Official /5eg/ Mega Trove, contains all official 5e stuff:

>Dwarven necromancer
The ancestors disapprove. Repent now.

youtube.com/watch?v=bgSurkfqXuI

By only operating behind the scenes and making everyone think they are the one coming up with ideas.

First the banker buys up a large plot of land. Then after the PCs expose him and his holdings are left without a ruler the dragon claims his banks as part of his dominion and begins funding an army to take over more land. Then the orcs rise up against him and create standing front line for a war effort causing an escalation of conflict.

Then the yugoloths step in and reveal they are the ones who hold all the capital in the dwarves banks and the dragon lord is suddenly at their mercy unless he wants to be unable to fund his war effort. And of course, they have also been supporting the orcs all along as well... And so the whole land falls to the dominion of the shadow broker who holds the chains of all.

>How would said necromancer stay entirely within the PC rules and still end up taking over a respectable portion of the world without dying?
Why bother making an NPC with PC rules?

Okay, so I've just gotten back from a session where things may have gotten a little out of hand towards the end
So I play as an assassin rogue, and he's just been hired by the party cleric to kill the party's warlock, who just effectively committed genocide
So for now, me and the cleric's player are having our characters go off and do their own thing for a bit (my character left for another reason) and come up with an effective strategy
Only the assassin has personal reservations about this, he's turned his back on the whole killer for hire thing and is trying to start afresh, and worries this might make him slip back into his old ways
Assassin is chaotic neutral, cleric is neutral good and the warlock is chaotic evil
And yeah, the warlock player is completely That Guy, and can be a nightmare to play with sometimes, but I'm really good friends with him irl
I've given the DM the basics of the idea since we were a little rushed to get home after the session finished and I'm gonna talk to him more about it tomorrow, but what do you think I should do?
Do I go through with it and backstab another PC? Or do I less literally backstab a PC and refuse?

...

Kill the PC and kick the guy out of the group. Why the fuck did the dm let someone play an evil character in the first place?

If you are just looking for cheesy necromancer abilities you cab do things like have a shadow for a minion and get it into the shadow of a PC as a constant spy or even drain a little health every night while they sleep. Or do the same thing to various lords.

Skeleton army is pretty potent. With a vast bankroll she could disguise all of them in full plate armor and masquerade as a foreign lord.

If she has yugoloths, orcs, and a dragon at her disposal that could make her a military super power all on her own.

And then there are spells. At 13th level she only has access to 7th level spells but just a glance at them will show you what horrifying things she could accomplish.

>join a campaign on Roll20
>party seems ok, no "half dragon half drow demon prince assassin ranger" players
>there is fucking 0 communication from the DM

we're supposed to play for the first time tomorrow and the I haven't heard from the GM since he accepted me into the group.

How hard is it to find a good game on Roll20?

Why be a conventional villain at all?

You're a dwarf, you know about banking and economies, you're in with some yugoloths who also apparently know their finances, and you are capable of creating an army of tireless servants. You don't need to take over or terrorize anyone to get what you want.

Start out by buying large stakes in various industries and replacing remote, unskilled labor with skeletons. They can work 24/7, don't need breaks, don't need food, don't need pay, are resistant to injury, completely expendable, and don't give a shit about working conditions. Start putting all the hard-working commoners out of a job while gaining massive amounts of money. Invest in more industries, expand your businesses, and if the masses start to get uppity, buy their good favor with a portion of your profits.

Eventually you're replacing entire labor markets and upending the existing economic order. Thousands are out of work, but can't complain because you're giving them welfare and presumably could unleash thousands of skeletons on anyone who bitches or grows a conscience. "Free" money and increased production bring down the price of luxury goods, making the noble lifestyle attainable to the average citizen. The classes condense into one, you gain even greater good will with the common folk, and the nobles who'd hate it have lost all their power and can't challenge you.

So you've got guaranteed income and total workforce automation. Your people are happy or at least complacent. Now it's time to destabilize OTHER countries by exporting your goods without giving their citizens the same treatment you've given your own. Let their employment sectors collapse and do nothing about it. Become a financial terrorist, ruining your neighbors' prosperity until they all but beg you to buy them out and become your subjects.

Dude are you a professional mason? Because that is very impressive wall you have there.

Not but is your monitor running out of ink or something?

Alright, I'll bite. How did the Warcock effectively commit genocide?

That doesn't seem all too bad.

So in my setting, the PCs recently helped get nation-wide magical tutoring for everyone.

What would be some good utility spells for the average peasant to pick up with Magic Initiate?

Cantrips:
Mage Hand
Mending
Message
Minor Illusion
Prestidigitation

1st-level:
Alarm
Comprehend Languages
Detect Magic
Expeditious Retreat
Find Familiar?
Identify
Longstrider
Silent Image
Tenser's Floating Disk
Unseen Servant

That's as far as wizard spells go, utility stuff that is least likely to be used negatively against others. It gets a bit wackier if you include others, like druid where peasants can suddenly feed 10 people for a day with Goodberry.

Goodberry would make a fine omega-nutrient, but I doubt people would give up real food in favor of this cure all. Sometimes, you really enjoy the taste of that warm, hearty soup filled with savory root vegetables and butter, all of it soaked up with a warm, soft bread roll. A berry a day can't beat that.

I don't care how wacky it gets, given that the setting's already rapidly headed for a golden age.

Even Cleric could work, since Zarus and friends wholeheartedly approve of this.

Alright /5eg/, my new setting has a bunch of master swordsman running about, and the players has expressed interest in besting either one or all of them.

What are some cool sword moves/styles that they should have?
For example, one of them can change the direction of his sword's swing last second to get around someone's guard, so he can gain a psuedo-advantage once a round. If he hits for the first attack, he'll change direction to hit again, giving it an extra die of damage. But the wizard and monk want in on this too, so now I got to think of more things for him and his friends to do.

Give them two or three at-will Battle Master maneuvers and call it good.

I've hyped these guys up too damn much, and I feel that would be a letdown.

>plane shift- zendikar
nani?

Alright guys, I'm gonna give one of my players a fucking chainsaw because why the fuck not

I'm thingking greatsword stats with brutal critical but do 1d6 damage to yourself if you roll a 1 to hit (because chainsaws are fucking dangerous)

Cool or what?

Fumbles on attack rolls are stupid, even for a specific piece of equipment.

I was thinking of giving my players a golden cat. Not for a single player, but for all of them. Could make for an interesting mechanic and maybe get some party interaction going.

Good idea, bad idea?

I'm open to suggestions

First attack is a normal attack, 1d6, but the target is auto grappled. Each turn the grapple remains, the damage ramps up, so the turn after the grapple is 2d6, then the next turn is 3d6. Picture someone just tearing into a guy with a chainsaw, it's not immediate, but takes a little bit.

A golden cat statue? An actual cat follower? Gonna have to go into more detail about what you mean.

In general, an animal mascot is fine. Prepare for its inevitable demise though.

Oh I like it, only problem is multiattack, might need a way to work that in

Simple enough to add in a one-attack clause. Also, enemies have advantage to break the grapple, unless they are prone, then they have disadvantage to break the grapple.

I was thinking Witch Bolt, but in weapon form.

...

It seems fine.

But again, prepare yourself (and your party) for its inevitable demise.

Hmm I don't know, that might complicate things a bit more than needed, plus he's really gonna want his extra attack

I might just make it stacking 1d6 damage up to 4d6 as long as he keeps attacking the same target

Well the only real danger I see is aoe attacks, and I can let the PCs cover the cat as a reaction. Or maybe I'll let the cat use its teleport move as a reaction.

And hitting of course

>How hard is it to find a good game on Roll20?

75% of the games I've joined have been shit. 25% have been good, but flawed. None have been great.

I have 2000 hours logged into Roll20.

What is the best god for a sun soul monk in Forgotten Realms?

Canonically, their order is dedicated to Lathander. In antiquity they worshipped Amaunator (who was kind of god-reincarnated into Lathander after Netheril fell, but they don't have the same personality or anything).

One of the canonical leaders of the order also thought Amaunator wasn't just reborn as Lathander, but his essence was divied up among some other gods as well: Selune and Sune.

If you want to know the BEST god for a dude who shoots fire out of his fists, though: Kossuth

I thought they were canonically devoted to Selune. I only know them from the Enchanced Edition. pls no bully

Interesting. I'm currently playing a Sun Soul Monk in CoS (who will eventually multiclass into a Moon Druid) and going for a sun and moon motif. I suppose he should not have been ignorant of the Morninglord, then.

Different sects of the Order can have their own primary patron, and that may have been the case with whatever group was active in Amn. The largest and most influential of the monasteries was in Waterdeep and was primarily Lathanderite with some "Triune God" leanings towards Selune and Sune.

The leap to Selune from Amaunator is mostly centered around her being a light-based deity, since the rest of her domains have no overlap with Amaunator or Lathander.

>Amaunator or Lathander
Why specify if they're the same god?

the ancestors approve or disapprove of whatever THE FUCK I TELL THEM!

Amaunator no longer exists. He "died" when Netheril fell and most of his worshippers were wiped out. The last vestiges of his powers were (ostensibly) reborn as Lathander, who has a completely different personality.

Amaunator was a NO FUN god of bureaucracy who obsessed over the placement of punctuation in text. Lathander cares about babies and working out and being happy and joyful. Amaunator didn't give a shit about any of that.

Whether or not Amaunator actually is Lathander is something that can be debated. It's believed by a lot of scholars in-universe that it happened that way, but it's also just as likely that Lathander was born out of whole cloth (as gods can be, since FR operates under consensus reality) through the belief of a bunch of misinformed people, or he was a completely separate and mostly powerless entity that stumbled upon some lost Amaunatorian domains and jacked them.

Well shit. Amaunator sounds way more interesting.

Lathander is cool. People only ever talk about his dumb SUN aspect (which is bullshit, because Kossuth is obviously the sun all two or three of them actually if you know your FR cosmology and creation mythos) and tend to ignore the other portions of his portfolio.

They also forget that time he did something the other Good Gods never fucking do: he got off his ass and decided to shake up the entire pantheon to be more to his liking. One assumes this involved killing a lot of Evil guys and pulling other Good or Neutral deities in line with his way of doing things, but the exact events of THE DAWN CATACLYSM are never described since it was mostly a Gods Only affair. Some of the few events that can mostly be traced to it are the death of Murdane, a goddess of pragmatism, whose existence was kind of chafing the whole hope and optimism schtick that Lathander has going on, and Tyche getting split.

Amaunator would never have done something like that, because he's too into RAW.

This is pretty much my experience. Getting games off of Veeky Forums has been closer to 50/50. Then again IRL has been just as bad too.

You can make them all thematically interesting and give them different fighting styles. I assume that all fights will be one-on-one duels against them?
Some examples might be:
>The aggressive swashbuckler who strikes deep wounds with a very precise rapier
>The elvish spell blade who uses magic as he strikes and focuses on disabling his foe with mystical might
>The dual wielder who focuses on parries and counter attacks and has an impenetrable defense
>The harassing bard who taunts them with jests as a vicious mockery cantrip as he strikes at them and criticizes all their actions
>The unstoppable barbarian who uses a sword too large for mortal men and flies into a rage in combat
>The cheater who uses a wicked serrated blade with a treacherous poison
>The opportunist who darts in and out of combat constantly disengaging and forces them to chase him down

There are countless ways to make an interesting swordsman. maybe even step away from player mechanics and give them unique abilities.

I'm gonna run a campaign on a homebrew setting where magic is demanding and casters must succeed on a spellcasting ability save with DC of 5 + spell's level whenever they cast a spell or they get an exhaustion level. What do you think?

Do they get more spells slots or something?

or are you just straight up making spellcasters less fun

A free PDF WotC released converting the plane of Zendikar from M:tG to a campaign world for D&D including playable races and monster stats and suggestions.

and it's official, not a DMsguild done by some random dude like blood magic?
my FLGS would jump on that shit so goddamn hard.

It's semi-official. It's put out on a Wizards site, but the MtG site, not the D&D one, and it's made by a guy on the MtG team. It was published alongside a survey, so it was probably a lunchtime project someone had that he showed to his boss who said "yeah sure, let's try that, maybe people will like it."

It's clearly not balanced like regular D&D content, the races are all pretty strong compared to PHB races.

>have to make a check to play your class properly
>fail the check once, exhaustion
>now you roll the check with disadvantage
>continue to play your class properly
>fail five more saves, which you will because lol disadvantage
>die

cool

I think it'd be better to make it so that whenever they use their last spell slot of any level they gain a level of exhaustion.

That encourages holding on to their best spells, since they'll usually only have one of those, as well as not spamming low-level ones.

Its more interesting than a slim chance of getting a level of exhaustion each time you cast.

>the races are all pretty strong compared to PHB races
I don't actually think I could stop my party from playing shit from it if they found out, now.
They aren't powergamers per se, they just hear stuff is good/fun and immediately want to try it out.

When it's the difference between nine people working to feed themselves and a tenth person vs one person spending 6 seconds a day to feed all ten though? The labour investment for real food would be insane relative to making goodberries.

>the races are all pretty strong compared to PHB races.
Apart from Vampires who're just Tieflings with a worse resistance and a useless ability in place of infernal legacy. Goblins aren't OP either, and humans are just the non-variant PHB ones.

I don't know why are you guys making this such a big deal. Most of the time, only 1 or 2 means failure and 3 for 8 & 9 level spells. And as your level goes up, you can cast lower level spells without worrying about failure.

Is it me or do fighters not have a lot of survivability at lower levels?

My 6th level fighter gets fucking hit the most out of the party, and the only real shot I have at healing is a good D10 roll and cure wounds from my party. All session yesterday I was barely hanging on.

What's the point?

What does that actually add to the game besides RNG-based annoyance that spellcasters can do nothing about?

protip: if it adds nothing but annoyance and pointless rolls/shit, don't do it. It'll just slog down the game.

I don't think you understand 5e exhaustion either. It's a pretty major thing.

Unless you think disadvantage on all ability checks because you rolled poorly while attempting to cast magic missile isn't a big deal.

what's your AC? my sword and board fighter at level 1 has 18, you can't be touched by shit for several levels.

smart DMs however will instead use save based damage on you

>10-15% chance to gain exhaustion because muh setting
this is not an interesting or fun mechanic, it's just a hamfisted way to make playing a caster more of a chore than it already is

18, i'm in plate w/ GWM, which makes me a bit more 'hit-able' I know, but I was getting fucking run through all night.

your DM was either rolling stupidly well or was fudging his rolls so he could hit you and make you feel like there was some sort of threat.

Are you one of the only frontliners? DM could have just been on a hot streak against you too, 18 AC and fighter hit dice are pretty solid for survivability.

DM might have cranked up the difficulty a bit, but it seemed unusual even for that.

I am the only frontline fighter in our 4-man party. We have two casters, and a ranged rogue.

well that's your party comp + your DM then.

a good DM spreads damage out so everyone is threatened.

there is no real taunt mechanic in DnD. If that bandit decides to go stab the old man in robes instead of the knight in full plate armor, that makes 1000% sense.

It probably doesn't help that she either has us roll for our HP or take the average, but whatever.

Our Wizard's HP is.. really bad.

>rolling for HP

christ, why?

I don't know, i've been taking the average so i'm sitting at 58, but the fucking Wizard is literally at 24 HP.

>roll for our HP or take the average
That choice is what it is RAW. The Wizard should have known not to roll when only 2 out of 6 results would be better than the average for them, but hey, not everyone has the same primary stat as their character.

But... Why on earth would you roll on a d6 instead taking 4? That's just asking to be gimped!

Give them some powers cribbed from 4th edition.

yeah no, why is rolling for HP considered an issue? :/

Make one a Monk Bugbear that is naked and moves incredibly fast

why do it?

meaningless RNG that could totally gimp a character for no reason.

An archaic tradition from a different time

I mean I kind of agree :/ on the same token rolling for higher than average is pretty exciting

the DM in my current campaign decided we'd all get at least the average amount of HP when leveling up, which has been useful for the rogue and wizard, but me, the fighter, has rolled like 4 10's and 9's and I have decent Con, and heavy armor mastery, so I find I rarely go below half.

app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/46910/hoard-of-the-dragon-queen

>20 years of murderhoboing

Which subclass? EKs have Shield and other spells, and BMs can use trip / disarm / parry / whatever to reduce incoming damage. Champion is both boring and lacks any real survivability mechanics compared to the other two, consider asking to respec to BM if you're a Champion.

He sounds like an idiot

Is Oathbreaker really that powerful?

Because the fucking Oath Spells look like shit.

Why is Exhaustion such a crippling mechanic? I hardly ever use it, because it's so hard to get rid of and every level is a harsh penalty. If the first couple of levels were milder, I could see it getting a lot more use at my table.

Anybody had any ideas for how to tweak it?

>Why is Exhaustion such a crippling mechanic?
To stop the overpowered Berserker Barbarian.

Add a couple of milder levels and give it out more liberally?

After thinking about it some, I've come to realize that my Halfling dex-based fighter with a Robe of Eyes is a murder peacock.

Interesting. Are you and your party members having fun?

Can I use Minor Illusion to make the image of a 6 foot man, provided I put the cube on its corner?

No, because Minor Illusion can only make an illusory object, not a creature. A 6 foot statue would be fine though, no matter how lifelike, so you could argue it's a moot point.

No, because that's not how cubes work in D&D. Read the spellcasting rules.

But I would totally allow that in my game because that's just good initiative.