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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Kane0's Avatar

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    Default Way of the Four Elements redux (and also Jedi)

    As always, PEACH!

    Level 3: Disciple of the Elements
    You learn two elemental disciplines of your choice from the list below. You learn one additional elemental discipline of your choice at 6th, 11th, and 17th level. Whenever you learn a new elemental discipline, you can also replace one elemental discipline that you already know with a different discipline.

    Elemental disciplines allow you to cast spells using your Ki. To cast one of these spells, you use its casting time and other rules, but you do not need to provide material components for it.
    Casting a spell uses Ki points equal to the level of the spell, and can be cast at a higher level if the spell allows using one additional Ki point for each level higher. The maximum number of ki points you can spend to cast a spell (including its base cost and increasing its level) is determined by your Monk level as shown below.

    Monk level Maximum Ki for a spell
    3rd-4th 1
    5th-8th 2
    9th-12th 3
    13th-16th 4
    17th-20th 5

    Level 3: Elemental Attunement
    You gain an extra reserve of Ki points equal to your Wisdom bonus. These Ki points can only be used for your elemental disciplines.

    Caustic Scintillation: Acid Splash, Chromatic Orb, Elemental Weapon, Transmute Rock
    Dire Flame: Produce Flame, Burning Hands, Fireball, Immolation
    Heavenly Wave: Shape Water, Create or Destroy Water, Wall of Water, Maelstrom
    Immortal Stone: Magic Stone, Earth Tremor, Erupting Earth, Conjure Elemental (Earth elemental)
    Phoenix Wing: Control Flames, Faerie Fire, Protection From Energy, Conjure Elemental (Fire elemental)
    Shaping Summit: Mold Earth, Firm Grounding, Meld into Stone, Wall of Stone
    Storm Dragon: Thunderclap, Thunderwave, Wind Wall, Conjure Elemental) (Air elemental)
    Sweeping Torrent: Water Whip, Grease, Tidal Wave, Conjure Elemental (Water elemental)
    Unbroken Wind: Gust, Fog Cloud, Gaseous Form, Control Winds
    Winter Breath: Ray of Frost, Ice Knife, Sleet Storm, Cone of Cold

    Optional: Jedi Disciplines
    Fright: Minor Illusion, Cause Fear, Fear, Synaptic Static
    Jump: Repulsion, Jump, Fly, Far Step
    Lightning: Shocking Grasp, Witch Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Storm Sheathe
    Mind Trick: Friends, Command, Hypnotic Pattern, Dominate Person
    Push: Mage Hand, Catapult, Bounding Weapon, Telekinesis
    Speed: True Strike, Longstrider, Haste, Timelapse

    Spoiler: Spells
    Show

    Repulsion
    Transmutation Cantrip
    Casting Time: 1 reaction, which you take in response to being damaged by a creature within 5 feet of you that you can see
    Range: Self
    Components: S
    Duration: Instantaneous

    You jump up to five feet away from the attacker. This movement does not provoke an opportunity attack.
    The distance you can jump increases by five feet when you reach 5th level (10 feet), 11th level (15 feet) and 17th level (20 feet).


    Water Whip
    Transmutation Cantrip
    Casting Time: 1 action
    Range: 15 feet
    Components: S
    Duration: Instantaneous

    You create a long tendril of water that lashes out at a creature in range. The creature must make a Strength saving throw or takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage and be moved up to 5 feet in a direction you choose.
    The spell's damage increases by 1d6 when you reach 5th level (2d6), 11th level (3d6) and 17th level (4d6).


    Firm Grounding
    1st-level Transmutation
    Casting Time: 1 Action
    Range: Self
    Components: S, M
    Duration: 1 Minute

    You erect an earthen barricade around yourself. You gain half cover, resistance to thunder and lightning damage and advantage on ability checks and saving throws against being grappled, knocked prone or forcibly moved. The spell ends early if you move from your space.


    Bounding Weapon
    3rd-level Transmutation
    Casting Time: 1 Action
    Range: 60 feet
    Components: S, M
    Duration: Instantaneous

    You throw the weapon you are holding at a target and then bounce it from foe to foe before it returns to you. Make a ranged weapon attack against a creature you can see within range, dealing an extra 1d8 damage on a hit. Regardless of it the attack hits or misses, you can repeat this attack on another creature within 15 feet of the target. You can make up to four attacks this way, after which the weapon returns to your hand.
    At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, you can make one additional attack for each spell slot above 3rd.


    Timelapse
    5th level Transmutation
    Casting time: 1 Action
    Range: Self
    Components: S
    Duration: Instantaneous

    You regain the use of your action, bonus action and up to half of your expended movement from your current turn. You do not gain or regain any extra actions, bonus actions or movement.


    Storm Shroud
    5th Level Evocation
    Casting Time: 1 Action
    Range: Self
    Components: S
    Duration: 1 minute

    A field of lightning encases you. You gain resistance to lightning damage, and whenever a creature within 5 feet of you hits you with a melee Attack, the attacker takes 2d6 lightning damage and must succeed on a constitution saving throw or be stunned until the start of their next turn.


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  2. - Top - End - #2
    Halfling in the Playground
     
    Flumph

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    Question Re: Way of the Four Elements redux (and also Jedi)

    Quote Originally Posted by Kane0 View Post
    As always, PEACH!
    Level 3: Elemental Attunement
    You gain an extra reserve of Ki points equal to your Wisdom bonus. These Ki points can only be used for your elemental disciplines.
    This seems unnecessary, since you already reduced the ki costs.

    Caustic Scintillation: Acid Splash, Chromatic Orb, Elemental Weapon, Transmute Rock
    Dire Flame: Produce Flame, Burning Hands, Fireball, Immolation
    These are your replacement elemental disciplines, each one granting a cantrip and 3 leveled spells in the same theme? That's a good method.

    Why did you abandon Fire Snake & Unbroken Air rather than translating them to spells, like you did with Water Whip?

    Repulsion Transmutation Cantrip

    Water Whip Transmutation Cantrip

    Firm Grounding 1st-level Transmutation

    Bounding Weapon 3rd-level Transmutation

    Timelapse 5th level Transmutation

    Storm Shroud 5th Level Evocation
    If you're creating spells, you should also assign casting classes to them.

    Firm Grounding & Bounding Weapon seem potentially overpowered.

    Timelapse trades 5 ki for an extra bonus action and a little movement. That seems underpowered.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Way of the Four Elements redux (and also Jedi)

    I concur on the whole with snafuy's comments, except for bounded weapon. I should like to expand a bit on timelapse, firm grounding, and bounded weapon.

    Timelapse
    I'm not quite sure what the desired effect of timelapse is, but making it a spell that costs your action to regain the use of your action, bonus action, and some movement is really awkward. And definitely not worth a 5th-level spell slot, when you have 3rd-level spells such as haste. The most potent monk bonus action, as far as dealing damage goes, is Flurry of Blows, which requires that you take the Attack action, so this spell won't let you Flurry twice in a turn (because you would have to have done something else as your first bonus action before casting timelapse).

    I think you'd be better served with either of the following:
    - timelapse stops being a spell, and instead, once on your turn after using your bonus action, you can spend, say, 2 ki to regain the use of your bonus action and gain 10 extra feet of movement.
    - timelapse stays a spell, but it gives you an extra turn on your next turn, as long as you were able to concentrate on it until then. I'm not sure that's worth using your action and a 5th-level spell, but on the other hand it seems too strong an effect to have, say, a bonus action casting time, and I wouldn't go any lower than a 4th-level spell, because haste.

    Firm Grounding
    If you compare this spell to other 1st-level combat buff spells, it's pretty clearly too strong to be a 1st-level spell. Divine favour requires concentration and just does one thing (granting 1d4 radiant damage on weapon attacks for the duration). Absorb elements lasts only 1 round, and you resist one damage type and get to do a little damage of that type.

    By contrast, firm grounding gives you half cover (so +2 AC), resistance to two damage types, and advantage on saving throws (but not ability checks?) against certain positional effects. All without requiring concentration.

    So, yes, it's wildly overpowered for a 1st-level spell. If you don't want to modify the effects, I would suggest going through buffs at different levels and seeing which spells get to the same power level in terms of overall effect - especially since I'm hard-pressed to think of any buff spell that does so many different things at once.

    Bounded Weapon
    This has been written up as a 3rd-level spell, so it's meant to compare to the likes of fireball, lightning bolt, and vampiric touch.

    Now, it shouldn't actually do as much damage as fireball, because that spell, I'm led to understand, was deliberately designed to do higher damage than might be reasonable, because so many monsters have resistance to fire damage.

    With that in mind, the average damage of fireball is 28 on a failed save and 14 on a successful save. I'm not sure what the average Dexterity saving throw die roll modifier is for monsters, so I'm going to use +2 as a ballpark figure. Let's a assume a normal 9th-level wizard casting fireball out of a 3rd-level slot has an Intelligence of 18-19 (so +4 ability modifier) for a save DC of 16.

    With those numbers in mind, a "typical" fireball target needs to roll a 14 to make their save, and so succeeds 35% of the time. That means the average damage is (0.35)(14)+(0.65)(28) or 23.1 per target.

    Now, for bounded weapon. It's implied, based on the spell text, that you can't repeat the attack against the same target, at least as I'm parsing it, so I guess you can't guarantee making all four attacks unless you have enough targets? That might be something worth making more explicit, whom you can or can't target with multiple attacks.

    A monk using this spell will have a shortsword, so each attack will, on a hit, deal 1d6 + 1d8 (average 8) piercing damage plus their Dexterity modifier (because ranged weapon attack), for an average (most likely) of 12 damage, and no damage on a miss. Because it's an attack, the monk can get a critical hit on a roll of 20, for an average 20 damage.

    The 9th-level monk's attack roll will likely be +8 (Dexterity modifier of +4 and proficiency bonus of +4). I once calculated the mean AC of monsters in the MM as 14, so let's use that as a ballpark number for determining this spell's damage. The monk needs to roll a 6 or better to hit, which means the monk has a 5% chance of dealing 20 average damage, a 70% chance of dealing 12 average damage, and a 25% chance of dealing 0 damage. The average damage per target of this spell, then is (0.25)(0) + (0.7)(12) + (0.05)(20) or 9.4 per target.

    So bounded weapon does a fair bit less damage per target than does fireball. What about, say, vampiric touch? That's a melee spell attack that does 3d6 necrotic damage per hit. A 9th-level wizard casting this out of a 3rd-level slot would have the same chance to hit as the monk just discussed (let's assume), and as it's an attack also has a chance to score a critical hit, but no ability modifier is specified in the spell description as being added to the damage, so it's straight up 11.5 damage on a normal hit and 23 on a critical.

    So our wizard does (0.25)(0) + (0.7)(11.5) + (0.05)(23) or 9.2 damage per target. Given how long a combat is in D&D 5e (3-4 rounds), a wizard would probably get in as many attacks over the combat as a monk would with one casting of the spell, and, what's more, the monk could conceivably burn ki to cast bounded weapon more often - but then a wizard or sorcerer could cast fireball every round, too.

    All that's to say that bounded weapon is significantly stronger than vampiric touch but significantly less powerful than fireball.

    In short, the spell itself is fine. A crucial distinction here is that monk's ki is restored on a short-rest basis, where spell slots take a long rest to refresh, so a monk could cast bounded weapon far more often than a wizard fireball.
    ~ Composer99

    D&D 5e Campaign:
    Adventures in Eaphandra

    D&D 5e Homebrew:
    This can be found in my extended homebrew signature!

  4. - Top - End - #4
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    Default Re: Way of the Four Elements redux (and also Jedi)

    Thanks for the feedback guys!

    A bit of extra Ki just for your spells I think is a fair counterpart to EK/AT spells having their own slots rather than using existing class resources.

    Fire Snake I didn't bother with because there are so many fire spells already, and Unbroken Air seemed a bit... boring? It's a single target damage + push/prone, figured things like Wind Wall and Gaseous Form would be more interesting.

    Timelapse, extra action next turn sounds pretty good
    Firm Grounding, happy to remove the damage resistances and add concentration. I figured cover isn't a big deal since you could come across it on the field or make some with a cantrip, and advantage against being moved is the primary benefit which is offset by not being able to move.
    Bounded Weapon, is Vampiric Touch much of a good comparison? I always figured it sort of sucked. Good to see that it checks out below fireball though.
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  5. - Top - End - #5
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Way of the Four Elements redux (and also Jedi)

    Quote Originally Posted by Kane0 View Post
    Thanks for the feedback guys!

    A bit of extra Ki just for your spells I think is a fair counterpart to EK/AT spells having their own slots rather than using existing class resources.

    Fire Snake I didn't bother with because there are so many fire spells already, and Unbroken Air seemed a bit... boring? It's a single target damage + push/prone, figured things like Wind Wall and Gaseous Form would be more interesting.

    Timelapse, extra action next turn sounds pretty good
    Firm Grounding, happy to remove the damage resistances and add concentration. I figured cover isn't a big deal since you could come across it on the field or make some with a cantrip, and advantage against being moved is the primary benefit which is offset by not being able to move.
    Bounded Weapon, is Vampiric Touch much of a good comparison? I always figured it sort of sucked. Good to see that it checks out below fireball though.
    Well, if nothing else, you know that you're hitting a good spot for a 3rd-level spell if you're more or less smack dab in the middle of fireball and vampiric touch for effectiveness.
    ~ Composer99

    D&D 5e Campaign:
    Adventures in Eaphandra

    D&D 5e Homebrew:
    This can be found in my extended homebrew signature!

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