Talk:Gri-Gri Mystic (Wokan) (5e Class)

Criticism

Am I misunderstanding something? With a good enough check and a little downtime, this class is able to learn and cast spells from every other spellcasting class. It can learn paladin spells at lower levels than a paladin can. It can cast warlock spells more often between rests than a warlock can. It's better at being the party wizard than the party wizard is, plus it gets more hit points and better proficiencies. There's no reason not to learn every spell by every member of the party, which in the end just makes the other spellcasters in your group feel weak and useless because the DM allowed this overpowered class to outshine them. The only real balancing factor is the DM blocking you from what you expect to get and/or the other party members not cooperating.

That's just from the line, "A Gri-Gri can also be taught a spell they can currently cast by another person, if they fully understand the same language." There's many other questionable things too.

• This class gets three saving throw proficiencies when every other class only gets two. It also gets two "common" saves (Dex, Con, Wis) when any SRD class only gets one.
• For skills it doesn't say "pick two from" or "pick three from," but just lists seven different skills, implying this class gets twice as many skill proficiencies as the skill-focused classes.
• Unless a variant rule is used, "Endurance" isn't a skill in 5e—and if the variant rule is implied, a link or reference to the relevant rule would be appreciated. If this is a class-exclusive skill used only for the relevant feature, why not just skip the middle and make it an ability check?
• Why are armor and weapon proficiencies so specific? Just as an example, why would a gri-gri mystic be proficient with a scimitar but not a handaxe or a shortsword? Why not list normal armor categories like "light armor"—or even if one uses specific armor sets, why not list ones that are actually in core rules, like "hide" instead of "fur" or "bone"?
• Is it expected for a gri-gri mystic to actually complete the described "Ritual of Passage" before they can even play the game normally? If so, this class expects to derail the campaign before it even starts. If not, why does it specify it must be completed "at" 1st level?
• Race names and class names, among other terms, would preferably not be capitalized. More on this subject is detailed in Help:When to Italicize and Capitalize.
• Several pieces of math are needlessly complex by 5e standards. "Transcription roll = (Gri-Gri Int + Teacher Int) divided by 2= Int(Arcana modifier)." Why not just have both teacher and student make an Intelligence (Arcana) check against a relevant DC? That's excluding the fact involving "Arcana modifier" at all makes this class so dependent on one skill it might as well be an inherent proficiency.
• The primary purpose of Ritual Aspect seems to get magic items before other characters, or to give a reason to allow homebrew spells in-universe. The core books for 5e specifically encourage the use of homebrew spells with existing classes, so having a feature for that reason should have no purpose. Outside of that purpose, you're just stealing the spotlight to beg the DM for magic items. If you waste your sacrifices to instead learn spells (instead of just copying other spellcasters because why would you not), there's a likely chance you won't learn any spells and your maximum hit points will be "permanently" reduced. In many instances it is unclear what "half" the reward is, or "double" the reward is. It's unclear if you can ask for specific magic items, but apparently you can ask for specific spells, so it's safe to assume you can. (Meanwhile under normal 5e rules you can't do anything to search for a specific magic item. Even being able to hear rumors of a specific one a variant rule or DM fiat.) Overall the rolling chart comes off as incredibly random, and as written at 1st level you could either gain two overpowered magic items or cut your maximum hit points in half, depending on one roll and whatever the DM struggles to come up with to appease this unusually demanding class.

Tl;dr - Even if this class is based on perfectly balanced and official content for AD&D, this implementation into 5e would greatly benefit from revision. - Guy 06:36, 15 September 2018 (MDT)

Rebuttal of criticism

I have been touching up balance a bit since your post, please look over any new content you missed.

Part of the balance in this class is the fact that you can permanently lose Con or HP or even die. The HD8+2 are there to give a bit of a cushion. Rewards would be up to the DMs discretion really, compared to what was asked for and what suits the Patron of the Gri-Gri. The way I see a half reward, meaning if you asked for 1st level spell, you would get a cantrip instead. Or if you were asking for a 4 lvl spell (at higher level) you would get a 2nd level spell instead. The double reward would grant 2 spells of the level you asked for. Patrons will not give what does not suit them, for instance, a Patron who had a life domain, obviously would not give a Raise Undead spell.

As far as scene stealing goes, these rituals could easily be done 15-30 min before a session if the character or party is in a decent place for it. Obviously you don't want to try to open up a portal to another plane in the middle of the town square.. who knows what nasties might come through the portal while it's open.

As far as asking for higher level magic items, obviously this shouldn't break the game, as is stated in the rules of ritual sacrifice, a higher level magic item cannot be asked for. At lower level the double reward would just give 2 of the lesser magic items.

As far as utility goes, that is the whole point of the character. This is supposed to be a primitive caster variant that doesn't really know what a class is. I've always found railroading characters into specific classes to be game breaking in the first place. I would think that in a group setting any other caster that was specialized would get first dibs on any scrolls, or spellbooks. And since learning them are one time uses, and possible to fail, it would balance out the versatility. Gri-Gris get no automatic spell learning outside of cantrips. They have to work for their spells. Being taught at 1 day per level of spell, obviously puts him at a disadvantage, because usually a party does not want to wait around for some one to do their actions for days at a time.

On Proficiencies, I had assumed that it meant that those are the ones you could choose from. I did not realize that meant that you were proficient in all of them. I changed them to read (Choose #). As far as the light armor proficiency situation. I wanted to keep the primitive feel and not make it like they start with a cookie cutter standard suit or armor or a proficiency in such. This was a nice feature in The Orcs of Thar supplement that I wanted to keep, but I simplified it. The old armor piece tables in the supplement were very confusing. I suppose I could make it so that you had to pick 2 of these, but I would think a primitive civilization would make due with whatever they could scavenge. This also restricts the character from using many conventional armors well, which gives the character a bit of a disadvantage compared to other classes in this area.. Weapons proficiency is in the same boat, a primitive society would only have access to a few types of weapons. The scimitar is used in many primitive societies so it was the one large metal weapon I wanted to include. It is also a throw back to 1st edition Druids, who had that proficiency. I think these fix the balance of power a bit. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by El Tres (talk • contribs) . Please sign your posts.

I'm glad you're addressing this. Often contributors just disregard feedback, are insulted by it, or sometimes just stop editing altogether. Anyway, let's get into it.

I imagined the unusual d8+2 HD (all official classes just use a standard HD like d8 or in this case d12), and some unusual aspects like Constitution Gain were there to counterbalance permanently losing hit points. Having painfully low hit points usually isn't a good way to counterbalance things in 5e. Low hit points doesn't really reduce the impact or versatility of things you can do (which as you know is what balance is primarily concerned with), but it makes you a liability to yourself and to the party. This design philosophy is why d4 Hit Dice from previous editions was abolished, and why 1st level characters start with max rolled hit points. If that's a significant part of this class's balance, I think it's worth re-examining that.

re: "As far as scene stealing goes, these rituals could easily be done 15-30 min before a session if the character or party is in a decent place for it." I think there was miscommunication on this point. Performing rituals with "Ritual Sacrifice" is fine; it doesn't steal the spotlight unnecessarily. What does is Ritual of Passage, which says it must be accomplished "at" 1st level, and without it a gri gri is ineffective as a character. This implies it must be performed in-character when a campaign starts, before the proper adventure or anything else happens. Even if it's something you can accomplish 15-30 minutes before the adventure proper, that's still requiring 15-30 minutes of the DM focusing on a gri gri with extra-special things, of the gri gri getting to roleplay before everyone else, etc. I don't know if that's precisely what was in mind, but it's how it appears. Even if you are wise enough to work with the group in a more nuanced way regarding this feature, a less experienced DM or player will easily run into conflict over this as soon as the adventure starts.

"As far as utility goes, that is the whole point of the character." I'm not sure what point this is addressing? I don't think I mentioned utility anywhere. Is it the spell-copying thing? I don't see another point addressing that, so that's what I'm going to assume. Being able to cast all the spells of all the casters in the party is still a problem, and the very definition of spotlight stealing. "I can do what he, she, and you can do and in some cases I can even do it better" flies in the face of the fact D&D is supposed to be a team-based game. It also makes other players feel worthless or inferior by comparison. I can imagine a wizard or paladin reluctantly handing over your spells to make the gri-gri stronger is a bitter feeling, even though teamwork suggests you should do so. Sometimes classes can copy each other's spells, but that's a two-way street—by contrast this feeds power and versatility in only one direction, giving nothing in return.

Proficiencies are better, but are still pretty abnormal. "Choosing" weapon and armor proficiency is a little confusing compared to first-party classes in of itself—and if you are proficient with scimitars, you already have the best melee weapons for a caster so it is purely for flavor, and has little effect on balance. It's also weird to imagine a character being able to move effectively in bone, but not in a chain shirt. But that isn't really a problem; the problem is in choosing save proficiencies. A player definitely shouldn't "choose 1" of those. Just as an example, Intelligence saves are infamously rare occurrences in first party content, so even being able to choose it over better options is asking a gri gri player to ruin their capability—and players with less metagame knowledge could make that mistake and thereby be punished just for not metagaming. I would recommend this simply being "Intelligence, Wisdom" or "Constitution, Intelligence." Con and Wis are both "common" saves, and all first-party 5e classes have one common save (Dex, Con, Wis) and one uncommon save (Str, Int, Cha).

"A higher level magic item cannot be asked for." Where is this said? It specifies, "cannot ask for a spell higher level than what can currently be cast," but does not clearly impose this limitation on magic items. But even if we pretend it does, then what magic items too high for what levels? In 5e, magic items don't have levels. Nowhere in the core rules does it explicitly assign levels to magic items, and the design philosophy of 5e discourages this from being done.

On the note of abnormal things, the Spell Crafting feature would definitely benefit from being better organized and presented. I like to think I'm pretty knowledgeable in 5e game mechanics but to be honest I'm still a bit confused with it. I only just realized that nowhere in this class (that I've found) does it explicitly specify what your casting ability is for your spells. Also, why are rests for spellcasting described above the class table as opposed to where the Spell Crafting feature is? That seems like a pretty important detail of that feature, so it should be included there—and experienced players might get confused when they're looking for how this feature works if details about it are spread out to unusual places. It would probably be worth copying verbatim the Spellcasting feature from druid or wizard and working backward from there, adding or tweaking the aspects that make Spell Crafting different from Spellcasting.

Tl;dr - When comparing this class to first-party classes for 5e (see 5e SRD:Classes), a lot of things stand out as unusual or confusing—more than what we've discussed so far. If you haven't done so already, I would highly encourage you to check out the 5e Class Design Guide and maybe more closely examine official 5e content as a whole. Whether or not it is the case, I get the impression you are familiar with previous editions but perhaps are not as much with 5e... If that is the case, getting more familiar with it would probably help you get pestered less by people like me, at the very least. - Guy 07:18, 17 September 2018 (MDT)

Hi, Guy.

Most of the inconsistencies in format have to do with my own ineptness at the coding and being unknowledgeable of the correct format. I have been looking at other classes on how they are designed, but the uniqueness of this class makes it hard to jive with others, and this wiki system is foreign to me. I am getting better at it, but definitely could use more pointers.

The problem with having a Ritual of Passage done before lvl 1, is that the character will have like 1 hitpoint and could not possibly survive it if they failed. There is a chance as is that they could be killed during the ritual, and I really haven't hashed out what that means for a lvl 1 character..(Do they start over? Are they reincarnated at no penalty? I'm not sure) I suppose a way to counter balance this is to just give them the gri-gri rod, but that really defeats the purpose of that first epic moment with your Patron, similar to how a Warlock makes a pact.. it is just assumed who it is and DMs usually skip over it, but that just lacks flavor. It really should be played at the start of level 1 even if it is done with just the player and the DM. The player should have already completed it before introductions. Another way to balance it could be to halve any damage to the character at lvl 1, so that it is always possible to survive the ritual, but other Rituals of Passage are done with the standard table.. but that sort of undermines the reward if a 20+ is obtained, and that reward would have to be balanced differently at lvl 1. As far as the DM needing to know the rules on it, that is as simple as printing out the ritual rules.. I pasted and copied them into my word program, and it fills up 2 pages nicely, the first page related to the preparations needed, and the second section the actual ritual and what happens etc. The pages could be either handed to the DM or kept with the player until he starts preparing for the rituals, and then handed to the DM at that time.

On the magic item issue, I guess I spaced on the wording. I added "or a magic item that is of higher power than is normal for their level" which I thought I had put in there, but I guess I missed that. Wording these things is like being a lawyer.. players always want to find that one exploit, and be more powerful than everyone else. That is not my intent of this class.

"It's also weird to imagine a character being able to move effectively in bone, but not in a chain shirt" My thoughts on this are old school, casters should not be wearing metal armor in my opinion, none of the materials I listed are metal, and are primitive. Fur is actually listed with hide in the players handbook, so I could change it to hide or just put light armor proficiency with extra proficiency specifically in wood or bone. This probably doesn't jive with 5e because of how generic they made the weapon and armor proficiencies.. And I realize that something like mithril chain that has a low cast failure rate is sometimes used by casters.. I feel that with all the hitpoints and con that the character gets, being also able to use any medium armor is way too overpowered. The piecemeal idea counterbalances this by not being able to have a consistent suit of armor, and being able to choose which armor slots you want.(which adds flavor to their looks) which I feel most primitive society would have, and would not have proficiency in full suits of standard armors. I suppose I could give the Gri-Gri simple weapon proficiency, but that would leave out the scimitar(since it is martial), which is a thing I think would add so much flavor to the class.. I have always enjoyed playing casters that could actually melee a little or used ranged weapons a little. Not everyone enjoys that style, but my whole idea with this class is versatility.

You had hinted in your first paragraph that the character can cast spells that many other classes can cast but at lower level or better than. And you basically say that any one in the group is obligated to teach spells to the Gri-Gri, I do not think that is the case.. I would think that other players would guard their spells well if they had a gri-gri in the party, and not give up their own utility unless a certain situation needed to be overcome and the party needed one more caster that could cast that specific spell to get them through a certain situation. (ie: Stoneshape for example.) I suppose in an attempt at exploiting a whole party could give the Gri-Gri everything they know.. but that would really be a dick move. I wouldn't think things like the Paladins "Lay on hands" could be a learnable spell, since that is really a specific thing between him and his diety. But spells like "Bless" or "cure wounds" are really generic spells, although a cleric asks their specific diety for the use of the spell, it never really says that the wording for the spell is much different from diety to diety, and even if so, the Gri-Gri could adapt the spell to be focused through their Patron, instead of the other guy's diety.

What else did I not address or I skipped over? These long walls of text always seem to lose some points over other ones. - El_Tres 14:50, 17 September 2018 (PT)

Truth be told, I've become so accustomed to wiki syntax that I forget how it can be to someone who is new to it. I can only guess that with time it becomes second nature. Some pointers can be found on Help:Editing, if that interests you.

One of the many flaws of 5e is there is no definitive answer for what you should do when a player-character dies, at least under core rules as far as I know. It seems like usually you either (a) hope your party puts towards the funds to revive you, or (b) you roll up a new character. Either way, low hit points aren't a solid balancing factor for this edition. Even if you die, it ends up just drawing more of the spotlight to your character.

As for the 1st level ritual—believe me, I understand the logic of not wanting to deny the first epic moment. I've had to design around it myself. If you think about it, the same thing is dennied to clerics and warlocks, albeit to a smaller extent. My criticism of its use remains, and I believe (but don't necessarily hope) most veterans of 5e would agree. It is I think definitely something you could "recommend" in some way, but it shouldn't be an integral part of the class. In 5e, "printing off the rules" for a class is really not something a DM is expected to do. I mean, I've played an Adventurer's League game where the DM didn't even fully understand warlock, let alone more obscure homebrew material (and to be fair that adventure actually went pretty well).

Regarding non-metal armor, I think that's fair. That said, I think it's best to examine 5e SRD:Druid. This limitation on armor is still present, but does it in a way that's concise, easy to understand, and plays nice with 5e rules. I'm not as familiar with pre-3e content as I'd like to be, but to me that seems like a pretty reasonable interpretation of old school philosophy that jives with what I think you're trying to accomplish.

You said "not give up their own utility," which... flies in the face of my personal experiences. In a party, our shared goal is to work together to overcome adversaries and accomplish goals. Every edition D&D is a game that is built on teamwork. Anyone who doesn't do something as simple as teach a spell to another character for the sole sake of "preserving their own utility" honestly just comes across to me like the kind of character or player I'd rather not party with in the first place. One I'd even rather not DM. I can only remember a few players in my time who seemed like they would do this, and in most cases the rest of the party disliked both in and out of character. Two of them were murdered by other PCs, and a third attempted murder. Both of those successful murders were back in my Pathfinder days, so it isn't strictly a 5e thing. If that's a significant balancing factor to this class, it might be best to annotate this class with a {{Design Disclaimer}} which (to me) seems a bit ridiculous—something along the lines of, "this class is most balanced if other player-characters don't cooperate with it for selfish reasons and/or there are no other spellcasters in the party." Maybe there is something I am not understanding? I'm still baffled by this. It's like a soccer football player who doesn't pass to their teammates unless they're overwhelmingly blocked in.

You know, spells aren't tied to a specific deity. Even if you personally don't think certain paladin spells could be learned, the class at present doesn't specify this, and it very seems reasonable to assume this class could learn them. - Guy 16:02, 17 September 2018 (MDT)

To address your lack of teamwork theme. I think the basis of role-playing should be role-playing, teamwork is secondary or can be even tertiary, if the character is of a chaotic or neutral alignment. Sure I could see a happy go lucky Lawful good character handing over all his spells like the gullible characters they are.. but if the whole team is a bunch of cookie cutter lawful good characters, what is the point? I think the point of the game should be differences of playstyle. Sometimes groups jive and sometimes they don't, and they break up and new people come into the group. That is the nature of role-playing. Playing in the MMO game environment you deal with selfishness all the time, and it is coped with and actually adds flavor to the game usually.. a challenge to be overcome, etc. Part of the problem with D&D is that you are usually always stuck with the same people, and they are usually people you know and so that breeds a bit of false loyalty that the players have, but the characters really shouldn't have unless they really have been together a long time.

Anyways I will work on the class some more and balance it a bit closer to 5e standards.. if you want to mark the class as unfinished you are welcome to. I also would like some pointers on how to keep the flavor I am trying to achieve with proficiencies, yet keep as close to 5e as possible. I looked it up by the way, and you can specifically be proficient in scimitar, although that is contrary to the format here on this site it seems. - El_Tres 15:40, 17 September 2018 (PT)

A class can be proficient with specific weapons, and I believe and hope I didn't specify otherwise. Several first-party classes are like this, after all. It's just—at the point of being proficient with scimitars—you're already proficient with the best melee weapon for anyone who doesn't invest in Strength and isn't proficient with shields. This limitation for flavor, but doesn't actually affect class to a degree that it should significantly affect balance. I think there shouldn't be anything wrong with that as long as one doesn't consider it a very impactful point of balance.

My point regarding teamwork stands. D&D is a teamwork-based game designed to accomplish goals, not die, and get stronger as a group. Even most chaotic evil characters want to maim their enemies and/or get powerful loot—and unless they despise the other party members, cooperation helps them with that goal. Of the many role-playing tabletop games on the market these days, D&D 5e is less suited for "flavorful" or selfish role-playing than literally almost anything else. In at least my own opinion, that kind of thinking heavily clashes with the intent of 5e's design, and if anyone else plays a gri-gri it seems unlikely to me they will share the mindset of "preserving their own utility." - Guy 16:53, 17 September 2018 (MDT)

One thing about that is that a Gri-Gri must use their rod to cast a spell, so that sort of limits what can be in your hands.(unless some homebrew race has more than 2, I suppose.)You couldn't have a scimitar and a wooden shield equipped and cast a spell, although I suppose you could have a scimitar in your dominant hand and your rod in your offhand and still be able to do a melee attack or a spell in a given round. Or a wooden shield equipped and a your rod in your main hand.

I can see your point of team work being a main part of the game, usually there is one main objective and since all the characters are thrown into the party for the duration of the session it would be disruptive for a character to go off and do their own thing.. but I have listened to pod casts of games where all the characters didn't see eye to eye, and there was some real friction, but in the end the problem was solved due to a need for mutual survival. It may be that I have this character idea as a small party class. that can do many things to fill in the gaps of that a small party needs, but in a large group setting it may be an overpowered class.. I've been playtesting the class solo, through little 1 off encounter dungeons, and random wandering monster encounters. Currently my 1st level character only knows 2 1st level spells(I am simulating a 20 roll on the sacrifice chart), and a couple cantrips, but has found a 3 scrolls. I haven't tried to learn them yet(2 of them are lvl 2 spells), but my feeling is that many of the scrolls will get burnt up at low level, due to bad rolls. At higher level when the character has more skills, items, and ability points transcribing may become too easy at DC10, and perhaps I need to up it to DC12 instead to make learning spells more of a challenge. Or a waiting period after a fail before they can try to learn another new spell. These are all balance issues that I need to hash out. I don't assume anyone out there is playing this class yet, so I have some time to work out the kinks.

I will go over the cookie cutter proficiencies more carefully, and try to fit one to the class. Probably mirroring the Druid class for most of it, with some minor changes. Thanks for your help - El_Tres 19:53, 17 September 2018 (PT)

I just went over the template and fixed a few problems with inconsistences in my format. I also fixed the spellcasting ability to read better, with everything about spells condensed into that tab. As well I fixed the proficiencies to be closer to the Druid Template. I added Simple melee weapon proficiency, rod, and scimitar proficiency. As well I added light Armor proficiency, with hide, bone and wood. I realize bone and wood armors are not official proficiencies, but I think a DM could figure out easily enough what the AC of those are. Technically this does give the Gri-Gri 3 options in Medium Armor, but excludes Chain, Breastplate, and Half Plate. Scaled armor can sometimes be made of lamellar wood, it was done in Japan, China, and Mongolia. Anyways, look over my new template and see if you agree with any of it. Thanks. - El_Tres 22:18, 17 September 2018 (PT)

Finished

This class is now essentially finished. I don't see anything, other than further sub-classes that could be added to it. At some point someone increased the HD of the class to 12. This is an error, the most the class is designed to have is a D10. I had designed the class to be 1d8+2, it's a weird stat, but I wanted it to be on par with the cleric and druid HD but have an extra buffer. I see that this is hard for people to understand so I changed it D10 to simplify it. I don't really understand what the problem is, but I will compromise on this.

The class is essentially a Mystic Variant, but Mystic is only a UA class that was never officially recognized. Check the design note at the top of the page for further reference to D&D published works. --El Tres (talk) 07:08, 9 February 2021 (MST) El Tres

Added the Primal Confessor subclass

The class is a sort of Paladin/full caster hybrid. It has a few of the abilities of a paladin. Some of the abilities are given at a higher level or not given right away. The class is more of an Inquisitor rather than a true holy warrior, although it does focus more on melee than the other subclasses. I have an idea for another subclass that I may add soon. --El Tres (talk) 05:27, 11 February 2021 (MST)El Tres