This has a fun flavor, but anything that summons a plethora of creatures makes me nervous. Action economy is king and tilting it in your favor can cause some wild swings in how difficult a fight is.
I'm interested to see the noncombat aspects of this one as well.
Mechanics
Collection of Tomes -
No. This blows the College of Lore's Bonus Proficiencies out of the water in comparison. This is equivalent to proficiency in every skill except Acrobatics, Athletics, Stealth, and Sleight of Hand. But better because it also gives expertise to anything you were already proficient in.
My advice would be to give this a certain number of uses or to copy the Lore Bard feature instead.
Loose Characters -
This is roughly equivalent to using Animate Dead to create skeletons, except at level 3 instead of level 5. It's ridiculously good when first acquired but becomes less and less useful as you continue to gain levels. I don't have good ideas on how to balance this because it has all the usual issues with summoning and trying to pare that back runs directly counter to the aim of this subclass.
Heroism and Villainy -
This preserves the usefulness of Loose Characters for a little longer. Like that feature, it starts out strong then gets less useful. I think I get what you were going for, but I think the Protagonist/Antagonist would need to continue to grow more powerful to really capture the feeling that you've made someone real.
This feature also opens up the option to
Bless your party without needing to concentrate. You can create an Acolyte, have them
Bless the party and then they can run away from combat. It's low on the cheese scale, but it definitely feels like cheese.
Worlds Collide -
This is cool, but confusing. A couple of comments:
Quote:
Originally Posted by
BerzerkerUnit
When used in a void, thin air, or on the Astral Plane this feature creates a 40 ft radius sphere of terrain appropriate terrain including a breathable atmosphere and functional versions of structures or vehicles that would have been found there. You can use this feature once and regain its use when you complete a long rest or expend a spell slot of 7th level or above to use it again.
Emphasis mine. What does this mean? Can you create anything you like? If you create terrain in midair, does it fall?
If this effect doesn't target thin air/void/Astral Plane can it go through solid objects? Do you get to choose the terrain for the sections that don't mesh with objects? Can this pass through something like a wall of force?