Because I am already like her... my planned rework of Ranger includes adding the Bloodied condition and making Ranger features key off that. So like, Colossus Slayer on Hunter would deal more damage to Bloodied targets rather than just targets missing any HP. But they also get abilities to cause the Bloodied condition before half HP. Also some monsters would now have abilities off Bloodied, like Sahuagin getting advantage. Probably most Recharge abilities would automatically recharge when Bloodied the first time.
RIP to Remarkable Athlete, the most useful subclass feature of all time. Truly a loss that will be mourned for generations. My heart goes out to all the fighters who will no longer be able to jump across slightly wider gaps. Really though, there's so many cool ideas in here, and the new names for the subclasses that you were showing on the stream were awesome. I've certainly been known to pick options based on how cool their name is
@@michimatsch5862 I don't heavily modify 5e because I don't like it. I modify it BECAUSE I like it! I know the system, I like the core mechanics! And I love tinkering!
I love your takes of Class and Subclass development. As a DM, I think you really have your finger on the pulse of what entices players to play certain classes. The "heartbeat" you mention is so on point.
I actually really like the Hunter's Quarry idea. It does give the Ranger a combat edge over their Favored Enemy which makes sense. Even reconciles well with Hunter's Mark (spell). HQ says "I know everything about how [enemy type] fights." in a very Thrawn-like way, while Hunter's Mark can still work for enemies that aren't necessarily "favored", or can even work with favored enemies in making it a more personal "I know everything about how YOU fight." Very cool!
Big change I've found works is just making it so you ignore the effects of exhaustion while raging. That way you get that push pull of "Do I want to Frenzy?" but you are still effective in combat. (I still like the exhaustion mechanic, it's unique enough it nearly feels like it's from another, grittier game, and it's thematically on point. I've played a Berserker till high teens and it usually wasn't enough to hold me back, but it did mean I had to be a little more strategic.) Some other changes I made was making the ability you get at 10 a bit better and calling it "Warp Spasm" like the Irish warriors of old. Now you use CON instead of CHA (symbolizing the horrific transformation of your body), you use it as a bonus action, but only while raging and in a Frenzy, and the creature who you target takes psychic damage and is stunned, while other creatures you choose who can see you up to your prof bonus are frightened if they fail. On a success the creature still takes the psychic damage, but isn't stunned, and the other guys aren't frightened. You can use your bonus action to extend the duration of the effect. (This means you're gaining levels of exhaustion, but you now have a small battlefield control feature, and you can do a bit of ranged damage I've gone back and forth on making it a flat number equal to your prof bonus, or a number of d6's equal to your rage damage, neither of tipped the scales wildly but dice are more fun. It sounds OP, but the monk is stunning fools much earlier, and getting its ability to do so back on a short rest.) I also made the lvl6 feature grant you resistance to psychic damage while raging, because it's a "Mindless Rage". I've thought about giving them another boost by giving them some kind of big blowout move where they can do like a big burst of attacks at 14th level but get stunned for a round or something, just because of the power creep of later archetypes, but frankly I don't think they need it. Mine just tears through enemies with those three attacks, and being able to do a little bit of crowd control and ranged damage is great. With some good items and feat selection a Berserker is a bloody monster.
My rework is fairly simple. I think Berserker should keep Exhaustion for going into a Frenzy but it shoulb both be something they can just turn on (rather than waiting until next turn to benefit) but should also replace that one single extra attack with a minor Damage Threshold. They literally ignore damage from single attacks or effect less than 2x their Proficiency Modifier, taking damage normally for the rest of the round once it's overcome and resetting at the start of their turn. This would highly encourage Frenzy Rage for the damage threshold, meaning Exhaustion happens often, meaning Reckless Attack would be more encouraged. High risk and reward. But removing Exhaustion on a Short Rest could be a higher level ability.
Love it. The add double proficiency to hit for champions is quite risky as a feature... we need to respect that Moses came down from the Mount with tablets that said "Thou shalt not take bounded accuracy in vain."
Giving everyone maneuvers is something I have done for my game as well, though I went so far as to give it to every single martial (though a heavily limited selection for non fighters) Makes martials fun! "I move and attack, that's my turn" has become a much more rare sentence.
FINALLY! SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS! My current pride and shame is a 48 page (and expanding) weapon overhaul for base dnd, consisting of over 96 weapons which I have lurked over for about 3 months. I cannot separate myself from it for more than a day and I feel crazy.
My favorite version of a Ranger rework comes from Heavyarms. It's a pretty major change that might not be for everyone, but it has revolutionized how I think about classes. It removes subclasses completely and just has a collection of features you can put together adhoc to make the sort of ranger you want
I will once more highly highly recommend Laserllama's homebrew works for all D&D tables that are interested in some game design reworks in terms of class design. I think he fully fixes so many of the core game's design and, on top of fixing many of the core classes, he has a number of super flavorful, super well-designed classes of his own design that are super fun.
skills don’t kill monsters though, which is most of this game. the amount of times you roll a stealth check is nowhere near the amount of times you shoot a bow, and even if you got surprise off of that stealth check, everyone had to roll high enough for that to work. if your players are like me and mine, expertise in a weapon means GWM and SS officially blow the doors off your combat encounters, as they no longer have their intended downsides.
@@Hazel-xl8in Skills might not kill monsters, but they have the power to completely change or circumvent entire encounters or even campaigns. I've seen expertise in athletics shut down an encounter with a mobile enemy, I've seen stealth used to circumvent countless challenges, I've seen the social skills de-escalate tons of potentially dangerous situations or even turn enemies against each other. I've seen Perception render entire encounters completely pointless. Expertise in weapon attacks just means you do more damage. I will agree that it makes Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter way too powerful. If I used this rule I would probably either nerf or disallow those feats.
I may miss the mythology videos, but I love how Dael lays out her design philosophy. I also think it is funny that she even points out that it is her design philosophy.
I'm so glad to see someone specifying the issues with Fighter and Ranger I've seen. Combat is designed to be balanced for the whole party and making everything equal because it's the only thing that the D&D rulebook cares about, however because of this, the fighter whose whole deal is combat, is weakened dramatically. Make the fighter fight good. And the ranger is always viewed as too specialised (especially with favoured enemy/favoured terrain) but that's the whole point of the classes, to be specialised, so lean into that
Scent Blood (Scent of Blood? Sense Blood?) is such a baller feature hooue booooiii that's some good design right there. I love so much of what you've done here! Couldn't agree more with your 'heartbeat' design philosophy for classes, and it has generated some awesome ideas. I will certainly use some of these designs when I run my next homebrew campaign.
"There's a hugely long cobweb on my bunting" is the best piece of natural poetry I've heard in my life. I have no idea what a bunting is so I'm gonna make up that the meaning of the line is about having a long gossamer of accumulated detritus holding your life back. But it's but a spider's web and an old one at that. Be free fly! Become the moth you were always meant to be.
"Rocks fall and you die! I am unhinged! We're back baby!" 🤣 Fantastic rant. Very Inspired. It's like those renaissance painters who worked without sleep or food to make one final masterpiece before becoming gravely ill lol.
I had an idea for rangers fovored terrain, what if it worked more like attunement? Like they spend x amount of hour minus their wisdom modifier to get to learn the lay of the land, and in the process making that terrain their favorite until they "attune" to a new terrain. While attuned, tracking in that terrain would be at advantage, and fighting enemies in that terrain allows you to add your proficiency bonus to your weapon damage maybe?
It's crazy how much you and some other great DnD-tubers have inspired and influenced my creativity! I've also done a very similar re-work of essentially all of 5e, and even had almost identical key-features like battlemaster maneuvers to all fighters and spell-less rangers (even down to having a spell-casting subclass being named "warden" weirdly enough)
Ahhhhh 53 rewrites! just in time for One D&D ;p very much support the ranger doesn't need to be casting spells so an equivalent to Edritch Knight & Arcane Trickster is perfect
I would love to see the full document. Seems like a lot of love was poured into making sure your players have the most fun at the table. As a DM currently working on my homebrew setting for our next game (I am currently running ToA and Scarlett Citadel) This type of video is really helpful as I have been making subclasses to fit my setting
Giving expertise with a weapon is a massive to hit bonus. Because it scales beyond fighter levels as well, taking a 3 level dip is incredibly potent for any martial character. Basically, a +1 is equally good at level 20 as it is at level 1, say for increesed crit chances. A +2 at level 3, combined with Archery, gives you a +4 at level 3, for a +9 total using pointbuy or standard array. And at level 17, it's a +19 total, before magic items. In essence you can Basically guarantee a hit for every hit.
Great! That's basically what I wanted it to do. It sucks to play a character who's specifically meant to be good at fighting as their main thing, only to miss attacks.
You are not the only one. I have been putting my "customized" version in a web page for my players for years, and I'm always tweaking things every now and then whenever I find some new cool idea. I think that this One D&D stuff is also making us all DM rethinking everything in our own way. 😁
Hey, I did pretty much the same thing with the Fighter! Turned the Battle master into the base class! I feel inordinately happy to know you had the same thought. :D
So, just a few thoughts : 1) This is the *sane*(ish) post fever dream version of Dael? 2) Are these two classes not now the 'Satisfighter' and the 'Rearanger'? 3) This is your IRL version of the 'Testament of the Falling Fire' isn't it? :)
This is amazing! You're addressing a lot of the same qualms I have with the 5e classes, and I love make sure each class has a "beating heart"! I would be very interested to the whole document and the reworks you've made to all the other classes/subclasses
Finally! I remember seeing your travel video YEARS ago. Since then I have run 6 campaigns, started my own RU-vid channel, and been unsuccessful in finding MonarchsFactory again. Till now
I really love this video. I have the same "problems" with the way this classes works, but I can't justify putting time in homebrewing a third of the player's book. Between a full time job, college and my ADHD, is generally easier to me to change to another system that's closer to what I want than trying to redo Wizards job. On the other hand, is pretty easy to me to steal this for my game. Thank you Dale :)
Fever dream Dael is my favourite Dael haha. Eyy! I'm glad my idea of maneuvers and superiority dice becoming an all fighter thing from the Champion Fighter vid made it! I definitely agree with you on the heartbeat of a class and that being what the Ranger was missing. I'd def recommend being liberal with giving Rangers power if you take their magic away. I think if you really want to push your Wild Magic Sorcerors to use the Bend Reality feature more and more, having the bonuses/penalties be more significant could be worth considering. Adv/Disadv typically weighs between +/- 3.5 -> 5 depending on the target number, so my recommendation is to multiply the Sorcery Point expenditure by 2 to determine the bonus/penalty. Is that powerful? Sure! Let them have it, as a treat. Also, Chaos Bolt is the most Wild Magic spell I can think of and definitely deserves to be on it's spell list haha. Love the video as always Dael, some really cool ideas. I genuinely burst into laughter at the cobweb aside, thanks a bunch.
What you did here.... First is amazing. Second, is what I did for SmashUp. Reworked just about all of the factions. Cut from the same cloth I'd say. I'll see if any of my players are interested in play testing these. :) thank you!
Oh, this is a very "I can do this all...... DAAAAAAAY" rebuild. And I love it. ...partly because it's *very* similar to mine, lolol. Big change I'd recommend, Dael: Combine Second Wind, Indomitable, and Action Surge into a single move called "Second Wind," with tthree options: Action Surge, Healing Surge, and something like Valiant Surge which is just Indomitable. I have it working at 2xFartNoise (prof bonus times per day), and you can regain a use of it during a short rest. Mainly so that the fighter works in the modern version of DnD where nearly every game has defaulted to the 1 to 2 big encounters per day thing, which means that Short Rest cadence is basically defunct.
Attack bonuses are almost always more valuable than equally sized damage bonuses. If the Champion's Deadly Skill is intended to be an upgrade to their prior ability, it might make more sense to reverse the order of the benefits (an initial +proficiency to damage with a later optional substitution of +proficiency to attack).
Not intended as an upgrade so much as versatility. Once you reach a certain point, having a +10 or a +16 doesn't really matter so much - thanks to bounded accuracy either one has a really high chance of hitting an ordinary enemy. So instead, I thought it'd just be a nice token to be able to move that excess bonus to hit into damage if you already know your base proficiency would probably be enough :)
This is wild. I was here many years ago when you put out your first vids about greek mythology. Years later and you are a DnD content creator with wonderful ideas. I like it! :)
I have fallen into similar wells such as downtime activities, mass battle rules, and ... well... just about everything. When you hit book 2 of your homebrew rule tweaks, take a breath and a step back. Or ignore it and carry on! Yay!
I LOVE the way you’re reimagining the fighter. If you think abt any fun videogame, it immediately makes so much sense that a fighter would gain a 10% crit rate on melee attacks when other classes would have 5%. I have been slowly burning at an idea for all characters with more martial levels than caster levels to have battlemaster maneuvers, but i may mix that with your fighter system, i would be excited to play a fighter too! The doubled proficiency going into an option for bonus damage normal accuracy hits, these keep getting better. The insight check dodge??? Woah! Ok i have to stop writing and watch
If you don't drop the whole thing online somewhere, can this become a series of you explaining all your rewrites? I've never wanted to play a ranger until now and this new wild magic origin has finally scratched my itch for a proper Scarlet Witch wild magic sorcerer.
"Don't be like me" --Dael "BUT i'VE ALwaYS BEeN lIKE ThiS!!" --Me "I think it's fairly normal for a lot of DMs to have a sort of set list of sourcebooks, or even individual classes and subclasses for their D&D game." "I started really thinking, wouldn't it be really handy just to have a binder full of the different class and subclasses, like cool art, and short descriptions that try to sell the player something. You could just hand it out; people could flip through it through your session zero. I don't know, that sounded fun to me, BUT..." ...so, I basically ended up with, like, an 111 page document, wherein I tweaked or re-wrote just about every subclass." (this is me on a NORMAL day. Thankyou for validating my existence.) Turns out, yeah, you're right: people love that. But, they Sh*t on more than half of the suggestions in the book, and you only get to use about half of what they do like, because not everyone agrees on what's good and what's not. STILL: much better than pitching each and every tweak individually. --- At least you didn't re-write the entire rules of the game, and create a new edition, in which ... well, it doesn't use hit points OR use the familiar spellcasting system. It seems a bit intimidating to people.
That was a trip. Thanks for giving us a snapshot mid descent into madness. I like your changes, especially the champion. Always love seeing your videos in my feed. And my grandma likes it too (I only email her when a new video comes out).
For the ranger class, I'd move Hunter into the base, move favored enemy/terrain into a subclass with substantial buffs, rework Beastmaster entirely so that it's not a burden of action/knowledge economy (e.g., Pick a pet, pet adds bonuses like mounting a dire wolf for additional movement or dismounting and it attacks with you adding damage to your attacks, maybe even knocking a target prone on a critical hit), Gloomstalker I wouldn't change much, if at all, and I don't know enough about the other subclasses to comment, but I'd probably buff them or make them deliver their fantasy better (my assumption is I don't know about them because they suck lol).
I love the honest reactions you are having in the moment rereading some of these things for the video. Coming back to things with fresh eyes can really highlight how on or off the mark you were when you first made a thing.
I DM for a Wild Magic Sorcerer player in a group of 6 players for a 3 years long campaign. Very quickly I got the impression that the class was lacking something but not that much. We changed Tides of Chaos to be a reroll instead of an advantage. We talked about the surge that comes from it, and we saw that this feature becomes stronger if the surge comes soon after you use it, but it must still be unpredictable. So we decided that the surge can comes anytime after an use of Tides of Chaos (not just on spell cast), and I do my best to link it to strong emotional moments (sometimes right as he used the Tide of Chaos). This way my player can use a lot of Tides of Chaos and has a strong feeling of bending reality with his mysterious power. I also adapted wild magic specific spells from older editions. One being the iconic Nahal's Reckless Dweomer which is THE wild magic spells. Basically it lets you manipulate raw wild magic to try and imitate the effect of a spell you have seen. There is a very high chance of failure (depending on the level of what you're trying to imitate) but there is always something happening.
I used the Indomitable change from your previous video where it is a legendary resistance. It's so good. It really makes my player's fighter feel impressive and cool, and it's not a problem for me to balance
Dael, this is fucking great. Great direction. Even though you could have very well ditched BM, love love love what you did with it. Love the Ranger, you opened my eyes to just accepting a specialized class. And holy shit I now wanna play a WM Sorcerer.
I have played around with Battle Master mechanics being part of the core fighter class in my mind for quite some time now. I think if one goes that route one can open up maneuvers to more martials. Like it is with casters there can be full martials, half martials, third martials and so on, which determines the number of maneuvers you get (Spells you know) and the number of sup-die (somewhat Spell Slots). One can even imagine fighters being able, like a wizard can learn spells, to pick up extra maneuvers from other fighters with some time spent in training and practice. It just fits the bill so good and would make martials as a whole so much more interesting and versatile. I like what the Battle Master subclass has brought to the table, but as it is, it blocks all other fighters from attempting what maneuvers describe, because many DMs are like: "No, that is a Battle Master feature, you cannot try to disarm your opponent with an attack as a Champion", and that's just sad.
For my champion rebuild I let them add half their dex mod to strength attacks and half strength to their dex attacks. As well as applying said modifiers to the damage. And when they critical they get to double their modifier damage. (These all kick in at mid to high levels) So a fighter with 20 strength and 18 dex has a plus 7 with his greatsword attack and damage. And deals 14 on a critical hit.
Thank you, Dael, I’m totally in love with everything you do and so is my grandmother and my daughter. Was very curious about your Draconic origins fix, but can’t get it to open. All your other links work fine and look beautiful, just not that one. Running a Draconic origins character and am excited to see your homebrew. Thanks for everything! Keep up the good work.
Thanks for letting me know! Something in the url has activated the strikethrough formatting code, but it doesn't seem to happen in the comments, so while I'm working on a fix you can try this link: www.gmbinder.com/share/-ND6rOZmKj7oL_-M7IAL
A friend of mine redid the articifer flavour to be elvish in origin and have a more druid-meets-mad-max approach so it fits into the base world instead of being steampunk.
Expertise in their favoured weapon is brilliant. I was looking for ways to make martial classes keep pace with spell casters in my group. I like a lot of this.
in Worlds Without Number, warriors get a feature called shock damage, which means that if they miss an enemy with an attack and that enemy's AC is below a certain threshold, they deal a little bit of damage anyway. that seems like a good champion path to make them much better at hitting things without cranking the numbers up to 11
Honestly, taking Nature's Blessing, fleshing them out and using THAT as the Ranger subclasses would be so cool! It'd be similar to the schools of magic subclasses for the wizard, but actually using the fantasy of the player. Imagine a Swamp Ranger, someone so close to the forrest but also so protective of it that the swamp itself has given them their powers. The power of decay (contagion) and all the small life that makes up a habitat (insect plague). A Mountain Ranger that doesn't talk much since they have taken the vow. They use the rock itself to protect the life that made this harsh environment its home (wall of stone) and know how to move through solid rock in an emergency (passwall). An Urban Ranger who loves how alive cities are, alway on the lookout to help with that heart beat (mass cure wounds) or swiftly punish those who seek to stab it (shift quiver). I have never been interested in ranger since I found out how bad Beast Master is. I've always seen them as a lesser druid. But honestly, taking the magic out, fully flavouring them through their favourer terrain and giving them abilities instead of the spells to ACTUALLY SHOW how their favoured terrain/foe has shaped them would be so fcking cool.
Hi Dael. Long time player and DM here. Recently started playing OSE. Took a few sessions to change my mindset such that I was no longer comparing and contrasting to 5e. I was making the PC my own. OSE offers such basic rules and the opportunity to make each PC unique, that I am now thinking hard about a future path for the PC. My point is that, rather than looking at someone else's step by step ladder of advancement, I am discussing with my table and DM how the PC is going to be unique and change the world. Since the system is so 'flat' the power level is, on initial inspection, also low but actually, the options are vast and the power level amazing as it is only limited by my imagination and my DM.
Thank you So so much for these PDFs. You saved me so much time and your efforts look awesome! The only thing I'd change about the champion favoured weapon would be training would happen during downtime.
The wild mage bend reality, I do think the reset is too hand wavy, I could see using the spend HD mechanic. During a rest, reduce the bend reality total by 1 for each HD spent.
