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Skywatch
2018-10-22, 09:51 PM
Circle of the Silver Seas
This subclass I’ve been working on is my attempt at making a full on “balance in the world” summoner Druid subclass. I need some help making the 2nd level and the 6th level abilities, and also if someone could check and make sure the two later abilities aren’t to out of wack. Thanks!
Circle of the Silver Seas Custom Subclass

2nd Level Ability:


6th Level Ability:


10th Level Ability:
The spells Conjure Celestial, Infernal Calling, Summon Greater Demons, and Summon Lesser Demons, all count as Druid spells for you. For the spells Summon Lesser Demons, Summon Greater Demons, and Infernal Calling, the creatures summoned are summoned as if they were each individually summoned by a Conjure Fey spell, with the summoned creature remaining one of an appropriate type and CR for the spell.

14th Level Ability:
Whenever you cast a spell from the list of spells added to your prepared spells at all times, you may expend a use of wild shape and have the spell summon one less creature. If you do, you gain temporary hit points equal to the number of hit points the removed creature would have, change into that creature, with your intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores as well as personality and current hit points remain the same. This change end when either you run out of temporary hit points, fall unconscious, a number of hours pass equal to half your Druid level, or you choose to end the transformation as a bonus action.

Galithar
2018-10-23, 05:01 AM
Level 14 ability is interesting and probably not too bad. That level 10 ability though... That's one of the more overpowered class features I've ever seen.

First, I think you added more spells to their spells known then Warlocks or Sorcerers have total at that point, including a large number that they can't normally get. Then you remove all of the risk in summoning demons and Devil's by making them into Fey that will auto obey. As if those two things aren't already enough, you then allow multiple instances of these summon spells at once.

I don't know how to fix that to make it balanced without just scraping it and starting over. First, don't let a subclass ability destroy concentration unless you're going to let EVERYONE ignore concentration. Don't let a caster be significantly better at using a spell that's not on their list then the caster who's list it is on, at least without expending additional resources (like Divine Soul sorcerer's using meta-magic on cleric spells).

Honestly I would find an at-will summoning spell that still required concentration to be considerably more palatable for my table.

Skywatch
2018-10-23, 08:05 PM
Galithar, what do you think of it now? I removed the always prepared part, and the all as one concentration part.

Composer99
2018-10-23, 08:58 PM
Okay, so it seems to me that your two themes for this subclass are:

Summoning - it is a druid that likes to use spells to summon creatures to achieve its goals, instead of using wild shape or other sorts of spells.

Balance - it is an old-school keep-the-balance-between-cosmic-forces kind of druid.

So far, your subclass features are mostly about summoning. The 10th-level feature kind of ties into balance, because you can summon both celestials and fiends.

Now, 5e doesn't really have mechanics attached to the alignments, but it wouldn't be hard to make a feature that affected "aligned" creatures - basically anything with chaotic, evil, good, or lawful in its alignment.

Here are a few things you could do:

- Be able to turn celestials, fey, fiends, and elementals, à la the cleric's turn undead feature. This might leave you unable to affect certain chaotic and lawful creatures (modrons, for instance, are constructs, and don't have any extraplanar keywords associated with them), but that's probably okay.
- Alternately, be able to turn "aligned" creatures
- Be able to banish creatures, whether specific types of creatures or "aligned" creatures
- Have bonuses of some kind against spellcasters, especially "aligned" ones
- Resist radiant and necrotic damage
- Buff the hit points, attacks, or other defences of your summoned creatures
- Heal your summoned creatures

Since most summoning spells don't become available until later, I think you want your 2nd-level and 6th-level features to relate to balance, and your 10th-level and 14th-level features to relate to summoning (as indeed your 14th-level feature already does).

As for the features you have at present, I'm not a fan of the 10th-level feature. It adds spells all in a big heap, which I find to be clunky - especially the 7th level spell conjure celestial, which you can't even use for 3 more levels. And treating fiends as fey doesn't sit well with me - they're fiends! They're not going to be obeisant just because the druid summoning them wants to "keep the cosmic balance" - a balance which the fiends themselves want to tip over, after all.

The 14th-level feature, however, is interesting and original. If you follow my suggestion for spellcasting, below, I would suggest you reword it such that you can use it when you cast one of your circle spells.

Instead of the 10th level feature, here's what I would suggest you do for spellcasting:

Circle Spells
At 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th level, you gain access to circle spells related to keeping balance in the cosmos. Once you gain access to a circle spell, you always have it prepared, and it doesn't count against the number of spells you can prepare each day. If you gain access to a spell that doesn't appear on the druid spell list, the spell is nonetheless a druid spell for you.



Druid Level
Circle Spells


2nd
detect evil and good, protection from evil and good


3rd
see invisibility, silence


5th
dispel magic, summon lesser demons


7th
banishment, summon greater demon


9th
dispel evil and good, infernal calling


11th
planar ally


13th
conjure celestial


Then your 10th-level feature can be one of the suggested features - perhaps one that buffs your summons somehow. Also, with such a large list of circle spells (and with 6th- and 7th-level spells added as circle spells to boot!), I would suggest that the 2nd-, 6th-, and 10th-level features not be so strong.