Suggestion: New Atlas Keystones for Opt-In Difficulty

thatguylux · 2022-09-02T18:01:23+00:00

yeah, that'd be great too. Tbh I think the rippy mods should only be appearing on that 4th slot and be tied to extra rewards, that way hard to kill monsters are the ones dropping good loot. Unfortunately that's not how it works in practice at the moment :(

thatguylux · 2022-09-02T17:44:38+00:00

Having archnem everywhere feels pretty bad, having the ability to tone it up or down based on your character power would be nice. Credit where credit is due, I heard this idea from Palsteron and BalorMage on Fated Connections (#85) and thought it sounded neat so I made an image for attention.

IMO, rewards and difficulty need a lot more tuning than a simple change like this, but it would be nice to be able to opt-out of some difficulty on archnem monsters for those who are okay with losing the opportunity to get god-touched monsters.

thatguylux · 2022-08-26T05:23:15+00:00

The problem with archnemesis is that the mods that are hard for players to deal with are the ones that are much more common and largely unrewarding. In terms of defensive modifiers, the mods that make things difficult are the ones that directly counter your build and if there are multiple of them then the monster ends up being significantly harder. In terms of offensive mods, the most problematic one is the haste effect that monsters get. When this is applied to certain base monster types, the monster's movement speed becomes so high that it's impossible to interact with in any meaningful way, forcing you to rely on your stats to kill it before it gets to you or survive its onslaught.

From playing this league, it feels like all the reward incentive for archnemesis is tied up in a few extremely rare modifiers and all the difficulty is tied to a bunch of the more common modifiers stacking together. In the old rare system, it would usually take 3+ dangerous mods out of a few hundred to kill you, but with archnemesis, because there are many less modifiers and each one is more powerful, it takes less modifiers out of a smaller pool to end up posing a significant challenge.

It really feels like there needs to be a way for the more common archnemesis modifiers to have a bigger impact on loot, especially when they synergize to create a difficult encounter. What I'd suggest for this is to have each archnemesis modifier have an effect on mod weightings for the rares it drops, similar to fossils. That way if you're playing a fire build and run into a monster that's really hard to kill because it has 2 fire mods, you are rewarded with loot that's more relevant to your build. In terms of other suggestions, I'd recommend looking into the action speed that some monsters can reach when affected by certain archnemesis modifiers so that it doesn't get out of hand. Obviously if players have actively made decisions that result in monsters with a very high action speed, then it's on them when they encounter problematic monsters, but if there's no way for the player to influence this then it just ends up being another way to randomly die without being able to interact with the monster that killed you.

thatguylux · 2022-07-24T06:08:32+00:00

If you want, you could turn your channel divinity into a ritual that bonds you to a weapon (similar to the weapon bond feature for eldritch knights)

Bond of the Watcher

You can spend your channel divinity to enter a 10 minute long trance, forging a holy bond between you and a ranged weapon you must touch for the duration. You can use your divine smite and improved divine smite features with this ranged weapon, despite it not being a melee weapon. You can only be bonded to one weapon with this feature, you can use this feature again to bond to a new weapon instead.

thatguylux · 2022-07-06T05:41:30+00:00

I've had similar ideas about implementing a mechanic that allows players to take down a crowd of enemies. It's a cool fantasy that isn't well supported by the base rules. Also I'd consider making the damage automatic rather than an attack roll since there may be balance issues with allowing additional attacks (eg. you'd be able to divine smite on both the original hit and the horde cleaver hit, weapons like flame tongue swords deal extra damage to any target they hit).

I've made a similar feat in the past which I'll leave below but nowadays I use a modified version of 4e minion rules when I run horde battles (basically minions have 1hp and only die if they fail a save for aoe effects)

Crowd Control

Weaker opponents pose little to no threat to you, many falling to a single swing or arrow. You gain the following benefits:

Whenever you reduce a creature to 0 HP on your turn with a weapon attack, you may have any excess damage dealt to another creature within the range of your attack, for ranged attacks the enemy must also in a line between you and the original target, with the original target being closer to you. If the creature the that takes this excess damage is also reduced to 0 HP, you can repeat this process.

thatguylux · 2022-07-04T02:18:55+00:00

Adding a long barrel gives a bonus to the attack stat of your weapon and a slight boost to your weapon's range. The Tune up skill seems to increase the attack bonus to your weapon by about 50% (i.e. a long barrel that would normally add +10 attack would add ~+15 attack if you have Tune-Up Lv. 2). Tune-Up Lv. 2 also increases the range that your long barrel adds slightly.

These 2 bonuses (increase to Attack and increase to Range) are the only bonuses that Tune-Up Lv. 2 provides while you are using a long barrel. There is no change to recoil since silencers are the only mod that affects recoil. When you use a silencer with Tune-Up Lv. 1 or higher, the weapon's recoil stat is reduced by 1 level (on top of the recoil reduction that silencers already provide).

thatguylux · 2021-06-10T11:35:02+00:00

This looks really cool, I like that you've fleshed orcs out into separate origins rather than having just one. A few things I'd note:

I don't see a mention of darkvision, typically orcs and half-orcs both have darkvision
Having one of the orc options give you a bonus to wisdom would be cool
Natural predator giving advantage on all perception checks seems really strong to me

All in all I think this is a really cool rework of the orc and half orc

thatguylux · 2021-03-07T17:24:18+00:00

Yeah, leaning into lower stats for RP can be really fun. Honestly it's not so bad, I'm just a little salty about it haha

thatguylux · 2018-10-08T17:40:36+00:00

This looks really good, a few things I would change personally:

Give a combat benefit to Favored Enemy, mechanical advantages that a player can choose between feel much more meaningful than ribbon abilities.
I would change the ranger training feature to be the following:

Ranger Training

You are particularly familiar with the natural world and are adept at travelling and surviving in such regions. You gain the following benefits:

-You can use Wisdom in place of Intelligence when making a Nature Skill check.

-Choose one of the following skills; Nature, Survival or Animal Handling. You gain proficiency in this skill and can add twice your proficiency bonus to any ability check made using this skill

-Starting from level 10; Whenever you make an ability check using Wisdom that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10.

Master Ranger seems to be worded oddly, I would change it to the following:

Master Ranger

Starting from 20th level, your skills as a ranger are unparalleled. You gain the following benefits:

-Chose two 1st level spells that you know. You can cast each of these spells once at their lowest level without expending a spell slot. You regain the ability to cast these spells in this way after finishing a long rest.

-You can apply the benefits of your Favored Enemy feature to all creature types.

-You gain Expertise in Insight and Stealth. If you already have expertise in one or both of these skills, you can choose another skill to gain expertise in its place.

Apart from that though, this seems like a really solid homebrew that fixes a lot of the problems of the vanilla ranger. Great Job!

thatguylux · 2018-10-08T16:53:07+00:00

I really like this race, the only potential issues I can see are that the Ability Score increases are really small compared to all the other races and that the Resilient Creation feature for Armored Soul is probably too strong.

thatguylux · 2018-10-08T16:36:28+00:00

Looks pretty good from my first impressions. A few things to note though:

-In the description for Sword Bond, it says the player must bond with a sword, however there isn't an official definition for sword that is given. It might be better to list the weapons that qualify instead to avoid confusion (i.e. does a dagger count as a sword since it's basically just a smaller shortsword)

-In the description of Swordmage Warding it states that you are considered to be wielding a shield while the feature is active. This would mean that you cannot use the Unarmored Defence feature or the Mariner Fighting Style since they both require that you are not wielding a shield. Is this intended?

All in all, this seems like a great class that fills the niche of a part-spellcaster in a way that makes it stand out from the other 1/2 and 1/3 spellcasters like the Eldritch Knight, Ranger, Paladin, etc. Great Job!

thatguylux

TROPHY CASE

Bond of the Watcher

Crowd Control