Hello! This is a very bare-bones subclass as far as lore and the like. Right now, I'm trying to get a feel for the balance and placement of the abilities. I'd be happy for any feedback. Thanks! (I've replaced the old version with a new one.)
Teleport around and cut stuff.
Strides of Mist
Cohesion: You have 3 cohesion at level 3. You gain one additional cohesion at level 7 and level 10. Cohesion is expended when you make use of one of your strides, which are described below. When you spend a point of cohesion, your next attack deals an additional 3d4 force damage. This lasts until the beginning of your next turn. You regain all of your expended cohesion when you finish a short or long rest.
Strides
You know 3 strides at level 3, each of which expends a single cohesion to use. You gain an additional stride at level 7, 10, 15, and 18. When you spend a point of cohesion, your next attack deals an additional 3d4 force damage. This lasts until the beginning of your next turn.
Beacon Stride
You may teleport to the location of a projectile that you fired this turn and is within 60 feet or less.
Evasive Stride
Take ½ damage on a failed dexterity save, and no damage on a successful dexterity save as reaction
Formless Stride
Teleport 30 feet as a bonus action
Micro Stride
Take the dodge action as a bonus action.
Rescue Stride
As a bonus action, you may teleport yourself and up to two adjacent, friendly creatures a distance of up to 15 feet. You must all still be adjacent after the teleportation.
Revenge Stride
When you make an attack as part of a reaction you can use the stride to make two attacks instead of one.
Single Combat Stride
When you hit an enemy creature with a melee weapon attack, you may teleport yourself and that creature up to 15 feet. You must still be adjacent to the enemy creature after teleporting.
Sprinter's Stride
When you take the dash action, your speed increases by 10 feet and you ignore difficult terrain for that action.
Trick Stride
When you hit an opponent with a ranged attack within 60 feet, you may swap places with them.
Untouchable Stride
If you successfully hit an adjacent, enemy creature with an attack, you may disengage as a bonus action.
Vicious Stride
After successfully hitting an enemy creature, you may teleport to any empty square adjacent to them. Your next attack against that creature has advantage.
Dissociation
When you take this subclass at level 3, you may suffer 1d10 force damage to activate a stride as though you had spent cohesion. You may do this once per day. At level 18, you may do this a second time per day, suffering 2d10 force damage the second time.
Swift Reprisal
Whenever an enemy creature misses a melee attack against you while you are dodging, you may use a reaction and end your dodge to immediately make one melee attack against that creature. At level 15, you no longer need to end your dodge.
Sudden Impact
At 10th level, you may teleport up to 15 ft before making an attack action. Your first attack roll applies to all enemies within melee range. You may do this once per short rest. At level 18, you may do this twice per short rest.
Traveler in the Mists
Starting at 15th level, your strides are available whenever battle starts. If you roll initiative and have no cohesion remaining, you regain one use of it.
Flash Guardian
At 18th level, when you take the Dodge action using cohesion, it applies to a number of allies equal to your Constitution modifier (Minimum of 1) within 15 ft. of you.
You should move the “Cohesion” section to before the Strides so we know what the heck your talking about before you talk about it.
Snap Stride is Worded poorly, maybe something like specifying that it uses a bonus action to grant Advantage and immediately after a successful attack against the target until the end of your turn you can move to that “unoccupied space.”
Myst Wounds Sudden Impact, Flash Parry, and Traveler in the Myst are all ridiculously broken. Maybe make them only work is you used a Cohesion that turn.
Ah yeah, I just copied over the format from Battle Master, but it is a little weird that the explanation comes after.
Yeah, that would be a simpler way to write snap stride. Thanks :-)
That's not a bad idea. It would be a shame to basically run out of things to do as soon as your cohesion is gone, but I guess that's more or less how ki and superiority die work, since they're the majority of the decision-making for those classes.
Also, I just completely forgot that Sudden impact was supposed to be limited use.
It would be a shame to basically run out of things to do as soon as your cohesion is gone....
I agree, so I would reword some of them a bit to make them less powerful so you don’t need the resource to balance them. Either that or make everything a little less powerful and then just give more Cohesion. They do need some stuff that doesn’t use Cohesion though, especially at 7th level.
I modified them some, though I haven't done anything with Traveler yet, since that was basically just placeholder. I'm also not sure if I like requiring a Dex save on every attack in Mist Wounds, since fighters get so many, but I'd like there to be a damage or # of attacks boost at level 7.
If I were going to attempt something like this is (and now that I thought about it you better or I might just beat you to it 😜):
I would make the subclass templated off of the Arcane Archer. Then I would raise the number of uses (Cohesion) to Con modifier, and make this subclass’s save DC use Con instead of Str/Dex. It would be slightly more balanced than using the Primary Stat, and it would also fit the theme a little better IMHO because of the Constitution necessary for pulling yourself apart and reforming yourself.
That gives you a framework in which to do your thing. It gives you some guidance for balance by example, and with more than half of the coding already done for you. Just take it from there.
Huh, that's a good idea. I didn't realize it would be so similar in structure. I'll definitely do that, and I agree that Con is a better stat in both senses. Thanks for the help! I'm gonna take a closer look at the archer and see what I can do :-)
Thanks, I appreciate it! Working on it now, lol. I'll paste the new stuff over the op once I finish. I'm pretty new to the coding, and don't have the time to fill out full descriptions yet, but hopefully it'll at least be usable, lol.
Alright, I tried to tweak some stuff to make it more balanced and a little more like the Archer. Course, the archer has choices of special arrow attacks, and those abilities improve, so it's a little different, but hopefully it's still practical. Also, I'm getting an error that says I don't have the appropriate features at the appropriate level, which is an error I got in the last version, as well. I have a feature at level 3, 7, 10, 15, and 18, so I'm a little lost. Someone said the fighter needs a level 5 feature because of a bug, but I added one to test that out, and it didn't help. Not sure what's going on, there.
After you add the features you have to re-save the entire homebrew, it only checks for compliance when the main Save is hit.
Also, friendly advice, DON’T PUBLISH!! At least not yet. You just wrote it, it will take at least a few months of playtesting and editing before it’s ready to publish. I am still playtesting a subclass since befor CV19. Trust me, you can’t edit if it’s published without jumping through hoops. And it leaves... unintended consequences. You and anyone in a campaign with you can use it while you playtest it even though it is not published.
This is looking a lot better. I think Swift Reprisal should use the character’s Reaction, I would make the level 18 boost be that you don’t have to drop the Dodge maybe? Sudden Impact, Traveler in the Mist, and Flash Guardian are looking a lot better.
I would honestly expand on the Strides and use those to replace the Arcane Arrow Options so that a player can customize their character a little bit more through their choices.
Ah, gotcha! And thanks, I'll give it some time before I worry about publishing then. Good advice.
Yeah, that's probably a better way to do Swift Reprisal than having it re-enter dodge. Felt kind of awkward that way. And, taking a reaction makes sense.
So, you're saying I should add some options and allow the player to pick some, but not have them upgrade in power like the arrows do (since the arrow upgrades seem to take the place of some of the features)? That would definitely make it more interactable, which I'm all for. If I did that, how would you recommend going about acquiring more? Or, would you just pick four when you take the subclass and stick with those throughout?
Happy to help. All in all I like the way this is going. I’m a little jealous that I didn’t think of it first. 😜 You’ve come up with a fantastic idea here.
I would have just used the exact progression that the Archer did if I had enough ideas for Strides. You have a Stride with a Misty Step but not, one for Dodge as a BA, one with the Rogue Reaction Dex save thing, and a cool teleport behind the target thing.
Maybe a stride for Disengage, one for a swap places, one for a dash. Make some of them happen after the attack like the disengage, or the Snap Stride like Goku, the Advantage happens after the teleport. So the first attack happens, then the teleport and then the advantage, almost like you can grant yourself flanking for that next attack. But requiring both attacks against the same target might be too restricted? 🤷♂️ That’s what Playtesting is for.
Make some of them happen only on Melee Attacks and some only on Ranged and some on either. That way the player gets another layer of customization without you having to do anything else. For this wispy fast fighter, think some stuff to happen as part of the attack, some to happen as Bonus Actions, some as Reactions. That’s another type of customization without having to do anything else. That’s the beauty of Options like that, all those layers of customization an happen with one simple mechanic. Remember Speed and Mobility are your weapons. Think speed of the wind.
To be honest, a zippy fast and mobile Fighter that uses speed and mobility as their weapon is pretty cool. You could have also used the 2d6 damage boost on an Attack when you use Cohesion. If you want to raise the minimum and average without raising the max damage you could switch it to 3d4. Statistically more reliable, but not necessarily stronger. That would help balance things since these are more mobility than combat/control like the Arcane Archer options.
Replacing the higher level damage boost (the 4d6) with additional stuff like Flash Guardian and the bonus to Sudden Impact was a good move. It makes it unique. If you think they need that damage boost at 18th, then instead of adding dice you can make them turn into d8s, and it’s got the same Max as 4d6, but the average and minimum will be a tiny bit lower, but that will help it be balanced considering that you’re adding Flash Guardian too. 🤷♂️ That’s also what Playtesting is for.
Man, that's a lot of good ideas. I'm gonna have to save that list and try and come up with as many as I can. In regards to the damage bonus on using cohesion, would that be like, "Your next attack after spending a point of cohesion deals 3d4 additional damage." (should it just be whatever the weapon was, or could it be force damage without being too much?). Would that outshine the Battle Master's maneuvers, do you think? I do really like that idea.
Thanks! Yeah, my gut feeling is that the high level features will make up for not having that damage boost, but I'll see if that hold true through testing :)
Ah, I really like that idea. I'm all for extra attacks, lol. I'm gonna try and throw together a list of as many Strides as I can think of, tomorrow. I'll throw them in the op when I have a decent number.
Man, that's a lot of good ideas. I'm gonna have to save that list and try and come up with as many as I can. In regards to the damage bonus on using cohesion, would that be like, "Your next attack after spending a point of cohesion deals 3d4 additional damage." (should it just be whatever the weapon was, or could it be force damage without being too much?). Would that outshine the Battle Master's maneuvers, do you think? I do really like that idea.
Thanks! Yeah, my gut feeling is that the high level features will make up for not having that damage boost, but I'll see if that hold true through testing :)
Ah, I really like that idea. I'm all for extra attacks, lol. I'm gonna try and throw together a list of as many Strides as I can think of, tomorrow. I'll throw them in the op when I have a decent number.
Cool. I also thought of a Stride to use your Cohesion to bamf a creature, like move a friendly adjacent to the target, or move the target?
Hmm, maybe like "When you hit an enemy creature with a melee weapon attack, you may teleport yourself and that creature up to 15 feet. You must still be adjacent to the enemy creature after teleporting."
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Hello! This is a very bare-bones subclass as far as lore and the like. Right now, I'm trying to get a feel for the balance and placement of the abilities. I'd be happy for any feedback. Thanks! (I've replaced the old version with a new one.)
Teleport around and cut stuff.
Strides of Mist
Cohesion: You have 3 cohesion at level 3. You gain one additional cohesion at level 7 and level 10. Cohesion is expended when you make use of one of your strides, which are described below. When you spend a point of cohesion, your next attack deals an additional 3d4 force damage. This lasts until the beginning of your next turn. You regain all of your expended cohesion when you finish a short or long rest.
Strides
You know 3 strides at level 3, each of which expends a single cohesion to use. You gain an additional stride at level 7, 10, 15, and 18. When you spend a point of cohesion, your next attack deals an additional 3d4 force damage. This lasts until the beginning of your next turn.
Beacon Stride
You may teleport to the location of a projectile that you fired this turn and is within 60 feet or less.
Evasive Stride
Take ½ damage on a failed dexterity save, and no damage on a successful dexterity save as reaction
Formless Stride
Teleport 30 feet as a bonus action
Micro Stride
Take the dodge action as a bonus action.
Rescue Stride
As a bonus action, you may teleport yourself and up to two adjacent, friendly creatures a distance of up to 15 feet. You must all still be adjacent after the teleportation.
Revenge Stride
When you make an attack as part of a reaction you can use the stride to make two attacks instead of one.
Single Combat Stride
When you hit an enemy creature with a melee weapon attack, you may teleport yourself and that creature up to 15 feet. You must still be adjacent to the enemy creature after teleporting.
Sprinter's Stride
When you take the dash action, your speed increases by 10 feet and you ignore difficult terrain for that action.
Trick Stride
When you hit an opponent with a ranged attack within 60 feet, you may swap places with them.
Untouchable Stride
If you successfully hit an adjacent, enemy creature with an attack, you may disengage as a bonus action.
Vicious Stride
After successfully hitting an enemy creature, you may teleport to any empty square adjacent to them. Your next attack against that creature has advantage.
Dissociation
When you take this subclass at level 3, you may suffer 1d10 force damage to activate a stride as though you had spent cohesion. You may do this once per day. At level 18, you may do this a second time per day, suffering 2d10 force damage the second time.
Swift Reprisal
Whenever an enemy creature misses a melee attack against you while you are dodging, you may use a reaction and end your dodge to immediately make one melee attack against that creature. At level 15, you no longer need to end your dodge.
Sudden Impact
At 10th level, you may teleport up to 15 ft before making an attack action. Your first attack roll applies to all enemies within melee range. You may do this once per short rest. At level 18, you may do this twice per short rest.
Traveler in the Mists
Starting at 15th level, your strides are available whenever battle starts. If you roll initiative and have no cohesion remaining, you regain one use of it.
Flash Guardian
At 18th level, when you take the Dodge action using cohesion, it applies to a number of allies equal to your Constitution modifier (Minimum of 1) within 15 ft. of you.
You have to explain Cohesion.
You should move the “Cohesion” section to before the Strides so we know what the heck your talking about before you talk about it.
Snap Stride is Worded poorly, maybe something like specifying that it uses a bonus action to grant Advantage and immediately after a successful attack against the target until the end of your turn you can move to that “unoccupied space.”
Myst Wounds Sudden Impact, Flash Parry, and Traveler in the Myst are all ridiculously broken. Maybe make them only work is you used a Cohesion that turn.
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Ah yeah, I just copied over the format from Battle Master, but it is a little weird that the explanation comes after.
Yeah, that would be a simpler way to write snap stride. Thanks :-)
That's not a bad idea. It would be a shame to basically run out of things to do as soon as your cohesion is gone, but I guess that's more or less how ki and superiority die work, since they're the majority of the decision-making for those classes.
Also, I just completely forgot that Sudden impact was supposed to be limited use.
I agree, so I would reword some of them a bit to make them less powerful so you don’t need the resource to balance them. Either that or make everything a little less powerful and then just give more Cohesion. They do need some stuff that doesn’t use Cohesion though, especially at 7th level.
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I modified them some, though I haven't done anything with Traveler yet, since that was basically just placeholder. I'm also not sure if I like requiring a Dex save on every attack in Mist Wounds, since fighters get so many, but I'd like there to be a damage or # of attacks boost at level 7.
If I were going to attempt something like this is (and now that I thought about it you better or I might just beat you to it 😜):
I would make the subclass templated off of the Arcane Archer. Then I would raise the number of uses (Cohesion) to Con modifier, and make this subclass’s save DC use Con instead of Str/Dex. It would be slightly more balanced than using the Primary Stat, and it would also fit the theme a little better IMHO because of the Constitution necessary for pulling yourself apart and reforming yourself.
That gives you a framework in which to do your thing. It gives you some guidance for balance by example, and with more than half of the coding already done for you. Just take it from there.
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Huh, that's a good idea. I didn't realize it would be so similar in structure. I'll definitely do that, and I agree that Con is a better stat in both senses. Thanks for the help! I'm gonna take a closer look at the archer and see what I can do :-)
Don’t take too long with it now. 😉 I could have something halfway ready before bed tonight....
But seriously, if it’s balanced and coded properly I would add it to my collection. If you need help with the coding just lemme know.
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Thanks, I appreciate it! Working on it now, lol. I'll paste the new stuff over the op once I finish. I'm pretty new to the coding, and don't have the time to fill out full descriptions yet, but hopefully it'll at least be usable, lol.
Alright, I tried to tweak some stuff to make it more balanced and a little more like the Archer. Course, the archer has choices of special arrow attacks, and those abilities improve, so it's a little different, but hopefully it's still practical. Also, I'm getting an error that says I don't have the appropriate features at the appropriate level, which is an error I got in the last version, as well. I have a feature at level 3, 7, 10, 15, and 18, so I'm a little lost. Someone said the fighter needs a level 5 feature because of a bug, but I added one to test that out, and it didn't help. Not sure what's going on, there.
After you add the features you have to re-save the entire homebrew, it only checks for compliance when the main Save is hit.
Also, friendly advice, DON’T PUBLISH!! At least not yet. You just wrote it, it will take at least a few months of playtesting and editing before it’s ready to publish. I am still playtesting a subclass since befor CV19. Trust me, you can’t edit if it’s published without jumping through hoops. And it leaves... unintended consequences. You and anyone in a campaign with you can use it while you playtest it even though it is not published.
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This is looking a lot better. I think Swift Reprisal should use the character’s Reaction, I would make the level 18 boost be that you don’t have to drop the Dodge maybe? Sudden Impact, Traveler in the Mist, and Flash Guardian are looking a lot better.
I would honestly expand on the Strides and use those to replace the Arcane Arrow Options so that a player can customize their character a little bit more through their choices.
This is starting to look pretty good.
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Ah, gotcha! And thanks, I'll give it some time before I worry about publishing then. Good advice.
Yeah, that's probably a better way to do Swift Reprisal than having it re-enter dodge. Felt kind of awkward that way. And, taking a reaction makes sense.
So, you're saying I should add some options and allow the player to pick some, but not have them upgrade in power like the arrows do (since the arrow upgrades seem to take the place of some of the features)? That would definitely make it more interactable, which I'm all for. If I did that, how would you recommend going about acquiring more? Or, would you just pick four when you take the subclass and stick with those throughout?
Thanks! You've been a huge help :-)
Happy to help. All in all I like the way this is going. I’m a little jealous that I didn’t think of it first. 😜 You’ve come up with a fantastic idea here.
I would have just used the exact progression that the Archer did if I had enough ideas for Strides. You have a Stride with a Misty Step but not, one for Dodge as a BA, one with the Rogue Reaction Dex save thing, and a cool teleport behind the target thing.
Maybe a stride for Disengage, one for a swap places, one for a dash. Make some of them happen after the attack like the disengage, or the Snap Stride like Goku, the Advantage happens after the teleport. So the first attack happens, then the teleport and then the advantage, almost like you can grant yourself flanking for that next attack. But requiring both attacks against the same target might be too restricted? 🤷♂️ That’s what Playtesting is for.
Make some of them happen only on Melee Attacks and some only on Ranged and some on either. That way the player gets another layer of customization without you having to do anything else. For this wispy fast fighter, think some stuff to happen as part of the attack, some to happen as Bonus Actions, some as Reactions. That’s another type of customization without having to do anything else. That’s the beauty of Options like that, all those layers of customization an happen with one simple mechanic. Remember Speed and Mobility are your weapons. Think speed of the wind.
To be honest, a zippy fast and mobile Fighter that uses speed and mobility as their weapon is pretty cool. You could have also used the 2d6 damage boost on an Attack when you use Cohesion. If you want to raise the minimum and average without raising the max damage you could switch it to 3d4. Statistically more reliable, but not necessarily stronger. That would help balance things since these are more mobility than combat/control like the Arcane Archer options.
Replacing the higher level damage boost (the 4d6) with additional stuff like Flash Guardian and the bonus to Sudden Impact was a good move. It makes it unique. If you think they need that damage boost at 18th, then instead of adding dice you can make them turn into d8s, and it’s got the same Max as 4d6, but the average and minimum will be a tiny bit lower, but that will help it be balanced considering that you’re adding Flash Guardian too. 🤷♂️ That’s also what Playtesting is for.
I’m excited to see what all you come up with.
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At what level do you get Strides of Mist and Swift Reprisal? Could you please clarify?
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Homebrew: Magic items, Subclasses
Strides is 3rd, Swift Reprisal is 7th.
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Maybe make a Stride where when you make an attack as part of a reaction you can use the stride to make two attacks instead of one.
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Thanks a lot :D
Man, that's a lot of good ideas. I'm gonna have to save that list and try and come up with as many as I can. In regards to the damage bonus on using cohesion, would that be like, "Your next attack after spending a point of cohesion deals 3d4 additional damage." (should it just be whatever the weapon was, or could it be force damage without being too much?). Would that outshine the Battle Master's maneuvers, do you think? I do really like that idea.
Thanks! Yeah, my gut feeling is that the high level features will make up for not having that damage boost, but I'll see if that hold true through testing :)
Ah, I really like that idea. I'm all for extra attacks, lol. I'm gonna try and throw together a list of as many Strides as I can think of, tomorrow. I'll throw them in the op when I have a decent number.
Cool. I also thought of a Stride to use your Cohesion to bamf a creature, like move a friendly adjacent to the target, or move the target?
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Hmm, maybe like "When you hit an enemy creature with a melee weapon attack, you may teleport yourself and that creature up to 15 feet. You must still be adjacent to the enemy creature after teleporting."