Volcano Barbarian subclass – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

April 11, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

I had a lot of fun on the Happy Fun Hour stream today. I think I'm starting to get a handle on managing the work and interacting with chat. Plus, who doesn't love volcano barbarians?

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) April 10, 2018

The Warlord Fighter subclass pt3 – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

March 21, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

hello everyone and welcome back to the mic murrells happy fun hour I’m your host Mike miles and this week we’re going to continue our exploration of the warlord subclass for the fighter so last week in the in the prior week we talked about the concept for the warlord how we saw that subclass as distinct from other subclasses for the fighter and we also settle on essentially the the mechanic that we want to use to capture the the warlords thought process how does the warlord the character approach and look at the world and then how does the warlord player the person playing the warlord how do they look at the rules and how can we make those two things as similar as possible so when you’re playing a warlord even when you’re thinking about the rules the mechanics you’re kind of thinking like how a warlord would approach a situation so we settled on a mechanic where the warlord would have an area of focus the warlord could survey the battlefield pick out a spot that looked important to the combat and then give allies benefits or enemies drawbacks for being in that area so this week I want to go through and talk about and create some of the specific abilities we’re gonna give to the warlord to give it the things it does with that that idea like what are the benefits and drawbacks that a warlord can bestow so the I decided to start with that since we’re building the warlord off of the eldritch night and the eldritch night gets spells of up to fourth level that an easy starting point would be to look at what are some of things that spells do from 1st to 4th level now I didn’t want to go through and just look at every single spell I wanted to take a look at spells that felt similar to the effect we described for the warlord spells that essentially take a portion of them of a combat area and mess with it put a barrier in the way or maybe grant a benefit to the characters now I didn’t look at the cleric yet though right now I just looked at the wizard spell list so we don’t see too many things yet that necessarily provide a benefit to other characters that is something you’ll find more often in the cleric and to a lesser extent druid spell lists also with the bard spell list wizard is more about messing people up rather than necessarily helping others the wizard sort of buff spells are usually self buffs they’re protective in nature to make up for that lack of armor and low hitpoints but I fell let’s think what how we want to mess with your enemies first to start with seemed like a good starting point so let’s dive in take a look at my screen right above my head is the list of spells I thought this is a good good starting point let’s take a look at what the Wizards doing and let’s think about how we really want the warlord in action I’m gonna be honest I want the warlord to feel better than the wizard at this sure wizards can conjure stinking clouds and lightning bolts and all this other stuff but we’re talking about this is our tactical expert so I’m gonna be okay if the wizard spells don’t feel quite as good as some of the warm the warlord effects because that’s something where you know this is what those characters focused on the yes they need an ability to conjure me griddles I agree if you haven’t watched the stream I have a well documented love of McReynolds McDonald’s so the the so yes if I could get that personal ability that’d be pretty useful the I guess I do I can just drive through the drive through but all right so I’ve got my handy-dandy D&E be on window up and I’m just gonna take a look at some of these spells so let’s start with fog cloud it’s one I picked out very early on it creates a sphere 20-foot radius I believe or let’s see for radius yeah 24 radius sphere of fog so fog in the game it’s heavily obscured but rides heavy obscure me now immediately when I think of this if I cast fog cloud that hurts both my friends and my enemies and that’s not really what we want the warlord to do so that’s kind of nice to see right off the bat my first comparison spell I pretty quickly have a sense of like okay here’s how I can make this bed for the warlord it’s long in effect one side or the other it’s always gonna be beneficial to the Warlord’s side again this is our master strategist and tactician this character isn’t good to do things that hurt both sides of the fight this characters gonna be helping one side sometimes we make a note here that just says ok and you know the other thing to look at too is the size right we want to make sure that the warlords area focus feels that that it’s big enough that it’s really affecting things so now 20-foot radius might be a little too big I’m sure when this spell was designed since it hurts both sides look it afford to make it bigger than we might otherwise but I’m just gonna note that 24 tre Deus Sphere a be obscure me I need to see me miss spell yeah there are certain words I will always misspell all right so that’s our fog cloud now let’s take a look at Greece Greece is another area useful spell for controlling an area yeah let’s go here and let’s expand our definition so let’s first take a look at this Greece is a 10 foot square ok so smaller and any creature that area has to make a dexterity saving thorough or fall prone and if you enter that area or your and your turn there you have to make another dexterity saving through or again fall prone this is an interesting one it’s a smaller area a 10 foot square so not as big as fog cloud so interestingly enough it does have drawbacks for anyone who enters you could cast a Greece spell then walk into it and slip so similar to fog cloud it’s hurting both sides what I think is interesting and this is probably something if you’re wondering like why is the area of Greece so much smaller than the fog cloud since you have to move into the Greece spell there are a lot of creatures that could ignore it it’s much easier for the party for instance to make this something that really only hurts one side for instance imagine you’re in a dungeon you’re going down a ten-foot-wide hallway you might cast Greece right in front of the characters who are in the front of the party so that the monsters have to move the Greece and stay there since if they end their turn there they can also fall prone my fighter or barbarian or anyone similar could just stand on the edge of that Greece and for the monsters to stay within it or risk provoking opportunity attacks so that’s why it’s smaller so we’ll go ten foot square deck saver prone you end or move into space or are there when spell cast I doubt we’re gonna have effects that the the warlord is using an ability and it forces a saving throw like Greece but maybe we’ll see I think you know based on the past two weeks we really want the warlord to be enabling others to act in some way especially as a team but we’ll see well we’ll figure out where we specifically end up the we might find that uh based on the effects we want to create there could be some immediate damage effect we may be out but I suspect we be filled in through an attack of some sort so okay so we got fog cloud we have grease these are both pretty reasonable for simple spells a little situational and that’s also where I think we want the warlord to have effects that are just strictly good for the group so but right off the bat we can see that knocking people prone in an area and essentially giving an armor class buff you’re making it harder to hit people making it easy to hide these are things that are well within what we want to do so we can build off of that I want to take a quick look at second level then I want to start thinking about and I’ll kind of talk about what I mean now at first and second level what does that actually mean for these tactics so let’s take a quick look at cloud of daggers this is another one that I sort of felt this is kind of if I remember right sneer control spell the let’s see we got here five foot cube creature takes forty four slash when it enters the first time on a turn or it starts its turn there so this is a similar type of spell now in our theoretical ten-foot-wide dungeon carter where we cast grease you could imagine cloud of daggers being very useful for the similar reason you’d put the cloud of daggers right next to the party where the monsters want to go the drawback here is this is only a five-foot cube so if it’s a ten-foot wide hallway I can’t fill the hallway with this spell there’s going to be space there’s gonna be a gap and so now you could are you that if you’re not using the grid you’d put the five foot cube in the middle of the hallway dungeon master using miniatures is probably gonna just have everything snap to grid just for ease of play so we can assume that while this is a very useful barrier it’s not it is smaller because of the damage it’s offering I mean this is a spell that could last for a minute 40 for slashing in theory that could be 40 D for slashing every creature managed to spend you know couldn’t get out of it for some reason that’s a kunai in blender the other thing notice is there is there is no saving throw so this is damage that happens automatically Greece gave us a dexterity save for arguably in arguably a lesser effect going prone is in terms of the game is not as powerful as taking or is you know as strong as dealing 44 damage you could argue lying prone setting up advantage but we try not to think too much about like make things too dependent on well what if the group acts together we account for it but it’s not it’s not as powerful as just dealing damage potentially taking some out of the fight immediately so I’m you know five foot cube 44 all right that’s pretty easy darkness is another interesting one in that it’s essentially an upgraded version of fog cloud let’s take a peek here let’s see we’ve got a 15 foot radius so smaller spell it does block dark vision so this basically shuts down all site where fog cloud just provides heavy obscure meant the other nice thing about this the point you choose is on an object you’re holding the darkness eminates on that object okay that’s something it’s just cool it’s very supernatural though I don’t think we want to do something where I mean the warlord can already move the focus we talked about it last week we had this idea that the warlord would focus on an area and the warlord on their turn could then move the area so I’m not really worried about picking up that but this is basically it another thing I’m just gonna kind of note this is 15 foot radius block line-of-sight and it sits and there’s a lot of just kind of spells specific stuff it’s 10 minute duration I don’t believe this a concentration spell I don’t believe it is so that’s probably other balancing factor of it’s pretty useful but it’s not useful enough to necessarily require concentration I’m not seeing it and I don’t think it’s there so now finally flaming spear this one might be a little bit a funny one to look at but I was just thinking the idea that the sphere since it does take up space it’s worth looking at right so let’s take a look what we got here for flaming spear and this is our 5 foot diameter sphere fire so fills up one square for using nature’s now if you remember if you’re here last week we kind of assume we’re designing the warlord that you’re probably using miniatures we’re not going to phrase the rules in a way that requires them like in the sense that we would refer to squares or or build it out assuming that you’re looking at a grid but we’re okay with things being a little more complicated because this is a very a subclass ain’t a very specific type of player someone who’d enjoy his tactical play we’re okay with it being a little more finicky so anyways we’ve got our 5 foot diameter sphere fire if you end your turn within 5 feet of it you must make a dexterity saving throw or take do to 6 fire damage half as much on a successful one now if you compare this spell to cloud of daggers the damage is lower a little bit 44 averages out to about 10 to d6 averages out to be about 7 these spheres is it since it’s within 5 feet of this sphere this can potentially deal more damage because it’s hitting more creatures now the one drawback to it is you can’t just put this next to the fighter unless they’re a tiefling or someone who didn’t or fire damage so there’s a little bit of a drawback there the very nice thing that is a bonus action you can move the sphere up to 30 feet so again something which we’re already kind of capturing with the warlord so I’m gonna note this down it’s to d6 fire damage but really it’s a 15 by 15 area alright so I’ve looked at these spells I’ve seen some that maybe start pointing towards some good comparisons I’m not seeing things though in actually this is kind of a good thing I’m not seeing things that are really like completely blocking movement and stuff like that so I kind of feel looking at this list we have a lot of room to make interesting things the warlord that can compete well with similar spells we don’t want the warlord to feel that the wizard could just cast a spell and be a better tactician than me that this is selling the the classes abilities short especially as in its identity so so let’s see okay let’s say I’m trying to check the look in chats anything that’s come up yeah the so Caleb would mentions you know so far this is trying to do what an elder tonight can accomplish and that’s exactly where trying to avoid so we want to do is take a look at these spells because that’s actually the better comparison is think of the elder tonight they can take many of these spells I can’t my roughed up my head which spells the election I can get but in terms of power all first level spells are in theory equal so even if the elder tonight doesn’t get grease and fog cloud the idea is this is the general box that those spells will live in so we need to do things that feel dramatically better and especially or dramatically more on point for flavor so with these things in mind now we know would we have to beat these things we can’t we can’t have grease look better than a warlord tactic so my thinking here was for the warlord tactics what we would do is and this is gonna get interesting but bear with me cuz I think I think this path might actually work out pretty well I’m gonna pop up in our spreadsheet if it were from last week I went through and showed how we could just using the dungeon master Dungeon Master’s guides rules for spell creation all rules guidelines we could have said we could convert a spell slot into its rough damage equivalent we could then figure out given the number of spell slots and Elder tonight got because that’s our comparison it’s neither fighter subclass that uses magic how many dice of damage it should a warlord be able to throw out during the course of a day and if you take a look at this table here I bill we’re starting at third level that’s when your subclass comes in as a fighter the and this is just a rough approximation so this was the the total column here starts at twenty two ends up at two hundred and nine that’s the total number of 10-sided dice worth of damage oh I’m sorry that’s the total damage the dice the dice column that’s the total number of 10-sided dice and then I just came up with this uses and peruse columns this is just a quick approximation of if I wanted to make a mechanic that felt easy to use the table in terms of number of dice and then how often you use it this is a good first cut now if you remember from last week we talked about giving the warlord just a basic ability to heal someone or grant them a damage bonus and that really capturing that idea of the tactical insight the warlord could give and I think I really want to try to keep of this ability these numbers these dice fuelling those abilities the other thing to keep in mind is last week we talked about how the Warlord’s healing while the warlord can’t really deal with conditions like a cleric could like if you’re poisoned the warlord doesn’t necessarily have a class feature that can deal with that their benefit is if your warlord provides healing that is an excess of your maximum that excess healing becomes temporary hit points so you could with a fully healed up character give them if this math holds up seventy ten temporary hit points at the start of a fight which is pretty good and it’s something that differentiates this this character from the cleric in terms of how that healing works and it helps conceptually balance the idea that the warlord is not as good at dealing with with conditions but it’s pretty good at dealing with just damage which felt right for a fighter you know essentially healer type okay so this is what we’ve got here what I’d like to do is try to keep these benefits purely for that healing and damage boost I don’t want to require them in order to use the warlord tactics and that’s because I really want the warlord tactics to feel like something you’re just always getting I want them to have a dramatic effect on the fight but I want that to feel because the warlord is a great tactician not necessarily because I’m always just expending something that area of focus ability is pretty it seemed to go over pretty well and I want to be something that feels like you’re always thinking about because as a tactical genius we don’t want the warlord to be a genius like for three rounds a day right that should be something where the world always has a plan it is always ready to to help pull the party together to execute a clever maneuver the so if that’s the case what does it mean for our special abilities here let’s take a look over here well I think what we want to do if we take a look at these abilities look at the first two levels of them cloud a daggers in flaming sphere dealing damage the others aren’t when I get up to stinking cloud and sleetstorm I’m going to start seeing more damage but the ability to control an area is not necessarily something I have to worry about in terms of damage because if I let the warlord do this and attack or also deal out that extra damage I’m capturing the damage that you’re going to be doing that round I can really just focus on the special effect you’re gonna create so for instance you could imagine that fog cloud could create in here of heavy obscure man and do damage as a spell well it doesn’t do that but I’m letting the warlord essentially do that by saying you can attack and then use a tactic that’s gonna be the equivalent of a first level spell so that means I don’t have to worry about putting damage in these and I think that’s actually going to make my design a lot more interesting and a lot more fun because I’m not trying to like okay not to account for the damage and where’s that’s coming in I can just assume you’re using this in addition to an attack all right so I’m gonna make a note of that so used in addition to an attack slash heal slash damage buff and potentially all of them depending on where we end up with the damage buff stuff so that’s the case it makes these comparisons pretty simple and we get down here I don’t have to worry about the damage the damage is already low enough for these effects because they’re ongoing effects does that actually is another thing that makes my life a little easier I don’t have to worry about trying to figure out well how long will this effect stick around the damage it’s doing now you’re just you’re attacking so that makes my life a bit easier the alright so let’s take a look at some pretty simple things we could do at first level so we know knocking people prone should be something we can definitely do and it feels pretty thematic so I’m just going to put knocking prone you know targets in your area of focus are knocked from the wind hey that’s pretty simple one now there are other effects in the game let you’d let you knock people prone so it might not be the most useful one but that’s a good starting point I am also going to point out this is when hit so this and it’s also targets yeah sorry hostile targets so to me I want to put this one down here it might not be someone we end up with I kind of feel it’s pretty straight forward I mean chat let me know do you think this is an ability that you’d find useful in a fight especially we could use it almost all the time I think maybe using this whole time might be too good we’ll see but I kind of want you to use it all the time because I really feel like I’m being pretty tactically clever but compared to Greece this is just better right doesn’t hurt my friends and it doesn’t require saving throw because I just have to hit you and knock you prone oh and someone mentioned in chat who was it Northland Kyle yes that’s one thing we mentioned last week using concentration yes we want concentration because that’s a nice little barrier we can put in here so that you’re not stacking these up it also gives the enemy away to try to shut it down so the so we’re gonna throw this one in here people seem to think like it might be it’s pretty good it’s always advantage in melee maybe at a size limit the oh the narrative explanation Ibanez rock star yeah what I imagine here is this is and we will mix way this flavor right but I imagine as warlord is providing oops more laud world Lord is providing insight on where to strike so we’d want to capture the name and then obviously give some description so if I was actually know what I’m going to try I’ll show you kind of how we can wrap that it might be kind of interesting we might call this well here let’s do something here this is an easy way if you have to name something what I like to do is forget hey the people of the world of D&D are naming these things and so let’s go to our monsters oh wait no monsters are over here and here’s here’s a very easy thing you can do right let’s go to who’s are awake and search for prone I don’t think that you know I’m trying to search the wolf came up the wolf knocks people prone that’s if it does direwolf do you knock people prone yes it does so this is something where we did this lot in 4th edition actually the idea that people in the world of D&D they would no direwolves are dangerous because they pull you down when they attack you so an easy thing we would do here now you run the risk of some of my not they have the player by know that but you can imagine some like dire wolf tactics when a hostile creature in your area of focus is hit oh here’s one thing we could do too well I don’t know I was about to write as a reaction I don’t know if I want to turn off the Warlord’s opportunity attacks [Music] that’s something that limits it you know but but just popped in my head like a that’s an easy way to limit this mmm mmm I’m gonna say no cuz it’s more fun to always get it but it might be too good especially when you were in this stage like we’re not gonna like this is something we would play test internally so I like to go crazy because then you have other designers going well this is nuts right that we could just throw it’s easy to add limits afterward but you might find in play that actually works and it’s great like oh this does work it’s balanced whatever reason it’s working out perfect so so when a hostile creature your focus is hit it is not prone and I’m gonna just say hit I don’t happen I’d think of just by an attack I don’t care it’s um I don’t care what the spell attack go up an attack I just care that you get hit because I want the wizard or the warlock to also get benefits from this like why not you know tactically in the world of D&D you know how to make spells work well with your your weapon fighters the the okay so the I’m turning key I’m trying to keep an eye on chat choose if I see things come up so if I’m a little bit like scattered I’m like looking right now people saying anything the trying to sort of see how this thing is going and kind of take the temperature so we got dire wolf tactics that’s a good thing to give some flavor and so as your allies struggle against the enemy you direct their attacks to their most whatever this is this is fake flavor because this is so generic but their most vulnerable points that’s terrible flavor because it could be in anything but this is where that first sentence we want to capture what’s going on what I imagine is you’re directing attacks two legs the limbs so we might say you make direct attacks to point yeah you know this feels really just kind of cheesy or whatever then their legs or I almost type wheels I guess you’re fretting a bunch of cars whatever this is not portable flavor text this is another great example of with flavor text you want to get get across the spirit but you don’t also want even imposition of like hey wait what if you’re attacking like a centipede or a serpent or some like that the rules for knocking stuff prone will capture that anyways in d and v we’re okay with you knocking a snake prone cuz the snake actually flipped on its back is not happy but so this is some pretty low hey this is this is the flavor texture you get live on stream it’s not all that great but it gets across this is what we want to do the you’d want to get a sense of like hey what’s happening that movie in your mind is important it helps put the player in the same mindset as the character it also helps makes things just easier to understand so but the this is apply to flying creatures oh yeah that does the area of focus extend into the air great question Abel hawk and actually makes sense for the Abel Hawk to ask what a hawk would think right yeah I’m gonna just put a quick note up here area of focus should be a cube and that’s just now you talked about having being more specific and how you want to say might be four squares but I’m just gonna say cube doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s gonna end up as a cube but just reminds me that I need to remember oh yeah this can go up and yeah that would be a very interesting one because oh so now this is a really good point Abel hawk I’m glad you brought this up what happens to a flying creature when it’s not prone it crashes so something that lets you automatically knock people prone if you hit them with any sort of attack is really good if I put my area of focus up in the air right I can knock creatures out of the air pretty easily now I’m going to say I like that it might again this might be too good and I think what we’re going to see is how does the frequency of this ability with things I want the warlord to always feel like the Warlord’s being clever but something like knocking prone if I’m always knocking everyone prone is that too good so I’m just gonna make a note down here I’m gonna put reaction save there are ways we can limit this but like I said earlier it’s much easier to put your limits on afterward if people say hey in our internal test it just feels too good so Oh Abel Hawk you mentioned it’s only a ten-foot cube it won’t crash too hard but remember I can put my cube up in the air right there’s nothing in so far that says this has to be on the ground now we may want to finesse that but what we’re seeing is that see and this is why we play test right because you can already see me thinking here I’m thinking Oh what is the name of this how do I make my flavor you know I’m working on one track in shat everyone else is working on their own tracks that’s like you know parallel processing and people start thinking of well how does this work in my game how would my players use it what happened my game last night what are some of the other options so this is why play testing is critical because it’s really it’s very difficult for one person to see all the possibilities but you give this concept of like a 100 500 people suddenly everything starts becoming more apparent so we know now we’re starting to hit some of those limits the things that are gonna turn this character subclass from hey wow isn’t it fun to Oz a DM I hate this thing all my monsters are constantly getting knocked prone but we know knocking is I’m one problem that’s a first level spell I’ve got to give us to you right like we said it’s ok for a spell so I’m gonna I want to be committed to this idea that this character has to be able to top what a spell can do it’s just to the extent to which that can happen the nice thing about spells is they are limited you can only use them so often so what I’m running into is my desire to have the warlord always have these abilities on so that might be something that’s going to require some finesse but again my feeling is start with not necessarily super obviously broken but start with something that feels like it might be too good then rein it in rather than try to self edit because you really want that first test to feel you want people you want to be able to quickly identify what your actual problems are a play test initial play test that shows no real problems is your probably didn’t actually do any really new design or you were just manage to get hit it perfectly which not very likely it’s probably much more likely that you might not be pushing things far enough all right so here we go this one comparison to Greece really just brought into focus some real issues we need to think of but right now I’m not gonna worry about them too much I want to take a look at some other benefits I could give you we have prone is a pretty simple condition we can throw around at first level notice we didn’t really have any other conditions coming in so we know magic wise mmm it’s probably something which we want to take a look at figure out when we start doing things like restrained if ever there might be too good to throw on all the time restraints very punishing condition but what we’ll figure out where we are from there now a very simple one is we kind of look at here with fog cloud have you obscure ‘men typically using that to get a defensive benefit or to let people hide so let’s go to here to our remember what do we always do we look everything up because we know we’re gonna get it wrong so let’s just go here just go to index let that load up I have you know there’s gonna be this should be in the basic rule so I’m just going to go there it’s kind of nice to have it all in one place all right so adventuring and let’s see could be under I think it’s either under the environment or it’s in let’s see it’s either under combat so let’s just pop over at the environment real quick because we have vision and light that’s we got here having a skirt area a heavily obscured area such as darkness opaque fog fog cloud are dense foliage blocks vision entirely a creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area so what that means is look under blinding a blinded creature can’t see it automatically fails on the ability to check the requires site attack rolls against the creature of advantage and the creatures attack girls have disadvantage okay so it’s very hard to see stuff and that also would allow us to make stealth checks to hide because I can’t see the person there they just need to focus on being quiet okay cool so we’ve got with fog clouds something that’s letting you hide and it is blocking vision what’s interesting is that that’s darkness has a similar effect the so that’s kind of we’re kind of putting those under the same roof kind of think of this as like here here’s our defensive benefit we’re gonna look at so let’s go back with our tactics um let’s see so a pretty simple thing here would be some sort of defensive bonus right so we call the shield wall and say allies in your area of focus gain a bonus to AC and saves maybe +1 it’s a little irritating so now you have to track that out there and now I can imagine now I’m gonna have to always remind players hey +1 AC remember your +1 AC but it’s also pretty generically useful and it feels like that’s something useful you know I’m always gonna want to use that I wouldn’t say no to pulse I’m honest AC and I think I’d also want to put it on saves because I think that is something again that when I look at the spell fog cloud well if I throw a fireball into a fog cloud of fog cloud does nothing for me but if my warlord is giving me a bonus to both AC and saves okay it helps against spells to helps against the broader range of effects and again I want the war load effects to feel better than the equivalent effect the wizard throws around now the scoby task what about advantage or disadvantage I’m a little leery of throwing those around they’re pretty big effects and they can also come from other sources so my feeling was if I was to give say disadvantage and all attacks against my allies here that’s really good but it also steps on a lot of other effects characters might be toting around which we’ve attached typically to using an action of some sort the classic example we’ll go right up here let’s go back to the top and let’s go to our let’s see let’s go to our classes and actually we look at the fighter itself it’s a great example here in the under our class features your fighting style so with protection I can grant disadvantage that is requiring me to use my reaction now there’s must be within five feet must be wearing a shield but essentially it’s saying a character can use a reaction so essentially once per round to grant disadvantage putting that on all attacks it’s probably a little too good whereas plus when you see you know that’s something where you could give that the party it’s useful essentially one out of twenty attacks is gonna miss because that plus one bonus but if everyone’s getting it pretty consistently you’re gonna notice that you know if it’s a three characters are getting that benefit or four if your old clumped up together you’re going to get that probably like once per encounter there’s it you’re gonna turn to hit into a Miss it doesn’t sound super good but it feels pretty good at the table we’d also made me consider going to plus two but I feel like that might be a little too good but we’ll put that there but I think the other thing also is I did disadvantage would also make it much harder to score quick so you have to roll two twenties rather than just one so the but that’s something which is pretty simple and straightforward it’s got good you utility and it’s good defensive element then again it’s something compared just to spells are being thrown around actually I will take a quick segue over to the cleric if I go to the cleric we look at shield of faith that’s our first level spell it’s a bonus action does require concentration gives plus two bonus Tacey so I think plus one bonus to the entire party versus plus two bonus one character it’s a little bit different but it also means I can protect if Ganon and that sort of if I’m if I need to have a ten-foot-wide Carter I’m giving the bonus to both characters so rather than just one so I think I think it’s a pretty good comp and you know it might be plus one versus plus two I’ll think I’m at a little bit but that’s why I put the plus one and plus two if you can see it put those in question marks I’m gonna kind of think of that and especially as we test we might sort of go well let’s try it’s try one try the other how does it feel this is also another area where I’ve talked about how balance so much of it is the feel you might be the mathematically prove the plus one is the right number but if players just don’t feel like it’s worth tracking like yes you turned one hit into a Miss and that’s a nice swing but players just don’t feel like it’s having a big impact so it’s always something to keep in mind now that doesn’t mean we could say make these if we found the eight plus two bonus are just too good we’d have to keep in mind well the field might be good but it just might be too it’s just shutting down too many attacks so so that’s a pretty good one there question it would it stack the oh yeah these abilities oh that’s a that’s a great question these abilities will probably assume that the same ability so if I have to world to warlords in the party they probably shouldn’t stack that we would probably draw on language view some spells of the same spell cast multiple times doesn’t build up unless it specifically says otherwise so it would stack there with other benefits like from Schule faith because those are two separate sources all right so we’ve got some basic defensive ability we have a basic offensive ability direwolf tactics might be too good let’s think of something that’s a little more has a little more utility and I camera if I talked about this one last week but it’s one that I liked because it’s not really useful until you realize wait I really need this so reorder ranks and I’m just gonna do this in kind of very quick spend 10 feet of movement to swamp position with any other ally in the area of focus so this is what I was thinking about in terms of if you have a group of characters defending a single point I can quickly swap people around and essentially now we’d probably to make sure make it clear like where are they moving all this other stuff but essentially it means if you have back rank in front rank you can quickly reorganize them it means for instance a rogue could swap places with one character make an attack then swap places with another character and then get away from the fight so we might even want to say swapping does not provoke but I put a question mark there because another immediate other one would be you know it’s gonna call clever movement very lame name but the allies don’t provoke in the area that might be too weak but Woolsey that’s another one which is pretty straightforward these two might get a combined but again the idea is if I’m defending a point it gives me a lot of flexibility that the characters who want to attack only have to be exposed to danger as long as they want to or if the enemies try to surround you you could the party can quickly reorganize this is also one that if we if we think the area of focus is gonna grow with level it be gets more and more useful as you go up in level so so yeah it might also make sense pen half movement we’ll figure it out this is also another one we’d want to test to make sure if the area gets really big it doesn’t now feel like you’re teleporting you can imagine if the area is large enough that there’s space between the characters and they’re swapping positions all the time like does that feel real so but that’s you again we’re just going across the the gist of the ability is you can reorder your ranks normally you can’t do that right so this is gonna let us maneuver the party around in reaction to threats much much quicker the alright now let’s talk about some other abilities so far we’ve talked about abilities that say hey your carrot your allies already occupy a spot how can you give them benefits last week we talked about the idea that you could have an area focus that essentially acts like a magnet it pulls your allies into it the example being imagine you’re fighting some monsters in a doorway the wizards in the back suddenly a secret door opens up and a werewolf bounce into the room to attack the wizard well what if the warlord had the ability to quickly move the party to the new threatened area so I’m gonna give this one the very flavourful name of charge magnet and what it just means is allies can use a well let’s see I don’t know if I want to use their reactions I think I want you to do it you’re actually gonna stay here you can use your action or reaction to move allies into the area focus that means you get to keep your opportunity attack up it also kind of makes you wonder if this reaction business if the Warlord’s the warlord come using reactions to make opportunity attacks mmm I’m gonna throw this up here as a question because now we work another one where it’s like light I don’t want the character that the ally to use the reaction because it’s moving you across the battlefield might not be too useful if you can can’t actually defend this pot you’ve gone to you’re like Hello The Fighter the barbarian is no next to the werewolf any waves as the werewolf just keeps going because the Barbarian used the reaction so so that’s another easy one what the forget what’s happening now is we starting to build our content we’re starting to see where it’s pushing against the framework we built you said we want you to use these all the time we want to make them manageable but now we’re starting to pop out some of the stuff of like well this might not really fit right does it is this fitting in the space we’ve set aside for it and that’s kind of like it’s kind of how I think about design for this content I gave a box and a ninth double spells you know the boxer 9/9 all spells huge you can fit a lot in there the box where a can trip is a lot smaller um these are kind of contra e but I also want to compare them to Wizard spells and make sure that the warlord feels so you can kind of see that tension right I have a can trip sized box but now I’m comparing it to much of bigger boxes I stripped out the damage so those boxes got smaller but they still might be bigger now I’ll do you know if this one might be getting much bigger in comparison to this so it’s always a give and take so let’s see what we got here how about blinding tactic is a reaction from hulking 73 how about blinding tactic is a reaction he blindsides target enemy to Allah ally to move the proton an opportunity attack oh that’s pretty yeah that sounds kind of interesting like what if the that’s not something I necessarily thought of what if we attach some of these things to our warlords attacks that could be pretty useful I’m gonna throw this in here just as a note but attack buffs on targets and area of focus triggered on warlord attack so I’m just gonna put that down here I’m gonna put it in bold because why not it’ll just make it stand out a little bit more but that’s another interesting model I hadn’t really thought of that could be a pretty nifty way to channel some these attacks so for instance the direwolf tag this might be I hit someone and if the next person hit them also knocks on pro so that might be another way to kind of channel that so I thought that that’s an it that’s an interesting way to look at that because then we can bring in more more effects and more control elements that are nested in conditions but I don’t want them to get out of control there the nice thing is as the warlord gets a second attack now you can tag two people so that’s another that’s an interesting to look at it also gets across the teamwork benefit now it does require some tracking you have to remember hey I as the warlord hit that creature I hit the werewolf the next time the werewolf gets hit then this thing is gonna trigger but it’s definitely worth exploring and it’s always good to have a lot of sort of at this stage of the design a lot of tricks up your sleeve because then as things get complicated you kind of already have a few ways to to mitigate some of that you know the box is not the right size we’re going to do so the okay and then so we’ve got that stuff here so we’ve got something that live allows for movement we got some jointed defensive abilities I also want to take a look and think okay what did what happens when we’re not fighting the warlord is a tactician but there should be some sort of benefit you can get like I think if you’re not in a fight let’s say the party for some reason has to build a fence the world Lords probably pretty good at organizing that too so you know one of the things we could look at doing is let’s call it help boost right you know when the warlord uses the help action it applies to everyone in the area of focus so now I’m gonna take a quick look at my help action make sure I’m not completely hosing that mechanic but if I go back home and I go over to my real strontium it’s bending the basic rules I just like to have the basic rules for this stuff cuz a lot of times the core element it’s it’s smaller right I’m gonna go down to combat go to actions in combat and let’s take a look at help okay you come in your age another creature in the equation of a task okay when you take the help action the creature you aid gains advantage and the next ability check it makes perform the task you’re helping with provided that it makes the check for the start of your next turn okay cool so the the other alternately you can eat a friendly creature and attacking a creature within 5 feet of you you faint distract the target or in some way so so this is also another thing I can so I think both of these are great now and here’s why the attack version is actually strictly worse than what the mastermind row can get kind of the mastermind road can choose one person as a bonus action one person gets the benefit of the help action so it’s pretty good I get still attack I can still sneak attacks this is saying a bunch of people could get a benefit there might be times there’s a warlord I might decide I’m gonna forgo my attacks most likely at low level once I get my second attack it’s not as useful but I might use this to give everyone advantage because let’s say I have the rogue is up next I whatever they want to make sure they hit but I also know the the warlock is gonna throw an attack spell but else wanna make sure it can hit so that can be useful but I do like the skill thing and I think that using this for the skill for instance we’re all trying to climb a wall I make my air focus the whole base of the wall wherever it’s standing I can aide and everyone gets advantage now on their checks to climb not as useful if time isn’t an issue because we can assume that if like we have an hour to climb this wall each character can just you know take the action eight everyone’s aiding and moving it back and forth but during a fight this could be really useful or anything any situation in which time is of the essence it’s the kind of thing where it’s simple enough that this might almost become a it’s just something all warlords get now put a question mark maybe they shouldn’t but it’s just very simple it’s very flexible right I don’t need to try to start predicting what you might want I can just give you look you can give everyone advantage people like advantage there are plenty of times when outside of a fight this is gonna be useful I mean you can even imagine in social encounters the parties trying to talk their way past the barbarian patrol that stopped them the warlord could use this to like sort of buff up everyone else and so if everyone has to make separate charisma checks or if the group is trying to accomplish multiple things so and it really kind of hits home that idea of the Warlord’s smart the Warlord’s cunning it’s not just during a fight warlord is also good in areas outside of combat and I always like that field the more we can make these things crossover the better so the so chat what do you guys think about that hunt I see people like that or the yes yeah Keith I’m on I agree especially a were lurch lead from the front while the mastermind does is working back yeah that’s that’s probably good feel what we’d want here the world’s gonna get up in that area of focus everyone’s around him or behind them is gonna say okay hey we’re gonna do this we’re gonna build this this we’re gonna paint this fence and everything they do a great job the okay cool people seem to like that so cool alright so what will keep that there and I think there might be something which is just a core thing the nice thing about it is we don’t now have to start coming up with a specific ones for climbing or jumping like okay I just named climb like jumping which might be because that’s not usually a check but there are a lot of areas with the our ability checks are gonna take up so much space that this feels more liberating than it does confining in the sense of I can think of a lot of ways to use this so cool the let’s see so what else we got here so this is like a decent starting point we’ve identified our pain points like we just worried that to give you really fun abilities it’s gonna have to come to cost you know the more I think about this I don’t know if I can just let you knock people prone all the time so we’ll have to figure out is that too good let’s take a quick look I think though what we are doing is about to compare this to things like darkness fog caught in grease I kind of feel like what we’re talking about here is already it’s more useful and it’s it’sit’s more on point on it quite a Jacob and 144 what do you think the level 20 ability would be I have no idea we’ll get to that when we get to that cuz I’ve been feeling we’re gonna do maybe one more week on the warlord now because we’ve made some half-decent progress here with these abilities prior to the point now I can write a few up but yeah it is interesting to think like how can we extend this like what does a capstone ability look like for the warlord I don’t want to do something like on your turn as long as you’re conscious I think I’d say something like everyone within every day my area of focus gets an action so that is super good it’s super broken which means yeah it’s probably a level 20 ability that might work right you can imagine you get your focus on the wizard the cleric the rogue the barbarian all of them get to do something and you get your turn I would not want that to take up your turn because that’s like I mean it’s cool that you got to watch every ounce do something awesome but I also want the warlord leading from the front as chat pointed out earlier so it should feel like I know I’m in there attacking so the wizard and the cleric and combo up a spell it might be too good it’s probably something we’d say once per day you know it just kind of kind of floating out there’s your thing but I think that would really feel like finish them right you’re fighting the tower ask and it’s almost yeah it’s on its last thing or when you do the combo right like you know and you could also imagine in non-combat situations right where it’s like we need to you know smash the you know the vial the demons essence in it then someone needs to set it on fire then something needs to throw it down the pit okay the warlord can make us do that in a snap right so the okay so that’s I’m gonna just make a note of that make sure they don’t lose that and I put it in quotes I came over the exact level the does is it at level 20 I can’t remember shout we’ll take a look later but allies in your area of focus you use an action boom so that’s a pretty good so we just jumped ahead but that but it’s kind of actually what’s used to what doing that it gives us a sense of like what’s the most powerful thing we can think that a warlord could do letting the entire party take an entire turn like rounds worth of actions that’s really good not a lot of creatures unless they’re much more powerful than you would want to cope with that so let’s take a look once we get to third and fourth level I’m gonna zero in on wall of fire because that to me that’s where I’m like okay I wanna make sure the wizard isn’t just a better tactician I want to respect the Wizards Lane but I don’t want to I don’t want to cross over into it too directly but I want to make sure that the wizard again just through the use of high level slots does not just feel like a better tactician so let’s go over to our spells let’s go to all spells and let’s take a peek at wall of fire fun spell I actually quite I’d like I always like the wall spells are fun alright so we’ve got a concentration spell the last one minute it’s gonna if I remember right it’s 60 feet long so that’s pretty big the useful thing here for us to think our tactical focus is probably at the start maybe approaching this size now how wide is it’s one foot thick but still that’s essentially 12 squares so we can also make it a ring we’re just well some pretty good to for trapping things or keeping a bunch of enemies at bay ah the walls opaque so that’s pretty interesting that means we’re getting a lot of those benefits just fold it in of those lower level spells like fog cloud this is just baked into its blocking line-of-sight it’s also essentially it’s like fireball Junior it’s 5 D 8 fire damaged half on a successful save that’s anyone within the walled area so if I make the wall on you wish you get roasted and the nice thing about the wall spell is since I can essentially make a path I can thread this through a group of enemies you know my friends don’t have to get hurt by this my foes can one side of the wall selected by you and you cast the spell deals 5 D 8 fire damage to each creature that ends it’s turned within 10 feet of that side or inside the wall creature takes the same damage when it enters the wall the first time on a turn or ends its turn there the other side of the wall deals no damage so this is a great spell for blocking off an area it is blocking out of sight so it’s not so useful for our fighter types if they’re next to the wall as a DM I would judge if you attack through the wall you wouldn’t take the damage because you aren’t going through it but we kind of let up at the dungeon master if you’re if you’re playing with me you’re probably even though the walls only one foot wide you’re probably feeling the square with the wall so unless you ever reach weapon you can’t attack through it but you still can’t see so you’re probably a disadvantage so but the interesting thing here is now but here’s the one nice thing this spell is just dealing lots of damage I’m not worrying about damage because I’ve already decided upfront I want to just put that into my generic healing and damage boost ability so what this is really showing me is just this idea of more the size what I should be looking for I’ve just gotta sumed that my damage you know I figured out what those dice those spell slots are worth I’m just gonna ride that unless unless playtesting starts showing it’s just doesn’t feel powerful enough so but it’s kind of good that I’m looking a wall afire and feeling okay this is pretty good this is just a lot of extra damage in some ways you know again it’s showing me that what I’m seeing consistently from spells is they lack the precision I want to give the warlord this is a very useful spell but it has drawbacks I can easily if I’m not paying attention if the fight changes I can easily position this where it’s actually hurting the party more than its helping I actually had this I’ll tell you a story about one of my campaigns I actually had this happen with the players used a wall of fire to protect themselves and with fire fighting a giant horde of bug bears and they’re using it to control a doorway that led into a very big room they were in so the face of the bug Bears were hosed that they couldn’t get at the party but what happened was when the way that the wizard dropped the wall there was a secret door in the room that when the bugbears opened the door they were actually able to hide behind the wall and move in and ambush the wizard which then dropped the wall so it’s a good example of it was very useful but because in this case the players didn’t know about this secret door it actually ended up working against them the bug bears are able to open the door and then able to hide because since the party couldn’t see through the wall of fire the bugbears could hide and then move along the wall and it’s believed it where they were they were safe in the wall the fire the way is positioned they did have to take damage from it and then launch an ambush I wouldn’t want a warlord ability to offer that the more led ability should again just feel like okay this is tilting way toward favoring us and it’s tilting towards holding back the enemy so that’s a good sign that these fourth double spells while they’re dealing a lot of damage let’s take another look I’m gonna throw any bards black tentacles is another example I think it’s gonna have something similar where if you go into the area that’s bad news for you wherever you are so draw a 20-foot square on the ground when a creature enters the affected area the first time in a turn or starts its turn their decks save or 3d6 damage and restrains so again this is very good for keeping enemies at bay but you and your allies don’t want to go into this area you could imagine in effect where the monsters managed to escape and it’s actually making it more difficult now for the party to engage so it does require a bit more precision to make sure it’s tilting to pure benefit and now I do see the restrained condition coming in so I’ve got to keep in mind restraints pretty good that is my main concern is I want to make sure that the warlord can compete on those sort of condition benefits that spells just aren’t aren’t overshadowing it so but again since now the warlord is just pure benefit it does make those conditions more powerful alright so but I feel like to start with we have a pretty good foundation here I think that what’s nice about this is we have a pretty clear vision of where we want these abilities to end up we so far have managed to keep damage and healing out of them so that can be a separate track we do see some pressure though for even a condition as simple as prone we already kind of feel you know chat I saw you know you guys talking I’m thinking of this too it might be too good right especially when we start talking on flying creatures and where I can put this it just might be too much of a shutdown ability so we want to think about some ways to elegantly limit these but we’ll try playing first and we’ll see what happens and then we’ll start putting some limits on this but otherwise you know it wasn’t too hard to come up with some new what new new concepts and what’s nice is looking at the spells or comparing to I think we do have some nice space here I think we can create effects that just feel like oh yeah I’d rather when it comes to tactical benefits the warlord can outclass the wizard the Wizards probably that on going the image element obviously like wall of fire that can be hard to top especially since the wizard can also still cast spells though not a concentration spell so but I don’t think it’s so far that it feels like oh that’s a real drawback you know I’d feel comfortable as a designer thinking well that’s the benefit the wizard spells hose everybody so the benefit is there is like you can get more damage thrown in on them if you are able to tilt it actually what ideally what you’d have is the warlord is working with the wizard to turn those spells into just strict benefit that there’s something in the tactics you’re using you know I want to try to find a me I don’t think of some ways to like create tactics that they feel like they they dovetail well it’s like a wall with fire so again we’re creating that sense of teamwork so and we also have our art our capstone ability let the the party gets to basically take an entire round of actions and the enemy just sits and watches and takes the punishment so that’s where we are we’re just sort of 2 o’clock so we’re gonna call that a session here next week without what I’ll do is a walk through the warlord how it’s all coming together and really importantly to one of the things we’ll have to resolve and I’ll talk through this is okay we have all this stuff that’s going on how do we manage it can the warlord attack heal someone and use a tactical ability all in one turn and also make an opportunity attack so starting to see there’s a lot getting packed into again they’ve that idea that it’s like a box okay your turn is like a box what can we fit in it we may have too much there especially we’re thinking you’re doing it all the time now the nice thing is without those heal and damage bonuses going back to our spreadsheet we were looking at somewhere between like starting at two uses at level three tapping it at six at level 20 those might not be the right numbers but they’re probably in the right zip code or right neighborhood so maybe we don’t have to worry so much about the damage bonus and heal being something you use all the time maybe use that in place of your tactical benefit yeah we’ll see I’ll start putting some thoughts into it and start building out some prototype characters and lay out the skeleton for the subclass right well thanks everyone for joining in thanks for your comments in chat and next week we’ll take a look at sort of the the foundation of the class we’ll have something actually that’s fully playable so looking forward to sharing that talk through how it all comes together and then we’ll have something you can check out and maybe using your own games thanks everyone I will see you next Tuesday 1 p.m. Pacific time

A little over 40 minutes until we go live. https://t.co/aAQduFPaVK

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) March 20, 2018

The Warlord Fighter subclass pt2 – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

March 14, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

hello everyone and welcome to the mic
Merrill’s happy fun hour I’m your host
Mike Murrells I am the franchise
creative director on Dungeons & Dragons
and we’re here this week to talk about
the warlord subclass for the fighter
surfer with us last week we started
talking about the warlord and came up
with some basic concepts what we wanted
to do with it
we spent basically most of our time
talking that through and luckily I was
on a plane coming back from Lake Geneva
Wisconsin coming home from Gary Cohn so
I had plenty of time to sit on a plane
with my iPad open to mull over some
thoughts about how to execute this
character class
well this character subclass you know
having that time it always helps and I
think I talked about last week it always
helps to put a lot of thought into what
you want to do right it lets you kind of
work through some ideas so you come to
the table when you look at a sheet of
paper you’re not unarmed you’ve got some
ideas of where you want to go or even
maybe you you know where you don’t want
to go either of those two can help so
last week we talked about this idea of
we really wanted to make this a fighter
subclass that felt like the master
tactician the fighter who could see
advantages in the battlefield and take
advantage of them I kind of abused a
chess metaphor about what the warlords
all about being a sort of chess master
who sees the board and sees the moves
that are ahead of his opponents moves
and really wanted to build from there a
subclass that felt very distinct maybe
one that dealt more with intelligence
and that idea of cunning and it was one
in which I thought I really wanted to
take a design approach that this was
built off the chassis of the eldritch
knight the fighter who uses spell slots
and therefore is cazza a power economy
that recharges on a long rest so with
all that mind away we go a good place to
start would be with our notes from last
week which are over here on my right
okay blow these up a bit so you can see
a bit more what we talked about so this
is a reading that we went
went down last week and a lot of this
you know essentially stayed in place but
we’re gonna see you know actually I
haven’t looked at this since last week
so I did a lot of my thing my my
ruminating and now let’s take a quick
review I know what I want to talk about
so I put some lot of thought into it
so let’s see what we’re gonna stick with
and maybe things that have fallen to the
wayside so what we looked at was this
idea that the warlord if you can take a
look at our first paragraph here we want
a system of tactical gambits that
capture the idea of a cunning warlord
who leads the party to victory through
smart tactics so now I congratulated
myself by putting an exclamation point
on the end of the sentence that’s a good
idea
because I was very happy with it but
that’s essentially something that I
think is pretty key and after putting
about a week’s worth of thought into it
we want to keep that we want to get that
idea of tactics smart tactics and then
this idea of following for benefit the
warlord makes others better in a
tactical combat way this was important
because we already have the battle
master with the ability to hand out
extra attacks to other characters we
didn’t want this just to be purely
increasing the group’s firepower we
wanted to approach this in the sense
that you felt like the warlord had a
cunning plan that if you followed it
you’d get a benefit it would help turn
the tide against your enemy so we wanted
to decide the end that the warlord would
you know set up this idea of like this
is how we’re gonna do it and you’d
follow through and then this final point
here insight helps with teamwork and I
think that’s something which is well
you’ll see I had this idea and what
we’ll see where it goes I don’t know if
this is necessarily gonna stick around
but what we’ll see so let’s take a quick
look at our bullet points here we had
this idea of the warlord as an expert
tactician that teaming up attacks are
better this is something where you know
I don’t think we really kept this but
we’ll see my idea of thinking here was
that if the warlord could essentially
move the entire party as a group the
warlord could mess with initiative to
set up combos that this idea that you
could almost like a spell break the
rules like do things and otherwise
you wouldn’t be able to but this this
game you’ll see where we ended up but
this fell by the wayside a little bit
cuz I didn’t I felt like it would get
too predictable or too scripted for the
other players if it was very much like
you take control of their characters in
some way wanted to avoid buffs didn’t
want these things to feel like spells
didn’t want it just like okay you’re
throwing around numbers now this one is
again is one which it’s a little bit
hard to avoid because you really do want
to make people feel better for following
your plan but I didn’t want to just be
the warlord just gives an attack those I
wanted to have real strong flavor and
have it be something that really made
you feel like oh this is the warlord
feels like the tactical the tactically
cunning or insightful character but we
do want it to be spell like in that we
want it to do unique things so that’s my
next bullet point that you’re doing
things that no other character can do if
this was back to why I wanted to avoid
buffs I didn’t wanted to say you get +2
day see you get +1 d4 in your attacks
and saving throws because if I wanted to
do that as a player I could just play a
cleric I could just play I could you
know bard alright I can just grab spells
that do that
why am i playing a warlord and then this
idea that you know we want you to feel
like a commander you know that you feel
like the chess master you feel like
you’re setting up the board and in an
advantageous way now one thing about the
spell like element that I did like I
kind of capture you might see it in the
fourth the third bullet point here it’s
okay for these effects to be a little
more unique I’m sorry a little more
complex and that ties into my next point
was I thought about the warlord I wanted
to really think about the player who
would embrace this option and that’s a
very important part of your design
because if you understand who you’re
aiming us at that’ll help shed some
light when you’re making design
decisions which way do you want to go
what do you want to emphasize this helps
give you some answers there and as I
thought about it I thought this is this
is really a player who wants to use
miniatures to use a grid because that’s
part of like having a very deep tactical
experience it’s a player who likes the
idea of
tactical puzzle how can we use our
enemy’s numbers against them how can we
come up with a cunning plan to take down
a superior enemy how can we work
together as a team to win and focusing
on that and coming up with this idea and
saying oh I have a plan of an idea guys
here’s what I’m gonna do follow my lead
and really making that payoff and that
made me feel like we could go a little
more a little more complexity we could
go a little more tactical because I
think if you if you felt like I want to
play a fighter who’s attacked the
insightful guy but I really just care
for the story end of it I don’t care so
much about the actual tactics of
fighting you could just play the battle
master with a couple of the appropriate
maneuvers you could take a high
intelligence fighter and just roleplay
that you know nothing stops you I mean
something weird so they keep in mind
nothing stops me from just role playing
a character you want what we’re doing
when we design something and give it
this very definitive place in the game
is we’re saying this is big enough that
someone wants to play this and someone
wants to be this character and for me
what that means and I’ve talked about
this in relation to the Acrobat subclass
for the rogue it means to me that you as
a player want to engage with the rules
and with the game and your characters
mindset you don’t want to just portray a
tactician you want to be a tactician you
want to think like one you want to look
at the game and say here’s something I
can do that that pushes me to think like
someone who’s tactically planning things
out and so I put a lot of thought into
that like how could I make you feel that
and one thing that occurred to me you
know we’re building this on the elder
the eldritch knight chassis and yeah
I’ll call it up our handy-dandy DD
beyond Paige if we take a look at the
marshal archetypes and go down to the
Eldridge tonight we can see this is a
character who is meant to feel like a
spellcaster you know right at third
level when you take this choice you’re
getting a couple can trips you get two
can trips at third level two first level
spells this is what your characters
about this is gonna make you very
dramatically different from other
fighters and just like giving you access
to spells you didn’t start thinking like
spell caster which is a distinct way to
think when compared to thinking purely
as
a battle master and on top of that when
you look at some of the class features
here you know when we take a look at war
magic beginning its seventh level when
you use your action to cast a can trip
you can make one weapon attack as a
bonus action in my mind I love this
class feature because it is literally
telling you think like a wizard
cast like a wizard swing your sword like
a fighter you can do them both at once
and then higher level not just a can
triple then you can eventually do this
with a spell so I really like that
because it really makes you think like a
spell caster but a warrior mage you’re
going to use spells that let you get up
close and mix it up as opposed to other
wizards you may want to stay back so
it’s very important to me the subclass
really gives you this way of looking at
the world of looking at the game that is
really smoothly transitions into your
role-playing and your character’s
mindset so what I thought of was that
the warlord warlords aren’t geniuses for
a few moments a day they’re always smart
they’re always tactically cunning they
always have a plan they don’t just you
know fight like fighters and
occasionally say wait is that guy
suddenly had this bolt of inspiration
this is what we can do that just doesn’t
feel like the cunning general to me I
feel like a cunning general is always
coming she’s always thinking she’s
always seeing the opportunity she’s
always seizing it so that came down to
what I see is the three pillars the
three mechanics we’re going to use for
the warlord now keep in mind three
mechanics that’s a lot but this is also
something where I’m comfortable with
this class subclass being a little more
complicated because it’s aimed at
players who I think want some of that
mechanical complexity to play with
because you’re depicting a character’s
probably high intelligence so taking a
look at our notes here I’m just gonna go
well here’s what I’m gonna do I want to
put this over to here bring up oh you
see is an Excel spreadsheet hiding back
there we’ll get to that later I want to
take a look at the eldritch Knight and
sort of show you what are the class
features that we’re gonna build it for
the warlord so the three main ones as I
thought about okay what does this
tactical cunning person I’ll do the easy
one first we’re gonna give you some sort
of you know inspiring or
insightful he’ll and so I’m just gonna
call it you know you’re the tactical
cunning person we want to be able to
heal because that feels like as a
commander that’s how you keep your
troops in the fight now this kind of
strays a little bit toward more charisma
but I thought about you know just in
terms of I’m inspiring but then I
thought well what if instead of healing
this was healing or damage so I can
either give you a heal or I can give you
a big boost of damage to your next
attack so this idea is I’m giving you
may be defensive inside maybe I am just
like being an inspiring figure even the
most insightful intelligent leader has
to at times be that inspiring person so
it’s a feature but it’s not the main
piece and then the other idea I had and
I figured you know it if we’re gonna
have this idea of the fighter who heals
how do I make this sit alongside the
clerk cuz I don’t think this replaces
the cleric
you’re still a fighter but what I
thought was over healing which means
basically I healed you above maximum
that becomes temporary hitpoints so what
this means is if a cleric in the party
this is pretty cool because I can give
you a bunch of temporary hit points in
addition to the healing you’re
eventually going to get if I don’t have
a cleric in the party I don’t have to
worry about if I’m using a bigger effect
on you that’s not gonna come they may be
completely heal you and then some you’re
gonna get temporary hit points now the
drawback here is rather than say now go
through and say okay now I need to give
you a lesser restoration ability I need
to give you a raise dead ability you
don’t get that as the warlord because
that’s really more the purview of a
character who’s more focused on healing
and support you are still a frontline
fighter but it does mean that in the
course of a typical battle if you just
read your swords on swords this is a
huge advantage like you can give your
allies big pools of temporary hit points
essentially preemptively heal which can
be a very useful advantage it lets you
save actions that you’re using in battle
you can use those before the fight give
a bunch of temporary hit points and then
go charging in it does mean against
something that’s throwing spells you’re
not quite as well prepared because you
don’t deal as well with conditions but I
felt like that made sense that when I
thought of this character I think it’s
useful for every character to have that
gap
in their skills because DNA is all about
teamwork and we’re still talking about a
character who’s a fighter just like the
eldritch Knight doesn’t replace the
wizard or the sorcerer or the warlock
the warlord shouldn’t replace the cleric
they should really augment that cleric
and so that’s why I felt like condition
removal just isn’t part of this unlike
say the paladin who does have some
element of it but this character as
you’ll see when we open that spreadsheet
delivers a lot more healing than the
paladin coming to the table unless the
paladin’s willing to sacrifice a bunch
of eldritch smites a knight Eldridge
divine smites which they probably aren’t
knowing how most paladin’s are played so
I’m giving you some really nice healing
some very efficient healing because you
never wasted but the cost of your not so
good at removing conditions from people
you can give them that buffer but the
things that really just take them out
you’re not so good at but we’ll get to
and then the next sort of element of
this class how you might be able get
around that all right so that’s piece
number one piece number two your own
fighting ability we see the eldritch
Knight can cast as cantrip and then make
an attack we see the other fighter
subclasses all get some sort of
essentially damage boost this is kind of
a brute-force I’m just putting this here
for now maybe it’ll work maybe it won’t
but we’ll see is this it’s really this
this mechanic isn’t as important as the
other ones but I still want the warlord
to feel like an effective fighter so I’m
just gonna put tactical smarts and just
add you’re in bonus to your weapon
damage roles that might be a little too
good but that’s just the entire intent
behind this ability is you’re the smart
fighter so when you’re fighting an
opponent this is just represents your
constant back background tactical acumen
you’re good at spotting the points on
someone’s armor where there’s a gap
you’re good at seeing while you’re there
using this fighting style or they’re a
wild animal here’s what I expect this is
how you take advantage of that use your
intelligence to pick out your opponent’s
weakness and so that translates into a
damage bonus it could’ve been an
accuracy bonus but you know I wasn’t as
excited about that because being
consistent but lower damage especially
at the higher levels you really your
damage role is what’s really important
there are enough other things flying
around where
and as you’ll see in the abilities of
the warlord starts to get big one coming
up that’s where we get start getting
some more accuracy okay so these two
abilities are here to kind of just help
you keep up now tactical smarts might
come in at a higher level – I’m not what
it did this as being the first thing you
get but your healing ability you need
that at third level it’s important so
what is your your main thing well by
request we’re gonna call a cutting plan
for now and here’s what I thought of I
really wanted to start with this idea
that you are the tactically cunning
character and the way I thought about
applying that was what if you could
essentially create terrain effects now
before you think I’m gone crazy I may
have gone crazy but not for that reason
what I really thought it was I had a
roommate years ago who really loved
JRPGs and he really loved the tactical
games you know this the grid based
combat a lot of them have and a lot of
those characters could do things like
mess around with the terrain just sort
of you know stop enemies or incentivize
you know attacks so what if what if
but the warlord has was this idea of a
tactical focus so it’s how you have a
tactical focus November I’m assuming
using miniatures or if you’re dam is
okay with it you don’t need miniatures
but it helps you pick four squares for
five by five squares each must share a
side with one other without with one
other and that is your area of tactical
focus what that means is during the
battle you only have so much attention
to go around you’re taking a look around
keeping your eye out for enemies but
this is the spot where you’re like hey
that’s this is the key part of the
battlefield like a good general you’re
aware of the Train and you aware of the
disposition of your enemies and so
that’s like okay I got a plan for this
spot in a dungeon it might be the
dungeon doorway and the area around it
and an outdoor fight it might be hey
here’s our exposed flank I’m gonna keep
an eye on that there it might be or
where you expect your enemies to go so
you’ve picked up this area and then this
is where we start to kind of have some
parallel design between yourself as the
warlord and that eldritch Knight chassis
we’re building you essentially get some
can triple
ladies and these are your always on
tactical insight so these could be
things like and I have my notes here I
did take notes in the flight I’m not
trying to fit it all up in his head
because you know as the hair comes out
more mayor more more memories leak so
the yeah but here’s a very simple one
right enemies can’t copy characters
moving out of those squares simple thing
right you’re keeping an eye on area
shutting warnings to your companions
watching your enemies so you know just
the right time to shout a warning
provide a quick distraction now the
thing about these squares is they can be
now I didn’t write this up make a note
of this so this is any square you can
see let’s say let’s say with an under
feet and allies need to hear you to gain
benefit
so we’ll just that’s kind of our basic
physics engine stuff but yeah so you if
you want to have a retreat you can pick
out a few squares that make a path to
the enemy your friends can just walk
right down there and they’re safe
another example ability we had was this
idea that let’s see hit an enemy enemy
in that space move them five feet kind
of the opposite ability we have an area
we need to clear out you know monsters
are in the doorway we need to escape the
ogres blocking the way the warlord
focuses says hit him in the knee right
or he’s just giving them that tactical
insight every time you hit it foe in
those areas you bounce them out just
happens and that’s why I said hit I’m
not gonna bother with a saving throw
because you hit congratulations you hit
I don’t need to then make it make you
throw saving throw on top of that the
let’s see what are some of the other
ideas I had here oh the this could also
be some basic trigger things so an
ambush right reaction when enemy enters
a square move half your speed so you
have your ambush set up in the dungeon
room or in the alleyway the warlord
keeps an eye out the enemy walks in get
them right suddenly all your allies can
hop in and surround that guy now the
important thing remember here is it’s
using your reaction so if you
taking a turn yet it’s not as useful so
this is something that you might use the
middle of a fight and you might use it
when you’re setting up a fight you might
use it when you know hey we have an
exposed flank there’s some goblins
coming on the side okay well in case the
goblins start closing in on with the
wizard if that happens then I can use
this ability and suddenly the fighter or
the barbarian or even the warlord can
make a quick move to block that now you
are using your reaction so maybe that’s
blocking the way or maybe we’d say maybe
we need to put something in here let’s
you still op B I just wanna make sure
you’re not moving infinite squares but
we’ll take care of that in the ability
the idea here though is to give you some
basic gambits
that let you cover your ground and make
you feel like you’re planning something
that’s the important thing for me was as
the warlord I wanted you to think I am I
have a plan and it’s not something just
as simple as hey you know like the
battle master does where I can let the
robe make another attack you know things
like that it’s a little bit more
intricate than that and it can involve
the entire party so I’m basically making
this zone of opportunity where it once
this happens the other players maybe get
to make a choice you know hey do I want
to move over and help block off access
to the wizard or am I gonna stay over
here it’s my choice I still as a player
as the person playing with the warlord
now have new options opening up by it’s
not shutting down my ability to maybe if
I just want to do my own thing
I’m the rogue hiding over here I don’t
want to make an attack yet I’m moving
the position you know I’m playing you
know the sort of lone wolf I can still
do that I just have a new option I just
choose to not use it the let me see you
take a bit of safe in my notes I had a
couple other ideas but I think that I
think that those three give us some
ideas of the scope of what we’re looking
at these are things that are essentially
cantrip level bonus damage because they
are taking place in addition to your
attacks I’ve really tried to keep the
damage down and I think maybe this is
even something like this might be the
Warlord’s reaction you know what that
might be a good way to you know move you
know allies of your choice or you know
allow other choice may
something like that we need to clear
that up so you can still make an
opportunity attack but any case this is
the idea that the opportunity attack you
know the important thing there is it’s
extra damage only if the Goblin keeps
moving so and this is important to keep
in mind for our balance we don’t want
this to generate extra attacks because
I’m assuming you’re doing this on top of
your regular attacks and I would
probably go so far as to say you know
use these as part of the attack action
so it might say something like whenever
you take the attack action I have to go
back in the text make sure I’m getting
the words right but I don’t want this to
be a rider on top of your attacks and
what I would like to do is to say okay
when it’s your turn at some point party
to turn not a bonus action because I
don’t want to shut down to up and
fighting but you get to pick your space
you get to move it can you get to pick
the effect you want to add to it
this is adding a lot to the game right
this is something that’s gonna affect
potentially every character every player
so I am adding to your company overall
complexity load but keep in mind this is
something where I’ve decided hey this
player wants that complexity they’re
okay with it I wouldn’t make this the
fighter that’s the default you know in
the basic PDF we make available it’s a
little more tactical ideally it’s
something where up that player I mean
there’s always the element of the player
who actually isn’t very good at complex
rules choosing this and trying to use it
but what I’m hoping is like if we can
get the mechanics right that kind of
solves itself by that player just
forgetting to remind the other players
hey you can do this you know things like
that which is disappointing but like in
general if complexity is ignored and you
lose an opportunity to do something
that’s better than complexity that’s
always present and is getting in the way
so hopefully it’s just what it does get
executed it’s very quick or for that
player who has mastered it it’s just a
fun extra part of the game the other
players are excited they get to get to
do more stuff that’s fun so it’s kind of
were aiming for especially these cantrip
level abilities because they are going
to be present in every round of the
fight all right so that’s our starting
point we have our strategists we have
our warlord the warlord says this is the
important part of the battlefield and
here’s I want to deal with it maybe I
need to set an ambush to Brent to flank
maybe I need to clear the path maybe I
need to get my friends the ability to
move around and safety that’s how I’m
going to handle this
but that’s our camp trips what about are
boosted attacks well I’m glad you asked
or at least maybe I asked on your behalf
so this is where we actually get to have
fun because now this is essentially
where we start getting we start diving
into the what is essentially spell
design surfer Murr from last week we
took the look and I was told there was
just a they did an update to the
database though there was a slight bug
in the system where this table wasn’t
showing up it’s back now we get to take
a look at the number of spell slots that
the Eldridge site gets access to at each
level and then say hey this is raw fuel
for our warlords power we can keep these
two classes on balance ground by saying
hey what’s two first double spell slots
worth what does that translate to into
the warlord and the nice thing is since
the warlord is always getting those
cantrip level abilities I can just make
these pure bonuses I don’t have to worry
about well this is happening every round
so I need to sort of account for that in
the power and you need to curl it back I
can give you tactical things that are
just as good as these spells if not
better so what does that what does that
look like well here we go I’m about to
open a spreadsheet and here it is I’m
gonna boost this up so you guys can see
it and you get to see I have done some
real violence to the math so this is
fake math this is not where we’d end up
this is just us playing around but the
starting point is if you remember in the
Dungeon Master’s guide there is a table
that shows you what’s the raw damage
value of a spell slot well we take a
look and say – first of all spells each
first level spell with a single target
and I chose the single target damage
because I’m assuming you’re using a
weapon so that’s equivalent of a weapon
attack it’s worth living points of
damage I get two of those I’m getting 22
damage worth of effect off of my spell
slots I did that for all of the spell
slots at all levels and I slide that all
together into what the total damage is
for the deck now if you can see here
that’s it’s fussing at me I’m just gonna
no Kay yes thank you excel please do
that no no no I was what we ignore the
error whatever it’s getting everywhere
excels convinced we’re making a mistake
maybe we are maybe knows more than we do
I hope not and so yeah the course of the
venturing game 22 extra damage to my
spells great
now this is where we start getting into
very suspect territory this is just me
this is what I like to do when I take a
look at all these big numbers I mean xx
have all 209 points you can imagine this
could be some ability where I spend one
point at a time to create an effect so
at xx level you have a pool of 209
points you’re spending one point at a
time you might like that I am NOT gonna
bag on you bag on you if you like that
but I think most players would just get
frustrated and irritated so what I did
here is I just converted that all back
and I could have saved a step probably
by just treating these as D tens because
that’s what it was I decided now okay in
terms of D tens I did all this math and
realize this is nonsense I just care
about the number of dice you’re getting
and then I just took a pretty basic and
you know I think it may have had to do
some rounding here I shouldn’t have
because these are all D tens but any
case I ended up with a number of dice D
tens this represents and then I just
looked for you know what can I buy us
down to smaller number of uses that had
gives you a reasonable consistent number
of dice per use now keep in mind again
this is fake math this might be a
completely wrong headed path but it
starts to give us some sense of like
what is the profile this ability look
like and so what we end up with is just
a pretty simple progression of uses
progression of dice but this is
something which very common when you’re
dealing with this subclass that’s being
built off of a spell casting one you’re
just looking for a way how do i bridge
from spell casting the power of that
into some other mechanic or some other
ability this doesn’t line up perfectly
nicely if you crunch this math I think
somewhere in here it starts to diverge
so again this is just a starting point
the idea here is really just to get a
sense of how many uses per data I want
to give you of this and what’s the
magnitude of those uses I like the idea
of just making it all one pool because
that would make our tactical ability a
little more flexible like you just get
an ability than you fuel it
it also means we don’t have to kill
ourselves by coming up with a billion
different stratagems and how they might
change so it’s a good starting point and
it’s the kind of thing where this might
be the first pass in the design this
might end up working really well it may
end up being that there’s enough space
that we want to be more precise and have
more of a spell like you know first
level
tactical plans to fourth level will see
we’re even bigger range we don’t know
yet we haven’t tried to actually
designing it yet but this is a good step
where you can get a sense of what’s the
size what I’m dealing with and if I was
just to try to really simplify this what
would it look like and so what that does
mean though if we go back here to our
warlord notes and here all this handy
dandy thing shrink this down a little
bit so we can kind of see a bit more
what we’re looking at that’s still
readable in fact you know what I’ll do
here I’ll just hide these you get to
watch me use Excel and forget here we go
hi this is all we really care about is
your level and this just very simple
shorthand uses per day and what I use is
worth in terms of detents what I do know
is I probably want to tie this to the
same pool of affect as the healing or
damaged ability and I also want to tie
it to that tactical cunning the one nice
thing is I have three very different
mechanics one of which that intelligence
bonus to damage is just kind it’s own
thing the other two the healing and the
tactical abilities if I can fuse those
together in some way that can be very
useful and so my thing on this is that
when I want to heal someone or inspire
them or whatnot I have to do that
against someone who’s standing in my
area of tactical focus and then I can
give them a damage bonus and a heal and
then you know maybe I didn’t want to say
that this activates some flashy effect
so I can kind of capture this all at
once the drawback to doing it that way
is that the mechanical effect on top of
that rod dice output has to be kind of
small because I’m already accounting for
the dice so that’s one way I could do it
another way I could do it is it cost so
many dice and that starts to get a
little complicated so I’m not gonna
worry about that right now instead what
I want to do is take a look at what
could my more powerful powerful spell
like abilities look like and I think
once I get a sense of a few of those
that will help give me a sense of how
does the healing and damage boost you
know I need to translate these dice that
represent the spell slots the Elder
tonight is getting I need a change
transfer those into effectiveness how
exactly I’m going to move that from the
character to the battlefield in a way
that makes me feel like I’m the
tactical genius so let’s give I hide a
bunch of ideas I went through so I’m
gonna throw some of these out there and
we’ll see some of these might actually
end up being like oh actually these are
more cantrip level we don’t we actually
need to you know and if that’s where we
end up and that’s an argument in favor
of making this just its own thing I put
it on top of these cancer of style
abilities rather than being it’s being
its own thing so what I wanted here was
these are you know effects that oh sorry
I don’t think that what I wanted to say
is that the actual abilities so let’s
say one thing right here I had let’s see
where was overs my list
oh here get down right so characters can
move out of an AoE this one since is
preventing damage potentially someone
fireballs an area then you’re actually
able to move out of that area completely
and ignore the damage this is something
we need to account for so that starts
moving more into the it’s like expending
a spell slot rather than being that
freak and Contra bubble effect so I
imagine here was an AoE you’re in the
tactical focus you get caught in AO e
you can move up to let’s say half or
even your full speed as a reaction
then we see are you still in the AoE do
you take the damage so this idea of like
ever to get down move out of the way so
but again it’s mitigating damage
potentially a lot of damage so we need
to charge you something for it a very
simple one would be in a help I call
this call down death basically a bonus
on damage against targets in area so
this starts to say hey yeah we’re kind
of is this just the generic one am i
giving you a damage bonus am i spreading
it out maybe our uses over here like
starting at to scaling up to six dice
going from two to 70 10 does this clash
against this maybe maybe not we’ll see
let’s throw down some more ideas and
let’s the start start seeing what the
color on the shape of it is on the
screen
oh the we also can put in some control
effects so it could be force movement
you could charm someone right the idea
being that you can confuse an enemy and
get them to treat you as charm because
you’ve confused them they’re not sure
which way the attacks coming from my
enemies are swarming around me so I get
confused maybe I attack and and one of
my allies maybe I forget to attack an
enemy because the group has done some
sort of maneuver
that throws me off for a moment and this
might be something would give you a
wisdom save because it’s just something
is just happening then we’re okay with
that it’s forced movements a very common
thing we’d also restrict movement you
just can’t move into the area now again
because this is something that might
completely block off attacks we do have
to again charge you a spell slot for it
if we just said look enemies can’t move
into those squares and their sentence
well what’s the thing you do you take
your range characters the freighting
against a size medium enemies you put
those squares right in front of them
your enemies can’t move up and attack so
we have to make sure we’re counting for
that since essentially we’re denying
attacks contrast that with shutting down
opportunity attacks that’s something
you’re opting into a player doesn’t you
know character doesn’t need to move they
might want to move but when we design
monsters we don’t assume that they’re
making opportunity attacks we don’t say
well this guy is obviously you’re gonna
make is it this orc warrior will attack
with his spear and then obviously make
an opportunity attack cuz players love
running around we don’t we don’t assume
that so we actually you’re gaining some
flexibility but it’s very situational
and it’s not at the cost of any of the
assumed power of a monster same thing
with a 5-foot move it’s useful but again
the nice thing about this is it’s really
useful if you plan well and turn it into
a big advantage but by default it’s not
necessarily gonna help you too much and
again same thing with the ambush this is
just well the system doesn’t know if the
Barbarian is overextended or no one’s
protecting the wizard we kind of assume
you are so in some ways this is like
letting you either make a mistake or be
very aggressive then quickly respond to
block off an avenue of effect but in all
these cases we’re shutting down things
that could happen not things we assume
happen so for instance the ambush
ability is a great good example the
goblins are moving in to attack the
wizard the warlord uses this the paladin
swings around to block off the attack
well now the goblins are attacking the
Paladin monsters are still getting their
chance to fight nothing is just shutting
that down all right so so that’s the
main thing to think of like why is
Abaddon ability in one category as a
canned trip as I pose to these spell
like abilities so the another one could
be like some sort of spot weakness
ability
you know it could drop AC against
targets are in there or our give
accuracy let’s see oh we could also we
could we could negate cover even say
like not total cover cover to the point
where you just can’t attack but cover to
the point where I’d like maybe like you
shoot back through arrow slits you know
the your enemies are in the castle
firing down through murder holes and you
are able to still hit them the so these
are all things where you know and that’s
what would be a big swing right you’re
turning misses to hits so again we want
to account for that so let’s see what
else we got here outside I’m getting
some direction we can’t see oh we can’t
see him like what my head sorry my big
melons right there thank you
learning as we go right there AHA now
you can see all right there we go seeing
it was like what what’s going on so okay
there we go
learning as we go right yeah it’s all
about Damon sign you take feedback and
you improve all right so so negating
cover let’s see what else we got down
here no cover you know I had this idea
of maybe shifting positions but maybe
this could be right here in place of
move swap positions in the area of focus
so or in place of say 10 feet of
movement so this you can imagine be
something where you have the doorway
blocked off and you want to keep that
really defensive fighter up front but
you want the someone else get an attack
they can spend some movement swap places
make their attack then spend moving in
swap places again again the system
that’s not really changing anything
because also you are gonna take an
opportunity attack for that because you
are moving unless you have something
that otherwise shuts that down but it
does let you maybe pull off a tactical
gambit like ideally you’re doing this
with the rogue who at least the rogue
doesn’t have to worry about opportunity
attacks and maybe you’re doing with a
character with a really nice AC who
doesn’t mind taking an extra attack so
that’s another one I thought I would add
but that really goes again to cantrip
level cuz that’s not that’s not denying
damage it’s not generating extra
like you know the road could always just
make a ranged attack in that case though
presumably the enemy might have a cover
it’s a doorway let’s see what else we
got here oh and then we could also do
just something simple as you know
defensive formation has gained AC bonus
while in the area so again that’s
another thing which we’d have to account
for because that is turning hits into
misses again mitigating damage so this
is to me is like a kind of a good
starting point and because what I’m
really trying to do here is get a sense
of how are my resources over here on the
right going to interact with the
abilities I’m building on the left the
cantrip ones are pretty simple you’re
just always gonna get those and what I
imagine is the spell like ones like
you’re healing you’ll choose to activate
it ideally it’s something that’s pretty
straightforward it you might instantly
you resolve it or it might be something
which is a bonus that you just thought
the track over the course of one round
maybe for the course of the rest of the
battle you know that’s another
interesting thing to think of too I mean
that might be where we add a
concentration
you know the spell mechanic use that
here to say look one when you pick one
of these it’s an ongoing benefit and I
kind of like that because I think the
more I think about it the more I think
we’d wanted decoupling we don’t want to
say you use this you heal someone and
get this benefit there are some game
mechanics I know in 4th edition we did
some of that where you kill someone they
get a benefit in addition to the heal I
think we want to keep these heals
separate and I think I want you as the
warlord to kind of think do I want to
heal some on do I want to get them a
generic damage bonus or do I want to do
something a little fancier but it also
makes me feel like maybe I don’t want to
roll these through the spell slots you
know isn’t kind of thinking about it if
I had a way to regulate these you know
maybe I just want I’m gonna write this
down and I don’t know exactly how we’re
gonna do it but we’re just gonna say it
once per battle
maybe these are abilities that just once
per battle it gives you some nice damage
mitigation or gives you an advantage and
oh that’s it like that’s essentially
kind of the measure like you’re smart
you’re smart you’re pretty smart all the
time we get those contra
benefits but you’re not so smart you’re
getting these big benefits and maybe
this dice pool you know maybe that just
is really the really simple benefit of
you can give people a damage boost or
you can give them some healing I could
go either way you know this is something
where it’ll take some more design time
to figure out what feels right cuz this
is really new you know we haven’t really
done something like this before the but
I think that giving it that extra
benefit yeah yeah I mean I’m kind of
struggling with that a little bit I’m
not exactly sure because I don’t think I
want these to compete with your healing
resource because then you’re just you
can have a lot of pressure from the rest
of the party to just heal people like
healing or you’re gonna say look I can
throw out a big damage benefit to a
character I really want to do that to
finish off a monster like it’s kind of
cute shutting down a ohi’s and things
like that but it’s very hard to compete
with just putting down a monster so this
might be something where you get your
can’t chip level abilities and then at
some rate let’s say once per battle
we’ll figure out what that looks like
you can do this special enhancement to
it or you know at some point you get to
kick this in and that sits on top of it
does it sit on top of it maybe again
it’s good now getting a little more
complicated I have two effects sitting
on top of my area of tactical focus I
might instead want to say it lasts for
around I think that feels right to me
it’s that moment where you can give the
team that boost they need to seize an
advantage so it feels like it should sit
on top of it but it shouldn’t overstay
its welcome you know I feel like having
two effects there would just be too much
to track I think would really slow the
game down so I think that’s we’re gonna
look at right now
you know tentatively let’s say these
smell like abilities you get you pick
one and you apply it and it lasts for
one round I already have a lot going on
up here are these cantrip level
abilities so I don’t think I want you
like throwing out tons of extra things I
kind of like the idea that the warlord
can build up a sort of typical bag of
tricks one of the nice things complexity
wise is it means as you play the
character you’ll learn these the other
players will learn them and it’ll be
those those will get faster as you go
because once you understand
three or four options that the warlord
and your party can use you can learn
those over time and if new ones come in
slowly enough that you could absorb
what’s gone before and then absorb the
new one and have it down really well
before the next one comes in that’ll
help us manage our complexity and if
these things are special I like I like
that if yelling get down and like boom
right I get to do that once and for the
next round or it’s a reaction you know
some really cool thing happens and maybe
that’s one thing we should look at to
like maybe these are reactions maybe
that’s not the way to make them very
distinct we talked earlier especially in
the rogue of really wanting to silo
these things so that they are separate
you know the silo our abilities so each
one Maps is something different and the
Rogues case knowing that you’re using
cunning action with your bonus action
you’re using sneak attack with your
regular action and you’re using your
dodge effect on Canada what the one that
cuts damage in half with your reaction
don’t really have an action left to put
stuff on top of so that’s why you solve
the Acrobat we attach it to your
movement it’s a different part plus it
worked well with your on your your
cutting action options so maybe this is
a reaction we are then saying that this
is a fighter who doesn’t make a lot of
opportunity attacks so there’s that but
maybe these are more defensive so you
feel like well I could op e or I could
do this thing that also would really
really help save my team so that’s
something which we’ll have to think of
as we go forward I want to take a look
though at let’s question this right is
it we said earlier we want to avoid
buffs I wrote it down over here if you
can’t read that it’s what’s highlighted
avoid buffs then I buffed you is this
design underselling what we can do my my
inclination is to say no that I really
think that this fighter needs to be able
to heal it needs to be healed really
well because I think otherwise you know
I want this character to feel like they
can bali support a cleric and that if
you don’t have a cleric this is an
option you know for that can help fill
that gap not as well and not to the same
full depth because in that case you’re
just you’re duplicating the cleric like
what the spiders as good as a cleric and
as a fighter that might be too good but
I think that our our avoid buffs thing
why
I think we’re doing a good enough job
with it like these things over here
aren’t I think just the fact we have
this terrain based effect field doesn’t
feel like a buff it feels like this is a
plan right I like the idea that it feels
like go to this spot to get your AC
bonus because that’s where the warlord
is you know has put their plan down that
doesn’t feel like a buff to me in play
that feels like a Smart Plan I feel like
the warlord is shouting something like a
former shield wall or watch out for each
other you know things like that you
stand here stand there watch out you
know watch your flank you know things
like that it feels more like that’s
that’s that’s our defensive formation
rather than necessarily just we just
have plus two AC does matter where we’re
standing that’s more of a magical effect
so I think this is okay this is
something though again we would this is
one of the things where playtesting is
important yeah we can get these numbers
exactly right it might just not feel
satisfying it might not feel right to
players they just might feel too much
like yeah I’m just throwing around lots
of dice that might be fun but remember
go back to one of the keys of subclass
design does that make me feel like the
person that this subclass is trying to
portray so I think we need this but I’m
not sure if we have exactly the right
flavor for it yeah another way to look
at it might be to with those dice so I’m
gonna be this is something here you know
maybe you can spread dice across
tactical focus so I might say look let’s
say if we took these numbers is true so
at forth level I have three uses of my
inspiring or insightful heal whatever
ability each one is worth to D 10 maybe
I can break those dice out so I have two
allies in the air my area of tactical
focus I give one at one be ten heal I
give the other one a one D ten bonus to
damage not to you know maybe their next
damage role or whatever it is the now
another thing immediately as I describe
that do I just want this to be a flat
number that’s another thing we could
look at too rolling a d-10 for healing
can be well ten percent of the time it’s
really irritating timber so no time
you’re really happy so maybe this is
something that translates to a flat
bonus too it could be a die for damage
and a flat number of hit points if it’s
used as healing and again with the XS
turning into temporary hit points so
that’s another thing to look at – but I
kind of feel like if we tie the
we tie that into our area of tactical
focus and I do kind of feel like this is
the warlord keeping an eye on the
battlefield barking commands giving
insight lending advice inspiring people
and then obviously this would work here
at certain points I can you know give a
shout in a quick kick and get you up you
know pull you off from the edge of being
conscious but yeah I do you know the
other interesting thing about that too
if you’re the tactical player that does
mean that if the wizard in the back gets
hit and you need to heal them you’re
pulling your tactical focus from the
front line to the back where the wizard
is that might be something that is a
tactical player is now a fun puzzle to
solve that might be where you say okay
guys you know I was using this ability
where we can’t Oppie so we can move
around and keep that door covered but
the wizard just got skewered by a thrown
spear so I’ve got to put my tactical
focus back here so I’m swapping the
ambush so if a monster gets through at
least we know someone can pop over there
and try to keep that wizard protected I
have to admit this might be really bad I
get really nervous when I feel this
excited about something I just said
myself cuz it’s probably maybe something
that just really appeals to me and no
one else or maybe I just did say
something that’s interesting but I think
that yeah you you know applies only to
area of focus so you’ll notice something
to that as we’re talking through this I
started making references to rules we
haven’t written down yet like you can
move your tactical focus once per turn I
need to make sure I write that down
because that’s just something that feels
like if I let you move it as often as
you can
I’ve undermined a puzzle that the player
might want to solve so move once per
turn
that feels important to me because he
and that’s what you know the warlord is
a tactically cunning character but
they’re not invincible they don’t get to
just throw their weight around
everywhere there could be cases where
that lucky crit from the ogres thrown
spear the secret door that opens and a
goblin comes bounding through it turns
out that the the villager that you’re
escorting to the forest was a werewolf
right so when you’re dealing with the
enter cap Ambler suddenly he Wolf’s out
and what do we do now is the where
can attack the party is the word I was
gonna go bounding out into the woods who
knows but we have to be ready so now is
the warlord I’m I have to make what
could be a really interesting choice and
I think that’s what I’m aiming for for
this player interesting choices
interesting choices I don’t think are
right for every player some players just
want to bash a monster over the head
with the biggest weapon they can find
some players just I want the highest
armor class and I’m going to stand at
the front and protect the rest of the
party others are I just want to throw
the biggest heels those players aren’t
really interested in in interesting
choices they want fun choices they want
to have make a big impact on the game by
throwing that fireball or bringing that
paladin up from two hit points back up
to 98 in one action they feel like yeah
that’s how I feel like I’m a hero and
I’m contributing all the players want to
puzzle right it’s not just okay get to
my turn and throw that heal I’ve been
waiting all game to make the difference
they want to have the feeling of wait a
sec I saw something that other people
didn’t see I want to spend that time
when it’s not my turn really thinking
and analyzing what’s going on in the
game and coming up with a smart plan so
this is a sub class which is aims to be
interesting in that sense that you’re
gonna make up you’re gonna weigh a few
factors then make your decision in some
ways you could think of it as the
difference between an option that has a
low skill scene ceiling versus one that
is a high skill ceiling something with
the low skill ceiling we’re saying is
it’s just here to be fun pretty obvious
how to use the abilities go out and
enjoy a high skill ceiling says if you
play this poorly you’re not gonna have
good results but if you start to see the
possibilities and start to make those
connections you could have a really
powerful character and so I think it’s
keeping in mind I think when we’re
talking about the warlord we’re talking
about that kind of player who wants to
think I want to work at this I want to
play this character and feel like I’m
getting better at this character as I go
up in levels because that to that player
is why I’ve solved a puzzle and now
dungeon master give me give me more
puzzles right give me more tactical
situations and that’s something that
gets that player to feel really happy
and engage with the game and then best
of all we’re doing this ready because
we’ve pitched the warlord as like the
hey I have a cunning plan it’s making
everyone else at the table feel like
they’re having more fun too it’s not
just hey I had the most powerful
character in the party and I just stomp
on everything it’s AI have a really
powerful character and
really what it’s doing is making
everyone else feel really powerful but
the Barbarian who if we use this ambush
ability who scoots across the
battlefield and then Wallops the you
know the orcs that tried to make the
ambush the warlord gets feel like the
hero cuz I had that idea the Barbarian
players like haha I did it I was the one
who moved over there and block that off
teamwork go right you have two players
feeling happy with that expertise rather
than just saying hey here’s the
Barbarian who deals lots of damage and
then here’s another higher skill ceiling
damage character who’s just dealing more
damage because this player solved the
game we want to try to avoid that you
know we’re thinking of low skill ceiling
versus high skill ceiling characters we
want to try to give them different
niches we want to make them feel
distinct we don’t want to just double
them up because this isn’t a competitive
game competitive game all bets are off
in that case right what we want to say
is hey you just started playing grab
that low skill see ceiling character
build that low ceiling deck because
right now you’re in the lower ranks of
skill your skilling up but as you get
your skills as they improve and you
start to feel like hey I’m kind of
bumping against my skill ceiling here
okay now’s the time I want to play
something that’s more tactical has more
options more moving parts and I’m gonna
slowly expand my ceiling and add in more
difficult options I mean I think that’s
why games like Magic the Gathering work
very well you can build your deck and
then all through deck as you play or opt
for a different type of deck team-based
games do this all the time you see there
are some characters that are great
dinners characters that are better for
more advanced players it’s to me it’s
great design because when a designer can
pull it off because you’re building a
nice roadmap for your players and you’re
letting them settle in at the point
where they feel like they’re having the
most fun and so yeah this is skin
especially as Dede ages right it’s um
where we’re approaching the 4th
anniversary of the launch of the game
the relaunch of the game so yeah I think
at this point people are starting to get
that those legs under them they wants to
be a bit more challenging doesn’t mean
we want to leave new players behind but
doesn’t mean we need to keep we need to
pay a little more attention to the
higher end of things while ensuring that
we’re not doing anything that shuts off
the lower skill levels of the game in
terms of mechanical mastery because we
know it’s all about keeping all the
categories
players happy and making everyone feel
like they’re getting fun stuff to play
with so that is where we are so you’ve
got essentially we’ve got our warlord we
have a few ideas we got this had this
idea of the the tactical focus always
another side to it expect the the the
tactical focus should grow with level so
it’s a good way to make you feel more
powerful plus gives you more flexibility
so I feel like that would make sense as
we become more skilled you come more
flexible and let’s see the I’m gonna
take a quick load over your chat if
we’re gonna see any questions that
popped up I may have missed one or two
but the yeah I think overall I’m happy
enough where we are with this that I
think I I’m gonna take a pass on doing
some more abilities and do a full
write-up and we can talk about next week
and kind of see where we end up the now
I think what’ll happen is as we design
more abilities that’ll give us real
insight into like are we on the right
path the proof really isn’t in the
design can you make stuff like we’ve
kind of built our structure we know
where our poles are where we get to put
stuff it’s like we just build our
shelves now do the books we’re going to
put in those shelves do they fit and are
we happy with them so yeah the other
capstone hundred 400 foot radius around
you counts through tattoo the area yeah
that’s that’s when now we go to like a
little school age that happens right
it’s everywhere the so yeah I think
that’s where we are with the warlord I
hope that was interesting I hope really
I hope this is a class that feels
interesting like I said this is really
what we’re aiming for some a it feels
interesting and is a puzzle to play and
yeah I’ll write this up for next week
and we’ll walk through a little bit more
detail on those special abilities see
where we ended up and see how is this
playing with our healing effect and are
we happy with how all these pieces are
working together yeah so that’s what
we’ll see so I’ll see you next week I’ll
have some more completed design probably
flesh out some of these abilities just
enough so I can start building out some
more specific tactical though these
cantrip level abilities and spell like
abilities and we’ll see what we ended up
with and we’ll see how it’ll works too
other so that was Mike Merrill’s happy
fun hour or happy fun 55 minutes as we
have 5 minutes to make our transition to
the next show I hope you enjoyed it I
know in the past I’ve asked if you have
suggestions for classes and subclasses
hold off on those right now I’m locked
into doing the warlord again for next
week
the following week then we’ll reopen it
to request we’ll see what comes in and
otherwise I keep designing keep gaming
and I’ll see everyone else I’ll see you
all next week
Turns out this flight was exactly what I needed to crack the warlord. It’ll be fun to talk about tomorrow on the Happy Fun Hour.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) March 13, 2018

For the curious, one of the moments I live for in game design was captured today when I talked about the warlord needing to move their tactical focus to heal the back rank wizard. Struck me something that might meld player and character thinking together in an elegant way.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) March 14, 2018

Order Domain Cleric subclass and Giant Soul Sorcerer pt3 – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

February 28, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

good afternoon twitch and welcome to the Mike morels happy fun hour I am your host Mike morels I am the creative director on Dungeons & Dragons and I’ll be guiding you through the design of a new subclass for a different character class of Dungeons & Dragons each week so as you can see up on our screen right now we have two things first we have our notes from last week on our giant soul sorcerer and on the left of the screen least as far as I’m looking at it we have our handy-dandy browser open to D&D beyond.com which we’ll be using as our reference throughout the show as we work on our sub class and that reminds me of one of my tips I’ll probably repeat this multiple times each week so if you’ve heard it before you’re gonna hear it again when you’re working on anything with D&D or any other role-playing game or any other system you’re working on never assume you remember details correctly always look things up to always tread cautiously and carefully before moving ahead with your design and always verify that way what you think is true is actually true so let’s take it away so last week we work on the giant soul we talked about the sorcerer and I’m introducing a little bit of a change we’re gonna try something a little bit different this week because I felt like I mean I really enjoy doing the show but I also wondered how much of the show were you watching me look through spell lists to pick the right spells that we were gonna give to the giant soul sorcerer so we’re gonna do something a little bit different with the next subclass which we’re gonna talk about this week but we’ll get to that when we get to it and so yeah the oh I see this soul spice V or v miss did you don’t worry about calling me mr. morals I’m just morals or you can call me Mike the I’m actually I shouldn’t say I’m not that old I am that old so I guess if you want to call me mr. morals that’s okay but being now that I’m in my 40s I guess that’s who I am whether I like it or not so yeah let’s take a look at the giant soul now I haven’t really worked this much since last we met and what I wanted to do here was just do a quick review to show you where we are cuz I think what’s gonna happen next you know I thought a little bit about what I wanted to do this week and I think we put enough work into this one that what I’m going to do is probably for next week take these notes and then kind of show you how it turns into the next step of text because I feel like in looking through this with the giant soul were in a solid place it really does need to be played tested now if you weren’t with us last week one of the big points we talked about and I’m gonna highlight it is this first level class feature we know from play test feedback that people feel that the sorcerer is just being sold short a bit on spell selection but we also know that at one point in this play test of the storm sorcerer we gave the storm sorcerer a bunch of extra spells to augment that list the feedback though was it really made the players handbook sorcerer subclasses feel very weak so we didn’t want to just repeat that we want to address the issue but we want to address it in a very specific targeted way that makes the new subclass in this case the giant soul where we’re doing this feel balanced feel reasonable we don’t want people who are playing the existing sorcerer subclasses to feel left out so what we ended up doing was taking a look at the low levels of a sorcerer and it really looked like now we can’t say for sure we can only verify this through play test but we felt that it was at the low levels that the sorcerer was really feeling that spell selection pinch having only two spells at first level really just felt like you didn’t have that flexibility that you might want in a spell caster especially if you’re playing a campaign where you’re expecting to see a wide variety of challenges so what we settled on was in addition to giving giving you the dragon sorcerer type hit point boost basically plus one hit point per level to reflect the sort of innate toughness you’d expect from a giant we also gave each of our different giant types a couple of additional spells at low levels to help bridge that gap and what we wanted to do was make these spells feel thematic for the type of giant and then to build that sort of mechanical ladder that theme that runs through the subclass that really tells you this is why this sorcerer is distinct from other sorcerers so that’s where with that looks right that’s really the big lesson to take away from here is in thinking of designing things for an existing game to really have an understanding of how is the game currently functioning how do the players think of that function are they happy with it do they see it has a shortcoming and then to consider if you want to try to make an improvement because that’s that’s a dangerous word in dealing with subclasses improvements because when we improve things we make them better and if you’ve played any game you know that often if we make things – good – much better if that’s proper phrase iation it leads to things being broken now in Dungeons and Dragons for fifth edition we consider things to be broken if four players at least if a player selecting the option makes the other players at the table feel ineffective or overshadowed it’s okay if that’s within a character’s area of specialization if the fighter has the best armor class at the table we’re okay with that but if the fighters armor class is so high that that character never takes a hit unless it’s a crit then maybe we feel like you’re starting to overshadow people so it’s that line between feeling like my character is really good at this and then feeling like my characters too good at this and often we find that really comes down to perception that we can mathematically prove at least as much as you can mathematically prove anything in a role-playing game that something’s output is similar to something that came before but if it feels too good then that can cause friction because DNA is a cooperative game rather than a competitive game that feel that idea of teamwork that idea of people feeling they’re coming together to play the game rather than coming together to oppose each other it’s important that fairness in some ways overshadows balance for D&D so that’s where we left off and talking about the giant soul for a quick recap we had at first level we increased your hit points we gave you a couple of spells then we came into six level this idea of the sort of spell rage concept it starts out at six level with this idea that whenever you cast a spell you get some benefit based on its slot so if I cast a second level spell I would get a benefit saying okay it’s for second levels better than if the benefit I get for casting a first level spell and this was the idea that truly really make each giant feel distinct and also give you a benefit that really pop up quite often and then at fourteenth level this idea of a spell range then going from a constant benefit from your spells to this idea of I can actually become a size large and then I get a raft of benefits with that then an 18th level allowing you become size huge for you to literally become a giant at 18th level so that’s where we settled on that and this is actually a subclass and I mentioned this you know I think last week I’m really curious to get this one out into play testing because I really want to know how do people feel about this that we’re giving you a couple of extra spells it’s not quite to the same extent that the storm sorcerer went but it also is it we I am treating this essentially as a class feature you know I the other sorcerers especially the dragon sorcerer they get an armor class boost at this level we’re replacing that armor class boost with a couple more spells so it’s be very interesting to see how people react they feel is as fair as it balance does it interesting is it worth it or is this just really patching a hole and people really feel like they’re not coming out ahead of the game at least ahead of the game to the extent they’d expect to after picking up their first subclass features so I take a quick peek in its schatzie let’s see what do I got any questions coming in through here if it wants to throw something up there because I’m about to roll out I’m gonna move away from the giant soul sorcerer and then move to our new our new so class we’re gonna show and like I said it’s a little bit of something different the I decided that well I want to try this right this is the spirit of game design we’re gonna experiment a little bit rather than necessarily watch me do a lot of typing this week there’s gonna be a lot more commentary the oh so a question for Todd Todd Kenny okay Todd why not large at six level so my main worry here is when we think of multi classing letting you become size large it’s probably gonna make you really good in close combat now just flavorful flavor wise that’s what we’d expect six level though makes it a little maybe too easy for a barbarian or a fighter to dip into this to get those benefits and then stack them up with there already you know impressive combat abilities really want this to feel like there’s the sorcerer is shifting modes and maybe acting the way the sorcerer normally doesn’t what that means is those benefits happy really big to get you from being more of the backline caster to muscled ignored your way up to the front and smacking down monsters those benefits if I give them to a sorcerer might make the source store an effective close combat character giving them to a barbarian or a paladin might make that character very powerful so by planting those at 14th level you can still go ahead and multi class I believe at fourteenth level and this is hey we’re gonna check what did I say earlier I can’t exactly remember where it is the fighter and barbarian oops I want to go oh you know what I’m gonna go to fullscreen mode because actually I’m so used to using this in full-screen mode that when I when I goes let’s take a look at the fighter so at fourteenth level as a sorcerer let’s take a peek when does the fighter get their additional attacks and they get them at fifth level so in theory at fifth level they’re I can reach you know 19th level I can combine the 14th level feature with those extra attacks I’m willing to let you do that at that level all the characters are kind of supposed to be broken we’ll talk about that later it’s not really necessary topic for right now but I’m ok with it at 6 level though that means I could reach 14th levels of fighter so I’m looking at I got my second extra has come online now and I’m stacking that so I’m getting three attacks and I’m stacking it on top of a size increase that just might be too good at that 17th level area just you know it’s one of those things where it just might be too appealing to two characters especially for the Paladin so let’s another quick look let’s see all right so I think we’re good here the Oh kira de or I hope I found that right acrobats a little bit I’ve been struggling with a little bit so I’m gonna be honest I’ve been distracted by other shinier things and so why not uh I’m not gonna beat around the bush let’s show you the shiny new thing I want to show you this week so like I mentioned earlier I was a little worried that with the giant sole we were spending too much time just looking through lists of spells so I took a little bit of a change of approach here I actually went ahead and designed a full subclass leading up to the show so I’m gonna show you the first draft of the text and then walk you through a bit of commentary on how I entered it and if you’re looking if you’re sharp-eyed observer might be able to see if you take a look at my window here you might be able to see that window that’s full screen lurking right behind the fighter right up here I don’t know if anyone has ever noticed that but boom cleric of order so this idea came from a discussion I had last week with James Wyatt James is on the magic team and we’re talking about cleric domains and we talked about how cleric domains have evolved over time I used to be when cleric domains as a concept called domains first showed up was in third edition prior to that there were spheres of magic that what the priests class category could access and then a cleric had a sort of a little bit of a different take on it than the druid but that really drove your spell selection one of the things we talked about how was how in the third edition you would pick two domains so domains gave you a benefit and then a list of spells and the way it would work is often you might say while my cleric is a cleric of tier the Forgotten Realms god of justice so I might say I have the war domain and the log and they would give you a sense of okay I’m war cleric I’m pretty good at mixing it up and leading the fight and my the DD I follow upholds the law the idea was you’d use a combination of things to express your character now in fifth we went with just you pick one domain first for ease of play so someone just said I want to be a cleric of the God of War they would just pick the war domain and also to give us more design space by making the domain selection one choice it gives us more essentially spots in that character progression chart to drop in abilities to build on top of each other and to make that one choice bigger but one of the things we didn’t do in fifth edition that we had done in Prior additions was this concept of alignment based domains now as I mentioned in third edition since you’re picking two domains you could imagine a cleric picking war and good would feel different from a cleric who picked war and evil or war in chaos so that was kind of that blending idea now we can we moved away from that because we were looking more just bigger higher concepts like war you know the Sun healing things like that but we talked a little bit about those alignment domains and is almost a little of a challenge like how would you implement those good evil law chaos domains and fifth edition and so thinking of that the I thought well what would the law domain look like and so I what I settled on was this idea of the order domain now before I go too deeply into this as you can see the new done it’s all it’s all written up nice and pretty I want to slide over to Dini Beyond and walk you through a little bit of the cleric character class to give you some insight into the thinking behind domains and that the classes design as a whole because we really wanted I’m gonna just flat-out say I think from my point of view admittedly bit of a biased point of view but I think the cleric was is one of my favorite character classes not necessarily that I play lots of clerics but I am probably happiest with the design of the cleric overall I feel that it has a very good Union between the core class and what it provides and the domains and the flavor that they provide I’ve talked before about the difference between if you were here for the rogue episodes a sub class coming in at third level and what that means for the power level and how much of an effect it can have in a character’s identity I think that the other type of design where the sub class comes in at first or second level really works well here for the cleric and I think the cleric is a great example of why that first level design can really work it adds a bit more complexity but it also really helps identify not only who your character is but what your character class is about the oh so quick question low wisdom check was there ever an idea for personalized domains for particular Dedes of fair room this is actually something we’ve talked about a bit and I’ll touch on it a little bit no no I’ll just tackle it now the you guys will play D&D before I’m assuming right you don’t necessarily need me to go into too much do you tell what the cleric is but um we we are sort of split on that on one hand creating domain specific to deities has a lot of Appeal because it allows for something that’s very flavorful and it’s very locked in for the story the drawback is is just the volume of design we would essentially have to tell players there are certain deities that we think are important enough that we want to give them full support as distinct domains and other ones that are more generic and so like that’s a little bit of a concern because it those concepts aren’t necessarily portable – but it’s I think in a setting where there was a limited number of gods that would make more sense in a setting like fair rune where you have a pretty wide Pantheon you have deities that could be regional in nature you have multiple deities but with different twists on them for instance for dealing with magic you have a Zeus and then you have mistre they both deal with wizardry but they deal with it in different ways there’s a lot of subtlety there but it’s sort of that’s that’s interesting and usefulness for storytelling so I think for fair rune we move away from it you know we we’ve we thought about it but we just fell it would also be really difficult to balance and that’s another important consideration now I didn’t say impossible the right I said difficult it means we have to spend a lot of time on it to get it right but the challenge is when you look at something like that balancing task you have to ask yourself what are the benefits of getting it right and what are the benefits of getting it wrong if we get it right we have really great domains for people to choose from that are nice and flavorful but you could also argue you could just spend that time making more broadly useful domains and make more players happy the other side of the coin too is what if we get it wrong what if our balance is off do we then have a world where say suddenly everyone’s playing a cleric of mistre because herb domain is the best and that’s not necessarily a concern for all players but it’s something where it can throw off the narrative enough that we’re worried about making things so story specific that we end up with a sort of a world where things are almost like to specifically broken if that makes sense having the war domain be kind of considered the best is a little bit easier because you can say well I want to play a war cleric because let’s say I’m worried about characters output I want to be really powerful that’s you know I like playing characters who are really effective in D&D and you pick the war domain but then you might say well my cleric is a cleric of tier or my cleric is a crusading cleric you know normally this deity you know doesn’t have a war domain it doesn’t offer it my clerics are real crusading cleric of that of this temple so you can write your own story we don’t want to put players in a position where they feel like in order to build that more optimized character that the story has to be very specific now it’s not perfect you know there’s big things that we have a miss or doesn’t quite come out the way we want but we generally when we think of those failure States we want to try to create an of design approach such that if we make a mistake it isn’t pushing the game in two directions that are really far from where we want to go I like to think of this is a it’s a subtle but important tool and in game designers tool box is to think about what happens if everything goes wrong how much damage have I done here how far off from the mark does the game end up it’s not something that’s fun to think about it’s like let’s think about total failure what will happen but it’s something that can be useful because what you’ll learn from it is the idea of scope what is the scope at which we want to operate are we making domains for specific deities or are we making them just more for concepts that then can be applied across a number of different story elements and clearly that’s what we settled on was we don’t want to be in a position where we’re narrowing the story too much for players especially because we know there are players who enjoy making optimised characters and it wouldn’t be fair to them to say well if you want to play a cleric who’s optimized here’s the one story choice we don’t want you to feel that those two things story creation and character optimization have to be at odds ideally you can do both now in an ideal world we’d have plenty of options when you think of optimizing a character you have multiple paths to get there it’s not just one clear right answer but we also have to accept to the in the world of optimization there is probably going to be one thing that’s just going to be the best simply because you’re just you’re running the numbers right the dps on one character might be 10.8 and for different character it’s ten point eight five when you’re dealing with matters of math there is just going to be something that’s going to give you the highest value but if we can keep those values close enough we’re not making you feel like the right now the right answer is just this one answer where someone’s damage per round is ten and this other options is thirty you know and this the the second highest option is you know twelve that’s when we get and that goes back to the discussion of what’s really broken in D&D you know those characters that make everyone else the table feel like why am I here I just feel ineffective so yeah so that’s where we some so simple question but I hope that answer kind of shed light on a number of different design processes so let’s take a quick look at the cleric as I mentioned I was very happy with how this class turned out it was one of the first character classes we worked on in 2011 or 12 a very long time ago at least that’s what it feels like in the games history you know the idea that the cleric it’s probably just conceptually one of those classes that lends itself the style of character class and subclass design we embraced for D&D so taking a quick look here the this is a character class that like the Warlock like the sorcerer you make your subclass choice at first level now another thing to point out is that in building these character classes as far as the core class progression goes spell casting is actually kind of nice because it does a lot to define the core of your character class and often we just build the subclasses in the gaps that the spell slot progression creates so for instance you’ll notice a third level the cleric does not get a class feature because we consider gaining access to second level spells that’s its own class feature that that is that’s equivalent in weight to putting a media ability here and so you’ll see that throughout the the character classes that have full casting progression they tend to have a lot of what look like playing spots that are really being taken up by access to higher level spells now it doesn’t happen all the time for instance at fifth level your turn undead ability gets an incremental upgrade we don’t typically see those sort of incremental upgrades to existing abilities as being worth a full character class feature so that can sit alongside gaining access to third level spells so let’s take a look at the core of the class the interesting thing about the cleric is and this was actually something there was a lot of discussion about in the design the cleric out of the box only gets access to light and medium armor this is a case where you know this is another interesting sort of design element of Dungeons & Dragons and something that I think is unique to D&D and a lot of games you can choose your armor and then your armor might affect the skills you take or some of the spells or abilities you can use so you can kind of think of your armors helping define your build its thinking especially like in video games which say like a game like Skyrim that might have a more and approach to character development where you pick the skill areas that you want to specialize in either by using those skills and play or by spending points that you earn in D&D we have a level system so you just earn experience points and then you you gain a level and that just gives you your new abilities the challenge we had was we knew some people wanted to play clerics who were wearing robes and more spellcaster ii and other players want to play the more traditional D&D cleric who was upfront mixing it up in a fight with heavy armor a shield and a mace what we decided was to make heavy armor a benefit that domain that would rest in the domain rather than the core class what this meant was it gave us a little bit of a lever to play with in domains domains that don’t give you better armor can give you some additional benefit as opposed to the ones that give you heavy armor and when we get to the domains I’ll show the light domain and how that uses that otherwise you get spell-casting clerics prepare spells from the full list of cleric spells your domain also gives you access to some additional spells that you have essentially prepared all the time so it extends number of spells you can cast now having said that I want to double check to make sure domain spells you always have it prepared so yes I was right that’s an example of I made the assumption but once I’m designing I’m gonna double check to make sure I have that right that it’s not just being added to your spell list it’s a spell that you constant you always have prepared and ready to go next up its second level so you’ve gotten your basic spell casting and you get your access to your first sub class elements channeled divinity came in primarily because we knew that turning Undead which is a funny phrase right if you play D&D you know turn undead like make undead creatures run away if you don’t play Dean do you think turn Undead oh my cleric turns into an undead creature but it’s just one of those phrases that has been in the game since the beginning so we just keep using it it’s just one of those it’s not a bug it’s a feature it’s distinctive not irritating this is something we just felt was so iconic to D&D clerics that all clerics could get it it’s essentially a an additional ability that floats on of your spell-casting it’s similar to a spell in the effect it generates and if I remember right do you can use this with every short or long rest right when user channel channel divinity you must then finish a short row long rest to use it again so the interesting thing here is that since turn undead is can be fairly narrow very useful if you’re in say burrow via dealing with accounts trod in his minions not so useful if you’re battling say a horde of works or an evil dragon the domains typically give you an additional ways to use this so if you’re have no use for turn Undead there’s something that’s iconic to your domain that you get to use it I always like this style of design because I think it’s fun to give you something that in the core class that then the subclass provides a twist to if you remember back to the Acrobat with the through the rogue we really tried to make sure the acrobats abilities blended very well with the Rogues cunning action that you felt like okay I’m using my bonus action and then later on I’m using my reaction to avoid damage we’d really want to make sure that that subclass didn’t step on the core classes toes in some ways channel divinity is the opposite we have an ability here that is essentially you get a charge of magic to use to some end this is an area where by giving you more options because the initial option is so narrow giving you a new option that’s more broadly useful does feel like a powerup because I’m taking something that’s very narrow and making it much broader we come to destroy Undead these are this is an augment to your turn undead feature and this is just dealing with a the the tradition in D&D that higher level clerics can instantly destroy weak Undead it’s also giving you some benefits you know as you gain higher levels we assume things like skeletons and zombies you’re encountering them in larger numbers letting you simply destroy them makes you feel more powerful but it’s not really messing with things gain balance wise 1/10 double divine intervention this is a kind of a weird ability but it was something we just felt was so iconic to as far as house rules went or thinking of how people thought about the cleric this idea that you have a link to a deal and you can call upon that God for aid now the interesting thing about this is this is essentially power neutral because the cleric is already a full casting class we don’t take divine intervention and think hey this is actually a load bearing all into this class that’s delivering reliable power it’s really more of a ribbon and a design ribbon is anything that we give you that is really just there for flavor or for storytelling it’s not something that we see is whoa you know the cleric about intervention you’ve got to use that correctly to play your character right we don’t see it that way but that’s it that’s it for the cleric as you can see it’s pretty light but what I like about it is it’s light but it’s delivering things that are very iconic there’s a wide variety of possible clerics you can play and so the the core class doesn’t carry a lot what it does carry is things that really can map to any deity and one of them channel divinity maps very well to being something we want to play with in our subclass design and I wanted to take a quick look before we go over to the order domain and talk about that for the second half of the hour I wanted to show you something here in the light domain so this is a good example in the light domain of the cleric who’s more of a caster to start with you can see we’re giving you spells are a bit more offensive in nature you get fireball as a third level spell the cleric throwing fireball that’s something that’s not really common in D&D especially before third edition burning hands at first level another AoE flaming sphere and scorching ray wall of fire flame strike we’re giving you spells now the important thing to start with is first we try to balance all spells at any level any third level spells in theory if it’s used at the time where it’s correct for the spell or appropriate is balanced with any other third level spell so daylight while it’s not the offensive punch that fireball has it can shut down creatures that are really dependent on darkness or creatures of generating magical areas darkness when used at the right time it can really tilt and encounter in your favor or in fireballs case you can just blow up a bunch of guys and that’s always useful as long as you’re not it’s not a diplomacy encounter but I guess maybe that’s a good way to end the diplomacy encounter and turn it to a combat encounter the other element here that comes into play is warding flare so this is the benefit that the light domain cleric gets now remember this is the cleric who’s not getting heavy armors they either need a good dexterity so there’s a little bit more pressure on their ability scores or they’re just they don’t have the defense’s other clerics have so what this ability allows you to do you get it first level when you’re attacked by a creature within 30 feet of you that you can see you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage of the attack role causing like to flare before the attacker before it hits or misses so basically you create a flash of light to distract on who’s attacking you you can use this feature number times equal to your wisdom modifier minimum of 1 you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest so essentially what we’ve given you is a little stockpile of miniature shield spells it’s not necessarily as reliable as the shield spell where you just know I’m getting an AC benefits gonna turn it into a Miss but it is nice to give someone disadvantage that you know typically speaking that’s like a swing of kind of like equivalent to minus 5 to hit ish it’s not quite that simple depending on the bath but that’s that’s a good rule of thumb to use but that’s a good example of we’re taking away your heavy armor giving you some more offensive spells and other clerics would get but still keeping you balanced because the other clerics are throwing around equally powerful support spells but and then giving you this to this benefit that you know in some ways it’s you know when you use it is actually probably better than armor because for instance you can cancel out a critical hit so we now has to roll to twenties to score crit on you rather than just one with the one the yeah so that’s one important thing to keep in mind about the cleric if that armor it’s something it’s pretty subtle you might not even notice it but it’s there and it is something that we redo way that access to heavy armor as a pretty nice benefit at first level for clerics so with that in mind let’s take a look at errors in our subclass so as I mentioned earlier I went and just did the design work here and we’re gonna try this out I’m gonna walk you through the design process and then I feel free in the comments on Twitter on the chat here just let us know how it’s going how this feels compared to the other approaches we’ve done you know with anything the first this is still new right I think this is only our fourth episode so we can expect we try to tinker with our format a bit to really find the right mix but like I said I was a little worried last week that we’re spending all the time just looking through lists of spells and I want to make sure that the hour we have we’re getting as much interesting content out there so the order domain so the challenge was could you take the concept of the alignment based domains of 3rd edition and convert them to 5th edition style domains and I started with now to take a quick step back because I thought about it I realized we already sort of did this chaos is essentially reflected in the trickery domain in the players handbook the idea of that low-key style cleric who is not necessarily trustworthy has got a little bit of a flavor of the rogue character class attached to it so it kind of is I thought about it I thought I don’t need to do a chaos one because I think if someone was to say I want to play a chaos themed cleric I’d suggest trying the trick we do main but the important thing there is the idea that rather than thinking of chaos just as chaos the concept of randomness trying to think of it a bit more well what’s the story intent there what type of character embraces chaos now it might not be a perfect match you might think that just a pure entropy cleric would be interesting but I think that’s maybe the direction I take it is well okay if it’s some it’s a cleric who’s just all about things ending or falling apart maybe I’d go more like a word like entropy and build around that but I felt like I said but I was I felt like trickery was already close enough I didn’t want to go in that direction good and evil as I thought about it felt like those are domains that kind of get gobbled up by domains that would feel not quite story correct if I tried to match an evil character to them so for instance or a good character now we don’t really have the good one the ones that wouldn’t feel right for a good character because just by default we assume and from what we what we’ve seen from players is they like playing good at neutral characters evil characters just aren’t so popular that domains like light that just naturally feels like a good domain you could imagine an evil cleric of light but it’s not it’s a bit of a stretch it’s a bit of a unique story there yeah you could totally do it but it’s not necessarily the first thing that springs to mind things like the healing domain again that you could imagine okay you could imagine evil healing cleric you can tell that story but it’s not the default and it takes a little bit of work to kind of think of one I’m not impossible but it’s not it’s not reflexively what you think of so that is what we came around to law and as I thought about it what I really wanted to do for my campaign this is actually also why this is kind of built up a bit my own campaign I wanted to do a cleric who could really encapsulate the deity orifice the goddess orifice who was the patron of civilization and as I looked at our lists now go back to DNA beyond real quick I didn’t quite feel that any of our existing domains were matching quite up with what I would thought thought of when I thought of civilization but I thought when I thought of civilization I thought leadership someone who helps build communities and preserve them and like war tempest tricker acknowledged great none of those quite matched up so whenever I have the opportunity to do get paid to do some game design work of my own campaign I typically take it so that’s where we ended up with this idea of the cleric of order now I did initially think about civilization but as I looked at our roster of deities I didn’t see too many other cards that I felt were really good matches for by taking the concept of civilization and asking myself well what are the underpinnings of civilization is there something that is more a broad concept and that’s where order started to come in like one of the deities who want things neatly shelved the deities who want people to obey the rules and especially deities who want people to obey their edicts that’s when things started to feel like okay this is coming together so my example deity list includes bein a rathus vultus from Grayhawk who’s also a deity of the Sun and that’s something where when we think of that like Oh shouldn’t focus also have the light domain well yeah and we I would think of it as in a temple of focus or the in the Holy Orders of focus there might be deities who commune with the Sun and those are the clerics of light domain and then but Voltas is also very lawful neutral very controlling he may have deities or most more I’m Dedes clerics who are more like inquisitors and that’s where this order domain might come in and that provided some fuel there too we Joss is another one the almost somebody is not the opposite of vultus but sort of a dark reflection a deity of order but also of death Orion from Eber on and mcglue biet and Asmodeus some are sort of evil gods really made sense Asmodeus being the head of the nine hells its ruler and often worshipped as a deity and mcglue be it being this sort of conquering deity who destroys Pantheon’s and claims their worshippers as his own really wanting to enforce the order especially through his Hobgoblin followers so the idea that I settled on was this idea that the gods of order and I’ll read a little bit of here trying to be the entire thing but the gods of order to promote obedience to the law above all else and I’ll just focus on that thing there that’s what they’re looking for is people should obey there are people who issue orders and there are people who obey those orders and the important thing here is because this is law it’s not good or evil really we’re looking for the deity to give us that flavor that we don’t necessarily care about the moral weight of the outcome we just care that we’re following the rules now a lawful good deity with a who offers the order domain might say well the laws should be just but we’re gonna rely on the laws to tell us what’s just we have our own sense we don’t want big people making judgment calls we want to make everything very clear in plain a lawful evil deity might say well these laws should serve me or should serve the powerful to keep those who obey the order should be kept in their place and those who the orders should benefit from their work you know things like that now there’s a lot of different ways you can slice it but that’s just this idea that when you’re creating a domain it helps to think what are the different expressions of it across different alignments and across different types of deities a good domain in my opinion is one where you can imagine a wide variety of deities well not so wide that they have no links but a good a good array of alignments can fall under it now for order order we’re not really thinking of any chaotic deities that they probably just don’t fit in and that’s okay because we want our subclasses to be distinct if a subclass could encompass everything you’re really probably more talking about a character class at that point so that’s we’re looking at is someone who feels like they are in charge we just assume that if you’re the cleric you’re probably not someone you’re following orders probably from other people in the religious hierarchy or from your deity or from the deities edicts whether it’s through a holy tome or through a government or perhaps even like a royal bloodline that you’ve been sworn to uphold and obey but this cleric is probably someone who is more in the position of I am issuing orders but I am doing so in the interest of imposing order and keeping the law intact so the first thing when I touch on is this is a character class that I wanted to give the heavy are a heavy armor too and I thought a little bit about this and where I settled on that why I thought that was a feature this character would need was I really felt that within the deities who offer this domain the ones I listed earlier I felt like they would expect their clerics to be out there in the front line leading okay it’s getting back to that idea of leadership that these clerks felt like they would be that sort of crusading or Inquisitor bent to them that they would deal with problems themselves if you disobeyed this cleric they might be the one delivering justice at least justice as far as they as they defined it so that’s why I went with heavy armor I’m gonna get to the domain spells in a second because actually those were affected by some of the class features that I built as I thought about it so where I thought about this runtime about this was to think okay who is this person who is this cleric who are they as a character and the image that came to mind was this idea and mentioned earlier of the leader this is the cleric who who orders others to do things now this being a cooperative game I don’t want a mechanic where the cleric just tells the other players what to do and they must obey but what I thought instead was what if this cleric gives you carrots gives you benefits if you act in this clerics best interest or at least give you tools where the cleric the player of the cleric can think of ways in which hey I can I can convince people that my plan is right or that we should do the thing that I want to do because if you work with me I can give you some nice benefits or it’s very least I can make our team work together a little bit more effectively and I thought a little bit about the warlord from fourth edition and how some of that this idea the character who’s almost like a little commander a bit of a tactician but with this cleric being less of I’m tactically insightful and more like I’m very good at inspiring others who fight alongside me so this is why I kind of I kind of take the lead here and I’m and as I thought about that oh what of it it’s almost like a target designation thing then if this cleric is has been sent to root out heresy this cleric can say there’s the heretic and point and say get them right so I kind of thought of it as I couldn’t work through it this is sort of the get’em cleric but that but the cleric this is the cleric who also leads the charge they’re pointing saying get him and they’re the first ones to Russian and everyone they expect everyone to follow them and obey so what we came up with was this idea of voice of authority so starting at first level you can invoke the power of excuse me the power of law to claim authority over others once during your turn when you target an ally with a first level or higher spell that Ally can use their reaction to make a single melee or ranged weapon attack against a target of your choice if a single spell targets multiple allies only one Ally gains this benefit and that’s where this idea was of get’em right I can throw a blessed spell on someone get them right I can heal you and say get them now the nice thing about this is I thought about it was this actually chords pretty well with characters like rogues now you might think right rogue and cleric wait this is the order cleric well as I thought about the rogue I thought well if this is a character who was sort of this Inquisitor mode he might often work with spies you could imagine like this character bursts into like there’s the evil cult that’s going in the city and he has a spy one of the cultists is actually on his side or maybe it’s the party rogue in disguise this character can you know the rogue King dive in and make a sneak attack on the leader and then this character can throw a heel on the rogue and the road gets to make another attack and use that sneak attack again now caveat not playtested might be way too good but I like the flavor of it thought this is something that makes this this cleric really feel like a leader the other nice thing is it makes your buff spells feel fun because you throw the buff on someone and they get to make immediate use of it if it’s augmenting their attacks so that’s why now I’m gonna turn it around that’s why at first level I threw bless as one of your domain spells that that being a nice spell to throw on there to really boost a character it’s also something where I threw now one other thing I threw blasts on there and then a lot of the other ones sort of deal with this idea of imposing order so command hold person spiritual weapon is one what I felt like flavor flee it felt kind of cool but I don’t know if it’s the exact right answer there this idea that I’m gonna call upon my Dee Dee’s weapon to smack the evildoer over the head or the enemy of order mass healing word just feeling like an easy one it’s a bonus action I can hit it hit the entire party and pick one the most effective character to make an attack slow being a good way to bring someone to justice so that evil cult leader is trying to get away I throw slow on them and let the rest of the party take them down such right there is slow on them then I you know maybe bonus action well I can’t do that the but anyway it’s it’s good in this idea bringing some to justice the dominate spells the same way dominate beast in person this idea that I can impose order I can force you to do things I can bring you to heal Guardian of faith this idea of protecting the faithful feeling like an order domain thing and then commune being like well okay this is a cleric who wants guidance so being able to cast that spell to get insight from from the gods felt felt flavorful and OnPoint but you can see especially at first level having blessed in there it’s kind of a pointer I thought about some other buff spells here but you know I looked at like spell like aid just didn’t quite fit in with what I wanted to want it to do so this might be something where in play tester and like a revision before going out this this might you might change a bit but it felt like a good starting point so that’s our big mechanic first level you are leading the charge and you’re really throwing buffs on your friends as much as you can especially your high damage friends like those barbarians and rogues to really lay the smack down on your enemies but as the cleric you control it so you get the feeling of a bit of the tactical smart person here right I’m gonna think about my buffs not only in terms of the party’s benefit but what could it do to really lay some hurt down in our monsters our enemies so then now the four more benefits for the class we’ll go through but you actually get three and I’ll talk about that when we get to it so it’s like a level this is where our channal divinity comes in and I actually gave this this domain two different channel divinities because I felt like it had two separate needs I wanted to address this is a I think I don’t know the proportion but we often either see channel divinity coming in at second and at sixth or coming in at second basically second level it’s almost always channel divinity to give you that flavor that way to you know that that additional utility out of a fairly and our ability and it’s six level that can come in if the second level one if we feel there’s more a broader use that makes sense the domain otherwise typically you get some sort of like static benefit here but orders demand demand was this idea that I pictured the order domain cleric it goes into a tavern it’s a rowdy crowd and this cleric just speaks a word and everyone goes quiet right he’s here to find a thief or that cult leader we’re trying to track down this cleric speaks a word and crowds listen so what I did here was I stole some mechanics from the sleep spell sleep spell it has you roll some dice that gives you some total hit points worth of creatures you can affect and in this case of sleep you perhaps not surprisingly given the spells name put them to sleep in this case it lets you put a command spell on on these other creatures so this is really meant to be a it can be really useful and in combat if just shut down a mob little I’m not just my little mob a bunch of creatures or it can also be useful in a more social situation now as I think about this this might be something where we need to specify if it’s in combat maybe it doesn’t work creature gets a saving through because I did think of this when I think of the use cases when I think of the story I often think it this is not during a fight but then again it’s kind of fun let’s maybe play test this and see how it goes we don’t I don’t think about it I want to play play test something that I know is broken because that I’m not gonna get good play test feedbacks already know people gonna tell me this doesn’t work but I also do always want to try to it’s good to push things it’s good to see where boundaries set and it’s good to take a risk sometimes on something that’s kind of cool and maybe it’ll work well but so this is where we are with your second level ability the six availability is one that’s really meant to be used in combat this is a bonus action you present your holy symbol and select a creature within 30 feet of you it should say that you can see until the start of your next turn junior allies gain a +5 bonus to all damage rules against that creature +5 might not be the right number but that’s a good starting point if damage applies to multiple creatures including the chosen one wait that might be something wrong yeah I don’t I think I can just oh whoa I see this is for things like fireballs so be thorough fireball it includes the creature the benefit applies only to that creature you don’t apply it to everything in the area of effect that language might need me clean up a little bit but that gets it there so my thing is looking at the six number one I might want to go back that makes me feel more like I want to sculpt the second one to be really more of an out of combat use because my six level one is coming in you don’t want these abilities to feel like they sit on top of each other because and the player feels like I’m not really getting a new toy I’m just getting a new way to use the thing I already have and maybe I’m happy using it the way it is now so I have to consider that there’s a chance that if I think if I kept orders demand as a ability I can use in combat I might make this something different make it not use channel divinity but we’ll see we’ll see where we get that now I said before that while there is four features really there’s only three divine strike is purely here to let the cleric keep up in damage output with other characters this is just a boost to your damage back when we designed we found that giving the cleric a second attack here was a little bit too good it also left clerics behind who are really going to be dependent on well a cleric using can trips doesn’t need a second attack to keep up with damage there can trips scale up so instead we decide we settled on giving use an extra die of damage that was enough in our spreadsheets to make the cleric feel like okay still competitive but also meant we could throw an energy type on this damage in this case force damage to give you a little bit of a you know a boost that you know a fighter barbarian doesn’t have automatic access to but really this is just divine strike is just here purely for the the math and balance of the game we don’t consider this to be a really a feature of this of the subclass per se we just really see it here because it’s what the class needs to keep up but then I had an idea I decided since this is something we just put in here is just a supporting pillar why not try to do something fun with it so it’s 17th level now remember you’re getting 9th level spells really that’s like your capstone ability as a cleric that’s like your really cool thing but you know within the domain we still want to give you something it feels really neat and really over the top and I’m just gonna confirm that right if we go to the cleric we go to our class features oh that’s right your divine intervention gets gets beefier at xx level the wanted ticket well we’ll do that later I can’t remember if that actually makes it something we we think is now actually a key part of your character or for just a flavor thing but in case it’s 17th level we want to give you a really nifty ability so that makes you very distinct because your subclass came in at first level it’s really part of defining your character we really want your awesome capstone thing if it can flow through that subclass that’s where we want to take it and this one is when you apply your divine strike damage to a creature so I smack someone with a weapon your allies gain the benefits of your divine strike against that creature until the start of your next turn so this is pretty good now it might not be quite good enough in my all that initial to DA damage is at 14 this ticks up to to d8 force but it the the drawback here is it does rely on you making a weapon attack so that might not be broad enough but this is something where I’d feel comfortable playtesting it you just try it and feel like am I being forced to make melee attacks more often at this level I’d also want to be able to cast us you know maybe I’m casting spells more often so this is the one thing here that playtesting could really show us is how does this character work and play how do I want this character to function what options my going for I can picture kind of a couple of different ways you might mainly be using weapon attacks augmenting with bonus action buff spells to get the most out of your voice of authority but I could also see a desire for this character to be using more like I can still use my buff spells as my full action and maybe there’s something where my bonus action isn’t being used as much so that’s something which this is also a good case we’re just building a 17th double character can sometimes give you some sense of okay based on the spells the spells I’m seeing the choices I have here is kind of where I think this character is gonna end up so that’s another good way to play test something when you have a new subclass is build that character for first level build that first level character did you have fun was it enjoyable do you feel like your characters effective just use that gut gut check then Inc just level that character up to whatever it like in this case level 17 obviously 18th on up I’m probably not going to see any changes maybe I will continue a level up just to be sure but it can be useful just to go through the process of okay I’m leveling up how do I feel this character developing do any obvious gaps appear going back to the rogue example that’s a really good one when when you’re making that character and you’re writing that stuff down you might realize hey I’m using my bonus actions in three different incompatible ways now I can kind of get a sense of why this might not work so the yeah and is a Gaius Octavian point seventeenth oh you have ninth double spells do you really want to be swinging your mace yeah so this might be something where it needs a little bit of work but I guess that’s something where I would probably just go over to DNA beyond make up a 17 little cleric and this is where since this domains not in D&D beyond right now I can still get a sense of what they may be like a war domain cleric might look like I might just say okay I’m gonna make a war domain cleric but I’m gonna really focus on buff spells rather than necessarily but I know war domain is it’s a cleric command that is more oriented toward close-combat so that that’s a good comp that’s a good tool to use if you you know because you can have to compete let the website automate everything rather doing it by hand it’s also very good for a quick first pass on what that character might look like so that’s what we’ve got here so I worried just about five of just a couple of closing elements where I head out but uh so let me know was this more in useful was it more insightful than actually seeing me type things out in a rough note order or was it more interesting to see some final design something that I worked on before I came into the show no to be fair to me things like a Giants law I do think about it before I come in I’m not just making up as I go I am making up as I go in some cases but there’s some specific pieces but generally I take some notes I have an idea of where I want the design to go the and I think that’s also important you know when you’re sitting down you know I used to be a freelance game designer I had a full time job I came home from work and I did some freelance you know I’d write what I found though was the writing went much easier if I didn’t use my writing time as my idea time seeing that blank page and thinking wow what am I going to put here was very intimidating but if instead like let’s say at the time I was a programmer I might doing my lunch hour just pull it a notebook and just sketch out a few really basic concepts for a character class or feet or spell or whatever it was what that meant though was at that night when I sat down like after dinner at eight or nine o’clock with that open word document I wasn’t coming to the table going okay now let’s come up with some ideas I already had some ideas that I could play with I could just start writing out and see where they took me but having that sort of pre-work those notes those ideas ahead of time to me it almost felt like you know if you’re gonna exercise is gonna lift weights you’re gonna run a marathon I felt like my warmup it’s what got me ready so now I was ready I mean it also gave me a plan right it’s sort of if you go to the gym and you have no idea what you’re gonna do just looking around at all the equipment you might just end up getting overwhelmed but if you go in knowing hey today is leg day right or today you know I’m gonna run you know it’s today I’m gonna do my you know two miles on the treadmill you have a plan you just go in and execute know that execution would be really hard but you’re already halfway there if you know what you want to do so that’s something to think of you know when you’re when you’re doing it yourself don’t come to the table you know think of the difference between time to think of ideas it might just be you in a notebook and time to implement those ideas I think a lot of times when we start out we tend to conflate those two things rather than thinking just have somebody fun with ideas and then maybe puts less pressure on you when you’re actually writing and what I also encourage you to is you know if you have an idea sometimes when you’re looking at that blank sheet of paper let that open word doc and maybe you don’t have any confidence in your ideas one piece of advice I got that’s been very helpful is throwout you put your worst idea implement your worst idea right and people just go ahead write it if it’s a class subclass whatever go ahead and start writing it and then ask yourself why is this idea bad and that might start giving you some insight into what a good idea could look like and in any case like a I’m gonna tell you it’s you know to be honest II I I am where I am because I’ve had a bajillion bad ideas we don’t get to the ones that work unless we’ve gone through plenty that don’t so don’t let that intimidate you now I know that’s easy for me to say it might be harder for you to live if you haven’t sort of been to that before but uh that’s just my my sort of encouragement is don’t let today’s failures undermine tomorrow success so anyways it’s been great I will see you all next week now I’m gonna get Gary Khan next week but we’ll still have our episode as normal and we’ll still we shouldn’t have any interruption due to Gary Khan but if you are at Gary Khan next week I’ll be arriving on Wednesday so we’ll have one more person before then but be sure to hit me up say hi I can sign a book or just chat game design and next week depending what I’ll probably good by the end of the week is figure out if I’m gonna show up with another written up one what I think I want to do too is write up the giant and show that off and finish up the Acrobat and maybe if I’m feeling really ambitious we’ll have another new one to show off but yeah so thanks a lot everyone I will see you all next week

Getting ready to go live with the Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour in about 10 minutes. This week – a little more on the giant soul sorcerer, and a new subclass. Trying something a bit different this week – I did the work ahead of time. https://t.co/kJy7uCt97O

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) February 27, 2018

Do we have to assume that Scout and Monster Hunter will not return for Fighter?

February 27, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

@mikemearls @JeremyECrawford
Hi! One question about the future of some subclasses.
Do we have to assume that Fighter subclasses like Scout and Monster Hunter will not return for Fighter?
The same with Wizard Artificer?

— Moses Lord (@MosesLord777) January 10, 2018

When a subclass moves from Unearthed Arcana to an official product, every version of the subclass that appeared in UA is obsolete. #DnD https://t.co/TfExWtzm4m

— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) January 10, 2018

but the fighter scout and rogue scout are essentially completely different things. UA rogue scout is of course now obsolete, but no reason for us to treat the fighter scout the same way.The fighter scout became the rogue scout.

— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) January 11, 2018

Giant Soul new subclass for the Sorcerer pt2 – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

February 21, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

Only one more hour until the @mikemearls Happy Fun Hour at 1pm PT! Today, Mike is working on the Rogue Acrobat and Giant Soul Sorcerer subclasses! Tune in to watch live
hey everyone welcome to the Mike mearls
happy fun hour each week I take some
element of the fishin D&D game and build
something new that we will eventually
share on Arthur Arcana for playtesting
the purpose of this show is to give you
a sense of the design process behind
creating new content for DD 5th edition
and some of the thinking behind the game
why we did things the way we did and
then how we create new content for the
future and I notice enchants someone
asked like if you could bribe me with
with Mick riddles you definitely can
Mick riddles are one of my many eating
guilty pleasures so if you can somehow
set me up with McGriddle x’ i will
definitely probably just do whatever
subclass or feature that you want for me
from the future so that’s like what one
of my one of my many culinary weaknesses
so the iifa my role in the team I was
one of the co-lead designers on 5th
edition I did a lot of the initial
design the concept behind how things
work so it’s fun to go back and take a
look at the game and see where things
are and how we got there so you might
notice right now I’ve got my handy dandy
D&D Beyond window open and I was
actually just looking at the wizard
class because I wanted to start this
week by talking about about the wizard
and the sorcerer and what we see the
difference between the two being and how
that feeds and do how people feel about
the sorcerer because I think one of the
important things is that about working
on D&D is understanding that so much of
what balances two players comes down to
how do things feel when I sit them next
to each other for instance if you follow
uh north dark a know we did a new
fighter subclass called the brute I can
show you a spreadsheet that proves I’m
gonna put proves in quotes because it
doesn’t really but it does if you look
in the game a certain way that the brute
is balanced with the other types of
fighters but what we saw in the play
test feedback people were really
negative about it because I didn’t feel
balanced can enter the other fighters
the brute had a mechanic where every
time a brute hit with a weapon that
character just got extra damage compare
that to the champion who gets more twice
as many critical hits now if I say twice
as many critical hit so you think oh
that sounds great because I must get
like I mean I’m a really good DD player
so I get tons of crits every every game
session right that sounds great but in
practice what it means is rather than
creating when you roll a natural 20 you
create when you roll in 19 or 20 natural
19 natural 20 mathematically this
doesn’t quite balance out it actually
leaves the champion a little a little
bit behind the battle master but when I
look at the battle master the brute and
the champion together they’re all
basically playing in the same
neighborhood but the important thing is
the perception is if I’m playing a
champion and you’re playing a brute
every time you hit someone you’re
rolling an extra die for damage which
means when you use action surge to take
an extra action and you hit someone
you’re getting an extra die of damage
when you’re using multi attack you’re
doing extra damage that’s something that
you get all the time when I crit yeah
sure I get I crit twice as often but I’m
only creating 10% of the time I could
through no fault of my own though you
know we I like to joke that rolling is
the plays that’s your skill as a player
in D&D right can you roll high but you
might just roll lots of eighteens right
that’s awesome
rollin 18 every time you roll a d20 or
getting an 18 that’s great you’re we’re
hitting you’re succeeding but you’re not
getting that special benefit that makes
your character stand out so it feels
weaker and that’s an important part of
game design it’s not just looking at one
piece of the puzzle in this case a
spreadsheet it’s looking at the entire
experience so the entire thing of this
sort of preamble is to get into when we
look at the wizard I want to take a look
at the sorcerer and the wizard together
so if you’re worth us last week we
touched on the acrobat subclass with a
Brogue and we’ll get back to that near
that yet I’m gonna reverse the order
from last week and then we started to
looking at the Giant soul option for the
sorcerer and I mentioned early on that
we see out there
that people aren’t necessarily happy
with a sorcerer and they specifically
think the sorcerer just doesn’t get
enough spells so I’m gonna walk you
through why I think that is and what
that means in terms of how we designed
the wizard in the sorcerer and and what
that might mean for our giant soul
subclass that we’re gonna work on
together the yeah so actually a question
here so say from Oh glorious segfault
I’m imagining that’s a glorious
segmentation fault which as a former
programmer I am very familiar with
segmentation faults the so is the brute
opie or is the champion weaker I think
it’s actually the champions weaker
because I think not only does getting
twice as many crits really maybe not
deliver the power you want it is that
element of I could roll very well but
not amazing and I never actually feel
like I’m getting my ability and that’s
not necessarily a place where you want a
player to be because if you were if
you’ve been with me the past couple
weeks or third episode we talked about
subclasses we talked about especially
subclasses that are really helping to
define who your character is you want a
game mechanic that you get to use a lot
because that starts to make you feel
like I’m thinking like my character
using the Acrobat as an example we’ve
worked up a mechanic where the Acrobat
gets to kind of do these short burst
flies flight you know sort of things
that mimic this idea of using parkour
bouncing around that starts to make you
feel like oh I’m thinking like my
character I’m gonna look at the
situation the dungeon masters narrated
to me and I’m going to think the way we
built the mechanic was it was one short
flight than a second short flight so you
can imagine your move has been broken up
into two pieces all right I want to
evolve over the ogre and then bounce off
the wall behind it and then run up the
side of the opposite wall to get up to
this ledge you’re thinking like your
character would think you’re looking at
the situation thinking oh here’s my
character would think here’s how my
character would read how things are
going on and here’s how I would act the
challenge of the champion is that key
feature you don’t get to choose to use
it it just I roll the die and it told me
now you get to feel like a champion and
then the further end of it is well
treating more often does that really
feel like a champion in almost in some
ways
makes me think of an assassin or maybe
like a swashbuckler feature right I find
a gap in your armor with my rapier it
feels a little more elegant
so doesn’t necessary speak to being what
a champion is and so that’s an important
part of the design is when you tell
someone you’re playing a champion they
can think I know what that means
I can think like that person so I can
portray that person in the game and then
my game mechanics are backing that up by
enforcing this idea that I’m going to
think like this character act like that
character and then be mechanically
rewarded by having my bonus comes into
play at a time that feels appropriate
it matches the this sort of story path
I’m going to take my character down the
and so I want to talk a little bit then
about the sorcerer and wizard in light
of all that that that preamble to get at
why do people feel that the sorcerer
doesn’t get enough spells now there’s
also another sort of kind of important
conceptual thing to think of no one
comes to Dungeons and Dragons especially
a new player thinking I know how many
spells a sorcerer should have right we
don’t have magic around us right
we know that in fantasy if you will if
you’ve read any novels or watched movies
there spellcasters who weave spells we
just know that and we know that the
stronger you are more skilled you are
probably the more powerful magic you can
wield but the details we don’t really
know so now that’s something we’re
thinking about because we want to make
sure that we’re not betraying an
expectation when we say something the
players go oh this is how this character
should work as an example we say if
you’re playing a rogue and if you played
a memo’s you just read novels do you
think oh this is my characters kind of
like a thief sort of person they should
be stealthy or at least I should be able
to easily make my character stealthy so
that’s something it’s kind of coming
from outside of the game but this is
something that I feel is clearly coming
from within the game you don’t have
expectations for how many spells a
sorcerer should have because there’s no
real common cultural touchstone someone
could point to that tells them how many
spells a sorcerer should have so
therefore it’s something in our game
that’s creating this disconnect the
question we’re humorless paradis do you
think the champion would feel better if
there was a way for them to get
advantage more often yeah that might be
something we’re for we to think of a
champion and this kind of goes back
to the the concept of feeling like your
character if we refine the champion a
bit more to be like you’re the party’s
protector you champion your champion the
sense of like you’re the person of the
frontline you’re leading the attack you
could for instance make a mechanic where
if your friend gets hit and you get
advantage so therefore you can maybe add
a little tankyness to it and you’re also
telling the champion character maybe you
don’t want to be an archer maybe you
want to be someone who mixes it up and
close now that might spawn some other
issues of since this is a player’s
handbook subclass and one that’s meant
to be easy to play do you want to tell a
player hey you’ve picked fighter but now
maybe we kind of told you with type of
fighter to play but it is you know it’s
one of those things where you’ve got to
really think through the full player
experience and one of the things we have
now we have four years of experience now
almost with the game being released we
can see a lot more of these sort of I
like to think of as like lower tier not
the sense they’re less important but in
the sense that the game might look fine
then you play it for a year then you
realize oh this is something that maybe
isn’t quite working or you bring in new
players and you’re really getting a lot
of new players coming in and you’re
starting to see a little friction where
when you’re doing a play test especially
early on with with fifth most play tests
the public play test was conducted by
you know people like yourselves even
playing D&D for a while probably we had
tests with new players but that’s more a
group of four new players have come in
we observed them they’re not gonna be
able to find although issues with the
classes that’s just not practical
alright so let’s see I want to go in and
talk a little bit in the sorcerer in the
wizard and note that perception issue so
the challenge we have is people look at
the sorcerer and they say not everyone
but this is the general trend sorcerer
doesn’t get enough spells so we have
this thing to ourselves we think this is
a problem that’s coming because it’s
within the game itself
people aren’t arriving to that
conclusion based on movies or comics or
something like that so let’s take a look
at the other classes and the immediate
comparison is the wizard wizard and
sorcerer very similar not in how they
kind of look but kind of the role they
play in a story and this is pretty easy
using my handy dandy dandy beyond links
I can just go right to class features
and let’s take a look how many spells
does
wizard yet so I go down here to
preparing and casting spells well
actually let’s take a step back under
the spell book at first level I get six
first level wizard spells
that’s a pretty good number right it
probably lets you take a couple
offensive spells some that are more
utility or that are kind of speak to
your character’s nature or background
and maybe a couple defensive spells but
that’s a fair number right six it’s
pretty good alright if I said my
fighters walking around with six
different weapons you might even think
that might be more than I need but what
the wizard me now spells a lot of spells
if you look at the list things like
charm person versus fireball well not
fireball first level it’s a magic
missile very different use so you can
kind of see why we arrived at that
number we want to give you some variety
so let’s take a look at your spell slots
here can you get your spell slots like
everyone gets and you can prepare the
wizard spells equal to your intelligence
modifier plus your wizard level all
right so at first level if I’ve had the
16 intelligence I’m preparing for spells
that’s kind of interesting right I have
six first level spells for which I’m
gonna prepare it first level let’s
assume 16 intelligence maybe three even
if you’re playing a wizard of the 15
intelligence if you’ve said I want to
play I’m gonna choose a character who
doesn’t get a bonus to intelligence but
I’m gonna try to drop my highest stat
they’re probably fifteen or sixteen
that’s still half that’s pretty good a
typical player might say I wanted a
shield or Mage Armor say maybe magic
missile or sleep and then maybe
something that’s a little tricky like
charm person and then I know I have a
bench of three or so spells or two or
three I can go back to depending on the
nature of the adventuring day you know
we’re back in town investing in a
mystery I know what spells I want to
prep so we see the wizard as a pretty
fair number of spells to start with and
you can prepare prepare enough of them
to feel that real sense of flexibility
now the interesting thing about this
though is that the number scales up with
your level basically one per level right
it’s intelligence modifier plus wizard
level so barring increase increases to
intelligence score I’m going to be able
to prepare one additional spell per
level so I don’t like to go to 20th
level as a comparison point because it’s
that’s where things kind of already know
20th levels meant to be a little broken
but let’s say 10th level by then you
probably have an 18 intelligence or 16
we’re looking and I have prepared 12 or
13 spells so in 12 of 13 and then let’s
take a look at the spell book and this
is why we always look things up because
I’m trying to remember every time I gain
a level I believe I add two spells to my
spell book so she could confirm that
though and I’ll take a look at shad I
don’t know what kind of delay were on
but if someone in chat wants to chime in
how learning spells our first level and
higher each time you gain in wizard
level you had to wizard spells so I
started with six every time I gained a
level so I’ve gained nine levels in its
first level that’s 18 additional spells
I’ve added for free
I got a spell book of 24 spells that’s a
lot of spells I probably have a lot of
either either I’m doubling up a lot of
like offensive spells because I want to
do a lot of energy types or adding more
and more niche spells knowing that since
I can prepare my spells each day I can
cover a lot more situations kind of have
a core of spells I see as my this is how
I play a wizard I have my core spells
and so to define my character and I have
a lot of more specialized spells that I
use as the situation warrants okay so
that’s a pretty good number of spells
we’re thinking you know a good
comparison I’d like to do sometimes is
to think of a trading card game like my
game like Magic the Gathering if I have
a deck of 24 cards that’s a fair number
of cards it’s not a full size a typical
magic deck I believe is 60 cards but
once you account for land you’re looking
more like 36 cards or picking typically
I’m sure there’s people would tell you
otherwise but it’s just the basic rule
of thumb I’ve used so those numbers are
kind of looking similar by the time you
get to level 20 you’re probably to be
you know you’re adding 10 more to that
it’s not unmanageable but essentially
we’re saying it’s on the higher level of
complexity level in terms of how many
things to track so here we go let’s then
compare this to the sorcerer so I’m
gonna go back to the top here go to my
capes over here to character classes and
go down to the Sorcerer’s let’s see what
the source was getting
in comparison so let’s go to our class
features so everything is very handy
Dandeli linked over here very easy to
navigate so let’s take a look at spells
known well okay first level you know –
first level spells so right now we’re
going I know two verses the wizards six
of a spell book and preparing probably
three or four so I’m clearly behind the
interesting thing about knowing two
spells – is if we think of a sort of
classic three categories offense defense
and utility probably gonna have to
choose one category I just don’t have
that spell and then more importantly I
don’t have that reserve of my spell book
to fall back on once I’ve chosen those
these spells that’s it so that’s pretty
straightforward and then looking at
let’s see so then we have a spells now
in column so that’s pretty handy dandy
we can see we started to and we’re
gaining one spell per level now the
challenge here is that’s like
essentially well I’m at half the rate of
the wizard in terms of spells I have
access to whether it’s getting to I’m
getting one in terms of preparation it’s
almost the same the wizards adding an
intelligence modifier where the sorcerer
your charisma doesn’t doesn’t factor
into it it’s just this is the number you
get so you can see now how that’s
starting to create a real feeling that
the sorcerer feels really cramped when
you think of those three categories when
you think of comparing it to the wizard
what the wizard it’s almost I don’t know
say what the wizard would might be
overly generous we’re giving you a lot
of flexibility and with the sorcery
going from all this space to play with
his wizard – now a very tightly
constrained space it’s a very dramatic
change and I that might be what we’re
looking at here is the real root problem
is the comparison is just so steep now
practically speaking once we get to 10th
level I do have 11 spells known that’s
probably enough right it’s you know if
we look at it break it down by level
that’s about 2 per level I can take with
say when I hit 9th level I can take a
fifth level spell
attempt I take a second fifth little
spell in terms of hitting offense
defense and more utility spells I have a
little more flexibility but there is one
thing to keep in mind the sorcerer has a
lot of pressure at low levels to take
spells that scale up and here’s why when
I’m taking that first spell for my next
level you know I hit third level I have
access to second level slots I’m only
gonna have one second level spell to use
them on I choose something that’s a
utility spell that’s all I can use my
second level slots on unless I say chose
a spell like magic missile that spell
that scales well or even a spell like
shield that actually doesn’t scale but
it does because it makes an attack miss
which is probably always good but it
does mean that you’re spending a lot of
time as a sorcerer worrying about your
spells because you can see that there is
essentially a not gonna say correct way
to do it but there’s a optimal way to do
it which if you do it optimally you’re
gonna have a lot more fun than if you
make some choices that you end up
regretting so there is a little bit of a
landmine here and with the wizard we’re
so generous that you can just ignore
that with the sorcerer we’re so
constrained here to think about it a lot
so I think that’s why we see that that
perception and that complaint about the
character class that you really it’s
really feast or famine there really
isn’t a middle ground between these two
classes it’s almost like you know the
two edges of like a letter U and we’re
missing the middle ground so this brings
us back to the oh and someone asks do
you get a if you pay for DME beyond to
get access to more than one subclass I
believe if you buy this they’re
different resources so right now I have
this as everything loaded up into it so
it’s it’s up-to-date and current the but
you do have to pay for Zenith ours and
to get access to everything I believe
that me someone in chat will correct me
but the but so we’re dealing with
something where as a sorcerer you really
have to manage us a lot at higher levels
though and this is where we might now
have a way forward for our design you
see if you remember back way back in the
misty days of 2014 2000
fifteen we play tested the storm
sorcerer and storm sorcery is now in the
game it showed up in the Sword Coast
adventurers guide and we also picked it
up for Zenith ours it was fairly popular
and people liked the theme so we’d
wanted to make sure it’s something that
was more widely available originally
this sorcerer at first level got a list
of additional spells we said oh great if
you play a storm sorcerer you get someti
Matic spells like lightning bolt you
just get those for free because we knew
people were complaining about how
constrained the spell selection was but
you know in the end of the day we were
really nervous about making that the
actual official rule because we didn’t
want to create a sorcerer subclass that
seemed so much better than the ones that
came before it and we really didn’t want
to go back in errata The Player’s
Handbook because while the sorcerers
choices are constrained the class is
still balanced mathematically and it’s
not perfect but we didn’t feel the issue
is big enough that we had to go back and
issue a major errata and then make these
people feel like they had to buy a new
players Handbook
that’s always when you think of the
balance of the counterweight we want to
make a change is it worth going out and
telling people you might want to
consider buying a new players handbook
has to be a really big change and it has
to have a huge qualit quality life
improvement for everybody not just for
someone who wants to play a sorcerer we
also know that people do play sorcerers
it’s not a case where just no one’s
playing the class maybe just not as many
people it is also when you look at the
perspective on the game looking at all
angles you can still play a wizard you
might be disappointed that you wanted to
do go with the sorcerer but didn’t you
just didn’t want to have to wrangle your
spell’s well then you could turn around
and play a wizard play a similar
character and still have a good time
with the game so it’s not perfect but
it’s not at a point where we really need
to get everyone to go out and update
their rulebook but whenever we see a
demand where someone’s like hey I like
this class to do something along these
lines in this case have a little more
access to spells we try to meet it now
what it means though is we have to be a
little more tactful of what we’re gonna
do
I think the mistake with the storm
sorcerer was to just give you a whole
raft of
I believe that really the sorcerer
problem exists mainly at low levels
it’s those first couple levels where you
just feel like I’m not getting enough
spells or feel really constrained I’m
not feeling like a powerful sorcerer I’m
feeling like a character who keeps
having to make really narrow really
limited choices and it feels like it’s
really imperative fun with this
character class so all that in mind
really less than there being context is
everything especially in game design
let’s take a look at our giant soul
sorcerer and let’s see if we can solve
this issue here so last time we took a
look here we had this idea that the
Giants all sorcerer would have a sub
selection within it that let you pick
which type of giant your character would
have a connection to we settled on this
idea that the stone giant would be a
little tougher and tankier the fire
giant would be a bit more offensive
oriented and that the frost giant we a
little bit more control oriented now the
question here from like in 1:20 why do
you not just release a UA with extra
spells that was something we that we
thought about having an optional rule
but we thought it would cause confusion
because it would just create a what
seemed like an instant upgrade for one
class and then we’re sort of back in the
position of like okay everyone has a
player’s handbook here’s something we
kind of expect you all to have which and
a lot of times this goes back to a new
player someone coming into the game with
the first time we don’t want them to
feel like in order to play the game they
then they bought their players handbook
they now need to go do a bunch of other
stuff we realize it’s not ideal for
players like you know people who see
this as a problem hey you solve this
problem for me but we do have to when
we’re talking about anything that’s
changing the players handbook that’s to
solve a problem for everybody not just
for a subset just because it can cause
confusion or resentment and so and like
I said it’s a class that’s in a kind of
a funny position because it is sort of
competing with the wizard so it’s not as
high a priority you know it doesn’t
carry as much weight as say let’s just
say we had something completely bonkers
broken the fighter had some ability that
said you have +10 AC that some
we horribly messed up an end up in print
that would be something we’d look at
changing because it might be a big
enough magnitude that everyone would be
happy to see it changed so thankfully
thank the play test we didn’t have
anything bad that messed up show up the
players handbook so what I’ve done is
sort of walk you through this in a show
I think the problem really rests at low
levels what that means is I feel a
little bit more confident now
introducing a option as part of this
character subclass that can give you a
few more spells but it’s not going to
just be like here’s a bunch more spells
to be a little bit more tactical and
then hopefully if we’re doing this right
a bit in flavor for what we’re talking
about for these characters and it’s
gonna have to come at the cost of a
little bit of power because we know we
don’t just want to say blanket wise this
subclass is better or more powerful than
the other ones very well very well may
end up there we don’t want it to be
obvious we want to be more in the sense
of where as close as we can get to
balanced and functional so that our play
test is as productive as possible so how
do we thread this needle okay so here’s
what I’m thinking we talked about and
this is actually now I’m gonna also show
this is where I get to feel clever so we
talked earlier about at first level
because your giant soul we feel like
okay I like the idea giving you the +1
hit point per level to make you feel
tougher we’re stealing that from the
dragon sorcerer but I felt like it’s
also Giants and Dragons they’re both big
tough monsters excuse me well what if
instead of doing this AC bonus thing
here and plus offense and plus control
we just made this some additional spells
we gave you that fanatically fit in with
the Giants the nice thing here is if we
think of let’s just say durability these
are pretty easy things to latch on to is
this as a sorcerer and at first level
with your spell selection so constrained
you’re gonna get a lot of mileage out of
the spell cuz we’re saying you know an
additional spell or two so this is
that’s the path I’d like to go I don’t
think it changes the higher levels yet
and actually in some ways it might mean
that the higher levels we might tap into
those spells again to encourage you to
cast them but let’s take a quick look
here go to
spell list just scroll the top yeah oops
okay I see I made the spell I made the
window smaller so I don’t have quavering
out spells official spells let’s go by
class and let’s say the sorcerer I don’t
know if I want to go so far start giving
you non sorcerer spells but let’s start
with a sorcerer level so we’re gonna
take a look at spells by level here we
go
just took it first and let’s filter all
right so here we go so what I’m looking
for is a spell or two I’d say 1st and
2nd level with a 4 stone giant I want to
make you more durable for the fire giant
I want to increase your offense and for
the frost giant I want to make you a bit
more control so the idea is you know
these spells should be thematically time
tied to both the giant and that concept
and I’m giving you some more tools to
play with now normally with you we are
giving you more ways to use your spell
slots so it’s an existing resource we’re
giving you more options for so this is
why this probably isn’t good enough to
sit on its own it sits alongside the hit
point increase giving people more ways
to use their existing resources is
really for most players they feel like
that’s not that’s somewhat power neutral
if you were here or last week and I
talked about the the sorcerer the idea
of using your sorcery points having more
ways to use them just doesn’t connect
with players that’s probably another
issue the sorcerer face is a bit that as
opposed to the wizard who generally just
gets things that add to that character’s
potency all right so taking a quick look
oh look burning hands this is easy right
so for fire I’m just gonna know let’s
give me burning hands that’s easy it’s a
fire spell and it does a bunch of damage
and it’s in a cone fantastic
might be all we need right there then
taking a look I want some it’s ctrl e
earth tremor now this is that’s a little
that really fits stone but might be I
know it’s a spell that’s a bit hey look
we just expand it and take a look at it
this is doing budgeting damage and
knocking people prone causes a sort of
localized earthquake and it’s not quite
hitting the durability know what I want
for the stone giant so let’s just take a
look over false life this might be a
nice one to throw any
one day 4+4 temporary hitpoints the
duration it makes it tougher now you are
already getting possible hit point per
level so I’m not gonna write that one
down yet but that’s a candidate that
makes you feel tougher ice knife that
might be a good spell is this ctrl e
let’s see what we got here you’re doing
damage to nishal target if you hit then
doing additional damage an area around
it the cold thing fits but it’s not
quite hitting that control element that
I’d like like to see from Frost
it might be I can’t hit it but I’m gonna
try mage armor is an interesting choice
for the stone giant because it’s such a
useful spell a lot of players for them
it’s an instant take and this is
essentially giving you get to you for
free as a sorcerer player you might feel
like this is pretty nifty just to get
this readout right out of the gate it’s
a spell I’m gonna use a lot eight hours
basically means I expend one spell slot
and then I just keep going the rest of
the day using my other spells so that’s
one definitely to think of and then I’ve
got Thunder Wave and this might be one
that I would consider for the frost
giant unfortunately it is more
thunderous than a you know under damage
theme rather than frost it does have a
sort of control effect I’m knocking
people away from me so I’m gonna just
for now type in mage army here from the
stone giant this is one danger you have
that when you sort of dive into the
spell list you’re not always gonna find
stuff that’s like really on point for
your flavor you might have to kind of
bend things a bit so people can go okay
I kind of see what you’re doing
like for instance maybe like ray of
sickness might be you know I’m poisoning
someone but does that really feel like a
frost guy so this is an area where
Micah’s we didn’t build the spell that’s
assuming that I’m then gonna come along
and build this giant soul sorcerer we
built it just to create the spells also
one of the things I know that ice knife
is a from the elemental evil players
companion and so now what we would do if
we were printing this for a product we
would just pick the spell up maybe in a
sidebar we only assume you ever on the
players handbook so you know another
spell to consider would be fog cloud
that can be pretty useful in terms of
controlling the battlefield and it’s
pretty good utility because it does
heavily obscure an area
I’m gonna pencil it in right now cuz I
can also can kind of see myself feeling
like well Frost has to do with
manipulating water fog is you know it’s
fog it’s water vapor so there’s a
connection there so I’m gonna put that
in there for now but you know what one
of the things remember why when I took a
look at the spells I was really looking
at the sorcerer what if instead we
looked at our classes you know just
spells in general so what I want to do
here is go over to spells and she’s go
to official and let’s just go to all
spells rather than just letting it
sorcerer spells so I’m kind of throwing
a little bit more of a wider net let’s
look at first of all spells and let’s
filter them so I’m just gonna take a
quick look through hero armor of Agathis
that’s that’s that want to be very nice
it’s got a cold damage on top of it and
you get temporary hit points
unfortunately I see now this is where we
get kind of like do I want to change my
focus a little bit I might consider that
but it’s it’s this is an area where it’s
it’s a little dangerous this is a very
nice the mattock feel for like a tougher
sorcerer
it’s a warlock spell so you don’t
normally get it so it feels even more
special and I have to make sure I’m not
just letting it go cold is control like
I’m not letting that drive too much so
I’m gonna kind of put that one in my
back pocket but I also don’t to make
sure that I’m suddenly making a big
design changes just based on one spell I
have to see that consistent pattern
before I might go back and do that the
and I’m gonna take a quick they’ll
hopefully that doesn’t give you a motion
sickness as I flipped through its go to
the second page see if there any other
spells that show up that really balanced
these other these spells out of the way
say armor Agathis you know it’s kind of
feeling maybe I do want to make a change
Hicks I’m seeing a spell so here’s what
I’ll do I think what I want to do is
give you first and second level spells I
think I want to keep it to that I don’t
think I want to start going up to third
because I feel once you’ve hit third
level you have a pretty good selection
of spells and I’m not as worried about
giving you a broader selection of magic
but let’s see there’s ice knife again
lungs page armor sanctuary now that’s
not really durability it’s more
come over charm effect shields always
good but shield might actually be too
good that’s that’s a discussion when we
talk about spells sleep now doesn’t only
fit in there we’ve unseen server in
which bold all right so you know what
I’m going to do I’m gonna leave these
here for now I’m not seeing anything
that’s so awesome
armor Baga this is kind of tempting me
but then I’m also not seeing well
there’s that that earth tremor spell for
for for stone giants here let’s do this
let’s take a look at our second level
spells because I decided I want to give
you a first level spell in the second
level spell now let’s see what we got
there
for our selections so agonize a scorcher
that’s probably a pretty easy one for
fire nicely what fire is it is just
generally it’s when we think of Firefly
flavor-wise it generally does like lots
of damage so we got here 30 feet long
five feet wide big it’s a line three
date fire damage the one thing that
could be a little bit lame here is that
you’re getting you know two spells that
are fairly similar so I’m gonna write
this one down but I don’t know if I
necessarily want to keep it one of the
tricks when you’re building a spell list
like this is you want to give players
variety because burning hands can scale
up with a higher level spell slot I
don’t want to just give you burning
hands and then another take on burning
hands for a wizard this might make sense
where maybe I didn’t take an AoE spell
at first love for my first level spells
now that I’m third level I might take
scorcher because it just fits in better
with my spell selection the let’s see
what else we got here blur yeah cloud of
daggers that’s a dark vision I’m looking
for a stone spell and a frost spell the
let’s see we got here track Dragon’s
Breath ain’t just the name we ready but
dragon sorcerer it’s a good example of
like I don’t think whatever the spell
does it just feels too much like another
subclass it’s always good to be aware of
what other options exist out there and
think about just how does something fit
together dust devil might be one for a
cloud giant but we’re not talking that
yet ooh
earth bind Oh
okay so this is gonna take away
someone’s flying speed this is one which
it sounded cool earth bind oh it’s like
something kind of cool with rocks it
might be the stone giant but it’s it’s
this is clearly a spell designed for for
wizards yes a sorcerer couldn’t take
this but you’re taking one of your few
spells and saying I can shut down your
fly speed it’s pretty specific this is
probably not what I want to do I don’t
want to give this spell to you to make
you feel like you have more flexibility
if I give you this spell and here’s more
flexibility you can make people not fly
kind of telling you that I don’t like
you right I’m giving you stuff you don’t
want
so enlarge reduce might be one to look
at but I think this the spell rages are
we gonna capture that and I don’t know
which china to give it to you like all
of them
maybe we’ll see well I’m gonna get to
the end of this list and I’m gonna
figure out what I’m going to do Oh
flaming sphere here we go this is a fun
spell I love flaming spirits one of my
absolute favorite spells because it’s a
damaging spell that’s also got a little
bit of a control element to it and so I
don’t have to just give you burning
hands and burning hands 2.0 I can give
me burning hands and flaming sphere so
now I feel like there is a distinction
between these two spells the oh wow chat
asks what are we making monsters we
might do that after we do classes
because I don’t want to just stay on the
character side of the DM screen for too
long even though that’s where a lot of
of the dis content design for the game
rests we might do monsters after we do
this sub classes or maybe take a break
right well kind of we’ll think about it
maybe I’ll throw a poll up on Twitter in
a couple weeks there’s a couple of
specific classes I want to hit though
but they’re definitely like things I
want to work on and then so let’s see
rolling art along we got gust of wind I
could kind of squint didn’t see how that
could be a frost giant thing but maybe
not heat metal might be another one fire
giant one but I like the burning hands
flaming sphere divided levitate there
might be another one I keep finding ones
that are great for like the clown giant
the let’s see this is what all backs
millions earth in grasp
Maximillian please save us you choose a
five-foot Square unoccupied space on the
ground you can see within range big hand
comes up you gotta make a string saving
throw or I bludgeon you and restrain you
you know what I’m kind of think I’m
hearing seeing the writing on the wall
here I think
our stone giant might end up being a bit
more control I’m gonna worry about the
flavor later and I’m just gonna write
earthen grass because it’s new and a
spell Maximilian’s right on stream
unless you want to see me type and
delete a bunch so and I’m gonna here’s
what here’s one of my little tricks I do
I’ll put like first level I’ll put it
all in caps I know I’ve not forgotten
then I go back and try maybe I’m gonna
shift stone giant this is one of the
challenges of whenever you decide hey I
want to actually start naming spells and
subclasses you don’t necessarily know
you’re gonna find the spells because
again we didn’t make the spell lists for
this perfume we didn’t think ahead that
this is how this would work out alright
so now I’m kind of like more summing for
the frost giant but now you know and I’m
actually just gonna go back right here
in put armor Magath this because that’s
a cool spell and it’s got great flavor
so we’re looking a little bit more
durability now for the frost giant which
kind of fits they’re sort of a Viking
thing in the ordinance ort of cultural
compass that Giants use to tell them
where where they fit in with their caste
system
Neelix snowball swarm see five foot
radius three to six cold damage now
that’s fine but they see it’s a it’s are
damaging cold spell
maybe my theme I’m trying to force this
a little bit too much I might just pick
up spells that just make logical sense
rather than trying to be a fancy fancy
here the alright and that’s we got to
the end of the list so I didn’t really
find it so you know what I’m just gonna
say I’m gonna throw snow much snowball
swarm here because on the other hand too
I don’t want to get too fancy because I
am just trying to give you more spells
to help your character feel a bit more
versatile I am gonna go back there real
quick and let’s find another earth spell
so these are subject to change but again
this is always something that’s a little
bit tricky so because the spell list
wasn’t necessarily built for this so
let’s go back and let’s find a I want a
pretty good control spell so let’s see
what we’ve got here
languages try not alright not so much to
control spell I guess you could talk to
somebody tell them what to do control
them that way let’s go there with tremor
because that’s another one this is let’s
see
it is also an AoE it looks like it’s an
AoE you caused a tremor on the ground
within reach each creature of the new in
the area yeah okay so this is a little
bit area spell the knocks people over
all right that feels pretty good so I’ve
kind of tilted my stone giant to be a
little more controlling and my fire
giant guy is still like I do damage and
my frost guy is getting a little
controlling little so alright so that’s
where we are with our spells so
hopefully this is something that feels
good it doesn’t feel so good that it’s
making me regret picking other sorcerers
subclass options this is something we
would definitely have to play test right
we would have to get a really good sense
in the audience from everyone know if
they’re watching does this just make you
feel like I’m not gonna take the other
sorcerers now because this is such a
pain point for us it’s also where I
really see the design we do with
unearthed Arcana it’s really is it’s a
conversation with the audience with
everyone out there playing and DMing the
game it helps us get a sense of where
the community sits you know what’s going
too far what’s not enough you know what
hits at that point just correctly so
this is actually something I’d be really
anxious to play a test to really just
get a sense of is this a good sort of
solving the problem without making it
solved so well that you just feel like I
would just always take one of these Club
feed this subclass over the other ones
all right so we’re making you tougher
because you’re a giant soul and we’re
giving you some extra spells that are
kind of on point the for what your giant
type is doing filtering through like
okay we have these three categories that
kind of shift it around but I think
flavor-wise you know one of the things
seems the stone giant is they are
artisans so the idea of shaping the
earth and controlling it but then the
effect being kind of control affect that
fits you know fire giants work forges
that were heavy armor they do just like
to you know they’re very warlike and
frost giants do this idea of toughness
and stuff with the armor value this kind
of comes through you know they are a bit
more rustic compared to fire Giants
again they’re almost like giant
barbarians culturally alright so let’s
take a look now we’ve got six level we
have this idea that you enter a spell
range go size large
and that there’s something that’s gonna
be triggered on your spell’s
that gives you a benefit now last time I
talked we have this sense that maybe
sighs huge we’d have to come in at level
18 but remember we have to go back and
keep an eye on the other subclasses so
I’m gonna do this real quick let’s stack
up we use the dragon sorcerer as our
comparison and if this is your first
time watching what I always say we
always compare to the players handbook
because that to us is our foundation we
don’t want to start drifting by
essentially making a copy of a copy by
for instance comparing these to the
subclasses from Zenith ours like for
instance the Divine’s the the divine
soul nothing around with the divine soul
we just always want to make sure we’re
using the same test case to validate is
our design within the right neighborhood
have correct so let’s go right down the
dragon and so we have elemental affinity
you can cast a spell when you cast a
spell the deals damage of the type
associated with your drew comic ancestry
so fire for instance if you had a red
dragon ancestor you add your charisma
charisma modifier to one damage roll
that spell so you just you get to do
extra damage dragon wings at 14 you can
fly that’s really good and Juke onic
presence this is one where you’re
spending sorcery points to essentially
cast a spell so the jury is out like I
don’t quite not quite sure where I want
to drop this but in looking over these
three I was thinking a little bit a
little bit about this I don’t think we
necessarily have to tie the size
increase as something that comes in when
you start your spell rage the this is
something where we maybe can dis make it
disconnect between the two so let’s do
this let’s give you size huge at 18th
and let’s give you size large at 14th
okay I’m gonna keep that
now throw that here I don’t know this
note is and it’s gonna save it in case
it’s something really smart and then so
let’s go here it’s soso spell rage what
do you on spell rage to be what I think
what I have in my mind is that when you
spell range it’s a once per long rest
which I like it basically means you
channel the power and magic of your
giant that’s about ancestors in quotes
because no you’re not literally
descended from Giants so this is where I
can give you something that enhances
what you the nature of being a stone
giant fire giant or frost giant soul and
the other end of it too is I want to try
to give you something that’s a little
bit persistent so you activate this you
get to keep using it probably for the
length of an encounter the now the one
thing I took to keep in mind is the the
Dragons soul the dragon sorcerer is
getting bonus damage whenever they cast
a spell so I’ve got to make sure that
I’m balancing something I can use once
per day versus something I’m getting all
the time now luckily that damage bonus
it’s really useful for your can trips
it’s not as useful for your other
abilities so it’s a little bit trade-off
6 level though you have enough spell
slots that your me casting a lot of
spells I’m rather than relying on their
can trips as much so it’s a little bit
of a it’s what I think it was a lumpy
ability like it’s really noticeable then
it kind of fades away if you’re xx level
you’re probably not really stressing
about adding say you know plus 40 or
cantrip damage you’re probably instead
slinging a third level spell at somebody
but at lower levels it is something that
will have more of an impact all right so
what we had here originally was this
idea that there’s a stone giant you’d
get a reserve of temporary hit points
that might be something now I’m gonna
throw that on the frost giant because
I’m thinking it’s more about durability
so and I like this mechanic of when you
cast a spell you get some benefits so
here and you cast the spell I’m gonna
fit based on its lock keep in mind we
can’t just use level because a can trip
is also a spell and we want contra to
count toward this we don’t want you to
enter your spell rage then you’d
actually don’t
benefits from it so so let’s just say
preserve temper hip points equal to one
or let’s say two plus syllable this is a
starting point might not actually be
good enough um you know actually know
what onager little nuts because the you
know what the dragon gets it all the
time I’m gonna say you just a speller
angel lasts all the time why not right
this is pretty small right it’s not I
mean it’s nice chat am I going crazy
maybe because what I can just do right
here for the fire giant so I can just
give you the dragon benefit right and
I’m gonna say it’s actually equal to
slaw level this actually should probably
I’ll just note I want to make sure this
is a spell slot this is a case where I’d
make sure and I talked to someone like
Jeremy Crawford or Kate Welch to make
sure that i phrase this properly so we
know it’s based on the spell slot not so
if I cast a burning hands with a fifth
little slot
it’s me treating it as level five
whatever this numerical thing is so the
and then for frost giant so okay all
this stuff is gonna go in and I drop
this down here oh now we need a control
effect actually for frost giant oh
here’s something actually kind of fun
let me just drop this down plus AC based
on spell humble daddy being maybe you
get a coat of frost over you that’s
that’s protecting you
oh wait no I had frustrating this is
what stone giant apologies stone guy
getting a control effect that’s that
scales with spell level probably points
to maybe why control wasn’t because
there’s no real simple numerical thing I
can use to represent control as a
generic element of the game so I’m gonna
throw in a see just cuz I you’re made of
stone right that’s cool so this isn’t
your spell rage thing that’s just going
to recast a spell
now I’m gonna take a look here and I
want to make sure that these spells here
now if I want to be fancy which I always
want to be fancy
well it doesn’t want to be fancy right
is make sure that these spells scale but
we I don’t think I wanna spend another
20 minutes of me flipping through spell
lists but that’s something I’ll note
myself so I want these spells to scale
so that my six little availability the
next thing I’m gonna make is is that my
six of the ability works well with these
in the sense of I think hey the
situations in which I want to get this
benefit they work pretty well with when
I’m casting these spells so I’m gonna
kind of tuck that away and maybe refine
this again kind of see a it’s not always
we might we might spend a couple weeks
on this but next we’re going to do
something completely new
trust me the because we’re almost done
with this one but that’s something that
I’ll take a look back and I can I can
look at spell lists when I’m not
streaming okay so this is our thing I’m
just gonna get benefit and then my spell
rage and this is this makes me feel a
little happier with the spell orig thing
coming in because I am really worried I
don’t want a fighter or barbarian just
getting size large I want you to earn it
he hit 14th level and sorcerer now go
play as a barbarian and so this spell
orig then would be once per day I become
size large probably want to give you a
benefit to strength checks and saves
maybe just advantage but we’d see extra
hit points yeah I’m gonna give you a
bunch increase current and Max probably
by like +2 per hit died a little
question mark there I don’t think any
damage reduction here but what I might
do then is say frost since we’re all
about kind of durability you might
double and actually I think all them we
might just say this wild enrage double
the six double benefit and then here I
can eat spell rage size huge I’d let you
choose you want to be huge or large
because there might be situations where
like there’s not enough space to go huge
you never want to give someone a really
cool toy at a teens level that they then
say I don’t want to use this let me off
this thing right so boost 14th
availability and now go huge and then
what we’re gonna say is
probably extend let’s say advantage to
con checks and saves and then you know
the extra hit points can go to plus
three or you know end up with plus four
X I like doubling things and then all
and this will prior to just do is triple
six level benefit so now here we go
as I gain levels I get more untouched my
giant ancestry when I get to basically
become a giant I’ve become a in ogre at
14th and at 18 I’m a giant I’m sized
huge the so yeah that’s where we’ve got
this so really now we’ve got our theme I
take a look at chat see was everyone
like is outraged and what I got here is
this feeling pretty good right the oh
the what’s the benefit of becoming large
Furnas any core I’d have no idea for
pronounce that right we would probably
just mention that you can use weapons
size to bigger creatures which do lots
of extra damage yeah we might want to do
something here the rather than advantage
that’s a numerical benefit so I’m
getting a bonus Twilight attacks with
strength and my damage rolls because I
yeah I’m in this giant person I’m more
accurate but I’m not hitting harder it
doesn’t quite feel so damned rolls
question mark there and we’re letting
pitch works over here Mike thank thanks
i i g IG snz for the warning so but this
is why we play test right the nice thing
is it’s so easy to be wrong at this
stage this is the fight one message
anyone out there wondering do I want to
do design work be wrong in this stage be
aggressively terribly wrong because
that’s why you have people read this and
tell you that you’re wrong that’s why
you play test it and yet people tell you
you’re wrong now you do want to make
sure before for instance this is
something which we would other people in
the team would take a look at we want to
get as close to as close to balanced and
as close to perfection for playtesting
because that’s how we get really great
feedback that really digs deep into a
subclass or any other game element the
more obvious that things are messed up
the less actionable to feedback because
for instance let’s say I put this
sighs huge thing at first level it’s the
same like without size huge what could
go wrong aside from everything all the
feedback would just be this is broken
we’d get very low rate ratings people
would just be obviously look you made I
dipped into this as a barbarian or as a
paladin and then started walking around
with a size huge axe and you could
picture the character right I can I can
try can grow to size huge once a day for
a minute so you see before you a a proud
dwarven warrior with his his plate male
and his axe and shield and he’s dragging
behind him that’s like 15 foot long
battle ax what does he need that for
right okay he’s gonna grow or maybe his
weapons grow lefting into the details
and say what’s going on with that but
suddenly you’re just you’re you’re doing
like triple damage with your attacks so
that’s that’s yeah that’s really good
now quick aside why do we have that in
the system and I’m glad I asked myself
that so I can tell you the answer the
it’s to help monsters scale we know that
as monsters gain in power we want them
to have attacks that deliver higher
damage we didn’t want to just
arbitrarily decide that the Minotaur
swinging his great axe is just doing 2d
12 plus 5 whatever the number is because
we we thought and I still believe this
as a dungeon master is anyone designing
a monster you need at least some
framework to understand like why things
are the way they are so the idea we came
up with is a great axe does one d12 a
great axe for a size large creature does
2d 12 a great axe for a size huge
creature does 3d 12 otherwise if we
didn’t do that you would see creatures
like a hill giant have multi attacks or
like it’s doing seven attacks because we
need to get its damage up so it’s
actually a threat that’s appropriate to
its power level so tinkering with that
let us collapse the number of attacks
down quite quite significantly boost the
damage per attack in a way that was sort
of aesthetically pleasing and that had a
pattern to it so if you’re home brewing
hey I have a I’m creating my own giant I
liked the death giant some third edition
and fourth edition
I want to adapt them they’re gonna be
size huge they’re these cool two-headed
giant actions whatever weapon you’re
giving to them you have a pretty easy
way by just following the design pattern
we’ve established to avoid that
potential pitfall oh oh and it’s got a
multi attack of
making eight battle-ax attacks because
that’s what it needs to do to feel like
a threat to a temp double character on
its own the and so the Oh a that’s
another Graham question black ace
thirteen what’s the reason for temporary
hit points not stacking that is
basically there because we wanted to be
able to give you the ability to have
multiple features with temporary hit
points without our really having to
police them too thoroughly so we’re very
liberal with stacking in the game
because typically when I use something
that’s giving me a benefit it’s either
magic item epi’ tuned to so there’s an
opportunity cost there or I’m expending
a spell slot to cast a spell we really
wanted to try to find a way to have
healing be something that was a little
bit easier to access in the game but
once you give people the way to heal up
for free this goes back to the
perception of balance people always feel
that that’s broken people don’t like the
idea in general it’s not every player
but in general players and DMS feel like
hey if we can heal up to maximum for
free or for a very low cost and it just
feels too good it feels like we should
be paying a price for if we get into a
fight or deal with the trap that does a
bunch of damage to someone that we’re
gonna expend some resource that we can’t
just immediately get back so then I said
what temper hitpoints is by not allowing
them to stack it means we can be
somewhat liberal we can have like
features that say hey every round you
get some more temporary hit points so
you feel more durable it’s persistent
but we don’t have to worry about who I
use that outside of combat and now I’ve
uncapped my hit points because that’s
essentially what temporary hit points
could in theory let you do they could
let you access what is effectively
infinite hit points and so we just
thought to ourselves the fact that this
mechanic and it’s sort of decision tree
of things that could cause one of those
potential causes is infinite hit points
like outcomes let’s just chop off an
entire branch of the tree so you just
can’t go there in order to get
effectively infinite hit points you
would have to design an ability that
said you get infinite temporary hit
points or a number of big enough that it
feels infinite what that does is it
ensures that designers are designing
with real clarity of what the impact of
this ability might have it’s not perfect
it’s something you strive for and
building your course system
but whenever you can you want to when
you are introducing limitations to a
system especially limitations that
aren’t necessarily intuitive for
instance I mentioned earlier this idea
that people feeling when people say
sorcerer doesn’t have enough spells
what’s causing that well it’s probably
not pulp culture you know it’s not
comics or movies because comics and
movies don’t tell you how many spells a
sorcerer sure to have just this concept
is the idea of a sorcerer is pretty
generic and in D&D it it’s it’s very
specific right here is what a sorcerer
is indeedy but in pop culture a sorcerer
can be many things so people coming to
the game are learning from the game that
it feels like it has too many too few
spells rather than saying hey when I
look at all these literary sorcerers and
all these movie sorcerers those
characters had access to lots of
different spells why don’t I hear so
it’s all about when you can localize an
issue if you’re gonna include something
that people don’t intuitively know it
has to be really worth it in some other
area so temporary hit points are
probably one of those things I imagine a
lot of people play probably a I would
say 25% of D&D tables out there stack
temporary hit points so we have to be
aware of it but the nice thing is if it
isn’t a problem for the dungeon master
I’ll just play the rule incorrectly but
it’s not having an effect on play
because presumably everyone’s just going
along playing and enjoying the game if
it does become a problem
then when the dungeon master looks the
role up they see oh hey here’s what
we’re doing wrong these shouldn’t add up
it’s right there in the players handbook
therefore that’s resolved when it
becomes a problem it’s kind of we feel
like when things become a problem that’s
when people go to the book and we want
to make sure the book has a clear answer
that’s gonna improve your game you know
if you if you need that correction to
the rule that you might not be applying
correctly all right so um that’s where
we are
Oh stabby road games yeah you missed it
no we were just finishing the so sorry
about that but this is gonna show up on
YouTube I usually you should show up
early tomorrow
Pacific time in the morning well we’ll
get this posted up so I’ve got my giant
so I got to tell you chat I am super
motivated to get this up for playtesting
so I’m actually really curious II what
people think about
especially our little spell solution
here that we’ve cooked up and let
allowing you to get bigger this is one
that we’re nowhere near publishable stay
right this is exactly how how we’ll
print it in a book right like go back
and watch the YouTube channel this will
explain what this all this little stuff
means if only was that easy so thanks
for joining us and joining me this is
really great really enjoying the series
on next week we didn’t get to the
Acrobat I wanted to resolve it’s hot
it’s its capstone ability we’ll talk
about that next week and then we’ll talk
about the next character class which
might feature a special guest star in
the form of an Excel spreadsheet that
I’m gonna use to get a little deep geek
on some of our system stuff but we’ll
see we’ll see what the the queue will
look like for some classes thanks
everyone enjoy the rest of your day and
look forward to seeing you next week
[Music]
#DnD design on https://t.co/2KBortFoc5! pic.twitter.com/LuWYlRZGia

— Dungeons & Dragons (@Wizards_DnD) February 20, 2018

Giant Soul new subclass for the Sorcerer – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

February 14, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

We’ll likely feature them in Unearthed Arcana at some point.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) February 14, 2018

I’m glad people are enjoying Happy Fun Hour, but I have to give credit where it is due. I was inspired by Harlan Ellison and his efforts to demystify the act of writing. https://t.co/VrISb9Q6a1

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) February 14, 2018

I really, really hope that people watching the stream get a sense that game design is something that they can do, whether as a career or a hobby.
halo out there welcome to the happy fun
hour with Mike morels so I am Mike
morals I am the creative director on
Dungeons & Dragons and that basically
means I oversee the creation of
storylines new mechanics both for the
stuff that Wizards of the coast
publishes and that we work on with our
partners like for instance we have the
never order memo we provide them with
information or upcoming storylines and
work with them to help shape that
storyline so it’s filled with everything
they need so if you’re with us last week
or the week before you know what we’re
in the middle of doing right now is
going through different classes from D&D
The Player’s Handbook and designing new
subclasses for each of them so last week
if you can see my text I’ll go ahead and
and begin this for you
we worked on the Acrobat for the rogue
and this one was pretty interesting
designing some classes for the rogue and
other classes that make their subclass
choice at third level is always a little
tricky because just by the nature of the
character class design the subclasses
usually don’t have as much space to work
with design wise so what you’re seeing
right now on your screen and don’t worry
if you can’t read it I’ll walk you
through it with each piece but the
concept here was that the Acrobat is a
character who is very mobile maybe the
most mobile character in the game and we
hit on this idea that well what if the
Acrobat could do some you could use some
sort of flight mechanic now what you’re
looking at right now if you can read
ahead and you’re looking at the text and
reading this is represent sort of a
first draft attempt to express what this
class does as we walk through this keep
in mind that what we would do next with
this text is it would then go over to
someone like Kate well sure Jeremy
Crawford
they would review the text and make sure
that the implementation is correct that
what this class is trying to do with the
subclass is trying to do is actually
reflecting what these rules say I’ve
said this before but I’ll say it again
for tabletop game development your
programming language is English or
whatever other spoken language spoken
the written language that you’re working
in so take me look at aerial artistry
this is our third level ability it’s the
ability you get
when you first choose this sub class for
your rogue and what we talked about last
time was looking at something where the
character could essentially fly and so I
put some thought into it
and what I kind of landed on was this
idea that it would be nice if we could
express this as like rather than one
movement that’s just new flying around
to really touch on this flavor that the
acrobats really bouncing off of things
that this idea is that you take two
short flight moves each of which is
equal to half your speed now this is an
area where normally if we’re working on
this for a project product I’d be
working much more closely with the other
designers to get the wording right and
also to get their input but you can see
here the language I’ve used the opening
text is flavored text well paragraph is
labor text missing a period and then the
second paragraph starts to get into the
actual mechanic now InDesign especially
at this stage this first paragraph is
actually very important early on looking
at it if you read it for used starting a
third level you gain the ability to move
with incredible speed precision in power
few obstacles can can prevent you from
reaching your destination that’s
important even if that paragraph doesn’t
make it to the final design what what
that’s doing is laying out for the next
designer to look at this if I’m not in
the room if I’m not there to answer
questions they can read that and
understand what we’re trying to do here
now in a product what this also does is
for a player they can read that and
understand here’s why I’d want to play
this character it’s laying out the movie
in your mind that shows you here’s
what’s happening at the table not every
ability gets this and typically as you
go head to higher levels you might not
see something that’s as precise because
you already kind of know what you’re
signed up for but it’s usually useful in
that first class feature that a subclass
gives you that you can just quickly
layout here’s what this should be doing
so our taking a look the mechanics when
you move you can instead take two short
movements by flying I’m gonna tell you
straight up this parent this is the
section I just highlighted it’s probably
not worded correctly to interact the
rest of the system because we’re really
creating something new here but we’ll
just go ahead the idea is that you don’t
just fly once you kind of fly twice and
then you’ll see kind of where we’re
going with this is that each movement is
that half your speed and you must end
each one on a solid
object or ground if you if you do not
you fall and your movement and you
remove it ends the movement ends thing
is important because you might do your
first one and then we want to sort of
penalize you for not playing by the
rules of this class now the idea here is
to capture the sense and this is
something us think about a lot the
Acrobat just flying around when I was
thinking about it one of the things that
you try to consider in building a
subclass is to think what is going
through the players mind as they’re
playing the game and the more you can
make the players thoughts mirror the
character’s thoughts the stronger your
design is because that really allows
that really immersive role-playing where
you get to really feel like your
character and so what this is trying to
capture is I could just say you can just
fly your speed but hey I worried a bit
that the flavor will just be off of the
table yeah you’re gonna fly 30 feet
straight up
you know and it’s fine but it’s not
quite the flavor I was looking for but
the other thing it does is it makes you
start thinking like a parkour expert
you’re gonna look around and think okay
I have to jump from here or bounce off
that then get up to here so if there’s a
rope just dangling in space above you
it’s not just a matter of I just fly up
and grab it it’s a matter of thinking
okay what I’m going to do is somersault
off the etins head because gettin’s
about 12 feet tall let’s say and then I
can do the remaining 10 feet I can then
jump up and reach the rope and then
there’s another thing we talked about
last week when subclass abilities can
interact well with class features that’s
really fun so then you think to yourself
okay I need to move off of that creature
and this should probably say creature
and object rather than just object and
ground so I’ll make that change the
moment it makes you think okay I need to
use my cutting action to cancel out
opportunity attacks or I need to cover
more distance so I’m going to use my my
my class feature – – so that’s another
way in which those two abilities are
working together really well so I’m
gonna say you must each one on a
creature solid object or ground so there
we go
so that’s the idea of getting you to
start thinking like an acrobat to make
you really look at the environment and
think how could I bounce off of things
how can I use things that might
otherwise be barriers to other other
care
to to my advantage so I can reach a spot
where either I’m safe I can mess with
the enemy’s plan I can foil a trap and
so on even in the sort of very mundane
like you know outside of combat let’s
say you’re trying to scale a castle wall
this gets you to think of like okay the
acrobat run moves up to the wall dashes
up the side of the wall vaults off the
gargoyle that sort of mounted halfway up
the wall and is up at the top it still
helps bring out a narrative and a visual
identity in your mind that story that
looks different from say the warlock
casting a spell
you know casting a quick teleport or a
wizard using fly or levitate it feels
distinct and as drop exco it’s really
not that big of one because you have
cutting action you really cover up
either double your speed which now
essentially you’re moving your speed
then touching something solid then
moving your speed again or to avoid
opportunity attacks so that’s what we
ended up with that I also wanted to feel
really unique I didn’t wanna just be
just just fly because I just felt like
you know if you play an Eriko crow you
can just yeah why would you play this
when you can just play a flying
character so then going on we talked
about last week our 9th and 13th double
abilities really don’t have a big impact
on the character and so these were
fairly small elements they just kind of
overall augment your abilities though
you’ll see the 13th of the ones a bit
bigger but I’ll get to that in a second
at 99th oh yeah you no longer take the
image from falling so that’s just a
cover if you try to do something tricky
or you’re not you’re trying to move and
your eyes something changes like an
opponent uses a reaction to move out of
the way this kind of covers you it still
ends your movement for aerial artistry
but you’re not taking damage the net13
feather we give you a constant freedom
of movement effect this is really good
it shuts down a lot of things that could
slow you down but that kind of fits into
that flavor of the Acrobat that you’re
very agile very mobile and it’s very
hard to pin you down now this wording
what did what it says is there’s the
intro text you gain the benefits of
freedom of movement I’m not exactly sure
how how we phrase what’s essentially a
mundane character getting a constant
spell there might be a better way to
phrase that but again this is the kind
of thing where that would get pushed
over then for discussion about how how
should we phrases
what it’s also like who do we have but I
should do what I would do would I’d look
through some of our subclasses to see is
there is there a good example to look
for for the template or look in our
guide I didn’t have time to do that when
I was finishing this up but that’s
something I would do next and along that
we’re giving you freedom movement of
13th because it’s 17th level you know I
still wasn’t quite sure how we wanted to
do this 17th of abilities they’re really
good abilities in combat and as you see
I have one sentence here at 17th level
you gain the ability to leave hordes of
enemies scattered in your wake that was
me just kind of brainstorming trying to
think what’s a good idea for 17th level
I’m still not crazy about it like I get
that maybe just for balance reasons we
need to have something that’s offensive
here but for now you know one of the
nice things about this of being is the
high level ability is I can run a play
test I can think about it some more we
have enough stuff here to get a play
test after through 13th level we
actually don’t don’t even need to worry
about designing this now so I’m actually
going to leave that blank because what I
want to see is it getting real sensitive
in play what players are doing and what
they’re asking for then I can go back
and make sure that that high level high
level ability is really interesting and
useful my initial thought was to do
something where everything every
creature space you move through you get
to attack them but that I just didn’t
sit well yeah it felt kind of like it
was coming out of nowhere compared to
other abilities so I’m actually gonna
leave this one blank for now because
said what this is a great example of
play testing isn’t always about
validating mechanics sometimes it’s
about inspiring mechanics and so this is
something where what I would do next is
send this out for play test and then ask
and see what the feedback it comes back
as far as the what players are missing
and what they might want this is also
partly why sometimes you may have seen
us do play test for new classes that go
only from levels 1 to 10 because that
feedback really helps build out 11
through 20 we can go ahead and design
the entire spinner levels but if we can
we’d like to try to start like levels 1
to 5 1 to 10
because then that gives us more likely
that our extra design work will be
useful and on point so that’s where we
are the Acrobat will probably come back
at this one next week maybe I think I’ll
have time on Friday or maybe even
tonight actually I think I’m planting
I’m playing tonight so we’re gonna see
you have a chance to a try play
talk to the DM see if I can play one of
these characters and we’ll see how it
goes the so that’s where we are with the
Acrobat and like I said in your own
design don’t don’t be afraid of blank
spaces sometimes those are just things
where you could bang your head against
the wall for a while and really not make
any progress it can get frustrating
there’s nothing wrong with going off
what I often find is I work on something
completely different and that’s what
helps me get some clarity it helps bring
some inspiration I’ll watch a movie
especially just to watch a movie that
has a character that you think fits into
this so I could Jackie Chan movie would
be perfect to watch you know especially
say like maybe rumble in the Bronx one
of my favorites of his that has a lot of
instances where he’s moving around
really using his agility his character
in the movie is not like he often plays
it’s not like this big tough guy who
just goes around beating up people he’s
kind of this sort of madcap kind of
funny guy I think it’s it’s being in the
Bronx but it’s clearly Canada when you
watch the movie but it’s it’s it’s great
it’s and it’s also I mean it’s really
funny movies so it also kind of fits in
maybe what the actor at Stone would be
less I’m here to crush you and more like
oh I’m kind of doing these wacky things
bouncing off walls and turning my name’s
against each other and just being you
know really really agile all right so
that’s where we are with the Acrobat so
now it’s time to take a look at our next
class so I thought a little bit about
this I got a lot of good suggestions on
Twitter and on YouTube and we should
save this so I’ll save that for next
week and some expansions to it and let’s
take a look the class I settled on you
know I said I got a lot of really good
suggestions but what I figured what I
like to do is show off the design for
something from the sorcerer the sorcerer
is a really interesting class it’s
definitely a class okay so I like my my
downloads are right there the it’s
definitely a class that has had identity
issues in the game and we know in our
feedback overall there is some
unhappiness with it especially with the
classes selection of spells
so this is a good example of a class
where when we’re doing a sub class
having that sort of metagame knowledge
is really helpful because if you know
people who want to like the class have
some barriers between them and their
ideal version of it we’re not at a point
right now we want to go back and revise
the players handbook but what we can do
is develop new sub classes that maybe
start to fill some of those gaps to make
you feel like ok this is still power
level equal because we know in terms of
raw output the sorcerer is fine the
sorcerer can just cast the attack spells
and keep up damage wives of the
characters the issue of the sorcerer
that we see is the spell selection is
maybe too limited that we just don’t
give you enough spells now now we don’t
want to just come up with new sub
classes that are equal to the other sub
classes out there and they give you
spells known we actually did that and
initial play test the storm sorcerer
what feels like a billion years ago but
is probably more like three and players
loved it and we just weren’t crazy about
you know putting out a subclass in an
expansion that people really felt like
if you want to play a sorcerer you have
to play it play played this subclass it
is a it’s a very tricky thing to solve
because you want to make new subclasses
useful and exciting but they can’t be so
great that people feel like and this is
what I like to think it was a good new
player scenario new player comes to the
table says they want to play a sorcerer
their first answer is well you need to
buy this expansion and that’s just you
don’t really want to have that be the
default now it’s okay if the player says
I want to play a sorcerer and I really
want to play a sorcerer who can command
the elements like they’re taking that
kind of next step then we’re okay with
that because we know we can’t possibly
offer everything that’s in the you know
the players handbook can’t hit every
archetype but if the player is thinking
like you know I saw in chat someone
mentioned you know the last airbender
their thing of a character like that and
they think oh it’d be cool to put a
spell caster like that then I think it’s
okay for more experienced players to
direct them to an expansion because the
player already has a good sense of what
they want to play they’re probably not
as much of a beginner as someone who’s
just doesn’t know anything about D&D or
really has no real clear idea of what
how the game’s gonna work
so with all that in mind we’re gonna
tackle a sorcery we’re gonna kind of
look at like can we do something to kind
of address those issues without really
stepping on the toes of the the dragon
sorcerer and the the wild sorcerer to
the two of the players handbook so I’m
gonna scroll down here and take a look
at our class table
so like the Warlock and unlike the rogue
the Sorcerer’s origin that is your
subclass that is a choice that comes in
at first level like the warlock we feel
like if you’re saying I’m a sorcerer
that means something important about
your character but also it really should
be attached to an origin that a sorcerer
for a sorcerer with a draconic bloodline
should just from the beginning seem
different from one say with chaos magic
so this means that our subclasses
probably a little bit weightier than the
rogue and probably about the same size
as the Warlock the one thing to keep in
mind about the sorcerer depend other
classes the sorcerers font of magic
feature which kicks in at second level
and meta magic a third level those are a
bit weightier than maybe class features
you might find in and classes that get a
subclass choice at first level we scroll
down and take a look at those does see
your font of magic fonda magic gives you
a pool of sorcery points the key to
sorcery points is that they allow you to
create new spell slots so technically
speaking the sorcerer has more spell
slots per day than the wizard now the
wizard has a does of a mechanic where
with a short rest you can get back some
numbers of spells and that’s essentially
the balancing mechanism here the key to
sorcery points is you can use those
whenever you want they’re not dependent
on how you taking a rest and then as you
get higher level once you get to a high
level third meta magic allows you to
spend sorcery points to alter the
effects of your spell’s I’ll go straight
to the one that everyone takes twin
spell twin spell lets you take a spell
that targets one creature and instead
target two so that’s actually crazy
useful and it’s probably the one that
people take the most often it allows you
basically to spend a sorcery point
equal to the it’s the spells level the
texts are in front of me as well take a
look yep you can spend a number of
sorcery points equal the spells level to
target a second creature what’s really
powerful about this is it lets you get
around the restriction on hey I have one
action which lets me cast one spell this
says you can use one action to cast a
spell twice and a spell that normally
would cost an action secondly very
useful and it’s this is a good example
something that might be good to the
point that these other features aren’t
really smooth as much because this is so
powerful but that’s that’s a story for
another day we’re talking about the core
class and kind of the perception of it
and how it’s working we wouldn’t really
try to mess with that or here in
subclass design because it’s just it’s
not really you know hey we if there are
more meta magic options within a
subclass I’m just I’m not really crazy
about that and I’ll get into a little
bit more detail on the why but it
basically comes down to you don’t want a
subclass to compete with the core class
for resources and so I’ll get into that
a little bit more as we go further but
compared to wizards you do have this
class feature that’s baked into the core
class that’s pretty robust and as twin
spell shows is very useful so we might
not have as much space compared to a
wizard or a warlock but we probably have
more space than the rogue so going on to
our origins and against this is the
handy dandy dandy beyond I have all why
might be options unlock in this account
we get to see everything affirmed
zennith ours including some play test
material that’s uh that’s label as such
but we’re gonna go straight to gigantic
bloodline as I mentioned last week I
always like to start with the players
handbook ones that’s our reference we
might look at the other subclasses to
get a sense of what’s out there
well we start thinking of power balance
but it’s really good to start the
players handbook because we always
assume that if someone’s buying an
expansion the only thing we assumed they
they they own is the players handbook we
don’t want people to feel like they have
to buy every book to keep up with the
game so taking a peek at first level
draconic bloodline sorcerer picks a a
type of dragon it’s a chromatic dragon
the color metallic dragon the metal and
that that gives you an associate of
damage type so for instance if you to
take
you would get lightning and all the
other dragon types are listed here with
their their damage types this is a
little bit detail thing this is also a
case where we know some damage types are
better than others but we don’t worry
about that balancing wise because this
is a player choice and it’s also a
choice now we don’t want to make it so
pervasive that like oh you’re the you
know if you chose a bomb let’s say gold
and are fire that everything you do is
fire based want some things be fire
based but we always had to kind of think
of the back for mines how does this
character feel if you run into creatures
that are immune to fire and for instance
we know that fire is the most common
elemental damage type that a creature
would be immune to as opposed to say
acid poisons another good example a lot
of creatures are immune to poison there
are constructs and undead that just
ignore it and so this is the kind of
design where it’s it’s fun
players naturally a drawn to it but we
don’t want to make it so overwhelming
that it becomes so defining that a very
simple encounter just makes your
character feel like oh I’m not really
doing anything useful generally these
abilities are more additive rather than
being the meat of your character and
you’ll see that as we go through the
dragon source reckon I’ll point out a
couple places were that that comes into
play you also get the ability to speak
speak read and write drew conic and when
you make a charisma tech and interacting
with Dragons you double your proficiency
bonus these are really ribbons it’s not
really meant to be something that’s
really load-bearing it’s just something
that we figure if you meet a dragon this
is the character you’d probably ask to
interact with the dragon so it makes me
feel good for doing that for standing in
front of the giant ancient red worm that
could kill you in one bite for taking
that one for the team now we get into
chronic resilience what we also see here
is a mechanic that says at first level
your hit point maximum increases by one
and increases by one again whenever you
gain a level on this class what this
essentially means is that rather than
having a d6 hit die you have a d8 now
obviously you don’t doesn’t say change
from t6 to d8 and when you’re recovering
during the short rest you’re not getting
beginning as many hit points but it does
mean your overall capacity to take
damage is better than other characters
we also have when you’re aren’t when you
aren’t wearing armor you’re AC equals 13
plus turd X dirty modifier
for baking on which actually be with a
good dexterity a pretty pretty durable
character compared to other spellcasters
and this the idea pie this was to just
to get across the idea of the the dragon
sorcerer being more durable than other
spell casters because of that drew conic
influence so these are passive they’re
pretty simple but they’re pretty useful
we do have an Zenith ours I believe we
talked about about armor there’s a lot
of misconceptions about how this ability
works the idea is this essentially
replaces any armor that you’re wearing
or could wear or any other effect lets
you calculate your armor class as
opposed to granting an AC bonus so for
instance if you had another class
feature that said when you aren’t
wearing armor you’re AC equals 12 plus
your constitution modifier you use
either this calculation or the
constitution modifier calculation if you
had a feature that just said you gain
plus one bonus today see that plus one
would just stack right on top of this so
that’s the dragon sorcerer at first
level you feel like a dragon sorcerer
and it’s something which again you might
might not seem really active but it’s
making your character operate
differently compared to other Sorcerer’s
in a very really notable way give a
significantly better armor class and you
have noticeably more hit points
especially at higher levels coming out
of six level you get a defensive ability
the notes are traversed that you get an
offensive ability and then a defensive
ability with a sorcery point so with
elemental fit affinity when you cast a
spell that deals damage of the type
associated with your ancestry you add
your charisma modifier to one damage
role of that spell visibility is it’s
not a game changer it it gives you a
reason to use spells that are associated
with your damage type in power
calculations this is probably be treated
as effectively neutral again because we
don’t necessarily think of damage type
as being something we want to rest too
much stuff on plus also your charisma
modifier I mean that’s gonna top out at
plus five and when it hits that it’s
useful I’m not gonna say you don’t want
to use it but it’s also something that I
mean you really want to try to associate
this with a can trip so that’s kind of a
nice design element that the spells are
using all the time will be tied to your
ancestry you’re bigger spells a plus
five is not gonna make as big of a
difference as it will say on a can
troupe let me get the second half this
is the first time we see you can
and a sorcery point to gain resistance
to that damage for one hour this is
design type to us and it kind of touched
on this earlier snow will go fully into
it this is a style of design we used a
few times in the players handbook we
used it here for the sorcerer we also
use it on the the way of the elements
path for the monk and we’ve found people
really don’t like it the idea here was
you have a resource let’s give you a
subclass that lets you use that resource
in more ways what we found though is
players really overall felt that this
type of ability where I can spend a
resource I already have anyway didn’t
really feel like they were getting more
powerful they really felt like well I
still only have so much fuel that then
in the tank this is a new way to spend
it which is nice but power-wise it just
feels really power neutral cuz I could
use my sorcery points to twin a spell
and now this is competing with it this
goes back to if you member last week I
talked about the rogue and how one of
the challenges for building rogue
subclasses is the core class accounts
for your your action usually with a
sneak attack that’s what you want to use
your action to do when you’re fighting
someone your bonus action is that’s well
that’s what cutting action is going to
use and that higher levels you have you
gain to access to a defensive ability
let you use your reaction every round to
reduce damage from incoming attacks this
is similar you only have so much to go
around for your class abilities in terms
of resources where the rogue was really
consuming its actions and a subclass
that gave you new ways to use those
actions would not be as useful giving
you new ways to spend a resource that
your character cumulated just doesn’t
feel as useful because you’re already
using interests safer twin spell but by
six level you probably have a pretty
good sense of the tempo or the uses you
have for your sorcery points adding a
new one especially when you don’t get to
choose just doesn’t feel as good now
there is one exception to this it’s not
something I’d use often but I would
consider it would be designed that say
let’s say if you had twin spell might be
something here looks like hey with this
you can spend a bunch of sorcery points
and get triple spell that’s something
where we know based on feedback people
are using that a lot well okay a
basically the ability to break the rule
to use the thing you like using and then
use it
or that might be one where it would feel
it would feel good to players because it
is you know it’s not a powerup and that
you’re still spending your points but it
lets you take something that you’re
doing and then do it in a way that other
characters can’t but it’s also kind of
sitting in that idea that if you’re
playing a sorcerer and you think hey I
use my sorcery points between my spell
well now I can use it to hit three
targets at once and that’s really good
now that’s also probably broken it’s
probably maybe too good but if that’s
the kind of direction it might take
things is let you break a limit with
your resource that you otherwise had had
to respect so fourteenth of all you gain
the ability to sprout a pair of dragon
wings you get a fly speed it’s a bonus
action and then you can dismiss them as
a bonus action and there’s also the now
this is also the kind of design which I
don’t think we worry about as much
anymore it says you can’t manifest your
wings all wearing armor unless the
armors made to accommodate them we
really don’t worry too much about these
this is something which is gets a little
fiddly and it’s not balancing anything
it’s not like well if you’re wearing
armor or something this is broken it’s
more just there we’re worried about the
logic of it but I don’t think I don’t
think this is the kind of thing we worry
about it as much then an 18th bubble you
get a fairly big ability you can channel
the dread presence of your Dragon
ancestor causing those around you to
become awestruck or frightened that’s
cool but as an action you can spend five
sorcery points and they were already
like oh that seems really cool but I can
do that or I can’t win a fifth level
spell I might maybe I’d rather twin a
fifth level spell so this is another one
where this is pretty good but maybe
pulling its weight so the what I want to
do quick I took some notes irreverence
already at 1:30 so I don’t want to just
go through the entire chaos mage but the
other one is the sources as well magic
I’ve got some notes here hopefully not
the sound of my pages moving and
drowning everything out but essentially
what thickened the kidney with a wild
mage gets is the wild mage mechanic at
first level or if you roll a natural one
something weird happens and the ability
to gain advantage in a die roll that you
also gain the ability at six level if my
notes right hoping that’s right or wrong
checked I’m sure travel let me know
but it’s not it’s not too important what
we’re doing here you get 234 for a
couple sorcery points and now that to a
result at six that we get to roll twice
on the wild magic table and pick the
results and it looks like an 18th level
you get the ability to boost the damage
of your spell’s I think it’s similar I’m
gonna take a quick look at that because
my notes are not all that useful we’d
roll damage for spell and roll the
highest possible number possible in any
of the dice choose one of those dice and
roll it again so and that doesn’t cost
you any sorcery points unlike the true
conic one so what we’re seeing here is
overall compared to especially the
warlock the this this subclass not as
power not as offering as much power as a
warlock subclass but offering broader
and more utility in terms of its of its
features compared to the rogue alright
so this is great well vive give me this
entire preamble let’s actually get to
the fun part which is let’s take a look
at building our subclass so I’m gonna
open up our handy dandy 5e template as I
do every week I do select all because
this is just the filler of the different
styles and I’m gonna go through and I
come straight into our heading two and
I’m gonna take a quick look back at the
sorcerer cuz I remember how are you fine
soul sorceress origin so what I want to
do I found a little about this when we
were doing Zanna thar’s we had the
different elemental sorcerers that
people seem to really like but um
they’re playtesting was like wasn’t
quite where we wanted it to be and I
thought a little bit about that and I
also thought about had a suggestion a
couple people come in on Twitter for
doing giant soul so basically this is a
sorcerer who ties back into a some sort
of a bloodline or the influence of
giants the really fun thing about this
is that the when you think of giants we
have multiple giant types we have Hill
Giants frost giants fire Giants storm
Giants and cloud Giants so this is a
subclass that we’d actually you know we
could make a separate subclass reach
giant type or what I’m gonna try to do
here is create a single subclass that
gives you a couple options
if you’re familiar with the barbarian
the the the totem path that lets you
choose different animals at different
levels so we’re gonna do something
similar here build out a subclass that
offers you choices at certain levels you
get to choose what kind of giant soul
sorcerer you want to be and this might
give us a way to kind of get an
elemental sorcerer without having a lot
of cluttered and subclasses and maybe
give us a theme that maybe connects a
bit better than just generic elementals
I thought about doing a genie themed one
but I think that I like the idea of a
genie being a pact that a warlock can
take so maybe once we get through our
character classes we’ll go back around
and do another warlock subclass with
this relates to genies the different
types of genies so flavor text would go
here I’m gonna just basically kind of
give me an over so overview of what I
was thinking when I think giant soul but
I think we want you to do is you want
you to get big bit big and giant
probably some Cermak anak lets you grow
because you’re claiming heritage of
giants like now here’s a nice thing
large characters in fifth edition the
way the mechanics work are almost
impossible to balance because a big guy
with a sword just does more damage and
little guy with a sword because the
weapon gets bigger we have Mechanics for
that but if it’s a spell caster then
things a little bit different if we give
us ability to you at a sufficiently high
level that means multi classing is a bit
trickier you can become more of a weapon
wielder but it’s gonna be a little bit
cost and we can kind of put some limits
on this like if it comes in and like in
the double digit levels it’s a little
bit harder to just out of the box out of
the gate just run around swinging a
really giant weapon so that’s the first
thing it’s gonna be it’s also some sort
of elemental an elemental element as we
might say in the pros yeah the there’s
an element to the elemental here so you
know we got fire Giants we know we got
frost giants we know we have stone
giants we know have cloud Giants I’m
gonna be honest I think I’m gonna skip
hill Giants here mainly because the
flavor hill giants are basically big
dumb dopes we used to joke that the art
and the monster male makes them look
like almost like a giant angry baby
which actually fits because they’re not
very smart and they’re just kind of
impulsive and do whatever they want
if you have small children or interact
with them you know sometimes kids can be
pretty uh pretty stubborn and so I’m
gonna skip that for now cuz I don’t know
if that’s necessary good flavor match
but again like I talked about the
Acrobat this might be something where we
do a few of them we leave some of them
blank we might just concept out one of
them has a template then go back and do
the others and there’s also the storm a
giant the storm drains so kind of funny
because we had a storm sorcerer that
showed up in Zenith ours and also in the
Sword Coast Avengers guide so I’m gonna
tread carefully with that one we’re
probably not gonna go into it too much
because I’d want to review that subclass
and make sure it actually feels
different compared to this one now I’m
confident we can do that but I don’t
want to be like say do the storm giant
first and completely flush that one out
and then find like how I just recreated
an existing subclass that is one of the
tricky things with working on the design
is sometimes you forget what you’ve done
in other places and then it comes back
and feels like oh that’s a great idea
and you forget wait I’ll use that over
here so I’m not really gonna touch this
the the storm giant yet and then the
other idea I had so I thought about this
this idea that and I flipped my notes
because I didn’t I do think all this I
don’t just start doing it live though be
fun to kind of do that maybe so maybe
swap some episode we’ll do like an
audience participation thing I’ll just
take things out of chat and try to make
them work but but not today
I also I wrote down this phrase and if
you if you played third edition you
might remember there was this prestige
class that did this and I called its
spell rage I kind of liked the idea of a
sorcerer who goes into like a Super
Saiyan mode and maybe that’s tied to
becoming huge or big that the more giant
like you get the more power you transfer
like that you know your spells get
stronger and bigger like you get
physically bigger so your magic gets
bigger and that’s just something that we
could reflect in why would I go to a
spell range because why why not let you
know sorcerers have fun too barbarians
get to rage so why not let Sorcerer’s do
it too alright so there we go
that’s kind of the flavor begin we don’t
need a ton because we’re looking at for
class features not having quite the same
breath as the warlock and when thinking
back to the example we used with the
dragon sorcerer you know at first of all
having things that more enable the style
of play
and higher level ones that were
dependent on sorcery points which we
don’t want to do so to keep that balance
we can’t go crazy with abilities and
then a a feature that was a little it
was a nice damage boost but it’s not
really something that’s like defining
your character alright so let’s start
out what I also need to do is I got to
make sure at least one of these features
preferably the first feature you get is
something that it can accommodate
different giant types so like the dragon
sorcerer I can say okay now go go ahead
and pick your type of dragon and that’s
gonna give you something that will then
would be reflected later on in the class
so I’m just gonna write down first of
all to remind myself this is coming
their first level and what I looked at
was okay to start off the gate I don’t
want we know well we know I know I don’t
want you turning size larger size you
dude first level because that’s an
immediate dip into multi classing
normally we don’t worry about multi
class until after play testing or at
least we play test first get that
feedback then shift if I set this out
saying first of all you can go to size
large then I already know the plates
have feedback it’s going to be
I built a pallet in one of these guys
multi class and just beat people to
death with my enormous great sword
smites so we’re not gonna even try it
instead what I really like the idea I’m
gonna steal this straight-up from the
dragon sorcerer because I think this is
also another sorcerer who’s more durable
so plus one hit point per level like we
did with a dragon sorcerer sorry yeah so
just gonna steal that mechanics straight
up with the dragon sorcerer we look back
the if and see this a good example
always look things up so like wait what
is what was the stat the dragon sorcerer
had an AC I could not remember so I’ll
go look it up and it’s decks 30 modifier
I might make a constitution modifier for
a giant in fact I’m going to cuz giants
they’re not the most agile of creatures
so making a constitution further
solidifies this character is gonna feel
different I can maybe tank my dexterity
and that’s okay so I’m gonna say
something like AC bonus with con but you
know as I think about that that’s pretty
cool that’s pretty tanky but does that
apply to all of our Giants and now am I
just recreating the Dragons
like really interesting ah hob well I’m
glad I asked myself those questions
because it’s true that’s exactly what
I’m doing
but if I instead say I want this make us
a choice what I just described actually
probably works pretty well for a stone
giant that’s torn stone Giants are
pretty durable
they have rocky skin so why not say if
you’re a stone giant sorcerer I can give
you a modification to the dragon armor
class benefit the great thing is is has
been tested started I know I’m pretty
stable ground as far as power but it’s
also very flavorful I’m playing a stone
giant sorcerer I’m really hard to hurt
but then we’d have to compensate fire
and frost so I’m thinking of the three
what what you really want to do when
you’re making a subclass like this is
you want these three things to feel
really different as far apart from each
other as possible but also they need to
be distinct let me give an example let’s
say if we said the stone giant got a C
bonus with con the fire got a C bonus
with strength and the frost got a C
bonus with wisdom I just made those up I
would not do those they’re different but
they’re not different enough and more
importantly they don’t really point out
what the characters gonna be like at
higher levels we really want your choice
here if you like this looks great
I don’t let’s take the stone Johnny’s
example if I’m gonna give me more stone
giant specific benefits later on they’re
going to make you tankier because what
I’ve said is stone giant Sorcerer’s
you’re tough you’re hard to hurt and
since this is calm handed I maxed out my
con I’ll play a dwarf awesome I’ve got a
really good AC and I have a bunch more
hit points cuz you’ve just given me free
hit points and I want to make my con
maybe my second highest ad so Wow I have
a bunch more hit points than typical
sorcerer cuz I’m gonna prioritize
Constitution more than I’d normally
would and then maybe I’ll look to play a
race that gives me a Khan benefit to the
but that you know that’s a great flavor
but the other classes are just using
stats kind of at random it doesn’t
necessary say what’s gonna happen next
like maybe I guess I said fire was AC
bonus with strength it’s gonna be a guy
who’s hitting people but does that
really carry through the sorcerer it’s
not really enough within this character
class it might work with say something
like a fighter
where those stats are really important a
DEXA fighter versus a strength fighter
is very different you know an archer or
a rapier wielder versus a character the
sword and maybe Kondo Khan you don’t use
conduit axe it’s a little dicey but to
make you tanky and maybe but you know
this idea of offense defense tank things
like that those are good elements to
start from so what we want to do is kind
of take that sort of role and really
make it bigger and make it something
that really follows through so what I’ve
decided is in my notes I like the idea
of fire being destructive so what’s
something here that gives me plus
offense I want an effect that hey I’m a
fire jayam I command fire I’m dangerous
fire is usually a burn stuff it’s the
classic thing I want you to feel like
this is the option where I can lay I can
really lay down some serious damage if
I’m the fire giant soul sorcerer and the
frost giant sorcerer that kind of feels
more like control I can command ice I
can freeze people in place I can turn
the ground into 2i so you can’t move it
move over it easily I can cover things
in frost so this is something where we
right now I’m gonna walk there I’m gonna
complete this the stone giant option but
what’s important is that I’ve put a flag
in the ground for fire and for frost and
this is where I want them to go now
we’re at 141 so I want to go ahead and
do the other higher level abilities and
then if we have time loop around and
fill these out or we’ll we’ll finish it
up next week you’re kind of getting like
two or three subclasses here so it might
take a little bit longer that it’s done
in the past but the idea is when you’re
doing these these these subclasses that
have these choices within them you
really need to make those choices feel
distinct and you’ve got to make them
feel distinct as soon as they can now
this is not designed we’ve necessarily
you know a design approach we’ve always
enacted this is definitely something
we’ve learned and so but I you know it
you might be able to look back and see
subclasses we’ve done that don’t quite
follow this pattern but it’s one of
those things where as you get more
fluent in the game as you get more
feedback it starts really bringing to
focus how you want to handle these
things and how you want to present
things in a way that’s pleasing because
we get so much feedback and lets us see
what’s working what’s not and you don’t
always just want to take the feedback
and play testing on a specific thing say
okay this is numbers too big so I’ll
make it smaller
what’s really great is when you can take
a bigger picture lessons from it and say
now okay not only if I made this design
better but I’ve learned something that
can apply to my future design that will
improve it and more importantly let that
play test feedback I like to think that
as it seeps deeper into the the design
be like I mentioned earlier if I could
just let you get size larger huge at
first level I already know it’s gonna
trigger a ton of play test feedback
rightfully so that’s like this is a
broken multi class great
so people plated immediately hit
reversible and already found things that
made them go this won’t work the more
refined I am the more we can really dig
into those deeper issues that might not
be apparent immediately that might be
like you know those are the kind of
errors I could show up in a printed
product and even like a year after
publication people figure out or you
know a few or you know so it’s you want
to kind of make sure yours refined right
in the beginning as you possibly can be
because that means you can put more
polish and design that’s sharper and
tighter right from the get-go which
means you’re gonna really really zero in
on some issues that you might otherwise
have missed if your design was sloppy
you’re upfront all right so first level
that’s where you got their six level we
saw you know that this was an ability
for the dragon sorcerer that wasn’t
necessarily something that was a huge
effect you know the elemental affinity
it’s a damage bonus and I can spend a
sorcery Bob point to get resistance not
that big but useful enough and getting
use again it’s it’s really great for
your can trips so what I thought it’s
six level was the idea of Spiller age
this is actually well I’ll bring that in
and this is probably to be something
that’s a bit larger than the damage
bonus but since it’s limited use we
might be able get away with it the six
level ability being constant means okay
that’s happening every time you cast a
spell in theory you pick the right
spells so if I could give you something
that’s on a timer a rest timer I can
increase the intensity a little bit now
this would be something I need to play
test but I’m a little more comfortable
kind of messing around
also because like I said earlier this is
a class of people like it’s maybe has
some issues especially with it with the
spell selection so I’m gonna say and
spell rage that you get size large and
your spell’s
are channeled back into you as per your
giant choice so this is a useful note
because I I’m not gonna really do fire
in frost right now
but what I will basically this is
communicating doesn’t matter to me is
that I want spell rain should be
something you enter you become size
large whatever and this is why having
that category is useful so what I’m
saying is whatever that category that
I’ve kind of decided to map this this
sub the sub choice into I want you to
get better at that noticeably so for
instance for the stone giant you might
get a reserve of temporary hit points
the so that’s like okay so I want to be
tanky and be tough so great I can spell
rage and I get temporary hit points and
then you know on the other side of it
what we might say is now this is what
we’re gonna get a little tricky but this
is not quite you know we want your
spell’s to feel more powerful so there’s
a stone right we’re saying that you’re
tanky the other thing we could say also
to is when you cast a spell heal damage
so maybe it’s based on the spell slot
maybe it spits a can trip you get – I’m
gonna say double spell a slot level or
one for a cancer that might be too small
for a cancer but the numbers would kind
of like okay though those will come out
in the wash and we’ll figure out what
those numbers should be but the idea
being hey we’ve said stone giant you’re
tanky so when you spell your age you get
size large which means you get even
tougher you got some temporary hit
points and as now when you cast spells
you’re getting some sort of healing now
this is the important thing – because
then the movie in my mind as I picture
it when I picture this source we’re
going to their spell rage I want it to
be a spell rage you just go woof and
start pouring out magic as quickly as
you can and the idea here is to really
incentivize you to cast a a bonus action
spell in a standard spell you want to
throw as many spells out there as you
can because that’s giving you this
benefit this healing benefit it’s making
you tank here the the fire one obviously
want to crank up your offense and for
the frost right now there’s something
interesting here with control might not
be interesting to think about how we
tackle that one but
I’ll get myself a Lextran I’m because
we’re already 15 minutes or so left
that’s something which want to ruminate
on and this is also a good example we
might just play test the stone giant
your option to start with and see if the
concept works and then use that to that
inform design that might require more
finesse so that’s where a speller age
comes in you get big which can be useful
is actually especially useful stone
giant which we have a good AC and auto
hit points you can control the
battlefield a bit more in a fight it’ll
let you climb things you know you’re
taller now you can reach stuff so this
might be something that has some amount
of utility but it’s really focused on
making a good at beating stuff down
all right then at xiv level which i will
go here in july handy heading 3 let’s
take a quick look of the Jacana course
remember always look things up even if
you think you memorized it you haven’t
the mind plays tricks on us this is when
you get your flying speed so that’s
pretty good and I can dismiss them and
bring the back as an action it’s kind of
neutral it’s really I guess just more
for the role-playing thing if you don’t
walk around with giant wings you know so
we can fit their door as easily people
I’m just pointing go look like I have
wings right you make them disappear and
no one knows who they’re talking about
but this is actually really big ability
and speaking of big what I might do here
because I just gave you a really nice
thing is spell range size huge so you’re
now a giant now this might be something
here with large and huge coming to these
levels it still might be six level this
maybe this is one I hop out of this
class and go back to be to gaining
levels in fighter but at 14th of all I
feel I feel kind of confident I mean
here let’s let’s do a reality check here
let’s take a look at the fighter I want
to take a look at the fighter character
class when does the fighter get their
additional attack mm fifth level hmm so
that means that I want to build a guy
who’s is beating stuff down I probably
play paladin’s mites are awesome but it
means that if I put this ability here an
11th level I’m attacking twice but
tension and I’m sighs large do I want to
just say in this thing that your weapons
still still do the normal damage I could
do that but
you’re not living the dream right like
you want to live it you want have a
giant staff you’re bashing people the
head with or an axe yeah if you’re
you’re you chose a character that get
some more weapons so who I might need to
move these sizes around but I’m not
going to yet so and so I’m gonna just
put it here for now and what I want to
do here is since you get a constant
ability I don’t want to do a bunch of
other things that interact with your
spell rage I think that it’s pretty good
and I’m gonna put spell range in quotes
because we probably wouldn’t actually
call it that you probably off with some
poetic name that has some do with Giants
but here we want to give you another
constant benefit and I think what I
would do here for the stone giant is I
don’t want to do some contemporary hit
points I don’t want to compete with a
six level ability I don’t like to make
you feel like oh okay my spell rage now
is just not as useful as interesting but
I have said early on that I want the
stones ID to feel like hey my AC and my
tankyness matters I think what I would
look here is doing something like you
know now damage reduction I’m gonna type
this word it’s kind of a pain because it
makes you do math every time but reduce
damage from attacks by con Bob makes you
really tanky now I do have some where
you see about playtesting like is this
just every time I get a hit at remember
to reduce this damage at 14th level you
have to really think about a lot of
different stuff but I’m gonna leave it
there for now because it does make you
really tanky and then we hit 18th level
and this is one where as I mentioned
before the the the the dragon sorcerer
which what those navigate back to go to
our classes oops I don’t need to go PBR
exactly to go back the dragon sorcerer
option was a little lame it’s okay but
it’s you know it’s five sorcery points
to basically make people charmed or
afraid I’d rather just cast a spell to
do that to be honest so I mean it’s fine
it’s good it’s capturing the idea of the
Dragon aura but it’s not necessary
something that I’m gonna use to base my
design on and then the wild magic
version was when I roll a die for spell
damage and roll the highest number
possible I get to roll again one day
it’s nice but it’s kind of random
a lot of that goes back to if we go back
to the core sorcery class the sorcery
class we’re probably gonna see at high
levels a really nice 20th level ability
and we’re gonna see yeah so it’s a
sorceress restoration you regain for
expended sorcery points whenever you
finish a short rest that’s pretty good
it’s probably not top end it does rely
on you taking a short rest but
especially when we’re designing the game
back in 2012-13 we probably may be heard
on the side of making this weaker just
thinking it might take more short rest
than we expected but that’s clearly
these those two things are in
competition so the endcap thing can’t be
too powerful and that’s kind of why I’m
reluctant to like I’d rather test size
large coming at 6 size huge coming into
14th even though I’m really worried
about this I’m going to work the but
something at at 18th that is in flavor
but not too big and do I want to let you
I want to have it Spencer any points I’d
really rather not unless it’s something
that sorcery points can’t otherwise we
spent for but if 18th of all I mean
you’ve been to venturing for a long time
you’ve hit the caps turn this thing it’s
no way to spend your sorcery points it’s
just not exciting so what I wanted to
put here for the stone giant the stone
giant blood I could go to the stone
giant stats I’m not going to excite
looked at earlier the stone giant their
one of their signature abilities is they
can catch things that are thrown at them
and they won’t they tell the sorcerer I
can catch stuff it’s really pulling its
weight um but so what I would like to do
here is again increasing this sense of
tankiness what I thought we could do is
something that is not it’s not something
that you can be using all the time and
kind of come up randomly it’s just
something like you know when you take a
crit you can cancel it once pressed and
that’s okay again it makes you tanky it
lets you cancel out the effects of luck
it doesn’t come up super often when you
compare it to the spell the the chaos
mage ability with the wild magic ability
every time you roll a die that’s
maximized rule and extra die that’s
gonna happen a lot more than you might
think at first glance you might be
rolling rolling he hates exciters for a
fireball it means are gonna be roll one
of those dice
but you know so this is something create
you can cancel it kind of doesn’t work
with damage reduction your damage
reductions in your c’mon if you take a
crit that con want as a percentage of
the damage you’re taking is much lower
so canceling a crit can be useful now
the immediate wary with this is you’ll
forget or you’ll think well this guy
quit me for like you know 20 do I want
to cancel that will someone crypt me for
more so this is kind of more of a
placeholder and I gotta make my feeling
that these two abilities might slide
down I don’t necessarily want to spend a
lot of time thinking of this because the
first thing I’m gonna do is play tests
at first level then I want to play tests
at 6 then I plays tested fourteenth and
I know them then gonna have to either
decide this works or shift huge 18th
which was a nice huge to be really good
that can make it bigger shift large to
14th probably keep the spell rage
effects here but I can kind of see where
I may have to do some redesign so quick
recap that if I have to if my testing
shows that size large at six level is
just too good even on a limited basis oh
and I should note that’s what I’m
thinking of this is maybe once for long
rest
it’s like make it really big I’d want to
keep the special effect you get if
you’re a giant type and then just move
the size benefits down to 14th 19th what
I do want to note the hair though is I’m
gonna quit no to myself size benefits
would be really good weapon damage and
probably benefits to strength checks and
saves so the so yeah now I want to get
really I mean the stone giants the
tanking one do I want to make all the
Giants tanky like maybe maybe the
temporary points is something that all
the giant types get just for being
larger but will solve that one get to it
so this is kind of gets down to like
this sort of the down-and-dirty with
this sort of subclass design when you
have a lot of options coming into play
and then you’re touching a basically
it’s a live wire in the game system
making something large maybe we get
there’s requests all the time
people want a size large character race
and we probably we won’t do it in any
version of D&D that’s really worried
about a combat power we could easily do
it in the game where if your campaign is
not
with fighting that no problem right but
just off the shelf making you larger is
really good in tactical combat and so
it’s one of those things where it’s very
tricky to be right because it means
there’s one type of campaign that is
going to be really really powerful in
and other types of campaigns where it’s
just it’s a flavor element right your
your size large character has to squeeze
through the doorway into the tavern
stands out in crowds things like that
so this will be got so far they’ve got
giant soul which we know is all about
getting big it’s all about elemental
attunement we know we wanted to make
this more durable and they give you
special effects aligned to the type of
giant you chose we settled on tankiness
and toughness with a stone giant offense
for fire giant control for frost giant
cloud giant to come later once we get
these um figured out and this idea of
this spell rage we’re basically get to
grow to giant size and then because
magic flows through you get some sort of
benefit now the big question that the
looms over this is this doesn’t
necessarily answer the the spells known
but and we know that’s kind of a point
pain point for sorcerer players but one
thing this might do is since it it gives
you it might give you a focus on types
of spells that makes that limited nature
just seem natural because you just want
to use a certain type of spell it’s kind
what the dragon sorcerer was trying to
do now then we ran into the immediate
problem of while fire and frost have an
obvious solution stone we don’t really
have a lot of our things bells and
there’s no real useful descriptor for it
so that’s something which you know again
maybe playtesting will come into or I’ll
just think about it a bit more it’s kind
of funny I started saying here we know
this is the drawback to the sorcerer but
I didn’t want to start by saying let’s
make a sorcerer who just gives you more
spells because that you know it’s always
good again to start with the flavor
what’s the story what is your character
in this world then are there ways a
simple one might be rather than giving
you benefits based on spouse or a
sorcery point expenditure maybe ways two
more ways to expend spell slots so we’ll
see about that
I’ll give it a little thinking
especially because we know that the size
art inside you huge stuff might need to
move around I’ll talk to some of the
designers here and we’ll get some sense
of it build even just making sample
characters it really helps because it
gives you a sense of what this character
feels like you can just do an immediate
like I don’t know how many times I’ve
been working
something and I just made up a first
little character and just immediately
knew like oh yeah this doesn’t work like
oh I was trying to make this this new
fighter you whatever a paladin option
whatever and it’s supposed to be all
about stealth and you know the service
Acin right just assassin and like now I
can’t even buy my stealth check is
horrible and I don’t have enough space
and mice mice skill selections to really
enable this character so I hope that was
useful um we’re probably spend more time
next week and what I imagine is gonna
happen is each week goes by will spend
more and more time in the prior weeks
design because I mean a subclass in an
hour is not always necessarily gonna
happen but we’ll go through and do some
more detail on this and I’ll also talk
about the Acrobat we’re also gonna have
a little traffic jam so I’m hoping to
play in Acrobat sometime this week so I
can give you a little like my first hand
play test report and we’ll go from there
now remember on Twitter I am Mike
Murrells all one word mi ke m EA RL s
tweet it me name of the class name of
the subclass and that’s it for something
you want me to tackle same thing in
comments one of some video goes up on
YouTube chat I don’t know if we really
capture it and little bit hard to go
through and find everything in there I
did wasn’t able to like talk to chat as
much because this is like like some
serious design now and then you can’t
okay I already know which one I’m going
to do for the fighter and that one I may
even have like a spreadsheet open to
show stuff to and it’s gonna be
something like a really deep geekery but
I didn’t want what I didn’t want to do
that one first I want to do that one
later once we get a few get through a
few of these to show you the different
elements of subclass design so the video
this should go up on YouTube tomorrow
usually goes up around late morning put
a west coast USA time so yeah so I hope
you enjoyed the show I keep those
suggestions coming in for classes and
subclasses and I’m gonna put some more
thought into this and hopefully get in a
play test of our Acrobat rogue this week
and report back
thank you much for tuning in and have
enjoy the rest of your day
[Music]

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) February 14, 2018

Unearthed Arcana: Into the Wild

February 13, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

EXPLORERs!

New ways to approach outdoor exploration are waiting for you!

These optional rules break overland travel down into four different phases: 1.Choose destination 2.Choose activities 3.Resolve activities and travel 4.Camp

https://media.wizards.com/UA_IntoTheWild.pdf

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Unearthed Arcana: Into the Wild

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