Now I could just playtest this myself, but there's so much conventional wisdom going around that PCs + Legendary Actions = Bad, and I really wanted to get a better understanding as to why that is, (and if I could possibly make Legendary Actions on a PC work.)
Most of what I read, and most of the responses I got from r/DnD when I posted a similar question there, boil down to "The games action economy was not balanced around players having actions outside their turn beyond reactions, you'll break the games balance in ways you probably won't understand," etc, which isn't really all that helpful. Please understand, I'm not just a new player who wants to be special by shoving their Mary Sue nonsense into some random DMs game. Homebrewing -- taking a game system apart and putting it back together again -- is a hobby of mine, and I enjoy doing it for its own sake. "Just don't mess with 'X,' the rules are the way they are for a reason" is kindof a nonstarter; I know messing with 'X' voids the warranty, so to speak, but that was never a concern to me in the first place.
That all said, I'm definitely looking for feedback and constructive criticism here. A better understanding of why this is a bad idea is equally valuable, but I'd obviously love it if I could make this concept seaworthy, so that, at least in principle, it would be suited to a casual game with friends somewhere down the road without being overpowered or hogging the spotlight.
The idea was that, by level 20, the character would be able to take legendary actions with the following stipulations: 1) You can only take one legendary action per round. 2) You can only use this feature three times per long rest. 3) You have two options for your legendary action: A) you make a single weapon attack (not an entire attack action; one attack). B) you take the disengage action and move up to half your speed.
This would be for a 1/3 caster, 2/3 martial class that focuses more on utility and counter-play then raw damage -- its working with only two attacks per turn at lvl 20 and no major damage boosts (a la sneak attack or divine smite).
It's definitely not the norm, but there are subclasses (namely Cavalier for the fighter) that make use of special reactions that are separate from your regular reaction so it can work. Only thing is you would need to be careful in how you implement it.
That all said, I think there's a really cool idea there, particularly if you use your reactions (which by and large is basically what a legendary action is) to inflict things like status effects to control the battlefield.
For this class I was thinking of something in the vein of John Wick or, perhaps more precisely, Trevor Belmont from the new Castlevania Netflix animated series. No so much controlling the battlefield at large, but controlling a particular opponents motions to give yourself an overwhelming advantage without overwhelming damage.
Would be a class built around a few particular weapons (something I wouldn’t do if the class wasn’t specific to a single character) namely a Whip and a Battleaxe. I had a couple of class features written down, one of which went something like:
Before you make a melee weapon attack with a whip, you can declare that you are making a trip attack, disarming attack, or a stagger attack. If you do, and the attack hits, instead of taking damage the target must make a strength saving throw or suffer one of the following effects. The effect depends on which type of attack you choose and the DC for this saving throw is equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier.
Trip Attack: if the target is large or smaller and is standing on two legs, it must make a strength saving throw. On a failed save, one of the target’s legs is pulled out from under it and it immediately falls prone.
Disarming Attack: the target must make a strength saving throw. On a failed save an item of your choice is ripped out of the target’s hand and lands at your feet.
Stagger Attack: if the target is more than 5 feet away from you, is large or smaller and isn’t prone, it must make a strength saving throw. On a failed save the target is pulled and staggers 5 feet toward you; until the end of this turn, the next melee weapon attack, or grapple check, against this creature is made with advantage.
...and another like this:
Before you make a melee weapon attack with a battleaxe or great axe you can choose to take -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack’s damage. If you made this attack with advantage and the target is medium or smaller, the target is also knocked prone. If you made this attack with advantage and it results in a critical hit, this attack deals its maximum damage.
It occurred to me that between these two features and the legendary action listed above you’d wind up with a cool synergy where if someone prompted an attack of opportunity you could use the whip for a stagger attack, pull them in, and then declare a legendary action, which would technically come at the end of that same turn, before using the axe to drive them into the ground.
I think it wouldn't work mostly because, uh... I know this is a weird critique to make, but it's too badass. Legendary Actions have a very specific function, and it's specifically to allow one creature to overcome the Action Economy in a manner that allows them to be a solid challenge against a group of PCs. PCs are generally more dynamic than monsters and NPCs, and sheer numbers allow them to steamroll a lot of enemies just by dogpiling on them.
That said, I think there are workarounds to it, but the best balance is being more strict about what triggers these specific actions. It doesn't necessarily need to consume your reaction. I think a good example is something like the Booming Blade cantrip... it allows you to set a trigger that activates on an opponent's turn to deal extra damage, but only triggers under specific conditions.
For what you've described as your character, it seems a lot like you've just designed a Battle Master who doesn't require superiority dice and who is able to use an even better version of the Great Weapon Master feat with a single-handed weapon. I think rather than give the character access to Legendary Actions, you should just design a capstone Reaction ability that accomplishes what you want. If you're building a Homebrew class built around the idea of always carrying an off-hand whip weapon, I think it would be great to have a Capstone ability where triggering an opportunity attack within the reach of the whip allows you to pull them in for a melee attack from your mainhand weapon. If that's what you actually want, just focus on that and don't worry about Legendary Actions.
Transmorpher has a strong point. "Legendary Actions", by their very name, are a sign that the PCs are fighting a Serious Business enemy, one that breaks the mold and has risen above normal critterdom.
A level 20 PC has clearly done the same, but giving that PC legendary actions specifically might be twitchy. Adding additional reactions, a'la the Cavalier or Mercer's Cobalt Soul, has a similarish overall game impact but allows you to fine-tune what the reaction does and how it's triggered. Legendary actions are at will and don't require a trigger, just specific timing; reactions require a trigger.
That said, rDnD was as right as Reddit can ever be. 5e is so massively interwoven with the idea of action economy that any way to monkey with it is automatically super powerful. See: Quickened/Twinned Spell Metamagic, the Haste spell, Action Surge, any feat or class feature that provides a useful, at-will bonus action, any feat or class feature that provides a useful, at-will reaction with a decent trigger. Anything that allows the player to take an additional meaningful action during a round tends to be super valuable and powerful, often even class-defining as in the case of the fighter's Action Surge.
Simply looking at how popular and powerful those effects are, and how far out of their way players will go to obtain them, should provide you an idea of how powerful giving your PC an at-will freebie Extra Action every single round would be. Ask yourself "would it be overpowered for this character to be permanently under the effects of Haste?", or "is being able to Action Surge every single turn too much?" Your proposed legendary action is much more limited, yes. Heh, the question is whether it's limited enough, even as a capstone, given how potent even one extra PC action can be in a game where combat is usually decided (i.e. the victor made clear) after two rounds, or even one.
Players should never have Legendary Actions; that mechanic is strictly intended for monsters. The first problem with that is that a player should never need access to the Monster Manual (or equivalent portions of the Basic Rules) to understand how to play their character. That's why the Player's Handbook includes essential stat blocks for familiars and common Wild Shape forms in an appendix, and why conjuration spells leave the monster choice up to the DM.
The second is that you're very likely to introduce unintended interactions with other rules that assume anything with a Legendary Action is a monster. Case in point, you're automatically making the character immune to the Vorpal Sword instant kill mechanic. While that example is relatively benign, it shows that you're opening yourself up to other possible problems in the future.
Finally, you're making significant changes to the way Legendary Actions work, to the point that the only thing you kept from the original rules is the fact that they're used at the end of another creature's turn. It's bad form to ask a player to look up another rule and then tell them to ignore most of it. Breaking strong conventions like the 3 Legendary Action uses is also bad because breaking convention often causes players to double-take and wonder if the mechanic is working as intended.
If you want to give your class the ability to take a reaction at the end of another creature's turn you can phrase the class feature in those terms instead of invoking the Legendary Action rules in a way that won't work well.
Finally, the usual word of warning when it comes to adding new classes: that should really be your last resort in 5e. I know you're fine with "voiding the warranty" but it's still important to understand that 5e's rules aren't designed for you to cleanly slot a new class into them the same way you can add new subclasses, spells, magic items, races or feats. Other parts of the rules (e.g. magic item prerequisites) assume the class list is more or less fixed and those parts of the rules are essentially blind to your new class.
Having an interesting mechanic simply isn't reason enough to start a new class. A class needs to have a strong conceptual niche unique to it and a clear place in the D&D world, while also being broad enough to support a large amount of subclasses (that also need to have strong conceptual niches). It's also a heck of a lot harder to polish up a full class to the level of quality of the official options compared to a subclass. The Artificer is a good example; it works with a unique concept that can't easily fit into other classes and it went through a lot of revisions before it was in a place most players liked. There's a very good chance your idea would work better as a subclass.
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I was looking at creating a homebrew class -- Wait! I know, I know... that's the last thing one is advised to do when working on a new character concept, better to try pretty much everything else first! I know... but in this case I decided it would be a fun challenge to build a class around a character concept I had for a novella... could be a nice exercise in familiarizing myself with the character's powers for the story, and also learning more about the ins and outs of 5e's mechanics by poking around with stuff I probably shouldn't be -- and I was thinking about giving my class (very limited) legendary actions as its capstone.
Now I could just playtest this myself, but there's so much conventional wisdom going around that PCs + Legendary Actions = Bad, and I really wanted to get a better understanding as to why that is, (and if I could possibly make Legendary Actions on a PC work.)
Most of what I read, and most of the responses I got from r/DnD when I posted a similar question there, boil down to "The games action economy was not balanced around players having actions outside their turn beyond reactions, you'll break the games balance in ways you probably won't understand," etc, which isn't really all that helpful. Please understand, I'm not just a new player who wants to be special by shoving their Mary Sue nonsense into some random DMs game. Homebrewing -- taking a game system apart and putting it back together again -- is a hobby of mine, and I enjoy doing it for its own sake. "Just don't mess with 'X,' the rules are the way they are for a reason" is kindof a nonstarter; I know messing with 'X' voids the warranty, so to speak, but that was never a concern to me in the first place.
That all said, I'm definitely looking for feedback and constructive criticism here. A better understanding of why this is a bad idea is equally valuable, but I'd obviously love it if I could make this concept seaworthy, so that, at least in principle, it would be suited to a casual game with friends somewhere down the road without being overpowered or hogging the spotlight.
The idea was that, by level 20, the character would be able to take legendary actions with the following stipulations:
1) You can only take one legendary action per round.
2) You can only use this feature three times per long rest.
3) You have two options for your legendary action:
A) you make a single weapon attack (not an entire attack action; one attack).
B) you take the disengage action and move up to half your speed.
This would be for a 1/3 caster, 2/3 martial class that focuses more on utility and counter-play then raw damage -- its working with only two attacks per turn at lvl 20 and no major damage boosts (a la sneak attack or divine smite).
It's definitely not the norm, but there are subclasses (namely Cavalier for the fighter) that make use of special reactions that are separate from your regular reaction so it can work. Only thing is you would need to be careful in how you implement it.
That all said, I think there's a really cool idea there, particularly if you use your reactions (which by and large is basically what a legendary action is) to inflict things like status effects to control the battlefield.
For this class I was thinking of something in the vein of John Wick or, perhaps more precisely, Trevor Belmont from the new Castlevania Netflix animated series. No so much controlling the battlefield at large, but controlling a particular opponents motions to give yourself an overwhelming advantage without overwhelming damage.
Would be a class built around a few particular weapons (something I wouldn’t do if the class wasn’t specific to a single character) namely a Whip and a Battleaxe. I had a couple of class features written down, one of which went something like:
...and another like this:
It occurred to me that between these two features and the legendary action listed above you’d wind up with a cool synergy where if someone prompted an attack of opportunity you could use the whip for a stagger attack, pull them in, and then declare a legendary action, which would technically come at the end of that same turn, before using the axe to drive them into the ground.
I think it wouldn't work mostly because, uh... I know this is a weird critique to make, but it's too badass. Legendary Actions have a very specific function, and it's specifically to allow one creature to overcome the Action Economy in a manner that allows them to be a solid challenge against a group of PCs. PCs are generally more dynamic than monsters and NPCs, and sheer numbers allow them to steamroll a lot of enemies just by dogpiling on them.
That said, I think there are workarounds to it, but the best balance is being more strict about what triggers these specific actions. It doesn't necessarily need to consume your reaction. I think a good example is something like the Booming Blade cantrip... it allows you to set a trigger that activates on an opponent's turn to deal extra damage, but only triggers under specific conditions.
For what you've described as your character, it seems a lot like you've just designed a Battle Master who doesn't require superiority dice and who is able to use an even better version of the Great Weapon Master feat with a single-handed weapon. I think rather than give the character access to Legendary Actions, you should just design a capstone Reaction ability that accomplishes what you want. If you're building a Homebrew class built around the idea of always carrying an off-hand whip weapon, I think it would be great to have a Capstone ability where triggering an opportunity attack within the reach of the whip allows you to pull them in for a melee attack from your mainhand weapon. If that's what you actually want, just focus on that and don't worry about Legendary Actions.
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Transmorpher has a strong point. "Legendary Actions", by their very name, are a sign that the PCs are fighting a Serious Business enemy, one that breaks the mold and has risen above normal critterdom.
A level 20 PC has clearly done the same, but giving that PC legendary actions specifically might be twitchy. Adding additional reactions, a'la the Cavalier or Mercer's Cobalt Soul, has a similarish overall game impact but allows you to fine-tune what the reaction does and how it's triggered. Legendary actions are at will and don't require a trigger, just specific timing; reactions require a trigger.
That said, rDnD was as right as Reddit can ever be. 5e is so massively interwoven with the idea of action economy that any way to monkey with it is automatically super powerful. See: Quickened/Twinned Spell Metamagic, the Haste spell, Action Surge, any feat or class feature that provides a useful, at-will bonus action, any feat or class feature that provides a useful, at-will reaction with a decent trigger. Anything that allows the player to take an additional meaningful action during a round tends to be super valuable and powerful, often even class-defining as in the case of the fighter's Action Surge.
Simply looking at how popular and powerful those effects are, and how far out of their way players will go to obtain them, should provide you an idea of how powerful giving your PC an at-will freebie Extra Action every single round would be. Ask yourself "would it be overpowered for this character to be permanently under the effects of Haste?", or "is being able to Action Surge every single turn too much?" Your proposed legendary action is much more limited, yes. Heh, the question is whether it's limited enough, even as a capstone, given how potent even one extra PC action can be in a game where combat is usually decided (i.e. the victor made clear) after two rounds, or even one.
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Players should never have Legendary Actions; that mechanic is strictly intended for monsters. The first problem with that is that a player should never need access to the Monster Manual (or equivalent portions of the Basic Rules) to understand how to play their character. That's why the Player's Handbook includes essential stat blocks for familiars and common Wild Shape forms in an appendix, and why conjuration spells leave the monster choice up to the DM.
The second is that you're very likely to introduce unintended interactions with other rules that assume anything with a Legendary Action is a monster. Case in point, you're automatically making the character immune to the Vorpal Sword instant kill mechanic. While that example is relatively benign, it shows that you're opening yourself up to other possible problems in the future.
Finally, you're making significant changes to the way Legendary Actions work, to the point that the only thing you kept from the original rules is the fact that they're used at the end of another creature's turn. It's bad form to ask a player to look up another rule and then tell them to ignore most of it. Breaking strong conventions like the 3 Legendary Action uses is also bad because breaking convention often causes players to double-take and wonder if the mechanic is working as intended.
If you want to give your class the ability to take a reaction at the end of another creature's turn you can phrase the class feature in those terms instead of invoking the Legendary Action rules in a way that won't work well.
Finally, the usual word of warning when it comes to adding new classes: that should really be your last resort in 5e. I know you're fine with "voiding the warranty" but it's still important to understand that 5e's rules aren't designed for you to cleanly slot a new class into them the same way you can add new subclasses, spells, magic items, races or feats. Other parts of the rules (e.g. magic item prerequisites) assume the class list is more or less fixed and those parts of the rules are essentially blind to your new class.
Having an interesting mechanic simply isn't reason enough to start a new class. A class needs to have a strong conceptual niche unique to it and a clear place in the D&D world, while also being broad enough to support a large amount of subclasses (that also need to have strong conceptual niches). It's also a heck of a lot harder to polish up a full class to the level of quality of the official options compared to a subclass. The Artificer is a good example; it works with a unique concept that can't easily fit into other classes and it went through a lot of revisions before it was in a place most players liked. There's a very good chance your idea would work better as a subclass.
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