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the samurai is a versatile martial class that channels the mystical arts of their ancestors.

please give feedback.

currently I'm thinking of restricting the uses of stances to one minute and a number of activations equal to 1/4 level rounded up, let me know what you think? and if you have any ideas for subclasses let me know?

and I'm sorry for not holding up to my commitment to writing the articles I promised. I will work on them but I got caught up in planning for the game I'm running and helping a friend with a project and reviving my classes of sokoku (a series of classes I made for a rokugan game some time ago)

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the parenthesis are areas to write in with pencil.

this one is a proof of concept that I drew up really quickly for my group, I'll run it by them and make revisions. but I'd like to have plenty of stat blocks in this format and maybe you would too, like a scaling brown bear for a moon druid. so let me know what monsters I should stat like this and I'll release them in a beta state to collect feedback before finalizing them for you.

thanks!

I'll be writing more articles here so stay tuned if you're interested, and check out my previous articles below.

click to expand

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Creating character kits instead of classes for 5e?

"dead" levels, casting, and balancing

How much is a ki point worth? an in depth look

now on to the article. I’ll address these topics in order, so,

starting with commanders.

Commanders can be used to keep low level monsters relevant as the party levels up, or to give uniqueness to specific enemy npcs. They also give the party a good secondary objective to combat that I will talk about later on.

Building a commander is simple, but they offer a lot more than just the monster; giving them individual motivations, styles of command, and names can go a long way for roleplay. Just don’t get too deep into the lore of one commander when it’s likely the party will hit first and ask questions later. To build one; first take a monster, give them a background (no shame in just rolling the tables), then give them 1 to 3 class levels (if it’s more than three the balance kind of breaks down), then adjust stats and equipment.

If you give them a spellcasting class I suggest picking just a couple spells that are signature to the commander instead of filling out a whole list, you don’t even have to choose from spells they are eligible for either.

Remember that each class level they receive confers 1 CR and to adjust their proficiency bonus accordingly. I suggest adjusting their ability scores by improving one by 1 and another by 2, and if their CR becomes 4 (I round up in this case) or increases past 4 by giving them levels then they get an ability score increase like they reached level 4 in a class.

Shamans

Shamans are an idea inspired by the monster manual entry for aarakocra. In order to add shamans to an encounter; choose one spell of preferably lower level, add a number of monsters designated as shamans equal to the level they plan to cast the spell at, then set a number of turns the shamans need to perform the ritual to cast the spell.

The reason why I suggest a lower level spell is that, if the shamans are upcasting the spell, not all of them are required to finish the ritual. They might want to cast a 7th level thunderwave, but if only four shamans survive to the end of the ritual it gets cast at 4th level.

Whether the shamans use; their action and their movement, just their action, or only a bonus action each turn to maintain the ritual depends on the encounter balance you want.

In order to calculate the XP of the encounter using shamans; quarter the XP for each shaman that has to use it’s action and movement to maintain the ritual, half the XP for each shaman that uses only their action to maintain it, and shamans that only use a bonus action to maintain the ritual are valued at full XP.

Secondary objectives

Now that I’ve introduced commanders and shamans let’s talk about how they can be used for secondary objectives.

Commanders and secondary objectives:

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Breaking morale. For this secondary objective you may use the optional morale rules in the Dungeon masters guide. Or, I use a modified set of rules for morale that I will detail. Morale checks are still DC 10 wisdom saves and are called when the following conditions are met;

• The creature is surprised
• The creature’s commander is reduced to half HP for the first time
• The creature’s commander is killed
• The creature’s allied forces are reduced to half the starting amount

For small groups, each enemy unit makes morale checks when the situation calls. For large groups, break them into ‘divisions’, if you have twelve kobolds make two divisions of six or four divisions of three (mark them so you don’t lose track) each division makes the morale checks as if they were one creature.

As long as the commander can be seen by the unit or most of the division they add their commander's charisma modifier to their morale check. Commanders automatically pass morale checks but may decide it’s advantageous to call off the attack and retreat.

On a failed morale check the creature or division gains the frightened condition and must run from the fight, they may be rallied by the commander only if they broke during the previous round or the same round on a turn before the commander.

A new charisma skill is added for npc commanders that they may be proficient in, leadership. The commander may use their action to rally their forces only once per encounter with a DC 15 leadership check and rallied forces are still frightened but are allowed to move back into the fight.

Diplomacy. If the party has prior knowledge of the commander or commanders, they might try to use diplomacy to evade fighting against a greater or even force. The party may try appealing to the commander's individual motivation or their history for leverage in diplomacy. For example the party are in the territory of the goblin clan four fingers, but are ambushed by goblin clan red beetles. Kricket is a goblin warchief of clan red beetles that had brought an entire invading force and surrounds the party. The party recalls that they previously learned goblin wars are settled when one of the clans clan staff is stolen by the other, and they were already on their way to four fingers clan to retrieve a stolen item. They use diplomacy in the midst of the fight leverage an end to the fight, saving their lives, by offering to steal the four fingers clan staff for Kricket. Kricket figures he can’t lose anything by trusting the party and lets them go, if the party holds up their promise and returns with the clan staff in 24 hours they can even gain a powerful ally.

Killing the leader. Sometimes it’s that simple. Killing the leader may spark the rest of the enemy forces to drop their weapons and flee, beg for mercy, or praise the strength of the party in a worshippy kind of way.

Shamans and secondary objectives:

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Break the spell. You may set up an encounter where the shamans have cast a summon spell such as summon shadowspawn. The shamans don’t have to concentrate on the spell but killing a shaman reduces the level of the shadowspawn by 1, reducing its stats and reducing its current hit points by 11 (or by how much the health scales by level for the chosen spell). For this objective I would multiply the XP value of the shamans by 2.

Stop the ritual. This one's obvious, but it doesn’t have to be a spell that the party needs to watch out for, it could be resurrecting a lich, or binding and draining energy from a hero npc. And maybe only one shaman is required to complete the ritual to put the party under a real time crunch. Or you could layer it and have shamans making a wall of force that need to be eliminated along with some henchmen before the party can proceed to the actual ritual and begin disrupting it.

v1.5 drive link

feel free to leave any feedback or questions but there are some specific points I would like feedback on. I’m looking for feedback for the spell list, mantle spells, and the bestial mind mantle. I feel like the bestial mind mantle is a little too powerful and would like some ideas on how to fix it.

the Psi warrior is designed to be a versatile half caster with the option to focus on martial combat or caster prowess. but also it’s to fill a gap in class themes without a convoluted psionic system or one poorly translated from 3e.

thank you for reading

v2.0 Drive Link

A spellslinger mage is an arcane caster who masters the basic magic of the cantrip. they forgo learning how to use a limited number of leveled spells in order to learn how to use their cantrips with greater power and efficiency. in other words it's a spellcaster that doesn't use spell slots.

thank you for reading. any feedback is welcome but I am looking specifically for feedback about the break dice resource and if it now appears / feels distinct from the fighter.

v1.2.5 (old)

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any feedback on the subclasses, spells, and spell list is appreciated. you can leave a comment or send a private message. Thank you

the Psi warrior is designed to be a versatile half caster with the option to focus on martial combat or caster prowess. but also it’s to fill a gap in class themes without a convoluted psionic system or one poorly translated from 3e.

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the Psi warrior is designed to be a versatile half caster with the option to focus on martial combat or caster prowess. but also it's to fill a gap in class themes without a convoluted psionic system or one poorly translated from 3e. it's the first one I've drafted that I'm happy with. I think the trance was a fun idea for a gimmick but I'm unsure if I executed it very well in the currently only available subclass, let me know?

feel free to leave any feedback or questions but there are some specific points I would like feedback on. I'm looking for feedback for;

the spell list. anything to add / take away?

the concept, does it have a strong enough identity? / how can I make its identity stronger?

and balance. is the autohypnosis feature too strong or too weak? are any of the new spells to strong or to weak?

A friend of mine has been planning to run a game based on the trails game series and has proposed some interesting rules for the arcus units.

I realize the amount of crossover in the people interested in 5e and trails is probably very small so let me explain. An arcus unit is a small device that allows humans to channel the same magic monsters do. The unit uses small marbles called quartz, refined from rare minerals called sepith, to grant these powers. This is almost the only way to use magic as a human.

Charge points and prepared spells:

• Use the DMGs spell points optional rule but call them charge points.
• Every character can prepare up to six spells by placing quartz into their arcus units. These quartz can be exchanged for others that the character possesses upon completing a short or long rest.
• Quartz are magic items and not tied to any specific class, classes do not learn spells on their own and are unable to prepare them without quartz.
• The maximum spell level a character can prepare is the highest spell slot they would have at their level. For classes that do not normally cast spells they follow the same third spell progression as eldritch knight and arcane trickster.

Quartz magic item rarity

Casting rules changes:

• Classes that do not usually cast spells use the same third progression as eldritch knight and arcane trickster (including charge points) however unless they are; eldritch knight, arcane trickster, or four elements they do not add their proficiency bonus to their spell attack modifier or spell save DC. for these classes they choose weather their casting ability is; intelligence, wisdom, or charisma
• After casting a spell the character enters a delay period

Delay period:
After casting a spell there is a delay before it takes effect, during this time they are concentrating on the spell, if they lose concentration before the spell takes effect then the spell fails.

The delay period depends on the spell level and caster status of the character. Once calculated as described below, create a marker on the initiative that is the character's initiative minus the delay, that marker is when the spell takes effect.

Calculating delay:

• Non / third caster Delay = 2x spell level

• Half caster Delay = spell level

• Full caster Delay = 1/2 spell level

Introduction

When homebrewing in 5e sometimes you come across the problem of whether a concept has enough of an identity to be its own class or if it should be a subclass. And maybe there is a strong enough identity there for it to be its own class but it has so much overlap with another class that it doesn’t feel like it’s own. Or maybe it’s just for a character concept that can’t quite be achieved through multiclassing.

Well what if there was a homebrew option that could solve this? Well I can’t promise that character kits will solve all of these problems all the time, but it’s an interesting option to consider.

So what is a character kit?

A character kit is a set of modifications to a class that a character can choose that act as a give and take. They give the class a distinct identity while not changing the core aspects of the class or disrupting its compatibility with its subclasses.

The idea of a character kit is not new and neither is it mine. It comes from D&D second edition. And even though it is a concept from a previous edition it works quite well in 5e, I have made some before and even prepared a few as examples here.

Character kit examples

You will probably notice each of these kits has a holy theme, while this was unintentional and I only realized it after preparing them, it does show how kits can be used to greatly expand player freedom in a restrictive campaign theme such as being members of a divine order.

1. Holy assassin (rogue)

A discrete warrior of the church, they take care of zombies, demons, and worse without the public ever suspecting.

Benefits:

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Channel divinity At level one you gain the cleric ability channel divinity and can use it to turn undead. When you use your Channel Divinity you must then finish a short or long rest to use your Channel Divinity again. You do not gain more uses of this ability as you gain levels in this class.

Cleansing strike Starting at first level, when you successfully use your sneak attack feature against a fiend or undead your sneak attack dice become d10 for that attack and the attack's damage becomes radiant.

Destroy undead When you reach 5th level in this class you gain the cleric feature destroy undead. This feature improves as you level up as shown on the cleric class table

Religion proficiency You gain proficiency in the religion skill

Hindrances:

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At first level you do not gain expertise or thieves cant, in addition you gain one less proficiency

2. Holy lance (paladin)

A divine guardian who operates at a distance, picking off foes with strikes guided by their god.

Benefits:

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Ranged smite You may use your divine smite and smite spells on ranged attacks with; spears, javelins, short bows, and longbows.

Fighting style options When you choose your fighting style at second level, the following options are added to the list you pick from.

• Archery. You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons.

• Ranged protector. When an ally within 60ft of you becomes the target of a ranged attack you may use your reaction to use your ranged or thrown weapon to intercept the attack reducing the attack roll by 1d8. You may expend a spell slot to increase the amount of dice rolled to reduce the attack roll by 1d8 per level of the spell slot. To intercept a ranged spell attack you must expend a spell slot.

Banners Each aura you get as a paladin is attached to a holy lance rather than originating from you. When you roll for initiative you may throw these lances up to 120ft to a space that you can see (no action required). If you lose these lances or they are destroyed you may perform a one hour ritual over a short or long rest to cause them to appear as new before you.

Hindrances:

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Your hit die becomes a d8 for this class and you cannot wear heavy armor

3. Evangelist (bard)

A preacher and orator who specializes in healing through the power of their god.

Benefits:

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Strength in faith Starting at level one whenever you cast a spell that restores hit points or gives temporary hit points, that spell restores twice as many hit points or provides twice as many temporary hit points.

Recited verses Beginning at third level you gain a bonus to religion checks equal to your charisma bonus

Enemy of evil At level three you have advantage on Charisma checks against any; aberrations, fiends, and undead, as well as on Intelligence checks to recall information about them, and you can't be charmed, frightened, or possessed by them. you also learn abyssal, infernal, or deep speech.

Spellcasting focus You may use a holy symbol as a spellcasting focus

Hindrances:

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You do not gain expertise at third level

Love thy enemy Whenever you cast a spell that deals damage, each target is considered resistant to that damage unless they were already immune.

“Dead” levels, casting, and balancing

Another article designed to help people homebrew in 5th edition.

When reading the players handbook or SRD you’ve probably noticed that each of the classes capable of casting spells have levels that there is nothing written in the “features” column of their class tables. You’ve probably heard this referred to as “dead levels” which, while not a very accurate name for it, is the common name and what I will be using for the rest of the article.

So why are there dead levels? And why do some classes have more of them than others?

The first one is easy, dead levels exist because gaining a new level of spell slot is considered a feature. After all, gaining a new level of spell slot is an increase in both number of options and power.

As for the second question. If you look closely, with only a few exceptions, the only times a caster gets a feature at the same time as a new level of spell slot is; when they gain their first level spell slot, when a feature they already have scales, and halfcasters at 5th level to scale their non-resource combat option. The exceptions are; artificer 9th level, bard 3rd level, cleric 17th level, arguably sorcerer 3rd level, and warlock 3rd level. While I do not have a clear idea why these exceptions exist as they do, they are indeed exceptions and it should be carefully considered whether or not an exception like this is appropriate for any class you design.

Exploring non-standard casting.

In 5th edition there are a few different kinds of casters each with their own purpose;

1. Third caster: for lightly supplementing a classes abilities, these are only used in official content as subclasses

2. Half caster: for an even blend of martial and casting prowess

3. Full caster: for a class that’s biggest feature is casting

4. Pact caster: for sustained but potent casting

With the variety available of proven kinds of casters it’s unlikely that you would need to venture from these to achieve the concept of a class, but maybe you do and that’s what we will explore from here.

Why use non-standard casting?

Maybe you are making a class that has a focus on casting but with an identity formed by abilities outside of casting, like the artificer, in this case you might use a half caster or even a third caster but round up at level one. Or maybe the class you are making has another substantial resource to track.

Whatever your reasons are it is important to keep in mind the following;

1. Fractional casters (third casters, half casters, or others) gain spellcasting at the level where their fraction becomes at least 1. After they gain spellcasting, their spellcasting levels (consult the multiclassing rules) are rounded up rather than rounded down when not multiclassing. For a casting focused class or one that uses spell slots as it’s primary resource give spellcasting at level 1 and round up always.

2. A class should never achieve a higher level of casting than a full caster of equivalent level.

3. There is never a reason to have a caster be less than a third caster as it is low enough casting to not warrant any dead levels.

Not using fractional casting but still using a table that resembles a regular caster would make multi-classing rather difficult, so if you decide a on making a non-standard caster that doesn’t use fractional casting I would suggest making the resource that powers it not spell slots or to model it similarly to pact casting. In any case, if a class would gain a spell slot at the same or a later level than a third caster would then it should not be considered a strong enough feature to be the only feature gained that level.

sample tables for non-standard casting

Introduction

When homebrewing, it is important to understand the values of the game resources both, for creating new ways to use them such as new spells, and for creating new resources as part of; subclasses, magic items, or new classes.

If you don’t care to read this whole discussion, the value of 1 ki is equal to one spell level in 9 out of 10 cases as shown by comparing ki abilities with spells. But that’s not all we will be discussing here, in addition we will look at how ki progression compares to spell progression of half and full casters.

side note: I have looked at the value of a ki point before and came to the same conclusion. But I thought I would do more comparisons to casters this time since I often hear a monk compared to a half caster and this comparison has been used to create full caster psionic classes.

base class comparisons

1. Flurry of blows
   Value: 1st level spell slot
   comparison notes

   At level one we can expect this ability to be dealing around 2d4+6 damage. without calculating for accuracy that’s an average of 12 damage, compared to the DMGs spell creation guide a first level spell should be dealing 2d10 damage (average 12). While this ability does require the use of your bonus action which would be a value increase it is offset slightly by the requirement that it is used on the same turn as the attack action.

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2. Patient defense
   Value: <1st level spell slot
   comparison notes

   While this is a powerful ability, when compared to the defensive capability one can get with a 1st level spell slot this pales. For this we are comparing it to the shield spell. Patient defense is used as a bonus action and not a reaction making it less valuable, additionally we can calculate the average roll adjustment by disadvantage as about 3.4 (this article does a good job of explaining). Of course 3 is less than 5 making this ability absolutely not worth a 1st level spell slot

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3. Step of the wind
   Value: 1st level spell slot
   comparison notes

   Escaping from a melee is highly valuable to characters with low health, it’s one reason misty step is a common ‘must have’ spell. While this ability can’t get you as far and has less overall functionality, that should be expected since misty step is a 2nd level spell. If you have allies you can position yourself around so pursuers provoke opportunity attacks then this is definitely worth it.

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4. Quickened healing
   Value: 1st level spell slot
   comparison notes

   Since this is a simple healing spell we can compare it directly to cure wounds. At 4th level this heals 1d4+2 (average 5) versus cure wounds that we can expect to heal 1d8+2 or +3 (average 8 or 9). With the lower healing and the inability to target allies, why would I place this as a value of 1st level spell slot? Because it scales to 1d6+3 the very next level to an average of 7 and continues to scale after that.

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5. Focused aim
   Value: 1 ki to 1 spell level
   comparison notes

   This ones a little tough. Increasing your attack roll by 2 is statistically going to increase your damage for the attack by 10% by increasing your accuracy. For comparison spells that increase your accuracy are… true strike… Well, we will compare it anyway. This ability is made less valuable by comparison because true strike increases your attack roll by 3.4 (I’ll direct you to this article again) and also this ability requires resources. However this ability is made more valuable by; not requiring an action, by being usable after you know the result of your attack, and not needing to use it the turn before you intend to attack. Overall I’d say the positives outweigh the negatives enough for this to be worth it. I’d say that in a vacuum this is in my opinion slightly less valuable than divine smite.

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6. Diamond soul
   Value: 1st level spell slot
   comparison notes

   For the comparison we will use silvery barbs. This ability is made less powerful than silvery barbs by; only affecting saving throws, and not also having a second effect. It is made significantly more powerful by not requiring a reaction.

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7. Empty body effect one
   Value: indeterminate. I would feel very good using a 4th level spell slot on this however, it is powerful.

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8. Empty body effect two
   Value: depends
   comparison notes

   It is still the full effect of the 9th level spell, just with seven less targets. It is only really useful if the DM allows it to be useful and is prepared to handle the spell, which is harder to do when only one member of the party is astral projecting.

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Subclass comparisons

To not cause these comparisons to overstay their welcome I’m only going to point out monk subclasses with casting

1. Way of shadow
   The way of shadow subclass can cast four different 2nd level spells from 3rd level, on a 1 ki to 1 spell level rate. This casting is actually a faster progression than half casters have and as fast as a full caster. However the progression is flat as those are the only spells they can cast and they cannot upcast them.

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2. Sun soul
   The sun soul has, at 6th level the ability to cast burning hands, a 1st level spell for a 1 + 1 ki per spell level cost. The fact that it is being cast as a bonus action is likely the cause for this 1 ki tax. You might note that with 1 ki placed at one 1st level spell slot of value it is worth 2 sorcery points, enough to use quickened spell metamagic. The only other observation I will make is that it’s a bit late to be getting a 1st level spell.

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3. Four elements
   For some reason the monk of four elements is really bad at doing the one thing it’s supposed to do, with the redeeming feature of having spell progression of a half caster as a subclass. Every spell has a 1 ki point tax applied.

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Spell slot growth comparisons

These numbers will be presented in both charts and graphs. When looking at these numbers it is important to note that spell slots, with some exceptions, recover at long rests and not short rests like ki points.

Below is a chart and graph comparing the growth of the number of spell slots between half casters, full casters, and the growth of ki points for the monk

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and below is a chart and graph comparing the growth of combined spell levels. that is the level of each spell slot added together.

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If you read this far. let me know if you want to join me in making a half caster, ki caster. I have some ideas laid out already for an elemental focused class in this fashion, but I would need some help because I am currently working on an update to a previous class I made.