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5E Character Class - the Plague Doctor
Publisher: Dragon Sun
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/02/2016 12:03:42

Extra Attack at level three. This is terrible, terrible balance in a game where Fighters get that feature at level five! Not to mention the Doctor gets this and an equivalent of Signature Spell at level three! No no no no!

There is an ability at level two that poisons enemies within 10 feet for 10 minutes, no save. The poisoned condition is extremely powerful, and poisoning without a save is ridiculous! A grappling Plague Doctor can lock down an entire encounter by themselves!

Poisons are nonmagical, so they can't be disrupted by anything that counters magic. I can accept this, almost, but why can they also mimic the Magic Weapon spell? How can a nonmagical substance overcome resistance to nonmagical substances? Most poisons are just reskinned or slightly modified spells, anyway. Nothing really new here.

How can this be fixed?

  1. Make the subclass progression in line with other subclasses. Try 3, 6, 10, 14 and maybe 18. Extra Attack at six is great! Rework the Malpracticioner entirely; right now, it's extremely overpowered and broken.
  2. Use format similar to the PHB. The tools are out there, and they're free!
  3. Bitter Humors should take an action and have a limit between rests. Maybe treat it like Channel Divinity?
  4. Either come up with something new or use what already exists. A "poison" that perfectly replicates a spell is just a reskinned spell, not one of forty four new spell/poisons.
  5. Emergency aid is lame and late. Do something new, fun, and different!

All in all, an overpowered class with little to offer. Has potential for being neat, but needs a lot of work!



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
5E Character Class -  the Plague Doctor
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Creator Reply:
Hi! Thanks for the review. I can tell you spent time & energy on writing it. :) Just to answer some of your concerns: The reason the archetypes get the features at those levels is because those are the levels rogue archetypes get their features. I based this class around rogue progression. That\'s why alot of the plague doctor works the way it does. (for example, the dosages) Likewise, since this class deals exclusively with poisons, they needed a way to handle the HUGE number of monsters that are immune to poisons. This way, plague doctors may be slightly slower than their fireball casting wizard friends, but at least they aren\'t entirely useless. As for the poisons using spell mechanics, this was written about a year & a half ago (finished in Dec 2014, released in Jan 2015), before the DMG was published. I didn\'t have any poisons to work from *shrug.* BUT! As you can see, I already took your advice above! I was really impressed, actually, by how well existing 5E game mechanics supported the idea of what I wanted to achieve. (Just to be clear, each poison is a unique creation. I didn\'t \"reskin a spell\" to create a poison. I don\'t think that\'s what this reviewer is saying, anyway. I do make it a point to say in the product that you can use these poisons as spells if you/your DM prefer that route.) Which brings me to my final point: game balance. The plague doctor was built around the rogue class. Likewise, the poisons were built around spellcasting. You can see that is how I work: I find a system in the game & build stuff around it. Each class & archetype feature was built using an example from the PHB as a guide. This is why Bitter Humors works the way it does. It\'s built around an existing class feature. That\'s what I like about D&D. Reading the books gives me so many ideas & the rules give me ways to bring them to life! I hope that settles some of your concerns. Thanks again for taking the time to write this review!
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