(5e) Spell Warden Class

[Axaya Hartly]

Returning this here, since I made progress on it, and I look forward to any suggestions.

Version: 0.9.9

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8497ugfVmguU3ZZUVRQYTN5NlU/view

Change Log:

Core:
Updated Chaos Trigger, it now functions as a DoT with some interesting utility functions, it's odd when the 1d4 kills something...
Gathering Entropy, this now recharges chaos points as an action, comes with a limit of recharging up to the 4th chaos point.
Updated Broken Echo - Dissonant Reverb, this now teleports you for 10 movement to any spot within 30-feet of the echo
Second Trigger - 10th level change on this, it does a 6d8 damage over 3 turns.

Seeker:
Natural Expertise no longer grants extra attack vs marked targets, instead you have advantage.

Keeper:
Identify portion of the Chaos Shard given a limit.
Eldritch Warden damage reduction shield is set to 2d12 and can be used to help an ally within 30-feet

Inquisitor:
Moment of Silence changed to Solemn Vignette, in short the inquisitor can ask questions.

Comments:

So the first thing I thought needed to go was extra attack, martial echo being the only exception.

The class seems to work very well for what it was intended to do. It can handle spell casters of very challenging CRs very well. However non-spell casters can be quite deadly.

There are still a few quirks that need adding, right now the work I'm doing on the class deals with the rp side, there is a lot of stuff you can do with it as is though.

I get a lot of questions about the psychic damage on a arcane caster and I always note that the nature of the threading mentioned in the flavor deals more with a kind of damage that exists in other versions of D&D but not 5e and force just wasn't accurate for what I thought it was about. The idea was always that the chaos trigger was dealing with the connection between the arcane lines of the world and the mind that put the powers to work to cast magic. This class attacks both.

Thereby considering the mechanical side of the psychic damage I figured the drop in nova for more of a steady dpr would deal with concentrating mages and things like that better.

The next thing had to be extra attack, this class does have a martial side to it, but I didn't want it to have extra attack. There are three exceptions to this, one being Martial Echo which has a few things that have to happen making it more of an anomaly than something reliable. Then Second Trigger with second attack, since it only happens on a natural 20 it is also fairly rare, and last is Chaotic Tide that lets you use your bonus action to attack (do not confuse this with 2 weapon fighting).

Okay so the next update should be the final one, which will be version 1. There probably will be some minor changes after that but more than likely to just the credits section or if I find any typos.

 

[Axaya Hartly]

Predicted changes:

I'm taking another look at inquisitor, as it stands I think the dice rolls for the core class are low enough that they are supportive rather than defining. The path inquisitor in my view doesn't support traditional dpr tests. It is so situational that to try to apply a formula to it is incredibly difficult.

You may have a wall but the ceiling is 100ft up, you may have ground but no ceiling or wall. It relies a lot on the environment to get its numbers going and that's hard to go by.

The base attack damage is 2d4, I wish I could make it half that and keep the psychic+force damage as that's a thematic thing for me but I may just drop it to 1d4 force. I've been also thinking of getting rid of the int modifier to damage as a solution to that and leaving it at 1d4 force + 1d4 psychic.

This is a grappler period so there has to be a reason for people to grapple and I think the features presented gives a good enough reason to actually grapple a target.

I added the saves to each kind of grapple for someone to have an extra chance of getting out of the grapple before taking heavy damage as well... I feel like it's balanced, bu I'd like a 2nd, 3rd or 4th opinion on this.

 

[Axaya Hartly]

formating hell <deleted>

 

[Axaya Hartly]

Alrighty,
So this is an almost complete class as it is, I feel safe that the version posted here can be used in game, it may be a little weak as it is though since I cut its core class dpr by 50%.
The Seeker will probably get the worst of it because it doesn’t get any dpr increases in its entire kit. However Seeker is supposed to be the most difficult to play ones and they should still have the highest nova potential of all the Paths.

The Keeper saw very little by way of changes, for anyone looking at keeper and trying to figure out where it stands next to a wizard. Here is an optimal list of how many spells a keeper could cast vs a wizard evoker between long rests, this is assuming you are casting each spell at its highest level.

Level Keeper Evocation
3rd 2+Chaos Trigger 8
7th 3+Chaos Trigger 13
13th 4+Chaos Trigger 19
17th 4+Chaos Trigger 21
20th 4+ Chaos Trigger 25

Okay also that is counting Gathering Entropy as part of the total number for Keeper and Arcane Recovery for the Wizard. It isn’t as bad as it looks I think though, where Wizards get cool things like creating holes in aoe spells or adding their int modifier to attack and spell damage rolls a warden gets to add 1d4 to the saves of up to 2 allies, and can essentially get out of jail free when they have their avatar available. They also have the ability to regain their chaos points via weapon attacks against a creature with chaos trigger and trading 3 temp hp for 1 chaos point.

At lower levels on a d4 that isn’t much but with a 5d4 that’s an average of 10 temp hp to pull from each turn so that’s 3 chaos points back each turn on average.

Anyway to make up for the lack of spell casting power I gave them a very generous spell list that they can utilize since they can use a spell book.

Inquisitor I feel… it needs some attention… I’m in a game that I’m planning on play testing this in, the DM of that game is willing to let me do that. The thing with this path is that it’s very difficult to compare it directly to the other paths much less other classes. It’s damage seems high but it is a melee oriented class and its damage is very situational. For example the 2d8 relies on their being a ceiling and that the Inquisitor has enough temp hp to pay for the cost of doing the move and is at or above the dementia step to pull it off as well as a saving throw and ability check. My worry is broken down into 3 things.
1. The damage may be too high in actual play.
2. The requirements may make this too niche
3. The cost vs benefit may be too minimal.
It would take 2 turns to put an enemy in a position where they are compromised. First a grapple, then you can do a bunch of stuff the next turn. The additional limiter on this is that it’s a bonus action, so you can’t subclass fighter come to this and start grappling times in a round or action surge for 4 grapples in a round, this also allowed for an action to be available for lower levels when you can’t trigger your chaos trigger as part of a grapple.

If anyone is actually playing this class I’d really like to hear your experiences.

The newest revision 0.9.5 is probably going to take a month or so to come out after I play test inquisitor a bit.

Some important notes for DMs allowing this class:
While seeker does have an innate detect magic it doesn’t have an innate identify, they know an item is magical and for all intents and purposes can grab a cursed item or a complex magical item and miss out on layers of magic that may be involved. A true detect magic spell wouldn’t have this issue. The area of effect for this innate detection is smaller than detect magic, the actual feature that is similar to detect magic is within a 10ft range. The 5ft effect would essentially be an arcana check and I should note requires time with the item, I wasn’t sure about adding a specific amount of time as I wanted to leave that up the DM.

If you want to adjust this class be aware that the mechanisms of this were designed in a way that in my view kept balance always in mind. I’m certain there are other ways to go about that but for example, Seeker gets no damage abilities because it’s a utility path with a very powerful nova. It could for example at higher levels set off 3 chain lightning’s in one turn. So it’s lack of spell casting and martial may lower its dpr contribution making it comparable to that of a life cleric in a campaign with zero undead but when it comes to taking down big bads they are the ones you want in your party especially if they have a chance to prepare. So giving them a mechanism for higher sustained dpr may make them shine a bit too often and giving them more spells may take away the value of their artifices.

So when you go to apply a nerf because something looks too versatile my position for making it that way is that the class may look very versatile but it isn’t it simply satisfies niches that vanilla classes do not and where it has more of one thing it lacks something else somewhere else. I mean I think the only thing this class has in common with any vanilla class is that it gets an attack. V_V

 

[Axaya Hartly]

0.9.3 Is now online.

Essentially I lowered the HD to a d6.

Lowered the inquisitor Axiom damage to 1d4+1d4 no intelligence modifier to the damage, my feeling was that when Maxim comes online it needs to be the heavy hitter that I imagined it to be and I felt that Axiom being able to both boost dementia and trigger chaos trigger kind of made Maxim just icing on a cake where it should have been the cake.

Changed Chaotic Maelstrom on Keeper, I felt that Keeper spent so much time catching up to other full time spell casters that it didn't really have anything to it beyond playing catch up. So what I did was alter the 15th level ability (I know it's late). It now allows you to once per short rest apply chaos to your spell before you cast it. The result is that creatures hit by the spell either suffer -5 to their ac or face your spell with +2 to the DC.

Spell casting in general, please keep in mind that I've done the math and you can too, but this class even on keeper is only a 3/4th caster by comparison to the full casters. (Even warlock). The reason the spell list may seem generous is mainly because this class can't use many high level spells per-day as is. With that said I took out True polymorph and added the magnificent mansion.

With that said, I would love to hear any tales of people using this class right now.

Once it hits 0.9.5 it should be safe for any campaign, but when it hits version 1.0 there shouldn't be any changes anymore... unless it's a typo. But 0.9.6 to 0.9.9 will be all about changing the wording to be more similar to the raw, so 0.9.5 should be where it's safe to use.

 

[Axaya Hartly]

Update 0.9.8 is up, some intense final changes, 9.9 should be a rebalancing and wording change, and hopefully before version 1 is complete all the overlooked issues should be looked at.

 

[Axaya Hartly]

Update 0.9.9

About 2 more months worth of changes and testing left, thanks for your patience on this. For those using the class the change log is in the update section for quick reference on what is different from 0.9.8.

Finally going to probably be doing some naming changes so if you have any suggestions let me know.

I'm thinking just Ward... I know my imagination...

=)