/5eg/ ~ 5th Edition General

It's an at-will conditional 'make this enemy useless' if I recall right. The main issue is that wizards probably shouldn't be in melee unless they're some bullshit 'I have 20 AC!' wizard, and even then.. They probably shouldn't be in melee. But I like the option.

It works well if the DM makes good battle maps. Sure, other editions work like that too, but 5e more than the others.

I feel like casters are for the most part very fun to play and fill their niches well. I do think that the system is currently extremely poor at allowing for martials with a variety of combat options that are equally viable, without DM fiat.

Barbarians, Fighters and Rogues will all be doing basically the same thing with little tactical consideration barring interesting terrain or unique monsters made by the DM. Paladins and Revised Rangers are considerably more flexible, but still ultimately are basically just taking the attack action most of the time. Even so, I think that Paladins, Rangers and Rogues are mostly OK.

I think that Warlock might actually make for a really good chassis for building an interesting martial. Agonising blast is almost the same as just getting four attacks, they can get a pool of martial maneuvers that regenerate per short rest in the same vein as warlock pact spells and the level 6-9 warlock spells can be super-powerful per-long rest powers.

How big do other DMs make their dungeons? I'm currently up to seven main rooms with three corridors, and a hidden corridor with room on the end of it.

It's pretty much linear apart from the hidden one, but it's designed as a trial for heroes rather than a practical location, so I don't think it matters too much.

>It's an at-will conditional 'make this enemy useless' if I recall right.
Yeah it's a wisdom save or the enemy can't do anything for either an hour, they take damage or until you release it.

It's a woefully underrated ability both in and out of combat and I honestly think Enchanter's one of the more powerful Wizards.

I've found Rogue to be the worst about this, because any improvised action that takes one of my attacks means giving up 100% of my damage, while for n other martial it's only like 50% or less. As an AT I'd basically never cast anything but bladespells in combat.

7 rooms, depending on how thoughtful your players are and if these are mostly fights or puzzles, will probably be about 2 sessions of 3-4 hours each, which is pretty much ideal and about how long I make my dungeons. Any longer than that, especially if you're only meeting once a week, will make your players fatigued of the dungeon unless you've set it up for several weeks in advance with cool background lore/character advancement.

3.5's combat was a slog. The only fond memories I have of 3.5 was the customization levels as well as the expanded list of skills. The combat is the main reason I'm DMing 5e. Fuck AOO on everything, split movement, martials being even more boring than 5e, etc.

4e's combat was great imo, but the game lacked in so many other areas that people didn't really give it enough of a chance. At will abilities and creatures having way more to do per turn (chalk that up to PC martials as well) made it more interactive. However, a lot of the wording was a bit muddy so the books came out a lot more.

5e's combat is really simple and that is both a good and bad thing. Some of the problem's from previous editions have been addressed at least slightly (Wizards vs. anybody, the flow and speed of combat) while not really stepping on OOC play. Problem is, its a bit too simple and a lot of stuff has to be sorta improvised on the DM's end. If you have creative players and DM's, though, it works

I've always figured that the best thing to do with rogue would be to make 'sneak attack' dice a pool that can be spent on different sneak attacks, like being able to spend some to knock an enemy prone, or take damage if they move, etcetera. So you can go full damage and enjoy 10d6, or you can spend 2d6 damage on knocking them prone, 3d6 damage to make them take 3d6 damage if they attempt to move, 2d6 damage that forces them to make a concentration save to cast a spell in the next turn, and just dealing the remaining extra 3d6 damage outright. Would be hard to balance, but I think could be really interesting.

Hi all. I've been trying to replicate an oWoD Garou for 5e. This is the best I could come up with.
Barbarian 3/Druid x.
Barbarian to get things like reckless attack, (constant advantage to attack and be attacked in turn) and more importantly, enrage and bear totem (To get damage immunity to nearly everything and rage bonuses)
The druid will be a moon druid, so they can still cast spells and stuff, but have the bonus of being able to turn into a huge beast then enrage and be stupid hard to kill with all that damage resistance.
To make it more killy, perhaps make the race an elf or half-elf to get elven precision, which will allow it to re-roll the re-rolls it gets on it's attacks.

How does this sound? Any good?

Do you think it'll take that long? Each room generally contains either a fight or a single, comparatively simple puzzle.

Examples:

Corridor 1 -
>full corridor of traps all made of steel
>just prior to the traps, there is a large lever. A DC12 Investigation check reveals that the lever itself is trapped, and if it's pulled, a shadowy shower of darts rains down on the lever-puller, 1d10 piercing (Dex Save 12 for half damage).
>Whether they make the rolls or not, they take no damage, and the traps themselves prove illusory

Room A -
>All but one PC see a large, unidentified beast in a cage, growling and snapping, surrounded by bones, dripping acid from its teeth.
>remaining PC sees a young woman, sobbing her eyes out, who'll spin a tale of how she was chasing after her lost son when she was trapped in here.
>In the corner of the room, there's a chest, but it's a Mimic if they attempt to open it.
>Alongside the cage are two levers, one labelled "Open", one labelled "Purge". Neither are trapped. The cage opens in two places - onto the room, and into the next, making this the only route through.
>The Open lever opens the cage's other door, while the Purge lever shines a dark light through her, reducing her to bones and then to ash. If the door is opened, she thanks the one who can see her, and passes through, shortly before the main door opens. If the Purge lever is pulled, she/the beast is killed with violent, miserable screams, and disappears.
>After a few moments, the main door to the cage opens. Ultimately, neither answer is wrong, as she's simply an illusion.

I was concerned the dungeon might actually prove too short with rooms like these - I've made five of them and had to write them all quite quickly because I didn't know I'd be running my campaign so soon. I like everything I've written, but it seemed like it might be quite brief if it's linear.

There're ways it can be countered and it puts you in a dangerous position, but wisdom saves are good to target, I think.
To be fair, it's better as a 'self-defence offense' type thing.

But yes, out of combat it really has some things going for it, too.

We've been stuck in the same dungeon for 3 sessions now, cleared maybe 4 rooms. Last session ended as we stumbled upon 15 identical enemies in a room with otherwise nothing else in it.
Wish my DM understood the very basics of adventuring.

What did the previous rooms have in them?

Just enemies.

Alright, if it's as straightforward as that (and especially if it's something that can be solved by a simple check, especially if you're the one putting it forward and not leaving it up to the players to make the check) then yeah, those might go pretty quickly.

I leave puzzles/traps/fights a little more open-ended, which eats up more time, but makes the players interact more. I like Room A quite a bit, I know my players would get stuck for 20 minutes just arguing either side of the problem, knowing what the levers do.

That being said, if they figure out everything's an illusion, the players might be... disillusioned with the dungeon, so try to keep it sold as reality until the twist at the end.

Consider these two resources for dungeon building, especially the first pdf, it's helped a TON
hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2011/02/on-tricks-empty-rooms-and-basic-trap.html
hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2012/06/on-set-design.html

Your DM would be better off running 4e, then. And even then, they're still a suboptimal DM, because it's not like 4e is there to do everything for the DM, it just makes cases of 'blank empty room' a little more tactical.

>friend of mine is doing a campaign online
>a couple of well known flakes have asked to join
>chances are only half the group will turn up

I like these guys when we do hangout but it bugs the shit out of me that they ask to come and never turn up, let them know weeks in advance

Just curious, /5eg/, as this question may very well depend on the kind of player you are AND the kind of DM you have.

Would you prefer an entire 4 hour session of just interesting roleplay, or an entire 4 hour session of just interesting combat?

Sorry man. Try voicing your grievances to your DM in private, making sure to let them know you're genuinely trying to make the game more fun. Sounds like they're a new DM, they might just need an experienced, guiding hand. Point them in the direction of the two links I posted there: Also, as said, 4e might have things to make combat more interesting for your DM; I've actually been porting some of the terrain hazards from 4e to 5e because it makes combat awesome. Like moving swarms of blood-sucking bugs that immediately attack anyone who gets 'bloodied' at half-health, which allows your players to act either more cautiously or more aggressively. It shakes things up.

Easily interesting roleplay, I play enough video games to have interesting combat, and at least in roleplay I can theoretically act whenever I come up with something interesting, whereas in combat you'll have to wait a minimum of half-a-minute, if everybody else is on their toes perfectly, and the DM is enforcing time limits on turns, neither of which happens often in my groups.

This was basically how playtest martials worked, from what I remember.

Depends on the buildup to the combat. 90% of the time, I'd much prefer to have a long period of roleplay. But if it's a fight against an enemy I've wanted to end for a long time, or one who's been really hyped up and established as something stunningly important to the setting's current situation or history, then fighting them will feel like a character moment in and of itself. So interesting combat with them is the best part of DnD imo.

TL;DR

Interesting combat with a strong build-up > Interesting RP with buildup > Interesting RP > Interesting combat.

Just interesting combat. You'd expect combat to have some roleplay elements as well, and also other dungeon crawler elements along the way.

If there was no middle ground whatsoever, neither. I'd really prefer maybe 25~50% combat, 25~40% dungeoning, 20~30% roleplay and 10~20% other.

>Combat
>Interesting

Pick one. Combat is the least interesting part of any good roleplay in my opinion, and really only exists to create stakes or tension in the rest of the plot. The actual mechanical act of doing combat itself is, and always has been (yes, even in 4e), boring as piss.

Please respond

>That being said, if they figure out everything's an illusion, the players might be... disillusioned with the dungeon, so try to keep it sold as reality until the twist at the end.

It's an illusion-based dungeon, but it's both the first room they come to, and some of the "illusions" are real, so I think they'll be wary (the knack is that anything in steel or flesh is an illusion while anything shadowy is real).

I'll have a look at the links, I appreciate it. I'm gonna try and add more rooms to the dungeons they don't go in before they get to them (they can enter any one at any given time, but there's a timelock before they can do another one - so I needed something in writing for each).

Would it be too complex/convoluted to make a half-caster martial that uses a system similar to this ( )?

Essentially the idea is that they have a gradually increasing pool of d6 dice they can spend when taking the attack action. They can spend the dice to do damage, or they can access a small pool of maneuvers with them. The dice size is quite small (d6), and they don't get as many as rogues (I'm thinking level/3 rounded up), but they refresh as they start each turn, and they can expend spell slots to increase their pool size for a turn. They won't get extra attack, so they depend on this pool entirely for at-will damage.

Basically the unholy child of paladin, rogue and battlemaster, but lacks the nova potential of paladin and battlemaster.

Not like he's a bad DM outside of that he just has no clue on the mathematical balancing aspects of the game I guess.
Dude just wants epic battles, which turn out to not be so epic.

in my opinion, all martials should be something similar to battlemaster in the sense of having a die pool of special abilities to use

Go for it.

Interesting roleplay, with the caveat that it IS interesting.

Interesting roleplay > Interesting combat > boring combat > boring roleplay

The number of times my DM has made us RP out travel by just chatting among ourselves until she decides we've arrived is ridiculous.

That sounds pretty neat, actually. I'm a sucker for at-will things.

This isn't even a mathematical problem. The problem is they don't put anything into the environment or into varying the enemies.

Kobolds in general tend to be the dragon-worshippers. They'd be ecstatic to work with dragons. Especially if there's some draconic blood in their tribe. Have the leaders be part-dragon, with wings and breath attacks and stuff. I'd definitely suggest them over lizardfolk, especially in a dungeon setting; lizardfolk tend to like open-air.

Keep in mind throughout the entire dungeon that 5th level adventurers are approaching town guard captains in power and expertise, they're actually pretty strong and can take a lot, especially if they have a decent composition.
Have the Kobolds be aware of this, and try to avoid a direct confrontation with the players. Use small tunnels behind the walls that would be hard to crawl through for human-sized beings.

In the boss fight, don't be afraid to down a player or two, get those death-saving throw rolls going. I'd genuinely suggest a CR 8-12 creature for the boss of the dungeon; it can only take one or two actions per turn whereas there will be probably 4 or more players, yes? And if it's too powerful and you think you might kill your players, don't feel bad knocking down its hit points a bit or lowering its damage, just do so secretly.
Maybe a Stone Golem, it'd be easy to justify having long-term in a dungeon.
astranauta.github.io/bestiary.html#Stone Golem
If your players are even somewhat smart, they'll be able to figure out ways to use their numbers to their advantage. Make them feel smart. Give them cover (+5 to AC), maybe environmental assets like vats of oil that they can slick onto the floor to make it hard for the big thing to move, and then they can light it on fire for extra damage. Pillars the golem knocks over that become difficult terrain.

As for monsters in dungeons, I'm a big fan of slimes and the like. Look up a PDF of 5th Edition Foes, in there you have the Blood Pudding and Slithering Tracker, both of which would fit in just fine in a dungeon like this, and each has interesting abilities.

That is, of course, your opinion.

Not sure why you aren't playing DW or some other fantasy game with simpler combat resolution, where 80% of class features aren't combat related like in 5e, though.

Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely try and follow!

Best advice I can give is trust your gut and be willing to improvise. Hopefully you're playing in-person so you can hear your player speculate; sometimes they'll think you're going in a direction you weren't, but if it's a good idea, take it and run with it. They'll be smug because they 'guessed correctly' and you'll be happy because you'll have a good idea.

Other good dungeon encounters are rooms with actual uses; they find the kitchen that the kobolds have been using to prepare food for the dragon- another chance for you to hint towards the fact it's a baby, a chance for the kobolds to get some characterization, a chance for the players to loot kitchenware or maybe get interesting foods and stuff. And that's just the kitchen.

As for other little monsters, I like non-traditional mimics. Treasure chests are awesome, but what about a mimic doorframe? It lets the players pass through into it, to a real treasure chest that they are certain has to be a mimic, or at least trapped, then boom, the door shuts behind them and grows teeth. They'll remember that one for sure.

One thing, though - one of the points is that dragon mom had a thing for collecting odd beasts, so one would be released from his cage as a boss. Stone Golem doesn't quite fit with the theme, any cool beasts you can recommend?

Gloom Crawler on page 122 of Fifth Edition Foes is a decent contender, though its 10 tentacle attacks might be a bit much; just make it so it can hit each character within reach once? Make it old, weak, or crippled to justify it. It probably hasn't been fed/treated well.

Alternatively, a Gohl on page 124, slightly less powerful. A mass of connected snakes sounds like a good way to scare your players properly.

As for other beasties the dragon mom might've had under lock and key that aren't the boss, consider a collection of spiders of all kinds that she kept around for venom collection, maybe a displacer beast?

So now that 5e's ability scores and numbers are bounded, what exactly do the scores represent? Is STR 20, for example, representative of Captain America's strength and is STR 30 Superman's?

Oh, I'd never have thought on doing any other rooms than the one required mechanically for the dungeon. Good catch!

Thanks a lot, just gave Foes a look, 1st ed must've been metal as fuck.

3.PF is too complicated

4e starts off decent, but after 10th level seriously slows down in terms of resolving a combat. Also doing anything outside of combat is not handled very well.

5e is the most elegant of the three.

5e literally handles out of combat like 4e.

Except worse.

user posted this yesterday, think I night try it. What do you guys think?

I'm a rebel: my dungeons are only two or three rooms of any real importance of detail. The rest of the dungeon I just describe in general terms to give players an idea of the kind of place they're in and don't even bother with any kind of map.

>4e starts off decent, but after 10th level seriously slows down in terms of resolving a combat. Also doing anything outside of combat is not handled very well.

As someone who has never played in a game that's made it past it's sixth session before the group collapsed, TPK'd, or got bored and started a new system, I have to say I'm pretty jealous that you've been able to find this out.

If you have a DC 15 strength task, someone with 20 strength will succeed 50% of the time and someone with 10 strength will succeed 25% of the time.

So basically it's the difference between the average joe and a football player. Not nearly a big enough difference to be representative of Captain America.

The cheerleader with 8 strength will also pass roughly 20% of the time.

How do I learn to make a poker face?

I was the one DMing, and frankly I did it by speeding up the rate of advancement by handing out increased XP over the norm. It kept the players engaged. I tried to keep each session balanced between 50% combat and 50% roleplay, but the closer the group got to level 20 the slower the combats got even though I wasn't doing anything spectacular and just using monsters straight out the Monster Manual. I was genuinely surprised because I thought 4e was supposed to fix all that, and it was precisely what I hated about 3.5

Think you need to add 5 to all those %'s

>Getting 10 or better on a 20 sided dice is a 1 in 2 chance. 50%.

50% is getting BETTER than 10. if 10 is included, it's 55%, since there are 11 numbers to succeed.

10-20 is 11 numbers
15-20 is 6 numbers

The dungeon, which does not exist save for in our minds, is precisely as big as I need it to be.

I had prepared 20 rooms. The wild-mage sorcerer opened a gate to the abyss, summoning a Balor. The party barely managed to close it, but after that most of the combat felt anti-climactic. At that point, I took 20 rooms down to 12, 6 of which they had already been through.

Do what is fun!

So the party I'm DMing managed to survive the fall from an airship (thank feather fall and shitty parachutes), but now find themselves in the middle of a lake with no land in sight.

What sort of shit could they encounter on the "seas"? Merfolk? Wandering ship?

Whirlpool to the plane of water. Merfolk rescue them and need their help! A cavern has formed on the border between the plane of water and the plane of earth, and they can't get in - but creepy crawlies are coming out.

They will send the party to safety if they kill the kraken! Or whatever monster you like.

Similar but not exactly the same. The key difference for 4e was that you had to artificially inflate the difficulty of skill checks to keep pace with a character's bonuses to them. In 5e you don't have to - A high level character stands a very good chance of completing a minor task but isn't guaranteed success.

A Dragon Turtle, which spends most of its time laughing at them.

It offers them a ride somewhere in exchange for valuables.

>The key difference for 4e was that you had to artificially inflate the difficulty of skill checks

You don't "have to". It just doesn't make sense for master thieves to hang around kobolds with poorly locked treasure chests when they could be robbing liches instead in 4e.

I'm not sure how the reverse is a point in favor of 5e.

Water dungeon. Everyone loves water dungeons.

>dragon turtle
>int 10

i guess you learn something new every day

Because there are still some things which should present at least a minor challenge to seasoned adventurers. Finding a guy hiding in a big city, for instance. Or climbing up a mountain.

You're putting words in my mouth by assuming I want the players to hang around low level kobolds their entire career. No, I want them to progress to that Liches horde. But players may eventually figure out they could go rob shitloads of kobold tribes and are guaranteed auto-success on everything from the way 4e skill system worked (unless you arbitrarily boosted the difficulty of all the checks) instead of taking the bigger risk of going after that Liche's castle.

At least in 5e there is the chance of fucking up even a simple lock which at least makes the risk less worth the reward.

>2d10 battleaxe
nigga what?

5e's combat is better simply because it allows for a breadth of options that are actually meaningful out of the box and combats don't take forever.

If you wanted static, boring as goddamn fuck, I only hit them with a full attack combat, go 3.5 and its successor PF, ToB and PoW notwithstanding. If you wanted deep tactical combat, go 4e but while its combat is fun it'll likely bore you out of your goddamn mind just with how fucking long it takes.

What 5e needs is a ToB equivalent but framed using 5e's assumptions and power level.

>A high level character stands a very good chance of completing a minor task but isn't guaranteed success.

Which is fucking bullshit and means that your game can't even handle adventures of Conan the Barbarian.

>It just doesn't make sense for master thieves to hang around kobolds with poorly locked treasure chests when they could be robbing liches instead in 4e.

This is bullshit too but for two different reasons - first if your game is still about relocation of fucking wealth by means of thievery, it is not high level, and your liches are just reskinned kobolds (again, even fucking Conan had quite swiftly graduated from stealing stuff to leading masses of people to take other people's stuff in quite organized manner); and second, the same applies if any sort of locks or mechanical traps are still a relevant method of keeping your stuff from being taken by other people.

>Which is fucking bullshit
>a game that uses a dice to decide outcomes can sometimes have failure

well colored me surprised

>This is bullshit too but for two different reasons - first if your game is still about relocation of fucking wealth by means of thievery, it is not high level, and your liches are just reskinned kobolds (again, even fucking Conan had quite swiftly graduated from stealing stuff to leading masses of people to take other people's stuff in quite organized manner); and second, the same applies if any sort of locks or mechanical traps are still a relevant method of keeping your stuff from being taken by other people.

4e does it like this:
1-10 local level (i.e. Kobolds). Thief can disarm traps and open locks.
11-20 country level (liches, scheming nobles/dragons/noble dragons, etc.) Thief can disarm traps and open locks that are magical in nature.
21-30 "world" level (demons, primordials, things that threaten the entire world) Thief (okay, to be fair only the very specialized ones) can disarm traps and open locks that are metaphysical in nature, i.e. he can pick your heart to steal your love for your wife.

In 4e, players are always in the center as actors, not as... facilitators? Point is, even if you become the king of some place, the game is based around the players themselves going out doing stuff, not sending armies/henchmen. Beyond that, they can have whatever goal they like.

I need ideas on stuff my players can spend all their accumulated gold coins on. Lifestyle expenses help but can only do so much compared to the massive influxes of wealth they'll eventually get from typical rolls on the random treasure charts.

I'm okay with letting them buy expensive magic items, but this can eventually get out of hand, so I got to cap it which means there will be coins left unspent.

I'm okay with characters training in additional skill proficiencies during downtimes - at a cost of course. As long as it's a skill they could've picked at character creation. Sound good?

I'm toying with the idea of allowing my players to outright buy one or two feats at great expense.

I like the idea of all the players pitching in to buy some kind of "headquarters" - are there any guidelines as to how expensive buying real estate and hiring staff would be? How about sailing ships and crew? What mechanical benefits should stuff like this provide in game?

I also need more ideas. Because over a typical campaign most adventuring parties can expect to get shitlloads of coin, if a DM is following the DMG guidelines for doling out the treasure. Which I am.

A couple of questions:
Should monsters have access to more than source for spellcasting? Say they can draw from both cleric and paladin spells.

Should paladins get proficiency to Con?

1: I wouldn't say that they 'should' get it, but if it fits the individual monster sure. Creatures don't follow the same standards as PCs.

2: No, definitely not. They already have a strong saving proficiency, and Aura of Protection means all their saves are good anyway.

>headquarters and real estate

Yes. The DMG has a section about maintaining and even building shops and strongholds and the maintenance includes showing the amount of skilled and unskilled hirelings. That part is between Page 126 and 128.

>Which is fucking bullshit and means that your game can't even handle adventures of Conan the Barbarian.

The adventures of Conan the Barbarian were bullshit.

>can disarm traps and open locks that are metaphysical in nature, i.e. he can pick your heart to steal your love for your wife.
Might as well ask, anyone know a good system for this kind of thing? Like taking high fantasy and attaching a rocket onto it into higher fantasy?

I was thinking of running a Feywild game and letting players do things that generally don't make physical sense, but if there's a system better suited for it I'm all ears.

Thanks!

Sorta figured for the first, and it's thematically appropriate.

Someone was sperging out because the paladin didn't get Con proficiency and said it was a design flaw. But he was someone coming from 3.5.

Yeah, feel free to ignore them or point them at the Resilient (CON) feat. Paladin is absolutely fine as is. A bit boring for my tastes, but I think still the best designed martial in 5e.

Well, exactly. It's the first 5e I've played so I didn't know if it was normal or not, but then he was just doing so much more damage than the rest of us.

She gave me daggers than do 4 necrotic damage with every hit, but then we're just fighting undead.

Most common undead do not resist Necrotic. Have her check that.
d10 is average 5.5 so if you're dual wielding you don't stay behind.

Cheers brah, all in all the classes in 5e seem pretty well designed...they're just lacking in something which I can't really put a finger on.

She's nuts anyway. It's far from my biggest gripe about her. She's off this week and next and I'm running in her absence, and all the players have said "how are we going to go back to her after this".

I think it's novelty. 5e is probably the least 'new' feeling version of the game ever, in that it focuses very much on trying to distil the archetypical DnD experience, which means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, into one set of rules.

Except for how dull martials can be, I think they managed that, but at the cost of not treading much new ground.

Why the absolute fuck is she the one DMing? No game is better than a bad game.

>had to artificially inflate the difficulty of skill checks to keep pace with a character's bonuses to them
Oh hey, another person who can't fucking understand the simple chart. Medium DC means that is the average difficulty challenge that the PC's face at that level. The same cliff face does not increase in DC, it means that they're not climbing the sheer cliff face but climbing the 90 degree stone tower and might not even have to roll to climb the cliff face anymore. If they are still adventuring around that cliff face then they're already naturally getting punished by going to places where their gains are less than what they could be getting elsewhere because they're somewhere too easy for them.

Hopefully we get to see them treading new ground in their UA hardcover. And if only they could break away from their bias of the wizard class and actually distribute their design talents into making less bland classes.

We didn't get a choice. It's a Meetup group where new players show up and are assigned to tables, and we all just ended up on her table.

After a few weeks people generally realise what she's like, and we've had dropouts, but the others in my group haven't, and I like those others and want to have them as my players (which is why I'm the one DMing temporarily, I had a campaign mostly written up already) so I've just been holding out for when hers finishes so I can pick them up. I've tested the waters and everyone's willing to swap to my table, but they don't want to upset her by running off mid-campaign.

In my ideal world, she just doesn't come back from holiday, or does and says she needs a break, then stops indefinitely.

Were you here for my Oil Baron stories?

What if you kept the current proficiency bonus for the casters but reintroduced the old 3.5 proficiency for the martial classes? But at half spread, so 20th level is getting a +10 proficiency.

>Except for how dull martials can be, I think they managed that, but at the cost of not treading much new ground.

You keep harping on this. I hope you realize there's a lot of players who appreciate how simple it is to play a martial for the same reasons you criticize it for. So with that in mind, martials as the way they are now are what some players actually hoped for. There are still other classes that cater to your apparent need for complexity and options, so not every class should be designed your personal tastes.

Oh, it's you. Was kinda missing you already. Man, just tell her it isn't the kind of campaign you guys were looking for and keep your own going, you don't need to slog through a shitfest just not to hurt someone else's feelings.

I don't think that having simple martials is a bad thing at all actually, and you're very mistaken if you think that every post in this thread about martials being too simple comes from me. My issue is that there aren't options for people who do want complex martials yet.

That's a very absolutist view. Simple martials can exist alongside complex ones, it's just that it'd be better to have more balanced number of options.

Just kick her out.

Like I said, it's not really down to me. I implied to one person I might keep going after she's back and they said they wouldn't join me if I pulled out mid-campaign, though they're fully on-board for moving over at the end.

I'm patient. She's been comparatively better as of late so there haven't been many stories, but this is the first time I've been able to get some DMing in, so I'm not eager to go back.

It's a Meetup group. I can't kick her out - the person who runs it would kick me out. I could mention my gripes to him, but at best I'd lose half the players to her with them not wanting to stir up shit, and at worst I'd completely poison the well. The guy who runs it is like real life Hardcore Lawful and I'm not sure he wouldn't be a pain about it.

Then talk to her about whether she can be less of a shit DM, but more diplomatically. Whether she can improve by focusing on less boring bits and generally trying to up her game so the rest of you can actually enjoy it rather than wanting to an hero.
Hardcore Lawful as in overbearing? Cos fuckers like that need their shit kicked in.