Users of Dungeons and Dragons’ primary digital platform, D&DBeyond, may have noticed that a new class appeared on the site in November. The Illrigger was first created by MCDM’s Matt Colville, and this infernal-flavored Paladin was recently reworked for The Illrigger Revised. If you’re willing to spend $14.99 on a third-party supplement, you’ll get a whole new class to bring to your gaming table – but I’d probably advise against it.
The first and most obvious reason is that this new addition to the DnD classes list has sworn an oath of service to a particular archdevil. This means that in almost every case, Illriggers will be evil characters that aim to enact infernal deeds.
That’s great in a party of all-evil characters (which is a different kind of challenge entirely). However, it’ll be tough to find reasons that an Illrigger would assist their good-aligned party members. The Illrigger Revised recommends some safety tools to address this hurdle with your party, but evil-aligned characters run the risk of being the party’s problem child regardless.
There’s a more pressing concern that Dungeons and Dragons fans have about the Illrigger, though. Homebrew classes produced outside of Wizards of the Coast have vastly varied levels of power. Like Matt Mercer’s DnD Blood Hunter, the Illrigger is an edgy alternative class that follows a different design ideology than the standard Paladin or Rogue.
MCDM had previously published an earlier version of the Illrigger, which was widely criticized for having balance issues. This newer version has been revised (hence the title), so you’d expect things to be much more consistent. But are they?
I wanted to see if the naysayers were onto something, so I did a little theory-crafting to test the potential damage output of an Illrigger. My conclusion is that this is an above-average damage-dealing class if you want it to be. However, it’s far from the most broken DnD character build on the market.
If your gaming group is filled with optimizers, an Illrigger player will probably fit right in. In a party more interested in storytelling than number-crunching, though, this class might overshadow other party members. Worse still, the Illrigger’s high power levels and varied party roles mean they will likely hog the spotlight and offend their allies’ morals – which sounds like a recipe for an un-fun time.
Let’s take a look at my workings. I’ve stuck with the rules from the new 2024 Player’s Handbook for this experiment, and I decided to build a level five (tier two) character, as this is the level where most builds typically come ‘online’.
An Illrigger’s most important stats are Strength or Dexterity, plus Charisma for other various class abilities. So far, so DnD 2024 Paladin. I used the Merchant DnD 2024 background to gain +2 Constitution, +1 Charisma, and the Lucky feat.
Thanks to Points Buy, I ended up with 16 Charisma, 15 Strength, and 14 Constitution. Dexterity was passable, and I’ve ignored Wisdom and Intelligence. My choice from the DnD races list was the Goliath, with the Frost’s Chill ability selected, so I can deal an extra 1d6 damage and reduce an enemy’s speed by 10ft on a successful hit. I could have gotten an extra d10, but that speed reduction will be useful for keeping my enemies close.
At level one, we get a Forked Tongue ability that lets us speak a few extra DnD languages. More importantly, we also get our flagship ability from the get-go – Baleful Interdict. Once on your turn, either as a bonus action or for free when you hit with a weapon attack, you can place an invisible seal on a creature within 30 feet.
This creature is now ‘interdicted’ for up to one minute, though this doesn’t stop you placing more seals on them if you wish. Any time an interdicted creature you can see within 30 feet takes damage from any source other than a ‘burned’ seal, you can ‘burn’ any number of seals you placed on them.
Burning a seal is a free action that deals 1d6 fire or necrotic damage per seal to the interdicted creature. The seal disappears after burning. Each seal’s damage becomes 2d6 at level five, 3d6 at level 11, and 4d6 at level 20.
Once an Illrigger reaches level two, they also gain the Interdiction feature, which further modifies what seals can do. You gain a single Interdict Boon of your choice, which allows you to ‘expend’ an unused seal to trigger a variety of effects – typically buffs, debuffs, or even healing.
With just four seals per long rest at level five, the Illrigger shares another trait with the Paladin – it has the potential to go ‘nova’ and deal explosive damage, but it must manage its resources carefully to avoid burning out too quickly. Despite this, my testing seems to imply that an Illrigger can deal above-average damage with just one seal at their disposal.
On my way to level five, my Illrigger also picked up a Combat Mastery (though oddly no DnD weapon mastery), as well as the bog-standard Ability Score Improvement and an Extra Attack feature. The Illrigger Revised offers five possible subclasses, each with their own schtick and some fairly hit-and-miss abilities.
From here, I trialed a few builds that focus on maximizing single-hit damage or the number of attacks I could do. There are some entertaining combos you can pull off with the Architect of Ruin subclass, whose access to the Command spell can be combined with a combat maneuver that lets you make a free opportunity attack when your opponent ‘Flees’ out of range.
Things would be even more interesting if I could throw that ridiculous Nick Dual Wielder combo into the mix, but this Revised class hasn’t been designed with weapon mastery in mind. Even without it, a duel-wielding Architect of Ruin can net single-turn damage in the respectable 40s.
There’s a more consistent way to deal damage, though – the Hellspeaker subclass.
The Hellspeaker Illrigger serves Moloch, so their core identity revolves around charming enemies and using Charisma. If I wanted to focus on damage, I’d generally ignore a subclass like this – except for one key detail.
At level three, the Invoke Hell feature gives you access to an option called ‘Honey-Sweet Blades’. It says: “When you make a weapon attack against an interdicted creature, you can gain advantage on that attack (no action required). If the attack hits, it becomes a critical hit.” My chances of hitting a creature with a seal on it just got way better, and I always get an extra damage die to roll on a hit.
Combine this with my Lucky feat (for creatures that don’t happen to be interdicted), and I’ve got an Illrigger that’s not likely to miss often. There are plenty of builds that aim to craft characters who never miss, but they’re usually a lot more complex than this.
Then, I threw the Great Weapon Master feat into the mix. That’s a +1 to my Strength under the new rules (now 16), the ability to deal extra damage equal to my proficiency bonus, and the option of performing another attack as a bonus action after scoring a critical hit. And since all my successful attacks against an interdicted creature are critical hits, we’re in business.
My mock opponent was a CR 5 Troll with an armor class of 15 and 84 hit points. I chose a Glaive as my weapon in case my high-level Illrigger might want to dip into the Polearm Master feat later down the line in my imaginary campaign.
Let’s generously assume that I’ve managed to interdict this Troll on a previous turn, so it has one seal attached. My next turn then looks something like this:
- Attack with advantage and hit with my Glaive
- Roll 6 on the damage die (d10)
- Add another damage die from Great Weapon Master, rolling 9
- Add my proficiency bonus (3) to the damage thanks to Great Weapon Master
- Add my Strength modifier (3) to the attack as usual
- Activate my Goliath’s Frost’s Chill and roll another 1d6 damage, roll a 3
- Make my second attack roll thanks to Extra Attack, hit with my Glaive
- Roll a 4 and a 3 on the (critical hit) damage dice, add 3 and 3 from my proficiency bonus and Strength modifier for a total of 13
- Activate Frost’s Chill again for another 1d6 damage, roll a 5
- Make a bonus action attack thanks to Great Weapon Master, and hit with my Glaive
- Roll a combined 16 damage on the attack, and choose not to use my Frost’s Chill this time
- Burn the seal now the Troll has taken damage, with 2d6 netting an extra 11 damage
That’s 69 damage from one use of Baleful Interdict and two uses of Frost’s Chill (nice). This turn is somewhere between going nova and playing conservatively with my resources. If I wanted to go totally ham on this troll, I could spend time attaching three more seals to him and burn all my Frost’s Chill at once – which adds another 7d6 to the result.
Alternatively, I could choose not to burn my seal, meaning I continue to have advantage on my attacks and guaranteed critical hits. When an interdicted creature dies, you can spend a bonus action to move that same seal to another target scot-free, and the time it lasts for continues to tick down. This means there’s an interesting game of strategy in deciding when to burn your seals.
These results are impressive, but as I mentioned before, they don’t quite reach the territory of the truly broken. We’re not talking about a Bard that can deal 334 damage per round, and the infamous Conjure Minor Elementals spell is nowhere to be found. Besides, even with advantage on damn near every roll, there are still plenty of times when a Hellspeaker is bound to miss.
Returning to the question at the heart of this article – should you ban this class from your D&D table? – the answer is an un-sexy ‘maybe’. The true solution to every problem in a Dungeons and Dragons group is almost always ‘talk to the other people you’re playing with’. Get a feel for whether your party and DM would be comfortable with an above-average evil character build, and go from there.
For me personally, I’ll be turning Illriggers away from my table. Their DnD alignment, lean towards power-building, and the fact they can replace a wide variety of roles in the party mean that they’re likely to step on many, many toes.
For more on Dungeons and Dragons, here’s my reviews of the 2024 Player’s Handbook and the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide.
Source: Wargamer
