Subclasses, the bread and butter of any player’s choice in character creation. I love writing up subclasses since it’s the most impactful piece of a character at the table, dictating their flavor, style, and what they generally do. After all, a subclass can completely change how a class works, or acts, or even thinks.
Generally, making this stuff requires us to follow The Rules, and that will be the case here as well. We’ll go over the most basic of basic stuff then get into the crunchier territory as we chug along.
Rule 1: Thou Shalt Conform to Normal Leveling Structure
Every class has a subclass, and they all level up around the same levels. Most classes gain their subclass at level 3, clerics and warlocks gain theirs at level 1, and druids and wizards get theirs at 2, which I never understood, but is nevertheless The Rules. Each of the classes are written like that, and until an official rebalance or some other UA rewrites the classes, that’s probably how it’ll stay for 5e. So, that means that when we make our class, we’ll have to color inside the lines and stay within the same rung of abilities our subclass might have, especially for our first subclass level. You’ll actually notice that most subclasses with notable exception will have the same sort of structure when you first gain them.
- A damage facilitating feature. One that gives the player a new way to do damage, gives the player a way to do damage more consistently, or imposes a condition that the player couldn’t do as easily before.
- A utility feature. This could be literally anything, but it’s usually not damage. Typically, it’s proficiencies, but some subclasses have amazing ideas and use this to further their theme.
- An expanded spell list. This is always a feature for paladins, but not always for some other spellcasters, and typically not a thing for the three pillars of fullcasting: Wizard, Cleric, and Druid.
While these may be The Rules, working in and around them will make your class pretty in line with what’s to be expected. There are few absolutes in making something like this, so have fun with precisely what you decide to put in them. After all, the above list doesn’t account for half-caster or third-caster subclasses at all, or subclasses that introduce a custom resource (looking at you, battlemaster!), but we’ll cover that near the end of the article.
Rule 2: Thou Shalt Be Special
It’s something our parents told us to be when we grew up, but it’s something I’m telling you that your new subclass actually needs to have. This could come in a number of ways: having a unique theme, cornering a mechanic, or even being an improvement on an existing subclass are a few ways of making something unique, these are just ways of focusing your thoughts into how the subclass operates at both a mechanics and roleplay level. I don’t really have a good way of really describing it beyond what I’ve said above, so I’m going to pull a few cool examples that I think are perfect.
Path of the Giant Barbarian is a unique theme: giants. These guys do stuff that you’d expect a giant to do, which involves getting really big and throwing stuff. There’s some elemental flair as a nod to the various types of giants, but each of the mechanics seen in this subclass all point back to the giant theme they have going on. Giant’s Havoc makes you really big and good at throwing things extra hard. Elemental Cleaver evokes the elemental nature of the giants, as they are typically seen as masters of their associated element, and their level 10 feature, Mighty Impel, takes the “throw stuff” to its logical limit and allows you to throw around creatures. It’s pretty neat, and all of it is on theme for what you’d expect a giant barbarian to do.
The other big example is the Oath of Conquest Paladin, a subclass who utilizes the frightened mechanic to great lengths. Not only does their Channel Divinity allow them to fear their foes in great number, but they gain the Fear spell at level 9, but also forces frightened creatures to come to a complete halt within 10 feet of them at level 7. Being able to force your opponent to a complete standstill is incredibly strong, but fantastic as a player character. Paladin’s later levels build on the flavor of being an immortal conqueror, unstoppable in their advance, but their abilities in the first 10 levels of play, the most commonly seen levels of play, are solid and evoke the style of character through the substance of mechanics.
Rule 3: Thou Shalt Not Be OP.
It can be tempting to give your new, shiny homebrew a secret weapon. A trick you can pull on your DM to get one over on them, a new ability to help your character stand out from the rest of the party, or even a cool idea you really wanted to see implemented into D&D 5e proper finally realized. After all, simply the process of making can be fun! There’s many avenues that haven’t been explored yet, and something like blood magic or blackpowder weaponry hasn’t been brought to their full potential in printed material (in this writer’s opinion).
However, it is important to realize that certain rules are not made to be broken. We want our DM to let us use this new thing we’re making after all. We want the other players to not feel overshadowed by our new character build. We want to ensure that everyone at the table is having fun because of the dynamics at the table that we cater to as gamers, and having something that breaks this delicate balance is… frustrating. We’ve got to be careful not to step on toes, so let’s layout a few things that we shouldn’t do.
- Automatic critical hits. This stuff is gross. Critical ranges? Awesome class feature to build up to. We don’t guarantee critical hits though, not without heavy cost.
- Free advantage. The baseline for this is the Push action, since you can cause somebody to go prone with it, granting you advantage on melee attacks against them. So if you’re going to give your class advantage, you’ll need at least an action’s worth of cost to do it.
- Consistent damage. Zealot barbarian is fantastic since it grants 1d6 extra damage on melee, but if that was a flat amount of damage like +6, it would be stupid broken. Try not to give a flat amount of damage to your players unless the numbers are low.
- Short rest abilities on casters. They don’t need this, they’ve got spells. Martial archetypes get short rest recharge abilities, and sometimes warlocks.
- Ensure your subclass has some flaws. Being able to do everything and fill every role is a one way trip straight to invalidating the other players in your party.
I don’t want to pull up an example for this, but just go find any subclass from dandwiki and you’ll see many of these problems there, and then some.
Next Week
Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll be putting this into motion with a new subclass for Ranger called the Brutal Instigator. See you then!
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