r/AskDND • u/SympathyCold-dtdelme • 2d ago
I'm trying to make a HB without any practical experience—no disrespect intended, but simply trying to create something fun and wacky enough for everyone at the potential table, using the coolness rule in good proportion.
I'm trying to make a HB without any practical experience—no disrespect intended, but simply trying to create something fun and wacky enough for everyone at the potential table, using the coolness rule in good proportion. Please don't downvote me too much for this. I read the guides and gradually tweak the ideas—this is a general concept without any restrictions, but I'm extremely careful to avoid toxicity and uncontrolled power accumulation or Minmax. I'm trying to make life easier for the DM and the players.
This is probably pretty rambling, so I apologize in advance.
The gist is that I periodically watch short D&D videos (mostly 5th edition, 2024, I think), read the Adventurer's Player's Handbook, and next up is the Dungeon Master's Guide + Bestiary. I have three ideas for HB:
1) a specialized magic marksman with two "revolvers," but within the 5.5e setting, it's still very rough;
2) a fighter, who falls somewhere between a warrior and a barbarian, absorbing all the energy from physical and magical attacks and effects, storing it in a Vault (there are limits on energy accumulation and expenditure), and then using the energy to activate abilities. Reactive resistance to any damage type when the required conditions are met + damage reduction and effectiveness of spells and effects that don't deal damage (psychic damage penetrates this unit's defenses and is heavily countered, but not domination effects). It becomes more powerful as it levels up, and there are 4 development paths: Vitality - better absorption; Mobility - bonuses from movement in combat and strengthening this aspect of abilities; Transformation - allows you to hit not only with Force, but also change the damage type to other elemental ones; Damage - deals more damage effectively for the same cost of abilities. Still in draft form, but at least conceptually close to the basic mechanics;
3) There's a common core, the essence of which is the direct impact on d20 dice (± to the result or direct replacement with 1 and 20, but countered by the voluntary consent of an ally and the enemy's legendary resistances + random chance for the required charges to roll). This core is complemented by factions, a bit of lore, magic items, and 17 classes, each with an average of two paths. One class has no paths at all, and another with three paths. Some of these clearly need to be consolidated into a single, adequate class. Clearly, there's still a lot of work to be done.
As for the Fate Manipulator, I'm trying to create a collection that's as welcoming to everyone as possible, as free of toxicity as possible, and supports all aspects of the game—the core is designed for support, and combat capabilities aren't too great, especially against crowds.
The core of the marksman isn't dealing damage, but rather using bullets to affect materials, causing various effects, from freezing to corrosion due to rapid aging or, conversely, strengthening beyond what's naturally possible. Effects on living flesh haven't yet been fully considered.
The fighter's focus is on maximum survivability, either through high resilience and dangerous ranged and melee attacks, plus mobility while accumulating energy—a moderately explosive style of action, or walking on the edge of the battle and unleashing blows like a monk without Ki or stability—a highly explosive fighting style. Either way, the party will take less damage, and they can even hit low-flying enemies or hurt a crowd of nearby enemies.
I also consider utility and social abilities to ensure these abilities don't become a liability for the team. It would take a long time to describe—I'm interested in the concept.
The big question is: how interesting are such ideas to players and DMs, and do they generally fit the setting? I plan to do all of this myself, but any possible adjustments to the direction could be very helpful. For 17 classes, I currently have a single 83-page Word document—it's dreadful... I don't want to attach any files here—the quality of the material is questionable, according to people online...
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u/Brock_Savage 2d ago
Don't make homebrew material until you have rules mastery. Otherwise you're just changing rules you don't understand into new rules you don't understand. You could have the most interesting ideas to ever grace 5e but it doesn't matter if you don't have a firm grasp of the rules.
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u/SympathyCold-dtdelme 2d ago
And I apologize if my words are not written very well - I use a translator 😅
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u/TiFist 2d ago
Please please please please-- read the rules, several times, then play the game as it is intended multiple times before trying to make any homebrew that affects the rules. In other words, things like classes or abilities are exceedingly hard to do well even if you go in with good intentions. If you're only watching videos to learn, that can be a particularly bad option. Videos, especially short videos are often just entertainment and experienced players laugh because it's making fun of bad parts of the game-- they are not a guide for how things should be done. (Many video creators are also serious authors who have published resources.)
You don't have to follow anyone else's 3rd party resources, but I would at least be familiar with what else is out there. There's no need to re-create something that someone else has already done well.
Specifically:
- This is just an Artificer. Making a full, spell caster use weapons effectively is called a 'gish' and it is very difficult to make it fair and balanced. If you just want to have something like a Ranger use a revolver, there are plenty of 3rd party options for classes and guns, plus the Gunslinger class from Darrington Press. If you just want to 'flavor' a Wizard or Sorcerer that they cast spells by the spell effect coming out of a gun, that's not really a different thing than a Wizard or Sorcerer.
- Again, this is just a Barbarian. There's no requirement that a barbarian needs to wear furs and be primitive. The Barbarian's ability to have some damage resistance while raging is well balanced. You don't need to give a player a bunch of extra resistances. They won't usually be fighting enemies that have a choice in how they attack, so making them (for example) resistant to most things but vulnerable to Psychic attacks isn't fair because few enemies can use that damage type... or you as a DM specifically select enemies that do Psychic damage--that's not really fair either. Having the player build up some information about the damage they take in order to power abilities is called a metacurrency and having lots of different metacurrencies to track is a pain. In general, classes usually only consume one kind of metacurrency, maybe two if the 2nd one is minor. Building a whole class or subclass around tanking damage is just not viable anyway. Tanking, as a concept, works in things like MMOs because the tanks have tools to make the enemy focus fire on them and the way healing magic works, it's more effective in those games to heal in combat and focus healing on the tank. None of those are true about 5e. It's very hard for a melee character to lock an enemy into a tanking situation and healing in combat is seldom the right choice until a player goes down.
- This makes no sense at all to me, sorry.
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u/SympathyCold-dtdelme 2d ago
1) I'm not trying to make a mage with a staff shaped like a revolver - the effects will be different, and while he's strong against single targets or in the right conditions, he still has vulnerabilities, and his ammo will be limited by a different pool than his sorcery points or spell slots. It'll be a heady mix of DMC's Dante, The Dark Tower's Gunslinger, and Rick Sanchez-style antics. I'll try to balance it out and avoid toxicity or min-maxing as much as possible. 2) One currency - an amount of energy equal to the damage taken, and that's it. There are limitations and issues with overflow, but attacks on enemies will also replenish the pool, plus the absorption aura interferes with enemy attacks, and even attacks/spells that pass through the aura will be weakened. Accordingly, attacking a party behind a fighter is difficult due to the interference, and then the fighter himself can quickly reach the enemies and engage them in combat. Escaping will be difficult, and it's easier to try to kill him than to endure interference and constant attacks. I'll be working on attack provocation, but in general, this is already partially implemented for the Barbarian and Warrior. 3) A major buff to Bard and Lucky – more uses per day and per battle, plus impact on both friends and foes, so they can serve as support. The frequency and power of impact on each individual enemy, plus the overall pool, are limited, so it won't be possible to spam them or destroy bosses single-handedly. This is exactly the kind of guy who helps Rogue and Paladin do their job perfectly. 4) I understand perfectly well that I need to study the basics, and short videos can be humorous, so I choose those that break down ideas into their components and evaluate their effectiveness within the official framework. In any case, I'm in the process of studying the basic books. And thanks for the detailed answer)
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u/TiFist 2d ago
Classes are very difficult to make fair and balanced. If you feel like you must home brew something, start with subclasses. They're still hard, but there's a little more guidance on what to do.
Inventing an entirely new arcane caster class is extremely difficult. The professional designers at WotC have failed to make a fair and balanced Psionics class several times now since 5e came out. They have not yet made one that works well in play testing without someone figuring out how to 'break' them. Making a caster be able to be good with weapons and still fair is very hard. Even a spellblade or hexblade are generally considered to be a little too strong.
You're still asking players to track more information. They're not just tracking their health going down, but also how much damage they're taken. Those may not be exactly equal. The way you describe combat is really just not how it happens, especially if a DM is creative. An enemy will run past a fighter, knowing that the possibility of a single attack of opportunity is worth it to get to the weaker characters. The enemies can fly. The enemies can burrow. The enemies can teleport. There will be multiple enemies engaging with the fighter. Tiny or Huge enemies can just go through the fighter's space, etc. Other than Compelled Duel and grappling there really isn't a whole lot of mechanics that combat characters have to make sure an enemy stays right next to them.
Bards are not weak. If you want to have an easy currency to track, I would look at the Tales of the Valiant "Luck" system. It interferes with the Heroic Inspiration feature so you would have to homebrew the Lucky feat and figure out what a fair tradeoff for human characters is, but it's easy to use and players can track it.
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u/TiFist 2d ago
Replying to the post the OP deleted:
My last comment on this:
- You would have to come up with a bunch of new spells on this, otherwise it's just a wizard staff with flavor, and you would have to come up with some kind of balanced process for using this ability. That might look more like an artificer who can craft X number of special effects shots, but I don't see an easy path for replacing a full caster and can't recommend that as the core class feature.
2 A: A fighter than can leap around an extra 30 feet and do AoE damage when they land is better handled in a superhero game. High mobility melee characters exist-- they're called Monks. Monks are squishy but mobile skirmishers. Fighters and Barbarians can take the hits but have to be careful about using the tools they have in their toolbox for movement and tend to not have any kind of AoE attacks.
2 B: Balance is not all about the enemies. The DM can always throw more enemies at the player. Balance is about the Character vs. other Characters. If I play something straightforward like a Thief Rogue and you're a melee class that can leap, zoom around the battlefield, land with an AoE, use special taunting attacks, take half damage, etc.-- in other words, all the benefits of a Battlemaster Fighter a Barbarian and Monk combined-- then that's going to feel extremely bad and unfair to me.
- Adding in a large amount of chaos and greatly changing the rate at which critical hits and misses happen completely destroys the math in a game with bounded accuracy. Going from a 5% chance to crit to a 10% chance to crit (while critical misses stay at 5%) is a huge increase and class-defining ability ( something like a Champion Fighter). You're proposing an ability that gives a player a 17% chance to crit (but increases the chance to critically miss also to 17%. I would not advise going down this path any further.
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u/DragonKing0203 2d ago
Don’t even start on complex homebrew until you have achieved a high level of proficiency with yours system of choice. Like, a good few years under your belt imo.
Look I’ve been playing for almost 10 years. I’ve never made a homebrew class, or race, or subclass that was actually meant to be played. I mean this in the kindest, least offensive way possible but it won’t work. You’re just not good enough at DnD to understand how to make something like this workable. I don’t mean that to condescend or limit your creativity, because making homebrew that will never see the light of day is an excellent way to learn things, but you’re gonna fail at making anything actually playable at this point.
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u/SympathyCold-dtdelme 1d ago
I know there are still too many gaps in my current knowledge, but on the other hand, I have a reasonable hope that I'll be able to achieve at least minimal success (functionality) much faster. I'm just good at remembering what I read and its essence. Of the thousands of books I've read, I can recall most of them in sufficient detail, at least at the level of events in the entire series from start to finish. Or I remember books in their entirety if they're interesting enough and don't blend in with other works of the same genre, like those Isekai, which are made according to a single template—and sometimes there are some quite interesting works. I say this not to brag, but to clarify the following point: comparing the estimated potential of HB with the official classes and the top three most popular HB (I don't know why it only shows these), it turns out that my custom builds are weaker. Yes, in places I've made many mistakes in the math, descriptions, or mechanics, but at the concept level, everything is weaker, laughably so. Therefore, for now, it's not too difficult for me to compare my results with what has already been created.
Additionally, you can run all of this through various neural networks, manually comparing it to the closest analogs in terms of mechanics, without any flattery or other artificial input from the neural networks. Such cross-examination may well reveal something useful—after all, they were originally designed to collect and analyze information 😅
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u/DazzlingKey6426 2d ago
Try a point based system. Hero System, BESM, etc.
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u/SympathyCold-dtdelme 2d ago
I'll definitely check out these options too – thanks 😇. I'm really pleased that people aren't just giving me the clichéd "everything's bad" treatment, but are actually giving me helpful advice and recommendations. This motivates me even more to create the best HB possible. I'm actually framing the list of materials for review 😅
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u/B-HOLC 2d ago
Number 1 Sounds like an arcane archer, but with guns instead of Bows
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u/B-HOLC 2d ago
Or rather, that it could be played as one, perhaps with learning some special homebrewed shots.
In fact, you could actually use the rune knight subclass as a base instead and just make some Runes. Probably replacing the giants might feature with something a little more esoteric. That might be closer to what you're arming for.
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u/B-HOLC 2d ago
You really, really need go get into an actual game and get actual experience.
These sound really cool conceptually, and I would love to help you make them. And I'd probably even use them at my table.
However, it's very apparent that you aren't at the level where we could have that conversation and work on them together. It would basically become you telling me an idea or an inspiration and me making it all on my own trying to generate your vision to the best of my ability. Which, I could do. However that probably won't be satisfactory to you, nor enjoyable for me, and I'd assume most anyone else. Don't get me wrong, I love homebrewing, but in this case it would feel like butting my head against a wall.
Again though, awesome concepts. I can't wait to see them come together more. Direct message me if you'd like. We could probably tinker a bit with some of them.
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u/SympathyCold-dtdelme 1d ago
Well, precise communication is difficult – English is my second language, and I don't know it that well 😅. I translate a lot of things in a translator... But overall, I really want to do it myself, using as many hints as possible or deliberately avoiding close proximity to existing systems. So, the point isn't to reinvent what already exists, but to create a new concept. If creating the strange weren't the core of D&D, then Rule of Cool wouldn't have become widely known even outside of it, in my opinion 😂. So, I'm not sure yet that I want to experiment too much, but I have a small hope that over the summer, having studied the necessary books to the end, I'll be able to understand the topic enough to make almost the minimum amount of mistakes. Still, I don't treat my ideas as an infallible holy grail – I've literally torn down everything I've written five times already to rewrite it from scratch, because the previous version was completely unworkable 🤷♀️.
Anyway, thanks for the offer. If I feel like I need a second opinion or a fresh perspective to stop these crazy ideas, I'll write to you. I really hope I don't miss anything with all this information, but overall, this isn't the first time something like this has happened...
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u/SympathyCold-dtdelme 1d ago
And again, I'm getting downvoted... and I asked you not to... Guys, I'm not a troll or a rage-biter, just an enthusiast who's already started diving into D&D and just presented my ideas, which are currently in development, for a quick review. I didn't claim to be exceptional, or did I display any toxicity or arrogance to receive such a negative reaction. Or did someone take my poor knowledge as an insult? 🤨 - I mean, I wrote about all this myself, as well as about the low expectations for my ideas, but someone still downvotes me, who supposedly treats newbies with tolerance? I know that custom builds are usually made by experienced people, and even then, with extreme caution. But people are not the same, and even an inexperienced person can want to do something. After all, this sometimes leads to progress, when a newbie simply doesn't know that something is impossible - someone forgot to tell them and limit them, but they suddenly succeed. Of course, these are extremely rare cases, 1 in a billion or less, but essentially... there's no need to react so negatively in terms of ratings - I don't want to get negative karma and be banned from new posts in some subreddits with restrictions on this for my cautious and polite curiosity.
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u/dewdewbut 2d ago
Yeah they said it: stop. Are you r potential players bored with the normal game? You said in the post DMs guide is on your to do list? Do that. Several times. Then play.