/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General: Manticore Edition

8th level shadow monk/assassin here. We're about to start and the GM is letting us have two uncommon magical items at his discretion. Are the Boots of Elvenkind overkill when I have an 11 in stealth and can cast Pass Without Trace? I feel like having a 21 stealth should be enough to make the Boots redundant, but I do like being a master of sneakiness.

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How would you include monstergirl/boy races in 5e?

>>48614008
I would view anyone who wanted to play one of them with huge suspicion and if GMing, would probably boot them out of the game at the first sign of the inevitable magical realm bullshit

>>48613830
Looking forward to my game tomorrow. The setting is a Victorian one and the party is heading to what is essentially the Wild West. Big encounter planned where their caravan gets ambushed by a pack of these badasses,

Any good DM tips on how to play them? I've got a player who ALWAYS tries the diplomatic route.

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>>48614008
>Implying anyone should need any convincing to have monstergirls included in a game.

>>48614077
Manticores are evil.

Have them save the diplomatic one for last, so he can scream more.

>>48613873
You know what the Sage Advice column is? It's the developers of 5E answering questions.

The example I gave is literally the one they use.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/ability-check

Right there, last paragraph about limit of number of spells in a turn.

And the rest of you faggots are wrong. You can only use your ACTION to cast a cantrip, your reaction is unbothered by using a bonus action spell.

>>48614186
You couldn't afford me, shitbag.

>>48613824
Well.. I'm still trying to figure out how to use all my action in one round for nova.

new discord link?

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>>48614277
HAHAHAH AN ACTUAL COCKSUCKER LAMO

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How do you feel a paladin of Avandra would roll?

I'm going acolyte background, figure he was educated and trained martially by the church, but I'm really struggling to hit up a personality.

I was hoping to base him on Jacques de Molay etc of the Knights Templar, but I'm struggling to find anything personality based on them, too.

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>>48614077
>a pack of manticores
rp these fuckers, so that way you can show the players how utterly pointless it is to try diplomacy, but still make it a funny, enjoyable experience.

Running my first ever game with 3 new players. Tips?

>>48614130
>Have them save the diplomatic one for last, so he can scream more.
I'm liking this idea.

>>48614344
Ah, your picture puts it all into perspective. I'm fucking excited now thanks guys.

How do you guys feel about magic induced heroic sacrifices?

Like say the party is facing a powerful boss and an enemy wizard places a powerful barrier spell securing the boss and the plot relevant player character. Would this be a good way to create both tension and excitement?

>>48614356
Pull some punches and throw them some healing potions now and again.

Alternatively just go with it and see how they fare.

>>48614369
If there's actual mechanics to it.
If a wizard puts up a wall of force and you can't get rid of it, that's just the way it is. Try not to deus ex fiat things when there are already mechanics in the game that can do what you want.

>>48614356
make sure you know what they all want to get out of the game before you hard settle on a storyline and series of major encounters.
Some people like a lot of dungeoneering, some people like a lot of politics, espionage, and diplomacy, and some people like light-hearted PC shenanigans. No one is right or wrong and all of them can be good in their own way, but if everyone is trying to get something different out of the campaign it usually means someone is going to end up having problems before long.

If they really don't know what they want, try out a few different types of sessions and see which ones get their attention the most and gets them actually roleplaying. Try to adapt the story to focus mostly (but definitely not exclusively on that) and see how it goes from there

>>48614369
It makes me think of the end of Phantom Menace.

I'd probably avoid it, as it can make it feel like the other characters are irrelevant.
If the player decides to cut themselves off with the boss it'd feel better, I think.

>>48614413
Thanks. I want to be big on player freedom so I'm trying to do very light world building and letting them create their own story instead of railroading them so I have fun. I'm finding a hard balance between over preparing and under preparing for the start of this. How much would you as a player expect from a ideal DM?

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>randomly picked a one page dungeon to run

>have 7 players now and everyone's 150% into the lore I am making up on the spot

>decide to go down the rabbit hole that is the imagination and end up creating a planar campaign for when they beat the dungeon

>investing massive amounts of time reading everything I can on the elemental plane of water, marids, the Citadel of Ten Thousand Pearls, looking at artwork, getting ideas for aquatic-based games

here's a picture of a Marid student I found. I'm calling the character Sheherazade, and making her a Chaik who brews tea that gives mechanics-based properties courtesy of the Crafting and Consumables homebrew guide. Any tips for my campaign?

I really hope this game lasts ;_;

>>48614417
pretty much this. The plot relevant character should be the whole party. Having half of the table just sitting there listening to how an encounter unfolds is the opposite of collaborative storytelling and against the spirit of the game.
maaaaybe if it's a small sidequest that focuses solely on one character's goals would it make sense to have him be the only really in the fight, but even then it's best to do it via character choice rather than force it upon them (have the boss issue a challenge to an honourable character who would never allow someone else to interfere, etc.)

If you do end up having to do it, at least give the other characters something to do instead of just watching. Maybe they're holding the door and preventing a never-ending steam of skellie reinforcements from swamping the party. Maybe they're trying to figure out how to work the mechanical mcguffin that deactivates the shield and lets them join in the fight. It does mean splitting the party and having to focus on 2 things at once, but it's better than most of the party sitting on their asses for half an hour

>>48614369
If you do this, give the other players something they can do so they aren't watching one person do everything.

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Planning on rolling a pact of the tome, great old one warlock.

He was once an actor who found an archaic play that split his mind apart (pic related) and has since been wandering the lands doing god knows what.

I have some ideas for a personality, but how do I NOT play this character. In other words, i don't want to be that guy who rolls a clown bard that always fucks everything up for the party and basically just gets hard at the idea of being obnoxious, but I still want to play a truly crazy character with all the eccentricities of a master thespian.

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How would you stat her?

Not sure if I entirely understand CRs, help me out-

CR 1 would be something that would be an even match for 4 level 1 PCs, right?
So CR 1/4 is equal to a single level 1 PCs, 1/8 would be equal to two on one level 1 PCs, and CR 1 would be equal to 1 level 4 party member?

>>48614463
That sounds really cool, anon. I don't have any significant tips, but I wish you good luck and enduring player interest.

>>48614606I
I believe you're right

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>>48614332
From what I just read about Avandra, I would advise a character with a strong since of right and wrong, but someone who is always willing to take his time to understand a situation before acting. Change is inevitable, just gotta make sure it is for the better.

You could have you character striving to change some part of the universe you are in for the better, like free all the slaves, kill all the pirates, Something that ties in his backstory

As for personality I would totally lean towards a cheery, toothy grinned, adventurer who is ready to see all the world has to offer. Reading about that goddess I had a very clear image of a young youth who looks on wide eyed at whole wonderful and magical the world is, a person who really takes every second in life to the fullest and appreciates the magic in the mundane. I mean Avandra is the god of change and adventure (right?) and paladins are supposed embody their gods' beliefs in their actions and personalities. At least, that is how I have always interpreted my paladins

I don't know if any of that helped lol.

>>48614447
I find it's best to prepare ideas for cities, dungeons, and character archetypes/situations but leave all of the details fuzzy and easily exchangeable depending on what the players want. That way if they choose one path instead of the other one you expected, you can always recycle ideas and put them in but with the names changed and details affecting the flavour changed.

Say you set up some plot about a dwarven king that recruits the party's help to reclaim an underground dwarven city that's overrun with kobolds. You have a whole dungeon set up with tons of dwarf NPCs and filled with traps built around collapsing tunnels and an avalanche of magma at the end when the party needs to get out.
Unfortunately they don't bite and instead want to just play treasure hunter and roam the countryside looking for loot and XP. So have them stumble upon half-sunken ancient ruins just brimming with treasure, or a yuan-ti temple that they decide to raid, or whatever. You can use the same basic dungeon plan for all of them, tweak things around (collapsing tunnels and magma are now just the ocean flooding in for example), and work with that.

And in the end just have them find the same artefact that would move the story in the same way so you can keep your plans more or less in tact. So instead of a dwarven crown that would start some diplomatic quest to a distant city, maybe they find a magical orb or a religious totem that needs to be taken to the same place to be identified/destroyed/whatever. and instead of the storyline focusing on saving the dwarven kingdom, it now focuses on stopping the yuan-ti gods or some recently incarnated old one in the sunken city, but with the same general flow of locations and mcguffins needed to be visited

>>48614606
No.

CR is a monster's "level," how strong it is, and can *roughly* be used to compare its challenge for a party of 4. To actually build an encounter, you use the XP of all the monsters involved. Both encounter creation and CR calculation are detailed in the DMG.

>>48614625
So the ratio for judging an equal match is always 1:4 for CR to PC? A CR 2 is an even match for a level 8 PC? CR 5 level 20 PC?

I meant to post this with the last one but forgot.

>>48614647
Oh, I hadn't gotten to it since I don't DM, I just looked at the MM since I like monsters and stuff.

>>48614595
warlocks have a lot of CHA skills and spells that he can put to use. new magical disguises or body plans as an action, and so on.
You could have him be an eccentric form of the face for the party, possibly finding and killing key NPC's and assuming their identities as long as they are useful and then moving on.
I'm not super familiar with the King in Yellow but you could adapt the whole famous "no mask" bit to be the character actually believing he's not wearing a mask and thinking he really is the people whose form he's assuming.

How well this works depends very heavily on how it's executed of course, and I would definitely run your ideas by the DM before starting the character and before doing anything big like killing and impersonating NPC's he's setting up

>>48614606
Technically, yes. In practice it's a bit more complex, though, because there are modifiers related to the number of monsters and party size. In general, a CR X monster is a Medium encounter for a party of 4 level X. But take this example: one CR 1 is a medium encounter for one level 4 PC. But even maintaining the same rate of 1 monster per PC, any fight involving more things on both sides (2v2, 3v3, etc) is a Hard encounter.

Anyone have time of beasts pdf?

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>>48614595
I would advise you to do exactly what you think is appropriate as a pact of the tome warlock. Just add flare to your actions. Make your craziness really shine in your fluff, maybe spout off lines from plays, sing song taunts at enemies, talk to yourself during role play conversations with NPCs and PCs.

Make your character as cool and hap-hazard silly as you like. Just don't be that dick who ruins everything for everyone else by saying, "I'm gonna go kiss the dragon teehee~"

Long story short don't be dumb and you'll be cool

>>48614654
>http://kobold.club/
Use this site to your heart's content, anon. It'll do all the math for you.

>>48614715
One of the eldritch invocations would allow me to cast disguise self at will, so that would be dope actually.

I now have a vision in my mind of the first time my character kills an npc, and when the player goes to meet up with that npc they notice that my character is gone, cue the slowly worsening looks of terror. I like it. Thanks m8

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My PCs are freelance inquisitives in Sharn, and their next case is going to bring them to the movers and producers of a new street drug. I'm picturing 2 different "dungeons", one the production facility and the other the distributors' lair/headquarters.

For the lab, I was planning on including lots of relatively weak enemies, but terrain hazards and traps, including plenty of chances for them to be induced with the drug through inhalation (if they don't loot the masks from the workers) or desperate attacks from them. The end of the place is an ex-licensed alchemist and doctor, who is actually trying to develop a medicine and is letting it be produced and sold so he can study and reduce the negative side effects. Of course, he's a bit off the deep end, and will imbibe a combination of drugs and potions should the party corner him, and 'hulk out' more or less.

The hideout is going to be the lair of a mafia or yakuza type figure, a beat up old exterior but the inside covered with stolen paintings, vases, tigerskin rugs, etc. A combination urban mansion and fortress. The ringleader here I'm giving a number of magical trinkets, namely a Shield Guardian amulet and at least one magic ring, that may have an illusion enchantment that makes the place appear so elegant in the first place.

What are some interesting things I could drop in to make these encounters better?

>>48614783
I really do want to stress that you should run this by the DM first. Pretty much any form of crazy PC has the potential to quickly ruin a game for everyone, so make sure it works well with what everyone else wants to play too

>>48614746
I hear you, but I've DM'd for people who do the "my precious" talking to themselves thing or even talking to invisible people that only they can see, and it's always sooo cringy at the table.

I don't want my character to be a clown, but I'm not so much worried about fluff or rp, I'm more concerned with stuff like...how I could possibly create a nontoxic personality for him, or what possible motivation he could have aside from "be crazy xD!1!"

>>48614817
Yeah no, of course, I imagine this will be the kind of character that requires a more than normal amount of discrete note-passing. And I really have no problem with being reeled in or even told no by the DM. I was the DM for my group of friends for about a year now, and I'm finally getting a chance to PLAY in a campaign, so I'm not a complete newbie, I understand what courtesy means in this hobby.

>make tome pact warlock
>take every other class' equivalent of prestidigitation

the best magician of all time

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Reposting from last thread:
Ended up with a setting where elves went extinct, and mages are doing shit like injecting fey/elven blood/transplanting body parts into humanoids to if they can recreate the race.
Said humanoids go mad after going through these surgeries so:
what are some monsters related to elves/fey that I can throw a level 3 party?
All I can think is owlbears, displacer beasts and maybe fairy dragons.

>>48614633
That's a fantastic idea, thanks.

I like the idea of him being excited to see what the day will bring, just happy to be around.
Not rash to action, but when the correct path is in front of him he wont hold back.

Thanks a ton!

speaking of Warlocks, can someone give me an idea of a Pact of the Blade build that works well?
I really like the idea in terms of fluff, but crunch-wise I don't see every wanting to use normal attacks pretty much ever, even at low levels. You'll need to worry a lot more about damage if you choose a melee weapon which isn't good because you're squishy even with light armour, and if you choose ranged you'll pretty much always be doing less damage than what you'd be doing with Eldritch Bolt.
All of the pact bonuses for Blade are alright but hardly good enough to justify taking it. At least from my impression so far, which is why I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing

>>48614930
just make custom ones and call them half-elf monstrosities or whatever, using the stats of some creatures of appropriate challenge rating, maybe with some minor spells/abilities thrown in for flavour

>>48614983
Yeah that's another possibility.
I was also thinking that maybe these experiments were dealing with demons/devils/ancient evil being but they were far too retarded to realise they were being tricked.

>>48614962

Here's the guide you're looking for:


___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________play a fighter_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

>>48614962
I spent a long time wondering why they would give a warlock a melee option and the only thing I could come up with is that it's for when the warlock is stuck in melee.

So summon a net I guess.

>>48614962
Just don't play pact of the blade.
We've had so many threads dedicated to this.

>>48615136
fair enough, just seemed like I was missing something

>>48614677
http://dhmholley.co.uk/encounter-calculator-5th/

>>48615192
You weren't. It's just bad.
Ranged > melee in virtually all scenarios.

Does no one have DnD 4th or earlier editions?

>>48614832
He thinks the Party aren't real and it's all in his head but he embraces his insanity.

>>48615258
OD&D through 2e: http://mega.nz/#F!AwhlTLKD!J45Rhcm1Hbrm1YdbBwEuVA
3e through 4e: http://mega.nz/#F!VkgGlSzK!11kU_hPmZpCqYBx8uRaHhA

>>48615290
Thanks!

>>48614894
What kind of a warlock are you? I played as a spooky as fuck warlock, went GOO, and had telepathy. So I could just tell party members what was up as long as I was within 30 feet of them. I cannot stress enough how incredibly useful that ability is.

Especially if you disguise yourself at will and put the party Rogue to shame with your sneakiness. Not that my Warlock could ever beat the stealth rolls of the Rogue, but he could do pretty damn well for himself all the same/eldritch blast his enemies into the ground, etc.

>>48614463
Steal from Magic, Planescape, and Star Trek really. The best part about Planar campaigns is that you're not tied down to a single setting. Hell, the whole point of Ravenloft is so you can run Halloween One-shots mid-campaign and threaten Evil Campaign players if they go too far.

>>48614962
Pact of the Blade can be fun, but you'll never be as good as a regular melee fighter. You would be better off taking a few levels in fighter instead.

But if you want warlock, go Fiend, and hex your enemies. Get good dex with medium armor proficiency and war caster. Use a shield, and you'll have pretty decent AC once you grab yourself some half plate. Choose a rapier as your pact weapon.

As a higher level fiend warlock you can slam an enemy through hell for a full round and it does insane damage to them once/day. It is a ton of fun when you come around to a boss fight and ruin that fucker's day with a trip through the planes of hell. If you cast hex on a pleb, you can go to town on them with thirsting blade invocation and output pretty decent damage.

If you do Pact of the Blade the right way, you can have a lot of fun with it.

>>48615245
>Eldritch blast with agonizing blast, and eldritch spear, and get up to 4 possible his with it at higher levels
>Put out 1d10+chr mod x 4 in a round from 300 feet away

It's not like a warlock can't kill his enemies from range.

>>48615471
That's the point.
Ranged
>
Melee

>tfw wood elf
>monk
>Mobile feat

I'm the fastest nigga around.

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>>48615351
as I said in >>48614595 I'm going to run Pact of the tome GOO, the telepathy feature sounds like a hoot. But, apparently disguise self isn't a concentration spell, so i could take guidance as one of my pact cantrips and combine it with disguise to get the best sneak / deception rolls you've ever seen.

Well guys, I'm a DM, and my group's about to die via hiatus and scheduling hell as I just got a new job that requires me to work on our scheduled day. Any advice on this? I don't want this to happen, but I need the money. Is there anything I can do?

>>48615591
Contact all players. Find out all of their availability. Cross-reference to find a common day between them.

Boot any players you hate/are unreliable if you have to.

The one skill that every single DM needs to have is stubbornness.

Citation: I've had the same campaign going since 5e dropped, and we've had four hiatuses in that time. Still going strong.

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>>48614962
its only worth it if its what you want
don't play it because you are after big numbers

Do you ever bother with character portraits?

If so, where do you usually look? I haven't historically had a lot of luck on Google, and most of what I find is too far out and can't be cropped to just the head nicely.

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>>48615693
I have a huge folder of potential character art that I grab from various character threads on /tg/. When I'm thinking up a character concept, I'll usually scroll through it look for ideas, maybe edit them a bit with some Photoshop wizardry (rounding or sharpening the ears, changing their skin color, etc.), then throw them in my token template and there it is.

Does a Tempest Cleric's Wrath of the Storm ability work with their Thunderbolt Strike?

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>>48615693
i have a pretty large folder of character art, but i never bother with character portraits.
i do often draw what my character looks like somewhat comprehensively, but that never actually matters in game so i never really show anyone those drawings unless it comes up for some reason.
in my group, the only guy with a character portrait drew his paladin's favorite weapon instead of his paladin.

>>48615693
>Do you ever bother with character portraits?
If I find a character art that I think fits sure but I usually dont go out of my way to find something unless the DM absolutely needs it.

>>48615681
it's not really a matter of low numbers, it's a matter of low numbers with nothing else to gain
both Pact of the Chain and Pact of the Tome have some amazing out of combat bonuses, or uses in combat that synergise with their spell casting (and don't require using up their action each round).
Pact of the Blade is purely for a melee attack that is nearly always less useful than a generic cantrip

>>48615610
>Contact all players. Find out all of their availability. Cross-reference to find a common day between them.
Yeah, I guess I should start there. I'll break it to them at our next session, which'll be our first physical meet and the last before the hiatus.
>Boot any players you hate/are unreliable if you have to.
That's tempting, but knowing him, he'd be the one that's the most flexible. Besides, we're all friends/acquaintances from school, and if one goes, I'm afraid all will go. But I'll think on it.
>The one skill that every single DM needs to have is stubbornness.
Yeah, my ADM says I'm too nice.
>Citation: I've had the same campaign going since 5e dropped, and we've had four hiatuses in that time. Still going strong.
That's impressive, I hope I can do that too.

>>48615735
Yep. Thunderbolt Strike can trigger whenever you deal lightning damage, be it through a spell, class feature, dragonborn breath weapon, or the extra bits of a magic weapon.

>>48615726
I'm slowly building a folder, but it's pretty small still.

Currently I've got 8 that are the kind of portrait I'd like. There's one I've got that would be really good, but it fuzzes out too much if blown up.

>>48615834
Try using waifu2x. http://waifu2x.udp.jp/

It's not perfect for everything but it can help if you accidentally get a good picture sized for ants.

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>>48615749
well i disagree with your assertion that there is "nothing else to gain". you get extra attack which is useful in combat, even if it doesn't up your damage above eldritch blast, you get a solid attack option that doesn't rely on making noise via a verbal component. yeah its not great but if you use armor of agathys and hex you can do okay.
like i said, not great, but okay.

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>>48615847
Champion, I'll keep that one for future use.
The one I was hoping for I think it's the art style as much as anything else that kills it. Pic related.

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>>48615885
Using the "photo" setting can provide slightly better results for detailed pictures like that, pic related.

>>48615866
>you get extra attack
right, but you still have to use your action to make the first one. It basically just doubles the effectiveness of your attack action without adding any new utility
And it requires one of your evocations to do. Meanwhile at the same level and having spent 1 evocation you can have an invisible flying familiar with absurdly high passive perception that communicates telepathically giving you a perfect scout, or a book that lets you cast a few cantrips and as many ritual spells as you can find, without class restriction.
These give you such a wealth of new possibilities for how to explore, interact socially, and fight creatively, while Pact of the Blade gives you the option to hit enemies in melee for a reasonable amount of damage

>>48615866
you'd really have to do some explaining to even come close to convincing me that using a melee weapon would ever come close to just eldritch blasting from 100ft away

like at level 5, EB with agonizing blast is 1d10+cha + 1d10+cha, can target two different people or the same, and has a range of 120ft. It can also be augmented for even more range and can also push people around.

EB vs pact weapon gets even more uneven at higher levels, as correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that you can't ever have more than two attacks with pact blade. Sure you get like, an invocation for +cha mod damage on melee attacks at level 12 or something, but EB will get to the point where you're doing 4d10+cha to multiple targets or the same target from 120ft away and pushing them all around and doing potentially 4d6 additional damage from hex

EB is better in every way. Sure a maul/greataxe/greatsword pact weapon outdamages it slightly, but for that then you'd need strength, and need to be in melee as a d8 light armor class for 2 more possible damage

and to even use a pact weapon you're giving up on an advanced familiar, which is massive, massive utility, and 3 cantrips + as many rituals as you can find.

>>48614163
It's counter spells all the way down.

>>48616047
>you'd really have to do some explaining to even come close to convincing me that using a melee weapon would ever come close to just eldritch blasting from 100ft away
i don't think under normal circumstances it ever would. but i wasn't arguing that in the first place.
i originally said don't go after blade pact if you want big numbers, because it ain't that.

Do any grid-less versions of the barovia map in curse of strahd exist? It's fucking impossible to align the hexes properly in roll20.l

>>48616209
There should be one in the PDF of maps in the Mega. Just open it in Adobe Reader and right click -> copy image, throw it in Paint or whatever and save it.

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>>48614832
What you should do is decide on one or more delusions that your character has, and just stick to them. Delusions that can't be shaken no matter how convincing the other person may be. In every other respect your character is a slightly eccentric older gentleman who is only a bit obsessed with the stage. He is talkative and friendly and maybe just a tad too eager to help out. His weirdness only comes out when his specific delusion is brought up, like a belief that everyone around him is wearing a mask or something.

For building a greatsword character is the great weapon master feat even worth it? The first part of it only feels somewhat useful, while the second part just feels like a useless trap.

>>48616891
Yes it's worth it.

I need to create an abandoned deep gnome city. What are some interesting locations I could include. Temples, old market places, forges etc?

What are some things that the deep gnomes do different when it comes to their underground cities compared to, say dwarfs?

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This is the best homebrew ever made.

>>48616891
Yes.

If you're fighting a creature that's easy to hit but has a lot of HP or resistance, it adds up.

>>48616981
Everything is smaller, less ornate.
The city looks kinda like the equivalent of stone adobes; well-made but without the elaborate stone carving or metalworking.
Not more primitive mind you, but more natural-looking rather then the obviously hand-made thing dwarves have going on.

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Anyone got that Tome of Beasts pdf yet?

>>48616997
The fact that you have to personally land the killing blow on a creature to get Negative Energy is pretty lame. Makes it feel like a video game where you're more worried about getting the last hit in than you are enjoying the game.

>>48615824
It seems like there is some fun to be had with that but Tempus looks like the best Cleric to me anyway.

>>48617027
Yeah it's the same with Warlocks. If you were to change it to something else it becomes almost impossible to balance.

>>48616997
pretty meh actually, a lot of poorly worded passages and it has the same bad homebrew thing of giving the class way too many features

also lol all those spells. gl finding a dm who would ever allow that class and all its spells at their table. homebrew spells are almost always laughable

>>48617146
That's only for one ability of one type of Warlock. That homebrew has an entire class mechanic, arguably the main class mechanic, revolving around landing killing blows. Feels like you have to kill steal monsters or ask your party members to "not kill that monster just yet and let me do it." Way too much of a hassle.

The Warlock's ability is mostly just a fun little bonus for getting the killing blow.

>>48617146
The best way to balance that class would be to make it not require killing monsters yourself and allow it to be any monster that dies near you. Then, just reduce the points you get per monsters so that it balances out.

This would make it a lot more interesting because you have to decide between resting to get your spells back or keep going with your Negative Energy stored up, which seems like what they were going for. But most importantly, you don't have to play it like some kind of MOBA.

Anyway, >>48617177 is right because it's just a really convoluted class with wacky, imbalanced spells. The best way to make homebrew spells is to just take an existing one and changed the flavoring, e.g. Flame Strike becomes Blood Strike and deals a different type of damage.

If you're going to increase your Strength or Dexterity, isn't it automatically better to just take the Athletic feat for one of those points? Or am I missing something here?

>>48617247
athletic gives +1 to something, not taking a feat gives +2

so if you have a single odd numbered stat, and you only want to increase that stat, yes taking a feat that gives +1 in that stat is probably better.

>>48617247
if its an odd level then yes, the same goes for resilient (stat) for some stats

>>48614008
Easiest way is just to take a standard race's crunch and reskin the fluff so that they're monstergirls (and/or boys) instead of the standard. At most, it's just a need to homebrew crunch for monstrous races that don't have "vanilla" crunch as-is, like orcs or kobolds.

Seriously, I can't think of any reason beyond pure magical realming to make a monstergirl race that actually has "I'm a sexy non-human chick!" written into its racial mechanics. Tweak the fluff, alter the appearance, take the appropriate gender, and you're golden.

It's not as if D&D doesn't include some stuff that's pretty fetishy as-is. Hell, I'm still struggling with holding back the urge to do a human/gynosphinx and human/lizardfolk (Kecuala) shaman pair of fics.

>>48617277
>>48617280
Oh shit, I thought you only get +1 for each Ability Score increase. Sorry, new to 5th Edition.

>>48614008
I wouldn't you piece of shit.

>>48614962
There are some interesting builds I have seen such as Fighter 1/2 Warlock X but Pact of the blade doesn't work well for a melee centric build because the Warlock lacks good melee centric features. You can make something that can work in melee but it only really works reliably if you don't take any focus or focus beyond a couple of monsters for a couple of rounds, otherwise you start to bleed resources.

What pact of the blade is good for is having a back up weapon option or storing magical weapons like you are an R2 unit. An interpretation of RAW which I found interesting was that your pact weapon can be given to another player, they just have to stay within 5ft of you or they only get the weapon for a limited time before you have to resummon it. They did confirm in either a tweet or in sage advice that your ritually bound weapon can be a ranged weapon so there is that as well.

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Is someone going to scan the Tome of Beasts by Kobold Press

http://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product/tome-of-beasts-for-5th-edition/

Hey guys, I'm trying to make an artifact that's essentially a sword which is the elemental plane of fire personified, and was wondering if you had any ideas for cool additional effects?

I'm thinking it can only be wielded by people immune to fire damage, creates a miasma of heat around it similar to a balor and evaporates water/melts ice within a radius- and maybe something like forcing a Con-check to people who want to get close to the wielder.

But what else might be flavourful or good for a sword as hot as a sun?

>>48617655
Make it have an activation that the player takes fire damage from.
Don't make it necessarily only allowed for people immune to fire damage, otherwise players can never use it.
Simply encourage the players to find a way to become Immune so they can use it without burning the shit outta themselves.

Furthermore, toss in some fire spell charges in there, possibly 1d4-1 Fireballs per day or something.

Even more furthermore, if it's super powerful, give it an extra damage die of fire damage. Preferably of one die size or smaller less than the original.

>>48617616
This, I'd buy it if it wasn't fucking $30 for a PDF, what are the thinking...

>>48613969
>GM is letting us have two uncommon magical items
>5th edition

Drop the campaign.

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>>48617853

>>48617853
>starting at level 8

>>48617779

Well, I've given it exploding crits.

>>48618025
Probably not the best idea. Oh, also make sure it has a deactivate 'button' otherwise the party will all dehydrate.

>>48617853
my last 5e campaign had the DM not only give a shit ton of magic items out from pretty much any encounter, but also allow the purchase of magic items (up to and including very rare ones) in town.
Of course he didn't actually tell the group that, it was just that the powergamer in the group asked him on the off chance in a private conversation if there was anywhere he could buy magic items, and suddenly he's got half a dozen ridiculously overpowered things in every engagement. Next town over the rest of the party asks the same and the DM just picks items at random from the manual and things get even worse. We're not even level 8 yet and most players have maxed out the items they can have attuned at one point in time. Meanwhile the powergamer has become such an unstoppable monster that the DM has to double the CR of our encounters to make things a challenge for him and the rest of the party is getting knocked out 3 times a day on average.

Someone wanna scan dat Tome of Beats?

>>48618132

I guess the problem with inappropriate magic items is that it can tend to make PC's into glass cannons where they either roll over stuff effortlessly without much damage, or if the CR of the enemies are increased to match the PC damage output, then the PC's end up dying really quickly.

Seems like more custom critters would be the solution, if removing the weapons is a no-go right now.

>>48618175
>Tome of Beats

Man, Bard players would be so happy...

Cleric: the ultimate dick sucker
> plz god, gimme mah spells and i promise to swallow

The same for pallys and druids who worship gods.

Warlock
>i like to suck alien-fairy-devil dick for a living

sorcerer: the class for special snowflakes
> "a dragon came in my mothers ass and i have dragon powas!"
> or
> "i am 2 w1ld 4 u 2 h@ndl3"

The rest of the classes are not bad.

>>48618184
he ended up just ending the campaign and restarting everyone at level 1 I didn't stay for attempt #2 though.
the real problem was it was almost everyone (including his) first time running 5e and you ended up with a lot of players who either had no idea how to build effective characters and were of next to no use in a fight, and a handful of either competent or borderline munchkin-y players (including the DM's chaotic evil DMPC who surreptitiously got more than his fair share of great items like a Deck of Many things at like level 4) that just amplified the problem

>>48614962
Would devil eyes + darkness work out? One of the players for my upcoming campaign was wondering about the combo and it looked like pact of the blade would need something like that to make it viable.

>>48618335
Here's your (you)

>>48618422
It works in the sense that Devil's Sight lets you see through magical darkness. In practice it doesn't work terribly well, as it almost always hinders the rest of the party and slows fights to a crawl.

Why is Dragoon / Dragon Knight such a common theme, and why are they always ass?

http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/BkmBQBxK

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mTHKmvv-X0wlm8MD-KSfEaAtZIP5eo7TNMnsDixcziw/edit

These two specifically come to mind. But then there are also a bajillion Fighter / Paladin archetypes that are basically just whatever that class is, with Dragon abilities.

>>48618495
Weebs.

>>48618495
Because muh Final Fantasy

>>48618422
it works but it doesn't gain anything from Pact of the Blade.
If you're surrounded by magical darkness and fighting in melee, the enemy knows exactly where your attacks are coming from and can hit you next round (granted with disadvantage).
If you're surrounded by magical darkness and shooting Eldritch Blasts from across the room, he can at best make general guesses about the direction they're coming from, and you have the option to keep mobile and move to a new spot every round. And if you're clever you can use your other spells/abilities to fuck with him even more - if you have an Unseen Servant, have him make noise on the complete opposite side of the room to make him think you ran over there. If you have a familiar have it fly in his face and distract him further. If you have that one evocation that makes Eldritch Blast push the target 10 feet you can knock him even more off balance.

Incidentally, as fun and loveably overpowered Darkness + Devil Eyes is, it also affects the rest of your party and is kind of a shit thing to use regularly. There's basically no way any of them can see through magical darkness at level 2 and they'll likely be useless in every fight. As an added bonus the DM can quickly adapt by changing all of the coming encounters to include slimes and other blindsight creatures to nullify your advantage, while the party will have to wait for a long time find a workaround

Is there a good way to play a Witch in this edition - ie more "earthy" magic, like charms, hexes, stuff to do with animals - without using homebrew?
Druid? Warlock? Some multiclassed Thing?
I've been rereading the Discworld series and I'd like something like the witch "magic" with some herblore and things like that.

>>48618530
Druid/Warlock I guess is your best bet.

>>48618573
I was thinking maybe a Warlock, taking Druidcraft with the Tome Pact.

>>48618530
you could also run an Enchantment wizard or the like and justify all of your spells as really good psychology

But yeah Druid/Warlock is your best bet. Honestly straight Druid would work pretty well if you just choose to avoid most of the more extreme animal things

>>48618594
Nice idea.
Thanks my dude.

>>48617835
A nice scan would let us know if it's worth it.

>>48618583
That could also work.

>>48618628
It'd be nice if we could just all put some spare change into a pot and get it.
Fucking internet

>>48618499
>>48618501
Like, I've seen some that could be fun to play, and still retain the flavor.

But like in >>48618495 that first one....I'm trying to explain to a friend why its bad, and he just doesn't get it, and tries to justify / rationalize every ability as "it's not THAT powerful, he's like a dragon"

Hey guys, I could really use some tips/tricks here. First time playing 5e, and our group consists of a fighter, pally, rogue, and druid (me). But I'm going for a different route of Druid.

I'm going to try to play a dark druid that detests society and whose goal is to tear down civilization to its roots. So far, I'm the only evil character (though the drow rogue might be on my side sometimes), so my question is, how should I go about role-playing this without becoming that guy?

I've watched West Marches, and I have a good idea, but some tips would be nice. I'm thinking about keeping it all really low-key when around people, acting nice and harmonious, but when I'm alone or off to the side I let the evil side show.

>>48619109
Literally don't do it.
If you really really have to, then you should nope don't do it did you not hear me the first time

>>48619109
D&D is a cooperative game at it's heart. Being evil in an otherwise good party doesn't tend to turn out well.

>>48619109

Just remember that this is a team game. You sign a social contract going in that it's going to be a collaborative effort on everyone's part to create a story together, solve problems together, have fun *together*.

This sounds like you want to play a kender.

The witch thread has inspired me. How would one going about making a witch? I mean, with curses, hexes, speaking to spirits, that sort of stuff.

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>>48619109

>>48619178


Shaman seems to have you covered.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2u4RqwDjhwJRHZmUkFpb0lwZjA/view
http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/HyjbBsa
http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/B1tPjORr

Otherwise, you could go druid with magic Initiate, or Archfey warlock.

>>48619178
https://imgur.com/a/MByU7#yF8jsme

>>48619200
Oh shit, everything matches with the type of witch I'm looking for. They even have spells that cause bad luck, can create charms, and speak to spirits. Are witches just another name for shaman?

>>48618530
just play a refluffed wizard mate, trust me.
as someone who loves to theorycraft and autistically build characters warlocks always just turn out weak compared to other "equivalents" while their fluff seems cool RAW they just don't really make it and end up boring, imho.

and besides discworld witches and wizards are just the same, but not really like each other

>>48619217
>https://imgur.com/a/MByU7#yF8jsme
Fucking saved. This is such a sexy ass homebrew....I didn't even read the abilities.

>>48613830
Cleric is now pointless: The Unearthed Arcana

So what's the best method you can figure to make a blade warlock? I know you can squeeze out polearm mastery damage with hex for decent damage, but I'm thinking it's better to have some defense and control.

My general idea so far, listing priority items

>Mountain dwarf for str/con/armor
>Stats: Good Str/Cha, middling Dex/Con
>Feat (level 4): Spell sniper (shocking grasp)
>Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Booming Blade, Green Flame Blade
>Spells: Hex, Darkness
>Invocations: Devils Sight, Agonizing Blast, Lifedrinker
>Blade Pact: Any reach weapon

Strategy at long range is standard Hex/Eldritch Blast spamming. When enemies get closer however, your spell sniper allows you to use BB and GFB at 10 feet away, either damaging two enemies or keeping a melee target from moving. If one gets within melee range use shocking grasp and take a step back. Pull out darkness when enemies are close and allies aren't to greatly enhance defensive control.

Invocations beyond devil's sight are variable, if you don't want to focus on damage. Thirsting Blade is completely unnecessary.


Thoughts?

>>48619328
>So what's the best method you can figure to make a blade warlock?

play a fighter or a paladin

>>48619346
Har. Consider this one a single suboptimal class challenge.

So, my party has just found a Ring of Spell Storing, and obviously we filled it up with healing and abjuration spells and gave it to the tank.

But my question is, if I as a paladin shove a Find Steed spell in the ring instead, and we pass the ring around, does that mean my steed poofs and he gets his, or does that mean instead that in a week all our party has got free steeds?

>>48613830
Help me out here boys.
I have never played d&d nor any other tabletop for that matter, but I've always been fascinated and awaiting the chance I get to make a group.
And what do you know I finally managed to convince a couple of friends to give it a shot and as thus I'll be attempting to dm for them.
So then my question is, would LMoP be a good way to start? I sorta need them to get hooked pretty fast.

>>48619223

Shamman is a greater archetype of the Witch Doctor, yes.

>>48619387
I believe its the former since the spell says a new cast resummons the same stead and a ring of spell storing still has YOU casting into it regardless of who activates it.

>>48619387
I see no reason that someone else steed would make yours poof

>>48619403
LMoP is a great beginning adventure, and if they want to keep going after that Princes of the Apocalypse has a plot hook connecting it to Phandelver.

>>48619387
It says it's treated as though the wearer cast the spell, though it uses modifiers and DCs of the original caster. So its the latter.

>>48619403
Absolutely. I started DMing for a group of new players about a month ago, and I went with LMoP. It's a solid guide for new DMs, and it gets the players involved in the plot right away.

>>48619457
>>48619418
Huh your right, i must have been thinking of another edition. Still doesnt seem to be RAI but there you go, it would create a new steed.

>>48614285

A pure warlock's nova isn't going to be that great anyways. I mean, Hellish Rebuke and EB is probably okay, you just have to make sure you Hex the turn before.

I want a map for a huge dwarven mine, in the same....vein, heh...of Erebor.

I have an amnesiac dwarf in my party, and I'd love to let him retake his home from whatever I decide has taken it over.

The other players love hunting missing stuff, so they'd have to hunt it down using RESEARCH!

>>48619403
LMoP is a great starting module even for veteran players.

Personally tho id recommend playing up the black spiders involvment some. He doesnt feel like the actual antagonist until its over and the module can go for long time periods of not mentioning him. Thats just how i felt after both playing and running it.

>>48619516

man, giving the whole party a paladin steed and a wizard familiar

I'm not sure this thing is completely thought through

>>48619595
A way to play him up is tying him to the Fane of the Eye; have some hint towards Tharizdun or something, or the lost dwarven kingdom of Belsimer (sp?), and then transition into PotA.

>>48619606
Personally id rule the way i described here >>48619418 for this situation, especially for a familiar.

What's the highest defense a straight class human fighter can have? Are there any tricks beyond just having magical armor and shield, plus the Defense fighting style?

>>48619456
>>48619486
>>48619595
Great.
The dragon is what's bothering me though as he'll probably melt them instantly, I thought about reducing it to a wyrmling but those don't speak common.
I really want to fuck with them to have them know it's not all about combat and big numbers while at the same time not presenting an impossible challenge.

>>48619772
Kinda contradicting yourself. Don't want it all about combat, wants to make sure the party can win via combat.

Let em die if they try to fight.

>>48619772
Dwarf heavy party will laugh at that dragon, least mine did tho the paladin did get lucky from a few attacks.

You could probably make the dragon a social or puzzle encounter, unless they are coming with intent to steal its hoard or kill it, they might be able to talk it down. Just make sure somthing warns them the thing is there.

>>48619754
Just the shield spell if you go EK

>>48619772
You could make it nonstandard somehow. Maybe it has a deep wound that screwed up its breath weapon or somesuch.

>>48619754
With +3 Magic Plate, Defense, Shield, Cloak of Protection and two Rings of Protection, it's 27. If someone cast Shield of Faith on you, that's 29.

>>48619866
Don't forget you can have +3 shields.


Even so, wizards still get higher AC through their magical bullshit if they want.

>>48614163
I had to double check the text on Reactions for this, and have now added that you cannot use reactions on your own turn to my house rules. Then again, my house rules allow forced movement against single foes to provoke opportunity attacks so it's more important.

>>48619772
Just because something doesn't ordinarily do something, doesn't mean you can't determine that this one is different.

A wyrmling could know common. You could determine it's bad at it and players have to be careful with their words in case it misinterprets things.

>>48614356
When a rules question comes up, make a decision and move on. Write down the rules question and reference it after the game to correct the action in the future, telling your players if something changed.

I encourage reserving looking up rule in game only to reference spells, item abilities, character abilities, and NPC abilities.

>>48619772
Well, this is something that really depends on your players, but my group has been going through very diplomatically from the start. Combat is really just something that happens when a charisma check fails. So you might not need to impart that lesson into your players.

That said, if they insist on fighting the dragon, don't hold back. But maybe have it say something like "Leave now, or suffer!" before you initiate combat to remind them that running away is a totally valid option.
>>48619911
You can indeed. So that'd be somewhere around 30-37 depending on what spells are active.

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>>48618335

>>48619933
You get shoved off a cliff, and now it's your turn. You'll go splat if you don't do something.

I'm going cast Feather Fall!

That's a reaction, and you can't do reactions on your turn. You go splat.

>>48619772
Not every encounter is a palms up fight, the groups needs to learn that or will just have a band of murder-hobos.

>>48619817
>>48619858
>>48619789
>>48619939
>>48619970
I see I see.
Great advice all around, I'll try to tailor it around player strengths and weaknesses so that it's not too easy nor devastating.

What's a good way to explain the difference between intelligence and wisdom to a new player? How would you play a high intelligence/low wisdom character and vice versa?

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>>48620174

>>48620174
I've always described it as "book smart versus street smart". High INT/Low WIS means you know a lot of information...that probably won't help you survive in the adventuring world unless something needs to be deciphered. Low INT/High WIS means that you're good at thinking on your feet, navigating, using your wits, rather than being able to retain a lot of facts and knowledge.

>>48620212
I love that post.

>>48620174
Intelligence is book-learning, wisdom is common sense.
High intelligence/low wisdom is an absent minded professor who's super smart but always has their head in the clouds, forgets to eat, walks into a closet instead of the door.
Low intelligence/high wisdom is salt of the earth who can't read but who knows what's right and wrong and always has their priorities straight, they know what's important in life and they never lose track of what's really meaningful and important.

>>48617867
>>48617927
see
>>48618132

stupid millennials

>>48620174
High intelligence means they have a lot of knowledge and facts, they have good memory. A large vocabulary.

High wisdom means they have great intuition, they're perceptive, and they can read people's intentions. They have a lot of common sense.

Low intelligence means they're bookdumb and they typically forget things that they learn without a lot of repetition. They will also have smaller vocabularies.

Low wisdom means they are naive, unobservant, or foolish.

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>>48620212
>>48620214
>>48620248
>>48620264

If Intelligence is "book smarts" and Wisdom is "street smarts," then why is Intelligence what you use for Investigation checks, which is all about piecing together environmental clues into useful information?

That sounds like something a street-smart detective would have, not a bookish scholar.

>>48620174
Intelligence is studied stuff, and Wisdom is experience and observation stuff.
A high-Int character would likely be a scholarly type, but and possibly someone who doesn't take in much of their surroundings. Perhaps because they zero in on one specific thing, like ignoring 99% of a library to look at the single spellbook or something.
A high Wis, low Int character would be someone with a lot of experience, and who takes in all their surroundings, but might struggle to recall details and specific information.

Basically, imagine you walk into a cavern in the Underdark. High Wis looks around, noticing all the different rock formations, flora and fauna as they enter and takes it all in. High Int notices a single object, like a magic-looking crystal, and instantly beelines towards it.

That's the way I see it, at least. Really, they aren't that rigid that you HAVE to play it one way. Low Int might just mean they can't read but that's it, if that's how you want to play it.

>>48620174
Wisdom is how information enters your brain
Intelligence is how you brain retains and analyses the information
Charisma is how information leaves your brain

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>>48620305

And also, if Intelligence is "book smarts," then why is it what you use to defend against illusions?

Why does having the insight to beat an illusion have more to do with "book smarts" than "street smarts"?

>>48620174
High int + Low wis : Mad scientist. 20 int | 4 wis for a super extreme one.
Scientist who knows a lot and knows how to put crazy contraptions together, though he lacks the foresight to realize he's put a number of things together wrong and whilst he makes it work through trial and error there's some glaringly obvious flaws to most people such as 'firing this gun also expels a great deal of flame into your face'.
They would try to invent things to solve problems nobody even has, because they lack the wisdom to realize people even have those problems.
Animals often have low intelligence but okay wisdom, as their instincts are on par with humans but their intelligence isn't.

High wisdom, Low intelligence:
A rather sheltered clerical figure, perhaps.
They know what's going on in the world. They know what's going on in the village, what needs to be done. Especially if they're lawful, they'll want to keep to tradition and never stray into uncharted territory where they've no idea what might happen due to their lack of knowledge.
They'll realize that the party is in a large beast's den. They won't have the knowledge to realize what kind of beast it is or know much about it.
They are always in the present. They know what's going on with the world, but they easily forget what has happened and while they might know if something will happen, they don't know what exactly will happen.
They might even be a little feral.

>>48620313

But the high Intelligence character has better Investigation and better chances of beating illusions.

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>>48620174
>roleplaying mental stats
>(random) statistics which alter and limit your character's personality, not just their mechanical capability
>relegating classes with no mechanical use for mental stats to being dumb ugly brutes
Don't. Intelligence is Arcane Power. Wisdom is Divine/Nature Power. Charisma is Dragon Blood Power or however the fuck Bards/Sorcs/Warlocks work this week.

You are invariably going to wind up with a Fighter who thinks everything through and comes up with the logical solution to any dillemmas or puts the pieces together of your grand mystery before anyone else, the Ranger who solves every fucking puzzle because his player wants to get through this shit and shoot shit, while your Wizard and high-Int Rogue (why?) are being played by the absolute dumbest people in the room. Your Sorcerer is going to be a studious guy who reads lots of books while your Wizard is a lazy wannabe playboy who shirks all research and advances in magical capability solely because he leveled up. The Bard will be charming the pants off of every noblewoman and peasant girl despite having all the tact of a mollusk, while the bronzed fucking Adonis that is your Barbarian oozes machismo and physical perfection all over the place to no result. This is what happens. There is no point in trying to fight this.

Look at how alignment worked out. For DECADES people have been saying it's retarded to limit a character's (re)actions because of a few words on their character sheet.
>I don't believe the villain and run him through
>UH, YOUR CHARACTER IS LAWFUL GOOD, HE WOULDN'T DO THAT
Why should we continue down this road?
>SORRY, JEFF, I JUST DON'T THINK RAGNAR IS SMART ENOUGH TO FIGURE OUT THIS PUZZLE EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE AT THE TABLE WITH A CLUE
>YEAH, NO, YOU HAVE LOW WISDOM SO YOU HAVE TO FALL FOR THIS OBVIOUS LIE
>YOU CAN'T RESIST THE MUNDANE CHARMS OF THE GAY VAMPIRE WHO HASN'T EVEN CAST ANY MAGIC, BECAUSE HE'S JUST SO SEXY

>>48620305
>>48620351
Because D&D is a jury-rigged hodgepodge of new mechanics bolted onto sacred cows. Every stat has things it's used for that don't make sense. That's just what happens when a game is 40 years old.

>>48620305

Investigation is about logical deduction. Logic is Intelligence.

>>48620351

Because it's about figuring out that the illusion doesn't add up. It's the same as Investigation - logic and deduction.

>>48620438
Doesn't that undermine the "book smarts, street smarts" thing?

>>48620305
I'd say that perception is more about noticing the clues and what's out of place, investigation is the logical deduction that comes after that.
If everything is obvious and plain to see, you don't need wisdom because you already know it's there. Wisdom might tell you if something's hidden or out of place, but int will help the logical reasoning.

It's like sherlock holmes working out where someone has been by the soil on their shoe by remembering that the soil comes from a certain part of London.

>>48620408
Perception(Wisdom) allows you to notice that something is off. Investigation(Intelligence) allows you to analyze and deduce what exactly is off. And once you figure it out, the illusion becomes blatant and the magic fails for you.

>>48620484
Naw, you can definitely use Investigation alone to find something.

>>48620469
No? Street smarts is about intuition, gut feelings, and reading people's motives. All those fall under Wisdom.

>>48620408
Those are the points where it falls apart, yeah. Honestly I'd recommend not rigidly roleplaying stats for that reason.
>>48620409
>Look at how alignment worked out. For DECADES people have been saying it's retarded to limit a character's (re)actions because of a few words on their character sheet.
And also for this reason.

>>48620495
>Perception(Wisdom) allows you to notice that something is off.

It's literally irrelevant against illusions.

>>48620501
Depends. Looking for something you know is there somewhere is just Investigation, sure, like hunting down a certain passage in a book you can't remember the name of.

But Perception is what gives you that clue that there might be something there to Investigate, like a secret door or something.

>>48620313
>which is all about piecing together environmental clues into useful information?
This is literally what intelligence of supposed to do

>>48620351
Because logic dictates reality be measured by empirical evidence, which is a property of Intelligence.

>>48620501
Okay, probably.
But, it shouldn't help you find things that are out of place (like illusions... Which... it does, somehow?)

You can use logical deduction to help find the other shoe. Then again, you could in theory try using survival to track the path the shoes took...

I like to think investigation will help you find the things that are in place (like a shop) but wisdom will help you find the things that aren't in their place (like a large hidden magical desert in the city square that couldn't possibly fit in there.)


Honestly it does feel pretty sacred-cow-ey.

Why couldn't medicine be half-int?
Why couldn't survival and investigation be on similar lines?
Why couldn't nature be a bit more wisdom-based if these other things are?

>>48619166
>>48619150
>>48619130

I think you guys are trying to tell me something...Sarcasm aside, I've got the GM go ahead, do you guys think that should be enough? Or should I go to him and tell him I've had a change of heart? I'd definitely still heal the party big time, and actually work with them, but see if I couldn't twist the outcome to my advantage in a small way.

I've got a couple of other ideas for characters that I'd like to try, a Rune Sorcerer (Wild Magic Sorcerer), and a Nature/Tempest Cleric. I might go Cleric since we need the healing badly.

>>48620573
It's not just you and the GM at the table.

You need the okay of the entire group, not just the GM. How many That Guy stories feature That Guy and a lenient GM?

>>48620563
>>48620548
>>48620501
>>48620484
The PHB (or DMG I can't remember which) does explicitly say you can perform a check with a different ability score. So, a Wisdom (Investigation) check or Intelligence (Medicine), where appropriate.

>>48620563
>But, it shouldn't help you find things that are out of place (like illusions... Which... it does, somehow?)

Investigation lets you figure out how the illusion doesn't match up how it should. Perception is what lets you notice that there something off about it in the first place.

Wisdom clues you in, Intelligence reasons and proves.

>>48620608
That's an optional rule.

>>48613969
You are already amazing at sneaking why not be good at some other things too. I suggest a weapon of warning so you can always go first in initiative, that means as long as you can hit something you can assassinate.

Bag of Holding is actually really really strong cause you can buy all the equipment you want and always have it. Get pitons a portable ram caltrops. It's good to have.

>>48619109
How to play an evil character:
Choose one or more.
1. Make everyone aware of it and make sure they're okay with it. (Especially good for something as crazy as chaotic evil.)
2. Never mention it and keep it secret, but be a very plotting and subtle evil. (Lawful evil in particular, though by the sounds of it you're likely chaotic evil.)
3. Make sure everybody knows that they can just take you out the back and stab you at any time. (They have every right to.)
4. Be on the path to redemption.
5. Possess something that makes people actually want you to keep you around. Unique abilities, unique contacts, being able to deal with evil things or knowing the only way to defeat the big bad.
6. Possess some sort of tie to someone in the party. You could be someone's evil father, their lover who refuses to let them go and intends to cleanse them... Perhaps you were friends of the party until something turned you evil.
7. Be their bitch. Slave chain and all.

>>48620651
>tfw no one ever plays a bad guy trying to git gud

>>48620621
Ah, alright. That makes a lot more sense.
It's like with druidic, you need a perception check to even know the message exists in the first place.

>>48620608
I forgot about that. I think that's something I'd throw in more regularly, since identifying a herbal medicine would definitely be an intelligence(medicine) sort of check.

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Create an absurd optional rule for the sake of FUN.

>>48620621
>>48620667
Perception is literally irrelevant to noticing things off about illusions, RAW.

That's how the game works.

>>48620006
>You're shoved off a cliff outside your return
>Wait to use your reaction until your turn
>"Well, that will use your action now"
At least try.

>>48620731
>i can perceive that this goblin illusion is moving with a human's gait because that's what the caster is more familiar with, has no shadow, and its clothing / hair is not affected by the wind

Illusion being an intelligence check could be chalked up to it fooling the mind directly, rather than the eyes.

>>48620753
That's Enchantment, not Illusion.

>>48620305
Wisdom is isn't street smarts - it's having good instincts. Street smarts is both Wisdom and Intelligence.

>>48620603
Alright, fair enough. Thankfully he's online every night, so I can talk to him when I get off work. I'll go a tough love Nature/Tempest Cleric.

Thank Anons, I always appreciate advice and perspective.

>>48620006
You cast feather fall in reaction to falling 60ft.

You fall 60ft at the end of your turn, then cast feather fall as a reaction once your turn ends.
Simple.

Illusions use Int because SOMETHING had to.

>>48620573

leave the evil characters to your DM, honestly.

>>48619933
Why are you doing that?

Did you decide thunderwave wasn't powerful enough? That when someone is suddenly blasted back, it's the same as a man being struck by a fear spell that makes them turn and run of their own violition?

Do you hate rogues being able to half damage using their ability on their own turn, but not outside their turn? Using a reaction on your own turn gives you no reactions until your next turn, after all.

Do you hate the fact that signature spell wizards can have shield active ALL the time, and that they should have it on all the time except when it's their turn?

>>48620796
>tfw playing a solipsist
>everything is an illusion

>>48620751

That really sounds like investigation to me.

>>48614163

Literally read the rules. It says it right there in the spellcasting section; if you use your bonus action for a spell, you can only cast cantrips that turn. It says NOTHING about tying up your actions, it's entirely about what you can cast. Just read nigga, read the manual.

How broken would a reaction cantrip be anyways? I thought about this as I went to bed last night. Maybe changing blade ward to be a reaction for resistance to Piercing/Bludgeoning/Striking damage for one attack only? I think the only real problem with it is that it might make Blade Ward 'mandatory'.

>one shot D&D mission
>start with a good amount of money, perhaps about 600ish for each person at about level 5 or 6
>get told you can buy 50gp healing potions with that money

Why even bother having a healer?

>>48621058
Because your actions are worth more damage than the healer's. Unless you're going to give all the healing potions to one guy and have him forcefeed you every round.

>>48621058
Because cure wounds is a single level 1 spell.

Any druid/cleric/bard can be a healer just for having one spell.

Anybody got the tome of beasts from Koboldpress?

How good is it? Is it worth spending money on? I do find the core MM to be quite lackluster

>>48617287
I did this. Reskinned harpies, kenku, and aaracokra to all be subraces of a 'birdfolk' race, with varying roles in birdfolk society and society at large. Playable harpies for monstergirl fun, playable kenkus just because. And, why not, ditch the weird aging things while I'm rewriting the race.

>>48621091
Though, they don't get infinite uses of it.

Prayer of healing is a level 2 spell. The healing potions pretty much invalidate that, too. And bard's song of rest, and goodberry, and...

Well, while a healer could outdo the healing of a potion of healing, it seems a better idea to make a tactical retreat and down all the potions when healers lose their spell slots for the whole long rest.

>>48621084
You know, that sounds like a brilliant idea. Having a forcefeeding helper.
There's not really any reason you couldn't have that if you threw enough money at a peasant aside from them being really squishy.

>>48620469
Yes. It's a line that gets repeated because it's concise, but it's not very accurate.

>>48621140
>tactical retreat
>fission mailed

It ain't a vidya gaem.

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>>48614077

>>48620573
> I'd definitely still heal the party big time
Don't. Healing is inefficient. Only heal when it means someone will spend a turn on their feet rather than unconscious, otherwise focus on removing threats.

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What do you guys think about the DM playing a major character in the party?

>>48621202
Kill it and take its stuff.

Thank DM for loot pinata.

Ask for another.

Repeat.

>>48615553
I had a blast as a Tome GOO Warlock. Consider the charlatan background for that little extra oomph for your tricky warlock. And I think that you are proficient with a disguise kit at that point.

>>48621178
People really, really need to do more things like running past a door, closing the door and having one guy hold it shut while everyone takes a round or two to recover.

People play the game too often like all monsters have a gravitational pull and they'll just charge at things and start rolling.
And that there's never a time you can't run.

>>48621202
I think it's a very bad idea to introduce overlevelled 'friendly' NPCs in.

NPCs, like player characters, can infringe on player abilities. Introduced a high level cleric to the party? Now your party's healer has a lot less special about them.
Introduced a know-it-all-wizard? Well, now the guy who knows the most in the party will get upstaged constantly.

Also, introducing characters of such a high level the party could never hope to defeat them is a bad thing, too.
It's a form of railroading, saying "you cannot choose to defeat this NPC" rather than "you could choose to get rid of this NPC, but it's dangerous and other people might come after you."

The DM could play a character of similar-ish level if you only have a party of 3 or so.

>>48620977
If you suspect something is an illusion, that's an investigation check.

If your DM is rolling (maybe because you asked him OOC for it) whether your character notices something off about it that makes them suspicious, that's a perception check.

>>48621202
DMPCs are generally disliked, because GM is stealing action and spotlight from players, and sitting here watching as Gm plays with himself... heh

>>48621202
Always a bad idea.

No, not even that one time it kinda worked out for your group, it was still a bad idea.

>>48621313

Sure. I'd say noticing something to the side might be perception, but when you start scrutinizing the details to see that it's gait is wrong, inconsistencies in it's movement, or that the shadow isn't in the right spot you've gone into full on Investigation territory. That's beyond perception, you're looking into the nitty gritty.

>>48621266
Sure, you can run away.

But the hostages get eaten because you fled. Or the ritual is completed. Or the band of goblin raiders has also fled, and you've no idea where they went.

The world isn't static and waiting for you to interact with it.

>>48621202
Retards who can't do it properly or have had DMs do it badly before think it's the devil.
Guess what? They're wrong.
If it's a character who doesn't step on anybody's toes and preferably isn't too flashy, it's fine.

What is the best Monk build?

>>48615026
how about having some wizards actually go and do "deals with the devil" type situation to gain more power to try and recreate the elves, something along the lines of what you said

>>48621428

Monk 20. Any path except Way of the Four Elements.

>>48621428
Tavern Brawler Barbarian.

>>48621370
Yes, but there are still many situations where you'll be fine.

If that door is the only exit, they can't just exit. There might be a secret exit, but they'd likely have already taken that exit.

A creature guarding its hoard isn't going to just abandon it. Or if it does, you win.

If they're casting a ritual that only needs 20 more seconds, then your DMs pulling some real generic action movie shit on you, unless the ritual only took a minute anyway and was in reaction to you coming along.

Sure, they could start propping up barricades or whatever, but..
It's still a much better option than dying.

Not every single moment of a campaign is going to be a time trial where you're racing against the clock to save the world. That just turns everybody into "Oh, the world's about to explode in fifty seconds if we don't do something? How lame. Last time it was twenty seconds, and we were even chained up. Let's have a tea break."

Though there are things going on in the world, the world isn't the feywilds or something. There are many, many static things in the world.

>>48621610
>wat

>>48621512
This with the added mention that it should probably be a wood elf.

>>48621677

Wood Elf is fine. Any race is probably fine though to be honest.

I like V. Human a lot so you can start with Mobile. That's pretty much the only 5/5 Monk feat.

>>48621696
I find I didn't really need mobile when I was able to start with 16 AC.

>>48621196
I'll have to agree and disagree. Healing have its place. Sure the wizzard dropping sleep/hypnotic pattern and disabling a whole group is useful as fuck but for a tank that is standing in a chokepoint and taking 6 attacks each round the occasional cure wounds/healing word is a godsend

>>48621355
you're retarded

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>>48621610
>honk

>>48621610
Unarmoured defence should really be dexterity and charisma. As much as I love the idea of not forcing dexterity, it's kind of way more suitable for a jesting paladin who might not be focused on strength and heavy armour.

It's not specific whether harming a creature after the channel divinity performance will cause it to become immune to radiated afteremotions.

Charm person at will:
>at will
>you can use this feature a number of times equal to your charisma modifier
That's a contradiction.
Presumably it uses an action, though? It also doesn't say it's cast 'as a first level spell', as is typically done in the rulebook for such things.

Hammerspace would be more amusing if you could also store things on other people.

Still, this is actually pretty neat.

>>48621710

You're still really squishy and it lets you save ki points and a bonus action to not use disengage with step of the wind. Plus extra move speed is what the Monk is all about, and it gets you through difficult terrain (situational, but nice when you need it).

>>48621610
Shouldn't Clown Paladins get Rope Trick at some point so they can make a Clown Carriage?

>>48620573
Do what you want, be evil if you want, don't listen to these other chuckle fucks.

If your character is dictated because someone else in the party wants to be the world's biggest goody two shoes, then they're fucking with your enjoyment of the game. For some reason, people think this is acceptable, while being evil is not.

Being insanely evil or good gets your party into unnecessary bullshit (think of the stupid paladin that drags the entire group into an obvious trap to go help someone instead of thinking things through, or the chaotic evil warlock who drags the entire party into shit because he wanted to murder hobo an entire tavern and didn't understand that there are consequences for being that evil)

Be evil if you want. It's a ton of fun, even in a mostly 'good' party. I built a character with a lot of useful skills and who had good contacts, so people just put up with my evil shit, like torturing people we captured who had information that they were unwilling to share. The really good characters stepped in a couple of times, but it never came down to a fight and sometimes I would lay off or they would when they realized that I was a necessary evil.

And them not simply trying to murder my character was a good decision on their part since my character ended up saving the entire party from getting wiped out in the final campaign.

Sometimes the evil character brings something to the table that the rest of the party needs. It's all about whether you're willing to be subtle in your plan and willing to contain your power levels or not. If you're going to be chaotic evil, you are going to get your party into trouble. They might choose to kill you in order to avoid running into this unnecessary trouble, or they may choose to not help you if you get hurt/just wait for you to die eventually.

And it all depends on who you're playing with. Do you play with a bunch of spoil sports who won't let you have any fun because they think fun belongs only to them?

>>48621202
I had a DM who did it well. We did not have a healer in Curse of Strahd. Ours got slaughtered at the beginning of the module and the guy decided to play a fighter instead.

So our DM made a cleric for us to give us healing spells. Our cleric is stoic and stays quiet for the most part, and goes along with what the party does without interjecting any sort of opinion into what we're doing, and the cleric is the same level as the rest of us. If a DM is going to play a character attached to the campaign, then it needs to be a character like that.

>>48622072
I don't know, that doesn't sound as good as, say...

Having a druid contact who helps you every day by giving you goodberries or something. Having extra characters in the fight sounds too messy and it's not like you exactly need a healer, it's just something kind of standard to have.

>>48614595
Only the first chapter's protagonist went insane after reading the play, and he already had a history of mental problems. The other protagonists are slutty artists or genuine victims of cosmic horror. That said, what makes the first one's story so interesting is that he genuinely believes the things he says and everyone just kinda' deals with it. It isn't until the end of the chapter that you know he's legitimately insane. Before that, you kinda' just take it for granted that the first suicide booth has just opened up and he's the soon-to-be King of America.

So, just come up with alternative explanations for things, either on the spot if you're comfortable with improvising, or with the DM.

The party's wizard is wanted by a foreign government and you've been contracted by them to keep tabs on his or her whereabouts. You have a ring that allows them to always know where you are. Occasionally, they track you down to get information about the wizard out of you, disguised as "quest givers." You know a double language with which you can use to pass information on to them without arousing suspicion.

During your travels, you've discovered that the party's paladin, unbeknownst to anyone else including themselves, is actually the last living descendant of King Arthur. You've taken it upon yourself to ensure their survival so that the world is not robbed of such a valorous bloodline. You think the king of who you have recently met in person knows. You could see it in his eyes. He may feel threatened and attempt to eradicate them. Comb through everything he says and does. He cannot be trusted. And let not your paladin wander too close to the performers in the city, for they are the king's personal assassins.

You sympathize with the party's rogue. He one day somehow stepped into a rift in time and found himself in a different millennium. Everyone he ever cared about is gone.

That's what a crazy person thinks, anyways.

>>48622072
>So our DM made a cleric for us to give us healing spells.
Fucking lame.

>>48622166
Trust me, we really needed the healer. Small 3 player group and we kept getting our shit pushed in and winning our fights by very narrow margins. Plus the healer could pitch in on the fight, which was also helpful considering our party size. Everyone else did way more work than the healer did in combat, but having an extra damage sponge that could also patch us up was extremely helpful.

Have you played Curse of Strahd?

>>48620688
1s and 20s are automatic failures and successes on things other than attack rolls as well.

Wild Magic surge is on EVERY spell of 1st level or higher, not a *chance* to happen; it's guaranteed.

Critical Fumbles.

>>48622259
>no healer
>eventually TPK in 3 sessions because no one could heal anything
>it's lame to have a healer provided by the DM when no one in the party wanted to be one
>someone should be forced to play a character they won't enjoy because healer

get over it faggot, I bet you don't let your party have any fun at all.

How do you feel about class options being niche and restricted to certain races (Battlerager, Bladesinger).

Personally, I love the idea. I think it opens up the road for more specific, but more creative new class options.

>>48621058
>the medicine shop has an infinite supply of potions of healing as the players do gold.
If your GM is doing this then they are bad, plain and simple

>>48622341
I like to think 5e is balanced, unlike other games where healers are mandatory which is a blatant sign of poor game design that everyone just deals with because the only people who like healers are ADD murderhobos who don't want to be punished for trying to solo everything, so they convince their beta friend or girlfriend to play a healer and follow them around all day.

A DM should know what the party can and can't handle. If one role is mandatory in your party setup, then your DM's a cunt.

>>48622341
Not him, but the reason it's retarded is because the DM controls the content you are facing. He can dial back threats or give more healing potions or whatever instead of making a dmpc. Furthermore the likelihood of you making a party with 0 healing is pretty hard. IIRC only the arcane casters and barbarians can't heal without using HD.

>>48622443
Yeah, my players don't have a dedicated healer and things are going fine for them.

>>48622400
i dislike them, because they're dependent on setting to make any sense. so while someones fluff for "dragonborn are more bestial and in touch with their roots, so i made an elemental barb archtype" MIGHT fit with your setting, that doesn't mean someones running a setting where dragonborn are stereotypical nobles would want to shoehorn a new tribe of them or something, if they liked it
also
>class options being restricted
so elf, and maybe dwarf. those are pretty much the only races people use for that

>>48622400
They will simply be ignored every time someone presents them. Witness all the non-elf bladesingers.

>>48622300
>DM not scaling down encounters
Lazy
>>48622341
>eventually TPK in 3 sessions because no one could heal anything
You would TPK with a healer as well because your DM wasn't scaling down encounters you dipshit. If he added a 4th character who wasn't a healer you'd fare just as well because of this thing called CR. Lern. Da. Game.

>>48622443
This.

Most of my games the paladin, bard, or ranger with the occasional health potion have sufficed just fine. Short Rests are a lot more important and if your really going to make a cleric npc for the party then you should instead consider the Healing Surge rule in the DMG.

Only half my players can make it this week, so I want to do something different for a one shot.

What's a credible short adventure for two level 20 characters?

>>48622529
>dragonborn are more bestial and in touch with their roots
Are they bestial? A dragon is an intelligent creature, so a Dragonborn's "bestial" roots would be intelligent agents of destruction. You'd be better off saying that Humans are bestial because they have dumbass shit-flinging monkey roots.

>>48621019
A reaction cantrip could work, but not for giving flat out resistance. Maybe a minor shield effect, or reducing damage by a couple points.

>>48622633
im saying thats a fake archtype, that someone made up, because thats how dragonborn work in their setting

the same way elves worship animals and jerk off on swords in the sword coast, and that lets them learn booming blade

>>48622549
>DM rolls crits like you wouldn't believe openly on the table for us all to see
>lol, better just dial this damage back so that the world is a safe place without any risk
>Roll an encounter with wolves with pack tactics
>You end up with 4 wolves, and 3 level 2 player characters
>Wolves are killable, but you're all looking pretty ragged afterwards
>And this is long before you get to where you were headed for another inevitable conflict

Pretty easy to see that you haven't played Curse of Strahd and have become accustomed to starting off at like CR 8+ instead of at 1 without any special snowflake bullshit to increase you killing power.

>>48619109
Play it as a racist elven druid getting sick of humans/orcs/dwarves tresspassing into " his " woods.

>>48621696
Except for learning to cast Hex 1/day and be a battlefield control beast at level 3.

https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/761264082016100352

Another ranger redo for next month's UA?

>>48622670
Everything in D&D is just something someone made up. There is a default setting.The material published by WOTC is for that setting. If you want to play in your own, wildly different, made up setting, that's fine, but you can't really expect WOTC to not publish something because it might contradict your homebrew. Your dragonborn can be whatever you want, but the default dragonborn are still whatever WOTC say they are. The FR dragonborn are whatever WOTC say they are. Eberron dragonborn are whatever WOTC say they are. Dark Sun dragonborn are whatever they say they are.
WOTC is going to produce content for it's settings. This means that sometimes content they produce will not be appropriate for your homebrew setting, but it's not really an unreasonable thing for them to do. Complaining about it is like complaining about owlbears being in the MM because your setting doesn't have owlbears.

How to fix DnD:

Martial/Skillmonkey/Caster balance
>you start each character with one skill proficiency, regardless of class or background
>spell slots at start drastically reduced for every class but warlock
>Warlock spell progression unaffected by these changes
>to gain more skill proficiencies, you have to take a feat, unless a class feature after level 1 would give you one
>to gain more spell slots, you have to take a feat
>spell slots gained are based on chosen class and number of feats taken. For example, a wizard might gain a level's worth of spell slots per feat taken.
>every class gets a free feat every 4 levels, and can take feats instead of attribute increases as per normal.

>>48622714
Yeah just ignore the part about scaling down encounters, retard. The original healer was slaughtered in the beginning of the game. What's your fucking argument?

>>48620880
Nothing you said follows the rules I laid out.

Thunderwave is an area effect, not a single target.

Why the fuck are your rogues being attacked during their turn? The only thing that comes close is traps and ambushes which are basically readied actions anyways, so I can just say a readied action can have a reaction against it.

Why he fuck do I have to write such detailed rules for your autism to catch all level 20 corner cases? And shield is only active until the start of your turn anyways, so it's never "always on" even when it is at will.

On the other hand, I like a well placed shove or lightning lure having tactical effect based on movement.

>>48623064
Shit rules are shit.

>>48623132
I know, I'm trying to fix them.

People lament feat taxes, but they fucking work when they're applied to the most powerful archetypes instead of the weakest.

>>48623173

The game is not NEARLY as unbalanced as you seem to think it is.

>>48620688
>>48622332
When you roll a 1, you roll on a fumble table, 1 to 100.
If you roll a 100, you move onto the 'supercritical fumble' table.
If you roll 100 on that, you roll onto the 'global fumble table'.
If you roll 100 on that, the planar multiverse begins to collapse in on itself at violent, irreversible speeds.

>>48623182
I'm currently running a group that refuses to play martials. They've tried before, and then the campaign ended because I found out they were all so bored they were conspiring to kill their characters.

The game is pretty shit balance wise, it's just some people refuse to see it, or admit that 4e did balance right.

>>48623225

>this bullshit story again

>>48623064
>warlocks can cast 2 level 5 spells every short rest without any feats
>wizard has to fork out his attribute increases just to even match that per long rest
>most people would have very limited skills unless they feel like hurting their combat efficiency
>why aren't you playing something like pathfinder instead if you want this

Honestly, the big thing about everyone getting a bunch of proficiencies is that skill proficiencies are usually mostly out of combat. People should be vaguely good at combat and vaguely good out of combat, to some degree. Unless they purposely fuck themselves up.

>>48619200
how do i fucking download this shit pls

>>48622964
Or they revised the playtest ranger redo to tenth level?

>>48623255
Not bullshit. Nice to know that other people have had my problem though. Maybe since multiple people are reporting this you could admit this game is shit balance.

>>48623260
The problem is you can't actually buff martials to be good outside of combat, because there's a retarded segment of the gaming population that enjoys their optionless wastes of paper.

>>48623296
I doubt that, since the ambuscade ranger got pretty badly shat on in the survey.

>>48623303

You used to post this same god damn story every day dude. Go shill for Dungeon World or something.

>>48623334
I
Don't
Know
Who
You're
Talking
About.

Not everyone who dislikes your game's balance is a shill. That's >>>/pol/ tier logic. right there m8.

>>48620603
this
>>48620573
don't fuck shit up and have a conversationw ith the whole group

>>48623325
And that would be cause for revision? Unless its a whole cloth revision of the Hunter and Beastmaster archetypes?

>>48620006
You CAN use reactions on your turn.

>>48618352
>DMPC

I feel like your problem wasn't the magic items, it was a shit DM. I ran a game with similar access to magic items and it worked out fine.

>>48622964
>Literally fixing something in the August UA that has bugged me about D&D for 30+ years
so... wizard heals?

>>48623303
Easy fix. Give martials extra skill profs. Hell give every martial expertise instead of regular prof and then let rouges expertise their expertise so they can be experts while theyre experts. It doesnt stop shit like charm but it boosts their out of combat pretty well.

>>48623702
The only problem with this is doubling expertise really fucks with the bounded accuracy system.

If you wanted something like super expertise, maybe rogues could have a version of lucky for their skill checks.

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>>48623667
I'm curious about this as well, what exactly did they "Fix" in the Aug UA?

So how do you go about "fixing" a campaign as a DM if you give your party TOO MANY or TOO POWERFUL of magic items early on?

I've got 5 Level 8 players, and they have

> Blackrazor-lite (still +3, still lifestealing)
> Manta Ray Cloak, Elven Cloak, Boots of Climbing, Gauntlets of Ogre Power (19)
> Bag of Holding, Bag of Devouring
> Rod of Spell Storing
> (ranger has a +1/+1 bow), both ranger and rogue have +2 arrows

I don't want to turn this into an arms race, and I've been rather stingy / getting creative in encounters to keep them on their heels, but in a slugfest they usually come out on top.

I kind of want to tone the power level back down a bit, instead of having to turn combat encounters into HP sponges.

>>48623835
"How to represent religious characters without just making a cleric."

>>48623835
The mystic theurge used to be complete shit and now the theurge is OP as fuck, I guess. Fixed WotC style.

>>48623796
I think the only real breaks in the system would be on stealth atheltics (for grapples) and maybe for perception. Otherwise you are just super good at investigating or finding food.

I think how it works now is fine but this dipshit>>48623303 thinks it doesnt.

My way seems better than a feat tax to buff martials. All >>48623303 seems to do is hard nerf casters, and half casters. Leave fighter/barbarian/some rouges alone and leave warlocks buffed by comparison, from being left alone

>>48623852
Ramp your encounters up a bit and make sure you are having 6-8 of them per day. And those 6-8 need to actually consume resources.

>>48623852
Have the players get trapped and the exit is through 5 tunnels large enough for only one of them to go through.

Have each one lead to a challenge meant for each player to try and get out of, including at least one encounter. That will give you time to come up with something interesting while keeping them from just walking through content.

>>48623909
You play in some weird games if skills are only used for investigation, stealth, grappling, and finding food.

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First time playing 5e, previously a path-baby. Joining my coworkers game as a Wild Magic Tiefling Sorcerer, party consists of a ranger, fighter and a warlock.

Starting at lvl 4, what are some general tips/things to avoid?

>>48623916
Duly noted. I kinda hate this approach, only because we've been starting to feel the effects of how combat kinda stagnates after awhile, and have been leaning towards more interaction based problems.

>>48623917
Will DEFINITELY keep that in mind. I like that scenario.


What are your thoughts on this situation: The ranger in the party kinda came to a realization a month ago that the ranger is kinda....less tooled / powerful than other classes, and so I've been giving him a lot of freebies to make up for it (increased CR on companion, arrows, bow, etc. He has the bulk of those items listed).

He's also a shit that likes to go off on his own more than any other player because he likes to feel like a badass.

I've been doing this thing where a gang of Kenku have been stalking the group because of a hit on the groups head from a former adversary (them being followed, feeling like they're watched, all the way up to someone leaving a bounty under their pillows and black feathers in their bags).

Next time the ranger goes off on his own, I plan on having him outnumbered and being embarrassed by the kenku as part of their mind games (binding, tarring, feathering, and leaving him naked in the woods).


Is that a bit much?

So... what's the best class for a hot-blooded shounen protagonist?

Not the "is an idiot, played for laughs" kind but the "I fight for justice!" kind.

Devotion Paladin could work. So could Sun Soul monk.

I intend to tone it down enough to be entertaining to the other players rather than annoying to them, and though the personality will be based on an anime archetype, I don't intend at all to go full animu mode either.

If you want more information, the character is level 4 and uses standard array, and has to be human or variant human.

>>48624080

Really, really depends on the anime. If they have to deal lots of damage Monk is right out since their damage scaling is pretty bad, Paladin could work (any Oath really). Fighter too, a lot of the time.

I could see a Rogue working too, for some animes. Any caster too.

I need some help guys. Today I'm taking over a Curse of Strahd campaign a friend of mine started. This will be our first meeting with me as DM.

I've caught myself up on everything and I'm super well prepared for everything except 1 thing: the party isn't very far in yet and they are just now leaving Barovia with Irena and Ismark entail, but have not had an encounter with Strahd yet. I want them to run into him somewhere on the road between Barovia and before they get to the Vistani camp, but I just can't think of a way to do it that really does Strahd justice.

Anyone have any ideas for a cool Strahd encounter I can setup for them to run into tonight?

>>48624136
I was thinking of a mix between Samurai Flamenco and Kamina from TTGL.

>>48624198

He's taking a piss in the lake. A perception check to see how big his weiner is reveals he has no reflection