/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General: Shooty Bang Bang Edition

A druidic moon temple that springs secret doors and traps as the moon draws closer. Guess what happens at midnight.

Anyway, don't stress too much on the map details, just focus on which areas can and can't be accessed on which times.

Probably...
Oath of Ancients Paladin

I love the concept of a Paladin, and I really like "nature" themed characters. It was basically what I wanted in WoW with my druid. Casting Nature Spells, wielding a big ass hammer, defending the beautiful and true places of the world. Also just being a nice person, easy to roleplay myself.

Though admittedly the last 2 characters I played were Paladins, but never survived to level 3. the first one actually got to level 3, but after that session the DM stopped being interested in running. The second was Bard/Paladin multiclass at low levels, and we got to level 4, but i was 2 in both. And now I am playing a level 5 wizard, which is cool i guess, but I kinda just want to play an Oath of Ancients Paladin because i've never gotten a chance to actually play it fully. But i want to play it from Level 1, and get to level 3 and actually go swear my oath in-game.

I had this cool idea for a character who was an Oath of Ancients paladin and was seeking to understand where her powers came from, hoping it would bring her to the Feywild where she would make a pact with an Archfey and just be this super freaky Knight of Faeries.

Other than that, i like Battlemaster mechanically and flavor wise, even though I have never played one.

Undying Light, but you might end up using Sacred Flame more than Eldritch Blast. Eitherway, you have special positive energy and light based abilities. Pretty cool for a warlock. You aren't seemingly bound to the desires of another being, Undying Light is the energy of the Positive Plane, so i don't know if it can make "requests".
Archfey works well too.

Or The Seeker, if UA is allowed.

Looks pretty neato and balanced to me

Forge a contract with an inscrutable old one to become a magical girl. Perfect.

I don't know why, but something about you just strikes me as really trustworthy. Let's do it!

Allright /5eg/.

I think this is ready (I just gotta wait confirmation from an artist to use a pic)...

Any glaring issues you see? Shapeshifters might have too many "Once per X" features instead of actually continuously useful stuff, but they're shapeshifters, they're to kind supposed of have that stuff I guess?

>Tell me about guns in your campaigns, /5eg/.
Largely replaced bows and crossbows in the military. Out in the territory the players are in they're uncommon for anyone who isn't an imperial soldier or a private guard of a particularly wealthy noble or merchant. It's said up north they're common enough that even some of the more well off communities can arm their militias with them and that the hunters of their community use them for catching large game. Technologically they use a flintlock mechanism, alchemical compounds in a wax casing and are breech-loaded. Cleaning the gun to prevent buildup of vaporized wax is part of routine maintenance. The smell of tallow, the more inexpensive wax used for shells, is now associated with gunmen as beeswax is common enough that it replaced tallow for candles.

Had to leave for a few hours and didn't get a chance to reply to the guys asking questions, so reposting:

Players and myself (DM) have been pitching ideas back and forth for a homebrew setting. Everyone likes the idea of a multiplanar world where planes are intertwined and it isn't uncommon for one plane to "cross" into another. The Spirit Realm and Elemental Planes especially are closely connected with the Material Plane.

One of my players has a cool idea, he wants his character to have a pact with a playable fire elemental/spirit. Backstory the character gave a portion of his strength and vitality to make the pact, making his body pretty frail. Similar to how in that old PS2 game Drakkengard, the characters sacrificed a piece of themselves to form a pact with the creature. The player supports gimping his PC for some balance.

I have no idea this would work in 5e though, as I'm fairly new to it myself.
Should I consider the fire spirit a familiar, but with beefier stats and the ability to attack? And it can level up with the PC.
Or is there another "pet" rule set that I don't know about?

I think it's a cool idea, but I don't want it to get unbalanced.

>What race/class/stats does this character have anyway?
Player originally was considering a magic-user, but we agree it will need some serious gimping if he's going to essentially have a small fire elemental under his command as well. Any ideas? If not, he's probably open to a different type. We may even homebrew him something.

>Would be best represented by having the player character not participate much in combat except for special moments (go pull a lever, interrupt when everybody's dying to potentially endanger themself to save others) and otherwise largely use the elemental. Essentially split the combat portion of the player's skills into the fire elemental and the utility portion into the player.
I'm thinking this will be the easiest way to handle it

Thank you, friendo. Have a Hobgoblin.

Stealing your Mongol hobgoblins btw

I want to try removing dex-to-damage. Has anyone done this? Do you find it helps with Rapier Edition?

I'll be posting more shit to come; let me know how they play in a game.

Would a shield hamper a character attempting to climb? Even if it would, feels like an unnecessary nerf...

GFB and Booming Blade seem to be scaling damage attached to a melee attack, and more damage if a condition is met. What other conditions would be balanced? As an example:

Moonfire Blade
Evocation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 5 feet
Components: V, M (a weapon)
Duration: 1 round
As part of the action used to cast this spell, you must
make a melee attack with a weapon against one creature within the spell's range, otherwise the spell fails.
On a hit, the target suffers the attack's normal effects,
and your weapon appears painfully bright to the target until the
start of your next turn. If the target ends its turn within 5 feet of you, it immediately takes 1d8 radiant damage, and the spell ends.
This spell's damage increases when you reach higher
levels. At 5th level, the melee attack deals an extra 1d8
radiant damage to the target, and the damage the target
takes for being adjacent increases to 2d8. Both damage rolls
increase by 1d8 at 11th level and 17th level.

I mean, you probably have a strap to put it on your back. That or it's a targe, which is small and strapped to the forearm so you can hold a dirk as well as your broadsword and still have a shield.

Really unless the player's shield strap was previously damaged in game for some reason I'd not bother. Hell, I might let them keep the +2 AC for it shrugging glancing shots off their back.

Actually I have a few myself that I ran through the general thread a few months back. Ended up starting a discussion about teleporting cantrips. Here's an example of some of the ones I've made(balance not guaranteed)

Gale Blade
Cantrip Evocation(Sorcerer, Wizard, Warlock)
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 5 feet
Components: V, M(A weapon)
Duration: Instantaneous

As part of the action used to cast this spell, you must make a melee attack with a weapon against one creature within the spell’s range, otherwise the spell fails. On a hit, the target suffers the attack’s normal effects, the target takes lightning damage equal to your spellcasting modifier and a powerful wind encircles your target. You can move to any empty square adjacent to the target, any opportunity attacks you provoke with this movement are made with disadvantage.

This spell’s damage increases when you reach higher levels. At 5th level, the melee attack deals an extra 1d8 lightning damage to the target. The damage roll increases by 1d8 at 11th level and 17th level.

If a town were to have an artificer, how much do you think he would charge per thunder gun and ammunition?

I want puzzles and combat to revolve around rising and falling tides within an area, but that would cut down on the maps I needed to make.

So many variables I couldn't give a fair answer.

>Tell me about guns in your campaigns, /5eg/.

One of the main conflicts involves the advancement of firearms which was kept stagnant of purposes as the smiths who crafted them wanted to maintain their monopoly on manufactur and repair.

Formally people were stuck with wheel/flint lock rifles until rogue artisans who fled out to a new continent decided to experiment with a new design that used cylinders and cartridges basically making six shot rifles and pistols.

Once they entered the market this forced everyone else to either copy or come up with their own designs they were keeping on the back burner breaking the monopoly of the guilds

However, even as guns largely became more commonplace it made more specalized weapons even more special with Archers creating special arrow shafts that allow them to fill them cwith various alchemical fluids and and creating bows with draw weights that could make an arrow pierce a boulder as well as highly expensive enchanted armor for elite warriors.

You need to hold the shield in one hand to benefit from +2 AC. A strap-to-forearm shield isn't qualify for AC bonus, you might as well just have a paper decoration that look like shield

What do you think about some of the races into a different kind of human? Like Elves being a kind of Witchfolk of a Haunted Forest, who don't sleep and practice foul arcane rites. Or Dwarves being a pale underground clan who know the secrets of steel and the blood of the earth.

I'm this guy. Working on a planeswalker-esque setting myself.
In mine there are multiple portals between the planes, some are known (and have various forts/wizard towers built over them for protection/containment), while other portals are keys that transport you. Keys can be ancient artifacts or seemingly normal items.

Still drafting a rough campaign, but a wizard actually the BBEG of course hires the party to enter the plane of Ice to retrieve an artifact that turns out to be a key. Once BBEG has access to the plane, he begins destroying the nodes that keep the plane in balance with the Material Plane. Ice Age on earth begins, Frost Giants and Polar bears go berserk, etc. Party eventually needs to restore balance or the multiverse will collapse.

I want to give an active ability to Champion, possibly adding it to their Remarkable Athlete feature. How's the sound of this?

>You can reroll a Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check that you fail. If you do so, you must use the new roll, and you can’t use this feature again until you finish a short rest.

This is more powerful than Booming Blade since you are forcing the target to either take OA or damage from the spell.

And I don't see why you specifically choose radiant damage other than wanting it to be OP.

0/10 attemp at power creep.

Walrock here, preview of my current project.

What familiars would you want to see?

Page 2

Here is a small storyline for my 2, level 2 party. A noblewoman hired them to investigate strange stuff going on near her farm. They are required to be quiet about it since the farm was given to the lady by her noble father and he thinks that she will totally ruin it and prove once and for all that woman can't manage these things.

Since a few weeks first a horse gone missing, then some crops were destroyed and finally noble lady's dog was killed. So afraid of her father hearing about problems at the farm she hires my players to check it out.

The party will investigate and track the area and finally find a high as fuck satyr laying in his debacuhery den. It was him who caused all the problems at the farm. He is actually addicted to some pleasure giving substances and he gets his fix by the hag in the woods. Hag being a old crony woman, is extremely jealous of the youth and beauty of the noblewoman and wants to ruin her happiness by causing these problems at the farm. And since the hag has the satry as her bitch she made him do all the bad stuff.

Now two questions:

>I want the lair of the satyr to be like a kind of abondoned small dungeon. What do you think I should populate it with other than the satyr?

>I want the hag to stay around for a while and actually try to make a deal/fake promies to the players in exchange of her life. Any ideas how to get the hag a continuation storyline after this?

So in SKT in the first town there's a tiefling that you can discover worships Asmodeus if one of your characters can read infernal. That's pretty fucked up right? Wouldn't they be suspicious of that shit? The book doesn't really go into any further detail about that person.

Let's see the rest mang

Would if I could. The rest isn't finalized yet.

>>I want the hag to stay around for a while and actually try to make a deal/fake promies to the players in exchange of her life. Any ideas how to get the hag a continuation storyline after this?
Making false promises is a way to wind up dead, make genuine deals.
The first few times she helps out, she does it fairly cheaply, and the help is real and useful. Healing, arcane knowledge, divination.
The more they rely on her, the more she starts to have deals in her favor, things that need done for her to continue. Culminate it with her life being threatened, if the PCs help, they just murdered an adventuring group.

Thoughts on this?

I need advice 5eg

So, the campaign I'm running just got to my big evil dungeon, but I'm a little daunted; I want the delve to feel at least somewhat deep (think the deep roads section from DA Origins or the Catacombs->Grave of Giants delve from Dark Souls), but this is a group that rolls their eyes and becomes unfun when anything outside of their plans happens to them, even despite all the times I've gone out of my way to avoid killing them.

The setup is basically
>Caves are full of dust that makes people crazy and magically unstable
>Party has the means to avoid said insanity now
>Delve deeper, notice lots of life and out of place greenery
>Encounter underground village of people who don't act right, turns out the place is basically a simulation
>At the bottom is setting's magical equivalent of Atlas who was wounded by story stuff and has been going nuts from pain and bleeding raw magic stuff, hence crazy dust from earlier

Basically, I'm thinking the enemy types would go from crazy people to animals/dinosaurs deeper down and finally to dangerous magic-resistant ones, but enemy variety only does so much for a dungeon; I can't really figure out how to do traps well without the group just scoffing and acting like I'm trying to kill them.

Is there a pdf of all the current classes and archtypes collected all in one spot?

Okay guys so I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to build a magic sentient Katana that can shoot sword beams and is also unbreakable crystal. I'm just not sure what to do with the crystal part... It was designed with this magus class in mind. This is what I have so far.

>Crystal Katana
>Sonic Wave
This ability channels the magus' arcane history and allows the Oathkeeper to fire an arcane thunderous wave at a target 30ft. away. The booming wave requires a ranged spell attack. The wave deals 2d6 points of thunder damage, on a hit you can expend a spell slot to increase the damage by 1d6 per spell slot beginning at 1st level to a maximum of 6d6.

What do you think? Tips? Changes?

...

...

>What familiars would you want to see?
Insects
Like a big damsel fly or a ladybug or a moth or something :>

Sounds a lot like Indomitable

Ladybug might be good. I considered doing a bee, but I figured a giant bee might make for a better ranger companion.

All right sounds good. What do you think would live in the same den with a satyr?

...

I want to run a game that's more Conan mixed with Warhammer Fantasy, rather than the implied default setting.

Well if it sounds fun then you can always give it a shot.

The Warhammer fantasy note is a bit odd though, considering that universe features a great deal of different races. But hey, run wild with your own world.
>tfw your army got delisted
Fuck you GW
Chaos Dwarves 4 lyfe ;_;

Yeah, it's supposed to be similar. It doesn't sound like too much, does it?

It's a remake of the 4e cantrip of the same name.
What if the damage die were lower?

Nah, Champion is a pretty tame subclass.
You'd have to really try to make one OP, mostly because anyone playing a Champion is probably spending half their time staring at the back of their eyelids anyway.

Cry me river.

l-like my very edgy Shardmind Ranger?

The Magus class mentioned here had made some GFB like cantrips one is called
Spell Shattering Strike.

Spell Shattering Strike
Evocation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 5 feet
Components: V, M (a weapon)
Duration: Instantaneous
Class: Magus (Arcane Order)
As part of the action used to cast this spell, you must
make a melee attack with a weapon against one
creature within the spell’s range, otherwise the spell
fails. On a hit, the target suffers the attack’s normal
effects, and if the target is concentrating on a spell this
attack deals an additional 1d8 force damage.
This spell’s damage increases when you reach higher
levels. At 5th level, the melee attack deals an extra 1d8
force damage to the target and the additional damage if
the target is concentrating on a spell increases to 2d8.
Both damage rolls increase by 1d8 at 11th and 17th
level.

It's a r-r-real army. With Earthshaker cannons and everything.

Flying bulls are cool I swear...

pls send help ;_;

Why would you ever take that?

I remember absolutely nothing about shardmind lore. They're kinda cool and I remember something about them having the power to kinda turn into a cloud for a round.

I've never understood Chaos Dwarves. They just never appealed to me.

It's an option as not every one of the classes archetypes gets GFB or Booming Blade.

To mess up casters. I would add verbiage to that to make it 2 separate instances of damage, so they have to make 2 concentration checks.

> want class bloat in 5e
Why don't you kindly just go back to your precious discussion about Kitsune in /pfg/. There are already several way to make a fighter mage in 5e.

They're pieces of a sentient gate blocking a rift to the Far Realms. God stuff happened, the gate blew up, and the shards turned into people.

Now they go around doing their thing, either trying to fix the hole in the world that their gate used to cover, or taking their sentience and running for the hills.

That's actually pretty cool. Is there a good homebrew for them?

How 'bout this one?

Corrupted Ki Kata
Transmutation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 5 feet
Components: S
Duration: Instantaneous
Class: Magus (Shadow Court)
You make the hand sign of corruption and strike at a
creature within range. As part of the action used to cast
this spell, you must make an unarmed strike attack
against one creature within the spell’s range, otherwise
the spell fails. On a hit, the target suffers the attack’s
normal effects. If the creature is surprised, blinded, or
incapacitated the creature is poisoned until the end of
your next turn.
This spell’s damage increases when you reach higher
levels. At 5th level, the unarmed strike attack deals an
extra 1d12 poison damage. This damage increases by 1d12 again at 11th level and 17th level

Yes I am aware of that but my players did not see the EK, Valor Bard, and Bladelock as suitable replacements so I went out and found something we all liked.

A couple people have taken a crack at Shardmind, but I haven't quality checked any of them yet.

They're around if you google them.

Is the homebrewery supposed to copy your entire opening description when you use the class feature template.

Shardminds: +2 Int,
Size: Medium
Speed: 30 feet
Languages: Common, Deep Speech, and one other of your choice.
Telepathy: You can speak telepathically to anything within 15 feet of you that has a language. They cannot speak back to you telepathically.
Living construct: Do not need to eat, drink, breath, or sleep. Must trance for 4 hours to gain benefits of long rests. You are aware of everything going on around you within 30 feet.
Age: You do not age like other races, you are a living construct.
Shard Swarm: You begin to loosen your shard form. As an action you can move any in any direction at half your speed. Any creature you pass by while doing this takes 1d4 piercing damage. Does not trigger attacks of opportunity. You have to take a short or long rest before using the ability again.

Subraces:

Crystalline Sharmind: +1 Wis, You know the mending cantrip.

Biotic Shardmind: +1 Cha, you are proficient in the Insight Skill.

This one decent you reckon?

Alright boys, I need your help. I'm trying to come up with some homebrew cantrips I can pitch to my DM since there is only ONE damaging necromancy cantrip and I'll be playing a Death Domain cleric soon. What should this be?

Drain Touch

Necromancy Cantrip
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous

You know how to momentarily control the very flow of life itself. Make a melee spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 1d8 necrotic damage, and [Insert Effect Here]

The spell's damage increases by 1d8 when you reach 5th level (2d8), 11th level (3d8), and 17th level (4d8).

>Tell me about guns in your campaigns, /5eg/.

I rather don't have them in the game except as magical implements which shoot out spells for magic users instead of staff and holy symbol.

Any ideas on how to give a Barbarian Dragonborn a backstory?

>I've never understood Chaos Dwarves. They just never appealed to me.
They were a weird race. Started out as like a sidebar in a GW magazine to float the idea of evil slave-driving magic-using chaos-touched dorfs. Eventually they did get an army book but they never caught on. They remade them with new toys but it still wasn't enough to become popular (I never played the newer stuff).

Race wise they were basically a massive military industrial complex fueled entirely by slave labor (mostly goblins) like a Steampunk version of hell. They also bucked the Dwarf tradition of >nomagic by having spellcasters, but the lore was that the older/more powerful a Chaos Dwarf mage was the more of his body was turned to stone. It meant that your highest level mages actually had to be carried around by 4 dwarves (and had obscene AC to boot). Eventually all CD mages turned to statues that lined the roads in/to their capital.

Army wise they were actually an obscenely powerful army. You had tough dwarven infantry blocks as a core, but filled out your forces with various goblin units that you'd throw into the fray without the slightest concern. If a unit broke, no one gave a fuck and no leadership checks were made. Just whip more slaves and throw more meat into the meatgrinder. You could also borrow bits from both Goblin and Chaos armies (including Black Orcs) Backing that up was some of the most powerful artillery in the game. Earthshaker cannons made most other artillery look like pop guns. One special ranged (12" only) unit was the Blunderbuss. Amazingly deadly, basically just a big shotgun, so anyone within the area of fire was auto-hit. Just a massive volley of death. They also had some incredibly underrated heavy cavalry (they were literally dwarf centaurs). I remember my buddy getting his Bretonian heavy cavalry to lock horns with my own heavy cavalry, and he had a big fucking grin on his face up until he realized they could easily go to to toe with them.

Fun times

Gain 1d4 temp HP until the start of your next turn?

Make them a luchador.

I've thought of that before, but the biggest problem with that is 1d4 temp HP as a cantrip compared to a 1st level spell of 1d4+4 is just way too good.

Seems pretty alright. Not blatantly overpowered, at least.

You might want to polish it, though. What does "pass by" mean?

Also trance doesn't give you a long rest, it just gives you the benefits of sleeping. A long rest always requires 6 hours of downtime, regardless of anything.

Convince your DM to let you fluff a ladder with a maul stats and use that.

Not mine, but I wanted to hear all of your thoughts from a mechanical standpoint.
homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/B1HBWX5j
The lore is fine as far as I know, I haven't played in a while.

Your character is an easy going fellow who uses the excuse of besmirched honour to hit people, preferably people that look like a challenge. He hails from a hidden mountain village, that is shrouded in a snowstorm.

Ripped right off of reddit from a google search and copy pasted straight to you.

What is your character’s name?
How old is your character?
What would somebody see at first glance (i.e. height, weight, skin color, eye color, hair color, physique, race, and visible equipment)?
What additional attributes would be noticed upon meeting the character (i.e. Speech, mannerisms)?
Where was your character born?
Where were you raised?
By who?
Who are your parents?
Are they alive?
What do they do for a living?
Do you have any other family or friends?
What is your character’s marital status?
Kids?
What is your character’s alignment?
What is your character’s moral code?
Does your character have goals?
Is your character religious?
What are your character’s personal beliefs?
Does your character have any personality quirks (i.e. anti-social, arrogant, optimistic, paranoid)?
Why does your character adventure?
How does your character view his/her role as an adventurer?
Does your character have any distinguishing marks (birth-marks, scars, deformities)?
How does your character get along with others?
Is there anything that your character hates?
Is there anything that your character fears?

Well my character just died at the 2nd and I wasn't really liking him any way.

Is there any class where Duergar racial powers help? I was thinking a primeval ranger to cast Enlarge while I'm in tree form but the Sunlight sensitivity's a bitch.

>a tree with sunlight sensitivity

I know we're talking about a game where a dwarf turns into a tree, but how does that make any sense.

I was going to reflavor it into a kind of Golem mode. Turns into a big rock motherfucker with the "dwarven stone powers" or some bullshit.

>Is there any class where Duergar racial powers help?
Probably fighter
I could see a case for monk too
But make whatever you want

Should I go with Oath of Devotion or Oath of Vengeance for Curse of Strahd?

You should play an Oathbreaker. The damage bonus comes in handy during that adventure.

Yeah, but then I'd have to be evil and twirl moustaches and stuff.

Nah I played a lawful neutral one who was an old folk hero that kept failing at his adventures.

Eventually he got sick of it and renounced his oath but used his training and powers to work as a mercenary.

>working on fleshing out NPCs from my character's backstory
>really enjoying writing about one of them
>tell the DM all about them and their personality so he knows how to play them if they show up
>roll up a character sheet for them just for fun
>become more invested in the NPC than my character
>end up wanting to play the NPC more than my character

Better yet, fluff it as a shroom mode, since fungi are technically plants in D&D.
Then punch stuff.

Aw now I've got a tough choice.

Giant dwarven golem or fuckhuge shoom dwarf.

Disadvantage on charisma saving throws until the start of their next turn

How would you introduce and include 4e style combat into 5e?

Opps.
Don't.
It is impossible and very difficult.
Play 5e went you want to play 5e.
Play 4e when you want to play 4e.
Play Pathfinder when you want to play 3.5