Talk:Claws of the Dragon (5e Spell)

This cantrip deals way too much damage when built around. It deals Str+Cha mod damage, plus 4d6. On a magic initiate fighter who has taken spells from sorcerer, that means they can do 20d6+50 damage per round (avg 120 magical slashing), action surging for another 16+40 to a whopping 36d6+90. The wording is also unclear, it is explicitly stated that you use both Str and Cha for the damage, but it isn't explicitly stated that you don't use str as an attack roll bonus either. In other words this spell is a +5 magic item, with a ton of extra damage dice. Could even take advantage of elven accuracy since it uses Cha. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Barronvonburp (talk • contribs) . Please sign your posts.

Lavie appears to have addressed your concerns. If you see any other pages that need refinement, please do place the relevant templates on the page, and remember that you are, of course, free to contribute to the pages as well. --Nuke The Earth (talk) 13:02, 15 September 2021 (MDT)

Lavie fixed my major complaints by cleaning up the wording, but the balance still to me leaves something to be desired, but I don't feel comfortable updating a homebrew someone else has uploaded to bring it into sense with my balance sensibilities, I'll feel free to comment on it and let them know there might be a problem, but for instance, if the creators party is either fine with this level of power, or won't min-max it to this extent, then it feels wrong to change the spell, as if I'm going to their table and yelling at them that they're doing it wrong, and I'm certainty not one to talk about that, as in my current campaign the players hit DPR in the thousands frequently, with 5 digit bursts. Especially since for my table, if I was going to introduce any homebrew, I'd fine tune it a bit to fit the campaign, whether its lore or power. Anyways, thanks for the template page I'll read it when I'm going to write something here next! --Barronvonburp (talk)

The wiki here strives for balance that can applied to all tables, and is in line with official material. If you can help with that, do it. You're not yelling at another table telling them they're playing wrong. You're balancing up a community owned page to be in line with official material. --Lavie (talk) 05:36, 16 September 2021 (MDT)

Damage calculations, assuming standard array and relevant score of 16/17 at start and increases at ASI level:

Old: 1st level: 2(d6+3)=13

4th level: 2(d6+4)=15

5th level: 2(2d6+4)=22

8th level: 2(2d6+5)=24

11th level: 2(3d6+5)=31

17th level: 2(4d6+5)=38

New: 1st level: 2(d4+3)=11

4th level: 2(d4+4)=13

5th level: 2(2d4+4)=18

8th level: 2(2d4+5)=20

11th level: 2(3d4+5)=25

17th level: 2(4d4+5)=30

Monk: 1st level: 2(d4+3)=11 (martial arts)

4th level: 2(d4+4)=13 (no flurry)

5th level: 3(d6+4)=22.5 (no flurry; extra attack)

8th level: 3(d6+5)=25.5 (no flurry)

11th level: 3(d8+5)=28.5 (no flurry)

17th level: 3(d10+5)=31.5 (no flurry)

--Lavie (talk) 06:45, 16 September 2021 (MDT)

The issue that I draw with here, is assuming that the spellcaster is actually a spellcaster fully, with certain interactions such as magic initiate (sorcerer), (or just a 1 level dip in sorcerer), a fighter can pick this spell up, and at

level 5; 3(2d4+4) = 27,

11th; 4(3d4+5) = 50

17th; 5(4d4+5) = 75.

At this point that isn't actually an exorbitant amount of damage due to changing the d6's to d4's, and removing the str scaling, going from 5(4d6+10)=120 to 5(4d6+5)=95, to our current 75 dpr. I feel it is in an alright spot now for fighters and interaction with say college of swords bard 3(4d4+5) for instance, seeing as how by going this build the character is forgoing something that is now more impactful or powerful, and raw, such as GWM+PAM for 4(1d10+5+10)+1(1d4+5+10) = 99.5 damage, with the potential for magic items tacked ontop of that of course. Thank you for giving me the right mindset to editing pages, it still doesn't feel alright to just edit somebody's page without giving a good explanation though. --Barronvonburp (talk) 15:10 est sept 16 2021