SnowWolf's Random Brews | A World of Frost and Fangs

[heady sequoia]

The other stances are essentially "transition" stances and so are meant to be slightly weaker but nonetheless effective and beneficial (you cant tell me a free disengage aint good)

[slow marten]

Eh. I think it's feel supremely awkward in play

However, you could do something like "combat phases", where you always start in the first phase and can only progress them forward (so Waxing, Full, Waning, Dark or Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) and give them appropriate abilities. Setup in the first one, burst damage in second, control in third, finishing off in fourth. You can probably do that better, but you get the point

[heady sequoia]

The idea is already there, but much less strict than yours

You progress through the stances in a set order

Full Moon is full offense, New Moon is defense

[slow marten]

Yeah, but without any control of the speed

[heady sequoia]

You go Full Offense, transition to defense slowly, then Defense, then transition to offense

You do have control over the speed, you can go twice as fast through the stances by using you BA

[slow marten]

oh

well, I guess that helps a little

but I still think this is somewhat awkward and there could be better implementations

[heady sequoia]

You can go from Full to New on 1st to 2nd turn, but to curb the strength you cant just go back to Full on the 3rd turn (thats partly why the Half Moon stances exist, to create a gap between the two strongest stances)

[slow marten]

tying it to basic actions does have a certain neatness to it, but I think you're gonna end up with an useless bonus more often that not, while also getting a very strong one sometimes

also having five phases instead of four is so weird

[heady sequoia]

6 actually

You go Half Moon twice

[slow marten]

oh. That's sneaky

[heady sequoia]

Heh

[slow marten]

still weird

[heady sequoia]

I was contemplating the Gibbous Phases but its 1. Not cool sounding and 2. Already lengthening the stance list that probably doesnt need it

Its awkward but its meant to emulate that waxing and waning thing

[slow marten]

The moon has always had 4 phases (and the option for a seasons reflavor is cool)

Yeah, it'd be great to somehow get the wax and wayne wane thing represented better - but a simple cycle probably isn't that

[heady sequoia]

I think its got 8
Full, Waning Gibbous, Half, Waning Crescent, New, Waxing Crescent, Half (the other half), Waxing Gibbous

[slow marten]

well, fair. Certainly not 6 though

[heady sequoia]

I think its represented well, I dont think it would be good to let stances change in a free motion, since the waxing and waning is in a strict order (duh)

Its not 6 but its 6 for gameplay reasons

And cause Gibbous doesnt sound that cool

[slow marten]

Yeah, that's for sure. But I still find this supremely awkward

[heady sequoia]

I think its interesting, the strictness of the order forces the player to gauge the rhythm of their stances, using a BA to control it. A BA can give you 1. An action surge, 2. A disengage, 3. A dash, 4. A hide. Theyre worded so theyre not explicitly those actions but sneakily theyre all "BA for this action or passively have it next turn" in a way

[slow marten]

I'd have to think on this when I'm not as tired

[heady sequoia]

You always know the order, nothing is hidden, and you choose your starting stance

[slow marten]

I feel like you could do with just 4, somehow - maybe just dash, disengage, dodge, hide. Leave the universal action surge to eclipses

[heady sequoia]

Yeah so thats what ive been wondering ultimately: is 1 additional AS per combat too strong? Its worded in my main post in the homebrew channel, but not here. I dont think it is for a subclass, but I could be wrong

I wanted Full Moon to be completely offensive in its benefit

Near completely

(Since New Moon isnt exaclty completely defensive either)

[slow marten]

Yeah that's fair. Honestly I'd drop the attachment to "basic actions". It's kinda neat, but they aren't exactly balanced or anything

[heady sequoia]

Oh I know theyre not balanced

[slow marten]

Hide is certainly flavorful - it'd be nice to have it right before attacking

[heady sequoia]

But theyre not exactly also the basic actions, I mean they look like it is my point, but double movement for example stacks with Dash

Becoming obscured doesnt mean an auto Hide, you just cant be seen

[slow marten]

yeah I know. Maybe I'll come up with something tomorrow

[heady sequoia]

Random very convoluted weapon XD

Just writing down some random thoughts

[heady sequoia]

.

[maiden inlet]

.

[restive leaf]

.

[random urchin]

.

[glass moth]

.

[halcyon kestrel]

Why the dots

[maiden inlet]

Delete that. Or be executed!

[restive leaf]

idk if this was ever resolved, but there's nothing I can find about limiting it to once per turn until you hit 17th level:

Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again. Starting at 17th level, you can use it twice before a rest, but only once on the same turn.```

[heady sequoia]

Yeah its only when you get a second use as I checked after

Its easy enough to add a one per turn clause anyway

Might repost Crescent Warrior for review later

[restive leaf]

Even so, having one more action surge is crazy powerful

[heady sequoia]

It is, but its in the context of Fighter's sub being pretty hefty in terms of complexity/budget

So idk if "additional action surge per combat" itself is too much or too little for a fighter sub (I assume too little)

[restive leaf]

I gotcha

I'm also of the opinion fighter needs a massive buff

but if you're wanting a more offensive option, you can't go wrong with just making it an additional attack or damage.

[heady sequoia]

Additional attack already exists as the inbetween Half Moon stance for Crescent Warrior

[restive leaf]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

In most critique of homebrew it's much more common to point out problems rather than create solutions so I apologize for not completing the latter

Those just be my thoughts

[heady sequoia]

It is, I dont fault you for that

I just also pointed out that I have that idea already in the sub lol

[restive leaf]

👌

reading

[halcyon kestrel]

Action Surge is literally 1/SR or LR until level 17

Any additional uses at 3rd level is immediately bringing you to 17th level for in terms of AS uses

[heady sequoia]

Its 17th level when compounding everything else, but 1 more AS isnt exactly literally a 14 level jump

Though yes I have considered that it might be too strong

1 AS is pretty underwhelming for a fighter sub I think

Like on its own

[halcyon kestrel]

Some way of of buffing you when you use AS without making it free

[restive leaf]

dats a good idea

[heady sequoia]

Not really the way I want to implement it, a stance should grant an effect that doesnt rely on you using a different resource other than action economy

Otherwise being in a stance would mean you are almost forced to use that resource

To take advantage of that stance

Since your stance is 100% changing next turn

Anyway the next idea is to just grant 2 attacks straight up, but I really like the flexibility of AS allowing Dash Dodge or Disengage

Adv on all attacks is possible but... thats just slightly worse New Moon stance

Or slightly better

Hmmm I do like that with Full Moon granting 2 attacks all stances except Half Moon are basically Dash Dodge Disengage Attack lol

[halcyon kestrel]

Full moon is offense, New Moon is defense

The Crescent’s are Waning for defense set up and Waxing for offense set up

[heady sequoia]

Yeap

Again im not against it I just like the flexibility

[halcyon kestrel]

Half Moon is…

Maybe scratch half moon so that you don’t potentially double up on something

Full and Waxing are the offense & New and Waning are the defense side

So a middle one like Half might interfere with that flow

[heady sequoia]

Half Moon is intentionally there to force you to never switch between Full and New only

While giving you control over the speed of ypur stance changes

Without it the stances become strict, so theres less choice and more following a strict playstyle

[halcyon kestrel]

Was there a specific order for the switches?

[heady sequoia]

So its

New > Waxing > Half > Full > Waning > Half > New

Then you have the ability to use your BA to immediately switch stances on your turn, but you are also forced to swap every start of turn

Having 6 stances makes it so you dont swap between New and Full with just a BA (you only stay in an interim stance on the downtime between turns)

Without Half, I kinda have to remove the BA swap, which means stance become strict, which makes it a little less controlled by the player and more like im prescribing how this fighter plays

Half is a stopgap to this and allows stances to be a little more controllable (but notably this wasnt some afterthought, I had Half from the start, it just turned out this way by happy coincidence haha)

[halcyon kestrel]

Some of the effects might need changing

Because if Full is 2 extra attacks and Half is 1… eh

[heady sequoia]

Half is one with a BA. Full is 2 without

(Which might also be too much but mostly at low levels lol)

[halcyon kestrel]

I kinda feel like Full straight up just maxing weapon damage that turn seems decent enough

[heady sequoia]

Maxing weapon damage is a pretty good idea

Thats not bad at all

I dont think that was suggested earlier

[halcyon kestrel]

Full - Max weapon damage
Waning - Auto disengage
Half - Attack as a BA
Waxing - Auto dash
New - Heavily obscured

[heady sequoia]

Id have to determine if this should max smite damage too, hmm

[halcyon kestrel]

Full Moon. When you hit with a weapon attack, the weapon damage dealt becomes the maximum damage possible.

Waning Crescent. Your movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Half Moon. You can make one weapon attack as a bonus action.

Waxing Crescent. Your movement speed is doubled.

New Moon. You are heavily obscured to all creatures hostile to you.

Full moon is the most wordy one here damn

[heady sequoia]

I guess I'll test it with allowing Smite to max, it takes multiclassing which isnt exactly optimal, and also slots

[halcyon kestrel]

This version of Full Moon maxes anything that classifies as weapon damage

Lemme look up sneak attack rq

[heady sequoia]

Oh dam yeah Sneak too

[halcyon kestrel]

I mean

[heady sequoia]

Sneak would go crazy

[halcyon kestrel]

Is smite weapon damage tho?

[heady sequoia]

Thats the question yeah

[halcyon kestrel]

Or extra bonus damage

“…in addition to the weapon’s damage…” it says

[heady sequoia]

"Your weapon always rolls its maximum for its damage dice"

The way you worded it it just maxes damage dealt thats why

[heady sequoia]

This should include crits so thats nice

And avoid both smite and sneak

[halcyon kestrel]

Full Moon. When you hit with a weapon attack, the weapon damage dealt becomes the maximum damage possible.

[heady sequoia]

Nice I'll try this version of Full Moon on my next review post here

I think weapon damage still includes smite and sneak

So i need to explicitly reference weapon damage dice

You roll the maximum on your weapon's damage dice

[heady sequoia]

btw if yall wondering, Ive been focusing all my brewing efforts on worldbuilding and my homebrew campaign's story lol

as well as writing some one shot quests

[halcyon kestrel]

Neat

[heady sequoia]

I probably wont get a review for a full campaign if its finished lol, idk if anyone does that here

[heady sequoia]

Was thinking of a Touch Conc armor of agathys, then revised it to this

not sure if its balanced, what do you guys think?

[maiden inlet]

Yeah thats more second level territory

A +5 to ac on a different creature is already thought to be a 2nd-3rd level spell (at least what i have seen) and + the damage, and it reforms efery round, yeah 2nd to maybe 3rd but i would he doubtful

[heady sequoia]

The AC bonus goes away after 1 blocked attack mind you

Refreshes on start of turn

This was +2 AC before but I didnt know if that was too meh compared to Shield of Faith

[maiden inlet]

But it also stops attacks from happening most the time making it better than shield while also being on someone else and for 1 minute

[heady sequoia]

Stops one attack from happening as opposed to Shield's entire round. Yeah it does last longer but it doesnt protect you the entire time like Shield can

[maiden inlet]

OH

I MISREAD

APPOLOGIES

i rhought it said it breaks if it hits

Thats very different

Yeah thats is either first level or a weak second level

[heady sequoia]

Alright got another spell, this time its a summon so the basics are fine and whats to evaluate is the statblock. Not sure yet how the balance of a summon statblock goes but here it is

[heady sequoia]

Gonna be travelling so Im gonna throw this on here just to have a reference if I want to look at some stuff

[halcyon kestrel]

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour

Sun Sickness. …if it spends more than 1 hour in direct sunlight.

[heady sequoia]

Yeah its mostly copy pasted from myconids rn

[halcyon kestrel]

I mean 10 minutes might still be useful

[heady sequoia]

Gonna still adjust things

[heady sequoia]

Yeah might do 10 mins

Euphoria probably needs a limit too but dont wanna make it 1 per day

[halcyon kestrel]

Can’t use it while a creature is still affected?

That’s like a 1 minute cooldown

[heady sequoia]

Hmm, maybe "a creature can only be affected by these spores once"?

Once per casting

Once per... something idk

[halcyon kestrel]

That exhaustion could disappear with the spirit if you feel generous

[heady sequoia]

The way the summon spell is worded it does I think

I added that any effects fade after the spirit disappears

Also in the works is Summon Giant. Currently the options are Cloud Frost Fire Stone Storm. I excluded Hill because it was too generic so I dont know what kind of ability to give them

[timid shale]

Well this all looks very interesting, curious to see what spells and subclasses I can find here

[heady sequoia]

A lot lol

[timid shale]

I'd say so!

[heady sequoia]

Heres a optional alternate feature for the Barb, replacing Brutal Critical. I know I did something like this before, but I got feedback that 9th was a bit too late for it. Im not sure where else it could go though

[brittle raft]

This is a very cool feature with great flavor. The wording is a little tricky though; I'm having a hard time figuring how a weapon's reach changes the effects.

[heady sequoia]

For bludgeoning, it only dictates how far you can hit. For piercing, it dictates how long the line is and so how many it hits (mostly compensating for the fact that a line is hard to... line up). For slashing, it dictates how far the cone sweep can be.

So both bludg and slash hits at most 4. Piercing possibly hits more. Idk if I should change that (maybe should lol)

[halcyon kestrel]

Just scrolled to the top of this forum (wanted to take a look at the older stuff) and it tool like 10 minutes

And this is 2000 or so messages, Ive seen some forums with like 14K

[slow marten]

There are probably ways to cheat it with the search tool. But yeah, those non-specific threads are pretty annoying

[halcyon kestrel]

Let us pin dangit

[slow marten]

That too

[random urchin]

it's a feature discord needs to add

atm, you'd have to give manage channel / manage thread rights to everyone to do it

but you can just poke a mod to pin it for you

[halcyon kestrel]

Personally give the thread/forum owner pin abilities in things they start but that might take some actual effort

[slow marten]

But getting people to stop making person-threads would be helpful too

[halcyon kestrel]

Oh yeah

[random urchin]

If I had to make a new thread for everything I do, it'd be just, awful

[heady sequoia]

I thought thatd be the big difference between threads and posts but nah not much hahaha

[heady sequoia]

Tbh I do agree that there are merits in the brew threads rather than person threads, but at the same time I cannot deny the benefit that Ovion and the other mentioned of basically already having a... captive audience that you know is interested in your stuff

[slow marten]

Well, yes. It's just selfish

[random urchin]

I mean, as mentioned before cube - you want single thing threads so its easier for you to find brew later.
But it makes it that much harder for people to get feedback if they're doing multiple things, and it'll just result in people using brew channels more, and so it's even further in a huge block of stuff.
Your complaints of things being long, and needing to scroll - even single-thing brew threads can reach thousands of posts.
I would much rather have better avenues for feedback, let people have combined brew threads, or choose to make single item, rather than enforce a worse option for feedback in the feedback stages, which is the point of posting your work in progress brew..

Encouraging people to post their completed work in #1009088298020511886, which is intended to be single-item-threads would be better, as then that makes completed work easier to find, and doesn't reduce engagement in the feedback process (and is the point of index).

To me, allowing the options that gets better engagement and feedback for more people, is less selfish than the option that gets significantly less feedback, but makes things marginally easier to search for in future for some stuff.

[slow marten]

Finding stuff later and excessive scrolling are hardly the core of the issue (though the former is fairly hard to circumvent, unless search is way better than I think).

The amount of time and creativity people have is roughly constant. You're only getting more feedback by diverting it from others, and in the process, make the forum way less useable. People are interested in specific types of brews - let them give feedback on those, it'd probably be better that way too. The channel is for brews, not for people.

Also, I absolutely don't get your argument about working on two things at once. That's when two separate threads are the most important to have for both creator and reader, it's gonna be a huge mess otherwise

[random urchin]

I didn't say you couldn't have 2 threads at once.
I just said people should get the choice of if they want 1, or multiple, and that group-brew-threads are better for engagement than single-brew threads.

[slow marten]

Again, they're only better if you wish to amass a fanclub. Single-brew threads are much better for engaging with what you're actually interested in, instead of whatever a given person came up with. "Captive audience" was a really good term

[random urchin]

It is factually better to have a slowly growing number of people who are willing to review work / going to see that white highlight to increase the chance of engagement, than multiple threads that start from 0 users every time.
Your want for "easier to find", is further derailed that those single-use threads with no one in, are less likely to have people join, and just reply in brew channels if advertised there (or not at all) so it just goes in the bucket of brew channels.

It's not "amassing a fan club", it's accepting how social media works, and giving the best odds to get feedback.

People should be free to choose if they want a single thread, or multiple.
But it is objectively factual, that the majority of single item threads get far less engagement, often due to a lack of advertising, and playing the game, or when things are single-item, then they might as well be in a brew channel anyway - because it's easier to get short-term engagement.

This is derailing snows thread, and I know you don't like user / multi-project threads - but that's just how it works.
If you have a solution that would fix the above, I'm all ears but there's not been an attempt I've seen yet that worked as well as retaining and growing the number of people in a thread, by doing the next thing along.

[wooden willow]

The solution would be for discord to implement threads inside forums

And to give posters the right to pin

[random urchin]

forums posts are threads.
a Forum is just a channel with a different layout.
It just needs thread specific moderation tools, rather than channel only.

[wooden willow]

Yeah, I get that, just imagine if you could have threads inside threads. It is crazy, but one iteration is enough to make this work.

The rest depends on discord changing the moderation configurations, like separating the general tag options.

[wooden willow]

@heady sequoia
By the way, I stumbled upon this forum, wanted to know if you're still looking for feedback, I'm particularly interested in talking about the monk subclasses you did at the beginning

[heady sequoia]

Yo, caught me right as I was going to bed. Might not reply rn, but shoot. If its the monk subs Im thinking of, note that theyre all patterned off the Sun Soul (as fire), so theyre even stricter in terms of the way the subs are structured

Might not reply cause I need to sleeeeeeppp

[wooden willow]

Good to know, and g'night

[wooden willow]

I did some hacking and managed to reach the top without scrolling. Will comment when I have time.

[wooden willow]

For starters, I like the structure these subs follow, I have yet to read air. I will argue that Sun Soul is not fire, it's literally radiant themed, barely any fire at all, even if you slap a cantrip to it. It's more of a Shadow counterpart.

I start having issues with this at 11th level, cause with how it's written, you can effectively perform 8 attacks on your turn at the cost of 1 ki point (the cost of your Flurry of Blows). Compare it to spending 3 ki points as an action to drop a Genkidama, which by all purposes intended, it will deal 42 damage across two targets. While your whips will deal 76 across two targets (not accounting for success or hit %). Oh, and keep in mind when you use Searing Sunburst, you shoot your Radiant Sun Bolt or Searing Arc Strike as a BA.

A minor detail in that same feature is that it says your martial arts save DC, but monks don't have that, they have ki save DC.

One slight suggestion is that I would change the piercing damage of your whips to either slashing or cold, because as I picture it, you ain't impaling, you are whipping. Unless that's how it's meant to look like.

------o------

[heady sequoia]

Using Sun Soul as fire is not "I see it as fire" and more "wow these abilities are thematically appropriate for fire and works well as fire, lets use it as the 'fire' base"

[wooden willow]

So, yeah, I would definitely treat Sun Soul as the radiant monk, and give it a bit of a tweak as well. Do keep in mind I don't know if you had already since I haven't read all you have done in this forum.

[wooden willow]

I see

[heady sequoia]

Heat blasts, heat cone, heat explosion

[wooden willow]

To be fair, I would be inclined to change burning hands in Sun to guiding bolt (cause I don't recall there being a 1st-level AoE radiant damage spell)

[heady sequoia]

But as is, it notably is burning hands

[wooden willow]

Regardless, if Sun Soul is being the reference for the rest of elemental subs, it does need a bit of a rebalance.

At least the 11th level feature does

[heady sequoia]

Rjght now it got given both fire cantrips (control flames and bonfire). Other than that I gotta check how to tweak it

[heady sequoia]

Also yeah slashing whips.

The double target was kinda a holdover from the previous version, partly me not being sure if the restrained is enough for the 11th feature alone

It does deal a lot more damage for free, might make it only when you flurry that it double targets if I still want that

[wooden willow]

The only funny business here is that you missed some key points when copying the wall of stone spell, like, not explaining the size of the panels (or not mentioning them before the 3rd paragraph), or skipping the "Reducing a panel to 0 hit points destroys it and might cause connected panels to collapse..."

Also, at first I didn't understand clearly the spending 1 ki to have another wall, then I got it, but now I'm wondering if this implies I can summon as many walls as I want as long as I spend ki (aka, no wall collapses).

[heady sequoia]

Right, that was wall of stone being very long and I cut it down a little back then XD

[wooden willow]

That could work, tho if you allow me, I wanna check how the numbers go compared to the sun burst and the rock throw.

[heady sequoia]

Also uh... yeah might give a limit of number of walls, but probably fairly high, like 6 walls

[wooden willow]

Oh, I like it when it depends on your Wisdom modifier.

Uh, that reminds me, why does boulder scale with Dex instead of Wis

[wooden willow]

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-patrick-building-falling-gif-25773500

I don't know WHY I thought of this

Imagining the monk building a bridge like this is hilarious

[heady sequoia]

Because Sun Soul's sun bolt is dex

[wooden willow]

Right, I forgot since I made mine with Wis, haha

[wooden willow]

Ok, so 6 attacks in total for 1 ki (not considering any % cause I'm tired):

• It deals 43 more dmg than 1 ki Sun Burst
• 15 more than 3 ki Sun Burst
• And 11 more than two Boulder Fist (1 ki)

That last one I don't think it's an issue since you have wall and that's very cool and defensive.

I think the one easy fix for Sun Burst is having it be a 3d6 AoE (no ki) action (no Attack action), and 1 ki to amp to 6d6. That way it's more justified.

[heady sequoia]

Yeah might bump Sun Burst up at that point

[wooden willow]

Man, I really don't want to think about %. I have been doing so many of that math this week. Not just that, but having to study for the scenarios

[heady sequoia]

Dont worry about it lol

[wooden willow]

Like, having to learn how the dmg of subsequent attacks is affected if you use an ability with a chance to fail on the first attack.

Aka, advantage is conditioned by the success of hit and save fail of the first attack.

Then checking how the math works if you were to try that save on both the first and 2nd attack.

And just today I did a whole lot of analyzing a new method of CR calculation, encounter designing to match xp distribution under certain monster combination to match difficulties, just to learn what's the worst CR I should throw certain parties to calculate the chances of missing attacks against a monk always dodging as a BA (for free).

I have learned a lot, but damn, I'm not Ovion, he's the mathmancer

[heady sequoia]

Nobody can live up to Ovion, not even Ovion.

[wooden willow]

Damn is Gale Wind Rush versatile. The cantrip, free Step, a long distance attack that pushes away and being able to use it when you Step.

Roaring Wave, idk why I was expecting gust, I forgot it was 2nd-level.

Tornado Spin, nice.

One With the Sky. Cool. I always wonder however, how do speeds like this interact with Unarmored Movement. We know for a fact that it boosts all movement, so by RAW your flying speed goes from 60 to 90 passively. It's something weird I haven't stopped to ask before, cause I sort of ignored it.

My only negative feedback is that Gale Rush is way superior to any other option of the same level. It has the longest range (along with 17th level boulder, radiant arc being 30 ft.), it has an auto push for every hit, the free Step of the Wind and attack + Step.

The rest is fine

[heady sequoia]

Yeah so Gale Rush was like... a mishmash of stuff I had ideas for to set it apart from fire. Def gotta cut something from it.

Also im pretty sure I also boosted Sun Bolt to 60 feet

Not sure if I did in my compendium. at work, cant check

Im fairly sure I did cut somethjng from Gale Rush but I gotta check when I get home

[wooden willow]

I tried to find the latest version, maybe I didn't look well

[heady sequoia]

Yeah dont worry, I might not have posted it

[wooden willow]

So far, not an update

[heady sequoia]

Lmao yeah life happened

Got busy with other things

[wooden willow]

Do you have a link with all your subclasses?

[wooden willow]

Relatable

[heady sequoia]

I have them in a compendium yeah, might post it later and ask it to be pinned

[wooden willow]

Cool

There's one idea I wanted to share, because it came suddenly and I thought it was really cool. What if Sun Soul (cause there won't be a fire exclusive sub) instead of its light pellets it had flamethrower hands. Like, you punch someone in the face and release a cone of fire.

But, a tiny one, like 10-foot

[heady sequoia]

I like the short bursts mostly cause its like the fire bending in Avatar

plus the flamethrowing is kinda there in the burning hands

[wooden willow]

I was sleepy at that hour, so I was half thinking. The idea didn't consider burning hands, then I remembered it. And I say they can still go hand by hand. You have little flamethrower and big flamethrower, for more pleasure.

I would also argue that this way both abilities roll better, since both are short range. Something I didn't even consider before, like, these subclasses are designed to be ranged, but your main combo would force you to move in close range. I guess it's just to give you a tool if you happened to engage in melee, but still curious.

As a side note, I can't think of burning hands without thinking of this:

[heady sequoia]

I revive my thread to show you, silly little Saving Throws section of a monk-based statblock

[halcyon kestrel]

“I am proficient in evading death.”

-this Monk

[heady sequoia]

its true, he is

[heady sequoia]

So I asked for feedback on brewtwo but I'll ask here for anyone looking at my stuff. I'm doing a conversion for each class to an NPC, basically so I have NPCs of each class available, AND to practice monster brewing with a guideline, observing the differences between monster and player

I have arti and barb done, working through bard, BUT I was hit with doing a "archmonk" so to speak

I used Drunken Master as the base, and its fine so far.... except Redirect Attack

I'm not so sure if I should include it or change its execution or its fine as is. This is the current way I did it, combining it with Deflect Missiles (which the official monk statblock does have). Is this way way too insane? Too crazy?

[heady sequoia]

@buoyant depot

Its an insane statblock lmao

Mostly cause I wrote down spells and fizbans shield

Might want to write down finger of death but probably gonna lay off it

Already chunky as is

Oh forgot to add flyspeed to the draconic heritage

And that draconic heritage is already included

Yes its based on dragon sorc, like how archmage is kinda abjuration wiz

Also yeah its 18th not 20th lol, but its easily tweaked

Just add a few slots

Something like...

Quickened Fire Bolt is now 4 times per short

Add one careful spell

Add 1 6th slot and 1 7th slot

CR probably wont go up because quickened fire bolt is already every round under normal assumptions

Technically archmage is 18th level only also

Btw anyone looking at the statblock, my philosophy is that theres not really a need to turn to "not spells but actually spell" actions for mage statblocks. Since all theyre doing is writing down the spell, it is completely fine to say that it is a spell and write down the spell description

Differences from Archmage

Bulkier in general (better AC and HP). Lacks spell resist but plat shield should get you most of the way there.

Same main damage spell as Archmage (cone of cold), but fireball is as good a backup (due to draconic heritage) and quickened adds a hefty bit of damage.

Fire shield isnt written down but any physical attack should be retaliated against by fire shield, making it harder to attack in melee

Careful spell helps vs friendly fire unlike archmage

PWK exists, use sparingly lmao

[heady sequoia]

@haughty blade these are the ones I have.

Mask is really make or break with its invocs so it seems kinda meh as is.

Coin keeps getting tweaked for its value from 20 to 25 and back to 20 lol, cant decide.

Seal is probably extremely broken HAHAHA

[haughty blade]

Bee likes the coin

It can't Bee used as coin though right?

[heady sequoia]

It has no value when trying to trade with it

Only substitutes the value of material costs

It can have value as 1 gp when you die I guess

[haughty blade]

Neat

Use 300 gold pieces to gain 20

[heady sequoia]

Not even 20 lol literally 1 gp

Per piece

So 2 gp at lowest and 6 gp at highest

[heady sequoia]

oh yeah @buoyant depot if you didnt see this yet

[heady sequoia]

Probably the most insane statblock I've ever made lol

im sure im underestimating still how much health this thing can have

oh correction, archbishop should only heal itself 7 after mass cure wounds and 5 after mass healing word

which I guess now kinda self corrects the underestimation but idk

oh also toll should be necrotic lol

[buoyant depot]

Yep! I put it in my homebrew bestiary. Referencing you, of course

[heady sequoia]

Nice! Glad you like it

With updated Draconic Heritage (explains the HP and fly speed)

[heady sequoia]

Have a dilemma with the Glamour Bard statblock. The idea is that its entire skillset revolves around controlling others to do what it wants. This sounds good, but in execution its threat is highly volatile depending on what its controlling. Not sure how to estimate its CR like this.

Second is how to handle Mantle of Majesty and Enthralling Performance. Mantle of Majesty seems crazy if I just let the statblock have infinite BA Commands. I'm not sure if I'm gonna post this but if I do then I can't just trust a DM to be discerning about it haha. And also the BA Command is attached to the Charmed condition. I was gonna just let this be Charm person and leave out Enthralling performance, but I'm flipping back and forth on converting it into the Entice action you see here.

mantle of inspiration is totally fine

Maybe make the BA Command be like... 10 times a day?

or 5 times a day?

then idk what to do with Enthralling Perf/Entice if im just gonna leave it out (which is totally agreeable) and leave the charming up to Charm Person

threat's also volatile depending on if enemies/the party clumps together, cause cant command and antagonize on the same turn. I mean, its possible to combo them just extremely difficult

crown of madness then antagonize maybe better

oh wait no madness requires an action to maintain

so enemies abound into antagonize lol

(on the other bards, the official Bard statblock is considered Lore Bard, and I made the Whispers and Valor bard with no problems, with Valor being the high level bard)

[drifting torrent]

BA command at-will is fine, IMO

Though tying it to the mantle of majesty trait is also fine. I'd just have the mantle's wording change a bit for the bard to be able to activate it at the start of their turn. 'At the start of their turn, the glamour bard cloaks itself..."

[heady sequoia]

Ah right

Still welcoming any opinions, especially this time for how Entice was executed (which is kinda an interpretation of Enthralling Performance but for an NPC)

It was added mostly to add synergy to the BA Command, but im not sure if I should just leave the charming to Charm Person or add it so theres a kind of "free uses" and it being non spell

[drifting torrent]

Entice is good. Keep it, i'd say. It won't be useful in a fight, though

Well other than the combo with Mantle of Majesty's Command

[heady sequoia]

Yeah more for the combo, cause Charm Person would be a spell and thus cant Command

[heady sequoia]

Side note: not even being a statblock with fireball can save 4E monk from being meh

[heady sequoia]

Sun soul too lol, I think the Open Hand's ability to actually stunning strike is helping it a lot. Sun Soul statblock reserves ki for burning hands and 4E for fireball and shatter. 4E is significantly better if I just gave it 3 fireballs instead of letting it actually use different elements

[haughty blade]

theorically iwht a multiclass in zealot barbarian and a caster iwth raise death you can create a really shitty infinite gold machine

"yo im out of pocket change can you murder me for a sec?" Oke says the wizard

[heady sequoia]

at max its 6 gp every 3rd level slot, the clerics in temples charge way more than that for each 3rd level spell cast lol

[haughty blade]

cleric in temples charge?

[heady sequoia]

oh yeah in Adventurers League you can pay for spellcasting services, so some tables use that rule too

[haughty blade]

ow

bee didn't knew that

[heady sequoia]

Tyranny of Dragons module also had a spellcasting services price list I think

[haughty blade]

bee probably thinks with a caster friend

[heady sequoia]

and SKT

[drifting torrent]

Revivify does cost 300gp diamonds to cast

[haughty blade]

zealot feature makes to revivy them cost nothing in material

[heady sequoia]

Zealot Barb is freeee

[drifting torrent]

Oh right Zealot, forgive me

[haughty blade]

infinite 6 gold coin a day

:<

just get a job some may say

no thankz i prefer to stab myself

[heady sequoia]

its better than a standard job for sure XD

[haughty blade]

you don't pay taxes at least

and also you are ruining the economy

with eldritchian made fake real money

[heady sequoia]

lmao

[haughty blade]

inflaction gonna go crazy

just figured it would be even more hilarious if the blood money come from the patron stash

u making your patron go broke

6 gp at the time

[drifting torrent]

Tbf if dragon hoards exist idk if 6gp per death will do much

[haughty blade]

true

but 6 gp per death every day

also if the caster is into this scheme and has more rez spell and slots can do this more often than once a day

damn even 12 gp a day

[heady sequoia]

lmao bee thinking in 6 gp increments slowly working their way up the number of slots

I was thinking of putting some clause, plus I didnt mention if it was really worth a GP, so I left that up to the DM

could be gold looking blood coins XD

btw the blood coins have an invoc that allow you to do "online shopping"

[haughty blade]

at that point if your character is so dedicated to abuse this feature you must focus your character entirely on showing the world the joys of capitalism

[heady sequoia]

basically buy equipment by throwing coin into the air lol

[haughty blade]

that's hilarious i love it

[heady sequoia]

*equipment may or may not disappear into thin air after a time

[haughty blade]

also like to think the eldritchian shadow waiting in line to buy stuff for you

[haughty blade]

would be neat to not tell someone you don't like

suddenly they find themselves with no pants

maybe bee is looking way too much into this

just know now bee is thinking of a subclass for the barbarian where the rage come from greed

finally dnd players can achieve their fantasy of playing as mr crab

[heady sequoia]

lmao I think BG3 had some kind of money blade where it dealt more damage the more money a target was carrying

so thieves would reverse pickpocket, putting a ton of money into the pockets of their target

and thenn hit them with the money blade

[haughty blade]

bee wanted to use money but was scared

since make a money get stronger feature sounds like somethign that could make it more broken

[heady sequoia]

yeah its highly dependant on the DM and how they want to hand out money

so its rough

[drifting torrent]

Oneshots the ancient dragon sitting on its hoard

[heady sequoia]

most money concepts I can think of or have seen mostly boil down to ignoring costs of stuff

[haughty blade]

i am actually gonna make it so that if the enemy is rich you are stronger

was thinkign richer than you

or with a set amount of gp

idk

would also be funny to throw gold sack just to get mad at people picking them

wait i think this is the wrong channel for this

sorry

[heady sequoia]

New subclass to NPC notes:

Assassin is an 8th level rogue and is pretty much faithfully done. What makes the assassin dangerous is the frankly absurd 7d6 poison he somehow carries around everywhere that no one can loot off of him lmao

This poison is Wyvern Poison mind you

A DC 15 7d6 save for half poison

Master Thief is no master thief at all: hes a vanilla 7th or 8th level rogue. His Cunning Action doesnt allow him to use items, not that he has any items to begin with. I was gonna do just 2 for rogue but I might tweak the thief.

He also doesnt have Second Story Work or a climb speed

[heady sequoia]

Sneak Attack reminds me we have the (1/Turn) wording available lol

[heady sequoia]

Debating whether to go with something similar to Assassin (where I distribute the damage to the actual attacks) or stay faithful to sneak

for the rogues

[haughty blade]

maybe he spits in the knife and all forgotten realm people are not vaccinated

[heady sequoia]

LMAO is the assassin secretly a Wyvern?

[heady sequoia]

Hmm as I was making the monk statblocks, I was thinking of how ki and ki features work. One of the problems was how monk was spending a resource for something the Rogue usually just does (its Step of the Wind in particular). I dont know if im actually going to go through with this, but what if some ki features were stances instead? Probably makes Patient D kinda busted, but it only lasts 1 combat and swapping takes another ki, so youre in perma defense mode. The problem I do see is that it kinda gives the monk even more ki to Stunning Strike, which may not be ideal

Also maybe makes Open Hand kinda busted

[broken tinsel]

PF2e monks? 👀

[broken tinsel]

if you'd like, you're welcome to use my assassin changes as inspiration

[heady sequoia]

Ah is that how pf2e does monks? I never reached the monk section LMAO

[heady sequoia]

What does it look like?

[broken tinsel]

the very short of it is that WIS for a PF2e monk doesn't matter unless you specifically pick the feats that let you do like kamehameha blasts

and instead, you can pick DEX monk to be dodge tank or STR monk for BEEG DAMAGES

and both are very viable

[heady sequoia]

Mmm I dont think its quite the same as what I did here

[broken tinsel]

other than that, you pick stances that give you special effects while you're in the stance

[heady sequoia]

Ah that part

[broken tinsel]

for example, mountain stance removes your DEX bonus to AC and instead gives you a flat +4 while also making you harder to move against your will

[heady sequoia]

For me I mostly just converted the ki features and made them more efficient, basically costing 1 ki but repeatable.

[heady sequoia]

Ah hmm my question on that section was more like....

So Sneak Attack is a big one and done with conditionals. Clearly the NPC Statblocks dont really have a good way to enable the conditionals so its up to the DM to play them that way. The Assassin statblock doesnt rely on Sneak for damage, instead actually giving the Assassin good damage on their standard attack and having Sneak as a bonus.

So my question is whether I wanted to be more faithful to Sneak, so actually making the rogue statblocks do probably 2 attacks max and raising the bonus sneak damage by their assumed level

Or do the assassin route where I keep sneak bonus low and actually make their attacks normally deal more damage, sneak is just a situational benefit and not 90% of the statblock's output

[broken tinsel]

i think keeping the sneak bonus low is the way to go, but make it a relatively simple conditional too

[heady sequoia]

Yeah Im leaning towards that

[broken tinsel]

even if it's low, a DM sees that it's a bonus and will want to satisfy the conditional even if it's not that impactful

that's just a human psychology thing

[heady sequoia]

Indeed, but not satisfying it would not cripple the statblock

Is the idea

Well tbf this matters for only exactly one of the rogue statblocks im building lol

But yeah thanks

[broken tinsel]

so what i'm thinking is like:
trait 1 - the assassin has advantage on attack rolls during its first turn in combat
trait 2 - the assassin deals an extra +1d6 or +1d12 damage or whatever if it hits an attack with advantage

trait 1 naturally enables trait 2, but trait 2 having a more broad conditional will encourage the DM to do things so that the assassin has advantage on the attack

[heady sequoia]

Mhm, tho im in no rush to rework the Assassin statblock rn

[broken tinsel]

so that could be like knocking PCs prone, or hiding the assassin, etc. etc.

[heady sequoia]

But it does work that way for the psi knife statblock

They have sneak as per normal but they also have Psychic Veil

So theoretically the DM should at least get one sneak off

But im distributing some of the extra damage to the normal psychic blade attacks

And lowering the sneak bonus

So that its not entirely reliant on the DM to keep performing sneaks

Tho he can and still get the bonus

[broken tinsel]

i'm noticing that you can burn ki pretty quickly by alternating between snake stance and one other stance

[heady sequoia]

I mean, im not changing how ki works. So if they want to keep burning ki then be my guest lol

The question would be more "is it broken to swap between snake and another stance with 1 ki"?

[broken tinsel]

considering 9 rounds between SRs, using 2 ki per turn, yeah that would be 18 ki between rests

[heady sequoia]

Yeah so I think the expense is fine is it not?

Just to essentially benefit from two stances

[willow reef]

The oddity I see here is that if you have stances that should last mostly the whole fight, then you cease to really need ki as a resource. Most of monk is built around using ki, so making their primary uses of it(flurry of blows) relatively free to use just means more ki for every other feature-causing the issue you mentioned, Stunning Strike would just get more ki to spend. If you were to change ki to stances, then every other ki-using feature would need to be tweaked to accommodate it

[heady sequoia]

oh no I agree, I mentioned that it would give a lot more ki to stunning strike

I think the mindset is more, these are things that the monk would be able to do normally, and the rest are actually the ki eaters

I think the advantage here is that farther along the progression of the monk it becomes more viable to swap stances, so it feels better in a sense that its a progression from having to use one stance the whole combat to switching from one stance to the next

I dont think ki becomes invalidated as a resource, but it definitely makes it much more abundant

[willow reef]

It's hard to say monk will ever be broken, and the approach(much akin to a bladesinger or rage) does cover a lot of ground. Being honest, I don't like Stunning Strike, because it's such a ki gobbler. And if more ki is available, it might just be wasted on that gacha game. If there was an alternative, stronger feature for monks, then this can work perfectly fine I think

[heady sequoia]

SnowWolf's subclass-based NPC statblocks

Yo! So I'm here with a different series of brews. You all know I usually do feats and subclasses, but now that I've been making my own campaign I realized: I don't have much in the way of monster brewing experience! Now I'm probably gonna use mostly default or already brewed monsters, but one thing I did notice is that I want some NPCs with similar powersets to the players. Random sorcerers or fighters out in the world yknow?

So I'm here with some NPC Statblocks, very much in the vein of the Volo's Guide to Monsters NPC statblocks. VGM had a bunch of Warlocks and Wizards stablocks, as well as some other classes, with very very similar powersets to the actual Warlock and Wizard subclasses. For example, the Evoker has Sculpt Spells and can choose creatures to be safe from the spells it casts; the Diviner has Portent, though its portent allows it to roll in the moment and recharges on a divination spell cast. Not every feature is converted, a Warlock of the Archfey does not have Fey Presence nor does the Conjurer have Minor Conjuration, but most important combat related feature was at last attempted to be converted.

Th accuracy of these statblocks are surprising at times. A war priest is a war cleric with exactly the domain spells andd the number of spells a player one would prepare (and that is a LOT of spells), and the Warlocks secretly have invocations as evident by their at will spells (including mage armor, disguise self, etc.).

The goal here is to try and do a similar conversion for other classes. Keep what can be kept, ignore what cannot, and reinterpret what could be reinterpretted. Bloat is a serious problem for some of these statblocks, so I'm welcome to comments about what to change and/or cut.

A few things to note: I will be keeping spellcasting to slots. I do think there is a use and purpose to the slotless, per-day system, but I think the slots gives a sense of... realness? to how enemy mages and player mages cast in similar ways, especially when it comes to the typical ones like the wizards.

Another thing about spellcasting is that I will be writing down the spells favored by the statblock on the statblock itself. A common complaint about spellcasting is the need to look up and reference what spells a statblock has. This solution is NOT OF MY OWN CREATION. In fact, WOTC did this first! You can look up the Rime of the Frostmaiden statblocks and notice that spellcasters have their spell effects written on the statblock itself. Vellynne Harpell has Vampiric Touch AND Chill Touch written down on her statblock. Their new approach to statblocks with "spell-like but not spell" actions written on the statblock? Typically, they're just spells. Look at the MPMM Bard: Cacophony is just Thunderwave with a new name.

Both the slot system and the spell description introduce a TON of bloat to the spellcaster statblocks, so do forgive them for being FAT AF. Spell descriptions can be cut down to their most basic and essential, so I welcome any suggestions on that front.

On the action system, something I did notice is that many monsters do not use Bonus Actions at all, whereas player characters tend to maximize both Action and Bonus Action. This does mean things that rob Bonus Actions, like the slow spell, don't really see that part get used at all. Now I'm not giving every single one a BA, but I will try to at least make BAs relevant where they can be.

One last thing is that I won't be converting all the subclasses, because some subs are harder to convert and also because I just don't have the attention span to stay on a single class and make it diverse in CR range. Heck some of these are very close in CR range lmao

To start, I converted 4 Barbarian subclass: Beast, Berserker, Giant, and Totem. I'll typically try to convert 4 of the subs, and try to pick 2 of the PHB ones and try to make a PHB one be the "highest" subclass CR. Oh and for the Barbs, I went with "warrior" as a collective term for them.

Beastial and Berserk Warrior is straightforward and simple: attack with Reckless and take hits with Rage. I'm actually doubting their CR range here: Reckless is both a buff and a demerit. Reckless isn't counted on most CR calcs, so I can't tell how it would affect the calculation. Either way: I'm most concerned about the execution of Rage, it is not the same player facing one that has a use limit. Instead, to keep the statblock's consistency, it is always assumed to be on, unless something specifically shuts it off somehow. This is currently only by becoming unconscious, but I'm open to other ideas in shutting down Rage without making it way too inconsistent or hard to track. I'm thinking "hasn't attacked a creature" is probably fine to add?

Another thing to note is that Beastial does not use any other option aside from claws. Fangs is an alternative, having it heal itself, but I found the damage to be way too small, but maybe I can lower the Beastial Warrior's CR to 1 or 1/2 to have a low level Barbarian option? Tail too, its essentially a Barb that gains Parry at that point, so I felt both Fang and Tail increases its defensive profile too much while giving it too little damage, which is why it ended up Claws here.

[slow geyser]

I agree Rage has to be different from regular Rage, mainly because of the bookkeeping on the DM side, especially if these come in a group. Currently, I'd say being unconscious is not relevant enough to be even included as a way to turn it off (it just doesn't happen enough to fight someone unconscious I'd say)

[heady sequoia]

Oh for sure. I just left it in so that it can be turned off in a way. Its just a little quirk, but not meant to actually be a reliable way to turn it off

Sleep is the only method to do it I think

[slow geyser]

Also, by how it is worded, it only comes in play the turn the warrior is knocked unconscious, but resumes the turn after even if it still is unconscious

[heady sequoia]

Ah right I can reword rhat

[slow geyser]

Either natural or magical, yes

[heady sequoia]

"If the warrior was unconscious the previous turn"

[slow geyser]

Can't you simply state "Rage is active unless the warrior is unconscious" ?

[heady sequoia]

Nah point is that it shuts down for a turn, so the next turn it isnt unconscious its still not active

"This trait does not function if the warrior is unconscious, or on its next turn after it recovers from being unconscious"

[slow geyser]

Mmh I see, still too narrow in my opinion though, it would be interesting to include more options to turn it off

[heady sequoia]

Or something like that

Oh yes Im welcome to that

"Hasnt attacked a creature" is one I am thinking

Not too hard to track I think

[slow geyser]

I'm not sure how much it could come into play, but you can make the trait turn off on a "calm emotions" or a persuasion with a set DC

[heady sequoia]

And introduces a tactic for the players to RUN and then come back in lol

Oohh calm emotions is a good one

[slow geyser]

Or it could be something like the berserker axe, with the rage being up only if it starts it's turn within X feet of at least one enemy

That way you don't have to track attacks but only consider it when its turn comes up

[heady sequoia]

Aahh thats a good reinterpretation for it

I'll def consider it, I'll hold off on editing things until I see more opinions

[slow geyser]

Aside from rage, I would probably add some interesting action options. Since I got my copy of Flee Mortals I can't really enjoy the basic 5e statblocks to be honest

Even if they aren't part of the main barbarian kit

Like a whirlwind attack for the berserker, a Rampage trait for the bestial, and maybe some way to make leaps

[heady sequoia]

Not the intent rn

tho you will see more complex statblocks later

barbs are just

very basic

[heady sequoia]

Forgot to add, Berserk should be immune to charmed and frightened

[heady sequoia]

So Beastial and Berserk are probably really basic so not much need for review. Here's the next two Barbarians.

Giant has a throw, which is basically the same as the player one. For Totem, it should be extremely tanky owing to all the resistances, and it has the Elk Charge to diversify its attack methods (attack vs saves)

[heady sequoia]

Hmm, alright, lets move on to the headache

Here's the Bard, of which I made 3 different bard statblocks. This is one of the classes that I gave less for, because the standard Bard statblock is already a satisfying Lore Bard imo.

Song of Rest is on the bard statblock and all other bard-adjacent statblocks, so I threw it in. However, BI is not inluded, usually being used by the special "BI" of the subclass (for Lore, thats Cutting Words or "Taunt" on the Bard statblock).

Now, this bard is the Whispers Bard. Its more or less a sidegrade to the Lore Bard, but actually I'm debating if its actually stronger in practice. The key difference is Taunt and Terrify, where Taunt is guaranteed just one round while Terrify can last longer. Terrify is a conversion of "Words of Terror", but for combat. Psychic Blades was made into a passive instead. What do you think about how Terrify is executed?

[distant solar]

Munk?

[heady sequoia]

What CR you looking for?

These are the monks I made for this set of subclass-statblock conversions. Its a Four Elements, Sun Soul, and Drunken Master. I consider the Martial Arts Adept to be "Open Hand" (and I can just cut out spellcasting from Hlam as well)

[distant solar]

thank you my rotten soldier

i typed that response and was too sleepy to hit send

[heady sequoia]

Wow its been awhile

Random idea I had, lemme know what you guys think. I think the biggest problem is probably just Animate Dead from the Undying Servitude invoc, but other than that, any other problems?

[broken tinsel]

mfw i have to convince someone in my party to let me beat them half to death (literally) every time we rest so i can use my subclass features

[heady sequoia]

lmao yeah thats one problem indeed, but at least you would be hard pressed to ask someone to do so

[broken tinsel]

or a rat is fine too, i guess

[heady sequoia]

But well theres a limit too so im not so concerned over the bag of rats, though yeah that problem is still there

less bag of rats and more one rat I guess XD

[broken tinsel]

so in more seriousness, this creates something i call a "perverse incentive"

you are incentivized to have something bad happen to you or your party to do whatever it is you want to do

[heady sequoia]

oh yeah I know

tbh I was thinking just lifting the half HP and just whenever someone takes damage

its not crazy anyway cause theres also still a use limit

[broken tinsel]

well yes, but ultimately as written, this feature rewards going out of your way to have a bad thing happen, even if it's only once per SR/LR

and behavior that you reward will be reinforced and repeated

[heady sequoia]

I mean, lifting the half HP req, someone is bound to take damage

so its not that bad I would say

[broken tinsel]

without half HP it makes more sense

but looking from above, using this reaction doesn't reduce the overall damage taken by the party

so you're still looking for that random rat or peasant to punch every time you finish a rest so you can have this resource ASAP

[heady sequoia]

Fair, tbh I was mostly trying to experiment with ways to make "HP sacrifice" work, and taking damage for someone felt like one way, youre "sacrificing" HP but in a way its all a "benefit" without straight up trading HP for a buff necessarily

but hitting a rat is still that I guess

So hard to stop people from hitting rats in this game XD

[broken tinsel]

how about remove the AC bonus, because 5e doesn't play nice with that, and make the overall feature something along the lines of:

You have 1 dark shard. You can expend a dark shard to do X. You regain all expended shards when you finish a rest. When a creature you can see within Y feet of you takes damage, you can also use your reaction to magically take that damage, instead of that creature taking it. When you do so, you regain 1 expended dark shard. Also, you get this bonus for having 0 dark shards (probably some defensive bonus).

it's a bit sloppy, but what I'm looking at here is:

1. it's not immediately clear that more shards equals more gooder. maybe you don't want any shards to passively have this bonus in effect over the other things you can do with them
2. you don't need to start every rest punching random rats to get your resource, you just have it ready to go already and expending the resource is easy enough to go down to 0 for the bonus

[heady sequoia]

Ah well why I had the AC bonus was to kinda still retain the "trade defense for offense" kinda thing

Tho yeah the AC bonus might be much

I figured 3 would be not too crazy haha

Also true can just start with all shards and regain them by taking damage for someone, lessening the whole punching rats thing

[broken tinsel]

you can trade a shard from one thing to another yes, but fundamentally it's still "more shards equals more gooder" because having shards gives you bonuses and options while having no shards gives you neither

[heady sequoia]

Just is way more resource than I would think, so maybe just 1 and just have the reaction increase uses

[heady sequoia]

Fair, but I was thinking more along the typical "drain hp for damage" but using AC as a stand in. Overall after dealing the damage the dark knight is weaker and thats partly how most of the fantasy surrounding dark knights are I think. Like a glass cannon

Definitely gonna think about starting off with 1 and then the reaction just refills it

[broken tinsel]

I'll be honest, i didn't really read "glass cannon" from this, i read this as a pseudo defender

[heady sequoia]

It became that because of the experiment on how to do HP sacrifice

And partially cause the ffxiv dark knight is a tank and it felt appropriate lmao

But I didnt reference the ffxiv dark knight mind you

Like I didnt look it up just knew it was a tank haha

So it probably doesnt play that way in ffxiv

[broken tinsel]

taking damage for a party member handily falls into the defender type feature, and getting a defensive boost for using it + you can do other things too firmly makes this a straight gameplay pattern of "take extra damage > do cool thing". and also an antagonistic DM using meta knowledge will focus fire this sub so they don't get to do The Cool Thing™️

[heady sequoia]

Antagonistic DM is more a table/group problem imo

[broken tinsel]

i agree, but i think it's hard to argue that it won't be a problem considering how heavily this sub is reliant on these shards

[heady sequoia]

But yes taking damage for someone else is a defender thing. All im saying is that it evolved that way due to the experiment on how to do HP sacrifice in a sorta balanced way that still makes the sacrifice meaningful

Not like the BH where its more for flavor

Initially this didnt even defend, it trigger when any creature died and you dealt damage to yourself equal to (insert creature stat) and gained a dark shard

But it felt even more bag of ratsy lol

So I was thinking "OK whats an acceptable way to sacrifice your HP" and well, the obvious answer was to take damage for something else

Initially I didnt have the defensive buff either

Just had the shards kinda there

Then I had it contribute a d4 damage boost

That might be better if I want it to really be a glass cannon

Then I wanted to still have a bit more "trade defense for offense" so I made it an AC boost

Could go back to the d4 per shard boost, but it makes Smiting kinda bad lol. Maybe d4 with any shard available

[broken tinsel]

isn't eldritch smite 2d8?

3d8 at 2nd, +prone

i get where you are getting at, but i still think having a clear "more shards equal more gooder" thing makes this too straightforward to run ingame

as in you're not evaluating the pros and cons of having fewer shards or whatever, you always want more, and the only question you are asking yourself is "what's the most value i can get from these shards now that i have them?"

much too granular for 5e, but i could see a mechanic in a different system that operated like:

• 0 > 1 shards: use reaction, take 1 damage. +some other bonus effect
• 1 > 2 shards: use reaction, take half damage. +even better bonus effect
• 2 > 3 shards: use reaction, take full damage. +the bestest bonus effect

now where you position yourself on this "ladder" becomes much more meaningful because you can literally take on different roles depending on how many shards you have

[heady sequoia]

I mean more shards is good but what good if youre not trying to expend them?

[broken tinsel]

in the current iteration, even if you don't expend them, you still have the option of expending them to do something, while you get nothing and you don't get to choose to do nothing while you have zero shards

that availability of options, regardless of those options being used or not, is what makes having shards strictly better than not having shards

[heady sequoia]

idk that kinda sounds like "having spell slots is better than not haing spell slots" which is correct but also kinda "why arent you using the slots?"

I think the reasoning is a bit strange

[broken tinsel]

the difference is that you start every day with all your slots but you don't if you start with zero shards

as in you aren't really making a choice to gain shards, you just do it as a means to be able to do everything you otherwise wouldn't be able to do

imagine if a warlock only got slots back on short rests but not long rests, you'd start every day taking an extra short rest, not because of a meaningful decision as a player, but purely because you want to be able to do the things you want your character to do

[heady sequoia]

No yea which is why I did consider your idea of starting with shards and regaining them by using the feature

[drifting torrent]

Did you ever make Light Cleric btw? In your statblocks that are based on PC classes/subclasses, i mean

[heady sequoia]

I did

Its got more Dex mostly for avoiding fireball in case lol, but it isnt very good at that still

[drifting torrent]

Wooo! Lovely! Can i make personal use of it? I have a combat situation where the party has recruited a high level cleric NPC of a Sun diety.

[heady sequoia]

Yes definitely, go right ahead

[drifting torrent]

The NPC in question is higher level than the statblock obvs and with different stats but its still a major help

Thank you my friend

Which subclasses did you choose for the higher CR ones btw? iirc you made 3 versions of each class, right?

[heady sequoia]

Archbishop is CR 12 and uses Life Domain

Theres an existing War Cleric (War Priest CR9) so I only made 3 for cleric yeah

The low level cleric is Order haha

[drifting torrent]

Lmaooo fair play, that is

[heady sequoia]

Ah correction, Radiance should be 19 (2d10 + 8). If youe increasing the level, the extra damage increases as well.

[lament egret]

Didn't want to interupt with a total diversion. But conversation in homebrew gave me a slight revelation regarding blood hunter and why ive never grokked with it.

Just how high level the monsters are, making any notion of experience as a blood hunter at level ten let alone level one something that doesn't grok to the worldstate.

[willow reef]

I'd say that argument applies to just about any character that has a goal like "one day I'll kill a dragon!"
They're meant to specialize in fiends, undead, etc, it doesn't mean they automatically have hunted them. Like a necromancy wizard studying to make an army one day just knows more about necromancy, but isn't able to make an army quite yet

[lament egret]

Aspirations aren't an issue.
Can still learn the fundamentals of necromancy without having made an army; the level one spells. It's necromancy, not Army.

idk. I feel like a hunter should be able to have experience hunting the thing they're hunting by the time the adventure begins, not that being exclusively a thing to be done by ultra high level characters.

Not ultimately an issue, more just a realisation of why I've feel they don't quite work.

[willow reef]

I mean, the same sort of goes to Rangers right
I think it's fine, especially with Blood Hunters operating by orders. Maybe you've had lessons on how, say, vampires hunt. Their weaknesses, their lore, etc, which doesn't need hands-on experience. And because you function by an order, you'd have plenty of mentors dedicated on that very subject I'd think.

[lament egret]

When leaning into the favoured foe (or some of the weird late era subclasses) angle, yes it can.

Though a Level 1 PC can more or less reasonably defeat a guard drake, if not a proper dragon. Most of the creature types have at least a bit of lower representation which could be utilised to flesh out things that have actually been done rather than pure theory.

[heady sequoia]

Thats partly why I move away from the pure Hunter aspect

My BH concept is self experimentation and becoming a monster to hunt monsters. You slowly turn into what you want to fight. This way its about your body and experimentation adapting to that monster's tactics. Ghostslayer fights ghosts and vampires, unlocking the ability to move through things is a progression to both you furthering your monstrosity, and to make you fight those better

Its less about knowledge and more about adaptation and experimentation

The knowledge part now becomes more the pseudo mad scientist/alchemist part where youre injecting and dissecting yourself and stuff

But I leave that up to flavor

[heady sequoia]

Dropping this here, still thinking about some stuff with this

Should obsidian break? Partly realism with that, but Vicious Weapon doesnt feel particularly strong, despite being a rare effect

Should adamantine do double damage to Constructs? I know it doesn't in 5e but it seems fitting

Should I have cold iron? I gave fey bronze to deliberately make them not use iron, but idk if I should do actual cold iron

Not sure if I should throw in an effect for Infernal Iron armor or Sylvan Bronze weapons, for now theyre just normal, partly because I can't track a good effect that's cohesive with the other effect.

Didnt want to give Infernal Iron just "resistance to fire", seems bland lol (plus Dragon Steel)

Also the cost is % increase with a minimum increase if its lower than that

[heady sequoia]

Probably also tone down Iceiron to just immune to petrify, shapechange, polymorph. Idea is that it and what it comes in contact to cant be altered magically (its unseelie ice that doesnt melt easily)

[random urchin]

ay, sobqof stuff.
I will have a look once I find my glasses, and then use my glasses to find drugs

[heady sequoia]

Also changed Silk from "concealable" to "looks like clothes" lol

And upping Dragon Steel to 75%/150 gp

[glass moth]

Bronze being stronger than steel seems weird
Mythril should also be 1/2 weight, and the same price as adamantine
Infernal Iron needs some kind of armor property

[heady sequoia]

Bronze isnt stronger tho, it just doesnt rust

And is more expensive for it

[glass moth]

IRL Bronze is a lot weaker than iron or steel

[heady sequoia]

Steel yes, but from what I researched it isnt weaker than iron, its just that iron was far more abundant and easier to use

Bronze was less abundant and required multiple materials

Steel yeah, its weaker than steel, but Im deliberately not trying to change damage dice or give +- bonuses, making sure everything was properties only. Bronze is strong enough to be used as weapons back in history alongside iron, and that was good enough for me

[glass moth]

mhm

should be fine then

[heady sequoia]

For Infernal Iron, yeah I am thinking what kind of armor property it should have, but nothing seems right and I dont want to, as mentioned, just give it fire resist

Tho it would make sense

Like I want the properties to be somewhat cohesive between weapon and armor

[glass moth]

make it netherite, knockback resistance
could it be... a boost to healing, if the weapon debuffs healing?

[heady sequoia]

Doesnt track with the flavor of an iron from hell XD

[glass moth]

if you wanted to avoid overlapping with Dragon, alimit magic resistance?

[heady sequoia]

Magic resistance was one yeah, but again it felt kinda random. And also it would make a lot of devils have no point wearing it (not that every one would, but I want those that do to actually feel the effect)

One I was thinking is that it would prevent one from being teleported or plane shifted, which makes sense but then every single devil would want this to be unbanishable, which is too much and kinda ruins the whole banishing thing

The idea being the infernal iron is an excellent anchor, chaining you to a place literally. Like the "chained to hell" idea

But yeah, would mean every devil would wear it and would be tough to justify why they wouldnt

Prevent healing feels right, of course devils will want it, but theyre not particularly violent, so only a small subset gets it when they need it, why spend the souls if you wont use the thing?

Of course not every metal needs to be useful to the denizen that discovered it outside of being just armor or weapons but im more talking about the consequence of it being too good for them haha

Celestial Gold isnt that useful as armor for celestials, theyre not really gonna be charmed, possessed or frightened. But it felt like a logical step for a metal infused with radiant energy, and works well when the celestial does want to grant stuff to mortals

[glass moth]

that'd be terrible for them lol, they need their souls to return to Hell when they are slain in the material realm

[heady sequoia]

Oh the souls would go back, just the physical form is anchored lol. But yeah I scrapped it anyway

So yeahthats what im stuck on for Infernal Iron, and effect that tracks with the "evil metal" and devils and hell concept

[glass moth]

hmm

googled it, apparently there is a type in BG3
that infernal iron armor gives:

• Flight
• Hellish rebuke on spell saves
• Fire resistance

[heady sequoia]

Of course its used to make soul coins so I was thinking of a soul related concept for it, but what I came up with was basically just soul coin but armor lmao

[heady sequoia]

Fire resistance tracks yeah, hell is hot and all

Hellish Rebuke when you spell save... thats a fair idea, might be much in terms of strength tho

[glass moth]

copy it and lower the damage maybe

or what about devils sight?

[heady sequoia]

Devils sight is an idea too yes, but it felt too easy XD. Plus it was hard to make it cohesive with evil metal, it feels more right for it to exude darkness than overcome it

Tho it works in terms of devil flavor

Oh ok wait

Hmm if it dims light around it

Way too good for twilight cleric but that isnt my fault XD

Plus its a cleric you really gonna be using infernal armor? (I guess asmodeus can have clerics...)

[heady sequoia]

btw the logic on mythril/mithral being cheaper is that when you buy materials, its usually by weight. You get far more mithral per weight (because its so light), than adamantine (which is so heavy), and you dont need all that mithral to make something. Plus I think in old eds adamantine is more expensive

tho im thinking of making everything mythril and above more expensive by about 25-50%

[heady sequoia]

Current list, rearranged to be listed by price.
Bumped everything mythril and above by 25-50%
Sylvan Iceiron now specifically polymorph (Should remove shapechange, since its only self, tho it would help if youre lycan and forced to shapechange for some reason) instead of transmutation
Sylvan Bronze now has adv vs charmed

Infernal Iron armor still doesnt have an effect, the idea right now is that it turns bright light to dim light within 10 feet of it. Tho its kinda awkwardly making a weird "dim light spotlight" lol. Plus its like the 3rd stealth based upgrade of the set, tho they all do it differently tbf

[willow reef]

Don't know a whole lot about actual DnD lore, but isn't there something related to iron in the nine hells?

Right off the bat my mind goes to maybe being applicable to Cursed magic armor, and Dispel Magic only suppresses the Curse for dunno, 7 days, but in return the properties remain even when Dispelled(the good ones)

[random urchin]

The percentages are killing me.
Cos I'm fine with it, but 5e aint

[heady sequoia]

Theres the fixed price increase which can be used if you dont want to be assed with thepercentage lol

[willow reef]

Snort

[heady sequoia]

but yeah I know 5e doesnt like em, so I made it 25-50-75-100 to be as simple as possible

[heady sequoia]

Infernal Iron exactly lol

its used for Soul Coins

and Hellfire Weapons

[willow reef]

Oh, so that's what it was

[random urchin]

while I wait for my head to stop doing the spoodle, lemme grab my materials rules so I can compare

[willow reef]

My DnD lore is rustier than a rust monster's dinner

[random urchin]

for reference

[willow reef]

Imagine it has the Ring of Mind Shielding or whatever's wording

"If you drop to 0 hit point while wearing this armor, your soul becomes trapped as though the armor becomes a Soul Coin..."

[heady sequoia]

Oh yes I was thinking that, that you can trap people's souls in the armor if theyre dead while wearing it

I really liked the idea, but was trying to field other suggestions

[willow reef]

I guess it could be like Armor of Agathys

Someone hits you in melee, you expend...what, a hit die? To suck in part of their soul into the armor

[heady sequoia]

Personally im avoiding as much as possible straight up +1 bonuses or so

[random urchin]

I think I fucked up reinforced armour

cos it has proofed in the text

[willow reef]

Or the armor itself negates things that affect your soul or vitality, giving you a bonus against Con saves/Necrotic damage

[heady sequoia]

it seems proofed and reinforced are the same in your screenshot yea

[random urchin]

I don't remember what it was ment to be

future mes problem

[willow reef]

Better realizing it later than never...

[random urchin]

but yeah - those are mainly for me to refer to my own work cos my brain will try and remember, and then people know the tangent of my thing xD

[lament egret]

Am curious why you make bronze unrustable

I really love the way that bronze rusts into a nice turquoise

[heady sequoia]

Dont they not rust? they do corrode but not rust

[willow reef]

I'm also curious why you can't have spider silk whips /j

Don't they rust into like
Green?

[heady sequoia]

yeah the way im doing it is that bronze is what you use for rust monsters, the bronze just changes color to green

[lament egret]

Yeah. Blue green.

[heady sequoia]

I mean, I could put it in lol, but Leather is also N/A in the weapons side even if it is the default material for whips

just to mostly make sure my players dont go "uhhh technically" lol

[random urchin]

why only giant spider silk?
I see no reason ironwood can't be slashing. You can sharpen normal wood, it just doesn't hold the edge for wildly long, so ironwood should be fine.
What are you doing with vicious weapon? Cos if its the magic one - it should be the equal in cost. (same applies to all effects)

[heady sequoia]

Mmm... yeah thats fine, i just didnt track in my head for wood to be "sharp" other than a point for piercing, but idk much about that so I appreciate knowing that

vicious weapon, yes its the magic one. I figured, personally, that its effect was pretty meh so it shouldnt be that crazy. Though actually at first obsidian also broke after a certain number of crit hits, so youd have to keep buying obsidian to "re-vicious" your weapon

[heady sequoia]

Also, surprised you dont have mithral/mythril there

[random urchin]

it does suck some yes.
lemme get my revised one for ya xD.

[heady sequoia]

So yeah uncommon, which if this obsidian is decidedly not breakable (for less tediousness) I would bump up 25%/50gp

but currently its in limbo of being breakable or not, im still unsure lol

[random urchin]

have you made uncommons a bunch cheaper then?

[heady sequoia]

no, but iirc the range of uncommons is 100-500 right? so I think the price I have set for mythril/adamantine should work

tho of course I can just bump them all up

I based the price mostly on the percentage, like if it was 50% or 500 gp the percentage would pretty much only affect plate armor

which didnt feel right lol

[random urchin]

and weapons / armour land at the top end of the range

this is another reason for set prices - cos the effects the same

[heady sequoia]

True that the effect is the same, tbf for weapons itd be almost always the minimum anyway, its for armor that had the scaling

but yeah I have no qualms doing straight up set price, it just didnt feel right that you pay 500 more gp for either plate or half plate, like you needed way more mythril for that

[random urchin]

it's not just the material, but the time + skill, so just, folds into that 5e wise

iiiiiif it helps I have....

goes lookin

its a touch rouch, and a little wippy

but

it there

[heady sequoia]

basically "not magical" but with the effect of that rarity? am I reading that right on the meaning of mundane?

[random urchin]

yeah, they have bonus effects but are not magical.
allowing for fancier mundane items

[heady sequoia]

because yeah the materials brew does also mean to make adamantine and mythril not magical weapons

theyre weapons of that material, the materials are pretty magical themselves, but they wont bypass magic resistance unless you have one thats specifically magical (or... Orichalcum with an artificer)

[random urchin]

they get like a ~20% discount on costs, and the "spell equiv" is -1, and the bonuses are slightly adjusted, with no attunement as a thing

and with sim I'm giving all items a rarity - then it's magical or not (with the ✾ symbol).
and like, Plate Armour will be a Rare item base

[heady sequoia]

For me the materials are "mundane", in a sense. Mythril and adamantine is "magical" in the same way a dragon is magical

[random urchin]

ay

[heady sequoia]

doesnt make the dragon's claws magical, and mythril also wouldnt make a weapon magical

but yeah, thanks for the table. Gonna think about that part...

tho actually, how would you rate the rarity of the effects I have already?

[random urchin]

np

[random urchin]

https://tenor.com/view/dolphin-noises-dolphin-noise-dolphin-animal-noise-animal-noises-gif-17290644

I was looking for another gif, but this came up and I had to

cos

what

[heady sequoia]

HAHAHAHAHAHA

[random urchin]

most are gonna be common to rare I think, but figuring out which is which is going to take more than I have in the tank atm xD

[heady sequoia]

no worries, no pressure to do so

[heady sequoia]

Also, does regular spider silk work?

[heady sequoia]

OK so fixed price

Added Lead material, makes you hidden from divination. You need to cover most of yourself tho, so Heavy only.
Changed Iceiron to "Cannot be targetted by transmutation". Should be mostly a detriment, making you unable to benefit from Haste and the like, but also makes you immune to disintegrate and slow. Does that work?

Concerning Lead poisoning... I'll just leave that up to role playing lol. You should be fine for awhile

[lament egret]

yeah that won't affect the adventurer life cycle

[heady sequoia]

Added:

Auran Glass. Invisible weapon doesn't confer a benefit to attack or anything, its just invisible. I thought that would be pretty cool. Also helps concealing it.

Celestial Feathers, if you ever come across this, you should question its source. There's probably a roleplay side effect here concerning celestials...

Vibranium is there just cause I was thinking of it lmao, probably not actually adding it to my setting... maybe...

[heady sequoia]

Random Subclass thoughts: More Runes!

[heady sequoia]

Also yes I thought it would be funny if Fortitude describes gaining resilience and Resilience described gaining fortitude

[willow reef]

"You can decide what triggers the run."

• Snowwolf, 2025

[heady sequoia]

Oh lmao didnt notice that

I was editing the thing up till posting

Its "rune" of course

[willow reef]

Haha, yeah just found it funny

Don't worry, I once said "Bomg" instead of "Bomb"

[willow reef]

Snow, quick question

Which bloodhunters have you made thus far?

[heady sequoia]

Poison - Blood is poison, make and apply poisons
Mimic - Pet sub
Celestial - Sort of healer
Fiend (Devil) - Pact with an ally to command, Warlord lite
Aberration (Psionic, Beholder) - Eye rays and psionics

Almost satisfied with Dragon

Trying to get Ooze and Elemental right

I feel im doing too much with elemental but didnt do anything unique enough with ooze. Maybe I shouldve made ooze the pet subclass but I do like mimic pet

Poison is sort of the "man hunter" one

[willow reef]

What does ooze do? Out of curiosity anyways

And can I see the poison one?

[heady sequoia]

Ooze is the least developed, currently I just listed out the abilities of existing oozes and am figuring out what would work. I at first had it just choosing from ooze abilities to make you some kind of amalgam of oozes (and of course, you can unincorporate temporarily)

With the blood curse being based on the Ooblex memory eating

I'll pull up the poison one in a bit. Just got home lol

[willow reef]

No worries, forgot about ooblex tbh lol

[heady sequoia]

So this was made early into my exploration of the BH, so it may be rough in some parts XD

Creating poisons is meant to allow you to make poisons for others to use, and also for the later level where you get special poisons

of course the main problem with poison is resistance and immunity. My original solution was actually to allow the Rite to be Acid damage at a certain point, but I figured I should focus on this being a "man hunting" blood hunter, and just ignore immunity to make it somewhat useful later on even in a non humanoid focused campaign

The last feature was a toss up between Cloudkill and a Paralyze Poison. I went with the cloudkill because part of the inspiration, Hassan of Serenity, is able to "disperse their poison as a fog"

[willow reef]

hmhm, I see I see

[heady sequoia]

@empty torrent @ashen furnace https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/YRe8PiCY2X0l

This is still a work in progress, notably the Sorc is incomplete missing one more statblock. Almost everythin still wants a better description lol

I may do more conversions later on, but for now I stuck with 4 per class (and accepting Fighter and Rogue as having 2 official ones, Warlock and Wizard having a near complete list of official ones to use as well)

Hmm... might do some tweaks. Runic Knight will be a lot cleaner being default large (with trait, can become medium or large), and shoving the damage bonus onto the attack permanently

[heady sequoia]

Changed Mythril to just NonHeavy gains Light, and a range expansion

Added Ignium, which ignores magic barriers

Added Astral Iron, which extends into the Etheral Plane (yes Ethereal, its Astral because its basically "meteor iron")

[heady sequoia]

So just to drop the latest table here

And follow with this. A simple Masterworks lineup, which is related to a race that usually passes that technique down. Its possible for a human to use a dwarven technique, or a gnome to use an elvish one.

It does combine with the materials table to give a little bit of customization, though players would have to seek out both a master smith and the material they want. If a material and masterwork's properties clash, the material takes precedence (its "unworkable" with the technique).

Cost combined of course, if you're applying a masterwork and using a special material at the same time.

(AEgirian is aquatic races btw)

[random urchin]

you might just need to band it on this one if you don't want it crazy.
Like "d4-d6 cost X, d8-d10 cost Y, d12 or higher cost Z"

alternatively, rather than +1 damage die, have it a set die

[heady sequoia]

I prefer the +1 mostly because I want it to work with versatile

[random urchin]

+1 set die would work with versatile

"attacks with weapon deal an additional 1d8 damage" type of thing

[heady sequoia]

Yeah I get that, but ehh

well either way it should be within bounds of the price range I set, could make it higher

I could make it so Efreeti and Giant work on different weapons but it feels needlessly complex like that lol

[random urchin]

then I'd band it.

Efreeti > Cost special > Add one weapon damage die. 1d4, 1d6 (cost)
1d8, 1d10 (cost)
1d12, 2d6 (cost)
kinda like this

[heady sequoia]

Mmm I'll think about it. Cause I was thinking of just taking the upper limit for simplicity

feels bad for the lower ones though of course

[random urchin]

yeah, thatd be the other option - though that makes it quite expensive for smaller ones yeah

[heady sequoia]

I'll think about fixed, cause itd also let me differentiate Giant and Efreeti now that I think about it

The thing about it working with versatile was mostly the thought process of making versatile's bonus be bigger, from 2d8 to 2d10 is a bit more significant

tho idk if its still worth it lmao

[random urchin]

most are going to be Rare tbh.
d4 uncommon
only d10, d12, 2d6, 2d8 are going to be v.rare

(having actually bothered checking the numbers)

(which technically makes most v.rare, cos only d6, d8 are rare... but then I think most weapons are that value so... I'm having to do linux shit my brain is frazzled)

[heady sequoia]

Added Fiend, which gives you claws in armor

Added Githyanki, which is basically a non bonus version of the githyanki silver sword

Added Drow, which makes poisons more efficient. Not sure if this should be 5 hits instead

Efreeti got changed to increase die size. But I'm not sure if I like this quite yet, and also the increase from 2d6/1d12 to 2d8. It should be 1d8+1d6 but that seems a bit complex

[severe tree]

flat 1d6 added seems reasonable

[glass moth]

Cannot deal less than average damage
what if average damage is a decimal?
+1 AC when parrying
"parrying" to gain AC isn't player-accessible

I do love the mental image of the Githyanki weapon, you use this cool sword and suddenly a whole hive mind swat team arrives at your location

[heady sequoia]

round down on average damage

parrying is specifically for if you have defensive duelist or the parry maneuver (or a parrying dagger)

its not something you can do normally yes, but its just there cause it felt right for the hobgoblins

[heady sequoia]

Flat d6 for Efreeti and flat d8 for Giant is what I'm thinking of ultimately, but I wanted to try something different for now lol. What do you think of the "increase size", too messy?

[severe tree]

an increase in size should be 1 average damage, so you could do that instead

reroll 1s on damage works too and is a little more interactive

what happens with 2dX weapons though? do both dice get improved?

[heady sequoia]

I listed 1d12 and 2d6 both become 2d8, which is more like +2

[severe tree]

that gets confusing ye

up to you on if it’s acceptably confusing

[sweet forum]

This is a bit of an old post on this thread but it stuck out to me because it's somewhat of a different take on DRK that I think has a lot of potential to stand out as not just an inverted Paladin or psi warrior knockoff.

I think what this subclass is lacking is features that play off of existing Fighter features. For example I think what would really make the subclass come into its own is a feature that plays off of action surge, indomitable, or second wind, which could be the crux of building dark shards.

For example, off the top of my head I thought of a feature that functions something like this:

If the creature's temporary hit points are depleted before then, you gain a number of dark shards equal to half your proficiency bonus.```

Alternatively it could play off of Action Surge, like Eldritch Knight's Arcane Charge does, so that you can get more than just one use out of it.

But if it was on the Second Wind feature it would incentivize risky play by sacrificing your innate healing ability for other potential benefits.

Or alternatively it could be when you use your Second Wind you can target a number of creatures equal to one of your modifiers to give the buff to.

[heady sequoia]

Tying things to AS or Second Wind isnt really standard and I quite like following established structures.

And tbh I dont quite see why the problem would be lacking features that play off the base features, as mentioned its not really standard, and you can still utilize Second Wind in a fairly synergistic way whuch is to heal yourself after using Deathbound

The problem Mag mentioned is probably the bigger issue, which is that its not really incentivized to expend shards, and youre pigeonholed early into using your reaction, not really a choice but an automatic thing to start using the benefits of shards

If I were to tie anything I might make it so AS grants a second reaction for that round, to allow you to still threaten OA or use Deathbound twice

[sweet forum]

Ahhhh, that's fair, yeah. In that case then the solution is reasonably to incentivize spending dark shards more actively.

At the current moment, my observation is that the only incentive to using the dark shards is invocations, some spellcasting, and Undying Spirit.

Other than that having blindsight depending on dark shards and truesight on burning a dark shard.

So then in that case maybe an idea to kick around would be to change the reaction to something more like Tunnel Fighter or Vigilant Defender off the cavalier, where it doesn't cost your reaction to take the hit, but you can only do so once on everyone's turn but yours.

And then from there maybe a small table of abilities you can expend the shards on, where each feature costs a different amount similar to the Sorcerer's metamagic <-> spell slot conversion

Like for example it's 2 shards to use Fiendish Vigor, 4 shards to use Eldritch Smite, and then 6 shards for Lifedrinker

[heady sequoia]

I think the amount of shards isnt quite a problem, it roughly matches to a third casting warlock.

The problem stems from first, having to find a way to gain the shards in the first place. Whether you use them or not, you need shards. And the way to gain them on this class is for someone to get hurt. So you kinda start the day punching someone to gain your shards, because you want to start combat with shards. Its a dilemma for me at the time because it was meant to be a kinda "damage for power" mechanic, but wrapped in a wrapper that is balanced that the HP loss isnt the "power" there. But it still incentivizes that bad behavior of letting an ally get hurt to gain the shards.

In terms of expending uses, I think I simply need to bump up some numbers, particularly the Eldritch Smite and the number of invocs you can gain which is just 4, not enough to actually grab a lot of spells from invocs

Maybe also letting them learn some spells outright would work, but I didnt want to make it 100% a thirdcaster

[sweet forum]

Then maybe you could work it like Profane Soul where it gets a half-pact, or maybe even a 1/3rd pact?

[heady sequoia]

Yeah I didnt want to make it 100% a thirdcaster as mentioned

would definitely simplify things tho hahaha

[sweet forum]

Yeah most likely.

[heady sequoia]

https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/_OjXu2syBOwd

Experimenting on using Sidekicks for short and simple class ideas

[lament egret]

This feels as though it dovetails nicely with the topic from my thread lol

What makes for it being a sidekick?

[heady sequoia]

I had the idea for awhile before the topic came up lmao

[lament egret]

I'd imagined so

[heady sequoia]

I didn't want to make it overly complicated, and wanted it to be largely nonmagical. Sidekick felt right, simple, short, didn't need to be someone epic. Like a merchant following around others, partly came from a part of FF16 where you had Goetz around and he just sold you some stuff in a interlude section between stages

and even did some smithing for you lol

[lament egret]

I should clarify i did not really touch sidekicks at all so don't quite get what makes something one

Though, there's a 2e supplement, Sages and Specialists that largely works with a similar idea I believe, which may provide some options/thoughts

[heady sequoia]

Ah, the official sidekicks are stripped down versions of the actual classes: Warrior is basically a Champion Fighter, Expert is basically a Rogue, and Spellcaster fills in any of the casters (Mage chooses from the Wiz list, Healer from Cleric or Druid, Prodigy from Warlock and Bard)

The one I made is sort of like a nonmagical Artificer, it had Flash of Genius as well at one point.

But all sidekicks are really simple, basically half a character in effect

the spellcaster sidekick even only has half casting

[lament egret]

right

surprised they go to L20

[heady sequoia]

They do haha

The original UA had it up to 12 only I think, which does feel right but if you do somehow bring up a sidekick all the way to the end it feels extremely underpowered (Though most campaigns end somewhere there so its actually no biggie)

[heady sequoia]

I think the big difference is that these would be in effect sort of "subclasses" of the Tradesman sidekick, which is a little complexity that sidekicks avoid. Creating instead one sidekick for each tool type would go against the design of the original sidekicks as well. That is, they wouldn't be masters of their one thing, but a generalist there to support the party. The Spellcaster chooses a spell list and largely thats the only choice it makes, the Expert its skills, and the Warrior its role (Attacker or Defender)

[lament egret]

ah I didn't clock not havin subclasses

[heady sequoia]

Mmm yeah, sidekicks are super simple in that regard

BTW sidekicks are made using a pre-existing statblock usually, so you could make a pet wolf into a sidekick. But Spellcaster and Expert require being able to speak a language haha

and so does Tradesman

[heady sequoia]

OK so @random urchin @marble dirge @nocturne gorge first draft of my BH 2024. Keeping BH the same roughly, basically mirroring how the 5e classes were changed. Major changes are the addition of Weapon Mastery, upped Hemo die, more Blood Curse uses, Amplify grants THP, and Brand of Castigation having extra effects. I'm debating whether to give more uses of Brand of Castigation or not, it should be accounted for in the BH's damage output

I'm still looking at the subs, Ghostslayer is mostly unchanged (except Curse Specialist), but shows how the new wording works in the subclass specific blood curse written the same way the new Channel Divinities are written.

https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/fcV-yiDorwjY

Oh and a very different Grim Psychometry and some Blood Curses reworked

I would appreciate if someone can do proper DPR calcs compared to other base classes, I'm not confident in that part yet haha

[marble dirge]

Ok I love that Grim Psychometry change

I'd use the hell out of that

Glad you bumped the hemocraft die early too, and the brand of castigation add on is actually so beautiful. They're basically the condition tanks and them being able to just end one when they kill their mark is so fun.

One suggestion I'll make is making the temp hp from amplify limited to a duration or # of uses. If its free temp hp it makes it so theirs often not a reason not to amplify.

I do love cursed brand though, and generally the class looks really fun now. I love me some just being immune to every condition in the game

[heady sequoia]

Right, I was somewhat concerned about that, hoping that the THP no stack rule and the ignore THP on drain would make constant Amping still drain HP, but you might be able to just come in and take damage to amp the next turn.

I think I'll make it so the first Amp gives you THP

[marble dirge]

I like that yeah. First one's free kinda deal. Then when you get cursed brand it actually just gives more hp

[nocturne gorge]

Ill read it as soon as I get to my PC!

[livid mountain]

-# it probably wasn't intended but I found the sudden contrast between what I expect a blood hunter to look like, and seeing a glasses-wearing blond anime girl leap at me with a literal blood-dagger, gave me a bit of a chuckle
I like what I see so far 👀
Can you be a Mutant blood hunter with the mutagenic fighting style and become a double mutant?
So we got ghost, werebeast, not-warlock, mutant... I wonder if there's any plans for more 🧛‍♂️

[heady sequoia]

If you want to know I have a lot of other BH subs that all take on traits from othr monsters, which is the theme I prefer that differentiates it from the ranger

theyre all self experimenters who turn themselves into monsters

I have
Poison Sub (Humanoid Killer)
Aberration Sub (Beholder)
Mimic Sub (Pet Mimic)
Celestial Sub (Very basic, can heal)
Fiend Sub (Pact-style/Warlord)

[livid mountain]

My first thought was "vampire" but blood hunters already seem very vampiric

[heady sequoia]

never hit truly found a satisfying implementation of elemental. And ooze is just super hard to draw from since youre just kinda being amorphous I guess (and engulfing?)

[livid mountain]

humanoid killer
wait we call those serial killers and assassins
celestial
dang, blasphemy subclass

Ideas sound fun

[heady sequoia]

Not sure if im converting them to 2024 since im still largely playing 2014

but theyre there hahaha

Yea the Poison one is basicaly turning your blood into poison, and getting special ones like a truth serum and what not. So its quite like an assassin with built in poison in their blood

Aberration is the psionics one, basically has eye rays along with some psionic powers

Also yes I half intended the anime girl to kinda soften the image of the Blood Hunter XD people keep calling it edgy. Though I know it turns some people off, but so much BH art is all edgy edgy so its hard t find a good replacement

Just the inherent vibe of the class I guess haha

[livid mountain]

I'd be hard-pressed to find barbarian art that doesn't look like an angry viking or Kratos cosplayer

[heady sequoia]

Real

[livid mountain]

I could see like some classic gothic/victorian "investigator" representing a blood hunter not actively slapping things with their own blood, if you were open to putting something else there. Not overtly "edgy" but I could look and go "he hunts monsters"

[hardy holly]

Alright ! Just dropping my red hot reaction about your blood hunter revamp (I actually love the idea of blood hunter and liked the 2014 version a bunch so I'll actually follow ya on this project to see how it evolves)

First : Picking an anime girl instead of Geralt or the gruff guy from the 2014 version is amazing and actually make sense
Blood hunter retheme : Not the biggest fan of this interpretation, for me Ranger were ALWAYS more geared toward magic and nature (not only in their subclass) but I do see the point you're trying to make.
Being able to switch from Int to Wis was a mistake that I am glad you corrected.
I see your point with the blood stuff, but it was pretty thematic like "turn indead" for cleric. I would have prefered if you made it more clear rather than erasing it completely (like unless the creature is a construct or an undead)
Blood curse use increase : YES
Your crimson rite rework just make sense. Yeah I lost hp and now the enemy is getting away so I'll attack with my bow... and lose hp again
Hardened soul : Not a big fan of immunity but alright, I get it
Blood curse of the anxious : Makes sense, it was always pretty weak
Blood curse of binding : But it already reduced the speed to 0 tho ?
Blood curse of marking : Make way too much sense.

Alright, here's all I have to say about the snipets now time to go into detail !

[heady sequoia]

Ranger is geared towards magic and nature, Blood Hunter is more about self experimentation and blood magic

maybe I didnt write it well haha

[hardy holly]

Ho you did but you were left me thinking that you thought that way ONLY about the subclasses and not the overall thing.

(Also I'll do the review a bit later, lunch break)

[random urchin]

I can definitely provide moral support!

[heady sequoia]

Debating whether to keep the Mutagen drawbacks, I dont think theyre necessary but its neat flavor

Still debating what to do with Mutagens in general lol

Profane Soul is up but I'm not final with how I did it. Almost every subclass that had a small set of options (Totem Barb, Hunter Ranger) basically threw away the permanency of those choices and made them flexible. They also made the choice of the Totem (ahem, Wild Heart) be different animals per level. Draconic Sorc also doesn't choose a dragon type initially anymore, though they still retain the permanency of their choice at 7th. Then 2024 lacks the subclasses that choose an option that affects their other subclass features (Storm Barb and Genie Warlock)

[marble dirge]

I really like mutagens as they are in 5e I've seen one of my players absolutely destroy high lv encounters with it. If anything mutagens are a bit too powerful compared to the other subclasses rn. But its lame you only get 1 until 7th level, but the fighting style you added definitely helps with that.

Considering they have so few mutagens the big problem always comes down to so many of them not having as big of an impact as the ability score increases. Idk if that means the ability score increases should be nerfed, the amount of mutagens should be increased, or if the other mutagens should just be better.

the 2 other things that really miff me about the subclass are them not getting proficiency in alchemy tools/brewers supplies and why they get blood curse of the corrosion at 15th.

[heady sequoia]

Mutagens are the ones actually considered pretty weak hahaha, tho the drawback is usually considered mostly irrelevant (usually you use a mutagen when you are in a situation where the drawback wont trigger).

Alchemy Tools is a base prof of the Blood Hunter even in its 2020 version mind you

Also why are you miffed about corrosion at 15? Pretty standard for all BH to get their special curse at the last 2 levels

[marble dirge]

Mostly cus Geralt from my memory doesn't get anything similar to it in the witcher and its somewhat out of flavor of the class. I cant think of anything itd be replaced with though, it might be the best one

[heady sequoia]

Aahhh just the flavor of it

[marble dirge]

Oh huh. I might be biased cus the only time I've seen a mutant bloodhunter was in a super high level series of one shots, and they slapped. They were immune to everything and had like 24s in everything

[marble dirge]

Oh yeah mechanically its perfectly fine

[sweet forum]

Well if I understand correctly BH isn't solely based on Witcher, either. I remember reading somewhere they're also based slightly on the Grey Wardens from Dragon Age.

[heady sequoia]

Mmm tbf theres some real obvious super good ones, like the 24 stat ones. The reason why theyre considered kinda weak, or maybe actually just bad butnot weak, is because there are a lot of meh mutagens

So youre really only using a few

Plus how theyre prepared makes you pretty inflexible

[marble dirge]

Yeah. I think what is so mid abt it is that like a lot of them seem fun but you only get 1 mutagen until level 7, so your forced to optomize.

[heady sequoia]

Yes exactly

[marble dirge]

Like in theory itd be fun to switch them out if you know a monster your fighting is gonna throw specific saves at you or is gonna have a fly speed or smthn, but they just arent flexible enoguh for that

[heady sequoia]

Eeexactly

But I think I have a solution, mostly what im trying to figure out right now is if the drawbacks are necessary or in 2024 5e just not sustainable anymore

[lament egret]

I would definitely think that drawbacks are against 2024's approach to things.

[hardy holly]

Yeah, just reread the wild magic table... except for the potted plant (that's not on a 42 which is already a huge mistake) and the "you have the frightened condition" there's no real drawback...
A shame. But the blood hunter is, in a way, the sacrifical class of dnd, I don't think a revamp without self damage to get power would be a real revamp

[livid mountain]

they screwed up the potted plant

[hardy holly]

https://tenor.com/view/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-oh-no-not-again-not-again-flower-pot-gif-21730553

[heady sequoia]

HP Drain is still there, the thing im wondering is the Mutagens drawbacks

which are wildly different

[lament egret]

given that even the Drow sunlight sensitivity was nixed, I'd think that it is just 2024 ethos.

[livid mountain]

I assumed the drow thing was to split Lolthite drow from the stock PHB race, since else it assumes every drow everywhere all got the same no-sun curse thing

[lament egret]

Certainly makes for weaker thematic coherence, weakening the class's identity, but such is 2024.

[hardy holly]

True, I do like drawbacks and I'd like you to keep them honestly. The blood hunter is a sacrifical class having drawbacks make sense for them more so than from any other.

[livid mountain]

If anything, the relative safety of other classes makes blood hunter a good risktaker

[hardy holly]

I see Ashley points, but the good thing about having a new class is that you can explore new areas of plays. From that point of view I think "drawbacks" can be the blood hunter's niche

(This conversation is making me rethink my own subclass, it's very fun)

[heady sequoia]

Hmm what I'm going for is to pattern after 2024 as much as possible. "Drawbacks" being the BH's niche doesnt seem right, only 2 of the 4 sublasses have any kind of drawback, one of them is fairly easily circumvented (Lycan), and the other is irrelevant most of the time (Mutant)

I did keep Lycan's in, because it served a mechanical purpose of making sure you arent just staying permanently Hybrid

Hmmm

[hardy holly]

Well the thing is, HP drain IS a drawback. At least, in my opinion. It wouldn't make sense to remove drawbacks from the subclass to fall more in lign with 2024 philosophy but keep a big one in the core class.

[heady sequoia]

I actually did my best to alleviate the HP Drain, I keep it in because its part of the core identity of the Blood Hunter

but mutagens having drawbacks isnt quite the same

[hardy holly]

(On the other hand, I personnaly am not very attached to the HP drain. It wasn't a huge part of the blood hunter identity for me. So working around that could be possible)

[heady sequoia]

Also did they remove Fireball on yourself?

[hardy holly]

That's ultimately your choice, but in my very shallow experience, compromise like this aren't good. Either you prioritise the blood hunter identity over 2024 philosophie or you do the opposite.
Doing a mix of both risk make things a bit blurry and confused.

Stepping back a bit, we're just talking about removing mutagen from a subclass, if you don't want them remove them

[hardy holly]

YES THEY DID ! Replacing it by a "Oupsie, got burned, take 1d4 damage"

[timid shale]

That's...kinda lame to be honest, I like wild magic for the stupid effects, fireballing yourself is very funny.

[heady sequoia]

I dont think my "compromise" is shallow at all. There are 2 sources of HP Drain in the base BH class: Amplify and Rite.
All I did was give Rite more permanency, you dont have to re-up your rite when you switch weapons
And for Amplify, all I did was convert HP to THP. This is still fleeting, THP is not HP exactly, and right now it happens exactly once per Short. Its in line with the "magic blood" theme of the BH imo

Mutagens, I'm not really thinking of a compromise. I'm just going to remove Side Effects/Drawbacks from the mutagens wholesale, and keep the main effects (well, if I do i like this I will be changing a LOT of the effects)

[hardy holly]

That's a choice, but that's what I mean by confused, you don't want to remove the HP drain because it's a huge part of the blood hunter identity (even if it doesn't really align with 2024 philosophy) and you're looking to update the blood hunter for 2024 not to rework it.
On the other hand, you want to remove the drawbacks of the mutagens because it doesn't align with 2024 philosophie (even if it's a big part of the order of the mutant identity) and to do that you'll need to rework a bunch of mutagen rather than just update them for 2024.

[heady sequoia]

See the big thing here is that 2024's philosophy, nearly all subclasses are heavily reworked

the base classes themselves are fairly close to their 2014 counterparts

barring the ranger, who got a lot of tasha's in them

but Wild Heart and Totem are very different, Hunter 2014 and 2024 are very different

[hardy holly]

That's very true (The ranger needed a whole reworking, doesn't count)

[livid mountain]

sad ranger hours

[heady sequoia]

tbh im more surprised they didnt change the Champion more

[livid mountain]

I think it could be neat to experiment with mutagen drawbacks, so long as they're still worth it in the end

[heady sequoia]

of course theres also a lot of subclasses that stayed the same, mostly from the ones that were released after PHB, or else the ones that were extremely solid already (Like Battle Master, tho they also made a small but significant change with it, basically at 15 its at will)

[hardy holly]

Your revamp your rules. I am just the perfect mix of HP drain hater and Mutagen drawbacks enjoyer

[heady sequoia]

lmao

Im an HP Drain "OK"-er and a Mutagen drawback "Definitely not 2024"-er lol

[heady sequoia]

Hmm... I think the best idea would be to have a sort of universal drawback

Lemme see what I can do, but I'll experiment a bit. The first order for the Mutant is to give the more flexibility anyway

[heady sequoia]

Ok so I'll try a no drawback version first and see if the balance works.

Theres a few mutagens that have fairly smart drawbacks, like Cruelty causing disadv on all mental saves means you wont use it against casters, which helps make you not explode casters. So we'll see how it looks without drawbacks, if itll be anything crazy with the new method of creating and consuming mutagens

I wonder if I need to scale Celerity, Potency and Sagacity to +5 though in the case theres no drawback

[heady sequoia]

OK so

https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/fcV-yiDorwjY

Current version, with subclasses

Ghostslayer received two changes, Curse Specialist doesn't grant another BC (Might be too many Blood Curses) but instead allows you to double curse as one BA/Reaction; and Aether Walk now just last straight up 1 minute. Otherwise unchanged.
Lycan had 2 features shuffled around, basically making you gain your Blood Curse and Brand Improvement on the same level, pushing the Adv to control to 18. Otherwise also pretty unchanged.
Mutant is reworked. Mutagencraft now lets you concoct 3 mutagens per Long Rest, increasing by 1 at 11 and 18, on a Short you concoct 1 mutagen. You can have 1 active at a time, increasing by 1 more active at 7 and 15. Mutagens had their drawbacks removed, and removing the Check Adv mutagens aside from the Wisdom one, adding 2 mutagens in its place as well as modifying Alluring. Strange Metabolism also gets nerfed, partly to make room for the drawbackless mutagens.
Profane Soul is reworked. Instead of specific patrons, they draw on creature types. Each creature type is representative of a patron, so its still a possible flavor to do, but the profane soul can also switch creature types after a long rest, granting it flexibility. They function relatively the same as the original patrons though, but the Arcanas now can cast the spell they grant once per long. They also get a new feature along with their brand, mimicking the resilience features warlock gets.

The way the new mutagens work, its harder to keep more than 1 go to mutagen for combat purposes, so youre either using Celerity or Cruelty (its Cruelty lets be honest). It does encourage mutagen diversity, and later on you can kinda keep two in most cases

Nerfed all the Ability Bonus stuff to just +4 at 15, not sure if I needed to

but was a precaution, you can still hit +7 but you need to dedicate to 20 and not just 19 haha

[marble dirge]

I love it, the profane soul being able to switch especially

Honestly I still think the Celerity and Potency mutagens are too stronk but its probs just me still being biased, I haven't done the math yet

It def feels a lot better to take something like aether though, not having to get a downside for a measly 20 feet.

[heady sequoia]

The key here too is that you cant stick with 3 go to mutagens and stay there (well you can at level 18 but thats late af)

Youre almost forced to use different mutagens, and thus removing the downside gives you more reason to use a mutagen you dont usually than just playing super safe

[nocturne gorge]

Reconstruction doesn't say when you regain the Hit Points

Everything else is cool

Though I subjectively would do some things differently

[heady sequoia]

The design goal is to keep things similar to original. Despite being reworked, Wild Heart keeps a lot of Totem in it, Bear Wolf and Eagle are all the same, they still get commune with nature, and its last level Lion is just Bear, Ram Wolf, Falcon Eagle

The rework lies a lot in the mechanics

Rather than the effects themselves

[random urchin]

So I have just had a stupid idea that definitely wouldn't increase both our workloads

so you did a 5.14 updoot? (or are doing with this?)
But what if, we also made a Sim version? xD

[heady sequoia]

I've done a Tasha's style update that added a lot of subclasses and alternate features (some of which arent here lol but thats still very Tashas that some didnt make it in the transition)

Like I think Harness Divine Power didnt cross over to 2024?

As for a Sim version, idk what that would entail XD

[random urchin]

Basically, need a 5.14 curve redux thing that brings it in line and tightened up.
Then I would need to reword it.
Then we put both our names on it and thank mercer for letting us steal it or something I guess

[heady sequoia]

Hmm im pretty rough with calcs, so most of my Tasha style update was new subs, fixing the problem with Mutant, and adding new patrons for the Profane Soul.

Cleaning up the curve, I think I may need help with the math of it all XD. Though I think the BH's numerical damage output is fine in its 2020 version? The HP sting is what needs to be fixed in the transition to Sim probably

I may revisit my old Tashas style update tho, ive learned a lot the past few years and probably would do a few things differently

I was focused too much on not changing mechanics at all, when I really couldve since Tashas did in some ways

[heady sequoia]

@hearty fern

[hearty fern]

Ah, thank you.

[heady sequoia]

Pretty much converted everything but needs a balancing pass to see if it matches 2024's curve

Theres a set of patch notes on page 2 and an FAQ on the last page hahaha

[hearty fern]

I'll give it a look through, thank you.

[willow reef]

@heady sequoia okay I only read through the base class so far, I may have more thoughts when I read it fully(but I'm currently headed to my workout)

Most importantly; bold choice of putting an anime girl on the front page.

Otherwise, my biggest concern is the brand. The 6th level brand feels o-kay, if a bit tricky. I'd make the heal option heal more, because regaining a hemocraft or removing a condition strikes me as much better. That being said, the latter is situational, since you need to be afflicted when the creature dies which...might be the cause for some missed windows of opportunity. All in all, Breathe the Soul seems the most consistent.

The level 14 bonus is where I find this a bit...problematic. My first thought was a paladin using Lay on Hands each turn as a BA on it, but other than cheeses like that-double your intelligence modifier feels like a bonus enough, maybe instead of damage they can't benefit from healing instead

[heady sequoia]

Double int and tethering (with its damage) is in the OG blood hunter. The Heal was my addition to give an option there, plus increasing the range to 30

I could reduce the heal damage but wanted to make it the same as Tethering

Or yeah I could just no healing it

Tho im not really considering the cheese to be that big a problem if I lowered the value to say, 2d6

I'll also add Int mod to Consume the Flesh, should help

The reason why I figured the damage is fine was because the heal still goes through, so most heals will reduce the damage. But the cheese is something I didnt account for

Tho I made it back for 2020 BH where Lay on Hands is iirc an action

[willow reef]

Blood Curses...

Anxious doesn't say when Frightened ends
Marked still feels like the weakest of the bunch. Unless you used magic missile or scorching ray...?
Mutual Suffering looks rather appealing. Though being honest it feels like it'd just be a way to double on a crit smite or something...maybe if it was damage an ally took-it's sort of a way to replicate resources spent on one damage instance, for me anyways

I see mutagens just flat out lost their drawbacks. Eh, it was a relic from Pathfinder anyways

[heady sequoia]

Its in the FAQ why mutagens lost their drawback

Right at the end haha

[willow reef]

Yeah, I think save for niche situations like that it should be fine. 2d6 also sounds reasonable

Kinda funny to me that you can add a d6 to attacks...without concentration

[heady sequoia]

Anxious, I'll fix that
Marked still feels bad but its not as bad as before, if everyones coordinated and can trigger the damage you can all pile on haha
Mutual Suffering, yeah I might add the condition that its an allied creature that took the damage

[heady sequoia]

You mean crimson rite? Hahaha and it improves faster unlike Hunters Mark

Its technically balanced

[willow reef]

True, I get the idea behind it, for Marked

Just feels still difficult to use I guess?

[willow reef]

I'm still mad about that ;~;

[heady sequoia]

Yeah but Im ok with difficult to use/niche as long as it is usable. The old one only affected you, and the output is just dual wielding mostly (and BH is a prime dual wielder now since it can activate on both weapons with my rework), and the amp gave advantage, but theres a lot of sources of that that its kinda meh

All source instead allows you to just tell everyone "FLAME ON" and pile in fire like a pseudo vuln

[willow reef]

Mm, yeah yeah
You were still unsure about Profane right? Do you want it to keep being a thirdpact?

[heady sequoia]

Yeah want to keep the thirdpact to keep it close to original, Profane mostly just wanted to know if

1. The Attunement bonuses are sort of equal and useful
2. If I needed more uses for the extra spells (mostly the level 7)
3. If the execution of using creature types instead of patrons felt fine without detracting too much from the flavor/idea of it

And if it needs a little more to compete, like more features somewhere, tho I think some tweaks to number of uses can bring it up already without much else

Maybe Souleater can be amped every short instead so its basically a 3rd slot

Also anime girl on the front, partially wanted to soften the edginess of the Blood Hunter, partially cause that blood blade looks cool, partially of course cause I like anime XD

I can swap it out, but I'll have to find a less edgy BH art that works

[willow reef]

You know, the free casting just might work since the spell slots they get are inherently lesser
So reflecting high level warlocks compared to other thirdcasters they don't have much versatility, but they have the most high-level spells(in a sense)

The creature types...hmm

I can see why it was done, honestly. Tough to account for every warlock subclass to appear after.

You didn't use every type though, right?

I could see something like Construct for hexblade or mechanus

[heady sequoia]

Yeah its not every type partially because its mimicking the old patron list, partially because I think its better not to exhaust all types and give people some room to interpret a new type

[heady sequoia]

Now that you mention it im wondering about the lack of a mechanus warlock dam

[heady sequoia]

Ive snuck in a link to the Expanded BH Options doc in the main BH doc, which is mostly a repost of my old 2020 BH subclasses hahaha

Its got 6 subs, Awakened (Beholder Psionic), Corroded (Poison), False Faces (Mimic), Hellbound (Fiend Devil), Overseer (Celestial), Wyvern (Dragon)

[heady sequoia]

Also also put the lovely anime girl at the back cover and put someone else on the front for wider appeal

[random urchin]

probably a good plan. xD

[livid mountain]

The anime has been vanquished! /j /j /j
Guy on the front's pretty cool

[hearty fern]

Now that I think about it a lot of anime characters would fit pretty well: Crona Gorgon from Soul Eater, Yachiru Unohana from Bleach, Power from Chainsaw Man, Choso from Jujutsu Kaisen, the entire cast of Deadman Wonderland etc.

[random urchin]

Deadman Wonderland

that's a name I haven't heard in some time

(and kinda wish I still hadn't xD)

[heady sequoia]

Yeah surprisingly I can mostly only think of anime stuff that uses blood attacks that isnt bloodbending/blood control. You can also use blood curses like a demon slayer demon

like most of the time in the west I feel if someone controls blood its usually them controlling someones blood a la bloodbending

[hearty fern]

The only example I can think of from the west using "traditional" blood attacks would be the Red Lantern Corp from the Green Lantern comics. When they use a red lantern ring their blood is replaced with a highly volatile substance only kept inert as long as you where the ring. This substance is most commonly used to destroy the energy constructs of other lantern corps but behaves similarly to napalm when used to attack anything organic, that is, if napalm could burn in a vacuum and was attracted to movement.

[livid mountain]

There's not a lot of handy blood sources, and there's not much you can take from your own body before you realize "wait crap I need that to live" and faint, so I'm guessing that's why it's more handy to bloodbend instead
And you probably won't see heroes bring like animals or something to use as ammo bags

[hearty fern]

Also the symbiote Carnage, though I'm not sure whether he would still technically counts as "blood." In the comics after Carnage removed itself from Venom while Eddie Brock was in prison, it's soon to be host Cletus Cassidy had a cut on his hand which Carnage entered and subsequently replaced the blood in Cassidy's veins resulting in a lethal codependency. Unlike Venom, Carnage can actually create/morph into weapons, so when Cassidy needs a weapon but keep a low profile, Carnage will pop out of a Vein and make/become one.

[heady sequoia]

Mmmm yes right the acid blood

[heady sequoia]

Yeah but its fiction yknow, just handwave it XD

carnage is a pretty good shout tho

[livid mountain]

hyperactive bone marrow, activate

[hearty fern]

Now I'm imagining a BH with a blood ooze familiar

[heady sequoia]

Currently the pet one I have is mimic lol

technically amorphous

fun idea for an NPC tho

I tried to make an ooze BH cause it sounds so perfect but also couldnt really do much other than "Be Amorphous" and "Suck Blood" and "Suck Memories" (Ooblex)

[hearty fern]

Hmm, fair.

[hearty fern]

Bone based BH?

[livid mountain]

hells yeah

[hearty fern]

🎶 Bad to the Bone 🎶

[heady sequoia]

Dam gained a lot of traction on the critical role subreddit XD

Meanwhile basically nothing on the UA and homebrew subreddits lol

[hearty fern]

It is what it is.

[heady sequoia]

glad the critters love the work at least

theyre technically the main audience for any BH brew

[hearty fern]

What do you think a bone based Blood Hunter could do? A limited use ranged attack ? An unarmored defense or summonable armor feature?

[random urchin]

https://tenor.com/view/goofy-gif-13729914

[hearty fern]

What does this what does this reaction mean?

[random urchin]

You asked what a bone based blood hunter could do.

It could fyuck