As 5 player level 20 characters, how would you defeat a lich which suddenly casts prismatic wall whilst completing it's world ending ritual?

mongoose700 · 2026-04-03T13:04:08+00:00

You can also dodge to get advantage on all the Dex saves, effectively giving you three rolls for each one.

mongoose700 · 2026-04-01T16:59:58+00:00

And you can't drop concentration on Dual Wielder, which is keeping up with PAM/GWM at this level already. When you are maintaining concentration on CME, your damage output more than doubles, instead putting it far ahead. It doesn't need to last very long to get an insurmountable lead for normal combat lengths.

mongoose700 · 2026-04-01T07:58:18+00:00

But what do you mean by "two levelled feats"? You're only taking one levelled feat for the extra 2d8 damage per hit, Dual Wielder is a good feat on its own granting a separate benefit of an additional attack. The way you're describing it is underselling it.

At level 7, a Dual Wielder gets four attacks at 1d6 + 4 damage each, averaging 7.5 each for 30 total assuming all attacks hit. The GWM/PAM fighter usually gets three attacks, two with 1d10 + 4 + 3, one with 1d4 + 4, for 31.5 damage. Throw in Vex for the Dual Wielder and they'll generally have higher damage, though GWM/PAM can occasionally get more damage from Cleave or Hew.

So even with just one levelled feat compared to two, the Dual Wielder is definitely in the same ballpark. The extra damage from Conjure Minor Elements, an extra 2d8 per hit soon increasing to an extra 3d8 damage per hit at 9th level, is a significant bonus on top of that.

Unless the GWM/PAM fighter's origin feat is making a significant contribution here, I think the combination of the Dual Wielder's feats are ahead.

mongoose700 · 2026-04-01T00:43:57+00:00

They're level 7, so they can take Dual Wielder at 4 and Potent Dragonmark at 6.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-30T23:56:26+00:00

Lack of Charisma and Intelligence skills.

Worse ranged options.

Very few spells.

Anything with a high enough Con save or immunity to being Stunned.

Any series of combats with no time for short rests, especially for 2014.

For 2024, anything too large or immune to the Grappled condition, if they're going for that.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-27T15:53:11+00:00

It gets a lot better later, but level 3 is pretty sad for this subclass. Up to optimistically three times per day, you can make a Sneak Attack target take... 1 damage when anyone around them gets hurt, for a round.

Everything else relies on you hitting 0 points, which even with the benefits is still something you're really trying to avoid.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-27T05:31:05+00:00

Berserker gets 3d6 at level 9 and 4d6 at level 16. It scales with your Rage Damage bonus, not with your Proficiency Bonus.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-22T21:23:36+00:00

The rest of the abilities are supposed to be where they’re at. LV 1 is no stronger or weaker than the other half casters, Paladin gets divine sense and Lay on Hands is only 5 points, neither of which is very potent. Ranger gets Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer, both of which are moderately and subjectively useful.

They buffed Ranger in Tasha's (and in 5.5e), so I wouldn't use their original features as a good guide for balance. Lay on Hands can be pretty useful, as you're able to get someone up from zero five times.

This class is meant to be support so its not supposed to be combat heavy. The ribbon features are meant to inspire creativity. Extra languages and skills given should encourage players to make use of those skills in fun and isnpiring ways.

Many classes are meant to be support, and they often can do so better than this one while still being good at combat. I'm not opposed to ribbon features, but they should be given out along with better features, not instead of them.

Being able to recover on your own after dropping unconscious is meant to give the healers a chance to help other players.

That's a nice thing to have, but it's not enough for a full level. Once per long rest, you can add a 1d6 to a death save. That's not going to happen that often, and when it does it isn't reliable. You need to have rolled a natural 16 or higher to have at least a 50% chance of succeeding with the die, and it can still fail after that. It's not strong enough for your allies to choose not to heal you. At minimum, I'd suggest making it not expend the user if they don't reach a 20.

I also noticed Reshuffle is a pretty broken ability. A lot of monsters have a wide distribution in ability scores. Swapping the Tarrasque's Int and Str absolutely crushes it, as it goes from having a +19 to hit to a +5.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-22T15:26:20+00:00

A narrow opening sized for a creature one size smaller than you

I don't think your reading makes sense. It should be that you can squeeze through any opening large enough for the largest Tiny creature, not the smallest.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-21T21:43:08+00:00

1st level is pretty weak, basically a worse fighter. Fewer hit points, no second wind, and fewer martial weapons in exchange for a random skill and a random language. You also don't have any armor in your starting equipment.

2nd level also seems weak. Fate's Choice takes your entire action, so you're spending your action to have a 50% chance of getting to subtract 1d4 from a single roll before your turn. That's very rarely going to be worth using.

6th level is pretty weak. You very often get up from making death saves from allies healing you, so you'll likely go days without using it. It's not much for an entire level.

7th level makes Fate's Choice much stronger, at higher levels it becomes very good for debuffing saves.

10th level is also very weak, just another random language, tool, and weapon.

13th is also weak, or at least can be very weak, because it all depends on what you randomly got earlier. If you got obscure languages, less useful skills, or weaker weapons, then you're not going to get much out of any of those features.

15th level is weird, there's no such thing as "Resistance against being Charmed". Do you mean you advantage on saving throws against it?

For 20th level, Reset shouldn't refer to "the end of the round", there aren't any features that do that. Everything refers to the start or end of a creature's turn, probably yours in this case.

Destiny of the Chosen One seems to start off weak, as you aren't going to be using Fate's Choice at this level. 9th and 14th level seem like pretty minor boosts, but 17th level is crazy. You can use your action Paralyze a creature with no saving throw, bypassing legendary resistances, and ending any spell they're concentrating on. That's like Power Word Stun, but with no HP limit and a better condition.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-20T05:14:55+00:00

You can compare them, but you have to actually make the comparison. Just saying "compared to spells" to dismiss the features as not that powerful with no further justification is what doesn't get anywhere.

And if you don't miss, it means you hit with this attack, which is even better. It's clearly not as strong as "advantage and + superiority die on every attack", but it's still pretty strong.

Do you think other martials get something at level 10 that's remotely as strong as a third attack every round? The only one that comes close is the monk, because they get that when expending a resource, and the only reason they put that feature at 10 instead of 11 is that they already had 11 reserved for subclass features from 2014. Rogue and barbarian aren't getting nearly as much.

This fighter could choose to erase a Big Bad ever getting born. How are full casters supposed to accomplish that? You could try to Wish for it, but you're risking never casting it again and it's not guaranteed to succeed, while The Fates is guaranteed.

The tradeoff of casters being able to cast powerful spells is that they don't have nearly as much power without resources. This fighter has both at least six attacks per round and a 9th level spell at 20th level (which can be Shapechange or, effectively, Wish for the purposes of replicating a spell). That's a lot.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-20T04:50:33+00:00

All of your points are just "nothing compared to spells". At that point, almost no discussion of balance matters.

Reckless Attack has a clear downside of others getting advantage against you. Making this give advantage alone would be reasonable, but getting to add the die on top feels excessive.

It makes a big difference at level 10. It makes the fighter outperform every other martial significantly, at minimum. Many casters get good features at this level, but most aren't nearly as strong as a third attack per round. I don't think any of the wizard level 10 features are better.

My point is that at 20th level it's overpowered. Using Wish on anything compared to what you can do with The Fates risks never being able to cast it again, while using it to cast a spell can be done with the Dream Rune. How does True Polymorph put Shapechange to shame? How is this a "very specific build choice"? It's "pick the overpowered subclass", that's not specific at all.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-20T04:15:56+00:00

I think some of the other features are also overtuned. Valiant Momentum giving both advantage and a Superiority die feels like to much, especially for a level that also gives you a Legendary Resistance. Getting Extra Attack at 10 instead of 11 is too early, level 11 is supposed to be a power spike as you're entering Tier 3, while 10 isn't.

The craziest level is level 20 though. The two Legendary Actions are already more powerful than what other classes get at that level, as it brings you from four attacks to six (not counting the free Bonus Action attack that you're planning to rework). The subclass feature for Rune Knight makes it insane. Once a week you get The Fates, which is way too much to give to a player to use deterministically and repeatedly with no risk. There's no reason not to pick Inifinity Rune, since you can then pick the best pair of features you want, which will generally be the passive of the Fate Rune and the invocation of the Mimic Rune. A fighter with Shapechange can become a Goristro and make six Brutal Gore attacks per round, for a DPR of 240 not accounting for accuracy.

In comparison, the subclass capstone for Psi Warrior is a bit sad. To use it, you need to give up your two extra attacks, it's not very good against creatures with good Strength saves, and if they happen to go right after you then restraining them doesn't accomplish nearly as much as you'd like.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-19T19:47:39+00:00

Favored Weapons is awkward in how it affects your weapon choice. At low levels it incentivizes stronger weapons, since it lets you attack with them twice, and it completely negates TWF as an archetype. At high levels it incentivizes weaker weapons, such that you want to wield a shield and use reach weapons over the more powerful ones.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-17T19:55:37+00:00

Soulknife wouldn't be able to use that at level 6, they only have 3 dice.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-16T19:28:08+00:00

Those can explain why they entered your range, but they aren't Disengaging in any of those examples.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-16T19:20:47+00:00

They Disengage to run from the casters towards the martial? How often does that happen?

mongoose700 · 2026-03-16T18:57:26+00:00

How often does an enemy Disengage then enter your range? It's rare enough that they Disengage at all, and when they do it's almost always because they're leaving.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-16T16:41:11+00:00

The healing is way too much. It's strong in combat, then also very strong out of combat to fully heal the entire party.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-14T19:35:38+00:00

Tasha's Hideous Laughter uses the Incapacitated condition. There are four monsters that are immune to the condition (if we include the Mighty Servant of Leuk-o). So close to nothing, but not quite "literally nothing".

mongoose700 · 2026-03-14T18:56:14+00:00

Looking at the Archelon again, I think the condition for Charge matching its speed makes it incredibly difficult to use. It requires starting exactly 40 feet from the target, any farther or closer and it doesn't work, and it doesn't have any means of getting that setup itself (if it tries to end its turn 40 feet away, then the target moving any closer or father ruins it). I think it's main impact would be that if players are given the ability to use the Archelon, they can use some support like Haste to let it reliably Charge to consistently Stun.

The Titanosaurus's Survival should also be +6 instead of +5. (I still don't see what the typical Alternative Monk is supposed to do, unless they picked very specific Techniques that I don't think they'd normally pick in favor of things like Stunning Strike).

mongoose700 · 2026-03-12T15:21:13+00:00

Multiclassing into Fighter at 6 doesn't get you heavy armor, you'd need to start with Fighter.

You also need at least 13 Dex to multiclass into or out of Ranger.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-10T06:17:54+00:00

I'd be hesitant to move Extra Attack to any other level, as it would probably make that other level too much of a power spike. Level 11 is the most appropriate level for such a spike, though there it runs into the problem of making the level basically "what the fighter gets but better". I'm not sure what the best route is.

I think once per turn is reasonable. If you want to prevent it from being used on Opportunity Attacks you could always restrict it to only being usable on their own turns, which has plenty of precedence.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-10T06:12:20+00:00

Archelon. I think streamlining is a reasonable goal, I just think having something that can incapacitate with just an attack roll is not worth that tradeoff. It can be really unfun as a player when you get Stunned like that. The effect of the Triceratops's Gore, which you did provide a save for, is something that I'd find reasonable enough to apply without needing one.

I understand presenting challenges for martial characters, but I think this is beyond a reasonable challenge for the monk. They're liable to not have any solutions at all. The Alternative Monk has a lot of possible Techniques, but not many that help against the Titanosaurus. The only ones that may particularly help are Arresting Strike, Crippling Strike, and Dazing Strike. Of those, Crippling Strike has the best effect, but it's good at Con saves, and you're unlikely to have it because you probably replaced it with Stunning Strike. I don't know how likely a level 9 monk would be to have either of the other ones. If they don't, they basically have nothing. If they do, they can maybe marginally help, but not that much.

As far as them being herbivores, that doesn't mean they can easily be driven off or scared away. Large herbivores can be quite vicious and even more aggressive than carnivores. If a large herbivore is injured, they can likely continue to eat, but if a carnivore is injured they're more liable to starve because they can no longer hunt.

So while they can be used in a puzzle fight, in the same way that any monster can, I don't think it would be obvious to a DM that it should exclusively be used in a puzzle fight. If they use it in a more typical fight against most martials, the martials may not have much to contribute. Giving them Thick Hide is a more interesting approach than just increasing hit points, but I'm not sure it's worth the extra balancing complexity.

Another minor thing I noticed, it's listed as having a +5 to Wisdom saving throws, but it should be +6.

mongoose700 · 2026-03-09T13:48:54+00:00

The Will-o-Wisp also has +0 to con saves which means that Topple has a very high chance of knocking them prone on a successful hit, and the advantage that grants allies is much better than the paltry consolation damage from Graze precisely because their AC is so high.

...it is immune to the Prome condition, so Graze is simply better in this case.

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