Talk:Big Dipper (5e Class)

Balance and Clarity

Oh boy, where do I even begin with this one? This class is written in very, and I mean very convoluted manner. Half of sentences in class' description are not written according to 5e standards, many features are written to conversationally, and some are just hard to read/understand. Formatting on this is close to nonexistent, and it suffers from random punctation and capitalization. Highly random. This may be ported from 3.5e, and it shows, really shows, but in a bad way. Before making/porting a class, one should read class design guide, and clearly main contributor did nothing of the sorts, or actively choose to do many thing against design ideology of 5e. But well, I guess let's go from the start:

• Class have proficiency in two uncommon saving throws and does not provide anything to balance this out, making it just worse in saves overall.
• Lacks gold value if you do not go with starting items
• Proficiencies in weapons are insanely limited. This class gives you proficiency in only one weapon(nunchucks do not count, they are not a official item nor is there link provided leading to statistics of them)
• This gives you darts. Without giving you proficiency in darts. Why.
• Pressure Points - Oh boy, I read this 4-5 times to understand this, and the more I saw how this works, the less I liked what I am seeing. Firstly, medicine is not a resource, it is a skill. Meaning I do not know at all how many of those "points" I have to use. Those penalties and the way they are calculated means after using one, maybye two pressure points you are having a penalty to the rolls. So around 2 uses. And this never really gets better. Hitting AC with medicine, opposing medicine check(opposing with who?), fluid and not normalized length of lasting effects, being randomly punished for using them, going to minutes from rounds, DC of 10+half the level+roll of a dice?(always should be 8, alvays should be from proficiency, and should always, ALWAYS be constant, not dependent on a dice roll), channel points that reduce the penalty, and one question I have is: Why? Why is this so convoluted, so unfriendly to read and use? Why pressure points do not have a normal, simple resource pool depending on, dunno, proficiency and wisdom? That would literally made this equal to medicine bonus. Why are those weird penalties present? Class should not punish you for playing it, in any way, ever.
• Pressure Lifting - unconditional, unlimited healing. Really, one shiny nickel for every time I had seen this in some form in a class would buy me a yaht already.
• Empty Polar Current Dance - nothing in 5e costs a turn, it is action, reaction, bonus action or movement. "as a counter" the same thing.
• Antidote Technique- 5e does not have a condition called bleed, also this does not work. Why? Paralyzed creature is incapacitated, thus cannot take actions, thus cannot end the paralyzed condition on itself.
• Fist Styles - more later
• Vital Point Strikes - class should not give you features on levels when you gain ASI. Also, more convoluted mechanics, why 5 turns, why unlimited number of times, why the damage is multiplied? Increase in damage should come from dice scaling or amount of them, not multiplying.
• Heavenly destruction- You have no spellcasting in this class, your spellcasting modifier literally does not exist; 30 feet, but what, 5ft thick line? Cone? Zig-Zag? and scaling on this, especially 18th level is sick.
• Vision of the Seven Stars- you are not a spellcaster, you do not have spellslots, this feature is literally unusable, not to mention doubling damage for 1st level of spellslot is beyond balance. I will not discuss second one, it is incomprehensible.
• Method Release - cone that has hit points? I am not really sure what this even does really. and funny thing x times 1 is still x, so increases to those hit points are nonexistent. Also this have no limit in uses, whatever it does.
• Art of Dragon’s Breathing - Another feature at 10th level. Doubling save DC, from for example 14 to 28 means propably nothing will ever pass it, so this is beyond broken and that's not even all, hardly a tip of the iceberg. Again, wrong length of being active.
• Luck Of The Seven Stars - This feature should not exist. Not that is too strong, it is, it just should not exist in dnd 5e, like for example casting two spells in one turn or gaining more actions or bonus actions. Saves are not skill checks, and removing the ability to fail in them in most of the cases should never happen.
• Seven Star Point Spirit - now you do max damage. always.
• Subconscious Transmigration of Soul- this is nonsensical. You gain features from levelig through leveling. Without it this gives nothing and is a dead level. Not to mention anime-esque "plot armor" do not, and should not exist in DND.
• Mastered Subconscious Transmigration of Souls - Like above, just even more broken, unbalanced. And can be always on.

I know I said more on subclasses and strikes later, but as this stands now, the very main class is unusable, at all. And Judging from what I have seen, the rest is not far from it, so I will not bother reading through and pointing out every single thing until(hopefully) main class is brought to playability. I can not stress enough that guidelines are of massive importance, and it is blindly obvious when someone read them or not. That's why I recommend, strongly reccomend reading through class design guide before creating a class. Many ideas sound good until we need to write them down, then they become a hideous amalgination of imbalance and wording mistakes. Almost all of which can be enitrely avoided, even when making things alone, by just checking to guide, and to source material. There is really no need to count damages, tankiness or whatever; just by being methodical, slow and steady, everything can be made with the same, or even better quality than source material. It just needs some work --Cezaryx (talk) 04:36, 10 March 2022 (MST)

Hopefully, I'm using this right

So I've read all your complaints and tried using them in the best way I could. I've never been the best with grammar so I apologize for any incorrections in my grammar. I've looked over your complaints And tried fixing things that I looked over and did not realize when I originally translated this from the Google Doc. there are some features and complaints I'd like to go over before continuing editing this page also before posting this to the wiki I have not touched this in a mechanical environment nor have I had anybody look over it as I have had no time to, I posted it here mainly to see what could be fixed

• Pressure Points: This feature is meant to be weird because of how I wanted to be made, I thought it would be interesting to use a not so used skill as a resource instead of just making up a resource on my own, well I could and it would be much easier if I had but my goal was never to make a monk 2.0, It was to make a martial class that used Unconventional means of attacking enemies, That's why I use it the skill to attack instead of any of your physical attributes and had the enemy roll a saving throw, The attack roll would be high because it's a skill but it would be balanced out because of the saving throw I felt like this is the most accurate way to represent the how the ability is used in the show. While it is a bit of a convoluted feature it is easy to explain once put on a character sheet

• Pressure Lifting: I forgot to put the long rest condition overlooked it

• Empty Polar Current Dance: A bit of weird wording on this one but doesn't seem like you had an issue with the ability itself

• Antidote Technique: I still think it's weird that there's no bleed effect but I didn't want to make this feature just exactly immunity to poison because that isn't how it works in the show

• Fist Styles: Would love to listen to on opinions of these

• Vital Point Strikes: I guess this is a bit of a convoluted feature but it's a way to do those secret techniques like the 100 fist rush and it's multiplying because it's supposed to start out weak but do a bunch of damage and I just don't want it to add a bunch of D4s but it's weird and unconventional but that's the point of the class

• Heavenly destruction: Originally this was going to be a half Caster but I felt like the class wouldn't need the support of its allies which would go against the goal of the show. So that's why some of the abilities had spell stuff also forgot to mention the thickness of it my bad

• Vision of the Seven Stars: The same thing with Heavenly destruction doesn't need repeating. this is after one minute of fighting something if it takes you 10 turns to kill something then I think you need the double damage

• Method Release: This is an ability that he uses once in the show and is non-canon, Basically it was to make a barrier that would protect you and anybody behind it from projectiles But since he rarely if ever uses it in the manga I'm not going to include it

• Art of Dragon’s Breathing: Doubling DC would be insane so I removed it and for the length (This also goes for other durations) I thought making it fluid would be interesting but realizing stuff like Barbarian and other things aren't I decided to keep it the same

• Luck Of The Seven Stars: Silly little feature I wanted to do something similar to Rogue but it didn't plan out like that

• Seven Star Point Spirit: Also forgot to make it not Unlimited

• Mastered and Unmastered Subconscious Transmigration of Soul: This is an ability that you're supposed to convince your DM of giving you, whether it's for plot or you get it in the backstory either way it's meant to be broken because of the way it is in the show and how are you with the peak of physical capability Well yes it is wasted levels and overpowered It is meant to be that way because of the themes and power of it. Also, most Martial classes don't get an equivalent to wish so this is my compromise on it

I hope this covers all the complaints you have with the class eventually I will try to play with it in a mechanical setting tested around and all that stuff and if you have any complaints after this I would love to hear them --Super Sonic X Universe 01:32, 11 March 2022‎ (MDT)

First things first. If you click the signature icon () on the top left of the editing box your message on the talk page will be signed with time, date, and your nickname. This really helps with reading the talk pages, as well as putting the ":" sign at the start of the comment, which will move the whole paragraph to the right, more ::::: meaning further right, which helps with prolongated discussions. I edited your response to show what exactly I am talking about. To the problem at hand: I wrote all of this because the class itself had not any templates about being unfinished/being actively worked on, so I thought it is in a major part finished, and yeah. It is a long process to make a well-built and worded class, and my concerns were mostly because many people just go into homebrewing on the site, leave something unfinished and leave, and no one really cares enough to fix something as big as a class, so that problems were mostly hints for someone who would stumble upon it in some time. I'm glad you are actively working on it and make it better, that's a rarity to see. To the clarification on the exact parts of the class I had a problem with:

• Saving Throws- before were 2 uncommon ones, making it noticeably worse than other classes. Now you gave it 2 common ones, shifting it to the other spectrum and making it noticeably stronger than any other :/
• Pressure Points - I did not mean it was a bad idea, I meant it is bad for a feature to be so needlessly complex. The very 5e design ideology goes to great length to make as many features as easy to understand as possible. It can be based on medicine, why not, but if it takes half a page to describe, and still be mind-boggling, then you know you have a problem in need of fixing. Many things can be reworded or rewritten to take less space, be easier to understand, and be more noob-friendly. Look at official sources; it is a rarity a class feature takes more than 3-4 sentences, some being as short as one. The problems with other non-5e things like, say adding your level to DC, is a 3.5e thing. 3.5e and 5e are different at the very core, even if they seem to be similar. Many things are normalized; they are done in a specific way not because of some grand reason or because you cannot do it - they are that way to make the game simpler, more intuitive, remove the need to look up things every session every time using a feature. To realize what I am saying, you should read about bounded accuracy and its implications on the game. I provide a link to a very good description here, if you have time be sure to give it a good look.
• Antidote Technique - you can achieve what you want without granting immunity, for example making the feature read like that: "At the start of your turn, while subjected to #list of conditions#, you can choose to end one of those conditions affecting yourself. If you do so, you cannot take an action at this turn". This fixes the problem, which btw. an official monk has with its Stillness of Mind feature, meaning not being able to use it, exactly because of the wording of the feature.
• Vital Point Strikes- that's not a point. If you can roll between 1 and 2, and multiply the outcome by 5, you do not have something like a roll of d10, even if they seem similar. Multiplying pushes the mean higher than the middle of it, making it bad for the probability of results. For example, rolling d10 and doubling cannot be compared to the roll of a d20; you cannot roll 1,3,5 and so on. Look at Rouge class, the damage scales steadily, but not by multiplying, think what implications would it have if rouges on their sneak attack rolled one d6, and multiplied the outcome by, say 10. You have the same chance for all damages, 10, 20,30,40,50,60. You're unlucky? your average damage is bad, you're lucky? it is good. It is in high contrast to a normal probability distribution, where the average is the most likely outcome, and straying further from it is less and less probable.

Mastered and Unmastered Subconscious Transmigration of Soul - Once again, design. Classes give you something for choosing them, it is not up to GM to decide what. Say your GM is a (let's skip that) and he does not allow that, ever. Now your class does not have a capstone, nor a feature on the 17th level. Then why, why anyone would take those levels and not multiclass instead into, dunno, rouge? It just gives nothing. They can be abilities that trigger when you see an ally reduced to 0 hit points, and GM intervention is not needed then. And, GM intervention into the game should be GM's own decision, not forced, or denied for that reason, from the class feature.

Beside that, the same thing: many things not up to 5e standards, ideas or rules. In class design guide it's all explained. And English of that hurts too. I'll leave you with this, and come back to check how you fare with this class after some time. As I said - it takes time.--Cezaryx (talk) 04:52, 11 March 2022 (MST)

So I know you probably won't read this for a while but I will be responding to this while I make the new Capstone, so I'll try to mention all your complaints in the new post and other complaints I forgot to mention in the Old Post.

• Saving Throws: Originally I wanted to give it saving throws that would be used as dump stats usually and a saving throw combination no class had (Remember I'm coming at this as if I was submitting this to Wizards of the Coast) But realizing that most classes don't do that so I went with the stats that would be used the most. Obviously, they became the best-saving throws in the game so I decided to compromise one dump one good
• Pressure Points: I have now more streamlined it using the monk's ki feature as a template I have now made it more obvious how the feature is supposed to work, I even gave the different strikes quirky little names. Hopefully the changes I made to it allow it to be more new player friendly, There is still some fat I could cut but I'm proud of where it is right now. Also as of writing this, I am going to research into that Bounded Accuracy Thing you posted about.
• Antidote Technique: Technically I'm combining this with two features from the show but it's no biggie. I know about the Stillness of Mind feature that monk has my issue with it is how it's worded is unusable with the way I worded it I hope it is now compatible with paralysis and other features that don't allow you to use your action, It is also now swappable so you can tailor-make it to what is more common with your campaign it's not too broken since you can only have two at a time.
• Vital Point Strikes: Now called Secret Technique and Gōken strike so it fits in with the new Pressure point better. Hopefully, now that it stacks with the pressure point strike it will be able to do more damage and the reason it's d4s is that I feel like It would become out-of-control if it was any higher. Well I could make it like Rogues Sneak Attack and I could just make it Reduce medicine modifier to add d4s to the attack but that would go against the spirit of what I'm trying to go for, and expanding on this feature is much more creative than just compromising with a basic feature
• Mastered and Unmastered Subconscious Transmigration of Soul: While trying to find a new Capstone in relation to the show as of writing this, I will admit it definitely there are DM's out there that wouldn't allow this but most Campaigns don't even get to level 20 so I'm not too worried about the Capstone but that doesn't mean I don't care for the Capstone than any other level but plenty of classes have missing features on certain levels there's nothing wrong with it, not level 20 of course But level 17 is not used by Paladin also once you get to level 17 You're Just One More Level way before getting your final Improvement to pressure points so if you do multi-class you're missing out on the extremely good opportunity, well I do understand the complaint and in the future, I may add something and I would have made it the pressure point Improvement to go with the theme of 7 but I feel like getting that earlier would give no reason to go further in the class. Also about design, I'm mostly designing this class for level 10, and below cause, this is how far most campaigns usually go if even where most things after level 10 are just icing on the cake, Not saying that I am not interested in the features that are after level 10 I'm just being pragmatic in my choices and what the focus on.

Now for miscellaneous things, I forgot to talk about.

• Proficiencies and gold: Personally for me that's class doesn't need combat proficiencies well yes is it extremely limiting in what weapons you can use, in the show Kenshiro doesn't really use weapons mostly improvised weapons or stuff that isn't in d&d even giving him simple weapons is weird besides something like a Quarter Staff and maybe a spear Since you're mostly going to be using your pressure point strike attacks having a weapon doesn't really matter unless the campaign is very Magic Item heavy and even then you can work with your DM and making item compatible with you but if you want weapons you can it's just pressure point strike is exclusively unarmed. And with gold, if you want to go with the show and be thematic to it Kenshiro just uses gas and food to pay for everything he doesn't use money but honestly, I've never had an opportunity where I pick starting gold instead of the class equipment nor have I seen anyone else do it, but this class does need money for armor so I can see where you're coming from.
• Formatting: For me, formatting comes last as it's mostly its vanity, the fundamentals and mechanics of the class should be the first things finished before we start formatting it to look good.
• Class Design Guide: The class design guide while helpful I have read it and as far as I know I've done everything to the T that the guide tells you to do and as far as I know besides the Capstone, subclasses, and maybe the punctuation of certain things it is up to standard to 5e classes. I would love more specific on what problem causes it not to be on the standard of 5e besides stuff mentioned before but looking at the guide and everything I've done everything it says to do.

For right now this is every complaint I can remember, If there are any more problems with the class after the Capstone once you return and I will try to incorporate them the best I can--Super Sonic X Universe (talk) 03:32, 13 March 2022 (MDT)