/5eg/ Fifth Edition General

The fact that there's a chance at all is the issue.
Tell me, if your player rolls 13 as their best stat will you let them re-roll?

there are two good methods of rolling for stats. Balls to the wall high variance 6d20 down the line after declaring race and class.

Or "roll 3 then flip".

To do the latter, you roll 3d6, rerolling any total result lower than 6. You repeat this process 3 times until you have 3 numbers between 6 and 18. For each number, find it's paired number.

18,6
17,7
16,8
15,9
14,10
13,11
12,12

Those paired numbers are your additional 3 stats.

So for example, I roll 3d6 3 times and generate 17,11,9
I consult the pairs, and get 7, 13,15

My stat array is now 17,15,13,11,9,7

There are some tweaks you can apply depending on how powerful you want the NPCs. You can add one to all the secondary numbers for instance (which ensures that stat rolls won't be all even or all odd). You can set the minimum and maximum values to different numbers (though the min and max should always be equidistant from 12, unless you're changing the average). You can change the dice rolling method while keeping the min/max and flip. This would be if you want the results to have different weights, perhaps weighing 15/16 and 8/9 more heavily than middling numbers to avoid "average" pcs.

With this method as is though, all stat totals will add up to 72, the average stat will be 12 for all players. Modifications are only meant to be undertaken with known goals in mind, because no one stat rolling method will actually solve all desires of every DM and every player you morons. You're all debating different things and I'm surprised that decades into the lifetime of the hobby you idiots haven't realized that some people like variance, and some people like balance, and both are valid goals in the pursuit of fun.

That's still better than 4d6 drop 1, but it's still sit.

18 and 6 is still much better than 12 and 12.

I've seen a player roll nothing above a 6 and then a player roll nothing below a 16. In both cases, I made them reroll.

Look, I don't remember the original guideline, but if the sum of your ability scores is less than 70 or greater than 80, you should reroll.

I explained this last thread. Also, I prefer this method (3d6 and flip) as well as keeping the standard array as the backup option instead of allowing rerolls.

Yet there is still some guy upset that people don't like the roll 4d6 drop lowest method and he's getting really defensive about it. I'm enjoying the show tremendously.

Your method is retarded.

>rerolls
Why are you even rolling if you're just going to tell them to reroll?

Why not just give them a fucking array?

There's an element of randomness to it, which is fun.

Personally, I have everyone start at 10 and then add 2d4 before racials.

>Tell me, if your player rolls 13 as their best stat will you let them re-roll?
no, not at all. if they somehow ended up rolling for stats (3d6, no rerolls because fuck them) they accepted their fate already.

That's fine. Why do you think so?
I like the small variance it can give to a group of PCs without being crazy. However, I've been considering taking out 17s and 18s all together, though.

How do I implement statistically the access to dry land and fire in a world that's 99% underwater. This race i the only race with access to these things, so I figure it would be represented in the character statblock?

I think it's silly that 6 is even on the table. Stats below 8 are criminal. Not to mention it almost makes you not want to roll well, since you'll be saddled with a rather unpleasant penalty.

Correct answer.
>Look, I don't remember the original guideline, but if the sum of your ability scores is less than 70 or greater than 80, you should reroll.
See Roll and accept your fate or don't roll at all you pussies.

Nah, I think I'll keep doing what's fun. Just a little bit of the unexpected, but nothing major.

Proficiency with smiths tools and dwarven weapon/armour proficiency

Right, that's why I'm considering taking 6s and 7s off.
However, the reason I have liked the 18/6 in the past is the idea of "yoiu're really fucking good at something, so you must be overcompensating." However, at least with 5e, it seems too easy to plop a 6 in your dump stat and be done with it.

even with this, 16,8 and 15,9 are on average better than the standard array and all of 18~14, 6~10 are better than 13~12, 11~12 while also being more likely to happen.

Could you clarify? are you saying that you want some sort of feature for a race that gives them access to dry land and fire? Or are you saying how does a race get access to dry land and fire in an underwater world?

the former seems silly. That's more of a roleplaying thing than a character mechanics type thing.

The latter is more reasonable: underwater caverns, island control, and basic knowledge of chemistry.

I disagree with your views on excellence, but those are your views. I would think that +0 modifier should be the baseline, instead of penalties.

>"fun"
worse argument ever, to be honest, famlings.

Great! Doing what you and your group think is fun is what matters. My job here is done.

The nice thing about 5e compared to previous editions is that saving throws are based on the stats, rather than derived from two different stats. So if you do have a weakness to a stat (commonly intelligence), then a varied campaign will usually present foes that put that player at risk (commonly intellect devourers). That's one thing I really like about 5e, but if I were redoing the monster manual (It's on a laundry list of improvements to make), I'd give way more of these save abilities to monsters.

-1 doesn't seem harsh to me.
-2 can be a little troubling, but when its a stat you actively try not to use (most likely), then you probably won't see it enough to care.

Do you often see negative stats coming up a lot when you play?

Neither.

How can I represent through stats a character that has access of dry land and fire. It's where they come from, these dry bubble cities underwater, so their equipment and abilties will be coloured with that technological capability that nobody else in the seas has.

There is a suggestion to give them the dwarven armor proficiencies with smiths tools and armor, but i don't want them all to be smiths or makers, but it's their kind alone that makes metal weapons, armor, even glass.

Having never played a Paladin before, which is the most important stat for one with a sword and shield, but also expects to be the party face?

The DMs I've played with, and as a DM myself, there's not always an opportunity for the specialist to handle an entire task. Penalties also matter a lot for saving throws, where you might not have any buffer between your penalty and the DC (say you aren't proficient or you don't have advantage)

I'm sick of having to manage a resource pool all the time. This shit drives me up the fucking wall and I personally think it's a retarded way of balancing an un-balanceable game

What are classes focused on always-on or unlimited-use abilities, aside from Champion Fighter and rogue? Good homebrew also welcome.

saving throws mostly, having to dump wis or dex is kind of dogshit, specially when wis and dex are already godlike stats for skill checks.

Speaking of intelligence commonly being the dump stat this edition, what could we do to make it more useful?

Have more int based abilities other than knowledge?
I was toying with the idea of making int useful for warlocks and bards alike.
Bards, as many have mentioned, feel incredibly powerful this edition (some say THE best class, which I might agree with). Since a lot of what it means to be a bard is collecting stories/memorizing songs/gathering information about the world, would it be too unreasonable to give them some sort of int dependence?

An even amount of Charisma and Strength. If they can't be even, then slightly more strength.

You could set up a list of proficiencies they can choose from. For example, choose 2 of: smithing, chemistry, acrobatics (I feel like acrobatics would be easier in the water, and so nobody would really be proficient in it), etc.

for pretty much every paladin you want str as your best stat followed by cha, with good con as you will probably end up getting lots of beatings.

you can pretend to be the face of the party but you will have overall crappy skills outside of your diplomatic skill of choice and no/not many diplomatic spells.

Stop being stupid

Right, these were the main two I was concerned with. I often don't see them dumped, however. For this reason, among others.

This is true. And again, saving throws seems to be the biggest issue I find, personally.

One way I've pondered is making ritual casting available to everyone, if they meet certain intellect requirements, and changing a few spells to be rituals.

So just as a very basic outline:

To cast 1st level ritual spells, you need at least 11 INT to memorize the ritual.
12 INT for 2nd level ritual spells, and so on, all the way til 9th level ritual spells (if any) at INT 19.

What resources are you having to balance, famalam? Spell slots? That's not so tough.

Maybe you can try warlock? Although some might consider this counter-intuitive, it depends on what trouble you're having exactly with keeping up with things. They have lots of 1/day things as part of invocations, also lots of at-will effects in their invocations. And their spell slots are easy to track with their recharge on short rest.

To be honest though, I don't know what's resources exist that are so tough to manage...

I like it. But then can we please take find familiar off the ritual list?
I'm not DMing for a party of owlphiliacs.

Warlocks are the best casters for this, as they get always on pact boons (pact of the chain is incredibly useful), and invocations that allow casting certain spells at will.

Wizards are a close second, with several of the schools offering always online features only limited by your creativity. Illusion and Conjuration, I'm looking at you.

In the martial realm, rogues you mentioned, but you forgot the new ranger. Beastmasters have the best pets in the game, and again, it's only limited by your creativity.

I'd want to stick to existing book proficiencies as well. Proficiencies could work. Maybe I start with the Half-Elf as a base as these people are technically true-humans, but the "common people" role are Merfolk so they have a slightly modified human statblock.

>make swimming proficiency
>I can finally put all my points into swimming

Yeah, the existing rituals might have to be pruned or changed to discourage spam like that. Find Familiar is already arguably good enough to be worth multiclassing for if your main class doesn't have a good capstone.

Whatever has a limit on its uses, spell slots being the most and I don't even want to have them. Even the fucking barbarian has to decide if he should spend a rage.

I just want to stop blowing my encounter share of whatever shtick my class has and spend the rest of the encounter spamming regular attacks or cantrips.

Making a human fighter, 2h starting at level 4

15 str
12 dex
15 con
8 int
4 wis
12 cha

Do I want to take the human +1 to all, the +2 to a score, or replace them with feats?

Then play warlock with pact of the chain, multiclass into conjuration wizard, and spend your encounters chucking damaging explosives while your familiar either drops them itself or gives your frontliners advantage on every attack.

>4wis
Hahahaha, hope you like murdering the rest of the party

I'm thinking about taking the lucky feat and being a folk hero

Thog like his friends though.

This is literally the opposite of what I stated. Wizards rely on expending a limited-use resource. Otherwise they are worse then peasants.

I feel like making up a bunch of magic items this weekend, so what kinds of magic items would you like to see? I'm mostly looking to make some race/class specific/flavored items because I feel there's a lack of things like flavorful great weapons, polearms, bows, etc and an overabundance of stuff for arcane casters.

No class is going to always have access to their best features bub. except the multiclass I just gave you. the spell slots don't matter, you've got 2 of the best always on features in the game.

Minor Conjuration
Pact of the Chain.

Look em up, read em.

>I'm thinking about taking the lucky feat and being a folk hero

Has there ever been a more bullshit feat.
If I ever find a DM that lets me take this feat I'm going halfling divination wizard with the lucky feat.

>Even the fucking barbarian has to decide if he should spend a rage.

If you can't even manage how many rages you have per long rest... you might need to find another hobby.

I can. I don't want to, and I tired of having to beg my party to take a short rest either.

You dumb, bro.

I don't really blame him. The once per day/once per short rest type design is fundamentally retarded.

There should be like a quick rest for smaller class features like inspiration or superiority dice

Does it make sense for a race to exist that's connected to a unique item for them, like a mask or something? How can I implement that?

Wait, is there a feat list I'm not seeing? I'm drawing up my first Paladin now.

I saw something about possibly making a short rest last 10 minutes and long rest 12 hours in the DMG.

Sure, there's a bunch of Dwarf-specific magic items in the DMG. How you would go about implementing that really depends on what you want to do with it. Is it just fluff? Is it a legendary artifact with stats? Is it just an item of great power with racial significance or literally the font of life for the race? etc.

Open Hand Monk 9
Elk Totem Barbarian 3
Fighter 2

(30+15+10+15)x2 movement speed while raging and dashing

Rage beforehand

Initiate Grapple
Attack
Flurry of Blows
Open hand shove to ground
Open hand shove 15 feet to wall
Action surge Dash ~140 feet directly up wall
Fall on enemy for 14d6 damage

I'm thinking more an item tied to them from character creation.

Sounds like you should just make it one of their racial bonuses then with the magical artifact part of it as the fluff explaining it. They have darkvision because the Mask of Truth they're all required to wear at birth grants it to them or whatever. That sort of thing.

While you're at it, hold a 30lb dumbell in your hands.

When you reach the peak of your jump, drop a dumbell for 14d6 damage with your item interaction, THEN fall.

>Not opening a bag of ball bearings to obliterate the target for 1400d6 damage

It's more like a cap of water breathing sort of thing. Their kind exist in these bubble cities and no one outside the bubble city can survive without a way of breathing underwater, so characters who are expected to adventure with groups that can breathe underwater should have a method of doing so as part of character creation right?

I'd pay to see that being roleplayed

I'd say so if the whole (or majority) of the campaign is going to take place under water. Otherwise, the mission to obtain their oxygen hats could be the intro series of adventures to introduce them to the world and they get their hats at the conclusion of it.

The campaign will be entirely underwater.

So my question is how to implement that in a statblock. Is something like it really powerful or because of the context something rather inconsequential in regards to balancing?

>halfling divination wizard with the lucky feat
basically my current pc's concept, except he is actually a bard pretending to be a divination wizard.

i still want portent, though, fuck luck.

If the entire campaign is underwater, and underwater survival is not a focus then I think it's an inconsequential item you can give them to make the campaign flow smoothly. While it could be powerful in normal D&D, in your setting it's just 'we can do the campaign' so I think it's fine.

>Pedantry Ho!
Worst. Not worse.
Worst is to Best as Worse is to Better.

typo, i have disgraced my lineage and will commit ceremonial suicide to atone for my sin.
also english is not my first language but that isn't an excuse.

Now I just need a name for this trait. It reminds me of the bubble helmets of the old school sci-fi tales, which is appropriate as they're technically the strangers of this world.

Can anybody give me a quick ELI5 on how wizards are supposed to work? I started playing the starter set with some friends last week and my buddy wanted to make a high elf wizard but I'm an idiot and we didn't get all the rules for picking spells, cantrips, and whatnot. Right now there's a strict "no wizards"rule in effect until somebody figures it out.

I'm thinking about running a campaign heavily focused around the material hit point rules in the DMG.

Something like Dark Messiah, where missed Greataxe attacks shatter tiles, fireballs blow wooden bridges apart, and monks shove enemies through wooden railings.

I keep it simple; I like ravens. I'm occasionally edgy.

Anyhow, Bladepact guy here with a question, need opinions:

I want to change lifedrinker to make the Warlock more durable as well as boosting it's combat potential. What do you think the best way to do this is?
>Heal yourself equal to the necrotic damage dealt, once per round, only on your turn. Better than other options because it's actual healing, worse because it's reactive - can't benefit from it until you take damage.
>Gain temporary HP equal to the necrotic damage dealt, once per round, only on your turn. Better than the other options because it's simple and can be used prior to taking damage, worse because it won't stack with your other sources of temp HP.
>Gain a ward (see Abjurer Wizard) equal to the necrotic damage dealt, once per round, only on your turn. Better than the other options as it stacks with everything else, worse because it's more complicated and might actually be OP due to stacking.

Current version of my rework attached.

be prepared for a glacial crawl of a campaign.

That's still an invocation tax on this shit

I figure something that both boosts your damage and survivability would be worth an invocation. I can't think of any other class that gets 2 stats to damage for free, except maybe bladesinger.

I'm planning to run Deaths House for my group as a Halloween one-shot this weekend, starting with a mini-oneshot 2-4 encounters leading into it.

Each character has at least an uncommon magical item each by the time they reach the house. My first concern is that they stampede through without issue due to being level 3 in a level 1-2 module, but I've heard from other sources that the campaign is highly imbalanced and super deadly.

Should I make some of the encounters more difficult or leave them all as they are?

Wizards have four things to keep track of: cantrips, spells in your spellbook, spells you have prepared, and spell slots. Cantrips are the easiest; you can use them at will without preparation or spending anything. Spells in your spellbook are spells you can choose to prepare when you take a long rest. You can prepare a number of spells equal to your Int mod plus your wizard level. Spells you've prepared are spells you can spend spell slots on to cast them. Spell slots are the resource you spend to cast spells.

Other spellcasters tend to be simpler than wizards, having just a list of spells known and spell slots to spend on them. The really unique thing about wizards is that they can steal other people's spells. If they find a spell on a scroll or in another wizard's spellbook, they can copy that shit.

you understand deathhouse alone can take upwards of 4 hours depending on how slow your group is right?

Party I may be playing with is

Wizard, Rogue (AT), Fighter (EK), Fighter (Battlemaster)

I was thinking Cleric or Bard. What say you?

>game design is fundamentally retarded
At some point there is a time cost drawback to your player's actions. If not per day (a simple easy to track metric) it's a cooldown period of some amount of time or the cost of a slowly recharging pool or stamina/mana. I can't think of any game with zero time cost abilities.

Well we have a 14 hour+ Session planned, so hopefully they don't whizz through in 4 hours.

Deathhouse was made for levels 1. You'd have to change every encounter and trap in there for level 3s. In fact it's dumb for you to have them go to it at all at that point. Just build off the map and make your own up.

Play whatever is fun for you.

What ability and skill should a player roll to rape a hostile hobgoblin?

Anal circumference