Comments from the Finger: But what if the Gods don't exist?
Oath of Heresy
You have seen the truth. The great prophets of history are false, and their clerics have been deceived; the gods are not what we thought they were. Your great revelation was a crystallizing moment, fulfilled by your oath. You will spread the truth with your voice to whoever has ears to listen, and where that does not dispel the lies, your sword might dispense its own truth.
Tenets of Heresy
Heretics are forged in fire and live by different creeds, but they universally share the following beliefs.
The gods are a lie. Your revelation has shown you this that the gods as people know them do not exist, and you may never again accept a religion founded upon them.
Their prophets are false. Prophets of false gods, including their clerics, paladins, and priests, shall be shown the truth. If they continue to spread their lies, they shall be put to death and their temples destroyed.
Steal from the gods. You can siphon off the power of the gods, using it to cast your own 'divine' magic, weakening the gods in the process.
Reveal the Truth. Your message will never accepted easily, for people hold strongly to their beliefs. You must make them see the truth.
Oath of Heresy Spells
3rd command, hex
5th enthrall, hold person
9th fear, vampiric touch
13th compulsion, dominate beast
17th dominate person, hold monster
When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following two Channel Divinity options.
Blaspheme. You speak words of heresy, profound statements which shake the room. Each unfriendly creature within 30 feet must make a Charisma saving throw. On a failed save, the creature us unable to magically regain hit points for 24 hours.
Burn Effigy. You can immolate your foes as an effigy of the gods. Choose a humanoid that you can see within 30 feet. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be paralyzed while you maintain concentration on this effect, to a duration of 1 minute, and take 2d6 fire damage. At the end of each of its turns, the target can make another Wisdom saving throw. On a success, the effect ends for the target. On a failure, the creature takes an additional 1d6 fire damage.Aura of Unbelief
At 7th level, your iconoclasm disempowers the servants of the gods. You and all friendly creatures within 10 feet of you have advantage on saves against divine spells, those cast by clerics, paladins, druids, rangers, and other sources the DM deems appropriate.
At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.
Ur Strike
Beginning at 15th level, you not only steal divine power from the gods, you can leech it from mere mortals as well. Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can cause the attack to deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage to the target and you regain hit points equal to the amount of necrotic damage dealt.
Apostate
At 20th level, fully divorced from the will of the gods, you can assume a form empowered by the influence of your blasphemy, a minor apotheosis. You can transform into a figure composed of dark, whirling energy as an action, which lasts for 1 minute. While you are transformed, you gain the following effects:
• You are immune to all divine spells and effects.
• When you make an attack, the creature you target gains no bonus to armor class from its armor.
• Your Ur Strikes are empowered. Your Ur Strike deals 4d6 necrotic damage, and you regain hit points equal to half the amount of necrotic damage dealt.
Note: Nature of the Gods
It is largely up to DM discretion as to the nature of the truth you have learned about the gods. Perhaps, they are merely powerful ascended mortals, or perhaps they do not truly exist at all.
You should mention that rangers are divine spell casters
ReplyDeleteGood point. I've edited that in
DeleteAre Way of the 4 Elements monks divine spell casters? The PHB kinda glosses over what type of magic Ki is.
DeleteExcellent question! The current edition make no distinction between divine and arcane magic mechanically, so it glosses over it in most places, and this is where DM discretion comes in. My instinct would be to say that elemental casters are arcane, based on the old planescape divisions between the divine outer planes and the arcane inner planes, but I would let the DM of your game have the final say.
DeleteI would say they're neither. Arcane comes from the user manipulating the weave, Divine comes from the God's and/or the Spiritual aspect of nature, and finally Ki comes from within ones own self.
DeleteDoes Ki even count as a kind of magic? I thought is was just life energy.
DeleteFast and great quality . Keep up the amazing work everyone involved!
ReplyDeleteFunny enough, this class archetype was made on a whim because the Finger needed one more pally archetype to keep up with our release schedule.
DeleteI wasn't a big fan of the Hulk and the weaponsmith, but this got me right back in. This one is great !
ReplyDeleteBoth of those were largely experimental. Hulk was our first attempt at a full class, and kind of a tribute to Marvel anyway. And Weaponsmith was something I wrote up when I was farting around and I figured, "ehh, why not post it."
DeleteIs there anything in particular you could suggest to improve either of those classes?
Deletehttp://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3b3wzv/5e_storm_warrior_homebrew/
DeleteI made a fighter archetype. Maybe you'll find something interesting.
For the weaponsmith I would change it to modify existing weapons. The GM can add new or unique weapons and you can find very powerful weapons already in D&D. Have a list of upgrade they can apply to certain weapons.
The hulk class is odd. Normally a new class is needed if another class dosn't fill a specific role.
Applying upgrades to existing weapons was actually the original idea. It just got too powerful. A character who could make existing weapons better would be able to upgrade everyone's weapons, giving the whole party permanent buffs and making that character kind of otherwise useless.
DeleteI was going for an entirely nonmagical character, so one restriction was that he couldn't do stuff like temporarily improve weapons. He should be able to do everything in his class features with just a nonmagical weapon and a set of smith's tools.
The final incarnation of the weaponsmith is intended to be as ridiculous and steampunky as possible. Because everyone's gonna either fear or make fun of the dude carrying around a steam powered chainsaw.
Hey.
DeleteI don't really have suggestions to improve the Hulk or the Weaponmaster, because there isn't anything in particular I don't like about these. They were well written, though I can't comment about balance.
The Hulk I dislike because of the theme, I'm not running a superhero D&D game, never will, and I think it just doesn't fit AT ALL in the games I'm running. I already have the barbarian to fill what the Hulk does, and it does it while making sense in the setting.
The weaponmaster just adds too many things I am not willing to fuck with : weapons. Adding weapons that do straight up more damage compared to those that already exist quickly becomes a clusterfuck. I've had players in the past argue for 2d8 weapons, or 1d10+1d4 and what not, and I'm not in favor of adding weapons in general. So all in all, while I do love the concept of the weaponsmith, it's not a class I'll ever allow, not because of a specific issue with it, but because adding weapons stronger than what already exists is too much of a mess in my opinion, and opens up the floodgates to a lot more issues than it's worth.
Over all, damage dice don't really matter as much as your strength or dexterity bonus to hit. But I do see your point. I originally had the weapons deal similar damage to their existing counterparts, but the Finger said people wouldn't want to use them if they weren't straight up more damaging.
DeleteApostate begins at what level?
ReplyDeleteIt's whatever level the last oath feature is given on the paladin table in the phb. I'll have the Finger edit it in though.
DeleteI've fixed it. Apostate begins at 20th level.
DeleteThis is incredible. I can't wait to use this as my BBEG. I can imagine the encounter with the cleric now where they have a momentary lapse of faith.
ReplyDeleteAw man, this is going to be fun. Awesome work on this one!!
Under apostate it says: "When you make an attack, the creature you target gains no bonus to armor class from its armor."
ReplyDeleteIn 5e armor doesn't give a bonus, it changes base AC. YOu might want to reword that. Love the class though.
You*
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DeleteI might be missing the point, but I fail to see a distinction here. There's no mechanical distinction in 5e between different types of bonuses and increases, like there were in 3.5, so the difference between saying that 'you gain a +2 bonus to AC' and 'your AC increases by 2' is purely semantic.
DeleteWhen you don armor, your AC doesn't increase, it becomes a different number, possibly still applying some, all, or non of your dex mod. If you want to hit though armor, you should reword this, and decide if any of a characters dex mod is applied.
DeleteSo does apostate hit through armor, or just ignore dex. bonuses and magic bonuses and stuff? And if it does hit through armor, do other bonuses still apply?
DeleteIf you read through the armor section and table in the PHB, that will explain it better than I can
ReplyDeleteThe aura of disbelief gives advantage against other paladins of heresy, which are considered divine spellcasters. That's a bit weird.
ReplyDeleteWhat, heretics are skeptical of other heretics! I don't see any problem there :p
Deleteare there any plans for a Necromancy orientated Paladin Oath in the works?
ReplyDeleteYou might want to look at Oathbreaker in the DMG, but I can also put it on the todo list!
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