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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next 5e Tempest Knight Base Class (Need help with balancing)



Krumpits
2016-08-10, 08:09 PM
So this was a class that was ridiculously over powered over on dandwiki and someone made a pass over it to try to balance it, and it was still pretty op. I made a couple passes over it so far trying to bring it in line while still keeping the flavor of a lightning charged knight. It will not have any archetypes at the moment. I am pretty sure it's still a little too strong where it's at right now, but figure I would let gtip rip it apart first.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eJz8r30X4mvNyYGOptYXysVnXupk2ciJz17gB6jcQGk/edit?usp=sharing

I am still debating on exhaustion for the capstone feature. I like the flavor of just burning everything you have for one big pay off and exhaustion represents that well enough. Please let me know more on how much 1 level of exhaustion would stop you from using the capstone, if it would at all.

EDITS:
-Removed AC bonus from fury of the storms. Reduced bonus damage from 3d8 to 2d8.
-Infused lightning reduced to once per turn.
-Cut bonus damage from Storm Lord
-Reduced chain lightning from exhaustion cap, to once per long rest.
-Moved wrath of the tempest to levels 11 and 18. Moved uses increase to level 11 from 15, as level 11 now seemed like a dead level.
-Updated cyclonic impact to be a little more flavorful, and increasing its thunder wave use slightly.

Rerem115
2016-08-10, 08:54 PM
1st off, the damage doesn't scale linearly:

--Wrath of the Tempest increases in damage at 8th and 19th level, points usually reserved for ASIs.
--Thunderous Leap increases in damage at 11th and 16th level, points reserved for a major damage bonus and an ASI, respectively.
--Infused Lightning increases in damage at 16th level, a point reserved for an ASI. In addition, you can't actually benefit from this without allied help; all your abilities that deal lightning damage require your action, leaving you with no attacks.
--Extra Attack (3) should be at 11th level, at least according to the precedent set by the Fighter.


If these abilities had rational scaling, it would be fairly simple to clean up this class, as most of what remains is numbers tuning. However, this class needs some serious tuning. Before level 11, while dual wielding rapiers and with a little help from a caster (Elemental Weapon) this class outperforms any other in DPR. Here are my damage estimates:

1d8+3 (first attack) + 1d4+1 (elemental weapon) + 4d8+6 (remaining attacks+infused lightning)+2d4+2 (elemental weapon) + 2d8 (wrath of the tempest).

Granted, this assumes you hit every attack and they fail their save. However, at this point in the game, the only melee class that will out-damage you is a paladin burning all their smites, and compared to them, you can keep this rate of damage up practically indefinitely.

Krumpits
2016-08-10, 09:48 PM
--Infused Lightning increases in damage at 16th level, a point reserved for an ASI. In addition, you can't actually benefit from this without allied help; all your abilities that deal lightning damage require your action, leaving you with no attacks.


Oops, that was actually just a miss type on my part. It was supposed to be at the end of your next turn. So you take a turn with thunder leap to charge your attacks for the next round. Changing that now.

I would actually prefer that the extra attack (2) is different from the fighters, just me though.

As with the scaling and placement of the abilities where would you recommend they be placed instead? And any thoughts on how to balance the damage better? I am not a min/max-er so balancing things can be a little harder for me.

Rerem115
2016-08-10, 10:49 PM
As a general rule, your class features shouldn't scale on levels that have ASIs. For whatever reason, ASI levels traditionally only have an ASI.

The problem with damage lies primarily with Infused Lightning, especially now that it triggers itself. Bonuses on-hit are extremely abusable, especially with a class that gets three attacks. When everything finally comes together, you'll be doing 4d8 + 4xmod (weapon) + 8d8 every round, using only your basic attacks, and suffering no penalty. Once you hit 20th level, that becomes 4d8 + 4xmod + 20d8 per round.

My advice would be to limit the extra damage from Infused Lightning to once per turn and get rid of its scaling, so it's more like the Hunter Ranger's Colossus Slayer. On a similar note, I'd get rid of the extra damage rider from Storm Lord; you already have three attacks and a floating d8 of damage, you don't need any more.

Finally, exhaustion as a rider on PC abilities is universally reviled. I'd recommend getting rid of the exhaustion rider from Chain Lightning and Fury of the Storms, but to balance this out I'd limit Chain Lightning to once per long rest, get rid of the AC buff to Fury of the Storms (+4 passive AC buff that stacks with any other enhancement is nuts anyways), and reduce the bonus lightning damage to 2d8.

With the removal of Improved Infused Lightning, I'd recommend moving Lightning Shield to 15th level and have your scaling abilities get buffs at 11th and 18th level.

*as a minor note, what level is the Lightning Bolt in Fury of the Storms?

Krumpits
2016-08-10, 11:19 PM
*as a minor note, what level is the Lightning Bolt in Fury of the Storms?

It would be cast at lowest level it can be cast.

Also good idea for the edits, ill look into moving stuff around and update the class. Thanks for all the help so far!

Edit: With Infused lightning being reduced to once per attack round and once on an AO it's typical round of damage seems to float in the same 55-70 damage a round range without the capstone, so I think that it is fine but I'll see if I need to raise it just a little down the line since most of its high damage abilities are once a long rest, and it has to keep pace with fighters and paladins.