D&D 5E War of the Burning Sky 5e Player's Guide Preview!

[Tormyr]

I’m on my phone so please forgive the brevity, but Legendary Leader is terribly broken in its current state. Compare it to Foresight (a 9th level spell) and it outperforms it in almost every way and can be done multiple times. A half elf hex blade warlock could have it online by eighth level and essentially have access to an ability more powerful than a spell available at eighteenth. As written, it is stronger than most class capstones. It does not fit 5e as is. Conversion sometimes have to look towards the spirit of something more than just the mechanics. You need to scratch the design and ask yourself what would a Legendary Leader look like in 5e? Honestly, you need to ask yourself that with a lot of your design. You’re hewing to close to the 3.5 paradigm and being to rigid with the initial design. 3.5 was designed to be feat heavy and that design was asking what a fantasy leader would look like in that system. You need to walk away from the prior guides and ask how you would meet the fundamental question in 5e. What does a fantasy leader look like in 5e?

Thanks again for the feedback. I will sit back and think some more about this before the final version goes live.

For the reasons I currently do not think it is broken:
1) you still need a 1-minute speech, so it is not available on a whim.
2) It can be hard at times to stay within 30 feet of each other.
3) It will take most characters 3 ASIs to get it which usually means 8th level at the earliest.
4) It only lasts an hour, which means that there will be many occasions that it does not cover more than one encounter.
5) Most PCs will only have 5 Leadership Performances per day.
6) The bonus action Dodge is taking up the bonus action that the allies might want to use for something else.
7) It costs 2 or 3 ASIs / Feats depending on character build. This is a major sacrifice on the PC's part to boost the party.
8) It does not work on the PC. Only the allies get the benefits.
9) The allies are kept in fireball formation.
10) It can be used against the party by an NPC.

While it has similarities to foresight a spell I have a lot of experience with as a DM (one of the PCs would cast it on the GWM fighter with a Defender greatsword - blender mode activated), there are some significant differences.
1. Allies can still be surprised.
2. It does not cover ability checks.
3. Enemies only have disadvantage on attack rolls if the ally takes Dodge as a bonus action.
4. It only lasts an hour instead of 8.

Right now the design of the Commander archetype and Leader Feats are pretty close to what I want for them in terms of philosophy.
1. They trade personal improvement for the betterment of the team.
2. They can be powerful.
3. They have a high personal cost.

Legendary Leader is also pretty close conceptually to where I envision it. I see a PC with Legendary Leader as being able to coordinate a team to unlock their fullest potential. The team becomes something akin to the Spartans in 300 or the Avengers at the beginning of Age of Ultron. I welcome some thoughts as to how it could be altered. At the moment I would like:
1. To keep the Leadership Performance requirement.
2. To keep the high cost with 2 feats (and maybe an ASI depending on character build).
3. Keep Dodge as a bonus action and the temp HP.
4. Keep some sort of ongoing benefit for the allies being near the leader.

There are two ways I could think of pulling back on Leadership Performance and Legendary Leader
1. Have Legendary Leader require concentration with advantage on maintaining the concentration. The idea being that the benefit is through continuing to give orders and encouragement to everyone nearby, but if that string of commands is broken the effect ends. This makes the Commander a target.
2. Have the benefits of Leadership Performance not stack with Paladin auras. As an example, if the ally is under the effect of your leadership performance and a paladin's aura that provides the same or better bonus to saving throws, they use the paladin's bonus for the saving throw and it does not count against their 5 rolls.

 

[Tormyr]

My review:

Organization

The organization of the product up until the New Rules Material section is pretty good. There are a few minor problems, as noted by others, but nothing that isn't a quirk or minor irritation. Really, you could leave most of it alone.

The New Rules Material section could use a massive reorganization. I would suggest changing the order to Backgrounds, Archetypes, Feats, Leadership Feats, Prestige Classes, Magic Item, and then Spells. The current organization makes one think you mistakenly put the spells and magic item in the middle of the feats section. And having the archetypes placed earlier has people thinking more along the lines of those when selecting feats.

Also, the art is sometimes placed oddly. However, this is the same complaint I have about the core DnD products, so your product is not out of line with the core material. Feel free to ignore my art complaint.

Backgrounds

For the most part, they are good.

I am uncertain the point of the Festival Organizer background; it seems like it wouldn't be a true background at all, given the limits of it. Maybe fold it into another background?

The effect of the War Mage background makes me think it would be far better reworked as a feat than being left as a background.

Feats

I have to admit the odd base requirements threw me for a moment, but I had a similar reaction to racial feats from XGTE at first. It is purely not being used to 5E feats having any real requirements beyond a base attribute score. So, I would not change the requirements of the regular feats. Just don't be surprised if people have the same reaction I had.

Now, comes the downside... Speaking about the Leadership Feats.

Speaking purely from a playing perspective, the entire Leadership Feat section is worthless. They are usable as written, but run into the problem that every feat is going to have with 5E: Feats come at too high a price to take more than two or three of them in a character's lifetime. That means that any feat tree, no matter how many feats it involves, is going to be at a massive disadvantage in 5E when compared to all of the feats that are not part of a tree. I would suggest considering feat trees to simply be dead in this edition.

I would suggest taking the entire Leadership Feats section back to the drawing board. If you want to keep them as feats, remove Leadership Performance and rework all of the others as stand-alone feats. But given the concept I see you are working on, I would suggest instead reworking that entire section as a bard archetype; what you have would be a perfect archetype feature set.

Fluff

East Wind Style and West Wind Style I must call out right off the bat. The fluff for those two perfectly justified their odd class requirements once I thought about it a moment.

I also like the way you connect the Spellduelist to Gabal.

Those two, to me, perfectly show off the writing level of this product. Despite my earlier complaints about organization and a certain feat set, I would buy this product purely for the fluff. It also is one of the best player's guides I've read for an adventure path, just due to the amount of setting material it includes. That alone justifies buying it.

The amount of setting material is useful in another fashion: Character backgrounds. Someone making a character who wants to set it in Gate's Pass or another area related to the AP would have no trouble writing up a character background with enough information to fit. It also makes it easier for a DM to adapt to odd things the group will do, since they have more information to draw from and thus less on-the-spot prep work they need to do in order to keep the campaign flowing.

My only complaint might be that there isn't enough fluff about the area, but this is a player's guide and not a setting guide.

On The Whole

Overall, despite what negative things I had to say up above, this is not a bad product by any stretch of the imagination in its current form. The final product should be worth the money easily.

Thank you for the feedback. In particular, the feedback about organization I used and rearranged the New Rules Material section to mirror the SRD's order.

I reworded several of the Leader Feats. I do not know if that makes a difference to you. While I think the Leader Feats are quite powerful, I also realize the sacrifice involved is not for everyone. From a fluff standpoint, the Leader Feats do not work as a Bard College because it is supposed to be a military soldier / commander. Additionally, I already moved the Wayfarer Cirqueliste into being a Bard College.

Hopefully I answered any of your other feedback in the earlier responses.

 

[Matthan]

I want to respond more fully when I have more time tomorrow, but I do want to give you two things to think through. Consider what Legendary Leader does and try to find something published by WotC for 5e that does something of a similar scope. The only thing I could think of was a 9th level spell. I think that should be a strong indicator about the balance we're dealing with here.

The other thing that I would like you to consider is how much of your design is balanced around your assumptions. You should not be balancing mechanics based on the AP. That's poor design. Your feats, spells, archetypes, etc... should be viable regardless of the game. You don't design something overpowered and then try to constrain it narratively. That just frustrates the player and DM. Balance it up front.

One last thing and I promise that I will more fully respond tomorrow. Every piece of feedback (which I admit is small) has had issues or concerns with the feat chain concept. The folks who are responding at this point are your core fans and most likely to be early adopters of the work. If they are having issues with the concept (regardless of balance), then that should be a concern you take seriously. It doesn't mean abandon it, but recognize that this guide will be your one chance to convince folks to buy the rest of your work. You don't want to give them excuses to write you off and expect problems. You want to leave them impressed and trusting you. 3PP already has an uphill fight. Don't give folks an easy way to write you off.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

Thank you for the feedback. In particular, the feedback about organization I used and rearranged the New Rules Material section to mirror the SRD's order.

I reworded several of the Leader Feats. I do not know if that makes a difference to you. While I think the Leader Feats are quite powerful, I also realize the sacrifice involved is not for everyone. From a fluff standpoint, the Leader Feats do not work as a Bard College because it is supposed to be a military soldier / commander. Additionally, I already moved the Wayfarer Cirqueliste into being a Bard College.

Hopefully I answered any of your other feedback in the earlier responses.

You have answered it, for the most part.

The problem I have with your feats is that, for the most part, there's a simple question of why I would bother. Why would I take Necrotic Leader and its prerequisite just to get the effects of one feat on the undead, when I can take two other feats and gain two different advantages that advance me farther? The same question applies to just about every single one of them. It's that line of thinking, and one which will go through a lot of player's minds, which will work against these feats.

The fluff reasons also don't really stand up well. The College of Valor in the PHB already covers the idea of bards going into battle under one aspect. It's already established within the game that bards can be in the military, so I see no reason why there can't be one that is more leadership focused. The Bardic Inspiration ability even mentions using stirring words to inspire.

I do think you have a good idea with the Leadership Feats as far as what they do, just not as a feat tree.

 

[Lylandra]

First: Thanks for putting up your V.2 that quickly

You have answered it, for the most part.

The problem I have with your feats is that, for the most part, there's a simple question of why I would bother. Why would I take Necrotic Leader and its prerequisite just to get the effects of one feat on the undead, when I can take two other feats and gain two different advantages that advance me farther? The same question applies to just about every single one of them. It's that line of thinking, and one which will go through a lot of player's minds, which will work against these feats.

The fluff reasons also don't really stand up well. The College of Valor in the PHB already covers the idea of bards going into battle under one aspect. It's already established within the game that bards can be in the military, so I see no reason why there can't be one that is more leadership focused. The Bardic Inspiration ability even mentions using stirring words to inspire.

Yep, that was my thought as well. Necrotic and Primal are so incredibly niche. The situation where someone uses Legendary Leader to buff a Zoomancer or Necromancer will be utterly rare. First, you need someone in your party who wants to play a summoning Necro or a summoning Druid specialized in animals. Then you need this character or someone else (most certainly a commander because of the ASIs) who takes a 17 Cha and three feats just to be able to buff the zoo. And the latter case is already the more likely scenario.

Now we all know that adventuring parties can be volatile. Players change, PCs die or someone wants to play something else etc. And WotBS is a very, very long AP. It will very well take you 2 years+ to play from adventure 1 to 12. And I'd feel sorry for the commander with Necrotic or Primal Leader should his summoning buddy bite the dust.

I do have to defnd the commander as fighter archetype however. Because in my fantasy there should be a martial leader type out on the battlefield who's bolstering his allies and using tactics to win. We didn't get the Warlord in the XGTE and it could have replaced the need for a Commander entirely. As you said, Bards have the College of Valor and the College of Swords. They are already out there inspiring their allies. So let's give the Fighter the opportunity to become more supportive.

So now for a bit feedback of the new PG:

Cirqueliste College - I like it. You could mention Sheena Larkis, the current leader of the Wayfarers, in the fluff text because your WC player might recognize her name in adventure 3 ("hey, she's my boss!"). I don't know if you'd want to incorporate the unanchored feature in the College. It is not so much an issue for players, but there is one encounter in adventure 8 (Lurker in the Eye) where Koren, a Cirqueliste, heavily abuses the dimensional lock zone to teleport freely while everyone else can't. You could just write it off as a unique ability of hers though.

Calanis: I found one error that's already included in the 4e version. In one sentence it is mentioned that Calanis is forbidden to non-elves except for those who are personally invited by either Shaaladel or Shalosha. And then Calanis is mostly humans and elves which kind of contradicts the first sentence (the 4e had the "mixed" populace of Shahalesti put under Calanis, so I guess that's where that came from).

Gate Pass: Good job Just one small addendum: Maybe add the "Mannish Inn" to the list of inns. My players coincidentally chose it as one of the favorite pubs, so they were really shocked to see Kathor lurking around in adventure 1.

Character Races: Really like it that you added this section. There are some smaller details you might want to reconsider, depending on what you plan to use in your 5e revamp.

Dwarves really have no country of their own in the original and I guess this "nation" mentioned in the 4e version is the small kingdom south of Gate Pass that's just filler content. I always thought that dwarves should have better representation, so I made Dassen more dwarf-heavy (the "Dassen Stone" is the temple to a dwarven god, so it makes sense) by changing Lord Iz and made Iz and Dashgoban the remnants of a dwarven nation.

Elves are also a bit tricky. The noble Shahalesti are all High Elves, even if not all Shahalesti citizens are High Elves - many of them are humans (especially in northern Shahalesti, close to Gate Pass) or Wood Elves (Taranesti and Shahalesti had a long period of peace before Morrus attacked and pushed them into Ycengled). Even if they face prejudice. So if you mention High Elves, the other elves should probably be mentioned as well.

Spoiler warning for some recent elvish history:
[sblock]Now Ycengled is technically Shahalesti territory. Still, I don't know whether you'd want to mention the Taranesti and the Innenotdar, the "two elvish nations" that Shaaladel erased, even if most people might only know of the Taranesti genocide as Shaaladel framed the Torching of Innenotdar on the Ragesians. In my opinion, giving a name is always a good plan and knowing that the Shining Lord can be a dick is not too much of a reveal.[/sblock]

 

[Tormyr]

I want to respond more fully when I have more time tomorrow, but I do want to give you two things to think through. Consider what Legendary Leader does and try to find something published by WotC for 5e that does something of a similar scope. The only thing I could think of was a 9th level spell. I think that should be a strong indicator about the balance we're dealing with here.

The other thing that I would like you to consider is how much of your design is balanced around your assumptions. You should not be balancing mechanics based on the AP. That's poor design. Your feats, spells, archetypes, etc... should be viable regardless of the game. You don't design something overpowered and then try to constrain it narratively. That just frustrates the player and DM. Balance it up front.

One last thing and I promise that I will more fully respond tomorrow. Every piece of feedback (which I admit is small) has had issues or concerns with the feat chain concept. The folks who are responding at this point are your core fans and most likely to be early adopters of the work. If they are having issues with the concept (regardless of balance), then that should be a concern you take seriously. It doesn't mean abandon it, but recognize that this guide will be your one chance to convince folks to buy the rest of your work. You don't want to give them excuses to write you off and expect problems. You want to leave them impressed and trusting you. 3PP already has an uphill fight. Don't give folks an easy way to write you off.

Thanks again for your feedback. I went back to the drawing board and came up with a version of the commander that folds a more limited version of the leader feats into it.