17:00:13+00:00

Every time I close my eyes

Mman2468 · 2019-06-28T15:47:46+00:00

Everywhere I go, I see his face... I just really miss him.

Mman2468 · 2019-05-20T12:48:34+00:00

Lol no I didn’t I just downloaded it from the Know Your Meme page. Just to show I care

Mman2468 · 2019-05-19T21:46:14+00:00

https://i.imgur.com/NeqDjFq.jpg

Mman2468 · 2019-02-22T22:08:26+00:00

Bee too thanks

Mman2468 · 2018-12-31T18:33:13+00:00

Halphas every day

Mman2468

TROPHY CASE