Talk:An'ssel'rr

Here's the holding place for my threatened homebrew content -slitherrr (talk) 21:57, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Barbarian, Path of the Totem Warrior

As normal, but Lizardfolk from the Wydmoor area have access to a new totem, the Dragon Turtle. Change Totem Spirit, Aspect of the Beast, and Totemic Attunement by adding the following entries to them:

Totem Spirit

• Dragon Turtle: While you're raging, you gain the Dragon Turtle's intimidating physical presence. Enemy movement through squares within your reach counts as difficult terrain.

You adapting this from something? It's not sexy, but when I think turtle I think AC bonus? -GM

Me too, but almost any AC bonus we give it is going to be worse than Bear's "resistance to everything but psychic damage", which by my calculations is worth a solid 5-7 AC. This doesn't step on that totem's toes. -slitherrr (talk)

Aspect of the Beast

• Dragon Turtle: You gain the amphibious quality and a swim speed equal to your running speed, if you don't already have them. You also gain momentum: as long as you have moved at least twenty feet this turn and have only moved in a straight line, any Athletics check made until the beginning of your next turn will have advantage.

I'm here for swim speed. When I think turtle I don't think "very athletic and maneuverable". I do, though, think "explodes out of a lake" - some sort of charge-forward mechanic? -GM

That's the point of the 20 feet, I originally had it "20 feet in a straight line". Everything I could get out of it started getting fiddly, but I agree there's probably something cooler for this. One main thing to remember, though, is that all the totems at this level are like 80% out-of-combat stuff, so skill support and travel and stuff. That constrains things a bit. -slitherrr (talk)

Just put the "in a straight line" qualifier back in because it was supposed to remain, I cut it accidentally. The idea is: If the barbarian moves more than X in a straight line, then they can get advantage to do stuff like shove a creature, grapple, jump further than their strength score, force open a door, push through a tunnel that's too small, tip over a statue, swim through a difficult patch etc. Things like "climbing" wouldn't work because that involves not moving in a straight line (presumably the check happens after some climbing movement has happened, although the technicality there is a little fiddly), and same for "escaping restraints" since being restrained typically means not moving (although I guess if it's just your hands there is an edge case there). Of course, now that I enunciate that, it's sounds strictly worse than bear's "advantage on strength checks to push, pull, lift or break objects". Maybe the language can just be, "You have advantage on Strength saves and Strength checks", and clarify language around staying in a straight line? The idea I'm going for here is kind of a Juggernaut-style once-he-gets-rolling-he-just-keeps-going thing. -slitherrr (talk)

Totemic Attunement

• Dragon Turtle: While raging, you gain a steam breath weapon. At the start of your rage, and in every you maintain your rage, you gain 2d6 into a breath weapon pool. You can spend any number of these dice to exhale scalding steam in a 30-foot cone. Each creature in that cone must succeed at a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 + proficiency bonus + constitution modifier), taking the allocated dice damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. This dice pool regains 2d6 at the beginning of each of your turns. When your rage ends, any unspent dice in the pool dissipate immediately. [ed note: this is meant to be equivalent to recharge (5-6), starting uncharged, and could be replaced with that. I just like the dice pool mechanic more].

I remember the post on discord about this, and I know this will never actually see PC play, but moved to 5e to avoid tracking things and mechanics like this. (Even moreso in a primarily NPC class!) Is there any reason this wouldn't be a lot better at the table as a once per rage action, perhaps one that levels up based on barb level? Breath Weapon was absolutely my first though, too - how could it not be - but I continue to like 5e for its relatively straightforward design decisions. Or, if you want a pool mechanic, give them a set pool based on barb level and let them spend any number of them at once as an action also seems a lot more straightforward take on the same idea. -GM

I mean the easy way to do it is to make it recharge[5-6] instead, which, you'll note, I even said in the description. I debated making it an "X per short/long rest" thing, but the other level 14 totem stuff is really good and generally has "be in rage" as its only limit. -slitherrr (talk)

Should this not be 8+PB+CON? -GM

Oh yeah probably, I did a quick calculation from the turtle but almost certainly got its proficiency bonus wrong and didn't go back after. -slitherrr (talk)

Design notes

• Damage on the breath weapon is in comparison to the regular attack, which would generally be 4d6 + 10 + other bonuses. This works out to less than half of that per-turn, but in an area and burstier.
  • Starting uncharged here is probably a mistake, d&d fights aren't generally designed to last more than three turns and the point of rage is to drop this big ball of RARR into the combat anyway.

Here for the breath weapon, but a 30' cone seems like a LOT of squares worth of elemental damage. Where are you getting that avg 24 from? -GM

Greatsword (2d6) with 20 stat (5) with two attacks. It will actually be higher with reckless attack and feats and magic and stuff, that's the bare minimum. Agree that 30' cone seems like a lot, but the dragon turtle has a 60' cone (and 15d6) and a 15' cone is the shit wizards have been doing since level 1. A raging barbarian can theoretically do this more often, but in practice it's about once a combat, which means the wizard is doing more damage to a bigger area (at greater range) just as often with fireball (barbarian has 5 rages per day at this level, wizard has 10 spell slots that can be fireballs). -slitherrr (talk)

• Re aspect of the beast, aquatic-themed abilities are always niche, but maybe this will never be used by a PC anyway. That said, the latter part of this is an attempt to come up with something more general, still unique, but also mostly affecting the non-combat pillars like the other Aspects.
• The totem spirit ability seemed to be the simplest physically intimidating ability that was also unique enough not to step on Bear's toes. Other ideas were:
  • Shove attack a la the dragon turtle entry, seemed like it was either counterproductive (just shove) or too powerful (shove plus prone)

+1 charge bonus? Perhaps double down on the "turtle up" theme and some sort of magic defense? -GM

+1 charge bonus is the sort of fiddly bonus we all want to avoid. Turtling up was a good idea but I couldn't think of a way to make it more attractive than "resistance to everything but psychic". -slitherrr (talk)

• • Armor bonus (stepped on bear and also super-hard to dial in between "not worth it" and "holy shit this is the best")

maybe, but this is also the most obvious thought to me. -GM

Damage curve is slightly geometric, so reducing damage by half takes more AC the lower your AC is. Around base AC, resistance is like going from 10 to 17, which is a looooooooooooot. It's so hard to come up with something defense-based when that is just sitting there wrecking the curve. -slitherrr (talk)

Another problem with any AC-based thing is that these are already Barbarians and lizardfolk, so that's already two ways to calculate armor class competing with each other. -slitherrr (talk)