/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General: Broken Heart Edition

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What's the most emotionally-devastated your character's ever been?

>What's the most emotionally-devastated your character's ever been?
When the party finally left the big city, travelled the road ON FOOT to a tiny hamlet, and the not-even-an-inn was revealed to have only "beef" on the menu and straw instead of 1,500 thread count silk sheets.

currently playing OotA and my char's backstory is that Ghazrim DuLoc killed his sister, currently fueled mostly by hatred and quickly sinking into the depths of insanity (failed nearly all my san rolls, currently have 1 permanent madness and just got my second long term madness)

Just finished up the mushroom kingdom, heading our way to Blingdenstone (or whatever that place is called). Interested in seeing if i can have my revenge before being totally lost in madness.

How do I make the game interesting for my martial players? Casters it seems easy: they get spells that change the battlefield in unique ways. Martials, all of the responsibility for fun seems to be on my shoulders as the DM.

interesting/dynamic battlefields.

Yes casters CAN take advantage of such things, but usually they are too busy looking at their spell list to bother.

Take some lessons from 4e, as far as having an interactive environment goes. Give them things to knock around into people and people into, various interactions that technically anyone can do but depend on the player, target or both being close. The good old "rope attached to the chandelier" is a good example.

Theoretically could a mindflayer reproduce with an elf? I'm asking for a friend.

Don't mindflayers reproduce by implanting parasites that eat the host's brain and turn them into a mindflayer?

If by "reproduce" you mean give them a parasite that turns them into a mindflayer, then yes.

Yup! Give them braziers to flick the coals from, towers to grapple and push the enemy off, let them swing from the chandeliers, etc.

Too much incase?

Like the other person said.

Things that require strength to deal with such as a bear barbarian and a boulder can create some fun alternate solutions.

A rogue has a bunch of things relating to hiding and taking the first hit in combat, so give them a chance to do something before combat happens.

A fighter...
Pfft, fighters.

A monk? .. People play those? Well, I guess, give them walls to.. .. Run up.? Maybe?

Make sure to supply them with items the martials can use, such as.. Maybe strength-thrown extra heavy bombs, or payloads for them to fuck around with, or, I don't know, magic items with cool functions.

If that were my reason for asking I would've said goblin or halfling instead of elf.

Too much Butcha-u.

My fighter for OotA, a goliath who prides himself on his strengh and courage, was nearly killed and forced to retreat the mushroom village after barely beating a giant mushroom slug creature/cultist. Afterwards, he had to kill a deranged stone giant and use his corpse as a raft to ensure he would not "get sucked into the earth". (he got hit with a short term madness at a poor time.)

It was a very depressing and taxing two sessions for him.

Haven't you seen the mindflayers fucking that group of elves by him?

Apparently not. I'll have to check it out during my break.

This is a good approach, but has a slight problem in that every class can attempt and succeed at these things, AND the caster classes (who run on resources and are generally worse at hitting things) are the ones who get the most mileage out of it.

A Barb who can hit things twice a turn for 20 damage each is putting out more damage and being more useful than the Wizard who is flinging a single cantrip for 10 damage. The Wizard has a lot of control spells and AoE nukes, sure, but he needs to pace himself in using those. If you allow battlefield manipulation (throwing enemies into objects, throwing objects into enemies, using the terrain to murder guys or impose conditions), it's got to be good enough in terms of ease of use, damage dealt, and conditions inflicted for it to be an attractive option to the Barbarian and other martials. See the problem with grognard interpretation of improvised weapons: "you throw the wagon onto the goblin, dealing 1d4 bludgeoning damage".

But the moment you make this stuff GOOD and something that the Barb wants to perform for mechanical reasons rather than variety and spice is when all the casters, who are either out of resources or don't want to use theirs, are now trying to do the same shit, and the way 5E handles skills and ability scores now means that not only can many casters be just as good, but even the ones who aren't won't wind up being significantly worse at it.

The only solution I've found is to not let the casters do these things in a useful way. The Barbarian throws a full barrel of ale on the thug; it does decent damage, maybe knocks him prone. The Cleric, who happens to have the same Strength, also throws a full barrel of ale on the thug and rolls just as well, but it just doesn't have the same effect. That seems unfair, and it is, but so is the huge utility disparity between those two classes to begin with. This is just one way of fixing it.

That's not to say that Clerics or Wizards or whatever other caster can't do useful battlefield manipulation. Their magic is the original battlefield manipulator, and they have few limits when it comes to drastically reshaping an area either through a specified spell effect or following through the physical consequences of creative spell use. As far as replicating what the Barbarian is doing, a barrel flung by a spell could match that, or they could instead capitalize on the action of their comrade by using a spell to freeze the whole mess solid, or zap soaked enemies with lightning for increased effect. I stop short of flammable Grease, but am otherwise very accommodating.

>A monk? .. People play those? Well, I guess, give them walls to.. .. Run up.? Maybe?
Don't be stupid. Monks are a lot of fun. Have some ranged enemies attacking them and the Monk will feel cool as fuck deflecting those with his bare hands.

You could impose weight limits on what you can effectively throw, carrying capacity is a thing after all.

>playing high seas
>muskets, pistols
>one person is playing a monk
I feel bad for that monk.
I feel so very bad for that monk.
What's he going to do, catch a bullet and deflect it?
Oh, fuck, he probably is.
I envy that monk.

That only works as far as throwing is concerned, which is a small subset of what you can do creatively on the battlefield, and still does nothing to stop Bards, Clerics, and Paladins from patching the power of more dedicated martials (or even the odd Wizard who has high Strength for whatever reason).

If you could take 16 Int or Cha on your Barbarian and suddenly start casting spells without multiclassing or taking a feat or a specific archetype, there'd be something to that, but you can't. Meanwhile, any caster, be they physically-oriented or not, can get the same skill score or ability score as a non-caster and match them tit for tat in a throwing competition.

Shit, for 1 Ki point he can even throw the bullet back...

Except they can't throw anything heavier than a dagger with proficiency, unless they are a dwarf.

I wouldn't worry terribly much if the bard or cleric can engage in the fun too sometimes, not everything needs to be completely exclusive. The barbarian might just be more often in position to push enemies into the coals while the cleric and bard are doing something besides melee, not more capable. Remember the point is to give them something to do, not make them "special" like having a specific spell list.

I think you'd also need to make it factor in multiple attacks. Making it require using up an 'attack' to lift the barrel and then another to throw it means a Barbarian can chuck it in one round while a caster will take two.

or better yet, make each "interaction" an attack, so barbs can do two interactions, 1 interaction and an attack, or two attacks, while most casters can only do one.

and by that, i mean picking up and throwing the barrel is one interation, so barbs could hurl two barrels, kick a table into someone then cut the chandelier rope, or punch someone in the dick and then pour hot coals on them.

Which would be more interesting as a player, desert-themed or caribbean islands themed campaign? I'm debating what to go for.

I'm curious what WotC's rationale was for giving rogues proficiency in neither whips nor blowguns. Has it ever been justified by Jeremy or Mike? Anyone have any thoughts on why?

>when has your character been most emotionally devastated?

When he finally overcame his trust issues with the rest of the group as he wholly dedicated himself at long last to truly being their friend, not just their comrade, in their quest to stop a full scale demonic invasion.

Shortly afterwards, he learned three of the four other members of the party were consorting with demons making pacts and securing places for themselves if things go south. This completely shattered his faith in friendship, and sent him down a blackened path of utter cynicism, and friendlessness. He rallied the nearby Templars and had them tried for witchcraft and crucified. The remaining member he was distant from from then on.

He was shortly after relegated to BPC status after the near tpk

:(

The more I think about it the more they might have just been humans getting raped. Who knows. Still good stuff.

I just explained that they can get in on the fun, but there's multiple routes to doing it which they have exclusive access to and the martials don't. It's fine if the martials also have things to do that the casters don't, and they NEED to have those, because if we're saying that standard melee or ranged combat is boring unless you are shoving enemies around or moving objects and throwing things or altering the terrain, doing that stuff also needs to be mechanically beneficial and (near) equal to taking a full attack action. But the moment you make "throwing things" a mechanically viable alternative for the Barbarian instead of "hitting things" (either because it does near-enough damage or is applying advantageous conditions) is when the Cleric, the Paladin, the Bard, the Druid, and the Wizard start doing it as well. The one thing they didn't have going for them up until now was matching the raw per-round damage of the Barbarian without blowing resources. Now you've just made them more powerful and given them even more options while the Barb sees his one advantage eroded.

A Valor Bard, generally, is not going to outdamage a Barbarian or Fighter. They have the same number of attacks, but Fighters have easier access to GWM and could take Dueling, the Barbarian has Rage damage bonus (which is not huge, but whatever). They are close enough, though, without being slouches. Same for the Paladin, who can even exceed them for a time by running through all their Smites.
If there is an action in combat that is attractive enough to the more-damaging Barbarian and Fighter to give up their attacks for, why would the less-damaging Bard and Paladin not also do this? Whatever effectiveness the Barb and Fighter lost in raw damage, the Paladin and Bard are losing less of it, since their autoattack ceiling isn't as high to begin with. On top of that, they still have magic to interact with the environment in ways the martials can't.

Do you have ideas for interesting stuff to do in the desert? On the ocean?

Both tend to be vast stretches of samey terrain where supplies are key. Islands are a bit better because they have easier variety, but its really a matter of hooking the players on why they're wandering this terrible place

>Do you have ideas for interesting stuff to do in the desert? On the ocean?
Nope! Not at all. But I do know that I want the environment to be a central part of the campaign.

Well, blowguns are garbage. Whips seem like an oversight, although I'm not sure how well sneak attacking with a whip would work.

In what way? Do you want survival to be a challenge, or do you want interesting terrain?

Survival and I want the players to experience something exotic and unfamiliar. I think I've personally had it with campaigns set in forests and grassland. Desert would be slightly more oriented towards survival, and islands more about navigation and exploration.

>blowguns are garbage
I know, they might as well be a simple melee weapon, they're empirically worse than two-handing the hand-crossbow.

Blowgun
>deals 1 damage
>has the Loading property
>disadvantage at any distance further than 25 ft
But it fits the flavor of a rogue, so why not just give it to them?

>not sure how well sneak attacking with a whip would work
Well, they have finesse and there are multiple ways for a rogue to gain proficiency with them, so I doubt WotC intended for them to be unsneakattackable.

Why not a Jungle? Why limit yourself to one type of terrain?

It would probably evolve to something like that further down the line.

If I posted the map I made would you guys rip it apart and tell me how shit it is but also give me some constructive criticism? I need help with scale and names but I know the locations themselves need work too.

Post it faggot.

I'd say island hopping then. Desert can be good for some things, but interesting environments tend to be easier when you can have Islands as set-pieces for different locales.

Heck, you can even have islands that are deserts for whatever random reason you want.

Put in imaginary numbers:
The Barbarian attacks twice for 20 damage each. He does 40 damage.
The Bard attacks twice for 15 damage each. He does 30 damage.
The Barbarian is bored of swinging every round and never doing anything else in combat, so the DM lets him throw a barrel.
The barrel does 3 damage, and everyone agrees this isn't fun or interesting at all. So they say it also knocks down, but this still isn't worth the Barbarian's time, because he could attack once for 20 damage and then shove an enemy prone. So to be attractive, the barrel has to, at least, do 20 damage and knock down. It has the advantage of being ranged, but the disadvantage of requiring special resources (nearby barrels).

So now the Barbarian is throwing barrels that deal 20 damage and knock down.
The Bard, who's just as strong, also decides to throw barrels. If he wanted to attack once and shove on his own turn, he'd deal 15 damage and knock down. But we've just established that barrels are ranged, do 20 damage, and also knock down. There's no reason for the Bard to never not be doing this, because he's just as good at it as the Barbarian, and it is in fact better for the party's damage output for the Bard to throw all barrels and the Barbarian to swing away all round just as before.

Monks can run on water. Imagine all the possibilities... they can, uh.... run... on the water.

That'd be great if your dungeon was basically zeldas water temple

Sounds good. I've wanted to do a maritime campaign for a while now.

Hell, maybe I'll start from the desert and then expand to some island exploration.

The only way we fix this is by letting the Barbarian throw barrels better than the Bard. But how do we accomplish that mechanically? The Bard can take the same proficiencies the Barb can. He can easily have the same Strength. He can even have Expertise in those proficiencies and be BETTER at it than the Barb. The only pros the Barb could possibly have is advantage on the throws (if we're making it a Strength check and he's Raging) and +2-3 damage (if Raging). But the Bard's Expertise easily outpaces the usefulness of advantage, so this has to be a generic Strength check and not Athletics, and two damage either way means dick. It's still probably preferable in this situation for the Bard to attempt every time instead of the Barb, especially when this means the Barb will be getting advantage on all of his more damaging attacks against the now-prone target.

It gets even worse if you compare something like a Fighter to a Paladin. The Paladin doesn't have any tricks like Expertise to get a leg up on the Fighter, but the Fighter also doesn't get to take advantage on every Strength check or go hulkamania. They're evenly matched in physical contests, but the Paladin can do shit with magic and the Fighter is left to... what? Be an EK? Burn his own resources to be better than the Paladin, while the Paladin also has resources to burn which are even more powerful? Be a Champion and pray for that 5% chance that your barrel throw is better?

It's so much easier to say, "Your class can't cast magic, being physical is literally all you know, so you are better at this physical stuff. Sorry, caster, but you can still do this with magic, plus even more amazing things with magic through non-standard spell usage."

I'm an idiot. I thought I had it on my phone but apparently not. I'll post it in 30 min.

At level 9.
And they fall since they're only water walking on their turn. Good for dashing across a pond, not useful for sprinting across the ocean.

Depends on the desert, but sure. The Three Amigos takes place in a desert. A bunch of the Raiders of the Lost Ark does, too. Lawrence of Arabia. Basically everything from 1001 Nights. Mad Max. Deserts are good places for crazy shit.

Caravans and oases and nomads and bandits and slaves and wizards and outposts on the edge of the grasp of law and order. Ancient empires struck low by horrible curses. Unspeakably corrupt autocrats with scheming advisors and beautiful consorts.

Basically the same stuff you could put anywhere else. "Survival" is a shit theme, don't lean on it.

A desert-themed campaign with Caribbean-styled islands of sand and stone separated by seas of silt.

Plus a desert is far more likely than a string of islands to have anything remotely resembling a dungeon.

...

did you autisticallyrag on your own map?

anyway yea it's pretty boring

...

>Missing the joke

Tilt your head, friend

...

Has anyone ever 3D printed a miniature before?

Hey guys, question;

Say you had to design a fantasy world but you were only allowed to use four races and humans are one of them. What would you pick for the other three? Everything else is either some sort of malevolent spirits, immortal, beast, or otherwise a creature without something we would qualify as a thriving civilization.

dragonborn
tiefling
gnome

Dwarf.
Lizard.
Alien Grey.
Yeti.

Yeah I just checked all of incase's stuff I can find with mindflayers shows them fucking humans.

Holy fuck I am going batty planning future sessions from the Curse of Strahd book, it is so fucking confusing and badly organized.

One is at least a half-elf.

Check the Mind_Flayer tag on paheal

Alright this is my map. I am 50/50 happy with it. I feel like there's too much going on, but I'm afraid of having wide open areas.

I am SHIT at names. Most are stolen from online, hell a couple are taken directly from Runescape.

I mainly want help with the scaling (I can change the squares to be any size) and tweaking some of the layout. Easily edited, the program I used was pretty simple and easy to edit. Also, any name suggestions would be welcomed.

Kobolds, Merfolk, Goliaths

How new?

High Elves.
Wood Elves.
Dark Elves.

Some of the text is difficult to read, can you do a stronger white border? White-bordered black text is always readable.

I would suggest extending the Fey's Forest up a bit or the trees around the The Iron Perch (?) down a bit and make it look like the same growth but the top part is spooky.

It honestly feels crowded to me. Unless you're going for that I would probably spread stuff out a bit more.

I won't bitch about most of the name, but please rename the "Cave of Fear" to anything.

>humans and three kinds of elves
>no half elves
I'd add them as a bonus, myself.

Yeah I can make it legible, it's easy.

I like that idea and it works with what I was planning for that area. A+ thanks.

I do feel it's crowded, but it works sort of. Mainly the 'bad guys' (Who are the PCs) Feel there's not enough room for the 'good guys' and plan on getting rid of them. So it works, but I'm worried it'll make traveling weird.

The name is actually from a set of childhood books I loved reading. It's terrible, but it's kinda important to me. It's a terrible fucking nae I know.

Thank you!

Which program did you use to make it?

Inkarnate. It's a website. You have to sign up to use it and it's in beta, but it's good for simple maps.

Can't do anything wild with it, but it works.

>Can't do anything wild with it

Well maybe I'm just bad!

Has anyone actually run the Zendikar material that was released? Is there a scan out anywhere of the art book to grab lore from for someone who didn't play through either Zendikar block?

Quick question; I have a -1 STR mod. When dealing damage, do I subtract 1 from my damage rolls when using a weapon that requires strength?

Yes.

This means I can roll a 1 and do 0 damage right?

Yep. Get a Finesse weapon.

Find practical uses for pic related build.
840 feet is equivalent to 168 squares

I'll start:
>carry 20lb stone in one talon
>standard action grapple enemy with second talon
>use 200 feet of movement to fly straight up and drop enemy for 20d6 bludgeoning (10ft remaining)
>drop stone on the enemy for 20d6 bludgeoning as a free action
>bonus action dash (10ft+210ft = 220ft remaining)
>fly to the ground (20 ft remaining)
>attack (with advantage if they land prone, use reckless attack if they manage to land on their feet) + extra attack with a greatsword for 4d6+14 slashing damage

24d6+14 damage per turn
mean = 98 damage

...

fuck off

I can use daggers for now, but my class already gives me two daggers + a simple melee weapon. Daggers are the only simple melee weapons that give finesse and I don't really have a use for three of them lol

Lies. Take 3 daggers. They can be thrown, and you don't want to run out of daggers to thrown.

Throwing.

Kill yourself.

Actually I fucked up:

>carry 20lb stone in one talon
>standard action carry enemy 200ft into air
>end the grapple at no cost (as per pic related) for 20d6 damage
>drop the stone as a free action for 20d6 damage
>let yourself fall onto the enemy for 20d6 damage, using your reaction to reduce your damage by 75
>attack+extra attack with a greatsword using Haste extra action for 4d6+14 slashing damage

64d6+14 damage per turn
mean = 238 damage

If there's one thing you can rely on with /5eg/, it's that the absolute faggot who posts "fuck off" to posts that trigger his autism will be in it. Congratulations on having absolutely no life, you miserable shit stain. I pity the mother who must be housing and feeding your NEET 37-year-old ass.

Not him.

Fuck off.

You say per turn, but you aren't going to be smashing your face into the enemy at 125 miles per hour very often.

Fuck off.

Fuck off.

Birdfag is trying to replace Virt as the most cancerous poster on Veeky Forums.
Keep up the shit work, Birt.

>post original content relevant to the general topic
>cancer

>pathetically complain like little bitches because someone broke the game that your entire life revolves around
>not cancer

wew lad, you really had me going there ;)

Fuck off.

Fuck off.

whar was /5eg/'s opinion of the mystic class playtest?