Beast master Class (WIP)

[Cobrakun]

Here is my Beastmaster Class that I thought of using in one of my campaigns. I'm not very good at balancing classes so some input would be great. Thanks again and enjoy.

BeastMaster
Like Seriously, its exactly as it sounds. A beast master. Like take the Ranger’s Beastmaster archetype, and shove it. Should I go on?

Hit Points
Hit Dice: 1d8 per Beastmaster level
Hit Points at 1st Level: 1d8 + your Constitution Modifier
Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8(or 5) + your Constitution Modifier per beastmaster level after 1st

Proficiencies
Armor: Light and Medium Armor
Weapons: Simple and Martial Weapons, Net
Tools: None

Saving Throws: Constitution, Wisdom
Skills: Choose three from Animal Handling, Nature, Survival, Medicine, Insight, Athletics and Perception

Equipment
You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:
(a)Studded Leather or (b)Scale Mail
(a)One martial weapon and a net or (b)two simple weapons and a net
(a)Crossbow with 20 bolts or (b)longbow with 20 arrows
- an explorer's or dungeoneer's pack

Features

Creature Affinity
Beginning at 1st level, you have significant experience tracking, studying, and even hunting a certain type of creature. At level 1, you have an affinity to beasts. At level 6 and again at level 14, you may choose one additional creature to add to your creature affinity list: Plants, Fey, Monstrosities, and Aberrations.
You have advantage on Wisdom checks (Survival) to track any creature on your creature affinity list as well as advantage on Intelligence checks to recall information on them. By spending 1 round observing a creature on your list, you know the remaining Hit Points the creature has.
In addition, you may choose to learn a language of a creature on your list, if they know a language.


Tame Creature
At 2nd level, you can attempt to make a creature on your creature affinity list your companion. The creature can be a CR no greater than your Beastmaster level divided by 3 rounded up (max: CR 7). As an action you can attempt to tame the creature. The creature must make a Wisdom saving throw using your Taming DC (8+proficiency+wisdom modifier or 8+animal handling modifier). Creatures that are hostile towards you roll with advantage unless they are restrained or severely injured (less than ¼ health). On a successful save, you tame the creature and it becomes your companion whereas on a failed save, the creature does not become your companion and is immune to Tame Creature for 24 hours.
Add your proficiency bonus to your tamed creature’s AC, attack rolls, damage rolls, as well as any saving throws or skills it is proficient in. Its hit point maximum equals its normal hit points or four times your beastmaster level, whichever is higher. The creature retains all features outlined in the Monster Manual except legendary and lair actions.
The new creature can understand any language you know, however it can only speak in its original language if it has the ability to do so. The creature attempts to obey your commands as best as it can. It takes as turn on your initiative, but does not use an action unless you command it to do so. Although you can command it to move without using an action. You can use your action to command it to attack, dash, disengage, dodge or help. However, if your creature does not take an action on its turn, you can use a bonus action to dash, disengage, dodge or use the help action.
You may only tame a creature on your creature affinity list and may only have 1 creature tamed at a time. If you attempt to tame another creature, the original bond is broken and the DM can choose the actions of the creature.

BeastMaster Archetype
At level 3, you may choose one of the following Beastmaster Archetypes: Master of the Wild, Master of Many, and Master of Dragons.

Ability Score Improvement
When you reach 4th level and additionally at 8th, 12th, 16th and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2 or two ability scores by 1.

Extra Attack
Beginning a 5th level, you can attack twice whenever you take the attack action. When you take the attack action, you can take one attack action and grant your tamed creature your other attack.


EDIT: Arcane Training Removed, Unfettered Movement Added
At level 6, your creature(s) no longer take movement penalties moving through nonmagical difficult terrain. In addition, any damage that they could take from nonmagical difficult terrain is reduced to 0.

Quickness
At level 10, your creature can attempt to avoid harmful area of effect damage that require a Dexterity saving throw. If your creature succeeds, instead of taking half-damage on a successful save, it takes no damage on a successful save and only half on an unsuccessful one.

Unchained
At level 14, you allow your tamed creature to attack completely. When you choose to use your action to order your creature to attack, the creature can utilize its full attack, such as multiattack.

Feral Senses
At 18th level, you gain prenatural senses that help you fight creatures you can’t see. When you attack a creature you can’t see, your inability to see it does not impose disadvantage on attack rolls. Additionally, you aware of any invisible creature within 30 feet of you as long as it is not in total cover and you are neither blinded nor deafened.

Symbiosis
At 20th level, you and your creature(s) have developed a telepathic bond, and will now fight with you following your will. When you roll initiative, have your creature(s) roll it’s initiative (Dexterity modifier + your proficiency bonus) and add it to the initiative count. On the creature(s)’s turn, it can move and act on its own requiring no action of the beastmaster. The creature(s) are controlled by the Beastmaster and act accordingly.


Beastmaster Archetypes

Master of the Wild
Like it doesn't get as cool stuff as Master of Dragons but like extra crit, thats not bad

Invoke Fury
Starting when you take this feature at level three, you can tap your creature’s fury when attacking enemies. One per day, you can use your bonus action to put your creature under the effect of Rage, found in the Barbarian class features. As long as your creature attacks or is attacked each round, the creature has advantage on strength saving throws and checks, when your creature attacks the damage for strength based attacks is increased by +2 increasing to +3 at level 9 and to +4 at level 16. In addition, the creature has resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. This condition lasts for a maximum of 1 minute.

Aspect of the Beast
At 7th level, your bond with your beast allows you to gain similar features. Choose one feature of your creature (such as damage resistance/immunity, breath weapon or magical ability), with the exception of spellcasting and multiattack, and add it to your character. When you tame a new beast, you lose this feature but can choose a new feature from the new creature

Beast’s Fury
At level 11, when you and/or your creature attack, consider any rolls 19-20 as a critical hit.

Beast’s Rage
At level 17, when you or your creature scores a critical hit, add an additional damage die when determining damage.


Master of Many
Like whats more awesome than controlling 3 owlbears, oh right a f’ing dragon

Pack Tactics
When choosing this archetype at 3rd level, you can increase the number of creatures you can tame and control by 1, and another at 13th level (Max: 3). The added CR value of the creatures cannot exceed your beastmaster level divided by 3, rounded up (Max: CR 7)

Tactical Advantage
Starting at level 7, as long as one of your tamed creatures is within 5 feet of you, you deal an additional 2d6 damage to one creature on each of your turns. The additional damage increases to 3d6 at level 11 and to 4d6 at level 17.

Elusive
At level 11, your intense training has allowed your creature(s) to become very light on their feet. No attack roll has advantage against them as long as you, the beastmaster, are not incapacitated.

Muster the Horde
At level 17, you can choose one target for all of your creatures to attack. Your creature(s) move immediately to the designated target with their max movement speed. All attacks of opportunity against them are made with disadvantage. Your creatures’ attacks deal an additional 1d8 damage until the target is dead, incapacitated or called off. This feature is only available once per long rest.

Master of Dragons
You get a f’ing dragon, what more do you want from me

Draconic Affinity
When you choose this archetype at level 3, you add the Dragon type to your creature affinity list as well as Draconic to your languages

Draconic Resistance
Starting at level 7 and you have tamed a dragon, you gain resistance according to its damage type

Flight of the Ancients
At level 11 and if you have tamed a dragon, your dragon trusts you enough to transport you places quickly. As long as you have trained a Wyvern or a Young dragon, you and up to three companions can fly throughout the world.

Dragon Mastery
At level 17, you’ve studied dragons enough to allow you tame even the most deadly of dragons. You have advantage on taming checks for dragons. In addition, you can tame any dragon up to the Young age.

[DiBastet]

You see, that's my opinion and just that, but I don't like new classes. I really don't. I understand you plan on using it on your own games, and by looking at it I didn't see any glaring issues (no +x abilities, no breaking the unspoken rule of creature cr, no 3.5 jargon), so I think yeah, you can use it on your games and just worry about fixing issues that come up during play (like not having a lot of dragons within the target CR).

Thing is, I just can't stop thinking: Why? Now that's my opinion again, but the subclasses system allow you to play (and create) a lot of archetypes while using the framework of a class. It could be a ranger subclass. Don't like the ranger bloat with wilderness and spells? Expand the ranger beastmaster to have your Tame ability; make the master of the wild a barbarian subclass and his creature raging with him; you could even make the dragon tamer guy a figther, the classic Dragonrider (and proving stats for a basic rideable CR 1 drake based on other CR 1 creatures would be great too). That's just my opinion again, but I think you could reach a wider public making them subclasses.

[Cobrakun]

You see, that's my opinion and just that, but I don't like new classes. I really don't. I understand you plan on using it on your own games, and by looking at it I didn't see any glaring issues (no +x abilities, no breaking the unspoken rule of creature cr, no 3.5 jargon), so I think yeah, you can use it on your games and just worry about fixing issues that come up during play (like not having a lot of dragons within the target CR).

Thing is, I just can't stop thinking: Why? Now that's my opinion again, but the subclasses system allow you to play (and create) a lot of archetypes while using the framework of a class. It could be a ranger subclass. Don't like the ranger bloat with wilderness and spells? Expand the ranger beastmaster to have your Tame ability; make the master of the wild a barbarian subclass and his creature raging with him; you could even make the dragon tamer guy a figther, the classic Dragonrider (and proving stats for a basic rideable CR 1 drake based on other CR 1 creatures would be great too). That's just my opinion again, but I think you could reach a wider public making them subclasses.

Thanks for looking at it. I know it could be an archetype, but i guess that was not the point of my class. As much as i like the ranger, it seems that a true beast master would not get half the stuff as the ranger does, in my opinion at least. I appreciate your comments, will definitely look into it. Thanks again

[DiBastet]

Oh I forgot one thing: Tactical advantage. Make the damage scale like a cantrip; it's a more elegant solution. (i mean two dice at 5th, 3 at 11th and 4 at 17h)

[Demonic Spoon]

Thing is, I just can't stop thinking: Why? Now that's my opinion again, but the subclasses system allow you to play (and create) a lot of archetypes while using the framework of a class. It could be a ranger subclass. Don't like the ranger bloat with wilderness and spells? Expand the ranger beastmaster to have your Tame ability; make the master of the wild a barbarian subclass and his creature raging with him; you could even make the dragon tamer guy a figther, the classic Dragonrider (and proving stats for a basic rideable CR 1 drake based on other CR 1 creatures would be great too). That's just my opinion again, but I think you could reach a wider public making them subclasses.


Classes are fairly minor changes to existing base classes. Subclasses are not the solution to everything.

anyway, OP

Tame Creature

Let's do some math, wall of text incoming:

At level 10, a BM can get an elephant (CR4) as a companion.

With the ranger's proficiency mod added to AC,hit, and damage, its stat block looks like this:

AC: 16
HP: 76
Speed: 40

Trampling charge: Move 20 feet, target must make a DC 12 STR check or be knocked prone and elephant gets a bonus action stomp attack.

Gore attack: +12 to hit, 3d8+9 damage.
Stomp: +12 to hit, 3d10+9 damage.

Discounting the trampling charge, an elephant with its stomp attack averages 24.5 damage per round at a +12 attack bonus (Which is absolutely huge). It's survivability at this level is also going to be really, really impressive given its 16 AC. Finally, while this be expensive for an elephant, presumably beastmaster companions could benefit from barding.

If I took Master of the Wild, my elephant can now rage for resistance to damage. Given his hitpoints and AC, he's basically now the party barbarian. He'll be doing an additional 3 damage per hit, so 27.5 damage average.


Comparing to a level 10 Champion fighter, I'll assume 20 strength and 18 CON (more than reasonable given the fighter's extra ASIs). If he uses a greatsword and has platemail, and doesn't take any feats, his stats look something like this:

AC 18 (plate)
HP: 100

Damage: 2 attacks at +9 for 2d6+5 each, rerolling 1s and 2s averages out to ~26.7 damage at a +9 bonus.

Now, if the BM isn't using any resource-limited abilities like rage, and the fighter doesn't either, we're looking at ~27-28 average damage for the fighter and 25 for the elephant. The elephant, however, has a 3 higher attack bonus and thus is likely to do more damage overall.

So, as of right now, it's looking like the beastmaster's companion, by itself, is almost competitive with another player character, to say nothing of what the BM himself can do (which admittedly isn't all that much). If we assume +4 strength on the beastmaster himself and a greatsword, he'll be adding another 2d6+4 damage at a +8 bonus, which certainly brings him over the top on damage potential.

Now, is the above overpowered? I'm actually not sure. It looks really strong from the math I posted above, but:

-I picked a very favorable level for the BM - at level 10, the BM gets access to CR4 beasts and not a whole lot else at level 11, whereas the fighter and most other classes get really powerful stuff there.

-The BM needs to actually tame a beast of the requisite CR, which may not always happen immediately, so our assumption that the BM has the highest-CR creature around him is questionable.

-The BM himself doesn't bring a whole bunch else to the table. He might even be better off grappling or something else while he lets his beast maul things.


Anyway, other small things:

Arcane Training
At level 6, your creature’s attacks are considered magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance

This is silly. Are you teaching magic to your beast now?

Not everything needs to overcome all damage resistance. The BM's companion not being able to overcome damage resistance is well in line with the druid and existing BM ranger; in fact, it's in line with every other class that isn't a monk.

This feature should just be replaced with something else.


Unchained
At level 14, you allow your tamed creature to attack completely. When you choose to use your action to order your creature to attack, the creature can utilize its full attack, such as multiattack.

I wasn't aware that this was even a restriction until I read this feature.

A companion should probably be able to multiattack regardless. That's how it works for the BM ranger, and it does artifically encourage you to pick forms that have strong single attacks (e.g. elephant) rather than creatures with multiple attacks. Though, the "add proficiency bonus to damage" thing does somewhat benefit multiattack more.



On the whole, it seems seems tentatively okay, balance-wise. I suspect that if you playtested it, some problems would emerge; it might be a little on the strong side.


EDIT: Oh, one more thing: Pack Tactics is overpowered. All of the above is predicated on the idea that the the beast is doing all the heavy lifting. If the BM is adding 2d6-4d6 to his attacks, then he's adding a ton of additional damage. At the very least, pack tactics is way better than the other subclass abilities.

[Cobrakun]

Thank you for the help, as i said before I'm not the best at balancing. I agree that Pack Tactics is fairly overpowered as well as the damage potential for the BM itself.
In terms of the attacking, it was my understanding that a ranger BM can attack once, then his beast can attack once. I did not assume that the beast could use multitask since that would be giving the ranger at the least, 3 attacks instead of 2. Then again, I'm not the greatest at math, so the damage could all work out.
Looking at it, arcane training is pretty off like you said. I suppose I should replace it with something else, but I'm not sure what to be honest. off the top of my head, i could give the tamed creature(s) something akin to Land's Stride, where they do not suffer movement penalties from difficult terrain or damage when traveling through difficult terrain that would provide damage.

Thanks again for the help, I do appreciate it.

[Yegofry]

Cool Class, I like the taming feature, great way to give your group some plot hooks to go capture a sweet new companion.

A couple of notes

-A moon circle druid gets to Wildshape into creatures with Druid Level/3 rounded down, and for a limited # of times per day. If you have a druid in the party they might feel a bit jealous that your Beast Master is able to permanently tame creatures that are better than what they can wildshape into.

-Allowing the creature to take the Help action as a bonus action at level 2 is pretty powerful, particularly if you have a rogue in the party.

-Multi-Attack+ProfBonus+Strength Bonus+Rage Bonus=A lot of guaranteed damage, particularly with CR 6-7 creatures that have 3 attacks in their multi-attack and/or ability scores greater than 20. Maybe consider removing prof bonus from the damage rolls given the CR leveling that is happening?

[Cobrakun]

I didn't thinking about a Moon Druid. I guess that would be a little unfair huh. I guess my counterpoint to that is, they also get nifty spells to cast and can take as many different type of shapes as possible.

Also I'm glad you pointed out the Damage output for the Master of the Wild. It does do quite a bit of damage, but the creature can only use its multiattack when the BM uses its action to command the creature to attack, so its somewhat like a Barbarian, or thats what i thought at least.

Thanks for the comment