D&D Subclass Contest XXI Voting Thread

[MoleMage]

Contest 21 is done, with 12 complete entries this time!

Simple rules. Vote for your top three picks in order. You can't vote for yourself. A number 1 vote is worth 3 points, a number 2 vote is worth 2, and a number 3 vote is worth one.

Entry	Creator	1st	2nd	3rd
Barbarian: Path of the Titan	Damon_Tor	4	2	2
Bard: College of Library Sciences	BerzerkerUnitr	0	1	1
Artificer: Battling Bowman	nickl_2000	3	4	2
Sorcerer: Draconic Elementalist	CountDVB	0	0	0
Sorcerer: Pyromaniac	Phhase	0	0	1
Barbarian: Path of the Reaver	Ilerien	0	1	2
Ranger: The Dunedain	Lvl45DM!	0	0	1
Wizard: Cannibal Witch	Twelvetrees	2	2	2
Fighter: Magitech Mercenary	RickAsWritten	0	0	1
Fighter: Dragonstone Warrior	Snowben Gaming	1	1	0
Monk: Way of the Mists	MoleMage	3	2	1
Rogue: Masked Menace	Lvl 2 Expert	0	0	0

Classes unrepresented in Context XVII: Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Warlock

All five themes are randomly chosen this time around, since we didn't have a vote last time due to a tie in contest 19. Pick your top two in order, a number one vote is worth 2 and a number 2 vote is worth one point.

Theme	Description	1st	2nd
Points for Everybody	Subclasses which use a pool of resource points	2	2
Follow Me!	Subclasses based in leadership	3	3
Refine Mayhem	Remake an existing subclass	2	3
From Zero to Hero	Ordinary folks doing the extraordinary	1	0
Bunch of Fives	Subclasses based on the use of hands or fists	3	3

This voting thread will stay open until the end of the day on March 28th. The following day I will post with the tallied results and declare a winner, then post the next contest thread. Good luck everyone!

[Snowben Gaming]

Subclasses:
1) Battling Bowman Artificer - Now this is some good stuff. I'd play this... Heck, I might actually ask my DM if I can next time I need a character.
2) Cannibal Witch Wizard - This is just great.
3) Way of the Mists Monk - I'm not familiar with the source material, but the mechanics here are still pretty cool.

Next Theme:
1) Points for Everybody Bunch of Fives
2) Follow Me! Points for Everybody

EDIT: Changed my votes for the next theme.

[nickl_2000]

1. Way of the Mists - MoleMage - Well balanced, good mechanics, great use of the source material!
2. Barbarian: Path of the Titan - Damon_Tor - A great subclass around something that barbarians needed from the beginning anyways. Good reference to the source material and very fitting
3. Cannibal Witch - Twelvetrees - Funny and fun, will never dominate a table, but looks like it would be amazing for party shennigans.

Next Content:
1. Follow Me!
2. Refine Mayhem

[Damon_Tor]

1. Way of the Mists- I'm not familiar with the source material, but it's a very well designed subclass. It ranks #1 on "would you play it" which is always my top voting criteria. I'll simply assume it's a faithful adaptation of the source: it seems like a really cool world (makes me want to read those novels).
2. Way of the Reaver- This a great implementation of a barbarian that trades defensive abilities for offensive power.
3. Battling Bowman- A missing artificer archetype IMO, much needed. And it's a good adaptation of the source material.


1. Follow Me!
2. Points for Everyone
(EDIT: changed my vote to "Follow Me" in first)

[Twelvetrees]

Subclass:

1. Path of the Titan - I want to play this. The imagery conjured up by the description of this subclass entranced me and the mechanics matched really well.
2. Dragonstone Warrior - Elegantly balanced.
3. Battling Bowman - This one had me considering a vast array of options, which can be fun.

Theme:

1. Refine Mayhem
2. Bunch of Fives

[CountDVB]

Subclasses
1- Dragonstone Warrior: Love the shoutout to Fire Emblem here! Nice.
2- Battling Bowman: We could always use more Artificer stuff and it would be alot of fun.
3- Pyromaniac: For the people who just wanna watch the world burn.

Next Contest Idea
1- Bunch of Fives
2- Follow Me

[Morphic tide]

1. Path of the Titan, by Damon_ Tor. While I'm not completely convinced about the damage differential working exactly as intended, as Mountain Dwarf can start with double 17s to have 18 Str and only a -1 penalty at 4th level, it does bring a lot of tradeoffs in losing out on feats and Dexterity to fuel that, so you are losing out on something even if it isn't damage.
2. Battling Bowman, by Nickl_2000. The Trick Shots are hilarious cheese. They don't make sense, and they don't need to. Pretty much my only complaint is that the Trick Shots are additive to the Artificer's existing resources causing bloat in both overall capabilities and complexity, as they cease needing to spend slots on damage.
3. Path of the Reaver, by Ilerien. It starts off with a very basic Frenzy one could use on frankly any extra-angry Barbarian subclass, but only the 1st-level feature is so utterly rooted in the core class. The rest of it all works with the supernatural stuff, and the option between sustain after a kill or a pile of bonus damage to chain kills is a quite nice one.

Next theme:
1. Refine Mayhem
2. Follow Me

[RickAsWritten]

1. MoleMage's Monk: Way of the Mists
2. nickl_2000's Artificer: Battling Bowman
3. Twelvetrees' Wizard: Cannibal Witch

1. Bunch of Fives
2. Refine Mayhem

[BerzerkerUnit]

1. Battling Bowman
2. Path of the Titan
3. Path of the Reaver

Theme
1. Follow Me
2. Bunch of 5s

[GreatWyrmGold]

Spoiler: My thoughts on the classes

Show

Battling Bowman: Neat concept, but nothing stands out as being especially interesting, and the prose has too many rough edges.

Cannibal Witch Tradition: On one hand, this subclass is mechanically incoherent. On the other hand, it's a subclass which lets you summon gingerbread houses as a bonus action, suck enemies into an oven, and cast spells with a ladle. It's not a tradition for serious characters, it's a tradition for silly hijinks, and it pulls that off very well. I'm a little concerned about how strong the oven is, but it's a high-level ability, so maybe it's fine?
Also, can you summon gingerbread houses inside large rooms, or would that qualify as "hav[ing] any buildings or other structures on it"?

Origin: Draconic Elementalist: I like this class, mostly. It's a little rough prosewise (in particular, "your chosen damage type" and "your draconic element" stand out as phrases that should have been replaced with some specific term), and Dracoelemental Body doesn't mesh mechanically with anything else the class provides. Still, it looks fun.

Martial Archetype: Dragonstone Warrior: A manakete would have been a pretty cool subclass...not that I'm sure what it would make sense to attach to. Druid, maybe? Or barbarian, and have the dragon transformation replace/augment rage? Anyways, this isn't that. At least, I don't think it is—I haven't played Fates.
The dragonstone transformation is pretty rad, aside from the clunky rules about dragonstones (which are torn between wanting them to be as important as they probably should be and not wanting to inconvenience players who lose this unique class-critical item). But beyond that point, the abilities are...alright, but not much else. Resistance to a rare damage type? Dragon transformations recharging every combat (when you're probably not using that many per day)? Being able to use arcane blast as part of a full attack, once per rest and it's not clear if that applies to arcane blasts period or just alongside other attacks?
It's a cool idea, even with the Fire Emblem elements removed, but there are so many little problems dragging it down.

Dunedain Ranger Conclave: A common criticism levied at the ranger class is that it's just a collection of arbitrary abilities from a handful of individual characters, most of whom were themselves inspired by the D&D ranger class. This conclave decides to strip away all the baggage accumulated from decades of D&D being inspired by characters it inspired, and focused on adding more arbitrary abilities from the OG ranger. Some of them are neat—I'm particular to any nonmagical healing I can find—but the package is less than the sum of its parts. It's basically picking up the peripheral elements of Aragorn's character that weren't incorporated into the main ranger class and acting like that's a thematically or mechanically coherent package of skills.

College of Library Sciences: Interesting, but two problems. First, "library sciences" fits with the "uses books" part of the class, but not what the books are used for. Second...I'm just not sure how these would work in actual gameplay. You can summon a bunch of weak creatures to serve as expendable fodder and eventually start blasting people with parts of fictional worlds?

Martial Archetype: Magitech Mercenary: ...I dunno, seems neat? But the abilities seem kinda underwhelming and scattered, not to mention that magitech gadgets are an odd fit on the fighter.

Roguish Archetype—The Masked Menace!! This feels like someone trying to import the concept and mechanical flavor of PF1's Vigilante into 5e. It doesn't do that well, but the super-modular nature of the Vigilante would never fit well into a mere subclass. The abilities all fit, more or less, but none of them are particularly inspiring—not even the abilities that are supposed to inspire your allies. It feels so...dull. All the character would have to come from the base rogue class.
Also, sticking "Superb" on the front of each vigilante talent rumored reputation to name the superb reputations is...awkward. Superb Chandelier Swinger works and Superb Leading by Example kinda does, but the others are just silly.

Way of the Mists: This Way is basically a bag of neat little tricks, most of which work pretty well for a monk even if they want to ignore the Mistborn angle. They're not really focused, but they feel like a broad bag of tricks instead of a bunch of random abilities. I wish I could explain what I mean by that...

Origin: Pyromaniac: More subclasses should give Quirk tables. Beyond that...it wants to be a pyromancer subclass, and in the process largely forgets that it's supposed to be a Pyro-from-TF2 class. I was going to say something like "I don't like everything about its design, but it's the purest example of what it wants to be," until I saw that the capstone ability makes half of its fire damage...not fire. What?

Path of the Titan: You know exactly what you want your class to be. It's a class about strong guys using ridiculously large weapons, and it does that. It has abilities which let you use large weapons to accomplish large feats. It could use a bit more flavor, but maybe that's just me—a lot of base-game subclasses are also bland mechanical suites. (Also, as an aside, the fact that longswords—in our world, generally wielded two-handed—are the standard one-handed weapons means that everyone in D&D already wields oversized weapons.)

Primal Path of the Reaver: The flavor text does one heck of a job selling this class, and its abilities are pretty cool. But they're also very complicated, and I don't think the prose is doing any favors in making those complicated abilities clear.

1. Cannibal Witch
2. Way of the Mists
3. Path of the Titan

Spoiler: Runners-Up

Show

1. Dragonstone Warrior
2. Draconic Elementalist
3. Path of the Reaver
4. Battling Bowman
5. Masked Menace!!
6. College of Library Sciences
7. Dunedain Ranger
8. Magitech Mercenary
9. Pyromaniac

Next theme:

1. From Zero to Hero
2. Follow Me!

[Ilerien]

This was a difficult one. I liked either flavor for a given subclass of its mechanics.

1. Artificer: Battling Bowman. Artificer needs an archer archetype badly, and this one fulfills this need quite nicely.
2. Bard: College of Library Sciences. The flavor is so overwhelmingly appealing, I can't resist.
3. Barbarian: Path of the Titan. Provides nice support for oversized weapon fighting that 5e lacks inherently.

Next contest theme:

1. Points for Everybody
2. Bunch of Fives

[Lvl 2 Expert]

3 points: Wizard, Cannibal Witch
2 points: Monk, Way of the Mists
1 point: Ranger, The Dunedain

[KragBrightscale]

1st) Barbarian path of the Titan. I love how this handles big weapons.

2nd) artificer: Battling bowman. Artificer finally has a subclass that appeals to me!

3rd) Bard: collage of Library sciences. Could be amazing with the right DM, you might even be the one who summoned the BBEG.

Next round I’d like to see:
1) points for everyone
2) refine mayhem

[MoleMage]

Quickly before I call it later today:

1. Path of the Titan
2. Cannibal Witch
3. Magitech Mercenary

[MoleMage]

Hokay calling it now. Sorry for my late vote, I got caught up in yardwork yesterday during my usual computing time (darn springtime).

We had some breakout entries this time, scoring far ahead of the otherwise fairly equal distribution.

Our third place winner, with 14 points tallied, MoleMage's Way of the Mists! You don't need to eat metal, your ki has you covered.

Our second place winner, with 18 points tallied (and a whopping 4 picks for first place), Damon_Tor's Path of the Titan! I guess we all just really wanted giant weapons.

And our first place winner, with 19 points tallied (receiving a vote from 9 out of 13 voters), nickl_2000's Battling Bowman! Trick arrows like Arcane Archer wishes it had.

In the theme category we had the opposite problem, coming in at nearly a 3-way-tie! We did have a 2-way tie, meaning contests XXII and XXIII are locked in for theme now. Follow Me!'s points came in before Bunch of Fives's, so we'll do that one first. Congrats everyone! I'll get the new contest thread up in a bit here.