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Tundra Update (Patreon)

Published:
2016-12-01 07:38:32
Edited:
2020-05-16 11:47:54
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Winter is Coming. Light a fire and stay warm, for there are far deadlier things awaiting you in the ice and snow. 

The Tundra Update provides players and DMs alike the resources to stage adventures in the icy north and in other landscape of eternal winter. This book includes new archetypes, hazards, magic items, monsters, spells, and more. 

The following archetypes are included in this book (those marked with * are completely new):

Barbarian: Path of the Frostrager*

Bard: College of Skalds*

Cleric: Cold Domain*

Druid: Circle of Beast Riders

Fighter: Torchbearer*

Monk: Way of the Winter Wolves*

Paladin: Oath of Winter

Ranger: Primeval Conclave*

Rogue: Slick Mountebank*

Sorcerer: Rimeborn*

Warlock: The North Wind*

Wizard: School of Simulacra

Changelog: 

12/1/16: Way of Winter Wolves: Fangs of Winter feature added

Penguin: Stats changed

Spell: Thaw: Is now a ritual

12/9/16: Primeval: Primeval Form: Add your proficiency modifier to attack rolls, no longer need to have seen the creature

Wild Spellcasting: Replaced with Wild Multiattack

Comments

Mage Hand Press

Quick catch -- that's a copypasta error for sure. I'll fix it asap

John Hoffman

Few things I noticed: First, Frostrager Unarmed damage. Text says it starts as 1d4, the table shows 1d6. Second, Feral Link allows the ranger to burrow through sand and references dunes. Assuming a copy paste error but maybe expanded to be more useful that just snow. Third, there is a spell name Snowshows, but I think it should probably be called SnowShoes. Also, who get's access to what spells?

Mage Hand Press

/Just/ fixed the copypasta error seconds ago. You're dead right on the other two as well. I'll fix those as fast as I can.

John Hoffman

Overall really liked a lot of what I saw. Torchbearer is an exciting archetype as well as Rimeborn, which Mei or may not look very familiar. The Way of the Winter Wolves looks exciting at higher levels, but early on seems very unexciting. The Rework of the Demon Chalice is interesting, what made you take it away from the original fluff?

John Hoffman

Dunno if you saw the edit, but there's also the question of who gets access to the spells in the book, or Weather you wanted to leave that up to DMs.

Mage Hand Press

Huh, thought I had included a line about this. It's a DM approval thing (since that's almost certainly a more elegant solution than writing out spell lists for each class.)

Mage Hand Press

One of the problems with the Demon Chalice is that its theme doesn't hold up outside of reference. Now, I'm happy to do references here and there (after all, people who look can Maibe find other references), but the Demon Chalice felt like a bit of a stretch. There's a lot of lore tied up into it and it felt contradictory to make a powerful demon thing associated with ice, rather than fire. I accidently left out a small but important feature for the Way of the Winter wolves. Changes incoming

Grand Moff Xela

Near the beginning of the book, in the the Natural Hazards section, you state that "temperatures in the WASTE peak at". Did you perhaps mean tundra? Fangs of Winter is wierd. It costs 2/3 total ki points at 3rd level for a one turn damage spike, and does not scale. Perhaps allow more ki to be spent to increase the damage, ala elemental monk? The figurines of wondrous power state what stat block to use for each dinosaur, but do not describe what the creature looks like. Thaw is really underwhelming, and almost feels like a cantrip. I would reccomend allowing it to be cast as a ritual, to offset this. Penguin's Underwater Charge feature actually decreases it's Dexterity.

Mage Hand Press

Okay, I've fixed that typo in the Natural Hazards section, fixed the Penguin's stats, and converted Thaw to a ritual. I'll look more closely at Fangs of Winter in a few hours. Its current iteration is a downgrade from the original, which was really quite powerful. Thanks for the help!

Pioneer1111

I have to say, I love all of the new spells and area ideas the most of this. Several of the classes also seem really fun, though I have to say that the Torchbearer will likely be banned at my table, as the damage output seems very powerful, with it's fire breath every round, infinite AoO, and quite powerful weapons.

Mage Hand Press

I think the torchbearer looks stronger than it really is, since it's mostly balanced by the action economy. Torchblast takes the fighter's full action to pull off a 15-foot cone AoE, that will deal an average of 14 damage on a failed save. This is hardly a game-breaking amount of damage, especially when you consider the amount of damage that a fighter can pull off with a few heavy weapon attacks (the next level, at 11th, the fighter gets three attacks.) Similarly, Ring of Fire takes your action to pull off, and comes at a pretty high level. Inner Flame might be the most powerful feature in terms of damage, but as a capstone it's more or less justified. I'm open to tweaking these features, however, so let me know if you have any specific fixes in mind.

Pioneer1111

I think I will have to take another look at that action economy, as that can be a powerful tool that I hadn't considered. Though I would say that Ring of Fire is more dependant on the DM than the player, so it's usefulness varies. But a well timed execution of this is also very useful, as an entire group of enemies trying to get through a choke would enter range for this to trigger. The 2d6 on light finesse weapons is a bit of a nitpick at that level, I have to admit, since other classes get access to magical damage and extra dice. But the light finesse part is rather big for it to me.

Pioneer1111

I would say that limited uses per (long?) rest might be an idea, as while they are not too broken, they are powerful, or at least can really feel that way. Say, either by level/x, or some stat like Con, or even proficiency/2 But overall, I do agree that this may not be as overpowered as it may seem at first, but it is one of the top damage dealers when compared to the base class options.

Corey Heward

I love that you are addressing the the new revised ranger, and overall it does look good, but while I like the look of the 5th level feature, I worry that just adding a spell doesn't quite balance the archetype as it should. All the other 5th level features of the other ranger conclaves increase damage in some way by adding an attack or adding an additional attack option. This, while giving some spells in beast form doesn't give you the best attack spells since those require a ranged attack action as part of the spell. (The fact that the ranger is so blasted dependent on ranged attacks is slightly annoying but that is another issue...) With the 5th level feature as is, you are still trading out damage economy for utility, and while utility is very useful, when in combat damage is slightly more valuable making the traditional ranger for this conclave slightly better as the extra attack is still usable in primeval form.

Josh Smyth

As one of the creators of the Demon Chalice warlock, I like the way it was rewritten to be more accessible to multiple settings. As for the Ice vs Fire thing, I know ice is usually associated with Devils but your artifact Rimefang states that it came from a hidden layer of the Abyss, so it could still be plausible to be a demon thing.

Ninja_Prawn

My logic with granting access to spells rather than an explicit damage boost at level 5 was that a) the primeval form scales like the moon druid's circle forms, so melee damage output is already scaling up as you level up (something other conclaves don't have), and b) without spellcasting the primeval doesn't have access to Hunter's Mark and Ensnaring Strike, which are important parts of its offense. I feel it's a good feature, but I'm always open to criticism, so if you have any further thoughts, please share them.

Corey Heward

The duration of spells like hunter's mark make it so that it could easily be cast before shifting forms, and aside from that the only damage increasing spell that the ranger could cast is ensnaring strike. With the limited use of spells, and the high chance of many enemies to resist the effect of that spell, as much as I like to use it, makes this ability fall far below the standard ranger's ability to get extra attacks in beast form. As it stands, with the beast form able to boost damage by better forms, I would suggest to GM's to not allow the standard ranger with this conclave. If players want the extra attack with the conclave they would have to do what any druid would and multi-class. Another thought to replace the level 5 ability would be some spell like effect, something maybe better fitting the cold theme that could add damage or utility that the spells you could get would add. Maybe a frost breath like attack at level 5 as a bonus action to do 1d8 cold damage and either slow, or have a chance to root, or similar effect.

Grayson Fox

Excellent content as always. Would typos be best mentioned in comments or PMs?

Grayson Fox

I'm about halfway through but the 2nd sentence on page two starts as "The can be" instead of "They can be".

John Hoffman

First line, second paragraph of page one, it says scare instead of scarce.

Michael Doyle

Seems to me an easy fix would just be having the primeval form grant access to bonus spells at level 5 but only while in that form. So you have a thematic selection to actually make use of. The Ranger normally lacks cantrip casting for instance. So hitting level 5 and being able to use Ray of Frost, Frostbite, Chill Touch or Gust for example. Could scale it up a little with the Ranger's casting level. Ice Knife or Snollic's Snowball Swarm for example. But all only available to cast while in the primeval form. Otherwise, yeah, there is very little a Ranger would need or want to cast in combat while in primeval form. What few offensive spells they have are mostly weapon dependent. Whereas a polar bear that can spit Ray of Frost at you to slow you down enough so it can catch you and maul you to death. That's entertainment. >.>

Ninja_Prawn

Well, I've had another look at the primeval and concluded that you are right: it does need a boost. We'll be making some changes soon!

Attackins

So, I cannot for the life of me find the stats for the Winter Wolf. I see the Winter Wolf Pup stats, but I think the Winter Wolf was left out. Unless it states somewhere to just use the stats for a Dire Wolf and I just didn't catch it, or the Winter Wolf is in some other book or update.

Weiss Cream

Question about the Rimeborn's Freezing Cantrip ability being used with Ray of Frost. Would the target's speed be reduced by 10 and then halved, or halved and then reduced by 10?