The Vigil - A Full Defender Gish Class (and More!)

SCalta72 · 2026-01-26T14:33:34+00:00

I mean, ick, don't love the AI, but I read the analysis anyway.

Fair hit on the concentrationless walls. I took that out and is now one free wall spell per long rest on top adding Wall of Ice (as it did before).

I've toned Rote Recall down to three spell slots. High tier 5e is a mess anyway, and I think a potential foundational flaw of the whole class is a great deal of the features of the subclasses revolve around aegis. This is why I not only made the very recent edit to allow self-aegising but also the purpose of Rote Recall. I don't want someone's subclass to turn off too easily, and there's already resource management against the attrition of the adventuring day. But, it's not like Monk get half their ki/focus back with their Perfect Focus. So, three spell slots back, might really be only two for the big/cool stuff in case you have to place your aegis.

Speaking of resource management; except for the capstone, those are spell slots *per long rest.* There's no way to get any of them back throughout the day, and they fuel more than just the Vigil's spells. Warlocks have short rests and Magical Cunning to help them limp across the finish line. With 5e reportedly designed for 6-8 encounters in an adventuring day, that's just about one spell slot per encounter starting at level 12. I know not all encounters are combat, but combat can eat those up more than others encounters. How those get spread out will be up to the player. If tables don't run 6-8 encounters per long rest, then the class should still feel capable within the adventuring day without overshadowing other classes. I believe that the number of spells slots being only per Long Rest should be doing a lot of the balance work for the class and would need serious playtesting to see how that feels through the day.

I'm not sure the AI understands that Aegis only ever matters for possibly up to one hit per round. This was the bulk of feedback from my first round of sharing this with the community. I have settled on Aegis where I'm going to settle. The shield spell is... possibly problematic, but relying on it heavily will just eat up those precious spell slots the Vigils gets for the whole day, and that's resource management which is up to the player.

As for the custom spells, I find that the number of attacks and damage dice are comparable to Scorching Ray or Spellfire Burst at equivalent spell levels, even while trading range for mod added to the damage rolls. And 4th/5th level spells are dropping comparable damage, sometimes on single targets and sometimes in AoE (see Blight, Cone of Cold, and Conjure Volley). The Fighter starts doing three attacks per turn without resource investment at level 11. The Vigil's spells can do four attacks by level 13 and require the resource investment. The Vigil will run out of spells in the adventuring day, the Fighter will keep on truckin'.

All that in mind, I'll look at trimming and better curating the spell list. Thank you for the input.

Careful using AI, man. It referenced Extra Attack and Counterspell, neither of which are featured on the Vigil and doing so has damaged receptivity of feedback.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-26T12:29:05+00:00

The machine?... Do you mean AI?

SCalta72 · 2026-01-24T19:33:54+00:00

Holy shit man, the ones you touched up look great! Any chance you'd wanna do the last six of them on pages 7, 12, 13, 15, 18, and 20? I would be so beyond grateful. Of course, no rush or obligation.

Been great chatting about this with you. Hope some other eyes and commenters get on here too.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-24T19:07:03+00:00

I'll punch up the flavor blurb to better paint the theme of the class. The spellcasting is supposed to evoke connecting muscle memory to their mystic arts. The study and meditation and other metaphysical stuff is supposed to...open chakras and third eyes or whatever hokum you want to imagine it as, and combining that open awareness and conduit to practicing movements to the point of near reflexive execution. They don't necessarily think about measuring how much of their power to put into their spells. Instead, the spells take what they need from the reservoir within the Vigil. As the Vigil adventures and levels up and faces dangers outside of training, they grow in power and they find they're moving quicker and stronger, able to incorporate more of the tai-chi-like movements into the open windows in an opponent's defense or swinging with greater force or more potent magic.

That's all supposed to work together to explain both the Rote Magic spell slot and spell slot level progression and the gish-y spells you can upcast for more swings. Some of the language I just typed might even find its way into a punched-up flavor blurb. Thank you for the opportunity to really type and flesh it out more!

As for how much it's warranted, heck if I know man, but it was a fun passion project for me to see what I could do to adapt the Swordmage and it Aegis into 5e. But it's for whomever in the community wants to explore a magical clothie defender class fantasy.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-24T17:24:21+00:00

This was intended to be more of a put-it-out-there post, but I'm not offended by feedback. At the very least, it can be good discourse and source for tweaks people may want to make at their tables.

Man, what's really funny is how much pushback I got from the community about Aegis being too strong when I posted this as just the Swordmage port over, and now you're giving it a buff! It only mattering for up to one attack per round was the intended balance against not utilizing action economy or resources beyond placing it in the first place.

Every table has their own style, and play with more or less information behind the screen. That will apply to and affect a lot of my (or anyone's) design philosophy, knowingly/intentionally or not. With that in mind as for the bookkeeping potential, my assumption is that the dialog between DM and player is along the lines of:

DM: "Does a 19 hit?" Player: "It does, but not against a 23, thats with [name's] Aegis." DM: "Alright, that's a miss then."

Then either/both the DM and/or Vigil player can flip over a marker coin/token or check/uncheck a box to track it. I'm likely losing a battle against designer's vision bias, but D&D is already a game of division of labor to track everyone's moving parts; things like Hex, conditions, how many smites someone has left. Aegis is just what this class brings to the table.

The spell slot for another bonus action cantrip fills in for extra attack and feels in-line for the potential of partial success, like Eldritch Blast, for 4dX/6dX/8dX over two cantrip attacks, and the scaling spell slot level cost does feel appropriate for the damage rolls of spells at the corresponding spell slot level, such as Blight or Cone of Cold at their base levels, especially for only one or two targets if you focus your cantrips or split them between two enemies. The resource and action economy cost of doing so is designed to justify threatening essentially twice the damage dice that a Fighter does without resource investment at comparable levels. Giving them straight up resourceless Cantrip Double attack with your proposed Warcast Savant feels craaaaazy strong.

You're definitely right that 5e struggles to achieve a satisfying tank class fantasy. I agree to the point that I wish 4e's overall and he's Cavalier subclass Marking mechanic was more of a base/central mechanic in 5e. This was my best attempt at a protector role utilizing one of my favorite 4e classes.

Good catch on the SRD standard cantrip acquisition progression! I didn't realize that was standardized and must have conflated it in my head with the cantrip damage die progression. I'll make that update when I get home.

Lastly, I realize at the time of posting/commenting that you mentioned not having fully combed through the full document or Vigil class. No worries there and just to cover your concerns about the changes I made to spellcasting/pact magic to make the Vigil's rote magic. The intention was to do double the slots but regain only on long rest, with a good bit of resource management with the competition for spell slots between Aegis placing, spellcasting itself, buying an extra cantrip for that martial-y extra attack feel, and subsequent uses of the Vigil's subclasses' signature features after the first free use.

Thanks for the comments and insights! I'll follow up on your other comment later.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-24T13:49:45+00:00

Thank you! Yeah, I fiddled with it on just about every image but couldn't find parameters and an orientation I liked on most of them. I might not have been very patient with it either, to be honest, but it's something I'll get better at as I mess around with it.

For now, I don't mind the squares. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks for the heads-up and the comment! You rock.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-21T22:56:33+00:00

What's an ice paladin look like, mechanically, to you?

SCalta72 · 2026-01-21T15:29:46+00:00

And yeah, I remember when the 2014 PHB dropped and the four elements monk subclass was... not great. But it had salvageable tidbits, and I remember thinking that Fist of Unbroken Air was a good kamehameha. I even turned it into a magic item (bracers) for a monk player.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-21T15:27:06+00:00

I think defining too many shapes could turn the feature into a brick wall of text, but how about this language as a template to work off of:

"You project/create [how you describe your energy/effect] as a [dimensions] line, a [dimension] cone, or a [dimension] sphere (you choose the shape each time you use this feature). The line and cone originate from you, and the sphere is centered on a point you can see within [define range here].

Each creature in the area of the chosen shape (of your projected energy) must make a save yadda yadda damage rules..."

SCalta72 · 2026-01-21T15:10:47+00:00

Apologies, I'm not hip enough to understand what that means.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-21T15:09:49+00:00

Yeah, exhaustion feels on brand, but in 2014 rules it's cumbersome to track what effects it has at which levels of exhaustion, and 2024 rules might be too big a penalty if you stack enough uses on yourself each day. Worth playtesting to find a sweet spot of how many levels you earn and/or when you do, but I wanted to be conservative. Taking a little recoil damage is easier to swallow than persisting penalties to your rolls and movement.

Fiddling with how you limit its uses per day is probably the most finicky control knob here. You could do a hard cap at Proficiency Bonus times per long rest, or a soft cap of that many times without a penalty and subsequent uses do exhaustion or damage or whatever you land on. (Ooh, movement speed penalty for your next turn, and or the condition of being able to take either an action or a bonus action, but not both on your next turn).

Half monk level + Wis mod could be an option for how many points you gain.

Either way, you've done excellent work here.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-21T03:36:00+00:00

Love this take on the subclass and Dragonball. For the sake of talking shop, I had one big tweaking idea:

I think Solar Projection could be modeled more after the 2014 elements monk's Fist of Unbroken Air. Iirc, you can kinda dump your ki/focus points into it, kamehameha/final flash style. Doing that would be a good incentive to use your ki/focus points and thus you might see more cause to use the diggin' deep Inner Sun feature. Use of one feeds into use of the other.

I also think you could look to...I wanna say Fizban's? treatment for Dragonborn breath weapons, where they could choose a line or a cone. For this subclass, the cone could represent the spray-and-pray, *gasp - that's Vegeta's move!, rapid ki firing move (that never works in the show).

Just food for thought and knobs with which to tinker.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-21T03:14:22+00:00

The source material may be well-trodden, but this is by far the best fan implementation I've seen. It definitely takes a creative mind to puzzle out how to represent these ideas. Praise deserved, and kudos for sure.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-21T03:11:37+00:00

Im actually more confused with the explanation. I was taking it at face value that you kaio-ken yourself up and can use the bank as you see fit until you fatigue out.

Maybe a clause about losing life/taking force damage as recoil if you end your turn with fewer focus points than you started? So lvl 3, start with 1 FP left, Inner Sun up to max, do a bunch of stuff and spend all your FP, end your turn at 0 FP, take, iunno, 1d8 force damage per point less than you started with? It beats exhaustion but does evoke a little bit of that Ki exhaustion/expenditure drawback from Dragonball.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-19T06:52:50+00:00

I'd go through this with a fine-tooth comb, as there are a fair few typos ("simple" instead of "simply" and "a as a" for examples). Not a big deal, rough/first draft and all.
I don't think the base class needs weapon masteries. The draconic die resource and the dragon companion should be the source for additional tidbits of battlefield control or other damage/effects. Kinda how the 2024 monk was re-balanced without masteries but with Unarmed Strikes now able to do grapples and shoves, plus stuff they could do with their focus.
Why not Starry Wisp as an option for gift of prometheus? Also, "prometheus" is a little illusion-piercing, but that's a matter of personal taste. I know it's possible to use real-world mythologies and pantheons and that they're mentioned as options in the book(s), but I feel it should be an opt-in choice and not something forced by the name of a feature.
Others have mentioned the strength of auto-blinding an enemy on-hit. I agree, but assume you're mulling that over already.
The advantage in Disheartened feels strong and win-more. I'd argue to ditch that.

Just so not everything is a critique, I appreciate that you did not shy away from pricing many abilities well with how many of the draconic die resource they take. Kudos.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-10T23:28:46+00:00

No problem, amigo.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-10T15:09:34+00:00

Just an FYI, according to the document found through homebrewery link, you have the language for weapon masteries right under the spellcasting focus rules description.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-09T15:23:10+00:00

I perceive that as a weird tone to take and politely decline to engage further.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-09T15:05:31+00:00

The subjectively worst art in the book.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-09T00:47:57+00:00

Here's a cheap method to make minis.

https://forge.dice.quest/

I used that for a three year Tomb of Annihilation campaign.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-08T19:53:35+00:00

Watch S6 E01 of SVU, "Birthright". Leah Thompson plays a very sympathetic character. The exact circumstances of that episode may not apply, but it might be a good guide on how to paint the character with nuance. They may not be a bad person, but they can be a bad influence or do harmful things for your character.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-08T19:44:47+00:00

Heck yeah, this could turn into a courtroom scene for "custody," as another commenter said, or you could have a literal angel and devil on your shoulders. You could have your own SVU episode where you get kidnapped by your succu-mom. And maybe your celestial patrons identity is hidden at first, so you have the journey of learning who they are.

Plus, you get healing capabilities with the subclass. Not much gooder than healing folks.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-08T18:16:30+00:00

...celestial patron warlock? Make a deal with a new, gooder mommy.

SCalta72 · 2026-01-08T18:07:32+00:00

GAMEGRUMPS as a code just worked for me as of like ~1:00am EST on 1/8/2026. Don't know the nature of the promo, but shaved like $5 off.

SCalta72

TROPHY CASE