/5eg/Fifth Edition General

>tfw you bothered to fill the survey for this one
Innistrad would be really nice (and would fit great as a 4-domain cluster in RL), but it probably just really requires a bestiary.

>DM thinks encumbrance is fun

>not wanting kamigawa most of all.

Full pleb right here.

Please learn math

Use the XP budget guidelines in the DMG, but make sure to remember they suppose no magic items, just average power.

Lots of low level enemies are a real danger, they can (and will) eventually wear of the PCs. Go to published modules for examples.

>wanting the most hipster deck

Also, several fights on the same day. Even if each fight isn't deadly, they'll cost the party's resources, and they'll start getting worried quickly. Especially at low levels.

Don't stick to stat blocks. Don't show your rolls. Aim for "too hard" and reduce difficulty if you roll too well / the party rolls too shit. Feel free to change the statistics of creatures that can't have been revealed yet. If you have five orcs with 60 HP and it's become apparent that this fight is going to be too difficult, and none of the orcs have been killed yet or reduced to 10, you can just treat them as all having 50 HP now and no one will ever know. This goes for saves that haven't been revealed or alternate attacks; say enemies with +4 AB with their melee weapons are doing too much damage, so you make them decide to take some ranged shots at +3 AB instead with weapons that are d2 weaker. That "holding back and playing dumb" is the ideal state. Your players will occasionally do something really crazy or lucky and surprise you.

There's too much fucking variance in a d20 to make a truly balanced fight. Don't sweat it and flub your rolls and "AI". Just don't flub your rolls in a way that hurts the players. That way lies darkness.

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/plane-shift-zendikar-2016-04-27

I have to say probably Illusory Reality for higher levels, but it's so high that it will almost never come up so in general... Portent. It's very satisfying, especially as a guy who grew up on 3.5, to be able to just say "No... This happens, bitch."

Plus on a personal note, it's nice to see the divinationist finally not be the shit tier school of magic.

God fucking dammit. Don't listen to this guy. You are playing a game. There are rules for this shit. Follow them. If it's too hard, follow the rules to make it easier in the future. If it's too easy follow the rules for making it harder in the future. Your players need to know that some shit can kill them, and if they don't know when/how to run away then they need to be taught or reminded. If you just goof around and make shit up you aren't playing the game, you are jerking off your players and assuring them that they are super kool.

Oh boy, the pro-fudging faggot is back. I guess now we'll have to endure 60 posts on why every DM cheats, and how we're all whiny bitches who've never actually DMed because we disagree.

Oh well, I didn't want to read this thread today, anyway.

I have to confess somethig. It's been on my mind. I kinda fudged some damage the other day. Not because the players were having a hard time, but because I realized that I put too much damage on a trap. That's not a REAL fudge right? Realizing that you broke the rules when creating the dungeon and changing it on the fly? More of a revision really.

The idea isn't to flub every roll for maximum balance or to bail the party out of dangerous situations they foolishly ran into or some shit luck. You skipped the whole slippery slope part of this argument and slid straight to the bottom.

Heavy improvisation is as much for your benefit as DM as it is for the players' enjoyment. You don't have to spend so much time on encounter balance if it's all malleable. And while you can spend just as little time worrying about that balance as someone who's going to change rolls, you get right back into the "too easy / too hard" shit, your players don't have fun, and they think you're shit at making encounters on top of it. Worrying about encounters is the stuff you want to be doing the least as a DM.

Forget the slipper slope part of the argument, the whole argument is stupid. You shouldn't *have* to fudge rolls. You should built encounters that your players can take on, some that they will roll over, and some that they will struggle with. It's up to the players to decide which is which. You should make have a contingency/dues ex machina if there is literally no way for them to escape, and it isn't their faults, but other than that you shouldn't intervene just to wank off your players.

>Don't worry guys, it's okay
>Look.
>See the bad guys are dead.
>You did it.
>Good job.
>Want me to jerk you off now?
>Okay, just hold still while I get this zipper...
>You are sooo kewl user
fap fap fap
>And your imaginary alter ego is so kewl too
fap fap fap
>See how he did there?
fap fap fap
>He did real good and I didn't patronize you at all.
fap fap...

And I'm gona stop now because just realized I'm basically writing literotica at this point... But yeah, don't baby your players by pulling punches so you don't hurt their feelings.

>You should built encounters that your players can take on, some that they will roll over, and some that they will struggle with.
Okay, you have fun spending an hour or two (or more) for your encounter balance and still having it blown the fuck up.

>don't hurt their feelings
>wank off your players
Which one of these very different things did I imply in my post?

And I forgot to address your second point. You are basically saying that DM'ing is hard and that it's easier if you don't follow the rules. That's true, but chess can be hard. Should we be allowed to just break the rules of chess because it would make the game easier to play?

If you are making the game easier on your players, by preventing them from needing to run, you might as well be telling them that they are awesome, special snowflakes, and don't need to run from anything. And as to taking hours to build encounters I'll refer you here.If you don't want to spend plenty of time out of game building encounters. Don't DM. You aren't ready for it.

>What's your favorite class feature in the game?

Cunning action.

In the spirit of gothic horror fun, I'm working on a draft of a new race. Tentative name is Curseborn, with Occult and Amalgamation varieties. The general concept is a dead or dying person who was somehow bound or reanimated, not quite back to life, but also not to servitude or undeath.
Occult are created by magic; things like voodoo, a mummy's curse, a fey prophecy left unfulfilled by the untimely death of its subject, or a deal carried out by some power. May or may not recall their past life, often bears some arcane mark such as tatooed leylines, a brand, or a crystal embedded in them. May also be stuck at any stage of decay between "funeral parlor", "Fallout ghoul", or "Skeleton with tendons". I am currently unsure if Warlock and Sorcerer or Wizard and Mystic are better archetypal classes.
Amalgamations are some flavor of Frankenstein's Monster, but not as strong or stupid as a flesh golem. Flesh golems are more crudely hewn and forced into obedience with necromancy as the mainstay of their form, but Amalgamations are put together with more careful surgery and at least a good understanding of the science behind it. Could be a misshapen blend of very different parts, carefully constructed and modified to match, or as simple as one or two creatures, perhaps with just a brain and a few missing pieces replaced. Thanks to miraculous crimes against nature, life is returned (or given fresh) to them.
I've nearly hammered out the lore, but I'm still puzzling over what stats to put to them. So far, I've got
>Curseborn
>ASI: Con +2 (?)
>(?)
>(Subrace) Occult
>ASI: Cha +1 (?)
>Resistance to Necrotic damage
>Cast Detect Evil and Good or Detect Magic once per short rest (?)
>(Subrace) Amalgamation
>ASI: Str +1
>Resistance to Lightning damage
>Muscle Memory: Once per long rest, add your proficiency bonus to a skill check you are not proficient in (?)
I'm still thinking of flavorful traits. Maybe a Crawling Claw thing for Amalagamations? Hit me with some ideas.

That's not what I said and your analogy blows.

>making the game easier by preventing them from needing to run
You're the one who came up with that and I already explicitly told you that's not the point. Do the thread a favor and don't even reply if you're just going to argue against your own points.

>If you don't want to spend plenty of time out of game building encounters, don't DM
Out of curiousity, how much time do you spend preparing for a weekly session, and how much of that is encounter balance?

Speaking of class features, this came up in game the other day:

Trickery Cleric in OotA. We're in a bunch of spider webs, with half the party about 100 feet down below. I create my duplicate 30 feet below myself. Is it effected by gravity? Can it call?

Can creatures attack the duplicate? Can the duplicate be destroyed? Half the table looked over the ability and we were all fairly stumped.

But unlike chess, one of the rules of D&D is that the DM makes the rules.

The Dungeon Master's Guide even says that you may want to fudge rolls sometimes. Chapter 8, the part about rolling behind a screen.

Fuck, meant *fall, not call. Damn I hate losing my ability to spell.

Is the War Domain any good? I'm trying to make a Lawful Neutral Cleric of Bane but I haven't played a Cleric in 5e yet.

The illusion is not affected by gravity and it does not fall. You can move it down (or up, or side to side) 30 feet each turn.

Just because you're making an illusion of a land-bound creature does not mean the illusion follows that rule. It can fly. It's just a massless image, and if you can cast it up a ledge or into a pit that isn't on your level, you can cast it straight up into the air.

What CR is 5 Vampire Spawn?

Just adapt some fey, fiends, celestials and aberrations. Mostly fey. Kami are Shinto daimons, like how fae are European daimons.

I'd like to see a Ravnica one.

1800 xp X 5 spawn X 2 encounter multiplier = 18000 xp total =
CR 17

The easiest way to do this is to allow for retreats and alternative victory conditions.

just had this problem tonight

>BBEG is a team of four celestials
>want to use Deva stat block but holy shit 40 combined challenge rating
>nerf them to about half power
>still prepared to perform in situ nerfs
>party steamrolls them

kill me

Wasn't Ravnica largely Sigil with numbers filed off?

CR is extremely useless then.

I just pulped that encounter with a level 5 tank fighter, a level 5 invocation wizard, a level 5 war cleric (Spirit Guardians MVP), a level 5 warlock, and a level 3 barbarian

It depends on what build you are trying for. The short answer: Yes, War Domain Clerics are good, great even since the base class is already good.

War Cleric is a great secondary melee combatant. They can mix it up reliably in melee for 1 or 2 combats per long rest depending on your wisdom score, and their channel divinity makes for some pretty heroic moments. But you're still a utility full-caster, and spells are still your primary bread and butter. Due to healing and buffs you can even off-tank well.

Polearm Master or (less reliably) GWM can help bridge the gap between you and your martial brethren damage-wise, though.

If you are looking for more of a martial > spellcraft type though, Vengeance Paladin of Bane is probably more up your alley.

Still, War Cleric is pretty baller. Gets even better if you have martials in the party to buff. Very War-leader type feel.

Pretty much. Eastern European flavoured as opposed to London, though.

Pros and Cons of a DEX Paladin please.

It's really hard to figure out proper CR for encounters not already in the books, I hope they'd do an UA about this to clarify shit.

I think the problem lies in action economy death spirals, which is exacerbated by bounded accuracy. The fight is decided by the first to go down.

Doesn't really matter if the enemy was supposed to be a joke if they crit and down one of the party members round one and they don't have Healing Word. And in the other direction, no boss squad is problematic if the party rolls hot and kills one of them immediately.

This is what Lair Actions are for.

Consider a Lair HP? Say you have 4 enemies of 100 hp each. They actually each have 50 hp, and the Lair has 200 hp. Damage to any of them goes to the Lair HP first, and once that's depleted, you start gouging into that 50 and can finally kill one of them.

This would of course require you to reexamine what a balanced encounter is, since the party can't target fire to get the upper hand

Play a STR Paladin like they were meant to be played.

God hates ballerinas.

Higher naked AC
You don't need to spend a feat on resilience
Rapier, dual wielding, Whip & Shield

Pros-
>Cheaper and more easily accessible light armor means you can have comparable or even superior AC in early levels.
>Better initiative, better use of ranged weaponry,and you can still use a rapier+shield.
>Unless your DM is an inflexible type, they'll allow the Archery fighting style and ranged smites. +Sharpshooter you can deal comparable damage to GWM. Mine does, but bumps the smite damage dice down by one step.
>Your offensive stat is also your defensive stat, so more points to allocate elsewhere.
>FAR more useful dex-based skills, and more to boot.
>You can climb on to larger monsters with your good Acrobatics score.
>You can still use heavy armor if you find a better set. Doesn't affect speed or initiative in most cases.

Cons-
>You will never be able to minmax damage since you can't make full use of GWM feat.
>Less AC than heavy armor at later levels.
>You suck at grappling and shoving.
>If your dm disallows ranged smites/Archery you are relegated to a significantly more utility-based role than traditional paladins.

End notes?
You're still a paladin. You are still bulky, have great support spells, and shit out damage. Go for it.

>You will never be able to minmax damage since you can't make full use of GWM feat.
Should I be going GWM?

I'm rolling a Str-Paladin now, but i'm liking eventually getting Shield Master and shoving. Plus i'm the only person in our party with a shield.

With Defensive Duelist I would have higher CA once per turn.

That's not how CR works, dinguses. CR is an NPC's "level." XP multiplication is used to determine encounter difficulty.

By all objective accounts it's a deadly encounter. However, vampire spawn have relatively little HP for their CR since they have resistance to non-magical BPS. If the melee guys had magical weapons, the encounter would be trivial, especially with Spirit Guardians cancelling out their regeneration.

The warlock has two EBs, the fighter has two attacks, the wizard has access to stuff like fireball and scorching ray, not to mention that vampire spawn are susceptible to lock-down illusions and such just as much as any other creature. And the barbarian can still tank their relatively weak hits, especially if they're a bearbarian. Vampire spawn also have a shit to-hit, so your tank fighter and barbarian are going to avoid a lot of the hits they could last through anyway.

CR isn't useless, you were just lucky and had a party well-suited to taking down that type of enemy.

Good initiative, AC is fine, damage is fine, better Dex save.

Athletics is super useful, sometimes you need to lift heavy things, damage could be better.

Dex paladin is fine.

Fighter was rocking a silver long sword, barbarian had a magic whip. Also, the encounter was nova'd because we came in off a long rest and knew we'd get one right after.

That said, RAW this was supposed to be a balanced encounter for a party of level 17's.

Which is ridiculous

Honestly? Unless you NEED to completely shrek fools, no. 9/10 times it is overkill. It's just "mathed out" as the optimal damage feat. Shield Master is the shit, go for it.

Yeah, and paladins don't use their reactions much from what I recall. Since Polearm Master isnt really an option for dex builds (that I remember) DD might be decent. Still not great, since it's only against 1 attack a round.

DD on a class with no reactions is like, the secret to going Dex. That or Battlemaster manoeuvers.

Shield Master and/or Tavern Brawler > GWM and/or Polearm Master
Why kill when you can cripple and humiliate?

>That's not how CR works, dinguses.

I got those numbers straight from the DMG. Chapter 2, Evaluating Encounter Difficulty. Total the monsters' XP, modify total XP for multiple monsters. Five vampire spawn are 1,800 each, and five enemies is a x2 multiplier, so the total difficulty is 18,000 xp.

For four level 5s and a level 3, a "medium" encounter is 2,150 xp. 18,000 xp for a group of 5 PCs means an xp threshold of 3,600 per party member. That means it should be a "medium" encounter for level 17 PCs, and "deadly" for level 11s.

Based on the challenge system as written, level 5 PCs shouldn't have stood a chance. And yet, here we are.

So yeah, I have to say that the system for calculating encounter difficulty is not so hot.

>Shield Master is the shit
That's what I was thinking.

Thanks user.

>The average of 4 1d6 rolls is 3.5
No it's not. It's 14.

Based on the challenge rating system as written, five vampire spawn pose a significant risk of wiping out a typical 5th level party. "Deadly" doesn't mean "OMG your shit's gon' get wrekt, son." Just like a "medium" encounter doesn't mean "poses a moderate risk of wiping out the party." The way I break it down when helping folks wrap their head around it is:

Easy: there's a reasonable chance the party will expend zero resources defeating this encounter. They'll spend no leveled spell slots, use no class abilities that require a short or long rest, and lost no hit points. Probably.

Medium: They're probably going to have to use some resources. They can't just plough through a literally unlimited number of these encounters without resting.

Hard: You might kill one of your players if the dice get lopsided and they're low on resources.

Deadly: The party is almost certainly going to expend some resources, and there's a reasonable chance one or more of them is getting knocked to zero HP before this is over.

That said, I strongly suspect in your case the dice rolls were abnormal, your characters were "overpowered" (maybe rolled stats or generous equipment by the DM), the vampire spawn's tactics were atrocious, some rules were misapplied, or a combination thereof. I write this not because I think the CR system is perfect (it isn't; it's just somewhere in the neighborhood of "good enough to help break in a new DM"), but because vampire spawn are potentially pretty rough.

Alternatively you could just describe them using the DMG's description for them.

And yet time and again we see fucksticks that cannot comprehend what's written in the DMG. Sometimes it's helpful to rephrase and re-emphasize things

Anons are waiting for the movie(s)

they're not going to read the books

You joke, but if there was a 5e equivalent of DragonStrike's "hyperReality" video I'd watch the fuck out of that.

Hey anyone got that image on how to do alignments in a group while being cooperative.

Not really, no. Sigil's whole thing is that it was a city in the middle of the Outer Planes, filled with portals that lead literally everywhere in the multiverse. Ravnica, on the other hand, is a relatively regular world that happens to be entirely covered by a giant city; by DnD terms, its a Prime Material Plane.

Ignore alignments, act according to your character's personality, flaws, and experiences, which you come up with while keeping in mind that D&D is a cooperative game.

I don't really care for alignments myself, but this is to help out some friends who are just getting into D&D. I'm trying to move them away from alignments. I've seen the image I'm requesting in other threads and think it might help prevent some fuckery.

whats the most broken class for level 2

Just picked this up, it's fucking great.

Any recommendations for books like this? Just straight, interesting, fluff content books?

the ravenloft gazetteers

Old World of Darkness splats tended to be 90% fluff, mostly a collection of stories focusing around a theme, like a specific auspice or werewolf tribe.

Thanks bro I didn't even notice that

So, confirmed highest DPS martial build is variant human cavalier fighter (1st level Dual Wielder feat) mounted dual wielding lances right?

Level
>mean damage with lances (mean damage with greatsowrd)

1
>13 (7)

5
>19.5 (14)

11
>26 (21)

20
>32.5 (28)

Damage means calculated assuming 10 strength and as many attacks as possible without expending rest-rechargeable class features.

Any questions?

Does the greatsword mean damage include GWM?

It doesn't include that (my stats knowledge is a bit too rusty to work it out at the moment and I didn't feel like looking it up). At first I figured it wouldn't make a difference because GWM would apply to the lance-wielder as well, but I just checked the feature and indeed the weapon in use must be held with two hands it seems. I'd like to see the mean un-modified damage for a GWM greatsword fighter if you could provide it.

>weapon in use must be held with two hands it seems
You're probably thinking of the GWF fighting style.

Know your enemy.

I just love getting a peek at how strong certain creatures are.

>This fucking triggered by fudging.

Oh, and I also did not take into account the benefit of the Two-Weapon Fighting fighting style for the lance-wielder.

Ah, you're correct, I was thinking GWF. I would think that GWF has a more significant impact on the output than GWM, no? We're getting into some statistical calculations I'm super rusty on if we start taking into account varying modifiers to the attack roll but I'd love to see someone pump out the appropriate numbers for a proper comparison.

In this case, there are a few things to take into consideration:
>Great Weapon Master Feat (which can apply to great-sword and dual-lances)
>Great-Weapon Fighting and Two-Weapon Fighting fighting styles respectively
>Any other applicable feats/features (I haven't ever played a fighter so I'm not familiar with the popular builds)

>Wasn't Ravnica largely Sigil that wasn't complete shit?
Fixed that for you, user.

>What's your favorite class feature in the game?
Pact of the chain

I love my little nigga

How often does the Kor Racial Lucky trigger?

Is it once per long rest or every single time?

The weapon does not have to be in both hands to use the first feature but the bonus damage feature requires the weapon to be heavy, which does require both hands. Lances are not heavy weapons and hence cannot get the bonus damage feature.

Oops, my bad. I'm making a bit of a fool of myself it seems. Regardless, I think it's still worth crunching out the numbers if someone has the resources to do so.

It's definitely something interesting to calculate out. I did it a long time ago but I don't remember all of the numbers anymore.

The main problem your gonna run into is the drastic changes in power a few levels can give. If you calculate at level 1 then usually TWF will win out, but as you get higher in levels the builds that use the sharpshooter and GWM feats will easily overcome dual wielding weapons of any type. On top of that S&B will also come close to breaking even with dual wielding at late levels as well, except for dual wielding lances.

S&B? Sword and Board?

>Can creatures attack the duplicate?
Creatures can attack anything they want, even an empty space if they think there's an invisible enemy hiding there.
>Can the duplicate be destroyed?
There is no mention of anything destroying it, so, no.

Every single time

Yes.

At late levels, S&B fighters can do 4D8+24 while dual wielders of the non lance variety deal 5D8+25. Not a huge difference, especially considering S&B don't need a feat to pull off their setup.

it's literally the halfling's feature, which of course triggers every time

So, a thought I had using a monk.

How would you get the most AC possible? Not just speaking as a monk, but in general? Preferably not a level 20 character.

>make an encounter with a bunch of animated swords and suits of armour
>giant slog that burns through tons of hp
>same XP on a pair of Spectators
>goes down after one turn before the 4th party member can even act with virtually no effect on the party
I sometimes wonder if the encounter XP modifiers undervalue the effects of high numbers of enemies. Lots of tanky enemies is certainly not the most fun way to do things.

variant human fighter

level 1
>plate armor (18)
>dual wielder feat (+1 for two weapons)
>spiked shield (+2)
>defense fighting style (+1)
22 AC (level 1)

If you're an eldritch knight, at level 3 you can take the spell Shield, which you can cast as a reaction twice daily for +5 AC until the start of your next turn.

>>dual wielder feat (+1 for two weapons)>spiked shield (+2)
Can't use both, mate.