5e Slapdash Subclass Challenge II Voting Thread

[Ninja_Prawn]

Phew, that was a blast! Thank you all for your entries, and good luck in the voting!

The rules:

• Please pick a first and second choice for the prize of best subclass. A first choice pick scores 2 points and a second choice pick scores 1 point. The subclass with the most points will win.
• You may not vote for your own subclass.
• Anyone can vote but, if you are a contestant, you must vote or your entry will be disqualified.
• Voting closes at 23:59 UTC on Saturday, the 10th of November.

I will not vote myself unless there is a tie for first place, in which case I will break the tie.

Entry	Creator	Points	Validated?
Stars Domain	SunderedWorldDM	0	Yes
Stellar Bloodline	MoleMage	7	Yes
Team Rocket Rogue	Kingsluger	3	Yes
Oath of the Eclipse	pygmybatrider	4	Yes
Way of the Reaching Grasp	Blackbando	5	Yes
Path of the Lunari	Vogie	0	Yes
Way of the Moon Walker	Man_Over_Game	1	Yes
Shooting Star Conclave	Unavenger	3	No
College of Stars	theVoidWatches	2	Yes
The King of Mars	Slaximillian	1	Yes
Starfire Conclave	Blackflight	4	Yes

[MoleMage]

1. Oath of the Eclipse
2. Team Rocket

My runner up is Path of the Lunari (gave you a 3rd place until I realized I wasn't supposed to).

[pygmybatrider]

Well, that was hectic. Only picking 2 will be tough. I had wanted to update my post and change to the Star Explorer rogue before the contest ended - we'll have to see how forgetting to do that turns out...!

1. Stellar Bloodline by MoleMage. All the features are beautifully thematic and the subclass just seems to flow. I love the scaling cantrip, and Gravity Well is a great way to give most of the benefits of at-will flight without the worry of upsetting the power curve. It is also exceedingly well-written, clear and concise.

2. Starfire Conclave by Blackflight. I love the spell list and the ranged Smite effect of Starfire Conclave, although I wish the wording was inclusive of crossbows as I think the subclass is a perfect fit for a red-cloak-and-pointy-hat hand crossbow inquisitor character, and also melee weapons for the poor unfortunate TWF/GWM ranger. Starfall combining with an upcast Moonbeam would be a heck of a lot damage if your DM lets you target the 'corner' of a grid to hit up to 4 targets. Overall thematically strong and nicely worded.

And I know they don't count for voting purposes, but to recognise and appreciate some more of the hard work that went into this competition, 3rd place for me is a tie between Kingsluger's Team Rocket Rogue and Vogie's Path of the Lunari Barbarian.

Kingsluger's Team Rocket rogue is the most inspired concept for a homebrew I've seen in a long time, and I really wanted to place it. Master of Disguise and Incompetent Savant are great features - I'm not sure if it works RAW but I love the idea of expending all your uses of Incompetent Savant on the same check until you are happy with the score - that seems very Team Rockety to me. I'm not entirely sure how Prepare for Trouble works. You and your allies give up their action on your turn to move to the top of the initiative order. You then have to wait until your turn again, and you get advantage on one roll during combat. It doesn't really seem worth it to me as the main advantage of going first in initiative is that you can act before taking damage - which this feature doesn't seem to allow you to do. Make it Double is a nice support ability, which I always like seeing on rogues, and Blasting Off Again is probably intentionally very vague but I see it being a total blast at the table (pun intended).

Vogie's Path of the Lunari is also a strong contender with some great features that suffers a little due to wording issues. Pale Cascade is a unique mechanic that I think works well but it took me a couple of read throughs to pick up that the effects begin when you activate your rage and end when rage finishes. I think Crescent Strike is meant to take an action, but it isn't specified. There's also no information on what stat the save DC keys off. For Moonsilversmith, it sounds like you need to cast Mending on your sword to silver it, but I'm not sure if that's intended. Lunar Rush is nice in that it seems to encourage the barbarian to be an active midfielder, switching between ranged attacks with Crescent Strike and melee attacks to take advantage of the second part of this feature. Some great work overall that would be ready for the table with just a little bit of clarification.

Good job to everyone who pulled something together in such a short amount of time! This was fun, let's do it again sometime.

[Slaximillian]

1st: Team Rocket, Rogue
This one is so fun, but is probably a little underpowered.

2nd: Oath of The Eclipse
This one just looks very nice, orderly, and balanced.

[theVoidWatches]

1. Stellar Bloodline. Thematic, balanced, and generally excellent.

2. Way of the Moon Walker. I like the idea of a monk built around leaping - probably the same impulse that leads me to like Dragoon classes so much.

My personal runner up is the Team Rocket Rogue, because I like Pokemon and thought it was surprisingly balanced for a joke class.

[Blackflight]

This is tough! There are a lot of good subclasses to choose from and while I'd like to give out more points I have to go with:

1. Way of the reaching grasp (2 points): The theme (and picture) had me laughing! It is probably quite weak towards the lategame and it would be nice if flesh slingshot damage scaled with level progression, but overall a very fitting theme and cool mechanics!

2. Oath of the Eclipse (1 point): Cool theme and mechanics. It seems to be more of a synergy class with a firemage party member as the class itself does not have a lot of options for dealing fire damage. All in all very clean and straightforward.

As a side note, I love this contest - Good idea!

[SunderedWorldDM]

2 points: Stellar bloodline. Solid space-based mechanics, and the idea of a sorcerer descended from the stars is appealing.
1 point: Shooting Star conclave. Nice wizardry mechanics, the only flavor qualm I would have is to maybe open it up further than Mystara's worshipers only? Maybe any worshiper of a god who has the Knowledge or Arcana domain? Just a thought...

Runners up for style and idea are the College of Stars (good concept and mechanics, but doesn't fit with the Bard class as a whole, might have worked better for Wizard or Cleric), King of Mars (not familiar with the source material, but it looks flavorful and fun to play), and the Way of the Reaching Grasp (out of all the stellar archetypes, one playgrounde chose to rise above and create a reach-based archetype...).

It was hard to choose! Good job, everyone!

[Man_Over_Game]

1st Vote: Way of the Reaching Grasp. Very thematic and cool. I will say that the 60ft reach is way too much, especially considering that you can then pull enemies to yourself. With the enhanced mobility of a Monk, there would be few ways for a Wizard to stand in combat without repetitive uses of Teleport, not even if there were an army of goons. Lastly, with the way the slingshot effect is, you can shoot someone straight up, which would deal an additional 3d6 damage to the target on impact (I've done a lot of recent research into fall damage). Technically, they'd still be adjacent to you after the maneuver, so they can't even run away. All-in-all, great class with cool abilities.

2nd Vote: Starfire Conclave. It really hits the "Star" aspect very well with its light abilities. My main concern is that some of the spells available are a bit redundant with the stealth removal, and that the entire class focuses around explicitly ranged combat. The Monster Slayer, for example, is full of abilities that work better with range, but can also be used in melee in a pinch. In addition, being restricted to ranged combat can be a bit...dull, considering most turns are going to be generally limited to "Shoot" or "Shoot Harder" with the class abilities. The Paladin, who this subclass is likely based off of, has a lot of decisions to make in melee combat (who to engage, where to move, when to cast support concentration spells, when to Divine Smite or when to Spell Smite, when to use Channel Divinity, etc), but ranged combatants don't have as many decisions to make. In contrast, the Arcane Archer or a Dexterity Battlemaster have a lot of different decisions to make with ranged combat. It does do a great job of reflecting the star aspect and owning it, as well as being an alternative to the Paladin, I just wish it had more decisions to make at range and was less niche against stealthed enemies (who often don't stealth past round 1).

The sorcerer Stellar Bloodline was my runner up. The one thing that kept it from having one of my votes was that a first subclass feature needs to have a strong identity to go with it, to reflect how the feel of the subclass's playstyle for the levels to come. In this instance, it was a 2d6 cantrip, dealing +1.5 more damage than Firebolt with 25% less range and none of the utility, loses the damage advantage to Firebolt at later levels, in a class that already gets more cantrips than everyone else. Otherwise, a stellar subclass.

[Kingsluger]

#1: Starfire conclaive
I'm a massive fan of the arcane archer archetype so having something like this really gets the brain going.

#2: Stellar Bloodline
The unique cantrip disguised as a class feature is really awesome as far as making it feel unique.

[Blackbando]

Voting at almost the last second, classic Bando style. I'm pretty neutral on most of these, so I'm gonna mainly pick the ones I like the ideas of most, rather than the ones I'd call the most mechanically balanced (those look like they're gonna win anyways so no harm done I'd say).

First: Shooting Star Conclave. I really am loving the flavor on this, it feels like a subclass tailor-made for a setting, and because of that, I enjoy it. The Sword of the Arcane Order feature is odd, in a good way; the extra spell slots are pretty bizarre, but I like the idea of it a lot. Might be better to be more like "You can cast an [x] level spell without a slot 1/long rest", but otherwise is good.

Second: King of Mars. This one is really damn cool, has some mechanics I enjoy a lot, especially the coin thing. Main criticism I'd give is that Favor of Benevolence is potentially overpowered, in any fights with more than one creature of the same type; for example, summon lesser demons while in the Abyss to get a nice fodder demon to hurt an ally, then kill the fodder and gain this.

[Vogie]

First: College of Stars: I love the feel of this class. It's not the strongest, nor would it be the strongest even of Bard Subclasses, but the Body horror and new inspiration abilities are awesome

Second: Way of the Reaching Grasp: Way of the NOODLE ARMS. This is an excellent, albeit odd, interpretation, and takes the subclass in strange directions. More body horror... I wonder what that means...

[Ninja_Prawn]

Voting is now closed!

Well, that concludes this contest. Great showing everyone! Lots of good work going on here, but there can be only one winner...

...and that is MoleMage, with the Stellar Bloodline! Congratulations!