D&D 5e Base Class Contest XIV Voting Thread

[MoleMage]

This is the voting thread for the fourteenth base class contest Monster Mash II (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?624969-D-amp-D-5e-Base-Class-Contest-XIV-Monster-Mash-II).

The rules are simple. Vote for your top three picks, in order. You can't vote for yourself. A number 1 vote is worth 3 points, a number 2 vote is worth 2, and a number 3 vote is worth one. You can (and are encouraged) to vote even if you didn't submit an entry this time around.

You can also suggest or vote on what you would like the next contest's theme to be. Currently in the suggestion box are Dragons, Heroes from Myths, Partial Casters, Divine Judgment, Other Media, and Breakfast Cereal Mascots, but don't feel as though you need to limit your suggestions to those themes; a larger pool means more options to vote on next time. I'm also going to allow votes for any theme that hasn't been used for at least six contests (so right now that adds Who Needs Swords or Sorcery, Terror, The Elements, Doesn't Meet Expectations, Chill Out, Remix Mastery, and Magic Without Slots). If you missed a contest or had another idea for a previous theme, you may get your chance again!



Entry
Creator
1st
2nd
3rd



The Beheld (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24871837&postcount=2)
BerzerkerUnit
3
1
1



Dragon Upstart (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24872142&postcount=3)
DamonTor
2
1
0



The Adversary (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24876387&postcount=4)
sengmeng
1
2
1



Skeletal Champion (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24878711&postcount=5)
Morphic tide
0
1
2



The Genie (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24925830&postcount=6)
MoleMage
1
1
1



Cultist of the World Ender (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24944753&postcount=7)
Lvl45DM!
0
1
2



The voting period will be three weeks, ending at the end of the day on March 21st. The following day I will tally these results and declare a winner. For the curious, the tiebreakers I will be using are:

1st tiebreaker is whether both participants voted. If one did not, they lose the tie.
2nd tiebreaker is total number of 1st place votes. The entry which got more 1st place votes will win the tie.
There is no 3rd tiebreaker. If both entrants voted and both entries reached their total score with the same number of 1st place votes, the tie will stand.

[Lvl45DM!]

1: The Beheld. I mean...how do you even pull off a solid Beholder Class?
2: The Adversary. Great job at capturing the vibe of a flayer
3: Skeletal Champion. Not a fan of some of the mechanics but mostly very good.

And Ill put a vote in for Divine Judgement. Heroes from myth is pretty close to what Dnd already is i reckon

[Morphic tide]

Huh, thought we'd see disqualifications for incompleteness. But then it seems nobody but DamonTor actually finished...

1: Beheld, by BerzerkerUnit. Similar to my own, it works to have a strong core playstyle of its own, but doesn't fall into the trap I did of having a fully-formed and divergent sub-role based on subclass, so it can actually do useful things in the core class. Operating on a mild distortion of Pact Magic works out quite well with the eye correspondence, and the spell list does appear quite solidly selected for the Wizard's usual task of controlling the battlefield and answering questions. The Evolution mechanics operate fine as just an ordinary subclass, but more importantly actually do properly expand on the role your spellcasting fills, instead of improving something you probably already do well enough.

2: Cultist of the World Ender, by Lvl45 DM. This is perhaps the most conventional, making a dead sprint for a Natural Attack powerhouse of the older formats, where you just throw a pile of dice at the enemy until they fall over. I assume the proper self-healing would have come in the subclasses, but Con+Dex makes for a potential AC 22, if you compromise on Strength. Not too much to comment on because it really is just a big brick of statistics, very much like playing a fat melee monster like a Troll.

3: Adversary, by Sengmeng. The grammar and formatting on Cultist of the World Ender would have put this at 2, if it actually took advantage of Past Life in any meaningful way or had the 5th-level power spike actually enabled. But what it does do well is flavor. You are, in fact, a Mind Flayer that's still somewhat the prior victim of Ceremorphosis, and represent this mechanically quite efficiently, even if those mechanics aren't working well from being arranged poorly. My own Skeletal Champion doubtlessly has hosts of dysfunctions in actual gameplay from the ordering of things leaving it with little to work with at one point or another.

Next contest: Partial Casters, as there's quite a large number of operations to work with there, but plenty of structure because you're explicitly starting from some mechanic already in the game.

[Damon_Tor]

1. The Genie
2. The Adversary
3. The Beheld

My vote for the next contest is "Doesn't Meet Expectations"

[Snowben Gaming]

1) The Beheld
2) Skeletal Champion
3) Cultist of the World Ender

For the next contest: either Chill Out II or something along the lines of "Seelie and Unseelie" (basically anything folklore fae) and I can hop into my first one of these, as I only just found out these contests exist today lol. Yeah, I probably shouldn't start making classes until I'm comfortable with subclasses, so I'm not gonna suggest anything I have a strong idea for. Partial Casters should be fun to see though.

[BerzerkerUnit]

1. Dragon Upstart- Love Dragons, I felt this had some of the boldest mechanical choices. The hoard bonus was something I initially disliked but it really grew on me.

2. Genie- Love Genies, I think this does a great job of sticking hard to their general themes without going wild with a wishgranting thing at early levels.

3. Cultist of the World Ender- Love the Tarrasque and elemental titans. I think as a straight brick this is a good jumping off point. I would like to see the Songs finished since the notion of Song as subclass gave it a very legendary feel.

Honorable Mention- Adversary. I couldn't rank it since the spell list was incomplete and that's such a huge part of any class that grants casting. Maybe my last read through overlooked it, but it seemed to lack a Plane Shift ability.

Next Contest:
Who needs Swords or Sorcery has my vote. I have a hankering to make an adventuring economist or merchant.

[Twelvetrees]

1) The Adversary
2) Dragon Upstart
3) The Genie

My voting was heavily influenced by how well I thought each class allowed you to play the base monster.

[MoleMage]

1. Dragon Upstart. I like the use of custom race. I didn't think I would but it works. It also is a versatile class. The next time someone asks if they can play a dragon in my game, I'll probably be coming back here.
2. The Beheld. It's more complex than most 5e base classes, but beholders are fairly complex entities anyway, and I don't it's impossible to track. Also bonus points for being something I definitely did not see coming.
3. Skeletal Champion. It's a minion class that seems to work alright (at least in my head, minion classes are hard to predict in practice), and we need more options for player-controlled undead in the world.

For theme votes, nothing is really speaking to me, but I'd rather do something new than something I've already visited this time around, so I'll go with Divine Judgment.

[MoleMage]

Votes are tallied! We had a tie for 2nd place, which was broken by tiebreaker 1 (sengmeng did not cast a vote during the window).

In third place, with 8 points earned, we have the illithid mindflayer squid thingy Adversary by sengmeng! Grow tentacles on your face! Eat brains! Seek vengeance on those who made you!

In second place, with 8 points earned and a win on the tiebreakers, we have that most iconic creature of Dungeons and Dragons (it's in the name!) the Dragon Upstart, by DamonTor! Be a dragon. Breath fire (or poison, or ice, or lightning, or acid)! Fly, eventually!

And our first place winner, with a resounding 12 points earned, is BerzerkerUnit's Beheld! Who needs hands when you have eyestalks that shoot magic?

Thanks everyone for participating. Our next contest will be Partial Casters (there was a tie between Partial Casters and Divine Judgment, so we'll do one then the other). I'm formatting the chat and entry threads currently, they should be up in the next few minutes.

EDIT: The new Chat Thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?628968-D-amp-D-Base-Class-Contest-XV-Chat-Thread&p=24979309#post24979309) and Submission Thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?628967-D-amp-D-5e-Base-Class-Contest-XV-Partial-Casters&p=24979308#post24979308) are here!