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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Theorycrafting a Knight Radiant (a Stormlight Archive ideas thread) (Update - 4/13 )



Grayfigure
2016-04-10, 11:00 AM
A while ago, I created a Bladesinger homebrew, testing out my creative muscles while exorcising that demon of inspiration that burns within us all. It was.......ok-ish :P. But then the SCAG came out with an official Bladesinger built in, and mine fell into dust and memories.....such sadness.....

BUT! I recalled that, during the creating session and the balancing back and forth, someone asked me if I could modify a 'spearsong' version of the kit. I remember thinking that it didnt really fit what I was going for, but it couldve been modified for it, but the idea started bouncing around in the back of my head...why did they want a spear so badly? and why did that sound familiar.....?

it hit me later, that it was leaning toward the homage of Kaladin Stormblessed, one of the main protagonists in Brandon Sanderson's Stormight Archive. I'd read The Way of Kings that very summer, and though it wasnt exactly my standard read, I stuck with the story enough to get through the second book, Words of Radiance. Now that ive finished that, I have a far clearer idea of what I was once asked to do: Turn my Bladesinger into a Knight Radiant.

That wont work.

My Bladesinger is far too limited in what it was intended to do to truly express Kaladin's suite of powers. Whats needed....is its own Kit, made from scratch. And so, Ive created this thread to begin the creative process anew.....on winds of a Storm, Dancing on the edge, with a ring of Light Fairies to guide the way......

here's the idea. FAIR WARNING: this is the start of the process. this is less about the ideas being balanced (that'll come later if I can get it polished down to where it keeps me excited), and more about just getting the 'feel' of that power suite in. That being said, EVERYTHING I'll post as an idea is on the table for Heavy Modification to better fit the DnD5e power scope. Im building this first iteration off of the Fighter Class chassis, so im hoping to somehow file this down into an Archetype. If I would hazard a guess, based off the books, not all the Knights Radiant (KRs from now on), are warriors, so it would make sense to make an Archetype for each of the Orders, based on a Class that most closely suits the character the Order is introduced with (The only ones we know the most about are Kaladin's Winderunners, and Shallan's Lightweavers). All are invited to join in on the process, cus frankly, I dont know how far im even going to take it. Below, are a list of power ideas, with (hopefully) explanations on why I think they would work, where they are inspired from in the story, and a customization to make it work in the power hierarchy. I give you:

The Windrunner:


Ok, a Knight Radiant's power comes from 'Stormlight', which is a light that comes not from him/herself, but from the HighStorm. What we need is a power economy that is capable of being generated, without it coming from the PC, but something the PC can, with some effort, get their hands on readily. My Idea is to change 'Stormlight' to 'Soullight'. Soulight comes from Greater light sources (sun or moonlight) filtered through a Knight Radiant, then captured in an object capable of holding the light. I chose gemstones to match the stormlight holders from the story. You would basically, over the period of a long rest, charge these gems as you would batteries, then during the course of adventuring, use these batteries to power your KR abilities. Seems convoluted? yeah, it kinda does. Im not 100% sold on this idea, but felt this needed something different than the spell slot system to express it. I got a bit of the idea from a Magic Point system I cobbled together in my other homebrew, The Avatar of Blades. Still needs a LOT of polish, but thats the general idea.




After a bit of reworking, I think this version of the healing idea will work better. I'll use Third Wind as a name placeholder for now. Give up 'SoulLight' to add attributes to Second wind. Lowest amount adds your fighter level in regeneration for 5 turns. Middle amount doubles your fighter level in hit points received from Second Wind. The highest amount grants you a second usage of Second Wind, but may only be done once a long rest..




Ok, here goes. In The Way of Kings, during I believe the final battle of the story, the Protagonist uses his powers beyond healing for the first time, using his abilities to draw all the arrows being shot at his soldiers to his shield. I think he ended the fight with a nearly impossible number of arrows jabbed into his shield. I would really like a thematic power like that for usage. Thing is, something like that without proper restraints, could be extremely exploitable.

The idea i have goes like this: You may, as a reaction, use SoulLight to shield yourself and your companions from various forms of harm. The triggering projectile, and all other projectile after the triggering that passes within 15 ft of you , immediately targets you with the attack. Subsequently, you gain your CHA modifier in AC until the beginning of your next turn.

The idea is that you are one of the toughest people on your team, and so you have gained an ability to use that toughness in favor of the team, even if youre not the original target. Now, the numbers themselves will need consideration before this power is close to finalized, but this gives you the general idea.




This would be a pretty simple port over of Divine Smite, albeit with a few changes. Of course, SoulLight would power it instead of spell slots, but their would be a limit on how much you could charge it up. At later levels, you may/may not gain either a stronger version, or just the ability to charge it up further. Haven't really decided yet; kinda want to flesh out the SoulLight idea more first so I have a clearer idea of the power economy I'm working with.





Lightly based off of Reverse Gravity as a template. Player/user uses an action to touch their target and states the intended destination. Once declared, the target immediately falls their movement speed each turn until they encounter a solid surface (wall, ceiling, bottom of a balcony, etc....). If they land on a surface that impedes their "fall" or if the surface is their destination, they will interact with the surface as if they had fallen to the ground, taking falling damage as if they had fallen the distance traveled and struck the ground in the prone position. Until the lashing ends, the direction the target fell in will now be considered "down" for the duration of the lashing. Once a lashing 's duration has ended, normal gravity will immediately reassert itself and, if not on a surface that is properly facing down, the target will fall back to the ground, following all normal falling and falling damage rules. If a single lashing is used or if a specific square is not chosen, the target will be able to move normally on any surface it encounters that can bare it's weight. If a double lashing is used, a target will be considered restrained to a square of its size, as long as that square is chosen as the destination. If only a direction is chosen as the destination instead of a square, the target is not restrained once it reaches a surface that impedes it's fall, only knocked prone. Double lashing will cause a target to do double the expected falling damage, though they will follow normal falling rules once the double lashing ends; they will do 3 times the expected falling damage on a triple lashing. The maximum of 20d6 falling damage still applies for all forms of lashing. A single lashing will last 2 rounds, a double will last 3 rounds, and a triple lashing will last 5 rounds.* Extra SoulLight may be used to double the duration of lashings. At a higher level (tbd), lashings will cost an attack instead of an action. Only 3 lashings are allowed per turn and can also be ended with a Free Action.




This ability would work almost exactly like the Warlock's Pact of the Blade Pact Boon, but with a few additions. I would have the player choose a 'Signature Weapon' for their character. While, as a Pact Weapon, you could create any weapon you want, whenever you created your Signature Weapon, you would get extra bonuses. All Pact Weapons would be considered magical, like normal, but would also get a+2 to attack/damage. A Signature Weapon would get a +3 to attack and 1d4 added to damage after your damage/proficiency bonuses are applied. The reason I have this feature so far back in the kit is because both protagonists didnt manifests these weapons til later.....however.....I know that in one case, the female protagonist actually had her weapon since she was a child, and I suspect that the male protagonist had his for a similar length of time, though if there's a reference to that in the books, I missed it. So argument can be made for moving this up further into the kit. As always, Still in the development stage...




Fly could be done two ways, depending on how much, or how little complication one would want by this point in the creation process. In the story, the Protagonist actually used his Lashing abilities on himself to fly, and also to actually stick to walls to fight. It would make for a great thematic battling.....but from a gameplay perspective, wouldnt really add anything to combat while bogging it down with complication. For the sake of simplicity, I would suggest simply giving the build access to the Fly spell at this point. If you want the thematic feel of the power though, Id suggest using/modifying the Lashing rules just a bit to make it usable on player as well. That way, they could use it in death defying ways, to 'fly' around the battlefield. The DM would need to keep an eye on this to keep it from overshadowing the game/other players, and also to provide the Windrunner with challenges to this as well.



I have not a single clue what to put here, because.....well.....we dont know all of Kaladin's powers as of yet. According to the end of his section of Words of Radiance, he's almost there (2 of 3 Oaths spoken), but still has one more Oath to find in himself. Until such a time as we know his full suite of powers, I'd recommend we leave this space blank. However, educated guesses as to what that last power could reasonably be are always welcome.

And here is where I am for now. Im going to be continuously going through this thread and updating my ideas until I have all 'more to come' spaces filled out. Feel free to offer advice/insight/criticism now, or wait until I have more information slotted in. Feel free to join in the process as well!

Edit - 4/13/16: Ok, all the More to Come descriptions are in. Now its time hard decisions. With the number of Ideas i have, there might be a full Class in here. That would more easily support making several KR kits on the base Class (Warming up to your idea, zeek0!), but would present challenges of its own (separating Archetype powers from Base Class powers, figuring out what ARE BC powers with only limited info to go on, remembering that i SUCK at BC'ing...). Otherwise, I have more than enough powers for an Archetype....but that means cutting some powers from the list. Im open to any opinions or imput you all have about what path to take. Also, I'll be going through the power descriptions i have there and 'themeing' them up, or streamlining them down. I await your comments!

zeek0
2016-04-11, 02:01 AM
Alright. I can't offer much in the way of features, but I have a few brainstormy ideas that you may be able to work in.

First, I have not read the book. But I believe that in transfer of concept from the book to D&D it may need to lose/gain some qualities. You can keep it based upon the book in concept, but by freeing yourself you may be able to do cool new things. The power progression of a story is not like a power progression of a D&D class.

Now, since you have so many feature ideas I would make an entirely new base class. You can base the structure of the class off of the fighter, but it may be unreasonable to make a fighter archetype. This also allows you to replace second wind with your regenerative ability.

Now, what catches my eye most is that he has some kind of power source. It seems that you want to use the points of this ability to power maneuver-like abilities. You may be able to power spell-like abilities as well, not unlike a 1/3 caster, 1/2 caster, or Elements Monk. Perhaps this constitutes different subclasses(?).

If you decide to make a half-caster, I think that my Twilight Warrior homebrew (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?481591-Twilight-Warrior-Base-Class-(with-alternative-casting-system)-PEACH) gives a good way of making a short-rest 1/2 caster (also, you may be able to copy some of the features, since they are based on the sun/moon).

I'm excited to see what you come up with once this is fleshed out. Keep the ideas coming and I'll respond.

Grayfigure
2016-04-11, 09:46 AM
Thanks for the imput Zeek0. You've given me some things to really mull over.

I think you may be right about losing some powers. While really want to see how close I can get to the 'feel' of the characters of the book (a homage, you might say), I do feel that I have too many abilities listed. This has always been more of a chalkboard for ideas to go up on, with a refining happening later to whittle out a lot of the stuff that won't work. That said, nothing wrong with a little early whittling. Now that ive had time to think about it, Regen is a bit too redundant, due to second wind. The newest idea I have for that is the possibility of being granted one extra charge of Second Wind via Soullight. The basis for that is that the character in question was hardier than any person had a right to be...supernaturally so. I want his healing ability to reflect that, but giving him a second ability would be too much. Perhaps granting additional benefits depending on how much Soullight is used is possible... (props to you for that idea. Will mention your Twilight warrior below!)

While I am thoroughly tempted to try for an entire class for this instead of an archetype, the reason I decided against it is because if doing a class, id have to work out the base abilities, then potentially 10 different archetypes (once Mr. Sanderson begins describing the other KR Orders.) While thats not exactly out of the question......i suck at base classing. Take a look at my Avatar of Blades homebrew to see what I mean. I tend to power creep pretty badly when I have that much to work with.

Also, I like using the archetype because each one that comes can be designed around a different class (while the Homage for this theorycraft was definitely a warrior, the other protagonist in the story was much more of a scholar/mage type, even though she had a Shardblade as well). I figure that as the story evolves, each of the KR Orders are going to come from all walks of life, and I felt that could be reflected in the freedom of Archetyping. However, you may be right, and base classing this might be the better way to go. I'll consider that for a while as we continue the exercise.

As for power sourcing, Im still kinda at a loss on exactly where to go with it. The idea itself comes from the books again: Stormlight is used as both a source of Illumination and currency in their society, but the ancient use of it for Power has long been lost, until rediscovered by Kaladin Stormblessed and a few others, quite by accident. I wanted the power source to reflect that dual origin source as closely as I could, but I completely admit to not being fully satisfied with what I have yet. As an aside, i really like that binary nature of your C Points in your build. Thats pretty original thinking!

Anyway, you've given me some nice thoughts to consider. Thanks for the advice, and keep adding imput wherever you see fit. its appreciated!

Edit - 4/11/16: Edited in Lashing into the original post. Gotta say it was a LOT of words to get the idea across. I even took zeek0's advice and pulled the self fly out for now (would have complicated it even more). Will work on refining that ability before I move on. Input is greatly aappreciated.

SilverStud
2016-04-14, 12:19 AM
I've been tossing around a Knight Radiant class idea myself. Lemme share what I've come up with. I'll just use the book terminology, for the sake of my mind.

First of all, for a Knight Radiant to work, his power source has to be fairly... everywhere. So either all the gemstones of the world are glowing, and you are playing a version of Roshar, or we have to say that, while the gems have power, they don't glow. That way fits better with other canons.

Anyway. Gems recharge their power every week. When a surgebinder inhales stormlight, he gains those points. While those points are in him, he loses one at the beginning of each turn.

Hit Die: 1d8
Familiar: You have attracted a Tiny Fey. This Tiny Fey is utterly mechanically useless, but is the source of your power. He/she cannot be harmed or cause harm in any way.
Stormlight: You have the ability to inhale the latent Stormlight in gems. Each gem is either small, medium, or large. Bigger ones are up to the DM. Smalls have 6 Stormlight, mediums have 10, and large have 16 (haha sixteen, get the reference?). When you inhale Stormlight, you drain any gems on your person and gain the Stormlight points. These points drain out of you at a rate of 2 points at the beginning of each of your turns.
Invested: While you have at least one Stormlight point, your Hit Point Max is doubled. Your current hit points increase proportionately. You also have +2 to your Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. You also emit bright light for 5 ft and dim light for another 10 ft.

Familiar: You begin to understand the nature of your Tiny Fey. Is it of Lies, Honor, Law, or Beauty(whatever EdgeDancers have?)?
Lies: You are on the path of a Lightweaver. This gives you features at Xth, Xth, Xth, and Xth level.
Honor: You are on the path of a Windrunner. This gives you features at Xth, Xth, Xth, and Xth level.
Law: Your path is that of a Skybreaker. This gives you features at Xth, Xth, Xth, and Xth level.
Beauty: You are becoming an Edgedancer. This gives you features at Xth, Xth, Xth, and Xth level.
Improved Invested: When you are below half health, you lose an additional 1 Stormlight point each turn. When you do, regain Hit Points equal to your Constitution Modifier(minimum 1). If you don't have enough Stormlight (i.e. -2 for normal drain, -1 for healing, but currently only have 1), this feature does not function.

Not sure at what levels, but they should get these abilities.
You gain the Minor Illusion cantrip, and you can cast Disguise Self at will. However, for each duration, Minor Illusion takes 1 Stormlight point, and Disguise Self takes 4. For instance, you may keep your Minor Illusion for 10 minutes, but each minute it will take 1 Stormlight point.
Shardblade, of course.
Probably Major Image, at some point. Definitely Malleable Illusion, and the ability to fool other senses.


Full Lashing: As an action, you take from your pool of Stormlight and spread it onto an area or object adjacent to you. You can cover an area no larger than five square feet. If you expend 1 point, it lasts until the end of your next turn. Anything that touches that area is stuck, completely unable to break the bond until it runs out. This does not affect you.
Basic Lashing: As an action, you infuse an object(by touch) or yourself and glance a direction. The object, or yourself, now considers that direction 'down,' and falls that way, taking damage as normal. If an object, you choose how many points to give it. The object loses 1 point at the end of your turn, losing the effect when no points remain. If yourself, you lose an additional point at the beginning of your turns. You may end the effect on yourself at any time, no action required.
Reverse Lashing: As a reaction when a projectile would pass within 20 feet of you, you may infuse one object(or yourself, if you're dumb) with 1 Stormlight point to force the projectile to attack the infused object. Until the beginning of your next turn, you may expend another point any time the original requirement is met, with the same result. You may spend an extra point to catch a projectile from 40 ft.


What thinkest thou?

Haveatya
2016-04-14, 10:10 AM
You may want to look at the rune scribe unearthed arcana. The way that class works could work nicely for mimicing effects you want.

Grayfigure
2016-04-14, 10:25 AM
....and I forgot to make a ruling about the spren.....gah!
Thanks for the imput Silverstud. To answer a few things:

The spren thing is an absolute oversight on my part. Was meaning to mod find familiar for it, but as my list grew, my anxiety grew, and I think I just forgot to include the idea lol. Yours works out better than the idea I had anyway, as I hadnt got much past the Ff spell itself.

I couldn't for the life of me get a good power economy idea down, though I put the rudiments of what I came up with in my post. You've actually worked through yours quite a bit. Bravo on that. The reasoning i had for my changes was because of something zeek0 indirectly stated when he posted his opinions. He realized before I did that if I try to hold too tightly to Inspiration, there will be pitfalls in trying to port over every ability exactly. thats what I ran into with Stormlight. Unless going into a Stormlight Archive style campaign, either id have to give up on have the unique power requirement or make up one for it. I still wanted to see if I could 'split the difference' though, and thats where my idea came from. Hadn't really moved passed the literal fluff, so youve gotten a lot further than I have. Youre right about all the gemstones glowing or not thing, so what I tried to do is turn the character into a 'Light Converter' of sorts: Light comes from the sun/moon, the chara (through intense concentration only capable of being done on a long rest) converts that light into a 'SoulLight' that he then stuffs into a 'container', which happens to be a gemstone. Gemstones seem to be the only containers that can hold the light. The process is too ardous for him to just convert light to usable light in combat or during a short rest; he needs a long rest to do it.

Well, that was my idea anyway. Like I said, seems a bit bloated. Yours is far more streamlined.

Gonna have to wrap my head around the invested stuff a bit more before I make a comment, but well thought out. I was gonna use Divine smite to use the increased melee capacity of a surgebinder, but that may be too much, after all.

Good stuff on your archetypes too! I hadn't gotten past Windrunners....my mind would literally go blank when thinking about lightweavers. I didnt understand enough about Edgedancers to make a guess at their powersuite besides sliding and Skybreakers......I know next to nothing about them yet, so wasnt even gonna ATTEMPT anything there.

All and all, great stuff you have here, and food for thought!

@haveatya: Will do. Thanks for the point out!

Haveatya
2016-04-15, 01:41 AM
Third wind could be replaced by CL/4 healing, rounding up, per round. It's a minor regen that will scale to late game. Let yourself spend light points to spend a hit dice for healing (no bonuses, keeping second wind better). This lets you spend some type of action as a less efficient heal than using second wind or healing on a rest. This method gives good flexibility and clear pros and cons.

As an aside, with rune scribe mechanics as a guide. Give your class a built in magic item or abilities that grow with attunement to it, you can buff the class by reducing the number of potential attunement slots or letting people not perform as classy in favor of taking items.

Grayfigure
2016-04-15, 09:49 AM
Not gonna lie Haveatya, at first I wasnt too keen on the cl/4 idea. It seemed a pretty low benefit....at first. But the more I think about it, the more I realize just how much healing you'll have coming your way with the ability to stormlight your Hit dice into play, so the regen benefit HAS to be low. Your idea has more and more merit. Now the other end of the equation: at high end game play, youll have access to somewhere around 10-15 of these heals at high end (realistically. youll be using your stormlight for other things, so limited resources and all that). Not sure how much that could unfairly sway combat in the chara's favor, but a limiter could always be put in place.......Very Nice idea! Gonna mull over this one a bit.

Gonna have to read more deeply the Rune Scribe again, as I skimmed over it at work earlier, but that could be a VERY nice 'Gate' mechanic: unlocking a small multitude of powers at certain levels, using Attunement as the unlock gate. Sounds good so far. I'll do a little more reading.

Good Stuff!!

Haveatya
2016-04-15, 11:39 AM
Happy to throw out ideas. I read on stuff after seeing this post and interested in reading the books now. All 1000+ pages (!) Of each

Something I've also seen is a dual-rest mechanic. Your HD are on limited regen time and includes in combat healing and out of combat healing. Maybe you can use storm light healing a number of times equal to your cha? Con? Per long rest and then at level 10 or so make it per short rest? That'd be 5d10 healing a day at lower levels and pretty spaced healing at high levels.

If you want to give them more control over healing, maybe sub their hit dice per level to 2d6.

Grayfigure
2016-04-15, 11:46 AM
sigh, me too. Ive only read Way of Kings and Words of Radiance. Got interested enough to start following the story...then did a search...and found out about the Cosmere.........FUUUUU*******!!

But i WILL perservere! *Dives into Elantris*

Edited from later post that would have been a dbl post:
Last post of the day before work for me, but I wanted to answer and ask:

Im kinda liking the limit factor you propose. That way, it becomes a gamble again, but still doesn't completely rob you of Stormlight for your other abilities in desperate situations. The cutting the HDs in half (2d6s) is a nice touch too.

Also wanted to ask you and any who participate in this thread if its ok to use modified ideas you guys imput here. I feel like I shouldve asked this in the first post, in hindsight, but I'll make sure any idea gets credited to its creator, and can even turn the title of this into a Community made Theorycraft. Don't want people to feel negatively about participating in this, if it even comes up.

Haveatya
2016-04-15, 12:33 PM
Its no problem with me if you use my ideas. I put them here to be used in the first place.

zeek0
2016-04-15, 01:49 PM
Again, keep in mind that I have no knowledge of this book. But what happens if I spend lots of time in the underdark and I have no access to the sun or the moon?

Grayfigure
2016-04-15, 02:10 PM
The way it worked is this:
There was this energy called Stormlight. Now the stormlight came from a naturally re occurring phenomenon called a highstorm. While not perfectly predictable, the Highstorm would reoccur about once a week seemingly. And an odd effect of high storms was to leave residue energy, or stormlight, in naturally occurring gemstones. So the societies that evolved in that land used stormlight charged gems as both a fancy source of illumination and as a currency. The gems, once charged, would last until the next highstorm, for the most part. Only the Knights Radiant and the orders' creators, the Heralds, could extract that energy and pull it into themselves, creating their wonders.

My Idea to simulate that was to substitute the sun or moon (or both) for the Highstorm. I figured that might make it too easy to gain the energy needed for powers, so I figured that the player character could act as catalytic converter, becoming the transformation engine that changes sun/moonlight into stormlight (Soullight maybe?) To keep limits on it, I tried to tie power transforming into long rests, and requiring gems to hold the changed light for longer than the second needed to draw it into you to cast your magic.

SilverStud
2016-04-15, 11:20 PM
Here are the reasons behind a few of my allocations:

Low hit die: The point of a surgebinder is that he is powerful when Invested, not necessarily otherwise. I honestly considered a d6, but that seemed too small.

Readily available stormlight(or soul-light): The class loses its flavor if the stormlight is just spell points, regained each day and stored in gems.

Draining stormlight: Because that's how it worked in the books. It just strays too far if it doesn't drain.
Also, it's a unique mechanic, different from ALL the others. It may seem like lots of math, but its simple in practice.

Con-modifier healing: Surgebinders heal at a steady, and fairly quick, pace. Not in leaps, and not at will. It just happens. I mean, really. I'm holding 450 Stormlight, but can't heal because no Hit Dice left? Pffft. It's a proportionate heal, because with more oaths the Invested gets better, therefor your healing does too. I modeled it on the vampire. The thing is SOOOO hard to kill because it heals 20 damage per turn. If a level 2 character is regaining 2 health per turn, that kinda makes sense, don't you think?

Haveatya
2016-04-16, 11:59 AM
I think we should make scale or set up some sort idea of how much resource we have to work with per unit. We could really start balancing then.