Sometimes all you want is to drive an awesome supercar. Or pilot a strange flying machine that's totally different on the inside. Or have a giant snail outfitted with lasers whose shell you live in. Congratulations! The Caravanner is a subclass designed to let you make and handle your own custom vehicle. Not only do you get to make an incredible murder machine you run over your enemies with, the same vehicle serves as a warm home for you and your party. Enjoy the luxury of a warm meal and a soft bed in wastelands surrounded by undead, deep underwater where no light reaches, or even in the vast emptiness of space with not a single living being in sight. Travel has always been a troublesome affair for many a party, whether because of lack of things to do or even an inability to think of anything interesting. The Caravanner gives you an easy way to introduce Downtime into your adventures, as you can spend your time in a productive manner!
Thank you for your time. I appreciate any and all comments you deign to give, and I hope you enjoy the subclass! All the buttons and character sheet coding should be working properly, but if you find something broken or any other problem, please bring it to my attention. Click on the link below to go to the Caravanner and make sure to vote on the poll!
I love the concept. Modifications that occurred to me giving it a quick once over would be to change domain spells of healing word to unseen servant and mass healing word to tiny servant. And then adding in some higher level improvements for some of the features, like making the size and amenities of the Arcane Caravan feature small at first but increase at certain levels. Same with Movement Components, adding in Sea and Sky at later levels. Also, allowing use of Tinker Tools as well as Carpenter Tools is something that popped to mind.
For your first concern, my initial thoughts were actually alarm and create food and water, respectively, but I thought a bit to how this would play out in combat. Since you would need to spend an action to pilot your caravan, there would be a lot of turns where your bonus action is wasted. On a class like the Artificer, you'd notice that a lot of their action economy gets filled up across the class and subclasses. I tried to mimic that by giving good bonus action spells to the subclass, and ones that are thematic, in a way. After all, healing on a support-tank makes sense. There's definitely room for thought, though.
Secondly, I want to avoid any size changes because its a vehicle and needs to be able to be ridden. The smallest I'd be willing to make it is large, but even then, I like the idea of a huge vehicle better because its a 3x3 square and a 1x1 character token fits perfectly in the center. As for movement components, thats one way to do it, but this way I'm nerfing it so it isn't super op.
Finally, all the artificer subclasses only use their respective artisan's tools to affect their subclass features. Therefore, I see no reason not to do the same.
Also, thank you! I put a lot of effort into snippet coding and tooltips all around. I referenced the battle smith and artillerist, if you couldn't tell. It really helps in coding on dndbeyond.
Regarding the size, I meant more the interior space. Like starting out tiny hut size and working up to magnificent mansion. Or maybe give 1 free casting of those a day, starting with alarm?
Regarding that, that's something that the original subclass was doing. However, with some thought, I realized that the average player and even DM would hardly keep track of space in the first place. With the occasional exceptional circumstance, such logistics are, I feel, something that would be grouped with the likes of an adventurer's monthly lifestyle expense or refilling one's waterskin. Things that are something that can be kept track of, but rarely do. It's easier to give a player a large enough amount of space so they could store most things without going into too specific examples. In the case of a rare, say, group of commoners, then the DM could use their own discretion to determine how exactly the player would split up the space within the caravan.
Regardless, thanks for the comment! Now that some time has passed, do you happen to have any other things you took note of on a second look?
This is very nit-picky, and more a matter of exposition than game mechanic design, but you should probably switch the display order of Weapon Components and Arcane Caravan, seeing as the former references the latter.
I love the fact that it can be used for the spelljammer setting without modification. If you don't mind, I'll suggest it to players in my Sultanate of the Seven-Score Cisterns game, since caravanserai are a big part of the plot.
You're totally right! Also, those nit-picky details are exactly the kind of things I'm looking for (on top of any mechanical suggestions).
I referenced both Spelljammer and Waterdeep since those are the only two official sourcebooks that provide any sort of statblocks and rules on vehicle combat, so I'm glad you noticed that! However, since I didn't put in Damage Thresholds or separate Hit Points for different parts, I will give a word of warning: I'm not super sure how tanky the vehicle is. It does have decent HP and AC, but I'm not super sure how tanky it actually is.
Also, the vehicle is Huge in size, so any dungeon crawling can be difficult because of the high possibilities of narrow corridors. A player can shrink it down to make it Tiny in size, but you may want to consider changing the size to Large if said circumstances apply. The idea in combat is supposed to be that the player would be piloting the Arcane Caravan from the cockpit, which is located on the outside. Like a mount, the player token would be placed on top of the vehicle token to illustrate this, and a Huge token is much simpler than a Large token in determining the exact location since you can just place the token in the center of the vehicle. If it wasn't obvious, I'd also like to say the cockpit provides no mechanical effect (unless DM's discretion) besides making sure the player can still be targeted by enemies.
Other than that, you may do as you wish! In fact, thank you for holding my Homebrew in such high regard! If you have any case-by-case concerns or questions, feel free to contact me at any time.
This is very nit-picky, and more a matter of exposition than game mechanic design, but you should probably switch the display order of Weapon Components and Arcane Caravan, seeing as the former references the latter.
I love the fact that it can be used for the spelljammer setting without modification. If you don't mind, I'll suggest it to players in my Sultanate of the Seven-Score Cisterns game, since caravanserai are a big part of the plot.
This is the updated caravanner! There's some QoL changes, language fixes, and random cleaning up. I hope you enjoy!
INSPIRED BY: PosTavern's Caravaneer
Sometimes all you want is to drive an awesome supercar. Or pilot a strange flying machine that's totally different on the inside. Or have a giant snail outfitted with lasers whose shell you live in. Congratulations! The Caravanner is a subclass designed to let you make and handle your own custom vehicle. Not only do you get to make an incredible murder machine you run over your enemies with, the same vehicle serves as a warm home for you and your party. Enjoy the luxury of a warm meal and a soft bed in wastelands surrounded by undead, deep underwater where no light reaches, or even in the vast emptiness of space with not a single living being in sight. Travel has always been a troublesome affair for many a party, whether because of lack of things to do or even an inability to think of anything interesting. The Caravanner gives you an easy way to introduce Downtime into your adventures, as you can spend your time in a productive manner!
Thank you for your time. I appreciate any and all comments you deign to give, and I hope you enjoy the subclass! All the buttons and character sheet coding should be working properly, but if you find something broken or any other problem, please bring it to my attention. Click on the link below to go to the Caravanner and make sure to vote on the poll!
CARAVANNER: https://www.dndbeyond.com/subclasses/1632615-caravanner (updated)
I love the concept. Modifications that occurred to me giving it a quick once over would be to change domain spells of healing word to unseen servant and mass healing word to tiny servant. And then adding in some higher level improvements for some of the features, like making the size and amenities of the Arcane Caravan feature small at first but increase at certain levels. Same with Movement Components, adding in Sea and Sky at later levels. Also, allowing use of Tinker Tools as well as Carpenter Tools is something that popped to mind.
PS Very solid coding and organizing.
Thank you for your advice!
For your first concern, my initial thoughts were actually alarm and create food and water, respectively, but I thought a bit to how this would play out in combat. Since you would need to spend an action to pilot your caravan, there would be a lot of turns where your bonus action is wasted. On a class like the Artificer, you'd notice that a lot of their action economy gets filled up across the class and subclasses. I tried to mimic that by giving good bonus action spells to the subclass, and ones that are thematic, in a way. After all, healing on a support-tank makes sense. There's definitely room for thought, though.
Secondly, I want to avoid any size changes because its a vehicle and needs to be able to be ridden. The smallest I'd be willing to make it is large, but even then, I like the idea of a huge vehicle better because its a 3x3 square and a 1x1 character token fits perfectly in the center. As for movement components, thats one way to do it, but this way I'm nerfing it so it isn't super op.
Finally, all the artificer subclasses only use their respective artisan's tools to affect their subclass features. Therefore, I see no reason not to do the same.
Also, thank you! I put a lot of effort into snippet coding and tooltips all around. I referenced the battle smith and artillerist, if you couldn't tell. It really helps in coding on dndbeyond.
Regarding the size, I meant more the interior space. Like starting out tiny hut size and working up to magnificent mansion. Or maybe give 1 free casting of those a day, starting with alarm?
Regarding that, that's something that the original subclass was doing. However, with some thought, I realized that the average player and even DM would hardly keep track of space in the first place. With the occasional exceptional circumstance, such logistics are, I feel, something that would be grouped with the likes of an adventurer's monthly lifestyle expense or refilling one's waterskin. Things that are something that can be kept track of, but rarely do. It's easier to give a player a large enough amount of space so they could store most things without going into too specific examples. In the case of a rare, say, group of commoners, then the DM could use their own discretion to determine how exactly the player would split up the space within the caravan.
Regardless, thanks for the comment! Now that some time has passed, do you happen to have any other things you took note of on a second look?
This is very nit-picky, and more a matter of exposition than game mechanic design, but you should probably switch the display order of Weapon Components and Arcane Caravan, seeing as the former references the latter.
I love the fact that it can be used for the spelljammer setting without modification. If you don't mind, I'll suggest it to players in my Sultanate of the Seven-Score Cisterns game, since caravanserai are a big part of the plot.
You're totally right! Also, those nit-picky details are exactly the kind of things I'm looking for (on top of any mechanical suggestions).
I referenced both Spelljammer and Waterdeep since those are the only two official sourcebooks that provide any sort of statblocks and rules on vehicle combat, so I'm glad you noticed that! However, since I didn't put in Damage Thresholds or separate Hit Points for different parts, I will give a word of warning: I'm not super sure how tanky the vehicle is. It does have decent HP and AC, but I'm not super sure how tanky it actually is.
Also, the vehicle is Huge in size, so any dungeon crawling can be difficult because of the high possibilities of narrow corridors. A player can shrink it down to make it Tiny in size, but you may want to consider changing the size to Large if said circumstances apply. The idea in combat is supposed to be that the player would be piloting the Arcane Caravan from the cockpit, which is located on the outside. Like a mount, the player token would be placed on top of the vehicle token to illustrate this, and a Huge token is much simpler than a Large token in determining the exact location since you can just place the token in the center of the vehicle. If it wasn't obvious, I'd also like to say the cockpit provides no mechanical effect (unless DM's discretion) besides making sure the player can still be targeted by enemies.
Other than that, you may do as you wish! In fact, thank you for holding my Homebrew in such high regard! If you have any case-by-case concerns or questions, feel free to contact me at any time.
This is the updated caravanner! There's some QoL changes, language fixes, and random cleaning up. I hope you enjoy!
https://www.dndbeyond.com/subclasses/1632615-caravanner