Hopefully this is in the right forum. A good friend loves the Dragonfire Adept of older editions, so I tried to port it to 5e, with some alterations of my own to make it compatable. I would like to submit this to the repository thread, (http://community.wizards.com/forum/player-help/threads/4132921) but I wanted some outside input first. The power had to get scaled way back, and it might be too powerful still. I would definitely appreciate any feedback.
Dragonfire Adept
Hit Die: 1d8
Proficiencies: Simple Weapons, Medium Armor and Shields
Stats: Con, Str / Dex
Saving Throws: Dex, Str
Tools: -
Skills:
Breath Weapon
The key feature of the dragonfire adept is his breath weapon, which can be used at-will. Each breath weapon produces a 15ft cone shaped blast, originating from the caster. Activating it is an action. The range and damage are detailed in the chart above. All affected targets must make dexterity saves against the user's save DC: 8 + Proficiency + Con modifier. Successful save results in half damage, and no other effects. On failed saves, the target is under the effect of the breath, until the start of your next turn. You are immune to the effects of your own breath weapons.
- Cold: An icy blast of Frost. A failed save reduces the affected creatures' speed by 10 feet. This effect can only reduce the target's speed once per breath attack.
- Fire: A scorching blast of flame. A failed save immolates the target, burning it for an additional 1d8 at the start of your next turn, unless extinguished. (As an action)
- Electric: A blast of lightning. The erratic nature of the blast increases the range by 5ft.
- Acid: A spray of caustic acid. The slow burn of the acid makes focusing on other tasks extremely difficult, imposing a disadvantage to maintain concentration from this damage.
- Poison: Creates a fog that lasts one round. Lightly obscuring the area for 1 round.
Learning Breath Weapons:
At level 1, a character knows 1 breath weapons, from the list above. At 8th and 15th level, you learn an additional breath from the list above.
Metabreath (Lv 2) - As a bonus action, you may add an additional effect to any breath weapon you use, before the start of your next round. Only one metabreath can be applied per breath attack. At level 2, you know 2 from the following list. You learn additional metabreaths acorrding to the chart above.
- Arc Shot: Instead of a cone, you can instead launch a concentrated clump of your breath weapon at a target up to 60ft from you. Your attack roll bonus is equal to your proficiency bonus + constitution modifier to hit. Area of effect components of your breath weapon now only affect a 5ft radius around the target.
- Concentrated Breath: You may treat all 1s and 2s for damage on this breath attack as though they were 3s.
- Dispersed Breath: You may increase the size of your breath weapon cone by 15ft. This reduces the concentration of the effect, giving any who are affected advantage on the saving throw.
- Focused Breath: The range of your breath weapon doubles, and becomes a line, instead of a cone.
- Hold Back: Choose a number of targets, up to you Constitution Modifier in range of your breath weapon. You those targets are given advantage on their saves, and take no damage on success.
Choose A Following (Lv 3) - Choose which path you will be following. Path of the Scale, or Path of the Dragon Warrior. This choice affects the level bonuses you will get at level 3, 7, and 14. More details on each can be found below.
Devotion Points (Lv 3) - At 3rd level, you gain a number of Devotion Points, based on your level. These are shown on the class chart above. These points may be spent to fuel your attacks and abilities. You regain all spent devotion points after a short or long rest.
Energy Resistance (Lv 6) - You gain resistance to a type of damage that you can deal with a known breath weapon.
Treasure Obsession (Lv 9) - You have aquired that which all dragons are known: a love of treasure and treasure hording. You always know exactly how much value your currently carried possessions are worth. You also have advantage on perception checks to notice being stolen from. Additionally, by spending 1 minute studying an unknown object, you can gague it's worth with very little error. Note, this does not mean you know exactly what it does. Only it's value.
Wings of the Dragon (Lv 11) - By concentrating, spectral wings spread from your back. By expending 1 Devotion Point as a bonus action, you gain a fly speed of 60ft, until the beginning of your next turn. You may expend an additional Devotion Point each round to extend this effect.
Advanced Energy Resistance (13) - You gain an resistance to 1 additional damage type that you do not already have resistance to, from the types dealt by your known breath weapons.
Draconic Fear Aura (Lv 15) - Once per day, you may channel the fear aura possessed by the dragons in 20ft burst, centered on you. Any creatures you choose with 20 feet must make wisdom saves against your breath weapon DC or be frightened for 1 minute. Creatures that can no longer see the source of their fear can make a save at the start of each round to end this effect.
Dragon God's Blessing (lv 17) - Your time channeling the weapons of the dragons gives you the ability to call upon their gods for aid. When chosen, the god of your choice grants you his/her boon. When you gain this ability, choose which god to call upon. It can be activated as a bonus action.
Bahamut - Breath weapon damage is maximized for 1 minute. Your breath weapon recharge increases to 3 - 6. This can only be used once per long rest.
Tiamat - For 1 minute, when using an action to make a breath weapon attack, you make also make a second breath weapon attack of any type you know. Also, your breath weapon recharge increases to 4-6. This can only be used once per long rest.
Dragons’ Vengeance (Lv 20) -
The power of the dragons seethes within your blood. When you take damage exceeding 20hp, from an enemy or spell cast by an enemy, you gain one more Devotion Point, if you are not already at your maximum.
Following: The Way of the Scale
Going beyond mere inspiration, follower of the Way of the Scale worship their draconic idols, seek to empower their breath attacks to better emulate and revere them.
Breath Enhancements
At 3rd, 7th, 10th, 14th, and 18th level, you gain ranks in a known breath weapon of your choice. You may take the same breath weapon up to three times, brining it up to rank 3. With each rank, gain the ability to use enhancments of your rank of lower, for each known breath. When making a breath attack, you may spend a number of devotion points equal to the rank of the enhancement you wish to use. Only one enhancement can be activated per breath weapon use.
Your breath weapon enhancements can each only be applied to their respective types. (Choking smog can only be used with Fire Breath, Icy spikes can only be used with cold breath, ect.) The effect of the enhancement only lasts until the beginning of your next turn, unless it specifically states otherwise.
Deep Breaths (Lv 9) - You can apply your constitution modifier to your breath weapon damage.
Following: Path of Dragon Warrior
Able warriors, inspired by the power of the great dragons of legend.
Natural Weapon:
You gain a Bite attack, dealing 1d6 piercing damage. This attack can be used with either strength or dexterity.
Breath Enhancements
At 7th, 12th, and 18th level, you gain ranks in a known breath weapon of your choice. You may take the same breath weapon up to three times, brining it up to rank 3. With each rank, gain the ability to use enhancments of your rank of lower, for each known breath. When making a breath attack, you may spend a number of devotion points equal to the rank of the enhancement you wish to use. Only one enhancement can be activated per breath weapon use.
Your breath weapon enhancements can each only be applied to their respective types. (Choking smog can only be used with Fire Breath, Icy spikes can only be used with cold breath, ect.) The effect of the enhancement only lasts until the beginning of your next turn, unless it specifically states otherwise.
Lv 3: Infused Strikes
Lv 10: Dragons Claws
Lv 14: Quicken Breath Weapon
Infused Strikes (Lv3) - You may add the power of a breath attack to your bite attack. By spending 1 Devotion Point, your bite bite deals bonus damage equal to a known breath weapon. If the breath weapon has any additional effects, the target must succede on a dexterity saving throw against your breath DC or be under their effects.
Dragons Claws (Lv 10) - You gain razor sharp claws, dealing 1d4 slashing. When taking the attack action, you may make a claw attack as a bonus action.
Quicken Breath Weapon (Lv 14) - By spending 2 devotion points, you may use your breath weapon as a bonus action until the end of the turn.
ENHANCEMENTS
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FIRE
Choking Smog: Fire Breath (Rank 1)
Dense smoke chokes the area, heavily obscuring it. Creatures cannot see out or in. This effect dissipates at the start of your next round.
Persistent Burn: Fire Breath (Rank 2)
The target will continue to burn for up to 1 minute. Until the target or any ally uses an action to douse the flames, the target takes an additional 1d8 fire damage at the start of each turn.
Explosive Breath: Fire Breath (Rank 3)
In addition the burn, this effect deals 3d8 force damage.
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POISON
Sickening: Poison Breath (Rank 1)
A strong blast of poison forces afflicted targets to make a constitution save against the breath weapon DC. Failure causes the target to be poisoned until the beginning of your next round.
Deadly Poison: Breath Poison (Rank 2)
Those who fail their save spend their next action retching from the poisonous gas.
Persistant Cloud: Poison Breath (Rank 3)
The cloud of toxic air hangs in place for up to one minute. When a creature enters the cloud for the first time each turn, or ends it's turn there, they take your breath weapon damage in poison damage. A strong wind disperses this effect.
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ACID
Slick Sludge: Acid Breath (Rank 1)
In addition to it's caustic burn, your breath leaves a coat of slippery sludge over the target area. Those failing their save fall prone, and make their first melee attacks at disadvantage the following round, as they try to keep balance and hold onto their weapons.
Blinding Spit: Acid Breath (Rank 2)
Causes blindness in the affected until the start of your next round.
Nightmare Acid: Acid Breath (Rank 3)
In addition to the burn of the acid, the magic interlaced overwhelms the targets mind, tormenting it from the inside and stunning it.
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COLD
Icy Spikes: Cold Breath (Rank 1)
The affected area is covered in icy spikes until the start of your next round. Targets moving through the area must succede on a dexterity save against your breath weapon or take 1d8 for every 5 feet they move.
Ice Over: Cold Breath (Rank 2)
Slow the targets (as per the spell) until the start of your next round.
Flash Freeze: Cold Breath (Rank 3)
Affected targets freeze over, and have their speed reduced to zero for 1 minute, or until making a strength or dexterity against your DC as an action. 20 points of Bludgeoning or fire damage to the ice will also end this effect.
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LIGHTNING
Thunderous Breath: Thunder Breath (Rank 1)
Targets who fail their saves are unable to take reactions until the beginning of your next turn.
Thunder Blast: Thunder Breath (Rank 2)
The damage type becomes Thunder. Failing the save pushes afflicted creatures back. Tiny size creatures are pushed out of range of the attack, Medium or Small are pushed 15 feet, large 10, and huge 5. Failing by 5 more, or hitting a solid surface, causes them to end prone.
Shattering Blast: Thunder Breath (Rank 3)
The damage type becomes thunder. A creature made of inorganic material such as stone, crystal, or metal has disadvantage on this saving throw. Unattended items also take twice this damage. Afflicted targets are deafened for 2d4 minutes.
Fiend-Factory wrote:
Aurek wrote:
Bahamut's blessing is stupid-powerful. Especially sitting right next to Tiamat's one. A given breath will do half of the maximum damage on average. Maxing the damage is effectively doubling it. Tiamat's blessing is the exact same bonus, except with the extra rider of the second breath attack. But on top of that, Bahamut's blessing lasts for 10 turns, and you regain your entire Devotion point pool with change.
When I look at this, here's the first thing I see: Poison breath + Fire breath + Bahamut's blessing + Flammable Gas + Explosive Breath.
First turn, I activate Bahamut's blessing and do 40 damage with the poison breath, activating Flammable Gas for 3 points.
Second turn, I regain 1 point (total 5), then do 40 + 40 by double-tapping maxed damage, plus spend 3 for Explosive Breath, doing 20 further damage.
Third turn, I get a point (total 3), use Flammable Gas again, getting 40 damage on that turn, and 80 again on turn 4. In a few turns, I will have regened all my devotion points, and can do the whole thing again.
So that's 40 damage on the first turn, 140 by the second, 180 by the third, and 260 after 4 rounds. Multiply by about 2/3 to include saves. Then I can sustain this damage rate for another few turns. Without Bahamut's blessing, I'd only get one use each of Flammable Gas and Explosive Breath, and all the breath attacks would do around half damage, meaning that one ability had more than doubled my damage output for that fight. Plus, all of this is happening over a 30ft cone, potentially ravaging entire rooms. This is way, way too good. You can find quicker novas, but this is still up there.
I'm assuming that the breath weapon from this class can be used basically at will, rather than once per short rest. Otherwise the "maxed for one minute" effect doesn't make much sense, and the class is only good for about one round of combat.
Aside from this, I think the ice effects are a bit on the "yikes" side. Restrained is a fairly powerful effect to throw at several enemies at once, once or twice per short rest. Generally I think an at-will AoE is going to be really hard to balance. I think I'd like this class more if it weren't so one-note. Have the breath thing be there, but give the character more variety in what it can they can do. It should really be more like "stand back now, imma FIRING MAH LAZER," instead of running around nuking the field with literally every breath. I'd maybe attach some kind of cost to every breath attack, equivalent to ki or spell slots.
I do like the what you've got so far, though. Sounds like the start of something I'd really enjoy playing. In particular, the amount of at-will customization of that one staple attack. Someone else will have to be the judge of whether that versatility is overpowered.
Macv12 wrote:
Macv12 wrote:
Breathe weapon recharge: this just rubs me the wrong way. Especially if you have an effect in there that boosts breath weapons for a finite time, this might equate to a long-term nuking or a wasted capstone. Making it random is more gamble-y and may be fun that way, but not tactically interesting, and not what I'd prefer to play. I'd give it a number of uses per rest, maybe 2 (eventually 4) per short rest or 2 (eventually 10) per long rest, or something like that. A random recharge thing especially conflicts with the Lawful nature of Bahamut, but something like this might be a good bonus for Tiamat's blessing.
Learning breath weapons: you shouldn't acquire all of these. It's an interesting and character-defining trait at early levels, then gets steamrolled into "everyone's the same" later on. If there are only 5 breath weapons, I'd cap it at 3, or just keep it at 2. Again, this might be a good Tiamat bonus, while on the other hand, Bahamut allows/forces you to use Radiant damage.
Energy resistance: if you limit it to 2 known breath weapons, give resistance to both of them. Or, let the player change their resistance after a long rest. Since they don't choose just one element to specialize in, they shouldn't have to choose one resistance...right? This might be too strong, but this isn't an extremely defensive class, so I feel like it gives them depth to make them specialists at combating varied damage types. This would also make Advanced Energy Resistance redundant, so replace it with another feature.
Dragon's vengeance: could get out of hand. At level 20, taking 10 damage at once should be par for the course, and there will probably be plenty of enemies with multiattacks, legendary action attacks, or lots of minions that have half-decent attacks of their own. I think this would activate too often. But then again, it's a capstone, and many 5e capstones are lackluster. So, I'm not going to propose an alternative :/
Way of the Scale breath enhancements: honestly, I think the requirement to have 3 of these of increasing power for every type means you have to supply way too many effects, so some of them are tipping off the power scale a bit. I'd get rid of the ranking system and just have a couple different effects of roughly similar power for each type. Or, you could keep "rank 2" effects and get one of these at levels 7 and 14 each, maybe. With points regenerating after a short rest, it's hard to see why someone would consider the low-level effects worth using, when you could nova-strike once or twice with the stronger effects and get to your next short rest quicker.
The most directly comparable class feature to this that in can think of is the Battlemaster's maneuvers. With the 'master, you get a handful of abilities that get stronger and more reliable as you level thanks to increasing die size, but you never unlock flat-out better abilities that make using the other ones a waste of resources. Plus, you get a couple of unrelated abilities that greatly enhance character flavor, like Know Your Enemy. I would definitely put something in this subclass other than just breath enhancements.
Path of dragon warrior: Quicken Breath and Combo Strike are very similar bonuses, and don't both need to exist. I'm not sure what to suggest in the place of either, but just like what I said above, I'd suggest a feature that adds more variety and flavor to this subclass.
Also, I misread Infused Strikes before, and it's far too good. Dual-wielding daggers, I can activate my breath weapon up to 3 times, doing 4d8 + CON each time, or around 70 extra damage that turn. 83 starting at level 17. Bahamut's blessing stills applies extremely disproportionately to this, giving 111 extra damage at level 14 and 135 at level 17. Plus I can still spend another point for the bonus action breath weapon, giving me 4 breath activations in that turn with Tiamat, or a further 32-40 extra damage from Bahamut. This is all before factoring accuracy, but this is an extreme bonus for relatively little cost.
As an alternative, maybe add your CON modifier's worth of (breath weapon damage type) damage for a minute, once per rest. Or, any time you use a breath weapon, you add your CON to weapon attacks until the end of the turn. A little refining between this and Combo Strike could create an interesting choice between breath-->weapon and weapon-->breath on a given turn.
And last...given the difference between Tiamat and Bahamut bonuses, and how they interact with everything else but don't kick in until late in the character's career, I might even make these sub-subclasses, like the Warlock's pacts of chain, blade, and tome. You choose your "Way of _____" at level 1 or 2, since that's your "fighting style," then choose your Following at level 3. Perhaps have the dragon choice be bloodline-related, so you aren't forced to pick Bahamut for any non-evil character or be super-dedicated to either dragon's alignment. Maybe even consider a third, neutral option. Off the top of my head:
Tiamat
- Lets you choose a third breath type eventually.
- Can use two breath weapons at once. When you do, you can't use a breath weapon again until you recharge (5-6 on d6).
- Draconic Aura is a Fear effect.
- Energy Resistance gives you resistance to one type and vulnerability to another, but you can choose them after each long rest.
Bahamut
- For one minute, breath attacks do radiant damage. Once per long rest.
- Draconic Aura is a Charm effect.
- Energy Resistance gives resistance to both of your breath weapon types. While you do radiant damage with your breath, you also get radiant resistance.
Having never played or seen or heard of a Dragonfire Adept before, I can't comment that constructively on what non-breath abilities would be appropriate for the class. It kind of sounds like breath attack is all they do, all day, but this sounds like a badly unbalanced ability in 5e's paradigm. I really hope someone else has some intelligent commentary, because class building (multiclass considerations, balance beyond simple math...) this is not my area of expertise.
Fiend-Factory wrote:
Wow, lots of fixes to make. Mac and Empact mentioned a fair few duplicate things, so I'm just going to fold them both in here.
(Pardon the small inconsistancies in name throughout the breakdown. Too many rewrites, and I know I've missed a few things. Frost vs Cold, or way/path of the scale/dragon warrior for example. I'll try to correct them as I go.)
EmpactWB wrote:
Fiend-Factory wrote:
EmpactWB wrote: