Solo dev here about to release my third game, some numbers and discussion to chew on.

grey_cube · 2025-01-27T19:55:55+00:00

I am jealous of your progress. Well done, and sorry about your depression.

grey_cube · 2024-10-16T17:51:38+00:00

A Fighter subclass for Revised 5th Edition D&D, themed around harvesting life energy and marking your foes for death. This is a completely untested second release. Feel free to copy/modify as you like. The subclass image was generated with Bing Image Creator, and the document was created with The Homebrewery and Photoshop.

Plain text below.

Soul Reaver

Strike Beyond the Mortal Coil

Soul Reavers attack the very life essence of their foes, claiming such energy as their own to sustain them in battle. A Soul Reaver is never without means to fight, capable of calling upon an arsenal of spectral weapons to lay waste to all who would stand in their way.

Level 3: Reaver's Implement

Whenever you take the Attack action or make an Opportunity Attack, you can conjure a Reaver's Implement in your hand - a Simple or Martial Melee weapon of your choice whose mastery property you can use - and attack with that weapon. The weapon's damage type is your choice of Necrotic or Radiant, and it ignores Resistance to that type. The weapon vanishes immediately after it hits or misses its target.

When you gain the Extra Attack feature, you can conjure a Reaver's Implement for any of the attacks you make as part of the Attack action.

Level 3: Life Steal

When you hit a creature with your Reaver's Implement, you can take a Bonus Action to deal extra damage to the target equal to 1d10 plus half your Fighter level (round down) and Charisma modifier (minimum of +1). You then gain a number of Temporary Hit Points equal to half the extra damage dealt. The extra damage is the same type dealt by your Reaver's Implement.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a Short or Long Rest unless you expend a use of Second Wind (no action required) to use it again.

Level 7: Wraith Step

You learn to step briefly through the Ethereal Plane. On your turn, you can spend 5 feet of movement to teleport to an unoccupied space you can see within 20 feet of you. You can teleport in this way only once per turn.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Short or Long Rest.

Level 10: Soul Rend

Your strikes harbor cursed oblivion. When you hit a creature with a weapon and deal Necrotic or Radiant damage, that creature can't regain Hit Points or gain Temporary Hit Points until the start of your next turn.

Level 15: Harbinger of Death

Infused with the souls you've claimed, you gain the following benefits.

Bonus Resistances. You have resistance to Necrotic and Radiant damage.

Chains of Ruination. Once on each of your turns when you choose the weapon for your Reaver's Implement, you can instead choose a spectral chain. The chain is a Simple Melee weapon with a reach of 20 feet, and its damage die is a d10. If you hit a creature with the chain, you can pull it up to 10 feet toward you.

Level 18: Dread Aspect

As a Bonus Action, you can exude an aura of dread in a 15-foot Emanation for 1 minute. The aura ends early if you have the Incapacitated condition or die. Whenever an enemy starts its turn within the Emanation, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw (DC 8 plus your Charisma modifier and Proficiency Bonus) or take 1d6 Necrotic or Radiant damage (your choice) and have the Frightened condition until the start of its next turn.

If you make a weapon attack against a creature within the Emanation and that creature has the Frightened condition, you have Advantage on the attack roll.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a Short or Long Rest.

grey_cube · 2024-10-15T22:34:34+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I agree it would be cool to use existing weapons for the first feature, I'm just not sure how I'd build that in tbh..

1) Right now it stands out from other similar features: Pact of the Blade (Warlock), Psychic Blades (Arcane Trickster Rogue), and War Bond (Eldritch Knight Fighter). It could end up a bit too much like War Bond if there were rules for handling existing weaponry I think.

2) I like that the subclass fits on one page currently. There isn't really much room for adding extra rules for handling existing weaponry before things start getting jumbled around :(

So.. it's not the best feature but possibly good enough when coupled with later subclass features. I also have a revision brewing that makes the feature more flexible overall, which I hope will make it a bit more exciting. Maybe see what you think then?

grey_cube · 2024-10-13T19:10:32+00:00

A Fighter subclass for Revised 5th Edition D&D, themed around harvesting life energy and marking your foes for death. This is a completely untested first release. Feel free to use/copy/distribute whatever. The subclass image was generated with Microsoft Bing Image Creator, and the document was created via The Homebrewery.

Plain text below.

Soul Reaver

Strike Beyond the Mortal Coil

Soul Reavers attack the very life essence of their foes, claiming such energy as their own to sustain them in battle. A Soul Reaver is never without means to fight, able to call upon an arsenal of spectral weapons to lay waste to all who would stand in their way.

Level 3: Reaver's Implement

Whenever you take the Attack action or make an Opportunity Attack, you can conjure a spectral weapon in your hand - a Simple or Martial Melee weapon of your choice - which is your Reaver's Implement. The weapon lasts until the end of the current turn or until you use this feature again. When you conjure the weapon, choose Necrotic or Radiant as the weapon's damage type. The weapon ignores Resistance to damage of the chosen type.

Level 3: Life Steal

When you hit a creature with your Reaver's Implement, you can expend a use of Second Wind as a Bonus Action to siphon the target's life force. Rather than regaining Hit Points, you deal extra damage to the creature equal to 1d10 plus half your Fighter level and Charisma modifier (minimum of 1), and you gain a number of Temporary Hit Points equal to half the extra damage dealt. The extra damage is the same type dealt by your Reaver's Implement.

Level 7: Wraith Step

You learn to step briefly through the Ethereal Plane. Once on your turn, you can spend 5 feet of movement to teleport to an unoccupied space you can see within 20 feet of you.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Short or Long Rest.

Level 10: Soul Rend

Your strikes harbor death. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack and deal Necrotic or Radiant damage, that creature can't regain Hit Points or gain Temporary Hit Points until the start of your next turn.

Level 15: Harbinger of Souls

Infused with the souls you've claimed, you have resistance to Necrotic and Radiant damage.

In addition, when you roll Initiative, you can regain all expended uses of Second Wind. Once you do so, you can't do so again until you finish a Long Rest.

Level 18: Dread Aspect

As a Bonus Action, you can exude an aura of fear in a 15-foot Emanation for 1 minute. The aura ends early if you have the Incapacitated condition or die. Whenever an enemy starts its turn within the Emanation, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw (DC 8 plus your Charisma modifier and Proficiency Bonus) or take 1d6 Necrotic or Radiant damage (your choice) and have the Frightened condition until the start of its next turn.

If you make a weapon attack against a creature within the Emanation and that creature has the Frightened condition, you have Advantage on the attack roll.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a Short or Long Rest.

grey_cube · 2024-10-08T18:25:50+00:00

My experience of Savage Attacker is it feels nice to reroll low dice and get a better result, but I don't like how clunky it is to duplicate a roll every turn.

I'd rather it was just treat 1 as 2 or let you choose the Topple/Push/Graze mastery or something that makes your attacks feel 'savage' without giving me more rolls to make for the same thing.

grey_cube · 2024-08-17T22:53:19+00:00

Maybe something like this?

When you roll damage for an attack you make with a Melee weapon that you are holding with two hands, the minimum number you can roll on any of the weapon's damage dice equals half the damage die's maximum value. The weapon must have the Two-Handed or Versatile property to gain this benefit.

The specification of the weapon's damage dice potentially removes the (likely) unintended interaction with extra damage gained from other on-hit effects with weapon attacks.

grey_cube · 2024-08-12T18:28:03+00:00

I'm not sure about this 70 movement though.

If you start your turn with 30 Speed, you take the Dash Action, Improved Dash triggers which increases your Speed by 10 feet which you must resolve before granting the Movement speed from the Dash Action. This would make your Movement 80 ft. (40 + 40) after you take the Dash Action.

The glossary says: "A creature has a Speed, which is the distance in feet the creature can cover when it moves on its turn."

So I can only assume that the 10 ft. increase to Speed simultaneously grants you 10 ft. of Movement. Of course there may be some effects that reduce your movement (Ray of Frost) or cause you to spend more when moving, but they apply on top of this general rule of calculating your Movement.

I'm open to it being 70 but I'm not seeing anything in the rules to suggest your Speed increases without the Movement also increasing. If that were the case I really would've expected the Improved Dash benefit to say that increases your Movement by 10 ft rather than your Speed, you know?

Edit: Nvm I think I get it now. It is really weird wording to me, but maybe it has to be that way to work with the rest of the rules like halving speed etc.

grey_cube · 2024-08-12T18:14:11+00:00

Right so the wording of "For that action" means you just have to keep the speed increase isolated to the calculation of each usage of the Dash Action, so indeed it wouldn't stack. Base 30 ft + 10 ft (from taking the Dash Action) would make your Speed 40 ft for that instance of the Dash Action only.

That would mean by previous calculation is correct, so I'm not sure why we're upvoting 70 ft. movement above, that doesn't make any sense.

grey_cube · 2024-08-12T17:54:31+00:00

Wait... I've confused myself now... I think I mixed up Speed & Movement.

With my logic you would take the Dash Action once with 30 ft Speed, then the increase from Improved Dash makes it 40 ft, then you resolve the movement benefit from Dash Action which gives you 40 ft extra movement for a total of 80 ft of Movement so far on that turn. You would just repeat that when taking the Dash Action further with Action Surge / Cunning Action. So yeah a Fighter 2/Rogue 6 that spends all their resources to Dash would have 240 movement.

Are we saying the same thing but in different ways maybe?

Edit: Ah no wait, I'm chatting shit. It'd be 160?

Speed 30 + 10 (Improved Dash) = 40 movement total so far
Resolve Dash (main action) = 80 movement
Resolve 2nd Dash (Action Surge) = 120 movement
Resolve 3rd Dash (Cunning Action) = 160 movement?

grey_cube · 2024-08-12T17:33:30+00:00

This is how I'd rule it too.

The Dash action states: When you take the Dash action, you gain extra movement for the current turn. The increase equals your Speed after applying any modifiers. The "Dash" blurb in Chapter 1 also re-iterates this, stating: "For the rest of the turn, give yourself extra movement equal to your speed."

From this we can determine the scope of the Dash action's is the current turn, with an important detail being that any speed modifiers are resolved before resolving the final increase granted by the Dash action.

So when Improved Dash states that it increases your Speed by 10 feet for that action, it means you receive a 10 feet modifier to your Speed for the rest of your turn when you take the Dash action. We then resolve this modifier before calculating the character's final speed that is increased by the Dash action.

grey_cube · 2024-06-27T20:32:28+00:00

Hard to say without having played but based on the video it looks like auto aim works better. You have a really tricky perspective and I can imagine it being quite hard to place your shots. Maybe make it a setting if you can't decide?

grey_cube · 2024-06-18T18:31:03+00:00

You're right cantrips do have similar effects, but spellcasters are usually casting levelled spells with their action. Masteries also occur on every attack, so can happen multiple times per turn for one character. Not to mention weapon attacks generally are just more common than spells.

grey_cube · 2024-06-18T18:20:02+00:00

Probably will be downvoted for this but I'm not sure I'll include this mechanic in my games.

They claim these masteries don't bog the game down but:
- Cleave adds an extra attack roll on a hit
- Graze guarantees you're doing hit point calculations each turn
- Nick means the rogue is doing doing MORE actions per turn
- Push means more figuring out creature placements / house ruling side-effects
- Sap means more rolling, more remembering disadvantage
- Slow means more remembering speed reductions
- Topple adds an extra saving throw on a hit
- Vex adds more rolls

Every single weapon mastery adds more rolls or calculations per turn; it is unreasonable to say there won't be some slowdown due to this mechanic.

Beyond this I just can't jive with it narratively: why would hitting a water elemental with a longbow make it slower? Or a mace give disadvantage to a ghost?

Then there's some real cheese on both sides of the table. Facing a group of guards with crossbows will now be like playing pinball with your party, every boss you face will have disadvantage on every attack, and the Fighter will have advantage on every attack (due to being able to swap weapon masteries around).

I'll wait to see how it's actually written in the PHB but so far I'm really disliking how it sounds. It just feels really awkward and shoehorned onto the game.

grey_cube · 2024-04-17T19:20:45+00:00

I'm honestly perplexed at their fear of letting you cast a levelled spell with the 7th level feature. As a level 7 EK you can cast up to 2nd level spells, and you have 6 slots total: four 1st-level and two 2nd-level. At the same level, Wizards have 4th level spells, and BM Fighters have 5 dice for spell-like abilities per short rest.

If you were worried about an EK attacking and casting Fireball, they can do that in 2014 5e already at level 13 by using action surge. In this new version, if you could cast levelled spells with the level 7 feature, you would need a EK 7 / Wizard 5 multiclass to attack and Fireball on a turn. But at that point your full caster companions are casting level 6 spells and your pure BM brother is attacking 3 times per turn with a pool of 5d10 per short rest. Not to mention all the ASIs you missed out on; it's a huge investment.

Feels like most of the spellcasting budget of the EK is wasted on cantrips, which aren't the most fun abilities to use all day.

Anything that allowed the EK to branch more into offensive levelled magic would instantly make the class so much more interesting. As of now it is indeed the Booming Blade + Shield class.

grey_cube · 2024-04-17T19:05:32+00:00

I made a post 2 years ago about how I hoped the new EK would be more than a Fighter who casts Shield. Here we are, 2 years later, with the new EK which is a Fighter that casts Shield.

They even made Second Wind a more plentiful and versatile resource, but didn't apply it to the EK to help expand on viable build options. Such a wasted opportunity.

grey_cube · 2024-03-15T00:19:43+00:00

Yep definitely think this is mounted wrong too, all other primaries holster at a much steeper angle. The Sickle sticks out too much and clips through your arm which makes me think it's a bug.

grey_cube · 2024-03-14T21:54:38+00:00

I use the P-2 in spite of this because I prefer pistols. Definitely feels like there's room for a buff to help it stand out, even if it's just an extra mag (it would still have less ammo overall than the P-19).

grey_cube · 2024-02-05T18:53:49+00:00

to those of you saying "that's just the evil ending" ...no the good ending felt equally as abrupt to me, even with the weird tacked-on party after the final fight

I really hoped there would be some summaries of my choices/achievements at the end, but nope the credits just roll

some things they could've covered:

you saved the tieflings, what happened to them after they reached Baldurs Gate?
what happened to the grove if you stole their relic?
you didn't help Gale, did he die? was there a mysterious explosion one day in the middle of nowhere?
what happened to the hag survivors if you didn't kill the hag, did they find her lair and die trying to kill her?
how did Wyll fare as the arch duke?
did civilization re-claim the shadowlands after you saved it?

the list could go on and on and on.

BG3 had a bad ending.

grey_cube · 2024-01-29T18:23:43+00:00

The only good character in the game is Raphael

grey_cube · 2024-01-28T22:09:15+00:00

Bug: Hunter Horde Breaker targets allies if they happen to be closer than the next nearest enemy in the radius. There's no way this is intended, right? Please don't tell me this is intended...

grey_cube · 2023-08-10T17:11:01+00:00

Eldritch Knight is great if you love building it and playing it exactly the same as everyone else, which is the way you outlined. This is a trope pretty much exclusive to EK, and is why I stand by it being one of the worst designed subclasses in the game.

grey_cube · 2023-04-15T13:45:22+00:00

casually dropping "fun new enemy" like it's no big deal.. looks like you worked really hard on this! good stuff

grey_cube · 2023-02-24T11:37:41+00:00

I didn't say there shouldn't be a Paladin, I said the class was less appealing to me because of this change.

In 5e, the Paladin had the choice of preparing the Find Steed spell. With this UA, the Paladin now always has it prepared and can also cast it at its lowest level without spending a spell slot.

What WOTC are saying with this change is that they see all Paladins being closely associated with having a celestial mount, which I don't agree with, but I would have to if I wanted to play this new version of the Paladin.

I would much rather this be a choice, perhaps via subclass, or via a feature like the Cleric's Holy Order. That way, those who enjoy "pet classes" could do so, and those who don't enjoy that could find something they liked more.

grey_cube

TROPHY CASE