Oath of the Revenant | Paladin Sacred Oath, and on length, simplicity, and innovation

A short and sweet Sacred Oath! The Oath of the Revenant is an example of a few different things that I think about as I create homebrew.

The first is length, which I talked about in my earlier Seelie Knight Ranger Archetype post. This subclass was one where I said to myself as I first starting writing it, "I want this to be only one page long." I didn't have any special reason why this one was only going to be a page long, but that's when I made the decision. Something gave me a feeling that it was only going to need that much space.

The second thing I thought about as I created the Oath of the Revenant is closely related to length: the question of simplicity versus complexity. These terms can sometimes be pretty fuzzy around the edges, and they can mean a lot of different things in different contexts. So what do I mean when I say it in this blog post right now? What I was thinking about as I wrote this Sacred Oath was, "I want to push myself to write features that are brutalistically simple. Features that are short, quick to read, and only do one or two things."

Some features are 'complex', like the Battle Master's combat superiority. It lets the player character do many things, and moreover it provides the ability to choose among many things what to be able to do in the first place! Another example from my own content is Blessed Settlement, the first Channel Divinity option of the Oath of Society. It's a whole two paragraphs, and it needs to be in order to capture the multiple, distinct effects it provides.

Some features are 'simple,' like Frenzied Rage from the Path of the Berserker. It's scarcely three sentences long, and it does just one thing: when you choose to go into a Frenzy when you rage, you can make a single melee weapon attack as a bonus action on each of your turns. There's also the consequence of gaining a level of exhaustion for choosing to frenzy, but overall the feature is, in comparison, simple.

A feature could do a few or several relatively little things, and together have power; or it could do one strong thing, and by itself be powerful. That was what I was thinking about as I wrote the Oath of the Revenant, and I think it shows in features like Defy Death and Unkillable. In fact, I wrote Unkillable as I was looking at my draft and thinking to myself, "how can I fit this on one page? What's a very short feature I can use as the capstone for this subclass?" And so a very short, but still strong, idea was born.

The third thing I thought about while writing this was innovation: balancing fitting in with existing Fifth Edition content with innovating on what exists to create new design space and different content.

Lots of Fifth Edition homebrew makes an effort to 'fit' with official content. In other words, it tries to look like D&D, sound like D&D, and play like D&D. Which makes sense! It can be awkward to use content alongside, say, the Player's Handbook if it reads very differently and isn't designed with the same mechanics in mind. Not impossible, mind you (plenty of tables do use content like that), but as far as design goals go, harmony with official publications is a worthy one, and it's one I tend to strive for. You can see this in the language that I choose to use to describe mechanics, the general 'power level' of my features, and even the degree of spectacle I employ in the narrative of the mechanics.

At the same time, there's also a question of how much to innovate. With homebrew comes the opportunity to do something different, whether it's creating a mechanic that doesn't exist yet, or designing with a unique style, or writing more or less than the 'standard' set by Wizards of the Coast's publications.

That's something I decided to explore with the Oath of the Revenant: variable tenets isn't something you'll find in any of Wizards' published Fifth Edition books (at least, none that are published as of this writing), but it made sense for the narrative of the subclass. There are all sorts of promises that could motivate someone to return to life in the face of death, and it was interesting and fun to fulfill that idea in the homebrew.

Additionally, no published Sacred Oath has an aura that functions while the paladin is unconscious, but I decided to adjust the 7th level feature's conditions so that Aura of the Revenant, which only works on creatures who are rolling death saving throws, could also benefit the paladin. This is another example of innovation (and one I can't personally take credit for; it was an idea I borrowed from Caim, a homebrewer I mention in the Credits box who helped with design and feedback on this and various other homebrews of mine).

So there's a lot of factors that can go into a homebrew. For me, it all comes down to what can make it fun and interesting, so I find myself pursuing different goals with different subclasses. Some are simple, some are more complex; some are traditional, others are more innovative. And the list goes on.

(Link to GM Binder version)