What are reasonable mechanics for rebuilding/restoring lost class features?

[Greywander]

I find myself exploring uncharted waters of homebrew, and need some guidance.

I'm putting the finishing touches on a class that lets you turn into a vehicle. Now, one of the things that concerns me is that being such a big target will make it easy to fail death saving throws if you go down, so I've allowed the option to shed your vehicle shell and appear somewhere inside in your original form. Currently, the consequences of doing so are that you lose access to your vehicle form until you spend gold and downtime to rebuild it. And we're talking in the range of 100k gp and a month of downtime (I do allow you to salvage the shell and use that as materials, but you won't always be able to reclaim it). In the mean time, you're basically without the class features specifically attached to those forms.

On the one hand, this seems overly harsh. But it does fit with the lore. Basically, these massive war machines were too expensive and took too long to build by hand, so instead they made these self-assembling cores that can be attached to people. The thing builds itself from scrap salvaged on the battlefield, saving loads of time and money. If you shed the shell and have to rebuild it, you can't just do so instantly, and you need materials.

Then there's also the fact that I've tried to balance things so that in your original form you're about as strong as any other PC, while if you're allowed to assume your largest vehicle form you'll be quite a bit stronger. So being without these larger forms merely means that you'll be stuck on the same power level as your party members, though it also means the they'll be stuck without their favorite mode of transport and (in tier 3 and onward) their mobile home base.

So does this sound fair, or would there be a better way to handle it? I'm also considering what happens if you face enemies that use this class (which would make for some nice ship-to-ship battles). If you destroy one of them, you'll expect them to be out of commission for a while at least, even if you didn't kill them. You don't want them coming back at full strength after a long rest.

Edit: Some clarifications. You always have access to your smallest vehicle form, which is medium sized. Functionally, it's not too different from just being in your original form. The 100k gp and 1 month of downtown was for a tier 4 character; in tier 2, it's more like 1k gp and a long rest. Smaller forms have to be rebuilt before larger forms, so you can always rebuild your tier 2 form after just a long rest and 1k gp, even at 20th level. This allows you to gradually regain access to these forms so you can at least get up and running again, even if not at full capacity.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Then there's also the fact that I've tried to balance things so that in your original form you're about as strong as any other PC, while if you're allowed to assume your largest vehicle form you'll be quite a bit stronger. So being without these larger forms merely means that you'll be stuck on the same power level as your party members, though it also means the they'll be stuck without their favorite mode of transport and (in tier 3 and onward) their mobile home base.

So you have someone that's at weakest as strong as everyone else, and at strongest is much much stronger? And that's considered balanced? By comparison, take a pet class. If the main PC is as strong as everyone else without the pet, then with the pet they're too strong. Or saying that it'd be fine if you had a moon druid who also got all of the land subclass, since they can't use those abilities while wild-shaped.

Maybe re-think that part? If transforming is most of their power budget, then so be it. If you can't balance it and make it fun without that assumption, I'd say that it means that the class idea isn't a good fit for the edition.

[Greywander]

So you have someone that's at weakest as strong as everyone else, and at strongest is much much stronger? And that's considered balanced?

This concept was always going to have balance issues, it's just a really tricky concept to realize. Nevertheless, I decided to push forward and do the best I could, and I'd like to think I didn't do too badly. It won't be right for every table, but I think some groups will be able to have fun with it.

But let me rephrase things. In your smallest form, you will probably have similar DPR to other martials. Actually, it might be less. And certainly you would be overshadowed by most casters. Not to mention skill monkeys. In your larger forms, you get some personal power boosts, but part of it is that you act as a force multiplier for the rest of your party, including yourself. This was the compromise I made to enable both balanced dungeon crawls and high powered ship-to-ship battles.

Wait to judge it until I publish it, as there's still a lot I haven't explained. For now, I'm just looking for advice on the topic of the OP.

[GalacticAxekick]

Wait to judge it until I publish it, as there's still a lot I haven't explained. For now, I'm just looking for advice on the topic of the OP.

In the OP you asked if it sounds fair. We can't wait to judge it AND answer that question.

This is what I think is required to make the suit fair:

• If the suit makes a player more powerful than a martial, a player without the suit must be FAR weaker than a martial. Equivalent to a spellcaster without slots, or a Rogue without Sneak Attack
• If the suit is difficult to lose (e.g. it is lost when the player is on the bring of death), then it should be just as difficult to regain. For example, if a player can go 3 adventuring days without losing the suit, they should spend 3 adventuring days trying to get it back. Whether it's a matter of time, money, or experience is up to you.
• If the player is going to spend more time in the suit than out of it, then they should spend more time protecting the suit than using it. For example, the player can go the whole campaign without losing the suit, it should be because they're taking actions to defend a weakness in the suit and not using the suit's full offensive/utility potential.

[Greywander]

In the OP you asked if it sounds fair. We can't wait to judge it AND answer that question.

That's fair. I appreciate you taking the time to attempt to answer my question as best you can in the absence of the greater context.

This is what I think is required to make the suit fair:

• If the suit makes a player more powerful than a martial, a player without the suit must be FAR weaker than a martial. Equivalent to a spellcaster without slots, or a Rogue without Sneak Attack

I'm going to disagree with this, but let me explain why. After working on this class and having to deal with so many issues, it's really helped me to see why this isn't really a good idea (though as I said, I still wanted to do the best I can, and I hope the end result will still be fun to play). One of the big things is that a vehicle is really a party asset. Like I said, in your larger forms, you act as a force multiplier for the rest of your party. Your larger forms don't just make you stronger, they make your entire party stronger. If you lose access to those larger forms, that's not just a loss for you, personally, it's a loss to the whole party. It's a very weird, unconventional relationship to have with your party, but when executed properly you shouldn't be overshadowing you're party because you're actually making them more awesome, too. Something I realized just now is that this is really a support class, not a damage dealer or tank, even though tanking and dealing damage are important aspects of its role. Most of the extra damage isn't coming from you, it's coming from bonuses your give to the rest of your party.

As such, I think the desired outcome is for your smallest form to be only slightly below average. Your largest form, on the other hand, makes you stronger than your party members without the bonuses you can give them, while with those bonuses, you're still on roughly an even level with them.

I'm looked at some numbers in a damage calculator, and here's what I'm finding so far. I'm looking at this Reddit post to get average DPR by level, but I haven't crunched the numbers myself so I don't know if these are accurate. I'm also assuming all attacks have a 65% hit rate, as that seems to be what most people expect.

Looks like in tier 1 (when you only have access to your smallest form) your expected DPR is about 7.5, which isn't actually that great. But, you have room for one PC to ride you and use one of your turrets. I'll spare the lengthy explanation of how and why the turrets work (just think of the turret as a buff to their weapon), the end result is that they add 1d6 damage to one attack and have a range of at least 20/60 feet, even with melee weapons. Figuring this in raises "your" expected DPR to about 10. This seems about on par with other tier 1 classes, and it's contingent on another PC being willing to give up their mobility to ride you (though the damage and range boost is a reasonable trade).

Also worth noting, not just in tier 1, but in general, almost all the out-of-combat utility stuff you get directly relates to being a vehicle. You can travel faster, and haul lots of cargo and passengers, and you get special move speeds. Not so much in tier 1, but you go from modest in tier 2 to ridiculous in tier 4. This is all quite useful stuff to be able to do, but also kind of specific. I really don't think you're going to outshine the skill monkey rogue or the utility wizard by any means. And shedding your shell means losing access to cargo and passenger carry space, though you retain most of the other things.

At 11th level, expected DPR in your smallest form is about 23.4. If we figure in your singular passenger manning a turret (and adding that 1d6 to two attacks), that jumps to 28.3. This assumes you're just spamming attacks; you do have other options, but those are a lot more difficult to evaluate. This seems to be below average, though it is above the warlock baseline (21.3 at 11th level), and I think the numbers from that Reddit post assume a lot of optimization, whereas I'm not even figuring in feats at this point.

At 11th level, expected DPR in your largest form is about 27.6 if you're flying solo. At this point, you have 6 turrets that can be manned, which is probably more than you have party members, but let's pretend you have a large party (or NPC sidekicks) and can fill every turret. In this form, the turrets are adding 1d10 instead of 1d6. Figuring two attacks for six party members, each adding 1d10 extra damage on a hit, the average DPR jumps to a whopping 73.8 (assuming I did the math right). But again, you, personally, are only dealing 27.6 DPR; it's only the boosts you grant to your party that push it up to 73.8, and then only if all 6 turrets are manned, and the people manning them have comparable hit rates (so letting the wizard's familiar or a hireling commoner man a turret is better than nothing, but won't see the same DPR benefits).

Now that I've crunched some numbers, what I'm really noticing is that, damage-wise, at least, your larger forms only marginally boost your own damage output, but this damage increase becomes much more staggering when you're able to pass it on to your party as well. Which makes sense; after all, what is a battleship or tank without their crew? Now, your larger forms also benefit from some damage reduction and several other defensive features; perhaps a comparison to barbarian would be the most appropriate.

• If the suit is difficult to lose (e.g. it is lost when the player is on the bring of death), then it should be just as difficult to regain. For example, if a player can go 3 adventuring days without losing the suit, they should spend 3 adventuring days trying to get it back. Whether it's a matter of time, money, or experience is up to you.

This is impossible to measure, though. The average number of adventuring days it takes to drop a PC to 0 HP will vary wildly from table to table. It's not a bad idea, there's just no way for me to act on it.

I suppose one question is if repairing your vehicle forms should require downtime, or if it can be done while adventuring. If it requires downtime, then you might not ever get a chance to repair it if the DM keeps the campaign moving all the time with no breaks.

• If the player is going to spend more time in the suit than out of it, then they should spend more time protecting the suit than using it. For example, the player can go the whole campaign without losing the suit, it should be because they're taking actions to defend a weakness in the suit and not using the suit's full offensive/utility potential.

...Like taking the Dodge action? And actually, as we see above, most of "your" DPR is coming from boosts you're giving to your allies (in tier 3 and onward, at least), so this is actually extremely viable.

In the end, I feel like I'm not much closer to an answer to my question. Maybe for now I should just leave it as I have it now, and publish the full class for critique, and then people may be able to make better assessments of what feels appropriate.

[GalacticAxekick]

I'm going to disagree [that a player without the suit should be weaker than a martial], but let me explain why. [...] This is really a support class, not a damage dealer or tank, even though tanking and dealing damage are important aspects of its role. Most of the extra damage isn't coming from you, it's coming from bonuses your give to the rest of your party.

As such, I think the desired outcome is for your smallest form to be only slightly below average. Your largest form, on the other hand, makes you stronger than your party members without the bonuses you can give them, while with those bonuses, you're still on roughly an even level with them.

Okay, this is a support class. There's no risk of you overshadowing your party members. That's great!

But you still need to be weaker than a martial when you lose the suit.

Imagine if we introduced a new class called the Warlord. The Warlord is roughly even to a Fighter, but the Warlord has a unique feature called Authority. As the Warlord's Authority grows, the Warlord and all of his party members gain the power to summon allies in battle; the power to call hails of arrows, trebuchets, and cannonballs; and the power to request peacetime favors like free lodging, access to important people, places and objects, and trust with secrets.

No matter how much the Warlord's Authority grows, he would never overshadow the party, because they would share all of the benefits. But the Warlord would obviously be a "better class" than all the others, because having one Warlord is worth more than having a Fighter (or anyone else for that matter). The Warlord would be overpowered in the sense that he makes the party more powerful than they should be at their level.

For the Warlord to be balanced, he would need to be weaker than a Fighter when his Authority is lost. That way, for every moment the full-Authority Warlord is making his 5th level party perform like a 6th level party, there is a moment when the no-Authority Warlord is making his 5th level party perform like a 4th level party, and overall they perform like a 5th level party.

Your Pilot class is the Warlord. And your Pilot's Vehicle is Authority.

Of course, you can ignore this if you're only concerned with balancing party members against one another.

...Like taking the Dodge action? And actually, as we see above, most of "your" DPR is coming from boosts you're giving to your allies (in tier 3 and onward, at least), so this is actually extremely viable.

Sure. Though that's an unfun example in practice, since it makes playing the Pilot monotonous for the player.

I was thinking more along the lines of a class-specific or subclass-specific weakness that you need to manage. For example, a tank-like Vehicle might be completely unable to see or attack targets within 10 feet of itself (except perhaps by running them over). As the Pilot, you would be responsible to keep enemies from getting close to you.

This means that you as the Pilot are removed from the fight (too busy defending the Suit to attack), while your Suit is actively contributing to the fight (buffing your allies), and that you are overall just as valuable as a Fighter, Wizard or whatever. No need to nerf you further. Spend all the time in the suit that you'd like.

In the end, I feel like I'm not much closer to an answer to my question. Maybe for now I should just leave it as I have it now, and publish the full class for critique, and then people may be able to make better assessments of what feels appropriate.

Sure. It will certainly be easier to comment when I can see the class.