/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General: Owlbear Edition

What are some fancy materials/manufacturing methods fluff I can add to +X weapons/armor?

Check out the tables on DMG pg. 142-143. They're criminally underused.

TLDR: Can a NPC divine caster change spells after a long rest?

Question:

Are Paladin or Cleric NPCs with prepared spell lists limited to those spells after a long rest? If the NPCS travels with the party members for an extended period of time, could they draw upon their divine powers and prepare new spells or are they limited to the spells on their prepared spell list?

We have a 16th level Paladin walking around and my DM and I disagree on this point. I know wizards and Sorcerers are limited to their spells known, so their prepared spell lists in the monster manual are more stringent, but divine casters aren't bound to those constraints. If yall think it's up to the DM to decide, I'll accept it.

Of course it's up to the GM to decide, but there's really no reason why they couldn't. Hell I don't know why you couldn't make such a request in character like "do you know how to heal an X" or "do you have any idea tricks for dealing with Y". More likely your DM just doesn't want to read the whole list of spell descriptions

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Our namefags making a chatroom was the worst thing that ever happened to the general. Now that the decent human beings don't have to put up with the pervs and shitposters to hang out with each other, they don't bother. Now, only degenerates are left.

I see that some of those add a bit of crunch, (half weight, glows faintly, +2 to initiative) and am thinking about coming up with other things of that sort. I know 5e is allergic to lots of little bonuses and maluses, but if they're persistent it's less of a problem. What about any of these (on armor):

+X to a saving throw
+X to max HP
-X to a specific damage type (ie, fire, or piercing)

I would have thought yes cause don't pally normally change/prepare their spells if needed? I know they need a long rest but they can do that.

but I would have though the GM would have kept the skill the same since it can become a hassle or annoying

Saving throw bonus is pretty big since that's like half a magic item right there (I'd say one is probably fine though), and when you say bonus HP it's hard to imagine a number that is both meaningful but not too much (10 maybe?). The specific damage one is kind of also in the same boat. I'd just save the damage type one for the more badass armors and have it be resistance to keep mechanical consistency, but if the number is less than 5 it probably wouldn't break the game until more material that works like heavy armor mastery comes out (basically never outside of homebrew at this rate)

if the issue is giving too much saves throw then you can just say double existing proficiency on X save throw

I agree with the issue with HP but it depend to how you giving to,cause if it to caster then maybe give 5-10 hp if melee/tanky class then dont, they have high enough AC giving more Hp is just making them a boring meatshield
which is the same with reducing damage

if anything you should go back to thoe magical bonuses.. silent steps- grant guidance at will

WHERE IS THE FUCKING UA

As an example, mindpatterned armor was a technique developed by mind flayers and stolen by the gith, where the neural structures of the wearer are mirrored in the weave of the fabric, providing some protection against psychic assault. Another example is starweave, where the particular weave of the cloth replicates constellations associated with protection and/or battle.

Sometimes it seems like all mindflayers ever do is make things that get used against them

To be fair, the garments have to be custom made to the individuals neural structures. If you just put on a mind flayers robe, it mental patterns infect yours, similar to mad cow disease or other brain prion ailments.

Is there any place in 5e for Blaster Wizards? In 3e it didn't matter what type of Wizard you made because they were all powerful but in 5e I never see people talk about Evocation Wizards so I was wondering if it was viable.

They're fine, but I think a lot of people who want that sort of thing probably play warlocks or sorcerers instead

Dragons crown. Awesome

Evocation wizards are there.
They're fun.
But their school bonuses are kinda boring, honestly.
>you choose who doesn't get hit by your AOEs
>attack roll spells do half damage on a miss
>more damage

Warlocks aren't as good at area spells, and sorcerers aren't as good at shooting them off safely. Careful Spell only guarantees that your friends will succeed at their saves against your spells, which usually means they still take half damage. Evokers are the most reliable slingers of fireballs because they're the only class who can truly put holes in their fireballs.

Fuuuuuck, having the worst writers block. I cannot for the life of me come up with an adventure for my next session. Rogue , Bard and Druid in Good/Neutral party. World setting is pretty grimdark and mostly set in cities.

Fuck. Ideas /fat/g/uys? Unfair challenges/npcs/ideas.. anything?

Crime syndicate smuggles an undead necromancer in a coffin in the city, then uses him(her) to bolster its numbers. Also skeletons dig up things from old tombs and steal trinkets from crypts.

...

For the HP, just give the item a small number of charges that can be used to cast 'False Life' as a bonus action, gain more at midnight /midday.

I mean, what other kind of abilities would they have user?

What does Veeky Forums think of homebrew bard colleges out there?
I'm thinking of trying out college of Maestro but only because it seems to be the one whos recieved the most feeback.

Anyone who got the Heroes of the Orient: Player's and DM's Companion from Dmguild?
Otherwise i will buy it and Post it later

This is the link to it
dmsguild.com/product/187283/Heroes-of-the-Orient-Players-and-DMs-Companion?sorttest=true

Sounds pretty promising for an eastern style campaign or a far traveller background

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them.
They're just a little boring compared to "gain permanent control of undead" or "give yourself free HP"

I am just wonder for fluff purposes since I am going for lock-sorc
can a Serpent Old God like Yig imbue draconic power into my character

You're playing a sorlock.
People are going to think you're a powergaming faggot even if you have a backstory, so who cares?

>5e
>Multiclassing

Why are we still playing this abandoned piece of vapourware?

oh ok... it kinda cause my GM like to make sure the fluff makes sense or not

well because in my current game I notice mind reading and shit it pretty cool and all and sorc meta like quickness and subtle seem useful so that is why

What is a good set of levels to maximize Scorlock Hexblade?

Still a better alternative than the others.

>looks at /pfg/
I guess you're right.

I just bought a bunch of reaper bones miniatures and one of them was fucked up. This was the email I got when I told them about it.

You da real MVP

My group met online and have been using roll20 for a few years. We've played a good 4 campaigns with mostly the same people.

did 5e keep the amazing fluff nuggets, like owlbears being created by some wizards just fucking around.
Or that they are active from noon to till midnight because they are a mix of a nocturnal and diurnal creature.

"An owlbear emerges from its den around sunset and hunts into the darkest hours of the night"

"Scholars have long debated the origins of the owlbear. The most common theory is that a demented wizard created the first specimen by crossing a giant owl with a bear. However, venerable elves claim to have known these creatures for thousands of years, and some fey insist that owlbears have always existed in the Feywild."

>Scholars have long debated the origins of the owlbear. The most common theory is that a demented wizard created the first specimen by crossing a giant owl with a bear. However, venerable elves claim to have known these creatures for thousands of years, and some fey insist that owlbears have always existed in the Feywild
That's actually a mixture of classic owlbear origin and 4e one.

Also, a much nicer owlbear from earlier 5e days

Okay guys, i just bought
Ravenloft Archetypes 1/2
Al Qadim Archetypes
and Eastern Archetypes

Anyone want me to upload the pdf´s?

Reaper has been my favourite source for D&D minis for a while now, they're good dudes
Ravenloft would be sweet, if you don't mind

>However, venerable elves claim to have known these creatures for thousands of years
trying to imply this conflicts with it being a demented wizard's creation. Elves can be demented wizards too.

>some fey insist
believe the fey about anything.

How's this for a sorcerer exclusive spell. Not sure if it should be a cantrip or a first level spell.
>First Level
>Target: Self
>components: S, M: small bits of dust, glass, and mushrooms
>roll an effect on the wild magic surge table

What's the verdict on the way of shadow monk?

Those all sound pretty neat, yes please.

Is there a good +1 dex feat that could benefit a monk?

I see athlete but I'm not sure how big of a bonus that will be compared to the things a monk can already do. I mean I'll probably use kip-up since it seems handy and like a monk thing to do, but other than that it doesn't seem super beneficial.

My upload rate sucks but will deliver the others later in this thread.
have some Al Qadim meanwhile
30 minutes to go

There's really not much in the way of feats that give a bonus to dex. I personally like Mobile as a feat for Monks though.

Okay, so...was the New Content Mike Mearls alluding to on twitter yesterday the new Sage Advice or was that out before his enigmatic tweet about new content launching on the website?

Where is the Unearthed Arcana? I would quite like the chance to pour over some new things so we can bitch about them.

Also, how is everyone doing in Curse of Strahd if they are still playing adventurers league?

He said that there was something else in addition to the Sage Advice. It hasn't gone up yet, last I checked.

How would you handle called shots?

>Al-Quadim
>russian bogatyrs

Depending on the called shot, disadvantage and/or increase to the target AC. Depending on the circumstances, if the player hits the normal AC but not the called shot AC, the attack may still hit as normal. The smaller or more mobile the target, the higher the penalty should be.

Instead of advantage/disadvantage, how about blatantly stealing from shadow of the demon lord, with benefits and boons? This would let players stack advantage/disadvantage, but in a usually intuitive way.

Fairly certain that Paladins and Clerics can prepare new spells a day. I'm pretty sure it's explicitly stated somewhere in the book.

Most of the time I'd just ask the player what they're aiming for and then resolve the attack completely as normal. Maybe it'll determine what appears to happen if they score a critical hit. It's already assumed that a character is aiming for the best possible targets when they make attacks.

Overchannel is probably one of my favorite abilities, flavor wise. It's also useful for making sure whatever you want dead stays dead.

Why not just go warlock for blasty with good thematic abilities?

I played the first session of CoS at some kind of convention, the party consisted of mostly pregens. There were three dex based Mountain Dwarf fighters, one halfling fighter, one arcana cleric (me) and two others.

In the quest where we meet the all-powerful witch-demon thing, one of our three dwarves walked up to the sacred elk, snapped its neck in one quick move and is now wearing its head as a helmet.

Don't sweat it, thanks user !

Different kinds of blasty. Warlocks are for lasers that fuck up one or two guys. Evokers are for big wide fireballs that fuck up every bad guy in the room.

Warlocks have more 5th level slots to blast with though.

If an attack is being made with advantage, the player can elect to make a called shot. If they do so, the attack is made with disadvantage, and has an additional effect if it hits. Work with the player to determine an appropriate result. For example, a shot to the eye could mean additional damage, and disadvantage on perception checks.

But they have fewer spell slots as a whole. It's not even a fair comparison. Wizards might have one or two fewer fifth-level spells at a high level, but they also have 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-level spell slots, while the warlock has none of these.

Mega Link for the Ravenloft stuff
mega.nz/#!uNgw1D7C!kzhVPMuE9YJqiAAcOrdCBJY7ZyDMI90Oou543FhSaeU

If they're herbivores, why do they fuck up every adventure party within a 20km radius?

You could say the same thing about hippos

And if I shoot somebody wearing full plate but no helmet in the head are they AC 10?

Likewise shooting somebody wearing a breastplate in the leg ?

And here you go with the Mega link for the Eastern Setting PDF
mega.nz/#!2UwEwQyD!hDiI9GNC5XWArR84KRjLvzOuhNG0O1rMUoOau54Zf-I

Enjoy it fellow anons, sharing is caring

So I just played a session and I don’t know if I did something wrong.
I was the DM, and my players wanted to buy some equipment, I’m fairly liberal with giving them money so they all had a great sum of gold. When they tried to buy the items they wanted I put the prices really high, thinking they would haggle for it. It went double or even triple the “normal” price. None of them choose to haggle for any of it. So now, despite me having showered them in gold in previous sessions, are now almost out of gold. One of them are.

Did I fuck up? Should I have said outright that I expected them to haggle? Was it just them not trying?

People in Western societies are desensitized to prices. They don't haggle and think you are being unnecessarily cheap if you do.

unless the merchant seemed especially shady, or you guys normally haggle, then just fix it next time
either give them more gold and always charge more knowing they wont haggle, give them less and tell them to haggle, or normalize the prices/rewards

Sounds like they're probably new players, and don't really understand the idea of haggling. I recently started DMing for a few friends, and its their first time playing, so they make these mistakes a lot as well. Typically during the course of the game, I let it go. After the fact I'll mention "by the way, you know you can do x, right?"

As an example, they were recently hunting a werewolf that when it was losing the fight went wolf form and darted away. Instead of trying to track it, they shrugged and went "oh well, he got away." After the game I had mentioned that if they had tried to track it down, they probably wouldn't have had much trouble since it was bleeding pretty bad at the time. In the most recent game, they took that lesson to heart. One player went off tracking a giant, and after he died (don't go chasing giants solo!) the others wound up tracking his body down and recovering it.

While you should be careful to avoid giving away too much, or telling your players what they should be doing, it's always nice to remind players that they have options. Whether it's something that should wait until after the game, or be brought up during the game is for your best judgment. The newer the players, and the more obvious the thing they're overlooking is, the more likely it is that you should mention it during the game itself. Or at least try to give them some hints.

Was there a story based reason for them to charge that much like they were greedy merchants or thieves selling exotic stolen goods ?

If not then yeah I'd say you made a mistake here but it happens.

As a rule of thumb haggling kind of sucks as the players have no accurate clue of the economy of the world to do so most of the time and will always go to extremes or either wanting grossly huge discounts for rolling vaguely well on Charisma or as in your case pay an exorbitant amount without realising. In general I'd just allow one CHA roll and knock 10% off or add 10% on to the price and leave it at that.

You can fix it by just giving them extra gold next quest and dialing down costs, or perhaps plant a seed that these guys were seedy and let the players get their gold back / apprehend the greedy merchants.

I mean I was recently running the Phandelver Starter Adventure and the players managed to clear the mine. The Dwarf offered them a stake of 10% in the mine as part of the quest reward. Which it suggests in the module itself.

Our Dwarven Cleric who is meant to be related to the Dwarven Miner decided that this was so low that he was trying to screw them all over and demanded more for everybody angrily then tried to persuade him to near kill himself fighting.

So... .at least you have nice trusting, accomodating players.

...

When making an encounter with Galeb Duhr, does it count as only one CR 6 monster or multiple CR 6 monsters?

This is more or less exactly how it is. They are really new to the game, and that’s the reason I’m the DM. And sometime I really have to poke at them to do things.
In the session we just had the came to a puzzle where they had to reflect a magic beam onto a crystal using a silver mirror they had just found. After looking at it for a while and throwing a firebolt at it they gave up and tried to go away. This was a main plot dungeon might I add. So after poking at them for a moment they figured it out and continued.

They were trying to buy exotic goods yes, but just from some ‘high tier’ merchants.

>So... .at least you have nice trusting, accomodating players.
That they are. But that’s fine, we’re all having fun.

Because momma is 1 ton of muscle and razor sharp claws, and she is not going to entertain the idea of you getting near her babies.

Only one. since making two more is a part of the monster. sorta like that zombies can come back after you kill them, it's still only one zombie.

So, 5EG:

I'm doing a 5E version of a Pathfinder adventure. The rules conversion, sure that's easy, whatever.

The thing is, 5E has the most miserable monster manual and NPC support I've ever seen in my life.

How exactly do I square an adventure style fairly centered around NPCs being constant and challenging encounters for PCs when 5E seems to be based around generic templates and the "approved" monsters in the manual, with no actual options for interesting challenges or specializations?

"Just pretend" is a shit answer.

Good to know, thanks!

You could make a custom one. It’s possible but takes some planning and thinking through. Or you could take some of the other monsters in the monster manual and just mix them together.

They are probably omnivorous like bears

You can make your NPCs have whatever abilities, and items you feel are appropriate. The DMG has pretty good guidelines for how to set the CR of an enemy. There are plenty of creatures for you to pull inspiration from in the MM, but you can also pull in abilities from pathfinder and tweak them to work in 5e.

One of the most important rules that the 5e books try to constantly instill in both DMs and Players is that the books are a guideline, and it's up to you to decide what should be changed, or modified to suit your needs, or the needs of your group or campaign. It's more time consuming to "homebrew" enemies, rather than pull them from the MM, but it often winds up with more interesting results.

True enuff

There are rules in the DMG for building custom monsters. They're okay, but I recommend you bump up the guidelines 2 levels from what is presented in the DMG, because it goes a bit too easy on the players.

Additionally, look up koboldfightclub. It has monsters that follow these guidelines from resources beyond the MM. It'll point you to the pages in the specific pdfs to find them, but it won't give you the pdfs. You'll have to find those yourself (check the OP links).

Finally, for NPCs, you can just stat them up yourself as if a player was making a character. Don't do this for every NPC, but it can make special NPCs feel special.

>Fighter weapon style gives them climb and swim speed

Yeah, nah, fuck off.

Wasn't there literally one of those in a UA? Like, the second UA? Waterborne Adventures? Mariner?

Yep there was