D&D 5e Base Class Contest V Voting Thread

[Requilac]

Welcome playgrounders, here is the thread in which you vote for which homebrewed class entered in the current D&D 5e Base Class is the greatest. The voting period will take place between 1:00 am on January 24th to 11:59 pm on January 30th 11;59 PM Eastern Standard time. Votes made outside of that time range while not be included in the total score of each class. You do not need to be part of the competition to vote. If you wish to vote, then give a first and second place vote. A first place vote is worth three points and a second place vote is worth one point. A person who votes for their own class must change their vote before the voting period ends or be disqualified. It is suggested that you include the reasoning for your votes, but it is not necessary. Let us begin.

When you make your vote, please also tell us what you would like the next competition's theme to be. It is not necessary to do this, but it would help us out greatly. So far people have suggested the following themes

1) Dragons

2) Monsters (such as vampires, mind flayers or angels) represented as PC classes

3) Time

If you would like to come up with your own theme, please submit that here.

Voting Points
Wintreborn: IIII IIII II 12
Sleighmaster: III 3
Wendigoe: IIII 5

[Crim the Cold]

I guess I'll be the first to vote.

My first place vote goes to the Winterborn. As I said before I really liked the fluff and mechanics of this class. Not much more I can say here. Well done!

My second place vote goes to the Sleighmaster. The idea of a sleigh being pulled by bears is really epic.

As for themes I'd like to propose another theme. Long name: Why so serious? Silly character classes for less than serious campaigns or chill DMs. Short name: Comic Relief. Examples would be Kikuchiyo from Samurai 7, Sokka from Avatar, or the Kenku Party B**tch from D&D 3.5. I have about a half dozen semi-fleshed out ideas bouncing around in my head for this one.

My second choice for theme is Time.
Thank you for your time.

[Requilac]

Wintreborn: Overall this is an amazingly well built class, with a good combination of flavor and mechanics to make it interesting to play. It also seems to be a good balance power wise, with it neither being stronger than its due nor weaker than it should be. Its definitely something I would allow as a GM. I do have my concerns though that its heavy reliance on the Snowcaller Flurries may make play as a Snowcaller repetitive and eventually uninteresting.

Sleighhmaster:
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I really should have expected this, but for some reason I didn't. Anyhow, I have to commend you on the great work you did with this class here. It seems fairly mechanically stable, but I worry that at higher levels it may become comparitively weaker to other classes. The theme seems pretty well developed to, including a lot of leadership based features too. The main concern I have is that perhaps too much focus is given on the sleigh's features, making the sleighmaster much more vulnerable than should be when the sleigh is for whatever reason destroyed.

The Wendigoe: First let me start off by saying that I absolutely love the theme, and have been interested in lore surrounding Wendigoes for quite some time. But it unfortunately begins to start to lag off when the mechanics and implications in roleplay come on board. While it is not necessarily overpowered, the Wendigoe has way too many features much too early on, which could be organized in a much better way. It would be difficult to keep track of all of the Wendigoe's powers and players may get easily confused by the complexity involved. Second, just given the nature of this class, it would be difficult for any DM to allow a player to play a Wendigo character in a non-evil campaign given their inherently evil and cannibalistic nature.

So upon my final examination, this would have to be were my votes go
1) First towards the wintreborn, for overall an excellent balance of mechanics and theme.
2) And my second vote goes to the Wendigoe, because despite some mechanical flaws it should still be perfectly functional and creates a very compelling roleplaying aspect.

And for my vote for theme, I would like to choose time.

[MoleMage]

This is a tough one for me, because I feel like both the Sleighmaster and the Wendigo each have the other's flaws and merits reversed. The sleighmaster is a tightly-written class with all its mechanics fitting into slots in 5e expectations, but at the end of the day, except for the reindeer team and one feature in bear team it doesn't have a lot of diversity in its features and comes out a little under the power curve. In contrast, the Wendigo has a variety of cool class features but most of them run at odds to 5e's expectations for action economy and power level, leaving it stronger than similar classes at a variety of levels. To top it off, both have good themes for the contest.

In the end, I think I have to give this to the class with more compelling features, even if I would do a re-balance of many of them before letting it play at my table. My first vote goes to the Wendigo.

And that means that my second vote goes to the Sleighmaster, as before playing it I would want to come up with some new ribbon features in addition to possibly rewriting some others (like the sledding team's damage progression which I still feel should be higher).

[sengmeng]

1) Wintreborn: I like the lore, and the flurry is a much cooler idea than I had for cold based powers, maybe the most unique new class feature I've seen recently.

2) Sleighmaster: it's a bit jokey, but solid. I can see a lot of parties having room for one, too.


Although I just did it, I guess monsters as classes is my vote for a theme.

[pygmybatrider]

I didn’t really put enough time or effort into either my submission or my feedback this time - sorry in particular to sengmeng for not getting around to critique at all.

1 - wintreborn, as usual a sleek entry, the class has a unique mechanic and thematic niche, with some really tasty ribbon features to carry the fluff. It has a real MMO feel to it - summon the snow, stand in the snow, shoot stuff out of the snow, debuff the baddies. I think it would be a fun and engaging experience to play.
2 - wendigo, as has been said by others has some really cool mechanical features and accompanying visuals - who doesn’t want to stain the snow red with swathes of blood you’ve torn. from your foes with your bare hands - but is a bit out of line with the power curve of other 5e classes. Having said that, again it reads like a blast to play and adjustments can always be made on the fly.

My note for next competition - monsters as classes!

[Requilac]

The Voting period has come to an end. No more votes shall be entered from this point on.