The Dread Champion, or how to be the awesome evil swordsman

[Hipster Dixit]

DISCLAIMER - This is homebrew content for Dungeons and Dragon 5th edition. I ask the community to help me on this work, to make it the best possible. What do I need in particular:

I am quite bad at English, so this is undoubtedly full of syntax errors, bad wording, an unclear/ambiguous phrases. Please help me find and correct them. This work surely needs number crunching and balance fixes. Even if I always do my best trying to balance my homebrew using core handbooks as reference, the advice of those more experienced than me on 5th edition is invaluable. Suggestions for new features, subclasses, feats etcetera is always welcome. Please feel free to share your ideas if you have any.

Any critique is accepted. Thank you for taking your time, I hope you will enjoy your reading.

Michael.



Dread Champion (http://online.fliphtml5.com/karm/qcrw/)

[Hipster Dixit]

Some minor grammar issues are corrected (thanks proofreading).

Also, a new archetype is coming... stay tuned!

[Amnoriath]

Well before I get into critiquing I will say what you did well. You made a class that is very distinctive and at base can be both a debuffer and support without casting. It also has very different ways it can be taken in which many would be good. So far good scoring for 5e. However it has some issues that really need to be addressed which arguably make it imbalanced and you need to adjust yourself to 5e language a bit as well.
1. Witchcraft is actually more devastating in terms of power than casting is. Aside from the high level witchcraft effects which long time delays or penalties to them you must realize that having both linear scaling and bonus level of cost abilities give many of these powers an exponential increase in power. No spell aside from maybe the polymorph set has this kind of increase in power, but most of your witchcrafts do.
2. Higher level of effects even in point cost system have an extra limit to them. Now a few of you highest level ones do but honestly a few often dwarf the effects of many 9th level spells and if you know more than one you can still stack in more than 1 a day since it is to the specific witchcraft not to the general use of them.
3. No base class has 6 archetype levels. The Fighter yields the most with 5 because of the large scope of what it could be.
4. Aside from the exponential power increase spell casting is massively held in check by concentration. Yours is not.
5. Giving 10 hit points as a side ability for level 1 makes it have health almost equal to the equivalent encounters at those levels. Not to mention the additional 10's that occur outside your archetype levels.
6. It has too much focus on fear as a base class. Prune a couple of archetype levels and fit a few different ones in.
7. Its Persuasion not Diplomacy
8. Gaining witchcraft points without any ways to use them is vestigial.
9. A lot of your witchcrafts have separate rules or DC's. This something 5e has in general tried to avoid as it makes things more complicated than it needs to.
10. It has a bit too many dead levels.
11. At 20th level the witchcraft regeneration is potentially way too much. Consider a monk only gets 4 at the start of battle with a resource that pays for less in general.

[Hipster Dixit]

Well before I get into critiquing I will say what you did well. You made a class that is very distinctive and at base can be both a debuffer and support without casting. It also has very different ways it can be taken in which many would be good. So far good scoring for 5e. However it has some issues that really need to be addressed which arguably make it imbalanced and you need to adjust yourself to 5e language a bit as well.

Thank you. Coming from 3.5 so yeah, I need a bit of guidance here.


1. Witchcraft is actually more devastating in terms of power than casting is. Aside from the high level witchcraft effects which long time delays or penalties to them you must realize that having both linear scaling and bonus level of cost abilities give many of these powers an exponential increase in power. No spell aside from maybe the polymorph set has this kind of increase in power, but most of your witchcrafts do.
2. Higher level of effects even in point cost system have an extra limit to them. Now a few of you highest level ones do but honestly a few often dwarf the effects of many 9th level spells and if you know more than one you can still stack in more than 1 a day.
4. Aside from the exponential power increase spell casting is massively held in check by concentration. Yours is not.

Totally in for nerfing. I somewhat knew that witchcrafts were imbalance, I just need some help to figure out how... I feel that some kind of scaling is needed since they are the only thing the dread champion get. Looking to the warlock, witchcrafts are like invocations and spells all in one. So there are a couple of potential fixes that come out of my mind:

Reduce the amount of dread points gained/double the dread point cost (result is the same). Forget the whole dread point mechanic (sorta ripped from monk) and giving a more standard short rest/long rest recovery. Reduce damage/effects.

What I tried to do is to set a witchraft's power to s spell level equal to the dread point spent. So a witchcrafts fueled with 4 dread points would have the power of a 4 level spell. In case the witchcraft had much greater power, i put a long rest cooldown, along with other downsides. I know this formula hardly works in reality. Do you have any suggestions to solve this issue?


3. No base class has 6 archetype levels. The Fighter yields the most with 5 because of the large scope of what it could be.

You are right, though I could say that maybe WotC was a bit lazy when designing classes... 5-6 archetype levels should be the standard in my opinion. I could cut to 5, that is for sure. I'll think about it.


5. Giving 10 hit points as a side ability for level 1 makes it have health almost equal to the equivalent encounters at those levels. Not to mention the additional 10's that occur outside your archetype levels.

Yeah, it is too much. I need to find a better progression for that feature.


6. It has too much focus on fear as a base class. Prune a couple of archetype levels and fit a few different ones in.

I am trying to find other suitable themes for this class... will come up with something eventually!



7. Its Persuasion not Diplomacy

Thanks, will fix on the next update.


8. Gaining witchcraft points without any ways to use them is vestigial.
9. A lot of your witchcrafts have separate rules or DC's. This something 5e has in general tried to avoid as it makes things more complicated than it needs to.

Not sure about this ones. a) You gain dread points at 1st level because you have Blade of Destruction. b) the save DC is always the same, in every case: 8 + proficiency + Charisma. Is there something I missed?

Thanks for your input.

[Hipster Dixit]

New version is up... hopeffully fixed some issues.

Changelog:

Completely new witchcraft mechanic. Features and Path abilities tweaked. Avatar of Terror removed.

EDIT:

Witchcrafts further tweaked. Should be the final draft now. Let me know if there is anything unclear in the text.

[Amnoriath]

The refreshment after a long rest now seems a little punitive. The problem is you are juggling some really high level abilities in which half-casters just don't get. A couple of these abilities almost seem more like plot devices than actual class abilities. You mentioned the Warlock but keep in mind there features are almost completely defined by invocations aside from their Patron features and casting. This already has some.

[Hipster Dixit]

The refreshment after a long rest now seems a little punitive. The problem is you are juggling some really high level abilities in which half-casters just don't get.

You mentioned the Warlock but keep in mind there features are almost completely defined by invocations aside from their Patron features and casting. This already has some.

Yes, I used the warlock as a sort of benchmark when trying to balance this class, since the two share many things. The warlock has some spells which scale with level: at 20th level he can cast four fifth-level spells per short rest, plus a 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th level spell per long rest. in addition, he gets invocations and features. At the same level, the dread champion can use 4 full-powered lesser witchcrafts per long rest (sort of low-level spells cast with a higher spell slot), including a greater and a grand witchcraft, which I compare to spells from 5th through 9th level. I see your point, since the warlock seems to get more stuff, but when out of resources the dread champion is just better in combat, or at least that was my design goal.
That said, I'm not against going back to short rest refreshing; actually, I would like it. The greatest problem is that blade of destruction would become a bit too powerful, given you can use it very frequently. However, this could be fixed by reducing the damage to 1d6 or 1d4. I think I would even reduce dread points progression to 3/4 or 1/2 character level if doing so, also to keep the bloodseeker relevant. I'll think about it and then post the new version on the next update. This class would really enjoy some testing...


A couple of these abilities almost seem more like plot devices than actual class abilities.

Yeah, you are absolutely right, stuff like Apocalypse is not D&Desque at all. The fact is, these are the kind of abilities I would totally pick if I were a player... and that is kind the point of homebrew, in my opinion.

EDIT:

Changes done.

[Waffleworshiper]

"TOXIC PUSTULES
Beginning at 10th level, you secrete an acid poison from your swellings. Whenever you take weapon damage, one of them explodes, reducing you maximum hit points by 10 and squirting a lethal pus in a radius of 10 feet around you. Creatures in the area must make a Constitution saving throw. They take 1d8 poison damage and 1d8 acid damage, or half that much on a successful save. Also, on a failed save, they are poisoned for 1 minute. Undead and constructs cannot be poisoned by this effect. Burst swellings regrow after a long rest."
As written that ability is more harmful to the player than helpful. I'd just have it activate whenever they were hit with a weapon attack with no additional hp penalty. Taking damage is payment enough.

[Hipster Dixit]

Updated with new formatting. Hope you enjoy it!