/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General: Desert Edition

Anons? I don't know if this is relevant to this thread, but, I've got a bunch of races I've been trying to homebrew for 5e, and I could use some help on balancing out what I have written and picking which ones to write next. Any opinions?

docs.google.com/document/d/1XovWm65MSmIzQWSMDMXo0_aIpZgq9YSa2KkpO3kThS4/edit#

In particular, I wanna talk about the Saurian Shifters (basically, Shifters if they were balanced were-dinos). Is it just me, or are they kind of underpowered/boring? Or is that a fault that comes from trying to adhere too closely to the official Eberron Update model for Shifters?

Land druid or Red Dragon sorc? Which is more fun?
I wanna cast spells that hurt

If you want big-dick damage: greatsword, take Great Weapon Master.
If you want to be THE WALL: longsword + shield, take Sentinel or Shield Master.

Well, alright.

Heavy crossbow is 1d10+DEXMOD+Any other bonuses such as sharpshooter's bonus.
Hand crossbow is 1d6+DEXMOD+Any other bonuses.

Let's assume you have 1 extra attack, you always have your bonus action and you have 20 dexterity.

It's (1d10+5)*2 versus (1d6+5)*3. 1d10 over 1d6 is +2 damage, or +4 damage on a crit.
In this case, you're losing 3 damage a round providing you don't crit every single attack ever.
Also, it's nice to have several attacks.

Okay, now, let's say you get sharpshooter.

You could either
(1d10+15)*2 with reduced chance of hitting
Or
(1d6+15)*3 with reduced chance of hitting
The 1d10 is less valuable on sharpshooter because you're less likely to hit, and most of your damage is coming from the +15. Also, more imporantly, the handcross is giving you another potential +15 there.

So, without sharpshooter, if you have 20 dex, you lose about 3 damage not considering crit chance. You lose about 2 damage with 18 dex, or 1 damage with 16 dex, or no damage with 14 dex, not considering crit chance.
With sharpshooter, it depends on your hit chance but if you have a very high hit chance (you do have archery, after all) you're missing out on a lot of damage.

At level 11, you get extra attack (2).

(1d10+5)*3 versus (1d6+5)*4.
16.5+15 versus 14+20.
31.5, 34. Hand crossbow still wins out by 2.5 damage.

>strength based
Out of those two options, greatsword. Otherwise you might as well go dexterity and rapier+shield and eldritch knight using boomingblade/greenflameblade/whatever.

The only reason you'd go strength with sword and board is if you want to avoid a little bit of MADness getting heavy armour and if you went for shield master and want a higher chance of proning targets (but a lower chance of using your reaction to negate dex save damage)

What are some good youtubers for 5e? Not gameplay recordings but talking about the game and monsters and stuff like that. Maybe campaign retrospectives too. So far I have Nerdarchy, Drunkens and Dragons, and Matt Colville.

And I guess Dawnforge Cast but I'm not too fond of him.

Dawnforged Cast has some really anal, nitpicky complaints about some of the UA, and just in general. He's okay and I like his homebrews/redos, but that's about it. He comes off as a reasonable dude when he's not bitching about the minutia of fluff, but he's definitely no Caulville.

>cosplay

Remember to say "A bloody good shot!" or "Exactly where I called it!" If you crit.

A warlock chooses X spells from the warlock spell list.

Their patron spell list expands the warlock spell list, but choosing one of the patron spells still counts against their spells chosen cap. They don't receive those spells free, or anything.

Correct?

I'm guessing there really isn't anyone on Colville's level of excellence then?

Been out of the game for a while so I catching up with UA and Volo's guide.

Thinking of making a kenku monk but they seem pretty hard to roleplay. Is there any tips for that?

Also what's been announced for the next release?

I wanna ask this again, but more clearly. I want to add live dismemberment to my games, because my players often try to cut people's hands off while they're fighting, and it feels a little fun squashing to tell them they can only do so on coup de graces. I want there to be more than just a DM decision or d20 table, because I prefer number crunching to stuff like that.

Here's what I have right now: On a crit, for every 10 points in attack roll over the targets AC, you get to roll a d6 for damage against a limb. Limbs have HP starting at 1 for minuscule and raising by 1 for each size category, and DR 0 for light armour, 1 for medium and 2 for heavy. Bladed weapons add 1 to the damage roll, two handed weapons add half strength, bludgeoning and piercing weapons can't dismember but cripple the limb by breaking bones or tearing muscle. I was also considering instead, that bladed weapons add half strength, and two handed weapons increase the die to d8.

Keeping in mind that if you don't meet or exceed the limb HP after DR, you only do regular crit damage, and there is no keeping track of limb damage: does this still seem too complicated?

Here's an example: you crit with a greatsword with a roll of 20 and +5 attack bonus, against a goblin (15 AC). After doing critical damage, the DM informs the player that he can roll to dismember one of his limbs. The player roll a d6+1(bladed weapon)+2(half strength) and gets 5. The goblins limb HP is 2(small) and he isn't wearing armour, so he has no damage reduction. The player gets to sever a limb.

Maybe I just like number crunching too much.

In terms of quality, Mercer's GM Tips are great and good advice, but they're a bit more for starter DM's and beginners compared to Caulville, who gives tips for more advanced DM techniques.

Probably the Sorc.

Hey I found a staff of Defense and it says cast one of the following spells from the staff if
the spell is on your class's spell list.

So does that mean I need to know that spell or my class can learn that spell for me to use it?

It needs to be on your class' spell list. That's what it says and that's what it means. It has to be on the spell list, of your class.

So if it's on Eldritch fighter A fighter can cast that spell? I'm confused sorry.

Hey smar/tg/uys, I'm feeling conflicted right now
>be me, 5th level dragonborn fighter
>lawful stupid since he served in the military and as a town guard
>Necromancy is on the rise again, even though it was outlawed many years ago
>Given a quest to warn local towns of necromancers and possible demons coming
>Have to prove worth to one ruler of a town and fight a dragon
>Everyone gets fucked up, but only one person dies (player was not a regular, just a friend of the DM who happened to be on winter break)
>Everyone grieving, but npc cleric says she has a necromancy spell that can resurrect him
>I remind the party this is literally what we're trying to stop
>They all give me dirty looks
>We get back to town and tell the council the dragon has been slain
>LITERALLY right as we finish saying it, we find out my homeland has declared war on the lord we're questing for
>Might have my fighter leave the party to fight with the motherland against these hypocrites
Am I That Guy?

Why not just always dismember on a critical that brings to zero HP, and roll d100 for location when that occurs?

Nobody is fighting through a severed arm without magical healing, so it doesn't really matter. If they are, your setting is going to quickly become Land of the Holy Grail Black Knight People.

In as far as I remember it, correct, unlike a cleric's domain spells.

Does seem like too much number crunching. I'd just generally say that on a crit, it's possible for additional effects to happen. Otherwise, they might hack say half-way through the limb but not properly since it can be quite hard to cleave through something cleanly.

Technically eldritch knight doesn't have a spell list.

It should be up to your DM therefore, but honestly logically an EK should have access to any wizard abjuration/evocation spell.

>there are people who don't use Strength for their crossbows

Tips for new DM's on keeping everything organized and flowing smooth to reduce lulls in playing?

Alright sounds good thanks for the help!

Only if you demand to actually play your character through it. If you wanna turn your character over to the DM to use as an NPC in the war, that's not even a little bit that guy. So: either turn over your dude and make a character you feel is more suited to the party, or find a reason for your character to stick it out. Or be that guy.

Can anyone tell me what they like about Dark Sun? Maybe it was just my DM, but it seemed every game was just about combat. A high persuasion roll never really worked out and pretty much every stranger wanted to exploit us. Felt very one-dimensional.

What do you think the prevalence of magic items should be in the world?

I'm debating whether to allow my players all +1 weapons. Half of them already have them, but the devs have said they don't account for this in the CR.

Magic weapons bypass all resistances after all.

On another level something like a flying cape allows a PC to bypass the majority of any obstacles. But these nerds are playing power fantasies after all.

Not really, probably. You could roll up a new character to bring in while sending off the old to where they should be. Maybe roll up a fucking necromancer in disguise.

It's worth saying, that necromancy is probably mostly in reference to spells such as 'animate dead', and especially used with evil intent, though it's quite possible it is everything that falls into 'necromancy'.

Also, revivify isn't necromancy, it's conjuration, so I don't know what that cleric is smoking unless they're purposefully using weird spells.

Only for that last bit. The party comes before your character.

Not necessarily the desires of the party, nor the characters of the party. You can resist what the other characters want to do, you can take actions that cause the death (or prevent the re-life) of a character, so long as nobody's buttmad about it.

But if the situation is impassible, and the other players won't budge, change your character to accommodate the continued existence of the party. Otherwise you have no game.

In this case, your character could be going through development and doing some soul searching and choosing friends over country. Or he could remain loyal to his motherland, but stick with the party for the "short term" (actually meaning forever) for practical reasons. Or try to sway the party to his side.

But if you find yourself saying "I'm leaving the party, it's what my character would do", you've fucked up.

>This is how Tha/tg/uys determine what is "fun".

Honestly it all depends on your players and what you want to do as a dm. I'd say if your players want gritty realism and real threats in your world to challenge them, don't give them anything magical that isn't meaningful or small in power. If your players want to feel like awesome badasses, give them the coolest magic shit you can think up and balance your encounters around them and the magic items you give them. Simple +1 weapons are pretty boring by themselves though.

Semantics. Bringing people back to life is necromancy.

The prevalence in general should be low. On the other hand, oftentimes part of the (in-universe) lure of becoming an adventurer is having primo access to magical items. So I wouldn't be afraid to hand them out, but only as the capper to an adventure. It's really the only reward (besides XP) they really care about since gold is so underwhelming.

...

I think flying items should be more restricted than in the DMG. Say, only allow flight for a few turns after activating with a bonus action or something.

But, overall, I say items should not be very common. They should have importance, and they should require some creative thought put into them rather than just being upgrades chosen by the DM.

Magic items should be interesting and relevant therefore. You need a particular magic sword in order to break open this seal (though there may be other ways), or you can use a magic shield somehow to reveal secrets of a certain dungeon, that sort of thing.

Limited-use magic items are fairly okay because it doesn't cause power bloat.

A) there is a difference between the Necromancy school and what commoners think of when you say "Necromancy"
The school deals with the energies of both life and death. Casting Ressurrection on people isn't bad. Pumping people full of Positive energy or sniffing out Negative energy isn't bad. Calling the animus (not the soul) back to a skull to talk to it isn't bad. It's the channeling of Negative energy into a corpse (or another person) for the purpose of murdering the shit out of them or creating an undead slave that's evil. When a country "outlaws necromancy", it's THAT shit; Animate Dead, Bestow Curse, Contagion, Harm, Finger of Death. No one wants spells like Gentle Repose, Spare the Dying, Feign Death, and Resurrection banned.

B) what kind of fucking town says "lol maybe we'll consider your warning of not doing evil necromancy zombie shit if you SLAY A FUCKING DRAGON"?

C) you're a dragonborn so life already sucks for you and any out you can take is a Godsend, so by all means fight for your Fatherland and purge the nation of these unclean, necromancy-loving asshats

I don't want to just end on a "haha bye fuckers i'm leaving because it's what i do ;))))))," but it almost feels like if I stay I would end up being a brooding asshole who is just angry at the party. Knowing everyone else, I'm seen as the one in the wrong, so there's no way in hell they're going to side with me on this matter

Then why isn't it in the school of necromancy?

Revivify only brings those who have been dead for a minute or less alive.

Are you saying real life surgeons sometimes perform necromancy?

Though I suppose it's sort of okay if you want your character to think that, though they could at least have the character ask if it's really evil magic.

>Limited-use magic items are fairly okay because it doesn't cause power bloat.
And they often remain rotting in the inventory of the party members because they are afraid of wasting them and then forget about them. I know I'm guilty of it.

No, using all the parts of a corpse to determine the future is necromancy. You'd think a bunch of fucking Wizards would understand language and etymology a little better than this. -mancy denotes a means of divination, not magic in general.

Think we'll get the full version of the Mystic next week? Or do you think they'll wait to refine it?

ok we have a wotc poll but how about a tg poll

strawpoll.de/g5yra7f

February

To be honest, that's the main problem with them. People don't have the initiative to waste consumables, and I'm pretty guilty of that.

However, it's nice to have it there as an option. If you were given a wand, you'd use it once every day just because probably.

>I'd say if your players want gritty realism and real threats in your world to challenge them, don't give them anything magical that isn't meaningful or small in power.
Honestly all +1 weapons are going to do is reduce the effective CR of creatures that have resistance to non-magical weapons.

It isn't going to make fights against veteran Pirates or the elite Orc marauders significantly less challenging.
And if your world is full of "gritty realism", then it isn't going to have droves of creatures that qualify for DR non-magic to begin with.

>.de
Nope

He asked if one weapon is worse than another you fucking jackass.

>Give people cool scrolls
>3 months later they still haven't used them

If it was only on critical killing blows, I feel like my players wouldn't have their chance to dismember often enough to make it any better than my current (only on coup de grace) system. I guess black knight shinanigans is something to worry about though.

I just want something crunchier than that. I want character and monster stats to factor in, in some capacity.

The cleric used resurrection, but somehow the party fucked up and the guy still didn't come back to life. I'd honestly have no problems bringing the guy back if this shit just wasn't outlawed. Also my dm just wanted to railroad us to fight a dragon with his SUPER COOL NPC(tm) who could polymorph into a dragon.

"worse" in this case meaning "barely less optimal", autist.

My players are the opposite, they use that sort of thing at the first opportunity.
They got a Bag of Beans with 9 beans, and before really knowing what they do for sure, they planted one and watered it right before engaging the Boss Fight.

What, like a damage aura? Could be good, if a little staid.

Maybe something where they turn into an elemental? Or possibly a self-hurt for more power type thing, hence why they're restricted in use.

The problem is it defies the way HP is supposed to work, since HP isn't meat points.

I've always done it where sometimes a hit might sever something. Sometimes a weak shield is split apart, a monster drops something, or even a weak monster's limb comes off from an attack. Not necessarily on a crit.
But there's no particular reasoning to that other than the situation. If it feels 'right' that it should happen.

The problem is if you try to put down specific mechanics, it may very well come down to black knight shenanigans.

You could also say that it happens if you deal enough damage, but then you might belittle people who make lots of smaller damage attacks (Say, a fighter in comparison to a paladin)

And, finally, it'll bring to question why the players aren't losing limbs, especially when there are spells to restore lost limbs.

I'd probably say that a player has to quite securely pacify a monster to get a good hit. Say, they have a teammate grappling the monster and restraining it as well before they can quite reliably chop off an arm. A 1/20 chance of chopping off an arm every attack is a big fucking deal.

Imagine a champion with advantage at level 11. That's up to maybe 7 or 8 attacks, each with a 1/5 or so chance of critting.

Fuck off, he asked which was superior, and then another guy did the math to determine which one was superior, there's nothing wrong with maximising damage if you still roleplay.

Once per day limited duration Investiture of ____ from the Elemental Evil Guide.

>barely
It's quite a bit worse to use a heavy crossbow over a hand crossbow for the aforementioned case, actually.
At level 4 and below, it's almost double damage. Especially once you factor in sharpshooter.

Am I autistic for having a dislike of published campaigns and thinking they go against the spirit of D&D?

It's not going to be 1 in 20 though, because the target AC has to be low enough and attacker's atack bonus high enough, plus a d6 roll.

Also, I would absolutely apply this system to players, if I decide to apply it to their enemies.

Asking again, does anyone have the Mind Flayer armor concept art that was going around a few weeks go?

1. It ties up both your hands
2. It reduces your range
3. it requires double the ammunition
4. you're far more likely to get a single magical crossbow than two magical hand-crossbows, or enough magical ammo to feed two hand crossbows.
5. you end up geared exactly like every other min-maxing turbo-autist

All for a minimal boost to DPS, which is apparently the end-all-be-all of being "superior".

There's no problem in having personal preference. I don't like adventure modules either, personally.

What would make you an asshole is if you never shut up about it and talked down to people who did play them.

I can agree with this.

Give me some unusual but inexpensive weapons

What the fuck do you even want, man? He did another poster a favour, unlike you, you pissant.

Hey guys new DM here

My friend wants to get his hands on one of these I don't really know how it would work fire 3 shots in one action doing less damage. If he wants a variation that stays on his hand how much should I charge him for it?

Jawbone of an Ass.

I'm thinking of giving my party a Cloak of the Montebank, which lets you cast Dimensional Door 1/day. I'm always a bit leery of shit that opens up unusual movement options, but I think this won't be so terrible because A. the whole party can't use the door, B. it's a bit risky to use willy-nilly because there is blowback if you fuck up and teleport into an object or person and C. once per day.

Plus, it's damn cool.
Safe?

...

Sickles, rakes. Anything that is essentially farm equipment + stick. Garrote, nutcracker.

I don't know what you want.

A big rock.

I tend to split the difference in my games. +1 swords and generic potions of healing or the like are common enough; they'll be around in any town that's got more than a couple hundred people. They won't necessarily be for sale, but they'll be there.

Anything beyond "entry level" magic items and you'll need to start going to the long lost temples to try to get them, and people will take immediate notice if you have one of these higher tier items, for good or ill. More powerful items in my games tend to have some sort of visual cue when used, or otherwise not appear to be mundane in origin.

Multi-Crossbow
Ranged (50/200), loading, ammunition, two handed.
On hit, 2d4 piercing.
If your world is at a Renaissance or higher tech level, 50gp. Otherwise, 100

...

For that you'd probably have to assign health to every single detachable part of the body. Otherwise things could go from 'perfectly fine' to 'you've lost a limb' quite quickly.

I'm not sure how AC would factor into it when the best attacks people will likely make are crits which'll come at least 1/20 of the time. I guess if you can't get it on a crit, it won't happen at all or you have to keep repeatedly hitting the same place. Otherwise, it'd be more often than 1/20, which sounds kind of dangerous considering that's already about once a combat if not twice.

Also, then, you'd wonder how a rapier might dismember somebody. It'd encourage everyone to take dismembering weapons if you discriminated by weapon in that case.

The only sensible way of doing things I can think of is by making it so there's a starting base chance of dismemberment which is quite low that increases based on the enemy's lack of HP. Otherwise it sounds like encouraging players to say 'I attack the left leg' and then everybody else will follow on and focus their efforts all on the same place. And it'd be weird if they all attacked the same place without hitting other places.

It's truly not suited for 5e other than through oldschool 'shit happens' style rules.
If your players are familiar enough with 5e though you can get away with pulling off semi-complicated homebrew rules if it's not too much.

Having masterwork/rare materials weapons that are +1 to hit OR damage is nice too, and you don't immediately lower the CR of magical monsters.

I'd say for something like this, it'd be easier to make a kind of quest-payment out of it rather than an exact monetary amount. It will take longer than just up and buying it of course, but the way you worded it makes it seem like a custom piece, so it might be cool to treat it as something special enough to do some kind of fetch-quest for, or other kind of thing for visiting tinkerers and the like.

Also, have the ammo sold in 3-shot canisters or whatever. 2gp/10 canisters.

I horribly abuse the magic, but not enough for increases school of magic item creation.

Here's a magic sword and it will glow the color of the enemy's weakness after striking them once! But no bonus.

That sort of stuff.

Is there a source for that or is it just the speculated "after the class UA" theory?

My dad works at WotC

The blowback seems a pretty feeble 4d6 compared to past times when teleporting was more like 'you fucking die'.
However, it seems safe enough. I always enjoy giving these sorts of items additional traits though that make them slightly unreliable. Say, there's a chance of summons DAEMONS or something every time you open it. Mostly weak ones, and they might be summoned in place of the person using dimension door, so the people who dimension doored won't have to put up with it.

But, yes, the fact only two people can use it means that it could potentially split the party if they're too liberal with using it, which means they won't just port through locked steel doors unless they have a death wish. Much better than a +1 weapon or a +1 AC or some sort of direct combat buff item.

There's nothing wrong with a High Magic campaign, tho a lot of people have a hard-on for "Gritty, Low-Magic".

And a DM could easily circumvent the issue of magical weapons bypassing resistance by using "resistant to magic items of less than X bonus".

Hmm, yeah looking at what the spells do I think this could work. I would like to impose some kind of risk of use for it though if I'm getting rid of the concentration downside; make some kind of Cha save at the end of its use or an automatic point of exhaustion or something. Or 1 HP per round to use.

or Vulnerability to another form of damage.

>And a DM could easily circumvent the issue of magical weapons bypassing resistance by using "resistant to magic items of less than X bonus".

I feel like my players would just quote the rulebook at me.

No, I like worlds with lots of magic in them, magic is fun. But I prefer most magic in the world to be mundanely useful. Like most of the harry potter magic.

Here's my starmap in a ball
Here's a pencil that writes for you as you speak
Here's a mug that fills itself with cider at breakfast, beer at lunch, and whiskey at dinner

Bonuses are ok, but they're boring when they're all you get.

Eh, I just really hate high fantasy stuff. Don't mind if it's too mid-fantasy.

The problem is that high fantasy means things have less bearing in the real world usually as things are harder to explain and often they become 'I don't know, it's magic' rather than having a purpose for being. You find magical items just lying around because 'why not lol'. Yes, you can make a high fantasy setting make sense, but...
Then, it's always disappointing to me to see things such as peasants be so much weaker than a monster. I feel a monster's main strength over the peasants is the peasants don't know how to combat it, they're scared and all that. If a burly, experienced adventurer came along, made them arm themselves with spears and lectured them a bit the peasants might have a chance of fighting back a semi-magical monster. But they probably couldn't fight some of high fantasy's super-bullshit-monsters.

I guess that's my problem. High fantasy feels more reliant on plot devices your DM is railroading you on such as magical items, whereas lower fantasies you can resort to more mundane tactics you've worked out yourself.

Saying it again, though, you CAN do high fantasy where things make sense and players are still free to think of ideas, say, using magic.

Feels like that might be too situational? The times would be rare where that would ever come into play naturally and without me engineering a circumstance for it.

I'd have hoped you'd already have established that you are the DM and so fuck that rulebook and its bullshit.