User talk:Lycanskull

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Flane Tounge

In advance, instead of making and wiping a page because of a mistake, you can just move the page to a different name. No hassle for the mods. --SwankyPants (talk) 13:29, 16 January 2021 (MST)

Sword Savage

As I said in the Fighter discussion page in the Hyrule supplement here are the problems I've noticed with the Sword Savage subclass. I see that you've fixed some but I'll start with the class writing issues before moving onto actual class balance. Extra Expertise isn't clearly written. It says: "Extra Expertise At 2nd level, you gain the Wrathful Combatant fighting style. If you already have this fighting style, you instead take the Unarmored Defense fighting style. You automatically gain this fighting style at 5th level. If you have the Dragon Rage fighting style, you may substitute Wrathful Combatant for Dragon Rage and learn the Unarmored Defense fighting style. You gain proficiency in one skill from Animal Handling, Nature, Intimidation or Survival." It isn't clear what "you automatically gain this fighting style at 5th level" means. Does that mean you get Unarmored Defense at 5th level if you do or don't have the Wrathful Combatant style, or do you get Unarmored Defense immediately? It's also confusing to have a feature tell you you get something at 2nd level, and again later to say that you get it at 5th level so whatever it is should be explicitly called out. There's also the wording of the interaction with Dragon Rage, which says you "may" substitute it but not that you have to. There's an overarching problem between the Dragon Rage and Wrathful Combatant Fighting Styles you have added that implies that they somehow stack, and it's odd for a class to call out a Fighting Style it doesn't even have access to within its own class. Overall I would remove the reference to Dragon Rage and specify in Wrathful Combatant and Dragon Rage themselves that Fighting Styles that grant Rage don't stack with themselves, and change the wording to say "if you have a Fighting Style that allows you to Rage already you instead take the Unarmored Defense Fighting Style" which should solve this problem at least for Sword Savage. Frenzy is poorly placed and doesn't do anything, the entire feature itself is broken. "Frenzy Starting at 3rd level, you can expend 8 stamina points go into a frenzy when you rage. If you do so, for the duration of your rage you may make two weapon attacks using one attack action on each of your turns after this one. You can only do this once per turn. When your rage ends, you cannot regain these stamina points until you take a long rest. If you would spend more stamina points than you posses, you spend all remaining stamina points and suffer 1 level of exhaustion." The first problem evident is that you can't use Frenzy at the level you get it. As a 3rd level Fighter you have Constitution Modifier + 4 Stamina Points. Using the Standard Array or Point Buy with a cap of 15 in any ability before racial modifiers, the highest amount of Stamina Points you can have is 7. You can't actually use this feature without having rolled for stats and gotten an 18 and chosen to put it in Constitution or taking the Stamina Scroll feat using the Starting Feat variant. The second problem is the text "for the duration of your rage you may make two weapon attacks using one attack action on each of your turns after this one". This is what Extra Attack does. "'Extra Attack'Bold text Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn." When you take the Attack Action using your Action on your turn you can make a weapon attack. Extra Attack makes it so you can make more. Frenzy as written allows you to do exactly what Extra Attack does, make two attacks with the Attack Action, and most players can only use this starting at level 4 at best and it becomes a useless feature starting at level 5 when you have Extra Attack. I think what you mean to have written is "for the duration of your rage you may make an additional weapon attack when taking the Attack Action on each of your turns after this one". My last point is a wording nitpick. The feature says it requires 8 Stamina Points to enter a Frenzy and the last part of the feature states "If you would spend more stamina points than you posses, you spend all remaining stamina points and suffer 1 level of exhaustion". Part of the issue is the feature explicitly states it needs 8 Stamina Points to use and you can't spend Stamina Points you don't have, you have them or you don't. The way it's worded as is this part of the feature will never occur because it isn't possible to spend more Stamina Points than you have or you expend all your Stamina Points to become exhausted, because you don't have the 8 you need to activate the feature. I understand the intent of what it's supposed to do, allow you to Frenzy by taking Exhaustion instead, but the wording should be cleaned up to explicitly say you can do that. Like "If you do not have enough Stamina Points to expend to enter your Frenzy, you may spend all remaining Stamina Points and suffer 1 level of Exhaustion to enter your Frenzy instead" and the earlier part of the feature should be rewritten to state "Any Stamina Points expended to enter your Frenzy cannot be regained until you take a long rest" because that effect isn't stated in the last part of the feature. The Wrathblade feature has odd wording when referencing Dire weapons and Advantage/Disadvantage. "Your weapon gains the Dire property. This essentially means you add your proficiency bonus to damage rolls twice." This wording makes it sound like the Dire property itself adds your proficiency bonus to damage rolls twice, which would lead people to believe that they add it three times because of Rage. It's also odd to explain what Dire does in a class feature given no other features do that for things like conditions, where Fear gives creatures the Frightened condition it doesn't spell out what Frightened does in the spell because there's a section for that. Dire links to the weapon properties page so this is unnecessary. Rage already says you gain a bonus to damage equal to your proficiency modifier. The Dire weapon property states that you add your proficiency modifier to damage instead of to attack rolls. These are two separate instances of getting damage because Rage gives you bonus damage, so it doesn't need clarification. "You cannot be disarmed of this weapon, nor can you have disadvantage on your attack rolls (unless you would have disadvantage twice)." You can't have Disadvantage twice, you either have Disadvantage or you don't. If something applies Disadvantage, you have Disadvantage. If something applies Advantage, you have Advantage. If you have both it's a flat roll. Advantage/Disadvantage is binary, it's either applying or it's not and it doesn't matter from how many sources. This should also be removed for balance reasons which I will cover later, but for now this is strictly mechanical. Potent Rage gets confusing again. "Potent Rage At 15th level, your frenzied rage is less taxing on your body. You instead spend 6 stamina points when entering your frenzy. In addition, you now may use add your proficiency bonus to attack and damage rolls when activating your Wrathblade." There's a typo there in "you now may use add your proficiency bonus" but that's a minor problem. The major problem is it isn't clear how many times you add your proficiency bonus to your damage rolls. Your Wrathblade is a Dire weapon so adds its proficiency bonus to damage rolls instead of your ability modifier, but that comes from the Dire property of the weapon. It's a weapon property, not a class feature, so this class feature claiming that you add your proficiency bonus to attack and damage rolls isn't clear in what it's intended to do. Are you adding it three times now, once from Rage, once from the Dire weapon property, and once from this class feature? Or does this let you add your proficiency bonus to attack rolls with your Wrathblade as a Dire weapon? I honestly cannot tell what the intent of this feature is. _______________________________________ So the above is just what I found mechanically wrong or written in ways that don't work with Sword Savage. Below is what I have to say on class balance. To be honest I did not allow this class at my table, I banned it for being overpowered after reading Wrathblade and not wanting to spend my time making my own edit of the class in my house rules. My first problem is with the Wrathful Combatant Fighting Style you added in the first place, because it's not the same as just having Rage in a very important way. For one it scales with Con instead of the Barbarian table which can give a player more rages per day than what can be expected but a little power boost isn't my problem with it because that probably balances out. The important part is there is nothing stopping you from Raging in Heavy Armor. For a Barbarian, who can only Rage in Medium Armor, to have the same AC as Full Plate (without a shield for either) you would need to be wearing Half Plate, have 16 Dex, and Medium Armor Master. Or if you went for Unarmored Defense you would need 18 Dex and 18 Con to reach the same AC as Full Plate and still be able to Rage. That's a significant investment into a stat you don't use for attacking and/or taking a feat, that's about 4 ASIs of investment. With Wrathful Combatant able to Rage in Heavy Armor I can just go out and buy 4 ASIs. You don't need Dex because it isn't even used for Initiative in the Wisdom-based Initiative Variant, it's only used for skills and saves and you already have Advantage with Dex saves with Savage Instinct. Having access to Rage and being able to dump an entire stat is incredibly powerful and should probably be reconsidered. It's not only possible but optimal to get your Ba Extra Expertise gives Sword Savage two Fighting Styles and a skill proficiency at the same time. All other subclasses get one Fighting Style max and a relevant skill, tool, or weapons. Sword Savage is already getting more than other classes right as it starts as long as they aren't stupid and pick up Wrathful Combatant or Unarmored Defense at level 1. I've already explained why Frenzy doesn't work as written but you should work out on the damage chart how much damage they do as intended. By my estimates at 15th level they're doing more damage than Brute can at max potential during Frenzy at Brute's max level on top of having better bonuses to hit with Wrathblade. Sword Savage should not be getting any other class features at level 5 than Extra Attack, no Fighter subclass should. Level 5 is when you get Extra Attack and your damage output doubles, for spellcasters its when they gain access to powerful 3rd level spells. You don't need to get another Fighting Style at this level or First to the Slaughter at level 5 because the DM already has to adjust for the jump in power, it shouldn't be harder than it is. That's poor class design. They should get First to the Slaughter at level 7 like other classes get their one or two subclass features. Wrathblade is absolutely broken. For starters it gives greater bonuses to hit over the progression of Wrathblade, which is fine in a vacuum and obviously balanced to be half of what your proficiency bonus would be to balance out with the Dire weapon. By the time you get Potent Rage however you get better bonuses to hit while doing much more damage per hit than other classes so all that balance goes out the window. Ignoring damage immunity on anything for any damage type period is already incredibly strong but the levels you get that progression are completely backwards. DnD classes begin to get ways to get around immunity from nonmagical attacks fairly early on as Monk and Pact of the Blade Warlocks can be seen to do, and it's more important for that to come into play sooner rather than later because of when they start encountering it and staying relevant when they do. The features that bypass damage immunity/resistance to slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing need to be switched for when you can bypass the damage immunity/resistance to when you can bypass damage immunity/resistance vs things that are only affected by magical weapons. For balance sake I would leave this as only ignoring resistance and not even touching immunity. The ability to ignore Disadvantage is what made me ban this class at my table. This causes so many problems for the DM and is incredibly powerful. This ability ignores the penalties to attack rolls imposed by: the Dodge action, Invisible enemies, Heavy Concealment, the Blinded condition, the Restrained condition, the Poisoned condition, all spells and abilities that can impose Disadvantage, and Fear. There is no fair counter to this. Barbarians already have Reckless Attack, which allows them to cancel out the benefit any enemy would have by imposing Disadvantage but at the same time dodging or being invisible is being meaningless because it takes away the Barbarian's ability to gain Advantage, it has counterplay. With this ability on Wrathblade you can attack at Advantage while blinded or completely ignore poison or enemies that grapple and Restrain you and there is literally nothing they can do about it. In this way they're granted many more immunities than what they're perceived to have, and at later levels they're nearly immune to everything else that could ever adversely affect the Sword Savage. This needs to be completely removed, it's broken, full stop. Potent Rage I've already talked about. I don't know what it does, and if it does add proficiency to damage a third time you're dealing +20 with every hit minimum between maxed Strength and your damage output with Wrathblade and Rage with better chances to hit than everyone else with your bonuses to your weapon, made worse if your weapon is magical to begin with. If not it's +15 which still hits 81 damage with three attacks Frenzied with a greatsword which is already better than Brute by the time they get their fourth attack five levels from now. Not that that's not okay but it isn't balanced that they have better chances to hit on top of doing more damage and having better defensive options. Overpowered Onslaught is a bad feature. It only increases the stat cap, not the stat, and the only time you will increase this is if you take your next ASI in Strength or Constitution at level 19. If you don't this feature is worthless. More importantly, you get this feature right before you get Champion, which is a feature that raises two of your stats and stat caps at the same time. Even if Overpowered Onslaught was buffed to increase stats it is completely redundant to Champion. Pure Power works fine as a capstone but it has quite a lot it's doing at once. I personally only have an issue with the saving throws. Saving throws are typically combined into the Mental and Physical groups. Pure Power gets all the physical ones but also gets Charisma. I can understand where this is coming from given a flavor reason but from a balance perspective it's a needless addition considering they are also getting immunity to several conditions and damage resistance to all types but one at the same level, along with all these Advantages to saving throws. Damage resistances especially is stepping on Darknut's toes, because Pure Power does exactly what Impervious does but also grants Advantage on a bunch of saves and also immunity to several conditions. Even if you have to activate it you still have 5-6 Rages per day, no adventuring party is getting into enough fights were this is going to stop applying. --ViniVidiVicci (talk) 01:43, 4 September 2021 (MDT)

Thank ye kindly sir/madam/other. Shall get on the rebalancing. --Lycanskull (talk) 01:43, 4 September 2021 (MDT)

Discussing Scion

Hello, fellow editor of the Hyrule (5e Campaign Setting)! If you're willing, I'd like to hear your input on a proposed balanced change to Scion that I've been on the fence about for a while:

• I think Scion should be given Stamina Points, just like Oathsworn. As it stands right now, Oathsworn is just a better Scion in most ways, since they can use their Stamina points for spellcasting in addition to everything else. But what do you think? Is this a good way to buff Scion, or should something else be done? (not saying you have to come up with what it should be, just genuinely interested in what other people think)

--Woahluigi (talk) 23:00, 12 October 2024 (MDT)

• Tempted as I am to say yes, Scion's subclass features are the most powerful abilities out of any class in the setting, and they don't have very many features that take advantage of stamina points. Additionally, Dragon Dragon Scions gain the ability to use magic points as stamina points for called shots at 8th level, so it'd be a touch redundant.
  
  Having said that, making Honed Strikes a class feature instead of a dragon subclass feature might be a good idea, and I would love to hear some ideas for class features that could involve stamina points!

--Lycanskull (talk) 23:00, 12 October 2024 (MDT)

I think there's a lot of abilities scion has that currently use magic points that could be converted to using stamina. For general class features, Spell Versatility could be easily changed to use stamina points. And while we could add in another general class ability that uses stamina points, I think we could instead make sure every subclass has a level 3 ability that uses stamina points (most already have one that uses magic, so it wouldn't be too difficult). This puts Scion on a similar plane as Oathsworn, in that they have to balance making called shots, each subclasses' stamina ability, and just using their stamina points as more magic points.

Alternatively, we could just add 2 magic points to every level of scion. Literally just make them have +4 each level, instead of +2, so they aren't so behind on spells when compared to every other class that gets Magic Points.

But what do you think? Is either of these options the correct one? --Woahluigi (talk) 15:01, 16 October 2024 (MDT)

I would say the +2 magic points would be the smarter call; if you wanna concept some subclass features that use magic points like stamina points, I am all ears! --Lycanskull (talk) 14:04, 17 October 2024 (MDT)

I've made some changes to scion, hopefully the class is in a more balanced state now. I have not, however, made any major changes to the new Demon Scion subclass. Before I did so, I wanted to get your opinion, since you are the creator of it. My current opinion is that its a bit over-tuned at the moment, at least compared to the other scion subclasses now that I've made my changes. Here's what I'm thinking should be done:

• Bonus Proficiencies: Remove the Fighting Style Demon Scions get. Other Scions have features at 3rd level that give them fighting styles, but Demon Scion gets Mutations instead.
• Demonic Vestige: Allow Demon Scions to transform twice, instead of once, per rest. This is to match a Druid's wild shape, and also to compensate for nerfs to some vestiges. Also, this is the subclass's big feature, it should get to use it more than once (right?)
• Innate Occultation: Demon Scions start off with only one occult mutation, instead of two. Demon Scions shouldn't really match the pace of an occultist, in addition to their Demonic Vestiges
• Demonic Mutation: Demon Scions learn two additional mutations, instead of mutations equal to their Charisma. Same reasoning as the prior change.
• Lingering Will: DC is changed to start at 10, and increase by 5 each time you use the feature. However, you can use it an unlimited number of times until you fail. Also, you have disadvantage on the save if the damage was radiant.

• Vestiges: Demonic Mutation only allows you to swap up to +2 in one ability score to another (up to your max for that score).
  Demonic Resistance gives you resistance to one damage type of your choice, other than bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing (has no other effect).
  Hands of Violence becomes a d6, uses charisma, and gives the unarmed strikes the light property instead.
  Demonic Shell becomes 10 + Con + Dex, and gets a +1 when not using a shield. (you can already swap out dexterity for charisma with Demonic Vitality).
  Demonic Growth allows your worn armor to increase in size, but not your weapons or shield.
  Renewed Sustainability becomes Level + Con + Charisma.
  Voracious Mutation allows you to swap +2 to one ability, and +1 to a different ability. Still increases your max to 22.
  Demonic size, same change as Demonic growth.
  Violent Mutation allows you to swap around +3 and +2 to different abilities, and increases your max by 3.
  Demonic Hunger doesn't need to mention vulnerabilities, since we already got rid of those.
  Demonic Immortality becomes a reaction, and requires Renewed Immortality as a prerequisite, instead of renewed sustainability. This way, you automatically heal to half, and that's more balanced than healing to full. Also, doesn't require a use of Demonic Vestige to transform, but only lasts 1 minute.
  Apocalyptic mutation now gives you an additional +1 to 3 ability scores for free, and raises your max by 5.
  

• And just a few wording changes, here and there, that won't impact how the subclass plays.

I'm just going to go ahead and make these changes, but still feel free to tell my your thoughts. --Woahluigi (talk) 22:02, 24 October 2024 (MDT)