/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General

I mean guns

Making a rough-and-tumble Explorer cleric.

Thoughts?

Variant Human, Magic Initiate- Wizard (Prestidigitation, Mold Earth, Find Familiar)

Cleric 1, (Life)
UA Ranger 3, Underdark

From there I'm undecided on if I should go all Cleric, or potentially pumping Ranger to 5 for Extra Attack and a Level 2 Ranger spell.

Also what weapon should I use? Heavy Crossbow seems the obvious choice for an explorer as a stand-in Musket.

Or earlier, or later. Greyhawk canonically has Zeppelins in it, those are a middle-industrial-age invention.

>Also what weapon should I use?
war. pick.

I think you mean gunpowder weapons. But thats just the default setting. People running home games are free to do whatever they want with the tech level.

I don't understand what you're trying to say.

keep reading

...I'm guessing the ghost of some Reb cavalryman has learned that his descendant is black?

5egmegaanon.github.io/5etools/classes.html

Early version of classes. It needs work on sorting and accessibility (especially for subclasses) but all the info is displayed, at least. I'll work on it more tomorrow.

>War Pick

>Do you include matchlock guns in your setting?

I got one in the AL. But it sucks

>Ghost refers to his family as "the Stuart name"
>Only guy in tank crew with name "stuart" is black
Congrats, you figured it out!

I'm planning a character that will dip into every class at some point. What are worthwhile classes that deserve a double/triple dip?

I mean, is that the entire comic, or...? Google is coming up with something called "Haunted Tank", but not a lot on it.

If you play a published adventure yes, but it doesn't have to. You can refluff the phb weapons to be from almost any era where people used swords, and people have used swords much longer than they've used guns. If you add guns and want to add increasing levels of technology as time goes on then relatively speaking you have a very short time before it becomes modern.

Yes that is one page of a full comic, but you only summed up the joke on that one page.
Pretty much the entire thing is racism jokes.

>then relatively speaking you have a very short time before it becomes modern.

You've probably got at least a good 400-500 years to work with, or longer, and that's assuming that technology advances at the same pace it did on Earth (there is no guarantee of that in the slightest). How many campaigns take place over that kind of time period?

i'm not that user, but on earth guns were in wide use way before the advent of plate armor. hell, they existed in europe before that even, i'm not just talking about china.

The DMG has rules for Renn. era firearms that are actually setting appropriate for a world where the technology is actually well into when Guns were available and pretty reliable.

>Do you include matchlock guns in your setting?

Yes, but often they are rare because they are sold in a far off kingdom almost impossible to travel to. This way I can get away with only the nobles having guns and put enemies with them here and there.

As an expansion to this, the earliest mention of firearms in Russia dates to 1382, where Muscovites used firearms to defend against the Golden Horde. Around the 13th century (1200s), Italy was already making use of hand-canons; and the earliest surviving firearm from Europe dates to 1396 (it was found in Estonia).

Plate armor reached its peak in the 15th and 16th centuries, though complete suits of plate armor as we'd recognize them were in use starting around the early 1400s, which in either case makes it a contemporary of European firearms.

Hello guys I'm kinda of a new DnD player and been playing a campaign with friends for a little more than half a year now. I'm a ranger who focuses on damage where ever I can and I'm starting to realize that Bows don't do nearly as much damage as the magic casters can do. Our sorcerer is mostly utility and can easily out damage me with his spells which is a good thing because we need it. Though I'm wondering if there are any way other people have attempted to up the dps on their bow focused character without the use of crazy enchantments or just buying a better +1-3 bow?

>400-500 years; How many campaigns take place over that kind of time period?

My setting is currently 300 years older than the first time someone played in it. I think using the same setting for multiple campaigns and multiple groups of players is neat. I feel like gun powder is sort of a point of no return because eventually someone will want to play a gun smith or want grenades and the development of those types of characters usually involves making better guns or bigger explosions. NPCs will notice the new technology and be willing to pay for it, which means the world as a whole advances technologically. A exceptionally rare and powerful magical sword might shape a region, but guns change the world. It might sound silly to make that comparison in a world where magic is real and gods have quantifiable influence but it would break my immersion if guns were not the best weapon at a certain point.

Sharpshooter is about it, for comparing with casters you need to keep in mind they are using a resource while you can shoot arrows all day every day.

Got Sharpshooter? Use Sharpshooter and do more damage all the time than a Sorceror can do with his X couple times a day spells the best of which will have a hard keeping up with your +20 damage twice a round shots

Yeah they original designers didnt realize that a lot of the stuff they put in the game was from a much later time period and would have existed in the Pike and Shot era

What do y'all think of this? My first take on adapting the Chronomental from the Tome of Beasts. It's probably higher CR than 9, I haven't done all the math yet, but I wanted to get some opinions on it.

Yeah I have sharpshooter the only thing is I usually have shit rolls so I don't activate it because it'd cause me to miss.

That is a fair point that I can just spam arrows. But my arrows usually do between 10-18 damage , I can obviously do more if I get a crit or get higher rolls that's just the average, that's usually including colossus damage. but when our caster use a spell and does in the 50+ I feel kinda useless.

Want to try playing with some friends. None of us have ever played D&D. Should we play on some online platform (though still in person)? How do we do this?

> I think using the same setting for multiple campaigns and multiple groups of players is neat.

I do too, but I also recognize that the world is a big place and I don't have to necessarily advance the timeline just to make sure that the previous campaign never intersects with the subsequent one.

I mean, Europe doesn't *look* that big, but according to D&D rules going from Madrid to Moscow (2,138 miles) would take about 89 days on foot (and that's assuming you've got flat, open land the entire way...which you don't).

What resources do you guys use as a DM? It's my first time and I've got everything I need written out on paper but want to know if there's something easier to use.

That's the idea of casters (particularly wizards). If you want to feel more useful, go Battlemaster 3 so you maneuver die to manipulate the battlefield. But casters wind down and get weaker the longer the day goes on - they might get big impressive shows of damage, but you'll do more damage more consistently on a per-round basis.

Get the starter set, nominate a DM, play through Lost Mines of Phandelver. If you can meet in person don't bother with online shit.

Yeah but how do we represent areas etc.

my dm uses onenote

>those are a middle-industrial-age invention
More like late industrial age. The first rigid air ship (and Zeppelin) was made in 1899, the first car as we know it was made around 1885 (fully mechanized vehicle with an internal combustion engine). So yeah cars are older than Zeppelins, airplanes are only slightly younger.

Seconding OneNote here. It's a fantastic tool for DMs.

Gothic plate armor yes, but people have made armor from plates of metal since ancient Greece.

You can buy a big ol dry erase map at most local game stores (or order it online). Get some dry erase markers, and the DM can draw on it as they please. Or just do theater of the mind (no map, nothing but paper and dice).

That face at the bottom is a perfect reaction image.

Some like having a map and figurines to represent each character, but 5e is simple enough that you can easily just rely on descriptions.

Thirding, that shit is insane.

I think a map is a must, but I feel like doing that bit digitally would be way quicker and easier.

which aren't what is represented by plate mail in the phb.
if you want another example, rapiers were invented way after guns.
i'm not telling you how to play the game, hell, i don't include guns in my game. but i'm just saying the phb inventory isn't indicative of any particularly accurate time period in human history.

Anyone tried the Arcane Archer? I really want to play one as my next character

so I'd have to duel class into fighter to get that right?

Sharpshooter tacks on +10 damage you also get +3-5 from your Dex 1D8 from the attack and 1D8 from CS. Thats an average of about 22 damage a hit all for an occasional miss that could be easily compensated for by a magic weapon which will also up your damage to 23-25. this means on a single round you should be able to put out 46 damage from range for no resource cost but arrows. With a Magic bow making attacks more reliable and maybe Hunters Mark you should be bumping 50 a round Sure you might miss now and then but generally attack outpaces AC and the +!0 damage vastly surpasses the occasional miss

I see. So the route to go would be buffing myself and damage per attack and not worry about the accuracy.
Note that we're all around level 11 and I have very little enchanted gear.

I've never really used OneNote before, what's great about it? Any tips to get started with it?

Some of my players want to play the child of their previous characters who got a happy ending so it's not always arbitrary.

The industrial age lasts until around the advent of personal computers, which is either 1975 or 1980 (depending on how much credit you want to give to IBM). The industrial age started, meanwhile, around 1820 or so.

So pegging the beginning at 1820 and the end at 1975 makes the industrial age last about 155 years. Zeppelins launching in 1899 would be 76 years into the industrial age, which is in fact almost exactly halfway through the industrial age.

(Properly speaking there's actually an argument to be made that the industrial age is still going on, though I'm not in that camp)

It certainly could be, but the map adds a fun layer of tactile feedback for everyone involved. You lose a lot of the charm of the game if you're all hovering over and looking at your laptops instead of each other.

Yes

i'm making a few homebrew classes

except they don't have archetypes, they're basically one build each

do i still call them classes?

It's free, allows for a lot of organization, you can embed all types of media directly, draw over everything, organize notes on a page how you want. It's got cloud-sync so you can use it on multiple systems and even access it on a phone.

I've used Wikis and Evernote and OneNote is far ahead of both in terms of usability and feature set.

No opinions?

*Oops, 79 years. Terrible math fail, mea culpa. It's still very close to the actual halfway point, however.

I know all this because of my senior class paper for high school. My thesis was on the modern-day commercial applications of Zeppelins, dirigibles, and other rigid airships, which necessarily involved going into the history of Zeppelins.

I absolutely should not have done as well on that paper as I did, particularly since it was a paper we were supposed to be working on for the entire year but which in fact I only did the day before it was due. Got an A minus.

My working theory is that everyone else was doing papers on depressing stuff like wars and death and disease and we're running out of oil and blah blah blah, and then suddenly the teacher turns to my paper which basically had the premise of "ZEPPELINS ARE AWESOME", and it was such a pick-me-up that she graded it more favorably than she might have in isolation.

But, hey, an A- is an A-, no matter how it's earned.

Pretty much. There isnt a whole lot you have to do other than use Sharpshooter. I assume you have Archery as your fighting style and a magic weapon to compensate for the hit penalty. Hunters Mark can work and can last pretty much all day as a 3rd level spell

Yes? What else are you going to call them?

Boring.

CritterDB, I think

Just got hunters mark on my last level up haven't had a chance to use it yet. So the big thing is getting a really good enchanted bow?

The rapier may have been invented after guns, but stabbing swords have been used in warfare for thousands of years.
D&D is not a good system for historical accuracy. The weapon table is a good example of that, but all the entries on the weapon and armor tables would be available in some form from antiquity. Guns are not like that. I couldn't run a bronze age campaign with guns in it because it would break my immersion.

There is nothing remotely resembling plate armor in antiquity.

A bronze longsword would be too heavy to use and would shatter or bend irreparably after just a few swings anyway.

Fucking bronze age crossbows? What?!

>Just got hunters mark on my last level up
You get that at level 2 though. Did you go 2-10 without it?

I know the US pioneers averaged around 12 miles per day which doubles that 89 days. 2138 miles in 89 days would require right around 24 miles a day, or 8 hours of walking 3mph which isn't particularly unreasonable either.

yea I got it as a level 2 spell but just switched it out on my level 11 level up

idk why you want to be right about this so bad. i give a fuck what you do. point is guns would exist alongside plenty of things in the players handbook as they are listed.
so yes, i agree with you that d&d is not good for historical accuracy.
just because there are stabbing weapons irl in lots of time periods doesn't make those all rapiers, and doesn't mean that because rapiers are in the phb that you need to jerk yourself off about bronze age campaigns or whatever your stupid point is

The accuracy will matter much more than the 2 extra damage a magic will net you. Turn a close miss into a hit is the biggest appeal. Its the same for Dex as more accuracy that stacks on top of your damage is great.

+4 Prof. Bons+5 Dex+2 Archery style+2 Bow -5 SS=+8 to hit and average roll of 18

+10 SS+5 Dex+2 Bow+3 Hunters Mark+4 CS +4 weapon damageX2=56 damage a round

...

My dex is 16 currently, had some bad starting roles been working with a strength of 5 through out the campaign, so I only have a +3 in the dex and a +1 bow, I'm assuming that the other + after archery style is from a +2 bow.

I also have usually bad roles and sometimes find it hard to break at least for a ten for a base role, which is my own lucks fault. so against higher AC enemies i'll most likely miss if I use SS. Again with optimal rolls or hell average consistent rolls you are correct and I'd be doing that much damage so I see where I have false complaints.

Google the wikipedia entries for "Anient history" "Plate armor" "Bronze Age sword" and "Crossbow"

I'm going to assume you are the user that is wondering about the introduction of guns into his setting.

Note that for a long time in 5e's current setting (Faerun), from the very first published adventures in that realm (around 1986-1987 according to my Google-fu) to the present approx. 140 years have passed (Time of Troubles is in 1358 DR, latest official date given is 1491 DR, and Storm King's Thunder takes place "a few years" after the Rise of Tiamat adventure modules). Since then, their vague knowledge of black powder has evolved into some people (notably agents of the Zhentarim) having some form of firearm (see the Acq. Inc. videos, one of them gets shot with a gun).

Also, note that one island that was full of tinkering gnomes in the FR setting straight up disappeared for 100-ish years (basically all of 4th edition) and when they suddenly re-appear start buying up black powder and don't tell ANYONE why.

If it were me, I'd make it so that if guns were to be allowed, they would be VERY hard to come by, and you'd basically have to make yourself an expert with making ammo and black powder yourself to keep yourself stocked, much less repair the thing if it broke, which is partially what happened back in the older days too; any firearms expert basically had to make their own ammo and repair the thing if the barrel didn't explode on them.

Magical weapons are up to the gm, some don't give out any with numerical bonuses at all and monsters aren't balanced around it. While it's not his fault your main stat is -2 compared to what it should be, but a +3 weapon would make up for that.

What the hell campaign are you playing in where the DM lets you play with 5 Strength? Did you get talked into 3d6 with no re-rolls on 1 and he kept you to it?

>There is nothing remotely resembling plate armor in antiquity.
Well....

anyone have experience with the witch hunter class from critical role? how does it play, and is there any base classes that can achieve the same thing?

He let me re roll the 1's I just had Like 2's and 3's with it. Again My own shit rolls. Survived this far though With him throwing a lot of strength saves and shit like that my way. So my luck evens out a bit I guess.

Yea just need gold which we're severely lacking right now because one of our party members successfully stole and used 4/5 parties gold from our last payment. Not many people like his character right now because of it.

Blood hunter? It's like a mix of ranger and paladin in some ways, I haven't had the chance to try it but it seems well put together and balanced.

Tell the player outside of the game that that is unacceptable, unless you live in some anomaly where that is ok. Having reactions in-character is important but more-so you need to make the player understand that "it's what my character would do" does not justify being an asshole.

I was actually arguing against guns in my world. I also don't run published adventures, but I appreciate your research and suggestions.

I don't know about the critical role class, but can you describe what you're looking for?

>does it use magic?
>sword and crossbow?
>pointy hat?
>Agile, cunning, a hunter (or all 3)?

Even if there's a good reason for doing it roleplay-wise, it's damn near an unspoken rule to never steal from the party. Skim a little off the top maybe, but don't take literally 80% of the group's reward because they can, or "it's what my character would do."

Oh we know. He won't do it again because we'll all fuck him over if he does. He was playing his character and his character is an ass.

Plate armor is not the same thing as full plate mail as D&D describes it. Bronze age plate armor is represented in D&D by the breastplate more than anything else.

Bronze age swords had blades that were usually between 30 and 80 centimeters in length; a longsword's blade is between 80 and 110 centimeters.

I'll grant you that China and Greece had crossbows starting around the 6th century BC, but that would a) be after the end of the bronze age (1200 BC in the Near East; between 700 and 600 BC in Europe and China), and b) ancient crossbows were tremendously more expensive to produce than their Medieval-based PHB counterparts.

That's a mea culpa; I meant to say that there's nothing remotely resembling full plate, or even real half-plate, in antiquity. What you've posted wuld in D&D be represented by splint mail or breastplates.

If memory serves, the class is meant to be a melee DPS that sacrifices a bit of HP to augment their damage with elemental dice added into their main role. The closest analogy I can think of would be to refluff a Paladin's smiting with elemental damage on every hit for a minute, and they're limited to medium armor.

What about the heavy hoplite? he even got armoured shoes.

I had a player play it and somehow buff himself past 20 strength. I never actually looked into it more than that though

THEATER OF THE MIND

vs

BATTLEMATS

i prefer battlemats to be honest. makes everything seem more fair.

The only place I can find an image of armor like the one you posted is from a YouTube video called Hoplite Hellas, which appears to have been made by some Hellaboo.

I'm not aware of such armor ever having actually been used by historical hoplites.

Anyone know of any good oneshot adventures?

> Paladin UA
> Both oaths are retard evil

Why must you do this, Wizards?

Is a 20 pt buy too low in 5e or are my players pussies?