We're giving away our 246-page homebrew compendium, The Elements and Beyond, for free!

[BenevolentEvil]

Download Links: [link removed]

The first D&D Unleashed compendium has finally arrived! A magical exploration of the four elements and the various energies of creation — minus those dark forces that belong in forbidden tomes — powers such as light, thunder, lightning, acid, frost, and the magic of nature! The great news is that just like all of D&D Unleashed, it’s [link removed]

This 246 page compendium contains 23 subclasses, 8 spellcasting feats, 134 spells, 213 spell variants, 85 monsters, 30 magic items, 4 races plus 12 new subraces each with racial feats, and even more!

If you’d like to view the whole compendium without downloading it or previewing it through Google Drive, you can find [link removed]

After an arduous process of refinement, our first compendium is finally ready for public consumption! You can finally make full use of the spellcasting specializations, the expansions to damage types through new spells, and of course the subclasses, races, monsters, and so much more that has yet to be previewed! If you’ve been waiting to be able to build your ideal plant mage, geomancer, or aerialist rogue, your wait is over. If you’ve been looking for dozens of new elementals and hordes of other monsters dealing and resisting a variety of damage types, you’ve not only found it — you’ve also got tools to customize your monsters for more resistance or weakness to various damage types and environmental effects to help tailor your game to your players! And if you just wanted to flesh out the underused damage types or elemental themes in your spellcasting lists, we have over a hundred new spells from cantrips to 9th-level spells to fill those empty areas!

You can see [link removed]

D&D Beyond Links for the compendium: [link removed]

(I think this is okay to post based on the forum rules but hopefully I'm not mistaken; if so, please let me know how to appropriately post this content)

 

[NotAYakk]

Nice.
But...

Spell Prowess: Equal to or less than 2/3 of your proficiency bonus?!
2: <= 1
3: <= 2
4: <= 2
5: <= 3
6: <= 4

That is weird.

 

[BenevolentEvil]

It's designed to enable more easy spellcasting for one-half and one-third casters. We wanted max level Eldritch Knights to have their highest-level spells affected without giving max-level wizards too much benefit from that clause

 

[Uta-napishti]

First of all, this is an amazing amount of work. Thank you so much for putting this out there! The art is really well chosen and calibrated to the 5E art style to within a whisker. Am doubtful that a list of credits at the end consitutes a right to distribute these artist's work, whether you are giving this PDF away for free or not. But as far as how you've used it, well done!

Hope you get proper reviews on this level of effort, so here is a little start:

A Disclaimer: I don't care much about elemental stuff, so I will ignore many things relating to the main unifying theme of the book, sorry. But there are lots of other things to pay attention to here, so let's go!

Player Stuff: I'm ignoring the (mostly Elemental themed ) Races and Subraces. Fairies look nice, but I skipped the other stuff.
Now the there are some wonderful Subclass names and concepts in here, again skipping the elemental stuff. I haven't even checked the mechanics, but I think that the Bard college of Journeys totally fills an archetype gap. I also love the paladin Oath of Dynamism and Oath of Purification for the same reasons, they are proper philosophies, I'd just ignore the lightning and fire theme. Aerialist is a great refinement of the Rogue, skip the air theme and go full acrobat. Likewise the Sorcerer of Plants is a good superhero background / origin, even if a bit more formulaic than some others I've named. It WAS disappointing to me though that Mariner Ranger is just Aquaman Ranger instead of Sailor Ranger, which would have been totally fitting, and badass way to give more mystical Sailor archetypes a 5E home. Wizards are too boring to have subclasses, apparently.

Some Feedback on the Spells (Ignoring the bulk of them that are many variations on "Level 9 Elemental Apocalypse!!!!")

• Blades of Grass is awesome, nice work on the magic arrows = concentration!
  Barrier scales far too quickly... should be 1d8 per level above 2. Upcasting should always hurt a lot.
• Drown is fun and nasty
• Guard is a nice cantrip, yet includes unnecessary tortured language about acid and psychic damage.
• Leaf Shield ... it may regain 1hp per round, but you don't say how much it has to begin with. Also confused text. Maybe just redo the spell text from scratch, beginning at the beginning this time?
• Shield other and Mass Shield are cool, and balanced nicely. Could forsee an even higher range, weaker effect version that would protect an entire unit / party. But please don't make it as insanely complicated as your Screen of Protection. Someone has been watching too much Star Trek Discovery season two.
• Relocate requires a to hit AND gives a saving throw to the target? Two rolls for a single effect are too many in 5E. Maybe just make moving unwilling creatures an upcasting option (4th or 5th level?), and pick a single roll?
• Starlight is creepy cool. So that's what happened to that guy in Les Mis. Think not giving follow up saving throws when upcasting to 3rd is too strong though.
• Swift Ward --- feels OP, but would have to playtest to be sure.
• Swoop might be too strong (solving the get across the gorge problem as a first level spell?). Maybe 2nd?
• Toxic Breath is too OP. Fireball & Lightning Bolt are intentionally OP as iconic spells. TB does fireball level damage plus a powerful secondary effect. Trying to get away with too much -- even given the discussion in the Spell Revisions section.
• Weathering --- awesome! yes.

Spell Revisions: OK, I see the idea. Wouldn't break anything, but not necessary IMHO.
Spell Variants: Rename spell and change damage type, I get it! May be eye opening to some.

Monsters: Almost all Elementals, so skipping to...... The Green Giants are awesome, same with Gnoll Beastmage... dunno about the name.. ranger would be fine. Love keeping it low CR. Always like magical goblinoids / kobolds. Golem Armor / Elemental Kaiju... didn't read, but someone is gonna make a campaign around them, I'm sure. Was hoping for more with the Hags. Primal Avatars are Fun Boss Challenges, with great personality notes and rollplaying around them. Um, is the art right on Astral Panther? Bat of the Below is Hot. Coyote seems taken from Native Amercan Coyote pretty directly.
Magic Items: Lots of elemental stuff. Dragonguard shield is cool.
News Rules and Conditions: Maybe just not worth the complexity, across the board.

 

[Morrus]

The first D&D Unleashed compendium has finally arrived! A magical exploration of the four elements and the various energies of creation — minus those dark forces that belong in forbidden tomes — powers such as light, thunder, lightning, acid, frost, and the magic of nature!

Could you clarify the status of the artwork, please? The back page says "These pages present the artist credits for all artwork in this compendium, wherever it was possible to locate." Have you paid for this artwork, or gotten permission to use it?

 

[Ace]

Deleted.

I'm not going to support even with likes something that is problematic on copyright grounds.

 

[Waller]

You have an entire website using thousands of dollars of artwork. And you direct people to a donation page to 'pay' for your "completely free and fanmade homebrew expansion" which is full of stolen art.

 

[BenevolentEvil]

You all seem to have a grossly misunderstood definition of the word "Steal." All the artwork is freely available on the internet, and we make no claim to ownership. It's as much "theft" as a google search is. In fact, by directing extra attention to artwork via appropriate credits, we're aiding the artists. But you're free to declare this against the forum's rules, I suppose. Your loss. Please delete my account, since you seem to lack the appropriate means for me to do so myself (which is honestly a severe oversight for any forum/account system, one that you should fix immediately, and is in fact against the law in some places).

 

[Morrus]

You all seem to have a grossly misunderstood definition of the word "Steal." All the artwork is freely available on the internet, and we make no claim to ownership. It's as much "theft" as a google search is. In fact, by directing extra attention to artwork via appropriate credits, we're aiding the artists. But you're free to declare this against the forum's rules, I suppose. Your loss. Please delete my account, since you seem to lack the appropriate means for me to do so myself (which is honestly a severe oversight for any forum/account system, one that you should fix immediately, and is in fact against the law in some places).

Permabanned at own request.