/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General: Protectors of Nature Edition

Played in a one-off. Soviet Dwarves defend Not!Stalingrad from Nazi Elves.

House to House fighting is easy when a Giant Spider can climb over walls.

The Elf's teleportation circle is wrecked by a bear rolling around in it, and pissing all over the sigil.

We end the session with the Bar Brawling Monk riding on the back of the Bear. Arrows are flying all over the place; the Monk knocks them out of the air.

That sounds both hilariously fun to have played through, and incredibly stupid.

Like any good one off should be.

>DM lets you use radiant consumption with sun shield
Yessss

Does it add anything if there's an encounter? Is there anything between point A and B? If there's something that could be fun, do it. Otherwise, it's fine to just fast forward if the meat of things is at the destination. Need more context than just "two day trip."

Thanks for the feedback last session guys, here is round 2 of the Healing Monk, looking for names and flavor text if you are up to it.

Level 3:

Prayers of Vigor and Frailty

You can spend 2 ki as a bonus action to chant a prayer that heals an ally within 30 feet. For 1 minute as long as you are concentrating at the beginning of the target's turn they gain HP equal to your proficiency bonus.

You can spend 2 ki as a bonus action to weaken an enemy, when they do damage, subtract your proficiency bonus from their damage. If multiple damage types are involved, the reduction is applied to the larger damage. This reduction to damage lasts for one minute and requires concentration.

Level 6: When you hit an enemy with an attack with a monk weapon and you are concentrating on a prayer of vigor, your ally gains additional HP, half proficiency rounded down per attack hit.

When you hit an enemy that is affected with prayer of frailty, the damage reduction is doubled until the beginning of your next turn.

Level 10: Your prayers now can be applied to multiple allies and enemies. When you cast prayer of vigor you may use additional ki to cast it on multiple allies. Ki is expended as if you were using it on each ally separately.

When you cast Prayer of Frailty you can spend 2 ki points per enemy.

Level 17: Your prayers now greatly empower your allies and ruin your enemies. Prayer of Vigor now grants double healing if the ally was damaged last turn.

When prayer of frailty is active saving throw abilities from the targeted enemy gain this effect. "On a successful save, no damage or conditions effect the target."

Changelog: Turned Prayer of Vigor from 1 Ki to 2, tidied up the wording a bit in some places, and removed a part of he level 17 prayer of frailty.

How long was it between Waterborne Adventures UA and SCAG?

I feel like it wasn't THAT long.

Harmony and Discord?

SCAG has new racial subtypes and class subtypes, Volos Guide has new races, and the players companion has new races and new spells. If combined all that content could make for the majority of a PHB2.

That's actually where I started getting the ideas, the first debuff idea was d4 force damage whenever the target takes damage.

So I'm fairly new to fifth. When it comes to feats, what are some of the most commonly grabbed, and what are some of the all around worst (ie, the designated noob bait)?

Great Weapon Master Sentinel Magic Initiate Warcaster Poleaem Master are pretty top tier, though pretty much all of them when put in the right place are beneficial.

I feel like the weakest one is Defensive Duelist and it's not even that bad.

Lucky is good to have no matter what you're playing.

Elemental Adept is kinda shit.

Weakest feat is probably the one that just gives 4 weapon proficiencies

Now that I'm looking, there're only, like, 42 feats. That seems really few, compared to other editions

This is really cool, but why are you using proficiency instead of WIS modifier? WIS is better flavor-wise, and can be balanced to be roughly similar in strength to proficiency bonus.
Plus, you give your PC an interesting decision to make, max DEX and be damage focused or max WIS and be heal focused?

It's not even THAT bad though, overcoming resistance is big it's just no classes focus on an element like that so a casted will just pick a different spell.

wont be mentioning the ones user said but

Tough
Lucky
Dungeon delver

That'd be insane single-target damage with magic missile

Sorry I don't know much about patrons or anything of the sort, but when you say "where the demon lord has formed his new domain" do you mean the warlock's patron?(Fraz-Urbluu?)

If so, my suggestion is they should be welcomed with open arms, given an immediate escort and entourage straight to the patron himself. Reveal that they're his heroes(or just the warlock in particular). Try not to let on until they meet him, so that way sudden realization kicks in.

Feats are an optional rule, so they aren't as supported.

Feats notable have a greater number of features per feat in 5e compared to older editions.

That's why it didn't make it into the final cut, plus people would just play it off as hunters mark but cheaper and better.

Oh, that's bizarre. I'm used to feats being almost core to customizing your character. Also, the number of ability score increases you can get is sort of insane. Weird that's what replaces feats.

It's good if you are a Dragon sorcerer, but every other type of caster can easily leave this feat behind without worry.

I felt like having proficiency means they gradually get better with the heal over time, and I don't want to necessarily have them max wisdom at level 8 and their heals don't get better from there.

That being said I would like to work it in, maybe change the heal on hit to give a better heal with wisdom.

Make a random encounter table. Have one of them roll during the day or when they're camping. Have the chances of something happening is like 19-20 and increase chance something happening each day. So day one would 19-20, day 2 18-20, day 3 17-20,etc.

Random encounters could be just a dude traveling cart broke down and the party can help him out and he might give them a reward or bunch of orcs think they can man handle them.

The only answer for a monk is to max both wis and dex, though.
Proficiency also makes it more multiclass compatible, which I don't think is a bad thing for monk considering monk can barely multiclass anyway.

Level 3 is interesting. The heal thing is only really useful for keeping an ally from being unconscious, and it is VERY good at that if you can keep concentration. Good thing it's concentration. Otherwise, it does a pretty poor job of actual healing.
Kind of surprised of the wording on the weaken enemy, because it's actually correct. Since damage reduction takes place before resistances, you don't need to specify when the damage reduction takes place, only what happens in the situation where a target takes simultaneous multiple damage types, and you've covered that without going into lots of extra unnecessary words. Are you a wizard?

However, it does somewhat fall into the problems of 'requires ki to do everything' at this point, but the fact they're concentration spells kind of makes it better since you only need to use it once a fight, perhaps.

Level 6
The only real problem with this is a lot of fiddling over tiny numbers of HP. Too much micromanagement.

Level 10
Eh, fine.

Level 17
Again, too much micromanagement on prayer of vigor.

Prayer of frailty is starting to border 'this needs a save throw' territory, like bane has, but that would unbalance it and make it less favourable. Not sure what to say about that, but it might be okay.

>Oh, that's bizarre. I'm used to feats being almost core to customizing your character.

5e moved away from the overwhelming numbers of options available in 3e and 4e to help make it easier for people to just sit down, roll up character, and throw some dice.

>>Also, the number of ability score increases you can get is sort of insane. Weird that's what replaces feats.

You'll need them because gone are the days when your character started out with 18-20 in their main stat. You also won't be getting a lot of bonuses from magic items either. Your stats generally won't go far past 20, if they even breach that cap.

Hey /5eg/, I want to run Village of Hommlet.
Obviously, some of the magic items need to be tuned down to +1, but how much should I slash the gold drops?

do u like the new druid ua?

Just get Elemental Evil ?

I've handled numerous sessions where a morally ambiguous player inhibits the fun of a party committed to doing good, but a few nights ago I had to deal with just the opposite.

3 out of 4 players in the group that I DM for were intent on killing an npc. The fourth player refused to participate, and threatened to abandon the party above game as they saw it as what their character would do. This occurred very early on in my campaign and there was very little incentive for the only morally conscious character in the party to stick with a party of potential murderers. Ultimately the party reached the decision not to murder the npc after I began to offer incentive to keep them alive, but I felt like scum catering to a single player's wants when I was originally prepared for this npc to die if it came to it.

My usual expectation from my players is that they try and make characters that are conducive to story telling. If a single player was inciting conflict because they felt like murdering people, I'd tell them to cut it out. Can you apply the same standard to a goody two shoes who holds the rest of the party back because of their moral objections?

I'm coming from pathfinder here, and I'd like to know, are potions from spells still a thing? In my last campaign (which was a while ago) I played a wizard, and my focus was on learning buffing spells to make potions to empower the rest of the party. I can't seem to find the rules for making scrolls and potions in the 5e rulebook. Am I dumb, or is the concept just not there?

ay yo nuggas hows this for a rough idea

Soul arrow- Evocation cantrip
S,M (Any Arcane Focus)
Range- 75 feet

A glowing blue arrow imbued with the caster's soul is launched at a foe

An enemy targeted by this spell must make a Dexterity saving throw or take the caster's INT mod X2 Force damage

While this spell is a Cantrip it's still taxing on the caster, and can only be used 15+5xINT mod per short rest.

The spell can be used to fire multiple Soul Arrows per turn when you reach higher levels: two arrows at 5th level, three arrows at 11th level, and four arrows at 17th level. You can direct the arrows at the same target or at different ones. Make a separate attack roll for each Soul Arrow.

I'd make a Heavy Soul Spear version that hits harder as you level up but only casts once per turn, and spell slot consuming things like Crystal Soul Spear but this would be the base.

its really up to your dm

you can make magic items at the DMs discretion and magic potions are a magic item in the DMG

Magic item crafting isn't really a thing in 5e. The crafting rules and cost hamper that quite a bit.

Talk to your DM about adding better crafting rules or letting you use the Eberron UA artificer, which is a wizard that can imbue potions and scrolls with their magic. While not that great for flavor in comparison to the old 3.5e and 4e artificers, it's still a really good wizard archetype.

Ok, thank you! I just really like the idea of a utility wizard that enables the rest of the party, as opposed to being any sort of centerpiece in the composition.

You can, but it might not be the player's fault. It's the player's fault if they understood that everybody else would be evil.

Similarly, it's okay to have some conflicting interests in the party, as long as there's a good enough reason for them to stick together. While a paladin might hate the rest of their party for being so murderous, they might have a special reason to stick with the party.

Special reasons to stick with the party are good.

I believe INT mod x2 is a beautiful representation of scaling in Dark Souls.

utility wizards are THE wizards of 5e

an experienced party will take that grease/sleep wizard over Mr Fireballs anyday

The druid ua is such a let down.

Oh boy, another class option that is all about preserving the natural cycle of life and death, and gets bonuses when killing zombies. How creative.

The dmg bonus is welcome tho, and the fact that you can chose to add them after you crit makes it quite good.

You should have just let the party kill the NPC. No need to coddle the player.

Usually, I've found people who play goody-toe-shoes aren't too uncomfortable with being the only good guy in a world of gray (or black). They generally don't fuck shit up when they don't get their way because their character is a good person*.

It's usually the character who wants to exploit everyone asshole when everyone is trying to be decent that's the real disruption.

*This does not apply to Lawful Stupid characters who want to kill/punish everyone they don't agree with.

I've had characters who were morally disgusted by other PCs. When things got bad enough, they left.

I just checked, it was 6 months.

It's not the same, man.
I like the moathouse.

The paths look pretty cool and I definitely want to try them out to see if they're any good in practice.

No. They're boring. The one thing I do like is wizards getting their heads out of their asses and making a feature that can be used often. The teleport on Fae.

SCAG and Volo's are supplements in the Trove's Supplement folder.

There are third party options...Kobold Press has Midgard Heroes, Southland Heroes and Unlikely Heroes.

There is also a whole setting and game that uses the 5E rules: Primeval Thule by sasquatch games.

Dreams is nice, others are boring.

what loot can I give out for the party that is obviously intended for the monk?

its a little early for bracers of defence but I like to design my loot with my PCs in mind

It's good for an eventual Eberron book. Dream druids are basically Greensingers and Twilight druids are Children of Winter. And the Shepard is at least an attempt to adapt the 4e Shaman.

>>Oh boy, another class option that is all about preserving the natural cycle of life and death, and gets bonuses when killing zombies. How creative.

Half of D&D's classes are "wear light armor and cast spells + one or two other shticks". Of course there's redundancy. Hell, the only reasons Wizards as a class still exist is to justify D&D's traditional spell schools mechanic.

What's the monk like? Does he have a strong Chinese or Japanese flavor to him? Tossing a "reskinned" +1 weapon (the DMG has a table of renames for standard weapons to fit oriental settings) might make it more apparent that this is meant for the monk.

Oo Damn that is a good idea, thanks user

...

I'm trying to get away from making saving throws, as I feel like this monk would be great against very powerful enemies wih strong saves, plus it's a little more challenging to balance something that is auto affecting.

What I have been toying with is the addition of spell effects, as you mentioned bane on enemies effected by Frailty could be good but it adds a lot of dice rolling. Same for bless on Vigor.

Something I was thinking was Protection from Evil and Good and Hex maybe, as the level 17 features.

Also I planning on the level 6 feature for Vigor to be replaced with a reaction heal equalling double your Wisdom Mod for 1 Ki. But that brings up the possibility of maybe a monk who uses Vigor a lot will max Wis first, and a monk that uses Frailty more maxes Dex first. Eventually they will both be 20 but that lets the character come out.

>DMs Guild content
implying that's an option

Iteration 1 of a fire elemental warlock.
The language in the mechanics is more reflective of an attunement to the Plane of Fire itself (à la the Undying Light) but can easily be formatted to patronage to a powerful being of fire such as Kossuth, Imix, Maegera, Grand Sultan Marrake, Rorn of the Rages, or any other powerful beings highly associated with fire.

This is just the archetype feature spread, and doesn't include the fluff text.
Pretty satisfied with this as a rough draft - biggest complaint with it as it stands is the capstone using Mystic Arcanum (which I like as a component of the feature for various reasons) but not scaling with which arcanum it eats. I've thought of numerous ways to have it scale, but none of them look aesthetically attractive when I've tried to include them in the feature text - it ends up making the feature looking bogged down.

Pyromancy might be a bit much, I'd mollify how often that kicks in, or how strongly. Or at least not apply it to cantrip damage.

Expect a lot less buffing.

Many buffs require concentration, and you cannot have more than one of such concentration buffs active unless you're a sorcerer (in which case you can have two of the same concentration buff active).

Some buffs don't have concentration and thus only a limit.

Crafting potions out of those isn't possible, though.

Gave alot of thought to that feature.

It's very heavily gated by warlock level (something the Undying Light very much failed at, and served as the most brainless 1 level dip in a red/gold dragon sorcerer build ever).
Up front damage is considerably more valuable than damage spread out over numerous rounds.
If the warlock is using fire bolt, they're not using eldritch blast.
It can be ended by anyone's action to douse them (obviously action economy is a thing, but even a single hordling's action can do the trick).
In the early game it's not powerful, and in the late game it's very reasonable compared to what everyone else is doing.

That's the conclusion I reached from thought experiments - I'll be playtesting everything in about two months here.

The deal with bane is that bane inflicts a -1d4 to various things the enemy does. However, the enemy gets a save to avoid being hit by it, and can undo it by attacking the one concentrating on the spell.

It seems a bit unfair that a monk can go around and impose a notable -damage effect along with later reducing the effectiveness of certain save effects without the enemy getting any save at all, even if they can try to break concentration.

However, there are other effects that don't have saves.
Magic missile is obvious.
Heat Metal gets no real saves if you cannot take off the heated item.
Grave Cleric's channel divinity inflicts vulnerability / removes resistance or immunity, yet has no save and automatically works.
Magic circle has no save I believe.

However, protection from evil and good, magic circle and all of that are powerful because they only affect otherworldly beings, things that 'aren't supposed to be there in the first place'.

The thing is, a monk against 10 weak creeps could instantly nullify all 10 of the creeps by setting all their damage to 0 - they can't break his concentration now. That said, a level 20 monk probably deserves to be able to do that.

It feels like there should be some sort of limit to number of affected targets, some feature that doesn't rely on ki (or something cast with ki) and maybe... I think it might be fine to have no save, but just be careful the effect isn't buffed too much if it continues to have no save.

...

Oh, but, it might be an interesting idea to give the monk buff spells they can grant to other teammates, though there's the same old problem of limited number of concentration buffs.

Yes. All of them are better than Circle of the Land.

Why? All the content that is on that list is either from a UA review or Dragon+ article.

That's why I have such a focus on small changes small numbers and small abilities, cause there is nothing you can do against them.

Enemies affected by the protection from good and evil spell are very specific, and you have to be fighting those enemies in order to gain the benefit, hex is only d6 per attack that hits, and at level 17 that's not that much, but I can see your worry for this and I understand.

I'll take these back to the drawing board and look at the numbers, bring in some wisdom score uses, and keep the auto effect but maybe force saves for more affects.

UA isn't official or play tested. Its WotC homebrew they release so the player base will fix it for them

I don't like that the level 14 takes all of your mystic arcanum uses. That seems like too great a price, while also being too vague (what if I use all but one of my arcanum uses?)

It's also more dot, which seems boring when you already get one of those at level 1. Thematically there are more things to explore with fire than damage over time.

It doesn't take all of them - it takes one

So that's a type error - this is why we rough draft

>Implying my DM cares
Homebrew is homebrew

I wanted it to be able to melt through objects and spread over things and creatures, but it would have gotten way too bogged down in description and mechanics.

Thought about a flashy explosion, conjuring fire elementals, causing magma eruptions, conjuring a fire storm by maybe displacing some of the atmosphere of the plane of fire and bringing it into the material for a bit.

Biggest issue is departing from simple mechanics - things need to be described in concise and clear ways.

Why does that matter? It's material released by them for the game. My group uses both UA and DM's Guild material and has no issues. Yes DM's can not allow whatever suits them, but I know plenty of DM's that dgaf as long as everyone is having fun.

>No medicine proficiency
>No accupuncture needels

I think 'enemy makes save, still suffers from some minor debuff if they make the save' works well for it.

The only problem is the DM trying to keep track of all the debuffs and to what extent everyone is buffed/debuffed by it, but concentration limitation probably keeps it from getting too chaotic.

Just realized hex doesn't have a save either. Though, it seems things like 'you get advantage against this' target don't normally get saves (say, help action), 1d6 likely applying the same. The only oddball there is the 'enemy has disadvantage on ability checks of a certain type' but since it's only disadvantage instead of a flat negative I guess it's fine.

Well, anyway, I'm not really sure overall. You seem to be on a decent path already.

How about the opposite of the conjuration feature?

Your connection to fire has become so intense you can channel supernatural destructive powers. As an action, you can burn away inanimate, non magical matter within a 5x5x5 cube that you can see. The matter disappears in a six second flash of intense heat and light, casting bright light for sixty feet, and dim light for another sixty.

Endlessly useful, thematically appropriate, and rewards creativity.

>blows a hole in a wall in 6s
>melts a dude's armor in 6s
>destroys the base of a column in 6s
>burns up your waifu pillow in 6s

I'm in

Sup' /5eg/
How would you guys do a muscle wizard in 5e?

Cool. It is a level 14 feature, so I hope it is appropriately powerful.

Stormborn Barbarian. Get so angry and buff that you shoot out lightning while you beat people to death.

I like matter obliteration a lot. A little trouble I might have is 1) I'd want some damage component since completely ignoring creatures as the very ground they stand on melts away would be weird. And 2) stems partly from 1, in that if you melt, say, all the matter 25 feet beneath a creature, does it get any kind of save to either avoid the fire damage/get out of the way? I would imagine it should.

These issues are very workable though still - I think it's possible to word all of that smoothly.
Lemme make a draft and give it a shot.

Could easily require a Dex Save if it affects the environment in a way that'd immediately affect them (and they...escape it safely? Would be weird if it negated it from happening, really. Maybe Wis), and a Wis save if it'd affect them more directly (eg, annihilating their sword or armor).

checked

Now, something completely unrelated.
Are there any adventures or stories that feature Yuan-Ti? I plan to use them heavily in my campaign and have read all of Volo's concerning them. Just looking for more inspiration to draw from.

Most of the campaign has been laced with hints and serpent imagery popping up from time to time. The Yuan-Ti in my campaign are currently trying to infiltrate the large city my PCs currently call home.

Any help or even ideas of your own can be appreciated, thanks senpai.

>Are there any adventures or stories that feature Yuan-Ti?
Tons from 2nd edition if you want to adapt them. Bunch from 3.0/3.5 too. Can't recall the titles off the top of my head, but they shouldn't be hard to find with a google search.

I would just put in a clause about "objects that aren't being worn or carried" like most other effects in the book. They learned their lesson about having things that instantly annihilate gear and possessions in 3.5.

Are there any hints at an official Aasimar race outside the DMG's example listing for the race generator?

Aasimar are in Volo's Guide.

It's literally in Volo's.
It's also probably the strongest race in the game now.

Whoa, really? I haven't had a chance to look yet. What makes them so good? Do they get a bunch of free cantrips or something? I just gave them light and thaumaturgy and added a feat restriction so they wouldn't just be human clones.