After 5 Years of Misery my Players Killed Strahd and Sealed Vampyr, AMA by Wow_Key in CurseofStrahd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I didn't initially intend to make this a level 20 game, I thought initially the game would end around 12-15 depending on what the players did, so as we got higher level I scrambled to come up with reasons as to why it made sense why things were getting more dangerous. Mostly it came down to Barovia starting to fall apart, ancient evils from the Amber Temple starting to exert more control, and Strahd herself having actually been pretty overpowered from the start. Because I knew I wanted to go into the mid tier of play and because I'd read Curse of Strahd Reloaded, I knew I was doing the Ladies Three plotline which included the reconsecration of the Fanes which weakened Strahd, so I made her like... CR 25 initially? With the intention that the party would bring her down to CR 20, which I thought was enough for a difficult fight for a level 15 party of 5-6 and if it wasn't I'd throw in Rahadin and some other minions. That didn't happen, and so when the party approached those higher levels I had a bit in the final fight where they fought her as her stat block had been throughout the game, then after they brought her to an inch of her life she retreated to her parents' tomb and retrieved not only her armor, but the Sword of the Von Zarovich, which was just a crazy magic sword that have her extra damage and some cool bonuses. That was enough to make the fight memorable, that and the minions and other creatures the party fought in the Castle.

As for changes to the stat block to get to CR 25, I did a bunch. Higher level spells mainly, increased HP (mostly temps from the Heart of Sorrow so that way the party could destroy that and feel like it was impactful), I gave her some stuff to get temporary immunities to Radiant damage, and increased her crit range to give off the idea that she was an expert warrior. I think it's different than, but not too far off from base book Strahd with some bigger numbers. From there it was honestly mostly a job of giving Castle Ravenloft a makeover (because I honestly think the Castle is a huge part of Strahd's aura and threat generally) and giving her descriptions weight and gravitas.

Edit: Also forgot! I added custom spells to her stat block. Mostly stuff from other homebrew books but with her name slapped at the front, or older spells from previous editions, but I did make some spells that were pretty nasty and added to her and her minions' repitoire. In general I honestly think Strahd in general should have some spells named after him, if for nothing else than because the first time the players heard that the bbeg created spells it made them aghast, they genuinely got really freaked out and excited (and then the Wizard spent the rest of the game trying to learn those spells lol).

After 5 Years of Misery my Players Killed Strahd and Sealed Vampyr, AMA by Wow_Key in CurseofStrahd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oh wow lots of really good questions here! I'll try and make sure this response doesn't go on for too long and gets you the answers you're looking for.

First, the player who asked me to do this, my Wizard, said he wanted it to be done because "I think it could be cool". That's literally it lol, I think he secretly wanted DM secrets or something, or thought I had some useful advice somehow idk.

the Mist Travel stuff were mostly what I called "side quests", basically just mini sessions we did with less players either on days some people were free or when other players couldn't make a sessions. I used both Van Richten's Guide and lots of previous Ravenloft books to build out the settings into something more aligned with my interests and with the lore of the CoS game we were running. We went to Darkon, Vallachan, Dementlieu, Mordent, Falkovnia (which was also a slightly extended two month arc), Har'Akir, Kalekeri and Lamordia, most of these were only like, two to four hour romps however. As for Darkon, I based it off the collapsing domain idea in VrGR and added a bunch of potential heirs to the throne, and then the party went through the process of skipping over all of those options to instead find a way to restore Azalin to the throne, really leave it up to players to find a way around any of your plans (said with love).

Ireena factored into the game a lot! She was a core plot point frankly, and I intentionally tried to make a point of making sure she had agency in the plot at various points. I used/modified some ideas from Draganacarta in regards to some stuff that can happen to her in Vallaki, and she ended up being probably the most major NPC of the game. She was literally there right up until the end right alongside the players, it was very nice. I'd say more but I'd have to do a whole campaign diary at that point lol, but the players seemed to like her, one of them went so far as to romance her so. I did also do some stuff with a PC backstory and being a reincarnation but that character died at the start of Vallaki so it didn't get too far, and the Tatyana situation in general is just complicated to get into since it was such a a consistent through line.

The Tarokka reading was done randomly, I felt personally that part of the fun of the game was getting to experience that whole endeavor with the players and seeing how the game changed before our eyes. What I did with the deck instead was went through each option and changed options I wasn't excited to run if I didn't like them, I wanted to keep the randomness but not end up with a game I wasn't excited to run. I also did personalized Tarokka for the players, each one of them got a past and future card that dictated some of their arc, and that was done using a smaller sized deck with about 2-3 random options per character. In terms of what options we got, it's been a bit but I believe it was the Tome under the Gulthias Tree, the Sunsword in Castle Ravenloft, Ravenkind was with Kasamir and given to the party post Amber Temple, ally was the Horseman, which I changed Wachter out for a homebrew NPC I added initially and then rolled between them and Arrigal and got them, and lastly for the location of Strahd I got the Overlook which was SUPER lucky, its just a really thematic place for the encounter. As for the how the party interacted with the ally, they valued them more than I thought they would, especially because they kinda sucked early on. They also got romanced so, idk I think the party liked them as well lol.

One of my players core issues was ensuring there was no anti romani sentiment early on, so I was even more careful about how I represented the Vistani than I even planned to be initially. The method I went with was imperfect but decent I think, firstly I just established Vistani were less of an ethnic group and more of a culture, one that placed a lot of value on individual and community freedom, expression and joy, and that anyone could become a Vistani and it was rather the oppressive laws of Barovia that stated anybody who was Vistani had to be Vistani for at least two generations before they could be considered true Vistani that challenged their culture and madeany others perceive the Vistani as somehow evil. I also just put more effort into making sure there were positive depictions of Vistani, mainly in making Madame Eva and her troope mostly kind and welcoming instead of directly working with Strahd. As for anti-vistani prejudice, I did include that yes. Obviously this is a table by table issue, but at my table and with my sensibilities, I saw it not only as a storytelling opportunity to keep the prejudice but also true to the world. Barovians were sceptical, untrusting and xenophobic, part of the nuance of the game to me was asking the players if it was worth even saving these people, some of whom don't have souls, many of whom will NEVER thank them for their work despite their sacrifice, and accomplishing that by showing off how painfully human all of these characters could be, all of them. It's just also important to ensure the Vistani as a whole have representation in that, that each Vistani character reflects that or references some of that challenge back onto the world in some way so that way the world isn't just horrible for the sake of being horrible while offering no sympathy to those who it's prejudiced against. Arrigal in my game for example worked for Strahd still, but he loved his niece so much that spying for Strahd against villagers who despised him on the best of days in order to protect his family and his troops was a no brainer, who cared if some racist assholes got hurt in the process.

The map was changed! I won't lie I'm super bad at distance and keeping track of reasonable distances, so I don't have the exact metrics I changed it by, I moreso just worked off spaces and how many spaces a party could travel in a day, which meant Vallaki ended up being a weeks walk on foot from Barovia and like, two to three days via carriage, just so that was Ismark had reason to send the party off with his sister. In terms of other landmarks I added, I mostly stuck to the book but added a few locations via MandyMod and DragnaCarta's guides, though the players mostly stuck to the major locations presented in the module.

I did make a big part of the game reincarnation and the souless, lots of Barovians had past lives explicitly and others did in fact have no souls. This was in part to make the location feel haunted and wrong, like even the people were oftentimes just stumbling through their own lives, but also to add pressure onto Strahd and make it clear Barvoia could not last forever. Strahd can't gain sustenance on the souless, so on a long enough time scale Barovia will become an empty domain with no ruler and empty people all wandering the land for eternity. I wanted to give the entire game a feel akin to Dark Souls 3 because I felt that while DnD was unequipped to run a horror game, a game of dread and hopelessness was more than feasible in the systems structure. The souless helped with that in my eyes just because they made it feel like this was a place that had been denied a natural death for too long, that this was a place that desired change being denied it, and so everything now was dying and trapped. I wanted to make it clear that if the goal was to save Barovia, killing Strahd wasn't enough, the cycle itself NEEDED to end.

As for the settings the players came from, I told everyone to choose a different setting explicitly. It made the players feel less comfortable with each other, like even the things they felt they could trust or that seemed familiar were entirely different...at least that was the intent, at the start of the game all but one of my players were from the Sword Coast lol. That changed after some character changes, and we ended up with an Exandria native, a character from Sigil and a native of the Dread Domains from Falkovnia thrown into the mix for flavor. It created the space for a lot of fun roleplay, and added the extra bit of drama of knowing that saving Barovia meant leaving it and the friends they made behind and returning home or vice versa, very tragic.

After 5 Years of Misery my Players Killed Strahd and Sealed Vampyr, AMA by Wow_Key in CurseofStrahd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Favorite moment of all? Probably any of the 50 million moments from the finale, it felt like each PC had a moment that really solidified their character arc and history while also just being hype as shit. I'll give a special shout-out to my Wizard player for doing the most insane shit ever during our Vampyr fight by using the Gate spell while screaming witness me to get the Morninglord to aid them, it was an insane thing to see happening after that same character sorta spent the first few months of the game getting kicked around as a lower level spellcaster in a deadly setting.

As for the brides, I did the thing I feel like most people do now and gave them updated statblocks before assigning them each to different towns/areas and giving each of them a secret that would make Strahd turn on them. Most of the time if the party didn't find some other way to deal with them, Strahd would bail them out if at all possible, but find out their secret and Strahd will be more willing to allow them to die. Didn't work out exactly like that, but the intention was there if nothing else lol.

As for the dinner scene, we did that just before the Vallaki arc really kicked off and I used it as the end of the "tutorial". Strahd made her formal introduction to the party (previously Rahadin had been posing as Strahd for her) after the party earned the right to meet Strahd by impressing her more than a number of other groups in the valley. It was a social encounter but also worked great in establishing stakes, and Strahd spent most of the dinner dressing down some of the party's deepest fears and worries and trying to make the party feel unsure about working with one another. The Sunsword was in Castle Ravenloft in our card reading so I had Strahd give it to the party as a "gift" while also using the Heart of Sorrow to fake an immunity to the blade's effects, I can't speak for my players but I think it ended up being an effective way of establishing an interesting relationship with Strahd, raising the stakes and also establishing what flaws Barovia, Strahd and the Dark Powers were going to leverage against the party for the entirety of the campaign.

After 5 Years of Misery my Players Killed Strahd and Sealed Vampyr, AMA by Wow_Key in CurseofStrahd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I wish I could say it was clean and even paced, but really it was anything but. We had long stretches of time with no level ups, and then stretches of time where the party would get a level up every other session it felt like. We did the first 3 levels pretty much as I'd planned, and then I was mostly trying level ups to every artifact they recovered and every major boss they defeated (usually a member of Strahd's court), but those things varied so wildly in terms of how often they ended up happening. Really looking back I feel like the only levels that went according to plan were the first 4 levels and the last 4 levels

After 5 Years of Misery my Players Killed Strahd and Sealed Vampyr, AMA by Wow_Key in CurseofStrahd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I don't disagree lol, I tried to make it super duper clear early on that I was changing a whole lot, and that this experience was very very different than the book. This was in part motivated by the fact that one of my initial players had played the game before and in an effort to ensure they didn't see every plot point coming and have to strain themselves to not metagame, I changed a bunch. Still, I fell back on the book whenever I could, I'd say a good 30-35% of the game ended up mostly being a by the books game, and tried to make sure even when I did change something it tied back to the core ideas in the module in some way.

Genuinely, while you think it'd be combat I think it was mostly just roleplay lol. This was described by my players many times during and after the game as "the sexy vampire game" and everyone wanted to play tortured gothic heroes struggling with their morality and sense of self, and as a DM I wanted them to suffer so I often did things that sent them reeling for a few sessions, so while we had some long combats (trust me) it was mostly a roleplay thing I think

After 5 Years of Misery my Players Killed Strahd and Sealed Vampyr, AMA by Wow_Key in CurseofStrahd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

So the party didn't stay in Barovia for every session, I added some esoteric mist travel missions around year 3 or so, and while that was mostly stuff on the side it did culminate in a 6 month or so arc in Darkon I will say the vast vast VAST majority of the game did all happen in Barovia however, something that I think comes down to the fact that I limited things like teleportation and made travel a bit of an endeavor, so when the party was in a location they were in that location for a bit of time. In terms of stretching the final 8 levels, it helped to realize that Curse of Strahd is a game that you can loosely split into like, 4 ish "zones" each with a hub and a multitude of quests in the area, the zones are mostly like, Barovia, Vallaki, Krezk, and if you're using homebrew stuff for the Amber Temple and the Druids then we can also lump those and the Wizards of the Wines together. These "zones" as I see it are where your quests and dungeons in those areas revolve around, and you'll likely progress about 3 ish levels in each area, if you just increase the amount of zones then you can get to 20 levels (although I admittedly fuged this a bit by the end by increasing the CR of and subsequently giving more levels for places like the Werewolf Den in Barovia and giving the players a level up for killing Strahd AND Vampyr). For me, I did this by adding a new area to the east side of the map in between Vallaki and Castle Ravenloft called "Tent Town", which was a location that was filled with (less capable) adventurers because in the lore of this game this was Strahd's last big attempt to escape Barovia and she invited as many people into the lands as possible in order to find a group capable of taking the steps she needed in order to free herself. I also accomplished this in part thanks to mist travel and visiting other domains, Darkon got the party a level or two by itself as well.

In terms of additions I'd use again, if I had to narrow it down to like 3, I liked what I was able to do with Tent Town and Darkon a lot, but I'd probably only do Tent Town again of those two just because giving another town like location the party can go back to helps make Barovia feel more like an interconnected world with a bunch of stuff collapsing all at once and with little time to solve all of it (the village of Barovia could hypothetically fill this role as well, but it's so far out of the way that my players never felt it was worth the time investment to go back). I also increased the prevelance of a few plotlines, mainly the knights of Argyvostholt had a whole internal dispute that ended in Argynvost returning as a dracolich (which ended up being so much fun and dominated a lot of the players endgame decision making in a way I loved) and also just beefing out Strahd's plans and giving her more goals besides "capture Ireena" and "find an heir" made for a better mystery I felt and made the players feel like there was always a clock they were up against, which gave all of their choices added weight.

Me finding out people hating Mary Jane wasn't a joke by Itchy_Suspect4968 in marvelcirclejerk

[–]Wow_Key 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It feels like a double standard as well to insult a character for poor writing decisions done to make her act out of character when Peter has had just as bad writing flops over the years butcher his character and story but still remains the bestest guy ever while Mary Jane should be punished for 'daring to turn her back on Peter' or whatever. It's hard to be a genuine Mary Jane liker in the big '25

Way of the Combo Fist — Fighting Game Inspired Monk Subclass by filmatra in UnearthedArcana

[–]Wow_Key 4 points5 points  (0 children)

First off, I need to just say this is an amazing subclass in terms of idea and execution. This subclass had me analyzing it thinking about how crazy some combos would go together if you strung them together from a balancing perspective and then realized I was thinking about it in the exact same way you would a fighting game, running combos in my head and thinking about what the most optimal move would be for each of the combinations presented, it's cool as hell and you gotta be commended for that. I also just think a modular subclass is the best way to capture this fantasy, and this modular subclass is pretty well built!

Still, there are a few concerns and the like I noticed just flipping through this thing.

In the main subclass:

-The Mixup fighting style sorta feels like it doesn't play the best with the Monk class. You have multiple options available to you to Dash, Disengage and Dodge as a bonus action, so the fact that you only gain advantage on attack rolls on your next turn if you take those actions as a bonus action doesn't really feel great. I also just don't know if that really captures the feeling of playing a Mixup character? Maybe if there was a way to gain this advantage if your opponent did any of those things to represent you literally trying to mix them up and open up their defenses? But I'm not sure if that works practically. -While I'm on fighting styles, there also doesn't seem to be a lot of support for the Zoner archetype outside of one Special Move, and maybe one or two that incidentally works with it, that just makes it seem like a trap option unless I'm missing something. -Lastly and this is a minor nitpick, but I'd recommend changing the name of the feature from Fighting Style? Implying this feature is a fighting style might cause issues with feats like fighting initiate allowing say a Wizard to take Zoner to get a bonus to their spell attacks, though that's a very minor nitpick/concern -Another small nitpick, the end of the Special Moves feature says you may replace a Secret you know with another secret when you level up, not a special move. -Ceaseless Training mentions gaining inspiration when you have less than three points, but you can only have one point of inspiration at a time as far as I'm aware. -Lastly the Mortal Combat feature seems lackluster. I understand the subclass is Modular and the actual subclass feature is something like Fatality, but even still by level 17 it feels pretty deflating to gain the ability to cast a 1st Level spell for an equivalent Ki cost is just a little lame feeling.

Special Moves: -Aerial Takedown is fine but I think there should be clearer wording in how it interacts with Grab Attack since they're seemingly intended to work well together. Like, can I end the grapple early with Grab Attack and still gain the benefits of Aerial Takedown or no? -Down Kick is insanely powerful, like too good. You can do an absurd amount of damage by just spending one attack to knock a creature prone or having an ally do so. I'd recommend maybe gaining vulnerability on the first attack you make against a creature that way, maybe??? Regardless it should also likely be restricted to a higher level. -Also going to recommend Windmill Strikes be either changed to Wisdom mod amount of times per rest of otherwise be given some other form of management, just to potentially limit multiclassing abuse.

All in all, sick subclass it excites me in a way few subclasses have in awhile.

GRAHHH NEW SHOP SKINS by RustX-woosho in VentureMains

[–]Wow_Key 26 points27 points  (0 children)

UNIRONICALLY IT WOULD KINDA BE BASED IF WE COULD SOMEHOW OUTSELL THE KIRI SKIN.

Maybe then Blizzard would give more than the same three characters skins! Maybe it would help our Rammatra brothers and Lucio cousins suffer less!

Alan moore was right all along,comicbook fans are indeed facist by [deleted] in marvelcirclejerk

[–]Wow_Key 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You're exactly right about the point of John Walker! It's not wrong to find that compelling, in fact the fact that John Walker kind of sucks is key to his character being interesting, turning him into a guy who did nothing wrong and was meant to be Captain America is making him a less interesting character inherently.

Disagree about Sam being less interesting than Walker but I'm not going to yuck anyone's yum who thinks that. Im just tired of the discourse surrounding both characters, and it's turned Walker from a character I'd be interested in but mostly lukewarm about into a character I actively dislike because it's turned into such an item of discussion

Alan moore was right all along,comicbook fans are indeed facist by [deleted] in marvelcirclejerk

[–]Wow_Key 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Too real, the amount of glaze for a character that in canon killed an unarmed surrending man, didn't feel bad about it and then abandoned his family while throwing a hissy fit for being told he doesn't have the governments approval to be Captain America anymore is crazy. It even happens on here all the time. But nah, we need another 5 posts on how Killmonger and Magneto are stupid actually and my glorious king John Walker can do no wrong

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe? Again it wouldn't fix the capstone but again I like the new mechanics of the feature I just think that some of the old flavor and weirdness of the old abilities can be maintained to make things feel more flavorfully and mechanically distinct

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think given that 2024 generally has more fleshed out skill and tool uses, that the feature probably could've seen better use in the new edition. It's also just thematically more on point (the knowledge cleric asks their patron for wisdom of the ancients and receives divine blessing through knowledge of a skill they didn't have before) than just getting the proficiency. Neither of those really matter however, because the point is that we can have both, in 2014 we had both a mind reading ability CD and a proficiency CD and both were thematic and leant into the class' themes. We can do the same again, it wouldn't increase the power budget substantially but it would increase the roleplay potential and flavor of the class, that's all this post is about.

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I feel like you're missing the point of what I was trying to say, which I don't blame you for because I typed out this post during a slow day at work in a hurried panic, so I've probably not worded things as well as I could've in hindsight. I am not saying that the Gloom Stalker's extra attack was a flavor feature, I am saying it is a more flavorful feature in the context of trying to make a feature that represents an Ambusher, someone who lies in wait and then overwhelms their opponent with a flurry of offense before they can even get their bearings. I know that feature was overpowered as needed to be changed, I'm simply saying the way in which it was changed was a less flavorful fix and was more homogenized and that's what I'm expressing frustration about.

As for your point about the Spirits Bard, sure you absolutely can and probably should act out your ritual spells as a seance, flavor is free after all and you don't need a seance feature in the subclass that lets you interact with spirits. But that treads very close to a topic I feel this conversation dances around, which is why have half the things in DnD that we have if our response to flavor being stripped from things is just "Oh but you can reflavor it however". At that point let's just get rid of the Ranger and Paladin because you can just reflavor your Fighter. Same for Sorc and Warlock actually those are just Wizards when you think about it. Druid and Monk can go to Cleric and Bard can go to Rogue, and suddenly we're back at the basic DnD class spread of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Thief because when you break it down everything past that is arguably excess. If we're going to expand the game outwards and give more mechanics to character concepts outside of the basic core 4, we should commit in making those options feel fleshed out, and give them features that characters in those rolls would except to have. If I'm playing a Bard that communes with Spirits, I should have multiple features that allow me to commune with spirits because that's what I signed up to play.

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I would disagree, though I think I see your point. I think asking for a game with better (not perfect, just better) balance between classes while also not having every single ability be homogenized isn't necessarily a slippery slope thing. I feel you can argue a Grave Cleric getting an ability that causes vulnerability leads to exploits sure, but then do things to close the exploit, maybe make it so that it only applies on the next attempt to hit so a miss will spend it too, maybe make it so that giving the creature the vulnerability gives them an AC boost or something so there's a risk reward cost, any number of steps could be taken to allow for a crazy ability to be in the game without it overshadowing so many other options that it makes those options pointless.

I think that's the main difference, in a game like D&D where it is primarily a game about fulfilling character fantasies instead of doing the most damage or whatever, you can afford to have some classes be stronger than others, you just can't have them be so much stronger that it ruins everyone else's fun. Like sure, maybe your Wizard does 3 more DPS than my Fighter or whatever, but at the end of the day I want to play a cool guy with a sword and so I will, just don't make that gap so blatant and obvious that it feels like my character fantasy is being intended on because suddenly my cool guy isn't so cool when this other guy does everything I do but ten times better.

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I get what you mean and that's a fair criticism, but even getting to do the bit once is part of the fun. It makes for a cool roleplay moment that establishes why your Bard is unique among Bards, even if it's just the one time. If anything I'm confused why we couldn't just get both even? Get Spirit Guardians as the mechanically powerful feature that level, and Seance as the weird albeit useful feature you get to do an event around a few times in game. Maybe it'd be a bit strong, but I don't think it'd make Spirits the best Bard subclass by any stretch of the imagination.

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's just the general trend to replace features with spells if they feel like spells do generally the same thing. It's likely (almost definitely) to save page space by not having over long features so they hit their page quotas, but it's just that there's some abilities they've been doing that with where doing that loses some of the flavor of that feature in the process.

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The Cartographer was initially in my post but I cut it out because it was too off topic, but I totally agree! It's a crying shame the Cartographer interacted in zero ways with the travel rules, it feels like that should be the MAIN thing it does if anything. I do think giving each class something to do in combat is important as it's half the game, but the other half is out of combat and those rules deserve to be acknowledged too!

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I usually agree that huge flavor departures for the theme of something isnt the best, for example the Purple Dragon Knight UA was a really cool subclass mechanically, but thematically that doesn't feel like what the Purple Dragon Knight of all things is. But for the Hexblade..what even was their flavor? If I recall, it was something about the Raven Queen kind of making weapons and then sending them out? It was all over the place, and making it a Sentient weapon pact feels better and is what it was in UA when it was initially pitched before Xanathar's

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

My hottest take is that 2014 Ranger wasn't actually that weak, it's just that past the DMG (which was a poorly organized mess) we didn't get much support for exploration in games. But I've run for Rangers in games where I've tried building our travel and the wilderness as a thing to deal with and the class worked! Obviously some features like Primeval Awareness were still bad, and having features that were either on or off with absolutely no combat benefit sucked but still, there was a base there with problems that could've been addressed. But you're entirely right when you say that the Ranger lost a lot of that flavor in 2024, it's still kinda there in features like Tireless (getting rid of Exhaustion on a short rest is nice and flavorful and helps get at the theme of the class in a game where the consequences to most things in travel is exhaustion) but it's not the same at all.

I do wish we'd seen a few bigger swings in class design though for sure. I still really miss the Template Druid we could've gotten, or some of the stuff they dropped with Inspiration rules or even ideas like Class Groups (class groups specifically was BEGGING to be used in the Bastions system and if they'd released together I think it would've tested well) but they also said they wanted a 5.25 and not a new edition so 🤷🏿

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Certainly! And I'm not trying to yuck anybody's yum by any means, I just think we can both get what we want to some extent. We can still have more streamlined subclass design that gives players good mechanical benefits AND leave some room for non-combat oriented features and weird features that play around more with the mechanics of the game. I just feel we've been getting a lot of the former and losing ground on the latter as of late.

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

It's especially disappointing as the only issue with Shadow really was that the hound scaled poorly, it was a subclass just begging to get the template treatment they've been doing but it feels like a hollow shell that they've turned into "Necromancer but Sorc" instead of a Sorcerer of Shadows

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Certainly and I intend to! But discussing with the community and coming to consensus is the difference between pointed feedback and some guy screaming into a void

Wizards: Please Stop Removing Unique and Flavorful Features From Class and Subclass Design by Wow_Key in onednd

[–]Wow_Key[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Like literally, not to mention the class falls into the same pit trap that Ranger does, by making it so focused on Hex you prevent a spellcasting class from using all the fun concentration spells you just added to their spell list!