One more thing about the Green Reaper Ranger is that the poison smites don't incur any saving throws. The enemy doesn't get to make a con save to resist the effect, as long as you hit them and spend the spell slot they become poisoned + whatever additional effect you choose. Really nice to see, would suck so bad if you spend one of your very few high level spell slots against the dragon or whatever and it just did nothing. As long as you hit it you're good!
I'd love to see a video series of "how to dm for..." each class Could cover topics like roleplaying out a paladin taking their oath, how to roleplay a warlock patron, what kind of quests can help a druid shine, etc.
To help Druid shine, put them in situations where they use their wild shape outside of combat. For level 2 and above, have the party encounter problems that can be solved by a beast with a climbing speed. For level 4 and above, add problems that can be solved by a beast with a swimming speed and/or underwater breathing. For level 8 and above, add problems that can be solved by a beast with a flying speed. Also, remember that most beasts don’t have hands. So, while a Druid wild shaped into a shark might not be able to operate a hand crank underwater, they can certainly retrieve a magic weapon from the bottom of an ocean trench and carry it in their mouth back up to their party. As for combat, give them a lot of opposing HP to chew through. Druids are simultaneously great damage dealers, great at battlefield control, and surprisingly tanky, especially Moon Druids, and especially if they have Conjure Animals prepared.
it should especially cover the class's strengths and weaknesses to help new DMs figure out what they should change should they find a specific player is far and away out performing their party
22:15 - RANGED Poison Smites (you can apply it to ammunition)!! That have no saving throw! Also, the Lvl 15 ability says, "Until the end of your NEXT turn." That means you have until the end of your next turn after activating this ability to take advantage of those temporary hit points. If your party has a decent healer, you are going to be very hard to kill unless the enemy/enemies focus fire on you, or use some kind of multi-hit attack, or a DoT effect!
The wording for the Vermin Lord, instead of a short rest restriction, just say that the swarms lasts for 1 minute or until you use another spell slot to summon more swarms. It would prevent you from summoning more swarms every round in combat since the previous swarms would disperse...or you could think of it as the existing rats reform into a new swarm...or something to that effect.
The version of Grim Hollow that I have says it lasts 10 minutes or until you use the ability again. It also summons a number of swarms equal to 2x the spell slots.
One of the weaknesses of the Paladins is the exploration aspect and Zeal really gives some serious assist to that aspect. It helps to round out the character and is someone that can stand alone for a short time until backup can arrive.
Yeah, even if mechanically it's the less powerful option I really, REALLY love the theming. Would be fun to play them as a Tiefling or evangelist who has been somewhat indoctrinated.
After Grim Hollow, I'd love to see your opinion on the subclasses from Steinhardt's Guide to the Eldritch Hunt! A cool follow up for a sweet, sweet dark fantasy arsenal.
4:30 I know you guys typically stick to Celtic lore but fun fact, in West Africa there is a divine spirit of pestilence. In the Ifa faith his name is Babalouaiye, he is simultaneously healing and disease. A very powerful and respected Orisha in the Ifa faith of Yorubaland.
Likewise, for the Green Reaper, I think the 7th level feature, Poison Control, is probably more useful than it seems at first glance. Casting spells without using a spell slot is always useful, but this particular feature lets you cast the spell *multiple* times, based on your Wisdom score (which, obviously, is the rangers casting ability so it should be fairly high). In play, I don't think any cleric, paladin, or ranger I've played in 5e has ever cast Protection from Poison, not because it isn't useful, but because I'd rather be using my 2nd level spell slots for Spiritual Weapon, Hold Person, or Lesser Restoration (which cures poison anyway), smites or upcasting important 1st level spells. But by giving you *multiple* free casts, this spell all of the sudden becomes REALLY useful, especially since the benefits last for an hour and don't require concentration. Is your party going into a creepy dungeon? Going into dark caves or any kind of spooky forests? Are you in a city with a powerful thieves guild? Giving everyone advantage on poison saves and resistance to poison seems very useful. And even if you don't encounter any poison using creatures or poisoned traps or get hit with any spells that deal poison damage, you haven't used any of your normal spell slots anyway so you're still at full strength. Any class ability that takes a niche (but useful) spell and makes it into a frequently used staple seems like a pretty good class abiity to me.
Great work, Gang. I've felt for a while that Grim Hollow and your Drakkenheim books are the only character options that seem to not hesitate at stepping on the official subclasses and actually give players something they'd want to play. ABSOLUTELY, PLEASE take a look at MCDM's Classes! Beastheart, Illrigger, and Talent are all amazing classes worth your time.
My jaw dropped when Kelly mentioned the Nurgle lore and pulling inspo from the Death Guard vibes! I guess I shouldn't be shocked that he's interested in other TTRPG's, but it's always cool to see content creators you watch that cover one game mention interest in other games you're interested in!
Id love to see you guys cover valdas spire of secrets! They have like 10 new base classes with like 6 subclasses each and then all the dnd classes have like 6 to 8 subclasses as well
Grim Hollow has variant rest durations as optional rules. A "short rest" is 8 hours under those times. If you use those times, I think the Vermin Lord being able to summon swarms a number of times equal to their proficiency modifier would be fairly well balanced
Don't know if anyone mentioned this already, but also felt it was worth pointing out that since you get all the best features of the Green Reaper by 3rd level, you can probably multiclass it with a Druid or a Cleric to crazy effect. Like multiclassing with Nature Cleric for a melee build using Shillelagh could be thematic and mechanically awesome.
I love that Kelly mentioned the movie "Willard" when explaining the Vermin Lord subclass because that is what I thought about immediately when reading this subclass myself.
For a Vermin Lord reference is a different TTRPG show where one of the first villains was 'bug boy' who coated his arms in nondescript pheromones and could then control swarms of insects and he was terrifying cause the players were in a low power, modern style campaign. Also I would just steal the toxic tradecraft from the green reaper and just make it a feature for paladins, getting rid of their smite spells and using those as the variable abilities, making several more smite spells as well.
@@aidansowood6176 I was imagining 3 levels Green Reaper, 3 levels Paladin, 14 Levels Druid. 😬 Although I do wonder of I can use spell slots for both the Green Reaper's and the Paladin's Smite ability in one and the same breath. 🤔
Love this series. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the Kobold Press Tome of Heroes subclasses - I've allowed a couple at my table and they've gone well, but there are some wild sounding ones.
Once you finish with the Grim Hollow subclasses, I’d love to see the two of you review the Theurge class and subclasses from Kobold Press’ Deep Magic Volume 1
I am working on a monk subclass and I have to say it’s an interesting thing to create because there are so many things you have to think about and consider
@@Lawless4566 in my opinion, the player options and the monsters could've been two different books. if you buy the book, it is mostly monsters with only a few player options. however, the player options are very interesting!
Cool, Thanks. I’ll have a look at it. Nightfall was a really interesting setting too but I’m Not sure all the subclasses transfer very well out of the setting as there are some setting specific mechanics in alot of them.
FirSt COmMent... BoOm!! I was surprised to see this video released in the same night as the actual play episode. Bonus!! Let me take this opportunity to say a massive thanks , love your content and your style. You Dudes are Dudes 💙💙💙
At this point I shouldn't be suprised when a 3rd party subclass with amazing flavor is written by the Dungeon Dudes, same with the Oath of Pestilence. If I can be slightly critical of it I would add the cost of an action to the description of Debilitating Fever, this caused some small confusion upon first reading. also saying you can't use this feature again untill the start of your next turn is already included in the fact that you have to use a reaction for Aura of Rampant Sickness doesn't it? Criticism from a place of love, the Pestilence Paladin is my favorite paladin by a mile!
Yeah for Vermin: add Ranger spellslot stipulation, you can only have 1 group of summoned swarms at a time. And if it still seems too powerful, potentially nerf the HP granted to the swarms to 4x or even 3x Ranger level.
Another recommendation for the vermin lord is to have it be PB/short rest, or wisdom mod/short rest so that the ranger doesn’t loose their subclass after using the feature once, but also have it scale with the character’s leveling
Vermin Lord exemplifies my experience trying to use Devouring Swarm in Dishonored. Really cool power to summon rats, a bit too expensive to use in every fight.
For Vermin Lord, another way to do it would be to have it either: 1. You get one empowered casting per short rest, which conjures the full amount. "Normal" castings summon 1 swarm, regardless of level of spell slot used. 2. You can use it as many times as you want, but only in combat, and instead of conjuring all at once, the casting gives you a (dispellable?) buff that passively summons 1 swarm at the start of each of your turns (2/turn once you reach level 8 or 10), for a number of turns equal to the level of the spell slot used. Max number of simultaneous swarms equal to your proficiency bonus. All swarms disappear 1 minute after you first cast the spell.
I wish Ghostfire Gaming had given this level of love to Monks, but definitely do not hold their treatment of the Ranger against them. Paladin...they fit well within the existing Paladin subclass power ranges. The Oath of Zeal stands out to me in that it gives the Paladin markedly more to do outside of combat (besides be the polite face) and I quite like it when martial subclasses do that. The abilities don't need to be best in an area, just that they allow you to meaningfully contribute outside of combat in multiple ways. The Green Reaper...you said everything that needed to be said. Just *chef's kiss*.
For the Verminkin ranger...maybe be able to summon your swarm using ranger spell slots, once per spell level per long rest. Would allow it to scale better w/o making it busted via multi-classing. I also like the idea of an inverse scaling time limit on each. The duration for your swarm equals your ranger level in minutes divided by the spell slot level you used to summon the swarm, rounded down to the nearest minute, or until destroyed.
About Vermin Lord. The rats can actually move during your turn. Which means you can set up some interesting combos with the help action to get advantage on ranged attacks if your facing multiple enemies.
I love reviews of the 3rd party content, especially so thorough as yours. And as to what review next, I think it would be great to lean into the dark fantasy that is going on here. So Steinhardt's Guide to Eldritch Hunt for sure, Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos, and maybe Grizelda's Guide to Ghost Hunting. Also one of the best imo resources for player options is the Ultimate Adventurer's Handbook. Also it would be great to get some review however brief for mechanics that are presented in some of those books, like moons in the eldritch hunt or haunts in the grizelda's guide.
I am currently in a campaign, and I absolutely love the Green Reaper Ranger. It is such a fun take on the ranger; I love the mechanical buffs it gives ranger, plus a ton of flavor to sprinkle in. I think more subclasses should involve tool proficiency, it's a really neat idea
I will be playing it in a future campaign and after 3rd level Ranger I will be going into Cleric. Either trickster or the Hunt Domain. So many more spells for the ranger smites.
For the Pestilence Paladin, you could also introduce a low level feature that allows (or even forces) them to turn any Radiant damage they deal into Necrotic damage, opens up more options for using it other than just smites and a rare few necrotic spells
I would recommend Raiders of the Serpent Sea or Odyssey of the Dragonlords as the next 3rd party subclasses you review. The settings are super flavorful and really impactful. Viking and Greek themed subclasses? Yes, please!
Odyssey of the Dragonlords has some amazing subclasses, think I’m going to need to find Raiders of the Serpent Sea book, I love me some Viking themed stuff!
In my GH campaign I have seeded an oncoming holy war of Pestilence paladins surging out of Lesetch. Listening to this has inspired the though of Rat swarm ranger/Pestilence paladin scouts which will be terrifying for my group.
So the Vermin lord subclass, fixed its issue and got a major upgrade in the final release. "Additionally, you can use an action and expend a spell slot to summon rodent hordes. When you do, you summon a number of swarms of vermin equal to twice the level of spell slot expended." and "Your vermin swarms flee the area and disperse after 10 minutes or when you use this feature to summon other swarms of vermin." meaning you can know have a total of 10 swarms
The base Ranger needs their own consistent Smite-like ability. Adding poison damage to their weapons or lighting their weapons on fire etc. is just so thematic and cool.
First, I love all of this. :) Second, for the Oath of Pestilence, I think you might be judging Entropic Resistance too harshly. Unless you're playing a solo adventure, boosting a companion is a legitimate and useful feature. The Pestilence Pally may not have a lot of opportunities to deal necrotic but is he 'pally-ing' around with a necromancer? Or a hexblade? Or an aberrant mind? Or a spores druid (this combo seems awesome!)? Or the Vermin Lord ranger from this book (that bonus action to add necrotic damage to a swarm's attack is a bit more appealing now)?
I dont know why, but I love the idea of multiclassing the oath of zeal with an artificer, for a smart angry inventor, possibly hunting down their own monsterous creation
For the Pestilence Paladin - they could take a feat granting access to Cleric cantrips and pick up Toll the Dead making Entropic Infection truly nasty.
Oath of Pestilence is by far my favorite Subclass from the book! Not particularly because it's so good, although it is, but just the flavor and Concept is soo damn cool!
It's kinda hilarous to me that my Gloomstalker basically became a Green Reaper Lite. Part of our campaign featured an attack from a horde of ogres on a village that our party had to stop. Between sessions I had the idea that my because my ranger had been a guide before the campaign started, he'd recognize poisonous plants in the woods. Our DM agreed and said that if our druid and I rolled well enough in our nature checks, I could harvest belladonna and foxglove to coat my arrows. Turned out to be a lot of fun and our bard go a new hit song out of the fight.
A number of swarms equal to your highest level ranger spell per short rest wouldn’t be an unreasonable restriction. It would be an odd restriction but totally reasonable and viable. You could spread your swarms out per encounter and then when you’re on a big bad you go all in
Newer editions of the pdf have a different wordning for the Verminkin summon, getting TWICE the level of spell slot in swarms, and them lasting for 10 minutes. Also old swarms go away when a new swarm is summoned. But most importantly, you can keep using it so long as you have spell slots. Hope that makes it an S!
You all should review the subclasses in Kobold Press Tome of Heroes since it’s designed as an additional players book. Any of their other subclasses in their books would be great too.
Sadly, the combo of Vermin Lord + Shepherd Druid doesn't work as well as you'd think, because the Shepherd reads specifically "beast or fey *summoned or created by a spell* that you cast". The Vermin Lord does not summon its swarms with a spell, it expends a spell slot to use an ability, so the rats don't benefit from Mighty Summoner nor Guardian Spirit. If your DM is willing to let you reflavor some of your animal forms, like wolves or bears, as various flavors of gigantic rat monsters, you could go Moon Druid and fight alongside your rat swarm as the giant rat that makes all of the rules. Or, if you prefer a different meme, the seven foot rat, rats along his rats
I think the big problem with the vermin lord, is a single stat block is more powerful than any other pet stat block the ranger gets. You get more HP and mundane weapon resistance. Now add in the fact that you can summon multiple, it’s broken. It needed that 1 time per rest restriction
I like how the Oath of Zeal paladin is all about hating and hunting cowards and weasels. Both weasels conspiring against you hiding behind closed doors or cowards relying on invisibility.
I'm watching this right now, but I need to comment about the paladins: the Oath of Pestilence paired with the Sentinel feat makes a paladin who radiates illness and WILL NOT LET YOU LEAVE. How awesome would that class be in an enclosed urban structure, like the Parisian or Roman catacombs? Next thought: Oath of Zeal might be a better fit for a John Wick character than the Oath of Vengeance. The punishing 19-20 crit range? The investigation features to reinvigorate a cold trail? Even Compel Confession makes me think of someone trying to lie to John Wick, i.e. that even if they succeed, they're too scared to do it convincingly (psychic damage).
Valda's Spire of Secrets by Mage Hand Press has some interesting subclasses, but even further than that, most of their homebrew classes are fun and amazing. They fill some holes in 5e and do some things better than published classes. I personally reccomend ignoring the Alchemist subclass for Artificers for my players just because I know MHP's Alchemist class is so much more fun to play.
All four of these classes seem fun and strong! However, Vermin Ranger + Shepheard Druid should be an instant band. Shepheard already has some nasty shenanigans it can do with rat swarms. This would be unmanagable.
I honestly gotta give the Vermin ranger a D. It feels like a Berserker in that trap. It's so extremely cool though so it's painful to give that rating, but like you said remove that Short Rest restriction and it's an A so easily. I think this along with the Beast Spirit Barbarian, Requiem Bard, and one of the rogues yet to be covered, it has among the best themes in any published 5e book.
It seems like green reaper/cleric or druid is be the Wis answer to sorcadin. Land druid would even give more spell slots you can choose for different effects.
The poison mechanics in the subclass is something I would honestly just like them to have as part of a poisoners kit specialisation or feat. 5e doesn't do poison well imo.
Imagine multiclassing the Vermin Lord with a monk (Leaden Crown or Rat-Masked Mercy), or the Doomsayer Bard. I can even imagine summoning the rats by singing Michael Jackson's "Ben".
i really like the oath of pestilence until the capstone. the resistance to necrotic and immunity to poisoned is good. so thats fine the ability to avoid your hp max being decreased is niche as there is very few sources of that in 5e. maybe Grim Dark has more, idk. but its fine my issue is the damaging aura. 5 necrotic damage once a turn to monsters in the 4th tier of play is very very low. honestly to the point that the damage aura on the capstone might as well not exist. especially since its a fail or save type effect.
Vermin Ranger + Twilight Cleric would be absurd. 3/17. By level 20, you can use a level 8 spell slot (you have level 9s, but we have better things to do then add one more swarm), to summon 8 swarms. They may not have a ton of hit points, but then you can Channel Divinity and add 1d6+17 to each of them every turn. And while the enemy has to wade through eight swarms of rats with regenerating hit points, you're battering them with everything a cleric can already do.
Vermine lord , They last till destroyed or till you use a spell slot to activate this ability again Which means you can only ever have your maximum number of swarms your multi class concern is valid
"Other 3rd party books" I would love your thoughts on any of the following. Steinhardts Guide to the Eldritch 3 Heliana's Guide to Monster Hunting Drizzt's Travelouge of Everything 1 All 3 also contain a new class for each book as well that I think would be awesome for your video styles
10:30 I think this is true of pretty much every Paladin Oath, nothing wrong with one of the CDs on your Oath being niche and hard to use. Conquest: Guided Strike is great but once you hit lvl 7 it's all Conquering Presence Glory: Inspiring Smite every time Redemption: Rebuke the Violent 9/10 times Ancients: Turn the Faithless literally only affects 2 creature types, Nature's Wrath comes out on top Crown: These both kinda suck but I'm taking the duel 9/10 times Watcher's: Both are pretty niche, Abjure the Extraplanar is more niche Vengeance: When has anyone ever not chosen Vow of Emnity? Oathbreaker: Dreadful Aspect is getting used a million more times than Control Undead
So happy Green Reaper was given S tier, one of my players is a green reaper and you don’t realise the power until a player fires an arrow and uses ‘befuddle’ on the spell caster boss you had been building up to and they can no longer cast any spells! 😂
35:00 you can summon up to 5 swarms, and you can only summon others if no other swarm is active. There’s better ways to word that but the idea is the same
Just a thought but being able to do a fireball worth of damage every round for ten rounds (for the vermin ranger) makes them as strong as most any character even if they can only do it every other combat. None of the other spell casters get that strong of a spell back without resting either.
are the extra effects of the green reaper poison smites _cumulative?_ As in, if you spend a 3rd level spell slot on a smite, you could poison a creature for ten minutes while also giving it disadvantage on str and dex saves while it's poisoned that way, and make it take extra poison damage for a minute to boot? Or with a fourth level slot add flesh eating and now it's taking 2d6 acid damage every turn for ten minutes??? Reading the text it really seems like that's the case, but you guys never mentioned that so I feel like I gotta check
About Verminkin: The rule book I have reads: "Your Vermin swarms flee the area and disperse after 10 minutes or if you use this feature again". No 1 min, no once per short rest. So, this is S tier, right? Or do you have an updated and nerved version?
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One more thing about the Green Reaper Ranger is that the poison smites don't incur any saving throws. The enemy doesn't get to make a con save to resist the effect, as long as you hit them and spend the spell slot they become poisoned + whatever additional effect you choose. Really nice to see, would suck so bad if you spend one of your very few high level spell slots against the dragon or whatever and it just did nothing. As long as you hit it you're good!
Yeah, this was the feature that made MErcy Monk so powerful. Mercy Monk can do it more often, however GR Ranger has a way to bypass immunities.
I'd love to see a video series of "how to dm for..." each class
Could cover topics like roleplaying out a paladin taking their oath, how to roleplay a warlock patron, what kind of quests can help a druid shine, etc.
To help Druid shine, put them in situations where they use their wild shape outside of combat. For level 2 and above, have the party encounter problems that can be solved by a beast with a climbing speed. For level 4 and above, add problems that can be solved by a beast with a swimming speed and/or underwater breathing. For level 8 and above, add problems that can be solved by a beast with a flying speed. Also, remember that most beasts don’t have hands. So, while a Druid wild shaped into a shark might not be able to operate a hand crank underwater, they can certainly retrieve a magic weapon from the bottom of an ocean trench and carry it in their mouth back up to their party.
As for combat, give them a lot of opposing HP to chew through. Druids are simultaneously great damage dealers, great at battlefield control, and surprisingly tanky, especially Moon Druids, and especially if they have Conjure Animals prepared.
it should especially cover the class's strengths and weaknesses to help new DMs figure out what they should change should they find a specific player is far and away out performing their party
22:15 - RANGED Poison Smites (you can apply it to ammunition)!! That have no saving throw!
Also, the Lvl 15 ability says, "Until the end of your NEXT turn." That means you have until the end of your next turn after activating this ability to take advantage of those temporary hit points. If your party has a decent healer, you are going to be very hard to kill unless the enemy/enemies focus fire on you, or use some kind of multi-hit attack, or a DoT effect!
The wording for the Vermin Lord, instead of a short rest restriction, just say that the swarms lasts for 1 minute or until you use another spell slot to summon more swarms. It would prevent you from summoning more swarms every round in combat since the previous swarms would disperse...or you could think of it as the existing rats reform into a new swarm...or something to that effect.
The version of Grim Hollow that I have says it lasts 10 minutes or until you use the ability again. It also summons a number of swarms equal to 2x the spell slots.
That would be a very effective way to let you have the subclass all day, instead of 1 minute per day, or more if the group takes a short rest.
One of the weaknesses of the Paladins is the exploration aspect and Zeal really gives some serious assist to that aspect. It helps to round out the character and is someone that can stand alone for a short time until backup can arrive.
Yeah, even if mechanically it's the less powerful option I really, REALLY love the theming. Would be fun to play them as a Tiefling or evangelist who has been somewhat indoctrinated.
After Grim Hollow, I'd love to see your opinion on the subclasses from Steinhardt's Guide to the Eldritch Hunt!
A cool follow up for a sweet, sweet dark fantasy arsenal.
Oh, yeah, I'd love to see them take a look at "5e Bloodborne," assuming they're at all interested!
Agreed, I'd love to see a series on that!
Honestly, a video about the Jaeger classe included there would be awesome as well, "standard" subclasses aside.
second this
For the love of all that is eldritch please do.
4:30 I know you guys typically stick to Celtic lore but fun fact, in West Africa there is a divine spirit of pestilence. In the Ifa faith his name is Babalouaiye, he is simultaneously healing and disease. A very powerful and respected Orisha in the Ifa faith of Yorubaland.
Sounds like papa nurgle
Kelly should wear an "I am Kellnough shirt"
Amazing.
I absolutely love the Oath of Pestilence. It oozes with character and fantasy. Hats off to you for bringing it together.
Sometimes I think we need an "Oath of Don't Make me Come up There" paladin to keep all the edgelord paladins in line;).
Oozes😂😂😂 nice one
12:30 I love the idea of knock just being them magically kicking the door
Likewise, for the Green Reaper, I think the 7th level feature, Poison Control, is probably more useful than it seems at first glance. Casting spells without using a spell slot is always useful, but this particular feature lets you cast the spell *multiple* times, based on your Wisdom score (which, obviously, is the rangers casting ability so it should be fairly high). In play, I don't think any cleric, paladin, or ranger I've played in 5e has ever cast Protection from Poison, not because it isn't useful, but because I'd rather be using my 2nd level spell slots for Spiritual Weapon, Hold Person, or Lesser Restoration (which cures poison anyway), smites or upcasting important 1st level spells.
But by giving you *multiple* free casts, this spell all of the sudden becomes REALLY useful, especially since the benefits last for an hour and don't require concentration. Is your party going into a creepy dungeon? Going into dark caves or any kind of spooky forests? Are you in a city with a powerful thieves guild? Giving everyone advantage on poison saves and resistance to poison seems very useful. And even if you don't encounter any poison using creatures or poisoned traps or get hit with any spells that deal poison damage, you haven't used any of your normal spell slots anyway so you're still at full strength.
Any class ability that takes a niche (but useful) spell and makes it into a frequently used staple seems like a pretty good class abiity to me.
Great work, Gang. I've felt for a while that Grim Hollow and your Drakkenheim books are the only character options that seem to not hesitate at stepping on the official subclasses and actually give players something they'd want to play. ABSOLUTELY, PLEASE take a look at MCDM's Classes! Beastheart, Illrigger, and Talent are all amazing classes worth your time.
A Pestilence/Blood Cleric or Necromancer combo would be absolutely gnarly.
Taldorei Reborn has a Blood Domain cleric. Pretty sure these guys rated it pretty high in their ranking video as well.
Love the Death Guard mention! I know the Dudes have mentioned Warhammer before but it always surprises me to hear it as a big D&D and 40k fan
My jaw dropped when Kelly mentioned the Nurgle lore and pulling inspo from the Death Guard vibes! I guess I shouldn't be shocked that he's interested in other TTRPG's, but it's always cool to see content creators you watch that cover one game mention interest in other games you're interested in!
hahah thank you for leaving that cut of "have you seen the movie Willard? ....no" in im rolling
"Have you seen Willard?"
"No."
Id love to see you guys cover valdas spire of secrets! They have like 10 new base classes with like 6 subclasses each and then all the dnd classes have like 6 to 8 subclasses as well
Grim Hollow has variant rest durations as optional rules. A "short rest" is 8 hours under those times. If you use those times, I think the Vermin Lord being able to summon swarms a number of times equal to their proficiency modifier would be fairly well balanced
Don't know if anyone mentioned this already, but also felt it was worth pointing out that since you get all the best features of the Green Reaper by 3rd level, you can probably multiclass it with a Druid or a Cleric to crazy effect.
Like multiclassing with Nature Cleric for a melee build using Shillelagh could be thematic and mechanically awesome.
Oath of Pestilence and Green Reaper are amazing!
I love that Kelly mentioned the movie "Willard" when explaining the Vermin Lord subclass because that is what I thought about immediately when reading this subclass myself.
For a Vermin Lord reference is a different TTRPG show where one of the first villains was 'bug boy' who coated his arms in nondescript pheromones and could then control swarms of insects and he was terrifying cause the players were in a low power, modern style campaign.
Also I would just steal the toxic tradecraft from the green reaper and just make it a feature for paladins, getting rid of their smite spells and using those as the variable abilities, making several more smite spells as well.
That "Green Reaper" Ranger is so cool! Love it to bits. 💘
Imagine pairing it with a full caster for increased spell slot progression too, dangerous
@@aidansowood6176 I was imagining 3 levels Green Reaper, 3 levels Paladin, 14 Levels Druid. 😬 Although I do wonder of I can use spell slots for both the Green Reaper's and the Paladin's Smite ability in one and the same breath. 🤔
Love these class rankings and would really appreciate one for the Sebastian's guide!
Love this series. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the Kobold Press Tome of Heroes subclasses - I've allowed a couple at my table and they've gone well, but there are some wild sounding ones.
I had fun playing a high level gun mage in a one shot. The party was shocked when the old man pulled a gun and popped the enemy with his weapon.
Once you finish with the Grim Hollow subclasses, I’d love to see the two of you review the Theurge class and subclasses from Kobold Press’ Deep Magic Volume 1
I am working on a monk subclass and I have to say it’s an interesting thing to create because there are so many things you have to think about and consider
Please review/rank the subclasses in the Humblewood, Nightfell, and Plangegea third party setting books!
Is plangegea any good I haven’t seen much of it?
@@Lawless4566 in my opinion, the player options and the monsters could've been two different books. if you buy the book, it is mostly monsters with only a few player options. however, the player options are very interesting!
Cool, Thanks. I’ll have a look at it. Nightfall was a really interesting setting too but I’m
Not sure all the subclasses transfer very well out of the setting as there are some setting specific mechanics in alot of them.
FirSt COmMent... BoOm!! I was surprised to see this video released in the same night as the actual play episode. Bonus!! Let me take this opportunity to say a massive thanks , love your content and your style. You Dudes are Dudes 💙💙💙
At this point I shouldn't be suprised when a 3rd party subclass with amazing flavor is written by the Dungeon Dudes, same with the Oath of Pestilence.
If I can be slightly critical of it I would add the cost of an action to the description of Debilitating Fever, this caused some small confusion upon first reading. also saying you can't use this feature again untill the start of your next turn is already included in the fact that you have to use a reaction for Aura of Rampant Sickness doesn't it?
Criticism from a place of love, the Pestilence Paladin is my favorite paladin by a mile!
Yeah for Vermin: add Ranger spellslot stipulation, you can only have 1 group of summoned swarms at a time. And if it still seems too powerful, potentially nerf the HP granted to the swarms to 4x or even 3x Ranger level.
Another recommendation for the vermin lord is to have it be PB/short rest, or wisdom mod/short rest so that the ranger doesn’t loose their subclass after using the feature once, but also have it scale with the character’s leveling
Vermin Lord exemplifies my experience trying to use Devouring Swarm in Dishonored. Really cool power to summon rats, a bit too expensive to use in every fight.
Sooo I haven’t seen ANY of your videos recommended even though I’m subscribed. Scrolling through I have HOURS of content to catch up on! Yay me!
For Vermin Lord, another way to do it would be to have it either:
1. You get one empowered casting per short rest, which conjures the full amount. "Normal" castings summon 1 swarm, regardless of level of spell slot used.
2. You can use it as many times as you want, but only in combat, and instead of conjuring all at once, the casting gives you a (dispellable?) buff that passively summons 1 swarm at the start of each of your turns (2/turn once you reach level 8 or 10), for a number of turns equal to the level of the spell slot used. Max number of simultaneous swarms equal to your proficiency bonus. All swarms disappear 1 minute after you first cast the spell.
I would love to see a video series in this mold reviewing the classes by Benjamin Huffman, especially the Pugalist and Thaumaturge.
Having played a Pugilist I can say it is a ton of fun and is pretty good. Would love to see them review it!
I wish Ghostfire Gaming had given this level of love to Monks, but definitely do not hold their treatment of the Ranger against them. Paladin...they fit well within the existing Paladin subclass power ranges.
The Oath of Zeal stands out to me in that it gives the Paladin markedly more to do outside of combat (besides be the polite face) and I quite like it when martial subclasses do that. The abilities don't need to be best in an area, just that they allow you to meaningfully contribute outside of combat in multiple ways. The Green Reaper...you said everything that needed to be said. Just *chef's kiss*.
For the Verminkin ranger...maybe be able to summon your swarm using ranger spell slots, once per spell level per long rest. Would allow it to scale better w/o making it busted via multi-classing.
I also like the idea of an inverse scaling time limit on each. The duration for your swarm equals your ranger level in minutes divided by the spell slot level you used to summon the swarm, rounded down to the nearest minute, or until destroyed.
About Vermin Lord. The rats can actually move during your turn.
Which means you can set up some interesting combos with the help action to get advantage on ranged attacks if your facing multiple enemies.
I love reviews of the 3rd party content, especially so thorough as yours.
And as to what review next, I think it would be great to lean into the dark fantasy that is going on here. So Steinhardt's Guide to Eldritch Hunt for sure, Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos, and maybe Grizelda's Guide to Ghost Hunting. Also one of the best imo resources for player options is the Ultimate Adventurer's Handbook.
Also it would be great to get some review however brief for mechanics that are presented in some of those books, like moons in the eldritch hunt or haunts in the grizelda's guide.
Those lives reviewing community submissions were also great! Hope you bring them back at some point
I REALLY need to buy this book 🤩
I am currently in a campaign, and I absolutely love the Green Reaper Ranger. It is such a fun take on the ranger; I love the mechanical buffs it gives ranger, plus a ton of flavor to sprinkle in. I think more subclasses should involve tool proficiency, it's a really neat idea
I will be playing it in a future campaign and after 3rd level Ranger I will be going into Cleric. Either trickster or the Hunt Domain. So many more spells for the ranger smites.
For the Pestilence Paladin, you could also introduce a low level feature that allows (or even forces) them to turn any Radiant damage they deal into Necrotic damage, opens up more options for using it other than just smites and a rare few necrotic spells
I would recommend Raiders of the Serpent Sea or Odyssey of the Dragonlords as the next 3rd party subclasses you review. The settings are super flavorful and really impactful. Viking and Greek themed subclasses? Yes, please!
Odyssey of the Dragonlords has some amazing subclasses, think I’m going to need to find Raiders of the Serpent Sea book, I love me some Viking themed stuff!
In my GH campaign I have seeded an oncoming holy war of Pestilence paladins surging out of Lesetch. Listening to this has inspired the though of Rat swarm ranger/Pestilence paladin scouts which will be terrifying for my group.
So the Vermin lord subclass, fixed its issue and got a major upgrade in the final release. "Additionally, you can use an action and expend a
spell slot to summon rodent hordes. When you do, you
summon a number of swarms of vermin equal to
twice the level of spell slot expended." and "Your vermin swarms flee the area and
disperse after 10 minutes or when you use this feature to
summon other swarms of vermin." meaning you can know have a total of 10 swarms
You know if you mix the oath of pestilence with kibbles tasty tech knight you might have a chaos space marine
"That's Grim Hollow, baby!" Ghostfire need to use that as their new motto. Put it on the cover like a movie poster.
You guys should totally rank the subclasses in Ryoko’s Guide to The Yokai Realms when it comes out.
The base Ranger needs their own consistent Smite-like ability. Adding poison damage to their weapons or lighting their weapons on fire etc. is just so thematic and cool.
First, I love all of this. :)
Second, for the Oath of Pestilence, I think you might be judging Entropic Resistance too harshly. Unless you're playing a solo adventure, boosting a companion is a legitimate and useful feature. The Pestilence Pally may not have a lot of opportunities to deal necrotic but is he 'pally-ing' around with a necromancer? Or a hexblade? Or an aberrant mind? Or a spores druid (this combo seems awesome!)? Or the Vermin Lord ranger from this book (that bonus action to add necrotic damage to a swarm's attack is a bit more appealing now)?
I dont know why, but I love the idea of multiclassing the oath of zeal with an artificer, for a smart angry inventor, possibly hunting down their own monsterous creation
For the Pestilence Paladin - they could take a feat granting access to Cleric cantrips and pick up Toll the Dead making Entropic Infection truly nasty.
Oath of Pestilence is by far my favorite Subclass from the book!
Not particularly because it's so good, although it is, but just the flavor and Concept is soo damn cool!
Vermin Lord: Let the bodies hit the-
DM: Oh here we go...
Vermin Lord (starts slamming down swarm minis): BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOARD!!!!
It's kinda hilarous to me that my Gloomstalker basically became a Green Reaper Lite. Part of our campaign featured an attack from a horde of ogres on a village that our party had to stop. Between sessions I had the idea that my because my ranger had been a guide before the campaign started, he'd recognize poisonous plants in the woods. Our DM agreed and said that if our druid and I rolled well enough in our nature checks, I could harvest belladonna and foxglove to coat my arrows. Turned out to be a lot of fun and our bard go a new hit song out of the fight.
Favorite subclasses yet. All real bangers (minus the one thing with the vermin ranger). Cant wait for the rogue I really liked the Highway rider.
Green Reaper is amazing. It is so cool thematically and iy is executed so well.
Yoooo let's go! My Paladin of Pestilence was one of my fave chars of all time--let's see!!
Amazing subclasses! Looks like certain parties can start preparing the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. 😁
A number of swarms equal to your highest level ranger spell per short rest wouldn’t be an unreasonable restriction. It would be an odd restriction but totally reasonable and viable. You could spread your swarms out per encounter and then when you’re on a big bad you go all in
Newer editions of the pdf have a different wordning for the Verminkin summon, getting TWICE the level of spell slot in swarms, and them lasting for 10 minutes. Also old swarms go away when a new swarm is summoned. But most importantly, you can keep using it so long as you have spell slots. Hope that makes it an S!
We need a review for the Griffon's Saddlebag book 2 classes or Valda's Spire.
The devastation caused by that one line in the vermin Ranger subclass feels like monk levels of disrespect.
You all should review the subclasses in Kobold Press Tome of Heroes since it’s designed as an additional players book. Any of their other subclasses in their books would be great too.
cant wait to see the warlock rerview, the parrasite sounds fun
Sadly, the combo of Vermin Lord + Shepherd Druid doesn't work as well as you'd think, because the Shepherd reads specifically "beast or fey *summoned or created by a spell* that you cast". The Vermin Lord does not summon its swarms with a spell, it expends a spell slot to use an ability, so the rats don't benefit from Mighty Summoner nor Guardian Spirit.
If your DM is willing to let you reflavor some of your animal forms, like wolves or bears, as various flavors of gigantic rat monsters, you could go Moon Druid and fight alongside your rat swarm as the giant rat that makes all of the rules. Or, if you prefer a different meme, the seven foot rat, rats along his rats
I think the big problem with the vermin lord, is a single stat block is more powerful than any other pet stat block the ranger gets. You get more HP and mundane weapon resistance. Now add in the fact that you can summon multiple, it’s broken. It needed that 1 time per rest restriction
I love that I can finally role play a death guard in dnd cause I love 40K and have wanted a balanced subclass for a typhus character
Wonder if a DM could be convinced to let the Vermin Lord ranger synergise with the Pipes of the Sewer to gain additional rat swarms…
I like how the Oath of Zeal paladin is all about hating and hunting cowards and weasels. Both weasels conspiring against you hiding behind closed doors or cowards relying on invisibility.
Valda's spire of secrets has the best content for dnd 5e. Tons of subclasses
I'm watching this right now, but I need to comment about the paladins: the Oath of Pestilence paired with the Sentinel feat makes a paladin who radiates illness and WILL NOT LET YOU LEAVE. How awesome would that class be in an enclosed urban structure, like the Parisian or Roman catacombs?
Next thought: Oath of Zeal might be a better fit for a John Wick character than the Oath of Vengeance. The punishing 19-20 crit range? The investigation features to reinvigorate a cold trail? Even Compel Confession makes me think of someone trying to lie to John Wick, i.e. that even if they succeed, they're too scared to do it convincingly (psychic damage).
Valda's Spire of Secrets by Mage Hand Press has some interesting subclasses, but even further than that, most of their homebrew classes are fun and amazing. They fill some holes in 5e and do some things better than published classes. I personally reccomend ignoring the Alchemist subclass for Artificers for my players just because I know MHP's Alchemist class is so much more fun to play.
Constructive and kind feedback should be the standard for all DnD content. Because even official WoTC content is made by real people.
All four of these classes seem fun and strong! However, Vermin Ranger + Shepheard Druid should be an instant band. Shepheard already has some nasty shenanigans it can do with rat swarms. This would be unmanagable.
I honestly gotta give the Vermin ranger a D. It feels like a Berserker in that trap. It's so extremely cool though so it's painful to give that rating, but like you said remove that Short Rest restriction and it's an A so easily.
I think this along with the Beast Spirit Barbarian, Requiem Bard, and one of the rogues yet to be covered, it has among the best themes in any published 5e book.
Love your stuff! Could you look at Helianas guide to monster Hunter classes?
It seems like green reaper/cleric or druid is be the Wis answer to sorcadin. Land druid would even give more spell slots you can choose for different effects.
The poison mechanics in the subclass is something I would honestly just like them to have as part of a poisoners kit specialisation or feat. 5e doesn't do poison well imo.
Imagine multiclassing the Vermin Lord with a monk (Leaden Crown or Rat-Masked Mercy), or the Doomsayer Bard. I can even imagine summoning the rats by singing Michael Jackson's "Ben".
One thing worth noting for the Vermin Lord is that it gets mad crazy IF you multiclass
I like the idea of a wave of centipedes consuming my enemies
As a big Nurgle and Deathguard fan I approve. Pestilence be with you!
i really like the oath of pestilence until the capstone.
the resistance to necrotic and immunity to poisoned is good. so thats fine
the ability to avoid your hp max being decreased is niche as there is very few sources of that in 5e. maybe Grim Dark has more, idk. but its fine
my issue is the damaging aura. 5 necrotic damage once a turn to monsters in the 4th tier of play is very very low. honestly to the point that the damage aura on the capstone might as well not exist. especially since its a fail or save type effect.
I am anxiously awaiting your next Apothecary build guide!!!
Vermin Ranger + Twilight Cleric would be absurd. 3/17. By level 20, you can use a level 8 spell slot (you have level 9s, but we have better things to do then add one more swarm), to summon 8 swarms. They may not have a ton of hit points, but then you can Channel Divinity and add 1d6+17 to each of them every turn. And while the enemy has to wade through eight swarms of rats with regenerating hit points, you're battering them with everything a cleric can already do.
Vermine lord ,
They last till destroyed or till you use a spell slot to activate this ability again
Which means you can only ever have your maximum number of swarms
your multi class concern is valid
the vermin ranger. maybe switch it from once a short rest, to your stat bonus times & use a long rest to recharge?
Poison Ranger 5, rest Cleric seems like OP combination. More spell slots for smites, Spirit Guardians, Extra Attack,…
"Other 3rd party books" I would love your thoughts on any of the following.
Steinhardts Guide to the Eldritch 3
Heliana's Guide to Monster Hunting
Drizzt's Travelouge of Everything 1
All 3 also contain a new class for each book as well that I think would be awesome for your video styles
10:30 I think this is true of pretty much every Paladin Oath, nothing wrong with one of the CDs on your Oath being niche and hard to use.
Conquest: Guided Strike is great but once you hit lvl 7 it's all Conquering Presence
Glory: Inspiring Smite every time
Redemption: Rebuke the Violent 9/10 times
Ancients: Turn the Faithless literally only affects 2 creature types, Nature's Wrath comes out on top
Crown: These both kinda suck but I'm taking the duel 9/10 times
Watcher's: Both are pretty niche, Abjure the Extraplanar is more niche
Vengeance: When has anyone ever not chosen Vow of Emnity?
Oathbreaker: Dreadful Aspect is getting used a million more times than Control Undead
So happy Green Reaper was given S tier, one of my players is a green reaper and you don’t realise the power until a player fires an arrow and uses ‘befuddle’ on the spell caster boss you had been building up to and they can no longer cast any spells! 😂
Please do a review on the Grim Hollow artificer, too. They made a pay what you want pdf on DM's Guild.
35:00 you can summon up to 5 swarms, and you can only summon others if no other swarm is active.
There’s better ways to word that but the idea is the same
Just a thought but being able to do a fireball worth of damage every round for ten rounds (for the vermin ranger) makes them as strong as most any character even if they can only do it every other combat. None of the other spell casters get that strong of a spell back without resting either.
are the extra effects of the green reaper poison smites _cumulative?_ As in, if you spend a 3rd level spell slot on a smite, you could poison a creature for ten minutes while also giving it disadvantage on str and dex saves while it's poisoned that way, and make it take extra poison damage for a minute to boot? Or with a fourth level slot add flesh eating and now it's taking 2d6 acid damage every turn for ten minutes??? Reading the text it really seems like that's the case, but you guys never mentioned that so I feel like I gotta check
About Verminkin: The rule book I have reads: "Your Vermin swarms flee the area and disperse after 10 minutes or if you use this feature again". No 1 min, no once per short rest. So, this is S tier, right? Or do you have an updated and nerved version?