D&D 5E The Illrigger: Why I hate this class and love what it could have been.


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Great take!

I've been a fan of that Plethora of Paladins article since the late 80s or early 90s so Matt hit right in my nostalgia feels with the name of the class, but I think your other criticisms are good ones and your redesign a smart one.
 

Like a Skeezy Used Car Salesman.

Or an Insurance CEO.

Or that uncle that always promised to take you to his beach-house he -totally- has on Honolulu.

Rogue doesn't mean "Thief" except in the context of D&D.

(Though Used Car Salesman is sometimes fairly close)
In defense of Rogue, WotC has tried to expand the concept of the Thief class to encompass all sorts of neer do wells, like smugglers, con artists, pirates, bounty hunters, assassins, and the like. So rogue does conceptually fit the idea of a class designed for all manner of skilled criminals or shady people. I just don't think the class does enough to escape the classic Thief setup (pickpocket, boxman, sneak, backstabber) so we end up with the Rogue = Thief issue.
 

The issue comes up ever so often. Some classes represent specific professions or calling, others are descriptive of what that person does, but aren't a title or job. The litmus test is "would the character" call themselves that. I don't think many people would introduce themselves as "Bob the Fighter" but rather "Bob the Swordsman or Knight or Captain, etc). Whereas it's easy to see someone call themselves Bob the Ranger or Bob the Bard.

Illrigger seems to be in that realm of names the character would never call himself. It's there with names like Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian, or Warlord.
I think that's actually 2 different problems, which highlight a lot of the ongoing archetypal problems with the classes in general. The Fighter and Rogue suffer from being too generic to actually be a profession or vocation. All soldiers, swashbucklers, knights and even paladins are fighters.

Warlord and Barbarian have the other issue, where a substitution is happening for a more accepted usage (though D&D has done a lot of work to wear down Barbarian to its preferred primary meaning) so no one would use those words to describe themselves, because they communicate something else. It's interesting, because you can imagine words that wouldn't have this problem, I'd probably go with Berserker and Captain (maybe Officer if there's a risk of nautical confusion).
 
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Everyone is ok with the fact that were slaughtering things and stealing stuff.....but what we call our jobs is the troubling part?
 

Everyone is ok with the fact that were slaughtering things and stealing stuff.....but what we call our jobs is the troubling part?
Yeah. We're talking about D&D, you don't enter the room if you're not cool with sanctified fantastic violence, that's basic price of admission stuff that's so fundamental to the activity you can't do it without that.
 

Just cuz your a hellknight doesn't mean you have to be a spawn of darkness 24/7. Ya just gotta attend the annual meetings every now and then while hitting your quota when management starts griping on ya.

Just like how as a Paladin, you don't have to save everyone.
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I'm not sure what's changed. As one of their options, the Warlock literally makes a deal with infernal forces but there's nothing about them being often evil-aligned or serving creatures with an evil agenda.
Two of the four subclasses in the base class as Celestial and Archfey, and only one is potentially infernal (Fiend). Most warlocks do not make a deal with infernal forces.
I'm kind of surprised WotC allowed this class to be associated with D&D. But then I'm often confused about what touches a nerve in some people and what doesn't.
It's 3PP, so they can't really stop it being published. Letting it into DDB gives them a little control while still keeping it at a distance. I don't like the class, so won't purchase it. It's an option for those who are into it, and more options are usually a good thing as long as you can opt out.
 

I'm not a fan of the Illrigger. But it's mostly because I can see what it -could- have, and maybe should have, been.

This is a very good breakdown.

1) The Name
Illrigger. What an absolutely terrible name. It has no cultural connection, no linguistic derivation, it's a whole cloth creation to define the class...

The name ain't great. It's got some niche legacy reference, but that's a reason, not an excuse. That said, it's not a dealbreaker for me. Blood Hunter is also a bad name. So is Barbarian. And Fighter. Sorcerer doesn't tell you much about a class. Illrigger can compete with some of the bad D&D names.

2) Narrow Concept
It's a Hellknight. You don't need to create a new 'more generic' term to describe the class on the precept that there's a lot of different cultural ways to be a hellknight. That's why "Fighter" is so open a term rather than miring it into a concept like "Knight" or "Gladiator". Because it's this broad concept that can easily slot into a variety of situations you need a broad term. Illrigger does not have this issue. It is a Hellknight.

I don't disagree that it's a narrow concept.

I do think I disagree that a class needs a broad concept. Like, I think one of the problems with the Fighter class is that it is too generic - we have like 9 different flavors of "person who uses magic" and about 3 flavors of people who mostly don't use magic that need to encompass the whole of that concept.

Also, the standards are much different when thinking about classes we're adding to the game after the initial batch. I'm OK with a narrow class in principle.

I do think this concept overlaps Paladin territory too much, conceptually. "Like a Paladin, but more specific" is already taking a pretty specific idea and reducing the audience it serves even more.


3) Awful Name for the "Interdicts"
Interdiction means to "Prohibit". Baleful Interdict means "To Prohibit in an Evil Way". But -why- go for Interdict at all when Maledict or "Evil Word" is -right there-?! You could even call the class Malefactor and have their seals be Maledictions and have their name be an "Evildoer" who "Says Evil Things". 90% of people don't know what interdict means and are gonna have to look it up in a dictionary. And what are you prohibiting, anyhow? That's not how the seals -work-. They don't seal anything. They're just marks on your target that your interdict boons (Prohibition Benefit?) trigger off of.

Honestly, it's maddening.

"Interdicts" is a kludgy word, for sure. But I do think they're going for an "I prohibit you to do this thing" vibe for them.

4) Seals have minimal effect
Pretty much the only reason to put a seal on a target is to break it almost immediately. They last for an hour if they're not burned, but burning them is how you make them -do- something. At level 1 you put a seal on a target and -as soon- as someone else hits them you burn it to gain an extra 1d6 damage. You can do this 3 times per short rest and... that's it. At level 2 you get interdiction (prohibition) which grants you a single minor benefit either if you burn a seal off a target or if you expend a seal that was never on a target (costing you 1d6 of damage). The only boon you get early on that gives you a reason not to instantly burn your seal off a target allows you to get a free Opportunity Attack once per round that doesn't take your reaction... but with how comparatively rare opportunity attacks and reactions even -are- you don't really need it. Especially since burning the seal doesn't eat your reaction! So what are you even saving your reaction for? Someone ELSE to try and move away without disengaging?

It does feel like a lot of very specific systems to master for a comparatively small boost.

5) Combat is Short
Outside of specific encounter structures combat tends to cap out between 3-4 rounds just because of the amount of damage players and enemies can swing around. So you're gonna throw a seal on turn 1 (either by hitting or bonus action), burn it before turn 2 most likely, possibly throw another to burn in the second or even third round... And then beg for a short rest like a Warlock chucking all their spell slots in the first 2 turns. And while I agree that makes synergy between the Warlock and the Hel- sorry 'Illrigger' pretty strong... I just feel like it's a poor use of the fantasy. Better to have the seals actually -do- something so that you aren't putting them on just to burn them off at your earliest opportunity.

100% and one of the big hiccups of a lot of non-WotC class design.

6) Seals don't do anything on their own.
Better to put a seal on a character at the start of the fight that causes some kind of prohibition for its duration and then you burn it in an effort to end them once your seal is no longer useful to you. Imagine a Seal that makes ranged combat dangerous for the person the seal is on, so they have to close to melee. THEN you burn the seal to deal damage while keeping them pressed in melee so they can't get back to range. That would be -way- more evocative and interesting as a battlefield mechanic than throwing it onto a target and burning it ASAP.

And it would give you a reason NOT to burn seals, but to hold onto an active seal and move it to another target once the first one hits 0HP.

It is like two competing things that could be harmonized so much better.

So how do you fix this?

I like your revision, but I'm not sure it solves the most critical issue of the Illrigger. Which is...

It's a crowded field. If I want to play an unscrupulous warrior, there's a half-dozen ways to go about that currently in D&D, from "I am just an Evil Fighter (maybe an eldritch knight)" to "I am a rogue (maybe an arcane trickster)" to "I am a shadow monk" to "I am a vengeance paladin" to "I am a bladelock" to "I am a war cleric."

If I was making a character in this vein, a new class with new subsystems to learn is not really meeting much of a need for me. The juice ain't worth the squeeze.

I could maybe use another subclass. A way to be a cleric of Asmodeus, or a rogue dedicated to Levistus, or a Fighter dedicated to Bel or something. But a whole class is just...maybe like taking a thirsty toddler and spraying them with a firehose.
 

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