D&D 5E Magic items - The Mage’s Apprentice Cloak and the Master Mage's Cloak

[pdegan2814]

I'm planning on giving this to an NPC which the party is to defeated, then they can claim the cloak themselves. Thoughts? Balance corrections?


(Revised version)

The Mage’s Apprentice Cloak
Wondrous Item, rare (requires attunement)

May spend one day of downtime to teach the cloak one of your cantrips. The cloak has 10 charges and regains 2d4+2 charges each morning up to its max. You may have the cloak take its own action immediatly before you, spending a number of its charges to do one of the following.
1 charge: Either you have advantage or your target has disadvantage on all rolls for that cantrip on your turn.
3 charges: The cloak may use the cantrip on a target you choose. The cloak uses your spell level, but it does not gain any benefits from your abilities or feats.
7 charges: Either all rolls for this cantrip are natural 20s or all your targets rolls are natural 1s on your turn.

Not just guaranteed hits but guaranteed CRITICAL hits? Too much. I would be ok with something like "X charges: If you hit a target with an attack roll using your chosen cantrip this turn, it's automatically a critical hit." I'm also not sure about having the cloak act outside of your normal turn economy, this seems like something that should require your bonus action.

 

[Shrapp Hamnier]

Not just guaranteed hits but guaranteed CRITICAL hits? Too much. I would be ok with something like "X charges: If you hit a target with an attack roll using your chosen cantrip this turn, it's automatically a critical hit." I'm also not sure about having the cloak act outside of your normal turn economy, this seems like something that should require your bonus action.

That's why I'm only doing this with cantrips instead of spells (imagine this ability with meteor swarm). Also, it's basically a once a day thing, and doing that takes up most of its power so it can only do another one-three actions, and that's if it even has all its charges, where it might not even collect all it needs in one day (getting between 4 and 10 charges each morning).

 

[Shrapp Hamnier]

But the nice thing about homebrew stuff is you can do whatever you want with it.

I'm looking for advice to make it ballanced, but Aco175 can decide to use it but say it's a familiar, while Pdegan2814 can say you chose one die to have at advantage / natural 20.

 

[pdegan2814]

That's why I'm only doing this with cantrips instead of spells (imagine this ability with meteor swarm). Also, it's basically a once a day thing, and doing that takes up most of its power so it can only do another one-three actions, and that's if it even has all its charges, where it might not even collect all it needs in one day (getting between 4 and 10 charges each morning).

Even so, at high levels cantrips can do quite a bit of damage. A 17th Level Warlock w/ 4 critical hits of Eldritch+Agonizing Blast would be doing ON AVERAGE 64 points of guaranteed damage, potentially up to 100.

 

[Shrapp Hamnier]

Even so, at high levels cantrips can do quite a bit of damage. A 17th Level Warlock w/ 4 critical hits of Eldritch+Agonizing Blast would be doing ON AVERAGE 64 points of guaranteed damage, potentially up to 100.

But at level 17, wouldnt that be a good thing? Although, I suppose that depends on the DM and the campaign. I like throwing armies at my players where they have to do a lot of damage to a lot of enemies essentially all at once. (And while they can hire or recruit npcs to help, i dont allow them to use them as meat shields).

 

[pdegan2814]

But at level 17, wouldnt that be a good thing? Although, I suppose that depends on the DM and the campaign. I like throwing armies at my players where they have to do a lot of damage to a lot of enemies all st once. (And they can hire or recruit npcs to help, i dont allow them to use them as meat shields).

"Good" and "balanced" aren't necessarily the same thing, though. If you're balancing your encounters on the more difficult side, then adding something like this becomes less of an issue, but I'm still not a fan of auto-hits on attack rolls. 64 average damage is close to the average damage on a Finger Of Death with a failed save(and my experience has been that the kind of creatures you want to throw FoD at often have really good Con saves and/or Legendary Resistances), being able to do that with a Cantrip that doesn't use up a spell slot is still a really big swing, even once a day.

 

[Shrapp Hamnier]

"Good" and "balanced" aren't necessarily the same thing, though. If you're balancing your encounters on the more difficult side, then adding something like this becomes less of an issue, but I'm still not a fan of auto-hits on attack rolls. 64 average damage is close to the average damage on a Finger Of Death with a failed save(and my experience has been that the kind of creatures you want to throw FoD at often have really good Con saves and/or Legendary Resistances), being able to do that with a Cantrip that doesn't use up a spell slot is still a really big swing, even once a day.

But if it's your 6 (plus a couple hirelings) against 60ish foes (and you've already used your meteor swarms against the 2 adult red dragons and their 5 young dragons you fought earlier that day), would you rather make that eldritch blast guaranteed criticals? Or be able to use a non-bonused eldritch blast 2 extra times for free and then a third eldritch blast at advantage?

I see what you're saying, it can get pretty powerful if meta'd. But 5e is about stretching the party, if they can easily complete 5 encounters, that means you should have them face 6 or 7 encounters, and/or make a couple encounters a few CRs higher. And this is assuming all the encounters are straight up combat, eldritch blast wont help much against the puzzles and trick rooms. ;P

 

[pdegan2814]

But if it's your 6 (plus a couple hirelings) against 60ish foes (and you've already used your meteor swarms against the 2 adult red dragons and their 5 young dragons you fought earlier that day), would you rather make that eldritch blast guaranteed criticals? Or be able to use a non-bonused eldritch blast 2 extra times for free and then a third eldritch blast at advantage?

I see what you're saying, it can get pretty powerful if meta'd. But 5e is about stretching the party, if they can easily complete 5 encounters, that means you should have them face 6 or 7 encounters, and/or make a couple encounters a few CRs higher. And this is assuming all the encounters are straight up combat, eldritch blast wont help much against the puzzles and trick rooms. ;P

But were they able to easily complete 5 encounters because they're just that good, or because you've already loaded them up with other homebrew that's more powerful than the official stuff?

*shrug* This seems like mostly a contrast of play styles, so I'm gonna step out of the discussion. I wouldn't allow the item in a game I was running, but my game is not your game and I'll leave it at that.

 

[jaelis]

Do you need to be conscious to use the cloak? If you use the cloak to cast a spell, does it count as you casting spell for things like breaking invisibility? Can you use it if you are surprised?

 

[Shrapp Hamnier]

But were they able to easily complete 5 encounters because they're just that good, or because you've already loaded them up with other homebrew that's more powerful than the official stuff?

*shrug* This seems like mostly a contrast of play styles, so I'm gonna step out of the discussion. I wouldn't allow the item in a game I was running, but my game is not your game and I'll leave it at that.

Lol, touche. Though the number of encounters is irrelivent, or why they were able to finish them. The point that I was making is that the party should have to NEED to use what they have. If they make it to the end of the day and still have a slew of their abilities left unused, I feel it is my honor bound obligation to have that lich the party forgot to destroy completely finally track them down and wreak a bit of havoc.

Do you need to be conscious to use the cloak? If you use the cloak to cast a spell, does it count as you casting spell for things like breaking invisibility? Can you use it if you are surprised?

Oh my, so many technicalities I didn't consider.

I would say it would relly upon conscious thought, since it isn't sentient. But I'm a bit confused what you mean by "breaking invisibility", though if it is a cantrip, then yes you should be able to make that the one cantrip it can use with the cloak should you so desire.