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

Why are manticores so based?

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8th level shadow monk/assassin here. We're about to start and the GM is letting us have two uncommon magical items at his discretion. Are the Boots of Elvenkind overkill when I have an 11 in stealth and can cast Pass Without Trace? I feel like having a 21 stealth should be enough to make the Boots redundant, but I do like being a master of sneakiness.

How would you include monstergirl/boy races in 5e?

I would view anyone who wanted to play one of them with huge suspicion and if GMing, would probably boot them out of the game at the first sign of the inevitable magical realm bullshit

Looking forward to my game tomorrow. The setting is a Victorian one and the party is heading to what is essentially the Wild West. Big encounter planned where their caravan gets ambushed by a pack of these badasses,

Any good DM tips on how to play them? I've got a player who ALWAYS tries the diplomatic route.

>Implying anyone should need any convincing to have monstergirls included in a game.

Manticores are evil.

Have them save the diplomatic one for last, so he can scream more.

You know what the Sage Advice column is? It's the developers of 5E answering questions.

The example I gave is literally the one they use.
dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/ability-check

Right there, last paragraph about limit of number of spells in a turn.

And the rest of you faggots are wrong. You can only use your ACTION to cast a cantrip, your reaction is unbothered by using a bonus action spell.

Fuck you cocksucker.
k y s

You couldn't afford me, shitbag.

Well.. I'm still trying to figure out how to use all my action in one round for nova.

new discord link?

HAHAHAH AN ACTUAL COCKSUCKER LAMO

How do you feel a paladin of Avandra would roll?

I'm going acolyte background, figure he was educated and trained martially by the church, but I'm really struggling to hit up a personality.

I was hoping to base him on Jacques de Molay etc of the Knights Templar, but I'm struggling to find anything personality based on them, too.

>a pack of manticores
rp these fuckers, so that way you can show the players how utterly pointless it is to try diplomacy, but still make it a funny, enjoyable experience.

Running my first ever game with 3 new players. Tips?

>Have them save the diplomatic one for last, so he can scream more.
I'm liking this idea.

Ah, your picture puts it all into perspective. I'm fucking excited now thanks guys.

How do you guys feel about magic induced heroic sacrifices?

Like say the party is facing a powerful boss and an enemy wizard places a powerful barrier spell securing the boss and the plot relevant player character. Would this be a good way to create both tension and excitement?

Pull some punches and throw them some healing potions now and again.

Alternatively just go with it and see how they fare.

If there's actual mechanics to it.
If a wizard puts up a wall of force and you can't get rid of it, that's just the way it is. Try not to deus ex fiat things when there are already mechanics in the game that can do what you want.

make sure you know what they all want to get out of the game before you hard settle on a storyline and series of major encounters.
Some people like a lot of dungeoneering, some people like a lot of politics, espionage, and diplomacy, and some people like light-hearted PC shenanigans. No one is right or wrong and all of them can be good in their own way, but if everyone is trying to get something different out of the campaign it usually means someone is going to end up having problems before long.

If they really don't know what they want, try out a few different types of sessions and see which ones get their attention the most and gets them actually roleplaying. Try to adapt the story to focus mostly (but definitely not exclusively on that) and see how it goes from there

It makes me think of the end of Phantom Menace.

I'd probably avoid it, as it can make it feel like the other characters are irrelevant.
If the player decides to cut themselves off with the boss it'd feel better, I think.

Thanks. I want to be big on player freedom so I'm trying to do very light world building and letting them create their own story instead of railroading them so I have fun. I'm finding a hard balance between over preparing and under preparing for the start of this. How much would you as a player expect from a ideal DM?

>randomly picked a one page dungeon to run

>have 7 players now and everyone's 150% into the lore I am making up on the spot

>decide to go down the rabbit hole that is the imagination and end up creating a planar campaign for when they beat the dungeon

>investing massive amounts of time reading everything I can on the elemental plane of water, marids, the Citadel of Ten Thousand Pearls, looking at artwork, getting ideas for aquatic-based games

here's a picture of a Marid student I found. I'm calling the character Sheherazade, and making her a Chaik who brews tea that gives mechanics-based properties courtesy of the Crafting and Consumables homebrew guide. Any tips for my campaign?

I really hope this game lasts ;_;

pretty much this. The plot relevant character should be the whole party. Having half of the table just sitting there listening to how an encounter unfolds is the opposite of collaborative storytelling and against the spirit of the game.
maaaaybe if it's a small sidequest that focuses solely on one character's goals would it make sense to have him be the only really in the fight, but even then it's best to do it via character choice rather than force it upon them (have the boss issue a challenge to an honourable character who would never allow someone else to interfere, etc.)

If you do end up having to do it, at least give the other characters something to do instead of just watching. Maybe they're holding the door and preventing a never-ending steam of skellie reinforcements from swamping the party. Maybe they're trying to figure out how to work the mechanical mcguffin that deactivates the shield and lets them join in the fight. It does mean splitting the party and having to focus on 2 things at once, but it's better than most of the party sitting on their asses for half an hour

If you do this, give the other players something they can do so they aren't watching one person do everything.

Planning on rolling a pact of the tome, great old one warlock.

He was once an actor who found an archaic play that split his mind apart (pic related) and has since been wandering the lands doing god knows what.

I have some ideas for a personality, but how do I NOT play this character. In other words, i don't want to be that guy who rolls a clown bard that always fucks everything up for the party and basically just gets hard at the idea of being obnoxious, but I still want to play a truly crazy character with all the eccentricities of a master thespian.

How would you stat her?

Not sure if I entirely understand CRs, help me out-

CR 1 would be something that would be an even match for 4 level 1 PCs, right?
So CR 1/4 is equal to a single level 1 PCs, 1/8 would be equal to two on one level 1 PCs, and CR 1 would be equal to 1 level 4 party member?

That sounds really cool, user. I don't have any significant tips, but I wish you good luck and enduring player interest.

I
I believe you're right

From what I just read about Avandra, I would advise a character with a strong since of right and wrong, but someone who is always willing to take his time to understand a situation before acting. Change is inevitable, just gotta make sure it is for the better.

You could have you character striving to change some part of the universe you are in for the better, like free all the slaves, kill all the pirates, Something that ties in his backstory

As for personality I would totally lean towards a cheery, toothy grinned, adventurer who is ready to see all the world has to offer. Reading about that goddess I had a very clear image of a young youth who looks on wide eyed at whole wonderful and magical the world is, a person who really takes every second in life to the fullest and appreciates the magic in the mundane. I mean Avandra is the god of change and adventure (right?) and paladins are supposed embody their gods' beliefs in their actions and personalities. At least, that is how I have always interpreted my paladins

I don't know if any of that helped lol.

I find it's best to prepare ideas for cities, dungeons, and character archetypes/situations but leave all of the details fuzzy and easily exchangeable depending on what the players want. That way if they choose one path instead of the other one you expected, you can always recycle ideas and put them in but with the names changed and details affecting the flavour changed.

Say you set up some plot about a dwarven king that recruits the party's help to reclaim an underground dwarven city that's overrun with kobolds. You have a whole dungeon set up with tons of dwarf NPCs and filled with traps built around collapsing tunnels and an avalanche of magma at the end when the party needs to get out.
Unfortunately they don't bite and instead want to just play treasure hunter and roam the countryside looking for loot and XP. So have them stumble upon half-sunken ancient ruins just brimming with treasure, or a yuan-ti temple that they decide to raid, or whatever. You can use the same basic dungeon plan for all of them, tweak things around (collapsing tunnels and magma are now just the ocean flooding in for example), and work with that.

And in the end just have them find the same artefact that would move the story in the same way so you can keep your plans more or less in tact. So instead of a dwarven crown that would start some diplomatic quest to a distant city, maybe they find a magical orb or a religious totem that needs to be taken to the same place to be identified/destroyed/whatever. and instead of the storyline focusing on saving the dwarven kingdom, it now focuses on stopping the yuan-ti gods or some recently incarnated old one in the sunken city, but with the same general flow of locations and mcguffins needed to be visited

No.

CR is a monster's "level," how strong it is, and can *roughly* be used to compare its challenge for a party of 4. To actually build an encounter, you use the XP of all the monsters involved. Both encounter creation and CR calculation are detailed in the DMG.

So the ratio for judging an equal match is always 1:4 for CR to PC? A CR 2 is an even match for a level 8 PC? CR 5 level 20 PC?

I meant to post this with the last one but forgot.

Oh, I hadn't gotten to it since I don't DM, I just looked at the MM since I like monsters and stuff.

warlocks have a lot of CHA skills and spells that he can put to use. new magical disguises or body plans as an action, and so on.
You could have him be an eccentric form of the face for the party, possibly finding and killing key NPC's and assuming their identities as long as they are useful and then moving on.
I'm not super familiar with the King in Yellow but you could adapt the whole famous "no mask" bit to be the character actually believing he's not wearing a mask and thinking he really is the people whose form he's assuming.

How well this works depends very heavily on how it's executed of course, and I would definitely run your ideas by the DM before starting the character and before doing anything big like killing and impersonating NPC's he's setting up

Technically, yes. In practice it's a bit more complex, though, because there are modifiers related to the number of monsters and party size. In general, a CR X monster is a Medium encounter for a party of 4 level X. But take this example: one CR 1 is a medium encounter for one level 4 PC. But even maintaining the same rate of 1 monster per PC, any fight involving more things on both sides (2v2, 3v3, etc) is a Hard encounter.

Anyone have time of beasts pdf?

I would advise you to do exactly what you think is appropriate as a pact of the tome warlock. Just add flare to your actions. Make your craziness really shine in your fluff, maybe spout off lines from plays, sing song taunts at enemies, talk to yourself during role play conversations with NPCs and PCs.

Make your character as cool and hap-hazard silly as you like. Just don't be that dick who ruins everything for everyone else by saying, "I'm gonna go kiss the dragon teehee~"

Long story short don't be dumb and you'll be cool

>kobold.club/
Use this site to your heart's content, user. It'll do all the math for you.

One of the eldritch invocations would allow me to cast disguise self at will, so that would be dope actually.

I now have a vision in my mind of the first time my character kills an npc, and when the player goes to meet up with that npc they notice that my character is gone, cue the slowly worsening looks of terror. I like it. Thanks m8

My PCs are freelance inquisitives in Sharn, and their next case is going to bring them to the movers and producers of a new street drug. I'm picturing 2 different "dungeons", one the production facility and the other the distributors' lair/headquarters.

For the lab, I was planning on including lots of relatively weak enemies, but terrain hazards and traps, including plenty of chances for them to be induced with the drug through inhalation (if they don't loot the masks from the workers) or desperate attacks from them. The end of the place is an ex-licensed alchemist and doctor, who is actually trying to develop a medicine and is letting it be produced and sold so he can study and reduce the negative side effects. Of course, he's a bit off the deep end, and will imbibe a combination of drugs and potions should the party corner him, and 'hulk out' more or less.

The hideout is going to be the lair of a mafia or yakuza type figure, a beat up old exterior but the inside covered with stolen paintings, vases, tigerskin rugs, etc. A combination urban mansion and fortress. The ringleader here I'm giving a number of magical trinkets, namely a Shield Guardian amulet and at least one magic ring, that may have an illusion enchantment that makes the place appear so elegant in the first place.

What are some interesting things I could drop in to make these encounters better?

I really do want to stress that you should run this by the DM first. Pretty much any form of crazy PC has the potential to quickly ruin a game for everyone, so make sure it works well with what everyone else wants to play too

I hear you, but I've DM'd for people who do the "my precious" talking to themselves thing or even talking to invisible people that only they can see, and it's always sooo cringy at the table.

I don't want my character to be a clown, but I'm not so much worried about fluff or rp, I'm more concerned with stuff like...how I could possibly create a nontoxic personality for him, or what possible motivation he could have aside from "be crazy xD!1!"

Yeah no, of course, I imagine this will be the kind of character that requires a more than normal amount of discrete note-passing. And I really have no problem with being reeled in or even told no by the DM. I was the DM for my group of friends for about a year now, and I'm finally getting a chance to PLAY in a campaign, so I'm not a complete newbie, I understand what courtesy means in this hobby.

>make tome pact warlock
>take every other class' equivalent of prestidigitation

the best magician of all time

Reposting from last thread:
Ended up with a setting where elves went extinct, and mages are doing shit like injecting fey/elven blood/transplanting body parts into humanoids to if they can recreate the race.
Said humanoids go mad after going through these surgeries so:
what are some monsters related to elves/fey that I can throw a level 3 party?
All I can think is owlbears, displacer beasts and maybe fairy dragons.

That's a fantastic idea, thanks.

I like the idea of him being excited to see what the day will bring, just happy to be around.
Not rash to action, but when the correct path is in front of him he wont hold back.

Thanks a ton!

speaking of Warlocks, can someone give me an idea of a Pact of the Blade build that works well?
I really like the idea in terms of fluff, but crunch-wise I don't see every wanting to use normal attacks pretty much ever, even at low levels. You'll need to worry a lot more about damage if you choose a melee weapon which isn't good because you're squishy even with light armour, and if you choose ranged you'll pretty much always be doing less damage than what you'd be doing with Eldritch Bolt.
All of the pact bonuses for Blade are alright but hardly good enough to justify taking it. At least from my impression so far, which is why I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing

just make custom ones and call them half-elf monstrosities or whatever, using the stats of some creatures of appropriate challenge rating, maybe with some minor spells/abilities thrown in for flavour

Yeah that's another possibility.
I was also thinking that maybe these experiments were dealing with demons/devils/ancient evil being but they were far too retarded to realise they were being tricked.

Here's the guide you're looking for:


___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________play a fighter_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I spent a long time wondering why they would give a warlock a melee option and the only thing I could come up with is that it's for when the warlock is stuck in melee.

So summon a net I guess.

Just don't play pact of the blade.
We've had so many threads dedicated to this.

fair enough, just seemed like I was missing something

dhmholley.co.uk/encounter-calculator-5th/

You weren't. It's just bad.
Ranged > melee in virtually all scenarios.

Does no one have DnD 4th or earlier editions?

He thinks the Party aren't real and it's all in his head but he embraces his insanity.

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Thanks!

What kind of a warlock are you? I played as a spooky as fuck warlock, went GOO, and had telepathy. So I could just tell party members what was up as long as I was within 30 feet of them. I cannot stress enough how incredibly useful that ability is.

Especially if you disguise yourself at will and put the party Rogue to shame with your sneakiness. Not that my Warlock could ever beat the stealth rolls of the Rogue, but he could do pretty damn well for himself all the same/eldritch blast his enemies into the ground, etc.

Steal from Magic, Planescape, and Star Trek really. The best part about Planar campaigns is that you're not tied down to a single setting. Hell, the whole point of Ravenloft is so you can run Halloween One-shots mid-campaign and threaten Evil Campaign players if they go too far.

Pact of the Blade can be fun, but you'll never be as good as a regular melee fighter. You would be better off taking a few levels in fighter instead.

But if you want warlock, go Fiend, and hex your enemies. Get good dex with medium armor proficiency and war caster. Use a shield, and you'll have pretty decent AC once you grab yourself some half plate. Choose a rapier as your pact weapon.

As a higher level fiend warlock you can slam an enemy through hell for a full round and it does insane damage to them once/day. It is a ton of fun when you come around to a boss fight and ruin that fucker's day with a trip through the planes of hell. If you cast hex on a pleb, you can go to town on them with thirsting blade invocation and output pretty decent damage.

If you do Pact of the Blade the right way, you can have a lot of fun with it.

>Eldritch blast with agonizing blast, and eldritch spear, and get up to 4 possible his with it at higher levels
>Put out 1d10+chr mod x 4 in a round from 300 feet away

It's not like a warlock can't kill his enemies from range.

That's the point.
Ranged
>
Melee

>tfw wood elf
>monk
>Mobile feat

I'm the fastest nigga around.

as I said in I'm going to run Pact of the tome GOO, the telepathy feature sounds like a hoot. But, apparently disguise self isn't a concentration spell, so i could take guidance as one of my pact cantrips and combine it with disguise to get the best sneak / deception rolls you've ever seen.

Well guys, I'm a DM, and my group's about to die via hiatus and scheduling hell as I just got a new job that requires me to work on our scheduled day. Any advice on this? I don't want this to happen, but I need the money. Is there anything I can do?

Contact all players. Find out all of their availability. Cross-reference to find a common day between them.

Boot any players you hate/are unreliable if you have to.

The one skill that every single DM needs to have is stubbornness.

Citation: I've had the same campaign going since 5e dropped, and we've had four hiatuses in that time. Still going strong.

its only worth it if its what you want
don't play it because you are after big numbers

Do you ever bother with character portraits?

If so, where do you usually look? I haven't historically had a lot of luck on Google, and most of what I find is too far out and can't be cropped to just the head nicely.

I have a huge folder of potential character art that I grab from various character threads on Veeky Forums. When I'm thinking up a character concept, I'll usually scroll through it look for ideas, maybe edit them a bit with some Photoshop wizardry (rounding or sharpening the ears, changing their skin color, etc.), then throw them in my token template and there it is.

Does a Tempest Cleric's Wrath of the Storm ability work with their Thunderbolt Strike?

i have a pretty large folder of character art, but i never bother with character portraits.
i do often draw what my character looks like somewhat comprehensively, but that never actually matters in game so i never really show anyone those drawings unless it comes up for some reason.
in my group, the only guy with a character portrait drew his paladin's favorite weapon instead of his paladin.

>Do you ever bother with character portraits?
If I find a character art that I think fits sure but I usually dont go out of my way to find something unless the DM absolutely needs it.

it's not really a matter of low numbers, it's a matter of low numbers with nothing else to gain
both Pact of the Chain and Pact of the Tome have some amazing out of combat bonuses, or uses in combat that synergise with their spell casting (and don't require using up their action each round).
Pact of the Blade is purely for a melee attack that is nearly always less useful than a generic cantrip

>Contact all players. Find out all of their availability. Cross-reference to find a common day between them.
Yeah, I guess I should start there. I'll break it to them at our next session, which'll be our first physical meet and the last before the hiatus.
>Boot any players you hate/are unreliable if you have to.
That's tempting, but knowing him, he'd be the one that's the most flexible. Besides, we're all friends/acquaintances from school, and if one goes, I'm afraid all will go. But I'll think on it.
>The one skill that every single DM needs to have is stubbornness.
Yeah, my ADM says I'm too nice.
>Citation: I've had the same campaign going since 5e dropped, and we've had four hiatuses in that time. Still going strong.
That's impressive, I hope I can do that too.

Yep. Thunderbolt Strike can trigger whenever you deal lightning damage, be it through a spell, class feature, dragonborn breath weapon, or the extra bits of a magic weapon.

I'm slowly building a folder, but it's pretty small still.

Currently I've got 8 that are the kind of portrait I'd like. There's one I've got that would be really good, but it fuzzes out too much if blown up.

Try using waifu2x. waifu2x.udp.jp/

It's not perfect for everything but it can help if you accidentally get a good picture sized for ants.

well i disagree with your assertion that there is "nothing else to gain". you get extra attack which is useful in combat, even if it doesn't up your damage above eldritch blast, you get a solid attack option that doesn't rely on making noise via a verbal component. yeah its not great but if you use armor of agathys and hex you can do okay.
like i said, not great, but okay.

Champion, I'll keep that one for future use.
The one I was hoping for I think it's the art style as much as anything else that kills it. Pic related.

Using the "photo" setting can provide slightly better results for detailed pictures like that, pic related.

>you get extra attack
right, but you still have to use your action to make the first one. It basically just doubles the effectiveness of your attack action without adding any new utility
And it requires one of your evocations to do. Meanwhile at the same level and having spent 1 evocation you can have an invisible flying familiar with absurdly high passive perception that communicates telepathically giving you a perfect scout, or a book that lets you cast a few cantrips and as many ritual spells as you can find, without class restriction.
These give you such a wealth of new possibilities for how to explore, interact socially, and fight creatively, while Pact of the Blade gives you the option to hit enemies in melee for a reasonable amount of damage

you'd really have to do some explaining to even come close to convincing me that using a melee weapon would ever come close to just eldritch blasting from 100ft away

like at level 5, EB with agonizing blast is 1d10+cha + 1d10+cha, can target two different people or the same, and has a range of 120ft. It can also be augmented for even more range and can also push people around.

EB vs pact weapon gets even more uneven at higher levels, as correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that you can't ever have more than two attacks with pact blade. Sure you get like, an invocation for +cha mod damage on melee attacks at level 12 or something, but EB will get to the point where you're doing 4d10+cha to multiple targets or the same target from 120ft away and pushing them all around and doing potentially 4d6 additional damage from hex

EB is better in every way. Sure a maul/greataxe/greatsword pact weapon outdamages it slightly, but for that then you'd need strength, and need to be in melee as a d8 light armor class for 2 more possible damage

and to even use a pact weapon you're giving up on an advanced familiar, which is massive, massive utility, and 3 cantrips + as many rituals as you can find.

It's counter spells all the way down.

>you'd really have to do some explaining to even come close to convincing me that using a melee weapon would ever come close to just eldritch blasting from 100ft away
i don't think under normal circumstances it ever would. but i wasn't arguing that in the first place.
i originally said don't go after blade pact if you want big numbers, because it ain't that.

Do any grid-less versions of the barovia map in curse of strahd exist? It's fucking impossible to align the hexes properly in roll20.l

There should be one in the PDF of maps in the Mega. Just open it in Adobe Reader and right click -> copy image, throw it in Paint or whatever and save it.

What you should do is decide on one or more delusions that your character has, and just stick to them. Delusions that can't be shaken no matter how convincing the other person may be. In every other respect your character is a slightly eccentric older gentleman who is only a bit obsessed with the stage. He is talkative and friendly and maybe just a tad too eager to help out. His weirdness only comes out when his specific delusion is brought up, like a belief that everyone around him is wearing a mask or something.

For building a greatsword character is the great weapon master feat even worth it? The first part of it only feels somewhat useful, while the second part just feels like a useless trap.

Yes it's worth it.

I need to create an abandoned deep gnome city. What are some interesting locations I could include. Temples, old market places, forges etc?

What are some things that the deep gnomes do different when it comes to their underground cities compared to, say dwarfs?

This is the best homebrew ever made.

Yes.

If you're fighting a creature that's easy to hit but has a lot of HP or resistance, it adds up.

Everything is smaller, less ornate.
The city looks kinda like the equivalent of stone adobes; well-made but without the elaborate stone carving or metalworking.
Not more primitive mind you, but more natural-looking rather then the obviously hand-made thing dwarves have going on.

Anyone got that Tome of Beasts pdf yet?

The fact that you have to personally land the killing blow on a creature to get Negative Energy is pretty lame. Makes it feel like a video game where you're more worried about getting the last hit in than you are enjoying the game.