/5eg/ Fifth Edition General

Is it a diamond torch?

>saves
Upping your charisma would up not only your dex save, but ALL your saves.
>AC
Not if you wear medium armour. You will only get no stealth disadvantage but the same AC as wearing light armour with +5 AC as half-plate with +2 AC.
>shenanigans, swag, flavour
I'll give you that.
>accuracy
Yeah, you'll get to hit more. Most of your damage comes from crit divine smites, and you won't be making any more of them if you up your dexterity.
You will hit more often (And thus do more damage) and do more damage (And thus do more damage), but you might as well go for strength if that's your aim.

The only time I might accept 20 dex paladin being a good idea over charisma-with-some-dex paladin is if you really need that sneak bonus (Say, you're going around solo a lot or everyone insists on stealthing everywhere).

>Improved Divine Smite
>By 11th level, you are so suffused with righteous might that all your melee weapon strikes carry divine power with them. Whenever you hit a creature with a melee weapon, the creature takes an extra 1d8 radiant damage. If you also use your Divine Smite with an attack, you add this damage to the extra damage of your Divine Smite.
Am I too drunk to read this right? So, add 1d8 radiant on an attack. Then, if you use a smite, you add another 1d8 radiant on top of? That's just so fucking weirdly phrased

>REEEEEEEE IMPROVISED ACTIONS SUCK

>Glamour is about unearthly beauty that attracts people to you in exotic almost inhuman ways
But how would I explain the fey connection?

>But the mechanics sadly are not as good.
It's not like my group is highly optimized (Monk, Fighter and Ranger) so I don't think this will be a huge problem, but could you give suggestions for improvement?

Some days ago, there was a comment about speaking in some other language to create a giant mega word (like german can). This was used to abuse the Command spell (I think), as it still counted as "one word" but it was in fact mostly a full sentence.

A word was brought up to describe the type of language this was, and, IIRC, that "common" was not that language? It was something like "diclunitive" or similar. What word was that? I need to know, please.

Prestige classes when

Runepriest?

1d4+Str bludgeoning, 1 point of fire damage.

They've come and gone, didn't stick, never coming back

>Have you tried 4th edition?, edition

Played it a couple of times, really disliked it for most of the reasons most people did.

Replace instances of "Fae" with "Ancient Mayan Snekvoodoo."

Its just there to cap out the extra damage at 5d8

There are two interpretations right now.

You add 1d8 to any attack. If you smite, the damage is instead added to your smite, which brings you closer to the damage cap on smites.

Alternatively, it gets added to the smite, but didn't contribute to the cap.

The only difference is the max damage you can do while smiting.

You always add that improved smite 1d8, and then if you smite you indeed add that damage on top of it.

So for a first level smite (which is 2d8), you add 1d8+2d8.

Here's hoping for another attempt

Never. The UA that tried to reintroduce them was critically panned.

>Have you tried 4th edition?, edition

everyone I know who has played it, HATED IT

Yeah but who understands german in DnD

Played it the entire time it was on shelves. Loved it. Never understood why people couldn't play it like any other D&D. Campaigns were exactly the same.

Who wrote SCAG (and in particular the section on the arcana domain)?

>Replace instances of "Fae" with "Ancient Mayan Snekvoodoo."
I might try that, but my DM is really strict with subclasses' flavor

A gay man.

De-obfuscation of mechanics frighten and confuse people.

I'm not sure about this one, but I'm kinda bummed that this feature is useless on so many monsters.
>Venomous blade deals normal damage if target has resistance, deals ½ damage if target has inmunity

Everyone has suggested this
>Venomous words takes only 1 minute

This may be slightly OP? It's really situational anyway
>Mantle of Whispers works on targets that are alive, and you have studied or talked with for a short time.

What's wrong with 4e? Legitimately curious.

why exactly? genuinely curious. i liked them in 3.5 but idk if we need them in 5e.

one argument i guess would be to get higher level abilities from other classes without having to invest in the lower levels. not necessarily the exact same abilities, but something similar for example if you wanted (say) hide in plain sight but didnt want to go 10 levels into ranger.

Caster players didn't appreciate losing superiority. 5e bright it back, but hid it.

>Venomous blade deals normal damage if target has resistance, deals ½ damage if target has inmunity
This I can convince my DM easily

>Venomous words takes only 1 minute
This not so much

Also, I think mantle is alright the way it is

The actual problem? Feat taxes, mainly. Lots of almost mandatory feats.

The fake problem? It used a different literary style and visual motif.

Basically when it was released it was kind of a mess. Monster math was way off, and skill challenges as presented were a confusing mess rather than the highly useful dm tool they actually are.

Add in the fact that it eliminated some sacred cows, and it built up a bad enough reputation in the first few months to completely taint the market.

It's actually pretty good after the revisions.

Oh god, remember when people were bitching for days about gnomes not being in the first PHB? Gnomes? Really?

Common complaints (or at least mine):

>Combat was tactical but could take fucking ages to resolve

>Due to the standard at-will, encounter, daily power set, every class felt very similar to every other one. This class does the same damage as that class, but it moves enemies instead of allies and targets a different save!

>Casters felt bland. Because everyone was designed the same casters lost a lot of their uniqueness and fun. Feather fall, for example, was a 1/day power. Now that's what I call exciting.

>Magic items were also boring. Almost all of them were x/day effects.

>Kept 3.5s fascination with endless feats, except these were even less interesting. Basically countless variants of 'you get +1 to [roll] if condition Y is met'.

>While the combat system was good for tactical play, felt like a lot of the social side of the game was sacrificed since most powers were made for combat.

But maybe that all changed, I played relatively early in its lifecycle, and a little bit around when the PHB 2 came out.

People fucking love gnome wizards for some reason.

It was a huge departure from previous editions mechanically, and its core content also had a pretty odd set of choices (like not including bards or gnomes, but including warlocks, dragonborn, and tieflings).

It also did a number on the flavor of a lot of beloved settings, including FR, Dark Sun, and Eberron (especially FR).

Alright fa/tg/uys, how do we fix Mystic Theurge?

Ancient Alluring Jungle Spirits and Ancient Alluring Forest Spirits are pretty much the same thing.

We must be playing with the revisions then, because our group is having a great time. We're even roleplaying with 4e, which is goddamn unexpected I know.

I didn't know people could be this genuinely autistic.

Eberron and Dark Sun were basically unchanged. FR was the only hit.

Remove the Sorcerer

Make Eldritch Theurge a Cleric archetype that gets Metamagic

Power creep (You can end up rolling up to +50 modifiers) and most abilities are purely designed for combat without much thought for non-combat interactions. Also, while stats were run better (overall fairer, multiple stats could increase a defence) there still wasn't a significant reason to up more than two or maybe three stats ever, I think. No real thought in that, and your characters don't really feel like they're super con-powered or str-powered.

Honestly, that's about it with my beef with 4e. Lots of other cool things about it.

Yeah, it's great. As a 5e dm, I take regular inspiration from the 4e dmgs, which are way more helpful than the 5e one. I really like skill challenges.

Look, it gets said every time it comes up, but I'm going to say it again. The At-will, Encounter, and Daily set up that all classes share had very little to do with how the classes played. It was the class features that you got at level one that drastically changed how you played from one class to another.

>there still wasn't a significant reason to up more than two or maybe three stats ever, I think.
Now, in fairness, that's still true.

Yes. It's always been rather like that.

It'd be nicer in a system where each stat will benefit you in a way that's relevant and requires a little more thought but maybe not too much (This stat gives you +Crit, this stat gives you +attack speed, this a stat gives you +damage.. Except adapted for DnD, and more interesting, such as 'this will give you more powerful spells but since you didn't up the other stat you have less spell slots and also because you didn't up this other stat the spells are very inaccurate')... But that dream is still a long way off.

Yeah, making every class MAD is not the way to go.

Sure but the general structure of the powers meant that most classes still felt like archetypes to each other, rather than totally different playstyles at least to me. Still, I think the at-will maneuver stuff for martials would be something I'd enjoy getting in 5E. That much I did like.

>Due to the standard at-will, encounter, daily power set, every class felt very similar to every other one. This class does the same damage as that class, but it moves enemies instead of allies and targets a different save!

Not at all. A friend is playing a class that has no at-wills, my at-wills and encounter powers are relatively shit compared to my other team members.
My other friends are playing classes that play completely different to each other.
We deliberately wanted to fulfil nearly all the party roles.

I suppose that's your own experience, but I can't say it's an accurate representation of the game's mechanics.

Still, I would also like martials to have more round-to-round tricks that aren't dependent on a short rest.

I wouldn't say that.

Multiple Ability Dependent just means that their abilities depend on multiple abilities.

If it was Multiple Ability Reliant (Monks are definitely this) and they NEED every stat, that's only a problem.

Instead, the idea is that simply each stat improves a different aspect of the class and creates a new way to play the class.

In a way, 5e subtley made an attempt at this with every stat having a save throw.

Up strength? You've just upped your save throw. You're now harder to push around. This is a combat benefit. You've gained athletics, which is both a combat and out of combat benefit. However, that's all you get really right now.

And, as you know, int saves are practically useless.

The idea is that you can play just fine with upping only one stat, but that would be a gimmick build.
You can distruibute evenly and play normally, whereas right now that's a dumb thing to do.
You could mix and match a lot, much like you can on some games.

However, it's quite hard to balance that and often people might insist on 'optimal builds', so you'd have to be careful to make it relative/subjective (This build is best if you're in a dynamic environment! This is best if your team lacks defence! This is best if you're fighting high AC targets!') rather than objective what the best build is.

So let's say I fucked up and gave my party / allowed then to buy many magic items, particularly a few that increase AC (ring of protection, bracers of defense). How do I fix this shit now?

Imo every class needs a few unique at will type features. Or short refresh features like the new druid with a teleport that refreshes every 1d4 rounds.

So, what's wrong with 5e?

Well, you could say "guys I messed up and those items make it hard for me to create encounters that don't feel lame" OR
Have monsters use abilities that trigger saves to avoid them. IE, don't target AC as much.

Rust monster

It's too simple for its own good.

Did you actually play? Or is just based off a vacuum analysis?

A bit too simple, which can get stale after a while.

Also, all the classes are really low powered, and feel like playing asthmatics, with how often you need to rest.

Getting into the game easier isn't a bad thing. Especially when all the classes more or less play on equal footing and there's no plethora of trap options.

the DMG yells weird angry sexual things at me when I'm alone with it.

Extra deadly encounters that loot the players instead of outright kill them.

If they have a lot of magical shit, even more reason for xorns and such to come after them.

Don't do it in one encounter, but put in a lot of extra deadly encounters that could potentially result in loss of items. They might be sad, but eh. Magic items are too often seen as direct upgrades that can never be lost and should never be removed ever.

I completely agree, that ease of access is an important goal.

I think the best RPG would be simple to learn, hard to master. 5e is the first, not the second.

It puts an impetus on the players and DM to use basic reasoning skills instead of spelling everything out for them in precisely worded rulings. That results in a lot of autists sperging out over how different features interact because some use precises language and others use more day-to-day wordings. It's how you end up with shit like Bardic Horsecasting or Netfighting.

That and a very slow content release schedule, even just for published adventures.

>I suppose that's your own experience, but I can't say it's an accurate representation of the game's mechanics.

Probably not as I said, I didn't have a ton of experience with it as I didn't like it. Tried a fighter, holy avenger, and rogue and didn't love any of them that much and the rest of what I saw wasn't exactly enticing me to grind through and find what I liked.

I actually played. I didn't do a campaign that went from 1-30 or anything like that but I probably played around 2 dozen sessions throughout its life. A handful at the start, and another handful when the PHB 2 came out.

>simple to learn, hard to master

have you heard of our lord and savior GURPS?
I'm kidding Probably

I should elaborate: In an effort to keep things simple, some things were lumped together that shouldn't have been.

Superiority Dice and Ki, for example, should not recharge at the same rate as Warlock Spells. However, because we only have short or long rests, these quick-use simple features have to have the same delay as a higher level spell.

See You do need to go into 5e with a different mindset compared to the previous editions. It's a lot more grounded. Hopefully they can produce an epic supplement for high end play.

Which RPGs do fulfil both criteria?

Eh, I feel like having mastery can be a detriment, but it is good to have more stuff available. I do like that they haven't been going crazy with splatbooks, but I could see how it's been too slow for some people.

Light domain cleric or life domain wizard?

>simple to learn, hard to master
The concept of "mastery" having any difficulty (or having any significant gains) really shouldn't be the focus of an RPG. That's how you get ivory tower design.

And in the end, all of the best combinations would end up in an online database somewhere, anyway. RPGs are games of chance and system mastery involves increasing your chances of success--the methods for doing that are easily quantified.

Nature cleric. You're welcome

I agree that 5e can do with a lot more options, be it archetypes or monsters or settings.
However, the long schedule and now release of playtest materials allows them to tighten the mechanical design of the system. The limited number of designers is unknown as a good or bad idea. Good in there's no needless waffling but bad because they could do with different ideas.

The system should absolutely not cater to system mastery. They rightly threw that out when they moved away from the earlier editions. System mastery is the bad way of designing things.

This.

To be fair, I think the reason some people complain about 5e is there's way too few options at the moment (and a lot of those are rather mediocre). Variety is interesting.

Why nature?

>Have monsters use abilities that trigger saves to avoid them
I'm planning on doing that BUT the most recent addition to the party is a paladin with 18 Charisma (everyone's level 8)

I just don't know how to do that believably without it showing that I'm especifically targetting their items.
>So this enemy will now go to the unconscious wizard and loot him instead of attacking the other people who are still a threat

Builds are only part of the equation. What I'm more interested in are complex decision trees in the moment to moment play of the game.

To put it into the context of a 5e discussion, it is very rare to have more than one way to use your reaction. In fact, I'd go so far as to say magical backline classes should almost always save it for counterspell, if available, and if they don't have counterspell, they don't really have a use for it. Hellish rebuke, maybe?

Non magical classes mostly use reactions for opportunity attacks. So there isn't really a choice again.

But a melee Gish complicates things for the player. Because they have two very good options, counterspelling and opportunity attacking. So the thought process of the Gish player is more complicated, and the Gish is more engaged.

I want more of that, for nearly all types of classes, in my RPGs. I'll grant that there should be classes which don't take much strategic thinking. But they shouldn't be the default design.

So when I say there should be more mastery elements to a game, it is referring to complicated decision trees in actual play mostly, and only a little towards build optimization.

objectively strongest domain

Fuck rolling to bookeep a number of rounds tho

Wizard too stronk compared to sorc
Wot4E a bit weak
Champion a bit weak
Barb berserker's core feature a bit too punitive
Bladelock too weak

I'd like to see more backgrounds, just for inspiration

Why?

Maybe just a set round bookkeeping? Or a feature that refreshes organically, like the wild magic tides of chaos? That dm player interaction has always been fun for me.

you get to be captain planet

Looting the character and then running is a much better idea than trying to fight all the other characetrs when that would gaurantee death.

I was thinking more like creatures that don't necessarily want to kill everyone in the party, but rather just want their stuff, and would actually feel kind of bad for killing them or have no reason to actually kill them.

Or, the entire party has to be ressurected by something and loses items in the process.

A xorn or rust monster or something like that can damage items if players don't play tactically.

Some monsters can temporarily deactivate magical items. Beholders do that. Normally it'll just reactivate again afterwards, but a particularly strong spell might set the party on a quest to reactivate their items.

This is going to be impossible though.

>you get to be captain planet
You can do that as a druid tho

Why do you think that?

But druids are homosexual captain planet.

everything is homosexual this edition tho

Not nature clerics, tho

>Not nature clerics, tho
You are right, they are furries

Too many levels feel pointless, empty, and without any choice for what you get. It's sort of like leveling up a pokemon with how many feel "empty", which is fine in a system where you get 100 levels but sucks in one where you have 20 and likely don't make it past 11. 4/5 level ups are going to give you a proficiency or additional choice of a class feature where you already took the 2 most useful ones, and now you're picking one you probably won't even use. The few useful ones feel like abilities they should have at level 3, but were held off to give you something to work towards.

This isn't remedied by additional class options, such as the unearthed arcana ones, because those features are gained so few and far between, and half of them (like in the case of fighter UA) are constrained to be a skill proficiency or something because that's how weak the PHB class options are. So you're restricted into making boring options by the way the original system was designed.

This is mainly a problem with martials, because casters get a whole plethora of new options every 2 levels. Their odd levels can be devoid of anything else and it still works fine, though a -little- boring if they don't get access to new spells via their class options. I think the cleric/druid/warlock are the best designed casters, wizards/sorcerers/bards could use a little love, and martial types need their boring levels revamped into stuff that better defines and empowers their characters

Note that I love this system, I just think it works a lot better if you throw the current balance out the window.