Talk:Daemon Eater (5e Class)

I love this class, but there were a couple things threw me for a loop. Would upping the damage dice for the corrupted limb be prudent and/or adding modifier damage to the attack? I know the monk tops off at a D10, but they also extra attack and flurry of blows for 4(D10 + modifier). Something like 1D6 -> 2D4 -> 1D10 -> 2D6 -> 2D8 that way it still competes with fighters and barbs without having the 3 extra attacks or rage damage to support them.

The Daemonic arts also seem really weak, especially once you get later in lvl. The dragonborn race gets a scaling breath weapon that starts a 2D6 at 1st lvl to 5D6 at lvl 16. Maybe change it to something like at 1 corrupted limb damage dice + 1/2 lvl and then scale it to 2 CL dice + lvl. Also increase number of uses to the Cha mod per long rest. That way the character doesn't half to short rest after every battle to restore its uses.

The Daemon's disguise doesn't do much if the character goes heart and eye (wear an eyepatch?), so maybe something for them.

How would Devour workings and other class features interact if something the character devoured gave them immunity to radiant but Daemon Form gives vulnerability to radiant?

Over all I love the roleplay potential for this class, the mechanics are cool but could use some boosting so that the class is reliable for extended duration without short rests. Joker123

Clarify Devour

My apologies for missreading the Daemonic Art and missing the uses equal to charisma mod per short rest. I thought it was 1 use per short rest, my bad. Max of 5 uses per short rest is great, especially with the adjustments to the damage. Overall, love the new changes.

Can you clarify some things for Devour: Can it be done in combat? If so, what kind of action? If not, how long does it take to consume and acquire the powers (like a ritual spell)? if it takes time, how about giving an increased duration but only a few uses that scale as character lvl? Can you carry a piece of the creature with you, (like beef jerky) so that going into battle the character can eat it, gain an ability that is going to better tailor them to the conflict.

Joker123

I'm curious about how Devour works too.

• What do you mean by random? Are all the traits, senses, and each remaining innate spellcasting and psionics is put in a table and someone rolls on it? What if it's some odd number like 3 or 5 things to roll out of? And who rolls?
• Also, for inate spellcasting and psionics, what's the spellcasting modifier? Is it what that creature had?
• Is a repeat trait possible to roll for? E.g. getting darkvision from a goblin and then what is possible to roll for it again from hobgoblin?
• How much of the creature does it have to Devour for it to count? A nibble? A arm? The whole body? What if the thing they're trying to Devour is a Huge or Gargantuan creature?
• Depending on the answer above, can the Daemon Eater devour the same corpse multiple time if the required portion necessary to Devour still remains after the first time it was Devoured?
• Is it possible to Devour Player Characters? If so, what can they get? --Alearori (talk) 11:18, 29 October 2017 (MDT)

Balance

• Devour gives you access to a monster's features, which can lead to nonsensical or overpowered/runaway situations.
• Malevolent Wave says its a ranged attack (spell? weapon?), but then says its a cone (which would be a saving throw). Which is it?
• Malevolent Storm isn't clear if it's an attack or not, it appears to be automatic damage?
• Don't use the term "heal". You regain hit points.
• Demon Lord's summoning should recharge on a long rest, not "once per day". This is important in case the rest lengths are changed at the campaign level. The summon itself is missing information (e.g, range?), recommend looking at conjuration spells.
• That's from a quick pass, there seems to be little errors everywhere. Marasmusine (talk) 06:07, 10 February 2017 (MST)

• "racial features are immunities and resistance to damage..." - um, no, racial features are the features granted to a PC when they choose a race, or to an NPC when one of the templates on DMG p. 282 are applied. Marasmusine (talk) 15:42, 10 February 2017 (MST)

But wait, there's more.

• Equipment is supposed to provide an alternative to starting gold.
• Corrupted limb needs to say that you choose one of the options.
• You need to say what the corrupted arm is. Is the 1d6 a replacement for the unarmed strike damage (in which case it effects things like a monk's martial arts), or is it a separate melee weapon? The whole bit about grappling has mangled grammar.
• "When you attack with your Corrupted leg as a Bonus action..." does this mean you can make attacks with the leg as a bonus action? Do you make a shove as part of that bonus action?
• You shouldn't have continuous truesight at 1st level.
• "At level 10 you gain Magic Resistance. " - what does that mean.
• don't say "per long rest"
• Devour is just still poorly defined. There aren't any creatures in the MM that have class levels, even among the NPCs (for example, the druid NPC does not have any druid levels or class features). Adding class levels to a monster is something a DM can optionally do to customize a creature, but you can't assume this will happen. And even then, you can't just transfer over any old class feature, they are often don't work independently, or aren't a discrete thing.
• Malevolent wave + storm: "spell like attack with a DC Dexterity saving throw". If it uses a saving throw, it's not an attack.
• Balor's eye doesn't have a range
• Extra Attack. You need to say exactly what this does at 11th level (it's important for multiclassing)
• Gonna stop there, this is still a quagmire of awkward wording, missing information and poor definition. What this needs is a complete rewrite. Marasmusine (talk) 12:15, 25 February 2017 (MST)

So I've decided to balance this class a bit and here's the changes I've made and why:

• So Devour being the biggest, I'll have it in segments:

• Adding the part about choosing from the list by the DM, a player does not know anything that a creature has, so a list by the DM is necessary. It'd also allow for the DM to not allow the player to gain game breaking things.
• Removing immunities because it'd make the power creep possibility too high. Because eventually, if your have high enough Charisma and Proficiency Bonus, you can become immune to everything, or at least all common damage types.
• Removing senses because it'd allow easy Truesight, Blindsight, Temorsense at early levels.
• Removing movement because it'd allow easy access to flying at early levels by devouring something like a bat.
• Removing spellcasting and psionics because it'd allow access to at will Detect Magic, Detect Evil and Good, Dispel Magic, and etc. which would normally consume 1st level or higher spellslots to cast.

• Removing the bonus Extra Attacks because that's an insane amount of attacks in one turn. Because it allows for the class to attack 5x in one turn at level 20, not counting if using the Bonus Action.
• For Spreading Corruption, you only have 4 limbs to choose from. You get one at level 1, and 2 at third level after choosing this leaving one limb remaining. Thus it's impossible to choose two more, and then an additional 2 more at 7th level unless overlapping happens. And gaining all the limbs so early.

I want to nerf it more, but I want to discuss it first. --Alearori (talk) 20:52, 3 November 2017 (MDT)

I have also made some balances to this class based on my own personal thoughts and those presented here:

• Removed Strength from the saving throw proficiency.
• Changed unarmoured defence to be dex and cha rather than str and cha
• Removed the ability to not suffer disadvantage when using ranged weapons beyond the normal range, I personally feel that is more related to the weapons capabilities than an accuracy related one.
• Changed the Hearts passive effects and made them a round timed usage ability, to avoid constant resistances to nearly all damage types, which I thought was rather OP.
• Changed some parts of how Devour works eg. what you can gain and clarified how it would function during combat and how much is needed to be consumed to gain the traits.
• Given limits to all Daemonic arts to prevent spamming.
• Clarified how Daemonic Breath works.
• Given the Bodily Corruption path a tier system where the limbs you gain earlier will grow stronger.
• Removed the ability to use attack roll abilities with Devour, because that makes no sense to me and can lead to some OP situations.
• Fixed some grammar issues (apologies on some of the spellings of armour and colour, I'm British)
• I have removed the unarmoured defence and 3 saving throws for the in need of balance template, however I will wait for others to view and they can decide if anything else needs to be removed.

At the moment I don't feel this class needs to be deleted, just looked at a bit more closely, so i have removed the deleting template. -- ThePhoenix 00:08 12 February 2018 (GMT)

The class does look a bit better and once a page has started to have its issues taken care of the deletion template should be removed as the class is making progress. The class itself does have far too many features and many features are too powerful/provide too much. For example the Daemonic Strength feature is extremely overpowered as even a +1 bonus to AC is powerful enough to warrant its own feature(and you largely shouldn't grant anything over +1 AC). The feature itself is also far too powerful as monk's get the same feature at 6th level, yet this class also gets +1 AC and +1d4 additional damage. Things like this seem to be a recurring theme throughout the class making the class largely overpowered.--Blobby383b (talk) 19:11, 11 February 2018 (MST)

Also, in pretty much all cases this class is just a straight up improvement over the monk.--Blobby383b (talk) 19:17, 11 February 2018 (MST)

I've made a few more adjustments:

• removed the AC bonus from Daemonic strength completely
• Added Corrupted Limb improvements into the class table
• Specified that Daemonic Art uses are renewed on long rest

I would also suggest the complete removal of the Daemonic Contract feature, as much as I like the concept, it just adds an unesiccery ability to it which isn't needed. However I will wait for a second opinion before I do. If this is done it will also allow for much better rescaling on all the other features.

-- ThePhoenix 10:57 12 February 2018 (GMT)

Okay, to make it easier to read without going through history, here's a list of changes and why:

• I have nerfed the Corrupted Limb Attack to fully match the Monk's Martial Arts because its the only only to get the damage to equal the monk. Right now, a Daemon Eater's highest damage output per turn is Corrupted Limb Attack twice with Extra Attack plus the Daemonic Soul twice for a total of 2d10+2d8 which averages at 20 damage. This will approximately equal to the Monk's maximum of 3d10 via Extra Attack and Martial Arts which averages at 16.5. A further nerf would be that Daemonic Soul can only activate once per turn. However, unlike Monk, Daemon Eater doesn't have Ki to increase damage output, so this should be fine.
• Removed Daemonic Arm as a light weapon because it would allow an additional 1d10+1d8 at higher level.
• Removed the extra push from the Daemonic Leg and extra 15 move speed, because it made the Daemon Eater have a base 55ft move speed assuming they chose the Leg.
• Split Daemonic eye to give the crit at 18-20 to be at 17th level, and crit at 19-20 to be at 13th. Because it makes more sense that way, like Champion Fighter
• Changed blood manipulation to be passive again, but at reduced effects. This is because the Heart would be the least useful corrupted limb otherwise.
• Changed Corrupted Limb to increase in a more better scaling by improving every 4 levels are 1-5-9-13-17
• Reverted Devour to previous version because the current version is nearly useless since all traits are lost after a long rest. Edited improvement to be every 8 levels to become 2-10-18
• Deleted a feature from the sub-classes so it doesn't overlap with the ASI's. Now it gains a feature every 6 levels to become 3-9-15
• Separated Daemonic Strength into Daemonic Soul to match the variant
• Daemonic Breath modified to make it more than just an AoE damage spell to warrant its 1/long rest clause.
• Changed Daemonic Jump to Daemonic Muscle and Reflexes because the 3x jump and extra move speed is too much
• Separated the immunities from Daemon Lord into Daemonic Fortitude, so that all the sub-classes get it.
• Spreading Corruption scales better now, and modified to reflect the additional Corrupted Limb trait
• Removed Daemon Blood cause Daemonic Muscles does the same thing basically.
• Changed Daemon Form to give bonuses to attack and damage rolls instead of ASI because that's what 5e does. And changed duration to 10 minutes to be more standardized.
• Reworked Worldly Corruption because it was far too weird to use. So now you can't kill your teammates accidentally and more closely matches the variant but slightly better.
• Moved all summoning related features to a 3rd sub-class, Tamed Corruption. Because they don't match what the Daemon Eater does.

And so that's all the changes thus far. Is there anything else wrong with the class? -- Alearori (talk) 20:38, 2 March 2018 (MST)

There still might be a few grammatical errors thought the page, but they are few and far between if any now, and overall the page is very close to completion. There are two last things that is still issues though.

• The Eye Corrupted Limb probably needs a partial rework, due to how weak increasing the chance of you getting a critical hit is. Both features on average only add 1/20 x 6.5(1d12) = 0.325 damage to your attacks, if you are wielding a greataxe(which deals 1d12, 0.5 less average damage than the mual and greatsword(2d6) anyway).
• The Heart Corrupted Limb when compared to the other Corrupted Limbs is still by far the best. At 1st level you gain resistance to an extremely common damage type(which is overpowered at anything but extremely high levels) while the eye corrupted limb likely gives you only a 30 feet darkvision increase. The Heart Corrupted Limb also shouldn't be able to fix almost every single defensive problem the class has, it simply isn't balanced, and makes it superior to the other Corrupted Limbs.--Blobby383b (talk) 08:54, 3 March 2018 (MST)

In that case, what we can do is make the 1st level heart gave an additional AC bonus instead of a common resistance. thus I've changed to to instead give half prof bonus AC. So it now makes the heart limb equivalent to getting a magical armor, capping at +3 bonus AC at 17th. And then additionally pushed that piercing resistance into the 17th level. This should make the heart's early game a bit weaker, but doesn't change the overall end game of the heart.

As for the late-game eye, I was looking back at the history and noticed that they lost the truesight. But I see it's far too early to be gained at 10th, but at 11th level, it should be okay.

Meanwhile for the early game, I've given the 1st level eye the Warlock's Devil Sight. These buffs doesn't increase damage, but it increases utility, which seems to be the goal of the eyes. -- Alearori (talk) 22:09, 3 March 2018 (MST)

Can we talk about these flames?

Is it me, or do these flames seem a bit random. I honestly don't think they fit with the class at all, theyre not even mentioned before hand. To me, that path is one were you store your malevolence within you, so perhaps more abilities in which you manipulate this would be more suiting.

I am not certain what you mean by flames, but if you can give me the revision difference as a link, then I can understand your comment. --Green Dragon (talk) 09:48, 13 October 2017 (MDT)

Demon Flames At level 11, you can now cast the spell Scorching Ray as a second level spell at will, without the need for material components. You may also cast the spell Fireball a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier per short or long rest. If used within a minute of using your Devour feature, you gain advantage on the attack rolls for the next minute. You can choose to have these deal Necrotic damage instead of Fire damage. The color of these flames are black and purple.

These flames, im not saying theyre a bad idea, they just seem out of place. I fail to understand why a demonically corrupt person would be able to suddenly start shooting flames. This is one of those situations were they need to be there at the start of a class, or not there at all. From what i can tell, one archtype focuses on keeping this corruption inside yourself to stop it affecting others around you but speeding up its affects on your body, while the other is more focused on expelling it from your body, affecting others around you to the point of infection. At the moment this class feels very monk/fighter, so i dont see why spells he been included. I am currently playing this class in one of my campaigns and its a lot of fun, this black blood that you get from the corrupt heart really makes the class unique, so maybe develop on that idea. :)

I added {{needsbalance}} to address this problem. --Green Dragon (talk) 00:23, 15 November 2017 (MST)

The flames are connected because certain fiends do use fire, such as Balor's Fire Aura or Barbed Devil's Hurl Flame. I understand your concern if you had something like a demon that uses some other element in mind, so I created a more versatile alternative which lets it work off of Devour and allows it to better use its blood manipulation. Darkness123 (talk) 02:05, 1 December 2017 (MST)

How does the blood control work?

Clarify Corruption Limbs

Can we get clarification on the innate abilities you get from the corrupted limbs? It seems pretty overpowered, if you go the bodily corruption path you get all the limbs and their passives.

As it's currently written that means at level 10 you get:

• +1 ac per free hand
• ability to walk on vertical surfaces/ceilings hands free
• crits on natural 18-20
• resistance to all magical damage and advantage on saving throws against magic/effects

Getting all those benefits in a single level seems pretty OP.

I'd like to see something to the effect that each limb has three tiers. The first limb you pick you can gain access to all three. The next two limbs you pick up from bodily corruption you gain access to only the first two tiers. The last limb you gain you are only able to access the first tier. These tiers upgrade at 4, 7, and 10. The last limb should be corrupted at either level 9 or 10.

--Betar