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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next FFXIV-Inspired Arcane Tradition: School of White Magic [PEACH]



Spiriah
2016-06-13, 08:59 AM
I've always really liked White Mages in the Final Fantasy series, and while the Life Cleric is similar to the White Mage in role, they're thematically very different – Life Clerics have heavy armor, and Blessed Healer and Divine Strike encourage them to get into the thick of things and take some damage, as their healing spells give them some HP back. I saw the White Mage as being more of a back-line healer/controller, avoiding damage and supporting the party through their spells. Besides their use of Int as a casting stat (Wis would've been more thematic), I saw Wizard as the best chassis for such a subclass.

Thus, I give you the White Mage (http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/HyuWzBPN).

I have some thoughts about its balance, and would like to hear your input:

Restoration Savant is pretty standard, though possibly a bit limited in scope? Only 12 spells, or 16 if you count death as a condition.
White Magic's changing the spell list is a clunky solution, and one I'm not wholly satisfied with, but I don't know how else to get healing into Wizard without it being too good. The Blessed Healer part brings it on par with Life Cleric in terms of healing power.
I think Regen is balanced out by only healing if you're above zero. If it brought someone back up every round, it'd be busted, but as is, it just keeps people's HP topped up. It's a very strong out-of-combat heal, as well, so that's a potential concern.
I'm somewhat proud of Divine Seal. I really like the way it's set up, and I don't think a crit heal once per short rest unbalances anything.
Reckoning serves as a capstone of sorts, improving the somewhat low damage on a lot of WHM spells, as well as buffing their healing. It's broader in scope than Life Cleric's capstone, but far less reliable.
The spell list was an attempt to find a middleground between the utility-master D&D wizards and the healing, nature-channeling White Mages. I might cut some of the stronger utility spells (e.g. Fly or Counterspell), but I think the loss of most damage spells, minionmancy (aside from elementals, but I might drop that as well), and a few other powerful spells (e.g. Polymorph, most Enchantments, Telekinesis) balances those out.
I might include a note about DMs being free to disallow Healing Word, Cure Wounds, and Bless as Spell Mastery picks. Resource-free healing is basically absent from 5e, and Bless is a very powerful spell for first level, but it does come in at 18th level. I don't see it as an immense balance issue, but I think I'll leave it up to the DM.

So, thoughts? Have I created some horribly broken healing abomination? Does anyone have a better fix for the spell list substitution? Should I try to convert some other FFXIV jobs? All feedback is welcome!

Final Hyena
2016-06-13, 09:28 AM
A good twist on turning the wizard into a cleric, never the less I have concerns with Regen.

At first level it's good value for your spells, however at around 3rd (slot) level I consider it still reasonable except that it takes 4 rounds to get all it's benefits, which is maybe too much, by 6th (slot) it's the same as heal but over 7 rounds with no condition removal.

I think the total amount healed is ok, but the time for all the healing to work is far too slow. A set duration that scales up the healing per round might work better.

Spiriah
2016-06-13, 09:44 AM
A good twist on turning the wizard into a cleric, never the less I have concerns with Regen.

At first level it's good value for your spells, however at around 3rd (slot) level I consider it still reasonable except that it takes 4 rounds to get all it's benefits, which is maybe too much, by 6th (slot) it's the same as heal but over 7 rounds with no condition removal.

I think the total amount healed is ok, but the time for all the healing to work is far too slow. A set duration that scales up the healing per round might work better.

I think there should be some increase in duration with higher slots, rather than a fixed duration. A medium-long heal over time at first level is great value, even if the individual ticks are small. Maybe every even slot level adds one round to the duration, and every odd round adds (a d4?) to the healing? I'd need to crunch the numbers on that, but I could see a solution like that working out.

Final Hyena
2016-06-13, 10:07 AM
most combat encounters lasts 4 rounds, if you want it to be viable during combat then you should roughly keep it to a max of 4. Consider that healing is reactive and so often you can't heal in the first round anyway, furthermore getting the ability off can result in a situation of healing when there's nothing to heal.

If the intent is for non combat then you could make it a minute casting but give it more bang for your buck than what it would otherwise be worth.

With regard to 1st level d4+3 (5.5) for 2 rounds 11 healing.
A life cleric will cast cure for d8+3+2+1 (10.5).

Personally I prefer the 10.5 upfront.

Spiriah
2016-06-13, 10:56 AM
What fix would you suggest? I find that combat generally does last for longer than four rounds, but that might just be due to my group in particular. Regen is intended to be an in-combat ability more than an out-of combat one, and Prayer of Healing fills the "strong out of combat heal with long cast" niche already.

RakiReborn
2016-06-13, 11:45 AM
How about it healing Xd4 (X=expended slot lvl) for an amount of rounds equal to (half?) your INTmod or (half?) your proficiency bonus?

Final Hyena
2016-06-13, 12:04 PM
You might not like this idea as it's a bit of a change, it's just the class is very much a life cleric, but without armour. Would it be possible that the 6th ability was instead of a Regen, a healing ability which the class has plenty of, a different kind of mechanic. Something like "Comeback" When you cast a healing spell on someone they also get one buff from a list e.g. bonus ac, attack, speed etc etc.
That would still fill the white mage theme and just be a smidgen different from life cleric.

Another idea is a sort of stasis heal. The creature gets put into a stasis field where they are healed over time, they can't act but can't be hurt.
This idea has the flaw that if used late in a tough fight monsters can be left with no one to fight and so finish off downed PCs.

Keeping it as is but re scaling the duration vs healing I would suggest a duration of 3 rounds with a healing per round of 5 times the slot level. Now that's a very cheap and simple suggestion that has some flaws, especially at end game (9*5=45 over 3 rounds = 135 which is pretty meh). The best solution would be to have a specific table for each slot level.

Spiriah
2016-06-14, 05:37 PM
I'm more a fan of the d4/slot level solution and Int mod duration than the flat HP one – there isn't much aside from Heal and Mass Heal in 5e that restores a flat amount of HP, and while a Regen will heal more HP than a Healing Word of the same level, they're meant for different things (HW picks an ally back up from unconsciousness as a bonus action, Regen is a slow-burning heal that can't revive KOed allies), and so have little in common aside from the d4s. Numbers might need tweaking, but I do like this better than what I had before.

I do think it'd be interesting to have an on-heal buff effect, but despite the complexity in porting it to 5e, I think Regen is a pretty iconic feature of the FFXIV White Mage, and I'm against dropping it. If there were such an effect, I might put it as an alternate Divine Seal option? You could choose whether to go with the increased HP restoration or a short-duration buff?

Final Hyena
2016-06-14, 05:49 PM
I have a slight concern with the current version. You have a level one spell that heals 5.5 hp for 5 rounds for an average of 27.5.

Spiriah
2016-06-15, 12:51 PM
I have a slight concern with the current version. You have a level one spell that heals 5.5 hp for 5 rounds for an average of 27.5.
Hm. Yeah, that's probably a little too good, even if the 5-round duration wouldn't come online until 4th/8th level. You mentioned having a specific table for each slot level earlier – can you maybe elaborate on that?

Final Hyena
2016-06-16, 08:15 AM
You write a table, at this slot level you get this much healing over this many rounds.
Firstly you need to decide how much you want to heal, for example cure light wounds restores (d8+mod+2+1) 10.5~12.5 hp upfront. So a reasonable trade would be something like 16 hp spread out over 3 rounds. But maybe you want it over 2 rounds and so lower it to something like 14, or maybe you want it over 4 rounds and so increase it to 18 hp. You notice I'm not giving much more despite an extra round of waiting, that's because D&D is a game balanced around 6 encounters a day, this means out of combat healing is a big consideration.