Here's what I've learned from writing homebrew. WORLD ANVIL, 20% with code: XPTOLEVEL3: worldanvil.pxf.io/xptolevel3 The Hexing Scrolls: / hexing-scrolls-36519519 Art by Cerisila: / posts TWITTER: / xptolevel3 DISCORD: / discord
No matter what kind of home brew you make, your players (or at least one of them) will find an exploitable loophole that can be abused -Some random DM probably
A class I made for a specific campaign had a thing that basically let them Crit and not take that much fall damage when they drop on top of an enemy from a height It was really a niche, cool little side thing until the spell caster learned to cast fly
not gonna lie, in my group im the designated "find out how this is broken" guy since i spend way too much time making pointless min/maxed level 20 builds for really stupid things, like highest possible persuasion bonus, highest flight speed, or most attacks in a round
I've noticed the more freedom players have in a system the easier time they'll break it. Take tensers floating disk, for example, the one zee bashew made a video on. It is very rigid in what you can do with it by RAW. You can only break it by asking the GM questions about things not stated in the description. The Epic Spell system from 3.5e, on the other hand is what's called a complete nightmare, at least if the GM isn't up to it. It gives players an incredible amount of freedom. You can even make a spell to make making spells easier. The Advantage modification system from GURPS(I know, not a magic system, don't @me.) has a similar problem once you get to higher point values.
Me, about to run two games a week: Look, you wanted a Supernatural campaign, so I'm giving you exactly what you asked for. Now take your reduced spell list and new magic rules, and be grateful I let you have casters at all. I have the benefit of stir crazy players suffering from COVID cloister syndrome.
Logan Sanders Supernatural the CW show! We’re starting a campaign set in the show setting, but magic is far more limited in that series, and we are trying to emulate the feel of the show as much as possible. Everyone has been down for it and a few players have suggested further restrictions so I’m not worried at all.
www.dndbeyond.com/races/2542-kitsune This is actually a thing I was using for one of my homebrew campaigns.. Surprised to even hear the word being mentioned by someone else.
@@MrTailson1 i always thought that the Kitsune's shapeshift from Pathfinder would make an interesting ability for a cursed race, like a fox based lycanthrope, or for a race of people twisted into monstrous form by a angered nature God or Archfey
A friend of mine, while we were in a similar situation, decided to shoot the girl while standing in between the two very lawfully good party members. PvP was banned in our group after that
I really like that idea for the 14th level ability. Wish is such an odd spell, almost everyone takes it, but I think emphasizing that it's wish with more strings attached can make that fun, coupled with the long cooldown. It winds up making it almost like a ridiculously powerful ribbon ability, which seems like an oxymoron.
I once saw a homebrew spell someone made and it starts as a second level and it let's you cast any first level spell with a chance to instantly drop to 0 health and fail 2 death saves if you roll a 1 this spell levels up and can do any second level but how a 1 and a 2 can drop you, the high level the spell is cast the more dangerous it becomes but the more options you get as you always get new spell options. I'm pretty sure it was meant for warlocks as well so a spell that will always be at the highest level cast and let's a warlock do any spell with a catch is pretty cool to me.
It’s alright. It will basically always end in one of two ways. Either the dm won’t remember the flavor of it and the Druid gets wish once every 30 days, or the dm does remember and the Druid will get massively fucked over by the trick spirits every single time. I don’t think there would be much in between.
Looks like Wish with LESS strings attached to me, since the druid isn't casting it himself and so will not suffer from the usual strain that cripples your spellcasting for the rest of the day and might potentially prevent you from ever casting Wish again. Honestly the only legitimate way to cast Wish yourself IMO is to replicate a spell of level 8 or lower, since the strain of using it for anything more impressive is just not worth it. Anyway, with a good DM, you can get some actual _wishes_ done with this feature.
Hex is made to go with eldritch blast or extra attack characters; 1d6 extra necrotic damage on *each* attack. With EB (and Agonizing Blast of course) each beam will be doing 1d10 + Cha force damage + 1d6 necrotic damage, so about 11 damage with a Charisma of 16.
@@randomunfunnyname8834 Designed for Warlocks, who have a rather small spell slot pool and are more based around big explodey spells while keeping their concentration on hex (which at 5th level lasts a 24 hour period!)
It can also be used out of combat. it has 2 effects: in combat, and out of combat. Combat: extra 1d6 dmg to all attacks OOC: disadvantage on an ability check (if you want to get some mileage out of this in combat, pick wisdom. -5 to passive perception might help the rouge) you're not aware that you've been hexed btw. thats important
@@Thunder-bw9xm im a fan of the transfer a hex to an insect and crush it when you start talking to Douchebag, transferring the dexterity hex to them sot hey have disadvantage on initiative
Imagine you have a wild magic sorcerer and warlock with hex. Sorcerer: Okay time to roll for my wild magic to go off Warlock who used hex on the sorcerer : No need it’s a mat one
In Rules as Written I don’t think you can use Hex on Wild magic as it’s not an Attack roll, ability check or saving throw. BUT you can murder your fellow players by making their death SAVING THROWS a 1.
The penalty in checks from hex isn’t really meant for combat, imo, it’s a multi-use spell, one of my personal favourite things I ever did as a warlock is hexed the opposing party and penalised charisma shortly before a trial, he had disadvantage on charisma checks for 24 hours, and we got the bad guy imprisoned. Situations like this, imo, are where hex really shines, the damage is an extra effect for me
I recently made a hexblade oathbreaker paladin and used hex as a precursor to his wombo combo. War cast feat. Hex on WIS, curse target, get right up in enemy's face, dreadful aspect, booming blade when they run, dump divine smites.
Jacob: if i'm gonna cast this spell in a game, how can I use it to break the game. that's wat balancing is Jeremy Crawford: fireball is a level 3 spell because I said so
"I've come to bargin!" roll for deception "20!" Not good enough. "What do you mean not good... WAAAHH!H!!" That's how i picture the 14 level Druid Wish going.
Warlock has two invocations that work amazingly well with hex. Maddening Hex lets you spend a bonus action to inflict automatic psychic damage on the target of your hex and any creature of your choice within 5ft of the hexed creature. There's another one I can't remember the name of that lets you teleport as a bonus action to the target of your hex.
New Player Here, i really REALLY wanna make a "Mercenary" Class that is all about fighting dirty and their main concept is "Debuffing/Cheating" against the enemy as much as possible, taking one of the principles of battle to heart "Seek Victory, not Fairness" and these are great advice!
One of my Homebrew spells is a revised True Strike cantrip, basically I changed it's duration from up to 1 min with concentration, to a single turn spell making the next attack that targets the thing effected By True Strike gains advantage to that attack until the end of your next turn. With the number of attacks that gain advantage increasing as you level up, starting from 1 attack at lv 1, to 2 attacks gaining adv. at lv 6, then 3 attacks at lv 11, and finally 4 attacks at lv 17. It's to actually make it useful for the caster, but it can also be used as a support spell for allies who are having trouble hitting that big bad when you're out of spell slots.
Thank you kinda strangers for the likes, this same adjustment could also be applied to Blade Ward, with the slight change of it being a reaction, but still scales similar to True Strike with it giving damage resistance starting at 1 attack then 2 then 3 and so on.
Hey cool kid Jacob, i would love to see a revised version of your artificer class. I loved the flavour and I would love to bring it to my table without feeling that I'm being unfair
@@halocrap It isn't correct. Look up the word 'Artifice' and how that's pronounced. Accents don't count as the actual pronunciation for a word, phonetics do.
Just read through your home brew, bro it’s epic. I was easily able to see the encounters in me head and was able to “play out” how they would all react.
www.dndbeyond.com/races/2542-kitsune I actually used to while making homebrew campaigns. Surprised to know that even Jacob either knows about it, or at least thought of it.
This druid class is everything I've ever wanted. Im Puerto Rican and my family is very Taino/African in our heritage despite my Spaniard appearance lol, and it's clear you didn't just throw this together without any research. Thank you!!
For some reason this video wasn't in my notifications or my subscription feed. I saw the post on discord and had to go to your channel to find it. Thanks RU-vid...
This is helpful... I'm trying to run d and d online with some friends(first time any of us are playing) ... I'm from trinidad and Tobago so there isn't anything hardcopy available so I won't be able to get much if any official material so I'm basically going off a dice rolling app some printed character sheets and thoughts and prayers... Basically homebrewing a adventure and learning to dm as I go
The problems starts when making homebrew so wildly different from what exists that you cannot possibly compare it, like an spellcaster who can Only copy the spells of others and never truly knows any spells or an at will battle master
I love the art style and I see that it's the same artist that drew your characters in the CoS campaign. I like that you have chosen a Bulgarian artist which may be just a coincides and a game of faith but each time I see a person from my country doing great stuff for great people I feel amazing.
Love how over a year and a half later WotC basically took the jinx spell and said “lol what if it were a first level spell and also gave one of your allies advantage on their next roll wouldn’t that be funny” In all seriousness though, silvery barbs isn’t broken. It actually never outperforms shield in the overall chance to turn a hit into a miss, is less predictable in that regard but can still be nice for denying crits. It’s main use is actually probably being an indirect buff for save or sucks, since it basically recasts spells such as hold person, hypnotic pattern, or dominate monster with a first level slot instead of a much higher level slot
This is so cool! One of my players wanted to be a Shaman (he was thinking of 3.5) but we are playing 5e in Eberron so he is playing a Kalashtar druid. This 'circle of the occult' would be perfect with the spirits being his quori. He had this idea that instead of having one quori, he would have multiple and that they all influence his personality in a different way (so one day he might get angry really fast and the other day being really arrogant or loving). The rite of the dark spirits would be a great addition.
Hearing Divinity OS 2 music in the background makes me oddly satisfied. Oh, also great video! Lots of awesome inspiration for those of us DMs who want to mix up our games!
I overhauled Eldritch Blast. I have it so every subclass gets a different version of the spell. My mindset was: Force Damage, an Attack Roll, and a D10 together are uncontested in value, thus if you change away from those you affecf the value of the spell. If you add an effect it increased the value. If you add a saving throw or reduce the die size from 8 you reduce the value. The reason why I did this was because Eldritch Blast is bland and really powerful. Everyone feels like you have to take EB just to be viable. Frankly it should just be a Warlock classs feature. Instead it's a cantrip, but why would every single patron give the same "spooky beam of energy". The Great Old One would but I didn't want that one to be distinctively better, so I changed it to Psychic damage and made the attack itself invisible to make up for that and make it more thematic. Which is almost better than the vanilla version, but the other versions are also almost better in their Own ways. So for some of them I reduce the die size and made the damage type uncommon, which is Worse, and in exchange I offered a 1 off debuff per target/hit, which is Better, thus balancing it relatively. Effects like blindness until your turn or someone deals damage to it are better than just grappling or reducing the target's speed, so I accounted for that as well. For example: The Fiend fires a beam of hellfire that does 2d6 Fire damage on a hit. On a critical hit the beam does an additional 1d6 Fire damage. So the thought process is that a die 8 is the average die and something like radiant or psychic is an uncommon damage type worth investing in. Fire is one of the most heavily resisted damage types in the game, and I didn't want to use the d10. So I used 2d6 because 2d6 has a minimum of 2 instead of 1 and a maximum of 12 instead of 10. The critcal extra die part is because the Fiend is the "I will watch you burn and enjoy it" style of Warlock so I might as well make it count. It's only an extra d6 on a crit [5% chance of occurance] but I know that will feel good for the Warlock who's trying to sling devil powers around. More examples: The Celestial fires a beam of radiant light that attempts to blind the target. On a hit the target takes 1d6 [less value] Radiant damage [uncommon type, nuetral value]. The target then has to make a Constitution Saving Throw or be Blinded [Blinded inhibits opportunity attacks, offers disadvantage on making attack rolls, and advantage on attacks against the blinded target, so that's a lot of value] until the begining of your turn or they take damage. While Blinded is good, this will only let you get one attack in at advantage unless someone's aoe messes it up. You can abuse this yourself, really punishing them with d6s, but they are not likely to continue to fail svaing throws agaisnt your spell over time and other people have more potent attacks. The Noble Genie fire two gold coins conjured from their treasury. On a hit the coins deal 2d4 Force Damage. If the coins are not used to deal damage to a creature they are returned to the treasury. On a critical hit the coins that remain after the attack are also doubled. The Genie is rich and literally throws money at their problems. I also couldn't restrict the elemental patron to an elemental damage type, so nuetral magicall force makes sense here, though that meant reducing the die size seemed necessary. Then I had the idea that the spell is like payday from pokémon and using it literally meant you could spend time after battle picking up money. I went through this process for each of the patrons and made sure none of then were too similar, and I hope eventually I will be able to dm and someone will take the spell.
The main use of Hex is to juice up Eldritch Blast, which now can do up to 4d10+4d6 magical damage (add up to 20 more damage if you took the no brains invocation). Double that if you crit. Secondary uses involve Hexing the spellcasting trait of a caster to make it ridiculously more difficult to counter or dispel magic that isn't third level or lower - and if you're using dynamic initiative (the one which is rolled every round) Hexing the Dexterity of the most dangerous foe almost guarantees they'll forever go last.
I actually Homebrewed a Shaman class that was sort of like a druidic version of the old artificer. They crafted fetishes (not that kind!) which are small objects that could hold onto spells. This allowed them to pass them along to other people as one time use things and it has 3 subclasses called shamanic paths which are the witch, the oracle, and the spirit walker. The witch gets a few more arcane spells on their list, gets find familiar, and gets special curses/hexes. The spirit walker is empowered by certain nature spirits and they get to pick different ones as they level up like totem warrior barbarian which give them different abilities, they also get an animal companion spirit that if it dies can be resummoned the following day. The oracle gets spells such as scry that let them perceive the world and they do some dice manipulation like the diviner wizard. They see the strands of fate and learn to read and manipulate them in subtle ways to change outcomes. That's by no means a complete description but they are interesting.
@@cassandramuller7337 Well its a pet project of mine and i just started. Mainly i plan on doing all classes and races first with appropriate spell lists. Afterwards i mainly wanna add a beastiarium with stat blocks. I also thought about example encounters based on fractals but I dont wanna overdo myself. One step at the time. Oh dont worry, i got an actual precursor drop a year ago (my first since release) but i havent finished it either.
@@Answerisequal42 That sounds so awesome :D If you ever finish it and feel like sharing you should put it on DM's guild. Oh and let me know how it progresses, I'm really curious as GW2 is probably my favourite game. I always come back to it even if I tire of it for a while. I'm only missing mystic coins and funerary incenses (like 85 of them) and then I'll finish Exordium. So close I can almost feel it, taste it. I'm so excited to get it for my beautiful Chrono main. Love greatsword on mesmer.
If Jinx affected saving throws, you could also have multiple users of it chain it. Make them succeed a Wisdom save or else get a 1 on their Wisdom save against your friend's Jinx. Basically, your ally could cast a second one and effectively give the target disadvantage. That could continue on to double and triple advantage for as many spellcasters as you have with Jinx. Not really OP, since that's multiple characters all using reactions and spell slots to accomplish a single effect, but it just seems like bad practice to allow chaining. "I counterspell your counterspell" is a slippery slope.
To anyone coming across after me, it's worth remembering that formatting is important. If you want to share or sell your homebrew online, you'll be best served by being consistent with the official formatting of the game you're tinkering with. With respect to Jinx, there's a nice illustrative example of why formatting matters. In 5e, every spell with a casting time of 1 Reaction has a triggering condition which must be met in order for you to cast said spell. This condition is always included in the text of the casting time using the form "Casting Time: 1 reaction, which you take when..." The only exception in the core rules is Hellish Rebuke, which uses the slightly different "1 reaction, which you take in reaction to..." Anyway, as written, Jinx has no triggering condition, so it can never be cast. The body of a spell entry is for describing what that spell does, so you should not be including anything else (like triggering conditions) in that text
That awesome improved artificer class is the only homebrew 3rd party class i always allow and encourage in my setting im developing. Though to be fair, my setting is an experiment in abandoning the idea of trying to balance everything, it's to experiment with a dynamic world setting where some choices are better than others, and not everything you encounter is level appropriate. The challenge is in roleplaying and being creative in your problem solving.
I really wanted to make a homebrew Druid subclass called the "Circle of the Cosmos". Basically they're an astrologian that uses star charts to decipher the very nature of the multiverse and gain foresight from it.
@@mauro_carvajal yeah, your right, still a cool concept, I'm the sort of dm who doesn't really care about your stats, whatever flavour you want to through onto your class you can. So circle of cosmos, stars whatever as long as its relatively balanced, I'm happy
I homebrewed a hybrid race/class for vampires. Basically you're a variant human eldritch knight, but instead of certain upgrades you'd usually get with that class you'd get vampiric powers. You do start off nerfed so you're balanced with the party, and by the time you get to 20 you're just as crazy as everybody else is in terms of power
If I was writing Jinx from the inspiration of shuffling an L into a characters deck or loading their dice with a 1, I wouldn't go down the reaction route. I'd keep it structured like Hex but make it a bad luck curse rather than a debuff. Jinx Lvl 1 enchantment (warlock) Casting time: Bonus action Range: 30 feet Components: V, S, M (a gold coin) Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour You place a curse of bad luck on a creature you can see within range. The target must succeed on a Charisma saving throw or be cursed for the duration. When a creature cursed in this way rolls a natural 20 on an attack roll, saving throw or ability check, the roll is treated as a natural 1 and the spell ends. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, you can target one additional creature for each slot above 1st. You shuffle a second natural 1 into their dice and guarantee that it negates a success. I was contemplating making it 19 instead of 20 but I'm considering this from a dms perspective and that would pick on champions and artifact wielders and is easier to forget when you're rolling eight+ attacks a round. There are a few points to this you could monkey with; increase the number of enemies to make it more like bane which is a stronger spell but costs an action. Increase the range to make it more like hex however that stretches the aesthetic of flipping a coin in front of someone if they're 90 feet away. Seems pretty strong, especially for full casters (hence warlock only) but it's balanced by the fact it is protective not active. There's a chance no 20s are rolled and a good chance a monster rolls more than one crit in an encounter. Also not sure how to break the game with this provided only warlocks use it or a cheeky bard. Also it's more vibes than a halfling second chance, chaos sorcerer bend luck, rogue stroke of luck style reaction that lets you juuuust survive something. This has more of a night hag flipping a coin in the air, it vanishing, then spectral coins falling from the canopy, phasing through the party as they are all cursed and filled with a deep subconscious awareness that their luck has run out or a black-clad witch entering through the door of the manor. The air is sucked out the doorway behind her slamming the doors and the rogue crouched all too visible on the landing with his pick in the lock of the bedroom door feels his connection to Tymora be severed violently. Hang on lemme copy paste this into a document...
Musket: 10 damage + 1d10 + Dex Modifiers. Attack Roll -4 + Dex Modifiers. Special Action: Take Aim Allows you to use one Action, to take aim, adding +12 to your attack roll next turn. Loading: It takes 2 turns to reload this weapon. High early damage, very bad DPR, can be very accurate, can remove one threat early in game. But will be less usefull mid to late game (Once the 30+ hp mobs comes out to play). It may seem very unbalanced, but the Reload time, is the biggest issue, as they can't attack every turn, unless they have another weapon, but then it doesn't count towards the loading. Then you also need to consider they can use an action to Aim, which takes pretty much the whole turn, as it only applies the +12 to attack roll the next turn. During that time, they can be overrun by even gobbos.
i can tell you what not to do dont give your party a bunch of hombre-wed magic items that are to powerful for your party but thats sorta a no brainer but look up xp to level 3,s series on it for actual advice.
The rule of vampires not being able to enter someone’s home without consent doesn’t apply to Strahd, because he’s the lord of all Barovia, and the whole country is actually his home.
If the players enter a house to evade Strahd with the mindset of "vampires can't enter a house uninvited", just remember that Strahd can still light that house on fire lol
The best and easiest homebrew is reflavoring the existing tech instead of changing it. A blood ball spell is still creepy cool even if for game mechanics, it's a fireball.
because it's a reaction and it only works if they fail a wisdom save the idea of it affecting saving throws works pretty well, you're basically spending a reaction and a second level spell slot to change the saving throw to a wisdom save
I made a homebrew race, fairly simple. Then a player found a loophole to get Shocking Grasp that scales off of Strength, for lightning punches. 10/10, not even mad.
My tip? Head over to dm's guild and see if you can find some stuff (like encounters and items) that you can either use directly, repurpose or just generally use as inspiration. It really helps when you get blocked. Also remember not to be a perfectionist (I no it's hard but the players won't care). If you're a perfectionist while worldbuilding you'll play in ten years at the soonest and everyone will be asking why you're still playing 5th edition. I'm newish myself and those two things have helped me a lot. Gaps'll get filled in during play and inspiration is always welcome, especially when you get writer's block. Good luck to ya. And havd fun :D
One thing that makes that Dark Arcanum feat oh so slightly better is the spells aren't restricted to a specific spellcasting modifier like with Magic Initiate where you need to pick spells from a class's list and use that class's spellcasting modifier when casting them.
Please give us a saving throw for using the level 2 feature on an unwilling target. I absolutely love the idea of this witch being able to turn people into frogs. Might make it too strong though.
I homebrewed a human fighter that was pretty cool. His main class skills and feats included Big Sword, which was an op version of Eldritch Blast, but you can only use it within 5 feet of the target, the damage is slashing instead of force, and it gets a d12. He also has an ability at level 5 called timber where he wacks his weapon around like a drunk lumberjack. At level 20 he gets to wack 4 times. He can't use any magic at all so he's balanced.
For spells specifically I feel like alongside damage (which is a conversation between player and DM) the most important part is how to flavor the spell or tie it into the setting/character. Like a super-chill Life Cleric being able to call down a meteor that does 12 D20 damage would feel a bit weird, even if the idea of dropping a meteor is cool. For a personal example before the game got cancelled I had this idea for my DM where instead of Countercharm at 6th level my bard could get a custom spell, with said spell tying into other aspects of her character. Essentially it would be a way for my character to have access to a decently-damaging lightning spell (working like Fireball albeit for less damage) since she can't naturally use Lightning Bolt, but alongside that as part of my character's desire to strike terror into one of the villain factions the spell could inflict fear on whoever it actually hits. I even had a decent idea for how in-universe the spell could be made and tailored to that bard without it coming off as absurd.
Dude, I have built a Witch Doctor class based on Diablo 3's class (my FAVORITE class in D3) and I wanted the "Shaman" class for 5e as well. I'm a big fan your Druid fo sho!
the first homebrew i made was a fighter subclass, i Called the Arcane Pugilist(its actually on the DandDwiki site). Basically its whole schpiel was using its bonus action to infuse spells into unarmed strikes, and basically acted as a 1/3 caster. Only I have used it so far, only in 1 campaign, and i went through it with like, 3 DM friends of mine before it got its final approval.
Kitsune Race: +1 Dex, +1 Wis. Subraces: Red Fox: additional +1 Wis Snow Fox:+1 to Con. Traits: Superior Darkvision (due to mix of hearing and night vision), Foxfire (Up to N-2 times per long rest, minimum 3 times, you may cast firebolt for free using Wisdom as your spellcasting modifier)
unless you make the jinx spell silent, it's pretty bad to cast in response to an insight check NPC: "it does seem kinda suspicius." Warlock: *flails arms around* "YOU HAVE BEEN JINXED TO NOT SEE THROUGH OUR LIES!" NPC: "now your previous statement seems plausible, but can we talk about the spell that dude just cast?"
re: feats are really strong: I somehow managed to convince my DM to treat any Perception roll of 16 or lower as a 16, because that's my passive perception because I took Observant
Gotta really love how Jacob is careful and caring with his homebrew wile WOTC are saying fuck it and putting all kinds of power creep spells and habilitys
