Class: The Witch [ROUGH DRAFT]

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Man oh man, have I been looking forward to releasing this.

Just in time for Halloween, spooky/scary month culminates with the Witch, the first full class I've ever released! An impressive endeavor clocking in at 14 pages of content and three full subclasses, the witch joins the ranks of Strongholds and Merchants as one of the larger projects I've ever worked on.

The witch weaves both natural magic and the arcane, carrying on a magical tradition that harkens back to the first casters to receive magic from the gods. A witch can curse or heal, dispense potions, fly on brooms, animate their house to walk on chicken legs, and much, much more!

Let's see if I can't list off everything this class does:

FEATURES:

• Casts with INT or WIS, enabling you to play either an academic or a wild witch!
• Jinxes! Magical effects halfway between Invocations and Channel Divinities.
• Make potions with Brewcraft and Imbue Potion, two companion features for all your potable needs.
• Dark Moon, Full Moon, and Half Moon Coven subclasses, focusing on cursing and stealth, healing and inspiring, and trickery and illusions, respectively!
• Familiars as a core feature, with increased durability and the capacity to sass-talk their witch.

CONCERNS:

• Oh, so, so many. Where to start?
• Is INT/WIS casting a good idea?
• Are jinxes roughly balanced, against one another and in general?
• Is the Beast Skin jinx too derivative of the druid's Wild Shape? 
• Are the number of spells per day right? They're midway between sorcerers and wizards, but still!
• The spell list seems large, but is smaller than the wizard and missing some of their more esoteric spells. Is that reasonable?
• Are all the various subclass features balanced roughly against each other?
• Is Light of the Half Moon too powerful for what it is?
• Is Dream-Eater too similar to the GOO warlock's level 14?
• Is the idea of 1 free subclass spell per long rest a good or bad idea?
• Does the class do a good job of capturing flavor?

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Building a class is exponentially harder than a subclass in every single way. I can see why Wizards sticks to subclasses, most days of the week. 

Divine Domain: Winter [Fourth Draft]

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Winter is coming! And I can't believe it took me until the fourth draft of this to drop a Game of Thrones reference.

The Winter cleric, like the Dragoon fighter, has always been a fan-favorite that nevertheless didn't end up where I really wanted it to be. Certain abilities seemed weaker or less compelling than they should be, but the flavor and concept were strong enough to give it a lasting, endearing quality.

It wasn't a huge surprise, then, when our first Walrock-level backer on Patreon requested a revision of this domain (and another subclass, coming later)! I've always been meaning to get back to it, so I put Spooky/Scary month on hold for one project, dusted this option off, and took a fourth crack at getting it right.

So thanks @DrMoradin for requesting this project! It's been a surprising amount of fun to revise, and it was great to have your playtesting feedback to draw upon as I did so.

And if you, too, want to become a patron, you can always do so by clicking the button on the sidebar. Or the identical one right here:

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Now, let's see exactly what I did:

CHANGELOG:

• Swapped Armor of Agathys with Fog Cloud on the spell list, as AoA got very broken at spell levels higher than 5th. 
• Cold Snap has received significant changes. This ability is now a bonus action instead of an action, is a 5-foot radius AoE instead of single target, and no longer removes the target's ability to take actions on a failed save. 
• Rime has received a small buff, as the ability was somewhat lackluster before, but now also causes its targets to take your WIS modifier in extra damage from attacks until the end of your next turn. 
• Blizzard has been reworked, now scaling in damage off of storm of vengeance. Blizzard now incorporates this math as well as the improved Rime. 

CONCERNS:

• The verbage may be a little long-winded in places, might need to stealth-edit some of that later. 

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Now's probably a great time to do a whole slew of revisions. Especially considering all the rough drafts I just released!

Our Patreon is now live!

Thanks to all your encouragement and effort, we've finally been able to launch our Patreon!

Patreon is a very important platform for our work, allowing us to use more of our time to continue homebrewing, working on the larger projects like Strongholds and Merchants that our community loves so much.

You can become our patron by clicking on this button, or on the other Become a Patron button that now lives on our sidebar:

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As a reward for new subscribers, we offer nine additional background options as a complement to those already included in the Player's Handbook, giving players the ability to be anything from Minions to Madmen, Fey-Snatched to bonafide Lawyers!

This content is only available on our Patreon, as will be other future subscriber-only content. Planned for next month: new Stronghold room options, available to subscribers!

And again, our deepest appreciation for allowing us to get to this point. Your support and enthusiasm really, truly mean the world to us, and we'll keep making quality D&D homebrew for as long as you keep enjoying it. 

Primal Path: The Slasher [ROUGH DRAFT]

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone!

Spooky/scary month continues with my first-ever option for the barbarian, the Slasher! A horrifying reaver powered by the dark energies of death, the Slasher is compelled to murder innocents that stray to the wrong parts of the world. An almost-definitely evil character, the slasher has many features that harken back to a certain well-known murderer I probably shouldn't name for copyright reasons.

Now where's that list of class options I haven't done yet? Oh, yes:

Barbarian, Ranger, Sorcerer, Wizard

FEATURES:

• Grapple while you rage as a bonus action or reaction, and hold close those who would probably like to get far, far away.
• Sense the blood of your victims, and find them where ever they may hide. 
• Teleport to where they least expect you and burst forth effortlessly from within hiding spaces.
• Just. Never. Die. Keep coming back when you really should be dead.

CONCERNS:

• The grapple/fear synergy is probably too strong. Any ways of weakening it while remaining true to the theme?
• Shadowmorph might need to be more concise.
• Unkillable may be too powerful, but it seems like it's probably fine. Having ~10 hit points is probably not going to keep you up forever. 

WHAT I LEARNED:

• I actually started this off as a fighter option before thinking, wait, why wouldn't this be a barbarian? It's surprisingly easy to port options between those two classes. 

Race: Scarecrow [ROUGH DRAFT]

Halloween is here!

Well, in 23 days, depending on when you're reading this.

In any case, this month is the perfect time for me to develop some spooky/scary character options. Previous years, I've done the Awakened Undead and the Vampire. This year, Scarecrows (and maybe something else secret, if I can get around to it)!

Scarecrows, as with their representation in the Monster Manual, are living spirits bound to constructs of wood and hay, created by nefarious practitioners of the Old Ways of magic. Used as dispensable minions, scarecrows naturally become unbound from the will of their masters upon their masters' death. Now animated abominations that wander the world, scarecrows often find some small solace in the ability to achieve a perfect disguise as an ordinary, inanimate version of themselves.

FEATURES:

• Lore, names, and backstory! All the elements of a well-rounded race writeup.
• Frighten your enemies with a glance. If it works on crows, it should work on orcs. 
• Modified Living Construct feature, to illustrate with more clarity what does and does not work on the character. 
• Never, ever worry about disease or poison, but you should probably worry about fire. 

CONCERNS:

• Though I previously gave the same feature to ghouls under the Awakened Undead, I'm still concerned that Claws may be a little much. The alternative would be to give proficiency in the sickle, and make the sickle count as a finesse weapon.
• I can't tell if the benefits this race receive are too weighty. Race balance is still hard for me.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Spooky/Scary month is apparently a thing now. Figures that my favorite time of year should have some of my favorite content!

Martial Archetype: Dragoon [Third Draft]

It's back by popular demand, and refitted with new features!

I actually revisited this one specifically because several people asked me to over Twitter (@WalrockHomebrew). I've been meaning to do so for a little while, but I had a lot on my plate to sort through until I saw that the demand was there.

Fighter Martial Archetypes are something I've always had a bit of trouble with. There's little uniformity in terms of features, and it's hard to draw a meaningful, consistent power level from the provided spread.

So, I experiment. Over and over and over again. And eventually, maybe, I get it perfectly right.

This might not be one of those times; I did add a whole lot of moving parts here, after all.

You know the drill by now. Find all the broken bits, and I'll fix 'em up.

(special thanks to @DrMoradin for helping me suss out what to do with this one, and providing invaluable playtest feedback!)

CHANGELOG:

• Aspirant Step has been reworked into three different abilities, loosely modeled on the Battle-Master's superiority dice!
• Wing Clip your enemies to bring those pesky fliers down to your level.
• Dodge that dragon's breath with Avoidance, and even ignore that half-damage-on-a-miss that lingers around. 
• Replaced Ascendant Strike with Always Ready, adding some much-needed flavor and rolling its benefits into making Aspirant Step initially more enticing. 
• Needle of Heaven no longer shoots you 400 feet in the air, which got pretty wacky. Instead, you can wombo-combo an Aspirant Step and Wing Clip with it. 

CONCERNS:

• Some of the phrasing is pretty convoluted, and I'm betting there's a more elegant way to put a lot of what I wrote.
• I added the balance math of the "Improved Combat Superiority" feature to the core Dragonslaying feature, but still have features at the levels ICS functions at. However, this archetype doesn't have the additional maneuvers (for a total of 9 instead of this archetype's 3) that are normally granted to a Battle-Master, so I'm hoping that evens out. 

WHAT I LEARNED:

• I always try to have my ear to the ground and do stuff people will enjoy. Turns out, Twitter is great for that. 

Druid Circle: Circle of the City [ROUGH DRAFT]

Completed classes I have yet to generate a subclass for:

Barbarian, Druid, Ranger, Sorcerer, Wizard

One down, four to go!

A really interesting thing about subclasses in 5e is the very different conceptual space each of them take up. A rogue, for example, mostly gets abilities in their subclasses that work to further the fluff of being a rogue, as the majority of their crunch and damage progression comes from the class itself.

Dramatically less so with the druid. Most of what makes up a Druid Circle is entirely crunch, with fluff taking a back seat. Indeed, most of a druid's progression beyond base spellcasting and cantrips comes from their choice of circle, be that damage progression from the Land's spell slots, Moon's forms, or Twilight's damage scaling, or healing progression as with the Dream's definitely-not-lay-on-hands.

One of the trickier parts of formulating a druid is inserting fluff alongside necessary crunch. A Druid Circle may have fluff, but it also absolutely has to have a Thing It Does that no other Druid Circle does. So much of the design space in terms of crunch is already well-occupied, leading one to have to be pretty creative when making an entirely new type of druid.

FEATURES:

• Have a street-based familiar, including pigeons and raccoons! No one should have to face the mean streets of a city by their lonesome. 
• Use your familiar to fortify your allies, but good luck convincing the party cleric to let a raccoon climb all over her. 
• City-based spellcasting, giving you an assortment of city spells, similar to what a land druid receives.
• Push through crowds effortlessly, and take the faces of those you have seen. Not in a literal sense, more in an expend-two-uses-of-wild-shape sense.
• Be one with the city itself, and learn to commune with it as you would nature. 

CONCERNS:

• Some of this is intentionally derivative of the Land druid, as I intended this as a sort of counterpoint to its wild-based magic. Don't want it to be too much of a knock-off, though.
• The pigeon's Natural Messenger ability may be a little powerful, but eyeballing it I don't find it to be much worse than a raven's mimicry. 

WHAT I LEARNED:

• A whole lot, actually. Designing druids is very difficult for similar reasons as wizards, because what has already been done with the class crunch-wise (including UA) is already very comprehensive, but there's still a little wiggle-room left that can be elaborated upon.