Talk:Phoenixmancer (5e Class)

I was wondering if there was someone who was looking to check this over because I would like to play this but it is a little to much to play with the powers from the arch types plus the Phoenix damage is strong.

hey, I was wondering why one of the gained proficiencies in "Ancient Sense" was nature, wouldn't it make more sense for it to be Religion. ~Signus

I'm looking to play a Phoenixmancer as my newest character, and while I like the Rebirth class a lot I think it is very unbalanced- specifically, it is EXTREMELY powerful in a narrative way but not in a battle setting. The advantage on saving throws absolutely helps but does not balance it. I think it's made up for by all of the features of the class itself, but to be around the same level as the other subclasses I think Rebirth needs some adjusting. ~EternallyBright

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There's a minor conflict in features listed, Ritual Flames of Rebirth lists the effect: "Flames will instead heal you for damage dealt. For example, if you were to be hit with a Firebolt and take 13 fire damage, you would instead heal for 13 hp. This also means that if you were to have resistance to fire, then you would only heal half, and full-on immunity would negate this effect entirely." That effect is great, but the fifth level class feature grants "At the 5th level, flame itself sustains you. You are now immune to your own fire damage from you or your phoenix along with non-magical fire. You can now EAT fire. You no longer can eat or drink normally. Eating fire requires a flame about the size of a modest campfire to count as a meal." Either feature on its own is useful, but the two together act as detriments to each other rather than synergizing. Personally I'm of the opinion that the Ritual Flames of Rebirth is the one that ought to be kept and the One with the Flames feature should be changed out with something else (maybe just move the RFR feature down? it's in a weird spot as it is)

To bring up another part, the Tribal Flames of Life archetype at first glance looks powerful (free resurrections each day? sweet!) but actually using it in D&D, you never really use the feature except maybe once or twice in a campaign. It'd make a cool NPC, but as a PC it's mostly dead weight especially compared to the other two archetypes. Maybe shift it to a regeneration-focused archetype?

I also added a use-recovery line for Bolstering flame, as I didn't see anything determining when you got the uses back (short rest/long rest/dawn/etc.) If y'all feel it should be different, go ahead an change it, it just needed something to give the uses back ---Ddraig (talk) 16:19, 18 July 2019 (MDT)

Given the lack of objection to the suggestion, I edited Ritual Flames of Rebirth as I mentioned above ---Ddraig (talk) 16:33, 3 September 2019 (MDT)

Hit Dice

TheFirstFoxx recently changed the hit dice from d10 to d6; Personally the class feels more analogous to a Cleric/Warlock (d8) or maybe Paladin (d10), intended to be in melee than the dedicated casters that have d6 HDs. A large portion of the features either are short range (20ft or less, most 5-10ft) or revolve around avoiding/returning damage from melee. The HD were a bit on the high side before, but d6 just feels like a giant "kill me" sign if you go into melee. I'm going to restore it to d8 as a middle ground. ---Ddraig (talk) 09:59, 5 September 2019 (MDT)

Balance

It sounds like Bolstering Flame is the only real part the not-signed-in-user (that made the recent page header edit) has an issue with. TBH, I'd completely missed that trait in the campaign I'm using this class in, but I can't imagine using any of the options it gives more than 3-4 times in a day unless SHTF (and with my current build I would have up to 12 uses with the original "double your Cha mod"). With that in mind, I played with the limits of Bolstering Flame (put a range where it was infinite, put a time where it was unlimited, and reduced the maximum uses to "only" equal to your Charisma mod. The shift from 'per long rest' to 'with sunrise' was purely to fit the flavor of Obtain Phoenix which has a similar restriction --Ddraig (talk) 13:34, 5 February 2020 (MST)

Major rewrite

EDITOR NOTE: Went through the entire class and worked on rewording things for clarity and reworking some things to try and achieve better balance, doing my best to leave the flavor and intent of the class untouched, as I love the concept. A note on the spellcasting, the previous iteration of this class had effectively all the perks of a sorcerer with melee capabilities, there is no balanced way to maintain this class with full spellcasting and keeping all of the flair and abilities, as such having half spellcasting is a better fit for this class. -Thravieus Windhelm

Neutering and its effect on the archetypes

Given the stripping out of the majority of the magical ability of the class by Thravieus Windhelm, is there any point in maintaining the healing and revival archetypes? The Revival archetype I already was questioning if it was worth keeping (see above) but without the spells or spellslots to really use on healing, the only one that seems to still be worth a crap is the DPS archetype. This is especially true given that the healing archetype was also nerfed in the same round of edits.

Sure, the class had the same spellcasting table as a Sorcerer and could go into melee, but it also doesn't have Sorcery Points or Metamagic, which are both huge boons to power and flexibility. It sacrificed a lot of magical flexibility (including a lot of utility spells that just aren't on the spell list) for the ability to go into melee if needed. Even of the spells on the spell list, the damage types are VERY restrictive, limited to exclusively Fire with a couple Radiant spells thrown in. Fire is resisted by a lot of enemies. I will say that the class can survive in melee, but it can't do it well. There's little in the way of features that buff its melee capabilities like Extra Attack barring one (and the DPS Archetype-granted ones), which, in my mind, makes the post-edit class analogous to the PHB Ranger. And it's fairly well known how that went over.

I figure I should give Thravieus Windhelm and any others the chance to weigh in/defend the edit before I make such a large change, especially when I don't have a lot of history on this wiki (and thus reputation/etc.) --Ddraig (talk) 19:28, 25 February 2020 (MST)

I'm going to be completely honest, when working through the class my initial intent on the spellcasting was simply to reduce the viability of a caster (i.e. not being a strictly better sorcerer), but looking back I definitely think this class should get better spells than a ranger/paladin equivalent. I was focused on working through the edits recommended by the template but in hindsight bringing spells down to half definitely did more than I intended. -Thravieus Windhelm

Just a random thought from an onlooker. I've had a player running this class in my campaign, and I couldn't help but wonder if adding some bonuses for keeping your phoenix companion within you could be in order. For example, a bolster to total hp and the power of spells. -- ChronoChrome