We’re back! Back from Gen Con, specifically, and oh boy was that a trip! Didn’t have a post ready at the time, so as an apology, I’ve actually made two subclasses for this week. One a ranger, the other a rogue!
Coming from last week, I gave a rundown on how I make my subclasses, and a lot of it was trying to be creative while staying in the lines of D&D’s basic “balance” structure. Now, you’ll see how I did it with the Brutal Instigator.
I started with a simple idea: What if Ranger was a strength guy who hit people with a big stick? Is it a complex idea? No. Did I have a good idea of the theming? Also no. But I knew I wanted to smack somebody with a big stick really hard, so it was a start.
I knew that to begin with, the 3rd level abilities were going to be the ones that defined his unique playstyle. Ranger typically gets two to three 3rd level abilities, a combat focused ability, an exploration or utility ability, and sometimes they’ll get extra spell choices. With this ranger, I was focused on making sure they cared about their strength score over their dexterity score, since dexterity was what they typically cared about.
In addition, I wanted to make it so when they hit, they had a chance to just really wallop their foe. I knew that whatever I gave them would need to be balanced enough for it to not go bonkers with Extra Attack at level 5, but also be useful and unique enough to be different from Fighter or Barbarian. It was a tall order, but I came up with the following:
Hunter’s Heft
At 3rd level, if you are holding a two-handed melee weapon you have proficiency with, as an action you may make a single attack against a creature within range. If you hit, you can deal damage to that creature equal to your weapon’s damage dice plus your Strength modifier. On a modified roll of 20 or more, treat the damage dice as you would on a critical hit.
If you could normally make more than one weapon attack as part of the Attack action, you can deal a number of additional dice equal to the number of attacks you could normally make as part of an Attack action when taking this action (for example, if you have the Extra Attack feature and take this action with a halberd, you would deal 2d10 + your Strength modifier damage).
With a special action like this, I won’t have to worry about extra attacks and can control exactly how strong or weak this action will be. However, since the player is trading out any extra attacks they may get, I want to make it a powerful tradeoff. Enter the first clause. “On a modified roll of 20 or more, treat the damage dice as you would a critical hit.” That’s right, roll high, crit more! This will make the damage pretty nice, as the attack will roll double the damage dice on hit, which is about the same damage as hitting two attacks, but a little worse. That’s where the second clause comes in.
“If you could normally make more than one weapon attack as part of the Attack action, you can deal a number of additional dice equal to the number of attacks you could normally make as part of an Attack action when taking this action.” This means that you’re adding one more damage die to the damage roll, and since all damage dice are doubled during a critical hit, you’re potentially rolling 4(!) dice for your damage step. It’s pretty nuts, and incredibly all-in, but it’s worth it if you roll well. That leads us to our second 3rd level ability.
Unseen Stalker
At 3rd level, whenever you make a Stealth (Dexterity) check, you gain a bonus to the check equal to your Wisdom modifier. In addition, you gain proficiency in Stealth, or in another skill of your choice if you already have proficiency.
This one is straight forward. You’re intended to put your points into strength instead of dexterity, so your stealth will be bad. To fix this, you can add your wisdom to whatever stealth to you do have, alongside guaranteeing that your stealth won’t be garbage, even if it isn’t being paid any attention to.
With those two abilities, the theme emerges. You’re a cold hard killer, stalking prey, then suddenly striking with a single blow, taking out your target, then slinking off into the darkness. I had a super fun time figuring out the theme, so I went and made the rest of the class with this guerilla fighter in mind.
Ambush Predator
At 7th level, you can take a bonus action on each of your turns in combat. This action can only be used to dash or disengage, and your movement speed increases by 5 feet.
With this little line of text, at 7th level, he had a pseudo-rogue ability to pop in and out of combat, with a bit of extra movement speed to facilitate that. Now the Sly Marbo was really coming out. Truthfully though, this was the last ability I came up with for the subclass as a whole. 7th was something that’s supposed to be good, but not that good. Instead, what was here originally was…
The Right Tool for the Job
11th level, over the course of 1 minute you can study a creature to learn what makes it tick. You can make a Survival (Wisdom) check to learn one of the creatures’ resistances. A creature becomes immune to this effect for 24 hours.
As a bonus action, you may choose a creature. Choose a damage type. Attacks by you and any number of allies equal to your Wisdom modifier ignore your target’s resistance to that damage type until the start of your next turn. You may use this feature once per long rest.
Studying your enemies from afar, the Brutal Instigator notes how his foe walks, how they hold themselves, their awareness, the grip on their weapon, and where he can strike them to take them down in one decisive blow. This felt cool, and is meant to also be a team play ability, encouraging you to coordinate with your team to get all the martial classes to smack one big dude to death while his guard is dropped. Plus, since the ability is in two parts, player knowledge of the monster can come in clutch, while a newer player could learn what a monster does and what they might be resistant to.
They’re In the Trees!
15th level, you know Tree Stride. It doesn’t count against the number of ranger spells you know, and you can cast it without a material component. You can also cast it an amount of times equal to your Wisdom modifier without a spell slot, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest.
I find a lot of difficulty writing out the final ability in a class, but not this time. By now, the theme was extremely strong in my mind as to what this guy did. He was Rambo, roaming around in the thickets, taking down enemies silently, quickly, and with one blow. Or he’s a clown who sneaks up on you, bashes your skull in with his oversized hammer, and squeaks away as you’re left dazed and confused.
That’s basically how I did it. I talked to a friend while I was writing up the class and we both laughed about the idea could be taken seriously or not at all, and we figured that at the end of the day, both of those ideas could be one character in the same campaign. Thanks for reading. Next week I’ll be going over my full class I wrote up, and bring out an exclusive subclass for it as well. Take care of yourself, and enjoy the subclasses.
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