D&D 5th Edition General: Giants Edition /5eg/

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Last but not least... Yakfolk.

Damn, you got me so excited for the Storm King's Thunder I just went and pre ordered it.

I ran a one-shot that was basically King Arthur (2004). All the players drew from pregen Dwarves that I made (in lieu of knights), and the horde above the wall was actually Giants. Tied it into the main campaign by making it the origin story of one of the current party members.

I never used these guys, but I always liked them

Is there a random encounter table? like one for forest and the like

just let them. reminds me of the tiefling NPC from Baldur's Gate 2, Haer'Dalis

Anyone ever created an in-game sport or had your players involved in something similar?

Was thinking of introducing both of these in the future for one-offs / palate cleansing sessions on my main campaign.

sot.wikia.com/wiki/Ja'La_dh_Jin
Which from what I can surmise (having never played BloodBowl) is very similar to Bloodbowl. The goal is slightly different, but it's still a football/futbol/rugby type sport, with fantasy creatures and death.

The other idea is gonna be a cross-section of golemancy / tinkering, and will be Battlebots style fights.

Any idea on how to make this happen?

So I'm running the "The Sun Goes Down with a Ruby Smile." moduleas my first DM session on Roll20.

Is there a checklist for stuff to get ready before running a session? Any advice ifg someones run this module before?

I did a one-shot in which Loki attacked, like he does every few thousand years, cause he's bored. Had a lot of giants with him. Wasn't anything special, cause Loki was medium size, and telekinesis is bullshit

Bladesinger never has to make a melee attack to be good. It's fantastic on its own, and the +3 to AC at 2nd level really makes up for the d6 HD
So basically, you're a normal wizard, who can attack with a sword when needed.
Nothing will be broken if you let a tiefling play it. If anything, it's suboptimal when compared to a high elf

I have a stupid question, as a new DM. I'm building combat encounters, and following the encounter rules in the DMG. I have five level twos, and had made an encounter with one single CR 3 monster. Then I read elsewhere that you shouldn't throw creatures with a higher CR than the player's levels at your players, so I'm super confused.

tl;dr Am I going to inadvertently kill my party of 5 level two players by throwing a CR 3 monster at them?

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

that encounter would be "medium" difficulty. it means the players might have to think instead of just act blindly.

Five fresh 2nd level adventurers are going to mop the floor with a single CR 3 monster, unless it has a specific ability / immunity that they don't have an answer for.

Action economy is king, especially if your encounters are slugfests between adventurers and a single monster.

Ok, that's good to know. I think I had one of the encounters being with a Nightmare, which unless I'm completely misremembering, was a CR3.

I may also be being too cautious, after my first experience with 5E ended in a total party kill from a shit load of bandits the GM threw at us.

The runes are actually originally from the 2e book "Giantcraft".
Ed Greenwood REALLY likes runes.

Yes.
We had to fight a giant army once.
It wasn't very fun.

> a shit load of bandits

That's the thing. A higher CR monster alone is usually less threatening then a mob of low CR monsters. It comes down to Action Economy, and who has more chances to fuck the other party up.

A politically/socially powerful NPC has a very longstanding grudge with one of the PCs. My plan is for him to flatter the party and then send them on a simple quest to infiltrate a political opponent's mansion (the opponent is a known scumbag). Before doing so, he will profess his admiration for one of the characters, a Bard who is constantly bragging about how amazing and famous she is (she is not), and give her a brace of elegant daggers with her name on the hilt or something.

The mission will be to intimidate the opponent into doing something or not doing something or whatever, and the NPC will send one of his guys who knows the layout to lead them, or maybe to follow them, so that when they reach the opponent, the NPC's man will kill him using a dagger identical to the ones given to the bard, all moments before the planned moment when other guards will arrive. The NPC's lackey will reveal himself to be wearing the emblem of the opponent's guards, and will begin cowering in the corner.

The players will be able to escape or surrender or whatever, I won't make the guards a particularly difficult encounter (they're just guards), as the NPC's goal is the make the characters hated, eventually imprisoned, but ultimately to see the bard dead.

Any suggestions on how I could pull this off smoothly? I just see a million things going wrong.

Anyone have the maps for Nightstone and the Dripping Cave for Chapter 1 of Storm King's Thunder? Running this campaign tomorrow and would rather just use these maps on roll20 then building my own considering Nightstone is like 260 squares long.

Does Magic Missile work with Hex?
>you deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage to the target whenever you hit it with an attack.
>Each dart hits a creature of your choice within range...you can direct them to hit one creature or several.

A single CR3 creature is going to get demolished by 5 level 3s. A CR equal to your party's level, or one higher is a standard encounter, while bosses without many mooks should be at least 2 CR higher than the party

Magic missile is not an attack since it does not have an attack roll.
Scorching ray however counts as an attack.

Then I have some bad news for you, considering SKT

No. There's no attack made.

You use the "Cast a Spell" action, not attack action.
There's no attack roll, so it doesn't count as a spell attack. There was no attack to proc the Hex, unfortunately.

Please spare your group such a terrible adventure.

I would rule yes, despite the literal wording saying otherwise.
I would also permit it for damaging effects that work off of saves.
It doesn't break the game when done this way, since warlocks will usually be the only ones with hex anyways, and they could use that level of versatility in their hex at later levels.

I literally did the first and most of the second part of it yesterday, and it wasn't half bad. But it might be my group, and all of us having fun, except one powergamer

Not what I was looking for.

My group is really looking forward to this as well.

Has anyone played IceWind Dale game?
Loved that one, and I was wondering if there was a fanmade Tabletop Campaign that anyone know about...

Unfortunately can't help you with maps, our DM built Nightstone from scratch on Roll20

>how I could pull this off smoothly?
really it shouldn't go smoothly. the guy trying to set up your PCs to be framed is doing just that, trying. you could have him bribe other NPCs to spread rumours about what they heard the bard doing/ saying/ planning if that's who he's trying to mess over the most to seem like she is planning to do evil.

he could also try to distance himself from the mission he sent them on evidence wise and feign ignorance if they try to talk to him about it and claim in front of others he can't be seen with their sort due to his position. people would get the wrong idea and since he's a politician he needs to maintain an image. they might know he's lying, but if there's bystanders they won't. or they could just be bared from seeing him and receive that information second hand from his guards.

if it goes wrong, it goes wrong. either way if you get the framed reveal how you want, or by them doing something unexpected and figuring out he screwed them they'll have a vendetta of some sort against the guy. his word against theirs.

Thinking up the backstory for a mid/high level spellcaster character I might use in a game soon, and got some mild inspiration after reading the bits on Genies in the MM

>Was a Wizard or whatever class I pick doing Wizard things
>As many Wizards do decided he wanted some tasty immortality
>Decided as many wizards do to get a Genie to do it
>Did the usual bullshit to get a powerful Air Genie on the material plane
>Didn't do the usual "follow my demands fuckhead" and have his wish backfire as many wizards do
>Instead gave the Genie a great feast and some gifts and said "If you grant me a Wish and don't twist my words to fuck me over, I'll become your servant until you, in your grace and wisdom, decide I've worked to earn it."
>Wish for immortality
>Genie agrees because having a powerful mortal servant mite b cool, plus they gave them a bunch of gifts and tasty food
>After settling all his affairs in his wizard lair, goes with the genie back to it's palace in the Elemental Plane of Air where he gets immortal'd (since who wants a servant that's gonna keel over in a few decades anyways?)
>Keeps his word and works for the Genie for an incredibly long time, eventually becoming good friends with them
>Eventually after helping the Genie with some undefined plot related event of importance, gets released from servitude
>Returns to material plane, turns out it's been several hundred years
>After spending a bit checking up on the state of things ends up joining the party for some reason or another, I'll be getting a reason from the DM that fits

Thoughts? The only catch is that the character would have "immunity to magical aging", which the DM said was fine since there's not really any situations where that's going to even be relevant.

Also related, if you ever find yourself making a wish to a genie (which is usually a shit idea), try to make a wish that would benefit them to not fuck up.

It's actually a quite decent backstory, I like it
Not TOO edgy, and not plain in the least

You might be surprised, actually
Wasn't even 3e yet when we had to fight that fucking giant army.
If you know anything about 2e that should tell you just how bad the odds were.

Lots of people crafted their own computer modules using Icewind. You can find those, run them, and then just copy/paste the information they have on all the characters and other stuff and do the standard 5e conversions for loot/traps/whatever.

Shit. Thanks anyways. I'm gonna buy the Storm King's Thunder Roll20 kit but that doesn't release till next week.

Thanks. Come to think of it, I just thought of a better premise for the frame-up. The opponent can have some kind of well known valuable/magic item/whatever he can send the PCs to "steal," (my group loves schemes and heists) and then his dude will lead them to the opponent instead of the macguffin, assassination, frameup, boom.

I'll take your advice though on paying people to spread rumors about the party, it'll help a lot. Thank you.

Glad to help. The heist bit would likely help motivate your players to go along with the plan if the reward is good, and a double cross at the end could be fun twist for a setup. Just beware of insight checks on the guide and the big wig whose putting them on the mission. If they smell something funny things could go in a direction you might not want.

>since there's not really any situations where that's going to even be relevant.

Be careful, I was blindsided by this (as a DM) while my players were doing a very undead heavy dungeon. A number of undead have this feature. Otherwise, I really like this backstory, and it's very similar to what I made for a past PC turned BBEG for a future campaign.

Would it be unbalancing to make Bladesinger an archetype of Bard, substituting Bardic Inspiration dice usage for Spell slots when appropriate?

That's fine too, it can go one of two ways. This NPC is THE trade big wig in the city with the biggest trade district in the continent, so he's a powerful man. Either it goes the way he wants, and the players become criminals to the city and, since they don't let a grudge go, have to find a way to go on the offensive vs this guy, or the party figures it out, avoids the frame, and the NPC has to use his vast connections and wealth to go on the offensive vs them. Either way I'll be able to come up with something, I'm sure.

And oh yes, he'll bait the hook with a good reward.

Sounds like you've got it figured out then. Should be fun. Good luck!

Yes, it would be the best class in the whole game, hands down, without even trying

Reposting from last thread (also thanks for the one advice user )

I'm currently DMing a campaign where it has the PCs become a security detail of a political gathering of candidates running for town mayor (elections will come next week) The gathering is like some debate being hosted in the town's city hall. Thing is, there's a looming serial killer in the horizon. My PCs found out his last killing was 2 hours away from town and happened fairly recently so they have reason to believe he's in town and could possibly target the candidates.

I'm not quite sure how to make a guard detail encounter interesting. The serial killer will definitely not waltz in so I'm thinking of interesting ways to make it an exciting moment cause my players are pumped up big shit is going down tonight. I do have this hook on the side that the local gang who is affiliated with one of the candidates might intervene and shit so there's that.

Overall, the biggest threat here isn't really the serial killer but a BBEG Lich who is being a puppetmaster to the whole political climate of the town. He's pretty endgame and I'm hoping the players to find out about it soon. I'm thinking of dropping the first hints of the Lich's influence on this night.

Any ideas? This adventure was pretty much winged on the spot since my players just wanted a pick up and play game but it ended up being bigger than we thought and now I'm here trying to come up with something engrossing.

Damn, seriously?
Bladesinger doesn't look THAT good...

It's not that good at all. Melee is not where a wizard should be. And all bladesong does is boost your AC - that's not gonna help you when your d6 HP gets hit by the dragon's breath because you decided kicking it with the barbarian and fighter in melee would be a good idea.

The +INT, or in this case, +CHA to AC is a huge thing, even more so when you already have a d8 HD. A 3rd level Half-elf Bladesinger bard would have 19 AC, and that's with the standard array.
Song of Defense using half your BI die rounded down is far better than using a spell slot to do it.
The Bladesinger's okay as a Wizard, but it would be fantastic as a bard, simply because bards are already the better class. You wanna give the bard +CHA on his concentration for the OP paladin and ranger spells he took with magical secrets?

Oh, no.
I'd be keeping the +Int to AC, not turning into +Cha.

Then it's utter shit, and Valor is much better, while Lore is still the king of the game

Utter shit in that delightfully autistic way Veeky Forums means "utter shit" in that it actually works fine but it's not the best so it's not worth bothering with?
Sorry if that sounds rude, but it's important to ask here because Veeky Forums is generally incredibly unhelpful when it comes to that kinda stuff.

no, utter shit in the way that the bard now has to have high cha, dex, con and int, because he needs the int to get anything from his archetype, and needs con to go in frontline cause his archetype is melee, which is already unfavorable.

Use this as a general caveat - nothing in 5e is unusable. It's all fairly competitive, unlike 3.5/PF.
When we call something bad or shit, we mean it's just not as good as something else, not that it's unplayable like 3.5 monks or rangers or whatever.

Keep that in mind for the future, because nobody is going to bother adding that implicit caveat explicitly into every one of their criticisms of a class. It's a waste of time when you should already pick up on it.

Speaking of bards with unarmored defense and abilities that spend BI dice, could anyone drop some feedback on this dancer themed bard college?

>lets make bards needlessly MAD just for one effect they have that they can do twice a day. if they bump int their dex (and thus AC or attacking) or their cha (casting)suffers, if they bump dex or cha their bladedancing sucks.
just... needless, counter to good design philosophy, mechanically not powerful, etc.
if u want to make a bard blade singer just take the kits of old ua bard and use that IMO.
t. not the user you are replying to.

dragonmag.com/5.0/#!/article/109672/102457564?loadFresh=true&title=09_01_Issue 9: Cover

New Dragon+ issue. The "best gadgets and gizmos" article is actually useful, maybe stuff you've heard about or use already but a lot of the links are pretty good. Sad they didn't have Kobold Fight Club on there.

Also they finally put the "best of DMs Guild" shit where it belongs: not as Unearthed Arcana, but bullshit hidden in their digital magazine.

too many abilities for one archetype/10 is what i rate it honestly.

On what grounds? It has far fewer than Battlemaster or Wot4E, or even Invocations.

, Okay, thanks for clarifying.
I'm sorry, wasn't aware.
I don't hang out much on /5eg/ and Veeky Forums in general, mostly because one glance around the board tells me it hasn't improved much since I left and might have even gotten worse since I stopped coming by here.

I just needed a second mechanical opinion because I'm an hour and a half away from DMing and my IRL GM friends are working. I'll just tell him to go Valor and fluff it as a Bladesinger, which was my first impulse anyway.

Thanks for the help fellas.

So did anyone get Storm King's Thunder on roll20? If so is it worth getting?

Me and my friends play over roll20 anyway and SKT seems nice. If I get the book I would save around 15$, but the roll20 version probably cuts most of the preperation work which is one of the main reasons for us not playing more often.

Thanks!

Just noticed that someone in this thread said that the roll20 version isn't out yet, but roll20 says its available right now. So what is it?

It is out. blog.roll20.net/post/149794076960/early-launch-achieved-storm-kings-thunder-is

Seconding this so that the person with it can make new games on Roll20 and transfer GM ownership of it to others so we can all have it.

Okay, as a guy with two lore bards, two valor bards and a jester under my belt. I'll look through it
First point, both lore and valor get more proficiencies. Give him more weapons, or more skills
Second point, does wearing armor inhibit any abilities? because the AC is literally Studded leather, and feels pretty useless, except for flavor. Serene is okay, but the Reprise is a bit strong, if it gives ALL friendly creatures within range the full BI die.
Spirited is also a bit strong, considering it's a buff to all allies, and other classes get this for themselves only three levels later. Duet is alright
Swift has the same problem as serene, affecting all allies is stronger than what other classes get. Fermata is fantastic, though i'd rather give something like 15ft move total, and you choose which ally can move and how much
Spellbound Inspiration is okay, unfavorable trade but that's the point
Dancing Winds is a good feature, but much stronger than anything the other bards get as their archetype capstone. it should be something meaningful, but passive, like the valor bard's spell and attack

I MEAN if he really wants to do that, i'd just let him and see what happens. it seems underpowered to me but if it makes him happy and its not overpowered my philosophy is just go for it. you can always throw him a magic item that patches things up later if he starts hating life or he can just reroll another character.

Not him, but I've fluffed a Valor Bard as a Bladesinger before too.
It's usually more the fluff folks are after I notice when making that particular class, at least with the sorts of people I play with.

Keep in mind that bards get archetype features at 3, 6, and 14, while wizards get archetype features at 2 (which can be altered to 3, okay), 6, 10 AND 15, which means even though the Intelligence based Bard Swordsinger would be crap, you'd still have to take out the level 10 feature as well, for fairness' sake

>Lore and Valor get more proficiencies
Because Lore is a skill specialist and receives an array of additional skills, and Valor is a gish and receives weapons and armor. Grace is intended to be near the front lines, but not directly contributing damage as Valor is, as well as being a bit less tanky than a fully fledged Valor built for AC. Weapons would be useless since scimitars complete the gamut of finesse weapons (besides whips, which I guess I could give them?), more skills would be gimping on Lore's territory, and they don't need armor since their Unarmored Defense bonus replaces it.
Studded Leather is only 12 + Dex.
Armor does not inhibit their abilities, or it would say so.
Noted regarding Reprise.
Regarding spirited, caster classes have cantrips that can deal full damage against mundane-resistant creatures at level 1 anyways.
I had not considered giving Fermata a 'budget' of movement to be spent, but that's a good idea.
Dancing Winds is intended to be a "one and done" feature since Grace already has so many persistent abilities. While neither of the other Bards has a x/rest feature as their capstone, the precedent for variations like that can be seen in the wide array of Wizard and Warlock capstones.
Of course, if Dancing Winds is too strong, I'll need to dial it back still. Originally I had it as dealing 1d6 damage and healing for 1d6, but other anons complained that was too weak and unnoticeable.

Rapiers are finesse weapons too actually.

I still don't think spirited is fair towards druids and monks, no matter the cantrips which can deal full damage
Also, every style they get has both an active and passive ability, you should disregard other classes and make the feature in line with other bard features, not wizard features.

>Not TOO edgy
It doesn't seem edgy at all?

I mean from a background perspective anyways, this could be the background and the character himself could have 4 katanas and a giant trenchcoat for all I know.

yeah that shit can be worked out though, and starting the campaign you can just slap the second level feature onto the bard third and then figure out the rest later. i'm kind of freewheeling in my gaming though.
yeah i feel it. i'm just ultimately a let them do kind of guy... not saying you're wrong or anything. i agree with you, but at the same time, eh, let them eat cake.

Eh, the idea of striving towards immortality is a gimmick already, but it could be much, MUCH worse, yeah

Weird. Bladesinger user seems to have actually just plain left.

>i'm kind of freewheeling in my gaming though.
5e's a better system for that then the prior two editions I think, or at least conflicts with the mechanics less when you do so.

Immortality is something any Wizard worth their salt tries to get at some point or another, and that's certainly a more reasonable way than going the Lich route.

I wouldn't trust a Genie, but I guess it makes sense from the MM page on them for their plan to work.

I'm still not fully convinced that Spirited is unfair. The DM could drop magic weapons at level 1, and that would be as "unfair" to them. Or the wizard could just nuke them uninhibited.
The other bard features aren't directly aligned. One is a resource consumer, the other is a bonus action after a specific action at will. And I wasn't citing the other classes saying that if wizard can do it that bard should, rather to demonstrate there is a precedent for classes to have slightly different sorts of features from subclasses.

Used to be that if you were a high enough level Wizard potions of Life Extension were not uncommon.
They didn't make you immortal per day but you could live a couple of centuries longer then normal.

Going to be DMing a new game soon. I had an idea for a friendship mechanic to encourage my players to interact and reward them for creating stronger bonds with each other.

Basically the idea is that any time they go through something with another one of the characters, something that would generally bring them closer together, or otherwise make them work better together, they gain a +1 to their "bond" with that character. This bond stat has a maximum of let's say 5. I want this stat to be able to applied to things like help rolls or rolls involving that character. "You roll to notice something off about the mind-controlled cleric. Add your bond bonus to this." Etc.

I'm not super experienced with D&D (only been playing about a year or so) and I'm wondering if this will too adversely affect the mechanics of the game, or if there's any tweaks I should make.

Advantage is probably the thing you're looking for, a bonding stat kinda forces the party to be smooth even if the members in that party have severe differences, there's often interesting stories in the stereotypical dwarf and elf standoff.

Aren't Spare the Dying and Chill Touch the only necromancy cantrips?

Is it just me or is Death Domain (from the DMG) particularly weak?

Seems like tricky ground. It's good to encourage roleplaying, but sometimes players do weird things when there are +'s involved. Once you introduce the mechanic they might have some gay mudball orgy until they hit +5 and then go back to murderhoboing.

But you probably know your players better than I do, so idk.

i agree with . The Help action gives advantage to the helper, so making the bond manifest as Help as a bonus action seems cool. If they bring the bond up or RP it in combat, they get advantage. just make sure they don't do it every time :P

it also brings the RP to combat; too often people think RPing and combat are mutually exclusive.

my main reason doing this is to let them feel like the connection between their characters is a tangible, growing thing. they're constantly learning how to work together better and better.

having this manifest as advantage is a good idea. but that does seem a little too on/off. either they work well enough together to get advantage or they don't, which doesn't quite offer that "growing" experience i'm looking for. perhaps i can just award that advantage *more often* the closer their characters are?

to make it "level" you could do this.

two characters with a bond can do the Help action to the other a number of times per short rest equal to their bond degree/level. Bond starts at level 1 and increases only as story milestones. Bonds are formed at the start of the game or as story milestones.

Looking through the spell lists, I'd like to add to this that Necromancy in general is plain weak.

Help action as a Bonus action*

writing this down. i think it works out.
thanks, friend

this reminds me of the persona social links, for some reason

Need help with a character I'm making.

The character is a warrior who tries to mitigate damage as much as he can with spears, armor, big shields, and out maneuvering.

He looks like the guy that played Black Panther