Sorrow Knight?

The new Sorrow Knight from D&D Beyond Drops looks pretty cool.

Thoughts?

Quote from MaedraDawnkeeper >>

They panic nerfed it within the first few hours of it being uploaded because of positive rules exploit buzz, making it compete for Second Wind slots, then said it totally intentional for its best feature to be chained down by Tactical Shift.

Feels exactly like the Hadozee Glide over-nerf in inciting incident, execution, & messaging.

 Unprovable, but it seems unlikely. If the original text was just "you can teleport ... instead of moving", that's an absurd ability. Nobody gets unlimited teleportation, much less a random fighter subclass at 7th level. It certainly doesn't get a rider ability as well.

Also, if it was an actual change from what they initially meant, they just don't work that fast.

Quote from MaedraDawnkeeper >>

They panic nerfed it within the first few hours of it being uploaded because of positive rules exploit buzz, making it compete for Second Wind slots, then said it totally intentional for its best feature to be chained down by Tactical Shift.

Feels exactly like the Hadozee Glide over-nerf in inciting incident, execution, & messaging.

Please don't post misinformation like this. It does the whole community a disservice.

Hadozee Glide over-nerf in inciting incident, execution, & messaging.

When did that happen and what is it?

I am pretty pumped to try using this in the next game where I am a player. 

Regardless, tying it to Tactical Shift OBJECTIVELY makes the feature worthless in practice.

Let Martials do cool things for no cost because they have less total & less varied resources than casters. Please.

Quote from MaedraDawnkeeper >>

Regardless, tying it to Tactical Shift OBJECTIVELY makes the feature worthless in practice.

Let Martials do cool things for no cost because they have less total & less varied resources than casters. Please.

Feeling strongly about your subjective opinion doesn't make it an objective fact, no matter how many capital letters you use.

Quote from wagnarokkr >>

Quote from MaedraDawnkeeper >>

Regardless, tying it to Tactical Shift OBJECTIVELY makes the feature worthless in practice.

Let Martials do cool things for no cost because they have less total & less varied resources than casters. Please.

Feeling strongly about your subjective opinion doesn't make it an objective fact, no matter how many capital letters you use.

 I'd expect to see second wind getting used more with this ability available. You're unlikely to be wasting the healing, because fighters get dinged up, and a teleport is way more useful than a shorter safe move.

It's still not gonna be a lot, because most D&D combats just don't need much in the way of maneuvering.

I see second wind used all the time when I’m playing. It is a great ability that provides necessary healing and alleviates pressure on the healer (if you even have one in the first place).  The ability to add some damage and a debuff on your enemy at the same time?  That’s icing on top of an already delicious cake.  No idea how one can say it was “useless.”

Overall, I think this looks pretty fun.  I know a few of my players will be excited by either the flavor or the mechanics (or both), and look forward to discussing it with them.

I also think it is a good time to tell one of my favorite game design stories.  One of the most iconic cards in Magic the Gathering is Time Walk, a card that gives an extra turn. Pretty simple, right?

In the playtesting stage, Time Walk read “Target player loses their next turn.”  Grammatically a correct way to say a party misses their next turn, allowing you to take two turns in a row.  They played with this phrasing for months, since everyone understood exactly what was meant.

Then they opened the door to some new playtesters outside of their normal group. Someone immediately looked at the card and asked “wait, does this mean the other person just loses the game?”  They promptly changed the language to its final iteration to remove the ambiguity.

What is the point of this story?  Game designers get tunnel vision sometimes.  They are so used to how they know an ability is supposed to work that they might presume the language is clear and unambiguous, even when it is not… or just read into text language they know is supposed to be there, even if it was omitted, because their mind expects to see it and thus does not register the omission.  That second thing seems to be what happened here, and happens every couple of years over in Magic…. And in pretty much every other game at some point.

Quote from MaedraDawnkeeper >>

Regardless, tying it to Tactical Shift OBJECTIVELY makes the feature worthless in practice.

Let Martials do cool things for no cost because they have less total & less varied resources than casters. Please.

 I don't know that I agree. Teleporting is fun, but if your DM is roleplaying their monsters instead of just making mechanically optimal moves every turn, then Tactical Shift to draw enemies away to toward some preferred spot is going to be more valuable than the teleport feature in Dread Appearance in some combat scenarios. Tier 2 enemies might be more willing to run down an enemy who is on foot than one that can teleport around the map. Alternatively, there may be a lot of situations where teleporting is the better bet. It really comes down to the moment the player is in.

I think it is more accurate to say that because of Dread Appearance, Tactical Shift becomes more important, but its feature that allows you to move half your speed without provoking opportunity attacks becomes more situational.