Talk:Scorpion Knight (5e Subclass)
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In my opinion, this subclass is very interesting, and I really like it, but maybe something more to do with attacks rather than crafting? That might just be me though, really cool concept, might need some more things to do with attacking, such as battle master with their manoeuvres or echo knight with their well, echo. Champion who gets even better crit odds, and an additional fighting style and regeneration, I feel that something more combat like should be added.
Scorpion Knight - Review[edit]
Hello, I really like the theme of this subclass and it is probably one of my favorites on D&D wiki. If you want some recommendations on how to improve the class personally the main improvement should probably be in the level balancing of it all. The theme and concept is superb, and a subclass that makes use of poisons which generally don't see a lot of play is great. However, from levels 4-9 this subclass is a little bit weaker in comparison to other Fighter subclasses, and then upon reaching level 10 it hits in insane spike in power with paralytic venom, essentially creating a death sentence for any creature who isn't immune to the poisoned condition. In addition to this the other issue is that gold is used as the limiting factor for the abilities, which really puts the limiting factor of the class on the setting rather than on any balanced interval. This means that if a character is poor the class is essentially useless, and if they're rich than they'll never really run out of poison. For a high level character this makes the gold cost rather trivial, while for a level 3 character it may be very hard or very easy to sustain the character's power depending on how gold rich the characters are in the setting. A better way to balance this in my opinion is to perhaps give a limited number of creations in a day, and have them expire at the end of a long rest to prevent infinite duping of the poison. The number of uses a day may increase at higher levels as well. I also recommend letting the enhanced venom be limited to some extent as well, maybe similar to arcane archer in execution (with more uses than Arcane Archer of course) and allowing those enhanced venoms to be accessed a bit earlier to prevent the slight weakness in the power curve at lower levels. Paralytic venom can be locked to require a higher level instead though much like the storm rune in the rune knight fighter subclass, and this also allows you to expand your access to venoms to spread them out across levels. Lastly, the only other suggestion I have is to maybe rework the levels at which the ignoring of poisoned condition immunity is gained, as only gaining access to that at level 18 is a little late in my opinion for the sheer number of creatures immune to the condition. A welcome trade off is giving immune creatures advantage on the save instead to not completely trivialize the immunity to poisoned, while still letting scorpion knights be relevant against poisoned immune creatures. If you have any questions feel free to ask me, I personally may playtest this subclass as well just to get a really good grasp on its performance in comparison to other subclasses and classes in official. Personally it is a really well themed class as it stands, and overall it could hold up really well, but most of my suggestions hedged upon the strength of paralytic venom, which in my opinion is a bit too strong unless a creature is paralysis immune. The other changes were very much based upon the shifting power scale of the proposed nerf to limiting paralytic venom, and if you want you could keep the class relatively as is and I'd gladly make a variant version, as my suggestions do perhaps weaken the theme revolving around the crafting component of the poisons which I personally really like. That's really my suggestions for improvement overall, and feel free to reach out any time.
