/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General: WOTC can't into creativity

No trip on the namefag though, so it's not like he is trying to be THAT special. I never noticed him before so it's probably fine.

>being this mad that you can't even make threads right

im sorry for your hidrocephalia

We already have paladin-classic, paladin-good, and paladin-anti-evil, as well as DMG paladin-evil. Then SCAG gave us paladin-law.

Now we see paladin-law and paladin-chaos, and they're both evil. It's unbelievable.

Rolled 4 (1d20)

Rolling for dominance.

>>thread wars

THIS IS THE VICTOR

ROLL FOR MAGICAL ITEMS

Rolled 6 (1d20)

How long until we get our own containment board?

rollin

Why do people think Conquest has to be evil? Only SOME Conquest Paladins are Hell Knights.

A Conquest Paladin could conquer an evil plagued land and rule it, making laws that punish evil behavior. Sure the oath tends to evil, but it doesn't have to be.

I guess we're stuck here then

Rolled 39 (1d100)

Look at the way the oath is worded. If it doesn't scream "LAWFUL EVIL" at you, there's something wrong with you.

I don't care about thread wars and I forgot about the new UA, so I deleted my thread (which people should always do when there is more than one thread)

Could be a Dredd styled LN or, depending on how flexible morality is in your system, a Sherman styled character who wants to be LG but also stop bloodshed.

>Why do people think Conquest has to be evil?
Because Forgotten Realms operates on objective morality and the specifics of the Conquest Paladin's Oath are Evil.
>sow fear x2
>show no mercy x4
Somehow I doubt that the non-Evil method of sticking to this Oath's second part (tolerate no dissent in your kingdom) would actually fulfill the Oath (oh you said a bad thing about Emperor Facestomper, our jack-booted thugs will be along shortly to collect your family and their belongings and put you on the first wagon out of our territory; you are hereby banished and ordered never to return under penalty of us carrying you to the border again).

But that's what I'm saying, it fits more for lawful evil, but could just as well be played as a good or neutral character.

LN Conquest paladin is called Crown Paladin.

>2% Human Ate Dragon

>Implying every oath has one alignment and vice-versa

Who does these comics? They look like the same person who did the adventure guides for the various classic adventures which were highly entertaining.

Conquest is a ruler, Crown is someone who does what the ruler says.

Do I need 16 in dex and wisdom to play a monk?
Or would a race outside of Human, Wood Elf, Half Elf, Aarakocra and Kenku be fine?

Explain what you think Evil (and Good) means, first

You definitely want a 16 in one of those stats if you're going straight monk and not doing an edge build like grappler or armor monk.

>Who does these comics?
pic

>They look like the same person who did the adventure guides for the various classic adventures which were highly entertaining.
Yes, it's the same artist

>you are hereby banished and ordered never to return under penalty of us carrying you to the border again
I love this. Sounds like a Monty Python sketch.

You know the guys who wear black clothes, as opposed to the guys who wear white clothes.

Is crushing the hopes and dreams of an evil character an evil act? If so how evil does said character have to be before it stops being an evil act?

...

You could be a Mountain Dwarf with 10/15/16/10/15/8 at first level and +1 Dex and Wis with your ASI, but that's three levels of playing with just 14 AC unless you use medium armor and a battleaxe and pretend you're not a Monk

A were-rat has escaped and my players/party need to track him down. They are primarily a group of rangers/druids/etc so there isn't much of a challenge here really if I keep things honest. A thread or two back I asked for help on how to work this in to something more than just a toss of the dice. I got some good suggestions and below is what I have put together.

I'd appreciate it if you all would take a look and make suggestions.

Actually it is a bit big for one post soooo, I'll post after this.

Catch the Rat mini game

Tracking him down is an assumed success in general as the party is a bunch of Druids, Rangers, a Barbarian, and Wood Elves. The challenge is can they track him down before he gets to his warren.

Party has a chance to stumble upon his trail prior to returning to the village, check 20 tracking and perception. Otherwise trail begins at the village when they learn of his escape.

Player cannot make the same check type/skill twice
Player cannot make two checks in a row

[Party Begins tracking him, checks are 15]
A: Tracking Check (He passes over hard to track terrain)
B: Insight check (after following his trail for a short while guess where he is going, find a shortcut, he has to pass by X)
C: Perception Check (He was here, find the spot he stopped to eat at, raided rabbit warren ate one raw and killed a few for fun)
D: Acrobatics Check (He moves through rough terrain and the party needs to follow)
E: Perception Check (He was here, find the spot he stopped to drink at)
F: Nature or animal handling Check (Spot that birds have been disturbed by his passing, some are silent others are warning, he passed through here recently)

G: Insight Check (Read his tracks - He is aware he is being hunted now, success=reduce check to 10 for next three checks)
H: Tracking Check (He lays a false trail)
I: Perception Check (He lays a trap to delay them, expedient caltrops-thorns)
J: Tracking Check (He doubles back on his trail

[Party needs to tuff it out for the sprint at the end]
K: Athletics Check (Party gets tired, helps others)
L: Persuasion Check (Party gets Tired, Inspire them to keep moving)

Fail on A-F and move ratman one square forward
Pass on A-F and move party one square forward

Pass on G-J no effect
Fail on H,I,J and move party back one square

Pass on K,L and move party forward one
Fail on K,L no effect

Did the party catch him?

Evil is selfish; good is selfless. Most people are on a spectrum between these extremes.
In fact, most people are neutral.

Look it up yourself.

A Conquerer could destroy evil forces, destroy their hope of ever winning against the good, rule with a Iron Fist to keep your lands and people save while never allowing evil to emerge again. He would sentence murderers to death while bringing peace to the good.

Now tell me where is this evil? It fulfills all tenets.

Skill challenge? X successes, 3 failures, each person can only use skills they're proficient in, can only test each skill once per person.

>pic

I don't get it

The parts where:
>showing no mercy to Evil is Evil
>destroying hope is Evil
>forcing everyone to do what you say OR ELSE is Evil
and the implied >valuing your own power and ability to rule above all else is Evil

There is an artist name in the picture.

Kind of what I came up with, take a look and see if any other skills/checks stand out as good addons.

The artist's name and Twitter handle are in the bottom left.

...

I know who fucking did it, but I don't get it.

What is pic

Treachery is ridiculously overpowered. Like how could they think this is alright?

That being said, the features are mechanically interesting, but they need to be toned down a bit.

user, blowing up an orphanage because it'll kill the lich inside isn't non-evil just because you're only doing it to stop the lich from melting everyone in the kingdom and raising them as an undead army
There is no "greater good"

Expedition to the barrier peaks, a module for AD&D, where the adventures fo inside an alien spaceship

If they were dead anyway, then killing them and the lich is a good thing

It's not lawful

It is an illustration of an AD&D party's trip through an old adventure module, the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (which is a crashed spaceship full of dead spacemen and their technology + radioactive plants)

I was really looking forward to this UA as I'm playing a paladin

Was expecting an "oath of light" kinda thing with a focus on healing/undead slaying, was expecting an Oath of Arcana/Silence as a arcane paladin/a magebreaker templar thing, was expecting some sort of ranged paladin

Instead we get oath of edge 1 and oath of edge 2, both worse than the OG oath of edge, mr oathbreaker

The orphanage is full of currently living children
The lich is just in there to complete his ritual to kill everyone because he knows the good guys won't actually blow up the orphanage to stop him, because that's evil
That's what makes it a challenge for the good guys

>showing no mercy to Evil is Evil
>destroying hope is Evil
If you think this makes you evil you're retarded. Then every Vengeance Paladin would also be evil. Also only destroying hope for murdering innocents is not evil.

>valuing your own power and ability to rule above all else is Evil
Where is this ever implied? You can think that you can bring peace to these lands by ruling them "until a stronger one arises". There are many lands that would fall into ruin unless someone rules them who knows what's best for the people, most people don't know what's best for them.

You can play a Conquest Paladin just as selfless as all the others. "If I don't rule and show these people the way to peace, no one will."

>Oath of Arcana
What could this Oath's tenets be?

Thief-acrobat subclass for 5e, when?! Does anyone here know about a homebrew of it?

>Then every Vengeance Paladin would also be evil
That's why Paladins don't have alignment restrictions anymore you goof

Now how the heck does that shoulder thing work?

The point of Good is to try

Paladin's choice is bullshit. Either you kill the kids or you let the kids be killed, that's not a choice.

So as long as you try to save them, then if that becomes impossible you try to save as many as you can, then when that becomes impossible you destroy the thing that caused the situation.

As long as you don't give up and accept the circumstances whilst there's still hope, then you are good and doing good works.

>every Vengeance Paladin would also be evil
I mean, it explicitly says right there:
>Faced with a choice of fighting my sworn foes or combating a lesser evil, I choose the
greater evil
Granted, most Paladins are not extremely knowledgeable about planar metaphysics and don't know that being a douche IS the greater evil, so their ignorance protects them from that and the separation of Paladins from Gods and the removal of their alignment requirements really shaved a lot of the oomph off there.

What are you even saying anymore? Vengeance tenets would make you automatically evil if you would rule it like you did here . You say that not showing mercy to evil makes you evil, but that is just fucking false. Only the devotion paladin can't to that.

I'M the one saying that conquest or even vengeance can be any alignment.

>he thinks Evil is actually evil

Press thumb button to explode assholes.

Rolled 19 (1d20)

Can I roll on my phone? Testing.

Its not that you ignore the lesser evil, its that you work your way down. The dread lich is worse than the corrupt tax collector, that doesn't mean you won't get to him eventually.

>protect ancient arcane knowledge/power from the hands of chaos/evil

Alternatively

>seek and destroy powerful Arcane things, because they're like evil dude

Or

>protect the commonfolk against magic/ magical creatures which they have no defense against

Channel div could be like a concentration breaker and maybe a small counterspell or something, aura could be making all weapons within 10ft of them overcome magical resistance or something

Alignment still exists in 5E and is unchanged from past editions
Vengeance Paladins can do things that would make past Paladins fall because the rules for "being a Paladin" changed from "don't do anything Evil" to "don't do anything that goes against this list"

I'm loathe to suggest anyone read BoVD/BoED, the first few pages of each of those will lay out how Good/Evil works in a setting like Forgotten Realms in a more or less decent manner without having to take you through the whole text of 20 years of older manuals

If you don't understand alignment rules, you're free to simply not use them; 5E makes it easier than in any other edition. But that doesn't mean they aren't codified for those that do want to use and understand them

>make weird-ass non-ergonomic designs to players have to roll to figure them out and risk dying
genius

Paladins weren't supposed to team up with necromancers and their zombie companions because "killing this Demon Lord is more important right now than chopping this necromancer's head off and ending his mockery of life". That's an example of "working your way down" to the lesser evil, and only now is it allowed to fly in 5E for Vengeance Paladins.

>B-but you don't know what alignment is
Holy shit, just tell me how could a Venceance Paladin ever by good in your opinion if one of its tenets is "No Merey for the Wicked. Ordinary foes might win my mercy, but my sworn enemies do not".

How is killing the red Dragon who enslaves a whole Kingdom and his kobolt minions considered evil? You know what? It isn't. It never was and it never will be.

Let's say I'm a powerful wizard with ambiguous morality who wishes to conquer the world. I have at my disposal the ability to create a unique humanoid race to fill the ranks of my armies. Naturally, this hypothetical race will be superior to all the natural-born PC races, and will contain the useful attributes of those races. Mechanically, this will be OP as fuck, and will not make for fair and balanced play on the table, but it could be an irritating advesary for any party. But maybe, for once, the elves won't feel like such hot shit in comparison. What would this race look like? What features would it have? What would you call it? Consider this the logical result of designer genetics where survival and martial prowess are the end goal.

First you must ask yourself, do you really want there to be a possibility of failure? Do you want them to get stuck because they didn't solve the problem your way, especially if the PCs have magic and other abilities that should let them track an enemy automatically?

Personally, if I were a wererat running from adventurers, I'd hide in plain sight. Go into a city, establish a human identity and get some people to vouch for me, and get whatever local watchmen or militia involved if the adventurers try to start shit.

Nobody liked skill challenges in 4e and they won't like them today.

Showing mercy is a Good act
You're supposed to try and redeem Evil, not just stab it in the throat when it's lying there at your mercy because it's easy or you're afraid of getting betrayed later
That's why true Good is hard

Yeah you're right. But it still doesn't make you evil. It is just a different kind of good.

If killing objectively evil creatures was evil, then there would be almost no good adventurers.

So are you making a race with no limitations on what it can get? As many stat increases and racial bonuses as can be squeezed in there? Because taht will be boring and OP and easy to make.

Honestly, I can easily see an Oath of Conquest Paladin fitting right into the Harmonium from Planescape or the Hellknights from Pathfinder. Definitely not good from an outsider's perspective, but certainly capable of believing that what they do is "for the greater good".

Am I supposed to feel like Treachery Paladins have nothing explicitly evil about them? Charm Person and Dominate Person were the only things I think I'd avoid.

Killing objectively Evil creatures isn't Evil
Killing a pile of Always-for-the-sake-of-generalizations-but-not-elementally-Evil orc babies, for instance, is Evil
Killing demons is not Evil
And either way, if you can kill them in a way that isn't Evil (walk up to their face, announce your intent to stop them, and immediately sword them through the brain when they begin to fight) and prevents them from asking for mercy because they're dead already, hey, no problems here

You also have to remember that Good PCs can do Evil things all the time
Alignments are an average
It's more Evil if you do something Evil while super Good, but you can still do enough Good things to keep being Good

Considering their poisons kill instead of debilitating, yes.

was for , oops. Fuck you, I'm not deleting and reposting.

Enough to be annoying, I'd say. Think of this as a mental exorcise. Instead of just taking everything good from the phb, take some of the good things. At most 3 asi's would be good.

I totally agree with you now. But this still doesn't make a Conquest Paladin evil.

Like I said he has some things that make him tend towards evil, but he can just be as selfless as the other oaths and do what he does for the greater good.

There are as many answers to that question as there are humanoid races, each one of which is the product of a god (considerably stronger than most wizards) creating his or her idea of a perfect life form. A few other species are usually said to be the product of mortal spellcasters dicking around with nature, and the results are as varied as the chuul, the achaierai, and the owlbear.

There's no such thing as a perfect design. Whether it's the product of artifice or evolution, the value of every design is relative to the environment where it will be used. If you take every feature that works in one application and mash them all together, you'll get an unfocused mess that can't compete with specialists or with more efficient generalists.

Dude can you shut up about your goddamn character. For months you keep posting about it.

I know, especially the ayylmao gun in looks like it's purposefully designed to shoot you in the face if you hold it the "normal" way (pointy antenna assumed to be where the laser originates).

"Cowing innocents" and "bringing despair" (eliminating hope) are Evil, though
That's #1 and #2 for Conquest, even the non-Hellknights

I'm not playing that. You must be confused.

It might be a different user. "Playing one character class pretending to be another" is a practice common to a lot of bad players.

Is all hope necessarily good? Ambition is another form of hope, and is more than capable of evil. Convincing an invading horde that they have no chance of victory or of attaining their goals can be construed as eliminating hope.

>he has never experienced the subtle joys of the Fighter Rogue

>"Cowing innocents" and "bringing despair"
But that isn't implied by destroying hope at all. If you destroy the hope lets the the evil red dragon that is, again, not evil if the dragon hopes to rule over all mortals and wants to use them for his own benefit.

All the tenets can be interpreted in multiple ways.

If you convince them they can't win, that they should turn around and go home, no, that's fine
If you convince them they can't win, that they should turn around and go home, and that they should never try again because you will effortlessly lay waste to their legions and there is absolutely no circumstance where their evil designs will ever progress even the slightest bit, and that they should spend the rest of their miserable lives in their dank holes hoping to stay beneath the notice of your all-consuming wrath, then yes, that's despair and that's Evil
The last one is also what Conquest wants to do
I'm not sure how anyone reads that class and thinks "oh he's just a bit of a hardass but he's not unreasonable"

I still think that skill chalanges are kinda lame.

and where in
>It is not enough to merely defeat an enemy in battle. Your victory must be so overwhelming that your enemies’ will to fight is shattered forever. A blade can end a life. Fear can end an empire.
did you get the miserable lives in dank holes, all-consuming wrath, etc? All it says is that you should break their will to fight through fear.

You're extrapolating far beyond the listed description of the class as to what you think the tenets mean. Both the example you consider fine and the one that you consider evil are viable.

>If you convince them they can't win, that they should turn around and go home, and that they should never try again because you will effortlessly lay waste to their legions and there is absolutely no circumstance where their evil designs will ever progress even the slightest bit, and that they should spend the rest of their miserable lives in their dank holes hoping to stay beneath the notice of your all-consuming wrath, then yes, that's despair and that's Evil

>implying doing this to absolutely terrible people is Evil
>implying Evil shouldn't have punishment if they simply ask for mercy at the end
>implying you can even trust Evil to never be Evil again after you defeat them