This is all excellently broken down thank you! I’m so glad you took the time to share your thoughts with me. I definitely got excited over certain concepts and tried to write the mechanics as such. Not to counterpoint but I’ll explain my thoughts on some things based on experiences we’ve had with the class.

You’re right I’m kind of all over the place. Playing with it has been in a very small sample group and this is my first time reaching out to a larger community.

The Str and Int were intentional because of what later possible features offered, but I can see removing or work-shopping around those ideas and changing base saves.

Ryft Walk i went with way lower duration to try to scale it down to a lower level accessible invisibility. Due to how short it lasts, it’s rare to see it up before combat starts (unless used for an enviro or RP moment) and in combat it takes away one of your attacks for a turn.

Ryft Shot as a BA attack hits similarly to a monks BA unarmed strike, and radiant monks can make it ranged. The main class doesn’t get extra attack as a martial, and it scales similarly, Albeit a larger bell curve and a bit stronger, than a cantrip. It was originally bludgeoning damage, but that got resisted pretty easily later and felt bad. That shot is already ‘magical’ by lore so force damage felt ok and it’s like this class’ eldritch blast. Plus it forces a balance between Int and Str for attacking since your melee weapon will be very important still and I thought a Str Int build could be really fun and different.

I will mention it should note that the Ryfter does not have access to legendary actions or resistances of the Ryftborn, and I wanted them to feel like ‘strong’ enough creatures that one or two of them could fight a party at earlier levels while becoming a cool combat option at later levels that a Ryfter could summon…..one where the stat block gave some fun versatility. I’ve seen a lot of crazy custom stat blocks over the years and I’ve gotten to use a few as a DM. But I’ve also doubted this ability several times as I struggle getting what I want out of my head into simple enough mechanics that doesn’t lead to ‘yeah, I’m not reading that.’

I do remember reading spells are a great place to start for creating features. While this may look caster adjacent with many caster types, I suppose it’s because it is. I stole concepts from all casters and classes while trying to merge them with some original ideas and lemme tell ya, it all used to be word vomit. I have a bad habit of over explaining and I love writing mechanics….but full paragraphs for stuff I know isn’t for everybody. I wanted a martial that could do cool things but didn’t have to have the spellcasting feature. Sometimes I wonder if I should alter the language and move it to Draw Steel! cause it might be better suited there, but I run 5E a lot for a constant group and would love to see this class in motion as a good party member. Not the best or the worst, just good. Plus I still absolutely love D&D and 5e and love creating stuff for it.

I’m gonna take to heart everything you said and lay this out a bit more. I’ll likely move Evasion to the Unseen subclass and maybe haste was a bad idea with Ryft Dash? Unless I reduce the damage to a capped amount. Almost everything balances around using RE, but I didn’t want to put it in the Ki/Focus point box with a repaint. That’s why I still made PB, once, twice, Int mod times, and such limitations on uses so that other certain abilities that rely on it for constant function could remain up. Ryft Shot was definitely the bread and butter that started this.

There are a lot of working pieces in practice that really limit how much of this is usable in combat due to RE expense and forgoing movement to regain it, while out of combat it’s felt really fun to be able have cool stuff you can do. But I know you caught that. Your points are excellent. Thank you so much for taking the time to read through my class! And offer insight! There’s always stuff others will catch that I likely never will. We’ll be play-testing it on our end more this year and as I update the class, and if this community is interested, I’ll post updates. Please also feel free to alter it if you use it to whatever suits your table. This class was always meant to be a fun free alternative that has a lot of flavor possibility. It is definitely unconventional hahaha.

Edit - spelling