/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General

Always always ALWAYS have the party be an established group beforehand. It instantly gives their characters reasons to trust eachother and work together, rather than just being a bunch of random schmucks who really have no reason not to cut and run as soon as their get their first bit of loot.

Find out what the campaign is going to be ablout, make up a group that fits (mercenaries, members of the same guild, servants to the same lord, ect) and tell your players they need to make a character who has a reason to be part of this group.

>Which class is the best class

Bladelock obviously

Seconding this, minus the blade part.

Seems like Warlocks in general are the class with the most flavorful mechanics and fluff. Their magic is limited enough to keep them from breaking the game in two like other casters, and they can do enough things to be built multiple ways and still be good characters. Everything about Warlocks is just right.

Now if only wizards and their ridiculous reality-bending ability to do everything could be reigned in with some sort of similar re-work...

Bard, Paladin, Strength Rogue with a touch of multiclass or perhaps Druid.

Seconded.
Warlocks are great design-wise for flavour and fun, but balance-wise are probably a bit weaker than some other casters.
Their main issue is often defaulting to eldritch blast.

I think you're putting more thought into it then WotC when they made it.

Bard is best class because it allows me to beatbox people to death, and they keep missing cause my beatboxing is so good(although anyone can pick up the cantrip). It is entirely relative because some crazy people wouldn't want that in their fantasy game.

Sure, it's got magic and kingdoms and war and shit.
If you wanted you could even do some name-dropping; one of the layers of the Abyss (which is one of the three types of Hell in D&D) is ruled by the classic Demon Lord Orcus, the Prince of the Undead.
He could easily be the original "source" of said zombie apocalypse because that's right up his alley in terms of methods.

gay orgy, but i tell them something different

There's always a lot of talk of how monks lovingly sucks the D like they can't get enough of it. But would they really be so lacking if you'd let them get ahold of some +DEX magic items, to compensate for not using +weapons for example?

Rogue, I enjoy it the most.

>But would they really be so lacking if you'd let them get ahold of some +DEX magic items
Yes, they would be marginally better than shit. But it doesn't make the class itself any better.

Shame :

One I've seen that I like is to use cards or something similar for tracking initiative, and write their HP and some other quick reference stuff on each one
I usually just keep a note with attack scores and HP totals of the big enough monsters and just count of mook shit in my head

No, not really.

i've been studying the revised ranger, like it a bunch but i would love if the deep stalker had a little bit more of humpf, so here's my idea, tell me if it's too strong of if it's better at level 13 or 17 (the only levels without perks):

once per turn you can decide to add to your attack roll or to your damage roll your profiency modifier halved (round up).

Hell, I'd play it - sounds fun. There's going to be huge opportunities for loot, you're gonna need the odd walled city here and there etc.
Just make it an island...

Postapoca fantasy is bretty gud

Is there any way to make a dartmeister like in 2e?

There are class features gained. 4th level and 5th level spells, and with the stalker ones in particular I think it's a big enough feature as is. The once per turn reroll on miss probably does more for damage than you realize though, particularly if the stalker has sharpshooter

ok then

Should I get into 5e or PF?

5e is the easist system ever, PF has literally 20 books of rules, you pick. They're both great systems, but one is harder to understand that the other.

Since this is a 5e thread... 5e!

If you want to actually play a game and enjoy the majority of it then go with 5e. If you prefer to theorycraft and build optimized or off the wall characters, but not actually play, go with PF.

Still no pdf for Storm King's Thunder or Adventures in Middle-Earth?

It is in the MEGA Trove v3.

5E has three core books, one splatbook (that doubles as a setting book) and several adventures out (of which only one set truly is bad, the remainder are quite nice).

PF is built off of 3.5 which was known as the "Linear Fighter Quadratic Wizard" or "I only allow these tiers of classes because all of them below that tier suck too much" edition for a reason. It has tons of "core" books, lots of adventures and lots (and I mean lots) of splatbooks but suffers from the core game and constant errata. The adventures are more hit-and-miss, the splats and errata often cause lots of issues in character creation and it still has all of the baggage of the issues that were in 3.5 and never really eliminated (full casters win, martials fail, half casters are able to achieve some win and some fail).

As someone who has devoted hundreds of hours now to both systems, I'd go with 5e any day.

but 5e seems kind of limited with the types of characters you can make

ty

Bard best class, because overcoming encounters without rolling for damage is delicious, and gets me engaged in the game
Relative because some people like chopping through the meat like a sawmill

Only limited on how you portray them. Listen, the best fighter in PF will never get close to a plain wizard in power, skill or versatility but the fighter in 5e can stand almost on par with them for long periods of time.

Just try the game out, you can get everything for free from the trove and go from there. If you don't like it, you don't like it but as I said here I greatly prefer 5e over Pathfinder for a number of reasons.

He asked in /pfg/, too, and holy fucking SHIT
How much self-loathing can one thread contain?

I guess Im looking for a system that lets me express character ideas in a mechanically format well

they play pathfinder, its not like you're happy with their lifes

but it's also the most homebrewable system around, there are tons of homebrew classes.
It's your pick, pathfinder has like 60 classes but it's extremely complex

If monks start with good stats, they're good.
There is an item in one of the official .pdfs that boosts unarmed attacks.
Monks can use weapons. A 1d8+3 quarterstaff is better than a 1d10 fist. Monks get two weapon attacks at level 5, which is just as many as most martials get.

And don't underestimate being able to use stunning fist as 1 ki, with ki regenerating on a short rest.

all planes are basically bubbles floating in the blind eternities. think of it as a cross between Exalted's Creation and Spelljammers Crystal Spheres.

serves those animu fugs right

Here's the thing, bro.

Sure, there's only, what, twelve classes, with a handful of archetypes each.

But they're intentionally generic, to encourage you to flavour them however the hell you like. You have to let go of Pathfinder's "there's not an option named the thing I want, so I can't do it" mentality.

Maybe you want a Metaforge, but oh no, 5e doesn't have a Soulknife OR Aegis (yet?)! But wait, what's this over here? There's a Warlock who summons a Pact sword, and an Invocation for at-will Mage Armour! METAFORGE COMPLETE.

What are you trying to play? I'm sure you can get help from 5e on what class, race and background combo would help you best on that and how to fluff it out for your best results. Sorry, but chances are that if you try to do it PF you're going to juggle like 20 books and need to be many levels in before you pull it off (if you even can).

then use Mutants and Masterminds instead of any DnD or derivative like pathfinder.

Don't be fooled. While PF will technically allow you pretty much any sort of archetype, there are so many trap options that at the end of the day, only a few archetype are truly efficient.

Unless your character ideas can ben translated into a wizard/druid/priest of some description, I'd recommend taking a look at 5E.

Personnally, I played 3 years of Pathfinder, both as a player and as a GM, and the variance in power level got painful to see as we progressed, leading to frustration from some players. I got to be GM near the end of the campaign, and by god encounter design was a nightmare then.

Having switched to 5E, I get how you can believe that there are fewer options. It's true, but most of the options are good.

But 5e-chan, what if the animu was coming from inside the thread?!

well, that or GURPS.

Any Generic system that ets you build your character out of a list of powers and components instead of using pre-built classes.

historically speaking that's when we make a new general thread

but shiiiiit, GURPS is like a thousands pages long

You can literally run it with just the rules-lite pdf and then eyeballing the numbers. Sure, there are rules specifically made to determine pretty much anything but you don't NEED those rules to play them as such. Just guesstimate the amount XP it would need to get and what it does and go from there.

I only played the rules-lite version and only for a few sessions but it just didn't click for me so I left that group

I've gone from rivalry, to confusion, to heartwrenching pity. I want to send them a gift basket, pat them on the head, and give them the card of a good abuse therapist, because that system has done some terrible things to these people.

anyone wanna gimme their opinion on this ?
aside from

Raw says short swords are piercing. Will houseruling it to have slasing make it too good?

If I remember right all that really does is make them redundant with scimitars

Look one line above Shortswords on the weapons table, dude. Scimitars ARE shortswords that do slashing damage.

>how it feels trying to convert a DM mostly used to 4e and actually enjoying the system to 5e, of which they've yet to properly review but are unsure of
You've been in a coma for 3 years while your 4e campaign was running. Please wake up. We miss you.

Nothing is wrong with 4e, user. I would still try to get them to transition over though, at least to test the system but if they still feel like sticking with 4e, well, that's their choice.

At least they aren't playing 3.P, right?

At least you aren't stuck in a 3.5 game with some weird combination of the DM's denial of his own sunken cost fallacy on all the prep time he's taken for his campaign, and the group wanting to let him down easy and just have someone else run a 5e game because the 3.5 one is getting increasingly miserable to deal with every session

Well here. Fine, ya increasingly picky bum, try this on for size. I've been working on it for a bit, and was hoping to playtest before releasing, but see if it tickles your fancy. It's a generic system with only 12 pages worth of rules, most of which are just examples or clarification.

docs.google.com/document/d/1yqAbRnIvl4VnwdnlzIF9brfWO72uVZ4WiL3WJeIdrw0/edit?usp=sharing

It's not very simulationist or crunchy, it leans more on the gamist and narrativist side of things, but that I feel that's fine. DnD has the Gamist-Simulationist market on lockdown, and GURPS the Narrative-Simulationist. If you just wanna sit down and play a game and tell a nice collaborative story, without a lot of baggage from the system telling you what is and is not possible or a lot of rules and numbers to keep track of, this is the thing.

The way they do it is fine. It was a good time.

ButI feel 4e just isn't worth it if you don't do pure combat. They do certainly do a fair bit of combat and get all that they can get out of 4e, but 5e is probably better at any given moment you're not in combat.

I thought people generally considered 4e worse than pathfinder/3.5.

I'm sketching out the basics for what is going to be a new campaign setting and I thought it would be cool if one of the continents was shattered apart a long time ago by some kind of cataclysm, but I'm trying to figure out what that would actually look like.

Does this look realistic? It's the bottom right one, obviosuly.

There's a large number of people who love 3.pf because it's the first RPG they played. While there are legitimate issues with 4e, most of them haven't actually played it and are just on the hate-hype train. 5e was in many respects created to appease that audience, which is a shame because they threw out most of the improvements from 4e.

Also, it depends on the player. Players that enjoy fun are more likely to enjoy 4e. Players that enjoy making bizarre character concepts work by cobbling together 14 sourcebooks, enjoy system mastery, or have autism will enjoy 3.pf. The systems are aimed at different audiences.

>ButI feel 4e just isn't worth it if you don't do pure combat.

I can't comment for how your games went but I was in a 4e campaign for a little over 2 years. We did so much shit out of combat! There were even entire sessions without a single weapon drawn or arrow nocked. Yes, combat is a the big part of the game (a huge one) but that was because people in 3e/3.5 complained that the classes were so disproportionate in combat they had to make a system that made everyone (more or less) equal. Out of every D&D system I've played, 4e is hands down my favorite. 5e is a very close second though but 4e hit all of my little buttons in ways no other system ever has.

It's less about 4e vs 3.5 in that case so much as having to deal with the social implications of telling someone "I don't really care that you spent an absurd amount of time preparing this. It's god awful" who can't really handle it. Mostly we've just been humoring him for a while, but it's starting to take too long for him to wrap up the campaign and patience is slipping

>Players that enjoy fun are more likely to enjoy 4e.
How to spot someone is full of shit

people that want Wow-like raids like 4e.
people that like designing characters like building a magic deck like 3.P

People actually there to play a tabletop game like 5e.

Looks pretty good to me. If you're just going for a general look it's perfectly acceptable but if you want to try to get more detailed, just make sure you put a few more squiggles and shit on the coasts and you're golden.

If you don't mind my asking, why did it shatter?

As someone who does not like WoW (and I really, truly tried to give it a try but it was just so bleh) and I loved 4e. 3.P sucks because all it takes is one new splat book to completely ruin your character and you were basically punished trying to do anything interesting by pages of rules and supplement. 5e is great, it speeds things up, simplifies things and allows just the right amount of crunch to keep the game moving fast but as I said here 4e just hit all my buttons in the details of how it played out, at least at my table.

Can we go back To 5e instead of talking about an abortion as 4e and completely obsolete and thousands times better done by paizo 3.5e? *sigh*

Looks pretty good desu

>thousands times better done by paizo 3.5e?
>thousands times better done by paizo
>better done by paizo

Certainly, we did things out of combat.

I joined in at the very end of a long campaign, so I started in the late 20s in level.

I'm fine with being handed a sheet full of pages upon pages of abilities I have to learn.

But...
Almost none of those abilities can be used in any way out of combat.

Like the game seems to have been intended, it really feels a lot more MMORPG like. 'I use this ability, which does this.'
And it doesn't really feel like there's much else you can use those abilities for unless you're really, really creative.

I guess the main advantage from this over 5e is that in 5e most of the utility is taken up by casters. A fighter might not often have a lot of utility.

But even then, if you're playing a spellcaster in 5e it feels much nicer to play outside of combat.

And then, there's also the magical item economy which is sort of a thing with pathfinder too. You just get tonnes and tonnes of money - enough money to buy the world - and are then probably expected to have all sorts of magical items.

In 5e at least, magic items are supposed to be a bit more special and not 'something that's practically a given you'll have'.

4e definitely succeeds at a MMORPGey feel, though.

I'll admit, I didn't get a lot of 4e experience.

There's a point that people have to know that they have to let it go.

I'll admit I did have a bit of fun trying to work out pathfinder. And then it got played a little and campaign died and that was that.

>>If you don't mind my asking, why did it shatter?
I haven't decided 100% yet, but my initial thoughts are that a powerful civilization that is no longer around did some bullshit that resulted in it shattering.
Maybe they gained so much power that a deity decided to ram his fist up their ass, maybe they attempted to collectively ascend to Godhood and it went badly.. Not entirely certain yet.

>all it takes is one new splat book to completely ruin your character
I don't think that really follows. New material did sometimes have the problem of "Now that there's rules for this, you need a feat to do it", but by and large supplements didn't really make characters weaker. Arguably, you could say they made them marginally weaker in the sense that there's little reason to use, say a fighter, if warblades are an option, but the real problem there was how shitty fighters were in the first place. My real problem with that shit is it just gets tedious after a while, and options that should only really exist for flavor end up being either some sort of weird trap or the best way to make a character regardless of their actual background

This really isn't the place to go in depth into 3.5 though

i mean you can try to meme how much you want but the truth doesn't change lmao

So I looked on the crossbreeding table and humans and centaurs can breed, but only if the mother is the centaur.
How does a half-centaur half-human even fucking look like?

Wut? user, put down the Book of Erotic Fantasy and back away from it

Well wherever you found that table it probably wasn't official, but I imagine either something that looks like a satyr or something much more unfortunate

Is CR not a thing anymore? How is the GM meant to balance encounters?

That's just the ranger capstone. Do something else

uhm what? CR is still a thing , read a MM

what does capstone mean

Challenge Rating is a thing, but it only means "dangerous if fought below this level."

Encounter difficulty is meant to be balanced by the XP gains it provides.

There's a chart in the monster manual, and I think also in the phb and basic rules.

5e and 4e don't really handle out of combat much differently. They're both more or less "you have skills, roll them to do stuff"

20th level feature

4e is just different and probably would have been accepted as a decent game if it didn't have the D&D name slapped on it and didn't end support for 3.5.

4e had skill encounters.

In fact, have a calculator made just for this very purpose
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eoRg79_yTUQ6AXxLNDq6Vl9_DAJH4h7tzs5HBikCuEE/htmlview

Which everyone (with sense) ignored

fuck you're right, i completely forgot that, thanks I'm gonna figure something else then. I was maybe thinkiung always taking half damage on fall damage since the underdark is place that requires a lot of alert for thgat kind of peril.

Really, it seemed like a neat idea?

>Almost none of those abilities can be used in any way out of combat.
Utility powers, rituals, martial practices
>And it doesn't really feel like there's much else you can use those abilities for unless you're really, really creative.
So like spells
>I guess the main advantage from this over 5e is that in 5e most of the utility is taken up by casters. A fighter might not often have a lot of utility.
Why is that an advantage?

Eh, they were interesting in theory, but a lack of creativity on the parts of DMs/players means it becomes too divorced from general adventuring, and the actions are disjointed nonsense done only to fill a success quota. I've seen it used well once, and it was when the DM never revealed it was a skill encounter.

Much like the rest of 4e, the biggest problem was presentation.

Forget the last point, I cannot into reading

This is crazy but:

My MM fell appart so i cut the spine off the book, sleeved the pages in protective sleeves and threw it in a binder. Now before session i just have to find the stat blocks im using and pull them out. I can write on the blocks with markers because the sleeves and my homebrew monsters sit right alongside the MM.

It ended up costing more than the book and id say the sleeves add too much bulk (needed a 3 inch binder, could need a 4in down the line) but the ease of use is amazing during session.