/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General: Kobolds edition

I didn't like it because especially for wizards taking the average gives you a very high chance of having better HP than not taking averages.

Give half hp, half an HP counts as a full HP until another level up.

It's easier to just allow it by the book, though.

Kobolds.

Fucking everywhere, ruins action economy.

Anybody know where I can find lots of good monster stat blocks for imaginative creatures? I'm not very creative and looking to throw things at my players that aren't from the monster manual.

Then do 18-20 crit baseline and everybody crits 6% of the time.
So now everybody is actually stronger, and the effects of the champion are made lesser...
..which sucks unless crits are trying to be made less prevalent. If you're doing that, the champion needs some help. Like he crits harder, or something.

Forgotten Realms.
>INB4 SCAG
>No, I want a Campaign Setting. Not just some piddly sword coast digest.

Give me a reason to buy your new product rather than reasons to ignore it and continue to hunt down used 2e and 3e setting guides.

Also, fill in the areas with scant less details, for a value-add for those of us who do have old campaign setting books.

If I nerf crits for everyone else except champion, I'm consequently buffing champion

Tome of beasts
It's not 100% balance but it's got some cool shit, especially if you want anything Fae or desert related. I actually really like it

in the mega trove under kobold press in the third party section there's "the tome of beasts" i've heard good things about it but i haven't had a look myself

worst comes to worst you stick a trait from one monster onto another one, rename it and there you go. Brand new 100% original monster

The new ranger let's you deal 3d6+2d10+1d4+72 damage per turn when multiclassed with bladelock. That's on average 92 damage, not factoring in crits or Ac.

You can choose beast Master to get an extra animal attack, or to get advantage with the help action.

>especially for wizards taking the average gives you a very high chance of having better HP than not taking averages.
I don't even...
What?
Do you understand what average means?

Pound for pound, the Tarrasque has the highest CR.

In practice the Ancient Gold or Red Dragon has the most power, the most ressources, and the most capacities to capitalize on it.
Have you tried Volo's guide?

The 'take the average HP' option instead of rolling for HP is what is being referred to, not the true average.

I'm DMing for a group of friends for the first time in a couple hours, and everyone is completely new to d&d. We are doing lost mines of phandelver. Any last minute advice?

Dark Sun. Basically I just want Thri-kreen in official source material so that maybe one day someone will let me play a bug man

So what do you intend to do?
When the champion is built off of critting 10 or 15% of the time, do you intend to make that less often (nerfing them), or what?

Truth. Yeah, frankly this.

>playing published adventures

Neck yourself asap

Try to not kill them with the first ambush.

You could try making your own monsters, just google some obscure folklore to start you off, like
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drude
Then follow the procedure in the dungeon masters guide, so maybe the drude would have a way to cause nearby characters to have nightmares which you can treat as mini dungeons, or maybe hit dice heal -1 while resting, put on some cr appropriate attacks, hp and ac and you're golden.

>tfw playing Abjuration Mountain Dwarf Muscle Wizard with 20 HP, Scale Mail, and a Warhammer
It is glorious.

try to allow fun over strict rules, i did this during my first time as DM and it made the whole experience more fun for everyone.

that and read the whole adventure to get a grip of how the story will roughly go

The starter kit is perfectly fine for new players.

...

I tried to make my own adventure but it seemed lame and generic.

>The new ranger let's you deal 3d6+2d10+1d4+72 damage per turn when multiclassed with bladelock
What does ranger add to this combination?
>That's on average 92 damage, not factoring in crits or Ac.
Oh, well that's shit. Nevermind.

Is it possible to have mystery and crunch in the same supplement?

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drude

This sounds like an elf version of "dude"

This is good advice

would it be okay to lead them a little bit? since they are new and probably wouldn't think to do perception checks for the ambush. like maybe asking them if they wanted to explore the forest surrounding the trail or something?

Play without being too strict first time, make sure you all understand the basic idea and later sessions you can get more into it (if you're into it)

As far as phandelver mines go, don't worry if they get a bit bored and go off script. It's pretty narrow from what I saw

Its the best thing he can do. Usually the veteran people who "have always made his own campaigns" dont know how to do a game that requires more thought than breathing.

Normal crits are 19-20 (3% chance)
Champ level 3 crits are 17-20 (10% chance)
Level 15 is 16-20 (15%)

I can buff the level 15 to be from 15 to 20. But everyone else already crits less, so by comparison, the champ is buffed.

Give them suggestions/ add a "training encounter" before the real adventure starts

build please?

was Darkvision as prevelant in previous editions as it is in 5e?

i would heavily imply that something would happen if they did go down the trail, something like, "the last goblin sprints off to the side, down a small trail screaming out to something further down" most likely the players will give chase which will give them the chance to learn about traps with a harmless (to hitpoints) rope track

I'm going to be running an introductory session for my third batch of newbies in the last month.

I'm sick as all hell of LMoP, what are some other good beginner/level 1 modules?

Jesus christ what am I. That is is exactly what I said and recognized originally in
I guess we're on the same page then, cool.

Just make your own.

5e is also deliberately built to allow rules interpretations on the fly, with fun overriding everything.
The DMG also spells out for the DM to just go with it and have fun and not be a stickler for the rules.
Just have fun and see where the adventure takes you.

Oh. okay. That makes more sense.

Still it's only 10hp at level 20; Not a huge difference, even for the d6 wizard.

Worst Case Scenario
4*20-20(8 Con)=60HP
vs 3.5*20-20=50HP
+20%HP, yes, but according to DMGp274, expected DPR is ~132, so it'll help you live an extra 7.6% of a round. Whoop dee do. Either way, at level 20, taking average damage from a monster even once will kill you.

Best Case Scenario
7*20+100(20 CON)=240
vs 6.5*20+100(20 CON)=230
An extra 4.35% HP. Insignificant.

I normally make my own adventures for my main groups, but I don't want to come up with a new thing every time I intro a new set of people who tend to have about a 50% "stick with D&D" rate.

well i added it because when i googled frogs i read that they had good night vision. since they seem more active at night. that's why i thought it was a good fit. if there is too much on offer i can remove it though.

>5e is also deliberately built to allow rules interpretations on the fly,
Wait, what does this mean
In what way is 5e particularly built to allow rules interpretations on the fly over any other system?
Maybe vague "rules"? Do people consider that a benefit? To me that just seems like they wanted a thing but then weren't sure how to do it so just said "it's your game, do it how you want, you're not a slave to the rulebook or us, who are we to tell you what is fun ;^)"
Is it the book saying "oh, feel free to change whatever. We won't come to your house and imprison you" - seems like a thing a game shouldn't have to tell you, which is why most likely don't.

i basically made everything up with random, slightly hard but achievable DCs for my players when we were doing LMoP, i accidentally missed a lot of minor story elements and due to a lucky crit the rogue one shot the spider dude final boss, it was a pretty cool moment though.
>drink invisibility potion
>jump over spiderweb
>sneak up behind big bad
>heart on a rapier comes bursting through his chest
rest of the fight was basically cleanup but i'll be damned if it wasn't fun for the players

Alright boyim, I've taken and polished this up a little more since last thread, and unless someone points out something dramatic or presents a really cool idea to improve it, it's done!

>I GIVE YOU

> The 5e Soulknife Class

> Hopefully not shit and maybe final edition

Are you the 4th edition guy?

>Usually the veteran people who "have always made his own campaigns" dont know how to do a game that requires more thought than breathing.
Top Keks.

>Hurr Durr Newbie GMs should homebrew.
Neck yourself ASAP.

>1. Good idea starting with a published adventure. Homebrew campaigns with newbie GMs tend to suck, because they don't know the system; they aren't familiar with GMing, and they don't know what kind of stuff to prep, so they waste a ton of time prepping irrelevant crap and run a shitty campaign.

>2. Don't listen to
>Even if you are a competent GM, using a module is great for if you don't have the time to prep a campaign. It's also good for cribbing plot ideas and predesigned monsters/characters/locations, even if you don't use the actual plot.

>3.Until you're confident in the rules, lean towards ruling towards the 'rule of cool'. If you've got the general idea of how something should work, but you're not sure about some detail or another, rule in favor of the players, and tell them you'll look up the rule after the session, for next time. If you don't know a mechanic at all? Probably look it up. But again, rule ambiguity in favor of the players.

Average DPR doesn't consider a bunch of things. The wizard might put disadvantage to hit them, use shield, have portent or simply be out of range of the full brunt of attacks, and so forth.

Wizards are the most susceptible to being downed in one round, and 20% could be what makes them last that extra round.

1d10 and 1d12 I might roll for HP on, but I'd be pretty careful about wizard when it's:
1d6
1: You lose 3 HP
2. You lose 2 HP
3. You lose 1 HP
4. You get average.
5. You gain 1 HP
6. You gain 2 HP.

>know where I can find lots of good monster stat blocks for imaginative creatures?
How about randomly generated creatures?
giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?427046-Random-Monster-Generator-Beta!

Pretty weak desu.

Thank you for the input. I will consider what I should rework to make it a little bit better.

wat? no, because I have no idea who that is and have never discussed 4e in this thread.

thanks for all the advice, you guys have been really helpful. I think I should be set so long as my players don't go completely off the rails of the story.

In 3.x "Darkvision" was fairly common, and "low-light vision" was also common. Elves and fey and most animals got low-light vision. Seeing at the bottom of the ocean or in unlit portions of the underdark was reserved for dwarves & underdark monsters.

Prior to 3.x, it was low-light vision (like animals), and underdark creatures saw using Infravision (Infra-Red) (Like Predator). I frankly kindof liked that better.

Just checking

I made an example and it's probably bad, this isn't a true Rübezahl based on germanic folklore, it's just based on the picture on the wikipedia article.

You can interpret the rule however you want to and make a decision then and there.
>Is it the book saying "oh, feel free to change whatever. We won't come to your house and imprison you" - seems like a thing a game shouldn't have to tell you, which is why most likely don't.
It actually does this. I forget the specific page though.

Re-read the DMG also, it's actually quite good because it gives inspiration for running adventures, adventure types, what kind of campaign you want to run, how much magic you want in your games, role heavy vs rolelite games and much more.

Nice, this is the way brah.

Not gonna lie, Soulknife sounds like a really flaccid name for the class.

I'd wind up calling myself a psion or a psychic over that.

KOBOLDS!

my players went completely off the rails, they got into a fistfight and kidnapped some of the redbrand members, the key is managing to re-rail the story without them knowing.
they kidnapped and tortured the guy for info? his guard friend came along which made him "accidentally" nudge them to the fact that the rest were hiding out in the giant mansion which let them retain their agency as players but also let the story progress

The fractured styles are fairly powerful, especially the second one. With 5e's bounded accuracy, a +1 is pretty significant, especially at low levels.

Mental Utility, RAW, allows you to summon some pretty enormous or expensive items. I think you should specify the object should be lighter than 10 lbs AND cost less than 10 gp. And you can probably remove the specific mention of ladders/ropes, because I believe they already fall under these conditions.

Otherwise, I'm pretty much out of criticisms. Thank you for providing me with hours of entertainment. :)

Speaking of LMoP, I found some people eager to try roleplaying games and we picked the starter kit for training since none of us have actually played before.
I got picked as the DM since I was most familiar with the basic concepts and we rolled characters for the 4 players and played for a few sessions.
But on our next session we got two more players and I didn't have the heart to deny enthusiastic players the opportunity to at least try the game so we have a party of 6 and the adventure is not really designed for a group that big.
I've been throwing a few more monsters on each encounter so they wouldn't just steamroll through everything.
The party consists of two fighters (EK and BM, elf and dwarf), tiefling tome warlock, human dragon-sorcerer, halfling longbow-ranger and a half-elf swashbuckler.
Nobody has any interest in clerics so far so I made healing potions a bit cheaper at the start so they could at least get some hp back.
Any tips on running large groups? And how early do you think they could take on the dragon in the tower?
They are level 3 at the moment and made the wise decision to postpone the dragonslaying for now.
They also seem to enjoy some rng because they asked me to get a fumble chart for rolling 1 on attacks.

It's honestly a pain to keep track of everything and I don't think I'm a very good at this storytelling stuff but I do enjoy designing encounters, characters and places. It's just that when we actually sit down to play my mind easily just blanks and I forget everything I had prepared.
I'm not just a very social person so talking a lot is a bit taxing.
/journal updated

>neck yourself
that's not how that saying is used

Also, LMoP is one of the better adventures I've run, better even than a lot of the stuff I've written.

No worries brah, see here as well

if you think it's a bit easy, try maxing out hit dice or adding monsters to specific encounters. o be honest even my 2 player party was having an easy time with the better half of the adventure, even with above average health.
another good tip is to add "pseudo-elite" monsters, a goblin with slightly higher health/AC/damage with a noticeable aesthetic change to the rest of the goblin mooks

A note on running large groups: prompt prompt prompt. Especially in combat, try to move things along as much as possible. When someone make stheir attack, ask them "is ther anyhting else you want to do?" If not, alert eh next palyer that it's their move and the clock is ticking. Tell players to think of their next turn as soon as their current turn ends.

Also what I found *really really* helps eve small groups: appoint a leader! Preferably have the group select someone to be in charge. Ideally a single palyer will step up and that will be that. If multiple people want to be leader, don't force one to step down: alternate between sessions. If no one steps up, roll a die to pick someone, and then rotate leadership clockwise. It's basically a way to prevent hemming and hawing and decision stalemates.

I figured that the +1 would put it on par with choosing the Archery fighting style from the Fighter. What would work better?

Shit, it should be "and". Guess I'll fix that.

I'd allow Investigation to see the fakery too

Almost same story as the other guy who just posted but yeah if they go off track, leave increasingly unsubtle hints (with a hint of tongue in cheek ofc) as to how to get back on track

Letting them spend a bit of time off track murdering some poor old man for little reason is good too though, that's the fun of tabletop RPG.

Are you the first time GM user or someone else?

someone else

Yeah that'd make sense, i was thinking about lowering their health because their spells are pretty escape oriented.

what, you mean things I can do in literally any system ever made, and how in most games they don't care if you break/change shit? I've seen like one ever that says "don't change stuff without careful thought" and that was like Burning Wheel, and it still says it's fine if you do it, it just might end up not how you expected.

It's just constantly weird that people praise 5e as some paragon of being "modular" or "interpret how you want" when most games ever are literally that and say the GM is the authority of their game, and have been like that.

I'm a big 5e fan and that is absolutely true.

So add squad/pack leaders to enemy groups and encourage players to be more active even when it's not their turn.
I've been asking "anything else?" after people use their action to make sure they are done. Picking a leader for the group sounds smart. The EK has been most active at npc interactions for now so it'll probably be him.
Too bad my npc dialogue is very lacking at the moment. I'm not used to talking even as myself so putting myself into the shoes of another is a bit hard.
Most of the dialogue, if you can even call it that, has been gutted to just "the npcNameHere tells you that there's trouble in place X and urges you to investigate, promising to pay you 100g for the trouble". The players also do very little speaking in character. Hopefully we'll get better at this as time passes.

Here we are, more escape oriented and now i can use it as an attacking monster as well as a monster you can discover.

Here. It's actually done now.

If anyone wants to put it in the trove, feel free.

Enjoy! You guys actually give good feedback, so it's nice to see the end result.

have you playtested this in any way?

The DMG gives different play/campaign/fluff-vs-crunch/etc styles and advises the DM mixes and matches how they want and choose.

I get this if you're First-Time-GM user, but if you're at all familiar with the system, why not just roll with it?

If I'm not running from a book, I mostly run sandbox games and my plots are all "what happens on such and such timeline if the PC's haven't interfered" and "so and so wants to accomplish x/y/z and has worldview a/b/c, and is willing to resort to d/e/f to make it happen. and situation/location depended random tables of encounters and events and whatnot. So in my game, there's not much rails to go off of."

If you're looking for some DM advice on good linear adventure design (like a module) for later, I'd suggest reading

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/8122/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-collectors-edition

For examples of a sandbox (sorry I dont have any articles dissecting such things), I would point you towards oWoD Vampire the Masquerade city books. For the D&D equivalent, I'd point you to the 800 some odd page city super-setting Ptolus: City by the Spire.

Nope. It's shitty, you just don't know quality when you see it.

That's because you are a poor and uncreiative person. That is not my fault, and it does not imply published adventures are worth shite. Another fallacy.

> 98 hp
> CR 4

And people say 5e hp isn't bloated as fuck. Lmao.

See , shitlord

Take a look at the DMG first, it's in the trove.

The archery style is considered fairly powerful (if not THE most powerful style), and that's without the burst damage the Soulknife brings to the table.
I'm not really sure what I'd put there instead. It's possible that the increased range is enough.
I am also a tad weary about AoO within a 45-foot range, especially when they can be boosted with a psychic charge.

How IS is used then?

And, your own lack of talent does not imply LMoP is good. Only that you are a shitty DM. Sorry.

While true, it's also true 5e gives some sound advice about how to do it.

Like when they says something like "Halfling rogue using her environment to push an ogre in a fiery pit is awesome, and making up a rule in a spur of the moment to allow it is good, but don't let the players exploit the ruling too much afterward,"

Let's not be too hasty :P
You've got something cool here. Don't rush it.

A new gm is going to be shit anyway. That doesn't mean a published adventure makes him better. If anything it teaches him the same shitty railroad bullshit that permeates those modules.

5e isn't bloated as fuck, when it comes to monsters' HPs.