/5eg/ D&D 5E General: Race War Edition

im really liking the boreal flame
Sounds important. its not a quest item, but its cool that it makes it sound like one.

Why do so many DMs ban the use of races from the Elemental Evil supplement? I want to try playing a genasi or a goliath but but for some reason so many DMs online and offline don't want to acknowledge any player options in that book.

Is there a particular reason for this or are they just shit DMs?

i dont know. maybe they just dont want to learn them. id allow it. im all for freedom as i dont give a fuck about lore.

Some people don't want to have a mess of options and keep things simple. Some people don't want a party of half-elementals, half-giants, or birdmen.

This is completely valid. If you don't like it, you can run your own game where such things are allowed

Genasi are stupid Forgotten Realms things that should stay there. There's already two kinds of Gnome and no one I've seen wants to play a Deep Gnome except for abjurer shenanigans.

Bird people because low-restriction flight is annoying to deal with.

Goliaths are cool but it's easier to just ban the source than suggest that only one race is usable out of it.

>Genasi are stupid Forgotten Realms things that should stay there.

Funny you should say that. Several DMs I've seen run forgotten realm campaigns online don't allow them either.

What's so triggering about genasi?

Homebrewers: what is the most fun class to homebrew options for in your experience?

Warlocks for me. They're so well designed from an RP perspective.

Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds and Lizardfolk.

Any other race apart from those classics had been either a mess, a bad human copy or fan pandering towards something like doesn't fit, like Catfolk or other furry shit.

They just seem very special snowflake-y

I have fun with Sorcerers myself, though that's because I enjoy the concept a lot.

Nice. Hope it gets added to the pastebin pronto.

So you have no legitimate reason why they should be banned?

Gonna be dming a new campaign for some friends next week and I'm wanting to run them through the hospital escape level from the phantom pain (none of them have played it so they won't know anything about it) in our first session. How can I suggest to my players that they want to stealth their way out and that trying to fight at all will get them slaughtered without OOC telling them this?

I want them to learn early on that fighting won't always be the way to handle a problem. I'm planning on having all of their gear stored in a room on a lower floor but when they get there that room is empty. Any advice?

Probably just the idea of someone basically walking around as the human torch. It works in really high fantasy, but if you're in some random village it just seems out of place.

Dragonborn at least pretend to have a unified culture or a homeland they come from. Tieflings are edgy, but they have justifaction for being places and the whole demonic blood thing can sometimes lead to interesting back stories. Both of those are better options for people who just want elemental powers from square 1.

Genasi are descended from beings from another dimension. They don't have a clear culture. They don't crop up at random like tieflings. They tend to just be a random person who was the child of a Djinn who fell into the real world through a portal. They're basically aliens in terms of tone

As a DM, I usually don't allow shit that I can't find a way to fit into my setting. I'm not going to write in a brand new continent so that a player can play some bullshit that they'll forget that they are 3 sessions in, and I'm not going to have NPCs gloss over the fact that one of the PCs is some otherworldly bullshit.
Granted, Genasi are decently easy to write into a campaign setting, I'm just reluctant to do any more work than I already am.

Cry me a river. No one cares if you dislike new races, and concede, they may be crapy deviant art tier oc characters. That being said, anybody advocating for less options is a limped dick of a DM.

What are some routine things a Loa spirit might require of one of it's clients or worshipers?

Personally I'd go "Okay, I'm not sure what your intentions are, but I'll go have a look at it"
And then I'd probably be a sucker and reluctantly allow it

Part of the problem is what just said: It might not fit into the setting at all and when allowed it might be hit-or-miss as to whether it actually pays off.

Show them that the enemies are really strong and in high numbers. Maybe have a friendly NPC get killed before their eyes to show them what they are up against.

>trying to fight at all will get them slaughtered

Remember this post when you start a thread next week about how shitty your players are that they kicked you from the group for "no good reason."

Yeah, it's generally not too good to force people into one course of action, because you know people will try fighting anyway.

I personally recommend you start them off with one if they're pretty strong, and the players should know there may be more. If the players stealth right away, good for them!
They should all team up and take it down is what you'd expect, but they'd take enough of a beating to realize once they see all the rest of them that fighting through is a really bad course of action without being more prepared.

Orc rape babies, dragon rape babies and demon rape babies are fine, but somehow genie rape babies isn't?

Yeah it's dumb.

Genie rape babies made perfect sense in Al-Qadim and Kalimshan

What can I do as a player to make sure that the game fun for everybody?

Genies live in another dimension. More specifically, four varieties live in four separate dimensions. They aren't as well known for visiting the prime material plane, and if they do, they're better known for granting wishes rather than trying to fuck things. Genasi don't randomly crop up from cursed bloodlines like tieflings either, so your Genesai has to come from Genesai parents. While they breed true, they tend to do so on their respective elemental planes. Thus, while you can have a society of them, they won't be in the world itself like a Dragonborn tribes where they can just wander somewhere. Even if they do, its unlikely they'll be able to visit their home, or even return. To include them, the DM gas to carve out a space for each variety, which is 4 separate ones in total. With all of them having great elemental powers and control, there's also a lot to consider for each society.

It's trying to stick space aliens with avatar element bending skills in a normal fantasy world. While the DM can make room, he shouldn't be forced to.

Including a single element is much easier, but if you open the floodgates on the whole book then you have to justify all of them.

Working on a warlock homebrew, based on the last thread's discussion of cleric/warlock options for Loa worship/service.

Would a general loa patron work better, or have individual options for individual named loa, such as Baron Samedi?

>new player races
blacks
-2 INT
+2 DEX
+2 CHA

as'raysis: Once per level, per day, player can claim unfair treatment due to their race. All within 20 ft radius must make Will save or flee (guards and paladins immune)

The biggest thing I'd say from my experience is

1. If bad things happen to your character, suck it up and accept it. Don't be a whining bitch. This isn't competitive and the tragic tale of a misfortunate character who finds their place is much better than the mary sue who always gets their way just so they'll shut the fuck up.
Though, if you're being excessively punished constantly and it's killing the fun, go and take it up with the DM I guess. But don't whine out loud so much.

Don't argue with the DM or other players about rules.

Don't get pissy if things don't go your way all the time.

Carefully describe your actions so as to leave little room for doubt.

I've got a player who fucks up all three of these and it really pisses me off.

>P:okay, I move my character down the hall
>Me: that provokes an opportunity attack
>pause
>roll
>attack hits,
>pause
>roll damage
>Me: you take 10 damage, which takes out your remaining hit points and knocks you unconscious
>P: oh, I took the Disengage action DM
>Me: you clearly didn't. You said you move, which would leave an action up
>P: no, no, I thought it was obvious, I took the disengage action
>Me: No Player, you moved. Then you waited until after I successfully attacked your character with an NPC and dealt enough damage to kill you to claim you took the disengage action. If at any point before I rolled attack, you changed to disengage, I would have let you. But you don't get to retcon successful attacks.
>P: fine, I guess you just have it out for my character then. This game sucks. Can't wait for my turn to DM.
>Me:I can't wait player.

I'm still waiting.

It's pretty easy to justify genasi, the DM doesn't even need to make a country of them. They could just be some random ass child of some woman from anywhere. So they could essentially just be strange travelers like several tieflings are.

Goliaths are easy too because they can just be in the mountains and you never have to go there if you don't want to.

>implying special snowflake races that distract from gameplay and destroy character development aren't reason enough

Shit, why not just make it a fanfiction club? Why even play when all of your characters are playing a stereotype fairy that's so goddamn stacked with racial bonuses it defeats the purpose of even having a class?

Is it so hard to see the issue with having characters play races so obscure and mythical that they're essentially living legends just for existing out the gate?

Do you not understand how difficult it is to build a plot when half your party can't come within a mile of civilization without inducing panic?

And of course I suppose you haven't GM'd enough of these wackjobs to understand how convoluted balancing their absurd level modifiers can get.

If you want a wacky weird party, it had better be in an already wacky weird world. Play GURPS if you want a special snowflake party in a world where nobody cares.

>I'm wanting to run them through the hospital escape level from the phantom pain
There's one huge issue here, and it's that you've already set yourself or your players up for disappointment with a fixed course of action. Who gets disappointed depends entirely on how lenient you are with this inevitably conflict of interest.

Yes, except Genasi would require your mom to have met and shagged a genie, and don't have the same sort of baggage that tieflings get.

Besides, people also already ban Tieflings for being too special snowflake and disruptive. Why is it so strange to think they'd also ban the version that has even less potential plot hooks?

I mean really, if you wanted to be a humanoid with elemental powers at first level, drawn from your bloodline, without being so monstrous that people hate you on sight, play a human and take Magic Initiate: Sorcerer.

And again, I'm not saying Genesi are the worst thing or should be universally banned, merely explaining what sorts of reasons people might have for banning them.

>depends on the setting.

Have a big personality, but don't let it drown out the other players. Nobody wants to sit in a circle and say "I guess we do this?" but nobody wants to listen to one jackass take up all the playtime either.

And don't be afraid to build a relationship with other characters. Your rogue might have a hard time getting along with the cleric, or maybe they surprisingly hit things off over a pint and instead you end up feuding with the other rogue, who you view as a showoff and an insult to the trade.

Have fun with the people there.

re genasi, aren't they basically just elemental flavored slightly magical humans? so in a fairly magical world you could fluff them as having been concieved during a storm or born in The Fiery Land of Fire or somesuch?

True enough, but there's a long stretch between "depends on the setting" and

"only in the multiverse"
or
"tailor the setting to the player's choices"

>distract and destroy character development?

Now I just know you're stupid.

Exactly. It depends on the setting, so why are you getting pissy about SMs banning a race that doesn't work in the setting?

You could, but at that point they're just weird looking Sorcerers. Genesi can be a lot of things, but they often feel tacked-on as an afterthought. You can spend time fleshing them out more, but doing that for all 4 is a lot of work when the potential genesi player is probably only going to pick the one they like best.

Fair enough. It would be pretty out of the ordinary for a genasi to be an adventurer, but then again adventurers are pretty out of ordinary themselves.

So far I'm only seeing problems fluffwise for them not being allowed but I was wondering if something mechanically was reason for their exclusion, since tieflings have elemental powers as well.

>how convoluted balancing their absurd level modifiers can get
The fuck are you talking about? There's no level modifiers in 5e, all races are balanced right from the start. Technically.

SMs?

I don't think space marines would limit themselves to banning genasi.

But my own autismal need to correct typos and belittle people who make them aside, arguing on the basis of setting is useless. In some settings, genasi will be common. In others, they won't be. Please provide a valid setting agnostic criticism of the race.

Bladelocks are the best polearm masters because they can fight fine at range while daring enemies to provoke that OA.

>This is completely valid. If you don't like it, you can run your own game where such things are allowed
Cool. My game will have hookers and blackjack.
> Anybody got stats for hooker and blackjack races?

What makes you think you have to worry about all four? Make your setting and if someone chooses a genasi, you really only need to focus on one, maybe two if you want an enemy character of the opposing element.

You don't need to write everything in advance. Remember the DM rule, don't over plan.

>Please give a universal reason why some people selectively don't use this thing

I think you'll just have to accept that some people don't want Genasi in their settings.

Personally, my main issue with the 5e version is that they look outlandish, but their rules are really bland. What does an Earth Genasi do? Walk really steadily?

>It's trying to stick space aliens with avatar element bending skills in a normal fantasy world.
So just make them benders. People live in a place with a rich connection to [element]. Sometimes a child is born among them that's linked to [element]. Done.

>Please provide a valid setting agnostic criticism of the race

Just look at this bullshit. Look at it.

forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Genasi

I don't think I have to defend why I DON'T want this mountain of snowflake in my game. Rather, I think it suitable that you defend the inclusion of this absurdity in a campaign.

>"Genasi were in a constant state of elemental energy, having no “neutral” state they could fall back on. Each genasi had a native elemental state, known as a “manifestation,” which was passed down to them through their ancestry. A few learned to master more than one manifestation. Unlike many planetouched races, genasi generally took pride in their unusual features."

>"The multiple personalities expressed by those who manifest more than one element are not completely different, in the way that personalities developed by the mentally ill are."

>"The exception to this rule are elemental tempests, sometimes known as genasi tempests, who manifest two elements simultaneously"

Explain to me how this isn't intended to derail player interaction and make my game a fucking nightmare.

I personally allow everything from EE except the birdshits. Cause everything except birdshits fits into my setting. Players must accept my fluff, of course

>Distract from gameplay and destroy character development
reading comprehension is an essential facet of modern life, young friend.

And might I add,
Not an argument

>not my genasi

I do accept that user. I just don't get why this one guy seems to be railing about including genasi in any setting at all.

>technically

It's a nice idea but if you're telling me that somebody should be able to play half of these (not!)homebrew races with the mountain of bonuses that come with it at the same level as the rest of the party, I feel sorry for your next campaign.

Do you have legit autism? How is any of that fucking with player interaction? So far you just come off as an assblasted sperg that hates fun. You must be a horrible person to play with, I feel sorry for the other players that have to put up with you.

Well, I'm not gonna try and guess Hus reasoning or defend it. I came to explain why some people might not like them or include them, and I've done so.

Now, to try and homebrew better Genasi rules because holy fuck these rules are so lame.

>my genasi
>now with EXTRA special

I don't care how you want to defend your particular interpretation. This is a question of whether or not these retarded main-antagonist teen fiction races should exist in a hypothetically average game with other players and quite frankly I don't see any reason to include them.

also
not an argument
I'd really be impressed if anybody here actually had an explanation for this instead of "hurr hurr you muss' be autistic on muh 4chins"

>how is any of that fucking with player interaction

>"The multiple personalities expressed by those who manifest more than one element are not completely different, in the way that personalities developed by the mentally ill are."

You're defending That guy: the race. I'm not surprised nobody who actually GMs wants to include these things as a player race. You can smell the trouble a mile away.

That Guy detected.

I like how every Attribute represents a kind of non-AC defence (mainly against spells and other non-weapon-attack effects) but I prefer combat wherein the attacker rolls against the defender's defence stat, as opposed to the Saving Throw vs. Save DC that 5E uses. It was one of the few things about 4E I genuinely enjoyed. So, with that in mind, would the following variant work for 5E?

PASSIVE DEFENCES AND ACTIVE CASTING
Characters have a Strength Defence, Dexterity Defence, and so on for each Attribute. This value is equal to 13 + their Attribute modifier. If they would normally be Proficient in saves with that Attribute, they instead add their Proficiency Bonus to the appropriate Defence. Thus, for example, a Fighter would add his Proficiency Bonus to his Strength and Constitution Defences.

When a spellcaster casts a spell, they roll 1d20 + their Spellcasting stat + their Proficiency bonus. In this case, their Spellcasting stat refers to whatever Attribute previously improved the Save DCs of their spells; Intelligence for Arcane Tricksters, Eldritch Knights, and Wizards; Wisdom for Clerics, Druids, Rangers, and the Ki abilities of Monks; Charisma for Bards, Paladins, Sorcerers, and Warlocks.

A spell successfully affects the target if the spellcaster's roll is equal to or higher than relevant Defence of their target. For example, a spellcaster casting Fear would make a Spellcasting Check against the Wisdom Defence of each individual creature in a 30-foot cone, and would affect all those their roll(s) exceeded. A spellcaster casting Fireball would deal 8d6 to each enemy whose Dexterity Defence they beat, and half that to all those they failed to beat.

If a creature would normally have Advantage or Disadvantage to a saving throw, it instead applies the reverse to the enemy caster. For example, if Tordak has Advantage to Constitution saves, an enemy spellcaster who casts Finger of Death on him would roll with Disadvantage.

I can think of a reason, as a DM myself, to allow a player to play a genasi.

It's a pretty simple one.

Because the player wants to, and absent any overriding reasons not to do so, I can make it work with my setting.

In advance, yes I know that Saving Throws work great in the current system. Yes, I know this isn't fixing a problem, because they're isn't a problem in the first place. This is mainly just because I prefer the active character to be making the rolls instead of the defensive character. It's a weird hang-up but I feel like it changes the tone of the game. Luck is in the hands of the aggressor when using weapons, so it's strange when luck is in the hands of the defender when resisting most kinds of spells.

>advocating for snowflake player races
>only arguments for it are insinuating all who disagree are /thatguy/

My first thought is why not just have the defense be the attribute score?

Read your quote first.

The genasi in 5e are made of only one element, thus no multiple personalities. You are focusing on shit from a separate genasi surface not in 5e.

>Citing 4E FR lore.
It sucks. No shit.

Damn phone meant subrace not surface.

>13+mod
>unless proficient, then 13+ proficiency

So let me get this straight, a level 1 Fighter with 16 Con has a 15 con defense, while a Paladin with the same has a 16? Why should proficiency make you worse?

Further, a Wizard with 10 Con would have a +0 to their saves under the old system, but a defense of 13 under the new one. They go from saving half the time to saving closer to a third. Why not just have it be 10+mod+proficiency?

The idea can work, but you're going about it in a weird way.

In denial.

Have fun with that. I'm sure the rest of your party will not regret that decision every 2-5 minutes of playtime.

They probably wouldn't, because we're all pretty good friends irl, and all of them are so bad at roleplaying that there's no way they could pull off the dramatic hijinks of a mary sue player.

That bollocks lore is from 4e or 3e. I can't speak for 3e, but in 4e not all of them had multiple manifestations, and you had to invest feats into them. It's not supposed to be multiple people, just a different perspective and tendencies, such as being fiery and passionate and impulsive, or cool and pragmatic and following the flow of things. Which I think is pretty cool. A being that has the elements ingrained in their being, that can switch their native element, being affected by it. Anything can be roleplayed badly, but I think it has just as much potential for good roleplay as anything else.
In any case, it's invalid in 5e. There are only 4 canon sorts, and have elemental magic in their blood from radiation seepage or ancestry, born to parents of other races or genasi. They can't switch between them. In addition, there are no quasi plane or dread plane genasi. Just the big 4 elements.
Personally I wouldn't mind 4 quasi genasi, but the dread and such are too much.

Well thank god they're just one superspecialawesome race with no mental illnesses.

This doesn't change the fact that you're walking a mythical being around your setting with a bunch of tagalong player races. Unless you want to run a Captain Planet campaign.

>inb4 someone stats a Friendship Genasi

You have poor reading and math comprehension skills.

A +0 passes a DC 19 save 10% of the time. This means you want a +11 attack targeting a nonproficient 10 attribute to miss 10% of the time. It needs to miss on a 2, so the defense needs to be 14 base.

>race determines player character personality from start

How did you misread
> different element personalties are not like mental illness
Anyway?

Try again.
>Race plays an aspect in the character's personality because it changes the situation in which they were raised, how others treated them, and other lasting effects such as lifespan or inborn powers
>A creature embodying a plane that represents both a physical element and the metaphysical tendencies it is associated with has at least some inborn traits based on that, which can be embraced or denied by the character in question based on how they feel they should or shouldn't harbor them

>"Well in MY group, complete with perpetually teleporting goalposts"

If I were telling you how to play in YOUR group and YOUR setting I would have done myself a favor and chucked my tower out the window before I opened a reply.

This is a question of whether or not Genasi are suitable as a player race and I still have yet to hear a good reason to include them in that particular, well-contained subset of races.

Again, I'm not looking for criteria to exclude races from player control, I looking for reasons as to why they should even be considered.

> I am angry! Angry about Genasi!

Are we being baited here?

Do you have an argument or is this pure bait at this point?

My first thought is why not just have the defense be the attribute score?
Because 13 + (X-10) / 2 =/= X. A character with 10 Con and no proficiency would have 13 Con Defence my way, and 10 Con Defence your way. On the other hand, a character with 20 Con and no proficiency would have 18 Con Defence my way, and 20 Con Defence your way. Your approach would, essentially, reward characters with stats of 17 or higher and punish those with stats of 15 or less. Since most characters will have a 15 or less in most stats, that means lower Defences and thus characters failing against spells and other similar effects more often than the game anticipates by design.

Defence = 13 + Attribute Modifier, if you're Proficient you ALSO add your Proficiency Bonus. I think I may have phrased that poorly, you don't replace your stat modifier, you ADD your Proficiency modifier to the total if you're Proficient.

13 Base if my math is correct, since the person rolling wins ties when rolling against a DC.

Correction, punishes characters with a 14 or less. Mathematically, using either of our formulas a character with 15 or 16 in an attribute would have the same Defence.

Have you ever DM'd before? I doubt it, but maybe you'll surprise me. A basic, foundational rule of DMing that is taught to almost anyone asking for advice on the subject is to "say yes". Now, I won't tell you that you should never say no, but if you can't think of a valid reason to deny the player, then yes should be your answer.

So far, the only reasons you've posited are mainly that the genasi are mary sue type races, and something about not working in a setting. I've already said if you absolutely cannot fit them into your setting, then go ahead and say no. But most settings can be tweaked to allow them.

What I take issue with is the "mary sue race" deal. If you can't trust your players to play a fun game, why are you even playing with them?

Most of your arguments seem to stem from bad DMing, or playing with bad players, and I pity you, whichever is actually the case.

I think my math is very clear and easily generalised. You need 14 base. I don't know what's wrong with your math, other than it got the wrong answer./shrug

Oh well maybe one of reason is because they are an official race for d&d. And since they are official, there shouldn't be such a big problem including them into a campaign. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean players who want to play officially approved character races are bad for wanting to play something completely legal in the game.

>players can choose to play however they like
no shit,
the question is, again, is it LIKELY that a player won't use the elemental excuse to engage in randumb shenanigans if Genasi are included as a player race. Elementals of any variety simply have no place in player races.

Alright, /5eg/ I need your advice.

Has anyone here ever been payed to DM? I've got a group that wants to learn to play and they said they'd pay me, but I don't know what's reasonable to charge now, and going forward (I hope to put up an ad for newbies, make some money for the hell of it). So, does anyone have any advice? I was thinking like $10 an hour ish, or like $10 a person for 5 hours.

Also, do you guys have any tips for being professional? Should I ask a game store to play there, or ask to play at one of their places?

Thanks for any and all help.

I kind of liked it, and how there was the tanky bard I played and a friend playing a tanky swordmage.
The swordmage had ridiculous AC and reflex but crappy two other stats
The bard had ridiculous fortitude and will but crappy two other stats
Mantle of unity was fun, together we would have 42 in all stats covering for each other's weaknesses.

A lot of enemies targeted the bard just because they could only miss on a nat 1

However, this is exactly where the problem starts

So many abilities work like 'on hit, automatically stun/daze'
And the enemies can just spam that.
Not to mention AC and reflex were kind of the most important... until Orcus, where the Bard is the only untouchable one, not even having to use his anti-death-touch abilities. You dealt half my max health in damage? Wow, you got me down to 80% health! Good job, Orcus!

Implying he's not the bad player/GM.

I still don't see what the problem is with just using stat scores then. A level 0 commoner guy with average charisma (10/+0) should seems like it should fail to resist the magical power of another guy with average charisma half the time. Or, to generalize it, two people, completely equal, should have a 50/50 chance each of winning and losing in a contested spell check.

Under your system, that isn't the case. Early levels favor the defender, and once the proficiency bonus is greater than 3, the attacker is favored.

If I had to design a system like this, I'd go with this:

Defense=Attribute score+proficiency
Attacker=1d20+(attribute score-10)+proficiency

I remember seeing something on here about rolling for your array. Someone made all the combinations of a point buy array and numbered them. Then you would roll for the array you get.

Anybody have that handy? 20 minutes of Google has failed me.

That's retarded reasoning. I suppose we should ban all half orcs because the prayers will just be CE murderers, ban all elves because players will act snobby, and immediately kill off any tieflings because their demon ancestry means they are all clearly evil. You're just making half-assed excuses at this point.