/5eg/ Fifth Edition General

>german
Just use English like everyone else.
T. not a burger or a bong

Brief rules dispute. I'm the DM and I had a villain on a balcony casting spells at the players below. The spellcaster player character casts thorn whip to pull the bad guy over the railing and make him take fall damage.
>That's cool, roll to hit.
He rolls 16, it hits. Guy takes 1d6 piercing damage and is pulled 10 ft.
>Because he's going over the edge of the railing, the bad guy can make a strength save to avoid falling by grabbing onto the edge.
Player disagrees, says the spell wraps him up in magic vines and he should be pulled over with no save.

I can see that his argument makes sense, RAW. The attack beat his AC, so he should get pulled. But I think that in any circumstance where some creatures is moved against their will over an edge where they might fall, they should get a save, either strength, dex, or con. If the player character was gusted or mind controlled or shoved or else forced to move off the edge into a instant death lava pit, they'd be pretty mad if they didn't get a save. The same should be true for npcs.

In this case the consequences were minor, since they beat the guy anyway, but in the future I want thorn whip and other push and pull abilities to be consistent.

What do you think about this ruling?

we're 5 friends from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, why would we ever do that?

Because English is the superior language.

NPCs don't have to be tied to the same rules as PCs though. The PC could easily say, "I make sure the vines wrap around his arms." And that could render the idea of a STR save moot. Personally, I think if the spell itself doesn't call for a save them it shouldn't need one.

Abilities with saving throws or attack rolls already have a failure chance built into them. Don't make it worse.

>From a forever DM

Now you're just being goofy

Maybe, but it's still true.

Honestly, I think your in the right for trying to rule that he could try to save. However, if the players want it to be done more by raw, then I'd advise doing as such. Just let them know that that path goes both ways.

To add onto what I said, you'll start making the players think creative stuff won't work if you add extra failure chances when they do something clever. Things get boring when players stop doing unexpected things.

>Just let them know that that path goes both ways.

That's where a lot of the fun of being a DM comes from. It's easy to shut down any bitching about how unfair something is when you're doing exactly what an ability says it does instead of making up anything.

You're in the right here. Players being crafty with their spells is great and all, but since pulling monsters off ledges is not intended use of the spell, they should get a chance to resist.

What's the best combat style for a Crown Oath Paladin? I was originally planning to go S&B with Shield Master, but one of my friends says that the Crown features better suit someone with Polearm Master & Sentinel.

>What's the best combat style for a Crown Oath Paladin?
Not being a crown paladin.

I think I made a mistake

I made a tough kobold guard a baby dragon, and the players have just taken the baby instead of giving it to the guy who gave them the quest. What do I do

baby dragon is probably hungry all the time and uncooperative. it wont grow up to be able to do anything as long as the pc's are alive and adventuring. they would have to tame it and feed it for months before it would be useful, and by then they would be so strong that it wouldn't help them any more than a regular familiar.

it can always run away, too.

>pulling monsters off ledges is not the intended use
>the intended use is pulling monsters
Why does it matter what elevation they're at? You've got more of a basis to say that you can't target a barrel and pull it since it's an object, not a creature, and the spell description doesn't mention objects.

This guy has it right. You might give an extra save-your-ass chance to a PC who thinks quick (grabbing a railing to avoid getting swept off a deck when the fucking lizardmen attack his boat) but monsters are made to get murdered and already had their chance. Does the creature even have an interesting feature that would let him use his reaction to grab something? Are you going to let every PC make Strength saves to avoid force movement if there's literally anything nearby to grab at some point during the move? If a Battlemaster starts using Pushing Attack, are enemies going to make extra Dex saves to bend over and dig their fingers into the dirt so they stop their slide after just five feet?

S&B is never best. You do that style because you think it's cool, not for optimization. Crown doesn't really have fighting style synergy other than champion's challenge being kind of ok with Sentinel. Polearms go well with Sentinel, and Polearm Master is a good feat.

To add to your second point: the law of averages eventually gets to the PCs anyway. Eventually the d20 does not smile on the PCs and it fucks them over. Don't make it worse on them by giving them more chances to fail. A PC by default has more chances at failure than any NPC because only the most extraordinary of NPCs would have to risk failure as much as an average PC.

Grasping vine is only 30' range. The balcony is less than 30' and the guy can only be pulled if he's directly above the vine. At most, it's going to do 2d6 damage, and maybe it would be fine to give the enemy a dex save to mitigate that. He can react because the vine doesn't grapple.

The balcony wasn't a massive positional advantage if he was close enough to get hit by a thrown weapon anyway.

If the caster isn't someone that can levitate or misty step to make the vine's effect negligible over more than one turn, is he even worth saving?

You're the GM so it's your call, just as long as the check doesn't negate any of the movement of the push/pull because that is straight-up 100% not okay.
The problem with situations like this is that you can swear on every book ever written and sign a contract with your own virgin blood that it's a rule now until the end of time and it will work the same way for any-one any-time they ever get put into the same situation but until it does actually happen again there's no difference between a one-time rule and a one-time asspull. But it does have the added benefit of letting you know just how much trust and respect your players have for you as a GM.

>S&B is never best
The two fighters and barbarian in my group grinding every enemy into the ground beneath their shields disagree. one of our fighters is essentially Captain Amnerica

Yeah and they could do it even better with 2 handed weapons. I didn't say S&B was bad.

>you could knock enemies down constantly better if you didn't have a bonus action to knock prone
What exactly is it that you think Shield Master does?

What do you think Trip Attack does? What if 1 of those character is S&B and the other is 2 handed fighter with GWM to take advantage of the constant prone? Your style is perfectly acceptable and works fine, but it's not the best.

Its intention is to pull monsters towards you, not instakill them by dropping them off a ledge. A saving throw is justified.

So paladin that can't use trip attack is completely fine to S&B, which is what I thought was the point anyway.

Not that user, but S&B and GWM are equally as good fighting styles. The main difference is tankiness and potential advantage every turn vs full blown offense, even potentially at the cost of accuracy. GWM will always win in terms of damage, but the loss of AC and the sacrifice of accuracy to deal more damage Ultimately makes them a high risk for high reward fighter. S&B is much more safe and does it's job very effectively. Just my two cents on the matter.

Initiative order doesn't always put your GWMers after your KDers but before the enemies have a chance to stand. Burning reactions to delay is a potential loss of DPR, especially if we're talking a high Battlemaster party who could be making use of Riposte/Commander's Strike.

Dogpiling enemies with one basher and several GWMers works best against large solo creatures, but dogpiling always works on large solo creatures regardless of whether or not you've got KDers/grapplers and GWMers since that's how action economy works.

GWMers are best in a dense group of thick weaklings who can be cleaved through, but this bunches up the party and makes them vulnerable to AoEs. But before you even get there, you've got the enemies bunched up, which means THEY'RE vulnerable to AoEs (which your frontline may now be standing in the way of).

Supplying free advantage without resource limitation (superiority die) is fantastic. Neutering multiple enemies each round keeps the threat down even if enemies are eliminated at a slower pace due to lower damage. GWM hits aren't guaranteed (though it's a safer bet with advantage), however neither are knockdown attempts which give that advantage, so multiple chances to ensure an enemy is on their ass is valuable.

No one with GWM is making their heavy swings literally every attack regardless of an enemy's remaining HP, AC, and state of advantage.

If you want a damage-heavy party that does not regularly gain advantage through knockdown (especially if they can gain it through other means) you can always rely on Sharpshooters instead. Classes that utilize this with the Archery fighting style have much less risk in making their aimed shots without advantage, and it only takes one hit that would have been a miss to compensate for the slightly lower damage (no rerolling 1/2 and slightly smaller damage die, both things which could extremely theoretically never come up).

The DPR of a dead GWMer is zero.

The polearm master can do trip with one of his attacks, and he gains a bonus action attack. He can attack the same number of times as the S&B guy does, also tripping, and he has the option for a 3 attack turn if prone isn't necessary.

Yes I never said S&B was bad. Making a fighter longer by having more defenses is often countered by giving the enemies longer to survive to attack more. Unless your enemies already need a roll of 15 or so to hit you, the shield isn't necessarily making a big difference in the number of times you're being hit per combat.

Why are your potential 2 weapon fighting types providing advantage instead of your casters/token monk anyway? Best way to fight defensively is take all your enemies actions away. Kill, stun, paralyze, charm, blind, etc.

Thorn Whip has a range of 30 feet. The most it could drop an enemy is 25 fight, since you can't exactly hit an enemy who is on a ledge directly above you (there'd be a ledge giving him full cover) and an enemy who flies under their own power isn't made to fall if they are forced to move (only if they have zero movement or are knocked prone).

Falling is 1d6 per 10 feet fallen. Is an extra 2d6 going to instakill everything you fight, assuming this entire campaign takes place in a 25 foot tall gorge?

If you must give the enemy another roll, make it a Dex/Acrobatics save/check to avoid/reduce fall damage or the resulting prone; the thing your player wanted to happen (pulling the enemy off the ledge) happened, they just didn't get extra damage and a free knockdown out of it.

Thanks for the input. I'll roll with it for now that it will pull any creature and reasonably sized object 10 ft, as per the spell description. The player wants to have fun as a controlling mage so for unimportant badguys getting yanked off ledges is a nice cinematic way for them to be dispatched. This particular bad guy was just a mook so it's not a big deal that he get dunked off the ledge.

However I do think that the concept of applying saves to effects that don't explicitly call for it is valid. For example, a ledge with no railing might be no contest, while a ledge with battlements allows the target to try to brace themselves. Similarly, what if the target is hiding behind a wall with arrowslits or behind the bars of a cage? Something clearly stops their movement in this case, and calling a houserule I think is appropriate.

My main point is that environmental ledges can be a 2d6 fall damage, or a 20d6 instant death pit, depending on context, and I wonder how long until a PC is in the position where they could fall to their death on a single roll of the dice.

I did forget about the range, and in fact going back over from memory there were a lot of spell effects going off that I now realize were wrong. I'll have to have a copy of the characters spell sheets to double check things like ranges, especially if and when exact rules in question are being disputed.

>substituting your Polearm Master bonus attack with a trip or shove
I'm not saying this is what you're suggesting, but it could be interpreted that way, and I don't think it's RAW or RAI. Making special melee attacks replaces one of the swings in your main Attack action, not a bonus action granted by TWF/Polearm Master/Martial Arts/Flurry of Blows. The prodigious tripping power Monks have therefore comes from Open Hand's prone/shove on any unarmed hit.

This wording is the same for grappling. It wouldn't make much sense if you could dual-wield to get another attack with your bonus action, then drop your sword to make a grappling attempt with your free hand, would it?

If you're suggesting the Polearm Master replaces one of his main Attack action swings with the special attack, and gets his "same number of attacks as the S&B guy" thanks to the bonus action swing, yes, but that's just a shitty d4. The damage disparity isn't huge (2d8 vs. 1d4+1d10), but it's there.

> I wonder how long until a PC is in the position where they could fall to their death on a single roll of the dice

exactly when you make the situation happen. there aren't many things that push a player more than 10'. then you have to have one of them in an are where there is a 200' deep hole. given how weak spells and abilities that push things are, i'm pretty sure throwing creatures into hazards is exactly the intention.

Yes, if he's aiming up as in that exact case, but in case a player's pulling a monster horizontally off a bridge or something, a save is more than reasonable. And so, for consistency's sake, would be pulling an opponent downwards.

not exactly a rule mistake buuuuut:
>Friend makes a Paladin focused on actually casting his spells on enemies
>only has 14 Wis
>complains that Paladins suck, can't do anything, and have terrible action economy

My DM ruled that all shots from a shortbow under 30 ft would be with disadvantage. I tried explaining that ranged attacks are only disadvantaged within 5ft or between the two range values given but they just said "I'm making a call!" and left it at that.

No wonder I was so bad at archery classes.

>Thinks monsters have hide on plain sight, all of them
Did he also let them do this as a fee action?
>Thinking if a monster have several actions he can do ALL in his turn
Oh god why
>Thinking adding +10 to damage, AC, hit, etc to a monster still doens't increase its difficulty
WHAT. WHAT. WHAAAAT????
>Long etc
wat

Why would he pump wis? He's not a cleric

That DM is a shitbag unless he has the same rules for spells

>Why would he pump wis? He's not a cleric
because he was focusing on casting, casting spells on enemies, spells with save dc's, not just properly walking up to enemies and fisting the evil right out of them

80ft* sorry wrong value

Paladin spells are charisma based, so they use CHR bonus for the DCs

My first character started as a tanky fighter, but because of the campaign I decided to go Eldritch Knight at level 3. I think I casted Chromatic Orb over 20 times and never consumed the components like I was supposed to.

gah, whatever, you know what i mean, his casting stat.

Did you post this a few threads ago?

I remember a story like this inciting a thread derailment. Some dumb fuck supported the DM in question by suggesting that a stationary deer at 80ft away is easier to hit than a moving chipmunk at 30 because relative lateral displacement is inversely proportional to distance.

>implying it would be easier to shoot a running chipmunk at 80 feet than it would at 30 feet

>hurr, it would be easier to shoot a airplane than a plane taking off that's 30 feet away
>because the airborne plane is barely moving
>but the runway plane is moving so fast

>My DM ruled that all shots from a shortbow under 30 ft would be with disadvantage.

Somehow we've reached this point. Despite shooting within 30 ft was rewarded in 3.5, of all things.

>I think I casted Chromatic Orb over 20 times and never consumed the components like I was supposed to.
Material components aren't consumed unless it's stated otherwise.

Yeah I remember that haha. I'm also the guy who keeps posting about his Fey patron being a tumblr fanfic writer using his PC as her 'donut steele' character.

You are thinking of focuses. Materials are used up.

Disregard this I'm a retard. I just checked the book and they've removed the distinction between material components and focuses. Its all material components on a case by case basis now. Weird.

This is why reading the book is important.

You are going to want to make sure you keep everything internally consistent. If he gets an extra save after being yanked into a pit, players are going to want the same treatment every time they would fall into a pit trap or the like.

That being said, it dampens the impacts of dangerous environments if you do this. Once I had my players climbing a magic beanstalk thousands of feet high. There was an encounter up there where one of my PCs used Shatter on some enemies and the portion of the beanstalk they were on. I had all of the enemies there plummet to their deaths which made the pcs realize how dangerous the situation they were in was. They started trying ropes to each other and hammering pitons into the beanstalk, and making sure the few leaves they found for purchase were more stable, etc. The encounter vastly improved the amount of roleplaying and forethought the PCs put into their actions, and it made the game feel more "real" than the "videogame" safety you would have included.

TLDR; If you give your PCs actions more weight, they will respect your environment and NPCs that much more, since they understand the same dangerous things can happen to them.

The plural of focus is foci

What would happen if you tried to turn a bag of holding inside out?

This message brought to you by P.O.E.M. U., the professional organization of english majors (unemployable)

All the contents would be dumped out and the bag would look like a normal bag when turned inside out. It's not until you put a portable hole in a bag of holding that shit gets dicey.

You're actually proud of being ignorant? Literally nigger tier, user.

I doubt it was even the same user, waltzing into a thread just to correct someones spelling or grammar and providing nothing else is pretty high tier autism.

Can you use UA stuff in AL? I already have a group but I kind of want to try some of the weird UA stuff.

UA is not AL legal, but if it's just a home game then it's all up to DM approval.

>Not playing Oath of the Crown with Dueling fighting style
>Not playing Dex-paladin
>Not being pic related

How about substituting one the attacks you would have with extra attack so there's no interpretation to be made? Or is Veeky Forums now going to tell me level 5 is higher than most people play now? The polearm master bonus attack still triggers with the one regular attack. All the GWF/GWM stuff can be applied to the polearm master bonus attack.

Read the fucking post, that's exactly what he suggested.

>If you're suggesting the Polearm Master replaces one of his main Attack action swings with the special attack, and gets his "same number of attacks as the S&B guy" thanks to the bonus action swing, yes, but that's just a shitty d4. The damage disparity isn't huge (2d8 vs. 1d4+1d10), but it's there.

How much worse would a STR-based rogue be than a DEX one? I want to play a half-orc rogue.

A fucking huge amount. All of your important skills are under dex, you need a finesse weapon to sneak attack so no 2handers, and half-orcs are gay as fuck.

>using finesse weapons when you have heavy armor proficiency

How much Rogue do you want? Rogue / Barbarian using a Rapier with Strength is a legit strategy - expertise Athletics, Reckless Attack to easily Sneak Attack, etc. Plus, Orc works well with Barbarian.

Straight Rogue won't work well at all.

it's also thrown weapons, for which you can use strength

You do need a finesse weapon to sneak attack but to my knowledge, you don't need to actually apply your Dexterity to the damage/attack.

I would recommend keeping Dex high as a Rogue, however. If you don't mind the hit to your Dex-based skills or just don't plan on using them, there's probably a better class to use.

I'm cool with having highish dex too, it would just be a shame to let the +2 str go to waste.

>reckless attack to get sneak attack damage
Talk about rules lawyering.

>using advantage to gain sneak attack
>rules lawyering

I suppose you think using action surge to cast two spells in a round to be rules lawyering, too?

Personally, I like the concept. Just make sure your Dex and Str are high(ish). High Str for a Rogue can be wasted though, realistically; if you use weapons suited to sneak attacks, your Str won't be put to its best use. If you don't use finesse, though or only use finesse weapons for ambushes at the beginning of an encounter or whatever, you'll see a lot fewer sneak attacks and thus a lot less damage.

is right, though. Rapier stronk.

So, I'm pretty new to 5e, or rather, D&D as a whole. The last campaign I played (which ended up falling apart), I ended up pretty decent in combat but not much else. This time around, I want to try Rogue/Bard, since their skill kit seems like I could contribute more to the group this time around.

How do I live up to my background as a light-fingered con-artist and all-around charlatan, without being That One Rogue Player, or That Guy in general? I read so many cringe stories about rogues done wrong, going full klepto, and I was hoping for some solid advice for a newbie?

A str based rogue can work. The main thing is you still need dex for ac so your not dying in melee, and your ranged combat will be lackluster at best. Your best race for a build like this is mountain dwarf for massive str and con bonuses and medium armor proficiency. Pick up breastplate or half plate and get a14 dex and max out str. That's how I would do it at least.

No, because that's intended behaviour. EKs have access to spells after all. However, attacking with reckless abandon and aiming precisely don't go hand in hand.

If having access to something makes it "intended behavior", why is a barbrogue having reckless attack and sneak attack not "intended behavior"?

Obviously the foe is distracted by your recklessness.

>holy shit what is he doing the absolute madma-

Behaviour. If you're going to use a language, do it properly.

Anyway. Multclassing as a whole is an optional rule, and some class combinations are unexpected, resulting in synergy that wasn't intended. Feint maneuever is fair enough, since you can reasonably do that to find the weakness to exploit. Reckless attack is not.

Except it's totally intended.

sageadvice.eu/2015/12/17/reckless-barbarian-rogue/

Just do all that bad shit but don't do it in a way that hurts the party. No class is inherently dickish or harmful to team composition (no alignment either but that's another story), so just remember to swipe from and insult people that impede your party, not that other PC who may have scruples about how you do your thing, he'll come around.

DnD is at it's core a team game, no reason to dick over your team (hoarding loot and magic items, making background deals with BBEG) except to make drama that will most likely make everyone have a not fun time.

>not distracting your foe with an opening for attack while you subtly attack them at the same time

please come back when you can rpg

Always remember that "It's what my character would do" is shitty justification for fucking over the rest of the party. It's your job to justify why your con-artist isn't going to con the rest of the players, sort of thing.

Is this the guy who decided you can't use cunning action to dash as a rogue if you hit with a weapon in your offhand?

He's one of the game designers, so... yes. You only get one bonus action in a turn.

Isn't that how the MC from Jade Empire worked? He had a subtle hole in his guard that people would always be distracted trying to find, but he'd use their distraction to kill them..

That's called gaming the system. But using strength to hit with a rapier is retarded to begin with, so whatever. Guess the easiest way to fix this dilemma is to rule that you need to use dex to take advantage of sneak attack. I think I'll go with that.

...

Pass note to the DM whenever you wanna be a thieving fuck and never try to steal things beyond your means. Go for small stuff always and whenever you get caught just pretend it was the first time.