/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General

Fucking off in the mountains somewhere until the end of the festival that celebrates him so he can devour all of his offerings.

Anybody here have any good Adventurer's League horror stories? I only have "we didn't have enough DMs so everybody had 8 players at their tables" which is not good storytime material.

I once had Ed Greenwood give me a very interesting tweet about that town. He said it would make a great site for a siege campaign, but he did so after it was confirmed destroyed in Phandelver. I wonder if Ed's home game is still pre-Spellplague. Wouldn't surprise me.

How do I make a Sith Lord in 5e? I'm thinking about grabbing the Sage (Wizard Apprentice) background and Hexblade patron so my character can have the fallen apprentice and eventually face his former master. At first level I'm going to grab Witchbolt (Force Lightning), Eldritch Blast (Force Pull/Push/Etc... via Invocations), Mage Hand for that telekinesis flavor, and Hex (Sith Mind Tricks). Eventually I'm probably going to go pact of blade or tome, bit I'd love any tips for a character like this.

Mad scientist style Sith would be tricky with 5e, but maybe you could pull it off with the new War Wizard? Oath of Conquest, perhaps, though it would take some trickery to do the elemental stuff. Maybe Magic Initiate into Sorceror?

hey buddy there's something stuck to your post

what the fuck is that it's gross

Depends on what kind you want. Something like Darth Maul might be an eldritch knight. Hexblade Bladelock would be typical as well but they are subserviant. Palpatine would prob be a sorcerer, maybe storm

So who is the best charisma caster? Paladins, Bards, Warlocks, or Sorcerers?

>How do I make a Sith Lord in 5e?

Warlocks.

For the raw casting power?
>Bard>>Sorcerer>Warlock>>>Paladin

For best class?
>Bard>Paladin>>>Sorcerer=Warlock

>What has your BBEG been up too?
Waiting for the party to activate the machine that builds warforged so he can control them to take over the kingdom.

Whenever the party shows up.

Whenever we can have a session again.

>he doesn't like starwars
Veeky Forums wont let me reupload your image

Waiting to be resurrected by his cult so he can take his country back

Not him, and starwars is gay.

I think the bigger issue is the fact you want to play a Sith Lord in D&D, when there's perfectly good starwars RPGS out there that are actually not hard to find a game for online, or get your irl group interested in trying.

Here's a rough draft on a new warlock patron, The Eye Tyrant. You get cool death rays and an antimagic cone ability as the capstone.

Let me know what you think. Is it too complicated? Too random? Too good or bad?

Probably lots of spelling and wording mistakes, I'd take feedback on how to word these abilities better. I tried to copy the beholder text.

>Implying warlock isn't the best cha class
Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrre

If you want to play a Sith, then you should play a starwars rpg, not 5e

>Waiting for the party to activate the machine that builds warforged so he can control them to take over the kingdom.
Calamity Ganon?

There's nothing wrong with wanting to import concepts across genres. If he had described a Sith without actually using the word, you wouldn't be jumping up his ass.

Mr. House?

Warlock's shit dude, like seriously. The only thing it does better then any other fullcaster is at-will damage, which is then beaten by any other non-fullcaster. The one thing I'd put in it's favor is at mid-high levels it's better then most archers.

It's not helped by the fact you're comparing it to Bard which is the best class in the game, and Paladin which is the best martial in the game.

No.

Kinda? Different personality and didn't actually create them, but same plan of attack.

someone post that retarded gish picture, me and a friend are talking about them and I wanna show him that.

I imagine a whole row of sad horses at the Horse Bar because their Pallies dismissed them in favor of a Greater Steed. It makes me sad.

>Not having your horse turn into mega-horse and gain wings when you cast greater steed

Has anyone tried running Dark Sun with 5e? How'd it go?

I guess you could fluff it to be that way, but I'm pretty sure you can't turn a Celestial Mastiff into a Pegasus.

No he turns into a Dire Wolf.

...My god.

Honestly I find it kinda odd they don't give Ranger's some kind of Find Steed, or at least something like Phantom Steed. Isn't overland travel meant to be a big thing for them? Besides what's more Ranger-y then rolling into town on your horse after killing horde of Orcs.

>Oath of the Good Boy

Do Rangers get Expeditious Retreat?

You should clearly look up the Mystic. They have everything you need for your jedi silliness.

No, they get Longstrider though which in my opinion is one of the most underrated level 1 spells in the game.

I know fighters do a shitload of damage, but do the have any survivability? I'm having a blast, but it seems like I need to get the "tough" feat or some shit to keep me relevant, and not have to lean on my cleric so much.

...

God damn it, now I want to play a Meilikki Paladin with a Celestial Mastiff/Celestial Dire Wolf mount.

>Chuck out long strider as artificer to make space for invis
>Suddenly need something to move faster than a snail's pace after being slowed
You never what you'll miss until it's gone.

Ditch your trip, faglord. This isn`t a thread about your writing, and even then it was cringy as fuck for you to pick a trip for a ghosttown of a shill thread.

Yeeeep, especially the fact it will last an hour with no concentration. I got it on my Arcana Cleric with Magic Initiate and it's such a great thing to use before a dungeon or something where I can expect multiple fights within the hour.

So, running my own ToA campaign online with 5 players. Tomorrow they're teleporting into Port Nyanzaru for the first time.

I really want them to take certain guides, but I know its really up to choice. Who do you think is top tier guides for RP purposes?

My rating?

1. Disguised Coatl
2. Weretiger Waifu
3. Tortle Goggles from Tortle Package
4. Yaun-ti Spy

Also, really looking forward to getting my crew to Kir Sabal and have the 17 year old Princess warlock princess girl totally glom onto one of the guys in the party and attempt to romance. She is a lonely young girl surrounded by bird people.

The Princess encounter can be super awkward if your party isn't mature enough to handle that kind of thing. Do you have any That Guys or their approximation in your group?

Sounds good, don't forget to get Otherworldly Leap, Improved Pact Weapon, Friends/Charm Person/Suggestion, if you make it that far grab Foresight and if you can convince your GM to get you a Sunblade/This homebrew weapon at some point you can get a lightsaber.

Nah. Actually only two guys in my group. The rest are girls, or at least playing females. Its totally online so rather looking forward to it.

Part of me wants to hunt down more players and run another campaign though. Part of me really wants to try a Gestalt Characters campaign too, and really throw them against dangerous monsters.

Don't post spoilers openly, nigger.

Who the fuck cares about maturity? Last session I had a whole goblin village compare the size of their dicks to see who would be the next chief.

Aaaah, Firefinger. The 'How do I kill my newly arrived party in Chult before level 3' encounter?

Seriously, that place is deadly.

Is College of Swords bard any good? Seems like the blade flourish are all weak af except defensive and that's a marginal bonus at best

Class lists;
Forest Gnome Mystic(Immortal)
Tiefling Sorcerer(Dragon)
Half-Elvem Bard(Lore)
Aasimar(Fallen) Paladin of the Erlking(Oath of the Green)
Human(Variant) Cleric of Eldath(Life)

Starting them all off at level 5 with a 40 point buy. Really looking forward to going full explorers through the jungle, and supplying them with some rather awesome battles and challenges.

Flavorwise, I'm not sure a beholder would be interested in sharing its powers.

Players will probably need to consult those tables pretty often to remember the effects, but that's already true of a lot of spells anyway so I guess it's not much of a problem.

The bonus cantrips are a cute touch. It might be more trouble than it's worth, especially if the warlock is better off using eldritch blast, but it would be fun if the cantrip was randomly one off the list whenever you cast it to better fit the theme.

>40
So you want them to breeze through everything until they hit Omu? I ask, because my current party is cakewalking shit with a 30 point buy.

so I don't mean to alarm you or anything, but you need to reconsider your life choices

That's stupid. You should let them get humbled by Taban the giga nigga.

Actually, they are really super strong. Defensive Flourish can deal a ton of extra damage, especially when they are rolling 1d12, and make your AC super high to boot. Slashing Flourish lets you really carve apart groups of people as you wade in. And Mobile Flourish is really powerful, able to reposition enemies away from your squishier allies so they get away from AoO range.

Basically, yeah. Though right now I am intending to give them some rather more dangerous encounters then described on the roll table. They're all still capped with a 15 on the point buy so none of them have stats over 18 right now in their prime stats(from the level 4 stat boost), and most of them took a feat at that level.

Going to be pretty fun, especially when I start throwing some crazy extra fights and let them really enjoy themselves as they slog through the jungle.

The Jungle and the time involved to move across it are the real challengers at the start anyway. In Omu, things will get crazy. I fully intend to have them meet Artus Cimber and Dragonbait before they arrive, and their first destination will probably be the Oracle.

Bah. Taban isn't as fun as getting out into the jungle and running into packs of hungry Deinonycus.

Hot shit. Best of luck. Are they vets, or are they new to 5e?

>Death cleric in DMG
>Dinosaurs alphabetized in MM but not undead

What the FUCK are they doing?

All pretty much vets, yeah. I'm not going to meatgrinder them. The whole idea of it is to tell the story and let them get to and see the end. I'm not going to Tomb of Horrors outright murder them.

ToA is the most fun when they actually reach the Tomb and you can start doing all the crazy shit involving it.

Taban is hilarious if you play him up to be a stereotypical nigger.

Does slashing flourish deal extra damage to just one extra enemy or any number you wish within 5 feet? Also can that damage crit?

Agreed. Some of the traps are straight out of old modules, and at least one is a Gygax-level fuck you save or permadie .

I've not reached it. Hope you have fun, though.

They know of your OCD and hate you.

Also Death Clerics are probably considered Evil and thus automatically a special thing. But there are some nice Death clerics like the one in Xanathar's.

Only to people with low int scores.

One other creature withing 5 feet, and yes, on crits, all dice are doubled so you'd have double the damage on the inspiration die to that other one. Its still a dice, and if they roll a 20, i'd be a crit.

You could load up on the stereotypical gish spells, like Booming Blade and... yannow... that other one.

The one I really love is the False Tomb that fills up with wine and Wine Weirds.

The fact that you can't use Water Breathing to negate the trap is really nasty. Its just the kind of trap that Acererak would make, and goes right in the spirit of the traps in Tomb of Horrors and Return to the Tomb of Horrors.

Right? The spirit of those old convention modules is that the Easy-Button spells will not save you.

>big buff black man just happens to be a deadbeat

Wizards themselves set up the joke. If you don't execute it you miss out big time.

I spend so much time trying to think of ways to be a better DM but I always feel like I produce complete shit and long story short I think it's a waste of time.

Am I a weirdo in this regard or can anyone relate?

Have you talked with your players and asked them what are things you could do to improve? I'm not really a DM myself (Only ran one quick module once), but I can definitely see player feedback helping.

1. Watch some of the online DnD games. Critical Role is probably the best and first choice. It should inspire how on how to be an amazing DM.
2. Learn. Learn learn learn. If they have a question, be the one to know the information they need and pull up the facts

When i ask my players they usually range from thinking it's fine to really liking specific things, but no matter what it all just seems ultimately really unsatisfying. I don't know why.

If SWAG cantrips are the only way to optimize then why not just go valor?

I actually do know the rules really well. The time I spend reading them and getting to know them and how the game is balanced vs the time I actually spend playing is really lopsided though and I think I've really stunted my creativity somehow.

>watch Critical Role

BARF

True enough, but there are plenty of spells you could get as a Blade that would be very effective without needing to worry about concentration. Valor Bards are a bit more tanky, also they can inspire other people to do more damage or gain AC. Blades are more about focusing on yourself.

Its a tough call, they are very very close in ideal, with Valor bards being the 'care for everyone' type of bard while Blades focus on 'doing it yourself'.

Just because something is popular doesn't mean its bad. There are alot of really shit DnD games out there online, and alot of really good ones.

The main reason to watch Critical Role for me would be to learn how to be a better DM. The players kinda suck sometimes but you can really learn how to weave a story together and how to properly make things and people feel important from certain series.

Used to be like that, got a lot better around my early thirties.

Trying to improve is natural and good, only spergs don't, and you don't want those types of people as players or DMs. I focus on three broad subjects all the time, with one method attached to each in sequence just to train myself.

>Complicate things
Method: Write down or take a prewritten very simple situation, for example a Goblin encounter at level 2, and try to make it as complicated in 30 minutes as possible. WIth a piece of paper, add ledges, flowing water, special rules for certain enemies down to individuals and whatever the fuck you can come up with. Anything goes.

>Make it simple
Now close the book / put away the original paper and make the clusterfuck as simple as possible in 30 minutes on a new sheet of paper. Reduce the encounter/situation down to its most important components based on your "complicated" writeup

>Birth a dancing star
Now take out all three notes and pick one aspect from each the complicated and the simplified version that have as much overlap as possible. Build that thing in, wether it was supposed to be there or not.

As an example: This way you can find some rather interesting hooks to build more tension into your situations, be they martial, social, exploratory or whatever else. It is always good to have a central element to a scene that is only or at least mostly connected to just that scene, be it a weirdly speaking Goblin shaman, a cat that appears on top of a stone nearby mid-court or even a flying metalic object that flies by just when the players are about to lose the upper hand.

Additionally, over time you get better and better at coming up with new creative things in the chaos part if you just keep doing it (including writing it down, brain cinema doesn't count for obvious reasons) as well as at restraining yourself from going buckwild in the make it simple part.

Over time you will get faster at this, after five years I now take around 5 minutes per scene to "pimp it".

Additional tip: Bring a small memento to your gaming table. It doesn't need to have any emotional attachment and it shouldn't play a role in the games being played. Keep it away from your roleplaying stuff at home so that you have to physically get it every time you get to play/dm.

Mercer isn't a good DM.

He is a terrible DM from an enforced mechanical perspective, yeah. But from a storytelling and character building one, he is amazing. But he does alot of shit that could be better.

He's been sailing around the ocean, recruiting vicious native races to his cause, and sending out his most competent underlings in search of cursed idols. He's got at least one so far.

Would it be OP to get a Pseudodragon through the Find Familiar ritual spell?

No, they're meant to be able to be gotten by the spell. Hell, Gazers are meant to be gotten by the spell and they're probably the most OP familiar besides an Owl.

I'll second this question. I'd love to run Dark Sun, but I don't know how to handle Psionics, and I'm leery of using homebrew/UA. Has anybody tried any of the homebrews, or made their own adaptations?

Gee I dunno, baws.

what do you mean "meant to"? The spell seems restrictive to just tiny animals. I know the spell was different in 3.5, right when they decided Warlocks needed to be extra extra special and moved them over.

Those are different entirely. Familiars gotten from the spell are summoned celestials, whereas the Variant Pseudodragon Familiar is specific to Pseudodragons that already exist and now want to make a contract with a spellcaster.

The one I get would not have that trait.

Gazers/Eyeballs have been Variant familiars since 3.5.

And here's the proof, straight from the shit-talker himself

sageadvice.eu/2015/08/10/do-chain-pact-warlocks-get-the-familiars-magic-resistance/

Is there a list in a book?

>I want the thing without using the rule to get the thing
Wat.

Why does 3.5 matter to this discussion at all?

I suppose the bonus to Sword over Valor is you can use your weapon as a focus whereas for Valor you need a free hand. Sword has a bit more DPS if you aren't abusing SWAG I guess.

As for Critical Role I mostly direct my players to try and watch it because they don't really roleplay much. No one does character voices but that isn't that bad, real issue is they spend 20 minutes brainstorming every tiny thing OoC

Cuz 3.5 had really cool and active familiars. They could actually fight and do shit in combat, whereas now they're sort of restricted to recon and the occasional cheese with touch spells.

But that's not the rule to get the thing at all. One is summoned by the spell from a different plane, the other is one that already exists that finds a master on its own free will.

I just realized that Totem Barb and Revised Beastmaster would make a pretty cool multiclass
>Co-ordinated attack and Extra attack don't overlap
>At 3rd level Totem you can speak to or see through your companion's eyes as a ritual
>If you take Wolf Totem your companion can get advantage on attacks even if it doesn't have pack tactics
Neato, I think I will make this character

5etools.com/items.html#ruby of the war mage_xge

hooray now that feature of warcaster is worth a damn