Talk:Outrider (5e Subclass)

A Look At This Subclass

Taking a look at the features this subclass has, Born to Ride is quite thematic and works quite well at being better at using a mount. As for Sweep, I see a minor issue of using the "attack of opportunity" wording instead of "opportunity attack". Besides that, the only issue I see is that with multiclassing, not all pcs who are outriders gain their extra attack at 5/11/20. To account for this, I believe the following wording is better "You may make a number of attacks with Sweep equal to the number of times you can attack on your turn when you take the Attack action." Meanwhile scouting is a good non-combat feature that makes sure your Perception checks are never too bad, nothing really else to say. Next is Wind Up, which is a strong feature that increases your damage based on movement. Looking at this feature, a minor change I would make would be to change the wording of weapon attack to melee weapon attack, to prevent you from possibly using the feature while ranged(bonus action crossbow attack/Action Surge/other possible shenanigans). After that comes Agile Rider, which either helps increase Wind Up's damage or makes it so you can disengage when you are in melee combat with multiple nearby enemies. The fact that it works with your mount too is just extra and makes the feature even better. Perfect Assault is your capstone feature for this subclass and really, it is far too strong. 18th level fighter subclass features are typically really strong, but Perfect Assault just increases your damage output by absurd levels. If you can make 3 attacks and take the dash action as a bonus action when you don't have a mount, it increases your damage from Wind Up from 12 (60ft/5) to 10 (50ft/5) + 11 (55ft/5) + 12 (60ft/5) = 33. Really, this feature needs to be changed in some way so it doesn't skyrocket your damage or it needs to be reworked into a different feature. I don't know what your ideas are, but here are a few ideas I had to make the feature less powerful.

• 1. Starting at 18th level, when you use Action Surge, the first melee weapon attack you make when using Sweep does not reset your movement moved with Wind Up.
• 2. Starting at 18th level, you have advantage on your first melee weapon attack you make when using Sweep.(after you use all your attacks and Sweep ends, you can then action surge to use Sweep again and gain this bonus again)
• 3. Something else? Say you and your mount ignore difficult terrain and some other bonuses not directly linked to combat?

Regardless of what you decide, I hope this feedback is useful in order to make this subclass the best it could possibly be.--Blobby383b (talk) 19:37, 21 March 2021 (MDT)

Yeah, a lot of this seems pretty reasonable, but I don't entirely get how bad Agile Rider is if it applies to your mount too. Enabling them to dash/dodge or dash/disengage doesn't seem like that big of a deal, especially since this is on the brink of tier 4. Not many mounts in the game are really that survivable(nightmares probably being the best thing you could get your hands on, and that's no easy task), and allowing them to potentially take/avoid an extra hit or two might be really handy. I would understand if this mounts scaled better, but as I understand they don't. I'll probably go about fixing those other few bits, but I'm just a bit curious about your comments on Agile Rider. Thanks a lot for the effort you're putting in to help me out here, again. --SwankyPants (talk) 20:30, 21 March 2021 (MDT)

I am glad I could be of some help. It seems I wasn't very clear on my point on Agile Rider. I believe the feature is great and not overpowered at all. I was mostly trying to point out the number of different ways the feature can be used and how simply good it was despite looking so simple(which I didn't manage to get across looking back at it). If there is any other questions you have, feel free to ask.--Blobby383b (talk) 20:59, 21 March 2021 (MDT)

Ah, that makes a little more sense. Might just be blind again, don't worry too much about your explanations. I've got no other questions/problems. Thanks again! --SwankyPants (talk) 21:04, 21 March 2021 (MDT)