For Custodians, Handymen & Others sworn to keep the world from breaking.
#Sacred Oath: Oath of Stewardship
low snow
low snow
<@&634107343180660739> One of the subclasses I am most proud of, what do ya think 😄
tough coral
Responded on the main homebrew channel but I'll throw it here too in case you missed it
Tenets are pretty good, I like it
Expanded Stewardship you can totally clarify how it works without the DM for the most part. "Your Lay on Hands, as well as spells you cast that restore Hit Points or remove conditions, can be used on Constructs and objects, even if normally unable to otherwise." Solid sort of ribbon feature.
Part of a Whole is weird. There's no targetting, and no definition of a "system", so its so vague even the DM has to make the definition. This is not great design. Be more specific, and have some kind of targetting, otherwise your character should be able to know who the literal BBEG is and everyone else in his party just by sitting down for 10 minutes. No secrets. Limit this some way, and be more specific.
Stay the Collapse is also strange. You know Spare the Dying right? Does this stabilize a creature like that? Does it bring them back to 1? Does it just stop them from making a death save? Clarify this
Aura of Stewardship ohgod NO do not add more to saves. The Pally already adds a lot to it and its absurd. The skill checks are fine, and the Use Object BA too, though it makes the aura sort of underwhelming.
Burden of Maintenance has really weird flavor, not one I really like tbh. Something about it is off, feels a bit like those mocking "heh my problems are worse than yours" kinda thing. As for the effect, ignoring exhaustion is fine I think, but the BA being unlimited exhaustion means you can nearly insta kill things if you can lock them down somehow, and thats really easy at this level (casters trap them literally, martials grapple). Granted thats 6 turns, but you can literally ignore something huge for 6 turns, fighting their adds, and just killing them. Idk if this is a good feature, maybe if it was use limited and can't kill.
Custodian's Presence needs a bit of rewording. Natural one auto fails turn into "normal failures" sounds... like an auto fail. Tbh idk how to word this, but currently its still kinda an auto fail. Vehicles are objects so they don't really need to be listed, and Constructs should be capitalized. Having permanent "no disadv" sounds really crazy even at 20th. That's one of the ways 5e scales its debuffs, and just negating it outright for your WHOLE TEAM with no uptime, just passively all the time, is crazy. The difficult terrain part is unclear, does it work on you only? Is it part of the aura? Also, if it references the aura, it should probably be capitalized. I think this power can work (a little underpowered?) if this was a Long Rest limited transformation like most other Paladins
low snow
Thanks for the feedback! I can see that my design is very informed by my own perspective and doesn't read cleanly from an outside perspective.
As well as the general balance of the design being off if generally applied.
low snow
Regarding Expanded stewardship, my initial thought was to hit point restoration and condition removal, but I wanted it to be applicable beyond that (such as damage resistance spells like warding bond or utility such as bless or death ward) so i kept the language broad. I could specify the direct examples but i do want to keep the broader use.
Part of a Whole could definitely use some specifying in hindsight. My intention was to have it be an augury effect that you direct at an object or person (should specify a range, yeah). And after 10 minutes you'd know an immediate relation, purpose or dependency. It wouldn't necessarily be the most important or relevant piece of information regarding the target, but could give you a loose sense/hint of the targets 'position' in a system. Ideally I was imagining something like:
"This object seems to have a strong tie to some individual (whether their identity would be revealed or how much would be DM discretion), it probably wasn't discarded lightly"
"This person seems to have significant ties to multiple organizations, yet with drastically difference in purpose. Split loyalties perhaps? (whether said orgs would be revealed/described would be gm discretion)"
(I can see how this is very fraught to abuse with the vague language, I suppose i was too deep in half remembered Actor-Network theory concepts so it made sense to me)
Stay The Collapse, when applied to creatures, is meant to keep them conscious and stop them from making death saving throws until the effect ends. They would still be at 0, and suffer the consequences of being at 0 once the effect ends.
Regarding Aura of Stewardship I can see the issue with more saving throw bonuses, although i felt that limiting it to the pally's proficiency, usually only wis & cha, meant it wouldn't be too unbalanced (considering the other aura's out there). If that is removed, it would be underwhelming yea.
tough coral
Regarding **Expanded stewardship,** my initial thought was to hit point restorat...
Its possible to keep some vagueness in both cases, but specifying greatly greatly helps with balance. A lot of the most unbalanced features are reliant on DM discretion and many DMs either make it useless or make it broken without realizing.
Expanded Stewardship can be worded to include those spells anyway with specificity. "..., as well as spells you cast that restore Hit Points, remove conditions, or grant some bonus such as resistance or advantage to specific rolls, can be used on..."
Part of a Whole isn't really an augury effect: the big limitation of augury is that it only predicts the next 30 minutes. Divination is only the next 7 days, and is cryptic. Both only predict an outcome vaguely. As it is now its more like youre information gathering, its not even vague about that part. It literally says "identify immediate relations" and a player WILL argue that means he knows the closest family or friend of the BBEG now. And hes gonna fuck the BBEG's mom now
You would need to be really specific about this, but the way you expressed it its still either broken (instantly know a traitor) or useless (hes definitely a part of this community yeah duh).
tough coral
Stay the Collapse you have to word that part, and you should specify that if they take damage they still receive a failed death save.
Aura of Stewardship even to just Wis and Cha this would be broken, the bonus to all saves is already usually broken this just makes it so everyone is basically ignoring Wis and Cha saves