Home-brew class for custom campaign setting

[murphybrain]

So to give some background flavor, in my setting the first race was the Ancients - a race of half-elemental giants. They helped the gods of my setting create the world and battled the second race (the Dragons) before the advent of the mortal races. They were put into a sort of stasis once the work of creation was complete but left tons of evidence and artifacts from their society.

The new class was based on the idea that some had discovered more about this race and they way they used elemental magic without casting spells.

The Elanim

Looking for some helpful critique. Is it broken? Is it awkward or clumsy?

[Cheapy]

Hey there!

First things first...praise is great, but criticism is useful. Keep that in mind, and take nothing here personal. :)

I am immediately struck by the idea of them having no armor, but then the Earth Discipline is all about stout defense. That was a real "wait, what?" moment for me.

Rapier seems really weird for the shadow discipline. Just...doesn't fit my conceptual imagery. Shortsword, definitely.

Bo9S based class senses tingling...Those are hard to judge, due to the huge amount of custom abilities.

Quote:

Anything that causes a character to lose their dexterity bonus to AC causes the stance to be dropped.

A character must be able to stand and act of her own volition to receive the benefits of a stance.

How does this interact with Feint?

Elemental Strike: Ok, the first paragraph made me think this was something you did to attacks. Then it goes on about making a ray. A bit weird. I think this could use some other text. "The elanim can use this in one of two ways." or the sort.

What's the action of the ranged touch attack? Is it just an Attack, so that once they hit 8th level, they can do two of these in one turn using a full-attack? Or is it always a standard action?

What's the standard action of the melee use relate to? Is it to apply the damage to your weapon for the next attack, or is it an attack that adds the damage?

Earth Strike: Is the bludgeoning damage counted as magic? Does it eventually overcome DR of any sort?

Wind Strike: See above.

Quote:

Life Strike: This attack causes a living thing to reach out and attack the enemy for

bludgeoning or piercing damage. Many elanim will carry with them a small plant as a focus

for this effect.

A small plant with a range of 60 feet? Eh?

I'm a bit concerned with the versatility that being able to use other disciplines' Elemental Strikes opens up, but halving the dice is a good step...

You're missing Detect Magic as an ability in the rules. Not sure how it differs.

Wise Defense: This should be (Su). Also, you should really list at which levels they get these. What action is it to use these? A lot of these are very, very powerful abilities that are given extremely early. Not many other classes can even get these abilities before 10th level.

Bonus Feat: So, where do these come from? Must they be (Combat)?

Attunement: List the levels! Also, Life's attunement: is this DR 5 / Slashing or Piercing? Or is it DR 5 / Slashing OR DR 5 / Piercing? Also, shadow and life are flipped in order of what they usually are.

Stances:
Iron Guard: Including attacking the elanim?

Eyes of the Eagle: This one has a lot of issues. First, to start a stance, you need to use a Swift action. You can't use a swift action until you roll initiative, which means that this won't add to your initial initiative. And then what happens if you use it during combat? Does your turn order jump up? What about if I use it at the end of one turn so that when I get to the next turn I can get a full attack in, and then use a swift action to change the stance? Do I get to go again once my 'new' initiative gets in the order? So if I have +3 Wis, and my initial Init is at 14, and there's an orc with init 15, does the following happen?

Round 1: Elanim Init: 14 Orc Init: 15. Orc attacks. Elanim attacks. End of turn: Swift action to go into Eyes of the Eagle.
Round 2: Elanim Init: 17. Orc Init: 15. Attack orc, swift action to stop stance. New elanim init: 14. Orc attacks. Elanim attacks.

I'm guessing not, and I'm really just trying to drive the point home that playing with init while in combat is messy :)

Shifting Stream: Most abilities like this require you to end in a square threatened by the enemy. That way you can't just step out of the way of the attacks once a single one misses you.

Burning Riposte: Is this only for natural attacks and unarmed strikes? Things like this usually are. Sometimes it's any melee attack, but ranged attacks are pretty rare to be affected by this. Do you shed light like a candle or torch when this is up?

Flame's Blessing: Useless after 10th level.

Hand of Wrath: Whoa whoa whoa. Is this only once per turn TOPS? No matter how many AoOs you have, it's only one, right? This is pretty good...but make sure it's only once per turn. People will try to say that each AoO in your full suite of AoOs is a single AoO :)

Martial Energy: This fails the Bag O' Rats test. Hard. There's no limit on uses per day for these. I'll just attack a rat from this bag until I'm fully healed. Or rather, I'll keep on attacking the rat's corpse until I'm fully healed and it's charred to a crisp.

Glowing Charge: What's the range of this? Does it apply to all attacks if they have Pounce? Do you actually glow?

Inspiring Spirit: What's the range of this? Does it rely on Line of Sight?

Assassin: Well, OK. I guess that's a solid low level boost.

Shifting Shadow: Seems like a really good defensive ability...20% miss chance and the ability to use Stealth from 1st level. This would be something people dip for. Very strong, I'd recommend something else.

Shadow Blade: Eh...I'd recommend against this one too. Too easy to shutdown foes, and would ALSO be worthy of a dip. Hell, I'd just trip them. Nope! You're not getting away from me! mwhaha. I'd upgrade this to be a strong recommendation to a change.

Shroud of Thorns: I don't know why anyone would use this. It's thematic, sure, but....I'll take something that doesn't hurt me thankyouverymuch.

Ent Skin: Hah! Clever. But no, way too weak. Way way too weak.

Overall with regard to stances:

Fix Shadow. It's too good.

Fix Life. It's too weak.

Stare at Life a bit more.

Kata Erm, what does the Discipline have to do with this? I read the Kata description, and may have missed it, but I didn't see anything about restricting to certain disciplines.

Greater Far Strike: Is this triple the base distance, so it's 180? Or is it triple the double, so it's... uh... 240?

Elemental Charge: Cool ability, but feats don't generally add +1d6/2 levels to all attacks in a charge. Scary to think of if they somehow had Pounce...

Overall: Hmmmm. I think this is a bit bipolar in balance. It's all over the place, making it a bit hard for me to see intuitively the power level, so I'll have to think on it. It gets a lot of solid spells. But also a lot of Save based ones, which are a bit tough for 2/3rds casters.

I think that the list of issues I found above is also clouding my judgement on balance, so I'll refrain from commenting on that too much for now. If I am guessing your intent for all of these correctly, I think it's alrightly balanced, but some things can be used to be way too good.

[murphybrain]

Cheapy wrote:

First things first...praise is great, but criticism is useful. Keep that in mind, and take nothing here personal. :)

No problems man, I wanted people to be brutal!

Quote:

I am immediately struck by the idea of them having no armor, but then the Earth Discipline is all about stout defense. That was a real "wait, what?" moment for me.

Well the class is meant to be an armorless martial arts style combat. That was an issue that came up in the reddit thread: I need to me more clear that unlike normal SLA the Kata would be affected by spell failure.

Quote:

Rapier seems really weird for the shadow discipline. Just...doesn't fit my conceptual imagery. Shortsword, definitely.

I have tooled around with the selection constantly. I am not particularly married to any of them but though it best that none of the "Heavy Hitter" weapons be in there. Honestly if a player thought a weapon was a better fit and it wasnt something crazy I would allow it.

Quote:

Bo9S based class senses tingling...Those are hard to judge, due to the huge amount of custom abilities.

Ha absolutely. I actually toned down some it, this started as almost a straight adaptation.

Quote:

How does this interact with Feint?

I didn't think about that to begin with, but I would say that Feint doesn't really cause the target of a Feint to lose his dex bonus. It only affects a single attack from the feinting character. " If successful, the next melee attack you make against the target does not allow him to use his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any)." This would seem to me like the stance would be intact.

Quote:

What's the action of the ranged touch attack? Is it just an Attack, so that once they hit 8th level, they can do two of these in one turn using a full-attack? Or is it always a standard action? What's the standard action of the melee use relate to? Is it to apply the damage to your weapon for the next attack, or is it an attack that adds the damage?

Unless modified by a Kata, any type of Elemental Strike is always a Standard action. The melee version is an attack does weapon damage along with the strike damage. There is no way to have more than one strike in a round without using a Kata.

Quote:

Is the bludgeoning damage counted as magic? Does it eventually overcome DR of any sort?

Yes, and No. Its magic, but its still just bludgeoning damage.

Quote:

A small plant with a range of 60 feet? Eh?

That's just flavor. The idea is that you're doing a weird plant tentacle attack thing, magically making a vine whip out and attack people.

Quote:

You're missing Detect Magic as an ability in the rules. Not sure how it differs.

Fack, that was in a previous version. I must have deleted it. It's just a spell like ability identical to the zero level spell.

Quote:

Wise Defense: This should be (Su). Also, you should really list at which levels they get these. What action is it to use these? A lot of these are very, very powerful abilities that are given extremely early. Not many other classes can even get these abilities before 10th level.

Wise Defense is basically a weaker version of the monk's AC ability. Since an Elanim doesnt wear armor i disagree that this is overly powerful. There is no action to use it, it's always there.

Quote:

Eyes of the Eagle: This one has a lot of issues. First, to start a stance, you need to use a Swift action. You can't use a swift action until you roll initiative, which means that this won't add to your initial initiative. And then what happens if you use it during combat? Does your turn order jump up?

This one is actually lifted pretty much straight from Bo9S. Assuming or swapping stances is a swift action, but you can be running around in a stance all the time. You're essentially giving up one of the stance power to improve your initiative. Shifting out of the stance would have no effect once the initiative order is established, just like taking dex damage does not effect your init order.

Quote:

Shifting Stream: Most abilities like this require you to end in a square threatened by the enemy. That way you can't just step out of the way of the attacks once a single one misses you.

This one is also straight from Bo9S. I guess i could elaborate more, but the only restriction is that you are still limited to one 5 foot step per round- just like Step-Up you wouldn't be able to make one on your following turn.

Quote:

Burning Riposte: Is this only for natural attacks and unarmed strikes? Things like this usually are. Sometimes it's any melee attack, but ranged attacks are pretty rare to be affected by this. Do you shed light like a candle or torch when this is up?

The idea for this one is that it's quick retaliatory strikes (like a riposte) with fire, not like the Heat ability from a fire elemental. Again taken from Bo9S. The intent is for melee only, not ranged strikes.

Quote:

Flame's Blessing: Useless after 10th level.

The idea was that this would stack with Attunement. I should be more specific.

Quote:

Hand of Wrath: Whoa whoa whoa. Is this only once per turn TOPS? No matter how many AoOs you have, it's only one, right? This is pretty good...but make sure it's only once per turn. People will try to say that each AoO in your full suite of AoOs is a single AoO :)

YES! It's only one. My minmaxer buddy tried to show me some AoO heavy build he wanted. I will try to make it more clear.

Quote:

Martial Energy: This fails the Bag O' Rats test. Hard. There's no limit on uses per day for these. I'll just attack a rat from this bag until I'm fully healed. Or rather, I'll keep on attacking the rat's corpse until I'm fully healed and it's charred to a crisp.

yet another Bo9S transplant. I never even though of that (honestly if one of my players suggested it i would slap him upside the head). not sure how to fix, perhaps making it a requirement that you much be damaging a living creature above a certain size?

Quote:

Glowing Charge: What's the range of this? Does it apply to all attacks if they have Pounce? Do you actually glow?

Good question. I think originally I had in mind the seen/heard limitation of Inspire Courage. Yes on pounce, glowing i would leave up to the player but sounds cool to me.

Quote:

Inspiring Spirit: What's the range of this? Does it rely on Line of Sight?

Same as above. LoS.

Quote:

Shifting Shadow: Seems like a really good defensive ability...20% miss chance and the ability to use Stealth from 1st level. This would be something people dip for. Very strong, I'd recommend something else.

Shadow Blade: Eh...I'd recommend against this one too. Too easy to shutdown foes, and would ALSO be worthy of a dip. Hell, I'd just trip them. Nope! You're not getting away from me! mwhaha. I'd upgrade this to be a strong recommendation to a change.

Good points, those may be something I'll have to revisit. I mean, dipping into what is partially an arcane spellcasting class for this one ability seems over the top for me, but now that you mention it I could see how it could be exploited. "I will only learn a tiny bit of this ancient, rare mystic art to enhance my rogue" seems off the wall to me. Again this would be a player slapping moment at our table.

Quote:

Shroud of Thorns: I don't know why anyone would use this. It's thematic, sure, but....I'll take something that doesn't hurt me thankyouverymuch.

Ent Skin: Hah! Clever. But no, way too weak. Way way too weak.

I agree they are probably weak compared to the others. Maybe a reduction in move speed as opposed to staggered?

Quote:

Kata Erm, what does the Discipline have to do with this? I read the Kata description, and may have missed it, but I didn't see anything about restricting to certain disciplines.

It's in the discipline section, but i could repeat it int he kata section for clarity. "The two opposing Disciplines are forbidden, no Kata or stances may ever be learned from an opposing Discipline."

Quote:

Greater Far Strike: Is this triple the base distance, so it's 180? Or is it triple the double, so it's... uh... 240?

It's triple the base distance. We went back and forth all morning trying to choose the best way to state it. I guess i need to be more clear.

Quote:

Elemental Charge: Cool ability, but feats don't generally add +1d6/2 levels to all attacks in a charge. Scary to think of if they somehow had Pounce...

It's not all attacks, it allows to you make an Elemental Strike in place of the attack action. You still only get one.

I appreciate you taking the time to go over this, and the input you gave. I will take a look at clarifying where there was confusion, and we will discuss the tweaks you mention with regard to the stances.

Thanks Again!

[Cheapy]

Also, my comment on really powerful for Wise Defenses was actually for the Vision ability. Must've mistaken myself while editing my post.

And with regard to eyes of the eagle, the Dex damage example doesn't really apply since penalties don't retroactively apply to rolls, but since this just modifying your value (as opposed to saying "This grants a +Wis mod bonus on initiative rolls" , which I don't recall this saying), it would apply, I think. But since you know what you meant, this'll work.

I don't particularly think that deferring to the Bo9S is the best idea, but I guess you now have a lot of questions you could search on if you're just using those abilities for some :)