Twilight Warrior Base Class (with alternative casting system) [PEACH]

[Ze_Azrael]

Ze_Azrael,

First of all, thanks for all the work you've put in to critique my work; I certainly do appreciate it. You raise many good points.

My pleasure :) I know I ramble often and my posts end up longer than I expected so thanks for taking the time to read them!

No worries on the homebrewery, in a big part I did it to learn about it. I'm still willing to transcribe your final doc there so it looks nicer as well as do an editing pass if you wish, but I can see how keeping track of two docs might be a hassle. Thanks for explaining your situation, I'll try to be patient haha.

I see how the energy mechanic is used too sparingly; I'll be replacing the 6th level twilight path features with something more suitable that will use celestial energy more often.

I'd like your feedback on the addition of cantrips to this class; you can see my concerns in my above post.

I'm excited to check it out. Now that I've read through the Incantations, I can say that they are very flavorful and thematic. The first 3 are thematic (though overlap a fair amount). Locate Sun/Moon is also really flavorful and I mentioned it on my previous post.
Shadow Messenger is a neat one, we've used Message a fair amount in my campaigns so this one's definitely useful and I like the extra flavor.
Resistance is a weird one... on paper it looks good but it takes your Concentration and you need to correctly foresee the target needing this, plus be next to them. I personally haven't seen any cleric use this ever. On the other hand this does in a thematic way overlap with my suggestion for Bind Fates so it's nice to see we're on a similar page lol.
I dislike Solar Shard, it competes with the flexibility and cool factor of your morphing weapon (why change it to a bow/javelin when I can just shoot a better firebolt instead?)
Lunar Aura is interesting... It's like Armor of Agathys lite. I would word it so the porcupine damage happens immediately after the target is hit instead of at any point before your next turn. Seems more reactive. Also the way you have it it currently works for ranged attacks as well, not a complain, just want to clarify that's the intention. Besides that I think it scales far too well. AoA is already an awesome spell, making it a cantrip is bonkers. I would either scale it down or make it an Incantation (and bump it up slightly). As a side note, if Cantrips don't count as Incantations, you can use your Lunar Shield and this on the same turn to be a pretty effective 'protector'.

As for how you're gonna implement the mechanic, my guess is that if you have more Solar Energy, you can use a Solar Cantrip and balance your Energy pool. If this is the case I can imagine that you'll be forced to give the TW cantrips in pairs (at level 2, they know 1 Solar / 1 Lunar, increased to 2/2 then maybe 3/3?) since otherwise they can only use the feature one way. Given there's only 8 cantrips (2 that aren't tied to either sun or moon) I can see them having some issues where they either basically know all of them, or know too few.

In order to cast an incantation at full strength, one must manipulate their energy pool to allow it. More spell slots compensates for this.

Fair enough, I commented on this again on my previous post. I'm glad to see you're aware of it and what your measure is to address it. I suppose I'm ok with it as is then. I wish I could test it myself but since Dean's the one that has been playing a TW and hasn't mentioned this as a glaring issue, I'll take his word on it.

My intent was to address what would happen when you gained a new celestial energy point in your pool (such as when you become level 5). I have clarified the language, and made it so it starts as solar energy.

Oh ok I get it then. Having it Solar is indeed simpler and also thematic.

Agreed. I have changed it so that when you spend 1 solar energy the weapon is magical (like the warlock weapon), and gains +1 to attack and damage rolls. This may be too strong.

I think this may be too strong as well. It is also worth considering what happens when you bind to a magic weapon. Could you have a +4 weapon? Or a +1 to a strong weapon that doesn't have it by the book? Also how does this interact with Brightblade? It specifies a non-magical weapon, and it adds additional +1... Personally I think something like a simple 1d4 fire damage is a good enough incentive. It helps in getting past weapon resistance and doesn't break bounded accuracy. Plus when you use Brightblade you can be dealing 1d4 fire and 1d4 radiant damage, which seems pretty sunny to me :P

(As a side note, I've made it so when you dismiss the lunar shield, it requires an action. This is to prevent you from using your bastard sword as a two-hander on your turn, and summoning the shield every time you are attacked.)

Nice catch. The shield was too good in the action economy department, yeah.

It is indeed my intention that when you use both their solar and lunar weapon features their celestial energy pool remains stable. The change to the solar weapon should ameliorate your concerns.

I'll keep the 1 hour requirement. As you say, it is usually handwaved, and I don't want to put too much math into this (multiply the size of your celestial energy pool by the number of slots you are exchanging...).

Fair enough, my only concern is that most likely you won't typically be changing your entire list, and this is 1 hour from level 1 through 20. So if you wanna change one Incantation at level 3 your group has to wait an hour for you. I personally don't care since my table handwaves this, but others might. Maybe 10 minutes per Incantation? Keeps it close to an hour if you want to swap your entire list at high levels, and it's long enough you don't need to worry about equivalence to spell levels that other classes have...

I had not realized how powerful an energy type radiant was... Only angels are resistant to it. Anyhow, I'll be changing this 6th level feature.

Yeah Radiant is a great damage type. For Incantations there are several instances where you take a fire damage spell and change it to radiant. I didn't mention it earlier because I think it's fine considering it's casting system restrictions.

I've changed the Illumination feature so that, in addition, you are immune to the blinded condition. I might change this so that it actually makes sense (what happens if you have a blindfold on?), but for now I'll just be considering it.

Interesting idea. It's fairly niche (certainly way less applicable than Darkvision), and as you pointed out can have weird interactions, but it's for sure an interesting idea.

Your assessment of the incantations is certainly welcome, as I think they are the most interesting part of the class. Let me know what you think!

Done!

Tomorrow, I'll try to update the document above. I may cannibalize some features from the astromancer; we'll see. Thanks again for your impressive feedback.

I'll be sure to check it out! and thank you for making inspiring homebrew.