A pretty minor homebrew, but one that I need to get into writing or it will continue to occupy a corner of my mind until it is out of there.
2 new conditions:
Staggered: Similar to Stunned, except that instead of losing actions, you lose your reactions. Staggered usually includes a value, which indicates how many total reactions you lose, possibly over multiple turns, from being staggered. Each round, you may use your reaction to reduce your staggered value by 1. Staggered might also have a duration instead of a value, such as “staggered for 1 minute.” In this case, you lose all your reactions for the listed duration, as you are essentially using your reaction every round for the duration reducing that duration.
Ardent: You gain an additional reaction that you can use. Ardent sometimes has a value. In that case, you gain a number of reactions equal to your ardent value each round that you are ardent. If ardent does not have a value, it is treated as if its value is 1. Many effects that make you ardent specify what reaction you may take using this extra reaction. If you become ardent from multiple sources, your ardent value does not increase, but you can use any single reaction allowed by any of the effects that made you ardent up to a number of times equal to your ardent value. You may also always use your ardent reaction to reduce your staggered condition. You may use the extra reaction in the same round that you are become ardent.
They are both too much ,in my opinion.
As for Staggered, currently the only conditions which deal with reactions are
I think that's a weird gap that there isn't a condition that specifically interacts with reactions, considering how often slow and stunned gets thrown around even with cantrips and 1st level spells.
And while the rules aren't fully clear, my reading of the stunned condition is that if it will last into the next round, you also lose your reaction, as you "can't act" (specifically defined in the "Gaining and Losing Actions" section as not being able to use actions or reactions) during that round. But as I said, that's not fully clear and may have been unintended. Makes sense logically though.
- It is something tied to incapacitate effects
- High level effects ( see how incapacitate works for low level spells and heightened spells )
- Effects which give the possibility to break free at the end of the round ( or even under specific circumstances ).
I have no issue with the 1st and 3rd restrictions applying. I don't think it needs to be particularly high level though. Hideous Laughter is a 2nd level spell, after all.
As for ardent, any class which has extra reaction has to expend a high level class feat ( 8+ ) to get a "specific" extra reaction to use.Exceptions are
- Lvl 12 rogue with preparation, which get a "generic" extra reaction by trading 1 action ( and using its flourish move for that round ).
- Lvl 20 fighter with Boundless Reprisal, which gives 1 extra reaction every enemy turn.
So giving a even a non generic extra reaction for free ( because some effects would be giving this ) would be way better than any other class feat.
This would theoretically be on par with Haste, or simply be a replacement for those class feats you mention. Like the Rogue feat would become "You gain Ardent (any Rogue reaction) that lasts until the beginning of your next turn.", the fighter "You gain Ardent at the beginning of each enemy turn that lasts until the end of their turn.", the champion "You gain Ardent (Shield block) at the start of each turn.", and so forth.
Then there's also the idea that a spell or talisman could give you "Ardent (AoO) for 1 minute" or "Ardent (grab an edge) for 1 minute". I forgot to specify that once you use your Ardent reaction, the condition ends.
Although now looking at those feats, this would unintentionally be a nerf to those, as you could theoretically have multiple ones. I don't know [i]how/[i], but best to get ahead of it. I suppose I can rewrite it so that when you get Ardent from multiple sources, they are tracked separately instead of combined, but Ardent from the same source just overwrites itself. Although at that point, I may as well just drop the concept, as it is starting to require more rules text than I intended.
Apart from that ( last ardent part ), I see that you are considering both of them to be active at the same time ( would then them be common in any fight? or it's just to show how those reaction would react to each other? )
More or less. If I'm theoretically creating a condition that shuts down reactions, if you have more than one reaction, you should be able to get around it faster. I suppose I could have just made them counteract each other, but being able to spend like this seemed easier.
But, again, I think I'll just drop Ardent. Doesn't seem to be saving much in the way of text when I rewrote those feats, and it is starting to be altogether too complex for a relatively straightforward concept.
I also feel there's possibly something missing regarding reactions. I think Staggered could work as either of the forms you proposed, and if you don't mind me adding I think you could maybe use something with the flat-check mechanism as an option as well, like a 50% of missing your reaction, on a yes or no condition.
Ardent on the other hand raises a few concerns. Not so much on how some classes gives specific reactions as these are concomitant and not concurrent IMO. I'd be more concerned with how some features profit more from reactions. For example the Champion has some really powerful reactions from pretty much all of it's causes, and multiple of those reactions will be exponentially better than what other most classes may profit from.
Not saying it couldn't work, but it's the one where you'd have to put more effort into making it balanced, which may not be possible or not worth it. Personally I'd drop it; or at least cap it as only 1 extra reaction, and/or maybe further cap it by limiting the sort of reactions you could take.
What would you say you'd have to add or change to produce these conditions?
|
Ardent
The game has valued this type of power @ 8th level in Quick Shield Block and 10th level in Combat Reflexes.
And those are "specific" reactions, rather than "any".
Good luck!
What would you say you'd have to add or change to produce these conditions?
Weird. I thought I replied to this.
For Staggered, as there are few effects that actually deal with removing reactions (why I assume they didn't add a condition like this in the first place), there's little to do. Add the description, modify Hideous laughter and the entry for confusion and stunned to accommodate Staggered, and you're mostly done. There might be another spell besides Hideous Laughter that deals with reactions specifically, so you'd want to modify that, but I don't know it off the top of my head.
Ardent sounded better on paper than actually written, and has too many corner cases and rules interactions to be worth the bother. For me at least; someone smarter than me might figure it out.
I like the concepts for both conditions. Staggered seems to of been pretty well laid out with all suggestions here. As for Ardent I would make the following changes.
Ardent: You gain an additional reaction that you can use until the beginning of your next turn. Ardent always includes a value. This value indicates how many rounds this condition lasts. Whenever you gain this condition, the source will indicate what type of reaction you can use as your additional reaction (e.g. strikes, movement, ect.). At the beginning of your turn you reduce the value of Ardent by one, and if you gain the Staggered condition, you reduce its value by the value of staggered gained. You cannot become Ardent from multiple sources.
I would also say to not have this condition usable until at least 5th level (3rd level spell).
If you don't mind, I would also like to use this in some custom classes I'm currently working on. I will give you credit for them too.
By all means. I'd love to see it when you're done!