Homebrewing a potentially broken class - what can I do with it?

[Van Silke]

Link to the latest version

Hello there.

I've been moving in and out of this project for about a month now, and it's simply one character class I'm making for sport, and potentially play it later. I'm doing it mainly for myself, but I'd rather like to consult someone with an actual experience.

His gimmick is that he can anchor himself to the location and cast spells with less limitations at the cost of being forced to hold position, but it blew way out of proportions.

A "potentially broken" because this little spellcaster here is able to prepare any spell from his spellbook at any time, with no upper limit except for a number of spells he can hold in his memory.

There's also a second part to this guy, as he's got a limited pool of points he can spend to cast more spells in one round, bending if not outright breaking action economy.

He has a potential to be a very interesting thing, but as of right now he's a "Suck or be God" kind of thing.

Right at the end of the document there are several alternate options I'm considering for his class features, but unfortunately I'm unwilling to part with most of them.

[Ciaran Barnes]

I'm confused as to how this spellcasting works because the way it is written is not clear. The obvious solution is to make the spellcasting more like normal spellcasting, and make modifications to that. You're trying to reinvent the wheel. If you keep it the way it is, you're going to need to open with a better summary of how it works. A roadmap, so to speak, for anyone trying to learn how it works. After that, you break down how each of the parts work. Some of the parts could stand to be simplified or streamlined.

Hypothetically, this guy has no limit to the number of spells he can cast each day. Is that right? I hope not.

You say that you are unwilling to part with things. That is a problem, because you are here asking for help and the people who comment are going to recommend changing things. I suggest you take a break from your project until you can be more objective. That has always been a big help to me in my homebrew.

Also, I don't think writing a character class for yourself to play is a good idea. You're going to be less objective because you'll be writing features that you can take advantage of. You include a weakness, but it is one that you will know how to mitigate. A character class should be able to support multiple character concepts, and I get the feeling that this is being written to support only one.

[Van Silke]

Ciaran Barnes wrote:

Hypothetically, this guy has no limit to the number of spells he can cast each day. Is that right? I hope not.

...yeah, I can see where I went wrong with this.

Either way, thanks for that. I'm not promising any breakthroughs, but you can expect an improved version around next week.

[Cyrad]

I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish with the class. They have a lot of fiddly rules involving their spellbook and "arcane actions", but none of it really adds any depth or interesting gameplay.

All of the rules involving spells "with the attuned descriptor" don't make any sense to me, especially considering no such spells exist in the game.

[Van Silke]

One of Anchor's class features is choosing one of the spell descriptors as Attuned. And...there you go. I'll probably keep this one, unless it doesn't do anything.

I've dumped arcane actions and most of the spellbook stuff, if you're interested in the progress.

[Here4daFreeSwag]

Good to see some free pre-updated Anchor stuff out there, for comparison's sake. ;)