>Official /5eg/ Mega Trove v3:
mega.nz
>Pastebin with homebrew list, resources and so on:
pastebin.com
>June 2016 Survey
dnd.wizards.com
>General question:
So tell me, whats the longest hiatus your group has ever taken from playing a session without completely breaking apart? Atm my group is hitting week 4 as of tomorrow. As of right now, we have plans to resume July 1st.
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If I'm a gnome wizard and reduce myself to size tiny, what is the best small size creature I could use as a mount, That could still support my reduced weight of 5 to 15 lbs?
A giant rat would be your best option for something you could easily tame, but best in general is hard to say. I guess it would depend on what all you want it to do.
How is the Helmed Horror not a TPK, even for a 4th level party?
With point-buy and optimal stats, the players are going to have at most +6 to hit, which means they'll have to roll 14 to hit the damn thing at all
This is BEFORE the resistance to non magical weapons AND TO MAGIC
I want to unleash this thing on my party, but come on it almost seems too cruel
It's not that good. I'd recommend avoiding it because it's sloggy, not because it's OP.
Using the chart on page 274 (monster statistics by challenge rating) we can see it's 20AC is literally off the charts. That's pretty phenomenal. Advantage on saving throws against magic is good but that great given that it has *no* mental stat bonuses at all and only a +1 on dex. In light of that it's status immunity that looks OP on first glance is actually absolutely necessary to keep it from getting 1 hit by anything on that list.
It's real weaknesses are its other stats. 60HP is CR1/2 level and it's damage per turn is 16 (assuming flat damage and using shield, which was needed to get to 20AC) which puts it on part damage wise with a CR2 creature. That's assuming both attacks hit and its target has no physical or slashing resistance.
Furthermore, all its damage is focused on its longsword. If disarmed or otherwise deprived of said equipment its damage will drop further: 10 if the DM rules it gets to keep using multiattack with unarmed damage for a CR1 equivalency. 5 if the DM rules it's version of multiattack required the longsword for a CR1/4 equivalency, or 0 if the DM rules that all its attack actions specifically required the longsword.
Put a bookmark there because it's a great "chump" blocker if you need a monster capable of blocking paths or staling for time, like covering the BBEG's retreat or making a room-filling trap an extra headache. As a solo, though, it's a total waste of time. You make too many rolls that won't hit but when one does hit it will blow away 25--50% of the monsters HP all at once for a long, uninteresting fight.
thanks senpai great post
i will put it in my trap room and think no more of it
(if the players shut off the trap well, they shut off the helmed horror too)
You're welcome. Happy gaming.
How playable is the "armor as DR" variant rule? does it gimp natural AC too hard? do unarmored classes benefit or slump passed a certain level?
to give context, I'm just reading through the base books while preparing a campaign planned for a few months ahead, but I wanted a general consensus and my players are fairly new from 3.pf and DR always managed to elude my lower level games.
For a single campaign? About 6 weeks.
For a single campaign interrupted by a smaller mini-campaign while one of our players got stuff sorted? 3 months or so.
For a break between campaigns? 5 months.
They also fly
Fuck im creating these things en masse when I get true Polymorph
house-cat-mounted tiny gnome wizard
Thanks, fellas.
That feature becomes much less desirable under the Gritty Realism rest variant, doesn't it?
>If I'm a gnome wizard and reduce myself to size tiny, what is the best small size creature I could use as a mount, That could still support my reduced weight of 5 to 15 lbs?
I appreciate your inclusion of 120/8 = 15lbs
How would you fix beastmaster so it doesn't suck?
Give the beastmaster invocations: ranger edition that benefit the pet/pet-ranger complex.
Yep. Earth Genasi in general don't get very good benefits.
Well I rate pass without trace really high up on the list of useful spells and it buffs your whole party so idk. It's still pretty good.
Had a group go eight weeks without meeting, but it was a bi-weekly group to begin with so it wasn't that bad.
So I'm trying to work on a homebrew setting, but I keep getting overwhelmed by how many different things D&D has going on from the default setting assumptions.
Would it be considered bad form to get rid of some casting classes or otherwise alter them to fit with a more unified idea? I don't like the thought of having to justify 9 different ways that people can use magic in the setting along with everything else.
well dont forget you can also generalize it. fluff up druids and rangers getting magic the same way, same with clerics and pallys, force paladins to worshop a god.
that being said, its going to be up to you and your players. you can limit a shitton, but if you know "johnny has been talking about wanting a lock" you might hit a wall banning locks
you can do alot with just fluff though. sure bards and wizards learn magic differently, but fluffing tricksters like bards, and EK's like wizards reduces how people cast
I think Meld With Stone or whatever would be a better fit than PwT honestly.
Longest hiatus was 2 months while I studied for the bar exam.
>Would it be considered bad form to get rid of some casting classes or otherwise alter them to fit with a more unified idea?
no thats totally fine
>the players are going to have at most +6 to hit, which means they'll have to roll 14 to hit the damn thing at all
Sounds pretty easy to hit. 20 AC isn't a big deal. Looking at the MM page, it only has 60 hit points too.
I note that the magic resistance only applies to save effects, not attack roll spells, and it doesn't have resistance to elemental damage. Scorching Ray comes to mind as a good choice.
A 4th level party should be able to take it down without much trouble, especially if there's only the one enemy. Just mash Attack and never let up, use healing if someone is KO'd, which is unlikely since it only has pathetic longsword attacks.
>longsword
>pathetic
katana fags
AC 20 is pretty hard for a lvl 4 party to break, roughly a 35% chance, 40% with magic weapons. It's HP may not be massive but it does have resistance to nonmagic weapons and is immune to force, necrotic, and poison, plus its immune to pretty much all crippling debuff conditions and advantage vs all spells with saves. Pretty much the fight would boil down to a slow grindfest where the party wails on it and hits half the time, and then it would make its two attacks and then the cycle repeats. If its a dungeon boss, it's nothing too bad to worry about. If its an obstacle on the wat to a dungeon boss, it can eat away at a lot of your resources if you get unlucky.
Also that force / necrotic immunity makes it a perfect warlock counter, so if you have a small party with a warlock fighting it, the fight gets a lot harder.
>have them instead just gain more and more slots of a single level
Okay hold up, so were talking a shit ton of low level spell slots? Isn't that kind of fail with action economy? still limited to 1 spell per turn, and its going to be a low level spell at that. It'd also be hard to pull off a counterspell in that way.
How is this for an early level elemental companion?
Small Shadow Elemental
Armor Class 13
Hit Points: 4d10
Speed: Fly 50 ft. (hover)
STR6
DEX16
CON10
INT6
WIS10
CHA10
Damage Vulnerabilities: Radiant
Damage Resistances: cold, necrotic, physical from nonmagical weapons
Damage Immunities: poison
Condition Immunities: exhaustion, grappled, paralyzed,petrified, poisoned, prone, restrained, unconscious
Senses: blindsight 60 ft.
Languages: primordial
Incorporeal Movement: The elemental can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain.
Actions.
Slam: Melee +5, 1d4+3 slashing + 1d4 cold
Shadow Mastery: while elemental and its target are in area of dim light or darkness, it has advantage on attack rolls. If elemental is in bright light, it has disadvantage on attack rolls.
I kind of figured that Rangers/Druids and Paladins/Clerics were already using similar sources.
I'm more concerned with having 4 different types of arcane casting. Sorcerers and Warlocks already feel like plenty, but Wizards and Bards on top of that gets overwhelming.
Wizards and Bards both study for their magic.
Warlock depends on if there's powerful non-divine entities that would be willing to make contracts and grant spells.
Sorcerer can come from a lot of different places.
Does it really matter whether you get your magic from your blood or a god or a giant octopus-faced man? Everyone still follows the same spellcasting rules.
its easy to assume, and rangers/druids specifically can work together in the fluff easily, but they specifically mention druids "worship" nature
rangers "worship" nature by following nerds around and killing jerks, and petting their fluffy pet badger at night. Not by stripping naked in the woods and doing circle jerk rituals to some ents
that being said, if you really really had to shorten the "types" of magic, but not remove classes i would say
cleric/druid
druid/ranger
wizard/EK
bard/rogue/sorc
lock
druids, rangers, clerics, paladins, AND locks are all "given" their spells by something
wizards and EK have to learn shit, and spend time perfecting it
bards, rogues, and sorcers all really get by on natural talents in some form or another
it doesn't all work, obviously rogues are more like EK than bards, and EK are obviously like wizards, but fluff wise, i feel like those can be broke down that way
That was sort of my idea. Consider if the shadowcaster gradually worked its way up to around 9 level 1 spell slots each day. This isn't much different than the number of spells a mid-level caster would be using, so action economy is fine. Rather, the biggest difference is that all the effects would be more basic. This means they'd be more effectively used for utility spells.
Then, they'd be more reliant on using Mysteries to get a handful of uses of certain higher level spells each day.
I'll admit, its a bit off the wall, but I think it'd be a good way to help set it apart from the warlock.
As for the elemental, that seems a bit more tame in the damage and health department. Blindsight and phasing through objects are both quite handy though.
I'd also suggest that no matter what, you make sure to add some Mysteries for options to boost the companion for that subclass.
Pass without Trace (Flat +10)
Stealth Proficiency/Expertise (Limit [2x]ProfBonus)
Dexterity Modifier (Limit +5)
Are there any other features that grant static bonuses to Stealth?
It matters when I'm the one coming up with the setting. The existence of a class that gets powers from a giant octopus man means I'm responsible for figuring out how to stick a giant octopus man into the world and have it make sense.
Yeah. I get the general breakdown, its just a matter of finding space.
I think I'll try something like that, attempting to condense the fluff of some of these classes so they're more shared. What mentioned about the fact that Bards and wizard both study and have schools/colleges I think is a good example.
Luckstone would give +1 to stealth, and all other skill checks.
Cloak/boots of elvenkind give advantage on stealth checks. Cloak also gives disadvantage to perception checks to spot the wearer.
Other than that, I cant think of anything.
no but theres plenty of ways to add dice rolls to your stealth check
I think ranger's Hide in Plain Sight adds another +10... as long as you don't move.
My 4th level party fought a Roper (20 AC, 102 HP) and 2 Guard Drakes and I was surprised at how quickly they took it down. After seeing how hard it was to hit the thing and how dangerous it's bite was, they played smart and used Magic Missile, Bardic Inspiration and Guiding Bolt to turn the table. They even remembered they had Inspiration!
I'm playing a houseruled Ranger at the moment, works pretty well and I'm keeping up with other classes.
Quite simply, Rangers get both the hunter and beast-master archetypes, they are both kind of bad so together you end up with an actually okay class. Additionally Beast companion get death saving throws akin to players.
Our GM also is going to let Rangers, Paladins and Barbarians get Extra attack (2) at level 13.
x6 ranger level HP instead of x4, add proficiency bonus to save DCs of its abilities, its attacks becoming magical with the 7th-level feature, and it attacks creatures it's commanded to attack until told to stop or until the creature is dead.
Simple and very effective in my own games.
Thanks, there are a few things that give those sweet advantages.
Thief's Supreme Sneak (Advantage with halved movement speed)
And another static
Hide in Plain Sight (Flat +10 drop movement speed to 0 and don't take any actions or reactions)
HiPS isn't really worth considering though because it's kind of shitty. But if you want a build with the highest stealth bonus on paper, you're going to go Rogue1/Rangerx for HiPS. Not considering magic items/boons.
>Stealth proficiency/expertise: +12
>Pw/oT: +10
>20 Dexterity: +5
>HiPS: +10
Total bonus of +37
Max possible roll of +57
If the party is helping out, we can throw some bardic inspiration (1d12), guidance, and bless. With the party helping, we get:
1d20+1d12+2d4+37
Max roll: 77
If we wanted to make that roll happen for certain, we could have a divination wizard help out with portent 20s and cross fingers for the inspiration, bless, and guidance.
What sort of stealth checks would merit a DC 77?
Oh, and Beast gets 3 death-saving throws, like players do.
Hiding your existence from an omniscient being.
Sorry, I guess the question I meant to ask was
What sort of stealth check to hide without moving would merit a DC 77?
>What sort of stealth checks would merit a DC 77?
with a reasonable DM? nothing that a 57 couldnt do, or likely nothing a 30 couldn't do
Ok tomorrow I am going to run a Halfling Lore Bard SOLELY because the Gourmand feat lets me make a character thats traveling the world for the perfect ingredients form dangerous monsters .Its going to be a side thing to our main game which is lv11 so I can go a little batshit with this character and im thinking of a good creature to use Awaken on to work as my faithful mount maybe Eberron style and a dinosaur.Does anyone have any cool ideas that I could use to spruce this guy up? I havent played a Bard yet and im jumping into a fairly high level game and im unsure of all the tricks. Rule of cool applies
make him a halfling bard.... BARBARIAN XD
lolz omg so random xD
what would an omniscient being's passive perception be?
>Want to play as an illusionist
>Realize I have the on-the-fly imagination of a brick
Dammit
One of my players rolled the following trinket:
>"A purple handkerchief embroidered with the name of a powerful archmage."
I'm at a bit of a loss on how to work with this. She's a bard and the archmage is supposedly her fan. What can I do so that he shows how much of a fan he is without having to shower the party with magic items? Maybe he's a bit crazy?
just make an illusion of you having good on-the-fly imagination
make him give them "powerful" magic items, but hes senile and they all don't work or are more trouble than they are worth, a fact the party can only find out after using them. also make them really weird.
The magical items are all just really lewd fetish stuff.
Maybe he just doesn't specialize in making magic items? Have him offer to make basic potions or something, but otherwise maybe he just has a different field of focus.
>9 level 1 spell slots each day
Funny you say that, the old shadowcaster did exactly that. 3 uses per mystery per day of 3rd level and lower spells once it reached lvl 13.
Alright, so 1+1spell known per level, with 1 casting per spell per day, up until 7th level, then that is increased to 2 castings per spell of 3rd level and lower per day.
Yeah, something like that could work. The exact numbers could be fiddled with until you find something that feels right, but I think it's a good basis for a system to make it feel like a distinct class.
Archmage of divination.
He's never missed one of her performances. He doesn't intend to, whether she likes it or not.
By performance, he means showers.
Problem is, the party also has a wizard and she never forgets to cast Identify.
That... could work. Consumable magic items are nice, and I could throw in some permanent weird ones.
I love this. I'll write it down so I don't forget it.
>Problem is, the party also has a wizard and she never forgets to cast Identify.
make them so powerful and yet weird (archmage remember) that her identify identifies one of the abilities of the item, but perhaps not the drawbacks. or perhaps the items arent even so much "magic items" as they are just weird items hes collected through his planar travels.
Any ideas of cool/fun weird items? Maybe some site with lots of examples of those?
Has anyone used the honor ability score variant in the dmg in a campaign? I'm weirdly attracted to it (and it potential increasing or decreasing at the end of every session depending on how honorable a player was) but I don't really know why.
It wouldn't be for a not Japan or not Asia campaign either.
Or any stories about non-sanity alt ability scores would be cool too.
not even joking, someone in an upcoming game wants to make a bardbarian.
we start at level 1, so being a "bardbarian" is at least off the table for a session or two
the powerful magical items only do the "fluff" cantrips of each class
thamaturgy, druidcraft, ect
>im a retard
he sends those cantrip items because she can use them to improve her showmanship.
booming voice, pyrotechnics, pleasing smells in shitty parts of town, slightly more temperate climate
>presditation for pyrotechnic sparks, slight backing notes and fancy lighting
>light in bullseye lanterns for spotlights
>dancing lights for colored mobile stage lighting
>thamaturgy for booming voice and a dimmer switch on the room for slow songs
>druidcraft for confetti
>minor illusion for chorus and extra applause
>mage hand... because i cant think of a reason for mage hand that minor illusion couldn't do
dew it
Does anyone have Legacy of the Crystal Shard?
I've got a buddy of mine who is interested in playing D&D for the first time because he came across The Icewind Dale trilogy. Id like to get him started on familiar ground for his first delve into it and a couple of other people in the group showed interest in playing it as well, if not only to perhaps go toe to toe with ever loathed Drizzt
>tfw when my group kind of already does this
>Bard singing, playing and using Minor Illusion for small fireworks and sparks
>Cleric using Thaumaturgy for drums and other special effects
>Wizard directing the animal she summons from the Bag of Tricks
>Fighter doing cool stuff, like wrestling with said animal when it was a lion
>Rogue being all acrobatic and shit
I have a fun party.
Well, tonight was my first 5e game, ran by a friend of mine. His first time too, in fact first for all of us. It was fun, but I get the feeling the CR system works waaaaay differently than in 3.5 or 4e.
Two 1/2 CR and three 1/8 CR dudes nearly wiped the four of us out, for example. Three people dropped, the only reason the ranger didn't was because he was perched where the other dudes couldn't reach, and pelted them with arrows until they died.
>but I get the feeling the CR system works waaaaay differently than in 3.5 or 4e.
well it says so in the book. JUST those two cr 1/2 dudes would have been an accurate fight
Tell your friend to use kobold.club when planning encounters. It'll make the accidental TPK more unlikely.
>kobold.club
Hmm. That would make the 8 CR 1/8 dudes from an earlier fight... ah... much more deadly.
Dang, well, newbies gonna n00b, I guess! Time to do better next time.
the problem isn't really the monsters specific difficulty. this time around, monsters are a little less... pushovery? i guess. even weak things do alright damage, so basically every turn those cr 1/2-1/8 people got 5 attacks. a single monster with similar difficulty would get one, maybe two, and only do twice as much damage tops.
that and one enemy can be locked down, 5 enemies really cant. one guy gets focus fired down, it takes bare minimum five separate attacks to take down the crowd.
at level one though, everyone is more frail than they really should be. a badly timed crit can absolutely kill a level 1 character at full health, with no save. they're just dead
Yeah, the DM dropped the cleric to -11, when his HP was 11. He was merciful and decided to call a mulligan and only maim him, since this was his first time and he hasn't really grokked the balance yet.
Hey, so first time in a D&D game since 3rd edition, went well played a wizard. we'll be doing a full campaign next and i wanted to try out the warlock to keep the magic but get in the middle of combat up close.
What would you suggest for building a warlock front line fighter?
oh and one more thing, the GM said were using any books we suggest to him. but all i know of is the core books (player and GM guide)
R8 and H8 my Snow Maiden monster.
Also BREXIT
Are there new monster manuals besides the first one?
There comes a point of homebrewing where it's more trouble to force in typical D&D expectations than it is to just use a different system. Think about what using D&D is actually doing for your setting.
There's an invocation that let's you cast False Life at will, I forget what it's called.
Would probably be handy for a Warlock that plans on getting hit a lot.
Exhaustion as a mode of attack is not a good idea.
No.
explain why
There are 3 ways to build a melee warlock that I know: heavy armor with polearm, sword and board untouchable dexlock and suicide warlock
Heavy armor lock relies on either first level of a heavy armor class or starting as dwarf and taking heavily armored at lv4, then you grab a polearm and polearm master for great lv11 damage, works with any patron
Untouchable sword and board takes shield prof at 4 and pumps dex to max, with mage armor invocation, take GOO patron for imposing disadvantage on enemy attacks
Suicidelock relies on getting hit and returning the damage with stuff like fire shield, hellish rebuke and armor of agathys. Works best as a fiendlock
Aneat trick to do in general is casting darkness on your weapon and taking devil's sight to always attack with advantage and be hit at disadvantage, combine with sword and board GOOlock for the scariest motherfucker in the room
Volo's guide out in october, kind of a mix of MM2 and PHB2
If they're still cutting vegetables for the stew, that shit won't be ready for hours. They shouldn't be handing out plates already.
A good point, but you think they might be using the plates for the blackened fish they're about to make? That shouldn't take long.
As people have often pointed out in /5eg/, being a bladelock is actually not as good as being a tomelock with access to Shillelagh. That way, when you absolutely need to be on the front line, you can use Charisma to hit people rather than having to go MAD.
Another cantrip you might want is Green-flame Blade, from the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. It lets you hit two creatures with one attack and ensures that your damage will properly scale with level.
The fish is piled up next to vegetables, and I don't see any spits or anything, which makes me think that they're going to put it in the stew.
Cause the new monster manual is coming out later this year
>You can cast Darkness on objects.
What are the advantages of being "invisible" to enemies in 5e? I know they get disadvantage on attack rolls. Do you get advantage to hit those that can't see you?
I didn't see any either, but it shouldn't be too hard to find some branches.
Also, who uses a plate for stew? That shit needs a bowl.
Those pans look deep enough to manage stew in. When you're adventuring you can't always bring a whole china cabinet.
Yes. This is not the same thing as them being surprised, though, and things like blindsight and tremorsense will ignore magical darkness.
Yup
Why exhaustion bad
Because it is a status condition that lowers player effectiveness dramatically.
Cause disadvantage on skill checks, slowed movement speed, and eventually disadvantage on attack rolls is bad.
What like HP reduction or paralysis
Yeah after failing three DC 13 saving throws
It's not as bad as people say. A single level of exhaustion doesn't significantly hinder your ability to fight, as it only affects skill and ability checks. Two levels halves your speed, which might be an issue if you're not a monk or barbarian. Three levels is where you really start sucking. And you only get back one level per long rest, which is kind of a drag.
The DC isn't always the same. All kinds of shit causes exhaustion - it's a catch-all rule for being worn down by your environment. There's a barbarian subclass that gives itself exhaustion that everyone is afraid to use but I kind of want to try some time.