/5eg/ D&D 5e General, Strahd Edition

That's the real adventure's subtitle.

I can see how Strahd implying he even needs a sword to deal with you might be terrifying.

That's a pretty shitty curse then, innit?
Though I guess for a given definition of "cursed" it might not mean the same thing to the Dark Powers.

>That's the real adventure's subtitle.
"This is is Strahd. He's cursed. Also, a massive cunt."
>I can see how Strahd implying he even needs a sword to deal with you might be terrifying.
This was to a group of new D&D players who weren't even aware of the basics of the character, so when they found out he was a warrior-king of sorts they basically started treating him like a warrior and began to think of him as one and kind of tried to pre-empt him along those lines.

The sword along with ripping off that line from Witcher 3 kinda drove home the point that it was go time and they had to expend every resource they had on this fight because he sure as shit was going to do the same.

Luckily Skuld is from a pre-high heel society, so she doesn't bother with that sort of thing.

Any of you guys go for more of a political type BBEG rather than the world ending Dragon or Lich gathering the dark forces to him?

My game has an expansionist Colonial Britannia esque sort of nation that's collecting magical artifacts and weapons to expand it's power and influence as it slowly conquers the world. Think India Jones's Nazis or Spartan Total Warrior's Rome

Unlike most of the older and free world, their military tech consists of colonial era muskets and cannons using a magical mineral that when refined works like gun powder. pis related is what inspired me.

Their foot soldiers also make great mooks because 5e muskets aren't half bad, and in melee you just count it as a spear. The first time one of my players took a fully organized volley from a squad of them was hilarious.

And one of my players has gone a little nuts in loving the new technology, he carries anywhere between 5-10 loaded pistols at a time, pirate style.

Only thing I'm ashamed of is I made them bit cartoonishly evil so my party would for sure want to help the free/old world fight them.

>with ripping off that line from Witcher 3
What line now?

>"If you acknowledge any gods, START PRAYING NOW!!"

>Any of you guys go for more of a political type BBEG rather than the world ending Dragon or Lich gathering the dark forces to him

I have, actually.
The actual "main villain" was a completely noncombat sort of character and it was the political influence and power he wielded that made him dangerous.

He had a scary-ass Monk-based minion who did all the fighting for him instead, kind of Darth Maul inspired.

>Only thing I'm ashamed of is I made them bit cartoonishly evil so my party would for sure want to help the free/old world fight them.

Not EVERY faction or villain needs to have deep, meaningful motivations.
Sometimes you can have a whole faction of ambiguously evil people or "evil by their inaction against injustice" types", but the main problem is that they're led by this utter asshole with no redeeming features at all so no matter how many "good" characters there are in the faction they have to deal with the fact that all of their orders come from a 100% evil guy.

I got the same kinda thing, my evil faction leader can't do shit in combat, but one of the most powerful Fighters in the entire setting is his right hand man.

Yeah my evil factions leader is a boy king who assassinated his cool father to take the realm. He's got a lot of Joffery vibes.

In an upcoming game I'm playing my favroute class again.

A Rogue.

I feel like I've done it all with Rogues over the years though. Thieve's Guild, Assassin, Detective, Spy, Treasure Hunter, Bounty Hunter, Politician, Ninja, Swashbuckler, Locksmith, Exterminator, Pilgrim, Scout, Prostitute, Cat Burglar.... Everything I can think of and more. So does anybody have any new or interesting Rogue ideas?

rapist rogue, or put your expertise in medicine and get the healer feat so you can be some kind of surgeon or plague doctor

Yeah, nah on the rapist and a Doctor Rogue was my last one actually. After I saw it how good the Healer Feat is with Thieves. I've been playing Rogues for well over a decade so I need the most obscure shit possible.

Here's Strahd with a sword if you want to really challenge your party.

enworld.org/forum/content.php?3285-Check-Out-This-Beefed-Up-CR17-Strahd!#.V1ltafkrKUn

Put your Expertise into Athletics. Grapple everyone. Go into Arcane Trickster. Once you have Fly, you grapple enemies and fly straight up, then drop them as a free action. Have Feather Fall prepared just in case.

Build wise wouldn't a Rogue/Barbarian Birdman be better?

No

Damn, that IS pretty beefy.

homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/HJtVb9Uw

How do you feel about these changes to the bard colleges?

College of Faith
> Mysteries of Faith similar to Great Weapon Master

College of the Phoenix
> Fire dancer similar to monk / bladesinger
> Ignite the soul adds CHA mod
> Blaze of Glory procs on hit.

>Think India Jones's Nazis or Spartan Total Warrior's Rome
Dude that game was fucking sick. You make me want to run a campaign stealing all the shit in there. Listen up boys and I'll tell you the tale of The Spartan.

I mean it was the purest form of campaign bait if I've ever seen it. Game starts with you "The Spartan" and your Spartan bros Castor and Pollux chilling in Sparta when suddenly the Romans come along with their fuckhuge bronze warforged Talos to wreck your shit. That's when Ares the God of War whispers in yo ear and tells you about how you need to get vengeance for him and he'll save Sparta from it's fate.

Predictably you stop the assholes from entering and destroying Sparta and destroy Talos in the process, but then Ares starts yer ass on an artifact hunt, gotta retrieve them Blades of Athena from a nearby Roman camp, along the way you meet and join up with a fine ass Amazonian princess, I forget her damn name.

Just when you get back to tell the King the good news about the new artifacts Sparta starts getting hit with a goddamn deathbeam from the sky that turns men to stone, fucking Roman's have kidnapped Medusa and are using her ass to shoot lasers and shit. Of course The Spartan naturally hunts down and smashes that gorgon powered deathstar piece of shit like any good Grecian.

Then Ares being the dickhead he is, informs The Spartan he'll be needing the Spear of Achilles, after a long ass haul through a bunch of barbarian badland bullshit you find your way there leading a Spartan expeditionary (guess how many men lel) That's when you realize the Romans have shown up and are going for the spear too, then both sides get their shit kicked because Achilles was a rad motherfucker and got buried with his entire army who decided to go full skelebro. So after fighting your way through a goddamn plethora of skeleton Achaeans and Roman mooks before you finally get eyes on the Spear and meet Motherfucking Praetorian Perfect Sejanus.

1/?...

Maybe with some DM leeway to let you get SA damage during wildshape you could play a rogue/druid?

That could be cool actually. I've played a Rogue/Druid before but never a Wildshape one.

Include the ToB in the OP m8s.

>Tome of Beasts by Kobold Press
mega.nz/#!xIcw0JrS!e_WL2JWFEU7HN0DwK69F9J9MLoe7qv69qez0lDGPWUQ

Sejanus being the evil slick motherfucker he is, is a magic piece of shit. He summons this clone of you and watches on as you gotta beat your own ass. Finally The Spartan does smash on himself and grabs the spear, Sejanus decides to bitch out and cut off your only means of exiting Achilles's tomb before he teleports out like some kinda wizardy necromancy roman bitchboy. You find another path leading out, but as that motherfucker planned, it puts you right in front of the fucking Hydra.

After about an hour of slicing and screaming, the big ass multi necked piece of shit is dead. That's when The Spartan gets the great fucking news of that while you, your bros and that smoking piece of Amazonian booty were treasure hunting, Sparta got conquered and all your friends, family, and even ur pupper are dead as fuck.

So then you and your damaged friends head off to Athens to try and get some advice from Archimedes, who for some reason is leading the Athenian resistance. After an eternity of irritating escort missions the boy fucking Athenians finally get off their ass and help you in an open rebellion, while this shit is going down you meet motherfucker Sejanus again, but this time you got Archimedes using mirrors to fire lasers and shit.

Predictably after you soundly whoop his ass, Sejanus manages to sneak a hit in and kill your bro Pollux, but then he goes even further beyond. He makes him an undead servant, and summon a fuckhuge undead dragon for some reason, Pollux's brother Castor is forced to fight him as you fire crazy ass sun lasers at Sejanus's new stupid ass pet. Finally you get a straight fight out of the fuckface and you stab him in his warped heart. With him dead and the Roman forces running, you managed to at least save one of the three Greek city states (but for real who gives a fuck about the third one that isn't Athens or Sparta?)

You leave your fine ass Amazonian babe behind to mourn your dead buddy and protect Sparta, The Spartan, Castor, and what's left of the Spartan expeditionary start their trip to Rome. You end up at a place called the Gates of Saturn, some kind of fortress leading to a quick pass through the Alps to Rome herself.

The Spartan and his boys fuck shit up as usual, but then once-a-goddamn again there is motherfucking Sejanus. Fucker cheated death with a deal with Hades and some crazy ass cult witches. So you then proceed to do some crazy ass time space paradox interdimensional bullshit, kill all his bitches, and send that fucker to get raped by Cerberus for good.

Finally The Spartan and his boys end up taking the catacombs under Rome to sneak in, turns out there's a lot of skelebros, Romans, and even the fucking Minotaur down there. After murdering all that bullshit you go in to finally make a smear of the little asswipe emperor. Your bros fuck up and don't blow him up as planned, so as usual The Spartan just has to kill his way to his objective.

Finally you get to the measly little fuck and he kills himself claiming he's had a master this whole time and none of it was his fault. That's when Ares reveals himself, turns out he's yo daddy, and he's been wanting to kill you for a long ass time for revenge against some side bitch handmaiden that reported him to Aphrodite.

The Spartan being the balls to the wall sonofabitch he is beats Ares's ass down, then returns to Sparta as king.

The fucking end.

So, I have a player (sailor, half orc barbarian) who has a mistrust of Paladins in general, and his goal in life is to get revenge on the order of Knights who raided his village as a child.

He's been having recurring nightmares of the situation all of his life, but he doesn't know which order it is. Based on rolls, he's only been able to figure out that their symbol/tabbard has red in it.

Any suggestions on where I can take this?

Yeh I am going to put Strahd in his +2 plate and give him a +3 sword

who would ever help fucking natives

Keep in mind that even if you don't use the enhanced stat block linked, Strahd is still very much capable of being extremely challenging to any group.

If they don't properly restrain him, he can use a lair action to simply pass through the walls or floor and regenerate his health while he throws undead at them, then pop back out fully healed.

ima have to emulate this now

The place where everyone who wants to get even with the goody two shoes goes

Trickery Clerics

Anyone have tips for doing a Five Room Dungeon in the Feywild? The party needs to get there as they seek the Council of Eight, seat of the gods in my setting, so I'm trying to figure out how to quickly capture the outlandish overgrowth of the Feywild within one sesh.

If it helps at all, I also want them to meet goat people.

>help fucking natives

Depends on what they look like.

Watch any or all of the last 4 episodes of Critical Role

Well the Evil Empire I was talking about isn't all whitey humans, a majority (about a third) of the Empire's Army are Hobgoblin, the rest are various foriegn races from conquered areas.

Does not deter my conquering nature.

Yes.

Iliira doesn't. She wears sensible soft-soled shoes, the better for sneaking and doing acrobatics with.

+3 sword!? From where? He was basically level 10 when he became a vampire... Even +2 is really powerful for his past.

Also, I'm taking the opposite approach. When the party encounters him outside the castle it will be in full plate and with weaponry. Inside the castle it will be out of armor, and in the fated location it would be when Strahd appears vulnerable which only enrages him more.

Man I got like four hours to plan while at work, help a brother out.

The PCs aren't the first adventurer party Strahd has drawn into his domain and fucked with, keep this in mind.

A gimmick i'm planning on using for my upcoming game is that he's thrown gear that was carried by the countless parties that came before the PCs into his castle's treasury, and he sometimes takes out bits and pieces and fucks around with them.

Surveyor. Go Thief archetype and build your character around being the best at zoning cities, finding property lines in the wilderness, and figuring out when buildings or dungeons need to be condemned. Perception, Investigation, Athletics, and Acrobatics are your primary skills, used to get wherever you need to and not die from some collapsing structure. You also want Lore skills, especially History, to know about any special concerns of the land or property, and possibly Insight to tell when an owner is not telling all.

Thug, hit people in the face and steal their shit.

I'm gonna be playing a knight cleric in an upcoming game. I need ideas for a third retainer, as the first two are going to be a squire and a priest.

Use one of these user!

homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyGRUsiD

Revolutionary
> Help your bros out!

Ruffian
> You hold em, I punch!

Time Bandit
> Prince of persia-lite

Does a Wizard need Int? If have Dex as your main stat, you can have a scaling damage source in Booming Blade/Greenflame Blade, and most of the utility spells don't need Int. Could you get by with a Dex/Con wizard?

Anything that they need to save against will be determined by your Int + Proficiency Bonus. Any ranged spell attacks will use your Int as a modifier to the attack.

So, yeah, wizards need Int.

So I'm working on a 1/3rd caster archetype for a class that doesn't have spells right now, and I'm having trouble figuring out the wording required.

Here's the main points

> Can ONLY learn spells with ritual tag
> Can ONLY cast spells as rituals
> Can learn new spells via meditating with spell scroll or spellbook for 4 + spell level in hours.
> Spells cast at the lowest level of that spell

Help a brother out?

Mountain Dwarf Wizard don't need Int, just a Warhammer and Scalemail. Not that good at the flashy stuff, but still solid practical magics.

If you were gonna do a Mountain Dwarf melee caster, I'd frankly do a straight Eldritch Knight.

I played a dwarf necromancer Recently with Shield and Misty Step for his low level slots and skeletons for the higher level slots. Dumped Int entirely and kept STR and CON as main stats with a heavy warhammer using booming blade and heavy armor mastery.

I wouldn't say it was good but it was a lot of fun. Definitely cool to march up into combat alongside your minions and be more resilient than the cleric.

My characters are gonna go down an intricate sewer system that leads into the Underdark. On the way they're gonna come across a city of Wererats/Ratfolk. What are some good traps/encounters that would lead up to revealing this city?

Take a level of Dragon Sorcerer, if you can. It's like having a +2 to Con.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention since you're dumping casting stats anyways you can mix and match full caster classes for features freely and keep full spell progression for your scaling undead horde. Gotta watch out for that attribute score increase loss though.

Can't dump them completely. Multiclassing does have attribute requirements.

But, you can dump Int.

Point buy the following attributes: 14 11 14 8 13 13

Start as wizard. You can then freely multiclass into sorcerer, warlock, bard, cleric, and druid without penalty.

Have a billion fucking cantrips.

Goddamn it this show is the most cringeworthy shit ever. I can NOT understand how people sit through four fucking hours of this tripe. First off, if you cannot find a D&D game of your own, it's because you deserve to be alone. This is the age of roll20, local game stores with community message boards, meetup.com, and literally DOZENS of other options. There is no excuse for not having a group.

So, anyone who is watching this actually prefers watching other people playing D&D over playing it themselves. Probably because they lack the creativity to even play a cookie-cutter fantasy character.

These shitheads are not funny. My (now-ex) friend forced me to sit through half an hour of these fucking morons. First off, I could barely make out what the fuck they were saying over the CONSTANT autistic laughter at every minor thing, like they have to laugh or it won't be funny. Then I realized nothing they were saying was funny or entertaining. It was just the same lame gay shit any game group could play. Fun to play in, barely fun to listen to. And the women are the absolute worse, they are literal whores who's only skill is mimicking orgasm noises for pain sounds in video games. How the fuck does that make them good roleplayers? They are fucking terrible at it, nothing about this show or story is compelling or interesting, and I stopped talking to my friend after he made me sit through just 1/8th of a Critical Role episode. I also stole 10 bucks off of his kitchen counter as I left out the door. Fuck him. He owes me that shit for wasting my time like that.

Can someone enlighten me as to why the fuck this show is allowed to exist, why people alike it, and why Mearls is now pandering to it (though the fact that he is a massive talentless shill might have something to do with that).

You need the required stat at 13 to multiclass OUT of a class too. If you have wizard levels and are multiclassing, you need 13 int.

Being a "blank" has given your character the ability to perform rituals for spells. You may learn spells that have ritual attribute, and can only cast them as a ritual.

If your character finds a spell scroll or spellbook for a spell with the ritual attribute, they may meditate with the scroll in their possession for 4 + Spell Level hours, and add that spell to their list of known spells.

>Waaaaaah stop liking things I don't like

Take your PC bullshit somewhere else.

...

It's all a plot to piss you off. Your only defense is to get the stick out of your ass and let things be.

Hmm.

Swap the 8 Int for 8 Wis then. You can still multi into Sorcerer, Bard, and Warlock.

Though, I'd be wary of taking more than two levels of other classes, because the Spell Mastery class feature for Wizards is one of the better class features in the game.

Dire Rats, rickety wooden bridges crossing gaps that could break if a character is heavy enough, maybe a wererat watching the entrance has a Pipes of the Sewers

If he's actually a 1/3 caster, he isn't limited to casting only as a ritual since he'll have some spell slots.

>These shitheads are not funny. My (now-ex) friend forced me to sit through half an hour of these fucking morons.
>not bait

I mean it's some damn obvious bait boys

We only had a nibble

Alternatively, he can go sword bard all the way and just steal animate dead.

Although...

Hill Dwarf Wizard 18/Sorcerer 1/Fighter 1

Has proficiency in all armors and weapons plus shields, +2 HP/level, Defense fighting style for +1 AC. Use one ASI to take War Caster.

Pretty damn tanky wizard.

Who does this best? No-INT Wizard, no-WIS Cleric/Druid, or no-CHA Warlock/Bard/Sorcerer?

Necromancy tradition makes the minions a lot tougher and hit harder. Not to mention the ability later to permanently thrall a single powerful undead.

Draconic Resilience only gives +1 HP for sorcerer levels.

Hmph. Fair enough.

Although, now I have half a mind to make a necro bard with unique mechanics. And not *necessarily* Thriller inspired ones.

Yeah, that's where all the floating weapons and stuff come from in my game, but a +2 weapon is rare and a +3 weapon is very rare. A +3 item is meant for the level 17+ range, and adventurers against Strahd all enter at low level.

I would agree if you said Strahd had 30 +1 weapons hanging around, but the +3 stuff doesn't make sense.

So, one of the coolest PrCs I remember playing from 3.5 was the Mage of the Unseen Hand. Thought about how I would go about it in 5e, and stumbled on this.

homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/BySoj3LY

Thoughts? It seems really pigeonholed, just curious to see what you guys think about it.

Yeah, anyone carrying that shit around would have beat his teeth in already.

My favorite bit is the end about how Mearls is "pandering" to Critical Role. I'm not even sure what that could mean.

I the the party (and Strahd's delusion that he can actually find someone to replace him) are just a small part of the curse. Barovia itself, and it's dilapidated state, is his curse.

See if you can work out ways to have iconic items from previous editions down there.

You learn two custom versions of telekinesis, at the same level? I would do something about that.

>My favorite bit is the end about how Mearls is "pandering" to Critical Role. I'm not even sure what that could mean.

enworld.org/forum/content.php?3624-WotC-s-Mike-Mearls-on-the-History-Future-of-RPG-Discusion-Design#.V6ifsfkrLIU

He's shilling it hard.

Not alone they wouldn't... At least lore wise. I mean Mordenkainen couldn't do it with a peasant army behind him. Granted he was lacking the items needed.

Hill Dwarf gives you +1 HP/level too.

So, +2 HP/level.

Anyone have stories about using Mordenkainen's Magnificient Mansion? The two times I've seen it its just skimpy butlers and maids. Anyone use it for anything else or is it the go to fetish spell

Point is, it does jack squat for as long as you aren't a sorcerer, so it means little to this build.

No, he means the Draconic Sorceror ability is ONLY for Class Levels. Not Character levels.

That's nice and all, but pandering and shilling are two different things.

Did it. It was okay.

Bleh, that's true. I forgot it was restricted to sorcerer levels.

In that case, I'd probably do Hill Dwarf Necromancer 6/ Death Cleric 14 for a melee necromancer.

Has anyone used any sort of alignment tracking systems, home brew or form previous editions, that they liked?

Whatcha mean?