Design Retrospective - The Fanatic

The Fanatic, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Miraculous

Hey everyone, Jonathon here. Woah, we made a whole class! It was a lot of work, a lot of revisions, and a lot of playtesting, but goodness we really did it. This article is about the Fanatic as a whole, how we got the idea to make it, how we went about making it (and the difficulties along the way) and some thoughts about the final product. Making a whole new class for 5e is a pretty substantial undertaking, and doing it well requires a lot of awareness not only of the existing 5e classes, but also the races, feats, and other abilities that might get mashed together with your new class. Keeping everything balanced in a variable, mixed-composition game like Dungeons and Dragons is impossible, but getting close to the same level of balance Wizards of the Coast’s team and other high quality homebrewers create was our goal. We think we hit that mark and we hope you do too - and if we didn’t, we can always update the Fanatic down the line. For now, I’d like to talk about how and why the Fanatic ended up where it did, Miracle Die, Con Mod, muttered prayers, and all.

We started by just throwing out as many ideas as we could think of for classes. Some of them were pretty good! (We’re keeping those for later.) Others? Not so much. (Notable rejects include a barbarian that bites people and what amounted to the rogue, again.) We whittled the list down to some our favorites and took a series of votes to see which one we were most enthusiastic about. It was a pretty tight race, but the concept of a non-magical ‘Zealot’ like class that fit in between the martial prowess of fighters and the blatantly magical oaths of paladins. We knew from the onset we wanted this class to have some level of ambiguity about whether or not the impressive abilities it displayed were actually imparted by the gods, some mystical force, or sheer stubbornness and willpower.  

Art: Eslpeth Tirel by Michael Komarck

So we knew what we wanted to do in broad strokes, but we didn’t have a unified vision on how to do it. This is where we realized that making a class was hard. Really hard. We didn’t just need a few features for an archetype that we could compare to existing archetypes and build around the main class - we needed to make everything ourselves, and it needed to be distinct from every other class, but not so different it was over-complicated or hard to understand. We settled on a set of four proposals - one from each of us - to come up with something unique and cool that the class could have as it’s unique mechanic. The rogue has sneak attack, the monk has Ki, the paladin has smites, and we wanted this to have something that defined it. After a short solo design session we all came back with some rough ideas, but one obviously won out amongst the rest - though we didn’t simply scrap the other ideas, they eventually manifested into another aspect of the Fanatic later on - which Trent, our local sewerman, called ‘Miracle Dice’.

Right, so Miracle dice were basically the child of my inner math nerd and my obsession with making new things from D&D’s most foundational mechanics, in this case, dice. We all know how typical dice progression works. 1d4 is bested by 1d6, which is bested by 1d8 and so on. But I wanted to try and make the opposite true. I wanted to make the dice progression for the fanatic a series of decreasing dice sizes.

So how did I make this not obviously terrible? I focused on the single strength of descending dice sizes -  the reduction in variance. As dice increase in size, so too does the ceiling for the possible number rolled. However, with an increased ceiling comes an increased variance in the numbers that can actually be rolled, as more numbers are added from 1+. This number, 1, thus became very important, as it is shared by each die, no matter the size. Thus, if it became more likely to roll a 1 as dice size got smaller, I had a mechanic I could hone in on.

In order to effectively increase the chance of rolling a 1 while not decreasing the effectiveness of an individual roll, fanatics gain floating bonuses to their Miracle die as it becomes smaller. Thus, a d10 becomes a d8+2, then a d6+4, and so on. Back to that 1 - there lied the opportunity to create something truly special. I knew that rolling a 1 on a Miracle die had to be something special; it had to feel powerful when it occurred, thus making the minor buff in your chances to roll one (10% at 1d10, 12.5% at 1d8+2, all the way up to 25% at 1d4+6) feel worth it. This is where the idea of ‘miracles’ occurred from. It was almost as if you were rolling for Divine Intervention for abilities built into the class. When you hit that low but all-too-present chance, it felt like an event.

I am very proud of this mechanic because I think it is a winning scenario for the player. Not only does it eliminate the worst roll on a die, effectively raising the floor to 2 rather than 1, it makes each roll feel exciting. Already powerful abilities now had the chance to really impact a fight or a scene, essentially baking a new kind of critical success into the class’s features.

-Trent the Sewerman

With our new class’ unique mechanic settled upon we broke up to begin working on different aspects of what would become the Fanatic. I took the main class and started banging out what levels should be Archetype features and what should be core class features. James was insistent on working on the Inquisitor archetype, Trent fell in love with the Penitent (originally called the ‘Flagellant’) and Julian ended up with the more generic idea of a Crusader, though he had some great ideas to make it more stand-out amongst the Archetypes. It didn’t take too long to settle on an overall level progression structure by comparing the progressions of official 5e classes. Once we knew roughly when everything would happen progression wise, the archetypes began to really take shape - and I hit a bit of a wall.

As the Archetypes were coming together I was hitting a wall in the body of the class. Miracle dice were cool and their progression from d10s to d4s were set, but just making a bunch of features that use Miracle die felt overly simplistic. We needed something else - something that interacted with Miracle die beyond being a single feature like Tireless. James is a big fan of option sets similar to what Totem Barbarian does, and together he and I came up with Litanies as a set of invocation-like options for the Fanatic to choose from.

Litanies are the result of my attempts to give the Fanatic modular ‘special powers’ without magic. Originally, I called them Prayers, as it made sense to me that a character built on devotion would not only pray a great deal, but that their prayers would be answered much more often. 

Fairly early on, we decided to categorize the Litanies as in-combat versus out-of-combat, or as Malediction versus Benediction, and to structure them each as a passive effect and an active Intercession. Since the Intercessions were limited by rests, we got to play around with more impactful effects for them, without ruining game balance. 

Since each Litany is meant as a small bit of subtle divine favor, we made sure that each Litany used the Miracle die somewhere, and we resolved to keep the effects fairly ‘invisible’; while the Fanatic is certainly empowered by their zealotry, it was important to us to keep some plausible deniability. Litanies can do amazing things, but they aren’t magic, and are made to be easy for a skeptic to handwave as luck or cheating, rather than divine intervention. Theoretically, everything a Fanatic can do is possible for a normal person, if they’re just very skilled and very lucky, and we were very particular about maintaining that distinction as we made the Litanies. 

Finally, we decided that a good way to make the Callings of the Fanatic distinct would be to give each of them Litanies exclusive to that archetype. Each one got one benediction and one malediction, and they were intentionally made to be much more specialized, to really give the Callings personality.

-James the Snickering Ghoul

These really brought the Fanatic to life by giving it a robust choice-filled feature that also gave it versatility and a lot of personality. From here, it was a mostly streamlined process of determining which features should come online at which levels and making sure everything was pretty balanced through playtesting. There was bickering, as there always is, but having a unified idea of what this class should be really helped keep us focused - this is also about when the name Fanatic was settled on, replacing ‘Zealot’ as a working title. 

Some of Fanatic’s abilities call for saving throws. Normal stuff. The unusual thing about Fanatic is that it uses its Con mod for some of these save DCs. Definitely an unusual choice - and one Wizards of the Coast avoids because Con already gives you more health and is regularly used for resisting effects and spells. This is notoriously strong on spellcasters, who also use it for concentration checks and benefit much more from the additional health given their lower hit dice. On a melee oriented class, Constitution is still quite good and especially a class like Barbarian can be downright scary. We decided to use Constitution for some of these features because it felt thematically appropriate and mechanically satisfying - Fanatics are all about willpower and being hard to stop. Charisma might fulfill that niche, but we didn’t want any unnecessary comparisons to Paladin and no other features the Fanatic uses call for Charisma meaningfully. The alternative would be to use Strength (or Dexterity) which would likely have worked, but we wanted to encourage Fanatics to sometimes put Constitution before their damage stat, and making it valuable for DCs was a good way to do it.

We initially picked a martial class because we thought a spellcasting class would be harder. Now, after making Fanatic, we’re pretty sure the opposite is true. Full casters have half as many features and unless you’re making brand new spells for it, all the options are already in spell lists - you just need to choose which ones it gets. Ah well, lessons learned. I don’t regret making the fanatic though - quite the opposite. It’s our baby, and I can’t wait for it to take its first steps in a campaign. I’m sure it’ll be running towards its enemies, screaming with madness in no time.

-Jon the Kobold Wrangler

Call to the Crusade

Within Gel Cubicles, we like to make a joke about several of the classes in DnD; especially the martial ones. Many of the archetypes of certain classes don’t add anything very interesting or divergent to the class; instead, they add on to what was already there with very similar mechanical content. After all, what is Champion Fighter but ‘Fighter’ Fighter? Hello sir, would you like some Paladin with your Paladin? If so, Oath of Devotion Paladin may just be for you!

Don’t get me wrong; we’re not bashing this design space. It’s great these options exist! These  simple archetypes give players who were already content with the base class the option to not diverge from the flavor or mechanics of said class too much. Moreover, they help elucidate what that class is really about. By adding flavor and mechanics to a class, the archetype helps players form a concrete vision of what the archetype’s class is at a base level. So when we started working on Fanatic, we had decided that this new class should have an archetype that similarly helps elucidate the class by being the most ‘base’ version of that class. This was a key design philosophy when I began working on the Call to the Crusade fanatic.

When we thought of the flavor of this class, we knew that despite its distinctions, it would seem very similar to the flavor of Clerics and Paladins. So we figured that a ‘base’ archetype, similar to the ones previously discussed, may be wise to create to help solidify this class’ true identity, both for ourselves and our audience. With that in mind, as I thought of what this Fanatic class really appeared as, I thought of a devout warrior so focused on their cause that their actions and capabilities seemed enabled through sheer zealotry, rather than the holy magic of Paladins and Cleric; a character that fights for their cause to no end, with an overwhelming and terrifying fervor. Thus, the Call to the Crusade, or the ‘Fanatic’ Fanatic, had formed.

When this general flavor motif was decided upon around the same time that the Penitent and the Inquisitor were formulated, we decided that this archetype would best be suited as a tank. With this in mind, we began to think about what type of tank this ‘base’ archetype should be. We decided it should be a tank who performs said role by being an immovable presence on the battlefield, and by forcibly manipulating the battlefield through sheer strength. 

I’d like to start with the features that quickly solidified as we began working on the archetype, being the Bonus Proficiency, Staggering Force, Litany of Control, and Frontline Commander. A member of Gel Cubicles pointed out how throughout the tank builds of DnD, there isn’t really one that excels at displacing the enemy. It immediately seemed like a fun build to make and an apt one for the archetype to embody; thus, Staggering Force was made. We had trouble deciding whether free shoves on landing melee attacks were too strong, but ultimately decided that it was balanced by the low distance shoved and the requisite to land your attacks. We also wanted to make sure that the tank could continue to remain in a person’s face after doing this though, so we added the additional 5 feet of movement when you successfully shove a creature. I like this feature because to me, it feels representative of a fierce and overpowering warrior charging towards the enemy. 

This archetype also quickly got Athletics as a Bonus Proficiency. Not only did it feel natural for this uncannily supernatural athletic warrior to receive Athletics, but it was also a way to ensure that the archetype is good at grappling. Grappling is a good way for almost any build to tank, as it allows you to displace the enemy with ease, and it generally disallows them to attack anyone besides you. We liked the idea of this archetype being able to lean into grappling if it wanted, so we decided that it’s malediction should interact with grappling. Litany of Control was then decided upon. It gives the build more potential to displace enemies in a single turn, since shoving 5-10 feet may not always be too influential. 

For the intercession, I had liked the idea of this build being able to knock an enemy senseless, so seeing an opportunity in this grappling litany I made the intercession do just that. We were a little worried about this one. Knocking people prone when they’re grappled is very strong; for those unaware, you need movement to stand after being prone. And your movement is 0 when you are grappled. I think you see the danger here. Moreover, stunning a creature on a critical roll of the Miracle Die felt even more scary; after all, it’s extra damage on a melee attack and the stun effect. But after playtesting it, we decided there were enough conditionals placed on the intercession, and enough counterplay on enemies’ part, that the strength of this malediction merely allowed it to keep pace with other archetypes.

Building further on this idea of battlefield control is Frontline Commander. I had liked the image of this archetype serving as a charismatic and awe-inspiring commander for their allies, so it was decided that this archetype should be able to inspire their allies to move their movement as a bonus action, using College of Glamour’s Mantle of Glory as reference.

Litany of Conviction, Tread the Path, and Overwhelming Resolve, all did not come quite as easily. Overwhelming Resolve came first, so I’ll start with that. When thinking about a 13th level feature for this archetype, I assumed it should not be anything too groundbreaking. Many class’ archetypes don’t have particularly influential penultimate features, and I felt like Crusader should follow this trend for balance purposes. I originally had put a nerfed version of Overwhelming Resolve here, thinking it would be usable but not overpowered. Turns out I overdid it, and the feature ended up feeling underpowered. Effects that proc off of bringing enemies to 0 can be surprisingly fickle; it’s hard to set those situations up consistently, especially if you’re a tank and lacking some of the damage your companions may have. 

In Overwhelming Resolve’s place was a capstone similar to Tread the Path, except it also worked as an aura that affected allies. Making it harder to displace your allies as a capstone felt a bit lackluster, so these two features needed to change. It was then that we realized that Crusader should be getting ways of being even harder to displace than the base class (which is saying something) earlier on. Since there was hardly anything left to buff on that front, we decided 13th level was the perfect time to do this; thus came Tread the Path. From there, Overwhelming Resolve moved to the capstone, except with previous limitations now being removed. 

The last aspect of Crusader formed was the Litany of Conviction. Designing non-combat and sociable features for a martial focused class can be a bit tricky. You don’t want them to step on the toes of more social focused classes and archetypes, like Inquisitor in the Fanatic’s case, but you also don’t want them to feel completely bland outside of combat. When I thought about what I wanted this archetype to do outside of martial combat, I wanted them to be an unshakable compelling moral force. So I decided on a simple but flavorfully described Intercession that causes charm and frighten effects, since these effects can really be spiced up by describing how the affected creature sees the one perpetuating the effect. And for the passive, a member on the team suggested that Crusader lean into the mental resilience of the base class by being able to counter charm people. This felt fun and flavorfully apt without stepping on the toes of the other archetypes or the benedictions of the main class, so we went with it! And with this pesky Litany formulated, the Call to the Crusade was done.

This archetype took a while to make. And I didn’t even have to do the primary work on the base class itself! It goes to show how difficult it can be to create a whole class; it requires you to be cognizant of every step you made along the way. But the end result is very satisfying; the feeling that there are now a few more characters that can fit more neatly into the world of DnD.

-Julie the Woozy Floomph

Call to Inquisition

Fanatics are characters built on belief, but who each take that belief in different directions. Usually, their ideology is mostly about themselves, but the Calling of the Inquisitor is not like that. As an Inquisitor, these Fanatics are called to police the beliefs of others, and this mission leads them to take a very different approach to almost every sort of encounter.

From a gameplay perspective, I wanted the Inquisitor to be a less straightforward Fanatic, in contrast to the other archetypes. As the more ‘outwardly focused’ believer, many of the Inquisitor’s powers affect and manipulate others, instead of directly strengthening themselves. On the one hand, this means that the Inquisitor is the most social Fanatic, able to hold its own with the Rogues and Bards of the world, but with some extra quirks. In particular, Inquisitors are excellent at turning an adversarial social encounter to their advantage. 

In combat, meanwhile, I wanted to find a way to make the accusations and condemnations of an Inquisitor into something with real weight. In the end, I settled on the concept of the Judgement die, a sort of inverse Miracle die that the Inquisitor can inflict upon their enemies. Several of the Inquisitor’s combat features are progressions of the Judgement die, and I intentionally made the capstone a perversion of the Miracle die’s ‘critical 1’, making a condemned creature take psychic damage as their ‘bonus effect’. In general, I’m a fan of debuffer characters, so building the Inquisitor as one came pretty naturally.

Apart from the Judgement die, most of the Inquisitor’s features are social or utility, and one I’m particularly a fan of is their 7th level, Inquisitor’s Eye. I designed it as a trained, more precise version of Paladin’s Divine Sense, and I think of it as the capstone feature to Inquisitor’s role as a detective and monster hunter. For the specific effects, I tried to expand the effects based on the types of creatures it could sense, and based on what sorts of things the Inquisition would be particularly concerned with knowing. I took the creature types from Protection from Evil and Good, but only the ‘holy’ and ‘unholy’ ones, plus spellcasters, to reflect Inquisitors often being the same as ‘witch hunters’. However, I was very careful to limit the information a player could gain, and to make the limits very explicit, since I have DMed for a Diviner Wizard before, and didn’t want to inflict even a fraction of that hassle onto another DM’s game. In the end, though, the feature is still probably my favorite of the archetype.

For the Litanies, I made sure to keep flavor in mind first, as the vanilla Litanies are already robust enough to cover a Fanatic’s general needs. For the benediction, I leaned into the classic Inquisitor ‘accusation’ image, something I knew I wanted to add pretty much from when I first volunteered to write the archetype. The malediction took more thought, but in the end I settled on giving the Inquisitor a mental defense against the same ‘dark forces’ of Inquisitor’s Eye, and let them disrupt the magic of ‘witches’ with a pseudo-counterspell. With both, I wanted to again give the Inquisitor ways to keep their enemies on their toes, unsure how to react to or escape them. 

Overall, I’m quite pleased with where the archetype ended up, and that’s saying something, given how many other versions of the Inquisitor I’ve read across many other homebrew sites over the years. While most of the other versions I’ve seen were Paladin Oaths, I feel like that never quite fit with the way I saw the character. For me, an Inquisitor is devoted to their task, yes, but to me, a Paladin is fundamentally about loyalty to their Oath, and that kind of loyalty makes even an evil Paladin reliable, as there are some things about them that are certain and unchanging. The Inquisitor, however, has no such limits; so long as they are battling the heresy and ‘dark forces’ of the realms, they can justify anything, a fact which makes them potentially much more devious, and much more dangerous.

-James the Snickering Ghoul

Call to Penance

The Call to Penance began as, and in many respects, still is, a total mess. A beautiful, delicious mess. Mmm, tasty. The subclass is built both mechanically and flavorfully from the standpoint of ‘taking punishment’. We wanted this guy on the frontlines tanking as much damage as possible, and using this abuse to fuel powerful rebukes. There were a few ways we considered doing this. One was an accumulation of ‘adrenaline points’ upon being damaged, which could in turn be spent on powerful effects. This was an interesting idea to be sure, but it proved to be a bit too finicky to work around, especially with a class that was already changing litanies, tracking intercessions, and rolling Miracle dice. We instead settled on a much simpler, streamlined design.

The Call to Penance centers around the Pain Tolerance feature at third level. It functions as a sort of expendable rage resistance like that of a barbarian that you can use in response to taking a certain damage type. This laid the foundation for the rest of the subclass’s features.

Next comes Adrenaline Rush, which allows you to hurt yourself (1d4 at 7th level is largely flavor, but it was flavor that we thought was pretty cool) to boost your attacking prowess. While in an adrenaline rush, you can roll a miracle die to buff anything Strength related, from a check to a save or an attack or damage roll. This technically ‘expends’ your adrenaline rush, but true to the high-risk high-reward nature of the Call to Penance, you have a chance to retain your rush and keep going on a roll of 1 with the Miracle die.

Captivating Anguish was born from an exhaustion with combat abilities. Call to Penance was great in combat, we knew that already. So, we wanted to give it something slightly more useful than a ribbon, something interesting to spice up roleplay and social encounters with the subclass. Enter this feature, which allows you to quite literally become the talk of the town, distracting those around you to allow for all sorts of shenanigans.

Finally comes my favorite feature. It’s not the strongest capstone. But it is… pretty hot. Flaming Avatar of Death allows you to light yourself aflame for fun and profit. Congratulations, your attacks now do additional fire damage as well as your grapples. Granted, you are also on fire. So, you know, you’ll have to find a way to deal with that. Luckily, this archetype is great at reducing the damage it takes from a specific damage type! Light yourself aflame and activate your Pain Tolerance to soften the blow, then wreak utter havoc on the battlefield. From its inception, I fell in love with this feature. The image it creates in my mind’s eye is just so evocative.

All in all, Call to Penance is a bit of a nutty take on the fanatic, but one that feels appropriate and true to the mechanics and flavor of the class nonetheless. We really wanted this archetype to stand out as the sort of oddball pick. Even then, a fanatic called to penance is still very recognizable as exactly what she is: a crazed extremist ready to sow destruction across the battlefield.

-Trent the Sewerman

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