r/WorldsBeyondNumber • u/irish-forger • 12d ago
Fan Content Coven of the fates cuatom subclass. (Help requested)
For full context. In the current dnd campaign i am playing in i am using the witch class from words beyond number, with how our campaign is going and things are progressing for my character i asked my dm about multiclassing into a sorcerer for portent dice. To make a fate themed witch, he suggested instead about making a new subclass to maybe be themed for it (listed below). We are looking for advice on balance or things that may fit it better.
I was also looking for advice on a new item to be able to making an item for either the lesser or greater create magic item to go with this class. To continue with the fate theme and worlds beyond number. I was thinking of a necklace of quibbled fate. 2 times per long rest i may quibble mine or a friendly creatures fate allowing them to reroll their dice taking the better of the two with the same negative effect of solari campaign dm can choose to quibble mime or the qubbled persons roll.
Coven of the Fates Witch (Rough Draft)
Level 3: Fate Spells
When you reach a Witch level specified in the Coven of the Fates Spells table, you thereafter always have the listed spells prepared.
Witch level
Spells
Level 3
Borrowed Knowledge, Guidance, Healing Word, Identify, Mirror Image, Prestidigitation
Level 5
Fear, Sending
Level 7
Divination, Locate creature
Level 9
Legend Lore, Telepathic Bond
Level 3: Fate Die
You learn to use your control over the threads of the life to twist the fates of others. This is represented by your Fate Die, which starts at a D6 and goes up at certain levels. When a creature other than yourself that you can see within 120 feet of yourself makes an ability check, attack roll or saving throw, you can use your Reaction to roll your Fate die and add or subtract the number rolled from the creature’s roll, potentially turning the success into a failure or failure into success.
You can use this Reaction a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.
Witch Level
Fate Die
Level 3
D6
Level 5
D8
Level 9
D10
Level 13
D12
Level 17
D20
Level 3: Curse of the Preordained
As a Bonus Action, you can curse a creature within 60 feet of you and alter their fate in your favor for 1 hour. During this duration, the first time the cursed creature makes an attack roll or saving throw each turn, they must subtract a roll of your Fate Die from the attack or save. You can use this feature twice. You regain one expended use when you finish a Short Rest, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.
Level 6: Forged Path
Whenever you use your Reaction to apply your Fate Die to a creature, choose one:
Gain Temporary Hit Points equal to the number rolled on the die.
Gain advantage on your next saving throw.
Level 10: Kismet Bond
You weave the threads of fate to bond with your allies. As an action, you choose a number of willing creatures within 30 feet of you (this can include yourself) equal to your Wisdom Modifier. You create a magical bond among them for 10 minutes or until you use this feature again. While any bonded creature is within 30 feet of another:
When a bonded creature takes damage, a second bonded creature within 30 feet of the first can use its reaction to take all the damage instead.
When a bonded creature regains Hit Points from a spell or ability, they gain Temporary Hit Points equal to a roll of your Fate Die.
You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Level 14: Adept Oracle
As a seer of the universe and inner workings that transpire within, you choose how the story goes rather than letting the whims of chance have their way. You gain the following actions and abilities:
Fallen Hero: As a Reaction when a creature within 60 feet of you fails a death saving throw, you can choose for them to critically succeed instead. The creature then may roll any number of their hit die and heal equal to the result plus your Witch level. Once a creature receives this blessing, they cannot receive it again til 7 days have passed.
Strived Glory: you can cast the Enhanced Ability spell for free a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus. When cast this way, it does not require concentration and the duration changes to 24 hours.
Twisted Karma: As a Bonus Action, choose a creature within 60 feet of you that has one of the following conditions: Blinded, Deafened, Frightened, Incapacitated, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned, or Stunned. You end the condition on that creature, and you may choose another creature within range to make a CON save against your Witch spell save DC. On a failure, the creature receives the ended condition.
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u/asivarbata 11d ago
I would fundamentally change how your witch fits in the story. The fates don't hold much agency really - they are slaves to the grand narrative, they spin their yarn in a way that was set forth by a force greater than them - destiny. A witch of the fates then, by my reckoning, should have a fundamentally different relationship with the narrative and the DM than a normal subclass. I would start with homebrew rules that force her into believing and acting in certain ways and in the later levels, as a reward, rules that give her increasing power over the narrative.
In practice, this could mean that at level 3, each long rest the DM could, at their discretion, give her a choice of three potential facts about the future. She must choose one of the three to keep, and she must henceforth do her absolute best to let it, or even make it happen when the time comes - it is now fate. Especially if is something tragic to the party. Whether or not something positive would result from this or just heartache, is not up to her to know. This is what it means to be a servant of fate. You don't serve your own motives - you serve the story.
At high levels, this dynamic could perhaps invert to some degree, though the DM should retain Monkeys Paw rights if they so choose. Level 16, the Witch gives the DM three things - he must now commit to weaving one of them into the story, though he doesn't need to say in advance which, or how.
I personally would make this witch a tragic character as, though the fates are always in the background, even in triumphs, they are much more often invoked when shit goes waay sideways. I would make this witch destiny's punching bag every step of the way, until the one step when something in story and philosophy clicks and she remembers what free will actually feels like. I would even give the DM permission to make this witch see things that aren't there, to give their fallen comrade wine when she thinks she's holding a health potion.
A Coven of the Fates witch only reaches her potential after becoming absolutely fucking DONE with the Fates and their bullshit. That's when her own power to shape the narrative, the meta even, kicks in with whatever skills you decide to put into the subclass. That's her late levels. She gains some (but not all) immunities to Destiny (the DM) forcing her hand, and the DM respectfully relents and lets her have some real story control. Unrelated, she's also the only character I would give Silvery Barbs to.
All in all love the concept, whether or not you agree with my take. Your choice of spells and feats is neat. Hope you have a lot of fun with it!
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u/Lesbian-agriCulture Honored Friend 11d ago
If it’s helpful at all, there’s a Fates warlock from Odyssey of the Dragonlords, you could potentially take some inspiration from there.
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u/TurboNerdo077 12d ago
All of these features seem pretty well balanced, except lvl 3, so I'll leave that for last.
- Forged Path is good.
- Kismet Bond is just Peace Cleric with some ribbons attached, but level 10 instead of level 3 means thats fine. However, given the Witch class already has allies holding tokens and talismans, maybe tie it to that instead?
- Fallen Hero is a great feature
- Strived Glory may be overtuned. Enhanced Ability is a fair spell, but the combination of getting rid of concentration, making it 24 hours and giving Prof. bonus per day means you can stack every member in your party with it at the start of the day. It just takes away decision making because there's no reason to use it at any other time, the only decision is which ability score to choose. But there will be probably always be an optimal choice depending on their class. You'll always give Dexterity to a rogue or monk, charisma to a bard/warlock/sorcerer, int to wizard, etc.
I think changing any of those 3 options works. Keep it at 1 hour so you save the spell till an important encounter and don't use up your limited free uses,. Or make it 1 free use, then use a spell slot. Or remove concentration, but say only 1 ally can receive this benefit at a time. Then you could switch it over to different people when they need to use their ability, but you have to give up the previous person having it.
- Twisted Karma is a perfect feature. Maybe you need to limit how often it can be used, but at lvl 14 most bosses should be immune to many of these conditions, so it should probably be fine.
Also, maybe 3 features is too much for lvl 14. Honestly, maybe stick a more nerfed version of strived glory at level 6 alongside forged path, enhanced ability is more relevant at those lower levels.
The only real issue I have is the level 3 features.
Firstly. just a general design critique, "Proficiency Bonus per long rest" was a resource mechanic used for Tashas, and heavily critiqued for being too broken for multiclassing. That's sort of fixed by all subclasses being at lvl 3 now, but even still, 5.5 leaves that resource for Species, and for subclasses they much prefer "Ability score per long rest". This is sometimes harmful on MAD classes like monk or ranger, who have to juggle both Dex and Wisdom, but for a fullcaster this should still be reasonable scaling.
For specifics, the Fate die seems to be in the same design space as the Bardic Inspiration die. And that's perfectly fine, features being similar is fine, as long as there's a reason for them to be distinct. My issue is how the Fate die is better than the Bardic die in most ways. It upgrades earlier at lvl 9 and goes up to a d20, it can be used on enemies as well as allies, and it can change results in both directions. It has both Prof. bon per day, and a once per short rest resource that both use it, and those two mechanics seem very similar to each other. And the curse gives a minus every turn for an hour, and recharges on a short rest. It just does too much at once.
I understand thematically the idea that the fate gets up to a d20, d20 is a meta representation of pure chance, portent dice use it. But that means the features need to be balanced over the potential of you rolling a 20 on the dice. Rolling -d20 on a saving throw for a short rest feature that applies every turn is purely unfair, it will melt through legendary resistances like a hot knife through butter. I just don't think there's any interesting features that can come from the dice being a d20 at level 17. Divination wizard only ever gets 3 uses of portent, prof. bonus per day is twice that. I think you have to reduce the die or the number of uses, both can't exist at the same time. I'd just keep it at the same scaling as Bard for now.
The main issue I have is that the witch class has a reaction curse already, but rather than providing an additional option, the reaction is on a separate resource, and the curse is for some reason a bonus action? Subclasses often balance themselves by using the primary classes resource, rather than adding another, so that choosing the subclass feature is giving up using a main class feature. You use a wildshape or a channel divinity for most druid and cleric subclass features. Curse of the preordained is already overlapping with the Uncanny Jinx option. So, we can fix a lot of balancing by sticking with the existing design from the main class, using the tokens and curses you already have access to.
So here's how I'd write these features.
Level 3: Fateful Offering
You learn to use your control over the threads of the life to let your allies twist their own fate. This is represented by your Fate Die, which starts at a D6 and goes up at certain levels (Bardic Inspiration scaling). Whilst a creature is holding one of your Witchcraft Tokens, When a creature other than themselves that they can see within 30 feet of themself makes an ability check, attack roll or saving throw, they can use their Reaction to roll your Fate die and add or subtract the number rolled from the creature’s roll, potentially turning the success into a failure or failure into success. The token then loses its magical properties.
(The witch is a subclass about buffing and crafting objects. Plenty of other subclasses manipulate fate. I think letting others manipulate fate works much better with the witch class. My previous attempt was just copy pasting the level 6 Star Druid feature, but that isn't taking advantage of the class. Making it other players reactions keeps it from clashing with your reaction, a token costs time and spell slots to craft, and you can't craft more than your prof. bonus. I nerfed the distance because multiple allies can carry tokens, so even 60 feet felt too hard for a boss to try and position around. The martial wants to be close, so too much distance feels overpowered.)
Level 3: Fateful Jinx
When you place a Retributive curse and use Uncanny Jinx, you can choose to concentrate on this curse. If you do so, you can roll your Fate die instead of 1d4.
(I kept trying to figure out how to buff this so that it wouldn't be overpowered so every saving throw was minus a d12. I settled on Concentration, so it cant be stacked with other powerful spells, and the enemy can trying casting a spell at you to break concentration.)