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

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>Old thread
Tell me some of your bard shenanigans in 5e. Bonus points if it's outside of the "the bard fucks everything that moves" schlock.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=yui4zkZQwCA
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Most of my shenanigans of late have come by virtue of Wild Magic, but my last character had a few.

Captured an enemy general while she was praying, and we wanted to get out with her alive to have effectively a show trial.

While everyone is talking about where to go, my fighter just picked her up and started to walk out the front door. I did get stopped before I got outside with her, though.

Later on we went to meet someone important to act as a judge in said trial. At his offices I walk in and say to the first person, in a heavy Dwarven accent, "Take me to your ruler." It took about 15 minutes before the other person I was finally got the request across, and I came out of it with a small metal ruler.

Low int/wis characters can be fun.

Crap, missed it was specifically bard shenanigans. Sorry.

nigga shenanigans are shenanigans

I'm new to D&D, and I need to know if I did the character sheet correctly? I have this sneaking suspicion that I screwed stuff up pretty bad
Also sorry in advance for my shit handwriting and poor picture quality

17 Wisdom is not a +4 mod, just a +3, so all your Wis skills are off.

18 Dexterity is not a +6 mod, just a +4, meaning your Dex skills and AC are off.

First for I played 3.5/PF and I don't like change.

The cost in heretical class changes is worth avoiding the mary sue clusterfuck character fests in 3.5 and Pathfinder though. I literally can't play those systems anymore because I just want to be in a fucking party with standard class archtypes.

My last 5e party
>Devotion Paladin
>Light Cleric
>Thief Rogue
>Evocation Wizard
>Valor Bard

my last Pathfinder Party
>Fuck-off wierd layline druid?
>Pugalist Fighter?
>Fuckoff Wierd Clown Bard?
>Jihadi Alchemist
>Monk of 40-splatbooks Path

I'm not even mentioning that the players always want to roll extremely rare monster races in pathfinder.

One of my PCs messaged me that he'd want a NPC based on Ruby from Rwby to act as his cohort.

I'm willing to humor him and was wondering how I would stat her as of Volume 3.

So far I'm so far halfway through Volume 2.

Your score modifiers go up and down for every 2 they're off 10, so 18 dex is +4, not +6.
Same problem with wis, should be +3.

That's thrown a lot of your other stuff like skills, AC and initiative off.

what would the repercussions of being lightly obscured be?

>modifier in the box
>stat in the bubble
WHAT THE FUCK

Well crap, how'd I screw that up? Must've glanced at the wrong modifiers. Everything else checks out though?

Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks related to sight.

That's it.

That's how the sheet is meant to work.

What you guys consider the best spells for a wild magic sorcerer? Campaign will start at level 3, so I'll know 4 spells (What WotC had in mind? Thats to few spells!)

You can try and hide, if you've got the skulker feat.
Creatures also have disadvantage on sight based perception checks.

Some of the other sheets I looked up that were filled out did the same thing, so that's that

I've been running burning hands, ice knife and sleep for first level, and hold person for my second.

Just hit level 4 last level and got scorching ray, and I'll likely drop sleep for... anything else, next level, so could probably run scorching ray and hold person.

>other sheets I looked up that were filled out did the same thing
>That's how the sheet is meant to work.
SINCE WHEN? WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME

New dm question here: I was doing a session with my players last night and one of them plays a rogue. During combat he started to claim that if one of his allies was within 5 ft of an enemy then he automatically got a sneak attack on them. I couldn't find that anywhere in the rules so I went with it that night but could someone explain to me if that's legitimate?

He's right. Once per turn, and you get it if either an enemy is within 5' of an ally or you have advantage.

The second paragraph of the sneak attack description user, I fogive you for dyslexia.

It does work that way. It should be in the rogues sneak attack ability. Pretty much since the foes attention is split you can exploit openings

Is Blink a worthwhile spell?

It seems like if you roll well you're pretty safe for a while, but it's hit and miss.
Super thematic for a Wild Magic sorcerer, though, which is one of the big appeals for me.

Thanks guys, I fixed my modifiers and should be good to go when I join a group

Thanks mates

I'm planning on rolling a paladin with wings for the next campaign. What kind of shenanigans can I get up to, and what should I expect?

i walked out in the middle of a session the other day ama

Why do you think anyone here cares?

What all happened to make you leave in the middle of the session?

>posted 2 seconds later
>one post count greater
My dude... don't own me like this....

I have some bard shenanigans for you. It's 3.5, but this is a real fucking shenanigan.

I played D&D with the same group for like a year and a half and we had pretty much the same party members the entire time.
One of which was a bard, and first let me give you a bit of info about this guy.

>older brother of the DM
>this dude is, no joke, a terrible person
>he's my friend but in no way would I deny this
>refuses to tip waiters or delivery people of any kind even knowing they make less than minimum wage a lot of the time
>once fucked the girl his best friend had a crush on
>generally just a huge Chad-type who hits and quits all the time with all the implications of that

This was our bard

>first adventure our group ever went on
>I'd never played D&D before
>all goes generally well, we're all having a good time, NPC interaction is at a minimum since the adventure is mostly just dungeon crawl
>but the one woman in town asked us to find her daughter in exchange for a reward, so we're on the lookout
>turns out the daughter was mind controlled, we ended up killing her
>go back and tell the woman
>she's noticeably shocked and needs a moment to process this
>as she's grieving, our bard goes "so how about giving us that reward you promised us"
>"yes, i'll get to that, just give me a moment"
>"no, no not a moment, we worked our asses off, we want the reward"
>"jesus dude just a second"
>this goes on for like a good 30 seconds between him and the character
>she says something along the lines of "will you give me a goddamn moment, I just found out you killed my daughter and now you're demanding treasure"
>bard returns with "YEAH, WELL, IF YOU'RE JUST NOT GONNA GIVE US THE REWARD THEN I'M GLAD WE KILLED YOUR DAUGHTER"
>everyone is just dead goddamn silent
>NPC now refuses to give us a reward and kicks us out of her store
>bard nearly considers going back in and robbing her too
>that NPC was how the DM was going to get us to the next adventure

Huh. Didn't even notice that at first. Neat

Because we wanted you to make a fool of yourself, and we succeeded!

how would you guys port the shadow dancer over to 5e? Im thinking rogue archetype, but dont know what archetype features to give it. dimesion door hopping while in shadows seems like it would fit. and some kind of hide in plain sight would be neat. what else?

The group has been going off track for a long time by either arguing with each other for an hour over nothing or taking up to over an hour to actually start playing when we all get to the place we play at.
They started arguing at me this time and I decided that I wasn't having fun and left

Reasonable, but not the ridiculousness I was hoping for

>Tell me some of your bard shenanigans in 5e. Bonus points if it's outside of the "the bard fucks everything that moves" schlock.

My Bard fought a pretty intense duel with a Barbarian chieftain as a distraction a few sessions ago lasting maybe six or seven rounds.
I actually lost the duel but I put up a pretty fine showing in the fight and we managed to complete our objectives since I made the fight as showy and dramatic as possible as I could without using magic.

>Dwarven bard
>Bought every bucket in town
>Decides to make bucket pyramid in the main square
>Next day, it is gone; he investigates and discovers the town guard took it off and confiscated his buckets
>They give them back, as long as he doesn't leave them unattended
>Bard decides to buy a cart so he can take his bucket sculpture with him
>Ends up inspiring a man to invent the first mechanical jack
>Just so he can cart around his fucking buckets

Wasn't even me, but I felt like sharing.

Miniatures, tokens, or pawns? What do you prefer?

I like miniatures the best (in theory), but the quality of a lot of the humanoid ones are pretty bad. Moreover, they're stupidly expensive. So, I tend to stick with pawns because having 10 zombies with the same beautiful artwork makes it feel more like a horde.

Nobody cares but I just remembered a second story about this goddamn bard

>our party walks into a tavern to check up on what's going on nearby
>see two seven foot tall half orcs or some shit having an argument
>looks like they're about to get into a fight
>I, as the Arnold-tier Fighter, walk up and try to resolve this
>they immediately pick me up and throw me across the room
>we decide to take this outside
>a crowd forms to watch the free-for-all
>our bard, being a bastard, starts running bets with the crowd
>he convinces everyone to bet on me, while he bets against me
>I end up winning miraculously
>because the bard refuses to lose any money, he sends our own rogue to literally stab me in the back
>I go down in one hit because I'm so low from the fight
>he now insists to the crowd he didn't lose the bet because technically the rogue won
>he almost murders a guy for complaining about the fight being rigged

Could an unseen servant play an instrument?

I want to make a swashbuckler/valor bard, who has his servant play a lute or something while he duels.

no mechanical advantage, just think it could be neat

Wha-at the fuck? Who bets against the fucking party? You bet FOR the party and then cheat to make him win, this is bard 101. I demand someone Debarred him.

>Who bets against the fucking party?

socially retarded autists who think it's cool to be edgy

It's questionable, but any reasonable DM would say.. 'Yes.'

Or technically the police win when they come along and end this farce, and then they're filthy stinking rich pigs.

We found a demon once, the bard, in all his wisdom, decides to make a deal with the demon. Ten souls for him to basically join the party, so the bard gets the Wizard to dominate a bunch of thieves around town, like minor thieves, like bread thieves. Long story short after 10 souls it joins, then promises some bonus warlock powers to the Wizard for 100 souls. Basically this happens.

youtube.com/watch?v=yui4zkZQwCA

To be fair, it very unlikely for me to win that fight. He didn't intend to rig it. He just ended up doing so because I somehow won.

He's also a bad person and was """"roleplaying"""" his character as a bad, bad man while insisting he was chaotic neutral.

>a cop actually pulling out a gun and firing bullets in a kids' cartoon

It's bizarre how this pops out to me because of how much culture has changed
I've seen this like a thousand times too

Chaotic neutral is always the most cancerous alignment because people think it's an excuse to just do whatever they want.

Please, watch batman beyond. Terry don't give a fuck, Terry will crush you with a giant pipe and make a pun. Terry can pan the camera away and make a loud crunch noise but Terry knows what happens, Terry knows.

>chaotic neutral.

is there any bigger warning sign in D&D?

I have never not seen it used as the "asshole who does whatever they want, even if it's something that would most definitely fall in CE or some shit" alignment

Like i had a bard once (what's with it with bard players?) murder about twenty completely innocent civilians with thunderwave because they were going to hang a witch, who was totally a witch, but she had a bag on her head so the bard thought she might be hot or something

guess what happened after the guy freed the witch? turns out she was a fucking witch, who had been stealing children from the town for sacrifices or something. The bard then murders the witch, too.

before you ask why the rest of the party allowed any of that to happen, we were just hanging out in an inn on the other side of the town while the bard was running about.

I really wish batman beyond/terry got more love

Play shadow monk since it literally mentions shadow dancers in the description and has all the relevant features.

So, your DM made him change his alignment, right? Because if that is a common occurrence with him, he would be forced to become Evil to reflect his actions.

yes but their skill would be questionable

Should had my DM lower my alignment to CG from NG after burning down houses from an abandoned village that some evil people were using for malicious intent?

>have him
dont have him, but dont expect him not to

also... i presume no people were in it while said burning was going on?

1st time player, possibly starting tomorrow. Did I fill this out right? It's a placeholder sheet I plan to transcribe to a clean sheet with pencil once I'm done editing it.

Variant Human. Fighter going Eldritch Knight.

No one was in it at the time but the evil people were using them to draw people in and kidnap them and do what ever to their bodies.
Like children and candy in a van.

If it's only evil dudes in there that you're killing anyway I'd think it's fine.

If there were survivors hiding in the ruins and you knew it, probably not so good.

Looks right, as far as I can see.

if you're using your longsword 1 handed with the shield your ac is wrong, but i presume you're 2handing it
other than that i dont see anything wrong

you're probably fine then. only problem would be if people (even evil people) were in there

Firstly, you wouldn't be "lowering" your alignment because that implies some sort of vertical tier where lawful is on a higher scale of good compared to chaotic.

Secondly, so long as you:
1) Knew that the town was abandoned.
2) Knew that the people were indeed performing evil.
3) Surmised that burning them down was the best course of action in preventing the evil.
Then, it should be fine.

lolno, nothing came of it

to make it even worse, we were in an Elven city that was very strictly Elven, we were only allowed inside because we had rescued an Elven noble and they vouched for us.

what does changing an alignment even do

were there non-evil people in it

also, why would anyone change someone's alignment
alignments are fucking stupid. why do they still exist.

good call.

in older editions bards learned their magic FROM druids. so that might be why. they also get spells like awaken.

Reminder that 5e is better than 3.5 in everything but sheer content mass.
Reminder that 5e sorcerers are behind all the other full casters but still perfectly playable.
Reminder that hunter rangers are a reasonable scouty-type character that can contribute consistent damage output at a safe distance while having decent world utility, but that rogues are still in most situations more useful to have around.
Reminder that monks are fine given their mix of defensive and offensive utility options.
Reminder that the only two core 5e archetypes that actually suck dick are beast master ranger and frenzied berserker barbarian, and even then their base class can still carry them through their relative suckage such that they can contribute effectively to a party.
Reminder that the best feature any class gets in the game is an illusion wizard's illusory reality feature, followed (yes, followed) by the (moon) druid's infinite wildshape capstone.
Reminding reminder of remembrance.

The fuck. Fuck you faggot.

this is how it should be

Changing an alignment, on a basic level, merely represents your player's morals, beliefs, and actions.

In terms of how it affects the game, it can arguably cause you to lose favor with gods, cause a Paladin to fall if it contrasts with his oaths, etc. You can't claim to be Neutral Good if you constantly steal from people or kill anybody who makes you upset, for example. That character is definitely not Good. Neutral? Maybe. Evil? Probably.

It was a much bigger deal in older editions because many classes, prestige classes, abilities, spells, and items required you to be a certain alignment. If your alignment changed, you lost access to those things.

why would you not just say debard?

What's bad about Frenzied Berserker? It's my favorite trope, and I always loved to play an old, bearded grumpy muscle grandpa Barbarian who slapped the shit out of young'ns.

Read Frenzy.

I simply removed the stupid class from my game. Problems solved.

>removing a class who shines most through helping teammates do awesome things
Brilliant.

The Frenzy barbarian is *actually* fine. The only complaint about it is the exhaustion from Frenzy, but it has a ton of other great features (immunity to being charmed and frightened while raging, making creatures shit their pants with your yells, and what amounts to a free reaction attack every turn while in melee).

Way of the Four Elements is hands down the worst, since its features can be summed up as "prestidigitation, plus four spells over your entire progression that drain your fightan magic."

>Reminder that 5e is better than 3.5 in everything but sheer content mass.
i love 5e but i disagree with "everything" in this sentence. there are some things 3.5 did better.
>Reminder that 5e sorcerers are behind all the other full casters but still perfectly playable.
true
>Reminder that hunter rangers are a reasonable scouty-type character that can contribute consistent damage output at a safe distance while having decent world utility, but that rogues are still in most situations more useful to have around.
i stand by hunters are fine/good until level 8, and after that they gain nothing useful, or at least nothing other classes dont get better versions of or earlier
>Reminder that monks are fine given their mix of defensive and offensive utility options.
true
>Reminder that the only two core 5e archetypes that actually suck dick are beast master ranger and frenzied berserker barbarian, and even then their base class can still carry them through their relative suckage such that they can contribute effectively to a party.
frenzied berserker can put out the most dpr of any class/archetype. it just comes with a drawback that isnt really worth it. beast master isn't as bad as people make it out to be. but it is bad.
>Reminder that the best feature any class gets in the game is an illusion wizard's illusory reality feature, followed (yes, followed) by the (moon) druid's infinite wildshape capstone.
true
>Reminding reminder of remembrance.
verily

Other player characters do awesome stuff themselves without some moron with a lute following them around. Save that shit for NPCs if you really want to have it around.

I'm looking at it and don't see what's bad.

You're assuming that I'm not new or as smart as you are, which is why I asked you. You could just be nice and tell me what's bad since that's what I asked.

exhaustion puts a heavy soft cap on uses per day
but really, the problem is it lets you use it as much as you want, but each use is a fully day worth of non use, to get back to full character strength
so if you decide "man, i really need it three times today" you're pretty much not using it for the next two days

The Frenzy is optional, right? It's not like you have to do it. It says you "can" go into a Frenzy. So, it's quite obviously made for taking down big targets and not fodder.

Intimidating presence is single target, uses your action, and the DC is figured by your charisma mod.
Frenzy is horseshit, especially if you pick up anything else to use your bonus action on (e.g. polearm master) because exhaustion is a fucking awful debuff.

WotFE is better than beast master and frenzied berserker, especially if you ignore the errata in regard to water whip (which you should).

Isn't that the point, though? You do it once per day in normal situations when you're in a tight situation, then you go all out and frenzy like a fucking monster against a boss. Afterwards, your party is likely going to rest anyway because everybody likely used up all their spells, need to craft, need to rest up, need to do other things, etc.

In a good roleplaying environment, you aren't doing non-stop fighting day after day, every day.

>I'm looking at it and don't see what's bad
Read what exhaustion does, and how someone has to remove exhaustion.
PHB 291, top right box.

yeah but really every group should use this t b h

>You do it once per day
Or, alternatively, you pick up polearm master or dual wielder and be way better and *NEVER* be exhausted by your own rage.

>ignore the errata
well now im curious

>Reminder that 5e sorcerers are behind all the other full casters but still perfectly playable.

Maybe, but I've been having more fun with my WM sorc than I ever had on other classes.
Given how close they are, and that I've had wild magic save my character, and prevent a TPK, I'm not gonna complain too heavily.

Dear god i laughed for a good minute.
Reminds me when i was that guy and used meta knowledge to win a bet since the DM kept railroading us (it was an impossible to win fist fight for my character who was a fucking beast at unnarmed combat, and to top it all off got one of my abilities halved midfight because it wasb't fair). I bet for the scrawny npc with fuckall str who won the fight because of a "miracle" no rolls needed.
I'm glad my group got a lot better since then

>WotFE is better than beast master and frenzied berserker
That's the first time I've seen this b8. Have a (You), m8, on me.

>Reminder that 5e sorcerers are behind all the other full casters but still perfectly playable.

How so?

Read the PHB errata, and read WotfE water whip (their one decent thing they had pre-errata).

do you guys prefer squares or hexes?

thats the thing, you can use it, say twice a day, for a few days. the first level is alright, the second is bad, but hey, you get extra movement anyway
and once you get to three on, you're fucked.

the thing is though, theres a ton of ways to get bonus action attacks that DONT require you to sleep for a week, several already obtainable for any barb, let alone frenzy meatmen

I still don't see the problem, as I posted here: I guess if it's a combat-heavy campaign where your party is just fighting every day, all the time from the crack of dawn until dusk, then it might be a problem. In that case, it just means you can't Frenzy more than once per day, which still isn't THAT bad. The other perks you get from Frenzied Berserker are still nice little things.

I want to try hexes, but since most maps are easier to make or come preprepped with squares, it's simply not meant to be.

It is. Frenzied berserker and beast master are absolute irredeemable garbage, while WotFE is just mostly garbage. WotFE can do big things really inefficiently between short rests while still having access to their base monk shit, which isn't bad. Especially if you leave water whip as a bonus action, they come out with more than those other garbage archetypes.

i want to try them too but squares just seem so ingrained into the game

Newer player here. Was looking at the classes and archetypes and Beast Master does make zero sense.
The pet uses your actions, right? So you're useless while you're controlling it?

how about theater of the mind?

Yeah, but you're not a super angry barbarian, in that case.

This is just a personal thing, but I'll always take personal flavor over mechanical strength. It's important to be strong because this is a game of numbers, but you can use "you could be way better if you..." for just about anything. Why play a Beast Master when it's the worse of the Ranger types? Because you like animals and want to have an animal companion, that's why.

Nothing in the Player's Handbook is so bad that I could even begin to consider it "bad." Some things are better than others, but that will ALWAYS be the case in any game.