Path of the Battlerager
Battleragers are followers of the gods of war. They specialize in wearing bulky, spiked armor and throwing themselves into combat. They strike with their body itself and give themselves over to the fury of battle.
Formerly exclusive to dwarven battle squads like the Gutbuster and Wilddwarf Brigade, other races have since taken up this unconventional style of combat.
Battlerager Armor
3rd-level Battlerager feature
You can turn a suit of light or medium armor into battlerager armor, covering it in sharp spikes and allowing you to use your own body as a weapon. You must spend 1 hour and 25 gold worth of materials (such as metal spikes, horns or broken weapons) to turn a suit of light or medium armor into battlerager armor. It still keeps any qualities or enchantments of the original armor.
While wearing your battlerager armor and raging, you gain the following benefits:
- You gain a bonus +1 to your AC
- You can treat your battlerager armor spikes as a simple melee weapon that deals 1d6 piercing damage. You use your Strength modifier for the attack and damage rolls. You also don't need a free hand attack with it, instead opting to kick, punch or ram your spikes into your target.
- You can make one melee weapon attack with your battlerager armor spikes as a bonus action.
- Your spikes also make it difficult to escape your
grasp. While grappling a creature, that creature
has disadvantage on Strength (Athletics) and
Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks to escape
your grapple.
If your battlerager armor is magical, the damage
of the spikes is also considered magical for the
purpose of overcoming resistances and immunities,
but are not affected by the armors enchantments.
Reckless Abandon
6th-level Battlerager feature
When you use Reckless Attack while raging, you also
gain temporary hit points equal to 1d4 + your
Constitution modifier (minimum of 1). They vanish if
any of them are left when your rage ends.
Battlerager Charge
10th-level Battlerager feature
You can take the dash action as a bonus action on your turn.
Additionally, when you move at least 20 feet in a straight line and hit a creature with a melee weapon attack while raging, you can use your reaction to force that creature
to make a Strength saving throw. On a failed save, the creature is pushed 10 feet away from you and is knocked prone.
The DC for the saving throw equals 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier.
Spiked Fury
14th-level Battlerager feature
You gain the following benefits while raging and wearing your battlerager armor:
- The damage die of your battlerager armor spikes increases to 1d8.
- Whenever you successfully grapple a creature, or a creature within 5 feet of you hits you with a melee attack, they take piercing damage from your Battlerager armor spikes equal to your Strength modifier.
NOTE: For the purposes of mechanics, treat Spiked Armor as Scale Mail that has already been turned into Battlerager Armor
Arcana Domain
Magic is an energy that suffuses the multiverse and that fuels both destruction and creation. Gods of the Arcana domain know the secrets and potential of magic intimately. For some of these gods, magical knowledge is a great responsibility that comes with a special understanding of the nature of reality. Other gods of Arcana see magic as pure power, to be used as its wielder sees fit.
| Example Deity | Pantheon |
|---|---|
| Azuth | Forgotten Realms |
| Boccob | Greyhawk |
| Corellon Larethian | Elven |
| Lunitari | Dragonlance |
| Mystra | Forgotten Realms |
| Nuitari | Dragonlance |
| Solinari | Dragonlance |
| Vecna | Greyhawk |
| Wee Jas | Greyhawk |
Domain Spells
1st-level Arcana Domain feature
You gain domain spells at the cleric levels listed in the Arcana Domain Spells table.
| Level | Spell |
|---|---|
| 1 | detect magic, magic missile |
| 3 | magic weapon, see invisibility |
| 5 | dispel magic, counterspell |
| 7 | arcane eye, banishment |
| 9 | wall of force, teleportation circle |
Arcane Initiate
1st-level Arcana Domain feature
You gain proficiency with heavy armor and the Arcana skill. You also gain two cantrips of your
choice from the wizard spell
list. For you, these cantrips
count as cleric cantrips.
Channel Divinity: Arcane Abjuration
2nd-level Arcana Domain feature
You can use your Channel Divinity to abjure otherworldly creatures.
As an action, you present your holy symbol, and each celestial, elemental, fey, or fiend that is within 30 feet of you must make a Wisdom saving throw, provided that the creature can hear you. If the creature fails its saving throw, it is turned for 1 minute or until it takes any damage.
A turned creature must spend its turns trying to move as far away from you as it can, and it can't willingly end its move in a space within 30 feet of you. It also can't take reactions. For its action, it can only use the Dash action or try to escape from an effect that prevents it from moving. If there's nowhere to move, the creature can use the Dodge action.
After you reach 5th level, when a creature fails its saving throw against your Arcane Abjuration feature, the creature is banished for 1 minute (as in the Banishment spell, no concentration required) if it isn't on its plane of origin and its challenge rating is at or below a certain threshold, as shown on the Arcane Banishment table.
Arcane Banishment
| Cleric Level | Banishes Creatures of CR... |
|---|---|
| 5th | 1/2 or lower |
| 8th | 1 or lower |
| 11th | 2 or lower |
| 14th | 3 or lower |
| 17th | 4 or lower |
Spell Breaker
6th-level Arcana Domain feature
When you restore hit points to an ally with a spell of 1st level or higher, you can also end one spell of your choice on that creature. The level of the spell you end must be equal to or lower than the level of the spell slot you use to cast the healing spell.
Potent Spellcasting
8th-level Arcana Domain feature
You add your Wisdom modifier to the damage you deal with any cleric cantrip.
Arcane Mastery
17th-level Arcana Domain feature
You choose four spells from the wizard spell list, one from each of the following levels: 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th. You add them to your list of domain spells. Like your other domain spells, they are always prepared and count as cleric spells for you.
Banneret
A banneret is a knight who inspires greatness in others by committing brave deeds in battle. The mere presence of one in a hamlet is enough to cause some orcs and bandits to seek easier prey. A lone banneret is a skilled warrior, but a banneret leading a band of allies can transform even the most poorly equipped militia into a ferocious war band.
A banneret prefers to lead through deeds, not words. As a banneret spearheads an attack, their actions can awaken reserves of courage and conviction in allies that they never suspected they had.
Final Stand
18th-level Banneret feature
At 18th level, you can inspire allies to fight on even on the brink of death. Whenever an ally within 60 feet of you drops to 0 hit points and is not killed outright, you can use your reaction to have them drop to 1 hit point instead. Any ally affected by this ability cannot benefit from it again until they finish a long rest.
Way of the Long Death
Monks of the Way of the Long Death are obsessed with the meaning and mechanics of dying. They capture creatures and prepare elaborate experiments to capture, record, and understand the moments of their demise. They then use this knowledge to guide their understanding of martial arts, yielding a deadly fighting style.
Touch of Death
3rd-level Way of the Long Death feature
Your study of death allows you to extract vitality from another creature as it nears its demise. When you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you gain temporary hit points equal to your Wisdom modifier + your monk level (minimum of 1 temporary hit point).
Hour of Reaping
6th-level Way of the Long Death feature
You gain the ability to unsettle or terrify those around you as an action, for your soul has been touched by the shadow of death. When you take this action, each creature within 30 feet of you that can see you must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your Ki save DC or be frightened of you until the end of your next turn.
Mastery of Death
11th-level Way of the Long Death feature
You use your familiarity with death to escape its grasp. When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you can expend 1 ki point (no action required) to have 1 hit point instead.
Touch of the Long Death
17th-level Way of the Long Death feature
Your touch can channel the energy of death into a creature. Once on your turn, whenever you hit a creature with an unarmed strike, you can expend 1 to 10 ki points to force the target must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, it takes 2d10 necrotic damage per ki point spent and cannot regain hitpoints until the start of your next turn. On a successful save it takes half as much damage and it isn't prevented from regaining hitpoints from this ability.
Oath of the Crown
The Oath of the Crown is sworn to the ideals of civilization, be it the spirit of a nation, fealty to a sovereign, or service to a deity of law and rulership. The paladins who swear this oath dedicate themselves to serving society and, in particular, the just laws that hold society together. These paladins are the watchful guardians on the walls, standing against the chaotic tides of barbarism that threaten to tear down all that civilization has built, and are commonly known as guardians, exemplars, or sentinels. Often, paladins who swear this oath are members of an order of knighthood in service to a nation or a sovereign, and undergo their oath as part of their admission to the order's ranks.
Tenets of the Crown
The tenets of the Oath of the Crown are often set by the sovereign to which their oath is sworn, but generally emphasize the following tenets.
Law The law is paramount. It is the mortar that holds the stones of civilization together, and it must be respected.
Loyalty Your word is your bond. Without loyalty, oaths and laws are meaningless.
Courage You must be willing to do what needs to be done for the sake of order, even in the face of overwhelming odds. If you don't act, then who will?
Responsibility. You must deal with the consequences of your actions, and you are responsible for fulfilling your duties and obligations.
Oath Spells
3rd-level Oath of the Crown feature
You gain oath spells at the paladin levels listed.
Oath of The Crown Spells
| Paladin Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| 3rd | command, compelled duel |
| 5th | warding bond, zone of truth |
| 9th | aura of vitality, spirit guardians |
| 13th | banishment, guardian of faith |
| 17th | circle of power, geas |
Channel Divinity
3rd-level Oath of the Crown feature
You gain the following two Channel Divinity options.
Champion Challenge. As a bonus action, you issue a challenge that compels other creatures to do battle with you. Each creature of your choice that you can see within 30 feet of you must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, a creature can't willingly move more than 30 feet away from you. This effect ends on the creature if you are incapacitated or die or if the creature is more than 30 feet away from you.
Turn the Tide. As a bonus action, you can bolster injured creatures with your Channel Divinity. Each creature of your choice within 30 feet of you regains hit points equal to 1d6 + half your Paladin level if it has no more than half of its hit points.
Aura of The Unyielding
7th-level Oath of the Crown feature
You and friendly creatures within 10 feet of you cannot be stunned or paralyzed while you are conscious.
At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.
Divine Allegiance
15th-level Oath of the Crown feature
You can use your divine power to redirect harm away from you and your allies. Whenever a creature within 30 feet of you targets you or an ally with an attack or harmful spell, you can use your reaction to force that creature to make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, the creature must choose a new target or lose the attack or spell.
Exalted Champion
20th-level Oath of the Crown feature
Your presence on the field of battle is an inspiration to those dedicated to your cause. You can use your action to gain the following benefits for 1 hour:
- You have resistance to non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.
- Your allies have advantage on death saving throws while within 30 feet of you.
- You have advantage on Wisdom saving throws, as do your allies within 30 feet of you.
This effect ends early if you are incapacitated or die. Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.
The Undying
Death holds no sway over your patron, who has unlocked the secrets of everlasting life, although such a prize – like all power – comes at a price. Once mortal, the Undying has seen mortal lifetimes pass like the seasons, like the flicker of endless days and nights. It has the secrets of the ages to share, secrets of life and death. Beings of this sort include Vecna, Lord of the Hand and the Eye; the dread Iuz; the lich-queen Vol; the Undying Court of Aerenal; Vlaakith, lich-queen of the githyanki; and the deathless wizard Fistandantalus.
Expanded Spell List
1st-level Undying feature
The Undying lets you choose from an expanded list of spells when you learn a warlock spell. The following spells are added to the warlock spell list for you.
Undying Expanded Spells
| Spell | Level Spells |
|---|---|
| 1st | ray of sickness, sanctuary |
| 2nd | blindness/deafness, silence |
| 3rd | revivify, phantom steed |
| 4th | phantasmal killer, death ward |
| 5th | insect plague, raise dead |
Among The Dead
1st-level Undying feature
You learn the spare the dying cantrip. It counts as a warlock cantrip for you and doesn't count against the number of cantrips you know. You also have advantage on death saving throws.
Necrotic Ward
1st-level Undying feature
As a bonus action, you can surround yourself or an ally with a protective barrier of necrotic energy. The creature gains a number of temporary hitpoints equal to twice your warlock level plus your Charisma modifier. Whenever the warded creature is hit by an attack, the attacker takes necrotic damage equal to the number of these temporary hitpoints lost to the damage of that attack. The temporary hitpoints last until you finish a long rest, or you use this ability again.
You can use this ability a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus and you regain all uses when you finish a long rest.
Indestructible Life
6th-level Undying feature
You can give yourself vitality using your patron's power. As an action, you can regain hit points equal to three times your warlock level. Additionally, if you put a severed body part of yours back in place when you use this feature, the part reattaches.
Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.
Undying Nature
10th-level Undying feature
You are immune to poison and disease. You can also hold your breath indefinitely, and you don't require food, water, or sleep, although you still require rest to reduce exhaustion and still benefit from finishing short and long rests.
In addition, you age at a slower rate. For every 10 years that pass, your body ages only 1 year, and you are immune to being magically aged.
Defy Death
14th-level Undying feature
You partake of some of the true secrets of the Undying. Your patron has gifted you with a small crystal to contain a portion of your soul for safekeeping. While the crystal is in your possession, it can be used in one of two ways. Using either feature consumes the crystal, causing it to dissolve into ash:
- Whenever you drop to 0 hitpoints, and are not killed outright, you can choose to drop to 1 hitpoint instead. Alternatively, if you are targeted by a spell or effect that would kill you instantly without dealing damage, that effect is prevented.
- Whenever you cast a spell that restores a dead creature back to life, such as the raise dead spell, you can use your crystal in place of a reagent of up to a maximum value of 500 gold.
During a long rest, you may perform a 1-hour ceremony to beseech your patron for another crystal if yours was lost or destroyed. Any of your preexisting crystals are destroyed when performing this ceremony.
Subclass Changes
These subclass reworks are based on the 6 subclasses in the Sword Coast Advenerter's Guide that have yet to get a reprint. I don't think the classes from SCAG book are all bad, many of them are actually really good (Swashbuckler, for example) and fun to play. I do, however, think some of them are showing their age in terms of design and mechanics. After seeing the Bladesinging rework that was released with Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, I'd love to see Wizards do a second pass at more older subclasses, even if it's only a minor update.
These are just some ideas on my part, and I admit they still need work. I tried to keep the flavour of the original class as well as keeping them somewhat lore friendly.
Path of the Battlerager
Battlerager is a very specific subclass. The abilities of the class are largely based around wearing spiked armor, making this subclass a 75 gold investment just to get started. This is already a bit of a problem as the barbarian's unarmored defense can provide a much higher AC than the spiked armor, which is just a reflavoured scale mail. The reward for this investment is the ability to make a melee attack as a bonus action with your spiked armor that deals 1d4 + Your strength modifier.
This seems a bit of a letdown when you compare it to Berserker's Frenzy, Zealot's Divine Fury, Polearm Mastery or even two weapon fighting. The one advantage, however, is that your battlerager armor attack doesn't require you to take the Attack action first, making it slightly more flexible attack option if you need to your action for something else, but still want to keep your rage going.
- Removed Dwarf restriction
- You can now use any medium or light armor as your battlerager armor and you gain an AC bonus for using it. The time and money investment is a bit of a reach, but I though it worked as a mechanic explanation.
- The damage die of your armor spikes is now a d6 (later a d8) and you can attack with it as a simple weapon. The damage on a grapple is moved to a later level. Instead, you make it tougher for creatures to escape your grapple. Also your spikes can be considered magical on enchanted armor, but don't deal any extra effects.
- Reckless Abandon gives a d4 more temp hp when you use reckless attack.
- Removed the rage restriction on the dash for Battlerager Charge and gave you a minotaur-like charge to knock people around the battlefield.
- Spiked Retribution is now Spiked Fury. Your battlerager armor damage die increases and and deals piercing damage to creatures you grapple, and anyone who hits you, equal your strength modifier instead of a fixed 3.
Arcana Domain
As is, I think the Arcana Domain is great and in the right campaign this can be very powerful. It's also a really fun way to add a little wizard to your cleric. The only things I thought should really change were the spells and Arcane Abjuration.
- Arcane Initiate also gives you proficiency with heavy armor.
- Arcane Abjuration now affects any creatures of those types in range instead of just one creature.
- For the spell list, I changed up some of the spells with ones I feel would see more use. Nysul's Magic Aura is now See Invisibility, Magic Circle is now Counterspell, Leomund's Secret Chest is now Banishment and Planar Binding is Wall of Force.
Way of The Long Death
This is a nice, durable subclass for the monk that isn't too hard on your ki points. Where it falls flat is Touch of the Long Death. The easy comparison is to ask if this is a worse version of Quivering Palm. QP deals costs only 3 ki to activate and deals at least 10d10 damage, where ToTLD would need 5 ki to do equivalent damage and the target needs to fail the save. The single advantage that ToTLD has is it didn't require you to hit the target first to use it. To try to separate that comparison, I added healing prevention to the target give you a reason not to spend all of your ki just to deal damage, and you can now use it as part of and unarmed attack.
Oath of the Crown
Crown Paladin seem to focused being a tanky controller, keeping enemies focus on them while trying to protect their allies. It has a lot of good ideas that are unfortunately done better by later paladin subclasses. I tried to move around some of the abilities to try and make it stand out a bit more.
- Turn the Tide now heals 1d6 + 1/2 your paladin level if the target is below half HP (similar formula to Redemption paladin's Protective Spirit) and they don't need to see or hear you. This makes the ability an emergency Mass Healing Word, especially if any of your allies are down.
- Unyielding Saint is now at 7th level as Aura of the Unyielding, your standard 10/30 foot paladin aura. It grants immunity to stun/paralysis effects instead of advantage for just you.
- Divine Allegiance previously functioned similar to Redemption paladin's Aura of The Guardian, but with a range of 5 feet instead of 30. Here, I've turned it into a Sanctuary-like effect for you and your allies.
The undying Patron
This is... tricky. The Undying warlock exists as this spooky undead seudo-healer and isn't really good at any of those things. The Celestial patron became the de-facto warlock healer and the Undead fulfills the spooky undead theme, so it's kind of hard to say what role Undying fills now.
I decided in addition to buffing the existing abilities, I'd make Undying into more of a damage control type class (kind of like abjuration wizard or clockwork sorcerer) and gave them a new ability. this make the subclass a wall of text, but I hope it helps.
- I changed a number of the existing spells. Notably, I got rid of Speak with Dead and false life as I feel you can easily pick those up from invocations, instead replacing them with sanctuary and phantom steed. I replaced situational spells feign death and legend lore with resurrection spells revivify and raise dead. Aura of Life is now Phantasmal Killer mostly because it sounded cooler. Contagion also became Insect Plague for that reason too.
- Among the Dead is basically the same, but I removed the advantage on disease for advantage on death saves. The undead protection I dropped for necrotic ward, giving you access to the sanctuary spell instead.
- Necrotic Ward is a new ability. Effectively, you can grant an ally an Armor of Agathys like effect, giving them temp hp that deals damage to attackers.
- Indestructible Life is now gained at 6th level and heals 3x warlock level as an action. this should heal you the same amount as Open Hand monk's Wholeness of Body.
- Undying Nature now also makes you immune to poison and disease.
- Defy Death is now kind of a "get out of jail for free" card for dying. You are given a crystal that protects you or resurrects an ally. I wanted to crate a kind of phylactery for your warlock. It's interesting, but needs balancing.