Pretty much what the title says. I created two homebrew items for one of my characters but I have no idea how balanced it is. If you were to make changes to this keep in mind I'd like it balanced for all levels, ergo it's not broken at lv 1 and not useless at lv 20. or get as close to this as you can. any critique is appreciated.
🎶Oops, I did it again! I played with your heart, got lost in the game! Oh baby, baby! Oops, you think I'm in love, That I'm sent from above, I'm not that innocent!
The Orb of Discord is an item that attaches to a creature and helps deplete its lifeforce. The orb is an etched crystal globe about 10 inches in diameter. When used, it grows to about 20 inches in diameter, and mist swirls inside it.
While attuned to the orb, you may use your action to expend one charge to target one creature you can see. The orb attaches to that creature, the Creature cannot make a Dex saving throw. At the beginning of its turn the creature can attempt a constitution saving throw (DC15) to be rid of it. If the saving throw is successful, or the creature is out of sight of the item owner for the whole of its next turn, the orb detaches and returns to the owner.
A creature that the orb has been attached to suffers 1d4 additional [insert a damage type here - I suggest Psychic] damage to any damage dealt to it until the orb returns to its owner or the owner is killed.
The orb has 7 charges and regains 1d4 + 3 expended charges daily at dawn.
The Orb can only be attached to one creature at a time.
The Orb of Harmony is an item that attaches to a creature and helps restore its lifeforce. The orb is an etched crystal globe about 10 inches in diameter. When used, it grows to about 20 inches in diameter, and mist swirls inside it.
While attuned to the orb, you may use your action to expend one charge totarget one willing creature you can see. The orb attaches to that creature. At the beginning of its turn the creature regains 1d4 hit points. If the creature is out of sight of the item owner for the whole of its next turn, the orb detaches and returns to the owner. The orb's owner may choose to recall the orb at any time, requiring no action.
The orb has 7 charges and regains 1d4 + 3 expended charges daily at dawn.
The Orb can only be attached to one creature at a time.
The Orb of Discord remains powerful throughout the entire game, as it scales upwards with multiattack, but also with certain spells - it comes close to doubling the damage of [/spell]magic missile[/spell] and this is a bit of a problematic combination. A 3rd level Magic Missile will deal an automatic (30)10d4+5 damage instead of the expected 18 (5d4+5) damage. If your party has a caster who can cast MM then expect them to use this as a combination consistently each fight.
The Orb of Harmony is fairly weak after a certain level - 2.5 healing per turn won't matter much if you're taking attacks for 18 (3d8+5) from a giant, say, or a 91 point breath weapon attack from a dragon.
I've assumed that these items require an action to use. If they aren't intended to spend an action on it, then these suddenly rocket in power if they're free to use.
Thank you so much, your edits are wonderful, I will incorporate that when I create the next versions. I would like to ask what changes you would make to balance their healing/ damage, also what's your opinion on their charges: too many total charges, too many charges regained each day, just right, not enough, etc?
Also I can't beleive I never said anything about them costing an action. Yes, they will count as an action. And the discord orb will do psychic damage as that does make the most sense.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
🎶Oops, I did it again! I played with your heart, got lost in the game! Oh baby, baby! Oops, you think I'm in love, That I'm sent from above, I'm not that innocent!
A good question to ask yourself is: do you want the monk who owns the item to use the item every fight for the rest of the game after they gain this item? If the damage and healing bonuses scale really well, then they may well decide to always use them. If they don't scale well, they'll never use them.
Giving up a whole action to use the Discord orb is only worthwhile for long fights, as that bonus damage needs to become greater than if the monk had just started swinging. I think that the best thing to do is see how it goes when they first get the item and consider scaling it upwards as the game goes along. I do this by creating new versions of the up-scaling item each time I need it to power up. Generally I think 1d4 is fair for the damage, but maybe I'd increase Harmony's healing to 1d6 (making it akin to Healing Spirit).
The Orb of Harmony is fairly weak after a certain level - 2.5 healing per turn won't matter much if you're taking attacks for 18 (3d8+5) from a giant, say, or a 91 point breath weapon attack from a dragon.
Actually it's quite powerful; it heals more per turn than the high level spell Regenerate, with no limits on the healing, meaning it will auto-revive you when unconscious, and can fully heal a character for only a single charge (and sufficient time). While it doesn't scale up it doesn't really matter, as parties have more ways to heal themselves at later levels, but being able to revive automatically is a lot less common. Because it can work over time, and no-one is going to want to roll every turn for it over 100 turns or whatever, it might make sense to make it a fixed amount (e.g- 2 hp per turn), but with an option to instead do a one-off large heal (4d8+8) and detach immediately when you need to heal someone quickly?
I do have two things I'd like to add:
First, you'll want to fix the attunement descriptions for these items as you've got a sentence within a sentence (the system adds "requires attunement by a " at the start for you). Personally I'd just set the attunement to "Monk" and then add the part about three long rests to the item description, e.g- "To attune to this item, you must spend three long rests in its presence, attuning to it during the third long rest".
Second, it feels like they should have some kind of time limit; while the Orb of Discord should see multiple uses as you throw it at multiple enemies, the Orb of Harmony seems less likely to use up charges unless you need to pass it around (but given the time it takes you may not want to do this). I'd maybe have them both detach automatically after 10 minutes so there's a limit and you can't just wear the Orb of Harmony all day just in case.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
thanks for your thoughts, I guess this wasn't specified but the orbs are for my pc monk, but now that we have damage/healing balancing out of the way do you have any thoughts on their charges, i think they might be a bit too much but idk
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
🎶Oops, I did it again! I played with your heart, got lost in the game! Oh baby, baby! Oops, you think I'm in love, That I'm sent from above, I'm not that innocent!
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Pretty much what the title says. I created two homebrew items for one of my characters but I have no idea how balanced it is. If you were to make changes to this keep in mind I'd like it balanced for all levels, ergo it's not broken at lv 1 and not useless at lv 20. or get as close to this as you can. any critique is appreciated.
link to the items in question:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/1371489-orb-of-discord
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/1371612-orb-of-harmony
(Yes I homebrewed Zenyatta from OW into DnD)
🎶Oops, I did it again!
I played with your heart, got lost in the game!
Oh baby, baby!
Oops, you think I'm in love,
That I'm sent from above,
I'm not that innocent!
First up, I'd write them as follows:
The Orb of Discord remains powerful throughout the entire game, as it scales upwards with multiattack, but also with certain spells - it comes close to doubling the damage of [/spell]magic missile[/spell] and this is a bit of a problematic combination. A 3rd level Magic Missile will deal an automatic (30)10d4+5 damage instead of the expected 18 (5d4+5) damage. If your party has a caster who can cast MM then expect them to use this as a combination consistently each fight.
The Orb of Harmony is fairly weak after a certain level - 2.5 healing per turn won't matter much if you're taking attacks for 18 (3d8+5) from a giant, say, or a 91 point breath weapon attack from a dragon.
I've assumed that these items require an action to use. If they aren't intended to spend an action on it, then these suddenly rocket in power if they're free to use.
Thank you so much, your edits are wonderful, I will incorporate that when I create the next versions. I would like to ask what changes you would make to balance their healing/ damage, also what's your opinion on their charges: too many total charges, too many charges regained each day, just right, not enough, etc?
Also I can't beleive I never said anything about them costing an action. Yes, they will count as an action. And the discord orb will do psychic damage as that does make the most sense.
🎶Oops, I did it again!
I played with your heart, got lost in the game!
Oh baby, baby!
Oops, you think I'm in love,
That I'm sent from above,
I'm not that innocent!
A good question to ask yourself is: do you want the monk who owns the item to use the item every fight for the rest of the game after they gain this item? If the damage and healing bonuses scale really well, then they may well decide to always use them. If they don't scale well, they'll never use them.
Giving up a whole action to use the Discord orb is only worthwhile for long fights, as that bonus damage needs to become greater than if the monk had just started swinging. I think that the best thing to do is see how it goes when they first get the item and consider scaling it upwards as the game goes along. I do this by creating new versions of the up-scaling item each time I need it to power up. Generally I think 1d4 is fair for the damage, but maybe I'd increase Harmony's healing to 1d6 (making it akin to Healing Spirit).
Actually it's quite powerful; it heals more per turn than the high level spell Regenerate, with no limits on the healing, meaning it will auto-revive you when unconscious, and can fully heal a character for only a single charge (and sufficient time). While it doesn't scale up it doesn't really matter, as parties have more ways to heal themselves at later levels, but being able to revive automatically is a lot less common. Because it can work over time, and no-one is going to want to roll every turn for it over 100 turns or whatever, it might make sense to make it a fixed amount (e.g- 2 hp per turn), but with an option to instead do a one-off large heal (4d8+8) and detach immediately when you need to heal someone quickly?
I do have two things I'd like to add:
First, you'll want to fix the attunement descriptions for these items as you've got a sentence within a sentence (the system adds "requires attunement by a " at the start for you). Personally I'd just set the attunement to "Monk" and then add the part about three long rests to the item description, e.g- "To attune to this item, you must spend three long rests in its presence, attuning to it during the third long rest".
Second, it feels like they should have some kind of time limit; while the Orb of Discord should see multiple uses as you throw it at multiple enemies, the Orb of Harmony seems less likely to use up charges unless you need to pass it around (but given the time it takes you may not want to do this). I'd maybe have them both detach automatically after 10 minutes so there's a limit and you can't just wear the Orb of Harmony all day just in case.
Just some thoughts/ideas anyway.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
thanks for your thoughts, I guess this wasn't specified but the orbs are for my pc monk, but now that we have damage/healing balancing out of the way do you have any thoughts on their charges, i think they might be a bit too much but idk
🎶Oops, I did it again!
I played with your heart, got lost in the game!
Oh baby, baby!
Oops, you think I'm in love,
That I'm sent from above,
I'm not that innocent!