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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Herald of Chronepsis (Campaign Specific Fighter Archetype) (PEACH)



PapaQuackers
2017-04-27, 05:56 AM
I don't want to bore you guys too much with the details, but I've started a D&D campaign with my fiance and her younger brother with a few of his friends. Originally I was running it and she was Co-DMing, but I found that she was doing a solid job running encounters on her own, but the boys were struggling since they hadn't really played D&D before this.

As such, I'm going to be joining the game as a PC to help them around the table as an experienced player, and to have a little bit of fun myself.

The campaign setting is based around a war between the dragon gods, and this archetype revolves around powers granted by the dragon god Chronepsis, god of fate, judgement, and death. Let me know if it's too strong, or too

Herald of Chronepsis


The Judgement of Chronepsis:
At 3rd level, you have been gifted the ability to pass the judgement of Chronepsis. When you successfully hit a target with a melee attack, you may attempt to brand them with the mark of Chronepsis as a bonus action. The target must succeed a Wisdom saving throw or be marked by Chronepsis. As a bonus action you may activate the mark of Chronepsis, which will deal necrotic damage to the marked target, so long as they are within 60ft, equal to the cumulative damage that creature has dealt to any number of creatures over the last minute up to a maximum of 10 + 2x Fighter Level. I.E., If your target has hit three creatures in the last minute and dealt 12 damage to each of them, a level 16 Herald of Chronepsis will deal 36 damage to the target when activating the mark.

The mark expires when the affected target finishes a short rest, is unconscious or dead, or you use this feature to mark another creature.

After you have used this feature on a creature, you may not use it on the same creature again until you finish a long rest. You may use this feature a number of times equal to 1 + your Charisma modifier, and you recover expended uses of this feature after you finish a long rest

Saves against Herald of Chronepsis abilities are DC 8 + Proficiency Bonus + Charisma Modifier

Weigh Their Hearts:
Beginning at 7th level you have been gifted with the ability to judge the hearts of man. You can instantly discern the alignment of a creature that is within sight and gain proficiency with Wisdom (Insight) checks. If you already have proficiency with the Wisdom (Insight) skill, you may choose another skill on the Fighter skill list.

Breath of Fate:
Beginning at 10th level you gain a breath weapon that affects a 15ft cone in front of you. As an action, you can use your breath weapon, and each creature in the area of the exhalation must make Wisdom saving throw. The DC for this saving throw equals 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus. On a failed saving throw, creatures will come under effect of the Bestow Curse spell as though it was cast a 5th level spell that does not require concentration to maintain.

After you use your breath weapon, you can’t use it again until you complete a short or Long Rest.

Mass Judgement:
Beginning at 15th level, using a single bonus action, you can effect up to three creatures simultaneously with your Judgement of Chronepsis ability.


Conscription of the Judged
Beginning at 18th level, any creature that is reduced to 0 hit points by your Judgement of Chronepsis becomes a conscript of the Dragon God. Creatures reduced to 0 hit points by this ability will immediately rise back up as undead as if raised through an 8th level Create Undead spell.

Silvanshei
2017-04-27, 01:52 PM
The Judgement of Chronepsis:
At 3rd level, you have been gifted the ability to pass the judgement of Chronepsis. As a standard action you can mark a creature you can see within 60ft. Once a creature is marked, as a bonus action, you may deal damage equal to the damage that creature has dealt cumulatively from the last 10 minutes. I.E. if that creature has dealt a total of 28 damage over the last 10 minutes to any number targets, you may do 28 damage to him.

You may use Judgement of Chronepsis a number of times equal to 1 + Charisma Modifier per long rest, but you may not use Judgement of Chronepsis on the same target more than once per day.

A few questions about this ability.

Does the target get a saving throw to resist the mark, if so what type of saving throw?
What about a saving throw to resist the damage?
When the damage is triggered, does that end the mark or can you use your bonus action to deal damage once per round for the next 10 minutes?
What is the range on the mark after it has been applied?

Overall, this seems really powerful, as all you have to do is mark target then send in a bunch of mooks. Deal damage after the target has killed all of them.

PapaQuackers
2017-04-27, 03:14 PM
A few questions about this ability.

Does the target get a saving throw to resist the mark, if so what type of saving throw?
What about a saving throw to resist the damage?
When the damage is triggered, does that end the mark or can you use your bonus action to deal damage once per round for the next 10 minutes?
What is the range on the mark after it has been applied?

Overall, this seems really powerful, as all you have to do is mark target then send in a bunch of mooks. Deal damage after the target has killed all of them.

I've made changes in line with all the comments you've made thus far, any thoughts about the revisions or other abilities of the subclass?

aimlessPolymath
2017-04-27, 04:03 PM
On Judgement, Will save should be Wisdom save, line on saving throw DCs is duplicated, no such thing as a standard action (just an action) in 5e.

This is a decent (and somewhat janky) archetype. Offensively, it covers both single and groups of opponents via Judgement and Breath respectively- each is extremely effective against a particular class of foe (although it does have range issues). However, both those attack modes scale very poorly- Judgement is incredible at low levels due to how much damage can be pumped out of one attack, but falls off quickly due to the horrible scaling, while Breath essentially OHKOs a pack of mooks if you can group them all in the right space, but never gets better (although 5e bounded accuracy helps it out by letting it deal with relevant opponents).

Furthermore, neither of those abilities work well with the basic Fighter at all- they feel stapled on, as though Judgement were originally a Divine Channeling ability.



Suggestions:
Judgement needs an activation tweak. I'd say to make the mark something which you can apply with an attack (as a bonus action?), and then use a standard action to activate. This makes it fit much better in the fighter's attack-focused build. The Mass Judgement ability lets it affect all attacks you make for a round. Furthermore, I would somewhat adjust the maximum damage it deals, to 10 + 2x level, to help it scale better (and compare better to simply attacking the target).
Also, buff the activation range to 60 ft.

I would alter Breath of Fate to make it a little more general: Instead of doing whatever spell it emulates right now (color spray?), it inflicts a different spell which scales a little better- I suggest Command, Bestow Curse, or Fear as spells.
I would suggest fear, except the "chrono" part of the name deceived me and time is not part of his portfolio.

(also, change advantage on Sense Motive checks to Proficiency).
(also also, there's an argument to be made for Wisdom over Charisma for ability DCs, given Chronowhatever's focus on judgement and fate)

Silvanshei
2017-04-28, 02:02 PM
Suggestions:
Judgement needs an activation tweak. I'd say to make the mark something which you can apply with an attack (as a bonus action?), and then use a standard action to activate. This makes it fit much better in the fighter's attack-focused build. The Mass Judgement ability lets it affect all attacks you make for a round. Furthermore, I would somewhat adjust the maximum damage it deals, to 10 + 2x level, to help it scale better (and compare better to simply attacking the target).
Also, buff the activation range to 60 ft.

I would alter Breath of Fate to make it a little more general: Instead of doing whatever spell it emulates right now (color spray?), it inflicts a different spell which scales a little better- I suggest Command, Bestow Curse, or Fear as spells.
I would suggest fear, except the "chrono" part of the name deceived me and time is not part of his portfolio.


I like the action change suggestion to Judgement.

The HD levels of Breath of Fate could be changed to scale with level, such as:
HD less than 1/2 level: unconscious, blinded, and stunned
(1/2 level +1) to (level -1): blinded and stunned
HD above your level: stunned

This covers around the same HD creatures at 10th, but scales.

Mass Judgement: (1)If I activate the damage, does it trigger on all 3 at the same time or is it an action per target? (2)If at the same time, what happens if a target is outside the range to trigger the damage, does the mark stay on them and can be triggered later?

Conscription of the Judged: What happens to the risen (1)if they are healed while under this ability? (2) reduced to 0 hit points? (3) after the effect ends?

Composer99
2017-04-28, 05:59 PM
I really like the flavour of this fighter archetype, but overall I think it's really, really fiddly for a 5e subclass. It has a bit more of the 3.5/PF design style to it, which is fine as far as it goes but in my view is unsuitable for 5e.

Specific comments below:



The Judgement of Chronepsis:
At 3rd level, you have been gifted the ability to pass the judgement of Chronepsis. As a standard action you can mark a creature you can see within 60ft. Once a creature is marked, as a bonus action, so long as the creature is within 30ft of you, you can force the target to make a will save, if they fail this will save you deal damage equal to the damage that creature has dealt cumulatively from the last 3 minutes up to a maximum of 15 + Fighter Level. I.E. if you are a level 13 Herald of Chronepsis and that creature has dealt a total of 28 damage over the last 3 minutes to any number targets, you may deal 28 damage to him. On a successful will save this damage is halved.


Apart from the saving throw misnomer:
- Most combats in D&D don't last 3 minutes in game time (3 minutes is about 30 combat rounds).
- As worded, the feature demands that somebody keep track of not only the marked creature's damage output, but given the ability's referring to the past, any potential target's damage output; given that 5e is meant to have a lot less fiddly number crunching than 3.5 or 4th, this ability seems to add an unnecessary amount of same.
- As has already been noted, the damage scales poorly, being really strong at low-to-mid levels, and scaling to relatively paltry amounts later on (although this is mitigated by the fact you can do it once per turn with a bonus action).
- Using an action to mark a creature is a big commitment, and for a fighter takes away a lot of damage, as has also been mentioned earlier.
- Incidentally, what type is the damage? (Given Chronepsis' nature, any of force, necrotic, or radiant might be appropriate.)

I would suggest:
- Make it a bonus action to mark a creature, or allow the fighter to add the mark while making a weapon attack; maybe a target can make a Wisdom save to avoid the mark (depending, perhaps, on how you want it to trigger).
- Don't require keeping track of creatures' damage (especially over an unusually long timescale) to use the feature properly.
- Adjust damage levels to scale better (especially if a fighter is using a bonus action or reaction to trigger the mark's effect).



The mark will automatically expire after you pass judgement on a target, or if the target completes a short rest.


Presumably, this means when you use the mark on a new target creature?

Maybe reword to "The mark expires when the affected target finishes a short rest, is unconscious or dead, or you use this feature to mark another creature."



You may use Judgement of Chronepsis a number of times equal to 1 + Charisma Modifier per long rest, but you may not use Judgement of Chronepsis on the same target more than once per day.


I would split these up, seeing as they represent different thoughts, like so (also bringing the wording in line with the 5e style): "After you have used this feature on a creature, you may not use it on the same creature again until you finish a long rest. You may use this feature a number of times equal to 1 + your Charisma modifier, and you recover expended uses of this feature after you finish a long rest."



Weigh Their Hearts:
Beginning at 7th level you have been gifted with the ability to judge the hearts of man. You can instantly discern the alignment of a creature that is within sight and have advantage on Sense Motive checks.


Presumably you mean Wisdom (Insight) checks, as Sense Motive isn't a skill in 5e. Otherwise, a decent ability (although since 5e doesn't have spells or other features that really interact with alignment, it's probably not that useful).




Breath of Fate:
Beginning at 10th level you gain a breath weapon that affects a 15ft cone in front of you. When you use your breath weapon, each creature in the area of the exhalation must make Wisdom saving throw. The DC for this saving throw equals 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus. On a failed saving throw, creatures will experience a status effect depending on their hit dice.

6 HD or less: The creature is unconscious, blinded, and stunned for 2d4 rounds, then blinded and stunned for 1d4 rounds, and then stunned for 1 round. (Only living creatures are knocked unconscious.)

7 or 8 HD: The creature is blinded and stunned for 1d4 rounds, then stunned for 1 round.

9 or more HD: The creature is stunned for 1 round.


After you use your breath weapon, you can’t use it again until you complete a short or Long Rest.


Presumably this requires an action to use?

This is basically a redo of 3.5's color spray (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/colorSpray.htm). IMO it's a little too fiddly for 5e (compare it to 5e color spray (http://5e.d20srd.org/srd/spells/colorSpray.htm)).

Similar to aimlessPolymath, I would suggest simplifying the ability's effects. If you want tiers of effects, I would suggest scaling it by CR instead of by HD. For instance, you might have the following effect:
- Creatures in the area of effect must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw [you'll have specified that all DCs for this subclass' features are equivalent to spell save DCs] or be stunned until the end of your next turn
- Each creature whose CR is one-quarter or less than your current fighter level (round down) fall unconscious instead of becoming stunned on a failed save, waking after 1 minute, until it takes damage, or until someone uses an action to wake it.




Mass Judgement:
Beginning at 15th level you may affect up to three creatures simultaneously with a single use of your Judgement of Chronepsis.


I think this is fine, especially once you've simplified the effects of the Judgement.




Conscription of the Judged
Beginning at 18th level, any creature that is reduced to 0 hit points by your Judgement of Chronepsis becomes a conscript of the Dragon God. It will rise back up as if it had completed a short rest since reaching 0 hit points and stay alive for 10 minutes. Creatures that have risen will also be restored to half of their maximum HP when risen. Conscripts of Chronepsis are under the control of the Herald of Chronepsis and may be dismissed early if he so chooses.

This is probably fine if you animate a beatstick with it, but creatures with innate spellcasting or other powerful recharge-on-short-rest abilities make it overpowered, IMO. I would suggest, given Chronepsis is a dragon-god of death, this feature animates affected creatures as ghouls, making this feature similar to create undead, and since it has a cap of 1 + Cha creatures (probably 2-3), it's hardly overpowered. If you want a maximum duration of 10 minutes, just specify that the affected creatures die at the end of the duration, and you're good to go.

PapaQuackers
2017-04-28, 07:06 PM
Made changes in line with all the excellent suggestions you guys have made. Any thoughts now?