Talk:Carcinomancer (3.5e Class)

Linking

I know it'll take a while, but one thing you can do with your spell list is link the spells. If you don't recall, linking is [[The Link|Whatever you want it to say.]]. In this case, it'll be like ''[[SRD:Alarm|alarm]]'' to make it appear like alarm. For linking to homebrew, it'll look like ''[[Conjure Tools (3.5e Spell)|conjure tools]]'' since it's not SRD.

Haven't read through the class yet. I'll get back to you on that.

Oh yeah, and all your class features are oddly italicized. It looks off, you should drop those. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 21:57, 11 March 2017 (MST)

Good to know. Thanks. I may have hit the Italics button by accident. I'll go through and see if I can fix that. Halloweenman33 6:03, 12 March 2017 (CST)

Balance

This class is broken, like, real hard bro. First level alone is just utter insanity of abusable mechanics. I couldn't even make it past reading through what 2nd level grants before wanting to comment on it here. It's also monstrously long, like Geez of the Seas it's long. I can comment more later on some specifics but I think Eiji might be doing that. He's got the time and I'm going to bed. --Ganteka Future (talk) 01:03, 12 March 2017 (MST)

Admittedly it's my first attempt at creating a new class, so I figured it may have some issues. With the length, I kept thinking of ideas, but it didn't occur to me at the time that I was overdoing it. I'll work on it some more when I get home from work. Halloweenman33 6:05, 12 March 2017 (CST)

This Class Are Sick

Phew. So I took a look at the class and it was kind of difficult. Why are there so many class features? Given it's a full caster it can go lighter on the class features. But enough about length, lemme go ahead and see what we got.

(Btw, you got a typo: 2nd level Fort save is 3+, should be +3).

Poor BAB, good Fort and Will, d8s, 4+Int. Legit so far. This is a disease build, Nurgle's Chosen and all. Looks like they have bard armor casting, and mostly simple proficiencies. Their spell list has some blasts so they can do something when they run into a construct or something immune.

Disease Host: The fluff text should probably be above as part of the class description, but whatever. Immune to diseases, +5 vs poison, and a strange monk-esque bonus to AC. You should probably specify either the bonus type, or how the bonus type interacts if you're flatfooted or doing touch. I recommend insight or profane given your fluff.

Diseased Spells: This is interesting, but also broken. This works with any spell. My god, you can Locate City nuke with this without weird feat and ability interactions! Locate City: Everyone is infected! Cast Detect Disease! You'll find diseases all right, as you lay down a 60 ft cone of diseases as you go. I really recommend limiting this to hp damage, otherwise things get weird. And though you can still Locate City Disease, you'll have to pull off the same Locate City Bomb tricks which aren't natural and will get you hit with the DM's book. Also, leaving the effect up to the DM is a bad idea/non rule. Say "from the list available for contagion" or something, otherwise it might be Mummy Rot, or it might be a constant line of diseases the host is immune to.

Plague Spores: This actually is just broken. Be you Milquetoaste the Sickly Begger or Flextough the 80th level Demigod, you have a 70% fail chance to pick up a disease. I suspect you meant "to roll for it at all", but that's not what it seems to say. But on the matter of DCs, it's actually the most broken here thanks to "every hour spent preparing". I choose to play a warforged, or any other race which needs no sleep. I spend infinity years crafting a glass of Sickness, and then kill all life, DC infinity. Nevermind the mysterious +10 DC for being a large city. Having a large city just increases the number of hosts, not the DC, and no DM worth his salt is rolling for the whole city anyway so I'm not sure why that's there. Far as I can tell it's just so that if you infect your target while they are in New York, you get a +10 DC. Even if this is your first target infected and he's patient zero.

Sneak Attack: While the decreased scaling is fine, why do they even have this? Especially with Poor BAB? They shouldn't be in melee at all to use this.

Advanced Learning: This is ok actually. Cherrypicking spells is dangerous at times, but acceptable with the limits perscribed.

Blight Specialist: With Plague Master, besides the shinanigans with the previously mentioned Plague Sports you may as well just lower the level of Mass Contagion, seeing as they already have that as a spell. In short, that doesn't really give you anything you won't already have.

The DCs chosen for Poison Master seem arbitary, and a bit high. +2 is the go to for "get very good at X", +1 if you wanted a more mild version.

Vermin Master, what is the AC bonus refered to here? To you? To your swarms? What kind of bonus is it?

Spell Master, this 7 spells/day. What is that even refering to? Each level? Seven 1st level spells known? I have no idea.

Diseased Master, the same thing I said about DCs applies here. The ability to Contagion at range IS useful, and that's something no one else has unlike Plague Master. Honestly, I'm unsure why "Disease" and "Plague" are two categories here at all.

Jesus, that was all 1st level though...

Improved Virulence: More DC increases! Goodness no no no. This might have worked if you had it set a minimum. "Diseases have a DC of 10 + 1/2 HD + Con or its original DC, whichever is higher". Right now your DCs are stupidly high. Set it to Con too, because not only is there presidence (see poison), but it makes you a little MAD (you want Con anyway though) to help balance things out.

Plague Infect: Word of the wise, you should always put the level you gain an ability in the text. You did it with Improved Virulence but not here. Rules as written text trumps table, so you technically also get this at 1st level. Anyway...

There is no action associated with this. My gut says "as poison application" but technically it's a standard action. It doesn't say if it wipes off like poison, any duration, or what. As is, I tip my sword in poop and from that point on til the end of time it's a longsword of filth fever.

Actually, there isn't any limit to how much I can apply. So it's a longsword of filth fever mummy rot mindfire slimy doom SARS mad cow prion disease AIDS cancer double chicken pox EX extreme turbo edition. Every hit. Forever.

Maybe also with an infinite DC from Plague Spores, depending on how those interact.

Summon Vermin: Didn't you give them a vermin summoning spell anyway? Huh. You did. Actually Summon Swarm is at 2nd. And 3rd for some reason. And before you mentioned a Summon Vermin II spell somewhere, but I have no idea what spell that is. That said, this is... chunky. 4d12/level? There's no need to know exactly how many centipedes are in your centipede swarm, and if they aren't automatically swarms they aren't even creatures as far as D&D is concerned, it only deals in swarms and monstrous or unnaturally big vermin. Your standard housefly has no stats.

I have a better suggestion for this ability, assuming you want to keep it at all (because you are very class feature heavy). Make it "You can spontaneously convert spells into summon monster spells (using the homebrew version here for ease, but it also works with SRD kinda), but only for the purpose of summoning creatures of the Vermin type." Then as an add on, "You're always covered in bugs and are considered to have bugs on hand, such as for the target of the giant vermin spell". Much shorter and synergizes with pre-existing spells instead of replacing them.

Create New Disease: Oh dear. We're in unexpored territory here. Right now, what's to stop me from making Eiji's Hideous Fart Disease, DC 9001, deals 1d10^^9999999999 Con drain instantly and causes target to explode infecting the next 5 nearest solar systems? Who, the DM? The DM has no rules to go off of for this. As a general rule, you don't want to have classes force the DM to do anything, any new rules should be self contained.

Venom: This is a disease focused class, but is sure does a lot of poison. Well, as Plague Spores, so here including the infinite DCs.

Practical Application: Wait. These are the rules I was asking about from Plague Infect. What are they doing here in a different(?) class feature? What? But if there is here, what is Plague Infect for?

Firsthand Experience: The idea is nice but the DCs seem to be arbitary (DCs, admittedly, tend to be). And half your examples amusingly don't exist in any mechanical sense in D&D. Knowing how to make Yellow Fever does little if Yellow Fever has no stats. It's kind of a useless ability as is, especially since it was implied the class could already do this before. What level is this anyway? *Scrolls up and back down* 4th.

Infestation: This has the same problem as Summon Vermin; you're specifying something that doesn't need specifying. I don't need to know that there are 2d10 to the twenty second power of insects over a pi times 3/4th 70% chance of yada yada. You can just say "when you put down your EZ Bake Ant Farm, the surrounding 1 mile is infested with ants after 1d10 days" or something. Though it's a very indirect method there is tactical use to this, like infesting a war camp shortly before a battle. It can give some kind of debuff to anyone who has spent time in the infested area.

Unfortunately the drawbacks listed as both very odd and very absolute. You dropped some spiders into the underdark. Now the drow are fleeing the city! Or the drow are killing the spiders! Or maybe your world is devoid of gods. It's ok, a deity kills bugs for them. It's much better to just go "People take a -2 to whatever, and maybe some of X status effect, as long as the area remains infested/the bug nest is found."

tl;dr, Dictate the effects of the bugs, not the response to the bugs.

I may as well mention now. The fluff text for these things are entirely too long. Fluff in class features should be a blurb, not a paragraph. We have to scroll through this and read it through to understand what your feature is. The more text prospective DMs will have to read to understand a class, the less likely are they willing to dedicate the time to it. Shortening this will help immensely.

Enchant Disease: Ironically this rarely matters for anything except for the occational class feature that makes them immune to mundane but not magical. It's ok, it's just very niche.

Improved Create New Disease: See Create New Disease. This didn't need its own feature anyway, it's implied I could have done this anyway.

Infected Wound: First of all, infectious taint *immature giggle*. Now that I got that out of my system... seeing as most stories don't follow the behavior of monsters after the battle (if they are even alive at all), it's probably not needed to make this as a long duration poison. Just make them have wounding on there attacks they shouldn't be making as a Poor BAB spellcaster and be don't with it. Or ditch it, because why are you in melee you crazy caster.

Extend Disease: This is ok. Weird, but ok. Not sure why you'd want to delay it... you'd think you'd want to accelerate it.

Vermin Armor: This seems redundant with the AC bonus you already get. Why are you getting more?

Persistent Disease: This is fine.

Contagion: You have this as a spell known, why also an SLA? Did you forget you were a full caster?

Infect Magic Item: You already have this ability, it's Plague Infect/Practical Application. Nothing stops you from slapping some disease on a pair of pants because they were magic pants.

Poison: As contagion, why is this here? You have it already!

Virulent Host: This is weird. You're super infected, so attackers are... poisoned? You would do better with "Once per round, creatures which successfully attack you in melee must save vs Contagion". Which mind you is really really strong, and I don't advise it. Or "Save vs 1 Con damage, immunity to disease applies" if you want to tone that down on your full caster here.

Contagion Ray: Well remember how I said that Blight Specialist (Disease Mastery) was good because it offered something new and useful? No more. Whatever you picked before it moot now that ranged contagion is given anyway.

Run Its Course: Quite insidious. The difficulty of how these diseases are getting is actually going to be a problem later, even if we ignore the class's current problem of infinite DC diseases. As it is though, this is fine. Ironically by this point I would have expected a feature to help bypass immunity or at least mitigate it seeing as entire types are immune to your abilities, but nothing do far. Well, it's ok. You have fireball, you're a blaster when you're not infecting.

Empower Disease: This is ok, if somewhat dangerous depending on the disease. Whatever, it's acceptable at 13th level. I notice the levels are back in the text now. Weird.

Overcome Immunity: Ah, there's the immunity bypass ability. That said, the DC should be their character level + 10 (which is what it would be if this was spell resistance). As is, you're always going to pass against your peers.

Epidemic: This is ok, though it extends the RANGE and not the AREA as I suspect you want. This just means you can cast farther away, not more people.

Diseased Domination: Hoo boy. So the full caster gets Perma-Dominate Monster. Broken says what!? The idea is fine but, at least, make it "Concentration with Line of Sight" and give them a save each time you dominate an infected victim. Then you can assume direct control and it's ok. As right now, at level 15 you conquer entire worlds who have been infected by you dipping your sweaty disease balls in their water supply. It's so long my eyes cross reading it; it looks like "You gain Leadership" in addition to 9th level Dominate Monster at will no questions asked after DC infinity save vs disease. Ugh. No, please.

Maximized Disease: Fine as is. How do you determine when a disease is Empowered or Maximized though? On infection? Per instance of ability damage?

Living Disease: Aberration or Vermin seems better than Outsider fluffwise here, but ok. The "you are now more disease than man" being hurt by Remove Disease is clever.

Pandemic: You were doing this for ages with your Mass Contagion spell anyway, what is 5 normal Contagions now? So, you remember when I said that the increasing difficulty of resisting your diseases (for DC and immunity and curing wise) was a going to be a problem? Because here with your multi-mile long spell areas you are killing entire biospheres unseen and unresisted. Even for a capstone, I'm not sure that's legit. You're already a full caster; break the universe with Wish spells and Time Stops like the rest of us you jerk!

---

As it, there is WAY WAY WAY too many class features. Half the class features repeat themselves three or four times in different ways. And quite a few are broken.

You're a full caster. Half your features are the spells themselves. You can lay light on the actual class features.

Find things to cut, and remove or fix the broken ones. As it is, it's not workable at all. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 03:33, 12 March 2017 (MDT)

I missed that typo. Thanks. Admittedly this is my first attempt at creating a new class, so I figured there may be some issues. Some of it may be more wording than others. I kept thinking of ideas, but didn't intend to overdo it. I'll work on this some more when I get home from work. Thanks for the input. Halloweenman33 6:21, 12 March 2017 (CST)

First, I just noticed the subtitle for this part of the thread. Nice pun. Anyway, I've made several tweaks and changes, hopefully balancing it out better. I combined Practical Application and Plague Infect. I also reduced Blight Specialist down to just Diseased Master, change the name to Diseased Master, and moved it to level 10. Since Contagion is a 4th level spell and they won't get it until level 8 anyway, it would be far more useful after that. I may need to tweak the class a bit more depending on how this version goes over, but it should be an improvement. Halloweenman33 21:56, 12 March 2017 (CST)