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Grek
2020-12-06, 02:51 AM
Hit Dice: 1d6 per maid level
Armor: none
Weapons: All simple weapons.
Tools: Any one type of artisan's tools and any one of disguise kit, forgery kit, poisoner's kit or land vehicles.
Saving Throws: Dexterity, plus one of Charisma, Intelligence or Strength.
Skills: Choose two from Athletics, Acrobatics, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Insight, History or Investigation.

1. Grace, Unarmored Defense
2. Poise, Improvised Attack
3. Maid Specialization
4. Ability Score Improvement
5. Extra Attack
6. Maid Specialization Feature
7. At the Ready (1)
8. Ability Score Improvement
9. Permanent Grace (1st)
10. Maid Specialization Feature
11. At the Ready (2), Exactitude (1)
12. Ability Score Improvement
13. Exactitude (2)
14. Maid Specialization Feature
15. At the Ready (3), Improved Poise
16. Ability Score Improvement
17. Permanent Grace (2nd), Exactitude (3)
18. At the Ready (4)
19. Ability Score Improvement
20. Permanent Grace (3rd)

Grace: In emergencies, you may draw upon an inner core of serenity and confidence. You may call upon this grace as a reaction to any event and gain the following benefits for one minute thereafter:
You cannot be knocked prone.
You have advantage on Dexterity checks and Dexterity saving throws.
Whenever you roll less than your proficiency bonus on a d20 roll, you may substitute a 10 before applying modifiers. If this replaces a natural 1, it no longer counts as a natural 1.
This ability may only be used twice per long rest, plus one additional time per long rest at levels 3, 6, 12 and 17. At the 9th, 17th and 20th levels you respectively gain the first, second and third benefits on this list at all times, even when you have not explicitly drawn upon your Grace. You cannot draw upon your Grace while wearing armour with which you are not proficient.

Unarmored Defense: While you are wearing no armor and wielding no shield, your Armor Class equals 13 + your Dexterity Modifier modifier. While wearing a professional uniform worth at least 25gp, increase your AC to 15 + your Dexterity Modifier.

Improvised Attack: Starting at 2nd level, you are proficient with improvised weapons. When attacking with a simple improvised weapon, you may choose to treat it as if it instead had a 1d8 base damage die and the Finesse, Versatile (1d10) and Thrown (range 20/60) weapon properties. You must choose before each attack whether you are using this ability; it does not stack with any other ability which modifies the base damage die or properties your chosen weapon.

Poise: Starting at 2nd level, you hold yourself with dignity and resolve, gaining a number of poise points equal to three times your level at the end of each long or short rest. Whenever you draw upon your Grace, restore a number of poise points equal to twice your level. While you still have poise remaining, you, your uniform and all of your equipment cannot be dirtied, damaged diseased, poisoned or wrinkled without your say so. Subtract any damage you would have taken from your Poise instead. While you have any amount of Poise remaining, you have resistance to Poison and Necrotic damage. At 15th level, fully refresh your poise points when drawing upon Grace.

Maid Specialization: At 3rd level, you choose your specialization as a maid, shaping your future role. This grants new features at 3rd, 6th, 10th and 14th levels. Choose from:

Battle Maid: As a 3rd level Battle Maid, you gain proficiency with all martial weapons. You also gain a single Fighting Style of your choice, as per a 1st level Fighter. At 6th level, you become immune to fear while you possess any amount of Poise. At 10th level, gain the ability to attack three times instead of twice whenever you take the Attack action on your turn. Finally, at 14th level, choose two additional damage types to gain resistance to while you possess any amount of Poise.

Magic Maid: As a 3rd level Magic Maid, you learn Prestidigitation, Mending and Eldritch Blast. At 10th level, you learn an additional cantrip from any class of your choice. You also learn three 1st level bard spells of your choice and gain spellcasting as shown on the Arcane Trickster Spellcasting table. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for your bard spells. You regain all expended spell slots after a long rest. Whenever you gain a level in this class, you can replace one of the bard spells you know with another spell of your choice from the bard spell list. The new spell must be of a level for which you have spell slots. Finally, at 14th level, you gain the ability to teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see whenever you draw upon your Grace.

Ninja Maid: As a 3rd level Ninja Maid, gain proficiency with one of Stealth, Acrobatics, Slight of Hand and one of Thieves Tools, Poisoner's Kits or Disguise Kits. At 6th level, double your proficiency bonus for the purposes of Grace when working with any of the above skills or tools and replace your roll with a 12 instead of a 10. This does not apply to attack rolls. At 10th level, you may use your bonus action to become invisible in any area of dim light or darkness, provided that you any amount of Poise remaining. You remain invisible until you make an attack, cast a spell, are in an area of bright light or start your next turn. Finally, at 14th level, whenever a creature makes an attack roll against you and doesn't have advantage on the roll, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on it. You must use this feature before you know the outcome of the attack roll.

Extra Attack: Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice instead of once whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

At The Ready: Starting at 7th level, whenever initiative is called for, choose one ally (other than yourself) to gain advantage on the initiative roll. At the 11th, 15th and 18th levels, choose one additional ally to gain advantage.

Exactitude: Beginning at 11th level, you may add your proficiency bonus to your damage on critical hits. Add your proficiency bonus again at 13th and 17th levels.

JNAProductions
2020-12-06, 05:45 PM
This doesn’t look finished.

And what is there looks poorly balanced.

sandmote
2020-12-07, 12:49 PM
It would probably help the write up if you added a class features table, and made sure the language works the way 5e uses it, rather than 3.5e.

Mechanically, this feels like a very bizarre hybrid of barbarians and monks. You should probably explain the design goals for this, and why it isn't just a subclass with some "your clothing never dirties," ribbon attached. Although considering how combat servants are usually portrayed, I'm a bit surprised not to see any rogue in here. Expertise would make sense, certainly.

Grace: nearly useless on a single class maid, mostly just letting you have some control ability on your archer. But, consider what happens if the wizard with fireball frightens everyone they just damaged.

Unarmored Defense: 13+Dex usually means you have physically present protection on you (magical, scales, ect.). Maybe consider using 10+Dex+Int, or just making this a monk subclass, with some note to call your ki "poise" instead.

At The Ready: This is not strong enough to justify being the only feature you get at 7th level. 15th, maybe, given you're supposed to be slowing down in power a bit, but certainly not 7th.

Poise: What do you spend Poise on? It looks like it is extremely important not to run out, but I don't see anything that expends it. If it's meant to run down at 1 per turn, I suggest rolling it into the grace feature, sort of how a bunch of barbarians get extra effects "while raging."

Exactitude: 11th level features are supposed to be powerful. A 6th level spell slot, for instance. This... is not that. Hell, the barbarian's brutal critical can add up to 6.5 damage on average at these levels and they get the first instance at 9th level.

Garfunion
2020-12-07, 02:42 PM
Personally I think it makes more sense for a butler/maid to be a background. A butler or maid is generally highly efficient at cooking, cleaning, and ensuring proper etiquette within a household. This could be rolled up into a background feature with additional skill proficiencies and tools like cooking. Then the maid or butler simply choose the class that is most appropriate.

Any world with magic many butlers and maids would pick up the prestidigitation cantrip for that extra squeaky clean and flavor enhancer.

Amechra
2020-12-08, 11:56 AM
Not the OP, but...


Poise: What do you spend Poise on? It looks like it is extremely important not to run out, but I don't see anything that expends it. If it's meant to run down at 1 per turn, I suggest rolling it into the grace feature, sort of how a bunch of barbarians get extra effects "while raging."

Poise looks like it's a secondary HP pool more than anything else. So you basically get a pool of 2*Level "HP" that you take damage to first and which give you some minor benefits as long as you still have some. And you refresh them whenever you rest or activate Grace, so you should actually be kinda hard to permanently hurt.

sandmote
2020-12-08, 03:31 PM
Poise looks like it's a secondary HP pool more than anything else. So you basically get a pool of 2*Level "HP" that you take damage to first and which give you some minor benefits as long as you still have some. And you refresh them whenever you rest or activate Grace, so you should actually be kinda hard to permanently hurt.
Yup, I missed this line:


Subtract any damage you would have taken from your Poise instead.

I suppose that explains the d6 hit die. It makes a lot of sense thematically. On the other hand, it means you have to be extra careful with the class balance, because they're going to crash a lot harder than everyone else on damage heavy encounters. Maybe more the increase to 3*level poise to 11th level, and add some features for pushing yourself beyond your limit when you're out of poise/grace somewhere?

JeenLeen
2020-12-08, 03:45 PM
Been a while since I tried offering comment to a class, so take this with a grain of salt, but some general comments then specific ones.

All in all, this reminds me of a serving a similar purpose to the Fighter (and Battle Mid is kinda like Champion and the Magic Maid kinda like Eldritch Knight, though different abilites). I don't mean that as a bad thing.


[/list] Whenever you inflict damage on a creature, it must make a Charisma saving throw (DC 8 + Proficiency Modifier + Charisma Modifier) or become frightened of you until the start of your next turn.[/list]
This ability may only be used twice per long rest, plus one additional time per long rest at levels 3, 6, 12 and 17. At the 9th, 17th and 20th levels you respectively gain the first, second and all benefits on this list at all times, even when you have not explicitly drawn upon your Grace. You cannot draw upon your Grace while wearing armour with which you are not proficient.


The ability to cause Frightened with an attack, even if it's limited to a few times per day, sounds really strong.
On the other hand, it is a nice level 20 capstone. It doesn't feel as cool as some other class capstones since it's not its own thing, but that is pretty powerful. (I'm not sure of how well DCs scale at high level, but I'm assuming your DC will be hard to make on average at level 20. Or at least happen half the time.)


Unarmored Defense: While you are wearing no armor and wielding no shield, your Armor Class equals 13 + your Dexterity Modifier modifier. While wearing a professional uniform worth at least 25gp, increase your AC to 15 + your Dexterity Modifier.

Seems close enough to what heavy armor gives fighters, so this seems fine.


Ninja Maid: As a 3rd level Ninja Maid, gain proficiency with one of Stealth, Acrobatics, Slight of Hand and one of Thieves Tools, Poisoner's Kits or Disguise Kits. At 6th level, double your proficiency bonus for the purposes of Grace when working with any of the above skills or tools and replace your roll with a 12 instead of a 10. At 10th level, you may use your bonus action to become invisible in any area of dim light or darkness, provided that you any amount of Poise remaining. You remain invisible until you make an attack, cast a spell, are in an area of bright light or start your next turn. Finally, at 14th level, whenever a creature makes an attack roll against you and doesn't have advantage on the roll, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on it. You must use this feature before you know the outcome of the attack roll.

<snip>

Exactitude: Beginning at 11th level, you may add your proficiency bonus to your damage on critical hits. Add your proficiency bonus again at 13th and 17th levels.

Combining Ninja Maid with Exactitude seems like it's potentially overpowered, but, on other hand, it's a situational pure numeric boost. But if this is combined with way so increase the crit range, that might get too strong.

Grek
2020-12-11, 11:29 PM
Combining Ninja Maid with Exactitude seems like it's potentially overpowered, but, on other hand, it's a situational pure numeric boost. But if this is combined with way so increase the crit range, that might get too strong.

What's the combo with Ninja Maid and Exactitude? Ninja Maid only applies to certain tool/skill checks, Exactitude only applies to crit damage. As far as I can tell, these don't interact.

As far as design intent goes, this class is 80% a barbarian refluff - Grace is Rage with Dex instead of Str, a weird variant on a to hit bonus instead of a damage bonus and different resistances. At the Ready is a team-buffing variant of Feral Instinct. Exactitude and Permanent Graces aren't an exact 1:1 match for Brutal Critical and the various Rage benefits, but they're similar in spirit and tuned downwards to account for the overall more impressive archetype features that Maid gets - an extra attack for Battle Maid, spellcasting for Magic Maid, invisibility on the ninja Maid - and focused on more reliability rather than higher spikes of damage and survivability.

The ability to inflict Frightened was originally intended as a side-grade for better weapon access, but now that I've put more thought into it, I've replaced it with a simple damage die replacement option akin to the monk martial arts die. I've also made the Poise maximum default to 3 per level, but made Grace no longer be a full refresh until level 15.