/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

>This is where I lost my ship, my crew, and my woman.
>That's awful, how did they die?
>Die? I lost them in a card game son.

hey senpai, they're just suggestions to spice it up a little, you do whatever you please with them.

I find when I'm DM-ing it's always good to have one or two visual aids per session to help the less imaginative players out.

>You won't do well here unless your profession starts with a P. The only folks that thrive here are pickpockets, priests and prostitutes.
>Pugilist?
>Eh, I'll give you that one.

>Probably some location in the Feywild, though the odds of my players going there any time soon are slim to none

Not really. People only swear by variant because you get a feat.

ayy thanks for joining fampai

>Last session, my party of total newbies fought two dryads in a ruined tower, fluffed to look like this big cunt here, and more feral and animalistic. Like Pan from Pan's Labyrinth meets 28 days later.
>mfw the wizard cast sleep and the other 6 ganked them one at a time.

>it's game time
>had to skip last session because I (DM) had to work at an unusual time
>one player messages me 10 minutes before the session start and says he'll be at least 1.5h late
>other two are AWOL, offline on every messaging service
>yet another had to leave the group due to RL interfering with session times
>and the last one actually showed up on time

So we're both just sitting around doing FUCK AND ALL because HOLY SHIT HOW FUCKING HARD IS IT TO SHOW UP ON TIME YOU SHITTERS.

DMs, how do you deal with the urge to strangle your moron players?

>Have you ever seen Thieves' Cant used in a game?
Yeah, in the third session. Our party had just arrived in a standard criminal-run town, and the party rogue was looking for a contact of his. He used thieves' cant to ask a bartender where this contact of his was.

The bartender basically responded (in thieves' cant) by calling him a fucking idiot for wasting time using thieves' cant when he could've just asked straight up, which my cleric found amusing.

I watch Trailer Park Boys with the one who showed up. Works every time

Mearls has tweeted that the 5e PHB has sold more then the 3.0/3.5/4 PHB's individually

>actually wanting a rainbow multicultural party free of hate
>mfw

Themed parties are the best, they also make for better stories. I would kill to DM an all dwarf, all ork, or even an all elf campaign.

>actually wanting a rainbow multicultural party free of hate
just cause its multicultural doesnt mean its free of hate.
The CoS party I DM has a Far Traveler Elf who hates inferior races (read: anything that's not elves) and a Tiefling who just hates people in general.

Start replacing them.They're honestly just leaving and trying in their own introverted autist way to be polite about it, by being flakes and just avoiding confrontation.

Also, play at your local hobby store or library, people generally don't like playing at some stranger's house until they know them.

I've got an idea but I'm not sure if it would be fun, so I wanted to get some feedback on it.

I've got a Final Fantasy themed D&D 5e game coming up and I had an idea to give players crystal shards full of magical power that they can do a few things with:
>enchant a weapon or suit of armour, or upgrade a magical one to +1, +2, or +3
>create a magic item without having to pay obscene gold costs for rare materials
>open a sealed door to ancient treasure vaults, with on-the-spot generated treasure hordes
>trade with NPCs for rare and powerful items

Thoughts?

Magical darkness has very few things that can bypass it, right?

I fear if I use it enough, or at all, the DM will have all important NPCs conveniently having truesight or something to see through magical darkness.

I wouldn't care if it was 'they must activate an ability or use one of the very specific spells that disspell it' rather than 'you automatically see through', but the DM has a habit of making mary sue NPCs.

I'm already sure one or two major NPCs has truesight.

I would, but it's the 9th damn session and we're about to wrap up the starter module (probably 2-3 more sessions for that). Replacing them would mean starting a new campaign.
Just going to ask them all via our messaging service what time they would prefer for the sessions, since the current one obviously is a hindrance. If they're not answering they will get replaced.

I do feel bad for the dude who showed up though. He's a real stand-up guy and this is his first ever campaign of any RPG.

Just played my first ever game at 22yo, fuck i wish i played this earlier
Pregenned a fighter with a longbow
Wanting to make a ranger

Good times

So /5eg/, I wanna make an eldritch knight.
EE and SCAG stuff isn't allowed at all, so what do you recommend for me for spells?

>Just going to ask them all via our messaging service what time they would prefer for the sessions

Do not do that over messages individually. Wait until they're all together and ask them as a group.

>start module
>12 sessions
What are you playing?

Shield for the "Oh, crap!" moments. Counterspell.

A new DM.

We're playing LMoP, but we had a long detour in Neverwinter where the party managed to get themselves tangled in some complicated plots (merchants vs. Zhents vs. Red Wizards vs. Uthgardt tribes).

I will just put up a post with "reply to stay playing" as part of the title. No reply? No game for you.

Can an EK even get Wish?

long range and aoe's with crowd control are useful.
Blade Ward is actually somewhat useful on an EK for tanking purposes.
Shield is always super A+
Utility spells and non DC spells are preferred

>go to old dwarven city
>sign out front that says ''no humans or elves allowed''
>half of the party has to wait outside

>ranger

It's a shame SCAG isn't allowed, because booming blade or green-flame-blade are much better at certain levels. Namely, levels 3 and 4. Levels 7, 8 and 9 and 10. Once you hit level 11 it's kind of a choice again.

Also, you lose 'absorb elements', which is a much-loved eldritch knight pick.

If you're an absolute min-maxer, stop what you're doing and don't go eldritch knight if you can't have your little toys.
If you're not... You'll be better than the arcane trickster who seems to think picking 'firebolt' and casting it instead of actually doing damage is a good idea. Shield is pretty much a given, as it's useful at all levels.
Unfortunately you won't get spells like fireball until a lot later while the real mages will be throwing them left right and centre.

Honestly there aren't a lot of must-haves, just must-avoids if you don't have EE or SCAG, save for 'shield'.

Bladeward is amazing, DMs are just little bitches about cantrip spam out of combat during marches.

Oh I know what I'm in for with this party.
It also has two barbarians, one of which is a gnome, and a Beastmaster.
I've just never played am EKnight before and wanted to know what cool kinda stuff I could get.

not even a GM here but i would fully expect one of your traveling companions to axe you in the face after about three hours of constantly chanting *blade ward*

Any reasonable DM would say the same. Unless you know you're immediately aboutt o enter combat, taking such actions isn't allowed.

Otherwise, whenever you enter combat, EVERYBODY would be using the dodge action unless they're surprised until they get their first turn. Which would mean people with the highest initiative are kind of fucked.

The problem with bladeward is always

'Why use bladeward when you could use dodge?'

The only thing bladeward gives you is that it's good against invisible creatures, as dodge doesn't apply to effects you cannot see. Or effects you cannot dodge. However, it only blocks against weapon attacks and thus won't save you from fall damage.

So I'd say it has a very niche use where you're fighting invisible creatures, or you're running through a blade trap.

>axe in the face

Boy am I glad I was casting Blade Ward!

I was taking a look at the homebrew classes, and Runeseeker caught my eye since I've always wanted to play something like it. Looking through the PDF of it, it seems pretty solid. Has anyone tried in practice though?

Shit.

I need a one-shot investigation/RP-heavy adventure to run tonight.

Anybody got one to run? Looking at level 5-9.

The point of multicultural or multiracial parties is banter, rivalry and hate sex.

First time DM here, planning to run LMoP. Isn't the triple Bugbear encounter in the Red Brand Hideout a little much for three level two PCs?

but user, my party is all male!

Did I stutter?

...who is the alp of the group?

Read my previous post, I do not think variant human is OP compared to the other races, except maybe a few outlying builds. What I'm saying is that (1) variant human is way out of line with other races in style, a feat is a very different benefit than the rest and doesn't fit in the design space (doesn't have to be a bad thing, but this on top of its laziness makes me dislike the design of it) and (2) that variant humans make for one of the best 2-3 races in almost any build, which can't be said about any other race. I challenge you to find even a single online build that doesn't have variant human as one of the best choices, i.e. sky blue or gold for most build sites. This is why I think they're a bad addition to the game, not because they're OP. If you want an all-human game, I'm running one right now as I said, and variant human works well there when everyone is one.

Hell, just look at the collective backlash at Aarakocra, it's not all because they're OP - a lot is because limit-less flight is way out of line when it comes to racial abilities, and even if it was balanced in combat, it would break the game in other aspects, trivializing many traps and obstacles for example.

People are insisting variant humans are always 'top-tier', but I wouldn't say so.

The feats you get aren't as good as the racial bonuses if you want all of them.

You could go variant human and pick the 'gain a load of languages' or 'gain more proficiencies' feats.
Since you are a variant human, you also gain an additional proficiency and an additional language over common.

Linguist variant human:
5 languages.
1 skill.
+1 int.
+1 to two stats.
Skilled variant human:
2 language.
4 skills.
+1 to two stats.

Half-elf:
3 languages.
2 skills.
Immune to magical sleep.
Magic resistance versus charms.
Darkvision.
+2 charisma
+1 to two stats (not charisma)

This is just one example where half-elf is a much better skillmonkey than variant human.

Then, how about half-orc?

>darkvision
>bonus damage on crits
>same number of languages, no choosing what it is though
>same number of skills, one must be intimidate
>dropping to 1 HP instead of 0 HP
+2 and +1 in stats that the class that is likely to take it will want (A fighter or a barbarian, for example)

What about halfling?
>reroll nat 1s
It is somewhat contested by human with lucky feat, but you can get a halfling with lucky feat if you really hate Fun.

Variant humans are a brilliant thing. It encourages more humans than rainbowparties and allows humans to be pretty much any class without putting restrictions on other races. Humans are about versatility.
Quite often, other races are very good at specific things.

Everything is fine.

Okay, after writing this, whoever said 'humans are either top-tier or second-best-tier', I'd probably say they're right, because they don't go any worse than second-best-tier at any point.

A high level fighter would be overwhelmed with so many feats they'd probably wish they were a half-orc or something, though.

I give up.

I quit.

Every single encounter I throw at my party they wipe the floor with them with ease. A Monk, a Bard, a Cleric, a Fighter, and a Druid.

Really I can't do anything. I have even made up my own baddies for them to fight using player stats and still they just wipe them with ease.

What the hell am I doing wrong

Well, start explaining how the typical fight goes.

How do your enemies target the players?
What abilities do the players use?

What level are the players?
What sort of saves/AC do the monsters have?

What sort of attacks do the monsters have?

Are you pacing battles correctly? i.e., not just one battle a day and then a long rest. Are there encounters that wittle down the player's spell slots and abilities until they come to the big fight?

>What the hell am I doing wrong
Apparently not giving them a challenge. just raise the difficulty of encounter up until you feel that ehy get a challenge.

The last big fight was against a Mind Flayer so naturally I had a progression of enemies to fight before reaching his lair.

But every fight just seemed like they breezed through it.

They're a lvl 11 party.

I think im just too afraid of a TPK or something I dont know. They want a challenge but i dont know how to give it to them I've followed the DMG on how to build encounters, used kobold fight club, donjon - everything. But it just doesnt seem like anything is working.

the monk only needs a short rest to get back all his powers and he is nearly invincible

Balancing badly, I'd guess.
enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?367697-Encounter-difficulty-how-to-fix-it
Use this to determine whether your encounter is deadly or not.

Also, feel free to tweak the MM entries. Creatures die too fast? Give 'em more hit points.

>Also, feel free to tweak the MM entries. Creatures die too fast? Give 'em more hit points.

Thats what i was thinking and it sucks because one of the players knows the MM inside and out already so when i do things like that he always questions on whether im cheating them out or something.

ive been playing with these guys for awhile now and we're all friends outside the game too so i think im just being a pussy about it lol

thank you for the link though gonna check it out.

Have you tried something like a boss rush or an encounter in an arena or Colosseum where there are plenty of fights one after another? Of course, raising the difficulty after each one. This should leave the party out of options by the end and make the big bad guys quite a challenge

Yeah, i think if you play at higher levels variant humans lose a lot of value for fighters in particular. That's part of the reason I don't like them, their power doesn't come from the features themselves but their timing, stealing things from higher levels to get a bit earlier instead of things that aren't as good. I played Lamentations of the Flame Princess lately and the non-humans there (as classes) are OP, specifically because they don't scale as well. I.e. an elf will be better than humans by getting both wizard and fighter features, but you need more XP to level up and don't scale as well. It might be balanced, but I hate the design of it and it just simply isn't fun.

I agree humans, in certain settings, should be more versatile and variable than other races, but it's much better to reflect that by having 4+ subraces as the different cultures or types of humans, instead of literally breaking the race feature structure just to force them to be good at anything. It's like saying "hey you can refluff any other race as human because they're so versatile", it would work in making more characters be human but it's a really lazy and bad way to do it IMO.

Refluff the monsters, even if you don't change the stats. I'm not the most experienced GM in my group and it's much more fun that way, so he doesn't know immediately what the monster is like.

Not every encounter has to be fought.

Not every encounter has to be inescapable.

I often make encounters that aren't SUPPOSED to be fought, or won, but they are supposed to be somewhat doable. I dislike making unkillable characters, it's a type of railroading. 'The big bad comes to town. You can't kill him, so you're forced to stay with the story and cry as he kills your mother.' kind of thing.

The players should know when they're getting into something rough. The players should have a plan for if things do get rough.

You don't have to keep it to such a simple progression. 'You encounter X. You encounter Y. You encounter the boss!'
There could be a lot of encounters you could get through without fighting, but you could still bypass otherwise at the expense of getting wornd own a bit. There could be encounters that hide extra treasure.
When it comes to bosses, you normally want them to either have some way to act outside their own turn or have them have extra goons.

Anybody else notice that the August UA isn't in the MEGA yet?

Hell, you can even just take the half-elf and give them +2 CON instead of CHA, and you got a versatile race right there. Half-elves are really good for any charisma class because of the nature of their features, and giving them CON instead, which is useful for anyone, means they will be good at almost any class. They may not be the top tier pick every time, but why would the other races even exist in the setting if humans are as good as them at every single thing? They should have a weakness, and a jack of all trades should be a master of none.

Which seems more useful for a Monk, Tavern Brawler for grapple checks or Magic Initiate for Druid stuff?

Or should I say fuck it and just get +2 to a stat?

If they fight them? Sure. But there's other methods of solving that problem, like pretending to be Redbrands. Or running away very fast.

Magic Initiate probably. Tavern Brawler only really gets you grapple checks, and I'm pretty sure monk class abilities and ki powers are better than that.

Magic Initiate (Druid), deploy nunchaku, become SAD.

+2 to a stat, unless you want to get those Druid spells for out of combat use. Flurry, your primary damage source, runs off the Attack action, meaning that casting most level 1 spells will actually reduce your damage output.

Tavern Brawler is shit for Monks because they run off Dex, not Str, therefore they're shit at grappling unless you got some ridiculous ability score rolls when you made your character.

Flurry still runs off Dex.

The stats I ended up with were 14str, 14dex, 14con, 10int, 14wis, 10cha as a Goliath, and I assume the Large Build will make grappling easier against small targets since that seems like something my DM would allow.

No gm would allow you to spam a cantrip that lasts 6 seconds over and over and over. Honestly cant even imagine what sort of player would want to do that

It was a magic axe, too bad

Goliaths aren't mechanically Large for anything other than carrying, but all the better for you if your DM rules that way, I suppose.

Still, realistically, unless you're starting at high level and therefore have ASIs to spare, you're going to want to put those points into Dex anyway, since it increases your to-hit, damage, AC and initiative. You'll probably find it hard to hit anything with just a +2.

However, if you're at high level, have found other ways to shore up your AC, and don't really care about your Wis-riders, a Dex/Str-based grapple build would not be the worst thing you could do. I wouldn't really advise you to do it unless you really want to, and have some idea of what you're doing, though.

>one of the players knows the MM inside and out already so when i do things like that he always questions on whether im cheating them out or something.

Ew. Get new players

That is probably one of the most obnoxious and blatantly stupid player things ive ever heard. Explain to your player that the MM is not the bible, its to be used for reference. If you want to buff something up, strip it down, or totally change it entirely, thats your choice as the dm

>No gm would allow you to spam a cantrip that lasts 6 seconds over and over and over.
I'd let them do it. But if it had a verbal component, like Blade Ward, I'd make them roll con saves to not lose their voice.

Indeed. I'm one of those players who does know the MM rather well and play as a scholar-type who potentially knows a lot about them. I let the dice fall where they may and it has varied from my DM just leading me read entries straight from the MM all the way to mammoths being explained as "Wooly, Tusked, Enlarged Giant Space Hamsters" with no idea how they worked. Makes it quite fun to explain what happens when his knowledge checks fail and he tries to explain what he is seeing :D

Am I reading this right?

>Shadow Step
>At 6th level. you gain the ability to step from one shadow into another. When you are in dim light or darkness. as a bonus action you can teleport up to 60 feel to an unoccupied space you can see that is also in dim light or darkness. You then have advantage on the first melee attack you make before the end of the turn.

This has no cooldown or cost to use? That seems like it could be fun to play literally "teleports behind u unsheeths katana"-ing people

Basically. The cost is your bonus action, which you could instead be using to make another one or two melee attacks from your other class features - bearing in mind that one attack with advantage is almost always statistically inferior to two identical attacks made separately.

Of course, you get additional movement and so forth, so it's definitely not a straight downgrade, especially if you enjoy the flavor.

Yeah I'm mostly just surprised to see that much mobility available, a monk with that, the mobility feat, no armor on and using Dash twice could cover a stupid amount of ground in one turn.

...

You can already dash as a bonus action, so it's basically the same upgrade as misty step over expeditious retreat, but also situational.

Which is the best website to download musics for RPG?

Download "DMDJ" for apple or android on your phone.

It costs like a dollar or two, totally worth it.
hundreds of weather tracks in addition to ambience. Can mix and max different sound tracks with weather and change everything's intensity depending on how prominent you want each track to be. And you do it all on the homescreen of the program, so its no a bunch of fiddling to get it right.

I was very pleasantly suprised. You can add your own music too, though it comes with much.

New player to 5e here. Trying to build out a ranged fighter. Specifically, my GM is letting me have a Heavy Bowgun (yes, from Monster Hunter). The way we've ruled it is 2d6 piercing (equivalent of a greatsword), but I have to spend an action (with Concentration check if I get attacked) reloading after 4 shots and the range is cut to 20/40. This will come up in a bit.

Two-part question here.
Firstly, I'm worried that the shortish range will make me pretty vulnerable. After I get my Battlemaster Maneuvers, I'm thinking of grabbing up two levels in Rogue to help with that. The way I'm picturing it is that it'll give me a bonus 1d6 damage most of the time and some extra movement on most turns, but maybe I'm mistaken.
>Is two levels in Rogue too much to spend on this? Is there a more cost-efficient way?
Secondly, since I'm new to the system, any tips for a ranged battlemaster fighter? In particular, I can take three feats and still reach 20 Dex (I'd have to discuss with the GM about 3rd party stuff, which I haven't looked through).
>Tips for a ranged fighter?

Pic questionably related

That seems nice, but I'm a windows phone user haha, I'm using clownfish to put songs in the background, but I don't have many songs that fit rpg.

Shit :/ can't help you there. There are lots of websites with raw sound files, mostly for sound engineers, but remembering my experiences from uni working with them for media projects, they all require a LOT of clipping and fiddling to make them actually useable.

As for premade sound tracks, i don;t know.
There's this:
tabletopaudio.com/
and this:
rpg.ambient-mixer.com/

I agree with this user. I think humans as mechanically best was on purpose. Core races are best, including half elves, then the rare races are second, and every supplementary race so far has been weaker than that. I think they're trying to make games mostly human plus some elves dwarves and half elves, and if you want to play another race you can.

Small correction, I just noticed I get a bonus feat as human, so I actually get four feats.

Damn and I pirated all my books and bought my books for 3.5 back in the day.

>more damage than heavy crossbow
>doesn't have loading quality, unlike crossbow, meaning you can fire it several times
>limited range
Concentration on reloading isn't a big deal since your con save should be pretty damn good.

It sounds like an upgrade of the longbow (longbow averages 4.5+dexmod damage, 2d6 blowgun averages 7+dexmod damage) until you get to level 11, where it becomes a bit of a hassle given you can only fire once every other turn if you use all your attacks.

The short range isn't really an issue. Fighters are tough. You should be pretty tough, and your main stat will be dex, so you can easily reach 17 AC with light armour alone.

Picking up a bit of rogueishness isn't too bad an idea, because you don't have a lot of bonus action functions. If you had a lot of bonus actions being wasted (some battlemaster featres do do this) then it might be a problem.

You might even want to consider going five levels in rogue for the added tankiness, since you can't fire your weapon as a reaction normally.

I think fighter 15 | rogue 5 would be a very good combination. You'd have 3 attacks per action, each with a chance to use that 3d6 sneak attack. You could halve damage taken with your reaction. You'd get to run around a lot with your bonus. Also expertise.

But seriously, pick up a longbow or something once you hit level 11 in fighter.
Also, try to aim for level 5 in fighter before multiclassing, I suppose. Level 5 features are good.

This is the track that is my campaigns "theme song". I play it mostly when they PCs are traveling, or leveling up.

Great feels, very grimedarp, but still real music, not MIDI. I have no idea who put the slideshow to it on youtube however, shits dumb.

youtube.com/watch?v=EjnC-rMXvJU

I could've sworn I uploaded it, my bad. It's in there now.

Great, that was a lot of useful info. Thanks!

(not him) Keep in mind a heavy crossbow is 18 pounds, requires reloading and is shorter range compared to longbow, so you could just use that honestly. Also, goading attack is great at range if you have some frontliners, essentially giving an enemy disadvantage on all their attacks the next turn if they have no ranged attacks.

How does this work in practice? Is the base system fundamentally flawed in taking numbers into so much consideration? This makes more sense and is much simpler, but it seems odd that they would create such complex formulas and shit to account for a non-issue.

>the party encounters some vaguely shady, sly, or hobo-like figure who speaks absolute nonsense every tenth word
>they immediately understand that he's up to something bad
Cant is retarded. It's a giant "I AM UP TO NO GOOD" flag, just like wearing a fucking hood. When you're the only one in the market dressed like a goddamn ninja, you're not being sneaky, you're even more obvious.

How do I run Curse of Strahd? My GM is finishing up his campaign and asked if someone would mind taking over and running CoS, he got it for his birthday and would love to play instead of run, I offered to take up the mantle, he made Princes look simple enough. Well cracking open the book, i have no idea. It seems like a sandbox style game with no real driving force other the the deck of cards at the beginning. How do I go about running this game?

>The third headline in this week's paper discusses a group of armed mercenaries attacking local workers near the docks, as they were "suspicious of their accent and diction"

>No real driving force
You have been entrapped in the realm of a devious wizard/fighter vampire, ages old, who intends to find one of you as a suitable heir or have you die trying, enjoying playing with his food every step of the way. Their only hope for survival is to claw their way out of this timeless hellhole, while being pursued by its Dark Lord as well as various evil forces that would be glad to see them gone, and kill the vampire in his castle. If your characters have any sense of self preservation or moral code, they have a driving force.

I'm running a campaign where dragons are long extinct but draconic is still spoken like Latin in Europe during the middle ages. Assuming none of my players take draconic as a language how do I describe it? Is it a gutteral language or more sing songy, how would I go about explaining to the players what they're hearing?

Languages are fucking hard, I don't even do accents. The easiest is to just equate it to a real world language, like saying it sounds somewhat Dutch, Elven being like French is quite common I think.

Ultimately up to you, but I typically think of it as being kinda harsh and grating. Also, no lip-using sounds (p, b etc), cause dragons don't have human lips.