[5e] [NothingWorks] Class: The Hollow

[GnomeWorks]

Read this first.

The Hollow is the Void Tank class. As such, it's got a d12 hit die, half-casting, and no cantrips. It's shtick is exactly what it says on the tin: to be a tank.

Because I've been writing these for 5e audiences, I've been using GM Binder to make the classes nicely formatted and such, so I won't be posting the info directly. At some point, if folks point out glaring mechanical problems or what-not, I might wind up posting a forum-formatted version for ease of reading, but for now, there's just a google doc.

I can immediately say that I know the progression is fucked, 9th needs to be a dead level as opposed to 11th. That will necessitate Naked Truth or Terrifying Presence getting upgraded so that the 11th level "tier bump" is more meaningful, but I haven't put a lot of thought into that yet.

I'm also not completely sold on how Void Debt works: specifically, the penalties given by the progression might need some tweaking, but so far in play-testing it's seemed fine. The player is rightfully scared of going above 3, though it's happened once or twice.

THE HOLLOW

[...You Lost Me]

I don't think I see any of the Katas?

In your first void debt I see "Radiance damage" which should be "Radiant damage".

I don't really like Void Debt being the core of the class. All your cool abilities care about how many levels it has and it gates how frequently you can use your marquee class feature, but you can't risk going to 3 void debt? I think players will want to use their class features, and void debt discourages that.

I would at least make some of the initial void debt levels less penalizing. Penalties to some social skills, or even no penalty at all, for the first 1 or 2 levels.

[GnomeWorks]

I don't think I see any of the Katas?

Yeah, this doc doesn't have them, unfortunately. Trying to be better about that, and including all the stuff for a class in its doc when I print them to pdf like this.

Most of them are translations of various things taken from the shadow magic section of the 3e Tome of Magic.

In your first void debt I see "Radiance damage" which should be "Radiant damage".

Heh, fair enough.

I don't really like Void Debt being the core of the class. All your cool abilities care about how many levels it has and it gates how frequently you can use your marquee class feature, but you can't risk going to 3 void debt? I think players will want to use their class features, and void debt discourages that.

I would at least make some of the initial void debt levels less penalizing. Penalties to some social skills, or even no penalty at all, for the first 1 or 2 levels.

Void Debt gates how often they can use katas, but their main abilities care about its level, and don't make you get more. Nullblade, for instance, is based upon how much debt you have - you don't get more for using it. So having debt leads to an always-on damage increase, and the guy playing a hollow in the game I'm running right now actively tries to cultivate 1 or 2 debt so that he can jack up his damage. Each of the subclasses has a thing you can to get a guaranteed level of void debt in exchange for a significant buff, which gives them a bit more control over when/how they gain debt.

Part of the point of void is that you are playing with something that is incredibly dangerous and directly, infinitely hostile to the idea of you being. The reason void debt is so draining is because I wanted to express that danger in mechanics. Past iterations of this concept have had very little teeth, and didn't have the sense of "this is stupidly dangerous" that I felt is appropriate to this power source.

I toyed around with the idea of the first level having no impact, but that felt cheap.

[OgreBattle]

What are the kata like?

[GnomeWorks]

What are the kata like?

Here you go. Note that only 1st and 2nd level katas are written, at the moment.

[...You Lost Me]

Part of the point of void is that you are playing with something that is incredibly dangerous and directly, infinitely hostile to the idea of you being. The reason void debt is so draining is because I wanted to express that danger in mechanics. Past iterations of this concept have had very little teeth, and didn't have the sense of "this is stupidly dangerous" that I felt is appropriate to this power source.

If it hasn't felt fun without the big penalties, I guess big penalties is the way to go. I would want to see this playtested across a lot of players before I made it a central mechanic for a ninth of my classes, particularly on squishier characters who don't want to take disadvantage on all their saves in exchange for using their primary class powers (especially if they're things like advantage on a knowledge check).

That said, 1 playtester having a good time is more than 1 forum poster disliking a mechanic they've never played. I'll reserve related judgment for after I actually play the class.

[GnomeWorks]

The penalties imposed by each level of void debt are absolutely the biggest concern. As I said, past iterations had little to no teeth, but I'm concerned I may have gone a bit too far in the other direction.

If anyone has a proposal for still effective progression that has some bite, but is maybe less dreadful, I'd be open to suggestions.

[pragma]

Spitballing: You could go with enemies doing more damage to you. "For each level of void debt that you have incurred, enemies do 1d6 additional damage to you when they damage you with an attack." This scales gracefully as the Hollow's HP and damage mitigation goes up, and it gives the sense of playing with something anethma to your life.

That said, I like the "halve received healing" and "vulnerable to radiant damage" weaknesses you have built in already. I could see keeping those two and annihilation and adding the additional void damage at void debt levels in between them. I dislike "Disadvantage on all ability checks," it's really rough and a similar exhaustion mechanic is one of the reasons Berserkers are so maligned.

[GnomeWorks]

Spitballing: You could go with enemies doing more damage to you. "For each level of void debt that you have incurred, enemies do 1d6 additional damage to you when they damage you with an attack." This scales gracefully as the Hollow's HP and damage mitigation goes up, and it gives the sense of playing with something anethma to your life.

I don't really see that working: void debt is the resource management for void as a whole. So the full casters are working with the same progression, as well... while you could probably argue that a d6 HD class is probably trying to avoid taking damage to begin with, that seems less than ideal.

Maybe I could see something like, "whenever you take damage, you take additional damage equal to your void debt," which avoids more rolling and is fairly quick math. Though maybe not damage: maybe just make it HP loss, to avoid interacting with resistance/vulnerability.

That said, I like the "halve received healing" and "vulnerable to radiant damage" weaknesses you have built in already. I could see keeping those two and annihilation and adding the additional void damage at void debt levels in between them. I dislike "Disadvantage on all ability checks," it's really rough and a similar exhaustion mechanic is one of the reasons Berserkers are so maligned.

Disadvantage on all ability checks does seem like it's the most debilitating, but I'm not sure how to fix it.

Maybe something like... disadvantage on ability checks for abilities you don't have saving throw proficiency? Clunky but maybe workable?

[owlassociate]

Here's my idea for void debt. Feel free to steal, ignore or change whatever you like.

1: Cannot benefit from advantage, vulnerability to radiant damage.

2: Healing is halved.

3: Disadvantage on saving throws and ability checks (including wu wei checks).

4: Lose proficiency on wu wei checks, gain advantage on kata attack rolls.

5: You and any creatures within 5 feet of you lose 1d6 hp per round.

6: Annihilation

[Orion]

I've recently accepted that 5th edition is here to stay and it the edition I'm most likely to be playing in the foreseeable future, so I've been hoping we would start seeing some 5e content on the Den. Thank you for your contribution. This class has a lot going for it in the flavor department. I haven't read over the katas yet so I can't sat much about the big picture of its game mechanics but there are a few concerns that jump out at me as I go through the class features.

Void Debt: I have a few concerns about the current system for void debt. First, a character with 2 levels of void debt now has an incentive to take two short rests back to back, which isn't something any other 5th edition character would normally want to do. Realistically, a party that can afford to rest for 1 hour can usually afford to rest for 2 hours, so why not just let a short rest reset debt from 2 back to zero? Personally I have similar feelings about a long rest, actually. I know that existing long rest rules already don't provide complete replenisment of all resource, but I don't think it's that fun or interesting to end up wanting to take 3 or more long rests in a row. I would consider letting void debt of 3 or greater reset to 2 with a long rest, with the caveat that it doesn't go below 2 until you take another long rest. I'm also not sure it's a great idea to penalize wu wei at higher levels of debt. The benefit of using a kata mostly stays the same regardless of how much debt I have. Because the consequences of taking on debt get worse the more I already have, I already have an incentive to use them more cuatiously the more indebted I am. If you also increase the chance of taking debt, I become very unlikely to take the risk at all, closing off a lot of interesting plays. The level 5 trade-off in particular seems poorly-calibrated. There's nothing wrong with the idea of making empowered attacks while risking your life each time, but the numbers just don't add up. Wisdom is probably my third best stat, so even at level 12 I probably only have like a +3. Rolling wu wei with disadvantage and without proficiency, I have less than a 50% chance to release even a 1st-level kata without self-destructing. Finally, I think that "disadvantage on ability checks" wants to be either narrowed in scope or moved deeper down the list. In 5th edition ability checks are the main way most characters can contribute to the game outside and between combats. It doesn't seem that interesting or fun to walk around being disadvantaged on stuff like perception, history, or arcana. It seems likely to push the Hollow player into shutting down and tuning out between combats.

[GnomeWorks]

Yeah, the two short rests back-to-back is admittedly a problem.

One thing to keep in mind here, I think, is that void debt is intended to be the casting resource. So the voidchild - the void primary caster class - is using this system in lieu of spell slots. I intentionally made hollow not focus on the wu wei stat to try to represent the notion that a paladin-like class should have fewer spell slots.

I loosely modeled this on the 5e exhaustion rules, but I think it's pretty clear that that's not going to work: as has been pointed out, the early levels of void debt are a bit too harsh.

[OgreBattle]

The 5e Frenzied Berserker path suffers exhaustion after their super frenzy rages, so that's something to look at. I think they get to use bonus actions as attacks.