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

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>July 2016 Unearthed Arcana
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>August 2016 Unearthed Arcana
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What other sorcerous origins would you like to see Wizards put out?

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>What other sorcerous origins would you like to see Wizards put out?
I want to see a sorcerer dedicated to summoning, because I feel like the conjuration wizard just doesn't do the trick for me. How they fluff that is less important.

But I'm gonna post these two things because I would like for people to playtest them with me if they'd want to. The more data the better.

what's wrong with conj wizard?

i glanced at them briefly cause I wanted to do some sort of summoner class, but didn't really go in-depth.

And the familiar.

Nothing - it's just not as flashy as I'd like. A little dull, actually.
How concentration functions in 5e really kicks summoners in the butt to begin with.

>What other sorcerous origins would you like to see Wizards put out?

Well, let's look at what we've got so far.

Draconic (dragons), Wild Magic (arcane), Favored Soul (divine/positive energy plane), Shadow (shadowfell/negative energy plane), and Storm (elemental chaos).

So we're probably looking at something from the Abyss (Demonic or Devil), Feywild (Fey), and the Far Realm (Astral). Of these the Far Realm one is probably the hardest, because most things from there are meant to be Cthulu-like stuff... I think the only thing that might work is that somehow your ancestors were slaves of illithids/Mind Flayers, somehow escaped, but their time in slavery and not getting their brains eaten got them tainted with psionic stuff?

should my Tempest Theurge take Elemental Adept (Lightning) or Ritual Caster (Cleric) as my Human Feat?

I'm surprised by how well they have supported the Sorcerer in UA and Sword Coast. A Fey Origin would be cool though or Elemental ones for more than Lightning.

I guess as long as they can both see each other it would be looking at it?

Yeah. Oddly, Druids make better summoners than a wizard dedicated to conjuration. The only spell they don't get that would pertain to summoning is Find Steed, which is easily remedied. All you really need to do is take Circle of the Land, add Conjuration Spells, and replace the archetype features with ones that give moderate bonuses to summoning. Also replace Wild Shape with a scaling version of Hound of Ill Omen from the UA Shadow Sorc.

>scaling version of Hound of Ill Omen
That thing is already ridiculously good. Disadvantage on spell saves just by being next to it is too real.

I skipped part of it reading, "actively averting their gaze" seems to mean as long as they know of it they can just not look you in the eyes. I'm just reminded of Basilisk mechanics for looking away.

Conjuration is about more than using minions though, it has Plane Shift, Cloud Kill and Teleportation spells as well. The idea of Conjuration is about moving things around in existence and sometimes bringing them from the ass end of nowhere. Necromancy and Enchantment both support minions as well but both schools have more than one type of spell that makes people drawn to them.

>"actively averting their gaze" seems to mean as long as they know of it they can just not look you in the eyes
I don't think that would be a totally unfair ruling, though I'd be more apt to treat it such that part of the ability magically draws your gaze to the warlock if you look in their general direction, so you'd either need to close your eyes or stare at the floor, ceiling, or backwards to completely negate the possibility you could be hit by it.
That being said, it's not the worst thing in the world to take 2d4 psychic damage and effectively lose your next round on a failed save. Attacking with disadvantage all the time just to negate that possibility might not be worth it, even if you know that the warlock in question has such an ability.

The 5e system works really well, except it isn't mechanically sound when it comes to balancing encounters, which is really such a mess that NOT EVEN THE OFFICAL ADVENTURE WRITERS USE THE ONE PROVIDED IN THE DMG. Worse, it doesn't provide a method of accounting for magic items in combat, which makes the whole Magic and Item aspect of the game(Artificer, Crafting, etc) really take it in the ass.

Since this is a player ability it is such a small issue, with monsters the characters may meet them many times but if you enforced those rules with this it would still almost never come up.

HEY Veeky Forums, CHECK OUT MY HOMEBREW ITS PRETTY GOOD.

Its got some mystic-like elements to it now. Thoughts?

Crafting rules suck dick. Anything more than uncommon is not viable for most campaigns.

I do like playing a crafter class but they piss off everybody else at the table by taking up time to build some shit you don't need just so you feel special. Crafting magical items over a long downtime period, potions/poisons and spell scrolls should only be done when needed because no reasonable person is going to spend a fucking month to make something that might kill him in the process to get it half price.

I refuse to read the word shadow that many times

It would start heavily nerfed and work it's way up towards that in terms of power and effectiveness. You'd essentially start with Familiar+, and work your way up to the Hound.

Yeah, but we're talking Summoners specifically, not simply Conjuration. I'm not saying the Conjurer is bad, merely that it's misleading for being something that suggests summoning.

it appears 261 times in the pdf.

Why? Just skim over it, you can ignore the thematic bullshit and focus on the mechanics aspect.

Yup - I don't think it's too bad for a PC at all to have that as a tool. I think the mechanical benefit of it is in line with Dark One's Blessing from fiend if we're just talking about combat efficiency.

Okay, that doesn't sound too bad.
I enjoy things that scale.

A summoner could be its own Wizard tradition eventually. They can only make so many before they have to start using specific ones like it.

Which is exactly the issue. The reason for this is that by putting Useful Crafting Mechanics in the hands of the players you run the risk of unbalancing the party. This wouldn't be an issue if the DM had a method of determining just how unbalanced Magic Items would make the party, and would be able to adjust encounters accordingly.

Does a "shadowcaster" need it's own class?

trim it down and make it a sorcerer origin

Most of the magic items my players encounter are either consumables or else just fun utility things like rings of jumping.
I don't give things that benefit raw mechanics until usually mid to late game, and often they'll just be basic things like slightly magical weapons so that my players can actually fight all the shit that's resistant to non-magical weapon damage.

I don't think it does.
I can't really think of many things that actually need their own class when archetypes of existing classes can cover almost anything.

eh, we could argue for or against it for quite some time.

For now, im just trying to figure out a new/different way to handle a type of spell progression. This iteration copie sideas offthe mystic, but uses its own cost table to try to tone down from the mystics power level..

that being said, i personally enjoy when things "dont fit" on purpose. if there was another "change selfs body to do damage" it doesn't necessarily need to be a druid, it could easily be a fey themed sorc or something.

but that sure as heck doesn't mean it need to be its own "weredude" class

Yeah. You can play an oath of the ancients paladin and a nature cleric incredibly similarly in terms of fluff. You could actually just run the same damn character just with different mechanics. Same for other stuff.

As a general rule I'd say a class would need either a new mechanic or a strong enough theme to break into distinct smaller archetypes (and that still usually feels like pushing it) to justify not just being an archetype. I don't particularly see why the idea of a shadow-magic-man is that different from an illusionist spin on warlock or sorcerer personally

Now this has got me trying to think of character concepts that actually *would* need their own class.
I was thinking shaman, but then I can see tuning a warlock or druid into that role pretty easily.

>shaman
well, dragon shaman could probably be a pretty easy paladin spec, but the oaths would be weird
regular shaman though, i could see druid pretty easy, lock would be harder since it needs a pact (and to be different than fey)

marshal (which was similar to dragon shaman in the aura aspect, but was a shit fighter) could easily even be bard, rather than fightman

I think shaman could work so long as it wasn't basically just a druid. If it was more about getting possessed by spirits to get different bonuses or whatever it could work (I think that's what binders were back in 3.5, but I never really looked much at that book). That's sort of samey with how psionics seem to be going by what we've seen in UA though

A martial type that picks a lot of it's features the same way as a warlock does with invocations might be one. I have no idea what that actually might be though. Also a class like paladin or ranger with an arcane focus, but with as many gish options as there are it's kind of pointless.

even though the shadow magic man does things pretty differently than an illusionist warlock or sorcerer?

how about an initiator from the tome of battle?

>lock would be harder since it needs a pact
Easy. You could just come up with some spirit being.

Tbh I might work on a shaman warlock archetype. That would be fun - just have the patron chassis be a powerful and primordial spirit being.
Fuck it. I'm doing it.

>how about an initiator from the tome of battle
I don't remember that desu. Only things I focused on out of ToB were crusader and warblade back in the day, which can be pretty easily covered on fighter/paladin frames if not even others I think.

This will be the spirit I'll be having in mind as the example.

martial adepts would be neat, but I'm a bit stumped on what I would actually do. Maybe just something like a martial class that only gets one extra attack, but a shit ton of expertise dice and ways to use it that are more overtly magical. Maybe even starting with that high level battlemaster thing where they gain a minimum amount of expertise dice when they roll initiative very early on to match up with the old "encounter based" thing

crusader and warblades are both initiators bruh.

He means initiator in the same general sense as 'caster'

>an initiator
I thought for some reason "initiator" was being referred to as a class in and of itself.
It's been a few years since I've played any 3.5 that wasn't limited to PHB (God help me) only.
I think crusaders and warblades can be pretty easily adapted to fighter/paladin at the very least.

>Easy. You could just come up with some spirit being
thats what i thought at first also, but when i think "shaman" i think making pacts like street shaman do in shadowrun
other than "aspect" spirits, i dont think "rat" is on par with "giant ass named Demon that has books written about him"

>when i think "shaman" i think making pacts like street shaman do in shadowrun
Ah, yeah, for a shaman like that I don't think I'd use warlock as a chassis for it. You could possibly finagle it by having a whole spirit realm as your patron though. Wizards basically did that with their Undying Light archetype.

I really like warblades, but I think both crusader and warblade were more about finding a way for those types of classes to work in a caster filled 3.5 game than necessarily having a very different concept from say fighter, barbarian, or paladin. Swordsages were a bit more unique I think, but even then they were basically just made to be monks that don't suck. Still I think you could justify them as their own classes by pulling a mechanic out of your ass since they basically have always existed as ways to play old concepts in different ways

>I think both crusader and warblade were more about finding a way for those types of classes to work in a caster filled 3.5 game
Yeah, that's exactly how I feel too. It was WotC's way of trying to bridge a disturbing mechanical gap.

>NOT EVEN THE OFFICAL ADVENTURE WRITERS USE THE ONE PROVIDED IN THE DMG

Source?

Plugging my rogue archetype concepts again.


homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyGRUsiD

I've posted this before, and made some changes, but I also added a new rogue archetype and would love some feedback.

Revolutionary
> Martial / Mental Support
> Che, IRA, etc.

Ruffian
> Strength based rogue, grappler
> The goon, hired muscle, thug

Prowler
>Time thief
> Prince of Persia, Tracer (Overwatch), Bill & Ted

>Ruffian
>Strength based rogue, grappler
>The goon, hired muscle, thug
I like this conceptually, since rogues get expertise which they can put into Athletics, and multiclassing is gay.

I really like this Shaman, I've seen a few with archetypes like witch doctor, guardian etc. like druids, how they use their powers, but this one is more like cleric domains where you commit to a certain type of spirit. Maybe still not enough for its own class but since my setting focuses on spirits/souls a lot it makes sense there.

Otherwise I replace Ranger with Blood Hunter, but most homebrew classes are just 1. a whole new thing to learn and get used to, and 2. can be done either as well or better as an archetype.

also trying to give martials something besides spamming "I attack"

Yup.

How do I make an adventure that isn't total shit? I just finished HotDQ for my friends and now I wanna try something original.

"So many words" is my first reaction, given 5e's design goals.
I'd have to look through the whole thing to make a proper judgement though, since even if I think it has way too much content for a class that doesn't actually say anything about how it might play out on a table.

I was just about to say something similar, it's just so overwhelming. It could also be the fact that it comes with like 6 archetypes.

Start reading other adventures. Long ones, short ones, old ones from previous versions, etc.

Get a feel of how each one is paced, sized, and what information is and isn't provided. Get an understanding of how each one has a specific goal, and all the options it gives the players to achieve that goal.

After all that, copy whatever formula you've come to understand and run it. It'll probably be ass, but it might be good. Just keep doing it.

Which published adventures would you say are particularly good? My friends and I are pretty new to pen and paper games in general.

Has there been a homebrew thing that fixes the simpler things for more experienced groups? I would be extremely surprised to see anyone in my group play a champion fighter now, and martials in general aren't too fun to play for them because of just attacking. I know the "everyone gets maneouvres" from the playtest wasn't completely right but I feel like something like that could work like AD&D worked.

Yeah it's quite big, I was lurking in the thread when it was being playtested and reported on/discussed so that helped a lot. At this point it's very integrated into my setting but as I has as my first point, a lot of classes means a lot to learn, which isn't always a good thing.

I'm running both Lost Mine of Phandelver, and Curse of Strahd right now. Both are pretty solid.

how would you make that class a sorcerer origin?

On ruffian, when I first saw how Bullying Tactics functions my reaction was to think "the grapple attempt should be a bonus action" like Tavern Brawler. But then I remembered I'm talking about Rogue, which doesn't get extra attack, so I withdraw that sentiment.
I think Aggressive Negotiation is neat for utili-fluff actually.
For Hold 'em Still I'd remove the 'within 5 feet' requirement to grant an ally advantage.
I actually think I like Fighting Dirty quite a bit, though I find myself feeling like I'd want something to what it gives earlier than 17. Though one probably doesn't *actually* need it earlier, given rogue chassis is pretty solid to begin with.

One thing I'd worry about with the archetype is their actual durability in a fight. They're based off of Strength, so their armor class isn't exactly going to be stellar. Maybe give them medium armor proficiency, or something like damage resistance against the target they're grappling or something.

These are pretty neat. The revolutionary feels like it would require a Political Campaign to make sense though but the Ruffian is something I've been dying for Wizards to release.

I feel like this depends entirely on your skills as a DM to set up creative encounters. I have a group that is Barbarian, Bard, Ranger, AT Rogue, and Sorcerer, and rarely is there an encounter where the Barbarian, Ranger, or Rogue just attack.

Environmental conditions, win conditions other than reducing enemies to 0 HP, unique monster strategies / boss mechanics where the group has to work together or figure out the "pattern" are all steps you can take to stop..."well I attack again."

probably by trimming it down. Taking what's core to the class / makes it unique as well as what's beneficial for a Sorcerer, and applying those to the archetype formula.

3.5 the balancing act was absolutely absurd though, which is the addition we were referring to.
Trying to make encounters where the monk feels useful while the wizard doesn't just yawn and watch the pawns from the sidelines was not really usually a thing in 3.5.

I remember the barb in my group wanting to retire (and he did) because he was tired of just attacking and stuff, and similar complaints have come up, but I don't think I would mind at all just attacking, thinking of some tactics, describing how you kill people, etc. But it's always going to be more fun being a battlemaster than champion I think, as long as you can remember to use the mans and stuff.

thats what i mean though. what do you trim down? Its core is already there, very barebones. the real meat is with the paths you choose and what mysteries you focus on.

Nothing in the other classes is quite like it.

I'm really happy with where Ruffian is at at this point. But yeah, I was concerned about the archetype's survivability. My first idea was to include a "tough" feat inspired feature, where their HP or Constitution is buffed somehow. Maybe a feature where they can pull a friendly in to take the hit for them ala goblins, kobolds, etc.

Awesome! Thanks, that makes me feel like I'm on the right track.

>Also, at the end of any turn where you don’t take the attack action, you can move yourself ahead in the initiative order by 1.
This maybe isn't bad enough to be an issue, but if you get magic initiate/high elf for gfb/bb you will always attack without taking the attack action.

Been thinking about how to make this game more fun than it is right now. One of the big problems is that binary d20 rolls are retarded and boring.

So:

>steal apocalypse world's system.
>If you roll less than or equal to 5 under the target number, you can choose to succeed, but the DM gets to qualify your success with a disadvantage, or NPC based counter (such as an enemy monster counter attacking, or a fumble after success, or in diplomacy, the shopkeeper agreeing to sell, but only if you do X first, etc, etc).
>If you roll more than 5 under the target number, you fail, and the DM gets to give you a disadvantage.
>If you roll 5 or more over the target number, you succeed, and you get some advantage.

The rogue will most likely dominate initiative anyway.

Yeah it's not exactly going to be abused.

Fuck of Virt.

Didn't think of that, good catch! I'm not sure if that's really broken though. I imagine that if any fight goes on long enough, they get to move forward in the initiative order regardless.

stop playing or find different people to play with.

I realize this wasn't entirely clear, so I'll sum it up this way:

Say the AC of the target is 15.

If you roll 9 or below, you fail with some disadvantage.
If you roll either 10, 11, 12,13,14, you can choose to succeed, but with a disadvantage.
If you roll 15, 16,17,18,19, you succeed.
If you roll 20 or more, you get an advantage.

Disturbing trend that I've noticed recently: people who suggest fixes or problems with the game referred to as Virt. Also, If I recall, Virt hated the * World games.

You could just let them move up every turn no matter what. I don't think it would break it.

The only one that's truly fucked is Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and that was because it was finished before the MM.

The rest are hardcore sandboxes, so the encounters are meant for a certain level of party - but probably not your party's level.

I would have them built like a ranger or paladin's pacing, but their spells are maneuvers and they get stances.

5e could do with a wealth system instead of a money system. Such system would also have the benefit of being easily factored into with the CR guidelines, as a wealthy party would be expected to hit above their level.

Continuing:

Some suggested advantages/disadvantages
>Attack Action
>disarm/be disarmed
>tripped up/trip up
>basically free maneuvers
>to keep it simple, only the first attack has this rule applied to it. Extra Attacks are normal DnD.

Diplomacy
>you get to ask the NPC a single question and they'll answer truthfully
>the NPC gets to ask you a single question, which your character has to answer truthfully.
>you get to ask the DM a single question about the NPC and they will answer truthfully, but the NPC doesn't know anything
>The NPC learns something about your character, without your character knowing about it. The DM gets to ask 3 questions, which you have to answer truthfully. The NPC learns one of these answers, though you don't know which.
Sort of an abstract one, this would be based on social maneuvering, that either you or your opponent was able to maneuver you into unwittingly answering a question, and your character may not have even known the question was being asked.

>That having to fight a dragon and the vampire in HotDQ

yeah good fucking luck

Are DMs not already subjective with die results? Like, is this not a natural thing or emergent gameplay that everyone does?

Attack or skill check, barely making a roll or completely smashing / failing a roll already happens, at least in games I DM.

Does everything have to be hard coded for you?

Play a narrative game man, this will never work well in 5e. Good GMs will have worse results for bad rolls and better results for very high ones, it's not too binary in that respect. And in combat, you would have to rebalance literally the entire system.

>extra attacks are normal D&D
nice one

put ``` twice on sequential lines to bump shadow magic reserves to the next column

paths really convolute the class, just give them warlock like casting and add your new spells in

some stuffs a tad unbalanced, like a 100ft range cantrip for 2d4 with a 3x crit mod? seems a bit munchkin for my liking

>you can use your reaction to give a friendly creature within 5 feet advantage on an attack roll against that creature until end of turn.
Wording's a bit weird here. Does it give advantage on attack rolls until the end of their turn, or for one attack they make during that turn?

Also, isn't Fighting Dirty a bit on the strong side? I know Thief gets an extra turn but this is every time you deal sneak attack damage, which is almost every turn as long as you hit.

bruh if you wanted to play 2 truths and a lie you should have done a better job at making friends in high school / college so you can play drinking games with people that don't like you.

I don't know the answers to your rhetorical questions user. What I do know is that with certain types of players, if you try to pull disadvantages on them that the vanilla rules don't support, you get complaints. Having these things laid out before hand, in a ruleset that the group agrees upon is just a better idea in general. Also, it makes it more fun IMO. One of FFG's good innovations with star wars for instance was letting the players pick what their advantages were instead of the DM.

There is no current rules support that. And at least with what I've seen playing DnD, most groups reserve the degrees of success/failure to extremes. So a roll of 5 against an AC of 16 is still just a miss, but once you hit 1, then you get into fumbles. Similarly with high rolls, except for skill checks. Players will expect an extreme success on a natural 20 skill check (even though there is no rule for this, and you can trigger Veeky Forums by suggesting there is one).

But for everything in between 1 and 20, you have either straight misses, or straight hits. Which is too binary for my tastes.

Adding in homebrew rules to codify the game will make things fair for my players, rather than just springing random disadvantages on them if they roll low.

I also think you're overestimating how much the combat system would need to be rebalanced. This would result in more hits, that's for sure. If you make the disadvantages great enough, it should balance itself out.

At 17th level I figure you're fighting creatures that are immune to one of if not two of those conditions.

a single attack. I could word that better though.

Is the Death domain alright? I've only seen one in a one-shot so not sure how it works out.

I don't mean fumbles, I mean how the GM describes what happens. And once you get to mechanical effects to failing/succeeding you fuck the entire game's balance. Again, you would have rebalance the entire game, monsters, classes, races even.

>condition immunity
That's very true, it doesn't seem that crazy then.

If you're just talking about changing the fluff of actions, then what you're talking about is irrelevant to what I want.

And you're still overestimating balance difficulties. Balance is the easiest thing in the world to achieve as a DM. If the players are doing too well, modify your encounters on the fly. If the players are struggling too much, do the same. It is never a struggle to rebalance the players versus the difficulties they encounter.

In fact, the only real balance issue with DnD is the class design, but I'm not going to tackle that problem. My players worked out a solution on their own.

drivethrurpg.com/product/190188/Ultramodern5-5th-Edition?hot60=1&src=hgrs

What do you think?

>drivethrurpg.com/product/190188/Ultramodern5-5th-Edition?hot60=1&src=hgrs
>9.99 dollars
fuck that shit nigga, that's way too much
It feels even worse that he cut down the price from 13 dollars

Use a system that's not d&d if you want to play in a modern setting.

I'm personally a fan of Chronicles of Darkness, but there are plenty of other options. I like 5e, but please do not fall into the 3.PF trap of trying to adapt it's rules for fucking everything when using a system more suited for your setting in the first place would be better.

As someone wise once said,
"I don't believe in generic systems."

Could be good, could be bad. Don't fall into the trap of not adapting rules to suit your needs. 5e was deliberately made generic and rules lite to facilitate adaptations.

People like this moron are forgetting that it is very difficult to find a game outside of DnD these days.

Anyways, this sort of argument only comes up with some grognard doesn't like the homebrew in question, or doesn't actually know its content. If they like it, they'll conveniently forget that "DnD's rules shouldn't be adapted to the group's needs or wants".

Does anyone have the DMsGuild products Race Compendium (1 and 2)? It's not in the mega, would greatly appreciate it.

Tempted to play a Jojo parody sun soul monk or a long death monk help decide.

>People like this moron are forgetting that it is very difficult to find a game outside of DnD these days.

With Roll20 and Hangout it is actually quite easy.