I've been slowly working on revising my homebrews, with this being one of the first I wanted to tackle. So I'm curious what you guys think about what I've done so far. In short, I'm still trying to focus on the duality of healer and damage dealer, but I'm also trying to keep the "pool of dice" mechanic without it being too much. So I hope you enjoy what you like and any suggestion or comment is welcome.
At the moment, my biggest curiosity is what do you think about the snippet at the end of the 5th level feature? Specifically the snippet regarding the ability to allow the player to change poison damage to either acid or necrotic damage. The reason I'm curious is I'm trying to find a way to work around the issues with poison damage without having to relying on the stereotypical "ignore X resistance/immunity" feature.
A Plague Doctor is an artificer who specializes in medicine, poisons, and disease. Most Plague Doctors spend their time trying to aid those who've developed an illness derived from a poison or disease. If it looks that it would be unlikely for the individual to recover from the illness, the Plague Doctor may offer the patient a poison to end their suffering, or they might ask the patient if they would willing to spend their remaining time to learn as much as possible about the illness.
While there are different methodologies between healers, when it comes to Plague Doctors the methods vary immensely since most Plague Doctors aren't fully practiced healers, or trained physicians. This has led many unsavory individuals to become Plague Doctors as a means to con people of their coin, to practice experimental medical procedures, or even to find willing participants to test their poisons. Which has led many people to become hesitant, if not outright distrustful towards Plague Doctors, even if their intentions are good.
Tool Proficiency
3rd-level Plague Doctor feature
You gain proficiency in either a herbalism kit or poisoner's kit. If you already have proficient in either tool, you gain proficiency with one other type of artisan’s tools of your choice.
Plague Doctor Spells
3rd-level Plague Doctor feature
You always have certain spells prepared after you reach particular levels in this class, as shown in the Plague Doctor Spells table. These spells count as artificer spells for you, but they don’t count against the number of artificer spells you prepare.
You've built a resilience towards different poisons and disease. You gain resistance against poison damage and have advantage on saving throws against poison and disease.
Esoteric Concoctions
3rd-level Plague Doctor feature
You've created a collection of concoctions made to either aid those in need or to harm your foes. These concoctions are represented by a pool of d6s, known as concoction dice, that you spend as either a Healing Vapor, Deadly Toxin, or Cleansing Salve. The number of dice in the pool equal to your proficiency bonus. The concoction die increases to a d8 when you reach 9th level in this class.
Healing Vapor. As a bonus action, you can heal one creature you can see within 60 feet of you by spending dice from the pool. Roll the number of spent dice and the creature regains a number of hit points equal to the result.
Deadly Toxin. As a bonus action, you apply a poison to a weapon that deals piercing or slashing damage by spending dice from the pool. When a creature is hit by a weapon attack with the poison, it must succeed on a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, roll 1 + the number of spent concoction dice and add the result as poison damage to the attack or half as much on a successful save. The poison lasts until either it damages a creature a number of times equal to intelligence modifier (minimum of 1) or you finish a short or long rest. The poison maybe also be removed from the weapon as a bonus action.
Cleansing Salve. As a bonus action, you touch a creature that you can see and spend a die from the pool. If the creature is afflicted by a poison or disease, you neutralize the effect. If the creature is affected by more than one poison or disease, you neutralize one that you know is present, or you neutralize one at random.
Your pool regains all expended dice when you finish a short or long rest, provided that you have either a herbalism kit or poisoner's kit on your person.
Virulent Edge
5th-level Plague Doctor feature
Once per turn when you hit a creature with a weapon that deals piercing or slashing damage, you can deal additional poison damage equal to your concoction die. When you reach 15th level, the damage increases by one additional concoction die.
In addition, when you make a damage roll that deals poison damage, you can choose to deal Acid or Necrotic damage instead.
Black Market Ingredients
9th-level Plague Doctor feature
Acquiring rare ingredients through various means has granted your Esoteric Concoctions feature the following benefits;
When a creature regains hit points from Healing Vapor, it can regain additional hit points equal to your intelligence modifier.
When a creature fails the saving throw for Deadly Toxin, the creature also becomes poisoned until the end of their next turn.
When you use Cleansing Salve on a creature, it gains resistance against poison damage and has advantage on saving throws against poison and disease for 10 minutes.
Master Plagueworks
15th-level Plague Doctor feature
You've developed a natural immunity to various kinds of poisons and disease. Enabling you to hone your craft and granting you the following benefits;
You are immune to poison and disease.
You can cast Harm and Heal without expending a spell slot, and without preparing the spell, provided you use a herbalism kit or poisoner's kit as the spellcasting focus. Once you cast either spell with this feature, you can’t cast that spell with it again until you finish a long rest.
I've made a number of grammatical edits, and after some more thinking I found another part that I'm curious what you guys think. Regarding the snippet at 9th level, "Your pool now regains all expended dice when you finish a short or long rest," I'm curious if you guys think that this is a bit much and would need to be toned done to something like, "at the end of a short rest, your pool regains a number of dice equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of one die)." Or possibly something a once per day after a short rest, you regain a number of dice equal to half your artificer level.
I think this subclass is interesting. Don't know how much you've changed since posting but I'll give you some feedback nonetheless.
3rd lvl is certainly stacked with features, even if two of them are the standard fair Tool Proficiency, and Additional Spells. Maybe making Plague Resistance a 5th lvl, but over all it's not that dire of a change. I assume the Fog Cloud being in parentheses means it is an optional replacement for Ray of Sickness, not something that other spell lists do though. So I think cutting one out can make it easier a player to read and not have to make a choice with a feature that is often just a given.
The dice pool idea is cool and well implemented in Experimental Concoctions, plus limiting how many dice can be used at one is a smart way for keeping players from hoarding it and then piling it all into one heal/hit.
Poisonous Edge is tricky, as I see what you intend with the swapping of damage types. I would suggest having it be a feature that takes time to prepare. 10 minutes, 1 hour, your choice. That way the player can choose which damage type they will be applying, instead of just having it happen on a whim. This helps flavor the subclass with more of the preparation/tactile smarts aspect that makes the Artificer interesting. This would also give both the herbalism and poisoner's kit some actual meaning in the class beyond a spell focus.
For Black Market, maybe have the poisoning be ineffective for 24 hours after they finally succeed. Flavor it as building immunity. As for the last bullet point there, I think reducing it to recovering half rounded down is the best solution.
I think this subclass is interesting. Don't know how much you've changed since posting but I'll give you some feedback nonetheless.
3rd lvl is certainly stacked with features, even if two of them are the standard fair Tool Proficiency, and Additional Spells. Maybe making Plague Resistance a 5th lvl, but over all it's not that dire of a change. I assume the Fog Cloud being in parentheses means it is an optional replacement for Ray of Sickness, not something that other spell lists do though. So I think cutting one out can make it easier a player to read and not have to make a choice with a feature that is often just a given.
The dice pool idea is cool and well implemented in Experimental Concoctions, plus limiting how many dice can be used at one is a smart way for keeping players from hoarding it and then piling it all into one heal/hit.
Poisonous Edge is tricky, as I see what you intend with the swapping of damage types. I would suggest having it be a feature that takes time to prepare. 10 minutes, 1 hour, your choice. That way the player can choose which damage type they will be applying, instead of just having it happen on a whim. This helps flavor the subclass with more of the preparation/tactile smarts aspect that makes the Artificer interesting. This would also give both the herbalism and poisoner's kit some actual meaning in the class beyond a spell focus.
For Black Market, maybe have the poisoning be ineffective for 24 hours after they finally succeed. Flavor it as building immunity. As for the last bullet point there, I think reducing it to recovering half rounded down is the best solution.
15th feature is good, no suggestions there.
I've made other changes after talking with my group more (the most up to date version to be current a few minutes after posting this), so I'll try to respond to the things that stuck because there were a few changes that might cause your opinion to change. The reason Fog cloud is in parentheses is because I intended for the spell to be ray of sickness but due of DDB's homebrew restrictions, if I were to make this subclass public I would have to change Ray of sickness. So I thought that fog cloud was a good alternative spell due to it not only being a nonartificer spell (not going to rant about that), but it also keeps with the idea of creating mists, smokescreens, and other types of fogs that are part of this subclass. Also I do like the idea of on a success they're immune that poison for the next 24 hours, I'll look into that in the next update.
cool, glad to hear you got feed back at some point earlier. I'm familiar with the problem of not being able to share anything that isn't a basic rules spell. Yeah the 24 hour stuff makes it easy as a dm not to constantly be adding the effect on and off while in a fight. Im interested to see how the 5th lvl feature got changed.
Yeah after discussing it with my group, we've decided to leave the 5th level as is because poison damage is in a weird spot in 5e. Simply put, most creatures either have no resistance to poison or are immune, and as character fights harder creatures the more likely it would be simply immune. While using an "ignore immunity" feature is an alternative, we opted not to because we felt those kinds of features are over used and in other parts of 5e certain more potent poisons do use acid and necrotic damage.
With that said, I could add the "provided that you have either a herbalism kit or poisoner's kit on your person" like I did with experimental concoctions, but not sure how much of a difference that would make. I could also try something like, when you finish a short or long rest, choose either acid or necrotic that can be substituted for poison damage, but I'm still not sure if that would make much of a difference either because then it has the same issue as the Order of scribes wizard. Is switching out damage types strong? Yes, but it isn't game breaking and becomes dull feature after awhile. Sorry if this got a little ranty and I don't mean this to come across the wrong way. it's just after talking about something for awhile you can form a strong opinion on that topic.
I actually really like this subclass, I think the flavor is neat! The best feedback I can offer is that is seems to be pulling itself in a few too many directions. Is this subclass supposed to be support focused or damage focused or do you want to keep the versatility as a selling point? Let me explain.
Your current set up allows you to be able to deal similar damage to a single Rogue's sneak attack, albeit with a different set of restrictions. Poison damage and the need to expend dice definitely keeps you well below a Rogue's DPR over the course of, let's say, a 5 round encounter, but you don't need advantage to augment your weapon attacks to deal your damage. In my opinion, this keeps your damage output really quite balanced overall, but it does suggest to the player that this is a fairly martial subclass.
On the other hand, you have a lot of support/spellcaster type abilities. Healing Mist is extremely similar to the Celestial Warlock's Healing Light feature except with no limit on the number of dice you can expend in a single use. I think this makes the ability quite a bit more powerful at later levels, especially since the dice scale quite well. In addition, Cleansing Salve is extremely strong. The ability to have an additional lesser restorations equal to half of your artificer level is quite powerful. You are essentially adding quite a few extra 2nd level spell slots to your subclass per short or long rest.
All of these abilities become even stronger at 9th level, allowing you excel at healing and damage with little to no trade-offs other than expending an additional pool of resources you get for free every short or long rest. The Celestial Warlock's Healing Light is a good feature in power and usability because it's flexible, reliable, and allows you to overcome the shortcomings of Warlock spell slots, but it doesn't scale as well into later levels.
I would keep the power of your abilities focused towards damage or support, however, if you want to keep the flexibility of your die pool abilities (and I think you probably would to preserve the duality of the subclasses' flavor), I would add a cap to Healing Mist per use and actually remove Cleansing Salve altogether, as you already have access to lesser restoration as an Artificer. I think with those changes Black Market Ingredients could stay as is (of course removing the bonus to Cleansing Salves), and I think your 15th level feature is fine as is.
In regards to Poisonous Edge, I actually quite like the flexibility offered here. My only change would be that you choose from among Acid, Necrotic, or Poison damage whenever you finish a short or long rest and must keep that damage type until you make another short or long rest or, at least, spend 10 minutes changing your equipment. I think the flavor of sitting down and reworking your concoctions works really well with the artificer themes and still forces the player to make some decisions based on information gathering and setting context.
I actually really like this subclass, I think the flavor is neat! The best feedback I can offer is that is seems to be pulling itself in a few too many directions. Is this subclass supposed to be support focused or damage focused or do you want to keep the versatility as a selling point? Let me explain.
In short, this subclass I do intend for the subclass to have access to damage and healing. This way a player can focus down on the idea of the "good" plague doctor who goes around trying to cure those in need, or they can focus on the damage as a poisoner class, or even being a more complex with a mix of the two. At the moment, I do intend to do another round of nerfs, currently thinking of reducing the pool size to proficiency bonus or/and possibly even reducing the die size by 1 (starting as d4 ending as d10). Which I'm going to test how reducing the die size by 1 works at first but then reduce the pool size if needed.
Healing Mist. Currently there is a cap of 1 die per use specifically by stating, "by spending A DIE from the pool" but I could clarify it as "by spending one die from the pool," but I didn't think that it was necessary at the time.
Cleansing Salve. This was the most recent addition to the subclass. I do like the idea that the plague doctor has a way to cure poison and disease that's not tied to spell slots, but right now it's just a lesser version but also a combination of Lesser restoration and protection from poison, with this version only curing poison and disease and not the other other conditions. Plus I'm also thinking of requiring the player to expend two dice instead of one and see how that works.
Poisonous edge. Sorry are you referring to the divine smite like part of poisonous edge or the replacement damage part of poisonous edge? Because if it's the former, then it's not needed because it works with the damage replacement part of the same feature.
In regards to Poisonous Edge, I was referring specifically the damage replacement effect. My suggestion was restricting the ability to switch between damage types at the end of a short or long rest or to take 10 minutes (1 rituals worth of time) to make the swap between damage types for all of the relevant abilities. I like the option to use a less resisted damage type, I just think it may be a little too flexible. Having the swap take at least 10 mins makes sense from a flavor perspective as well, as you have to re-coat your weapons, prime concoctions differently, etc.
I misread Healing Mist actually. I thought you could spend more than 1 die at a time. Keeping the ability restricted to a single die per use makes the original die progression fine in my opinion, though I'm not sure how balanced tossing upwards of 5 d12s for damage with Poisonous Injection at 15th level and beyond would be. It also means the overall power budget for the rest of the class feels better in my opinion. My only concern is how powerful this ability is for yo-yo healing (repeatedly giving HP to allies at 0), but considering Healing Mist competes with other options it might shake out just fine. Would require testing.
The only other feedback I have is that now you have two abilities that buff your weapon attacks, one uses a resource and the other is free. Is there a need to have both the poison smite and Poisonous Injection? Maybe you could move some abilities around or replace the poison smite effect of Poisonous Edge with something more interesting and leave the damage buff to Poisonous Injection and keep a similar power level.
Makes sense, I am getting enough input for that feature that I am leaning on adding another requirement to the damage replacement, but unsure how far, currently waiting on a few people to get back to before I solidify a change. As of right now it's ranging from just requiring you to have your subclass tools on your person to only being able to use one of the two options, but can change after spending 10 minutes with those tools.
As for the healing mist, from my experience with yo-yo healing, it's usually not as big of a problem that a lot of people make it out to be. Even in my main group whenever we have a situation with yo-yo healing, the DM usually adds an additional rule that increases the cost of being dropped to 0 hit points, such as; "after being reduced to 0 hit point 1+Con modifier times (minimum of twice), if the creature regains hit points while they are below 0 hit points they must make a Con save (DC 10 + number of times being healed while below 0 hit points between long rests) or gain 1 level of exhaustion," (wording is a bit ruff but think you get the idea). Now even without that ruling, this subclass does have less burst yoyo potential as compared to the other dice pool healers due to having a smaller pool, but might have a higher overall yield over an adventuring day because it resets at the end of a short or long rest.
For poison injection and poisonous edge, I can see that viewpoint but I'd have to disagree because of what each is providing. At 5th level artificers get either extra attack or a different combat buff, which in this cause I decided to do the latter, thus poisonous edge. With poison injection, that feature is suppose to add burst potential to the subclass per expending from the pool. Even if both can be seen as, "just more poison damage," the paladin already does this in a similar manner per the interaction between divine smite and improved divine smite.
Glad to hear. I'm also hoping to make a proper 2.0 version of the Plague Doctor once we see the printed version of the updated artificer. It'll expand the three options to a formula based mechanic; think of something like the blood hunter's order of the mutant but you can learn more that what you gain via class leveling.
As for your question, I've dabbled with the idea of making a what I call a "venomsmith" rogue which would be a poison focused rogue, but struggled in finding a balance for how frequent you should be able to use the main feature. I haven't returned to that subclass in some time, but maybe one day I might.
I've been slowly working on revising my homebrews, with this being one of the first I wanted to tackle. So I'm curious what you guys think about what I've done so far. In short, I'm still trying to focus on the duality of healer and damage dealer, but I'm also trying to keep the "pool of dice" mechanic without it being too much. So I hope you enjoy what you like and any suggestion or comment is welcome.
At the moment, my biggest curiosity is what do you think about the snippet at the end of the 5th level feature? Specifically the snippet regarding the ability to allow the player to change poison damage to either acid or necrotic damage. The reason I'm curious is I'm trying to find a way to work around the issues with poison damage without having to relying on the stereotypical "ignore X resistance/immunity" feature.
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I've made a number of grammatical edits, and after some more thinking I found another part that I'm curious what you guys think. Regarding the snippet at 9th level, "Your pool now regains all expended dice when you finish a short or long rest," I'm curious if you guys think that this is a bit much and would need to be toned done to something like, "at the end of a short rest, your pool regains a number of dice equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of one die)." Or possibly something a once per day after a short rest, you regain a number of dice equal to half your artificer level.
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I think this subclass is interesting. Don't know how much you've changed since posting but I'll give you some feedback nonetheless.
3rd lvl is certainly stacked with features, even if two of them are the standard fair Tool Proficiency, and Additional Spells. Maybe making Plague Resistance a 5th lvl, but over all it's not that dire of a change. I assume the Fog Cloud being in parentheses means it is an optional replacement for Ray of Sickness, not something that other spell lists do though. So I think cutting one out can make it easier a player to read and not have to make a choice with a feature that is often just a given.
The dice pool idea is cool and well implemented in Experimental Concoctions, plus limiting how many dice can be used at one is a smart way for keeping players from hoarding it and then piling it all into one heal/hit.
Poisonous Edge is tricky, as I see what you intend with the swapping of damage types. I would suggest having it be a feature that takes time to prepare. 10 minutes, 1 hour, your choice. That way the player can choose which damage type they will be applying, instead of just having it happen on a whim. This helps flavor the subclass with more of the preparation/tactile smarts aspect that makes the Artificer interesting. This would also give both the herbalism and poisoner's kit some actual meaning in the class beyond a spell focus.
For Black Market, maybe have the poisoning be ineffective for 24 hours after they finally succeed. Flavor it as building immunity. As for the last bullet point there, I think reducing it to recovering half rounded down is the best solution.
15th feature is good, no suggestions there.
I've made other changes after talking with my group more (the most up to date version to be current a few minutes after posting this), so I'll try to respond to the things that stuck because there were a few changes that might cause your opinion to change. The reason Fog cloud is in parentheses is because I intended for the spell to be ray of sickness but due of DDB's homebrew restrictions, if I were to make this subclass public I would have to change Ray of sickness. So I thought that fog cloud was a good alternative spell due to it not only being a nonartificer spell (not going to rant about that), but it also keeps with the idea of creating mists, smokescreens, and other types of fogs that are part of this subclass. Also I do like the idea of on a success they're immune that poison for the next 24 hours, I'll look into that in the next update.
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cool, glad to hear you got feed back at some point earlier. I'm familiar with the problem of not being able to share anything that isn't a basic rules spell. Yeah the 24 hour stuff makes it easy as a dm not to constantly be adding the effect on and off while in a fight. Im interested to see how the 5th lvl feature got changed.
Yeah after discussing it with my group, we've decided to leave the 5th level as is because poison damage is in a weird spot in 5e. Simply put, most creatures either have no resistance to poison or are immune, and as character fights harder creatures the more likely it would be simply immune. While using an "ignore immunity" feature is an alternative, we opted not to because we felt those kinds of features are over used and in other parts of 5e certain more potent poisons do use acid and necrotic damage.
With that said, I could add the "provided that you have either a herbalism kit or poisoner's kit on your person" like I did with experimental concoctions, but not sure how much of a difference that would make. I could also try something like, when you finish a short or long rest, choose either acid or necrotic that can be substituted for poison damage, but I'm still not sure if that would make much of a difference either because then it has the same issue as the Order of scribes wizard. Is switching out damage types strong? Yes, but it isn't game breaking and becomes dull feature after awhile. Sorry if this got a little ranty and I don't mean this to come across the wrong way. it's just after talking about something for awhile you can form a strong opinion on that topic.
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I get it, not offended in the slightest
I actually really like this subclass, I think the flavor is neat! The best feedback I can offer is that is seems to be pulling itself in a few too many directions. Is this subclass supposed to be support focused or damage focused or do you want to keep the versatility as a selling point? Let me explain.
Your current set up allows you to be able to deal similar damage to a single Rogue's sneak attack, albeit with a different set of restrictions. Poison damage and the need to expend dice definitely keeps you well below a Rogue's DPR over the course of, let's say, a 5 round encounter, but you don't need advantage to augment your weapon attacks to deal your damage. In my opinion, this keeps your damage output really quite balanced overall, but it does suggest to the player that this is a fairly martial subclass.
On the other hand, you have a lot of support/spellcaster type abilities. Healing Mist is extremely similar to the Celestial Warlock's Healing Light feature except with no limit on the number of dice you can expend in a single use. I think this makes the ability quite a bit more powerful at later levels, especially since the dice scale quite well. In addition, Cleansing Salve is extremely strong. The ability to have an additional lesser restorations equal to half of your artificer level is quite powerful. You are essentially adding quite a few extra 2nd level spell slots to your subclass per short or long rest.
All of these abilities become even stronger at 9th level, allowing you excel at healing and damage with little to no trade-offs other than expending an additional pool of resources you get for free every short or long rest. The Celestial Warlock's Healing Light is a good feature in power and usability because it's flexible, reliable, and allows you to overcome the shortcomings of Warlock spell slots, but it doesn't scale as well into later levels.
I would keep the power of your abilities focused towards damage or support, however, if you want to keep the flexibility of your die pool abilities (and I think you probably would to preserve the duality of the subclasses' flavor), I would add a cap to Healing Mist per use and actually remove Cleansing Salve altogether, as you already have access to lesser restoration as an Artificer. I think with those changes Black Market Ingredients could stay as is (of course removing the bonus to Cleansing Salves), and I think your 15th level feature is fine as is.
In regards to Poisonous Edge, I actually quite like the flexibility offered here. My only change would be that you choose from among Acid, Necrotic, or Poison damage whenever you finish a short or long rest and must keep that damage type until you make another short or long rest or, at least, spend 10 minutes changing your equipment. I think the flavor of sitting down and reworking your concoctions works really well with the artificer themes and still forces the player to make some decisions based on information gathering and setting context.
Thanks for the feedback man... now lets see...
In short, this subclass I do intend for the subclass to have access to damage and healing. This way a player can focus down on the idea of the "good" plague doctor who goes around trying to cure those in need, or they can focus on the damage as a poisoner class, or even being a more complex with a mix of the two. At the moment, I do intend to do another round of nerfs, currently thinking of reducing the pool size to proficiency bonus or/and possibly even reducing the die size by 1 (starting as d4 ending as d10). Which I'm going to test how reducing the die size by 1 works at first but then reduce the pool size if needed.
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In regards to Poisonous Edge, I was referring specifically the damage replacement effect. My suggestion was restricting the ability to switch between damage types at the end of a short or long rest or to take 10 minutes (1 rituals worth of time) to make the swap between damage types for all of the relevant abilities. I like the option to use a less resisted damage type, I just think it may be a little too flexible. Having the swap take at least 10 mins makes sense from a flavor perspective as well, as you have to re-coat your weapons, prime concoctions differently, etc.
I misread Healing Mist actually. I thought you could spend more than 1 die at a time. Keeping the ability restricted to a single die per use makes the original die progression fine in my opinion, though I'm not sure how balanced tossing upwards of 5 d12s for damage with Poisonous Injection at 15th level and beyond would be. It also means the overall power budget for the rest of the class feels better in my opinion. My only concern is how powerful this ability is for yo-yo healing (repeatedly giving HP to allies at 0), but considering Healing Mist competes with other options it might shake out just fine. Would require testing.
The only other feedback I have is that now you have two abilities that buff your weapon attacks, one uses a resource and the other is free. Is there a need to have both the poison smite and Poisonous Injection? Maybe you could move some abilities around or replace the poison smite effect of Poisonous Edge with something more interesting and leave the damage buff to Poisonous Injection and keep a similar power level.
Makes sense, I am getting enough input for that feature that I am leaning on adding another requirement to the damage replacement, but unsure how far, currently waiting on a few people to get back to before I solidify a change. As of right now it's ranging from just requiring you to have your subclass tools on your person to only being able to use one of the two options, but can change after spending 10 minutes with those tools.
As for the healing mist, from my experience with yo-yo healing, it's usually not as big of a problem that a lot of people make it out to be. Even in my main group whenever we have a situation with yo-yo healing, the DM usually adds an additional rule that increases the cost of being dropped to 0 hit points, such as; "after being reduced to 0 hit point 1+Con modifier times (minimum of twice), if the creature regains hit points while they are below 0 hit points they must make a Con save (DC 10 + number of times being healed while below 0 hit points between long rests) or gain 1 level of exhaustion," (wording is a bit ruff but think you get the idea). Now even without that ruling, this subclass does have less burst yoyo potential as compared to the other dice pool healers due to having a smaller pool, but might have a higher overall yield over an adventuring day because it resets at the end of a short or long rest.
For poison injection and poisonous edge, I can see that viewpoint but I'd have to disagree because of what each is providing. At 5th level artificers get either extra attack or a different combat buff, which in this cause I decided to do the latter, thus poisonous edge. With poison injection, that feature is suppose to add burst potential to the subclass per expending from the pool. Even if both can be seen as, "just more poison damage," the paladin already does this in a similar manner per the interaction between divine smite and improved divine smite.
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I've made a number of changes recently, and curious how you guys are thinking of this subclass at the moment.
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This is awesome, definitely something I would play. Is there any chance you could make a Rogue subclass with similar ideas.
Glad to hear. I'm also hoping to make a proper 2.0 version of the Plague Doctor once we see the printed version of the updated artificer. It'll expand the three options to a formula based mechanic; think of something like the blood hunter's order of the mutant but you can learn more that what you gain via class leveling.
As for your question, I've dabbled with the idea of making a what I call a "venomsmith" rogue which would be a poison focused rogue, but struggled in finding a balance for how frequent you should be able to use the main feature. I haven't returned to that subclass in some time, but maybe one day I might.
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