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

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>Old Thread
>July 2016 Unearthed Arcana
dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/quick-characters

>August 2016 Unearthed Arcana
dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/faithful/

What's the best use and characterization of a familiar you've seen?

Opinions on this? As you can see, I desperately need better names for the ring's properties.

>The Pale Ring of Myrkul
Ring, very rare, requires attunement
While wearing this ring, you gain the following benefits:

Undead Ward. You are considered to be under the effects of the sanctuary spell (save DC 15) to any undead creature. If you attack or cast a spell that affects an undead, or if it succeeds on its save, it is no longer affected for the next 24 hours.

Undead Tongue. You have advantage on Charisma checks when interacting with intelligent undead.

Undead Touch. You can use your action to cast the spell chill touch, at your level, if it is on your class' spell list.

I also need some kind of minor curse or, even better, a Flaw, to give to the wearer.

>Myrkul
He's a cheeky one. I'd consider putting in some sort of cursed effect. Myrkul like his chum Bhaal is a schemer by nature.

How important is it to have a detailed setting for a campaign? I'm planning on DMing for my college's DnD club this fall and I'm putting a lot of work into the setting but my friend who's a more experienced DM than I am says I shouldn't do so much writing. He says if I have too much planned out I'll be more likely to railroad players and there's a chance the players I end up with won't care about my setting and will just want to kill monsters and raid dungeons.
But a big part of the reason I wanted to DM is that I enjoy world building so I'm not sure I want to DM if I'm actively discouraged from it. What's everyone else's opinion, should I have a detailed world or just have basic details and make shit up as I go along like my friend thinks?

ForeverDM here, only time I had a player use Find Familiar it was a Druid who summoned an eagle, realized it was night time (and didn't like the color I described), so he snapped his neck and tossed it aside before dismissing and summoning a new one.

Other than that, I played a one-shot as a racist elf Bladesinger (whose sister was a PC elf barbarian) and had an owl familiar named Nebuchadnezzar who was a badass in a scrap.

Bladesinger + owl familiar + Totem Barbarian + Rogue. We walked through most encounters.

So, anyone got any ideas, hopes or expectations for the new races in Volo's Guide to Monsters? We know of 6 races we're getting so far, but anyone got any others they really want to see?

For the curious, those six races are:
* Orc, Goblin, Firbolg: Revealed in the product summary for Volo's Guide.
* Aasimar: Revealed on Reddit.
* Catfolk: Revealed on Twitter, but we don't know what "sort" of catfolk we're getting - there's tabaxi and wemics (lion-centaurs, essentially) as "traditional" Faerunian catfolk, after all.
* Tritons: The podcast where they talk about Storm King's Thunder.

Personally, I want to see:
* Kobolds - because they're, like, one of the most popular monstrous races besides orcs/goblins.
* Gnolls - because I think they could really make for an interesting race if they weren't pigeonholed into "demon-worshipping lazy cannibal slavers" all the time.
* Saurials - simply because they're an esoteric FR race and, really, it's a race of dinosaurs; you have to be *trying* to cock that up.
* Aranea - because I think they put the Isle of Dread in Faerun at some point and because "intelligent, magically adept spider-were" is a really unusual racial archetype.
* Tannaruk and Fey'ri - because we got Tiefling variants already, so why not go the whole hog and give us the FR-native Orc & Elf versions of tieflings too?

I'd like to see official lizardfolk stats.

Building a world/setting for your campaign has nothing to do with railroading. Make the world as detailed as you want. The more detailed and prepared you are, the easier it is to roll with it when your group unexpectedly goes somewhere/does something you weren't expecting.

What you should avoid doing is writing too much of the campaign ahead of time. Build the world, and create plot points, but leave how the group gets from plot point A to plot point B out of your notes. Also try to keep your plot hooks rather open ended, so you can throw them in whenever it's appropriate.

So instead of "The captain of the guard tells the group X", just have "The group learns X" in your notes. This way you're able to be flexible and introduce plot hooks when you feel it's appropriate, and aren't forcing the group to meet some specific person, or go to some specific location to get the plot hook.

>only time I had a player use Find Familiar it was a Druid who summoned an eagle, realized it was night time (and didn't like the color I described), so he snapped his neck and tossed it aside before dismissing and summoning a new one

How much damage would someone take per round if they were tied up and dragged by a horse? Don't ask why but this is going to come up a lot in my campaign.

But why?

>How much damage would someone take per round if they were tied up and dragged by a horse? Don't ask why but this is going to come up a lot in my campaign.
Oh you fucking bet I'm going to ask why.

It's a weird western themed campaign so I expect a lot of people to get lasso'd and dragged through the desert.

Yeah, but what kind of curse? It's my first time making a cursed item.

Not just horses but camels, elephants, griffons etc etc. Name an animal you can ride on and I will have someone hogtied and dragged to death by it.

Fair enough. I'd say probably 1d10/round. That said, clothing would reduce the damage, potentially. It's the reason biker's wear "leathers". Cloth wouldn't offer much protection, but leather or metal armor would reduce the damage.

Upon wearing the ring you die.

>What's the best use and characterization of a familiar you've seen?
It actually WAS a tressym, one that could talk.
It was basically like any other cat in personality and just flew around knocking over shit and leaping at invisible things for fun while asking for food and occasionally calling it's master a "douch-faggot" when he wouldn't feed him then flying out of reach when you tried to hit him.

It felt completely accurate to what a talking winged cat would act like as well as being the only familiar ever in a group I've been in with an actually distinctive personality.

So I'll say 1d4 to 1d8 depending on the armor and the kind of animal dragging them. Thanks.

Upon taking off the ring, you die.
And at a random time each day, the ring will begin to itch for 2d6 minutes.

> Archfey Warlocks get Fey Pressence at level 1
> Draconic Bloodline Sorcerers get Draconic Pressence at level 18

Why? I mean they're practically the same thing, the latter's just bigger and has a cost, why have something like that not available until 18?

Now that's more interesting. Would the curse show up under Identify?

2d8?, I dunno.
now tell us...WHY?

this is what i want as well.

So for my next session I'm planning on forgoing a full dungeon and having a mission where the players have to protect a Naga while he summons a portal to the Feywild. What would be some cool evil fay/fiend type creatures that could besiege them?

Fey Presence lasts for a single turn and is not selective in what it affects.

Draconic Presence lasts for 1 minute, has a massive area, and only affects hostile creatures. It's the equivalent of a much larger selective Fear spell (and costs the equivalent amount of sorcery points).

There really shouldn't be any damage reduction because being dragged along the ground also involves slamming into any objects in your path, such as rocks, logs, and brambles. Smashing your head into a rock like that would easily kill you, so just make it flat damage per round.

Hey, folks? If we got "Adventurer's Guides" for various other settings, what crunchy goodness do you think they'd slip in that relate to that setting?

For example; in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, we got Duergar Dwarves, Ghostwise Halflings, Svifneblin Gnomes, Variant Half-Elves & Tieflings, Elk/Tiger/Skypony/ThunderBeast/TreeGhost spirits for the Totem Warrior Barbarian, Arcana Domain for Clerics, Banneret Fighter, Monkly Ways of the Long Death and Sun Soul, Oath of the Crown Paladin, Mastermind & Swashbuckler Rogues, Storm Sorcerer, Undying Warlock, and Bladesinger Wizard.

So, what kinds of goodies would you expect to see in, say, a Mystara Adventurer's Guide? Or an Eberron AG? Or even a Sigil AG?

I actually plan on having the first time this happens have it so a player is being dragged by an elephant piloted by kobolds but if opened with that people would be more likely to question it and not give me an answer.

I posted this in the last thread but I was ignored, so I'll try my luck again. Updated homebrew sorcerous origin based on the necromancy idea, would appreciate criticisms and opinions.

The idea is to not take away the wizard's niche of being able to summon a small army of undead and being able to boost them all, while at the same time giving the Sorcerer a different style and something to make up for it.(I.E. Wizard=Skeleton party, Sorc=monster mash)

1d4+3 per round if they don't make a Constitution save at DC 15.

pic related

I'm curious as to your reasoning behind each ability, in terms of how it defines the archetype thematically, and what type of playstyle you envision?

Even with the Wild Magic, or the Draconic, you aren't pigeonholed into playing the class a particular way. Just wanted to see how you felt about it.

The problem I see with Soul Sculptor is with Raise Dead/True Resurrection, which require that the creature's soul be free. As it stands, the only spell to my knowledge which can trap a creature's soul is Imprisonment, which is 9th level.

With that in mind, do you hold onto the soul indefinitely, or do you lose it after a certain amount of time? I'd probably say you lose stored souls after you complete a short rest.

Also, being able to gain four sorcery points per short rest is the sorcerer's capstone. The odds of killing four or more enemies in one battle are pretty good. All this to say Soul Sculptor makes it too easy to regain sorcery points. Maybe it has to be a creature with a CR equal to or greater than your level?

I might say Death's Embrace is almost equal to a paladin's capstone in power, but they can only use those once per day. Permanent resistance to nonmagical damage is crazy powerful.

As long as we're posting homebrew, I still haven't gotten any real feedback on this. Unless maybe it happened after I fell asleep one time but I don't think so.

If you don't have the time or energy to look at all of them, you can just pick one or two.

Does anyone have experience with hiding your class from the rest of your party?

I'm planning to play a Halfling Charlatan Warlock of The Great Old One pretending to be a sailor (my visible character sheet will say some other class, considering Ranger or Rogue). I'll have one open character sheet on the table, and one "true" character sheet that only me and the DM will have, though the major stats will be the same, having +4 for both DEX and CHA in any case.

I have the advantage of joining my group a bit into the game at level 5, so I've talked to the DM about making my crossbow hold/be an arcane focus, pretending it's an enchanted weapon, and he's cool with it.
I'll be picking the Warcaster feat instead of my level 4 bonus ability score so I can cast my Eldritch Bolts without worrying about the somatic part, and then simply pretend I'm screaming something in halfling whenever I shoot, being the only halfling in the group.
(On my visible sheet I'll have the "Crossbow Expert" feat to explain why I don't need to reload this beam-firing crossbow.)

Not entirely sure what I hope to achieve with this, but I haven't been this excited about a character in a while.
It probably wouldn't hold up for very long against experienced players, but the group is quite new and not too well-read on the details yet, and neither am I to be honest, especially not when it comes to D&D. But I hope I can fool both the players and their characters for as long as I like.

Anyone tried something similar before? How did it go? Looking to get some inspiration.

Thanks for the criticism! Let me bounce some things off of you.

1. Make it so Soul Sculptor temporarily holds onto the souls(unless used for undead)? The idea is that the souls merely wonder and follow the Sorcerer, and he has a few choices on how to use them. I used the term "exchanged" so as not to allow the souls to be directly destroyed or imprisoned unless infused directly inside of something.

2. If I would to base it off CR, it'd mean the stronger the sorcerer the less spell points available to him. Which wouldn't make sense in any sort of direction. Perhaps I should use a similar idea you mentioned and maybe make it so the sorcery points is temporary?

3. I felt it was a justifiable way to become a pseudo-lich without having to make an entire class based on it, besides at level 18 who doesn't fling or swing magic around like it's common place?

This will go good or bad depending on the other players and how forgiving they are. You will be in zero control when the reveal happens so I hope that wasn't your plan.

What are you gaining by hiding this info from the other players instead of just their characters?

What if getting caught is part of his plan?

I'm about to DM Out of the Abyss with some somewhat experienced 5e players. I really want to have chapter 1 set a great tone for this campaign and looking for advice to make it better. So far I'll keep Ilvara and Shoor as the typical Drow, lusting for power and higher social positions. Jorlan however I am considering actually making him a constant reoccurring character and making it his big goal to kill Ilvara and Shoor.

For now though I am more concerned with building up this outpost for the characters to try and explore and figure out their own way to escape for a week before throwing in one of the suggestions the book makes.

So I need suggestions, which 5th level spells do I take as a 9th level wizard?

I'm thinking I'll take rary's telepathic bond, just to have it up all the time.

But what should the other one be?

>at level 18 who doesn't fling or swing magic around like it's common place?
Well, for one example, any creature that relies on natural weapons (such as a dragon) typically doesn't have magical weapon attacks. They have breath attacks, but shouldn't be forced to rely on those to be able to damage a player character every minute of every day. A level 18 sorcerer would have resistance to all of the Tarrasque's attacks.

>the sorcery points is temporary?
That's essentially the same thing as just regular sorcery points. They're something that's made to be spent. It's not a significant hurdle to use sorcery points before the next time you take a short rest.

Mostly because I know at least some of them are going to do their darndest to "accidently" discover the true identity of my character if they themselves know about it.
And just like it's more fun not to know what the DM is going to throw at you, I feel like it would be more fun for me if I kept them all in the dark for real.

Quick guys, I need a partner for a D&D group where our characters are CIA Guy and Big Guy.

Really depends. What kind of Wizard, how do you want to play him?

I plan to get caught sooner or later. And one of the members being a paladin, I suspect there will be some conflict, but that just makes it all the more exciting.

If you want some recurring characters then give the other prisoners PC stats. If they're familiar with D&D they aren't going to trust Jorlan unless he reveals himself to be Eilistraee in disguise and spins his pussy hair into silver plaques that read "I am trustworthy" with a signature by Corellon "Gender" Benderian in Lloth's blood.

Just be sure to stay clear of those people with guns on planes

Hmm alright.

1. So remove nonmagical and instead add something like resistance to cold, lightning, and necrotic(already there)?

2. Do you have any suggestions then regarding that? I like the idea and feel of being able to use souls as a power source for magic, and felt like it was fairly limited in the respect you can only gain 1 sorcery point in combat with a bonus action. I feel only out of combat would it be truly abusable.

I'm a bladesinger, and I've got fighter HP with really high AC, usually concentrating on haste, so I do a lot of attacking with my sword.

I tend to use my level 1 slots for shield, and level 3 for haste, with 4 for counterspell. I don't get much use out of my 2nd level slots.

I do a lot of ritual casting.

I totally understand. So far I have decided that if the group attempts to make an escape (or just acts up severely) Shoore is gonna line them all up along the ledge and give a whole speech on how they are all worthless slaves and must obey before pushing their favorite prisoner over the edge to feed them to the spiders below, well everyone but Stool I guess cause he is a pretty valuable slave to have for the Drow,

As for Jorlan, no, he would not become part of the party. He would be working on his goals solo unless he found out the party also had interest in killing Shoore and Ilvara. Then he would possibly would work with them, after a somewhat high persuasion check, unsure.
And yeah, will be keeping track on the surviving prisoners and do some chance rolls to see if they survived their travel to their destinations.

Same guy as How many kobolds do you think would be able to ride on the back of a circus elephant at once? Again I'd prefer if you don't question why I ask this but be assured this is very important for the campaign I'm running.

Personally, I would go with conjure Elemental cause everything else seems sorta, meh for the build. Though I have little experience with Wizards.

That's a bit much, with the hiding character sheets thing.

My wife played a female halfling rogue once, she was pretty much Jasmine from the beginning of Aladdin, a princess who was hiding amongst the "poor" to help out and stuff. Also palace life is boring.

She rp'd it by donating her share to randoms, staying out of certain parts of town, etc. She risked getting caught any time there was a public altercation of some sort, and she would do her best to go back into hiding.

your facade is going to fall apart immediately when you get your 2nd attack if you go rogue.

Actually, even faster than that, considering you won't be rolling sneak attack dice.

Any recommendations for one shot adventures from the mega trove? Looking to run something that preferably isn't too grimdark.

For the first two levels you can fake it with Hex.

Gotta question, that I'm going to go ahead and talk with my DM about, but I'd still like to field to you guys. Does your GM, or rather would you as the GM, allow a Druid to turn into Monstrosities as well as Beasts, or just Beasts?

From what I understand, Monstrosities are just beasts with a touch of magic, I don't how it would be too far'fetched of a request. However, a Druid could take Circle of the Moon and the turn into a Death Dog, which could imbalance things a bit, so I could see the counter argument there. What about if you let them, but only at later levels, like 12 or something.

What do you guys think? Or am I missing a paragraph where it says they can?

But they will know something is up as soon as you don't roll sneak attack dice. Actually, just rolling 2d10 every turn is sure to get you discovered ASAP.

So everyone will know that you are either lying or cheating the second you attack something. Most people will tell you "Hey, you should be rolling 5d6+8 for your two attacks, not 2d10+2d6+8" Because they think you are a rogue, not some jackass with EB and hex. At this point you have two choices
1. Come clean. You will have to explain (out of character at least) that your character is just pretending to be a level 5 rogue or whatever. This makes all of your plotting sort of pointless.
2. Cheat, and roll what you should be rolling for a xbow expert rogue. If you are a cheater you are an asshole, and when this does get discovered you might get voted off the island.

Just hearing about one of the prisoners dying is boring. They should see it if it happens.

On the meta side the amount of note-passing would seem sort of suspicious and I have to wonder how much it would make sense in a non-meta way to the party that they don't see him doing magic shit

The sneak attack thing was the reason I was leaning towards it saying ranger.
But you might be right. It may just be too much hassle to try to hide everything. I'll have to reconsider.

>Expecting people to not ask why
But seriously I'd say at least 10 bareback before they got into crowding. Double that if there's some roap or something to grip

>But seriously I'd say at least 10 bareback before they got into crowding. Double that if there's some roap or something to grip
OHHH MYYYY

In my head they have a seat or large basket or something on its back. Basically this is supposed to be a mobile fortress.

My group has a halfling warlock pretending to be a wizard. We all know he's a warlock, our characters don't. Of all the people in the party, he has only used his telepathy with me (hafling rogue), and my character doesn't know shit about magic. I mean, his whole deception hasn't played much of a part in the game so far, but I'm sure it'll come up at some point.

Resistance to cold, lightning, and necrotic should be fine.

At most what you might do is "if you have any souls remaining when you complete a short rest, you regain one sorcery point." At most. But from 2nd level to 6th level that leaves the problem that that's way better than the other use for souls.

Yeah figured something like that come up

Aw. No one again?

Are the official miniatures worth it at all? Some of the 5th Edition monster ones look neat, but some of the humanoid ones look really bad.

Was thinking about buying some boosters but won't bother if most of the figures are bad.

Have them roll on the minor detriment table.

That's a whole lot to read bub. I'd help but I'm not really experienced. Maybe try to break it into individual pdfs by class, it might be more likely to get a response from other anons if it isn't so daunting

Boosters are okay, but it's more cost-effective to buy old singles. They've been making D&D minis at the same scale since 3rd edition, and a lot of them are as cheap as $1-2 each.

>random
thats reason enough for me to never buy them.
if you just need representatives of SOMETHING, i guess they're alright. that or you really really like a specific adventure.

they're alright quality, but you're pretty much never going to "get what you wanted" anyway, so dont think to plan buying a box or two and having the right things

The minis they've made since 5e are a mixed bag. Some of them are amazing - they've made the best beholder, displacer beast, and gelatinous cube I've seen on the market - but a lot of them are flimsy. A lot of them have clear rods that require assembly, mostly because they're trying to tie it in with the Attack Wing game, and often the rods don't fit very well.

Pathfinder minis seem to be a little more durable, and lately they've also been including dungeon furniture in boosters. That might be a plus or a minus for you.

Oh, thanks, I'll check that out! I think I'll do this, though:

Curse. While attuned to the ring, its wearer has vulnerability to necrotic damage, as it seizes the opportunity to claim some of their life. Upon taking off the ring, they drop to 0 HP and start making death saves.

I'll try that, thanks.

1d3 per 10 feet dragged, horse does not move at half speed while dragging fuckers.
Athletics / Acrobatics check as an action to squirm free of the rope, or deal 5 damage to an AC 10 rope (with disadvantage on the attack, even if it's a spell attack) to break it.

Since it seems kinda weird that fencing isn't referenced at all in DnD, specificaly in the fighter class I've tried to come up with at least a fighting style that would bring it in the world.

So here it is:
FENCING
Whenever you use a meele weapon you gain a +1 bonus to attack's rolls and +1 bonus to damage's rolls.

Any feedback?

And well I guess both fighters and paladins could have this since Paladins are basically suppossed to be at least expert in martial arts.

Try again.

what?

Fencing in the sense of fighting with a rapier is covered by the Dueling fighting style. Fencing in the broader sense of swordsmanship can be represented by any fighting style except Archery.

Take his sheet. Write Evil on the Alignment line. Homebrew Druid Assassins who turn into Bears and Panthers and stack Sneak Attack Dice and Kill him.

Fencing is not just done with a rapier, Medieval fencing can be find in Viking fighting styles and so on, it's not just somethign youdo with a rapier as aI said, fencing is used with a lot of different types of weapons, mainly one handend swords, sword + shield and two handed longswords (which go from the bastard sword all the way to the Landsknecht's Zweilhander) but it obviously can be extended fairly well to polearms, axes and blunt weapons.
So no fencing is just specific to one weapon but it specific to a level of training that gives you much more precisiona dn ways to damage effectively, that is why I decided to put a +1 in both attack rolls and damage rolls.

*not specific to just oen weapon

I'd allow some of them but it would be a damn short list.

That's why I added "fencing in the broader sense of swordsmanship." In that sense, every character with a melee weapon is fencing, and of course they're all trying to be precise and effectively damage the enemy. It's already assumed.

Pathfag here. Looking to convert to and play some 5th edition for the first time soon. Looking around at the rules and stuff, I read also the stats of some cr1 monsters and I almost fell off my chair. Take the Scarecrow for example. How the hell is that a cr1 encounter?

Try doesn't mean being proefficient in fencing, fencing means that you have spent that time into precision and better damage instead of just straight damage like a duellist or dual weilder or archer, or defense like for protection or hoping to have luck when you swing your two haanded weapon.

I think it is supposed to be a lvl 1 boss enemy.

Fencing is about scoring points, not actually murdering dudes. For a quick example, look at how people spar with spears (two hands on the spear underhanded) and then how spears were used in actual fights (one hand on the spear overhanded).

Re-read the CR guide. There are creatures with lower CR than 1.

AC 11, 36 HP.

If the scarecrow loses initiative it will just die to a party before it gets a turn.

Level 1 is all rocket tag though.

Just pretend In character. trying to deceive out of character for two wildly different classes seems like a waste of effort considering you're going to get discovered like instantly.

i just want to note here
theres fluff
and theres crunch

what are you trying to do with the crunch to make "fencing" not just fluff

resistance to: bludgeoning, slashing and piercing from non magical weapons

Uhm what? Fencing is the highest art of historical european martial arts. It was specifically made to kill, seriously go look up some german manuals from the 15000s, it was made to effectively kill the opponent int he safest way with maximum precision that comes with costant practice of the guards and stances.

what?

That's covered by weapon proficiency. Have you actually played these games?

ok, i guess you're gonna try to insult me now instead of actually have a discussion, welp, I tried.