Demon Hunter Class (5e)

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While demon hunters abhor evil and those that practice it, they have chosen to embrace evil in order to overcome it. Possessing dark powers provided through study and dark rituals involving the lower planes, demon hunters turn the darkness against evil teaching their prey that they too should fear what is lurking in the shadows. However, the deeper the demon hunters delve into the sources of dark power the harder it becomes to maintain their humanity and the more they begin to fear when the hunter will become the hunted.

This is a complete character class for 5th edition. It was inspired by Matt Mercer's Witch Hunter and Order of the Lycan as well as the demon hunter from Diablo 3.

In essence, the demon hunter is a dark ranger class, specializing in hand crossbows, that pulls its spellcasting from the Warlock list instead of the Druid list. It has three distinct archetypes that serve to embody the goal of all demon hunters, to embrace darkness in order to fight it. One archetype imbues the hunter with the fury of the Abyss. Another focuses on embracing the shadows. The third shows the demon hunter as a superior predator, exectuting devastating attacks on their prey. (This third archetype is basically the Battle Master Archetype, with a couple changes to some maneuvers, a couple new maneuvers, a few renamed maneuvers, and some that have been removed altogether.)

UPDATE V2.0 IS NOW LIVE! (12/17/16)

Okay, I know it's been awhile without an update, lack of aavilable play time and comments have made progress on this class slow. For this reason v2.0 is a BIG one!

Notable changes include:

Hunter's Strike has been removed from the core class and Monster Hunter has been split into two abilities: Monster Hunter and Sense Evil.

Dominion Over Shadow Archetype has been replaced with Shadow Hunter, an archetype with emulates the new Beast Master Conclave from the Ranger Unearthered Arcana recently released by WoTC. (Minor ability changes and reflavoring to fit Demon Hunter Class)

Edits to Dominant Predator's Maneuvers List

Minor changes to Demon Hunter Spell List

Going forward, any ablities from v1.x will no longer be play tested for viability, so the higher level abilities in those versions will remain unplaytested by me. Use them if you'd like, but know they may require some rebalancing on the DM's part.

Updatev1.2was uploaded(07/20/16)

Notable changes included:

Some reformatting

The pdf should now be searchable, as well as selectable for copy/pasting.

Hunter's Surge has been removed for balancing and replaced with Hunter's Strike, an inverted form of the Rogue's Sneak Attack that provides extra damage to the lone hunter.

Embrace the Demon archetype has had some rebalancing done to make it a little more balanced. There have also been changes to better fit the flavor of the archetype (i.e. a boost to Strength, based on DH Level, while in hybrid form.

A few new spells have also been added to the demon hunter's spell list.

Updatev1.1 was uploaded (5/18/16):

Notable Changes Included:

Complete reworking of the "Embrace the Demon" Archetype. It now works as more of a transformation with a duration. There have been some added abilities which required a duration for balancing purposes. There is also an added Corruption feature

Conjuring spells will be added to the base demon hunter spell list.

New Spells! Some spells didn't fit as well as others thematically, so they have been replaced with others. Also, the conjuring demon spells from the v1.0 "Dominion Over Shadow" Archetype have now been added to the base Demon Hunter's Spell List

I'm posting this in the hopes of increased playtesting. It is already in use at my table but the more it's tested, the better it can become. This is also my first title here on DMs Guild. I appreciate any feedback you give, so long as it is constructive. Trolls will be ignored.

To those of you that have already downloaded, thank you. I appreciate you guys giving my class a chance. Please feel free to post any comments in the discussion section below and I will try to address them when time permits.

I really love the idea of this and most of the way you have made this. Only things I would really change are the capstone, seems a little strong, maybe try a version of vengeance (level 70 demon hunter ability), and the spell and abilities being charisma based, seems much more thematic and makes more sense to make the class key off of wisdom. Demon hunters are kind of ostracized from most communities so being a charisma based half caster seems a little odd. Other than that I love your work and really hope you keep it up :D

Paul SNovember 08, 2018 8:21 pm UTC

CREATOR

Thanks so much for the feedback!

I agree with making the spells wisdom based and that will probably be a change I put into the next version.

As to the capstone, I'll take it under advisement. I haven't really had a chance to play test it's higher level abilities yet. I wanted it to have a demonic feel and i think I pulled that trait off the vampire statistics (CR 13) and only added 10 hit points to it. A demon hunter with only +1 con would be at 130 HP as an average. It would take 5 uninterrupted rounds before they fully recovered, and that's erring on a lower side for a max lvl PCs Con. Though I have been planning to make it a once per long rest to get it from being abused.

Greg PSeptember 27, 2016 2:25 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Where do you get the concept for a surge from? Under the Shadow Hound it says that the ability can be used as many times as you can surge per day? And if I may, how does this class stack up against the other classes in utility? It seems quite... powerful, with little downside.

Paul SSeptember 27, 2016 8:34 pm UTC

CREATOR

The Surge is a leftover from one of the last updates and still needs to be corrected. It hasn't in this iteration because the shadow hound will be undergoing some huge changes.

As for utility, it's meant to fall somewhere between Ranger and a Paladin in concept. As for power, it is still a bit on the strong side. As noted the purpose of posting this is for feedback which hasn't been forthcoming. So, all changes in balance only take place as it plays out on my table.

As for downsides, I'd say no class truly has a downside, only situations where they are more/less effective. However, if you want to talk in terms of downsides: The hunter's strike can only be used in limited situations that require the PC to be essentially outnumbered, so downside. Embrace the demon Archetype can cause the PC to lose control and attack enemies and allies alike, downside. As for non-archetype abilities they follow closely with the Ranger abilities (as well as from the unearthed arcana that came out with out...See more of the abyss) and as such there is a reduced number of abilities gained from archetypes. Due to this, it will be getting another update shortly since WoTC just released an all new Ranger class which will be greatly reflected in this class as well.

Paul SApril 26, 2016 7:08 pm UTC

CREATOR

This is a printer friendly version, a more detailed version will be posted later.

July 19, 2016 7:56 am UTC

PURCHASER

I am a Fantasy Grounds user, a version that allows me to copy-paste this into custom modules (for auto-calculations of dice rolls and effects) would be of great help. Otherwise, it is forcing me to literally copy your work letter by letter.

Paul SJuly 19, 2016 10:44 am UTC

CREATOR

Thanks for the heads up. I have an updated version that I will be posting sometime this week (hopefully), I'll see what I can do to make that pdf selectable.

Paul SJuly 20, 2016 2:07 pm UTC

CREATOR

The file has been updated in v1.2. Let me know if you have any other questions

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