/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General

>Tales from the Yawning Portal
>Sunless Citadel, Tomb of Horrors, and Whiteplume Mountain 5e conversions
>In one book

This is either going to be really good,or absolute garbage.

I'm making some traps for my villain to spring on the PC's while they investigate the city, and just wanted some input on what you guys think.

So far I have the PC's getting trapped in an alley with a powder bomb and they have a few rounds to either get out, find the bomb, or mitigate the damage somehow. I also have them getting trapped in a kitchen where a few of the knives on display are flying daggers.

More spells to pilfer from other classes too. Can pick from any spell list so it makes the Lore Bard so incredibly versatile in almost all situations.

If you want to go the red mage route Lore would work best. It's not that Valour is bad it just focuses on the physical combat side of things with the extra attack and battle magic effects.

Might be worth looking into some multiclass options too for extra proficiencies and utility.

If they get Mike Schley to redo the maps instead of whoever did most of the maps for SKT, it should be great.

It was archived, jackass.

>giving even half a shit about Tomb of Horrors when WPM is there
ToH is a meme adventure
If you needed to name three good things about this book, you shoulda gone with Forge of Fury, SC, and WPM.

How the fuck do you trap someone in an alley with a bomb?

I have a fresh group of player's that have never lived the meme, user. It's a rite of passage.

It's a dead end alley, and the Villain locks them in with a gate. I'm kind of trying to make it over the top and dramatic.

Even people who meme about ToH haven't lived the meme. People don't play it, don't want to play it, they just want to imagine that they do and then talk about it because other people who also have never played it are talking about it.

It's the Kim Kardashian of modules: famous for being famous.

What I'm getting from this is that you're complaining about modules you've never played.

What kind of pussy adventurers is the villain contesting that they can't beat a fucking gate? Climb over it, kick it open, do literally anything. It's a gate, not the doors of Fort Knox.

What you really want to do is back up an SUV or a wagon (conveniently the width of the alley) full of SNAKES and overturn it / park it there. The easiest way out (over the vehicle) is also the most dangerous, because it's FULL OF FUCKING SNAKES.

Then the villain screams from the other side, "FANGS FOR ALL THE MEMORIES" and fucks off.

>defending modules you've never played

I mean... no wait you're right that's great and fits way better.
guess I'm not in a clever mood right nowe

>Implying

Hm. Just what do you figure is the most well-rounded between the two, though? Still Lore?
Honestly the music thing is probably gonna screw me over because I have the overwhelming sensation that any DM I have WILL make me play or sing or the like with them.

Not that guy, but these look like posts bitches would make

>Critical success doesn't really help martials in 5e. Rolling a 20 usually mean you are success since the DC is low enough.
Do you even Rogue faggot?
>How about, as a compromise, only the first attack of a round can crit fumble? So you don't make martials completely useless compared to casters.
>implying I don't critfail spells into explosions or wild magic
>implying I don't do the same to magically based ability checks
>implying a Lucky Halfling Diviner will save you from me
>Implying I'm even going to tell you I use critfails at the table and not just do horrific things to your character

Mmmmm, love that bitch taste

what did he mean by this

Hey guys, I'm in need of some pretty dire assistance with my campaign and you're the only option I have left because the people I usually talk to about this are either out of the country or in my session.

To keep things simple, my players are doing their first campaign that isn't just indiscriminate stabbing and they're actually doing sort of well. The big problem I have now is that I don't know if they'll be able to patch up the relations between the goblin and kobold factions. The issue with them not being able to do this will be the fact that they'll lose out on the goblin magic or the kobold engineering, both of which make the final encounter easier by far. To this end, I'm stuck wondering if the simplest solution to account for my players innate murderhobo tendencies is to give them the possibility to ally with the geese faction or just nerf the final encounter to account for the loss of a faction which took me days to make the first time around.

DWARF FACTION OUTTA NOWHERE is pleased that you told the kobolds and goblins to fuck off

Lore is typically seen as the best of the options. Focuses on the Bards strengths (versatility and utility) instead of trying to compete martially with much higher damage classes.
I'd suggest using 5egmegaanon.github.io/5etools/spells.html to find spells you like the look of and see if the extra stolen spells you get for Lore (along with mockery and proficiencies) will help with what you are trying to achieve.

As a habit, I would just say bite the bullet and nerf the encounter, but I am curious as to how geese would help your players.

You lost me at geese faction

I've been looking at it, actually. The thing I've been wanting is something that's as good at spell-slinging as they are melee, but not necessarily the best at either, though I suppose that's a bit much to ask for.

Well there's casty fighter subclass which is 75% fighty and 25% casty, and the fighty full-caster subclasses which are 25% fighty and 75% casty. Nothing really in the 50-50 range.

I'd go this route if the players didn't already cause the extinction of the local dwarf populace by complete accident.

Well, they're not exactly normal geese. The explanation behind them is the creator of the place where my players and three lesser deities are currently trapped in accidentally created extremely muscular and bloodthirsty geese that have down which repels a significant amount of physical damage. Basically, imagine if Donald Duck had the physique of Senator Armstrong and screamed as he attempted to smash you with a club roughly his size.

...they have opposable thumbs too? Dropped

>cause the extinction of the local dwarf populace
The party deserves to die. Nerf nothing.

Bladesinger might be worth looking into then.
You lose a ton of party utility in skills and are no longer the 18 CHA party face but you gain a ton of spell slots and melee ability. Go Int/Dex for a hard to hit, mobile spellsword stabbing and hexing all day.

Depends how much you value being a good talker/liar/con artist and how much you value literally being passable at every check in the game.

I'm not sure what drove you to create them, but that just sound evil. I say see how the players handle it.

Have you already discounted Ranger and Paladin? They're called half-casters, after all.

There are more 'normal' geese, which have the same appearance as usual but are about three horses tall and not much use in a fight.

The thought came to me after playing Dragon's Pass and mixing together Olive Garden leftovers and booze.

To be fair, it wasn't their fault; mostly just bad rolls all around.

Versatility and Jack-Of-All-Tradesiness (Not necessarily how powerful they are):

Bard
Druid
Paladin
Wizard
Cleric
Rogue
Warlock
Ranger
Fighter
Sorcerer
Barbarian
Monk

That's how I'd put it anyway.

Which is an annoying thing to me. Is Bard the closest thing to it? I'm just trying to broaden my ideas here. All I ever made was a Dragon Ancestry Sorcerer, and our campaign has pretty much 100% been confirmed to been given up on after 2 sessions, the DM can't adjust to the change from physical to Roll20 according to him
A good idea, but I'd definitely have to talk with any future DMs about it, because frankly I can't see myself using an Ellf.
I know nothing about Rangers admittedly, and I generally just skim over them, but Paladins seem a bit too...locked-in, with the Oaths and such, for what vague ideas I have in my head are.

>online
>better than offline play

Online makes grids easier and gives you a larger pool of grognards to avoid, yay.

You could always roll Moon Druid and have wild shapes for melee combat but still have a decent amount of spells on tap otherwise. You just can't do both at once until very late levels

I think most DMs nowadays use tablets or laptops. I use my phone to send images of certain things to my players during the game but I'm 95% paper.

Why is it that every time I build a character, I look at the numbers, either rolled or arrayed, and think to myself: "Wow, this would make a great half-Drow (SCAG variant) Warlock with Fey patron," and promptly proceed to create just that?

Circle of Dreams good for a support-focused druid?

Oaths are very versatile. You can easily skew the words of an oath. You could play any of the 3 PHB as evil, as well as oath of the crown, though you'd have to double check you're not infringing too much on 'I'm a Paladin but I'm SPECIAL' edgelording.

Paladin can heal, tank, deal some of the best sustained damage, deal some of the best burst damage, cast spells and has a control ability or two.
However, they don't have abilities like Wizard's conjuration 'conjure anything the fuck up' or skill checks across the board.

OK /5eg/, hear me out.
My party is hitting level 8, and my moon circle druid has been feeling a bit limited lately. So today I worked out a new wildshape system with him. I'm planning to implement this next session.

>You have a number of Wildshape Points equal to the experience point value of a creature with a challenge rating 1/3rd your druid level, rounded down. On your turn, you may turn into a creature worth a number of experience points no higher than your pool of wildshape points.
>You regain half of your Wildshape Points after completing a short rest. You regain all of your Wildshape Points after completing a long rest.
>Once you expend the Wildshape Points for a form, you may switch between your ordinary form and the Wild Form at will until 1 hour has elapsed, or until the Wild Form is reduced to 0 Hit Points. You must then expend additional Wildshape Points to maintain the form.

So at 2nd level, you have 200 points to turn into animals. You can use that to turn into one big, strong animal, or a bunch of tiny animals. My player's druid would have 450 points to spend, and he could use that to turn into an polar bear, or maybe use it to turn into a dire wolf a couple times, or maybe he'll spend them on reconnaissance.

The only other important change is this:
>At 20th level, your pool of Wildshape Points is tripled.

So now you have 6,900 points to spend on beast forms. This would allow you to change into things like a tyrannosaurus, giant ape, etc., but only once, or he can turn into a mammoth 3 times, or a shit ton of crabs or whatever.

What do you guys think of this system? Workable? Broken? Underpowered? My druid player seems really excited about it, because he doesn't have to worry about spending a wildshape on a cat if he wants to scout ahead.

Works fine. Honestly I mostly have the screen to hide dice rolls and to seem more ominous.

Then again I'm a drama queen and have heavily considered buying a fog machine for dramatic moments.

That's because your DMs are faggots who roll and let you assign rather than roll in order.
That's the only true way to roll for stats.

...Autism?

Or do you mean why do you always play that exact same character?

>rolled or arrayed

What's your rationale for putting paladin ahead of wizard and cleric when those two classes have ritual casting built in?

>tfw my group has too many minmaxing munchkin faggots so everyone is forced to use the standard goddamn array

What minmaxer hurt you so?

I enjoy DMing for them if they're willing to still roleplay enthusiastically.

Paladin has better armour, health sustained damage, single/double-target-burst-damage, healing. I'll admit that a wizard with a feature such as conjuration wizard's may well be higher, however. Also, those fucking paladin auras for +saves to everybody, wizards mostly support through battlefield control and buffing.

Cleric isn't as versatile on spellcasting as Wizard and while they have better health and armour, they're not good on sustained damage or on single/double target burst damage, I guess. Both wizard and cleric have better AoE damage than a typical paladin though, I'd expect, and the Cleric has maybe a wider range of support options.

It's quite tough, cleric wizard and paladin are all quite close to each other, I suppose.

You forgot to take your meds again.

>What minmaxer hurt you so?
The ones in my group who tell me I can't roll for stats because it's "not fair." They won't even use point buy FFS.

Note that 'rolled' is in there at all.

Good. Rolled stats that aren't in order never contributed anything significant anyway. You sacrifice balance and being gauranteed to being able to do what you want for a tiny bit of variation, whereas rolled stats sacrifices balance and half your hopes of doing what you want if you have something you want to do in exchange for proper variation.

Fuck you Harold I can dream

That's a shame. I'd compromise and have each person roll some stats.

i.e. 4 person group:
Each person rolls 4d6 drop 1 once.
DM rolls 4d6 drop 1 once.
Each person rolls 1d6 to make a pool of 4d6 drop 1 for the last stat.

Random rolls, but everyone is equal.

So the the campain im planning im going to have a magic item shop in the hub town an idea im shamelessly stealing from the adventure zone
the idea is ill populate it with expensive but neat items after every adventure but to draw them to it in the first place i would try and get them to visit it before the first dungeon and have it "being renovated" and only have very minor magic items that offer small utilities, a pair of rings where one can cause the other to let out a loud ping noise, a magnetic bracer, a ring that acts as a lighter, small bags of holding ect ect
is this a decent idea or is it too soon for even that

See what the players do, tell them about it and give them preparation
I expect a storytime from them and nothing less.

>very minor magic items that offer small utilities
Sounds good. I love when DMs make cool items that have roleplay uses first and foremost.

I'd recommend you have a time after renovation where it sells useful stuff in combat but not quite +1 level. lordbyng.net/inspiration/results.php is a cool tool I use for inspiration fairly regularly.

Anons? Quick, easy problem for you; I got dared to make a 5e racial writeup for the Huldra (back-barked, fox-or-cow-tailed super-strong nymph from Scandinavia); how unbalanced is this first draft at it?

Huldra
Ability Score Modifiers: +2 Charisma, +1 Strength
Size: Medium
Speed: 30 feet
Vision: Darkvision
Fey Ancestry: A huldra has Advantage on saves vs. Charm effects and is Immune to Magical Sleep effects.
Alpine Origins: A huldra is considered to be Acclimatized to both High Altitudes and Cold Environments.
Unnatural Might: A huldra's impossible strength gives it Advantage on Strength checks. It also counts as one size larger when determining its carrying capacity and the weight it can push, drag, or lift.
Back of Bark: At will, a huldra can spend its move action to assume the form of a tree; shape, species and status as living or dead are chosen each it assumes tree form. As a tree, a huldra takes up space as a Large creature, is immobile, and cannot physically interact with the world around it, although it can still perceive the world with its normal senses. Attacking a huldra in tree form is treated as attacking an ordinary tree. It can revert to its true form at will as a free action.
Fortune's Kiss: Once per long rest, a huldra can apply either a blessing or a curse by placing a kiss on a creature, a weapon, or a tool. A blessed weapon or set of tools grants Advantage to anyone that wields them, whilst a blessed creature gains Advantage on one ability score or skill check of the huldra's choise. Cursing instead imposes Disadvantage. The effects of Fortune's Kiss last only for 1 minute, whether it is used to bless or curse.

Or don't nerf it, and let them fail
They will always remember that time they didn't try hard enough

I wish INT wasn't the most useless stat in this system save for the dedicated caster classes.
Give INT some fucking utility, dammit. If you're going point buy there is literally no reason not to go 8 int if you're not an int-dedicated class. 10 if you're a bit less of a minmaxer and want to hit the int score of your average peasant. Which is still kind of embarrassing, really.

What utility should it have?

Actually there's a related method I want to try to see how it works. It's a little bit of work but I think it might be fun. Note that it won't really work with a group of 7+

>Everyone rolls 4d6 drop lowest 6 times, and writes them down in order
>If this doesn't create 6 arrays, the DM rolls the remaining arrays until there are 6
>DM writes down every array (starting from the player to their left), in order, writing each array on the line below the last one
>DM then draws a grid around the numbers, creating a 6x6 two dimensional array of stats
>(optional) DM quickly totals the lines, both left to right and top to bottom, vetoing the lowest and highest scoring lines. Alternatively, the group can decide which lines are veto'd if any
>DM presents the grid to the group, and they must collectively decide who gets what line. The lines must be used in order, but can be read left to right, right to left, top to bottom, or bottom to top. Once a line is used it cannot be used by another player unless they are reading it in the opposite direction.

This way people have some agency in everyone's stats, so instead of being jealous of what another player rolled, you actually want to give players good stats appropriate to their roles.

That's really complex but it would be a good bonding activity for a session 0.

I never had much interest in druids, but I'll give them a look, too.
I suppose they are fairly vague. I haven't settled on anything, but I'll give it a look, thanks!

It should influence how many languages you can learn, just as god intended.

That seems like a very simple conversation with a DM. If you asked me for that, I'd say yes.

Would you play in a game where the DM said you can't choose feats instead of ASIs, but the DM said he'd reward feats in place of treasure occasionally?

No, but I'd play in one where you were only allowed to take feats, and players could swap powers with each other via cybernetic implants

Yes
I actually only let my players have feats if they find the NPC to teach them.

Make em work for it

Has anyone experimented with randomized equipment rolls, like an old school dungeon crawler in the style of Diablo 2?

Like, something of a specifications variance amongst weapons? Maybe this greatsword is a hit die smaller but has some other effect to balance it out?

Was just a passing thought since my D2 playthrough just ended. Would be fun to fiddle with but I can live without

so you don't understand what versatility means, got it.

I hate to be that guy in the thread, but could somebody give feedback on this please?

TL;DR

If you have an issue and you think a wall of text like that is the solution, it's probably a time-wasting kludge.

A druid feeling limited is laughable. Tell him to look at what abilities he has besides wildshape. He's getting close to the levels where wildshape isn't enough to carry him by itself.

Im gonna start running Curse of Strahd tomorrow, 3 players one's gonna be playing either a war or light cleric the other two havent decided yet.

Any advice at all that you fa/tg/uys can give me?

I'm tempted to make the adventure more "Ravenloft-ish" sort of speak (use the optional rules to make it more gritty and stuff) but im not sure. I'm a huge Ravenloft fan but im tempted to run it a bit more straight and heroic since its the first time i run this particular adventure, and also the first time i run a published adventure at all (i've been DMing for 14 years)

You could just do something simple like change the wildshape CR to level minus 4 so there aren't large swathes of time where a moon druid doesn't get any new wildshapes

I mean that's fair enough but provides very little variation and still skews with balance in a way.

i.e. somebody plays paladin, somebody plays fighter. If you rolled great stats across the board, the paladin has been given a much bigger buff than the fighter, even though the paladin is already a rather strong class.
Or, i.e., somebody plays monk and somebody plays fighter.
If you rolled bad stats across the board, the monk's gonna suck.

>You have a number of Wildshape Points equal to the experience point value of a creature with a challenge rating 1/3rd your druid level, rounded down.
jesus fucking christ you already need to stop.

Skill learning, kinda like 3,5.

All random rolling does that though. RAW, you roll your stats before you pick your class though, so you're only screwed if you choose to do it in reverse.

Can you elaborate? 3.5's skill point system doesn't translate over well.

Languages are honestly nowhere near useful enough to make it worth it, especially considering wizards can already just get a spell to understand all the languages.

It looks like they designed 5e with the policy of 'Let's make three great stats everybody wants and three stats only specific people want'.

It's fatal as fuck, so keep in mind that.

I wanna DM. Where do I start?

Wow, you must be so smart that you don't even need to explain WHY people are wrong. They just are, because you said so. Congratulations, genius.

Read the PHB front to back, then read it again. Then read part 3 of the DMG, it has some good DMing advice.

You gain a number of skill proficiencies equal to your int mod if it's positive.

That seems pretty reasonable, other than on a wizard.

Well, yeah. But the question is are you getting your money back for the sacrifice of potentially nerfing/buffing people who insisted on playing a certain class or driving people out of playing a certain class/driving people into playing certain classes?

If you get barely any variation, you've barely gotten anything for that sacrifice. The only variation you've got is 'Each game, people have a different set of stats'. That barely means anything, especially if people haven't played lots of standard array games before.

But is it F.A.T.A.L. as fuck?

Step by step character creation.

Step 1, choose a race.

Step 2, choose a class.

Step 3, determine ability scores.

Step up your game.

ok let me expand on that, dumbass, he lists paladins ahead of wizards and clerics on VERSATILITY because they combat good. Except the clerics and wizards also do combat well AND DO EVERYTHING ELSE UNDER THE GOD DAMN SUN.