Subclass Design: Master of Games & Yu-Gi-Oh!
It’s time to D-D-D-D-D-D-D-DUEL!!! Compelled Duel that is. Well not really. Look, the point is, Yugi Warlock.
Now I know you’re wondering, and why yes, to answer your extremely specific question that you definitely had, our recent release “Otherworldly Patron: Master of Games” was indeed inspired by everyone’s favorite case of bad hair day. That is, I was inspired to play a Yugi-esque ‘King of Games’ in 5e.
For the uninitiated, “Yu-Gi-Oh!” is a popular children’s anime based around a children’s card game by the same name. What you might not have known, however, is that said children’s card game was created based on a Magic: the Gathering parody called “Duel Monsters” in the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, an action-horror series. Ever wonder why some of those classic Yu-Gi-Oh! monster designs look so creepy? Well, turns out they were intended to scare you, and not just your religious grandparents.
Indeed, before the series found success in the card game craze of the 90s, it was an edgy horror manga that saw our main protagonist forming an unwitting pact with a patron – I mean a dark spirit – upon the completion of the millennium puzzle, an ancient artifact recovered from an old dungeon – I mean an ancient Egyptian tomb. You can see the parallels. In moments of great danger or powerful emotion, our pointy-headed friend would lose control to this elder power, who would in turn challenge those who crossed him to “shadow games”. These were no joke either; these games often saw the loser being dismembered, going completely insane, or literally being set on fire. Pretty far cry from that show you saw as a kid about friendship and the heart of the cards, huh?
You see, aside from the classic trope of a wily, deal-making devil, it’s these somewhat buried roots that truly inspired me to create this subclass. Take a look at that backstory again. Not a far cry from a 5e character backstory, eh? It certainly seems like something you should be able to create, but I never quite found the right fit for the build. Enter my brewing philosophy: If I want to play it, I should make it using available material. If I can’t make it using available material, well then it’s time to create that material. The guiding principle for this project was to recreate a ‘king of games’. You’re a gambler, a manipulator, a challenger, and a sadistic punisher. You don’t just play games, you use them. They are a tool by which you ensnare your enemies, preying on their psychological weaknesses with your honed competence. That’s the idea, anyways. In reality, there’s only so much to be accomplished in a subclass. You want to design a subclass with a distinct flavor while still leaving the concept open enough to be tweaked and modified to the need of an individual character. Even still, when taking inspiration from a particular source, it’s important to take an adaptive eye to the whole thing; that is, take that distinct flavor and adapt it to function within a TTRPG ruleset, empowering a character to act out that player’s fantasy. Thus, a Master of Games warlock might not be trapping their opponents in prisons made of their own mind, playing games with dramatic rises and falls that span entire sessions, and uniquely outsmarting your opponents with every new torturous blow you deal to their shattered psyche; it lets you feel like you are, though.
1st Level
First and foremost, expanded spell lists! Nothing too crazy here. You might notice that, despite this article’s opener, this archetype is missing out on compelled duel. While the joke is quite funny, it turns out compelled duel is an awful spell to give a squishy caster with spell slots usable only at high levels. So, we instead chose to give it the simpler options of bane and dissonant whispers, to give that creepy, almost antagonistic flavor. The only other highlights here are tiny servant and animate objects, which I gave to the archetype imagining flying cards and tiny dice tearing apart the enemy. Well, and there’s one of our favorite spells over at Gelatinous Cubicles, geas.
Next up, I’ve given the king of games the equivalent of expertise with three gaming sets. As this subclass, you should be skilled with games and able to consistently beat the average player, end of story. So, expertise serves that purpose quite well. It helps, too, that outside of the context of this subclass, proficiency with gaming sets is more flavor than anything else. Using the gaming sets available in the PHB, three proficiencies will cover your bases between dice, cards, and ‘dragonchess’.
We realized from the outset that we wanted this subclass to be able to manipulate odds in its favor. One way we envisioned this was through a sort of ‘luck drain’, wherein you steal an enemy’s ‘luck’ for yourself. We knew we wanted this to be a feature that the class had reliable access to, so we decided early that it should be unlimited use. Building from there, the feature itself should be useful but limited in power for balancing reasons.
So, we decided to allow it to debuff enemy ability checks by a d4, similar to a combination of the Hex and Bane spells (the former of which can, in fact, stack with this feature). This was a good start, but a little underwhelming. Being able to debuff a goblin’s stealth check was certainly helpful on more than one occasion, but the ability is overall limited in scope and power. While the feature originally allowed you to add a d4 to ability checks made with the same skill, we realized that this put players in an awkward situation, as not all characters use ability scores equally. For instance, while you may need to debuff the aforementioned goblins’ stealth checks, you may not benefit from dexterity checks yourself as a charisma-focused caster character. This archetype was lacking in combat-related abilities, so we instead scrapped the second half of the feature for one more immediately combat relevant.
If you miss with an attack roll, you can end the ongoing debuff to attempt to reroll that attack roll. This made the ability itself much more apparently useful, while also giving this subclass some much-needed oomph in combat. Naturally, since this half of the ability is fairly strong, we limited its use per rest. We also increased the dice of the debuff by archetype level, to ensure that this feature scales properly.
Finally, as some extra gravy to this feature, we made later features in the subclass gain bonuses off of the use of this effect. I really like this approach to subclass-building; since early features are foundational, I find it useful to make later features in a subclass synergize and even reference former ones. It makes the whole package feel cohesive and neat, and ensures that those early abilities will always be getting stronger!
6th Level
That brings us to what I think is the coolest feature of this subclass: Shadow Games. Those of you who are familiar with this subclass’s inspiration know exactly what I’m talking about, but for the uninitiated; Shadow Games in Yu-Gi-Oh! refer to games played with major stakes, those generally being the lives or souls of those involved in them. Now, I can’t be letting PC’s run around stealing the souls of poor townsfolk at 6th level. But, I can allow PC’s to cast bestow curse on those same townsfolk, besetting them with some horrific ailment for a time (or even forever at higher levels…).
The basic idea here is to put those expertises and skill debuffs to real use. By challenging someone to a game of cards, you can initiate a Shadow Game. Doing so is purely your own choice; once someone has unwittingly agreed to a game with you, you can initiate a shadow game. Period. The catch? The winner curses the loser, as in casts bestow curse. Meaning if you lose to Old Man Wilkins, he’s gonna be giving you a nasty curse for the next 24 hours, probably none-too-happy with you bringing about hellish consequences to your casual game of cards and whatnot. While this feature is certainly strange and very specific, I think the roleplay and unique stories it can bring about really make it a homerun despite its restrictions. Plus, as I mentioned before, it really gives you a chance to put those otherwise corner-case ability score debuffs and expertises to real use.
10th Level
Honed composure is a fairly simple ability. It's important to give a subclass some digestible and effective tools, especially after a real doozy like Shadow Games. This feature gives you advantage on saving throws against being frightened, allowing you to keep that calm-and-cool composure no matter the situation. Not only that, but those affected by your siphon luck feature now have disadvantage on attacks rolls against you, period. We were a bit worried about the strength of this feature initially, but we quickly realized that, when taken into account with the naturally lacking AC of casters as well as the high to-hit bonuses of creatures at this level, it really didn’t present much of an issue at all. Context matters!
So, to give the class a little extra mastery over that sense of composure and to give Warlocks something to do with their reaction, a creature under this effect who misses you with an attack roll must succeed against being frightened itself, provided you choose to spend your reaction. This ability originally came about through the poker concept of ‘tilt’; a player who is ‘tilted’, or frustrated, naturally makes worse decisions due to their compromised mental state. Thus, most professional players put a lot of practice keeping their composure during a game and likewise look for ways to ‘tilt’ their opponent, as doing so provides them a natural advantage.
14th Level
The capstone for the Master of Games warlock was originally meant to be a freeform ability wherein you impose a set of rules on yourself and another creature, putting you in a sort of meta-gamestate where you both tried to beat the other, with the loser taking 10d10 psychic damage. Unfortunately, while this concept was cool and very flavorful, it was so open-ended that it made the feature itself too difficult to use, both from a player perspective to devise a set of rules and from a dm perspective to interpret and enforce said rules. So, in the end, we settled on a more simplistic design.
Rather than designing an entire subgame in the moment, you instead choose a single course of action. Neither you or the enemy targeted with this feature can take that course of action and, if you do, you ‘lose the game’ so-to-speak, taking 10d10 psychic. It plays almost like a superpowered geas! While I miss some of the flavor of the original ability, this version is so much easier to understand, apply, and run in-game. And, afterall, our job as designers is to facilitate gameplay, not obfuscate it!
Jonathon the Kobold Wrangler here;
Something Trent doesn’t go into too much detail about is a second issue we had with the old ‘choose your own rules’ capstone that is a pretty inherent problem with any feature that lets players choose the rules; meta-knowledge. Briefly, meta-knowledge is the information someone has about how a system or game works. It’s the player’s level of informedness about the rules, what is effective, and what isn’t, and it can really get in the way of roleplaying a character that lacks the same knowledge a player has.
So in the case of a feature that lets a player pick the rules - they’re going to always have the temptation to pick something meta. Something THEY know, but perhaps their player shouldn’t know, and beyond all that, why would you choose some interesting, convoluted game of chance where you have realistic odds to lose when instead you can just tell the dragon ‘If you breathe fire, you lose the game.’ Well, we really couldn’t find any solution to this problem that didn’t neuter the ability anyway, so that was also a key factor in cutting it down to the state it currently is in, which still supports the high-stakes game angle, but boils away all that grey area for awkward, ineffective, confusion or ambiguously decided games.
Overall, I’m very happy with the finished state of the Master of Games patron. It is one of the strangest concepts I’ve ever adapted, but was a very enjoyable experience. I have so much nostalgia for the original Yu-Gi-Oh! series and, as a competitive Magic: the Gathering player, I really enjoy the intricacies that come with competitive tabletop gaming. Being able to capture that and adapt it into a fantastical 5e character concept was a unique challenge but a rewarding one, and I’m not sure when I’ll have the chance to work on something that hits quite so close to home again. Overall, though, I really hope you all enjoy this bizarre subclass!
—Trent the Sewerman