/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

Main effect of the ring aside from being unable to be removed normally. "When in a market or situation similar to that, the ring will shout in different voices every time the wearer gets near something. Even though the voices are different, they all say the same thing. "THIEF! THIS MAN IS A THIEF!""

Making a warlock/paladin. Undying Light Tomelock, for the first three levels to get to Shillelagh so I can beat people to death with my holy bat, then five levels of paladin to get extra attack. After that it's whatever. Is this a decent order or should I look at it another way?

cause it looks cooler?

No.
The monsters arent build for that.

Thank god you've made this general. The other one fucking sucked.

How would that even work for monsters? Would you just multiply the dice they already have by their STR mod? Or would it be just whatever die they have, they have (mod) number of damage dice now?

For reference for any other kind of exotic special pronged snowflake weapon people might recommend (i.e. Military Forks, Ranseus, Spetums) so they don't come up with some stupid overpowered weapon when an exact analog isn't on the equipment list.

Same reason why the Glaive and Halberd are listed as two different weapons in spite of being functionally identical; because somebody will bring up his special snowflake Guan Dao or Naginata and suggest something outrageous if a similar weapon isn't on the list.

Hex takes a bonus action and the third attack takes a bonus action, but at least it can be done at range.

The problem is... Compared to an eldritch blast with hex at level 5, which is 2d10+2d6+2xCHA or at level 11 3d10+3d6+3xCHA or level 17 4d10+4d6+4xCHA, each with 10ft pushback per blast..
Yeah, it's just not a thing.

Not to mention you need to multiclass for the ranged weapon.

Those are some of the worst portent rolls possible.

Small creatures are infrequently possessed and attempt to attack the cursed. The creatures often deal little to no damage or at most might interrupt a spell or get in the way at a critical moment, but their main impact is that they will annoy the character to no end, particularly getting eaten by rats in the night.
If the character doesn't start doing something about it such as putting their sleeping position somewhere hard to reach, they might get exhaustion or a bit of damage sometimes overnight.

I wanted to dislike this idea but it really seems viable at higher levels. Probably not so much before level 13 or so.

God-style wizard is a surefire way to be very powerful and yet fly under the radar of the average DM. The other players might not even realize how useful you're being, but it's the most useful way to play a caster.

I was allowed to take the crossbow as pact weapon (even Mearls approves it), and 1) the game is a short campaign maxing at lvl 10, anyway, so the latter disparity is meaningless.

And who says that you must max-gimp each of your characters? That's not fun. It's not like I'm actively trying to outshine the other players.

More touch spells
Bladelock can use a bonus action for touch spells

In that case it might as well be a Simple weapon, too. It seems like it's jut not worth the effort for them.
A Guan Dao seems blatantly functionally identical to a halberd/glaive to me, though, at least in tabletop.
Frankly if I ever DMd I'd make spears simple weapons and put them on any proficiency list that mentions spears.
Non-Kensei Monks I guess.

De-emphasize the pacts and increase emphasis on patron powers. They have more room for expansion.

In one of the dndnext rulesets they were d8/d10. They just fucked them in the release.

You'd have to completely remove feats, completely discourage rolling for stats (rolling for stats is shit anyway)... Champions will become hot shit and all the dexterity people can suck it up.
It's a matter of +7, +6.5, +5.5 or +4.5 damage and +1 to hit per +2 strength compared to +1 damage +1 to hit per +2 dex.

Paladins mostly tend to use strength and they're already fine enough, but as above they tend to cling to PAM. A good barbarian or fighter also uses PAM or GWM or both.

It.. Needs some serious balancing, and it's pretty boring to just make it 'Strength is the stat of the damage dealer!'

>In that case it might as well be a Simple weapon, too. It seems like it's jut not worth the effort for them.
B-but my special spear takes skill, Chinese monks trained for decades to use these weapons etc.
>A Guan Dao seems blatantly functionally identical to a halberd/glaive to me, though, at least in tabletop.
Yeah but if it there was only a halberd or only a glaive some fuck will go "But it's not technically a halberd/glaive it's more of a glaive/halberd so can I make up shit how about 2d8 that's fair right"

The point isn't to optimize EVERY character, just the shit ones.
Shit like bladelocks, monks and all that should be optimized because they're already the runts of the litter and there's no shame in making them on par with everyone else.

Warlock itself needs an overhaul to bring it back to something resembling its old 3.5 self, instead of attempting a piecemeal fix to each pact and patron.

Stop familiars from using the help action.

Completely remove the blade pact. Make a new class to fill in the 'bladelock' style niche instead.

But only when using their weapon huh?

Congratulations, there is now ZERO reason to go chainlock.

You must lack creativity if you can't find a use for familiars.

What is invisibility?
What is scouting?
What is trap-checking?
What is all the stealing utilities you can have by having an invisible imp go around town and taking things, with them having hardly any way to trace it back to you unless you're clearly a warlock and the familiar isn't disguised as an animal or something?
What is having a second opinion?
What is having someone with their own initiative to go pull the lever or shut a door for you mid-combat?

Certainly, they could use more interesting invocations, but it's not bad, and familiars using the 'help' action should never have been a thing with hidden invisible familiars not giving away their position from using the help action technically and wizards getting familiars for free.

Heck, maybe just take away wizard's free familiar so that pact of the chain gives you something more unique.

Don't gimp an already weak archetype, you autistic fuck.

Is Peace Monk any good?

Also by taking away familiars from wizards, you'd take familiars away from tomelocks.

Most people find it a pretty okay archetype, if you can even call it an 'archetype'.

Tomelock's main benefit is honestly shillelagh at level 3 rather than level 6, which is great on certain characters. Otherwise it's just some nicely rounded utility. Kind of want to try magic stone with it, too, to give it to people with slings who have poor stats. That sounds like great support.

Anyway, I still despise that wizards get a familiar that's practically free that can use the help action. I'd be okay with leaving the help action in if non-chain familiars go or are nerfed and have the help action removed. If you remove the other familiars, pact of the chain is fucking brilliant.

Best class to represent a master of healing and therapy through sensual tantric massage.

Paladin, just lay on hands

Life cleric 1/bard X

Thief with healer's kit and healer feat.

Bonus action massage people.

But why optimize bladelock as a turret, essentially making the whole pact pointless? At least my "optimization" uses a feat and little leeway to make a better character than a straight-up bladelock who goes in and tries to hit shit with a greatsword.

Unless you're suggesting I should've just taken PAM and go into town with a Glaive or smth with my puny 1d8 health.

At least my option keeps me alive, dammit.

And check out the numbers. With the current style, Hand Crossbow is actually better than EB w/ ASI. I just gotta change from my Heavy crossbow to that. Only things I'll lose are a little bit of range and the ability to push.

anydice.com/program/a93a

Remember, this game only lasts until 10th level.

So yes, basically there is a better build (at least on pure damage output) than Turretlock if your GM is a little flexible. Pushing is still the Turret's job, but hey, you can do both.

And if you go variant human, hell, you can do this even better.

How broken would it be if a bladelock could gain a fighting style as an Invocation?

I'm amazed Veeky Forums can endlessly rehash the blade warlock topic and keep saying the same shit about it over and over. It's a meme.

Give it to them with their first invocation, say it counts as two.

But all it really does is take the same mechanic and make it worse.
The mechanic of 'stand away and make attack rolls'.

You're requiring bonus actions to hex and move said hex around which directly conflicts with the bonus action hand crossbow attacks, which will drop the average to being worse. Granted, without hex and with decent stats, you should still do slightly more damage. You're losing out on the possibility of having an extremely strong invocation - the 10ft pushback - and not using force damage, though I suppose you might get a magic crossbow if you're really lucky.

I could understand if there was some special gimmick going on. Melee bladelock actually has a slightly different gimmick to eldritch blasting - they benefit from things such as enemies being prone, they can use PAM for reaction attacks and bonus attacks, they deal more damage than EB probably will and overall they have a different experience, even if they still have inherent flaws.

The problem with the handcrossbow is.. It's very much the same thing as EBing, but just worse.

If you're going to use bladepact properly, the best use is on some sort of PAM fighterwarlock or on a rogue-warlock multiclass

Not awfully broken, but you're not fixing anything. Pact of the blade really shouldn't be 'does nothing, but gives you some really boring combat buff invocations - the pact'.

Probably just add a base die if they're large or bigger, and then multiply by their STR mod.

>You'd have to completely remove feats
Why? Are you thinking of some in particular?

>Champions will become hot shit
Why do you say that?

>all the dexterity people can suck it up.
While I was writing this, I actually just had a second, even greater idea. So STR is the way I just said it is, but DEX is like, finding the weakpoints in someone's defenses? So you could represent that by adding the DEX modifier to the damage dealt for each point that you beat the target's AC by. So if you're fighting someone with AC 17 and you have a 1d8+3 rapier or whatever, when you roll a 17 you deal 1d8, if you roll an 18 you deal 1d8+3, 19 1d8+6, all the way up to a max of roll of say, a 29, which would be a crit, and thus dealing 2d8+36 damage.

yeah desu i've not yet been in a dnd related thread that didn't have at least a few posts about bladelock recently. It's quite surprising how desperately we're trying to make it work. It's not even that cool thematically.

only thing I can think of is that you can use a trident underwater without a penalty right?

What would be some neat options or builds that would synergize with the Horizon Walker? I'm thinking about playing an "undead hunter" sort of ranger, and liked the theme of Horizon Walker, considering it allows me to ignore resistances. What kind of feats would make this archetype shine a bit more?

Bring back the quirks for Warlocks from the playtest.

Sounds like more damage rolling and calculations with extra dice and calculating difference between your attack and AC. But, hey, if you do the calculation that's not so big a problem.

Champions crit a lot. When they crit, they could do as much as 20d6 damage with an ordinary greatsword, or 10d12 with an ordinary greataxe. After all, by expanding the number of dice rolled you make critical hits more valuable.

PAM would definitely have to go, as if grants you two extra attacks, and those two extra attacks...
A fighter at level 11 would make 5 attacks, each dealing a possible 5d10+5 except for their bonus action which is 5d4+5. They can also apply GWF to reroll all 1s and 2s and thus their average d10 damage goes from 5.5 to 6.3.

GWM has a chance of giving you a bonus action attack, which is powerful when it can do crazy damage. The +10 damage is useless though considering the crazy damage outputs.

But, yeah, you could give dex more damage. You could just give all martials more damage, but then also paladins will get more damage, sorcerer-paladins would get more damage..
And then wizards will do nothing but use non-attack spells, and you'll have to buff everyone's health to survive monsters longer, and you'll have to buff spell damage so wizards sometimes use their spell attacks as well, and then-

And then you realize you've just inflated all the numbers like some 3e/4e powercreep.

Martials don't need more damage. They need more utility.

Sure, so at the very least you could run up, summon your weapon then some damage touch spell if you weren't changing summoning weapon to be not a full action.

Nope.

STR is a good stat if you actually pay attention to carrying and jumping rules. Most DMs just don't care.

Well true, but to me, the thing is more about the aesthetic anyway.

Because if I actually take something like Ascendant Step and jump into air, put hunter's mark and surprise snipe someone, doing it with a crossbow has a definitely different feel than EB (at least to me), even though mechanically it's basically the same.

The players around me haven't optimized their characters. Hell, I helped half of them to make their characters because most of them are new to 5e, so trying to be the most viable is not really a problem to me. Especially so when our party has a Halfling Barbarian (Not using shortswords) and a turnip farmer from Barovia (a Champion Fighter, stats rolled in order), among others. Trying to make the most viable character isn't really a thing with our game. If I was playing with hard powergamers then yes, I would probably make something more optimized. But then again, I wouldn't play with hard powergamers.

Please.

Surely a trident should do 3 times a spear damage because it stabs people 3 times instead of once

If you're trying to be the most viable thing, you'd be a wizard or something. It's not about being great, it's about having something you excel at and excelling at it. So it seems kinda lame to take something and then not excel at it. You could make a paranoid rogue with high wisdom whose focus is crazy perception checks, for example.

You can also try to become a good support with new players. Do things like prone and grapple enemies over hurting them a lot, and then the other players can get advantage for hitting them or the like. The alchemist artificer seems pretty neat for this.

But.. It feels such a shame to take warlock's gimmick and waste potential for the sake of fluff.

Anybody have that homebrewed universal weapon chart made by some user?

But it's stabbing 1/3rds as hard though.

Three, really small people, stood directly next to each other. Like, hugging each other. Yeah that makes sense.

Making characters, rolled pretty well.
18
18
16
16
15
13

What do? I kinda want to make a bard for the support abilities, maybe even go for Lore, and then grab a rapier and hand crossbow and go van helsing on people when I am not singing like a faggot.

How does that sound? Most of the other players rolled like shit, so I definitely dont need to worry about bring optimised, I just want to be a supportive bitch who still kicks ass when I dont need to assist the others.

Points taken, but you actually wouldn't add the modifier, It would just be multiplied. So 5d4, 5d10, etc.

And it has less to do with balancing martials, and more because it annoys me how long fights take.

That's because the encumbrance rules are garbage and item weights are a mess. A mining pick is 10 pounds but a great axe is 7? Suure. A pike is 18 pounds and a halberd is 6? How tiny is the halberd? And a barrel isn't 70 pounds unless it's got something in it or it's made of lead.

All that mess aside, I think item weights are a bit of a red herring anyway. Slot-based equipment is the way to go, the problem is how to do it intuitively, fairly, and in a way that actually matters to the game.

Well, my bad, I didn't look at that.
Holy fuck

If you want to shorten fights, I'd do it by way of not making every single fucking monster fight to the death like they're trying to go to valhalla or something.

I don't get why so many DMs do this.

Add Finesse to the glaive and 5e is saved

How much damage should this do?

>rolled pretty well.
Pretty well? Two 18 plus a pair of 16's is insane. So insane that if you didn't roll this mess in front of a live human being I'd just say forget about it because no one will believe you. You can literally make whatever the fuck you want with those scores.

Players want to rebuild a manor in phandelver.

Ok, how do I go about making a nice 2nd floor map that looks similar to the 1st? Or should I try to find a map somewhere and say the bottom floor was rebuilt?

It would almost be a shame not to play one of the MAD classes like Monk or Paladin.

2d12 psychic

I use this
At first my players were butthurt about not being able to carry as much, but I like it because it makes them actually think about what they're carrying with them
I can upload the rules that came with it if you like

Rolled them with the rest of the group, GM included. Now we just have free reign to make our level 1 characters with those stats.

How would a build focusing on the whip look like? I kinda feel like going for a Belmont kind of character.

Play a bard, but roleplay like your are Hercules, offspring of somekind of god, half god, trying to attain your godhood.

Maybe play Aasimar

OR!

Pick a Variant Human, bump your Cha to 19 with a +1 and then take Actor for another +1, starting at level one with 20 Cha.
And instead of actually being the offspring of a god, pick the Charlatan background and just be trying to trick people into thinking you are the son of a god, perhaps someone from the mythology of your DM's setting, with advantage on deception checks.

My players are doing the same thing. I told them that the east and west walls are mostly intact, but the north and south walls are shot. The ground floor interior walls are basically gone, the entire second floor and half the roof have fallen in.

They're pretty much building everything but the cellar from scratch.

>I can upload the rules that came with it if you like
Sure, looks neat. Looks like a more complicated version of the anti-hammerspace sheet I saw. I liked that one except that it really punished heavy armor builds. Hoping to find a happy medium somewhere.

I would really prefer not just going full cheese monkey and outshine them completely. Much rather go for a more supportive style that allows me to still be able to fight, but in a much more subdued fashion.

I kinda like the idea of someone who acts like a sissy little faggot in the backline, but turns out to be a complete monster in close combat anyway. And I actually have the stats to make something like that vaiable, so why not.

Well, I guess. But I would probably enjoy playing less if I did that, myself. I am a huge crossbow buff (I didn't even really think about optimization when I asked my GM about it), and finally being able to make a character who uses a crossbow is a godsend, in addition to the fact that it's a Warlock with all the neat Warlock spells.

In short, this character is a dream come true, so I love it.

You see, I have always wanted to make a crossbow-using character, and sadly, I have been a forever GM for my entire RPG career of 5 years or so, this being the first classic fantasy campaign I've been in. Getting the chance to make a Warlock simultaneously? Heck yes! Especially considering that I will probably not get to play D&D or fantasy RPG:s in general for a long time, due to the impeding release of my own game, which I still need to playtest immensely before that.

>Pick a Variant Human, bump your Cha to 19 with a +1 and then take Actor for another +1, starting at level one with 20 Cha.
>And instead of actually being the offspring of a god, pick the Charlatan background and just be trying to trick people into thinking you are the son of a god, perhaps someone from the mythology of your DM's setting, with advantage on deception checks.
Okay that actually sounds dope.

Be an old lady life cleric

Play a shitty race/class combo, like rock gnome monk or orc wizard. Basically any race/class combo where your racial bonuses go to the stats you care the least about

Not sure how the ruleset you mention handles it, but armor weight is halved if you're wearing it in this.
The rules are bit complicated to set up, but in play they run fantastic I've found.
If I made one change, it would be to how the encumbrance score is calculated. I'd probably just have it be straight STR, the average of STR and CON, or the higher of the two, because the current method is a bit unforgiving

What said. You could be the most amazing Half-orc Artificer or Bard. Hell, with your stats, you could ask to be a full orc, but so civilized that you actually live with the other normal races. Ask your GM for silly things like that.

>Now you're thinking of an orc talking in a posh british accent

You could play a Tiefling Monk or Ranger, like one of my players did

>How would a build focusing on the whip look like?
Pretty much whatever you feel like with those stats.

Shit you could go Halfling Barbarian and dual wield whips. With 16+2 Dex and 18 CON (other 18 going to STR) you'd have 18 AC right out the gate, bouncing around like goddamn Yoda.

Or play a whip wielding Paladin.

Make a fucking Half Orc Wizard or a Tiefling Druid if you want. There's literally no way to make a bad character with those scores.

And here's an example

Play something that can get magic stone, like druid or warlock, use magic stone and hand them over to a rogue or someone with really bad stats. The rogue only has to use a sling, which is like using a shortbow with -1 damage, so it's worth it.

They'll use your attribute modifier for their attack rolls and damage rolls.

Alchemist artificer is definitely heavily support focused. A charisma paladin has support but would probably just be overpowered.

Monks are pretty supportey if you go open hand or something, though you might end up doing a bit much damage if nobody else optimizes at all.

The best solution is to punch your DM in the nuts for having rolled stats, but bard or wizard isn't bad either.

Paladin with a whip.

Plate, Shield and Whip, or you can go dex and have Studded, Shield and Whip.

Protect allies with your shield and spells while throwing out whip smites at reach range, while also buffing your allies with your high charisma.

Thanks I'll take a look at it.

And the anti-hammerspace ruleset is literally just 6 of those 3 slot boxes, but you lose one full box for each tier of armor you're wearing (eg: -1 for light, -3 for heavy, etc) so a plate wearing paladin was basically carrying around their weapon, a bow, and maybe some food. Pretty punishing.

What if we had a patron that focused on melee instead?

dropbox.com/s/psh6ccbkrvwpp9e/The Warlock.docx?dl=0

Speaking of equipment and encumbrance... thoughts on giving players a stash? Like a literal video game stash where you can access the exact same box of stuff no matter what town you're in, as long as they have a magic bank there.

?

>tfw

>Monks are pretty supportey if you go open hand or something

Play a Way of Tranquility (UA Monk) pacifist who doesn't like to hurt other living creatures

So I'm gonna be playing a Death Domain cleric soon, and I noticed that their 1st level feature Reaper is a bit hazy. Does it use my spellcasting modifier or the class I picked it from? Likewise, there's literally only two necromancy cantrips. Anyone have any ideas for necromancy cantrips to homebrew to toss at my DM?

The super lay-on-hands is pretty neat.

It's better, but ideally it should be neither a patron or pact choice but rather something else, like either class or some sort of 'eldritch blast or melee' type thing.

Logically the party can easily cart their stash between towns, no need for magic bank stuff. Just assume the players auto-cart their stuff everywhere.

Meh. I use an everybody's got 6 + Str mod slots rule. Each item takes up a slot, but has essentially infinite uses (torches, rations, healer kit, etc).

>thinking anyone will trust an online, outdated dice-roller program

lmao @ ur life

I actually kinda like that.

Only one person needs to keep hold of each supply, like camping equipment, but they don't have to worry about keeping track of the numbers.

I like the efficiency, at least. It's like equiping something on a loadout, 'do you want food or not food?' rather than 'how much food do you want? That'll take up.. This much of your backpack.'