doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
updoot
D&D 5E Homebrew Assassin v4-ish?
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Changes.
Cleaned up some wordings, still plenty of that left to do.
Added a ribbon ability, Priveleges of Membership, at level 3. Each of the classes in this project will have stuff like this built in.
Changes list of conditions for Vulnerable state. Should I add langauge that makes creatures vulnerable to your if they are unaware of your presence? Perhaps instead of requiring Surprised condition? Relying on Surprise is a problem for PHB rogue assassins, after all.
Cleaned up some wordings, still plenty of that left to do.
Added a ribbon ability, Priveleges of Membership, at level 3. Each of the classes in this project will have stuff like this built in.
Changes list of conditions for Vulnerable state. Should I add langauge that makes creatures vulnerable to your if they are unaware of your presence? Perhaps instead of requiring Surprised condition? Relying on Surprise is a problem for PHB rogue assassins, after all.
Dontaniez
Villager
Any new updates on this class? I love what you have made so far. I'm so excited to see what the rest of Manticore will be.
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
I’ll post and update this week.
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
I’ll try to look it over again and put the newest build up tonight when I’m home, but I do know that I’ve renamed Manticore to Naga, because it gives a little more of a hook with grappling, whereas I kept trying to make manticore more mobile and that’s already the Peryton’s deal.
I also modified Wraith to Moon Shadow (might change to Loup Garou) and gave it a transformation at level 6, and tied the whole thing to the moon and the empty night, and you choose which to embody when you transform. I’d like to have the basic transformation at level 3, but alongside Spellcasting it’s a bit much all at once.
Maybe transforming requires a spell slot? Then the basic Shadow form could be level 3, and be appropriate to a level 1 spell, and level 6 unlocks a greater transformation that’s more meaningful and has that binary choice of The Shadow In The Moon or The Hunter In Darkness.
Dontaniez
Villager
I love it & thank you so much. I have been wanting to make a sort of shadow assassin that utilizes poison for a long time. And just reading the unfinished one was amazing. I love the flow and options during and out of combat. Really gives the relentless assassin lurking in the shadow vibe I've wanted for so long. And I am a fan of Assassin's Creed so the flavor of it all is just top notch to me.
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Hell yeah. Thank you! If you play it I’d love to hear about your experiences with it. Especially how the features come together and the actions flow in combat.
Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
This looks cool. I haven't been following along, let me leap right in. Sorry if I cover things dealt with in other versions. I'm not going to comment on everything, if I don't say anything I think it's good. (Though some things I'll comment on just to say they are great!)
Saves + DC
Why is the weak save CHA, but the DC ability INT? Shouldn't they be the same? INT is used elsewhere as well.
Vulnerable Targets...
Vulnerable is already a keyword, I'd suggest picking something else for clarity.
Assassin's Shroud
Is this visible? Does the target know they have a shroud? Is this a magical effect that can be dispelled?
Can you place a shard outside of combat? By divorcing this from normal actions that gets questionable.
Can a target have more than one shroud on them?
What is the damage type of the shroud? Or is it the same as the weapon? Is it affected if the weapon hit was a crit?
Recovery seems like Arcane Recovery and the others - making it happen during a short rest syncs this class with the others. No need for them to skip a short rest because they need to use 10 minutes of the hour performing the ritual, and no imbalance with them able to recover and other recovery methods not.
EDIT: Just rereading and realized they come back on a short rest. 12d10 (2x 2d10 x long rest+2short rests) is FAR too much guarenteed bonus damage for a 1st level character. A 1st level paladin gets nothing, a 2nd level paladin gets 4d8. Paladin is a sturdier chassis, this can exceed that by some, say 4d10 per day guaranteed bonus, which is still only 1/3 of what this gives.
Shadow Moves
These are really flavorful, but it feels like too much is coming at at 1st level. I'd suggest moving something from 1st back to 2nd.
The "hit or miss on a weapon attack" is usually "Takes the Attack action" in 5e. This helps stop it from cascading too much, like with melee cantrips, etc.
Defensive Posture could be effectively permanent bladesong, and that's considered a premier defensive ability and can exceed bounded accuracy. This should cost a resource, even if it's a separate currency like [PROF] times per day. Compare to Monk who needs to spend Ki and a Bonus action for Disadvantage.
Lethal
Is cool, comes to early. Ripe for multiclass cherrypicking, but even without that, this should come a bit later.
Preternatural Parry
See no indication that this class is a slow enough progression to give a feature at the same level as an ASI. Very few classes do. I'd move this back.
Also this is better than the monk ability in that never coverts a hit to a miss, so you would still take any other effects from the missile. Plus melee attacks are more common than missile attacks. Plus this will later get overloaded with Deadly Riposte.
Fear and Shadow
Love these!
Quick on the Draw
("Sleight" misspelled.)
Just to make sure I understand. So I could attempt to stealth, fail the roll, do a shadow action (I'm assuming these are Shadow Moves), to do something, and spend a shroud to Hide again? With no extra actions? Eh, not liking it.
There's a recurring theme of doing things outside the action economy, or overloading like where a single Reaction can trigger multiple features. It's too much.
Hunter's Gaze
Unlimited Vulnerability and 18-20 crit range just for being able to see someone for a minute. And for 24 hours? Maybe usable once per long rest, and you recover the use if your target dies.
Death's Messenger
Love this!! Might move this earlier.
--
Sorry, time was short and I didn't read the Guilds, nor all of the details from the tools. It's really flavorful and I'm enjoying that. There are a few places were I made suggestions to align with 5e standards that are more about matching how the game does it. There's a few other places where abilities came either too soon, too densely, or were too powerful. One part of that last category is this class has a lot going on that avoids the action economy, and a touch of that can be unique, but too much can be unbalanced vs. other classes.
Still, really enjoyed the feel of this. Don't be fooled by this looking like a long list of suggestions - the majority of it was just on point so didn't need any comments at all. Good work.
Saves + DC
Why is the weak save CHA, but the DC ability INT? Shouldn't they be the same? INT is used elsewhere as well.
Vulnerable Targets...
Vulnerable is already a keyword, I'd suggest picking something else for clarity.
Assassin's Shroud
Is this visible? Does the target know they have a shroud? Is this a magical effect that can be dispelled?
Can you place a shard outside of combat? By divorcing this from normal actions that gets questionable.
Can a target have more than one shroud on them?
What is the damage type of the shroud? Or is it the same as the weapon? Is it affected if the weapon hit was a crit?
Recovery seems like Arcane Recovery and the others - making it happen during a short rest syncs this class with the others. No need for them to skip a short rest because they need to use 10 minutes of the hour performing the ritual, and no imbalance with them able to recover and other recovery methods not.
EDIT: Just rereading and realized they come back on a short rest. 12d10 (2x 2d10 x long rest+2short rests) is FAR too much guarenteed bonus damage for a 1st level character. A 1st level paladin gets nothing, a 2nd level paladin gets 4d8. Paladin is a sturdier chassis, this can exceed that by some, say 4d10 per day guaranteed bonus, which is still only 1/3 of what this gives.
Shadow Moves
These are really flavorful, but it feels like too much is coming at at 1st level. I'd suggest moving something from 1st back to 2nd.
The "hit or miss on a weapon attack" is usually "Takes the Attack action" in 5e. This helps stop it from cascading too much, like with melee cantrips, etc.
Defensive Posture could be effectively permanent bladesong, and that's considered a premier defensive ability and can exceed bounded accuracy. This should cost a resource, even if it's a separate currency like [PROF] times per day. Compare to Monk who needs to spend Ki and a Bonus action for Disadvantage.
Lethal
Is cool, comes to early. Ripe for multiclass cherrypicking, but even without that, this should come a bit later.
Preternatural Parry
See no indication that this class is a slow enough progression to give a feature at the same level as an ASI. Very few classes do. I'd move this back.
Also this is better than the monk ability in that never coverts a hit to a miss, so you would still take any other effects from the missile. Plus melee attacks are more common than missile attacks. Plus this will later get overloaded with Deadly Riposte.
Fear and Shadow
Love these!
Quick on the Draw
("Sleight" misspelled.)
Just to make sure I understand. So I could attempt to stealth, fail the roll, do a shadow action (I'm assuming these are Shadow Moves), to do something, and spend a shroud to Hide again? With no extra actions? Eh, not liking it.
There's a recurring theme of doing things outside the action economy, or overloading like where a single Reaction can trigger multiple features. It's too much.
Hunter's Gaze
Unlimited Vulnerability and 18-20 crit range just for being able to see someone for a minute. And for 24 hours? Maybe usable once per long rest, and you recover the use if your target dies.
Death's Messenger
Love this!! Might move this earlier.
--
Sorry, time was short and I didn't read the Guilds, nor all of the details from the tools. It's really flavorful and I'm enjoying that. There are a few places were I made suggestions to align with 5e standards that are more about matching how the game does it. There's a few other places where abilities came either too soon, too densely, or were too powerful. One part of that last category is this class has a lot going on that avoids the action economy, and a touch of that can be unique, but too much can be unbalanced vs. other classes.
Still, really enjoyed the feel of this. Don't be fooled by this looking like a long list of suggestions - the majority of it was just on point so didn't need any comments at all. Good work.
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doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Thank you!
I think some of these issues are a matter of the language needing updating or clarification, but I’ll go over all these features with an eye toward that as soon as I can.
Lethal is too central to the identity to push back significantly. I think it’s also very minor at low levels in the current build, but I’ll double check.
The shrouds are tough, because the damage output per day is based on comparison to the rogue and to a full caster using all slots for single target damage using the DMG damage by spell level table, and over the same number of rounds, the three pretty much line up. I also don’t think that full 2 short rest days are all that common, but that’s a tangent. I’ll give it some more thought.
The party and riposte abilities should probably be streamlined into one ability, but that is a huge part of the round-by-round play of the assassin once the fight is on. Punishing enemies for trying to focus on the assassin.
Also the monk variant I’m working on has Deflect Attacks, which works against any weapon attack.
The whole point of parry is to set up riposte, though. They are one dynamic whole.
Shrouds and shadow moves probably both need simplification, and/or upgrades at later levels for some of the bonus tidbits like increased crit range. Speaking of, shrouds are not stackable, not visible, but probably detectable as magic. Maybe with a later level upgrade to not be detectable via magic.
I’ll have to do a review of the class again to reply further, but I will percolate on all that and reply more later.
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Here is a document that contains a quite recent draft of the assassin. It’s cleaned up a bit, loses extra attack in favor of centering shadow moves and deadly riposte (now level 5), and some other tweaks.
Still have r made the changes to manticore mentioned upthread, and I’m considering making preternatural party the defensive shadow move, and getting rid of “defensive posture” entirely.
I probably will change the saves to Dex and Int. I’m tempted to give them Unarmored defense (Int), as an alternative to wearing armor. IMO that’s fairly balance neutral on a weapon user who needs Dex and con as well.
I also am considering making lethal onky work on vulnerable targets and shroud targets until either level 5 or 11, and some other odds and ends.
Still have r made the changes to manticore mentioned upthread, and I’m considering making preternatural party the defensive shadow move, and getting rid of “defensive posture” entirely.
I probably will change the saves to Dex and Int. I’m tempted to give them Unarmored defense (Int), as an alternative to wearing armor. IMO that’s fairly balance neutral on a weapon user who needs Dex and con as well.
I also am considering making lethal onky work on vulnerable targets and shroud targets until either level 5 or 11, and some other odds and ends.
