The Psionic Class pt3 – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

hey everyone and welcome back to the my girls happy fun hour I remain your host Mike morals franchise creative director on Dungeons & Dragons and this week we are going to continue looking at the Sion character class we’ve spent a few weeks on this and before we dive in I have a quick question for everyone hello chat the question for you why you’re all typing in your greetings consider this so we’ve been doing the Sion for a while and I kind of feel like this is probably the light I think last week I said I’d maybe spend two more weeks on it but I think this might be it might make sense for this week to tackle the the shaper you can see I have the phrase at whale summoning and that’s gonna be our first can trip we’re gonna tackle what I thought we would do today is go through and look at some of the canned trips for summoning what those can look at essentially well summoning that’s not really the shippers doing but that’s mechanically what is the best match and then talk about what that subclass looks like and then I think from there it’s gonna be a lot of just boring desk work for me so what I like to do what I like to do is I’m gonna like bring in some enlightened self-interest I like to think that as I’m working on my campaign I’m running a campaign set in an interval on Fridays if you know that into your veil it was the world the fourth edition D&D and I’m adapting what do you call it the keep on the shadow fell but I’m making a higher level so I have some undead monsters I want to design for it so I thought would it be fun if after we work on this because I’ve kind of shown you how to design a class a very rough way if I did some monster design so chiming to chat me think monster designs sounds good as kind of our next topic so we’ve been doing character stuff since we started so the who we got here so let’s see what monster design however Simoes design okay I’m seeing all yeses and what I will do is what I want to do is take a few of those undead creatures and throw some stuff around them because I thought it will be fine yeah yeah okay so it’ll be fun and I think will be fun too is I could take I kind of share the entire process from start to finish and not just the mechanics but also how the story works and in this case I think it would be fun a game phantom diem but itching for the artificer you might not well hey I can spell anything we’ll see we’ll see the but the one of the nice things about monster designed as I can kind of show you what it really looks like in terms of how we often reproach monster design having a piece of art working at the story stuff and then it’s just kind of walk through some of the mechanical elements alright so I’m seeing a lot I’m seeing people like seem to think that’s cool okay cool um cool nice really spoiler part of his earner first the artificer might be uh we’ll see we’ll see there might be an artifice or design somewhere on our network drives that might be due for you soon I don’t want to say anything okay I’ll just come on say it well no I won’t come and say yeah I’ll come on say it’s an artifice of design there isn’t it there was a revision we have made it revision the challenge now is and this is something which you look at the process we’re going through the silent building a class is a lot to it so where we are right now at that is it’s got a revision based on feedback from a lot of sources from the play test feedback and then from a few back from other designers and then now it has to go through a refinement phase and this is important at this stage especially it’s something as big as the artificer if there’s just some obvious mistakes in the class we get everything revved up we throw it up for you a we could ever in prime to play test and if there’s just obvious broken stuff that means the play test feedback is going to be just more right it’s not gonna go anywhere the they call me Tomo no spoilers and what the actual casting thing is I’m not gonna say yeah because I want Crawford to have a chance to look through it I want Kate to have a chance to review it and really dig into it so I’m not gonna those some of the things I changed still stuff might still change but I have done another draft for the artificer the so the anyways let’s get the sign on dunya’s exactly okay so next we could be monsters we’ll start doing some monsters I’ll show you that process but let’s here talk about the taeyeon so we talked about the shaper being the subclass that essentially now mechanically we’re going to think of it like summoning but what we want the flavor to be is that I am plucking things out of my imagination or your imagination and making them real and making them do stuff now this is the important thing I think when we think summoning it’s very easy to get caught in I summon a thing and it beats people up I mean that’s definitely a very useful version of summoning believe me but there’s also space for more utility I summon something that can’t fly so it picks me up and carries me somewhere so I want to make sure we’re capturing that too especially for class that’s gonna be really a sub classes can be really focused on this ability putting some flexibility and they’ll be really good because then we just don’t have I just things are doing my fighting for me and also it gets us maybes we’ll see maybe some flexibility and how we’re actually limiting these things so first things I want to do yeah the are changed Eric we’re making Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends it’s exactly these are this is your imaginary friend that comes to life and that’s what I see the at-will summoning doing oh no don’t I don’t need a ch3 any core body usually you’re better behaved than that alright so yeah that’s basically what any we write you summon your imaginary friend now if you’re familiar with our process here the first thing we need to do we start designing maybe just a let’s go to new stuff let’s take a look at what exists in the game already right there are a number of summoning spells out there so we turn to a handy-dandy D&D Beyond which is and I gotta say I you know a total commercial mode right now but I love using the adeney beyond for design because it does make just searching yourself easier the it’s nice being let’s go through all spells and we are just going to go through and do our filter up spell targets right there I always forget and we’re just gonna go down to pretty sure summon spinning is a filter now let’s filter all our spells so this is a good starting point we want to check out we want to do is you know if you’re familiar with the show you get to hear me say this again what we want to do is look at what levels do certain things come in so checking these things out now we have fine steed find familiars I’m not I’m gonna ignore that one because it’s a bit of a outlier in terms of its utility infestation is using the summoning key word but it’s really it’s not actually summoning things it’s really the flavor and it’s just driving home that flavor so we’re gonna skip fine steed well we’ll go back to it but what I want to focus on is conjure animals third-level so what we’re saying here is that with a third-level spell now uh let’s see I’m gonna go so my head doesn’t get in the way I’m gonna do this so I want to take some notes here just to get us a sense here of what we have what’s going on and what we’re saying here with this spell is it a third level I can get one cr2 creature so I’m just gonna do a very quick and dirty table here just so we can I don’t want h3h3 is just like busting in today I wants to be everywhere let’s just go core body easy let’s go still know this a spell level and then see our so whatever establishes and I’m not gonna care too much about the other ones for right now what I want to do is just focus on the one for one I just burned a third level spell I get one cr2 creature the other two I’ll get back to those in a sec but we’re not yet I want to take a look at the other spells here now whatever you want to do here I’m gonna skip summon lesser demon because these are these come with drawbacks but at fourth we go to mana elemental and what’s interesting here is we’re saying at four we’re still seeing CR two now what’s happening here is something that I’m gonna say is like a little it’s soft design what this is assuming is that elementals by nature of being the creature type elemental are going to have more interesting things at CR two than beasts beasts by design are very boring they’re generally adjusted buckets of hit points with some basic melee attacks attached to them if there’s any special abilities they’re pretty minor maybe a rider on an attack like knocking someone prone or maybe some sort of sensory ability so I’m gonna note this right here that’s CRT that’s a beast and what I really want here is that you know what’s just the raw CR so I’m seeing here before that will spell an elemental it’s CR 2 so okay it’s not now here’s the one thing though is it’s not a huge upgrade going from elephant jarick elemental to generic beast or vice versa is not like wow you just doubled its power it’s more usually what happens is with summoning one of the things that will trip you up in D&D is those utility spells the future might be coming with and we’ll see that because I think Fay now phase also at 4th I know this is a very common problem least I’ve heard people complained about that some of these Fei you can bring in you know you’re dragging in like 8 CR 1/4 faith at all say can cast cure wounds or something like that the chat might know the specific issue people are saying but and kittens and mittens beets are boring Merle’s on why wats he hates Beastmasters range here following that beast it was the Fae master then we’d be all we’d be all in so again we’re gating it here we’re saying a little for spell that’s worth getting some magic find greater than greater Steve it’s like the king of the horses I don’t know what the spell does oh ok so this is kind of intro can’t see you know this is gonna be hilarious because I forgot the spell exists xanthus got everything on it’s at Zenith IRAs book they added it’s at aftermarket like year 3 expansion the so this is kind of interesting so we’re getting a kindest thing fight I forget let’s see 10 is 5 total combat I get telepathically uber blah drops to dismiss it okay doesn’t seem to see anything here that it says I can’t make this tell us into fight so this is we’re gonna kind of backdoor this in what’s the Griffin the CR see ours too great they’re all gonna be to watch this is gonna be like every summoning spell just gets er to the okay yeah they come we’ll take it can fight okay yeah last thing I need is Jeremy busting Kyle just gimme yeah this is a flood well this is a flying but these are flying creatures though but that doesn’t why wouldn’t I just summon these things and fly them look I’m complaining up my own game this is classy but wait a sec okay wait a sec see these conjure and all does it have a restriction see are two giant boar and Asura Sabretooth oh these guys are monstrosity czar they I might be completely whipping on that is a Griffin what Strasse monstrosity or is it a beast this is gonna be this yeah it’s a monstrosity okay there we go so again we’re getting this segregated here so basically we’re putting a lot of a lot of weight on that creature type a lot more than I didn’t I care for personally not personally professionally saying like has a dungeon has a game designer that’s probably more going here so good ok now we’re up to see our six well that’s a big jump so we went from so elemental level 5 up to see our six Wow okay that’s a big jump this is gonna be interesting to try to balance well look at the duration of fine good oh is one of those things that’s like buried the durations much longer because I think I’m just gonna snore m’l eyes my oh this is a minute Wow okay this is this is something that irritate I got it okay so these are all this is why we have one minute one hour find greater seat is 10 minutes instantaneous conjurer’s one minute this is one action this is it’s a little all over the place okay so here’s the thing this is not not a berry this as an opportunity opportunity for us to make something work a bit better yeah Conger Fay a minute I get why it’s a minute it’s really so you don’t do in the middle of a fight but it’s concentration so that’s all really gonna kind of throttle what else you can do alright opportunities there’s lots of opportunities here there is lots of opportunities here we can do a lot of stuff here that will make something a lot more fun because there’s a lot of like how it takes a minute oh I want to I want to get a foul on a summon a Tyrannosaurus Rex hello this is conjure face [Laughter] so yeah it is it is a t-rex okay cool so anyways this okay okay this is me gender sputtering on stream right like okay so you can up gun the spell that’s why the t-rex shows up okay so let’s go see our 6:00 at 6:00 okay but that’s six there all right opportunity keep saying that it’s an opportunity for us to make something you know this is really funny because I know people on Twitter especially it says oh I want to play a good summoner I’d be like aren’t there summoning spells in the game but I personally don’t play a lot of summoners and this is a corner of the game it’s like you can imagine if the game is a house I have I gone into those back corner room and I’m like it’s really dusty and like with what’s in here oh there’s summoning and it takes a minute I had no idea I literally last night was cleaning our garages looking for some miniatures and this is because I’ve been married for a while so I’m getting better at this there was a check my wife did some photography works someone sent her a check for it and I did not know I read I did not realize I had put the check out in the garage with some of my miniatures I accidentally picked it up and put in a box and so much here’s looking for it and so when I said I found it and she said where was it and I said oh it was behind the fridge I’m not gonna tell her I took your check and just put it out in the garage with a bunch of my my rail parth of miniatures I was sorting because I’m a goofball like this okay alright my new this happened it was this summer I knew I meant to make it this way and this is here okay it’s a celestial force in cr4 okay so this is all over the place this is really interesting case again opportunity right what we’re seeing here though is I am going to just be blunt I’m gonna ignore these spells beyond getting a sense of where the CR is because what’s happening here and this is something that I am not necessarily a fan of InDesign for old playing games and I know why we did this here right and this is a case of you know we did this five years ago essentially there would have been some adjustment in two and fourteen before the game released but this is something where don’t be afraid to look back at something you didn’t go I don’t really like how I did that that’s okay that means you’re learning hey I’m learning right and it’s I’m not I’m not trying to be lame and be like that’s my excuse for doing it this way this is something where somebody was a real Bears specially in third edition that’s a pun by the way so you can look him laughs the COS needs someone to bear the actual eat someone a whale it’s a whale of a good time the sum in the whale and you’d block off a hallway with a huge creature even bigger and then it would just flop around and die but still a barrier but anyway so this is pride era where we’re very very cautious because in designing the entire game system the there’s a lot of questions you have to ask spells in in particular you know when you look at the game where we are now in 2018 you’ve seen a lot more sub classes come out in terms of you a you have not seen as many spells in terms of our focus and the challenge being a single spell can really disturb the balance of the game but it’s very tricky to get play test feedback on say 50 new spells as opposed to two new subclasses or one new subclass whatever it is that we’re doing so with spells in fifth we were probably a lot not probably I know this because I worked on the game we were a lot more cautious about pushing things and summoning this was a great example of we decided to throttle back a bit on it to make it more situational what these like we know casting times of a minute to really make it something that you had to plan on rather than something that you could just do and I can see here okay so Kandra woodland being is an action that that’s what’s going on here yeah the tricky thing is as a player I can admit as a player I don’t like having multiple axes I have to use two meant to measure things I also don’t like the surprise factor I like hey if I’m a player scrolling through oh hey fine see that looks cool and you forget it’s got a ten minute casting time so this is like a warrant warrant moment in the game you’re like oh hey the guys are chasing us condors fine steed i’ll cast will get it warmer so no it actually takes ten minutes and it’s got all this stuff what’s going on so what I want this guy to do is is instant summons like I want I want this to just be instantly summon you friend or servant that’s what we want now here’s the trick to this Oh once I regard you – I’m putting suggest as an H case 2011 action spider accrual 4080 xx oh yeah so here’s something I threw about 12 in fighting on Twitter if you don’t follow me on Twitter oh and there’s a question tridents from black ace 13 and I actually wanna get to that one the okay so do two things I suggest don’t weapon fighting that on Twitter that instead of costing a bonus action because as I’ve hammered home many times if you’ve watched the stream to weapon the bonus action economy can get kind of messy with two up and fighting often class features require a bonus action to activate it something that can be defining like rage which means a great weapon fighting character you feel bad I would like you know how would that work without a bonus action so the idea is if you’re – I’ve been fighting in place of an attack you make two attacks but your damage gets decremented down in a well elegant simple way and the elegant simple way is what’s kind of struggling here but there are cases where that could probably lead to lot of attacks quick question about the Trident so I’ve seen them a few people ask well that why is the Trident such a crappy weapon the Trident is in the game not because we strive to make the Trident a an interesting weapon that sits alongside the spear and the sword the Trident in the game something because our aquatic creatures wield it and it’s really a flavor thing we felt that putting a lot yeah I felt and people seem to agree that if we’re gonna show arts abus to you again or Triton or merfolk who has a trident but then call it a spear and thus taplok that might be a little bit disconnect so that’s all that weapon is literally in the game because we have aquatic creatures that use trident we actually didn’t want you to make it feel like he was a great weapon that would be a natural thing that would use now you could argue that maybe that wasn’t a great case but like in some ways the weapon list serves two purposes it serves characters basically I like that what weapon I want to use it and then it also always serves the monsters so anyway while that’s going on here’s we want favor for at will summoning want clear utility things have a clear use have a function beyond combat the can fight instantly summon a friend or servant I’m probably gonna say you know restrict this to one creature as default I think a lot of the shenanigans that come in or one like I can get multiple creatures twelve or is it gonna be a non creature summoning option yeah I think that’s something which would be cool cuz essentially these are gonna be constructs can be almost anything and that frees up a lot of design space for us so you could say I’m gonna summon a dancing sword I’m gonna summon a giant you know rolling Boulder to crash through people and move around the got like a big bees hands say ciao Mart so gets a good comparison so the this is essentially what we want to do and when I think of at will summoning this is where and this is where I think this sort of this sort of benefit I get as I put spell slots into this what I think at will summoning does is it a costs to your action that’s like yeah cost your action action on an ongoing basis higher level summoning lets you stack things on top of your actions so what I mean by that is this I have an apples someone have this imaginary friend I want to call into being and make them do something I think if you think of the unseen servant spell yeah had her feign unseen servant being something along those lines except I wanted to be able to fight um you know otherwise I don’t really feel like a summoner if we’re they what I’m doing is just I can move stuff around but I can do that with mange hand so I have this creature I can bring it into existence like I sculpt it I can make it fight it’s gonna cost me my action to make it fight the benefit I get benefit I get that was that creature is gonna occupy a space so if I’m you if you’re miniatures player if you use miniatures in your game you probably instantly need to know that benefit as a party we can control an extra square we probably have to put a tax on that though so I’m going to throw this other thing in here at will summoning comes with some damage feedback what does that mean you might ask well I think what that what that means is that if I summon a creature and it’s at will I haven’t invested any magic into it my name our resources that could you gets killed I need to take a drawback that could be damage it could be something like I lose concentration for a time I’m in favor of damage that’s fast and easy as a player to assess I’m not looking for this to be a lot of damage what I just want to do is stop you from infinitely blocking a doorway the size limit northland Cal that’ll be something that we’ll play with as we go to higher levels so that’s something where we don’t want you to just round up to round him to keep blocking the doorway and essentially have a damaged sponge because that’s the other benefit and let’s actually take a quick step back so I realized I’m doing all this stuff thinking of the benefits of summoning this is why summoning is so tricky because it’s got a lot of follow-on benefits you know a fireball just does damage that’s it’s doing damage if you want it to do something else like set a building on fire or something the DMS to kind of start adjudicating this but summoning comes there’s a lot of things baked in it’s extra hit points for the party so a summoning a summon creature comes with having hit points so I can attack it I’m essentially creating a buffer for the party if so think of this scenario the party is in a dungeon they open a door there’s five goblins the shaper goes first they throw a summon creature into the doorway the goblins rush up with their swords one or more of the goblins has to spend their actions essentially dealing with that summoned creature again it’s very powerful a can trap and lets me cancel essentially it’s letting you cancel an attack at no cost is very good canceling an attack at a cost so in this case damage means I can use that but I have to use it judiciously and if I’m using it a lot it’s going to drain other party resources so what we want to make sure is we’re just not giving you a very big benefit and denying attacks is a big benefit if you can put your enemy in a position where they cannot attack you that’s and you can attack them back that’s fantastic that something you’ll do all day so we’ve got to make sure that we take an account into that it’s more area control so again it’s if think of if you’re using grid grid in a minute and miniatures it’s another miniature on the table for the party the so that’s not as big but it still can be pretty useful and it’s extra actions just do more stuff right if you have your adding essentially member to the party it just gives you more flexibility if you think of the party has it’s a group that has X number of actions to use each round adding more actions that’s always just a good thing there is vanishingly few cases that aren’t contrived we’re having those extra actions is actually drawback I mean at worst it’s neutral example you need to open a door that’s one action okay I could have 50 actions or five actions or one as long as I have one I can open the door so but typically scaling those up I have more actions means I can open that door we can go through and I can do something else so now there are some limits to it but we’re not those limits look more like adding eight to twelve extractions not one one is always always beneficial so we have to account for that too and that’s why you see often you know the actually here’s something really we should look at let’s say and someone mentioned it because of the fae in the beasting let’s take a look at everyone’s favorite character class the Ranger everyone for definitions of people who like Rangers you see a lot of the discontent people who don’t like the Beastmaster almost all the things that they don’t like about this design and go back to that list that I just rattled off so let’s take a look at our companion though a third level you gain a beast companion that accompanies you on your adventures and is trained to fight alongside you choose a beast that is no larger than medium so that’s an important thing we don’t want you getting a large beast large creatures especially use miniatures are super useful to have in your party because they just they command four spaces party of four that’s essentially I’ve doubled the number of spaces I can control an a grid it makes it very easy to clean clothes off passages things like that challenge one quarter or lower oh that’s something I’m gonna write down there too that’s going to be kind of our I’m trying to put Ranger here to note that and set 1/4 that’s a little 3 there’s gonna do note that I’ll remember or chat you’ll remind me ok so so you get some bonuses ok we’re adding your your proficiency bonus just because we want to make sure it doesn’t go you know sideways so we’re giving it some hit point cushioning here but our base thing is 1/4 so this is essentially the hit points and the proficiency are just there to let this thing’s scale up so it’s not you do have to recycle it or you don’t have to worry about it it’s becoming useless the lot of people to argue this is just not very useful to start with it can understand you sure it can spend hit dice so it takes its turns on your initiative though it doesn’t take an action less you command it to on your turn you can verbally command the beast or to move no action required by you you can use your action to verbally command it to attack – whatever take much of actions the and that’s using your action and so it’s getting back this idea of adding extra actions to the party pool the thinking here and you can see that same reluctance to really embrace this idea of summoning that we saw in the spells with like the 10 minute casting times and cr2 being kind of our ceiling and once we hit CR 2 we just started changing other things in the spells to make them better casting time or type of creature you’re seeing this play out here in the Ranger and you’re seeing based on what we saw in the reaction to this design a lot of people just not happy with this they just didn’t feel like they were getting a creature that was their companion they felt like they were getting a robot with a remote control attached to it and you were remote controlling a robot I think that for me that’s kind of metaphorically where I feel it is and yeah it’s and that share DVI this is a great point all right the problem is this is made for people who want a pet I want to pet and then I get a pet and I get a kind of a pet that sort of lame and I was just having the discussion with someone today about a character race someone was working on and realizing that the way the design was configured if you rarely played that race like maybe you played that race once it was work fine but if you’re the type of player who said oh this is my favorite type of character to play oh I’m gonna play these guys and connect year I’m gonna play four different characters and all them will be this type of character ooh the way it was designed is like oh that’s actually feels kind of lame like it feels fun the first time but the second when you make I feels a little to say me so that is definitely something that is designed you need to think about that in terms of the player that you’re aiming to act not just in terms of what they like but in terms of over the course of several campaigns how will this stand up so he’s 0 cuz spiritual basically spiritual weapon is a streamline but pseudo version of summoning there might be something there the well I want to take a look that actually bring in creatures I want to make this work because I think we can make this work that’s a win I think there are players up there who if we can make this work would say finally I can play the character I always want to play I get to play the character who has pets and as someone who has two dogs and four cats I can understand that you like I mean pets around unless they wake up at both like 3:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. to be let out so much but that might be them kind of trying to tell you something and that might be our older dog and happy that we have a puppy in the house so used to getting older but still a puppy so yeah so this is really where you’re seeing the tension come in and I feel pretty confident that we we were cautious here and I think that caution was warranted I would stand by that decision I think if we went back to 2013 and whatever revised this we would revise it because we learn things since then not because there’s really any insight that we just flat-out missed when this sort of thing goes wrong it goes wrong in a way that makes the DM at least really irritated because I have played in the campaign with the broken summoning with somebody something that felt broken and in this specific case Elvis find it has something that just felt like ridiculous and it was doing things that felt far beyond what you’d expect from the character to do I had a friend of mine who would use multiple summonings to like summon just hoards of low CR creatures and just have them all use the help action and third edition if I remember right the help action stacked or it was like the hinder action stacked so there’s just ridiculous you know but it was a good example like a low-level spell that was producing like +10 attack bonuses which third edition were great because then your your iterative attacks we’ve got multiple attacks in third edition your attack bonus went down dramatically so getting a big bonus was huge it meant you were going from hitting one and a half times per round to like hitting all three times with your attacks so it could be really big the all right so yeah I know a frog wheeler a Wyson a character to scout when you have disposable NPCs another good example right that comes into the action sort of thing I have more actions I have actions I don’t mind sending out to die I were playing a game with a druid who was summoning animals and sending them down to trigger traps and a tumor in which was just sort of hilarious I am the guardian of nature animals I love you plants come to me I will I will take care of you protect you accept you fight Oh run down that hallway and let me know if anything jumps out and stabs you so again that gets back to this idea of putting the bet penalty on it you know this idea that if it’s free summoning I want to throw a some sort of I wanted in your resources in some way because I want to avoid hey I have this guy get some time at well someone him and have him run down the hallway to trigger traps we have them open doors we have them you know there’s a switch maybe we should pull it well let’s have a summon creature do it right and then you don’t want to deal with coming up all these weird rules like this creature can attack but it can’t pull a lever and they can’t walk down a hall and whatever right it when you when the restrictions on an ability start to be the bulk of its rules that to me is like you’re doing something very wrong you either you’re doing something just by its nature just isn’t gonna work it’s gonna be disrupting the game or you’re doing something in a way that really what you want to do is just penalize people in some way for abusing it so just make that as simple and direct and obvious as possible because players will always find ways to get around like very specific drawbacks but it’s harder to get around like look II just taking damage if you can get it you’ve been getting around taking damage then that’s great you’re gonna win you know in a lot of fights the so John Herzog artists are their penalties for letting the imaginary-friend die then read something later I don’t I’m not crazy about X I do like the idea that this is something that’s here for me and what I think I might do is this all right so are at will summoning here’s the mean version so I’m gonna do like I’ll do like version one but it takes damage you take that damage now I don’t want to do this because we have a d6 class then I mean like well I need to give you more hit points well now I have you the entire dat separate pool eight points maybe you’re tracking where so I don’t wanna deal with that it’s that what I wanted what I would like to say is when it is destroyed you take some damage and lose maybe your focus for around I think I want I kind of do both so it’s not just gonna come back so you’re gonna yeah I think actually yeah so I want to lose your focus which means in your concentration in focus so you’re not gonna be cavalier about it if you’re in a situation though where you do want to look I’m mission to sacrifice my summon character and this is at will not the other ones we’ll get to those in a sec I think that it’s open what I like about this is that you can decide tactically okay I’m gonna take this hit because I do need to keep the goblins in the room where I want to block the door and you know I’m gonna take a drawback here but it is gonna be useful to keep these guys out um let’s see Oh Morey I think it’s what you the greens a little hard to read what it was xx damage I like the overkill it feels a little fiddly to me I think I’d rather just make it a flat number so I don’t have in a situation where well they’re goblins only doing like say 1 d6 + 3 damage and I’m like the higher level I don’t care if these guys keep killing my summon as opposed to I’m really worried if the dragon kills it I’d rather just know that there’s just a flat a flat thing so we’re not like this weird scaling thing taking effect where some things are really nervous about attacking your summons and others you’re not so I just specify that the and I think looking at its benefits I’m probably gonna go say that you’re at will summon as a baseline is that the app will summon is a Buddist is a CR at 1/4 creature now what I mean by that is we’re gonna figure out either pull staff locks I’m not gonna go to any step locks today I’m just gonna use I’m just knees challenge as our as our baseline so the so that’s basically our entire thing here you know a CR 1/4 creature you and you have to spend your action to make it it’s been it’s action essentially what we’ve done is we’ve created a can trip what I imagine using this can trip will be a bonus action so I can summon it in and then have it attack somebody or I can have it do something well also gonna do is try to restrict range she’s gonna say 10 feet or even adjacent I don’t want this to be like hey there’s a chasm and there’s something on the side we need I will summon and my guy shows up and does something know again I want you to spend a resource for that I have to spend a spell slot or spell points or whatever it is because again if it’s at will at will things DMS have a higher high allergy to real good utility net will because it just distorts the entire design process of your adventures so so yeah so I think we want to restrict range I’m sure this is a great example playtesting will start revealing other things that’ll come up all right so then let’s just do a very simple thing here I’m gonna delete this because I don’t really care not that I don’t care but it’s just yeah and what I want to do is look at what my level so if I know level 0 is see our 1/4 essentially can’t rip I’m just gonna this is like this is where we start getting into like rough justice right we have a spell system here that is trying to do summoning but is maybe not pulling its full weight in terms of what people want I am pretty much committed to saying I don’t want you to summon multiple creatures unless I want to handcraft that I don’t want to make it as a look at the spells what they’re doing is they’re giving you this sort of progression that here let me I’ll show it to you we’ll take a look at one right this progression of the number of creatures is going to end up with things that you’re unhappy with as a DM because there’s no way that under conjure animals or any of them like okay be really fast contra elementals that we can really consistently say that hey eight one-quarter challenge rating things are equivalent to one two yeah they’re tax and damage might be but as soon as I have a spell on her ability resting here eight of those is just better than one and I’m sure right now if I just did a search for monsters I can find an example here so let’s go to elementals there might not even be a one eighth LCR elemental how do we got some right here yes let’s get the mud method and then Mitch it’s got some sort of special ability a mud breath so it can restrain creatures now eight guys who can show up and restrain you so basically means every round I’m restraining a lot of creatures for a long time so this just really kind of breaks down that idea of like the swarm summoning because we’re not gonna say our elementals don’t get abilities and this is what kind of makes them fun so I’m gonna be pretty focused on just doing this a one-for-one the so so let’s go through and now going to assist do some rough justice here so this is gonna be spell level so I’m just gonna go through and add my to hear three four five six seven eight nine and I’m just gonna sort of back the envelope what I think oh my god my computer froze this has been my thing today my my outlook just was like weirdly frozen I thought I broke it and an email is trying to respond to and oh no there we go I’m not in trouble 99 oh well that’s that’s now the new feature here right we did d-104 like the commoner so now the the the shaper gets how it’s getting really slow okay check in and just send all my data to the NSA make sure they have it all right so we send a level let’s see it’s never forgotten what does the let’s go back here it’s back in again to our spells so we set here under conjure animals cr2 is a third little spell should make sure had that right so I’m just gonna arbitrarily say that that’s gonna be one and arbitrarily say that’s half and I’m just gonna again equally arbitrarily just increase this by one no I don’t think this is actually going to work but it’s it’s a handy enough starting point this is also case now what I would probably do in play test is just come up with some generic stat blocks they’ll just get across this damage armor class and hit points I can finesse this later but this is what I’m basically going to look at use if you spend a spell slot of this level you get this step this corresponding stop lock to give you it now let’s take let’s do a quick reality check here to give you a sense let’s take a look at some CRE creatures and what I want is a CR eight beast because as I mentioned before beasts tend to be very simple so let’s go to monsters official and let’s go to beasts you know let’s just look at all the challenge unless is the Billy know there should be a lot of cluttered so let’s just do challenge rating eight like a look all right so we’re saying a t-rex with a knight the whole spell 136 hit points a C’s pretty lame it’s gonna get hit pretty quickly it’s got one bite in one tail this is I don’t know if its restriction carries any real bite but we’ll see +10 433 you can grapple +10 420 so seven hinges to the seventeenth level getting this that feels probably weak so I probably need to boost that up a bit let’s take a look at what did I am I sort of totally fake math give a game of CR for for a level 5 spell so that’s a 9th bubble so let’s take a look what that creature looks like let’s see how what the damage is there and I just can I just want a bruiser whoa okay yeah okay elephant okay it doesn’t get any more comp case guy is AC 1276 hitpoints yeah I don’t think I think this actually feels pretty for a fifth level caster this is my big creature I get getting seventy six extra hip points it’s nice and that’s nice durability +8 419 it’s got this traveling charge ability DC 12 though so I’m not too worried most creatures in let’s take a look at uh there’s a giant subterranean lizard simpler it’s the AC 1466 hitpoints one bite in one tail okay Gordon one of my kids oh it’s so so plus 7 for 16 + plus 7 for 12 one target not crapple by the lizard that’s kind of funny it’s very specific lizard grab me grapple me now you can hit me with the tail oh that you can swallow me in that pain alright so that that this feels reasonable so let’s take a quick thing here a very rough estimate of what this matches up if this is a fighter say typical fighters probably to have + 2 hit points per hit die and beginning about 8 hit points per level so this is actually pretty good avian +3 so let’s say 9 so level you know if the fighter the party probably has 80 to 90 to make a point so I’m not overshadowing the fighter but that’s still pretty good the cleric and the party probably has about let’s say again this is 9th level so 60 something sacred cleric and roguish hit points the art class is really the hard thing here most beats up pretty lame armor classes oh it’s also huge my phone is ringing I thought it told it – wow that’s pretty funny sorry but it’s the first time that’s happened but it is four months it’s the first time someone’s actually tried calling me I put on do not disturb the this is an easy thing to overlook this is huge so ok that’s not actually this is really good at locking down a big air of the battlefield ok so I feel actually that’s pretty good this guy’s gonna really tank up and he’s gonna dish out some ok hits I mean here’s his other main thing he’s only a plus 7 to hit our party members at 9th level are probably to be around probably I think nine or ten maybe ish around there depending up the up magic items and stuff but this is yeah someone’s trying to summon you through your phone true enough of our serious the this is a good example of I’m getting a text to my wife can’t find her computer I have no idea where it is the so she’s texting me now to the can this wait 17 minutes actually it can’t chat I can talk while I do this because I’m gonna tell her I think it’s on the couch so but what we’re seeing here is what we’re getting for summoning is a really big huge creatures great that’s a three by three grid that’s like nine size medium creatures so I feel pretty good you know so I want to pay attention to like the the opto level ten beyond that I think we just need to get the numbers right but this feels pretty good for a fifth level spell slot to get a challenge for creature yeah I’m not offended by it the I’m just gonna put a little like – they’re here just let me know that I need to verify below oh and even Kyle and I’m gonna tell her because she probably needs it for work anyway I’m probably be getting other things I am gonna have to go silent you guys get to watch me texts okay anyway it’s very it’s like this week we have a holiday here and if you’re not if not in the States 12th of July is tomorrow it’s a Wednesday it basically it’s like two working weekends back to it’s very strange this entire week feels very splintered all right so hey I have to be mortified if she knew she was on stream okay so here’s our basic thing now this may sound like we haven’t got a lot done we got actually had a ton done because here’s what we’ve done all I want to get to say is I can add will summon we’ve got some basic parameters for that then if I put a spell slot into this I up gun my summon creature and then I can drop these restrictions right so I’m not gonna say like you know I’m just gonna say lose these with a spell slide I think we’re gonna put the note here is uh stays where so that’s it this is like our first big step forward so then because I was thinking about this in terms of what the SONA CR to bard the seven bards ever just runs away in horror the so the main thing here is that we kind of have a rough outline for our creatures are gonna look like what I think I will do is rather than say hey go into the monster menu I’ll put a snap lock I think because this thing is constructed I’m we’re gonna give you stat blocks that you will use I think it’ll be faster to reference plus when we go to the next thing because I think some names gonna really show off the basically the idea of augmenting abilities the what I want to do is I want to know if I have and we know about some right here cause fear increase image extra actions like they’re just you know buffs in general we can give these things I want to know the destination and that’s one of the trickiest things in role-playing game design with a system that is allowing for more character customization is if you take something you want to know where is it going as an example imagine have an ability that says whenever I roll my damage dice if I roll the highest damage die I get to roll another die whatever it could do that once it’s very simple stuff but but you thinking okay that usually means one extra die oh wait what about if someone has a 2d six damage sword yeah the great sort how does that work you know and if you’re gonna say well we treat each die separately that ability is much more useful for someone with a great sword than it is for someone let’s say a great axe where the great axe is gonna get an extra die of one and twelve yeah exploding die Zack may right whereas there’s a one in three chance for you know I have one in six chance normally of that happening in a six signer but I’m willing to so roughly I’m getting twice as many chances one out of three top rounds I’m doing an extra d6 and then there’s you know one out of 36 issue runs that I’m getting extra to d6 right so it’s just that’s an area where knowing the destination really gives me a real sense of the the power this thing’s going to be so that’s why rather than have you go to the Monster Manual I want you going to these kind of pre-built stat blocks it makes it clear what’s gonna happen these these stab blocks can be kept very simple and utilitarian and then we can kind of get a sense of what does it mean like to increase your AC things like that I kind of know what AC is a great example a +5 bonus to AC if your AC is like 11 and 12 and that’s good but for AC is already 20 you know you might be shifting your bonus up your AC up to the point where monsters need to start rolling just 20s to hit you right look the elephant or whatever was it was a +7 so I mean it’s obviously a bonus Tacey is always great but you don’t want to end up with frustration of just like the creatures just can’t hit this guy because we push the AC too high that’s kind of why we have the sort of this idea of keeping hackers seeing bonuses narrow so then let’s do a quick thing what I want to do is cause fear and other emotions I want to be let’s say hey I’m gonna give this creature an aspect that makes it scary Oh a dead in seconds shape your class features I’m gonna get to that next actually so what I wanted to do is bang out what I wanted the spells to do increase damage indeed this is just general buffs either do that extra actions I think that’s another thing you could say I burned a spell slot I could you gets to go again or it’s a spell whatever it is and that could even scale up so we have some pretty obvious things we want to do oh and then we could offset up augment and other ways no utility comes to mount flies skills or detection abilities this is a lot of stuff we can give it here by essentially having targeted buff spells that augment my guy so what do we want to do for the shapers clients features well what I thought would be kind of interesting was the I’m just gonna copy and paste the Nomad here because this is fully new just you know we’re gonna do here right everyone’s favorite word that’s it bonus disciplines that’s just become a basic thing so we can give you two extra shaper disciplines and so what I like to do think between the Scion who focuses on shaping and the creature they actually shape or the thing they actually shape so I thought about like maybe like like someone mentioned doing sane you get some like some spell slots just for augments only the abhorson I’m a little worried about that because that’s just a very clear power up over what other characters are getting a way to think of it is what that what that was that you do is I can use my spell slots to augment my thing and I’m gonna use my other spells on top of it even if you’re specific about those bonus spell slots it’s still just opening up your bandwidth overall so what I want to try to do is give you things that improve the relationship between you and the creature so and again things that wouldn’t just be spells so a very simple thing to do Chicanos augment and shaping and I like things that are simple indirect so at first level your summon features gain advantage on attacks against pictures within this might not be the best thing but this is kind of direction where I want to go because what I’d like to do here and work on here is this idea that I can kind of combo up with Mike and my creature especially by summon one that’s doing its own thing now 10-feet might be too close so an alternate might be pick a target how can they say get them and my guy is really good at getting that guy well that might be need a cool-down a another thing we could do is this sort of free buff the rather than say hey like here’s some extra small slots cheese’s you want which but I think maybe we can do basically when you summon it you just get a free benefit so so maybe you can like increase max HP grants some extra game I don’t wanna do get some extra damage because that’s just makes your firepower better yeah so I think you can increase max HP you could also like share your skill proficiencies so if you can do something you can do something so that might be kind of useful to I can actually kind of like that the the divination spells load though those degrade that is a good point the important the I think what were you’re seeing there is since they’re degrading what it’s saying is these spells might not have the impact that say a fireball would have we’re incentivizing you to use really high-level spells for what’s really in character for you knowing that he was a player don’t and aren’t necessarily losing out on firepower that you could use later on the but I can’t remember if well I’ll live it up later cantide it doesn’t it says only when you use the divination spell you get as a lower level slot back right you don’t have to it doesn’t say then you’re locked into using it the rest but anyways the but yeah it’s definitely a it’s a tricky thing I’d rather just do it by giving you just the benefit because again you also now you want you know what’s going on you know that donation you know the benefit you know where it’s going so I think it’s augmenting your summons in some simple ways let’s see another thing we could let you do is at six level you get additional reaction you know I’m gonna throw this because I think this is interesting let’s say you can grant oh no I have seen additional actions as a spell ability you know what I don’t know if it that’s actually works and here’s why if you were last week I talked about how like in in games that like magic be an example or any game where the hey I put a creature into play at a cost there is invariably a Kevin effect that says I get to kill any creature for a much lower cost a potentially much lower cost they might only cost two or three resources opposed to like up to like infinite for a creature the tree thing with saying hey my creature gets an extra action is that skills kind of it does not necessary scale well because we think of the haste spell and use the hey spells an example I thought he’s from a character he’s very specifically says you get one extra attack there because we know a lot of the melee characters they’re getting their benefits for making multiple attacks now the Rogues an exception that was my design though we kind of felt like haste would be something which throwing it on the rope oh I’m sorry because that’s only during your turn sorry did this so even the rogue falls victim to that then I seen what the rogue is if they’re getting an extra attack if they missed and didn’t get a chance to use sneak attack they get to attack again and potentially amount put it on so I think I’m gonna strike the the spell effect of granting extra attacks extra actions I’m gonna strike that make that a class feature because I think that’s something that I don’t think scales well and class features are a good place to put things that don’t scale well because because of this follow usually about the seed we’re an extra action to a summing feature we gain on long rest so it’s pretty cool it’s very dramatic but I can just say look you get it take a long rest get this back you can’t just say keep spamming it it’s a good way to think of an ability that scaling abilities often have to be balanced at they’re their mightiest form which might push something like this I copy to the seventh level where you only get one of those per day this lets me go you know this is gonna scale so I can give it to you low levels to I just need to make sure you can only use it once per day because it needs to behave like those level 6 plus pills excuse me pardon me all right let’s ping we got 5 minutes but you know what it’s a weird holiday weekend two days on one day off two days on we’ll go a little late I don’t think anyone something I’ll bust down the door and yell at me if I’m going to late um let’s see oh yeah this is so let’s see so we’ve got that I’m just gonna just put it on this action just be very utilitarian here as I can remember it um let’s see we’ve got our no man is getting getting resistance weapon attacks until the start of your next turn after you teleport yeah let’s do this let’s do another let’s do a reverse reverse damage transference the 10th level I’m gonna say when you take damage reaction to have summon feature take all or some and that’ll that’ll come out in the wash so bonus extra bonus X Joe what is it it’s tip bonus in its texture it’s just double plus more good I don’t know what it is could be a barrel of toxic waste but there it is it’s more so I kind of like the idea giving you a little more durability you can do this idea of these as your helpers this might be one that gets swallowed up by spell but I don’t think so I like this idea that it’s there it’s constantly reaction and especially if it’s a spell sloughing if I use it to dump the damage back in my aunt wheel guy then I have damaged plane back to me again so it might have to be but we’ll see I’m gonna put a custom work there alright we have like four minutes Pelham just step back in you may have seen a walk behind me I think about to get kicked off line so let’s do a fourteenth double thing you can Joe and this is oh let’s do something here where well right now you could summon two creatures because I’m letting you concentrate twice oh how would that work because we don’t let you concentrate twice so it’s never in a case we have to figure out what happens my cast of concentration spell again so you know what I think oh this is the case oh this is easy well put it a simple restriction but then we’ll lift it double summons so I think we’re gonna have to clear up that and my impulsive to say you can’t concentrate in the same spell twice because I think that it’s going to lead to shenanigans I can probably prove that later if I have time but you can now this and I’m gonna put a big note to myself because that’s just one of the things that I really thought about which would be a big mess we didn’t consider it that’s why we work this way to make sure we consider these things can’t concentrate on same spell points question mark but I think that’d be a very simple thing you’d feel very great at that 14th you know you’ve got your entire career now I can summon two guys awesome so then I feel pretty good power wise it is actually really good so I think it probably has to sit at 14th I think we want to say you can’t double concentrate because flooding the board with so many guys that’s really good too huge creatures again if using nature’s you’re locking down a ton of the board space so and the rope I mean that for the actual class feature which I don’t know if I wrote let me take a quick look at that did we put your sonic focus today actually try to write that or did I just put in the table okay so we are saying sonic spells they’re not the same one just throw it in there it’s probably okay good so I don’t have to worry about the other summoning spells coming in and playing poorly with this I can wall those off all right so we’re at two o’clock this is a something that I really doesn’t need some more deep thinking now that rather than just die I don’t want to end up on stream just doing a lot of flailing around and I felt like I was flailing around a little more than I wanted want to when I’m doing something live because there’s a lot of like moving parts here so I think it just needs some time to just kind of kind of come bring everything together really bake it for a while and then roll it back out so let’s do neck next week let’s do some monsters cause monsters I think will be fun and I think that it’ll be a bit more coherent as we go across and I’ll give me some time to really think about all the implications because there’s actually a lot of stuff that’s bubbling up here this is a great example of a design that seems reasonable and the first play test may show that none of works at all right because there’s a lot of moving parts here so I think this needs to go in the oven for a bit it’s kind of like the Great British Bake Off this is the part of the show where we just show the bakers like nervously waiting for like you know the 40 minutes for their cake the so yeah maybe we’ll wait like maybe give it a month or so and I got a bunch of monsters I need to design at mine interval campaign so let’s let’s tackle those over a couple weeks that can show you some nice range of critters so fail are we’re getting next you a next Monday I think we are getting it next Monday because I know we’re actually working on it now spoiler that’s I was talking about a player-character race so there might be a player-character race and that you a so don’t don’t don’t be sure to race over to our website to get you way the puns they’re painful aren’t they they are or is it Tuesday a camera what day you a is I just work on it and it wanders off and then a bunch of things to work on so anyways work two o’clock thanks for tuning in ahh next week we’ll do some monsters and I’m gonna start working on this and let’s see if we get a bit more of a stable design here because we’re doing a lot we’re juggling a lot of things at once let’s let’s take a break and put get everything lined up nice and neat and then come back and look at this in August okay well take care everyone and I’ll see you next week

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