Base Class: Rogue
Not all rogues prefer the comfort of easy living in the city as a thief or murderer. Some are hunters of the most dangerous game of all, and that prey isn't always man. All bounty hunters are masters of the hunt, studying, tracking, and subduing prey, and carve out home turf to operate on, whether the rocky coasts of the shoreline, the ice wastes of the arctic, or the squalor and dark corners of the urban jungle. No matter the threats or challenges ahead, the reward for the bounty is always worth the risk.
Hunter's Quarry
At 3rd level, you learn the art of the hunt. You have study a creature for one hour or spend four hours gathering information about them. When you do, you may designate that creature as your quarry.
When making Dexterity (Sleight of Hand, Stealth), Intelligence (Investigation), or Wisdom (Insight, Perception, Survival) tests related to your quarry, you may double your proficiency bonus if you are proficient or add half your proficiency bonus if you are not proficient. You gain advantage on all Intelligence tests made to recall information about your quarry based on your studies and information, including any class levels, supernatural or extraordinary abilities, or weaknesses they might possess, though this is obviously limited by the information you were able to access while studying them or gathering information about them.
Unless you have disadvantage on your attack roll, you may always sneak attack your quarry, even if an ally isn't within five feet of them or you don't have advantage on the attack roll.
You also gain proficiency in the Wisdom (Survival) skill if you don't already have it, as it is needed to track down your quarry.
At 9th level, you may have up to three creatures as your quarry at once. At 13th level, you may have up to five creatures as your quarry at once.
Hunter Bane
At level three, you have been proficient in using a whip, any kind of whip's you possess will deal 1d8 (instead of the usual 1d4), and does an extra 1d8 Necrotic damage only to your selective target's. It also grant an advantage at Strength (Athletics) for grappling your quarry, while your foe gain disadvantage on both Dexterity ( Acrobatics) and Strength (Athletic) when they are grappled. While grapple, the target get 1d8 Necrotic damage for each turns being restrain by the whip till the target escape.
Home Turf
At 9th level, you may spend half a day (12 hours) studying a neighborhood in a city or a ten square miles of wilderness terrain. This area becomes your home turf. While on your home turf, creatures have disadvantage on all Dexterity (Sleight of Hand, Stealth), Intelligence (Investigation), or Wisdom (Perception, Survival) tests meant to locate or hide from you, or to locate any items or goods you have hidden or stashed in your home turf. If you choose to set traps on your home turf, creatures have disadvantage on all Intelligence (Investigation) or Wisdom (Perception) tests to locate them and on any tests attempting to disarm them. Your allies are immune to these effects unless you designate otherwise.
You can only have more than three areas of home turf's at once. If you attempt to make a new home turf, you will end up losing the previous home turf as the result.
At 17th level, you may instead designate an entire city or a very large area of wilderness terrain, such as an entire forest or stretch of coastline, as your home turf, provided that you spend a full day to do so.
Specialized Subdual
At 9th level, when you successfully defeat a creature, you may always choose whether to kill or disable it, no matter what means you used to do so. When your quarry is defeated non-lethally, you may call upon your experience as a bounty hunter and knowledge of its capabilities to secure and transport it, no matter how large it is, provided suitable materials are at hand or were gathered while studying your quarry. It suffers disadvantage on any ability score checks made to escape from bindings placed by this ability.
Master Interrogator
At 13th level, when attempting to gain information you may add half your proficiency bonus to all Charisma tests you are not proficient in. If you are attempting a Charisma test on your quarry or one of their close associates, you gain advantage on the test.
Home Advantage
At 17th level, you have now become the master of your own turf, knowing every inch of land and become better within your own territory. You can add ten feet to your movement, swimming and climbing speed as long as you are on your home turf, and you do not halve your movement while swimming or climbing in your home turf. You have advantage on all Dexterity (Stealth) tests while on your home turf. Any attacks you make will become critical on a 19 or 20 roll.
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Posted Nov 25, 2019Hunter's Quarry and Hunter's Bane are both broken unfortunately. Bane doesn't apply to sheet correctly and Quarry has a string of broken code.
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Posted Apr 29, 2019At a glance: Seems messily executed, with multiple mismatching themes. Overall I think this could be the start of something really cool, but as it stands it is more like a weird Rogue/Ranger subclass.
The specifics:
Your starting ability is flavorful as all hell and is probably alright as it is...but it is basically a better hunter's mark. Because the second ability makes no thematic sense in my opinion, I almost think it would be better to merge the second ability with the first, and make the feature allow you a use of hunter's mark per short rest. I also think that this class is frontloaded too heavily, and that you should split some of the features from this ability up into later levels.
Hunter Bane is...terrible. It doesn't fit the theme of a bounty hunter that most people imagine. Whip's dealing more damage is more of a Taskmaster thing, and the tacked on necrotic damage make's no sense. It has nothing to do with a Bounty Hunter, it adds no flavor, and it isn't what I'd look for when wanting to be a cool Bounty Hunter PC.
Home Turf is cool, but it doesn't make sense to grant more than 1 location as being considered home turf. It reads as an interesting take on Favored Terrain, which is interesting for sure but nothing about it scream "Rogue"
The 9th level ability Specialized Subdual is odd, as per the rules on "Knocking a Creature Out" any damage that drops a target to 0 can be non-lethal. The disadvantage to escape restraint is cool, but maybe not enough. Because part of the ability is a dead ability, i'd take the "if you don't have disadvantage, you can sneak attack your hunter's Quarry" part from your first ability and add it here. It fits the name and theme of what you were going for and offloads the power so that this subclass isn't just a 3 level dip.
Master Interrogator is also another sort of odd choice. Bounty Hunter's track their foes and need to gain information about their target of course, but a boost to all non-proficient charisma based ability checks is super weird. Like I'd expect proficiency or a boost to insight checks, because knowing that your target isn't lying is more important than forcing people to talk, which isn't guaranteed to be the truth or the full truth. Like advantage on insight checks to determine if truths are being spoken about your Quarry makes more thematic sense, with maybe a boost to persuasion checks that are seeking information about your Quarry.
The last ability has things that don't make sense as well...the boost to speed does make sense, same with even boosts to climbing...but swimming? Also the Stealth advantage thing is double dipping, since creatures in your home turf already have disadvantage to find you...disadvantage against a Rogue is strong enough as is, since they have Reliable Talent and Expertise at their disposal...so it is really much less impactful than I think you imagined when you added that ability, since someone that wants to be stealthy is going to 100% increase their stealth ability checks prior to getting that feature.
In summary, what you have here would make more sense as features to grant to a Ranger than a Rogue, and as written I would never see a reason to advance past a 3rd level dip because what you gain isn't really granting too much thematically...and as it stands it'd make more sense to go something like Champion 17/Bounty Hunter 3 and just get an extra 1d8 damage on every attack and the ability to absolutely dominate one individual that I stalk for a bit. That's how front loaded the whole subclass is though, there is little to no reason to advance past 3rd level because almost everything granted is so situational that there is little reason to go further when you can get more reliable abilities by branching into other classes...and if I really just wanted to play a Bounty Hunter style class, I'd play a Ranger rather than take this subclass as it currently stands.