Homebrew: the Dark Knight

[Drackolus]

By request of a friend of mine, I tried to make a blood-magic using fighter specialization, somewhat modeled after the Dark Knight jobs of the Final Fantasy series. My goal was to have a somewhat battlemaster-esque tactical style, with a sort of high-risk-high-reward flavor. This is a fairly rough draft with no playtesting, and reflects about two hours of work, so I suspect it's not very balanced. Please give me some feedback/concerns/ideas about anything you see, whether it's wording, balance, flavor, or to tell me that it's stupid and I should go cuddle an Otyugh! Be brutal, I can take it :smallbiggrin:

I'm especially concerned about the health costs of these abilities being too high/low.

Dark Knight______________
The Dark Knight is a warrior who manipulates the power of blood to corrupt and debilitate their foes. Willing to use any tactic to attain victory, they've turned to dark magics to amplify their already impressive martial abilities. To them, their lifeforce is simply another weapon in their arsenal.

Blood Magic
When you become a Dark Knight at level 3, you begin to learn magical attacks fueled by your own health called Blood Strikes.
Blood Strikes. You may learn two Blood Strikes. You learn one more at 7th, 10th, and 15th level. Each time you learn a new Blood Strike, you may replace one you already know with a new one.
Blood Price. Most of these abilities have a health cost that you must pay in order to use it. You may use these abilities (and pay the cost) before you make a weapon attack roll against a creature. If the attack hits, the ability goes into effect. You can only use one of these abilities per attack, though you may use different ones for each attack if you use extra attacks.
Saving Throws. Many of these attacks require a saving throw to resist it's effects. The DC for these strikes is calculated as follows:


Blood Strike save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your constitution modifier

Bloody Retribution
At 7th level, you can cause your attackers to share your pain. When you are struck by a melee attack, you may use your reaction to cause the attacker to also take the total damage back, which is unaffected by resistances or immunities.

Dark Recovery
At 10th level, your second wind becomes more powerful. When you use it, it now heals you for an additional 1d10, and you can use it twice between rests.

Thick Blood
Starting at 15th level, you gain advantage on constitution saves.

Unrelenting Strikes
At 18th level, creatures have disadvantage on their saving throws to resist your Blood Strikes.

Blood strikes
These are the abilities available for the Dark Knight to learn. They are presented in alphabetical order, with their HP cost in parenthesis.

Absorbing Strike (0). You may prevent half the final damage you deal (rounded down) with the effected attack. If you do, you instead regain as much health as you prevented.
Corrupting Strike (8). The creature must make a constitution save or begin rotting from the inside. At the beginning of each of it's turns, it takes 1d6 necrotic damage. It may then repeat the saving throw. This effect continues until the target reaches 0 hit points or succeeds the saving throw.
Crippling Strike (4). The creature must make a dexterity saving throw. If they fail, their speed is reduced to 0 until the end of your next turn.
Dark Strike (7). The creature must make a constitution saving throw. If they fail, they take 2d6 extra necrotic damage. If they succeed, they take half as much.
Dazing Strike (4). The creature must make a wisdom save. If they fail, attack rolls against the target before the beginning of your next turn have advantage.
Disrupting Strike (8). The creature must make an intelligence save. If it fails, it loses concentration on any abilities it had.
Draining Strike (6). The creature must make a constitution save or have their strength or dexterity (your choice) reduced by 8 for 1d6 rounds. If this ability is used on a target already under it's effect, the attribute may be changed, and the duration becomes the higher of the new roll or the remaining duration of the last ability.
Spreading Strike (7). Creatures of your choice within 5 feet of the creature you hit make a dexterity saving throw. They take 1d6 necrotic damage on a success, or half that on a failure.
Venomous Strike (5). The creature must make a constitution saving throw or become poisoned for 2 rounds.

[ZenBear]

Quick thought, haven't read all this yet, but what if you made it a Paladin subclass Oath of Blood that lets you burn Hit Dice on Smites? Or just give this custom class that ability?

[Drackolus]

Quick thought, haven't read all this yet, but what if you made it a Paladin subclass Oath of Blood that lets you burn Hit Dice on Smites? Or just give this custom class that ability?

That's a pretty cool ability! I'd be a bit concerned about some campaigns where hit dice are a non-issue (due to spacing between adventures). The return would probably have to be pretty low. That's a cool idea though.

[twas_Brillig]

That's a pretty cool ability! I'd be a bit concerned about some campaigns where hit dice are a non-issue (due to spacing between adventures). The return would probably have to be pretty low. That's a cool idea though.

Counterargument: what about campaigns where hit dice are very valuable? It might be better to design for an "average" campaign with a caveat, and possibly some optional balance options.

[Drackolus]

Counterargument: what about campaigns where hit dice are very valuable? It might be better to design for an "average" campaign with a caveat, and possibly some optional balance options.

Good point.
I may toy with using hit dice with another class/archetype. This one already sorta uses them indirectly by using health. A paladin would be perfect. Using two hit dice for a single smite die sounds cool.
Alternatively, could make it a feat. Class-specific feats don't exist in 5e, but that doesn't mean a DM can't let you do it =P
You could also have a magic weapon that draws on the life energies of the paladin in order to smite evil stronger. Very vengeance-y.
In a campaign that doesn't let you get all your health back during a long rest (making hit dice more valuable), that would be even neater. Could say it's 1-1 then.

The more I think about it, the cooler it sounds on a weapon than as a class ability. A paladin who uses a greatsword that pushes the paladin past their limits to fight terrible evils sounds perfect for a dark and/or horror themed setting.

[pwykersotz]

Quick thought, haven't read all this yet, but what if you made it a Paladin subclass Oath of Blood that lets you burn Hit Dice on Smites? Or just give this custom class that ability?

This...is actually a pretty sweet idea.

[Submortimer]

Neat idea overall.

Side note: This should be on the Homebrew Page.

[Angelmaker]

Quite tanky with the selfheal. Damage abilities are underwhelming.

1d6 or 2d6 necrotic damage are worthless, because you need to pay for the extra damage with the selfhealing. And you pay just as much on average as the enemy.

Thick blood: neat but rather useless. You are already proficient and there just arent that man good con save abilities

Disrupting strike is situationally useful. Draining strike is about the only thing worthwhile besides absorbing. The boost for second wind is desperately needed and should be warrior staple already.

Draining should be changed to an effect similiar to touch of weakness(spell name. Feeble touch? Cant remember and away from books ) which halves enemy damage output. -8 is a hassle to take track of.

Overall i don't see the "high risk, high reward" game when you can just turtle all day long behind absorbing or spam the same strike ov and over and over until the enemy fails its save.

Against a single strong enemy dazing and venomous strike are pretty awesome, against multiple targets you can still be a pretty good debuffer if you want to suck up all the attack of opportunities: you just dont have the mobility. I would feel forced to multiclass rogue.

I think this archetype is underpowered, as are probably all warrior archetypes and it lacks options. The individual blood strikes just arent plenty or powerful enough and they will quickly become even weaker on higher levels. Against mobs its way weaker, against powerful enemies it becomes moderately strong.

[Drackolus]

Side note: This should be on the Homebrew Page.
Oops.


Quite tanky with the selfheal. Damage abilities are underwhelming.

1d6 or 2d6 necrotic damage are worthless, because you need to pay for the extra damage with the selfhealing. And you pay just as much on average as the enemy.

Thick blood: neat but rather useless. You are already proficient and there just arent that man good con save abilities

Disrupting strike is situationally useful. Draining strike is about the only thing worthwhile besides absorbing. The boost for second wind is desperately needed and should be warrior staple already.

Draining should be changed to an effect similiar to touch of weakness(spell name. Feeble touch? Cant remember and away from books ) which halves enemy damage output. -8 is a hassle to take track of.

Overall i don't see the "high risk, high reward" game when you can just turtle all day long behind absorbing or spam the same strike ov and over and over until the enemy fails its save.

Against a single strong enemy dazing and venomous strike are pretty awesome, against multiple targets you can still be a pretty good debuffer if you want to suck up all the attack of opportunities: you just dont have the mobility. I would feel forced to multiclass rogue.

I think this archetype is underpowered, as are probably all warrior archetypes and it lacks options. The individual blood strikes just arent plenty or powerful enough and they will quickly become even weaker on higher levels. Against mobs its way weaker, against powerful enemies it becomes moderately strong.

Good feedback! Yeah, I should apply some strings to Absorbing strike and buff up the damage on Spreading (terrible name) and Dark strike. My idea behind it being high risk and high reward was that you'd be rewarded for spending health, but use them too often and you could get dropped. You also would spend health for something that might miss AND get saved against. I went with smaller numbers since there's no limit to how often you can use them (unlike maneuvers), but it sorta loses the point then. Maybe some "ranking up" similar to spell slots. More multi-target abilities would be a good idea, maybe switching Crippling to multiple targets. Not sure what to do with Disrupting, making it prevent casting would let the warrior shut down any caster ever. Maybe make them make extra saving throws to cast spells?

Also, I believe the spell is Ray of Enfeeblement. It has the half damage effect. That's a better choice of effect for Draining, I agree.

[Angelmaker]

As much as i hate recharge mechanics, this class could probably need one, like 3.5 tome of blood classes. Would give you more options to balance strikes out.

You could change absorbing to become a passive ability thats always on and instead leaches the weapon's die as health, while dealing normal damage. Increase blood costs for non damaging strikes to counterbalance.

Also remove some saving throws. This class gets annoying very quickly for the gm having to roll for every goddamn 1d6 extra damage.