Wanting to make a chef character for 5e. How do you do your chefs Veeky Forums?
What are some motivations for chefs?
How can one turn meals into an epic journey?
What are the best races/classes for a chef?
What experiences can be had as a chef?
I was thinking of something lawful based around dining and cooking etiquette, but I'm open to ideas.
a bard fluffed to perform magic with cooking instead of music
You really can't. The mechanics don't really support it and you can't RP by yourself without pissing off the rest of the group. Build a character around being able to participate in the group as a whole and just make it a sideline hobby for your character to be mentioned in passing and maybe used for a bit of world-building, but not much else.
>The mechanics don't really support it
Shut the fuck up, woman, men are talking.
Play a support Cleric, re-fluff spells to snacks you provide your allies.
Cure Lights Wounds? Now it's goodberry mint tea.
Hell, you could even be a maid-style chef.
Follow your dreams user
hon hon hon
There's the Gourmand feat in the Feats UA.
Modify the guild artisan background into an iron chef style. Get a weapon, such as an axe and flavor it as a meat cleaver. Refuse to use it on common enemies and those you refuse to eat. After every combat take what you need to eat from enemy corpses for food.
Motivations? You can have found a legendary recipe that requires a rare ingredient from a monster, such as a roc egg. Your fiance's father will not let you marry her until you prove that you can take care of her by proving yourself to be a chef of his level.
Epic Journeys? Be a chef who searches the world for rare ingredients. Be an immigrant and run a noodle cart/taco truck/hot dog stand and travel the country looking for a city or town that approves of your food and has access to ingredients that you use.
Races? Halflings are stereotyped as food focused. Rangers and fighters are good choices. A chef should be a martial class, but take the magic initiate feat that allows you a fire based spell or ice based spell for either cooking or preserving food.
Experiences? Food is the heart of community, and you can bring together strangers. Anywhere you and your trade go you can always make friends. Soldiers on the front lines will love you, and you'll always have a place to crash if you offer food.
A chef should be neutral and focus on the craft. A true neutral chef will serve food to anybody and hone his craft, such as a doctor will heal anybody. A lawful chef will care about etiquette and making food that the locals will love. A chaotic neutral chef will cook the foods he loves without much concern for the 'craft' and will be more likely to serve illegal foods and alcohols.
This entire idea is utter shit but it's made even worse by the fact that there is no cooking skill in 5e, nor is there at support for that. Because Kike Mearls decided that anything not directly related to adventuring and killing shit in his shitty prepackaged modules, had to be removed from the system.
If you unironically play 5e instead of superior AD&D, then you need to kill yourself.
>What are some motivations for chefs?
To seek out new cultures and explore their culinary arts
>How can one turn meals into an epic journey?
You've come across a recipe that requires rare ingredients. This can range from fruits and herbs, to precious sweetmeats. You could even go as far as rare and exotic humanoids if you want to pull of a little bit of Hannible Lector.
>What are the best races/classes for a chef?
This is most entirely subjective. a player could fluff any race to want to seek out this kind of thing, and with the ability for most anyone to take some kind of artisan tool proficiency, any class can do it, it's up to the individual to justify their classes obsession with it.
>What experiences can be had as a chef?
Anything ranging from having to come up with how to feed an entire army, prepare an exquisite four course dinner for a pivotal diplomatic engagement, to full blown iron Chef to the death. Talk with your GM.
I wouldn't entirely listen to this person, although you should talk with your GM and other players to see how much of this aspect can be focused on in the game. If everyone's on board, it could take centre stage, or you can simply tell the GM that if you happen to get some out of combat spotlight time, you'd like it to focus around cooking. Hope that helps.
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Take proficiency with Cooking Utensils. Page 154 phb.
My last monk was a chef, guild artisan backgroound, cook tools, survival to get food and spices, etc.
He always said some mantra or super wise short phrase about his grandmother to provide insight about what the party or him was doing.
Personally I don't think 5e is the best place for that character but if you have to... Just play whatever class you want but work with your DM on a chef background. Then just try to get into the role. Obligatory Dungeon Meshi reccomendation. Try to actively seek out ingredients and carry around a cooking pot and utensils when going on adventures. Maybe your DM will grant you guys advantage for being well fed or something
Recipe book = Spell book
Yeah, see 5e wasn't my choice. It's just the group I'm with.
It started out as a Big Boss type character and then I just kept liking the idea of him wanting to become a chef(after honorably losing a fight to a chef). So it's more a journey of a fighter who wants to pursue his passions after having his worldview changed, but is struggling to escape his life based around subterfuge, violence, and survival.
Pic related, I need to give him a frying pan or something around his belt.
>How do you do your chefs Veeky Forums?
Eccentric Chairman Kaga stylings, getting excited about potential ingredients, but always encouraging the party to continue the story.
>What are some motivations for chefs?
Travel the world, cook interesting and exotic meals. Work and learn from different chefs.
>How can one turn meals into an epic journey?
Go full Monster Hunter on something's ass and turn it into an epic victory meal.
>What are the best races/classes for a chef?
Anything, honestly, but consider that your life is mostly dedicated to food, so maybe something like a huntsman might be fitting.
>What experiences can be had as a chef?
Working as a chef in 5e will generally find yourself putting that aspect of your character last, at least in the early game. Your goals will primarily be to keep your party well fed, and I find that the other players are generally keen to help you search for the night's meal. It turns into something of a group exercise, and if your party consistently finds themselves having close shaves with death, the Gourmand rules in UA will provide bonus healing and disease resistance for anyone who partakes in your cooking.
You don't have to be an over-the-top caricature of a chef in order to play a good chef, maybe just an ex-caravan guard that started studying old cook books, because they wanted something good to eat while on the road.
Most importantly, try not to drag a session on for 20min because you need to find the perfect ingredient for tonight's meal. Be a team player, and have fun.
Prove it with a screenshot. I don't give money to jew-controlled RPG companies such as ((((Wizards of the Coast))))
Dude, there're free pdfs flying around, literally the fist link if you google it
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Halfling or GTFO when it comes to cooks
This. Or port some kind of alchemist class over into 5E ("wizard who prepares spells by making dishes")
Holy shit dude. How much of a manchild are you? Calm the fuck down.Use your eyes and stop screaming to be spoon fed. You've proven you know nothing about 5th ed, and are just screaming for screamings sake.
You don't even know, mang. A chef is like a ninja and a sorcerer, but he feeds people and shapes their lives, so he's also a monk. But let me explain.
Chef's don't sleep. They rest their eyes a bit sometimes after the kitchen is cleaned, but before sunrise they're off to the market for the best ingredients before lazy servants and busy housewives snatch them up.
To meet this challenge they must be able to move swiftly while avoiding notice. Keen senses are essential when appraising fresh merchandise. A veteran chef can hear a bacterial infection in the vibrations reverberating through a gourd and can smell how many minutes ago a fish was pulled from the water.
A chef vouches for the ingredients they prepare to the diners and must therefore develop an expert sense of people. A blatant lie by a butcher is easily spotted. But a true chef must know that when the farmer reports his wife picked the best apples just last night, the chef remembers that it is around her time of the month, then there might be a few sour fruits in the batch as she then grows impatient at times and might not pay as close attention to which apples look most ripe as she usually can be relied upon to do. These complex social skills also require meticulous memory or note keeping, just like many processes around the kitchen. The selection of able personnel to entrust with delegated tasks involving the food also requires chefs to be quick and precise judges of character. But chefs can never be blatant and must navigate even complex gradients of station with grace and tolerance to facilitate an enjoyable dining experience.
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Logistics are a large part of being a chef. Ingredients need to be fresh, so local contacts are the first thing to establish anywhere. This often yields additional information, but the important part is what to get where. A chef's network of suppliers is tightly organized and delivers information faster than a spy's passenger pigeon (also tasty). A chef must anticipate appetite, mood, weather, and for that a vast diversity of current information has to be collated and put into context without provoking any attention. The supplies have to be organized around this anticipated demand, and this involves seasonal prices, storage temperatures and humidity, reserves, and a budget to rule it all. Any chef worth his weight in water is a precise bookkeeper and successful speculator on several commodity markets.
Now let's discuss knives. A chef carries their own knives and with good reason. A knife to a chef isn't just a tool. It is an extension, a part of the hand. And it must be understood in detail and cared for with every use. A fighter might remember to have their blade sharpened on occasion. A chef's blades will be razor sharp after every meal served. Like a surgeon a chef's cuts must be precise. But like a butcher a chef must practice their blade skills fast and often hundreds of times in a row. So unlike a surgeon, a chef rarely has to consider their cuts. They just see vein, ligament, nerve, joint, and they have cut the same thousands of times before, giving them perfect muscle memory of how hard to press and at which angle to separate which tissue. A chef could kill you in their sleep, don't make sheep noises before they've had their coffee.
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Ah yes, drugs. A chef knows how to make people's bodies do things. It's quite simple to make a diner sweat or grow jittery. Indigestion is not an art, that's a mistake. But even mistakes can be made... if it serves the right purpose. More than that a well stocked spice collection will basically turn the chef into an apothecary with a lab of chemicals to make diners calm or hot headed, awake or sleepy, romantic or rational, and healthy or dead.
The problem with chefs is that they always have to follow their calling. Glory and riches may be within their grasp, but if a new flavor beckons the other way, they're liable to turn and go. And they always dream of this mythical place where everything is perfect and they command a realm of minions and interlopers to form a symphony of experience which they call The Restorunt. It's sometimes hard to get them to talk about anything else.
Convince the everyone in the party to go with a culinary theme and play a traveling gourmet kitchen.
>Fighter and Ranger hunt big game
>Druid knows how to find the best fruits and vegetables
>Rogue knows the best spice traders
>Wizard knows all the best recipes
>Cleric makes sure everything is clean
>Paladin is a friendly host
>Sorcerer keeps the fires burning consistently
>Bard works the bar and provides ambiance
My elf adventures because he wants to cook and eat exotic creatures and fauna ...and just generically things that might look tasty.
He does this to make a cookbook that he can share with his elf-friends because everybody enjoys never-before-seen recipes and things to eat.
Mechanically, nothing is really altered with him. He's a rogue but that's just because I wanted to play as a rogue and it felt right.
I like you
Pretty much this You can pick the guild artisan background and take cooking utensils as the associated tool but that's pretty much it. Roleplay cooking meals for the party during camp sequences, maybe your GM will have you roll for it and make up some kind of bonus if he's a cool guy.
There's a Gourmand feat in an unearthed arcana but it's fucking terrible.
If you want to be a dedicated chef and get mechanical benefit from it, Ryuutama has food mechanics. You could probably manage something in GURPS too.
>A chef could kill you in their sleep, don't make sheep noises before they've had their coffee.
I love you.
I'm actually playing a Paladin of Chauntea who's motivation is to go on a crusade of bringing people from different parts of the world joy by providing bountiful harvests and preparing great food. It's a lot of fun for a campaign that's more light hearted and the players aren't going murderhobo on everything that moves.
/thread.
I once played a Neutral Evil Orc Shaman who was a chef. His motivation for adventuring was to eat his enemies, because according to his beliefs this is how he would gain power. He wielded a great club shaped like a meat tenderizer and beat monsters to death with it. Despite being a cruel, sadistic man he was quite loyal to the party and restricted his diet to non-humanoids only, so as to avoid getting the group arrested for cannibalism.
Mechanically you're going to want high Constitution and Wisdom, to represent the stamina and instincts needed to be a good chef. Average or better Strength and Dexterity is also important. If possible avoid having any dump-stats. The Guild Artisan background can work well, but strangely enough I recommend the Hermit background. Just make your Discovery feature related to cooking. Maybe your chef is the first person to realize they can keep meat from spoiling by putting it in ice-boxes. It's a cool hook that makes you unique in the setting without affecting the power level of your character in the slightest.
Class-wise you might want to go with a divine spellcaster, just because that's where your stats line up. A Cleric of a God like Bacchus might work quite well, and you could translate your cooking into a form of worship or religious ceremony. Imagine using breakfast as your method of communing with your deity and preparing your spells for the day. You could use the ritual of cooking as a form of meditation, or perhaps even read into the process as some kind of divinatory act (like how tea leaves are read). Even if you're not a Cleric or Druid this is still a cool idea that could be incorporated into your character.
If you don't want to play a caster, Fighter always work. They fit most non-caster character concepts just by how damn generic they are, and the class features aren't half bad.
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This thread is gold
I swear chef adventurers are Veeky Forums's human male fighters or dual-wielding chaotic good drow rangers
Is Dungeon Meshi at fault?
Nah, it's much older than Dungeon Meshi.
"I wanna be a chef" is just babby's first out-there character idea, alongside "I wanna be a luchador" and "I wanna be an animal with class levels"
I played a dwarf fighter once who was kinda forced into combat training by his father, his real passion in life was cooking. He would gather ingredients and cook up intricate meals. I just used my favorite meals and translated them to a fantasy setting I.E meatloaf became roasted Wargloaf. The overall campaign was about trying to stop an evil crime syndicate from resurrecting an evil slain demigod that had an item which could merge the material plane with the shadowfell thus creating a major unbalance and lots of wormholes. Everyone got a special reward at the end and mine was that since I was such a good cook, I was taken to Dwarfhome to cook for her lady Berronar Truesilver herself. Apparently it had been ''a very long time since she had an expertly crafted meal by mortal hand'' Our Warlock also got freed from his demonic pact and still retained his powers which was nice.
You played Champloo?
Either way if you are doing
I'd just say do shit gradually. Work your way to being a good chef.
I had a player who did something similar but with alcohol.
Worst place to refer someone to that wants to like cooking with a passion.