After several months of development and internal testing, I’m excited to share a new playable class with the community!
Introducing the Conduit (click for PDF).
These mystic warriors bring the power of the spirit realm into your games, and offer exciting role playing opportunities along with unique game mechanics. Conduits use their innate gift to fuse with spirits and channel their magic abilities.
As half-casters, conduits are sturdy combatants that can quickly recover from debilitating attacks and help their allies avoid them. Aside from their defensive repertoire, they provide a degree of utility, versatility, and crowd control.
The key feature of the conduit is unlocked at 2nd level, and allows them to fuse with spirits to unlock unique powers. The powers are based on the emotion that is associated with the spirit, also known as the spirit’s aspect. As the conduit levels up, they unlock more aspects, and can even fuse with spirits that combine two or more aspects at once.
Conduits currently have two subclasses, also known as Spiritual Creeds: Creed of the Harvest, and Creed of Sympathy. The former focuses on draining as much from the spirit as possible to punish their foes with psychic blasts. The latter finds power in their powerful bond with their spirit, allowing them to defend their allies more effectively. As we develop the conduit, we may publish more subclasses.
Inspiration
The class draws inspiration from media like Dragon Age, The Stormlight Archive, and Avatar (The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra). These stories depict worlds in which spirits play an instrumental role, and the spirit realm offers extraordinary opportunities for exploration and roleplay. We hope that by including the conduit, you could enjoy the spirit realm in your D&D games.
Some of our ideas are based on the work of the late Professor Robert Plutchik, who proposed a psychoevolutionary classification approach for general emotional responses.
Help us Playtest it!
This document is a design in progress, and the conduit class is still in the early stages of playtesting. We plan to improve and balance this class with the support of the community and publish updated versions. If you are interested in joining a playtest or have feedback about the class, please reach out to us.
That’s all for this post! I'll catch you all in the next one :D