/5eg/ D&D 5th Edition General

KOs are pretty common from my experience, and not really a big deal especially if you have some kind of healer

Seems to me like they're doing their jobs

yes

Forge cleric makes me sad I'm a permadm.

One of my players is playing a cleric of an evil god. He wants to disguise his divine magic as something vaguely druidic/alchemical, calling it "natural philosophy", so other PCs and NPCs won't lynch him. For example, his Warding Flare involves using pocket sand and calling it flash powder, while Fireball involves throwing a bottle of "alchemist's fire".
Would you allow this in your campaign? How would you stat that? Make him roll for deception at every spell he casts?

I'll bring my question over to the new thread then: 50374586

What do you think, Veeky Forums?

Make a DMPC and ram it down your players' throats until one of them DMs

We have a bard. Just a bard.
They just keep doing stupid crap and diving headfirst in to trouble.

Forgot the quote Just slay me now

taking a look at him, that doesn't seem very rapier-ish, looks more like a cutlass

though upon a lot more research, it looks like a backsword?

Wait so he wants to use Warding Flare but turn it into the illusion of him throwing pocket sand?

Or does he want to refluff Warding Flare into throwing pocket sand ?

Are your other players pretty familiar with 5E ? It might backfire if they know what a Light Cleric does.

Also, why is he not just roleplaying to be devoted to Lathander ?

An elder brain was a CR 25 monster in 3.5e, in 5e it's a fucking chump.
Justice for elder brains!

Clerics have to flash their holy symbol, don't they?

>They just keep doing stupid crap and diving headfirst in to trouble.

If my DM offered to turn my PC into a dragon I would refuse. The idea is almost disgusting to me for some reason. I'd find a way not to do it, like I'd ask him to make it so my PC is the only one not getting transformed - and then he has to ride the others.

They might investigate why the hell it's not working for him. Or they might not care.
But fuck turning into a dragon.

From what I understand, his character will throw pocket sand, there'll be a flash of light, and then he'll pretend that the cause of this flash was pocket sand.
Other players know he's playing a cleric, though they don't know the specifics, but they're good at separating IC and OOC knowledge.
It's my own setting. There are two gods of Light, and he chose an evil one to worship. Why is that is beyond me.
This one is handled. His god's holy symbol is fire, but instead of using an amulet with a picture of fire, he'll be using actual fire - a torch, a lamp, a censer. It's a fun way to circumvent the need for obvious holy symbol, so I've allowed that.

Do you trust the player to not dick over the rest of the party? Why would his PC stick with the group?

Yes? I mean, for the most noteworthy one there, the Fighter diving in to a 1v5, and the Monk deciding NOT to drink a healing potion that would save his ass on purpose

DMs, how do you encourage your players to roleplay? My players don't really, and we might as well switch to 4e if they aren't going to, because all they seem to like is tactical combat.

I think I'll just allow it then. Just as long as his motives are clear & set & compatible with the group, like said.

I don't really understand why he has to hide his powers, he could just pretend he's a cleric of the good god of Light. That seems a bit convoluted.

But nah no deception checks unless there's actual confrontation and people are rolling Insight/Investigation against him. It'll just be cumbersome otherwise.

Are they new? Is it an issue for the game? Is it getting in the way of fun?

Just don't be lenient. Maybe if it makes sense make it so one of your sadistic/feral creatures (like a pack of wolves with one very hungry/weak wolf) actually attack one once he's KO.

But otherwise I don't see an issue, from what you've said. They're just playing the game and not being very good at the least important part of said game: combat.

You have to do a shitton of roleplaying on your own end and maybe they'll start getting more into it. Like, have NPCs do more, describe them doing things more, etc. It might pull them into it. You can also try mood enhancing stuff like music or whatever. Also, use the inspiration mechanic 5e has that nobody ever remembers - I don't think you should really mechanically incentivize them beyond that, though - it can get out of hand.

Otherwise, some people just don't get into it too hard for various reasons. Maybe they're uncomfortable getting too into character (embarrassed, etc), maybe their 'roleplaying' is different from yours (do you expect voices and stuff?), maybe they really just are into RPGs for the combat and problem solving more than RPing.
Switching systems can be good if that last one is the case, but at least ask them what's up at first.Maybe they're fine as they are, in which case no need to rock the boat (unless you want to play 4e...then ask them if they would be ok with swapping)

To clarify, I'm playing as part of the party, not a GM, they both have more experience with RPGs than me, if slightly.

Let them play their way, desu

If it's your second session of Lost Mines, it should be noted that the fight with the Bugbear is notoriously deadly. I've done that fight a handful of times now, and it always ends up with at least one dead party member, usually several. Not KO'd, but straight up dead.

That Clarg guy? We covered that entire place with the first session, our Fighter was unconcious the entire time during that the bugbear had shown up, and my Sorcerer was the only person he attacked, never landed a hit on me with a javelin and 2-3 melee attacks.

holy symbols can be disguised, AFAIK. specially if the God's portfolio promotes lies and deception

in a 3.5 adventure (cormyr something) there was a cleric of Cyric that disguised his symbol as a black disk so he could infiltrate a cult of Shar, that in turn was disguised as a temple of Mystra.

But yeah, is it bad that I'm worried about them, even if my character, being more or less a selfish TN, isn't?

I don't want to DM any more but nobody else wants to do it either and honestly I think the others would be worse at it than me.
Send help or assassins, either works for me

Wouldn't it be infinitely easier for everyone involved if he was pretending to be a cleric of the good god of light? People in the D&D world know what clerics are, and they know what the verbal and somatic components of spells are like. If he recites magic worda, waves his hands, throws a bottle and then casts Fireball, nobody's going to be fooled into thinking it was anything but casting Fireball.

I see this all the time where one player wants his character to be misunderstood by the other characters. This can be done well in that the pretense is natural and only comes up in the story in a dramatic way, or it can be done poorly where the pretense in unbelievable and will fall apart almost immediately, leading people to wonder how this unrealistic facade would have been maintained for any length of time prior to the story's beginning.

Better just to be up front with the rest of the players, and have them conveniently metagame as to not notice or care. Especially if everyone sits down and brainstorms ahead of time why they are working together and has reasonable motivations other than arbitrary dnd alignments.

Last thread someone was shit talking fantasy grounds and I just wanted to give my two cents. Since I personally feel for busy people with some disposable cash it's worth it.

I mean when it comes to VTT the only real options are Fantasy Grounds and Roll 20. Roll 20 only isbt shit if you pay for the sub and even then you still need to pay for any licensed material. Unless you want to import it yourself(which you can also do in FG) but I dont have the time to do that plus it also lends itself to user error.

As far as features the UI is a little clunky but it's not too hard to get used to. It beats having to write macros in roll 20 for everything.

I wouldn't recommend it to someone where money is tight. Bit for people like.me who don't have as much time.anymore who can only.play with friends.online and who have full time work fantasy grounds beats out Roll 20 and there isn't any other VTT out there that comes close to those two.

Plus it gets regular updates and the new unity version will come out soon with some good features. And the devs are pretty nice guys.

Do you work for Fantasy Grounds?

>drive.google.com/file/d/0B2bXgsHg7PtJNEdpNHBVRDVOXzA/view

I don't want to wait for the new UA and have decided I'm making a mystic from this homebrew. Looking at order of the invisible hand.

Do you guys think it's balanced well? Thinking of focusing on crystalline manifestations too as my go-to power.

Nah, just a fan. I get a little sick of people touting roll 20 because it's free when it's only useful features can only be used with a sub. And even then it's a pain to plug everything in yourself. And the UI is ugly as sin.

Id be happy if a better VTT came around that beat them both. One with a far more intuitive UI.

What's a good alternative name for Aganazzar's Scorcher?

My Blowtorch.

Eg. Balthazar's Burner
Or
Eg. Chandra's Lash

>old hippie plants leeks while a ninja riding a scooter made of dead bodies shoots lasers at an approaching hurricane.

I mean, like, to avoid giving it the name of a person on it.

Astounding Scintillating Searer.

Use song names
Hells bells

I don't know why I didn't expect a silly name from you guys.
I'll think about it.

Magician's Red

Just name it Scorcher then.

Fire Blast.

Flame Wave.

Combustion Cannon.

BURNING ATTACK

Blazing Discharge

>drive.google.com/file/d/0B2bXgsHg7PtJNEdpNHBVRDVOXzA/view
It just seems overly complicated at first glance.
The Psi Limit does not seem ruled by anything coherent, it's just a bunch of numbers. The amount of Psi Points is just ridiculous. I'm not talking about balance here mind you, just talking design. If you design a class for 5E that has "17" of something that is not HP @LV4, your design sucks.

Just look at the class progression table. It's a fucking mess.

And now I've just realised. Man... It's a 13 pages homebrew class on a 53 pages document. Can you tell me how many pages there are for a regular class at the moment?
Still not as bad as the 30 pages on the Witch class alone. Holy fuck people are dumb and ineffective.

I got it
Ray of fire

>POCKET SAND

Big Boomy Blazing Blaster

Duplicitous Incendiary Channel Kindler

I know that feel, so many PCs I want to play but no DM to take my place

Chandra's Fury.

In the SCAG, do we get a sense of what portfolios (rather than domains) each god has/represents?

Hexes or squares, /5eg/?

I injected a little bit of magical realm into my homebrew setting

the only elves are now brown athletic jungle elves

how awful am i?

Squares, never tried hexes

Well, most classes have between 4-8 pages worth of class and this brew has 7, not counting the fighter and rogue subclasses.

The limit is there to prevent "I'm going to use crossbow attacks until we fight the boss where I can one shot it with a 90d10 mindfuck attack for all my points." Which is kind of a bad design in the sense that it's there as a preventive mechanic, but if the disciplines had more exciting things to use at higher limits, then gaining new limits would have a better feeling.

The whole concept behind the class is to be a different spellcaster. More battlefield "control" and utility stuff, which I think is more fun than cliche wizards and mages. "Spells per day" actually makes less sense than power points, and keeping track of PP is no different than ammo.

i don't think you know what "portfolio" means but there is at least two paragraphes on each god in the SCAG, plus details on non-human gods.
Fuck, elven gods are boring.

Just as long as you don't force the monstrosity in your image into your games, shouldn't be a problem.
I think it's fine giving them a more raw, less perfect aspect. High Elves are meh to me, especially if you don't give them intrigue.

I understand why there's a limit and why there are lots of points. But I'm saying I don't like it, I don't think it's what 5E design is about, and I don't think this homebrew does Psions well.

Although to be honest i'm not a fan of Psions in the first place.

Hey everyone.

Lets say that I'm hypothetically going to join an AL game with a level 1 character... while the party is all level 5. What class combo will give me the best chance of staying alive long enough to be a leech. Preferably something that can actually do something besides hide, if possible.

Druid 2 Barbarian 3, Moon and Bear totem.

Enjoy resistance to everything and an extra bubble of animal hit points. Play Hill dwarf for even more HP.

You'd be surprised how long you can survive if you focus only on staying alive, with any class.
I guess Fighter and Ranger are all good from afar, and you should have plenty AC and saves.

I could be wrong but you should be able to lvl up fairly quickly, especially 2nd & 3rd. How many players in the party?

They sure are pushing out a lot of class option Unearthed Arcanas lately. I like this. Does /5eg/ have any complaints on the bard colleges and divine domains?

that looks uncomfortable as fuck

College of Whispers is a mess that lacks a coherent theme. Forge cleric is massively overpowered with a potential +2 to AC even without magic items. The new clerics in general have a lot of paladin-like abilities, which is risky because of the two classes' history of having a blurred line between them, thematically speaking.
That said, College of Glamour is dope as all fuck (as was the fanatic barbarian two weeks ago), and I'm glad they're doing this because it almost certainly means a PHB2 or class splat but with proper testing and feedback (very much unlike certain previous editions' splats).

That's a great build and I know it works, but it's getting PAST the first level which is the challenge.

Thanks for the good advice! The party is fairly large, which is good! However, it's very likely that this coming week would be a module, and those tend to be harder and quicker paced. If I get caught in a small enclosed area at least once, it could get dicey very fast.

What do you think about race?

basically, in my setting, the high elves are nearly extinct, their number less than 100, but there is very specific reasons for this. The "jungle" elves are descended from the high elves that went to reclaim their old lands after a cataclysmic event wiped nearly all sentient life out. Without going into too much detail, they went, to phrase it, "too early" and the latent magic of that cataclysm was still in the air, and it slowly addled their minds. Not to madness but to change their culture to one of elegance and beauty that the high elves are known for to one of primal existence with nature and some minimalism. Life was harsher in this rebirthed world so they went from high elves to buff wood elves and became +1 STR/DEX/WIS, rather than +2/+1, and obviously several generations of humid jungle living will brown their skin.

>College of Glamour and Fanatic Barbarian
>not College of Whispers and Spooky Ghost Barbarian

C'mon, man, that's just weaksauce. Also, the College of Whispers has a pretty clear theme: Dickass Twat. Sneak-Attacking, Face-Stealing, Paranoia-Inspiring manipulator. More of an NPC antagonist or an Evil Campaign option, but definitely a pretty unified design. You're a social predator.

If you really want to hammer home the survivability, Goliath gives you yet another means of not dying. Same for half-orc.

I should mention here, that I had some pretty good rolls, but throughout the first 3 levels, my half-orc monk survived so much punishment, It's a small wonder he even reached that far.
Fucking Relentless Endurance, goddamn.
Also, bonus disengage for 1 ki. That was also useful

Spooky ghost barbarian was the dumbest, because of its extreme reliance on very specific visual cues. This leaves no room for refluffing.
"Dickass twat" is not a theme, it's an attitude. The face-stealing has so little to do with the other features that I'm wondering why they felt the need to write such a needlessly multi-step ability in the first place.
Contrast to that Glamour and Fanatic, which have extremely coherent themes and great refluff potential (if they remove the radiant damage from fanatics, at least).

Either way, flavor arguments can be a bit meaningless, because they at least partially rely on personal preference. What do you think of my opinions on the new Cleric domains?

That's a really classic science-fiction-like backstory - I like it a lot. Modern D&D could stand to learn from that genre.

My biggest problem with the College of Glamour was that it was lacking the punch that I imagine when it comes to being FABULOOOOUUUUS.

Party being fairly large is not necessarily a good thing. It means the DM will resort to AoEs, and it also means less XP/encounter for you.

>College of Whispers is a mess that lacks a coherent theme.
That's pretty wrong. College of Whispers has a theme, and a pretty cool one at that. I had wet dreams of a party full of Mastermind, Inquisitives, Whisperers for intrigue scenarios.

Their main issue, which is OK, is
> Venomous Word demands 10 minutes alone with a NPC. 1 minute would make the feature 100% fine.
> Size restriction on Mantle of Whispers does not make sense
> Shadow Lore is awful (but eh, LV14 feature, who cares)
Basically a lot of "it" is about your DM playing well enough with these abilities, and his acting skills.

Man, Enthralling Performance is pretty effin fabulous.

So /5eg/, got a question. What would you say would be balanced for a Kusarigama? GM is gonna restart a long-term campaign soonish I think, and we're starting with new characters. Was gonna play a multiple weapon-using ninja character and I need to pitch him something for a Kusarigama.

When I think of a Kusarigama, I think something along the lines of a 1d4/slashing-bludgeoning/finesse/10ft reach martial weapon with the ability to disarm/grapple. But that feels incredibly loaded with shit. Any ideas?

I agree that it has a theme, but not all the abilities support it. I don't think Mantle of Whispers meshes well with the others.

>Can charm people without them even knowing
>Can protect himself from attack, whilst charming attackers
>Can implant suggestions in charmed targets
That's pretty elfin' fabulous if you ask me.

Yes, just use the whip stats like 5e intended. It already does 1d4 slashing and has finesse and reach.

Would anyone recommend me a 5e setting that isn't FR and is still medieval, well established, has available pdfs, online info etc.

I would've, but I feel like the main purpose of a Kusarigama is to bind/disarm the opponent which the whip doesn't cover. Would it be justified to just up the price of the whip and add on the ability to grapple/disarm?

>no room for refluffing
Whaa?
>magical wind whisperer
>self aware maori tattoos
>that one guy who's really bros with a minor deity

Fuck, you can even call the way of master strategist. Every feature can be attributed to you giving really good advice. Even 14th level feat is basically
>I KNEW that's going to happen. HA HA. You stepped into caltrops/got counterattacked/ stepped into a wall

>The new clerics in general have a lot of paladin-like abilities, which is risky because of the two classes' history of having a blurred line between them, thematically speaking.
PHB clerics have divine strike too. Which other features are you referring to?

"Make an attack roll against the opponent -- instead of dealing damage, you can make a grapple / shove / disarm (from the DMG) attempt."

Well guess I've got brain problems, thanks user.

Obligatory
>Forgotten Realms
>Well-designed

Disarming isn't really a thing in 5e, unless you're playing a battlemaster fighter. If you want to disarm people, I'd recommend a 3-level dip into fighter (which is kind of appropriate for weapons-expert ninjas anyway).
5e's philosophy is consciously anti-weapon bloat. Everything that isn't in the PHB, they encourage to make a refluff (they specifically say that a nunchaku is a club, for example).

IDK, maybe I wasn't trying hard enough. I still don't like it, but I'll let that argument go.

>Kusarigama
Use the Disarming Attack maneuver with your whip, either as a Battlemaster or with the Martial Adept feat. It might not be the prettiest solution, but that's the one I'd give you as a DM (admittedly Martial Adept is one of the feats I buffed)

Sure, it's fabulous, but it's only so-so fabulous. It's not Jojo-posing fabulous.

It's not Divine Strike I'm concerned about, although it's a bit silly that they ALL have it. I'm concerned about, for the forge/protection cleric:
*Access to searing smite/compelled duel
*Access to the defense/protection combat style (thematically appropriate, but still encroaching on martial territory)

I disagree.

Characters should be able to trip and disarm without being Battlemasters -- the key difference here is that non-BM's just go for the effect, while BM's get the effect AND extra damage.

Yeah, I'd probably go for martial adept to get that sweet disarming attack. Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Derp, I forgot about Martial Adept when I suggested multiclassing. Godspeed, user.

Yup. But if it's not a mechanical "character choice" it's less guaranteed to be even tryable.

Now if the guy is martial, I'd allow that he can try but DC may vary.

If the guy is a Battlemaster with Disarming, I've got no say in the matter since the rules are clear.

That's pretty much how I go with all that stuff.

Stealthy evil is the best sort of evil.

I'd try to accomodate, but take note it'snot entirely easy.

His holy symbol could be obscure from an obscure offshoot of the evil diety's place, and thus take a high religion roll to identify (which the chance that it gets immediately identified by a player, though people may not choose to believe whoever identifies the holy symbol or the two of them might agree to not mention it because whoever identified the holy symbol is nice).

If they want to appear to not be a light cleric at all, it's probably fine if they want to reasonably refluff it.
I'd likely say they'd have to have a reason it's refluffed like so, such as 'My character is a natural philosopher' or something, rather than just saying 'I shoot ice bolts because I want ice instead of water'.

.. It'd also have to make sense. I hope the 'fire ball' isn't a flask of something-like-alchemist's-fire alone. Alchemist's fire is nowhere near as strong. As a focus? Perhaps.

DO note a Cleric can use a components pouch instead of a holy symbol. That's probably what they're trying to do.

Technically it's better to use a shield as it allows them to cast M and M + S hands without needing an extra hand free.

Do you guys have any tips for running an evil campaign?

Is a dex fighter a good idea?
Primarily to go with a bow, I suppose a pair of scimitars or short swords would be in order as well, likewise for medium armor that gets dex bonus