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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Monastic Tradition: Way of the Reaper by gavinator154



gavinator154
2018-01-27, 06:21 AM
I am attempting to make a monk that is essentially supposed to be a reaper. Using a scythe and manipulating souls in deathy was is the name of the game, and all constructive criticism is appreciated.
For the scythe used, it is a 2d4, Two-Handed Weapon. This is custom since scythes are normally heavy, so damage was lowered to remove it.

WAY OF THE REAPER
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Death will eventually come to all. For some it will be sooner, for others, it will be later, but death comes to all things that live. With this knowledge in mind, you have been trained to take those who need to be taken and take your power from them. You, using your scythe and sickles, will become an aspect of death.


SOUL TEARING

Starting at 3rd level, you gain sickles and a scythe as monk weapons and also gain proficiency in Intimidation. Along with this, you gain the ability to attack not only the body, but the soul of a being itself. After making a successful hit with an unarmed strike or with a monk weapon, you may pay 1 ki point to tear away part the attacked creature's soul, dealing an additional Martial Arts die of necrotic damage and gaining a point of Soul once per turn. Soul Power leaves you at a long rest. You may use points of Soul Power to use the following abilities:

SOUL FORTITUDE

You may use 1 Soul Power during your bonus action to give yourself temporary hit points equal to 1 Martial Arts die + Wisdom Modifier.

SOUL REPAIR

You may use 2 Soul Power during your bonus action to regain hit points equal to 1 Martial Arts die + Wisdom Modifier.

SOUL FORGED

You may use 1 Soul Power while making an unarmed attack, or attack with your monk weapon. If you succeed on hitting, you deal an extra 2d6 die of necrotic damage.

SOUL AEGIS

You may use 2 Soul Power in response to being hit with an attack to cast shield on yourself.

SOUL STRIKE

You may use 1 Soul Power when making an attack to gain advantage on the hit.

SOUL FEAR

You may use 1 Soul Power as a bonus action to make an enemy afraid of your for a turn. The enemy makes a Wisdom saving throw, becoming afraid on a failure.

CURSE OF SOULS

Starting at 6rd level, you learn to funnel your soul shards into useful effects. You may now cast the following spells using Soul Power:

2 Soul Power: Bane, Dissonant Whispers, Zephyr Strike
3 Soul Power: Blindness/Deafness, Darkness, Invisibility, Misty Step, Ray of Enfeeblement, Silence

Along with these effects, your monk weapons and unarmed strikes count as magical and you gain the ability to place a curse on a specific soul. Using a bonus action, you may point to a creature that you can see withing 60 feet of you and place a curse on them that lasts a minute. This curse ends early if you become unconscious or the creature dies. While under the effects of your curse, you may add your proficiency to your damage against the cursed creature. Along with this, you gain an extra Soul Power for every time you gain a Soul Power from that creature. You may use this once per long rest.

PENANCE STARE

Starting at 11th level, you can burn through souls with a single look. During your turn, if you successfully hit an enemy that fears you and have at least 6 Soul Power, you may pull yourself to them and deliver the devastating stare into their soul. They must succeed a Wisdom saving throw or take 40 + 1d6 per Soul Power worth of psychic Damage for each Soul Power you have, half if they succeed. This ability burns all Soul Power, however, if the targeted creature dies from the stare, you may regain half of the used Soul Power, rounded down.

BECOME THE REAPER

Starting at 17th level, you have all but become death itself, and have learned some of the most important tricks. Once per long rest, you may use your action to bring Death into you. This lasts for 1 minute. While you are Death's Avatar, you do not evoke attacks of opportunity. You may use your action make an attack with your monk weapon on each person withing a 30 foot radius. On a successful hit, deal an extra d6 necrotic damage which you gain as temporary health. Once Death leaves, you lose all temporary health points from this class, and you gain 1 level of exhaustion.

Lalliman
2018-01-27, 07:59 AM
This looks fun, I like the method of converting Ki into Soul quite a lot.

The amount of options that Soul Tearing grants seems a little much though. I think you could get rid of Soul Forged, which merely does a crappier version of what you can already do with your Ki points, and is pretty underwhelming in terms of power. Soul Strike can probably afford to be 1 SP instead of 2: monks make many attacks per round, so advantage on one isn't that worthwhile.

What is up with Soul Fear? No action cost and no save? Something is missing.

The second part of Curse of Souls is way too good! At this level, the open hand monk learns to heal himself for 18 HP once per long rest. This subclass learns to get advantage on all attacks and ~12 extra damage per round against a single target, while also getting essentially a bunch of free Ki points when attacking them, once per SHORT rest. It would be too good even if you didn't also get a sizeable list of spells to cast.

I suggest you make this ability once per LONG rest, reduce the duration to a minute, and remove either the advantage or the proficiency to damage. One of the two is more than enough.

As for the spells: The large list is kind of a hassle since many of them aren't really worth the cost. I suggest you reconsider which of these are truly useful to a monk and which aren't. Especially:
- Arms of Hadar, since you can already disengage as a bonus action for half the cost, and still deal good damage with your action.
- Compelled Duel, since making yourself the centre of attention is really not what you want to do as a monk.
- Inflict Wounds, which is pretty much inferior to just punching people.
- The two Smite spells, which are a hard sell because you already have many good uses for your bonus action, and your Constitution save is probably poor.
Not offering trap options is generally a good idea.

The aura effect of Penance Stare is pretty savage, especially compared to the very ribbony Tranquillity and Cloak of Shadows. Like, a paladin gets to do this once per short rest, you get to do it constantly. Given how insignificant Tranquillity and Cloak of Shadows are, I'd frankly remove the fear aura completely and just give the actual stare ability at 11th level. But if you want to keep the aura, I suggest you make it an active ability that costs SP.

The stare itself is fine though. It has some nova potential, but it's not a very efficient use of your SP in most situations.

Become The Reaper seems fine, except that it says "help points" in the final line.

Again, I like this a lot. I think even when you apply my changes, it's still generally better than the other subclasses, since it can get a lot more value for its Ki points. But I can't really condemn it for that, since the monk is so lukewarm to begin with.

gavinator154
2018-01-27, 04:23 PM
Thank you so much for the feedback. I would be lying if I didn't say I was falling asleep when I made this so I hope that explains some of the issues. XD


The amount of options that Soul Tearing grants seems a little much though. I think you could get rid of Soul Forged, which merely does a crappier version of what you can already do with your Ki points, and is pretty underwhelming in terms of power. Soul Strike can probably afford to be 1 SP instead of 2: monks make many attacks per round, so advantage on one isn't that worthwhile.

Made Soul Forged a little more powerful, since I wanted to give them an option to be a more aggressive character. Changed Soul Strike to 1 SP since they can use that a bunch.



What is up with Soul Fear? No action cost and no save? Something is missing.

Curse of the Exhausted, I was VERY tired. I added this at the end to combo a little with Penance Stare. I think a bonus action with a Wisdom save works okay, but feel free to correct me.


The second part of Curse of Souls is way too good! At this level, the open hand monk learns to heal himself for 18 HP once per long rest. This subclass learns to get advantage on all attacks and ~12 extra damage per round against a single target, while also getting essentially a bunch of free Ki points when attacking them, once per SHORT rest. It would be too good even if you didn't also get a sizeable list of spells to cast.

I suggest you make this ability once per LONG rest, reduce the duration to a minute, and remove either the advantage or the proficiency to damage. One of the two is more than enough.

Agreed, and nicked it down a bit. Took out advantage on hits because too much advantage can break things, but a little extra damage seems fine. Reduced to a minute (seriously, I could've just looked at the Hexblade).


As for the spells: The large list is kind of a hassle since many of them aren't really worth the cost. I suggest you reconsider which of these are truly useful to a monk and which aren't.

I agreed with the ones you talked about. I left the others, since a lot of THOSE can be used for utility.


The aura effect of Penance Stare is pretty savage, especially compared to the very ribbony Tranquillity and Cloak of Shadows. Like, a paladin gets to do this once per short rest, you get to do it constantly. Given how insignificant Tranquillity and Cloak of Shadows are, I'd frankly remove the fear aura completely and just give the actual stare ability at 11th level. But if you want to keep the aura, I suggest you make it an active ability that costs SP.

The stare itself is fine though. It has some nova potential, but it's not a very efficient use of your SP in most situations.

Not sure what I was thinking, that area of effect would've broken everything. I've made the 11th level ability just the stare now, but given it more damage (like you said, not really worth the points you would put in), with a small addition I think might be interesting.

If you do see this, please tell me what you think about my corrections. Thank you again.

Lalliman
2018-01-29, 12:03 PM
Oops, forgot to respond.

It looks pretty good now. It might still end up overperforming, because once again you can get so much value out of every ki point. But that's up for playtesting.

I do think Soul Forged might be a bit overtuned now. Assuming level 3-10, 2d6 damage on potentially up to 4 attacks is a god damn lot of damage, even if it is unreliable. I dunno, you're gonna have to test and tweak that.

As an aside, why is it called Soul Forged? I don't really get the name on that one.

gavinator154
2018-01-29, 04:21 PM
Oops, forgot to respond.

It looks pretty good now. It might still end up overperforming, because once again you can get so much value out of every ki point. But that's up for playtesting.

I do think Soul Forged might be a bit overtuned now. Assuming level 3-10, 2d6 damage on potentially up to 4 attacks is a god damn lot of damage, even if it is unreliable. I dunno, you're gonna have to test and tweak that.

As an aside, why is it called Soul Forged? I don't really get the name on that one.

Yeah, but if you put it on all 4 hits, you wasted all your points on that, meaning no healing. It's definitely a little more powerful, but we can see how it works in playtesting (soon hopefully). It is called soul forged bc the idea is you use the soul to toughen your blade. If you know One Piece, like haki.