D&D Subclass Contest Chat Thread 2: Joke Entries Win with Alarming Frequency

[MrStabby]

I wish that I had been able to participate in this one or at least do some reviews. Corporate buyouts/mergers are not fun.

If I have time this weekend I will try to do some last minute reviews.

And the theme for the next competition is "corporate mergers"?

[Crim the Cold]

And the theme for the next competition is "corporate mergers"?

I sincerely hope not. I don't need real life bleeding into fantasy for extra realism. If you have a realm piercing dagger or any other such enchanted device please do not deploy it.

[Notafish]

Once again, I had the seed of an idea, followed by weeks of writer's block. I added a last minute entry: the Fire Marshal (Fire Fighter): https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25973873&postcount=5

[MrStabby]

Once again, I had the seed of an idea, followed by weeks of writer's block. I added a last minute entry: the Fire Marshal (Fire Fighter): https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25973873&postcount=5

Fighter Archetype: Fire Marshal

Even setting aside red dragons, demons, and other supernatural sources of flame, fire is a danger not to be taken lightly. In the civilized world, fighting fires can be a specialty unto itself. The Fire Marshal is just such a specialist. Preternaturally prepared, they help their allies deal with fires as well as other elemental hazards.

Upon choosing this subclass at level 3, gain the following features:

Fire Prevention

As an action, you use your training to designate a cube up to [10 feet * Proficiency] wide as a protected zone. You must occupy a space within the protected zone when you create it. The protected zone lasts as long as you are within the space, conscious, and have a movement speed. Objects within a protected zone have resistance to fire damage. If an effect that would cause something to catch fire (such as the Fire Bolt cantrip) occurs, you may roll a d20. If you roll 11 or higher, the fire is prevented. Additionally, moving through difficult terrain in your protected zone does not cost you extra movement. The zone is fixed (it is not an aura), but new zones can be created.

A cool ability, and one that matches the fluff of the class. Probably not a strong ability but when its useful (say stopping an enemy from burning down a door)

First Responder Training
Gain Proficiency in Medicine and learn the Defense Fighting Style (choose another proficiency and/or fighting style if you already had these competencies). You do not need to carry a shield to use the Defense style. While in a protected zone, you may use the Defense style's reaction to impose disadvantage on any attack made within the zone.

Is this supposed to be defence style or protection style? I like that there is something in the class that works even when not fighting fiery enemies. Its a nice additon.

Fire Fighting
You may make an attack roll in place of a saving throw made to prevent fire damage, negating all damage on a success, even if a success would normally only prevent half of the damage. This attack uses your proficiency bonus and best ability score bonus, but does not benefit from any bonuses provided by weapons or other gear. If an ally is within your protected zone, you may use a reaction to make this attack as an alternative to their saving throw, negating all damage on a success. You must use your reaction before the result of your ally's save is known.

Flavour-wise I love this. I think its a cool and innovative way of boosting saves - now a non dex focussed fighter can be good at saving vs fireball. Niche... somewhat, but poweful when it comes up. How does this work with things like spells that do multiple damage types including fire?

At Level 7, you gain additional features.
Turnout Gear
You may modify clothing or armor to have resistance to any elemental damage type. This takes two hours and 100 gp in materials.
You also learn how to make a specialized rescue helm that grants blindsight to 30 feet and allows the wearer to breath clean air from a reservoir for 30 minutes, allowing short expeditions underwater or through toxic vapors. Crafting a rescue helm takes eight hours and 500gp of materials.

I think this needs something about it not being transferable or not being able to sell this or similar. 30ft blindsight is potentially a big deal - espcially on someting that doesn't need attunement.

At Level 10, you gain additional features.
Rescue
When you are within a protected zone and use your Action Surge feature, you may treat the Dash, Help, and Use an Object actions as if they were attacks (they may be used with the Extra Attack feature). You may not use these actions in this way outside of a protected zone.

Interesting. So the next level you can dash 3 times and still have your normal movement left, and an action and action surge to get 6 times normal movement? That is... fast. I realy like this - another creative way to match the flavour whilst giving abilities that will work outside of fiery enemies.

At Level 15, you gain additional features.
Prevention Instincts
By level 15, establishing a protected zone is second nature to you, and only requires a bonus action.

Your proteced zone is gtting pretty powerful now. The combination of scaling on size, scaling on what you can use it for and then scalling up to need just a bonus action is al compounding everything. Still, why not? Fighters are alowed nice thigs too.

At Level 18, you gain additional features.
The Towering Inferno
While in the presence of open flames, you are invigorated, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the danger. If you (at any time) or an ally in a protected zone are subject to fire damage (regardless of resistances or immunities), gain an additional reaction use, up to a maximum of 2 additional reactions per turn. These reactions expire at the end of your next turn.

Hmm. Nice interacton with (I assume) earlier abilities. Not an OP capstone, but unique

Overall I am loving this. It has loads of creativity i turning a concept into something mechanically sound. It feels like it isn't stepping on the toes of any other option and t just also feels... elegant.

[Notafish]

Thank you for the review!

Is this supposed to be defence style or protection style? I like that there is something in the class that works even when not fighting fiery enemies. Its a nice additon.

Protection Style. Oops!

How does this work with things like spells that do multiple damage types including fire?

I could go either way. But I lean toward it being fine to negate all damage resulting from the one save (you can save an ally from Meteor Swarm, but not, like, toxic flames that deal fire damage on a failed Dex save and poison damage on a failed Con save.
Given how many fire effects are AoEs, I wonder if it would be better to make this be a feature that acts more like an anti-fire Counterspell (and Counter-Breath Weapon), rather than a narrower but sharable version of Evasion. I think that version needs more time to figure out the math or uses per day, though.

I think this needs something about it not being transferable or not being able to sell this or similar. 30ft blindsight is potentially a big deal - espcially on someting that doesn't need attunement.

Hm, yes. I think I should clarify that the blindsight and the SCBA gear should both be on a 30-minute timer, and that I ought to specify a refresh rate (long rest).
While I am not too concerned about breaking the magic item market economy with this feature, I think requiring that all gear you create must be maintained by you during long rests to not lose its potency could limit the temptation to spam items (alternately, you could use something like Infusions, but I don't really like the flavor of Infusions for this subclass).

Your proteced zone is gtting pretty powerful now. The combination of scaling on size, scaling on what you can use it for and then scalling up to need just a bonus action is al compounding everything. Still, why not? Fighters are alowed nice thigs too.

I was thinking about the "linear fighters vs. quadradic wizards" trope when I put the feature together.

[MrStabby]

I think the comptetion is now closed, so posting a bit of a review.

I thought it interesting the way that people approached the theme here. There were a lot of elements repeated between submissions - though not as many as I had thought whilst writing my own (my imagination was lesser than others here). I do wonder if I should wrap up the ignoring rsistance in with the change of damage type, as they fill such a similar purpose.

Name	Spell list with fire spells	When does fire damage, add more.	fire resistance	fire immunity	change damage type of fire	Ignore fire resistance	resurection theme/mechanic	Number of abilities that do none of these.1
Pyromaniac Wizard		x	x	x		x		1
Oath of Purification Paladin	x	x	x	x	x		x	1
Sorcerer of the Flame	x						x	4
Fire Marshal Fighter			x					6
Path of the Phoenix			x		x		x	3
Blood War Scion	x							5
Circle of Hell Druid	x	x	x	x			x	3
Serial Arsonist Rogue			x					4

Still, the theme of the competition led to a lot of overlapping abilities - I don't know if this is good or bad. Though there were a good number of classes offered that broke away from this. I also noticed a lot of entries added an ability to fly, which I didn't include in this table.

In terms of selecting themes, I don't realy have a sense of how much overlap is good? Is it better to have more closely comparable subclasses ang you get to see how the same abilities can be used in different ways? Or is it better that these thigs are taken in different directions?



Really loving some of the entries this time.






1. This column is wildly innacurate... probably. I was updating my definitons of what an ability is part way through and it isn't always clear what should or shouldn't make the cut. It was just to illustrate the degree to which overlapping mechanics between classes squeezed down the number of unique features. Given different classes have different numbers of features anyway, it shouldn't be overinterpreted.

[Just to Browse]

Thanks for the reminder, MrStabby. I keep forgetting I'm running these contests

The voting thread for Contest 41 is now up!

A few notes / questions on this.

Deadline Delay: For personal reasons (good ones!), I need to extend the deadline a bit beyond its usual 2-weeks. Just giving folks a heads up.

A new contest theme (without torturing Crim): I've added "Mergers and Acquisitions" to the potential pool of future themes in honor of our busy friend, but I won't put my foot on the scale and force it into the voting rotation. You are safe for now, Crim!

Question about Votes: There are a ton of submissions this go around, and a lot of them seem very fun. Would folks be interested in a way to vote for more themes instead of just a top 3? I'm not sure if it's necessary, but I was considering a few options.

• Add a 4th Place: Votes would go 1st - 4th, and point totals would shift upwards (1st place would now be worth 4 points, 2nd place would be worth 3 points, etc...). One interesting consequence is that this makes 2nd and 3rd place spots more valuable relative to 1st place.
• Runner-Ups After 3rd Place: Voters could vote for 1-2 Runner-Ups (maybe the number depends on contest size?), worth 0.5 points.
• Runner-Ups after 2nd Place: Alternatively, we could have 1st & 2nd place votes (worth 3 and 2 points respectively), with 1-3 Runner-Ups each worth 1 point. This makes the Runner-Ups more valuable

I'm imagining we would only do this when the pool gets pretty large. Though I'm not sure if the value of more voting is worth the cost of extra complexity. What does everyone else think?

[Just to Browse]

Double-post to keep the flow of convos separate.

Still, the theme of the competition led to a lot of overlapping abilities - I don't know if this is good or bad. Though there were a good number of classes offered that broke away from this. I also noticed a lot of entries added an ability to fly, which I didn't include in this table.

In terms of selecting themes, I don't realy have a sense of how much overlap is good? Is it better to have more closely comparable subclasses ang you get to see how the same abilities can be used in different ways? Or is it better that these thigs are taken in different directions?

This is a great analysis. I had idly noticed some themes like fire resistance, flight, and resurrection, but hadn't thought deeply about it.

I don't want every contest to have this much overlap, but I personally like that we have a mix of narrow & broad themes. I was a little surprised not to see any subclasses about smithing or dragon stuff.

[Psyche]

The URL was wrong, I'm sure it was just a simple mistake but that's the submission not voting thread.

[Just to Browse]

oops bad copypasta, link should be working now

thanks psyche!

[Wombat42]

Hi everyone, I am new. Unfortunately for me I have severe penalties on tracking checks for navigating through forums threads (its like favoured terrain but negative), can someone tell me what the next contest theme will be (or if not decided yet, where it will be posted once it is decided)?

I tried the link at the start of the thread, but it links me to a constest done in 2022.

Thanks!

[MrStabby]

Hi everyone, I am new. Unfortunately for me I have severe penalties on tracking checks for navigating through forums threads (its like favoured terrain but negative), can someone tell me what the next contest theme will be (or if not decided yet, where it will be posted once it is decided)?

I tried the link at the start of the thread, but it links me to a constest done in 2022.

Thanks!

In the voting thread, there is a vote for next topic. So as yet, the next one is undefined.