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?

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, 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?

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 10 + proficiency bonus + constitution modifier) [Should this not be 8+PB+CON?], 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.

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.

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?

• • 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.
• 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?

• • 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.