[Jungles] Fighter - Dreadcaller (Patreon)

This is a fighter that specializes in instilling fear in your enemies using a special item you craft called the Death Whistle. Making new fighter subclasses is actually kind of hard because if you flavor them too much, they're liable to morph into other classes!

The typical fighter progression is as follows: the 3rd level feature generally increases damage output (see Battlemaster's dice, Champion's criticals or Samurai's Fighting Spirit), thus making the fighter better fighters. The 7th level usually follows up with a roleplay or exploration feature because fighters often lack features outside the combat pillar (see Banneret, Battlemaster, Champion, and Samurai). The 10th and 15th levels then brings an improvement to your subclass features, often offensive-oriented at 10th and defensive-oriented at 15th. At the end, the 18th level brings a strong unique capstone to round out the class.

Let's see what the Dreadcaller brings to your table:

Level 3 gives you the titular ability to set the fear condition. It's endlessly resuable so it never drops off in use, though it becomes harder after the first use. Fear by itself is already nice because it helps with crowd control and protecting your allies, but you also gain a few benefits against frightened creatures. You can force your frightened targets to move how you wish, or drop their weapons, which could extend to a roleplay encounter. Finally, you deal extra damage frightened targets - specifically worded so that it works against any frightened target, which encourages your allies to pick up some fear spells.

Level 7 keeps up your damage output while you use your death whistle, similar to the Eldritch Knight. You also get some social features and your Intimidation checks get to mechanically instill the fear condition.

Level 10 boosts your Level 3 extra damage, but more importantly allows you to ignore creatures immune to fear. Very important so that your whole kit isn't neutralized. Once you reach Level 11, you might end up doing an extra 3d6 damage to frightened creatures!

Level 15 helps protect you and allies from being frightened, which is thematically appropriate

Level 18 gives you a free frighten attempt that allows you to use your Fearful Strikes right off the bat and limit the enemy's first round of combat. Very powerful for setting the stage.

Do you appreciate these write-ups? I figure they might help explain how some of these were designed, and might persuade your DM that these are okay for your table use.