/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General

Maybe if you're a 15 year old WoW player

I'd agree. I liked them thematically though I wish we'd gotten a duelist instead of the sharpshooter. Two ranged arhcetypes was pretty excessive.

I really like all the level 3 abilities. But past that many of them needed more work.

Yup.

>picking the option that ties for shittiest
You had one job.

>implying I don't run a 5E campaign and regularly post and lurk here
>implying that considering 4E a better edition means you hate 5E
>general faggotry
Fuck off.

>don't talk about thing in OP
No.

Completely subjective
I find them pretty cool conceptually, just not mechanically amazing
But then again it is PLAYTEST MATERIAL, so maybe you should stop expecting this to be perfect on the first try?

Definitely looks interesting. Gonna take a while to digest that. I will say that completely reinventing the wheel normally creates the biggest opportunity to make something busted in either direction.

I expect it to have more thought put into it than d&dwiki user. Nothing more.

>two uses
>magically conjured ammo doesn't count as magic for the sake of resistances

Even dandwiki makes better shit than this. I expect a UA to at least have the same level of consideration put into it as a Middle Finger of Vecna original.

And it does

Not really in this case.

I always want to use werewolves or other lycanthropes because of the mystery angle and having to find a specific weakness. It'd work great for horror/mystery sessions, but it's way to easy to metagame.

I actually managed to absue that fact once by having a one-shot where the monster was a scarecrow instead. The players were so confident it was a werewolf that they actually took the monstrous scarecrow from the fields while it was standing still to hide and tied a bunch of meat to it to use as bait for an ambush.

Reposting, but if I would recommend any of my suggestions I'd seriously recommend 'use silence to silence the bard'. Bonus points if the bard can't see what casts the silence effect so they can't counterspell it, and would need disspell magic instead.

Just isolate them, swarm them with kobolds and make the kobolds shove them to the floor, grapple them, disarm them if possible and kick the shit out of their body.
Solves every problem.

Eh, but
>berzerker
Trigger rage, then run. Repeat.
Makes sense flavour-wise.
>sorcerer
Trigger twinned buffs, run, repeat. Otherwise, simply just aim for them. They're the most vulnerable character there.
>Rogue
Pretty much anything that inflicts disadvantage on them. Use your imagination. Problem with grapple monsters is rogues can have very high anti-grapple rolls. I'd probably just suggest baiting them into running ahead of the party and then isolating them.
Makes a lot of sense flavour-wise since you expect rogues to be easily baited, and they run around a lot and try out all the traps.
>Bard
Probably the hardest, but you can run down their spells over a long day or, even better, silence them. Remember the 'silence' spell?
Definitely suitable against a bard.
>EK fighter
Great AC, pretty meh saving throws until they get indomitable.. And that's limited. As suggested elsewhere, focus on charms / wisdom saving throws.

>Just isolate them, swarm them with kobolds and make the kobolds shove them to the floor, grapple them, disarm them if possible and kick the shit out of their body.
Solves every problem.

Sorc can fireball / lightning bolt more than once. The party can tank the collateral damage.

i based it mostly off of the UA mystic, but reigned in the brokeness as much as i can while adding a neat little spin on how the archetypes ought to work. Way less 'psi' points too. honestly i think it might be underpowered, still need to playtest it at higher levels though.

Sure, the sorcerer can fireball themselves if they really want, and if they do it before they're grappled beyond being able to do somatic components.
And if it fails, eh. It's just some kobolds.

Also going to post the 'disciplines' or spell abilities. Fair warning: theres about 12 pages of new spell and spell abilities. Dont get scared away by the sheer amount. If you find something broken, just point it out to me and move on. Its hard enough to get someone to actually look at it, thats all I can really ask for.

Need a character that can blast and heal. Not sure if I should go for cleric with light domain or wizard with life domain via theurgy. Wat do? 1st level, party is rouge that plans to go swashbuckler/battlemaster, conjuration wizard, and moon druid.

Definitely not. Same for the barbarian. And honestly 2/3rds of the druid and cleric ones. And half of the Bard one.

why do you need a blaster? Bar d would work nicely for both, though a cleric is right at its heels. Cleric isnt as blasty as youd like.

not going to recommend the theurge because its pretty broken.

Light cleric or a bard X/warlock 2. Eldritch blast gives you more than enough combat oomph while you can heal fine.

My party got wiped last session, so we're all re-rolling. I decided i want to base my character on Kamen Riders. Transforming, flamboyant special attacks, that sort of thing.

After some googling, i actually found another user had the same idea a few months ago in this thread. The suggestions he got included playing a Eldritch Knight and using Mage Armor. Then seeing if the DM will approve of binding an armor and a weapon instead of two weapons.

Our DM typically allows reasonable tweaks to things, and has stated our new characters will start at Level 3 with one free feat, max potential health up to level 3, and a +1 weapon OR armor. Variant Humans do not get two feats so there's no point to that.

I wanted to know if anybody else had some ideas on how to make a Kamen Rider themed character with as little homebrew as possible?

You realize the quick cycle of release and feedback surveys is so you can give this kind of insightful reasoning to WotC to refine the content, right?

>A target within 100ft must succeed a Dexterity save or take 2d4+1 necrotic damage as an action.
honestly stopped reading there

>My party got wiped last session

I'd love to TPK my party, but make it look completely natural / random, and not like I'm out for them. Like, I seriously wish to do this to my group, but they've gotten out of every situation I've put them in (and really earned it too).

I just secretly desire to kill them all.

Too good? I had it as 1d4 before but was told that was too weak. didnt want to put it as a standard 1d8 because thats just sacred flame except it deals a worse damage type and it cant kill.

How to fix?

We killed a big bad and his crew at the end of a cave system, and on our way out we met a huge monster at the entrance.

The DM wasn't even subtle about it.

Refine implies the content is worth salvaging.

"Completely remake" is what is required for most of the options.

With as little homebrew? My vote would actually go to Barbarian - your rages perfectly emulate the effects of putting on your super suit and deciding its time to kick ass. What feat you take is up in the air, but some feats to help you kamen rider it up:

>Shield Master
>Sentinel
>Great weapon master

Reposting from last thread with upgrades.

This is intended as the final boss of sorts for the first arc of the campaign that will have the party at level 4, fleeing from an execution they disrupted. The fiendish construct will be dispatched to kill the vigilante that orchestrated it and return the condemned prisoner. It'll have a pair of down-graded hellhounds (CR 2) as a hunting pack that the NPC will occupy while the party handles the real threat.

Everything look in order? The party consists of a homebrew that can best be described as a valor bard with warlock spells, a Devotion paladin, an assassin, and an Ancestor calling shaman. The bardlock has a magical weapon as does the rogue. The rogue won't be catching this thing surprised.

That sounds rad, but my last character was a barbarian so i'd like to avoid that class.

I'll keep those feats in mind though, thanks man.

And since I'm a troglodyte, I'll remember to post the bastard.

If say Warlock for at-will mage armor and disguise self. Usually a better fit for magical girls, but I think it'd fit just as well.

Actually giving feedback instead of saying "this sucks, I don't like it" worked for the ranger. Try telling them how you'd remake the stuff, genius.

no its just horribly written. compare yours to this.

yeah im familiar with EB. How is it horribly written? I dont follow. multiple saves as opposed to multi attacks.

>The DM wasn't even subtle about it.

That's my problem. Every situation either the dice fuck me, or the players RP their asses off.

I don't want it to be obvious that I'm like, "yep, you guys are done."

I've been tinkering with a sorcerer homebrew as part of an overall remake of the classes.

It's largely going to be more powerful versions of each class, with lots of low CD or at will abilities to encourage more varied and tactically interesting ability.

With the sorcerer this means making meta magic not use resources, but limiting it to once per round. Also, you can use meta magic on other people's spells now.

Another part of this is making up meta magic effects for each of the subclasses. So what would be a good metamagic for dragon sorcerers, wild magic, storm, and shadow?

I have in every poll so far dipshit.

>metamagic on other people's spells

damn, thats pretty cool user.

>metamagic for subclasses
give them specialized effects. dragon sorc deal bnus +1 damage to elemental spell. wild magic rolls a d4 and gets a bonus to the next ability check equal to number rolled. shadow gets free hide check when metamagic'ing, dont know jack about storm so cant help you there. maybe change damage type to thunder or something? idk.

I don't really understand user either

It's basically just sacred flame but more range and damage but necrotic in terms of description and effect.

ok
>A target within 100ft must succeed a Dexterity save or take 2d4+1 necrotic damage as an action.
should be something like
>You shoot ribbons at a creature you can see within range. The creature must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 2d4+1 necrotic damage.

Oh, I think I get it.

You're making several attacks, yet they're save throws, so you might make a creature make four save throws in a row.

You should probably make it increase damage instead of gaining additional ribbons.

Oh. gotcha. i thought you were talking about the actual spell itself. ill fix that. thank you.

so multple saves are not the way to go? yeah i can get behind that.

Not really interested in Bard for flavor reasons. Apparently no one decided to pick up any good ranged options and while the druid can heal a bit they'll be to busy pushing people's shit in with their gorilla hands.

What's the secret to running a successful Horror adventure?

managing expectations and your players being on board with it being a horror game and adjusting their roleplaying appropriately.

Your players have to buy into the concept and you need to set the mood. Don't break character often, adjust lighting, etc. to keep things in horror mode. Keep them thoroughly in the dark about how strong things actually are and don't be afraid to make them flee from combat on the regular.

Well, it's awkward.

Sacred flame is a 60ft, radiant damage, 1d8 (4.5 average) single-target dex save with +1d8 damage every now and then.

This is a 100ft, necrotic damage, 2d4+1 (6 average) flexible targets (one to four) dex save, but then has multiple things.
It should probably state if you can target the same person multiple times and that if you target the same creature multiple times, they only make one save for all of the things.

It has to be a mystery as well. You can't just have the monster confront the party and murder someone in front of them. They wont run, even if it seems totally immune and is slower than them, and they'll just complain after.

Instead, you need to have them put together the clues from other crime scenes that this thing isn't something they can beat in a straight fight. They need to research its weaknesses and carefully plan their confrontation.

i can reduce the range, and change it so that its all based on a single save, like you mentioned. Im still not confident about the damage though. i think it averages 1 point higher than EB which is not a good thing.

>What monsters have you wanted to use in a campaign but were hesitant because they might be seen as cliche/uninspired?
OP pic related. Basic undead are the easiest enemies because pretty much anyone of any alignment will attack them with glee. They're pretty much fantasy punching bags.

I honestly don't do many mandatory combat encounters unless it's important to the plot. Most of the combat so far has been the town guard when my rogue get handsy or my (purposefully) retarded fighter makes too big of a scene.

I was always hesitant about using remorhazes, but then I just said fuck it and used them. Players loved them.

Dragons, actually. 5e dragons aren't very interesting IMO, and I struggle to create memorable personalities for them.

yeah ill just remove the +1 to damage, so its bse 2d4, single save for each target. range of... 60ft? 80ft? is 100 still fine? shit idk.maybe severely reducing the range is the way to go. say 50ft?

I wouldn't compare it to EB, because it's dex save based. Dex saves can be better than attacks versus AC, or they can be worse, depending on various things such as if you're using things that happen on an attack, if you want to disrupt concentration on a spell (multiple attacks is better than a single source of damage), if the enemy's dex save is poor...

But if it's supposed to be a balanced cantrip, it's not.

Eldritch blast, without agonizing blast / other bonuses, is usually the best cantrip in the PHB. It averages 5.5 damage per hit, the thing you have averages 6.
Sacred flame is pretty good, but only averages 4.5 without bonuses. However, sacred flame is similar since it's a dex save.

How are 5e dragons not very interesting?

I have the opposite problem. I find most types of dragons and coming up with cool encounters for them very interesting, but I just know people don't want to play a game that's nothing but killing dragons.

Makes them feel less special

yeah, i agree with you.reducing the damage is in order. would 2d4 be fine? or is the average of 5 still too high?

I hadn't thought about disrupting concentration. thats a very good point. more reason to not allow it to force multiple saves.

The effective way to play them seems to be "fly over, breathe, wait until breath recharges."

They're kinda shit if they get grounded.

The big fat dragon in Gracklstugh in OotA is pretty great

2d4 is fine. While it is a higher average, it's also less likely to roll maximum.

Have you read any of their Monster Manual entries? Legendary actions, lair actions, and lair hazards are plenty interesting, and dragons can easily have minions to add to a fight.

Oh, will say though.

It's okay for cantrips to be somewhat more powerful than others if they're part of a different class.

Eldritch blast is only gained through a level in warlock, and that's generally too much of an investment for a wizard to bother. A wizard could take two levels for agonizing blast but not only do they need charisma to make the most of it, it's two whole multiclass levels, so they'd rather stick with their 1d10 firebolt.

If it's save-based, it shouldn't really be making somebody do several saves a turn unless there are multiple conditions/effects.
2d4 is +0.5 on average over 1d8 (sacred flame) but it's fine if it's better since clerics won't get to have the cantrip by default. And radiant is kinda better anyway. You can keep it at 100ft and it'll certainly still be better, but it's not like clerics are going to multiclass to get themselves a slightly better sacred flame.

It's also less likely to roll minimum.
Almost always, 2d4>1d8. 1d8 is better if you have an enemy with 6-8 HP left. 2d4 is better if you have an enemy with 2-5 or 9+ HP left.

how is this, then?

Ribbon of Dusk

A ribbon of shadow springs from your hand, draining vitality where it strikes.

A target within 100ft must succeed a Dexterity save or take 2d4 necrotic damage as an action. If this spell would reduce a creature to 0 hp, they are automatically stabilized.

You may strike with additional ribbons when you reach higher levels: two ribbons when you reach 5th level, three at 11th level, and four ribbons at 17th level. You can fire the ribbons at the same target or at different targets. Targets make a single save for all ribbons targeting them.

Yeah I have, they all have the same legendary actions which amount to "see something, tail whip, or wing buffet to get out of trouble."

The lair actions are actually different but I think I just have higher expectations of dragons to be clever and/or overwhelmingly powerful.

I can make interesting lair hazards, but I can make those for any type of monster. I've thought of two specifically for dragons. A black dragon's lair was a giant pool of acid with walkways for its minions and shelves to place its treasure on. A red dragon's lair was inside a volcano, and it could hide in and move through the lava to avoid being vulnerable to attacks.

Minions really aren't that great unless they are immune to the dragon's breath weapon. What's a good minion for a dragon besides a guard drake or a kobold?

I'll gladly take suggestions on how to make dragon encounters more interesting than "fly around, breathe, hide until recharge, repeat."

Well, let's dare to compare. Here's dand's Samurai Fighter archetype.

dandwiki.com/wiki/Samurai_(5e_Archetype)

First, the stances are a good idea fluff-wise, but

>You can use a bonus action on your turn to enter a stance if you are wielding a melee two-handed weapon. The stance lasts for 1 minute, until you change stance or until you are knocked unconscious.
So I can grab a two-hander, enter a stance, then drop my two-hander and keep my stance? Seems a bit silly.

There's also nothing to say how often you can enter a stance, so I guess you can enter them all day long, so why last 1 minute? I mean, I guess stances eat a bonus action (reaction later on) every minute (or when you swap) but it just seems unnecessary.

The stances, mechanically, are pretty broken. You can deflect projectiles free of any action cost just by hitting a 16 AC, on top of Disengage as a bonus action? Overpowered.

Stone stance isn't very good and is poorly worded: are the enemies the ones 10 feet from you, or are the allies the ones 10 feet from you?

Fire stance has them making contested rolls whereas water stance has enemies making a roll against saving throw DC (which is weirdly worded). It's inconsistent.

Unlimited frightens (that last "until you end the effect," so if the effect ends on its own, guess they're just perma frightened) for a bonus action? OP.

Considering how often a fighter can hit you, water stance is going to force a lot of saving throws (compare it to Monk's Open Hand, where the most you can ever do with that is two a turn, and only if you choose that effect for both).

There's also two stances that give +2 and -1 to AC, which kinda goes against the game's design philosophy of not having a bunch of pluses and minuses to juggle around.

And this is just scratching the surface. Seriously, this is supposed to be better than the Unearthed Arcana version?

You could make them into spellcasters.

But really, that doesn't really change the fact that the most effective way to fight as a dragon is "fly around and breathe". Maybe the party would have to figure out how to ground the dragon before they can really fight it?

But nobody said better, they said more thought.

You can put out fairly uninspired and boring garbage without any thought.

>minions really aren't that great unless they are immune to the dragon's breath weapon.

Resistance, sure, but I don't think they should have to be immune.
It's always nice to see that monsters face the problem that they can hurt allies if they're reckless, too. Not just 'oh, I can ignore my allies and play without tactic because they're all immune'.

This is more of a general rule, but it's definitely fine enough if their have some close personal guards that are immune that stay with them a lot, while the underlings all much prefer to stay away from the big boss in fear of getting stomped.

Don't mind me, was just concerned about that one line.

>Minions really aren't that great unless they are immune to the dragon's breath weapon.
Dragon alchemist that creates moving vials of explosive liquid (like pic) that rupture when it uses its breath weapon on or near them.
A white or green dragon that drops avalanches/deadfalls on the party, using stealth rather than brute force to kill.
A white dragon that disguises itself as a 'particularly pale' silver dragon and demands tribute. When revealed, it flies off, and a 'gold dragon' comes flying in a bit later, saying how it just escaped from a dashingly handsome and powerful white dragon, would the party be willing to aid it in killing the handsome and dashing fiend.

yeah but dragons wouldn't give a shit about most of its minions. kobolds die in huge numbers anyway. cleansing fire and all that.

Rolled 5, 2, 1, 4, 3, 5, 1, 6, 3, 1, 3, 4, 6, 1, 2, 5, 5, 2, 4, 3 = 66 (20d6)

Hey, it's been a while. Some of you will remember.

Anyway, I want to troll you fags with more ridiculous bullshit theorycrafting, what's the skinny on the new books? I'm downloading SKT but I also recall that there was supposed to be a second monster manual to be released in November? It was supposed to include goblins as playable race? What's the deal?

yeah, volo. in the op.

Vol's? Vol's is pretty cool.
I like what they did with Yuan-Ti, ambivalent to disappointed about the rest of the monsters.

Your nitpick is true, and yet my reply points out how little thought was put into dandwiki's Samurai: stances that require you to hold a two-hander for a second and then drop it that you can enter all day but also only last a minute, with ill-defined benefits that, in some cases, are overpowered and, in other cases, go against the game's design philosophy.

Compare that to UA's Samurai and its Fighting Spirit. There, you have a feature with actual thought put into it, that lacks all the holes that are in the dandwiki's Samurai's stances.

I use the innate spellcaster variants to give them some stuff to fill in between those breath attack recharges.

Figuring out how to ground the dragon is not as hard as it sounds to a decently-built party that's actually high enough level to fight a dragon with legendary actions. That's how all my dragon encounters have gone so far. Once the group grounds the dragon, it's toast.

I like the ideas, but there's not very much there using the actual abilities of the dragons. Those are good encounters but not distinctly draconic.

A dragon giving a crap about its minions seems out of character unless it's one of the good-aligned dragons that's less inclined to fight a party of PCs in the first place.

I think well-designed lairs are probably pretty key to making them powerful. A black/green dragon lair with copious amounts of underwater tunnels and defendable rooms that it moves between. A blue dragon that uses its burrowing to ambush the party in an open plain, a red dragon that fights inside a volcano with plenty of kobold minions etc.

Well, yeah, that feature is literally "use a bonus action, gain a benefit until the end of your next turn, do it 3 times/rest."

It doesn't require any thought, because it mechanically does very little and has no dependencies on its use, or much going on.

That's also the rest of the archetype.

>I like the ideas, but there's not very much there using the actual abilities of the dragons. Those are good encounters but not distinctly draconic.
How is "pretending to be a different kind of dragon' not draconic?

So pretty much a converted version on Arrow of Dusk from Tome of Magic? Someone made a 5e conversion of the whole class and the spells (kinda lack luster). Here is their version of the spell convertes over: dandwiki com/wiki/Arrow_of_dusk_(5e_Spell)

>inb4 dandwiki is shit
I am aware, but figured since it's similar...

(Arrow of Dusk used to deal nonlethal damage back in 3.5)

It's close in character to what I do with rakshasas, and they're much better than dragons at being disguised manipulators.

*conversion

Also, I probably should have looked at your PDF, didn't know that was what you were attempting to do

>Figuring out how to ground the dragon is not as hard as it sounds
Fair enough. Well, I suppose you need to plan their lair to be interesting like that other user suggested, and never have the dragon fight alone.

You do realize that dragons don't all act the same, and some can be sneakier or more conniving than others, right?
Maybe this is why you are having trouble.

lol yeaaah. hahaha

I think you're missing my point. I said it's a good idea, just that it's not distinctly draconic. That means it's not a unique tactic based on being a dragon, and in fact several other types of creatures perform that act better than a dragon does.

I seem to be having trouble locating it in the megatrove. Could you point me toward it's (Volo's guide's) location in the directory?

So you are saying that some other creature would be able to disguise itself as a pale silver dragon when it is actually a white dragon better than a white dragon?

No, I'm saying that if I wanted to base an encounter on deception and mistaken identity, I can do it better with a different type of creature.

The heart of the matter for me is there's nothing special about a dragon other than the fact it flies and has a breath weapon, mechanically.