/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General: The Mega is Dead, Long Live the Mega Edition

That's just fanfiction at this point.

How do you try to characterize your races without using either A: Culture or B: Alignment
Personally, I try to give each PC race a quirk in their way of viewing the world. For example, a dwarf thinks that the shortest distance between two points is a line, while an elf thinks that water is wise for taking the path of least resistance. An orc goes into a situation and asks "Could I take that person in a fight?". A halfling asks "What would make this event into a great story to tell later?".
I'm curious how other people characterize their races.

Boring in what sense?
Tranquil is unique, and mechanically interesting, but i would be bored as hell playing one.
Kensei is a word jumble, but the idea is at least worth exploring, just a shame it doesn't do much overall.

Fug, I was just starting to warm up to FR.

Speaking of which, what's the best way to learn about the setting? I've never played anything that wasn't homebrew until I started DMing LMoP and SKT. My players are trying to get involved in the world beyond what the adventures offer (especially with the different factions) so I've been looking up a lot of stuff on the wiki, but that's about it.

What does that even mean? Eberron and Dark Sun are both official, published settings, and they're also really fucking good. If you can't come up with your own setting, just use one of those.

D&D doesn't have to be Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms all the way down, no matter what WotC tries to tell you.

I actually really hate when a Race just becomes a hat that a particular member of said races wears.In my present game ever single player thats touched a Dwarf and the DM always design them as utterly interchangeable comic relief drunks.Its just too lazy to design things like that.Of course Humans are supposed to be the "We do everything well" race but you can still have versatility in your non-humans

Here's to Wizards actually giving us settings to play and not just once in a blue moon good adventures.

>humans are short lived, and while can come in any variety, most seem either entirely content in dying without accomplishment, or want the world for their very own
>dwarves are masters of craft, whatever craft they choose for that to be. Quite often its drinking. Beauty is in craftsmanship, and technical skill, the WORK is what matters.
>halflings may only be half a mans size, but they are often twice in heart, if not in head. while their greatest accomplishments can rival any other races, they more often do them for the joy of DOING than trying for a goal.
>gnomes are inquisitive, and inventive... and often delve far too deep into what is possible, rarely stopping to consider what SHOULD BE, and caring only for what COULD BE

Is there a mirror for the trove? Mega has a quota now?

Current Mega in the OP is up, Meganon got a new fake email and Mega account for it, so it should be up for a while. Download or stash the files in your own Mega while you can, because as of now we don't have any non-Mega mirrors.

Way of the immortal was interesting because thanks to having d8 and no extra attack they could play with psy points more, if it's a fighter subclass ia going to do jack shit beyond once per day meh stuff because "you have 4 attacks, d10, action surge and second wind"

Why are people talking about psionics???

I'm gonna be honest. I've been SUPER hesitant to start using the stuff outside the PHB, DMG, and Monster Manuals in my games. I've been very slowly integrating stuff from the Player's Companion into the game, and that's after almost a year of playing it as close to vanilla PHB content as I could. Haven't even touched Unearthed Arcana yet, let alone Volo's Guide.

I have this innate, visceral worry about unnecessary "bloat" from way back in my 3.5 days of players applying racial templates from some obscure book that's only supposed to exist in Eberron or something so they can multiclass into a class that was introduced in some magazine and exploit some feat found only in the darkest corner of one of the "Complete X" books.

I know that none of the 5e content even remotely approaches it and I know that it's almost entirely an irrational fear, but I'm having a lot of trouble moving beyond it. I'm afraid I'm alienating my players with all my "let's stick to the core content for now" stuff.

Alright that's a good alternative, thanks.

I highly highly super duper recommend the revised Ranger UA.
Print it out and tape it into your PHB.

But, other than Warforged, that setting is boring.

Indeed. Best setting. Shame the newer versions are so watered down.

Yeah, that's irrational, and also the kind of attitude that got us the content drought otherwise known as 5e.

OK, so I've gotten my PCs through a short dungeon crawl, and now they're about to head back to their home town.

Where the fuck does my campaign go from here? I want to give them some flexibility, but they're the sort that need options presented to them.

>But, other than Warforged, that setting is boring.

>nega-litch elves
>Aztec giants with bloodsacrifice magic
>scorpion and demon worshiping drows
>elemental powered ships/trains/airships
>industrialized magic
>velociraptor riding halfling nomads
>non-velociraptor riding halflings who charge you out the ass for healing and other services
>banker dwarves
>Sharn
>half-elf racial supremacists
>dire-human racial supremacists
>warforged racial supremacists
>chaotic good magical queen hellbent on world domination.
>lawful evil vampire hellbent on world peace
>prophecies!

Funny, core 3.5 was an unbalanced mess, so thanks to your paranoia martials got the short end of the stick every time in your games, congrats

The person who had them run the dungeon has left town, stiffing the PCs on their promised reward for unknown reasons.

They will chase him to the ends of the earth.

All the while, build up that this person is actually a very high level character who has some sort of evil plan. Fill out every facet of the evil plan, but never let the players know what that dungeon has to do with it.

Finally, after they confront and beat him, they are permitted to know. he thought it was funny to trick a bunch of vagrants with delusions of grandeur into a death trap

Don't forget the lolipope, level 3 cleric, level 18 while in the chapel.

How is Storm King's Thunder? I've never GMed a game before and it seems to be the big "thing" they're pushing right now.

>giants descended from an empire that blew a continent to pieces to blow a plane into fuck-off orbit
>scorpion-revering jungle drow who ritualistically scar themselves with scorpion venom
>ancestor-worshiping elves whose ancestors are in a state of undeath and guide their civilization
>feathered aztec yuan-ti connected not to snakes but to couatls
>druids dedicated to keeping other planes from invading, starting from orcs being taught magic by a black dragon
>racial supremacist goblins trying to Make Khorvaire Great Again
>the illuminati
>the demon-tigermen illuminati
>the dragon illuminati
>the magi-merchant illuminati
>a continent controlled by psions who use worshiper's power to fuel invaders from the planes of dreams
>planes "orbiting" the material plane with their "distance" determining their influence

If you don't want to integrate the races into your setting, Volo's Guide is still great as a Monster Manual 2. Lots of great stuff in there. I don't allow any UA other than the revised ranger one (as it is where the class should have been at launch). If you want to eliminate bloat make the following things clear at your table.
A) Anything new (classes, archetypes, races) that you allow for players to use is on a probationary basis
B) No multiclassing. Seriously, that eliminates like 80% of your problems right there. The fact that it's a variant rule this time means it's even easier to shut down min-maxers.

8 INT wizards, 10 kobolds vs a level 20 fighter, 4e was good, diamond pickaxes, rolling for stats is superior to point buy

>minmaxer
>he actually thinks multiclassed chars are more powerful than singleclassed ones
top kek

>8 INT wizards
>10 kobolds vs a level 20 fighter
I've never heard these ones before.

How would you guys go about building a character based on this guy?
I was thinking wizard because of the high number of abilities known, and wasn't sure between enchanting, illusion, bladesinger for the sword - maybe just being an elf would do it?
Also, some fitting spells to be selected would be of help.

The best written module so far, but how you and your group like it always depends on what you're looking for. I think its great with alot of flexibility for a pre-written adventure.

I would start with Lost Mines of Phandelver though if your group hasn't played that before, it's perfect for a first time DM. You can then transfer the PCs over to SKT if you want, the book tells you how to do so.

>long term madness
>possible outcome is unconsciousness for ~4 days
>google 'feeding unconscious patient'
>a feeding tube or IV is required for a comatose patient
>that's impossible tech for dnd
>4 exhaustion levels

It's fucking magicland user, I'm sure they can work out a way to feed them.

>Players pay for a night at an inn
>Paladin declares he's going to sleep through the night in full plate armor
>Give him a level of exhaustion
>Entire table flips their shit and starts calling me names

20th level gestalt monk, sorcerer, death cleric and necromancy wizard and you'll still be fucking weak compared to him

full plates are really comfortable to be honest, the whole penalties for sleeping with them was so GMs could ambush the party at night, nothing to do with how it actually works. 5e doesn't have such rules, so yeah you implementing them is a dick move

Because that's taking things way too far.

I ruled that resting in armor can only ever grant the benefits of short rest, and in two years and three groups I don't think I've ever had anyone object to that ruling.

Specially if he didn't inform players first

So the UA ranger has good abilities, but it ends at level 5. Is there any more stuff for them beyond level 5 some other place?

>Sleep every night in a sleeping bag in full plate
>Get no exhaustion
>Sleep in a comfortable bed in full plate
>Get exhaustion
Maybe your players flung shit at you because this is inconstistent as fuck ruling

>I ruled that resting in armor can only ever grant the benefits of short rest
I do the same and none of my groups have ever complained.

>UA Ranger
You mean the stupid "spirit ranger" bullshit?
Fuck that. We have the UA Revised Ranger now.

>have to expend 8 hours sleeping before realizing you arent comfortable

I don't think the severity of the penalty is the reason your tables didn't complain, it's the fact that you laid it out at the beginning, rather than springing it on them.

Say your ruling on this is final, in your world armor is uncomfortable as fuck
>a paladin with years in martial training is unaware that sleeping in his armor will provide no benefits
Nice bait

Shove a goodberry down his throat everyday

I tend to tell my players when they do that kind of stuff what will happen.
>”I want to sleep with my armor on”
>”You’ll only get the benefits of a short rest then”
>”Alright, I still do it.”
If they complain I just tell them not to do it then. And this has so far worked perfectly. they know what they are getting into when they do it.

Oh right. Thanks

I don't like rangers by my players do, one was wondering about it

Neither do I, I prefer sentai

Alright /5eg/

Somebody a couple of threads ago asked about a drunken monk path, so here we go. No fluff because somebody else can do that.

Way of the Drunken Fist.

3rd level: Bottoms up!
You can spend 2 ki to enter Drunken Rage, or drink a bottle of alcohol of any description (DC 10)
While in Drunken Rage, enjoy the following benefits:
-adv. on DEX checks and DEX saving throws.
-extra damage ala Barbarian rage chart.
-lasts 1 minute, number of rages equal to number of ki points total, must finish a long rest to regain spent rages.
-Advantage on constitution (Poison) checks.

6th level:
Master surroundings.
You become proficient with Improvised weapons. These weapons count as Monk weapons and use your martial arts die if they resemble no weapon available. You use DEX for all your attacks with them.

11th:
Swaying Drunken Willow
When engaged in melee and in Drunken Rage, you spend 3 ki on one of these - sway five feet to the side, fall prone or bend around the attack. Your next attack deals an additional +1 damage.

17th:
Endurance of the Drunken Monkey:
Your Drunken Rage only ends when you want it to or fall unconscious. In addition, if attacked and you would go to 0 hitpoints, spend 5 ki points to stay at one hitpoint.

What do you think? A bit unbalanced, especially at the end? Or does it need a bit more?

No problemo, famalam.

kek

gonna play a yuan-ti rogue

which archetype should i pick?

Swashbuckler for that sweet +Cha to initiative and fancy footwork.

>his GM allowed him to play yuanti
whatever, you're broken from the get to go

it's in volo's guide

just like bugbearmont

He knows that. Most people are of the opinion that Magic Resistance is a stupidly powerful racial trait.

In terms of balance, punishing a character for always having armour on is ridiculous. Heavy armour does not have enough ups to its downs to warrant insisting they can't sleep with it on and heavily punishes someone who took the sacrifice of dumping something such as dex instead of int for fun-related-purposes (Instead of making braindead paladin no.50, they decided to have a clumsy one). In those cases, you can turn a 21 AC Paladin into a 9 AC Paladin in the middle of the night, and that's seriously stupid.

In a game where night combat is rare / very easy / players have time to dress because it's a raid on the entire town or something and not a raid on them then it might still be okay to do this.

Very weak. There isn't really a lot of benefits you can get from this. Say, 'advantage on dex checks and saving throws' is pretty limited for a level 3 feature that requires you to do some sort of rage, and advantage on poison is alright, and good to have, but too situational to justify the archetype.

Secondly, the action economy is skewed. Nothing has designated conditions or triggers or actions. 11th makes absolutely no sense for example. What on earth is going on? You spend 3 ki at any time to move 5ft, fall prone and gain +1 extra damage on the next attack?
Is it a reaction that spends a reaction after an attack? Does it negate the attack? Reroll their attack? Reroll their attack as if you'd moved 5ft/gone rone? And even then, it just seems worse than something like uncanny dodge. +1 damage is pretty much nothing.

This desu

i just wanna be a snek mayne

Well, except for Arcane Archer, the archetypes didn't change the way you played fighter much in comparison to PHB archetypes. Battlemaster gave you the option to use maneuvers, EK made you a gish, Champ wasn't very interesting but you can't deny the crit range. These ones don't bring anything to the table on the level of EK or BM, nor do they give you simple but powerful options like Champ does.

Monk is a little better. DESU Kensei should have been the whole point of the monk and martial arts should have been a secondary weapon at best, and Tranquility would have better served as a halfcaster that was an EK with cleric spells.

I like tranquilty as an option for low magic games healer.

Considering that this is basically the equivalent of a Barbarian's 3rd level Rage and scales up in the same way, it felt balanced.

Maybe also have attacks that send opponents prone have advantage.

Improvised Weapons could have a thing where you can spend a bonus action to turn a part of your environment into an improvised weapon.

Maybe replace 11th level with something like Uncanny Dodge. I was trying to simulate the unpredictable nature of a Drunken Fist master being able to dodge attacks easily. How about, you can spend 3 ki points to force disadvantage on melee attacks against you.

Is that better or worse?

Id disagree only to the extent that Knight actually does a pretty damn good job of defending other PCs without degenerating into a taunt macro spamming MMO character. I actually like it and think it can be better than the Champion it just doesnt stack up to what the the BM can do

Shit.

>>I get Innate suggestion and solid caster stats
>>I got Gnomish cunning but better because it affects all saves and all magic
>>I got Dwarvish resilience just better because im completely immune to the element

Yuan-Ti is such bullshit

Random ideas without levels

>improvised weapon master:
>You may apply a weapon property (such as versatile, reach, thrown) to any improvised weapon you use, as long as it makes sense for the weapon, but the improvised weapon is destroyed/bent out of shape after being used as such.

>Drunken strike
>While making an attack, you may decide to fall to the ground after it. If you do, you make the attack with advantage

>Crawling monkey
>Movement while prone does not provoke opportunities from enemies. You may enter enemies occupied squares while prone, but you may not stand up in such a square.

Maybe make it like Wot4E monk who can choose techniques from a list? It's called 9souls drunken fist, so having a lot of techniques makes sense.

Yeah, marks are pretty great, eh?

Too bad that it does shit all against casters this time around, but I guess that's par for course.

Oh, I forgot the extra damage.
The extra damage is actually pretty good on a monk who hits 4 times at level 5, and scaling up to +3 or +4...
They don't gain resistances that barbarian does.
Also, you'd have to specify the rage damage applies to attacks with dexterity.

What might then happen is a monk might take levels of barbarian to gain barbarian rage as well, and if they use strength then that's two instances of bonus damage they'd get. But, eh, going strength monk is enough of a penalty.

Hm.. Compared to Kensei monk, however, it does less damage, and the most attractive part of it is the extra damage, so you'd have to hope they nerf kensei's RAI or something.

So, patient defence as a reaction?
Maybe. It's nothing other monks can't do without spending 1 ki and a bonus action (less dammage).

The problem with improvised weapons is while it's fun and fluffy, it doesn't really give any benefits besides that.
Might be good if there was a bonus you got for using an improvised weapon such as 'if you attack with an improvised weapon, you can choose to shove the target 5ft away.'
I'm a bit worried about applying stuff such as prone as well because that's open monk territory. And +damage wouldn't be a good idea on that.

Shit.

First off, don't delay the most interesting feature of the class (improvised weapon proficiency) til six. That should be baseline, level 3.

Second, drunken fist is not a fighting style you do while drunk. It's a fighting style that imitates drunkenness. It is actually highly technical. Your drunken rage concept is both inaccurate and mechanically boring. A little conceit for the heroic nature of the genre is fine, but not this mechanical monstrosity

So here's where you should start:

Level 3
Gain proficiency in acrobatics and improvised weapons, which count as monk weapons.
Intoxication doesn't impact your ability to fight or do acrobatic stunts (this is the ribbon, the conceit).

Start with that, scrap all your other ideas (they're shit), and rebuild.

>It's a fighting style that imitates drunkenness. It is actually highly technical.

Too bad, we are basing shit on popculture, not Real Life(tm), and Jackie's character often drinks himself really drunk in Drunken Master 1 & 2 while fighting.

Sure, because he's an alcoholic. That doesn't mean you have to go full retard and make your speshul monk class a barbarian.

best friends play D&D when?

No, because it makes him a better fighter. The entire buildup in DM2 is that he gets a handle on his alcoholism, realizing he doesn't have to go totally dry as long as he can control it... so he drinks industrial alcohol to get drunk, and becomes fucking impervious to pain and the big bad becomes intimidated and gives the fuck up.

You need to open your eyes Moron. Feeling depressed, fatigued, having foggy thinking (and thus reactions), it's all symptoms of withdrawal. The reason Jackie's character got a power boost from drinking was because he was an addict going through withdrawal while sober. Any "power boost" he got from drinking was because he couldn't physically be at 100% sober. Having to drink to deaden his nerves is also a classic symptom. Since alcohol is a depressant, your body becomes used to not feeling things strongly.

This was pretty obvious in the movie, and you should feel bad for not catching it.

If you wanted to represent this in a class, the appropriate effect isn't a rage effect, or a booze tax. Just let them ignore the effects alcohol would have on fighting, and give them features from actually training in drunken fist. Aka, what I did at start.

But those are both ribbon features, unless you're using some unusual crossbow clubbing technique.

Aren'tthose all related to culture though?

I suspect you are trolling me but w/e.

He becomes a better fighter in DM1 as well when he drinks, and that's before he became an addict.

You could make an archetype about a monk who becomes more powerful by killing themself, but 5e wouldn't really be suited for it unless there's a vaguely logical explanation such as 'they're killing themself'.
Similarly, poisoning yourself doesn't really make sense for 5e unless you have alcohol magic or something. Which you probably don't, because what the fuck is alcohol magic anyway?

>such as 'they're killing themself'
Holy shit I fucked up
I meant
'Blood magic'.

Are you some sort of... Alcoholic Avenger?

Scouring the internet, looking for wrongs to right, such as someone drinking without any negative side effects (and a few positive ones to booth) in games of make believe?

i was very confused

Of course he does. The drunkenness let's him loosen up. The entire film series is a treatise on the insidious nature of addiction, and the end of the second film where Jackie loses his desperate battle with alcoholism is the lowest point. Expect a third real film, not an imitation, to see Jackie's character redeemed fully and clean sober by the end.

This is standard trilogy structuring, how is it not obvious?

Read my post here again,
Then ask. The blood magic guy
is doing his own thang.

Has anyone ever played a character where they Rolled 4d6 dropped the lowest, but put that stats on the sheet in-order of which they were rolled? Seems like it might be fun.

I'm just here to put the 'No Fun Allowed' back into 5e by arguing anything too unreasonable being in 5e, such as halflings with longbows or cantrips that allow you to teleport.

Usually what's done for that is 3d6 in order, but 4d6 is probably a thing too. It was more common back when stats were requirements for classes/races.

Compared to 'roll 4d6, assign', I much, much, much prefer it.

It's much more variable. If you let people assign stats, you get one character which could be identical to another extra that one character has +2 in their main stat. That's less fair.
In this, even if someone rolls 18 strength, they might end up with 8 con, which puts a notable character flaw you'll almost never ever see otherwise.
It's harsh, yes, and you can still end up with shittier stats than someone, but it generally serves the point of rolling for stats better than letting people assign stats. If you want to let people assign, just go point buy instead.

Also, make sure characters die sometimes / complete their quest and retire sometimes to keep things fresh.

...

How is the Path of the Ancestral Guardian?

If you want to combine approaches, do 4d6 drop 1 in order, and then allow a single swap at the end. That way everyone can guarantee a good primary stat for the class they want to play and still have unpredictable strengths and weaknesses.

Don't forget 8-int wizards!

I think the spirit ranger features would be good for the Shepard druid.

Stat me, /5eg/