Context: I’m planning to play a Druid in an upcoming campaign. His race is Fairy with a chimaera-like appearance that’s like a Small satyr/gryphon combo (bird head with antlers, furry body, hooved feet, lizard tail, feathered rather than insect wings). Rather than wildshape into a beast he’s going to have an alternate form that’s basically him “Hulking out” and manifesting his true Feywild appearance on the Material Plane. I’m trying to homebrew a custom subclass for him that’s a combination of Moon and Dreams.
A big part of the subclass is the alternate form which is an attempt at making something balanced that scales as the character levels. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
Manifest Fey Majesty
2nd-level Circle of Fey Majesty feature
You gain the ability to manifest your true Feywild form. As an bonus action, you can expend a use of your Wild Shape feature to take on this alternate form, rather than transforming into a beast form. While this feature is active, you gain the following benefits:
You grow to Large size. You have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws.
Your Strength score is replaced by your Wisdom score.
You gain a melee natural weapon attack dealing 2d6 + your new Str modifier damage.
You gain 5 temporary hit points for each level you have in this class.
Your Armor Class becomes 10 + your Dex modifier + your proficiency bonus.
These benefits last for 10 minutes, until you lose all these temporary hit points, you dismiss it (no action required), are incapacitated, die, or use this feature again.
I’m thinking the 6th level feature would be the same as Circle of the Moon. Haven’t figured out what to do for the 10th and 14th.
I’d love to get some community feedback on this alternate form and help making this a viably balanced subclass overall.
Honestly, at this point why not just play as Barbarian or Order of the Lycan Blood Hunter and re-flavour the Rage/Werewolf as the transformation you like?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...
Is it intentional that it gives you everything and the kitchen sink? It seems out of balance with other druid subclasses (particularly spores, which is probably the closest analog).
Because I am trying to create a new Druid subclass.
That's not much of a reason, but sure I'll humour you.
First of all, I'd say it's lacking a restriction on your spell casting. There's a reason why druids can't cast spells while in regular wild shape even if they're Moon Druids until they're level 18.
Second of all, gaining advantage on Strength stuff AND having your Strength score replaced with your Wisdom score is a bit much. Other features that try to do similar things may let you use your main ability score for attacks and give you advantage on Strength stuff, but that's it. Regular wild shape forms do replace your Strength score but only with some fix value that's in the Monster Manual and not with your main ability score you also already use for casting nor do they grant you advantage on checks and saves using that same score.
Last but not least, why the weird tempHP thing? The spore druid is the only subclass with a transformation that uses this mechanic and only because it doesn't really transform into something. Keep in mind that if you go this route it also means that you aren't going to be able to benefit from any other source of tempHP your party might provide since they don't stack and they also can't get healed back up. That means your tempHP transformation is going to be a lot less durable than a transformation using a similar amount of real HP like the regular wild shape does. Also the way you calculate it you're going to have less tempHP than a Moon Druid usually has real HP in their form. For comparison sake, a CR1 Dire Wolf has 37HP. Your transformation reaches that value only at level 7-8 and still has the drawbacks I mentioned. Regular Druids can turn into a Dire Wolf at level 8 which would fit your calculation, but Moon Druids which you want to compare to can do that at level 2 already. Consider using the regular Wild Shape's rules regarding HP and give your form something like 10+5xDruid level real HP. It's slightly less than Moon Druids get ranging from 20 to 110 (Moon Druids cap out at ~126HP as Mammoth at level 18+), but you have much better AC and hit harder (in return for lacking any kind of interesting additional abilities specific beasts may provide).
That being said, it still feels like this is trying to re-invent the wheel. Unless you find something special to do with your transformation other than just fighting in melee you could probably just take Moon Druid and flavour the various beast transformations as your funky character specific transformation.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Context: I’m planning to play a Druid in an upcoming campaign. His race is Fairy with a chimaera-like appearance that’s like a Small satyr/gryphon combo (bird head with antlers, furry body, hooved feet, lizard tail, feathered rather than insect wings). Rather than wildshape into a beast he’s going to have an alternate form that’s basically him “Hulking out” and manifesting his true Feywild appearance on the Material Plane. I’m trying to homebrew a custom subclass for him that’s a combination of Moon and Dreams.
A big part of the subclass is the alternate form which is an attempt at making something balanced that scales as the character levels. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
I’m thinking the 6th level feature would be the same as Circle of the Moon. Haven’t figured out what to do for the 10th and 14th.
I’d love to get some community feedback on this alternate form and help making this a viably balanced subclass overall.
AmazingScottMan#3124 on Discord
Honestly, at this point why not just play as Barbarian or Order of the Lycan Blood Hunter and re-flavour the Rage/Werewolf as the transformation you like?
I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...
Because I am trying to create a new Druid subclass.
AmazingScottMan#3124 on Discord
Is it intentional that it gives you everything and the kitchen sink? It seems out of balance with other druid subclasses (particularly spores, which is probably the closest analog).
That's not much of a reason, but sure I'll humour you.
First of all, I'd say it's lacking a restriction on your spell casting. There's a reason why druids can't cast spells while in regular wild shape even if they're Moon Druids until they're level 18.
Second of all, gaining advantage on Strength stuff AND having your Strength score replaced with your Wisdom score is a bit much. Other features that try to do similar things may let you use your main ability score for attacks and give you advantage on Strength stuff, but that's it. Regular wild shape forms do replace your Strength score but only with some fix value that's in the Monster Manual and not with your main ability score you also already use for casting nor do they grant you advantage on checks and saves using that same score.
Last but not least, why the weird tempHP thing? The spore druid is the only subclass with a transformation that uses this mechanic and only because it doesn't really transform into something. Keep in mind that if you go this route it also means that you aren't going to be able to benefit from any other source of tempHP your party might provide since they don't stack and they also can't get healed back up. That means your tempHP transformation is going to be a lot less durable than a transformation using a similar amount of real HP like the regular wild shape does. Also the way you calculate it you're going to have less tempHP than a Moon Druid usually has real HP in their form. For comparison sake, a CR1 Dire Wolf has 37HP. Your transformation reaches that value only at level 7-8 and still has the drawbacks I mentioned. Regular Druids can turn into a Dire Wolf at level 8 which would fit your calculation, but Moon Druids which you want to compare to can do that at level 2 already. Consider using the regular Wild Shape's rules regarding HP and give your form something like 10+5xDruid level real HP. It's slightly less than Moon Druids get ranging from 20 to 110 (Moon Druids cap out at ~126HP as Mammoth at level 18+), but you have much better AC and hit harder (in return for lacking any kind of interesting additional abilities specific beasts may provide).
That being said, it still feels like this is trying to re-invent the wheel. Unless you find something special to do with your transformation other than just fighting in melee you could probably just take Moon Druid and flavour the various beast transformations as your funky character specific transformation.
I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...