Has anyone played or looked over Matt Coleville Illrigger class

[Throne12]

So Matt Coleville created a devil anti-paladin class. I haven't look to closely yet but I been listening to stream. So what do yall think of it.

[Squeeq]

I have! It needs a ton of work!

So the biggest problem with illrigger is that the seals you can put on are a bad use - a paladin's smite does 2d8 with a first level slot, the illrigger does 2d6, but later. With a third level slot, the paladin does 5d8 damage, and the illrigger does.... 2d6. The extra bonuses you get with it are cute but not particularly amazing. The fighting styles are all new instead of using existing ones, and one of them lets you copy the hexblade thing, which I guess is cool.

Forked tongue basically means that my bard doesn't need to show up since this thing can cast just as well. The spell growth is weird, growing as fast as a full caster but capping at level 5.

The spell that lets you throw all your spell slots onto one person, and then the fifth level one that lets you blow every seal up for 5d10 damage would let you do something like 65d10 damage in two rounds at 10th level, which seems WAY more powerful than he's expecting it to be.

For a non-mechanical note, the fact that it's specifically designed as an anti-paladin fixed to archdevils is boring. You can play a paladin in almost anyway, from chaotic evil to lawful good, same with basically any class you want. Illrigger, as a class, is kind of locked in by the flavor to basically one general idea, and that's really stifling as a design choice.

I do get where he's going from, an alternate, sneakier version of a paladin, and the idea to cast small debuffs on a variety of foes is actually something I really like, but the basically-forced character information and the wonky mechanics make it frustrate me.

[mephnick]

I love the guy, but Matt is a writer, not a game designer. It shows.

Mercer's homebrew classes were also terrible before years of community input were put into them. I still don't consider them well designed, but they're passable.

Illrigger will be cool two years from now as it gets playtested and fixed.

[Trask]

The purpose for the class seem a bit odd to me. Conquest Paladin or an Oathbreaker seem more than suitable for a paladin of the devil.

[Willie the Duck]

The purpose for the class seem a bit odd to me. Conquest Paladin or an Oathbreaker seem more than suitable for a paladin of the devil.

Well, the purpose clearly seems to be to resurrect the Illrigger that he played back in 198X, or whenever the Dragon mag that had the 'paladins of other alignments' article was. Wouldn't be the first time, of course, that D&D has had multiple ways of accomplishing the same thing.

[Trask]

Well, the purpose clearly seems to be to resurrect the Illrigger that he played back in 198X, or whenever the Dragon mag that had the 'paladins of other alignments' article was. Wouldn't be the first time, of course, that D&D has had multiple ways of accomplishing the same thing.

Just seems like a lot of work, but I guess Matt isn't one to shy from that. But as others have said, the class itself is a bit of a hot mess. I think if a player of mine really wanted to fulfill that Hell Knight archetype I'd recommend them a Conquest paladin and maybe let them change their smite damage to necrotic instead of radiant.

[Kalashak]

I'm playing one in a game right now, I reworked a lot of it because at the moment it's a little....wonky. I haven't had a chance to do much with it though so I can't speak for how it plays.