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

Would a Zealot Barb of Pelor be a thing or would pelor be like "nah fuck you"?

I want to make a Crusader-themed Zealot, and there's already an existing highly nationalistic Theocracy worshipping Pelor based off the Vatican so it'd fit as far as setting background goes, but I'm not sure if a Pelor devout going full RIP AND TEAR would be approved of by his god.

There's been a bunch of others in other threads shitting on the combat in 5e. But dunno if it's because of their contempt of the system clouding their judgement or a legitimate issue.

What's great about it in your eyes and in other's eyes?

If we're talking melee spellcasters, i.e. characters that have melee combat class features and can benefit from their own spells in the same turn in some capacity then (in approximate order of excellence), we've got:

Paladin
Eldritch Knight Fighter (poor caster, good melee fighter)
War Cleric (excellent caster, not very melee)
Ranger
Valor Bard
Blade Warlock
Arcane Trickster Rogue (rogues aren't really that good at melee, but it's there)

I might have missed something.

Bard College of Glamour

Bladesinger

No, you go two rogue for cunning action and expertise.

Especially when the Spear and Trident have different stats...
Or... At least different classes and weight.

Bladesinger is still a full caster first and foremost.

But cunning action only allows hide, disengage, and dash.

So you'd be taking a 2nd level for dash or maybe disengage?

Nowhere, but it's common sense.

Try asking your DM if you're allowed to do it. They'll refuse to let you, or they'll hvae you suffer exhaustion or make willpower type saves to keep doing it.

Athletics expertise is fucking bonkers m8. Cunning action is just icing on the cake.

what why?

I want to make the attack action every turn
>well you need to suffer exhaustion
>or take willpower save

5 levels of barbarian, rest in rogue.

Go dexterity for super AC, extra initiative and all that.
Go strength for better grapples and rage damage. Consider not wearing a shield so you can grapple with one hand and use the rapier with the other.

Me and my friends are new to DnD and were wondering how specific we can get with combat. For example if a player wanted to cut off the hand of a monster, would he have to do an attack roll against the monster's AC and would the monster have to do a saving throw to not get it's hand cut off? Or should the DM not allow actions like that at all?

Yeah but its the only difference between rogue 1 and rogue 2.

Rogue 1 was already stated as being part of the plan

Read the original post properly.

>every turn of your life
If you say 'I want to cast blade ward every six seconds while doing ANYTHING every day' your DM will call bullshit.

This isn't 'I want to do it ten times during combat'

This is 'I want to do it 10800 times every day'.

5e combat is rocket tag at low levels.
At high levels with casters, it remains so, but only in the early nova rounds.
By 5th level combat normalises unless there are full casters about.
In general, the combat is faster than 4e, but, using only the written rules and not fluctuations based on individual DMs, there is very little tactical thought to the matter.
If you want simplistic combat where the only thing that really matters is getting HP down as fast as possible, it's great.
If you wanted anything more interesting, then it is pretty much entirely DM Fiat.
Also, the speed of combat (see rocket tag comment earlier) makes any tactical concerns moot anyway as most fights are over in 3 rounds.
Exception being fights where the party does not have magical weapons and the enemy resists non magical damage. Earth Elemental will be a long boring slobber knocker unless everyone deals magic damage...

I think they are referring to out of combat.

Like when you're chilling in the tavern and get backstabbed by an assassin, you can't say "B-but my character has been prepared to dodge for the last four hours and does it EVERY turn for his action during downtime."

Just like you can't say every six seconds for the rest of your life, you swing your sword behind you JUST in the event of an invisible attacker.

Or can't cast Blade-Ward once every 6 seconds of your life for your entire life.

In combat through, this is fine.

Arcane Trickster could be sort of close

Yeah, Bladesinger is like War Cleric: It's got a bit of melee, but it's only really Cantrip-level power; casting a spell will almost always be your best option, but you can't do that every round so you have melee to fall back on.

Here's a few things I like about the combat in 5e.

*The classes are pretty balanced. There are still good classes and bad classes, but it's not as bad as some other RPGs. The Fighter is useful, and the Wizard can cast spells that solve problems. Concentration is a very good mechanic.

*They got the numbers right. Enemy AC and HP aren't too high, you can't stack modifiers until you break the game and get bored.

*It's easy to run. Lots to make GMs happy about the way that monsters are run and tracked. No ridiculous stat blocks a la 3e, no laundry list of status effects a la 4e. YouTube might have helped make this edition more popular, but there had to be something for GMs to stick around for after they got stuck in.

People who don't like 5e can find evidence to back up their opinion, but that's true of literally everything. It's a system with a lot to like, if you enjoy liking things.

Generally no, but you might allow them to do that if they score a crit (if your DM is the type to run crit successes and failures) or they might allow you to do it if it brings them to 0 or they might allow you to do it if you grapple them and pin them and then attack. They might also allow it on a very weak monster.

It's possible they could come up with rules, but you have to be careful of people saying 'I attack the neck for an instant kill'.

a common sense for a neckbeard who never exercise once in their life, maybe? They probably never see a boxing match.

Go strength, take Tavern Brawler, Shield-bash people and have an open hand to grapple.

The problem with that is you can't sneak attack with that, and the barbarian-rogue sort of set-up kinda focuses on rogue features for more damage through sneak attacks, uncanny dodge and all that.

Though if you want to go some sort of PAM GWM fighter/barbarian sort of a thing you might decide just one level of rogue.

The guy isn't talking about a boxer bobbing and weaving dodging constantly while in the ring, they are talking about the boxer bobbing and weaving while sitting on the bus.

Or reading a book.

Or shitting on the toilet.

Or cooking his dinner.

Or spooning his girlfriend watching a movie.

All so he can go "What the fuck don't be a jew, you've got disadvantage to hit me with that attack you twat mugger!"

Sure. Go try and convince your DM to let you dodge all the time and have enemies always have disadvantage to attack you on the first round of combat before your turn, if they're not unseen attackers, and advantage on dex saves.
See if he calls bullshit on you.

Don't forget you don't only need incredible stamina, but also incredible willpower and the will to look like an absolute baffoon all day long and any assassin will probably attack you when you can't dodge on the loo or something.

A sorcerer with haste and quicken -> 2 attacks plus one greenflame blade as a bonus action. And can do it one time per level daily.

If you get favored soul is 3 attacks + cantrip per round.

Arcane triskter rogue can do:
3d8+6d6+5 at lvl 11 with boominb blade, 3d8 is the targuet move.
So if you move booming and dash you get one guy out of combat one round and do 40.5 dmg if its moves you do 52 dmg.

First one can do one attack + Greenflame + Greenflame actually.

Do you reckon dual shortswords would be a good choice of weapon for the barbarian rogue? I feel like the boost to strength based attacks would work well with extra attacks.

Ok cool, cause I was gonna say if taking back to back dodge actions in combat is breaking the rules then I've been breaking the rules a whole lot recently. Spirit guardians + spirit weapon + constant dodge is my jam.

Is Booming Blade even on the Sorcerer spell list? Not all Wizard spells are also Sorcerer spells.

The lack of TWF style hurts dual-wielding and you have better things to do with your bonus action.

Cunning Action?

Short answer is dm should not allow

Long answer goes into a discussion about what HP really means etc. mobile and laziness here so I'll give you the brief and what I do as a dm which isn't universal

Basically that sort of shit is an attempt to bypass the hp system which, while not perfect (really just serviceable) informs your health more than a singular strike can.

(How I run it/the right way to run it is) all attacks represent attempted lethal blows or some series of back and forth with your opponent that ends in an attempted lethal blow. AC and HP combine to determine how often your opponent can avoid danger and by how much. Significant body harm never happens above 0 hp, they still have the "will to survive" or what have you until then. This brings the realism of the fact that anyone who gets their arm chopped off in real life is going to be bleeding on the ground dying not continuing to fight with "just a flesh wound" or whatever. "I aim for the head/arm/foot/etc" is a fine first step into flavoring Completely Regular Attack Rolls.

yeah, warlock wizard and sorcerer.

Yes. The blades are wiz war sorc

How strictly do you follow travelling/adventuring/dungeoneering rules?

My mates and I are pretty casual and only got into this recently and we're really enjoying it. We tend to skip all the encounter rate/travel time/camping stuff since we're still getting the basic game down right, but I was wondering how loosely grizzled veterans handle it.

I recently tried Darkest Dungeon and was thinking of doing something that relied on that stuff pretty heavily, so tips would be cool.

Dual shortswords are good for a level 1-4 barbarian, actually.

Rapier + Shield - A bit hard to grapple since your only easily grappling hand is the rapier one, and then you can't sneak attack. GIves you godly defences, though. Don't forget, you get two attacks, so you don't necessarily need a bonus attack in order to reliably sneak.
Two Shortswords - You can easily drop a shortsword in order to have a free hand to grapple with. If you only have one shortsword, it's only -1 damage compared to the rapier per round. Bonus action attacks have rage damage if you're using strength but it's a shame to use bonus actions if you don't have better things to do with them.

..Yeah, I'm thinking dual shortswords is better than I imagined before. I always decided rapier+shield but I forgot how hard it is to grapple with that.

This.

Until you hit 0hp, you are basically at worst lightly scratched. Falling to 0hp represents any serious hit whatsoever.

Whoops, it's actually roughly -2.1 damage per round, not -1.

Still, what I would do is have a rapier and sheld for combats you don't plan to grapple in or if you don't care about your defenecs and two shortswords otherwise.

To build on what this user said, if you note you aim for a specific location, and then reduce the enemy to 0 HP, there is an excellent opportunity for severing, maiming, ect...
Personally, in my games, I let the player that dropped the target below 0 HP describe how they did so. Decapitation? Tipped both arms off? Pulled a blow right before it sliced the target's throat and they fainted? Sure, why not.

Not really unless its a crit. D&D isn't really about realistic, simulationist combat. HP is a combination of all sorts of things and by bringing specific injuries into the mix you make the heroic fantasy of D&D into a more realistic affair that is not represented by the HP system as is.

That's why I'm running theangrygm.com/fighting-spirit/
Being fine after taking dragon's breath and a quick dip into lava but going down to a lucky kobold swing is just wrong imo.

The short answer is that being really specific in combat is an awesome concept that's basically impossible to balance. Unless you specifically want to go off the rails with a weird homebrew where every tough fight is a matter of lopping each other's hands and/or heads off, you're probably better off just not allowing it.

Which is sad, but there really isn't a good alternative.

GM-specific bullshit rulebending question time.

RAW, if you take a level or two in Wizard instead of Eldritch Knight your spellcasting doesn't improve, because of how the multiclassing rules work. (More slots, but the spells you can cast are tied to your individual class levels.) Would you let someone stack them if you were GMing and they were playing a multiclass EK? For example, a lv3 EK lv2 Wizard would be able to cast second level spells. You'd get third level spells at character level 7 instead of 13. (Lv13 is SO damn late for third level spells. It basically means "not in this campaign".)

Obviously, this is me looking at the Bladesinger and the multiclassing rules and getting frustrated with RAW. It might still be worth it sticking to RAW. I'm just wondering how many of Veeky Forums's GMs would say Yes to that request.

Fuck yes, somebody else is using it.

Still, personally, I'd do it like so:
>Once you hit 0 HP, any extra damage goes over to a pool of HP that is bigger than the one given by that article.=, but still smaller than normal HP
>You don't become 'despirited' but you roll 1d100+damage every time you take a hit instead and roll on an injuries table that may give nothing or might give something until a long rest or really bad rolls above 100 can be nasty.
>Actions such as cure wounds or attacking an enemy might have a small HP cost to represent overexerting and to discourage attacking while in a critical state, not so sure on this one.

Fuck the death saves system, fuck 'I heal you for 1' healers.

Eh.
I'd say 'yes, if you reached level 5 on EK (it's not just a 3 level dip).'

Don't forget, you don't necessarily get more slots. If you're a level 4 EK and you take a level of wizard, you don't gain more slots until wizard level 2.

Every time I encounter the spells known / prepared / slots / level systems I get a little bit angrier at how it all works

Oh, and, something like not being able to use standard magical healing to restore non-fighting-spirit HP.
The idea is people are discouraged from fighting without spirit because they cannot easily regain their physical health and run a risk of injuries if they do so. This means while people have the option to fight on, running away or defending themself becomes much more of a priority.

I've been using when you go down you gain one level of exhaustion and I think it works pretty well.

>Don't forget, you don't necessarily get more slots. If you're a level 4 EK and you take a level of wizard, you don't gain more slots until wizard level 2.
Yep, I noticed that one too. Multiclassing rounds down fractional casting levels, while the classes themselves round up. Odd stuff, but I guess I'm OK with the end result of single class characters being good.

I'm not changing that much. I'm doing fighting spirit because I want to represent heroic high fantasy as best as possible and FS represents that idea well. People don't just take nondescript damage in myths constantly while fighting anything, they block, parry, and dodge everything. The only time a mythological hero takes an actual wound beyond a scratch its fucking serious and specific.

It's better than the standard system, but I still prefer that people can fight on after they reach 0 HP rather than become ragdolls. It gives them more to think about.

Of course, the table would have things like 'This doesn't apply if the weapon was not bludgeoning' or 'this doesn't apply if the weapon was not slashing' or that sort of thing, since theres supposed to only be a certain chance of injuries happening. There's nothing permanently deliberating until the really high numbers, and it's the player's fault at that point for facing danger in a critical state. They don't get sprung injuries out of nowhere.

I don't think FS is bad but I don't think it's entirely perfect. It has all the right ideas for what it's trying to fix, though. I think it's a brilliant way to introduce injuries and rather than saying a clause about attack and save disadvantages which can be circumvented by grappling, using non-attack spells, etc... It's simply, 'you make a small HP sacrifice to do that' or you don't just dodge every turn but only in the turns when you think you might be in danger.

Personally I'd rather say that that doesn't happen and you continue spell progression as normal.
After all, it only affects half/third casters and their spell progression is considered in part of their levelling.

What are some really fun class/archetypes to play? Really fun multiclasses? Starting Storm Kings Thunder at level 5. So far all I've played is the Mystic and 3 sessions as a Paladin (the game fell apart due to scheduling). I'm really looking for something that's going to be a lot of fun to play.

Today I had my fighter leave the party to go back to his homeland who had waged war on the country I was currently in. I had done many tasks for this land and the party even had a growing reputation. Upon saying I was leaving, my character was taken and made a sleeper agent by the DM

Was it a /thatguy/ thing to pull a "BECAUSE MY CHARACTER WOULD XD" moment like this?

People have been doing "Your first HD is meat points, the rest is abstract bullshit" for years. All this is, is changing the single HD to 1/3 total HP (which does make the math better, but its not a revolutionary concept). Even 4e had the Bloodied condition which would be decent if there was any true support for it.

>my character was taken and made a sleeper agent by the DM
Now that's the kind of asspull I wouldn't put with.

Fuck that shit. Your character is your character.

Not really. It was the DM's choice to do that.
If he didn't like the possibility of you saying your character is gonna go home, he shouldn't have put forth such a situation where that's a high possibility.

If you had established that you hate your homeland then it makes no sense, but if you seem to love it, would make tons of sense to return to it rather than be in a place that might be hostile to you. Or rather, it makes sense to return when you as a citizen of another land, might be seen as helping the enemy by being in their land and helping their citizens.

I could have worded that better. I was given a day in game to make a decision (and what a tough one it was), and I made it to council of the strongest mages of each school of magic, who my team was aiding. The enchanter then met me after a meeting, wiped my memories, and made me a sleeper agent for their side. No one in the party was happy about this

Rogue Swashbuckler is always a fun choice.

Guys I have a question in regard to the Way of the Kensei from the UA

Can a shortsword be consider a kensei weapon? or does the 3 martial weapon only consider to be kensei weapon

Making a Tempest Aasimar for our new game.

Any tips what kinda of build would be good? Wisdom max, mace or warhammer?

How the fuck did he wipe your memories to that degree?

I'd say fuck that. Modify memory isn't even that powerful of a spell. And I myself am fine with making up effects that happen outside the realm of normal spells, but that is some fucked up shit to make canon.

The DM should have been more creative and given you false memories of your homeland being the clear aggressor, POSSIBLY causing you to stay instead of going. But still giving you the ultimate choice. If you had decided to stay after the new memories took effect, possibly having those memories restored could have led to a really cool moment in the story if you get healed by a greater restoration and discovered the shenanigans done by the enchanter.

Shit DM.

Any weapon the monk is proficient with.

>first campaign I DM
>follow all the travel rules
>ask for marching order, track rations, utilize travel speed

>second campaign I DM
>ignore all travel rules and just handwave all those mechanics
>it's 100x better

This is also the reason most people hate playing a ranger in practice because the things they're good at get hand waved. And kind of rightfully so, because that shit is boring 90% of the time.

If you've got a ranger, make sure to include some non-travel related ranger shit for them to do.

champion fighter my friend, enjoy yourself and have a fun game

These mechanics can be fun, but only in the right sort of game.

You want hexcrawl mechanics and some sort of Dungeon Meshi set-up where players are having to cook up and eat monsters or something.

Don't do it to keep ranger relevant, do it for a certain type of party where they're broke and hungry / away from civilization / limited on time and they need to explore. Something like that.

It's even better with the 7 day long rest 8 hour short rest rulings.

This is the one where the DM had you working for a theorteically corrupt lord or something, right?

Holy shit, is the DM basically saying 'No, you can't leave the party because lol a master wizard showed up and told you no'?

Instead of using travel mechanics whatsoever, I just treat the walk to and from a dungeon as part of the dungeon. I try to include Rangery type stuff in there.

For example, say they're hiking to a goblin infested cave. One of my favorite encounter templates is "party stumbles upon unaware enemies in midtransit", IE maybe a goblin hunting party returning to base, or fighting some mercenaries, or hauling captives, or whatever else. Then I just let the party do whatever they want. Follow, engage, ignore, whatever. It's easy to sprinkle Rangery activies in there - the band marched through and tracks are visible, or the party attempts to follow stealthily and you can have many possible interactions with the terrain and the enemy camp.

The key is treating it as part of the dungeon, not just an obligatory preface. If the party spends an entire session on various shenanigans as they attempt to continually tail, sneak into, or otherwise interact with a goblin band, that's just as good as some puzzle or RPG interactions I could've dropped into room 2B of the cave.

Why the Champion out of curiosity? It doesn't seem to get any interesting abilities, outside of the increased crit range.

That looks fun, definitely a possibility!

I apologize for my poor choice of words, I did leave the party. I am now a sleeper agent for the side of the wizard, though.

This is also the same gm that made my party of level 5's fight a dragon so he could use his polymorphing dragon npc

Crits are fun and champion gets loads of them.

I do love 5e paladins, but their fluff is a little wonky. The phb describes them as being righteous warriors who's power comes from a sacred oath, but fails to explain the hows or why of this. This is then contradicted on basically the same page by the fact they get smite before they swear their oath.
And then the dmg has the oathbreaker, who has broken his oath but still has his powers. He isn't righteous and he doesn't have an oath but he still has his powers.
Then you have the oath of the crown, which is basically lawful neutral with good leanings, so not particularly righteous but still has powers.
And then you have the oaths of conquest and treachery, lawful neutral with evil leanings and chaotic neutral with evil leanings respectively. The oath of treachery is basically the oath of not having an oath.
I actually love all these oaths, but if this is what they were going to do with the class then why the fuck doesn't the fluff in the phb reflect it?

So.. I suppose the DM is trying to set up the people the party's working for as a really douchey faction they should rebel against? Is that his intention?

It's a bit of a shame to not give the character a proper send-off, and honestly whenenver 'memory wipe' comes up it's bullshit on the level of 'aliens invade, probe humans' but if there's some way to save the guy..

Yeah, travel mechanics can certainly be fun, but not in 5e, because you need to add so much homebrew that it's barely 5e's systems anymore. But in a campaign like that, where you have a party having out of character navigation discussions, you can definitely do some fun stuff.

Personally I've always wanted to design a system for a "blind" hexcrawl (players have my descriptions and their navigation skills/decisions instead of access to the hex map) and run that, but I've yet to be in the right mood for it.

But for most campaigns the best solution is to just ignore the systems entirely. Treat travel as part of the dungeon, and treat travel based actions the same as any other RP action, that is, on a case by case basis.

Every piece of the Rogue's fluff says they're all stealy dickthieving criminals.

I don't know why either, user.

Perhaps nobody knows.

No, it's seriously only this guy that is a douche. That makes him BBEG #3 at this rate

So why is Oathbreaker considered overpowered? I understand why Oath of Treachery is but I'm not sure what feature Oathbreakers get that's so exploitable.

Is it possible to play a naive character who tries to spare lives when ever possible without pissing off the group?

CHA to damage on all attacks.

Just hope you aren't fighting Undead or Fiends.

It is a bit dubious.
It's generally considered to be 'the strength of their convictions, force of will', and so forth.
Imagine it a bit like a favoured soul sorcerer fighter. They channel holy energy (but might not be affiliated with a god) into battle, and oaths and such restrictions with honour and such help their ties to the holy realm. Then, oathbreakers just channel unholy energy and are fucking overpowered because of that level 7 ability.

I think they've left it a little dubious to allow paladin a lot more leeway than previous editions, especially so they don't need to set up an entire class for 'unholy paladin'.

I wouldn't say it completely alters the system, but you do have to nerf things such as goodberry or make it so extraordinary heroes need extraordinary food.

There's a lot of stuff you have to make up, but it's not really 'homebrew' to replace existing mechanics, it's just filling in where 5e has left the mechanics blank for the DM to fill in.

Up to +5 to damage is pretty much the same as an additional improved divine smite at 1d8.

It's not crazy overpowered, but it is to a certain degree and holy fuck it's not even an exciting feature, it's just, 'You do a fuckton more damage! Up to 20 more damage a round, go you, edgelord!'

So im reading the unfinished Mystic UA
if i understand correctly are Disciplines like stances? you use one, gain the psychic focus, and then "cast" from the list of associated effects using psi points?

You basically summarized exactly how I do things as well.

I'm adding on to my character's background since I only had a barebones one so far.

Is there any spell you can put on someone to prevent them from talking about something specific?

I've got a secret agent type PC and I think it'd be interesting to show how their nation, (until now shown in a mostly good light), has a bit of a less savory side in that their agents are heavily affected by Modify Memory and have some spell to prevent them from discussing their mission by any means.

Geas seems like an option but it's only once a day, and where I am at level 7 I could survive even a max damage 5d10.

Obviously Modify Memory would be good for a lot of things, but they clearly can't not remember their mission while they're on it. Ideally something that 1. doesn't actually cause harm, just prevents them from talking, and 2. is an actual spell from the game instead of a made up one so it has a proper frame of reference for the DM.

I cant find this section anywhere

In regards to goodberry, I've always ruled it that it does exactly what it says, but the name goodberry is a bit ironic because it is perhaps one of the most bitter tasting "fruits" you could ever put in your mouth.

It was any martial weapon the monk is proficient with.