(closed) Heroes, Myths, and Legends: Voting Thread - 5e Base Class Contest: XXI (21)

[animorte]

Welcome to the Heroes, Myths, and Legends Voting Thread

5e Base Class Contest: XXI (21)

Remember, anybody can vote! You don't need to have participated in the contest to vote here.


List your top three base class entry votes. (#1 is worth 3 points. #2 is worth 2 points. #3 is worth 1 point.)
You may not vote for your own entry.
List your top two theme votes. (#1 is worth 2 points. #2 is worth 1 point.)
The winner will be determined by most total points.
In the event of a tie, the winner will be decided by most #1 votes. If still tied and only one creator voted, that creator will be declared the winner. If both voted, the tie will stand.
Creators can't edit the entries during the voting phase.

Let's get to voting! Good luck, everyone!



Creator
Entry
1st
2nd
3rd


Damon_Tor
The Leader (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25587962&postcount=2)
2
4
1


BerzerkerUnit
The Ninja (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25592571&postcount=4)
1
2
4


sengmeng
Merry Woodsman (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25593731&postcount=5)
1
2
2


Just to Browse
The Scion (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25597591&postcount=6)
4
1
2


MutantDragon
Paragon of Strength (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25598594&postcount=7)
2
1
1




Themes for the next contest:


Theme
Description
1st
2nd


Breakfast Cereal Mascots
Current or historical. Use advertising examples or the potential of the mascot itself.
1
2


Death Itself
Morbid things filled with despair. Anything relevant to the subject of death.
3
4


Magic Without Slots II
Magically capable without the use of spell slots. Use a pell points, ki, or your own system.
2
1


Remix Mastery II
Take an existing base class and create an alternate, variant, or remastered version.
1



Time to Chill Out II
Anything related to Winter, ice, or any cold things in general.
2
1



Base Class Discussion Thread: New D&D 5e Base Class Contest: Discussion Thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?649862-New-D-amp-D-5e-Base-Class-Contest-Discussion-Thread&p=25585555#post25585555)

Deadline: November 17th will be the last day for the voting phase. This voting thread will close the following day and a new base class contest will begin!

[MutantDragon]

I vote for the Leader as #1, the Scion as #2, and the Ninja as #3. My #1 theme is Death Itself, and my #2 theme is Time to Chill Out.

[Tevo77777]

I will be looking over the above listings and thinking about them before I vote. I will also be likely "stealing" ideas for them if I find them useful for my own system. Credit will be listed in footnotes as per Chicago citation format.

I hope this is okay? I will edit this post later when I vote and then I will PM you so you know!

-

EDIT:

I vote for the Leader as #1, the Ninja as #2, and the Scion as #3. My #1 theme is Remix Mastery II, and my #2 theme is Magic Without Slots II.

The Leader was good enough to borrow from (Not using the large tabs or the specifics, which are impressive.) and The Ninja has really detailed work on it

[GideonRiddle]

This is difficult...they all are so cool...

In order of those that caught my Imagination the most:
1:The Scion
2:Merry Woodsman
3:The Ninja

As for themes:
1:Breakfast Cereal Mascots
2:Death Itself


God, the Scion has so much flavor and expansion potential...

[Itsfrank]

Hey guys! Here's my class votes:
1.Paragon of strength
2.The leader
3.Ninja
My themes votes:
1.Time to chill out
2.Death itself

[Notafish]

1. Merry Woodsman
2. Ninja
3. Paragon of Strength

[Damon_Tor]

1. Scion
2. Paragon of Strength
3. Merry Woodsman

1. Magic Without Slots
2. Death Itself

[animorte]

#1 The Scion
#2 The Leader
#3 The Ninja

(With permission, I will be playing every single one of these entries. They were all brilliant.)

#1 Time to Chill Out
#2 Death Itself

[BerzerkerUnit]

1. Scion
2. Leader
3. Merry Woodsman

Next Contest: Magic Without Slots

[Just to Browse]

1. The Ninja. I really felt the energy from this class. Right out of the gate, Twisting the Knife is such an interesting way to change up the usual 5e combat patterns. Aura Suppression and Guise of No One are also super fun. I do have some concerns about subclass power (e.g. pretty sure a Genjutsu ninja gets 2/SR hold person at level 3 on top of a bunch of other stuff) and there are just a loooot of features & options that I would like to see streamlined. But the class still captured my imagination in a way I hadn't expected, and I'm a huge fan.

Also... is Madogu-Shi a Flame of Recca reference? I almost don't believe my eyes.

2. Merry Woodsman. Quick and to the point. Feint creates interesting combat patterns while remaining relatively simple, and it interfaces nicely with the subclasses. I think the swashbuckler feint benefit is especially clever. I would have liked more unique class features. Particularly something to replace the fighter-style XAttack features, because they consume a lot of power budget, which means a lot of room for creativity. Splitting the Arrow, for example, is so archetypal that I think it deserves some kind of reference in the main class at Tier 2.

3. The Leader. This is such a fun class to think about. Two things put this in 3rd place for me though: (1) Usability seems quite rough. I had to read the rules for an entourage several times and I came back to them repeatedly while working out theoretical builds. The formula (https://i.imgur.com/ZLfXg78.png) for group attacks is also pretty complicated, and it's not easy to shortcut because it depends on target AC. Not sure if there's anything you can really do about some of these, but I foresee even experienced players taking a while when they play a Leader. (2) My biggest problem: this class's output is way too high. For example: At 1st-level, your 3 commoners + 2 bandits / guards are putting out around 7~8 DPR (vs AC 12) at no cost to you. Comparatively a PAM fighter outputs ~10 with combined Action & bA only while in melee range. At level 2, casters become available: you can swap out Bandits for Acolytes to get 6 daily combined uses of bless, cure wounds, and/or sanctuary. As you go up in level, the average DPR becomes more reasonable but the dumpster-diving potential goes up quite a bit. Every time the DM brings in a spellcaster NPC statblock, they need figure out how busted it will be in the hands of a Leader, which sounds like a huge pain at the table. I think this class needs some aggressive early-level cuts and possibly a list of curated statblocks in the way a wizard gets a curated spell list. But in spite of my worries about balance & usability, the idea behind the class is so inspirational that I can't get it out of my head. I am a sucker for ambitious designs, and I love that this class took on such an intimidating area of design space.

Also, extra kudos: I was expecting the results of the group attack rules to yield totally different DPR values from the normal method of having mooks attack, but I ran some sample calculations and it's really quite close.

Topics:

1. Death Itself.
2. Breakfast Cereal Mascots

[Breccia]

This was a tough call for me, the entries were all solid. I think some of them are overpowered, but I think a lot of homebrews are overpowered, so that's probably just me.

So in the end, it came down to "which one would I want to play, if they're all effective?" And that, finally, made the decision possible.

#1 is the Paragon of Strength. While all of the classes seem competent to even lethal levels, the Paragon of Strength just looked like would be the most fun to play. And that gave it the edge it needed.

I ended up giving #2 to the Leader, because it was effective, but also creative and different.

Any of the remaining classes could have been #3, but we don't do tie votes here, so after back and forthing a bit, I went with the Scion. It came down to details, honestly, and when asking myself "what would I change before allowing this in my campaign?" the Scion had the fewest issues -- and not by much, none of them were like stupid OP broken or anything. So Sengmeng and Berzerker, don't take my lack of votes as dislike or disrespect.

I'm also voting for Death Itself #1 and Cereal #2 next for the sole reason of we haven't done those yet.

[animorte]

The voting is complete and here are the results:

Third place: The Ninja by BerzerkerUnit with 11 points!
Second place: The Leader by Damon_Tor with 15 points!
And our first place, the winner of Heroes, Myths and Legends: The Scion by Just to Browse with 16 points!!!

Every single entry was brilliant, the votes were very spread out, and it was incredibly close! Thank you everyone for your participation!

The next base class contest submission thread for our voted theme, Death Itself, (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?651624-5e-Base-Class-Contest-22-Death-Itself-(submission-thread)&p=25638132#post25638132) is ready!