Talk:Knight of Bretonnia (5e Class)

I'm in love with this class and ABSOLUTELY CANNOT WAIT to see the rest of it finished, and possibly archetypes? Not sure if that is something you are wanting to do, but either way this class looks and sounds really fun. Nine-Eleven~Kun (talk)

Ummm so question do you mean +5 to get the blessing of the lady or +5 in general? Also I think? your basing this off of some arturian lore so maybe as a skill for one of the archetypes as summon Excalibur, just a suggestion. -Random?

YES YES YES YES YES!!!! FINALLY FINISHED!!!! I kind of thought you had given up on it because of what we talked about, but it's finally here! I CANNOT WAIT to play this class! Nine-Eleven~Kun

Constructive Criticism

Everything below is opinions and suggestions. If I "direct" you to do something, it's just a statement of what I would do, not a flat-out command.

The Good

• Love the flavor. Comedic and clear. Paints a convincing image. Very tasty. I love how rich and developed the conceptual side of this class is. There is a lot of material to work with there! Not many people make great use of these introductory sections, and I'm glad someone is making good, healthy use of the preload!
• I actually really like that they do not have light armor proficiency. Putting thematic restrictions on build choices makes for an interesting character.
• I cannot help but like favored mount, because I'm pretty sure I wrote that whole thing! :D Did you copy that from the Knight class by any chance?
• You gave him full fighter extra attacks! Wow! So, with Lancer, a lance, and 20 STR, I can put out 4*6-17 damage, which averages to 48 damage. NICE! Now, thankfully he doesn't have the additional actions to put out additional extra attack stacks, so it works out fine with everything else the class has going for it. The unrestricted use of a lance is still a little crazy, but that's covered elsewhere.

The Bad

• This is based on Warhammer, which is Games Workshop copyrighted IP. Can of worms opened, friend. One of your links goes to a page which contains text plagiarized from another source. That is not ok. If you don't want to rewrite the source material, then don't copy it either, just link to it.
• I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of setting-specific mechanics. I mean, I know it's kind of unavoidable when running your own games, I just don't enjoy seeing them posted up for public use, because that kind of content requires the DM to either shoehorn the setting-specific aspects into their own setting, or bend the content to suit their needs. That said, it's really just a personal preference- there is certainly nothing wrong with making and sharing setting specific content, and when done right, it can be a ton of fun to read. This class is a good example of that. My negative opinion of this kind of thing pertains mainly to officially published material, not so much the homebrewed side of things, but it is still a bias on my part.
• Right away, there's a broken image on the right. Not your fault, just a nuisance. It can be a pain to keep good images on a page, especially since the wiki has no way of telling you when an image you linked to has disappeared! Bretonians.png is a bad link. You should find a replacement or remove it.
• By two-handed sword, do you mean the Great Sword from the PHB, or are you saying any 2H sword will do?
• The gear options are a little off-kilter. You can start with a great sword and a flail. Or a great sword and a shield. Neither combination makes much sense. Swap the 2H sword and flail entries, this would allow the defensive modes, (flail/shield and lance/shield) or the sidearm options, (2H sword/flail and lance/flail). Players should be able to meaningfully utilize their starting gear right away, and that starting gear should represent certain archetypes or tropes of the idea being represented, giving players multiple play styles to choose from. This makes your class more flexible.
• Perhaps consider dropping them to medium armor, rather than starting them out in heavy? Like, maybe chain shirt for people who want the shining armor style and have the DEX to make it shine, and ring mail as the alternative for those who lack the DEX but want the AC anyways, because it doesn't have a strength requirement, and a starting character may not be able to carry that STR13 chainmail suit. This also gives them a place to start from, and goals to work for- specifically, that expensive shiny new suit of armor they're dreaming of!
• Lancer is a MONSTER of a fighting style! The lance is the only d12 weapon in the core game, dealing a whopping 6-17 damage with a +5 ability modifier! This fighting style outshines all the rest by far, turning this class into a mook-slaying chainsaw. Nobody has much reason to choose another fighting style, or build a different type of knight, in the face of that!
• Regarding Expert Rider, From WoTC: "...never assume that a particular feat will be a part of the game. For instance, a class can't refer to a feat and feats should never be granted as class features
• You only need to link an item once, not every time it appears on a page, so only the first mention of the Lady of the Lake should be a link.
• Lady of the Lake is remarkably specific. It could be possible to make this a little abstract, allowing any lawful good deity to stand in perhaps, with Lady of the Lake given as the only example, just to keep the flavor?
• "Before the battle" is extr'ordinarily vague. Depending on the campaign, this could give the player months to do this. Really, they could prey after each fight, prey repeatedly until they get the blessing, and just hold onto it until the next fight! Also, the initiative penalty makes no sense; if it happened at the start of the fight, why are you slow for the rest of the encounter? Really, it should say something along the lines of, "When initiative is rolled, you may choose to prey, forfeiting your first combat turn as if you had been surprised."
• +2AC is pretty potent. If they get their hands on plate mail and a shield, they wind up with 22AC against ranged attacks. That's higher than the highest possible player AC in the core rules. That kind of artificial AC creep is a slippery slope, it messes with the bounded accuracy of the game, and is one of the many problems with earlier editions that 5e was designed to remedy. (Bounded accuracy is the idea that even a CR1/4 creature or level 1 PC should have a chance of hitting a CR30 creature or level 20 PC. (whether that damage is meaningful is another issue entirely) It still isn't entirely true for 5e, but it's much closer to it than any previous edition. The lowest level monster that can hit the highest AC PC is CR5, the triceratops, from what I've heard.)
• "flee from a close fight" is also extremely vague. What counts as fleeing, exactly? Any time I step away? Any time I invoke an AoO? How far away counts as running away, as opposed to tactical movement? And how close is a "close fight"? With absolute weapon proficiency as provided, I could totally be rocking a heavy crossbow with proficiency using this class! For a heavy crossbow, "close range" is anything within 100ft! What if I'm engaging a target in single combat for most of a fight, but then my buddy needs a hand, so I put a bolt in the enemy that's attacking him. Does that count as fleeing? I didn't even disengage or necessarily move, I just shifted focus! 5th edition doesn't really provide any tools for making meaningful use of this kind of wording, and it implies a selfish style of combat, absent of cooperation with the rest of the party, which is just bad mojo.
• Duel Challenger is GREAT for knights who don't give a damn for honor! The code is fluff, so it has no penalties for breaking it at this point! I could lock an opponent into a duel, and then pull out my crossbow!! The only downside is that you forgot to include what its effects are, aside from me having a penalty to attack others! That penalty doesn't apply to the challenged opponent apparently! I'm assuming it was supposed to?
• Heroic Blow... Is not well thought out. Sorry. The massive guaranteed bonus damage is not balanced by having a lower chance to hit, it's just unstable, being useless most of the time, and broken the rest of the time. That is terrible. Players would only use such a feature on enemies they could one-shot with it, who pose no short-term threat. Again, this makes the PC a mook-slaying chainsaw, albeit a messy and inaccurate one. Also, it's just arbitrarily your first attack of your turn, which is kinda' weird. Usually this kind of feature consumes action economy resource, like a bonus action or something.

OK, I've put in 4 hours of reading and writing, worked my way up to level 5, and found some pretty glaring issues. I'm going to wrap it up there for today and clear my head a bit. (Reading this kind of dry, technical stuff always makes me feel like I've got a head-cold) Hope that was useful, and good luck! --Kydo (talk) 11:01, 24 July 2016 (MDT)

So, first of all, thanks for your hard work.

The Good

• Yeah, I copied some things from the "Knight" class, including your Mount feature, it`s really cool and fitting for me, lol. Though I would like to change the part where my horse can pierce some thief with my lance while I`m asleep, but I really don`t mind that.
• Thanks for the rest.

The Bad

• Let`s skip that for now, I`ll explain it in detail later.
• Yeah, I get that. I understand that this class can`t be very popular, or, like, just popular. Frankly speaking, I wrote it for myself while reading some Bretonnian fluff and putting down my ideas in some Word document. But I want my classes to be balanced and well done, that`s why I decided to post my Knight of Bretonnia here. And maybe, somewhere in the world there would be people who will chose these classes for their DnD sessions (Manly tears of hope)...
• Fixed
• Fixed
• Fixed
• Fixed
• But if you will choose to become the Questing Knight you won`t be able to use lances for a long time, and, on the other hand, Great Weapon Fighting will become a viable option.
• Fixed
• Fixed
• Unfortunately, it's not an option. Knights of Bretonnia venerate only the Lady of the Lake. And I would like this portion of my classes' fluff to remain as it is, if that will be possible.
• Yeah, there shoul be something like "At the first round of combat...". I tried to balance this additional AC with Initiative penalty, but if you say there is no need to it, then it's great.
• I've got a Paladin in my party and at his 5th level he has 25 AC or something about that. I had a feeling there was something fishy about it... But the Knight of Bretonnia is paying a price for these AC points, should he break any rules of Honour - he will lose the Blessing, I consider this a good deal - your class rewards you if you act in character, but it will also punishes you for not being in character.
• I'll rephrase it.
• I'll rephrase it.
• That's why it was named Heroes BLOW, lol. As you can see, you shouldn't be asamed of such jokes in our conversations. I wanted to make some damage-dealing, which doesn't require making a charge, but I haven't come with anything less sucking (lol, I think I sould stop).--MrWAAAGH (talk) 17:56, 24 July 2016 (MDT)

Feedback

As requested, here is my feedback.

• Again, a lot of the descriptive text is copied from Games Workshop material, so needs to be removed.
• The images are hosted on sites that disregard copyright. I would prefer it if you could link to the original image (which might be on the artist's own page) and attribute the artist.
• Lancer. "...lose the disadvantage..." -> "you do not have disadvantage". I'm not sure what this style would look like. With a reach polearm, you can shift the haft back, but you can't do this with a lance.
• Favored Mount. You should limit this to Beasts and set a CR limit, similar to the druid's wildshape. Allowing a non-beast mount is too unpredictable (a feasible workaround is to specify exactly which creatures can be mounts).
• I'll add some more later, need to look after the kids now. Marasmusine (talk) 06:49, 25 July 2016 (MDT)

Well the PHB specifies that a creature must have "appropriate anatomy", and be one size larger... And the feature does have a CR limit... And it also gives an alignment restriction. So, I mean, yeah, something like an aboleth would be a possible mount for a level 10+ evil PC, but what are the chances the DM would even introduce such a thing in a manner where you'd be able to engage in this feature with it? If anything, it would turn the PC into a mind-slave, then have that PC form this magical bond arbitrarily, and use him as a weaponized meat-shield. A level 2+ PC might be theoretically capable of making a steed out of an ankheg, but again, how would you get one of those things into a situation where it's willing? Ultimately, this feature sets down some ground-rules for a DM to work with, but lets the DM decide what is actually available. Dragons and griffins are potential options, just as much as horses, or a roc, or the party's halforc who thinks it'd be funny to be the gnome's steed! It allows the feature to work in many different styles of campaigns by having just enough restrictions to make sense. --Kydo (talk) 10:48, 25 July 2016 (MDT)

Wait. Dang. Did I just resurrect a comment you didn't want? --Kydo (talk) 10:55, 25 July 2016 (MDT)

As I started writing the above, I was getting distracted by children, I had to abandon it before I could check it, I should not have hit save.

Nevertheless, the feature needs to clarify what is meant by "animal", since that is not a keyword. It refers to nightmares, which are not animals, they are fiends.

The feature should specify that the creature is to be a mount (in the text, not just the header), since that's the keyword that ties it in with the mounted combat rules.

Let's look at CR a moment. A CR 5 creature is a normal challenge for a party of 5th-level players. A 6th-level player should not have permanent control over a CR 5 creature: that nearly doubles the power of the party. I suggest looking at the scaling of wildshape or the ranger's companion.

Next, I am wondering what mounts are available to a level 1 lawful good knight. It needs to be an "animal" of less than CR 1 and an alignment of LG, LN or NG. Most beasts are out because they are unaligned. Maybe they should be included?

Sorry this was another brief message, I know I promised some full feedback, really struggling to focus today with household noise. Marasmusine (talk) 12:51, 25 July 2016 (MDT)

Sorry.

I don't think we need to be absolute and extreme with terminology the way you're being. This isn't magic the gathering, and the terminology in 5th edition isn't exactly the fine-tuned system of keywords that it should have been. (IE, referring to constructs and threatening plants as "creatures")

Yes it should! Didn't realize I forgot to state that.

As for CR, it's not extraordinarily accurate in 5e. That aboleth, for example, may be CR10, but its actions make it capable of pulling off a TPK on a group of level 20s! Really, that CR10 is only meaningful if you corner the thing in a fist fight, where it can't just overwhelm you with its capacity to manipulate. Furthermore, through playtesting, I've found that the CRs are incredibly pessimistic about PC power. Outside of first level, the CRs rapidly become irrelevant as far as predicting its actual effectiveness. I'm not the only person who has experienced this, with other DMs stating that a group of optimizers can force the DM to make encounters with double the threat.

Why would being unaligned have anything to do with it? Not having an alignment doesn't exclude them from the rule, it makes that rule inapplicable to them. You're never more than 1 step away from their alignment, because they don't have one. I mean, it isn't like you can't cast detect good and evil on a horse, it just won't give a response when you do. --Kydo (talk) 17:23, 25 July 2016 (MDT)

More Feedback.

Features are rough. For example, look at Gifts.

• Problem: You "kneel to pray [...] at the first round of combat". Is this instantaneous? Why the first round of combat? Is that to force it to be once per encounter?
  • The 5e Way: "You may use your action to kneel and pray. You cannot do this again for 1 minute."
    • Better Way: "You must finish a short rest before you can use this feature again." - "Combat" is a poor definition. I could pick a fight with anything to initiate a combat, and perpetuate the benefit.
• Problem: "If you pray, roll d20 + your charisma modifier, on a 15+" ignores existing mechanics.
  • The 5e Way: "Make a DC 15 Charisma check."
    • Better Way: Remove this line entirely. If we use the Better Way above, we need the feature to work every time.
• Problem: When does the benefit end? This is vague. If I "flee from hand-to-hand". What defines that? What distinguishes fleeing from making a tactical move away from a creature? "Refuse to meet a challenge" - "Challenge" has no mechanical definition. If a wild boar snorts at me, or a devil points a spear at me, is that a challenge? What does it mean to meet a challenge? Make an attack? It seems possible to avoid all these end conditions, so can the benefit last forever? Can I stack them up?
  • The 5e Way: "The benefit lasts for 1 minute, or you make a ranged or spell attack." If you've "given up the fight" or "flee from combat", the 1 minute will expire anyway, and the other commandments are a bit too vague.
• Problem: The benefits are too powerful to be used in every combat.
  • Solution: See "Better Way" above.

Anyway, that's a small example. Marasmusine (talk) 05:21, 22 June 2017 (MDT)