Otherworldly Patron: The Fathom Horror [Third Draft]

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After I released both the Fathom Horror and the latest draft of the Ancient Dragon, I had a gradual realization that this material was the least future-proofed it could be. As can be seen in earlier drafts of both patrons, invocations found in Unearthed Arcana had changed the face of how certain warlocks functioned and their power level, and I attempted to accommodate those changes in the material I produced.

Ultimately, I decided just not to touch either option until Xanathar's Guide to Everything came out and included the finalized version of those UA options. What followed was a grueling waiting game on my part, both for Xanathar's, and to see how its invocation options were inevitably received.

Now that some of the hubbub around the new book has died down, I finally feel comfortable in continuing the revision cycle on these warlock options. The Fathom Horror is first up, because I love it so dang much, but expect the Ancient Dragon to be close behind!

All that in mind, let's see what all this time waiting led me to change:

CHANGELOG:

• Jellify has been tweaked slightly, to keep the ooze it creates from being able to eat metal.
• Removed Anchor of Drowned Sailors and Aquatic Adaptation invocations, as both conflicted with new material present in Xanathar's.
• Anchor of Drowned Sailors is now a sidebar rule, synergizing with Improved Pact Weapon found in Xanathar's. 
• Young Sea Drake has been rebalanced, tweaking its HP, making its Torrent Breath an at-will ability, and allowing it to share its Marine Camouflage with whoever it is riding. 
• All invocations have been made patron-agnostic, meaning that any warlock with the right features can now use these invocations!

CONCERNS:

• Still unsure of how the young sea drake feels. Monster math has always been a weakpoint of mine.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• When a class' whole game is about to change, maybe wait before releasing content for it. That's why I still haven't released a single ranger option. =/

Roguish Archetype: The Archaeologist [Third Draft]

Download a selectable-text, printsafe version here!

Sometimes, with the content I produce, things get lost in the shuffle. Good, flavorful options fall behind and don't get updated properly, and don't quite get to that finished-n'-polished stage I like to have my whole library at.

The Archaeologist rogue was definitely one of those options. As strong with flavor as it was, it never quite got to where I was happy with it. I kept coming at it, revising it, and giving up, because I just couldn't seem to make it work. 

So when a Walrock-level Patreon backer (thanks @DrMoradin!) asked me to revise this option, I knew what I had to do:

I gutted 90% of this option, and started over fresh!

I've learned a lot of things about making class options function well recently, and I've put everything I've learned to work here on this project. As it stands now, the Archaeologist is fully functional, well-flavored, and likely will be a treat to play. 

CHANGELOG:

• Field Training has been modified slightly, giving a slower climbing speed that scales with existing climbing speeds.
• Intelligent Combat is now Explorer's Tricks, using a number of points equal to your INT mod + 1, that confer mostly non-combat benefits as rewards for being a researcher!
• The Ruin Researcher feature, a similarly non-combat feature, which grants a level of archaeology-type knowledge whenever you want to spend your short rest studying a ruin that you find yourself in. 
• Get out of a bad spot with Fortune's Favor, and spend those handy explorer's points to dodge some nasty nat 1's!
• Paragon of Adventure has been fully reworked, and how provides all the explorer's points you could ever need, every short rest.

CONCERNS:

• Lots of changes means at least a few bugs. Always.
• Explorer's Tricks are powerful, but their usage is few and far between. I wonder how they'd feel in actual play. 
• Fortune's Favor might not be powerful enough? Or could it be too powerful, with a full INT mod and Paragon of Adventure?

WHAT I LEARNED:

• As much as it hurts, if it's not working, sometimes you just have to throw out what you've made and start over.

Martial Archetype: Dragoon [Third Draft]

It's back by popular demand, and refitted with new features!

I actually revisited this one specifically because several people asked me to over Twitter (@WalrockHomebrew). I've been meaning to do so for a little while, but I had a lot on my plate to sort through until I saw that the demand was there.

Fighter Martial Archetypes are something I've always had a bit of trouble with. There's little uniformity in terms of features, and it's hard to draw a meaningful, consistent power level from the provided spread.

So, I experiment. Over and over and over again. And eventually, maybe, I get it perfectly right.

This might not be one of those times; I did add a whole lot of moving parts here, after all.

You know the drill by now. Find all the broken bits, and I'll fix 'em up.

(special thanks to @DrMoradin for helping me suss out what to do with this one, and providing invaluable playtest feedback!)

CHANGELOG:

• Aspirant Step has been reworked into three different abilities, loosely modeled on the Battle-Master's superiority dice!
• Wing Clip your enemies to bring those pesky fliers down to your level.
• Dodge that dragon's breath with Avoidance, and even ignore that half-damage-on-a-miss that lingers around. 
• Replaced Ascendant Strike with Always Ready, adding some much-needed flavor and rolling its benefits into making Aspirant Step initially more enticing. 
• Needle of Heaven no longer shoots you 400 feet in the air, which got pretty wacky. Instead, you can wombo-combo an Aspirant Step and Wing Clip with it. 

CONCERNS:

• Some of the phrasing is pretty convoluted, and I'm betting there's a more elegant way to put a lot of what I wrote.
• I added the balance math of the "Improved Combat Superiority" feature to the core Dragonslaying feature, but still have features at the levels ICS functions at. However, this archetype doesn't have the additional maneuvers (for a total of 9 instead of this archetype's 3) that are normally granted to a Battle-Master, so I'm hoping that evens out. 

WHAT I LEARNED:

• I always try to have my ear to the ground and do stuff people will enjoy. Turns out, Twitter is great for that. 

Roguish Archetype: The Shadow-Weaver [Third Draft]

Man, have I not thought about this one in a while. One of my favorite roguish archetypes (along with the ninja), and definitely one of the ones most in need of a rework.

One of the fortunate/unfortunate things about doing this for as long as I have is that I learn so much about how things are balanced. Eventually, I start seeing the glaring mistakes earlier on, and either have to whistle and pretend they don't exist, or sigh mightily, go back, and start revising them.

What IS handy, though, is this allows me to update to more modern templates I have developed, standardizing the look of my material while I rework it from the ground up.

So how did everyone's favorite shadow-assassin-counterpoint-to-the-arcane-trickster change in this most recent iteration? Well...

CHANGELOG:

• Doubled the length of the Shadowy Organization table, and fixed some of the sillier choices. Sorry, members of the Venom Cave.
• Added Phantasmal Force to the spell list, because why wasn't that there before.
• Shrouds are no longer a smite-type ability, and instead act as a vehicle to confer Sneak Attack. Less potent than before, but also more in-line with how rogues typically scale. 
• Heart of Darkness is now Eyes in the Dark, because Heart of Darkness honestly didn't do much. It was one of those ideas that sounded better in my head, and EitD gives a good little bit of fun utility not represented by the spell list. 
• Black Agony is now Deathly Shroud, because the idea of calling in shrouds for damage needed to be represented somehow. Deathly Shroud strikes me as a more thematic ability than Black Agony's "hey you do extra damage," anyhow. 

CONCERNS:

• I basically changed everything except Gloomstride, so there's liable to be some mistakes in there. That's just how it goes, really.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Dang did I used to have a real problem letting images collide with text. Now every time I see that, it annoys the pants off of me. Revision revision revision!

Otherworldly Patron: The Ancient Dragon [Third Draft]

Always wanted to update this one. Got into a conversation the other day that got me thinking about it, and it just kind of went from there.

One thing I didn't like about the v0.2 of this patron option was that it tried too hard to be dragon-agnostic, creating a spell list that attempted to address every type of dragon possible. What it generated was something of a bland mess that had a lot of holes and no central feel.

So, I made six spell lists instead, one for each damage type of dragon (almost; acid and poison have to share).

It was a huge pain in the butt. I hated it from a simplicity-in-design standpoint. But it was the right call, I think, to preserve the feeling of this patron.

But, of course, that's not the only thing that got changed. Changelog!

CHANGELOG:

• Diversified and reformed the spell list(s), trying to keep a central idea of dragon-ness while showing deviation across the various dragon-types.
• Moved Ancient's Breath (now Breath of the Ancients) to 1st level, and included a note saying that yes, dragonborn can and will have two different flavors of breath.
• Added Dragonscales at level 6, a shield type ability that does what I was trying to make shield do, without costing a spell slot. 
• Reworked Blood of Dragons making it less dependent on coming into contact with a specific type of damage. 
• Minor reworks to Draconic Apotheosis, to make it function with the new Blood of Dragons and Breath of the Ancients.
• Added Invocations, including the much-loved dragon chest, small buffs to the Pact of the Chain pseudodragon, a Pact of the Blade weapon, and more!

CONCERNS:

• I'm not sure of the damage ramp on Breath of the Ancients, could use another look. 
• Blood of Dragons may be too good, and also, is it clear? Could also use a look.
• The pseudodragon invocation (Dragonling) may have unintended consequences, maybe?
• Giving heavy armor to warlocks is probably an okay call, given that this invocation matches numbers with Armor of Shadows pretty well, but I'd still like to have Knight of the Beyond be looked at. 

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Usually, it's worth doing the big, stupid, extra-work-pain-in-the-ass thing to preserve flavor.

Martial Archetype: Brawler [Third Draft]

These days, I really try to finish up options with a second draft. Any changes a second draft needs can be appended to it with subsequent sub-versions.

But that only works out like, half the time. Any time I change a full ability, we need a new draft, so here we are.

The Brawler has been a challenge (and probably will continue to be so, if I made mistakes here), but the standard fist-fighter is something I've always enjoyed playing in fantasy games. I find the best archetypes that I make are those I care personally for, and right now the Brawler is in a place that I'm very proud of, thanks in no small part to the input from you fine folks.

But let's not have that stop us. If there's something that needs changing, this is the place to tell me!

CHANGELOG:

• Fisticuffs is now Counterpunch, trading out the push/prone ability for the ability to literally roll with the punches. I find this one to be much more flavorful, and has the advantage of pushing home DEX dependence. 
• Dodge and Weave is now Defensive Footwork, which is just a name change, really, but one that makes more sense for what it is now. 
• Made Fist-Fighting incompatible with shields to keep it from being strictly better than Two-Weapon Fighting. 

CONCERNS:

• There's a lot of kit added at 3rd level, but two pieces of it (the unarmored defense and the progressive damage die increase) are background detail, setting up the pieces for the rest of the class to work, rather than anything active and confusing.
• This class option has a pretty tight reaction/bonus action economy, but it's not overburdened significantly.
• The STR/DEX dependence makes this class option a little M.A.D., but fighters of all classes can handle that just fine.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• There's sometimes a much more thematic ability out there, though it just might require thinking outside the box a little bit. 

Sacred Oath: Oath of the Midnight Hour [Third Draft]

Should I have made this a new release, or just updated the version I released less than a day ago?

Not as if there are any rules to this thing I do.

I'm issuing this as a new release because of the extensive changes made to v0.2 which, while a step in the right direction, still wasn't quite right. A lot of the mechanics needed some TLC, but the end result here seems much more polished.

Did I say "end result?" That's never really right, and certainly not up for me to decide. Tell me what you think.

CHANGELOG:

• CD: Death Whisper is now CD: Shadowblade, because encouraging players to spam their bonus action every single turn for nothing isn't necessarily great design. 
• Ebon Smite has been removed, as it was a contentious feature people either loved or hated. I figured it was best to take it out and fold it over into CD: Shadowblade. 
• Nightcloak is now a Channel Divinity, affecting only you and stifling any noise you make, including speech. 
• Midnight Blessing has taken Nightcloak's place and now gives a few passive benefits and a helpful ribbon to your whole party. 
• Umbral Jaunt has been reworked, again, and is now a sort of retributive attack, in keeping with the shadow-assassin-paladin theme of this Oath. 
• Living Nightmare makes you less huge and more sneaky, hiding you to all those but the one you are attacking, and feeling similar to you being a living phantasmal force. 

CONCERNS:

• Shadowblade might be a little confusing, but its usage is pretty straightforward after the first glance.
• Lots of changes, means lots of potential for mistakes. As always. 

WHAT I LEARNED:

• No limitation on how many drafts I can release how often, but I really should try and not make this sort of thing happen again. 

Roguish Archetype: The Corsair [Third Draft]

One of the biggest things I wanted to do during my absence was update older content. So much of what I make can use additional iterations, especially with the quantity of good feedback it has been collecting.

The Corsair has always been one I've been meaning to update. I didn't leave it in a good place, and the familiar it introduced stole the spotlight and bogged it down with math.

So, I fix that by just getting rid of the damn thing. Here's what I did.

CHANGELOG:

• Removed First Mate, brought Dirty Fighting to 3rd level to give a distinctive feature early on that wasn't a nightmare for everyone involved.
• Added Lookout feature, to give this pirate a good fluff ability and to keep the option from being centered almost exclusively on combat.
• Moved familiars to an optional rule, because they should still be there, but should definitely be about as useful as a wizard's familiar. 
• Added a Feint-like ability to Dirty Fighting, to introduce CHA-dependence at an earlier level.

CONCERNS:

• Maybe I bunged something up without noticing in Lookout, but I'm betting not. This seems pretty water-tight to me.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Half-year turn around time for project updates? Maybe I want to do these sooner instead of later.

Worldbuilding Option: Fortresses, Temples, & Strongholds [Third Draft]

Part of designing expansions for half-year old content is going back and reconsidering the rules. Especially so when I made most of these rules from whole cloth.

This piece of homebrew is something I'm pretty proud of, on the whole, but it had plenty of rough edges. Having only two drafts of a project this large was never what I really wanted, and it gives me a good deal of satisfaction to have fixed errors that have been with this project for this long.

The way it is now, I feel this content is finally in shape to be expanded upon. Which is good, because I also have its first expansion complete and ready to publish.

CHANGELOG:

• Minor modifications to many rooms, with the intention of fixing verbage and adding clarity.
• Several rooms now directly generate income, because that made much more sense than just shrugging and expecting the DM to figure it out. 
• Moat and Defensive Walls have been removed, and will be reintroduced in a new form in a coming expansion. Until that is introduced, feel free to use the rooms in the second draft of this option. 
• Barracks and Lodgings have been combined, because it didn't make a whole lot of sense to say ONLY SOLDIERS CAN SLEEP HERE.
• Merchants have been reworked, in preparation for an upcoming expansion.

CONCERNS:

• Nothing really. I think I've hit all the major points that have come up in the past half-year, but feel free to remind me of anything I've missed. 

WHAT I LEARNED: 

• It's amazing how much this project has proliferated. Turns out, people wanted something cool to spend their hard-earned gp on. Who knew?

Divine Domain: Winter [Third Draft]

With homebrew, my personal philosophy is to push the bounds of convention. To look at what is there in core, but to change and add to it, rather than to keep completely faithful to what already is.

But, sometimes that bites me in the ass.

And that's okay - making mistakes and learning from them is the entire reason I have a WHAT I LEARNED section, below. It pays to dissect the intense layers of math and balance within this game to determine how the whole machine works. If nothing else, it makes me appreciate the obvious dedication to building balance that went into fifth edition, and it encourages me to be more forgiving of the handful of balance mistakes 5e does make.

But, enough about mistakes. Let's see what got fixed:

CHANGELOG:

• Frost's Fortitude was tweaked significantly, and now hinges on Wisdom instead of Strength (to illustrate that it's your magic making you tougher), and now gives you access to much of the lower-end martial weaponry. 
• Cold Snap can now target objects, maximizing damage against them for multiple rounds afterward. 
• Rime has had its resistance-nullification removed. The feat Elemental Adept exists for a reason.
• Blessing of Snows is now a vanilla Divine Strike, because it seemed like this option was leaning melee overall anyway. 

CONCERNS:

• Cold Snap is still very similar to hold person, but I feel it's important to have at least one freeze-creature ability inherent to this domain. 

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Sometimes, more choice can actually be a bad thing. Surprising, but true. 

Race: Awakened Undead [Third Draft]

Constantly, it seems this project is being left to die, before it suddenly rises from its grave with newer revisions!

Very little changed in this version, which means that this is (likely) the final draft. Always good, especially because I have a couple very big things planned and it's nice to have a clean project queue before starting up a mega-project.

What's different? Changelog!

WHAT I CHANGED:

• Rebalanced Bone to Pick and gave your skeleton arm a d6 instead of a d8. Seems reasonable.

• Withering Touch is now more important, not giving you proficiency in something you'd already have by default, and adding CON to unarmed damage. 

• Fixed Incorporeal Stride so that it no longer references 4e mechanics and gives you a very clear idea of what keeps out your ghost. 

CONCERNS:

• Nothing, really. Seems about done and balanced to me.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Not much this time around. Just that you guys are always particularly good at picking out the nits I've missed. 

Expanded and Exotic Weapons [Third Draft]

There are two important things to consider when revising homebrew:

1. The difference between when a mechanic is bad and can be fixed, and when it's bad enough to have to take it behind a shed and do what must be done.
   
   and...
2. When to keep it simple, and when it's appropriate to complicate it a little bit. 

The "trade in proficiencies" bit wasn't really working out for this homebrew. So, I nixed it, and mixed the format of this project around a little bit. 

The changelog can explain.

WHAT I CHANGED:

• Expanded and Exotic Weapons is the new title, replacing the old "Exotic Weapons" and representing the two weapon lists available here,

• Broke weapons into two lists, one intended to be an extension of the PHB's weapon list and proficiencies, the other of which requires feats to access. 

• Removed Bladed Fan because that one just really wasn't working out. 

• Added Repeating Crossbows because D&D cowboys. 

• Added Sword Sheath because that's a fun thing to beat people with. 

• Added Exotic Weapon powers which are once-per-short-rest abilities related to the weapon, intended to help make a feat worth it. 

• Revised item descriptions, rebalanced weapon damage because you can't do that enough times. 

CONCERNS:

• What's the power balance on the new Exotic Weapons and the weapon abilities? I think the power variation is fairly alright; I guarantee they're not going to be perfectly balanced, but as long as the spread is roughly even I'm alright with it. 

• Do any expanded weapons invalidate any existing weapons? Keep in mind the differences in Simple and Martial weapon categories. 

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Well, that thing I posted, above. 

• 4e-style mechanics can work in 5e. Whoda thought. 

Also, I'm still figuring out how to generate a PDF with selectable text that Google will let me embed without breaking it. It's surprisingly tricky, but for now you can download a PDF with selectable text here. It won't look pretty previewed, but if you download it, it should run off a computer or device just fine.

A newer version of this option is available.

Prestige Class: Vampire [Third Draft]

This last round, I got feedback loud and long about how people wanted a vampire, but that the Crimson Blessings were wacky and made the vampire feel as if it had no direct progression, among a host of other gripes.

And that's great! When you have gripes, I get to fix gripes. Crimson Blessings are no more, replaced with a scaling pick-one-of-three-blessings reminiscent of the totem barbarian, and all of the other gripes have been fixed.

But wait, this sounds like I'm getting into the changelog already, and I haven't even thrown up the header yet. Let's fix that:

What I Changed:

• Well, that thing I said, above.

• Total blood points have increased, now scaling at 5/10/15 instead of 2/4/6/8/10. 

• The drawback from having no blood has been changed to levels of exhaustion instead of leaving you paralyzed in the middle of wherever, at the whims of whatever.

• Hit dice back up to 1d10, in lieu of the blessing that would let them be increased. 

• Blood drinks per target per day is now a function of the target's size, rather than its CON score.

• Somber Elegance and Blood's Vigor have been compressed into the Blessing of Blood, Lifeblood, and buffed up to a reasonable level.

• Wolf Form has been buffed, to make it an ample competitor for Mist Form and Bat Form.

• Vampiric Celerity has been folded over into Deathly Reflexes.

• Predatory Gaze has been reworked and rebalanced. It now costs an action and two blood points.

• Somber Elegance returns as a charm spell, the spiritual successor to the nix'd Dark Beckoning, built off the charm available to the vampire monster. 

• Someone pointed out this prestige class needed a level 4 stat increase, and they were completely correct. Added a variable stat increase a la the Rune Scribe's Living Rune, named it Sinister Nourishment, and made it function off of your daily consumption of blood.

• Changed Vampiric Siring to Curse of Eternity, now raises a minion from a properly prepared body, with the additional fluff power of being able to turn your friends into vampires if you can, y'know, kill them with your bite first. 

Concerns:

• I'm not 100% on how the respective options for each blessing balance against each other. If someone could look at that and tell me what they think, that'd be great. 

• Blessing of Darkness comes in at 4th level, the same time as the stat increase. It's pretty weak though, but I'm not sure if it's okay to double-up on a stat increase or not. 

• Curse of Eternity has a small mechanic that functions off of total character level, which nothing else in the game does aside from multiclass spell casting. Still, it enables you to raise a vampire spawn at a level which would be appropriate for it, and prestige classes are a little different anyway - I'm leaning towards saying it's probably okay. 

• Overall feel. Does it feel solid, like it has meaningful progression? Let me know!

What I Learned:

• Modularity is nice, but not when it comes at the expense of feeling like you're making progress. 

• A player character conjuring a minion should be assumed to conjure a CR's worth of minions equal to 1/3 of their character level (based off of create undead and similar). Thus, a level 15 character should be able to conjure CR 5 worth of creatures, or one vampire spawn. 

• All classes are "about" something. A prestige class needs to also be "about" something, and it has significantly less time and space to carry the same fluff weight a normal class has. 

• Prestige classes are still really hard. =( =( =(

Roguish Archetype: The Jester [Third Draft]

With a third draft, I think the jester is finally either complete or very well nearing completion. Mechanically sound, balanced, and with abundant flavor, this definitely looks like a rogue archetype worth playing.

A lot changed in this draft, and not all of it obvious, so let's have a look at the changelog to see what's what:

What I Changed:

• I used an entirely new template for this! Based off of the formatting I used on the Vampire PrC, the type is smaller and the headers are a closer match to what the PHB uses. Overall, it's cleaner and gives more room to add graphics and features while maintaining readability, which is always a good thing.

• Fixed my Photoshop (finally) to allow for high-resolution PDFs. A great thing, which will mean I'll probably have to go back and high-resolution all of my previous work (a less great thing). 

• I added faerie fire and feather fall to Arcane Buffoonery, and enthrall, mirror image, and misty step to Jesting Magician. I capped Arcane Buffoonery at "choose four spells," and Jesting Magician at "choose five" - one less than Jesting initially got, but the fact that you can choose from a list means it needed the minor rebalance. 

• Cruel Comedy can now be used defensively as soon as you are the target of an attack. This means a gamble for the jester: Do you wager that the enemy is going to fail its Wisdom save, and then miss on its attack against you while it is suffering disadvantage, or do you expect that the enemy will make its save or hit regardless, and take the damage while using Uncanny Dodge to mitigate it? 

• Cruel Comedy also has had the verbage changed up on the qualifiers for vicious mockery's sneak attack, which should make it come up more often. 

Concerns:

• Cruel Comedy doesn't have the clearest, most intuitive verbage for the aforementioned sneak attack, but I truly believe it's about the best I could do. Making sneak attack apply to spells with saves is hard work. 

Otherworldly Patron: The Dead King [Third Draft]

Alright! After fixing a pile of formatting errors, finding out that raising a whole pile of skeletons that do mostly nothing is confusing and boring, and fixing some verbage, this thing looks good to release.

Now, you get a single, well-trained skeleton butler, a man (woman, or genderless animated corpse) of impeccable taste, unswerving loyalty, and rotting flesh. Much more talented than the four skill-less clods before him, he can even speak (eventually, full sentences!), learn a skill (with a full +0 Int modifier!), and eventually there can be two lovable undead souls, following you around and tending to your every need.

Of course, you can't sense undead anymore. But that's okay, because your skeletal retainer can! Just be sure to ask him about it - he probably won't think to tell you right away.

* * *

The Dead King or Queen is a powerful entity with sway over undeath like a dead god, lich, or death knight. Whatever the nature of this creature, it is willing to make pacts with mortals to imbue them with the ability to cast potent necromantic spells, creating warlocks in life that will serve them in death.

Mortals may make a pact with the Dead King in order to more fully master life and death, or to attain the reliable protection that only a handful of loyal undead can provide.

What I Changed:

• As said above, revamped Accursed Retainers completely. Now is a skeleton that essentially levels alongside you, but never does anything terribly game-breaking. It's got a bunch of little features, most I enumerated above. Check it out!
• I removed the "undead sense" portion of the abilities, and applied it to the retainers. It's up all the time, but the retainers as a rule won't tell you unless you ask them.
• Retainers also hang around until they die which, given that they have 1 hit point, should be pretty frequent. 
• Lots and lots of formatting failures. Clearly I need to look at these with a closer eye before putting them up, good to go. 
• Not much else, really. People seem to think that Corpse Explosion, Bone Armor, and Master of Death work pretty well, or at least don't consider them worth commenting on. So, that's good!

Concerns:

• I've given the Accursed Retainers a lot of kit, but it doesn't really add up to much. There's also a lot of new verbage, and where there are new words, there's a potential for something to be wrong. 
• Still'd like more people to weigh in on Master of Death, it seems like it could use some scrutiny. 

* * *

The problem with these pacts is I always want to play them so badly while making them, but have to wait until I'm all well done and finished to even consider it. Doubly true for pacts like this that break new territory and involve new mechanics like minions as a class feature - lots to make sure I'm getting right. 

Thanks for what help's been given so far, it's really reshaped a good portion of this pact, and made it all much more clean! Let's see if anyone can find anything else for me to change.

Version 0.3

No reddit thread yet!