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Previous Thread Sounds like we'll get two new classes in the next content book - an artificer and the mystic. Do you think there'll be someone else? Who?

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what pact do you feel is most thematic for a goblin warlock?

Old Ones, of course. You know, those things that live in the darkness beneath your caves? The reason why you don't dig too deep?

Reposting from other thread, what do people think of this new version of a Dragonperson-specific archetype?

I want to make a warlord, Mastermind rogue 3/Battlemaster fighter 17. How horrible of an idea is that?

The older one I made for comparison.

Sounds good, good luck playing 'til 20!

Is there a list of what you can have as a mechanical servant yet? I know a half-dragon allosaurus is probably the best, just wondering what the other options are

It's homebrew but I think cave fungus and goblins go together pretty well.

Isn't it just any Large Beast for stats and then fluff to taste?

How do people on the DM's guild get their monster stat blocks to look right?

Allosaurus
Axe Beak
Brown Bear
Camel
Constrictor Snake
Crocodile
Dire Wolf
Draft Horse
Elk
Giant Bat
Giant Boar
Giant Eagle
Giant Goat
Giant Hyena
Giant Octopus
Giant Owl
Giant Sea Horse
Giant Spider
Giant Toad
Giant Vulture
Hunter Shark
Lion
Plesiosaurus
Polar Bear
Rhinoceros
Riding Horse
Saber-Toothed Tiger
Tiger
Warhorse

And some stuff in Volo. Look that up yourself, you lazy bum.

You could do mastermind rogue stuff without actually using your bonus action via a familiar.... Fluff it as... I don't know... manifestion of your power or something..

Rate my homebrew ranger:

Mage Hunter
3- whenever a hostile creature within 30 feet of you casts a spell you can use your reaction to make a weapon attack against that creature if it is within reach of your weapon. You can cast Detect Magic and Identify as rituals with no material components. Also, the advantages granted by your Favored Enemy feature extend to include any creature capable of casting spells.

7- When you damage a creature that is concentrating on a spell, that creature has disadvantage on the saving throw it makes to maintain its concentration. You also have advantage on saving throws against spells cast by creatures within 30 feet of you

11- you add Counterspell to your list of known spells. You may cast it without expending a spell slot once per short rest (wording will change)

15- whenever you cause a creature to lose concentration on a spell or successfully cast Counterspell the affected creature takes psychic damage equal to 1d10 plus your wisdom modifier

Here's a thought, how about
"You may use your breath weapon an additional number of times per day equal to your constitution modifier, you may only use this feature while raging"

Dragon's Roar: Too strong. Berzerker Path requires gaining a stack of exhaustion after a frenzy rage just to make a bonus action attack. A bonus action breath weapon with +1d6, extra DC on a core barb stat, and recharge more often than 1/rest. You can easily get of 4-5 of them in an average day.

Surging Soul: So unless two-weapon fighting, the only thing this archetype has to consume it's bonus action is breath weapon. So you basically breathe flame and slash, round2 rage and slash, round3 breathe and slash, round 4 check for extra breath. So you can probably get like 6-7 breath attacks (which scale with level and are only limited by the action economy, which is no longer an issue).

Draconic Senses: This shouldn't cause too many issues. If it turns out blindsight is good for more than overcoming blinds/killing invisible enemies, perhaps limit just the blindsight portion to 1/rest. IMO it's fine.

Legendary Might: I like the that this is thematic with legendary resistance, but I feel it overlaps with fighter a bit. I'm also done commenting on breath weapon power.

Frightful Aura: So it's a better Intimidating Presence?

Will provide proposed balance changes shortly

100% agree with this assessment

Should I go Lore bard or Divination wizard for a detective? Both seem to fit...

Or how about a free use of breath weapon when entering a rage? That way it stays level-appropriate

Inquisitive or mastermind rogue

>Berzerker Path requires gaining a stack of exhaustion after a frenzy rage just to make a bonus action attack

Berzerker path is universally panned as hot garbage, it's a really bad metric by which to judge anything

> no magic
eww

I was going to run a heavily modified Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat and was thinking of tweaking the Black and Green Dragon Masks so that they have something in addition to or instead of their Water Breathing features to put them a little more in-line with Red, Blue, and White's.

Any suggestions on how to adjust them? Or should I just leave them as-is?

Lore Bard would be good at interrogating suspects and rubbing shoulders with lowlifes in smokey taverns

seriously, some people like actually having real abilities

Or homebrew stuff in general. What are these guys using?

is 14 DEX and 12 CON too low for Lore bard? Trying to get 14 INT for investigate and knowledge skill.

Lore bard have more skills than Rogue and they got magic on top.

There is this to consider. Who even likes Frenzy-ing?

It's in the Mega.

>is 14 DEX and 12 CON too low for Lore bard? Trying to get 14 INT for investigate and knowledge skill.

Depends on how reliably you can stay out of fights. If your party has a solid front line, sure.

>Half-dragon allosaurus stays at challenge 2
>The example in the MM (veteran) goes from challenge 3 to 5
I don't understand

recommend changing it from
>Favored Enemy feature extend to include any creature capable of casting spells
to
>Greater Favoured Enemy:
- If you are a Mage Hunter you have access to an additional type of greater favoured enemy: Spellcasters.

You gain all the benefits against this chosen enemy that you normally gain against your favored enemy, including an additional language. Your bonus to damage rolls against all your favored enemies increases to +4.

Additionally, you have advantage on saving throws against the spells and abilities used by a greater favored enemy.

Not bad, but then if the core of the interest of the archetype is in having cool breath stuff, then limiting it to 1, maybe 2 a battle doesn't make the rest of it very interesting.

Frenzy might be swarbage after the exhaustion, but at least it keeps up for a whole 10 rounds.

Wow it's better than the worst archetype in 5e ever, big fucken deal
The fucking subclass has to stand up to the likes of animal totems, which is where shit gets fucken crazy with ultra tank/flight

Balance changes proposed (grain of salt here):

Dragon's Roar: When you enter a rage, you may use a Breath Weapon as part of entering a rage if you have not used it yet. For clarification, you don't gain an extra use of breath attack, but you don't need to eat up two bonus actions on two turns raging and then breathing. The extra 1d6 is fine so long as the barb doesn't get 3 guaranteed breath uses per rest.

Surging Soul: I like the ability to recharge based on a DC con save rather than an auto-recharge since it curbs the strength of the class early on, but means that as you gain ASIs and proficiency bonus, your breath weapon becomes stronger, more difficult to resist, and more consistent. I'd say that, while raging, You can use your bonus action to make a DC 15 Con Save. On success, you regain a use of your breath weapon and must unleash it as part of the same bonus action used to make the save. You may only use Surging Soul once per rage. Our goal here is to frontload the damage of breath weapon but limit the uses per rest to the number of rages. This makes the class feel more impactful during the stages of a fight where AoE attacks are most effective (which is the beginning when there are typically the most enemies). It also means that at level 3 a Roaring Soul will be able to succeed on the save ~50% of the time.

I justify this extreme reduction in the usages of breath weapons due to scaling damage, multiple target value, and the fact that as you gain a higher con mod and proficiency bonus, surging soul's breath weapon will recharge extremely reliably (90% with he barbarian's captsone feature in full swing).

More coming

I kinda like the former, as you might only have 1 battle in a day or something.

Thanks for the thoughts, am looking forward to the proposed changes before I comment.

I wasn't going for the UA ranger with it, but spellcasters as a greater favored enemy could work were that the case

There is this Japanese artist called Nano whose image is androgyny. Publicly nobody knows if Nano is a man or a woman and discussion and articles about Nano don't use gendered pronouns. Would it be possible to play a character like that? Even the player themselves do not know the gender of their PC?

maybe? but why?

I think it's likely we'll get a shaman of some sort. I remember after the survey for the Ebberon UA, they mentioned looking at making Artificer a subclass as part of a new "Enchanter" type class, with Alchemist and Shaman as other subclasses.
Obviously that isn't the case anymore, but I'm still interested in the concept of the shaman.

Go to kobold.club and plug in the criteria (CR 2 or lower, Large, Beast) and pick from the list.

Your proposed archetype would be worthless trash that only an idiot would ever take.

Elves are already referred to in the PHB as being generally androgynous, and Corellon is referred to as being depicted as being a man, woman, both, or neither in the same section. That'd be your best bet

>articles about Nano don't use gendered pronouns

pretty easy to do in Japanese, what with the general lack of pronouns, gendered or otherwise

(you have to go out of our way to call someone a man or woman or whatever, instead of using "person")

Has anyone ran an adventure or campaign which heavily features travel? As in, lots of encounters on roads, in the wilderness, etc. while traveling long distance? Keeping up with rations and foraging and travel time as well as marching order and downtime activities for middle-rank people such as mapmaking like the PHB suggests? Was it fun?

If you haven't run something like that, what would you do to make it good? I'm also looking for reasons a party might need to travel long distances for extended periods of time. My players are used to being railroaded and 'fast-traveling' to 'quest areas' video game style. I want to make this feel more like an adventure than a series of tasks the party warps to instantly.

>Has anyone ran an adventure or campaign which heavily features travel? As in, lots of encounters on roads, in the wilderness, etc. while traveling long distance? Keeping up with rations and foraging and travel time as well as marching order and downtime activities for middle-rank people such as mapmaking like the PHB suggests? Was it fun?

I played a months-long game of Ryuutama that was an absolute blast. My wandering merchant had the PRETTIEST umbrella.

Of course D&D would be shit at that kind of game, because D&D is shit at anything that isn't Murderhobos: the Fightening.

My DM tried to do that one. But we have 2 Druids. So all of his book keeping is pointless with goodberries and create water.

One of the druid even take ritual caster feat and get phantom steed to mess up with traveling pace too.

I've run a campaign back in 4e that was almost entirely travel. They had to trek across a continent, sail across an ocean, and then fly to their final destination and defeat the evils that dwelled there. However, it was mostly travelling from place to place to get there and the in between was just skill checks, roleplaying, and the occasional plot significant encounter.

Encounters along the road can feel tedious and boring if there is no plot progression, especially if it is commonplace. Tracking rations and who does what while on the road wastes time if everyone isn't into it. If you wanted to do a completely travel focused campaign, I'd look at ripping off the Oregon Trail.

Rip off Steelball run and have it a large cross country cart race.

...

4e's concept of the Points of Light is great for this kind of thing. Civilization is just so spread out that travel becomes a huge factor. Also, just keep any directions or locations vague. Then they have to actually look for that dungeon or something. They may end up spending a lot of time bumbling around in the woods until they can find whatever ancient tomb they're looking for. It's to the north. Well, the north is a big place.

Any daily challenge that can be bypass via a level 1 spell isn't worth the trouble.

Legendary Might: I really like the idea of a save bonus because of inherent draconic nature. I've never balanced saves but I feel like this should be closer to true legendary resistance. So that means it must activate AFTER you fail a save (which is already included in your version). We can do with as auto-succeed (identical to legendary resistance) 1/day. While mechanically effective vs save or sucks that you cannot afford to fail, it's not very exciting. If 1/day legendary resistance seems too strong in the crunch or too boring, a one save reroll per rage (after failure) works well and scales with # of rages. Alternatively we imitate monks and gain proficiency in all saves while raging.

The changes made to the breath weapon in Legendary might are honestly on the weak side but I wouldn't buff it more it since this class is already a barbarian with 2 attacks per turn plus bonus action breath weapons (again, DC and recharge scales with a mandatory barb stat, this is basically Quickened Burning Hands at level 3 on a barb, better than Quick BH at level 6).

Frightful Aura: I think this should apply the proper "frightened" condition and make it an active effect, rather than triggering when attacked. Perhaps upon entering a rage and using the free breathe weapon attack (referring to the one proposed in my other post under Dragon's Roar), all hostile creatures within 30/60 feet must make a Wisdom Save vs 8+Prof+Cha or become frightened until the end of their next turn, when they may repeat the save. Frightful Aura may only be activated once per minute. I don't quite like my suggestion on this one. It follows the frontload paradigm that we've followed so far by tacking it onto a rage activation, but it has overlaps with Intimidating Presence and Draconic Presence (DracoSorc Lv18). Also, the 1/min rule is awkward and solely to restrict lv20 barbs from toggling rage for a shitload of uses.

Out of the Abyss does this. Moving around in the underdark from place to place trying to escape or find someone to help you escape, while being hunted by the drow

How do y'all feel about magical items that are fuelled by the player sacrificing hitpoints? I think it's a cool idea, but I'm not really sure how to balance it.

For example, one of the ideas for a magic item I wanted to introduce to my campaign was a broach that let the wearer use their Bonus Action/Reaction to teleport 15 ft, but every time they chose to teleport they would have to roll one of their hit die and lose that much HP.

Another was a tea set where everyone participating would give up a hit die for 24 hours, and in exchange they would bank a '20', allowing them to switch out a single roll for that 20 over the next day.

You could check out that featured "Blood Magic" Dungeon Masters Guild homebrew for inspiration. Basically involves sacrificing hit dice for a burst of features

one of my player doesnt enjoy combat.

she's a pretty decent person and she doesn't really complain in session, but when asked she clearly states she doesnt like it.

do you think there's a way to always design combat encounters so that she gets something else to do to help the party besides fighting?

i feel giving her a puzzle or something to complete while the other are trying to gain time is only going to pressure her, or worse, to make everyone feel like she's not playing the same game

last time i asked the advice was to ask her specifically what she didn't like about combat.

i will try to ascertain this, but in the meanwhile, do you guys have "general" advice? maybe sharing actual experience?

I think it's ok, even if personally I'd be overly cautious about using it.
What I'm strictly against is items fueled by hit dice, because you're paying for combat benefits with a non-combat resource.

>keep any directions or locations vague. Then they have to actually look for that dungeon or something.
Morrowind was unironically the best Elder Scrolls game.

In general, HP for effects is a neat idea.
Difficult to balance as overall as a party levels up. Hypothetical mid-level paladin would give up a HD in a heartbeat for an auto-crit.

The bonus action/reaction teleport seems neat and makes sense as a reaction retreat to avoid damage bigger than the cost.

That pissed me off. There's literally no reason to think V is female for the first 1000 strips at least, and then a couple of obtuse readers get confused and Belkar makes a racist joke and suddenly nobody knows V's gender.
It wasn't even pandering (I don't make /pol/ arguments), it was just stupid.

I don't recall them being referred to as androgynous, except for the part that says intersex and genderfluid elves are a thing. Which is fine by me, but there's nothing that contradicts elfin manly men.

Normally i'm against it but...
Have you tried not playing D&D?
The system is designed primarily for combat, and while you can certainly get good RP out of it, it isn't particularly well built for entirely social or puzzle play.

Most mechanics I've seen solve this with something like "take 1 damage per level," to make it relevant at all levels.

Should quote

Why not sacrifice AC rather than HP? You can still get the flavour and it's probably more of a trade-off at higher levels.

D&D in inherently combat-heavy. I've seen great success with players being low-combat effectiveness that are still a great boon to the party.

Skillmonkey bards/thieves are always fun, and so are control/support casters like sorcerer/cleric/bard(again).

If the problem is that she simply doesn't like it when combat occurs because she finds combat tedious or doesn't like the idea of fighting, D&D doesn't offer a lot of alternatives. D&D is almost solely designed around combat-centric settings.

>Morrowind was unironically the best Elder Scrolls game.
What I would give for that game, but with updated graphics.

Sacrificing AC seems neat but idk if that the same as the sacrificing was talking about. Seemed more like bloodmagic/vitality expenditure when I read it.

Depends how much you like her and how much you're willing to homebrew something solely for her.

Speaking for myself, and purely because I love coming up with new mechanics and tinkering with them, I'd build her a new feat/class/spell that hinges on solving a puzzle in order to earn combat rewards, flavoured to be some sort of Warlock-esque pact with a Sphinx.

e.g.
Hanoi Tower -> advantage for rest of party for a round

Probably not that, I'd need a few days to come up with something workable, but it would be fun to try.

Because AC is a calculated value, not a resource.
If you need a more convincing argument, consider that people have a REALLY bad concept of how important AC is (because humans can't into probability), and will likely make terrible decisions through no fault of their own.

If you don't mind the different mechanics, Morroblivion did come out a couple years ago.

What class is she playing?

I've been playing a lot of "pacifist" characters lately, and I find it a lot more engaging to try and figure out how to end a combat without being able to just go whole hog on somebody. With the release of the new Tranquility Monk, she might find some enjoyment in a fully support role.

Alternatively, you could help her design a sort of trap disabling rogue or something and offer interesting puzzles or similar that are involved in defusing a trap that is threatening the rest of the party while they're fighting monsters.

Let's be honest, all of your players don't really enjoy combat. Combat is by far the weakest part of 5e.

I'd rather have Lego Morrowind, but sadly Lego games don't do existing game franchises.
To everyone who never realized how much they need TES:Lego in their lives until now, I am sorry. It will never happen.

The problem with that is usually the other players, who want to use their shiny combat abilities.

There are mods for that. Also open Morrowind someday.

Just because you're a pacifist doesn't mean the rest of the party needs to be. The point is that the game can be made more interesting by focusing on combat interactions outside of "hit dude with pointy stick"

The moment you, as a player, starts using any pronouns or the rest of the party has to, the gig is up, unless you're all willing to accept "he/his" as sort of a default.

also the jig
fuck you i just woke up
idioms are a diamond dozen in this doggy dog world

Considering base AC is 10 + Dex, you can assume that some degree of AC is a) part of life, and b) how much you can dodge.

That in mind, reducing it still factors into flavour as exhaustion or weakness.

>likely make terrible decisions through no fault of their own
Isn't that what questionable, blood and vitality-draining magic is for?

Always refer to that character by their name? Or maybe switch between him and her every so often?

Does anyone have a spreadsheet / csv file with all the 5e SRD monsters?

You're gonna look like an even bigger goob saying, "Jort takes Jort's sword and swings it at the enemy to Jort's left."
The most important thing to remember with this, and all other goofy character ideas, is that no one else at the table is really going to care even a fraction as much as you do, be it about the mystery or anything else. It's your character, not theirs.

>Isn't that what questionable, blood and vitality-draining magic is for?
Perhaps, but it still doesn't make for good game mechanics.

>Always refer to that character by their name?
"Did anyone see Pat? I need to give Pat Pat's sword so Pat can fight Pat's nemesis."
>Switch between him and her every so often
That's a lot to keep track of for players who don't really care about your gimmick.

Have a clear objective for combat other than killing stuff? Grab and deactivate the magical trap. Rescue a hostage to safety. Those kind of stuff? Maybe some kind of puzzle where you need cooperate with party member (and someone also has to hold the monster)?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

Japanese barely uses pronouns anyways. It's not a gendered language like English slightly is and European languages are.

>Perhaps, but it still doesn't make for good game mechanics.

I don't see why not. It wouldn't have to be called "give up AC", just a "penalty to AC".

Could even make it a penalty to Dex, reduce the modifier, and factor that into AC as a result.

Wouldn't be unreasonable to have Dex take a penalty due to vitality/blood-loss anyway.

>It typically occurs with an antecedent of indeterminate gender
Outside of the modern LGBT movement, singular "they" refers to situations where the person referred to is an unknown. If you refer to someone as "they," you're saying "I don't know if it's a he or a she. It's definitely one of those but I'm not sure which one."
Using it as a gender-neutral pronoun for gender-neutral objects is a relatively recent phenomenon that is still much debated.
Not that there's anything wrong with it if your entire group is on board; it's just that it's not a given that they will be.

With HP, you know what you're giving up. If the cost is 10 hp and you have 80, you can gauge the effect of using the ability.
With AC, most people have no fucking idea. Reducing your AC by 1 can impact your effective health by anything from ~5% to ~50%, depending on your initial AC and the accuracy of your enemies. And from my observations of players and theorycrafters, most people really, really don't get that.

Wew. Lots of answers, thanks guys.

I've tried. I put a lot of work into social&puzzle encounters so as to circumvent a bit the D&D shortcomings you are speaking of. I also honestly dislike systems or scenarios that push for a danger (or an enemy) so huge that simply fighting it isn't an option. Once in a while, why not, but if the entire system is built like thus... it seems unfair. I guess that's stupid of me.

She's might play Artificer (Alchemist). We're not sure yet. I haven't been able to reach her since yesterday (that's kinda why i can't expend on what it is, exactly, that she dislikes). Honestly the last time we had a combat with this character she WAS useful, and she mad smart use of her abilities. But she did seem a bit disengaged.
I think I'll ask her if she's interested in a different character. Maybe the kind to be reading glyphs on the walls and trying to guess the murals' signification while the rest of the party is busy taking out monsters. I hope session zero will help with this, and I hope I can manage making encounters that fit this weird state of the party. But:
What I'm a bit afraid if I go for this is that the entire party ends up not putting any importance on the encounters themselves. Or she might feel a lot of pressure from the group in solving these puzzles before they get killed (that's probably a good thing but I'm not sure it's going to be healthy). I guess that it's fine, and that I'll have to take that risk.

That's kinda what I meant by the whole: " to make everyone feel like she's not playing the same game". It seems to me that it's going to be more distracting/disengaging for everyone, including her, and it'll feel weirdly artificial. If you do come up with better examples maybe that'd change my mind on this though?

me having something to say about all of your answers doesnt mean i dont appreciate them

Would a setting created by reversing DnD assumptions be good, or just gimmicky? Disclaimer: I've never played any DnD beyond 5e set in the Realms.

Example: humans, halflings, dwarves, and elves are the common races per the PHB, and the rest are varying degrees of uncommon. Flip that around.

HotDiQ is a shitty campaign, to be honest family.

Subverting DnD just for the sake of subversion is gimmicky and pointless.

I mean, just set a campaign in a different part of the same world. They've been doing this for decades. Don't go out of your way to produce the bizarro versions of everything in D&D, because THAT's gimmicky.

If it's for indeterminate gender, then it seems like it's ideal for what OP wanted. They weren't wanting a true blue gender neutral character, just one where what side of the binary they were was an unknown.

It is kind of a lame idea for a character if that's all there is to it. Better if it's an interesting quirk than their main character trait for roleplaying

> DM that run more than one session a week
Who are you and where to find you.

Depends if you give it context.

>random world where it's just all subverted
Gimmicky.
>world that was normal setting, but some dumb wizard tinkering with reality inverted it and the party are the only ones who know what it used to be like
Playable, hook-filled, interesting.

Alternative home-brew: make her a spirit traveller, so every time combat kicks up, she goes into a trance and interacts with the souls of the enemies. Her actions in the spirit plane affect the physical plane:

>party fighting goblins
>pacifist player goes into trance and talks to goblin
>diplomacy/persuasion/deception/interrogation where the first three can convey disadvantages to enemies while being interesting roleplaying element for player
>interrogation provides further plot hooks for party following combat

DMG page 9 mentions exactly this.

As is, if it's just bizarro fantasy, that lacks a lot of substance.

Not a good idea. The combat guy will feel bored and less engage while waiting for the persuasion.

Has drunken vocaroo-user been around in awhile?

>one session per week

My group has yet to get two sessions in the same month, and some of the people ITT haven't played in months or years or ever.

Check your session privilege.

Other ideas

>party fighting in dungeon
>floor starts to lower, threatening to crush them all
>control panel for trap hidden under a wall tile
>player attempts to disarm trap while the rest of the party fights off the hordes
>both groups are contributing to the combat in positive and engaging ways

Question is too vague. It can mean anything from "making elves more common than humans" to "making demons lawful good."

Using it for a known, present character is really strange, though. It's like saying, "he or she" every time. Unless the character is completely obtuse, it makes no sense for them not to correct the speaker with their actual gender.