Structural Class Changes (Mana, Talents, Clear gish structure)

[Wherf]

Great change to seeking strike, now it reads like you don't actually need to make the ranged attack, not even see it, just know that it is there. This raises the question though: what if the creature is no longer a valid target? (Teleported or just moved out of range, phased, invisible, etc) the spell would likely fail, but does the caster know the target is gone?

I want to suggest also that when a new spell is created, you would create an issue in the issue tracker and link it here. It might sound lazy of me to ask that, but I often forget to use that tool.

I usually just CTRL+F in the All Spells tab after seeing changes on the Changelog. (If you scroll all the way to the right on the top bar you can see a changelog.)

With the wording of the spell it should still reach the target unless they are out of the spell's range or behind full cover. It is a really nice spell to catch someone who goes in an out of invisibility. The only requirement is that the caster saw them recently and they are within range. The spell would fail to cast if they are beyond that 300 ft range- or the arrow would clatter against a wall trying to get to them.

[Golagar]

I usually just CTRL+F in the All Spells tab after seeing changes on the Changelog. (If you scroll all the way to the right on the top bar you can see a changelog.)

I meant for Kryx to have all discussion of a certain spell tracked by the tracker, for us to see the changes to the system I use the same technique as you.


Couple more things about miscelaneous spells:
What is the difference between Charming presence and sleep? Aren't they mechanically the same?
Comander's Strike: It says "as a bonus action when you damage a creature, you can direct one of your allies to strike..." It means you can use this bonus action only when you use an attack action or cast a damaging spell? Can your ally only attack that same enemy?
Can I make a specific key using trinket? What about copy a letter or certificate? This is more a curiosity than a question per se, I love this open ended spells as well
The spells Beast bond, Find familiar and Blood Sentinel are pretty much similar (get a pet/familiar for 1 mana) but the Find familiar and Blood sentinel lack a duration, what is their duration?

[Marcloure]

Couple more things about miscelaneous spells:
What is the difference between Charming presence and sleep? Aren't they mechanically the same?
Comander's Strike: It says "as a bonus action when you damage a creature, you can direct one of your allies to strike..." It means you can use this bonus action only when you use an attack action or cast a damaging spell? Can your ally only attack that same enemy?
Can I make a specific key using trinket? What about copy a letter or certificate? This is more a curiosity than a question per se, I love this open ended spells as well
The spells Beast bond, Find familiar and Blood Sentinel are pretty much similar (get a pet/familiar for 1 mana) but the Find familiar and Blood sentinel lack a duration, what is their duration?

Most of these questions are general D&D 5e questions. My two cents in:

Charming Presence and Sleep. They work the same, but charm is a condition, sleep is another one entirely. Charming presence is more useful when speaking to a public, for instance. Sleep is useful to sneak past a guard house or use in combat.

Commander's Strike does what it says. When you deal damage (no specification, so any damage), an ally can make one weapon attack (no specification, so any target with any weapon attack).

Trinket is similar to RAW Wizard's Minor Conjuration. The spell is DM dependent, some DMs may judge that you can make any small object, some will say you cannot do anything too complicated or make a key for a lock you don't know the details.

With Beast Bond you can link with any beast, bear, tigers, or otherwise. As the creature is friendly to you, maybe you can convince it to help you in a fight or something else, for instance.

[Golagar]

Thanks for the clarifications, really appreciate it.
Regarding the last question:

With Beast Bond you can link with any beast, bear, tigers, or otherwise. As the creature is friendly to you, maybe you can convince it to help you in a fight or something else, for instance.

What about the duration of Find Familiar and Blood Sentinel? Are they forever until dispelled? Can the link be dispelled at all?

Comparing the two: Beast bond has concentration and a shorter duration and cant deliver touch spells, but the pet is potentially better (bigger beasts) and can fight while Find Familiar and Blood Sentinel have undetermined duration? but are limited to small or tiny creatures.

Did I get it right?
Either way I think it should be specified the duration of Find Familiar and Blood Sentinel

[Kryx]

This raises the question though: what if the creature is no longer a valid target? (Teleported or just moved out of range, phased, invisible, etc) the spell would likely fail, but does the caster know the target is gone?

The spell does not specify that the caster would know the target is gone, so the caster doesn't know. Mine rules are adjudicated just like 5e rules.

I want to suggest also that when a new spell is created, you would create an issue in the issue tracker and link it here. It might sound lazy of me to ask that, but I often forget to use that tool.

The issue tracker is a list of TODOs for me to tackle. It is not meant as a "here is a list of things that have happened" or "here is all the discussion about fireball". The changelog serves the purpose of informing of changes and the issue tracker should be used to raise specific issues about specific things (spells, classes, races, etc).

Can I make a specific key using trinket? What about copy a letter or certificate? This is more a curiosity than a question per se, I love this open ended spells as well

I wouldn't allow it as a catch-all like that, no. It can create minor things and you could use those minor things as lock picks for example by rolling an ability check, but I wouldn't allow a specific key that just worked.
Paper/writing is beyond the capabilities of Trinket and similar spells.

The spells Beast bond, Find familiar and Blood Sentinel are pretty much similar (get a pet/familiar for 1 mana) but the Find familiar and Blood sentinel lack a duration, what is their duration?

Find Familiar does not have a duration by RAW, nor does mine. Beast Bond is very different from Find Familiar in both RAW and my rules.

What about the duration of Find Familiar and Blood Sentinel? Are they forever until dispelled? Can the link be dispelled at all?

They act just like RAW Find Familiar. The duration is instantaneous and lasts until the creature dies or is dismissed.

Regarding dispelled: read https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questi...ed-or-banished

Either way I think it should be specified the duration of Find Familiar and Blood Sentinel

Like Fireball, instantaneous durations are not explicitly written. Anything without an explicit duration is instantaneous.

[Golagar]

Thanks for the detailed answers, specially this one

Anything without an explicit duration is instantaneous.

I think I missed this very important detail when reading the spell section, a lot of things make more sense now

[Golagar]

Love the companions changes, I just have one question: at the companion table, all forms have an enhancement on the last column labeled "first enhancement". Does that mean that if your companion has that form, it MUST choose that enhancement when it first gets one (at energy 5, so lvl9)? Or is that just a suggestion?

[Marcloure]

I'll make my own question about companions as well. The homunculus perk says:

"Your homunculus is a construct that is resistant to poison damage and is immune to exhaustion, frightened, and the poisoned conditions and starts with one additional enhancement."

So, you don't choose a form for it, right? It starts with those resistances as traits and one addition enhancement. Movement is the base of 30 ft., but you can swap the enhancement for extra movement, like with many forms in the table. Is that it?

[Kryx]

I've explicitly stated the following:

The first enhancement you select must come from the “First Enhancement” column of the “Companion Form” table

"Your homunculus is a construct that is resistant to poison damage and is immune to exhaustion, frightened, and the poisoned conditions and starts with one additional enhancement."

So, you don't choose a form for it, right? It starts with those resistances as traits and one addition enhancement. Movement is the base of 30 ft., but you can swap the enhancement for extra movement, like with many forms in the table. Is that it?

That's correct. It's not as explicit as it should be. I've added a homunculus form to make it explicit.

[Golagar]

I do miss the fire shield spell (resistant from cold/fire + dmg to meele) from the PHB in this rule set. Should I suggest it here or open an issue?

[Kryx]

All suggestions belong on the issue tracker please.

Though if you check https://marklenser.com/5e/spells under "Converted Spells" is converted to "Fiery Rebuke". Imo there is no purpose to an ongoing thorns like spell when there are a plethorea of reaction cast spells that fulfill the same niche, but likely better in the vast majority of cases.

[Ugganaut]

Looking at the level 17 features of the subclasses, I don’t understand the balance of their power level, in particular those that grant spells.

Some grant a 10 mana spell: Arctic, Sea, Stone, Storm.

Aberrant: Feeblemind(8) or Dominate Creature(is now Mind Control 4)

Astral: Planar Ally(5) or Plane Shift(5)

Fiendish: Flame Strike(2) augmented to 6 mana.

Undying: Circle of Death(2) or Finger of Death(2) augmented to 4 mana .

I’m assuming that the mass AoE spells are more niche than most, and are therefore rated less overall. Same goes for Astral, unless your adventure requires plane-hopping a lot. Fiendish augmented to 6, while Undying augmented only to 4, is that because it has two options, or that one of those options is single target? Aberrant however has two very useful options(Feeblemind is single target), especially if Mind Control is augmented at all(don’t remember if Dominate Creature was the same).

I don't know if this is an issue for your tracker, or if I just don't understand it properly.

[Kryx]

I've adjusted them to be at least 8 mana. Several could probably use a bit more thought, but it should be sufficient for now.

[Marcloure]

"A sphere’s area, unless otherwise specified, is up to 5 feet radius for each mana expended." Does "up to" mean that you can cast a spell as a smaller area? You can't do that in RAW, but there spells doesn't grow by upscaling.

[Kryx]

I'm not sure what is better design now that you ask. My initial thought is to let casters resize it, but maybe that's too fiddley and the idea that spells are harder to control with more power could make sense.

What do you think?

[Marcloure]

I am not sure as well. I can say that using high mana AOE spells can become quite hard. At 4 mana, you need a room of 40-foot side to not target yourself or your allies, and that is a lot.

At the same time, I think this is an acceptable restraint, dungeons and houses are bad places to use AOE. Maybe you are better casting a lot of small AOEs than a huge one (as mana scales linearly, there is no loss of efficiency, just takes more time).

[Kryx]

I think I'll keep the "up to" wording. Otherwise you have a very rigid structure for walls that have to be at 15 foot intervals or have some overlap.

[tyresias11]

Hey, I wanted to ask you about the change of the lvl 5 feature to spellstrikes, on hybrid classes. Casting ANY spell was very versatile.

Was the versatility a major drive in changing it to spellstrikes?


(We are 15th lvl right now and spellcasters begin to do some more complex stuff. The high level spells are and feel quite impactfull, in both combat and out of combat scenarios. I think that hybrids being able to make an attack with a weapon and fulfil the martial-weapon wielding character fantasy, and cast a spell (although at half
max strength of a full caster) on the same round, opened up a lot of mechanical options too.

- Our buffing, mostly control using spells, warden, is very satisfied, both attacking in the front lines like the tank she was aiming to be, but also be the utility mystic who assist her allies with air magic (she loves control winds, levitate and its upgrades, and wind wall). A really specific kind of "tank".

- The avenger is the same, in that he feels satisfied with running around hack and slashing, while being able to use cool shadow and Illusion spells and give us some cool combat scenes.



Full spellcasters never felt overshadowed since having access to much higher forms of magic felt fair. Some of them were happy not feeling guilty for not using another control/utility spell in battle, and instead be more flexible with a wider range of options. (fireball :/ it's always ****ing fireball)

[Kryx]

The goal is for characters to be able to attack and cast a spell on the target. The implementation was flawed in several ways:

• Forgoing an attack on a two handed fighter is way more value than a TWF for example
• The spells could be any spell, not targetting the target.
• The implementation, when not targetting the target, was effectively quickening a spell and then attacking another creature. It doesn't make flavor sense.

The new implementation of either having a variant of the same level or adding 1 mana to the cost to cast certain spells as a bonus when you hit is a much better fit for the goal of casting a spell on the target you hit.

- Our buffing, mostly control using spells, warden, is very satisfied, both attacking in the front lines like the tank she was aiming to be, but also be the utility mystic who assist her allies with air magic (she loves control winds, levitate and its upgrades, and wind wall). A really specific kind of "tank".

This usage really falls into the 3rd issue above. Levitate on the target makes sense, but Wind Wall in a random location or Control Winds in a random location somewhat associated with an attack do not.

[Marcloure]

I have a rules question:

Crafting Concoctions says:

You can craft and buy concoctions that are available on the Alchemy Power Source, paying the same price as scrolls:

• 50 sp for 1 catalyst
• 150 sp for 2 catalysts
• 375 sp for 3 catalysts
• 750 sp for 4 catalysts
• so on

So, I suppose this overrules the general crafting rule (Playing->Adventuring) that states that you expend only half the market prince by crafting, right? Crafting and buying concoctions have the same cost then?

[Kryx]

You can craft at half cost still. That is just providing the base market cost and crafting is half. XGtE has their own scale (See https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questi...a-spell-scroll). Feel free to adjust the scale to suit your world, though I personally think the XGtE prices are crazy unless you give out mad amounts of gold.

[igorboschetti]

Questions:

1 - unbalanced concoction "Invisibility Potion"?
- costs only 1 catalyst
- it doesn't require concentration
- requires Stamina instead of catalyst to augment, is that correct?

2 - I'm Apothecary Alchemist...
- an extra-atack make extremely sense if you are a grenadier or something like a halk conjurer, as an apothecary or poisoner, i fell like throwing arrows not much like this class, so i have this suggestion. Instead of making an extra attack, the alchemist should have cantrips (lvl 0 concoctions), like shillelagh (a poisoned dart), or other minors grenades like the poison cantryp, ilumination, now that the alchemist can't lend its potions to other characters, making lvl 0 concoctions shouldn't be broken.

3 - rituals for Alchemist
- shouldn't be difficult for an alchemist to separate water from mud or other fluids, so, i suggest to add create water as concoction (ritual?)
- same to detect/identify a poison or dicease

4 - Mana & Stamina concoctions
- why not?

[Kryx]

Hi igorboschetti,

Thanks for the feedback!

1 - unbalanced concoction "Invisibility Potion"?
- costs only 1 catalyst
- it doesn't require concentration
- requires Stamina instead of catalyst to augment, is that correct?

Invisibility as a spell is only 1 mana. It's a short duration: 1 minute instead of RAW's 1 hour. Though 1 hour can be achieved through an augment.
I've fixed it so it requires concentration like the spell does
Requires stamina? I'm not seeing that anywhere on the potion.

2 - I'm Apothecary Alchemist...
- an extra-atack make extremely sense if you are a grenadier or something like a halk conjurer, as an apothecary or poisoner, i fell like throwing arrows not much like this class, so i have this suggestion. Instead of making an extra attack, the alchemist should have cantrips (lvl 0 concoctions), like shillelagh (a poisoned dart), or other minors grenades like the poison cantryp, ilumination, now that the alchemist can't lend its potions to other characters, making lvl 0 concoctions shouldn't be broken.

The Alchemist is being discussed on https://bitbucket.org/mlenser/tablet...-and-crossbows

As I wrote there: "Catalysts, unlike mana and stamina, is not an internal power source. It does not come from within. It cannot have an everlasting supply."

3 - rituals for Alchemist
- shouldn't be difficult for an alchemist to separate water from mud or other fluids, so, i suggest to add create water as concoction (ritual?)
- same to detect/identify a poison or dicease

"Ceremonial magic (ritual magic, high magic or learned magic[1]) encompasses a wide variety of long, elaborate, and complex rituals of magic. The works included are characterized by ceremony and a myriad of necessary accessories to aid the practitioner." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_magic

Concoctions do not have rituals as they are not magic.

4 - Mana & Stamina concoctions
- why not?

Huh? Mana powers spells and stamina powers maneuvers. Thematically, none of those could be used to create concoctions.

[Marcloure]

Huh? Mana powers spells and stamina powers maneuvers. Thematically, none of those could be used to create concoctions.

I think he means "the ability to create mana or stamina potions". It would be like trading your catalysts for the mana or stamina of another character, maybe with the total deficit of 1 energy?

[Kryx]

I think he means "the ability to create mana or stamina potions". It would be like trading your catalysts for the mana or stamina of another character, maybe with the total deficit of 1 energy?

Ah, ya, I purposefully did not include these. Trading your energy for another class's energy really enables playstyles which simply exist to enable other characters and do nothing yourself. It's like the Lazy Warlord from 4e. It shouldn't exist as a concept imo. Everyone should be able to meaningfully contribute themselves. Sure, they can buff others and help eachother, but they shouldn't just be a battery that sits there and enables the "best player" to do his work.

[igorboschetti]

Attach Bomb has been removed as a Chemist's 4th lvl feature?

Suggestions:

Charm
- Sleeping potion = + add a sleeping dart

Creation
Shouldn't Creation theme be a alchemical theme instead of divination?

Mending = some adhesive strap, maybe used to attach concoctions to arrows
Forge armor = a black oiled flask wich become a sort of rubber armor
Alchemical Solvent (From contamination)
Holy water (from explosives)
Grapnel
Grease
Fabricate = Fabricate + gold coins, necessary to create a permanent concoctions

Water theme
Create, Purify Water = Liquid Puriffy potion (dirt and toxi fluid become hardened stone and can be easily removed from water, so um can make some water from wet mud etc..)

Explosives theme
Nail bomb -> add a bleed effect (as a augment perphaps)

Trickery
Smoke BOmb from explosives theme

Also, i 'll think in more chaotic versions of concoctions to suggest, as a concoction may be hard to control, since it's not a magic.

[Kryx]

Attach Bomb has been removed as a Chemist's 4th lvl feature?

It wasn't a feature on the old Alchemist (https://old-alchemist.marklenser.com...hemist/Chemist) and hasn't been one since I reworked it. It's a general feat that is available at 4th level though.

Suggestions

It'd be great if you could open individual issues for each suggestion: https://bitbucket.org/mlenser/tablet...ew&status=open

Charm
- Sleeping potion = + add a sleeping dart

Isn't this just Sleeping Potion with Attach Bomb as a feat?

Creation
Shouldn't Creation theme be a alchemical theme instead of divination?

Divination has 13 items that work as alchemical flavor. I can't see why that woul

I don't see many Creation theme spells functioning as something created via chemicals (non-magical). A few, but not many.

• Mending: cantrips are not in alchemy
• Forge armor: could work by pouring a liquid on yourself and letting it harden
• Alchemical Solvent: I don't see this as creation. It isn't creating anything (other than the concoction, but that's always true). It's removing contaminations.
• Holy water: If anything this is light
• Grapnel: Grapnel could be an item, but it's surely not a chemical concoction
• Grease: could surely work
• Fabricate: fabricate cannot create gold and is quite a bit of a stretch for alchemy

Based on that list I'd say there are 2 options. I think there are a few more in the theme, but I purposefully didn't spread out alchemy as much as I could, otherwise the alchemist would need a lot of themes (this is why Explosives exists instead of putting all of those options in fire, acid, etc).

Water theme
Create, Purify Water = Liquid Puriffy potion (dirt and toxi fluid become hardened stone and can be easily removed from water, so um can make some water from wet mud etc..)

This is already covered by Purification Potion, ya?

Explosives theme
Nail bomb -> add a bleed effect (as a augment perphaps)

The split of damages comes from DMG or some other source that I found for a nail bomb. I forget now.

Trickery
Smoke BOmb from explosives theme

See above: "I purposefully didn't spread out alchemy as much as I could, otherwise the alchemist would need a lot of themes (this is why Explosives exists instead of putting all of those options in fire, acid, etc)."

[igorboschetti]

ok, about repeating potions on different themes, i think it's not bad at all, actually the alchemist wouldn't need to take as many themes if there were some concotions repeated in other themes.

i 'll open the threads for the next suggestions, thanks for the advice!

oh! about purification potion it doesn't purify or separate water from other materials, at least i don't think so:

"As an action, you can create a vial of liquid that appears to have a visible infection in the middle that is continuously washed clean. A creature can drink the contents as an action to remove the blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or poisoned condition."

[Golagar]

Quick question, when you say "A character can’t benefit from more than two short rests before they take a long rest" you mean can't regain mana, stamina, doesn't get powers that recharge after a rest, no action surge, nothing?

[Kryx]

Quick question, when you say "A character can’t benefit from more than two short rests before they take a long rest" you mean [..] nothing?

2 short rests a day, max. Correct.