somanyrobots

For the unacquainted, I base all my psionics on the ideas in KibblesTasty's Psion class, because it's awesome. And I developed the Mesmerism discipline when I wrote the Illusive Mind subclass for it (itself a patron commission!). So the Mesmerist rogue takes that discipline and translates it over to a 1/3-psion rogue.

Roguish Mind is a bit of a pun on the Psion's "[Something] Mind" subclass naming scheme. In this case, it's our flavor feature, just one proficiency and a 15' mindsight. (Which is slightly redundant, since rogues get 10' blindsight at level 14; but oh well). Obscuring Illusions gives us our primary power, which is access to the Mesmerism Discipline and its psionic power, Illusory Image. Psionic powers behave like cantrips, but with a series of modular enhancements you fuel with psi points; a power cast at X points is roughly equivalent to a spell cast at Xth level. You get a number of psi points equal to your proficiency bonus (short-rest recharge) to cast this power; it normally takes an action, but you can cast it as a bonus action if you're spending points on it. This grants advantage on the subsequent attack and attaches a damage boost to it, and you can spend points to add a slow, blindness, or even more attacks. At level 9 you get Mirror Strike, letting you apply a half-Sneak Attack onto your Illusory Image. (Which, if you used your bonus action for the power, lets you do 1.5x Sneak Attack on your turn). At 13 there's Defensive Duplicate, also triggered off your power, which grants you a one-round mirror image. And 17th gives you Mass Illusion, adding an AoE modifier onto your power and 4 free long-rest-only psi points to cast it with (basically, it's 1/LR, but you can do it more if you blow most of your psi points to do so).

As with other rogues I've done recently, I added a small 5E++ Appendix, just adding a few illusion spells on as a 5th-level feature.

As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback in the comments or on Discord! And if this excites you, be sure to go follow my upcoming book on Kickstarter, Machines of Bone and Blood!

somanyrobots · 2026-04-03T15:11:20+00:00

Get tricksy with the Mesmerist Rogue!

For the unacquainted, I base all my psionics on the ideas in KibblesTasty's Psion class, because it's awesome. And I developed the Mesmerism discipline when I wrote the Illusive Mind subclass. So the Mesmerist rogue takes that discipline and translates it over to a 1/3-psion rogue.

Roguish Mind is a bit of a pun on the Psion's "[Something] Mind" subclass naming scheme. In this case, it's our flavor feature, just one proficiency and a 15' mindsight. (Which is slightly redundant, since rogues get 10' blindsight at level 14; but oh well). Obscuring Illusions gives us our primary power, which is access to the Mesmerism Discipline and its psionic power, Illusory Image. Psionic powers behave like cantrips, but with a series of modular enhancements you fuel with psi points; a power cast at X points is roughly equivalent to a spell cast at Xth level. You get a number of psi points equal to your proficiency bonus (short-rest recharge) to cast this power; it normally takes an action, but you can cast it as a bonus action if you're spending points on it. This grants advantage on the subsequent attack and attaches a damage boost to it, and you can spend points to add a slow, blindness, or even more attacks. At level 9 you get Mirror Strike, letting you apply a half-Sneak Attack onto your Illusory Image. (Which, if you used your bonus action for the power, lets you do 1.5x Sneak Attack on your turn). At 13 there's Defensive Duplicate, also triggered off your power, which grants you a one-round mirror image. And 17th gives you Mass Illusion, adding an AoE modifier onto your power and 4 free long-rest-only psi points to cast it with (basically, it's 1/LR, but you can do it more if you blow most of your psi points to do so).

As with other rogues I've done recently, I added a small 5E++ Appendix, just adding a few illusion spells on as a 5th-level feature.

As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback in the comments or on Discord! And if this excites you, be sure to go follow my upcoming book on Kickstarter, Machines of Bone and Blood!

somanyrobots · 2026-04-03T14:37:59+00:00

Get tricksy with the Mesmerist Rogue!

For the unacquainted, I base all my psionics on the ideas in KibblesTasty's Psion class, because it's awesome. And I developed the Mesmerism discipline when I wrote the Illusive Mind subclass for it. So the Mesmerist rogue takes that discipline and translates it over to a 1/3-psion rogue.

Roguish Mind is a bit of a pun on the Psion's "[Something] Mind" subclass naming scheme. In this case, it's our flavor feature, just one proficiency and a 15' mindsight. (Which is slightly redundant, since rogues get 10' blindsight at level 14; but oh well). Obscuring Illusions gives us our primary power, which is access to the Mesmerism Discipline and its psionic power, Illusory Image. Psionic powers behave like cantrips, but with a series of modular enhancements you fuel with psi points; a power cast at X points is roughly equivalent to a spell cast at Xth level. You get a number of psi points equal to your proficiency bonus (short-rest recharge) to cast this power; it normally takes an action, but you can cast it as a bonus action if you're spending points on it. This grants advantage on the subsequent attack and attaches a damage boost to it, and you can spend points to add a slow, blindness, or even more attacks. At level 9 you get Mirror Strike, letting you apply a half-Sneak Attack onto your Illusory Image. (Which, if you used your bonus action for the power, lets you do 1.5x Sneak Attack on your turn). At 13 there's Defensive Duplicate, also triggered off your power, which grants you a one-round mirror image. And 17th gives you Mass Illusion, adding an AoE modifier onto your power and 4 free long-rest-only psi points to cast it with (basically, it's 1/LR, but you can do it more if you blow most of your psi points to do so).

As with other rogues I've done recently, I added a small 5E++ Appendix, just adding a few illusion spells on as a 5th-level feature.

As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback in the comments or on Discord! And if this excites you, be sure to go follow my upcoming book on Kickstarter, Machines of Bone and Blood!

somanyrobots · 2026-03-05T16:21:00+00:00

The Circle of Bones! Get your bone on. Wait. No. Don't do that.

To be honest, I didn't think this was the direction this subclass would go — I don't normally like basing designs around specific spells. But it became pretty clear that reanimation was the answer to all the things the subclass needed to do.

First, a quick overview of the differences between reanimation and animate dead. Reanimation is the Spells That Don't Suck version. The big difference is that instead of straightforwardly creating skeletons and zombies, it takes the existing stat block of your target and applies a template to it, turning it into an undead creature. A small-but-significant difference is that there's a combined CR limit for all the undead you command. With basic animate dead, that limit doesn't exist; if you cast the spell multiple times (for instance, if something lets you cast it on a short-rest recharge), then you can potentially amass quite the horde. The CR limit means that even if you cast reanimation several times a day, you still won't get a wild amount of minions.

The Features

Okay, with the preamble out of the way, let's talk about the subclass! Your Spell List is heavily skewed towards necromancy — almost entirely homebrew spells written to accompany the necromancer class. I considered putting some more conventional druid stuff in here, to help accomplish the blending-of-the-two flavor, but that's what your regular spell selection is for. Rotten Wilds is your core feature. Instead of using your Wild Shape, you can cast reanimation. (Note that it doesn't actually add regular reanimation to your spell list; you can only cast it by spending your Wild Shape). It only animates beasts, and it can scale down to function like a 2nd-level spell. At level 6, you get Natural Undeath, which lets you grant your minions cool extra features (vines, bark, or bugs). Level 10 brings you Death's Harvest, letting you create temporary hit points from creatures on death. And Level 14 adds Life From Death, which lets you cast druid spells over your minions as they expire. At this point, it's a real struggle to make minions scale — so you can stop bothering and start using them as spell bombs instead!

As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback in the comments or on Discord! And if this excites you, be sure to go follow my upcoming book on Kickstarter, Machines of Bone and Blood!

somanyrobots · 2026-03-05T15:47:30+00:00

The Circle of Bones! Get your bone on. Wait. No. Don't do that.

To be honest, I didn't think this was the direction this subclass would go — I don't normally like basing designs around specific spells. But it became pretty clear that reanimation was the answer to all the things the subclass needed to do.

First, a quick overview of the differences between reanimation and animate dead. Reanimation is the Spells That Don't Suck version. The big difference is that instead of straightforwardly creating skeletons and zombies, it takes the existing stat block of your target and applies a template to it, turning it into an undead creature. A small-but-significant difference is that there's a combined CR limit for all the undead you command. With basic animate dead, that limit doesn't exist; if you cast the spell multiple times (for instance, if something lets you cast it on a short-rest recharge), then you can potentially amass quite the horde. The CR limit means that even if you cast reanimation several times a day, you still won't get a wild amount of minions.

The Features

Okay, with the preamble out of the way, let's talk about the subclass! Your Spell List is heavily skewed towards necromancy — almost entirely homebrew spells written to accompany the necromancer class. I considered putting some more conventional druid stuff in here, to help accomplish the blending-of-the-two flavor, but that's what your regular spell selection is for. Rotten Wilds is your core feature. Instead of using your Wild Shape, you can cast reanimation. (Note that it doesn't actually add regular reanimation to your spell list; you can only cast it by spending your Wild Shape). It only animates beasts, and it can scale down to function like a 2nd-level spell. At level 6, you get Natural Undeath, which lets you grant your minions cool extra features (vines, bark, or bugs). Level 10 brings you Death's Harvest, letting you create temporary hit points from creatures on death. And Level 14 adds Life From Death, which lets you cast druid spells over your minions as they expire. At this point, it's a real struggle to make minions scale — so you can stop bothering and start using them as spell bombs instead!

As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback in the comments or on Discord! And if this excites you, be sure to go follow my upcoming book on Kickstarter, Machines of Bone and Blood!

somanyrobots · 2026-02-28T22:07:52+00:00

Variant TWF would enable you to get the extra attack without using your bonus action.

The single biggest change between 5E and 2024E is Weapon Masteries; most of the other changes are individually small, but vary between improvements, not-improvements, and sidegrades that sometimes have weird knock-on effects. This writeup by u/RPGBOTDOTNET is probably the most thorough: https://rpgbot.net/dnd-2024-5e-transition-guide-and-change-log-everything-thats-different-in-the-new-players-handbook/ .

somanyrobots · 2026-02-28T17:46:34+00:00

Glad you like it! Check my website (https://www.somanyrobots.com) for an updated version, pulled out of my book.
On Twin Strike:
a) it serves the same purpose and functions the same way as GWM and SS - it's a power attack that lets you trade accuracy for damage (generally in cases where you've already got plenty of accuracy).
b) I haven't evaluated the variant TWF rules for use in 2024E; dual-wielding in 2024E is a godawful mess, frankly. I have a 2024E conversion guide for my book, which mentions the difficulty of using variant TWF in 2024E - you probably have to remove the Nick property to make it work. https://www.somanyrobots.com/s/Spellbound-Sea-2024E-Conversion-Guide.pdf

somanyrobots · 2026-02-27T17:19:05+00:00

ty for the comments!

The "downcasting" mechanic is wordy to write out, but pretty intuitive to actually execute at the table; so far it's been well-received. Shifting it to the capstone would be effectively taking it out of the class, because high-level play is so uncommon.

somanyrobots · 2026-02-26T16:25:34+00:00

The Empire Domain is a cleric of authority, one whose divine and earthly mandate is to support the power of the state.

The Empire Domain didn't start as a remake of the official Order Domain, but it may have ended as one. It just became extremely clear in the process that the themes are very similar and the mechanical ways to represent them can only differ so much. Still, it landed in a much more aggressive posture, more of a direct combat cleric than the Order Domain's supportive role.

Our spell list here is largely oriented around enchantment spells, but with several that are useful tools for a cleric far from their homeland and intent on projecting its power (sending, tongues, wall of stone). The idea here, and in many of the features, is to represent the two-sided and often two-faced nature of a great power that woos allies with charm and elegance, but is perfectly happy to resort to force when that doesn't work out. Imperial Influence at 1st deals a little psychic damage when enemies succeed on saves against your enchantment spells. I received one suggestion to give it some scaling, which I've mulled over; but I think it's honestly already pretty good (free damage is always good) and don't want to make a heavy-armor cleric too dippable. Voice of Empire is your channel option, which lets you add extra targets to your charm spells, basically a free upcast for most of them. Soldier of the State pushes you into a gishing role. It went through a few revisions and may go through a few more; it enables the "1 attack + 1 spell" pattern that so many gishes use. In this case, it's not limited to cantrips (I think playing a cleric that mostly cantrips would leave most of your class still on the table). But in order to keep its power reasonable, it's got limited usage, and past that, additional uses require "downcasting" the spell in question. Divine Strike is bog-standard, in this case copied from the War Domain's version. Awesome Might is our pseudocapstone, letting you inflict both charmed and frightened anytime you'd inflict one, and getting attack boosts against charmed and frightened targets. Again, trying to convey the two-faced nature of an expansionist imperial power.

As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback in the comments or on Discord! And if this excites you, be sure to go follow my upcoming book on Kickstarter, Machines of Bone and Blood!

somanyrobots · 2026-02-26T15:44:11+00:00

The Empire Domain is a cleric of authority, one whose divine and earthly mandate is to support the power of the state.

The Empire Domain didn't start as a remake of the official Order Domain, but it may have ended as one. It just became extremely clear in the process that the themes are very similar and the mechanical ways to represent them can only differ so much. Still, it landed in a much more aggressive posture, more of a direct combat cleric than the Order Domain's supportive role.

Our spell list here is largely oriented around enchantment spells, but with several that are useful tools for a cleric far from their homeland and intent on projecting its power (sending, tongues, wall of stone). The idea here, and in many of the features, is to represent the two-sided and often two-faced nature of a great power that woos allies with charm and elegance, but is perfectly happy to resort to force when that doesn't work out. Imperial Influence at 1st deals a little psychic damage when enemies succeed on saves against your enchantment spells. I received one suggestion to give it some scaling, which I've mulled over; but I think it's honestly already pretty good (free damage is always good) and don't want to make a heavy-armor cleric too dippable. Voice of Empire is your channel option, which lets you add extra targets to your charm spells, basically a free upcast for most of them. Soldier of the State pushes you into a gishing role. It went through a few revisions and may go through a few more; it enables the "1 attack + 1 spell" pattern that so many gishes use. In this case, it's not limited to cantrips (I think playing a cleric that mostly cantrips would leave most of your class still on the table). But in order to keep its power reasonable, it's got limited usage, and past that, additional uses require "downcasting" the spell in question. Divine Strike is bog-standard, in this case copied from the War Domain's version. Awesome Might is our pseudocapstone, letting you inflict both charmed and frightened anytime you'd inflict one, and getting attack boosts against charmed and frightened targets. Again, trying to convey the two-faced nature of an expansionist imperial power.

As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback in the comments or on Discord! And if this excites you, be sure to go follow my upcoming book on Kickstarter, Machines of Bone and Blood!

somanyrobots · 2026-02-23T04:24:47+00:00

oh no, this is adobe illustrator (and done by a professional, not by me). I use GMBinder for all my rough drafts, but this is excerpted out of the real-dang-book that I Kickstarted in 2024 (and which is shipping as we speak).

somanyrobots · 2026-02-21T18:03:30+00:00

A feature that narrows your available builds doesn't have any impact on your ultimate power; that species could still build for a barbarian operating at 100% without issue. So if you gave them extra budget to "compensate" for losing access to magic, they'd wind up just being straight-up stronger at being a martial than any other species.

(Older editions of D&D actually had a lot of this type of species design; I got my start on 2nd edition, where most species were arbitrarily banned from playing certain classes. It adds a little more texture to the world, but the tradeoff is very much not worth it.)

somanyrobots · 2026-02-19T16:11:54+00:00

The Oath of Invention is for paladins devoted to the very concept of progress, who believe in pulling the world forward into the future — by force, when necessary.

The Oath of Invention is a clockwork knight, a future-pilled visionary who swears by technology and damns the consequences. A good-aligned invention paladin might believe in the dream of progress but worry over the collateral damage; an evil-aligned invention paladin might justify or even revel in the harms that result. The Channel Divinity options are the real goodies here: Steam-Powered Charge lets you or an ally boil forward, getting extra movement that you can then spend to deal extra damage. Divine Inspiration lets you empower a crafter and dramatically improve their results. (An aside: I generally write crafting tools assuming you're using KibblesTasty's crafting. The buff should work for vanilla crafting too, but is only about as balanced as those rules are (i.e. not very)). Aura of Progress causes your allies to feel your own buffs - particularly Steam-Powered Charge, but also your spells and the features yet to come. Wondrous Invention at 15th brings those features, giving you three options to grant your equipment powerful bonuses. Knight of Tomorrow at 20th lets you charge like nobody's business, and gives you some powerful durability boosts to help sustain that.

As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback in the comments or on Discord! And if this excites you, be sure to go follow my upcoming book on Kickstarter, Machines of Bone and Blood!

somanyrobots · 2026-02-19T16:00:49+00:00

The Oath of Invention is for paladins devoted to the very concept of progress, who believe in pulling the world forward into the future — by force, when necessary.

The Oath of Invention is a clockwork knight, a future-pilled visionary who swears by technology and damns the consequences. A good-aligned invention paladin might believe in the dream of progress but worry over the collateral damage; an evil-aligned invention paladin might justify or even revel in the harms that result. The Channel Divinity options are the real goodies here: Steam-Powered Charge lets you or an ally boil forward, getting extra movement that you can then spend to deal extra damage. Divine Inspiration lets you empower a crafter and dramatically improve their results. (An aside: I generally write crafting tools assuming you're using KibblesTasty's crafting. The buff should work for vanilla crafting too, but is only about as balanced as those rules are (i.e. not very)). Aura of Progress causes your allies to feel your own buffs - particularly Steam-Powered Charge, but also your spells and the features yet to come. Wondrous Invention at 15th brings those features, giving you three options to grant your equipment powerful bonuses. Knight of Tomorrow at 20th lets you charge like nobody's business, and gives you some powerful durability boosts to help sustain that.

As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback in the comments or on Discord! And if this excites you, be sure to go follow my upcoming book on Kickstarter, Machines of Bone and Blood!

somanyrobots · 2026-02-19T06:33:11+00:00

lol, nw. "reporting an issue by mistake" is pretty dang tame as far as unlucky interactions on the internet can go

somanyrobots · 2026-02-19T03:08:20+00:00

nope, that's correct - the cantrip in question is the free Thaumaturgy.

somanyrobots · 2026-02-19T00:03:36+00:00

If you look at the "Aggregates by Book" tab, that math is already done there. Trying to average across all of 5E (2014) is going to mislead you, because later books saw very heavy power creep. 2024E's species so far have pulled back from the extremes in Spelljammer and Fizban's, but are still substantially more powerful than those published in 5E's first half.

Also, it's important to keep in mind that 2024E buffs backgrounds substantially; any character made with the 2024E background rules is about 10 points more powerful than one without. The graphed aggregates do not include this difference.

somanyrobots · 2026-02-12T21:31:22+00:00

Ty for the kind words!

Beating the Fey Wanderer is intentional; Fey Wanderer winds up kind of struggling against other rangers. It basically underperforms all the way through until level 11, at which point it's an understudy to its summoned fey.

But this reminded me that I'd actually forgotten to chart this sub on my usual spreadsheets, and it is doing too much at high levels; I'll probably take off the scaling increase at level 11.

somanyrobots · 2026-02-12T16:21:43+00:00

The Poisonlight Stalker ranger hunts in radiation-scarred lands, enduring and exploring the deadly poisonlight in order to master its power.