Yeah, for prime minister. Out with TURDeau, in with Treantmonk. Actually slogan "D&D is for everyone, no seriously, if you don't play you go to jail". The nation would be a better place!
I would remove that ribbon on Wild shape. Make the blight ground an alternative use of wild shape. And maybe give some Subclass spells that fit the theme. And definitely i would give immunity to necrotic damage at 14th level
@@youtubeseagull having more than 1 single use of ground for rest makes the main feature of the subclass shine (since the rest of the features work with it). Removing something useless like that wild shape feature with some subclass spells I dont think it's a nerf. If you mean that using the Wild shape "pool" of uses is a nerf, I think it's not. Wild shape for a Caster druid (like this one and like every non-moon druid) becomes only utility and it's less and less useful, having alternative uses for a feature that scales very badly like WS I think makes the class more fun to play.
Error at 3:50 - p.125 of the Players' Handbook states, "If a character would gain the same proficiency from two different sources, he or she can choose a different proficiency of the same kind (skill or tool) instead." So if you already have Intimidation, you'd just get to pick a different skill proficiency instead. You wouldnt lose anything.
One of my players asked me if they could play this. Seemed pretty good to be on the first look. They don't really do any kind of conjure animals shenanigans, so I was considering saying yes anyway. Seems like a fun concept but I was definitely waiting for Chris to put out a video before I actually make any calls.
You are missing out by not looking at the corpse explosion effect from (none) CR creatures. By having the patch tied to short rests the DM dictates how often it can be used.
My player use it with conjure animal (mostly raptor for the usual 50 damage at round) and they all act as a group on the same initiative so the extra d4 is limited to the small area. I changed defile ground so it uses WildShapes so the character have more freedom.
I am playing this subclass rn and one of my favorite parts is that it actually motivates you to play the new summon spells instead of conjure animals every time since if your summon dies it does more damage than what a single conjure animal would do, which also is much more table friendly
Surprising Mercer who is on record for hating Summons (especially the multiple summons Druids are infamous for) he made this subclass with a bunch of summon support. Love the theme of it.
4:48 small correction, you can have the sapling attack any creature within 5 ft of it as a part of the reaction, not just the original creature that took the damage. This can be useful since it will allow you to apply the defile ground damage again potentially.
I like the subclass, the flavor is really fun. But unless I am missing something, you only ever have a single use (per rest) of Defile Ground. I think I would've liked the ability to spend a Wild Shape to use it, or even just offer it as an alternative to Wild Shape like the other subclasses do. Since creating saplings requires Defiled Ground, it seems like a lot of your iconic abilities are limited by that single use. Maybe the intent is that you use other types of summons and rely on the level 10 resistances you grant? Cause while I'm fine with blowing up a free sapling summon, I think I want to keep my upcasted Summon Fey/Beast spells around. Which says to me that without Defile Ground, the amount of times you explode a summon is going to be once a combat, if that. The necrotic resistance and +2 AC are nice at 14, but that's pretty late in the subclass, and again the second half of the feature is tied to that single use of Defile Ground. Even if you wanted to risk taking the bonus damage for temp HP, you might not have use of Defile Ground available. If your table doesn't run frequent short rests, you may have entire combats where you just can't use big portions of your subclass.
I mean this subclass was supposed to be in contrast with the shepherd druid who can also use their main ability spirit totem once per rest. One is making summons expendable and deadly on death, other is making them durable and long lived.
It's once per short rest. You are using the mind set of a Shepard druid who wants to preserve furballs. Blighted wants to blow up disposable summons when they have served their purposes on the defiled ground.
@@ShilquesI will not accept this Shepherd druid slander, the conjure spells are very badly designed but the Shepherd druid subclass itself is well designed and flavorful
10:36 "I don't think it's the most powerful druid, but it's ok, and it's pretty cool thematically" Agreed, and I think that's actually the gold standard for third party material. If third party publishers want DMs to allow third party content, they should aim their subclasses to only be about B-tier in power while offering a fresh flavor for the class.
My dm is planning a game where we play interplanetary Pirates, and I've been going through a few different build ideas. This one just got added to that list of possibilities, I like the flavor a lot! Loving the reviews for these subclasses! You do great work Chris! 💜
One of my player is playing a Blighted Tortle in our ToA campain and we are level 7 and he is liking it quite a lot, we "homebrew" it a bit as we played it. 1) Defile Ground use WhildShape uses (like the stars druid) so he can use it twice for short rest. 2) Sapling take turn afther you (also note that sapling have no CR so they do good damage when explode) 3) I give him expanded spell list (afther tasha we have homebrew one for every sorcerer also) 1° Create Destroy Water - Inflic Wounds 2° Web - Blindness 3° Fear - Life Transference 4° Blight - Death Ward 5° Cloudkill - Contagion Few notes, AoE work so well with defile ground and if your team work well with you the d4 adds up. Conjure animal dont get more broken since the summoned creatures act as a group on the same turn so the extra d4 is limited, i cant wait to see them all explode
Great breakdown. I like this concept too, probably my favorite so far from the book. One question: does this continue what you said in your Druid tier vid that although Moon and Shepherd rank higher, you’re favorite subclasses fall in B tier (including this) because they seem more fun? I definitely feel that way. I wonder if B tier is the sweet spot in most classes or just a Druid thing.
if you've got crowd control on melee enemeis or a lockdown melee party member, you can likely benefit from the temp HP at little to no risk to yourself. It's also pretty safe against single enemies, since even if they target you, it's just one instance of extra damage per round, which your temp HP can help offset while your party racks up the extra damage against the enemy
This is actually a really, really good Monk multi-class. At relatively low levels(around 6-7 depending on if you want a feat or not) can have an AC of 19,and a solid increase to your health pool. My favorite monk sub to mix it with is astral self,a little BA hungery but i've seen solid success with the combo! Thanks again treant monk for the info.
This series makes me really interested to see what the Critical Role team comes up with for Daggerheart. There are a lot of little details which are being overlooked, so will Daggerheart also have similar holes that need to be filled by players and GMs or will them having designed the system from scratch mean they are more easily able to see these spots and fill them in?
it always baffles me how Mercer and a full team of professionals overlook things that are glaringly obvious to any decently-informed novice DM. I get that CR focuses more on story than mechanics, but it's literally their job at this point, and Mercer does try to adhere to RAW whenever he can, so idk. Maybe they just get carried away with excitement, but it often comes across sloppy and shortsighted
@@jeepersmcgee3466 They didn't have a full team of professionals overlooking these things. They have teams of designers now, but this stuff was made well before that. They had lots of professionals working on the products (art, editing, layout, etc), but only a couple actual designers.
This is a nice little shap shifter type, you can do a few things on an engagement: Cast your defile ground, create the sapling on an attack,a nd use something like moonbean, call lightning as your action, and next turn shape shift to (I like, per say) something like a Panther, I love Axe Beak, or some other shape (wolves are good too at low level, dire wolf is good, I find stuff like giant wolf spider, giant a variety of snakes (constrictor, giant constrictor, etc) or this type of creatures also (giant toad?) anyway, as far as the sappling's verbal command, look at the conjure animals, it also says it obeys your commands, and says no action needed so I've often seen it interpreted that way. By shape shifting, you can use that as a temp HP (as I said, at early levels, when you can shape into something like an axe beak that has 19 HP and +2 AC is HUGE at early levels. As for the being in the ground in defile ground, use earthbind? Also, you can conjure a bunch of snakes (I like a bunch of poisonous snakes, I think conjure animals get you 8 of those, or 4 constrictor snakes (there is one that is 1/2 rating) and you can have them try to restrain people, use them in pair with advantage (I think you can get 8 constrictor snakes that do either 1d8+2 and restrain OR 2d6+2 ona bit, and you can have them in four pairs of 2 to gain advantage via flanking, and if they drop to 0 HP you can have them blowup and do damage. (or a swarm of rats that surround a creature, blow up your sappling, and they should start a cascade of blowing up rats? may be a waste of a level 3 conjure animals spell, but a fun one none the lest.
It honestly depends on how you rule the spell. If you give every single animal a different turn, it becomes broken, but most people just make the animals act on the same turn, so with that ruling they can only get the extra damage once instead of 8 times, which makes it balanced IMO
I wish that this subclass would let you spend wild shape use your main feature again, even changing it to "you can use this feature once per long rest or spend one of your wildshape uses to do so again" would be nice.
I'm very happy to see this subclass if well made and balanced. I played a Blighter once in 3rd edition and loved it. Glad to see it making a psudo-comeback.
There could be an argument, kind of like the wildfire druid, that disease and blight are part of nature's process (like fire). Having an infestation can clense nature, like where I live a report came out that bettles that are seen as infestation has help sagebrush thrive and helpe a type of sage grouse (who was about to become endangered) to do well (or at least better). So, you can play this druid a few ways: YOu can play as a currupted druid, maybe disilusioned or corrupted and seeking to blight everything, a bit dark. YOu can RP as a cursed druid who dislikes his curse and seeks to redeem or cure himself, OR, you can play as one who embraces blight (much as a wildfire druid) usin git as a way to manage and control nature. I like that last one. Very good class, I think, and as Druids are my favorite class overall, I think I will try, lets say, a duergar (grey dwarf) or drow half elf druid? (somehow those classes seem to fit to me, but there are some other good options, Hill druid is a classis as well as wood elves/half wood elf, half orc, and humans. (grey elf and orc is if you want to do a less dex, more strength build, which could fit this druid or a spore druid) Can't way to play this and the Runechild and the Moon domain (Oh, the moon domain!) The two blood classes and the new barbarian also are good.
In regards to flying creatures, druids DO also get the Earthbind spell. It's a strength save, granted, but it DOES bring flying creatures down. Also, I wonder if the extra damage from Defile Ground applying to you and your allies is intentional. I could see the answer going either way, because it makes sense thematically, but it's also mechanically unusual to have a feature that bones your party also, especially such an absolutely key feature to the subclass.
I would make the sapling share its turn with you. 1d4 necrotic damage in addition to everybody's existing damage is already nuts. Then you throw a 2d4+PB sapling attack on top of that. THEN next turn you get to: action spell +1d4, then sapling turn 2d4 + PB + 1d4, reaction create another sapling 2d4 + PB. That's 6d4 + 6 damage, or a minimum of 12 if everything hits, in addition to whatever big spell you used that turn(3d10 call lightning?), at 6th level, in one turn. And again, that's on top of everyone else's +1d4. If you have any melee party members tangled up with those enemies in the defiled ground, those Opportunity attacks are also going to have +1d4. Granted, at that point you're using 2/3 of your saplings per long rest for that one turn of crazy burst, but with a potential of 60 damage and an average somewhere around 30-40 at level 6, seems like a bit too much.
My brain might've just missed it, but I think it's fun to point out the Sapling gets Multiattack at 14th level. Also, this just makes me think someone really liked Maokai from League of Legends. (Specifically before his rework because he still had his Sapling Toss *and* had an AOE on the ground, but this one reduced damage for allies and detonated at the end, iirc.) I doubt you play League, but couldn't get this thought out of my head.
I feel as if the extra necrotic damage was not intended to work on friendlies considering how the sapling doesn't have necrotic immunity before level ten and that the fourteenth level feature encourages you to stand in the corrupted ground.
Okay, so that +2 AC and Darkvision comes in handy if you Wild Shape into an Ape after casting Shillelagh, so you can Multiattack with a Club/Quarterstaff that scales with Wisdom.
I like that this one is actually balanced for the most part. Critical Role subclasses have a tendency toward being kind of overpowered and are usually in contention for either the best or second best subclass a class has access to, so it's nice to see one that is good, but not arguably broken.
So, I was playing a Blight druid with my DM. They looked it over and I thought it affects ALL creatures in the area. However it specificslly mentions "Starting at 2nd level when you choose this circle, you can use a bonus action to corrupt a patch of land or an area of water in a 10-foot radius centered on a point within 60 feet of you. This corruption lasts for 1 minute. The corrupted area is difficult terrain for creatures that are hostile to you. Additionally, when a creature in the area takes damage from an attack or spell for the first time on a turn, it takes an extra 1d4 necrotic damage. You can move this patch of corruption up to 30 feet as a bonus action. Flying creatures are unaffected by the corruption." It does not say it affects all creatures in the area, only the creature that took damage in that space
If alot of creatures take damage, then of course it affects them. But it doesnt hit the ones that didn't take the damage. I was quite shocked but I was fully thinking that it affected EVERYONE, but I was wrong
Theres no way you could take more damage from blighted ground then you get in temp hp. With resistance you can only take 4 damage on a d8 after resistance.
I wonder if you could get around the drawback of the 14th level feature by being a flying race because it just says the radius of the feature and not that you have to be on the ground, unlike the level 2 feature. It sounds a bit cheesy, but it feels weird that you are impacted by your own corruption to begin with.
Matt mercer makes some cool thematic classes/subclasses/spells/items/content in general. But I wouldn't trust him with game design as far as I could throw him. Remember Chronurgist? lol
I think it's pretty interesting from my perspective. On one hand, absolutely sometimes he lets things....get out of hand, on the other hand- stuff like the echo and hyper rage in C3 is some of the best martial stuff I've ever seen. So while I think his grasp of the power level is hit or miss, he pretty consistently comes up with really really fascinating game design. Also yeah, obviously agree about theme being in point usually. Overall what I take from Matt is not to be too afraid of fucking with the current precedent the system sets, just to uh- lmao, play test it a bit to make sure it isn't chronurgist level lmao
The wording leaves much open to DM interpretation. For example, "You gain proficiency in the Charisma (Intimidation) skill" could mean you only get proficiency if you're using Charisma. This is reasonable since why would your visual corruption matter if you're intimidating physically with strength. Also, as written the blighted sapling doesn't "immediately" attack since you only direct it to make an attack. Again, most likely intended the way you described.
I really want to like a lot of these sub classes but the only one I really think is any good is the Barbarian Juggernaut. Everything else just feels like an attempt to be “so edgy it’s cool” & it falls a bit flat imo
Defile Ground would feel more balanced if A., you had to Concentrate on it, and B. you could regain uses of it by expending spell slots, as many Tasha's subclasses allow for varied subclasses. Otherwise agree on Blighted Form, allow different skill proficiency or expertise in it, or even "You can use Wisdom for Intimidation", lol. Call of the Shadowseeds would also be better with the aforementioned changes to Defile Ground, but I think overall its good? Maybe say it takes its turn directly after yours as other summons? Also, Incarnation of Corruption ABSOLUTELY needs to make you specifically immune to Defile Ground damage, even if its just Resistance to all other sources.
I think there is a bit of unintended clunky behavior here. - First of all, the first feature doesn't corrupt the ground in a generic sense like you said, it corrupts "A patch of land or an area of water". Does that mean it only works on natural ground? If you're inside a castle, it doesn't work? For such a limited use feature that your entire class relies on, feels pretty harsh. - Second, I don't think the damage was supposed to affect your allies. The design of the rest of the features and specially the 14th level one where you gain temp hp from it heavily implies so to me. The way I see it they just messed up the wording there. - Third, rolling a d4 every time damage is taken is really clunky and slow. I wish they'd just used the dice average +0.5. So 3 damage as base, then it gets upgraded to 4 and then finally 5, then added a line that it doubles on critical hits, so it doesn't lose that benefit. Much faster and simpler in my opinion. Now for my overall opinion, I actually disagree with you. I think this class is bad. Here are the reasons and how I'd fix it: - I often find classes that require a condition to be fulfilled to be able to function really inflexible and disappointing, often leading you into mindset traps where you constantly seek this one scenario where you can use your feature, only for it to be underwhelming. The entire subclass relying on this ground that, as I pointed before, it's unreliable to get out and has a small pool, is really bad. To fix it, I'd remove the resource from this feature altogether, and just make is a cube that can go anywhere instead. Or maybe give it this upgrade at 6 to dodge some powerful dips. - But let's say you have that feature down and working. 30 feet of movement with a bonus action? Oof. That is terrible. From my experience features like that often struggle to "Keep up" with any fight that isn't completely static. I lost count how many times I had to dismiss Spiritual Weapon and make a new one because my old one had no hope of catching up to the fight before it ended. Instead, this should have the better version of, on your turn, you can use a bonus action to move it anywhere within 30 feet of you. That's much better. If they wanted to keep it moving along the ground, give it at LEAST 60 feet. - That darkvision+AC to the wildshape feels like the ribbon of ribbons, and proficiencies are cheap. Most useful wildshape forms already have darkvision, and an additional 60 feet of it it's not gonna be impactful. It's like they wrote it but didn't remember that outside of Moon, wildshape isn't terribly useful. Instead, they should just trash this ribbon and give this druid an expanded spell list of spells they always have prepared and are druid spells for them, and in my opinion it should have been: Inflict Wounds, Ray of Sickness, Web, Ray of Enfeeblement, Slow, Animate Dead, Blight, Giant Insect, Insect Plague and Cloudkill - I kept the idea of one good spell, one bad, though Animate Dead can be good depending on your DM. - Finally, no extra uses for my wildshape. I don't have any idea here, maybe fuel it to cast inflict wounds in the defile area?
that blighted druid portrait is the least magical portrait of a highly magical class i've ever seen. Girl just needs a shopping trip and blind person's cane to get around, and stop carrying flowers if you're a blighted "druid". This is just a picture of some one i'd be walking by as an adventurer. Seems to be further evidence that people hate druids and refuse to recognize them as fun and powerful.
Would you make videos that correct the blood domain cleric and other classes from this supplement? You know some quick fixes like a change to wording or abilities that....frankly stink.
Seems counter intuitive but okay. Iunno, calling it circle of decay might have been better, but it also might be taken. How does showing corruption grant you higher defenses? Intimidation, sure. The biggest weakness of the subclasses is the ability for your enemies to move out of it. You place it down and the enemy teleports out of it, and it's basically useless. Also 6 temp hp at lvl 17 isn't that great. Decent but it's a bandaid.
At 30 ft of movement per turn, unless the creature spends the whole combat moving their full movement away, the corruption will probably catch up to them. Plus not every creature can teleport, so for the most part its useful
@@geroni211 and when it isn't, you're just a bog (heh) standard Druid who corrupts the land for your own gain. ... how is there a circle of such individuals?
Another poorly designed subclass by Mercer, feature with a resource you have to track, that depend on another feature with different resource you have to track. Both with different amount of uses and recovery conditions. On a class that already have wild shape- perfect secondary resource to use for those, and spells on top. Its all over the places.
I mean to be fair it's not like any published *cough monk* Classes *cough ranger* have *cough barbarian* the same problem... I think this is fine, it's balanced enough - I would like to have the corruption also be usable with wild shape uses, but overall it's fine
![Natanael Cano - Amor Eterno [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EO4prCs6WpM/mqdefault.jpg)
![KAYTRANADA - Witchy (feat. Childish Gambino) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/jGK3YVmGZ3Y/mqdefault.jpg)
“Corruption is a cool concept” Treantmonk for President 2024
Chris is Canadian.
My campaign slogan has LEAKED!
@@danielbeshers1689 I'll still vote for him.
Treantrump
Yeah, for prime minister. Out with TURDeau, in with Treantmonk. Actually slogan "D&D is for everyone, no seriously, if you don't play you go to jail". The nation would be a better place!
I would remove that ribbon on Wild shape. Make the blight ground an alternative use of wild shape. And maybe give some Subclass spells that fit the theme. And definitely i would give immunity to necrotic damage at 14th level
isn't that a nerf?
@@youtubeseagull having more than 1 single use of ground for rest makes the main feature of the subclass shine (since the rest of the features work with it). Removing something useless like that wild shape feature with some subclass spells I dont think it's a nerf. If you mean that using the Wild shape "pool" of uses is a nerf, I think it's not. Wild shape for a Caster druid (like this one and like every non-moon druid) becomes only utility and it's less and less useful, having alternative uses for a feature that scales very badly like WS I think makes the class more fun to play.
Keep the ribbon and still do it, it makes the wild shape more interesting and more obvious to notice
Error at 3:50 - p.125 of the Players' Handbook states, "If a character would gain the same proficiency from two different sources, he or she can choose a different proficiency of the same kind (skill or tool) instead." So if you already have Intimidation, you'd just get to pick a different skill proficiency instead. You wouldnt lose anything.
One of my players asked me if they could play this. Seemed pretty good to be on the first look. They don't really do any kind of conjure animals shenanigans, so I was considering saying yes anyway. Seems like a fun concept but I was definitely waiting for Chris to put out a video before I actually make any calls.
You are missing out by not looking at the corpse explosion effect from (none) CR creatures. By having the patch tied to short rests the DM dictates how often it can be used.
I think you're fine allowing this
My player use it with conjure animal (mostly raptor for the usual 50 damage at round) and they all act as a group on the same initiative so the extra d4 is limited to the small area. I changed defile ground so it uses WildShapes so the character have more freedom.
@@LeakysTV Why not make it just proficiency times long rest?
I am playing this subclass rn and one of my favorite parts is that it actually motivates you to play the new summon spells instead of conjure animals every time since if your summon dies it does more damage than what a single conjure animal would do, which also is much more table friendly
Surprising Mercer who is on record for hating Summons (especially the multiple summons Druids are infamous for) he made this subclass with a bunch of summon support.
Love the theme of it.
When did he go on record for saying that? Is there a clip?
4:48 small correction, you can have the sapling attack any creature within 5 ft of it as a part of the reaction, not just the original creature that took the damage. This can be useful since it will allow you to apply the defile ground damage again potentially.
Usually you move enemies back into your hazard. Defiled Ground is that rare hazard that you move back under the enemies.
I like the subclass, the flavor is really fun. But unless I am missing something, you only ever have a single use (per rest) of Defile Ground. I think I would've liked the ability to spend a Wild Shape to use it, or even just offer it as an alternative to Wild Shape like the other subclasses do. Since creating saplings requires Defiled Ground, it seems like a lot of your iconic abilities are limited by that single use.
Maybe the intent is that you use other types of summons and rely on the level 10 resistances you grant? Cause while I'm fine with blowing up a free sapling summon, I think I want to keep my upcasted Summon Fey/Beast spells around. Which says to me that without Defile Ground, the amount of times you explode a summon is going to be once a combat, if that.
The necrotic resistance and +2 AC are nice at 14, but that's pretty late in the subclass, and again the second half of the feature is tied to that single use of Defile Ground. Even if you wanted to risk taking the bonus damage for temp HP, you might not have use of Defile Ground available. If your table doesn't run frequent short rests, you may have entire combats where you just can't use big portions of your subclass.
I mean this subclass was supposed to be in contrast with the shepherd druid who can also use their main ability spirit totem once per rest. One is making summons expendable and deadly on death, other is making them durable and long lived.
@@thunderwe_ryesiam it is still strange that they use the bad design of another subclass as the basis of this other one
It's once per short rest.
You are using the mind set of a Shepard druid who wants to preserve furballs. Blighted wants to blow up disposable summons when they have served their purposes on the defiled ground.
@@ShilquesI will not accept this Shepherd druid slander, the conjure spells are very badly designed but the Shepherd druid subclass itself is well designed and flavorful
This is a great class for a Dark Sun setting. It has a lot of Defiler vibes to me
10:36 "I don't think it's the most powerful druid, but it's ok, and it's pretty cool thematically" Agreed, and I think that's actually the gold standard for third party material. If third party publishers want DMs to allow third party content, they should aim their subclasses to only be about B-tier in power while offering a fresh flavor for the class.
Wow. I didn't expect to see such a balanced subclass from Mercer.
Props to him
Defile Ground and Entagle = very strong low-level combo
My dm is planning a game where we play interplanetary Pirates, and I've been going through a few different build ideas. This one just got added to that list of possibilities, I like the flavor a lot!
Loving the reviews for these subclasses! You do great work Chris! 💜
One of my player is playing a Blighted Tortle in our ToA campain and we are level 7 and he is liking it quite a lot, we "homebrew" it a bit as we played it.
1) Defile Ground use WhildShape uses (like the stars druid) so he can use it twice for short rest.
2) Sapling take turn afther you (also note that sapling have no CR so they do good damage when explode)
3) I give him expanded spell list (afther tasha we have homebrew one for every sorcerer also)
1° Create Destroy Water - Inflic Wounds
2° Web - Blindness
3° Fear - Life Transference
4° Blight - Death Ward
5° Cloudkill - Contagion
Few notes, AoE work so well with defile ground and if your team work well with you the d4 adds up. Conjure animal dont get more broken since the summoned creatures act as a group on the same turn so the extra d4 is limited, i cant wait to see them all explode
Great breakdown. I like this concept too, probably my favorite so far from the book.
One question: does this continue what you said in your Druid tier vid that although Moon and Shepherd rank higher, you’re favorite subclasses fall in B tier (including this) because they seem more fun? I definitely feel that way.
I wonder if B tier is the sweet spot in most classes or just a Druid thing.
Yes it does! Also, yeah, I think B is a pretty good spot for subclasses.
As far as I understand, A and S tier subclasses are a level of powerful where it can feel like they just become boring to play.
if you've got crowd control on melee enemeis or a lockdown melee party member, you can likely benefit from the temp HP at little to no risk to yourself. It's also pretty safe against single enemies, since even if they target you, it's just one instance of extra damage per round, which your temp HP can help offset while your party racks up the extra damage against the enemy
Tbh i thought thev meant 'the first lot of damage they recieve in a turn does extra 1d4' not that 'the first attack by everyone does extra 1d4 damage'
This is actually a really, really good Monk multi-class. At relatively low levels(around 6-7 depending on if you want a feat or not) can have an AC of 19,and a solid increase to your health pool. My favorite monk sub to mix it with is astral self,a little BA hungery but i've seen solid success with the combo! Thanks again treant monk for the info.
This series makes me really interested to see what the Critical Role team comes up with for Daggerheart. There are a lot of little details which are being overlooked, so will Daggerheart also have similar holes that need to be filled by players and GMs or will them having designed the system from scratch mean they are more easily able to see these spots and fill them in?
I've heard through the grapevine they are involving additional game designers, so it's at least another set of eyes.
it always baffles me how Mercer and a full team of professionals overlook things that are glaringly obvious to any decently-informed novice DM. I get that CR focuses more on story than mechanics, but it's literally their job at this point, and Mercer does try to adhere to RAW whenever he can, so idk. Maybe they just get carried away with excitement, but it often comes across sloppy and shortsighted
@@jeepersmcgee3466 They didn't have a full team of professionals overlooking these things. They have teams of designers now, but this stuff was made well before that. They had lots of professionals working on the products (art, editing, layout, etc), but only a couple actual designers.
This is a nice little shap shifter type, you can do a few things on an engagement: Cast your defile ground, create the sapling on an attack,a nd use something like moonbean, call lightning as your action, and next turn shape shift to (I like, per say) something like a Panther, I love Axe Beak, or some other shape (wolves are good too at low level, dire wolf is good, I find stuff like giant wolf spider, giant a variety of snakes (constrictor, giant constrictor, etc) or this type of creatures also (giant toad?) anyway, as far as the sappling's verbal command, look at the conjure animals, it also says it obeys your commands, and says no action needed so I've often seen it interpreted that way. By shape shifting, you can use that as a temp HP (as I said, at early levels, when you can shape into something like an axe beak that has 19 HP and +2 AC is HUGE at early levels. As for the being in the ground in defile ground, use earthbind? Also, you can conjure a bunch of snakes (I like a bunch of poisonous snakes, I think conjure animals get you 8 of those, or 4 constrictor snakes (there is one that is 1/2 rating) and you can have them try to restrain people, use them in pair with advantage (I think you can get 8 constrictor snakes that do either 1d8+2 and restrain OR 2d6+2 ona bit, and you can have them in four pairs of 2 to gain advantage via flanking, and if they drop to 0 HP you can have them blowup and do damage. (or a swarm of rats that surround a creature, blow up your sappling, and they should start a cascade of blowing up rats? may be a waste of a level 3 conjure animals spell, but a fun one none the lest.
Corrupted ground plus conjure animals seems busted.
It honestly depends on how you rule the spell. If you give every single animal a different turn, it becomes broken, but most people just make the animals act on the same turn, so with that ruling they can only get the extra damage once instead of 8 times, which makes it balanced IMO
@@inky7993 then you'd just hit different targets if there's a weird home rule in effect.
Or ready an action
DM- "10ft radius? 3 archers attack you... hit hit... miss... what's your AC? 16?"
I wish that this subclass would let you spend wild shape use your main feature again, even changing it to "you can use this feature once per long rest or spend one of your wildshape uses to do so again" would be nice.
I'm very happy to see this subclass if well made and balanced. I played a Blighter once in 3rd edition and loved it. Glad to see it making a psudo-comeback.
I like this one. A very not broken subclass that could use a couple of minor tweaks.
There could be an argument, kind of like the wildfire druid, that disease and blight are part of nature's process (like fire). Having an infestation can clense nature, like where I live a report came out that bettles that are seen as infestation has help sagebrush thrive and helpe a type of sage grouse (who was about to become endangered) to do well (or at least better). So, you can play this druid a few ways: YOu can play as a currupted druid, maybe disilusioned or corrupted and seeking to blight everything, a bit dark. YOu can RP as a cursed druid who dislikes his curse and seeks to redeem or cure himself, OR, you can play as one who embraces blight (much as a wildfire druid) usin git as a way to manage and control nature. I like that last one. Very good class, I think, and as Druids are my favorite class overall, I think I will try, lets say, a duergar (grey dwarf) or drow half elf druid? (somehow those classes seem to fit to me, but there are some other good options, Hill druid is a classis as well as wood elves/half wood elf, half orc, and humans. (grey elf and orc is if you want to do a less dex, more strength build, which could fit this druid or a spore druid) Can't way to play this and the Runechild and the Moon domain (Oh, the moon domain!) The two blood classes and the new barbarian also are good.
0:30 Sad... I was really hoping to finally be about to play a Blighter, I think they are so cool.
Refreshing to hear some positivity in one of these lol
Thank you for your information video
In regards to flying creatures, druids DO also get the Earthbind spell. It's a strength save, granted, but it DOES bring flying creatures down.
Also, I wonder if the extra damage from Defile Ground applying to you and your allies is intentional. I could see the answer going either way, because it makes sense thematically, but it's also mechanically unusual to have a feature that bones your party also, especially such an absolutely key feature to the subclass.
I would make the sapling share its turn with you.
1d4 necrotic damage in addition to everybody's existing damage is already nuts. Then you throw a 2d4+PB sapling attack on top of that.
THEN next turn you get to: action spell +1d4, then sapling turn 2d4 + PB + 1d4, reaction create another sapling 2d4 + PB. That's 6d4 + 6 damage, or a minimum of 12 if everything hits, in addition to whatever big spell you used that turn(3d10 call lightning?), at 6th level, in one turn.
And again, that's on top of everyone else's +1d4. If you have any melee party members tangled up with those enemies in the defiled ground, those Opportunity attacks are also going to have +1d4.
Granted, at that point you're using 2/3 of your saplings per long rest for that one turn of crazy burst, but with a potential of 60 damage and an average somewhere around 30-40 at level 6, seems like a bit too much.
My brain might've just missed it, but I think it's fun to point out the Sapling gets Multiattack at 14th level.
Also, this just makes me think someone really liked Maokai from League of Legends. (Specifically before his rework because he still had his Sapling Toss *and* had an AOE on the ground, but this one reduced damage for allies and detonated at the end, iirc.) I doubt you play League, but couldn't get this thought out of my head.
I feel as if the extra necrotic damage was not intended to work on friendlies considering how the sapling doesn't have necrotic immunity before level ten and that the fourteenth level feature encourages you to stand in the corrupted ground.
Is there a typo in the Blighted Shape feature?
"Additionally, while you are transformed by YOU Wild Shape feature...."
Okay, so that +2 AC and Darkvision comes in handy if you Wild Shape into an Ape after casting Shillelagh, so you can Multiattack with a Club/Quarterstaff that scales with Wisdom.
Yamcha is gonna hate the level 10 feature
The order of the lycan bloodhunter is a better base monk. I wonder if way of the cobalt soul is worth a damn. XD
I like that this one is actually balanced for the most part. Critical Role subclasses have a tendency toward being kind of overpowered and are usually in contention for either the best or second best subclass a class has access to, so it's nice to see one that is good, but not arguably broken.
So, I was playing a Blight druid with my DM. They looked it over and I thought it affects ALL creatures in the area. However it specificslly mentions "Starting at 2nd level when you choose this circle, you can use a bonus action to corrupt a patch of land or an area of water in a 10-foot radius centered on a point within 60 feet of you. This corruption lasts for 1 minute. The corrupted area is difficult terrain for creatures that are hostile to you. Additionally, when a creature in the area takes damage from an attack or spell for the first time on a turn, it takes an extra 1d4 necrotic damage. You can move this patch of corruption up to 30 feet as a bonus action. Flying creatures are unaffected by the corruption."
It does not say it affects all creatures in the area, only the creature that took damage in that space
If alot of creatures take damage, then of course it affects them. But it doesnt hit the ones that didn't take the damage. I was quite shocked but I was fully thinking that it affected EVERYONE, but I was wrong
I WANT TO PLAY THIS DRUID!!!!
I've been been waiting on a sapling or plant based summoning druid forever.
Now just to find a DM...
Theres no way you could take more damage from blighted ground then you get in temp hp. With resistance you can only take 4 damage on a d8 after resistance.
I wonder if you could get around the drawback of the 14th level feature by being a flying race because it just says the radius of the feature and not that you have to be on the ground, unlike the level 2 feature. It sounds a bit cheesy, but it feels weird that you are impacted by your own corruption to begin with.
Matt mercer makes some cool thematic classes/subclasses/spells/items/content in general. But I wouldn't trust him with game design as far as I could throw him. Remember Chronurgist? lol
I think it's pretty interesting from my perspective. On one hand, absolutely sometimes he lets things....get out of hand, on the other hand- stuff like the echo and hyper rage in C3 is some of the best martial stuff I've ever seen.
So while I think his grasp of the power level is hit or miss, he pretty consistently comes up with really really fascinating game design.
Also yeah, obviously agree about theme being in point usually.
Overall what I take from Matt is not to be too afraid of fucking with the current precedent the system sets, just to uh- lmao, play test it a bit to make sure it isn't chronurgist level lmao
I agree, but this one looks OK
Blighted ground eh? Almost like what the undead do in Warcraft 3. I wonder if Matt has anything to do with Warcraft.
was waiting for the errata on mispronouncing taldorei lol
im thinking the blighted ground isnt supposed to deal its damage to you or your allies. just worded wrong to make it sound like it does.
The wording leaves much open to DM interpretation. For example, "You gain proficiency in the Charisma (Intimidation) skill" could mean you only get proficiency if you're using Charisma. This is reasonable since why would your visual corruption matter if you're intimidating physically with strength. Also, as written the blighted sapling doesn't "immediately" attack since you only direct it to make an attack. Again, most likely intended the way you described.
So... are these subclasses now OFFICIAL OFFICIAL or...?
Eath bind could be useful for flying creatures
👍🏻
Curious Treantmonk, how do you compare this to the Circle of Spores which is thematically very similar to this one?
I really want to like a lot of these sub classes but the only one I really think is any good is the Barbarian Juggernaut. Everything else just feels like an attempt to be “so edgy it’s cool” & it falls a bit flat imo
So what's the difference Between this and Spore
Defile Ground would feel more balanced if A., you had to Concentrate on it, and B. you could regain uses of it by expending spell slots, as many Tasha's subclasses allow for varied subclasses. Otherwise agree on Blighted Form, allow different skill proficiency or expertise in it, or even "You can use Wisdom for Intimidation", lol. Call of the Shadowseeds would also be better with the aforementioned changes to Defile Ground, but I think overall its good? Maybe say it takes its turn directly after yours as other summons? Also, Incarnation of Corruption ABSOLUTELY needs to make you specifically immune to Defile Ground damage, even if its just Resistance to all other sources.
blight and corruption? so kinda like spores druid? neat. how original.
I think there is a bit of unintended clunky behavior here.
- First of all, the first feature doesn't corrupt the ground in a generic sense like you said, it corrupts "A patch of land or an area of water". Does that mean it only works on natural ground? If you're inside a castle, it doesn't work? For such a limited use feature that your entire class relies on, feels pretty harsh.
- Second, I don't think the damage was supposed to affect your allies. The design of the rest of the features and specially the 14th level one where you gain temp hp from it heavily implies so to me. The way I see it they just messed up the wording there.
- Third, rolling a d4 every time damage is taken is really clunky and slow. I wish they'd just used the dice average +0.5. So 3 damage as base, then it gets upgraded to 4 and then finally 5, then added a line that it doubles on critical hits, so it doesn't lose that benefit. Much faster and simpler in my opinion.
Now for my overall opinion, I actually disagree with you. I think this class is bad. Here are the reasons and how I'd fix it:
- I often find classes that require a condition to be fulfilled to be able to function really inflexible and disappointing, often leading you into mindset traps where you constantly seek this one scenario where you can use your feature, only for it to be underwhelming. The entire subclass relying on this ground that, as I pointed before, it's unreliable to get out and has a small pool, is really bad. To fix it, I'd remove the resource from this feature altogether, and just make is a cube that can go anywhere instead. Or maybe give it this upgrade at 6 to dodge some powerful dips.
- But let's say you have that feature down and working. 30 feet of movement with a bonus action? Oof. That is terrible. From my experience features like that often struggle to "Keep up" with any fight that isn't completely static. I lost count how many times I had to dismiss Spiritual Weapon and make a new one because my old one had no hope of catching up to the fight before it ended. Instead, this should have the better version of, on your turn, you can use a bonus action to move it anywhere within 30 feet of you. That's much better. If they wanted to keep it moving along the ground, give it at LEAST 60 feet.
- That darkvision+AC to the wildshape feels like the ribbon of ribbons, and proficiencies are cheap. Most useful wildshape forms already have darkvision, and an additional 60 feet of it it's not gonna be impactful. It's like they wrote it but didn't remember that outside of Moon, wildshape isn't terribly useful. Instead, they should just trash this ribbon and give this druid an expanded spell list of spells they always have prepared and are druid spells for them, and in my opinion it should have been: Inflict Wounds, Ray of Sickness, Web, Ray of Enfeeblement, Slow, Animate Dead, Blight, Giant Insect, Insect Plague and Cloudkill - I kept the idea of one good spell, one bad, though Animate Dead can be good depending on your DM.
- Finally, no extra uses for my wildshape. I don't have any idea here, maybe fuel it to cast inflict wounds in the defile area?
that blighted druid portrait is the least magical portrait of a highly magical class i've ever seen. Girl just needs a shopping trip and blind person's cane to get around, and stop carrying flowers if you're a blighted "druid". This is just a picture of some one i'd be walking by as an adventurer. Seems to be further evidence that people hate druids and refuse to recognize them as fun and powerful.
Would you make videos that correct the blood domain cleric and other classes from this supplement? You know some quick fixes like a change to wording or abilities that....frankly stink.
I've tried to suggest fixes in all these videos as part of the base video
@TreantmonksTemple ok and I see now. Thanks for the responding.
Seems counter intuitive but okay. Iunno, calling it circle of decay might have been better, but it also might be taken.
How does showing corruption grant you higher defenses? Intimidation, sure.
The biggest weakness of the subclasses is the ability for your enemies to move out of it. You place it down and the enemy teleports out of it, and it's basically useless. Also 6 temp hp at lvl 17 isn't that great. Decent but it's a bandaid.
At 30 ft of movement per turn, unless the creature spends the whole combat moving their full movement away, the corruption will probably catch up to them. Plus not every creature can teleport, so for the most part its useful
@@geroni211 and when it isn't, you're just a bog (heh) standard Druid who corrupts the land for your own gain. ... how is there a circle of such individuals?
Another poorly designed subclass by Mercer, feature with a resource you have to track, that depend on another feature with different resource you have to track. Both with different amount of uses and recovery conditions. On a class that already have wild shape- perfect secondary resource to use for those, and spells on top. Its all over the places.
I mean to be fair it's not like any published *cough monk* Classes *cough ranger* have *cough barbarian* the same problem...
I think this is fine, it's balanced enough - I would like to have the corruption also be usable with wild shape uses, but overall it's fine