/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General

Trying to name drop them as NPCs to make it more realistic but keep forgetting their names so not that much

>How active are the gods in your setting?
Surprisingly active, considering that none of them exists.

Which book can I find staff of striking?

I asked a few threads ago and got some great responses, so I'll ask again.

What are some good roleplaying encounters I can put into a session?

After a swift battle the orcs manage to conquer a large portion of territory previously held by humans.
What does it gradually look like?
So far I have this idea:
In quiet times more women are born, creating over time a stable society capable of stable peaceful with neighbors nations.
Breeding wimpier orcs may not sit well with the still war-crazed old generation which generates internal conflics...

Ok, but in that case I won't have much of an opportunity to prepare for what they're doing. I'm fine doing some things on the fly, but when they have the ability to go to so many locations, it's a little concerning.

DMG

It varies. The main God, literally the sun, shares power to anyone that is earnest in their commitment to his law, and the law of his brothers. The gods occasionally manifest an avatar, but it's rare and frightening.

Both the moons are basically Dyson spheres that house artificially created miniature stars/gods, they have great influence during the height of their cycles.

Demon gods are constantly scheming and influencing where they can, but rarely manifest on the surface, because sun/starlight basically imposes law and reality on beings made of consolidated "cannot be"

Is working off the basic rules and the SRD considered sufficient to run a game off? I'm loathe to buy physical copies and WotC seems to hate the concept of receiving cash for PDFs.

New DM trying to get something going for some of my friends.

Where do I start with making a campaign? BBEG and their motivations?

Just to confirm does Attacking with Haste reset your extra attacks?

I started with where the campaign took place, and built around what could be happening.

Sword Coast is a great place to start unless you want to homebrew a setting.

What are the best domains for a cleric to pick? Also, how do clerics hold up in 5e?

Nothing resets extra attacks. You get your number of attacks, and you get one additional weapon attack through the haste action.

Run a premade campaign first. It'll help you get the "feel" of a campaign down and also see how other, more experienced GMs set about crafting a narrative

Active gods don't really make sense to me. If a god decides to do something, what could the party possibly do to contribute to or hinder that? You're taking something on a scale the party can't match and making it a situation they have to deal with. Any situation in which the party can kill or thwart a God kinda ruins the idea of a God, doesn't it?

So, my Gods are passive boons/banes. If a God decides to defend a town, then that manifests as the guards fighting a little better, the walls holding a little longer, the plague ending a little faster. If a God decides to kill a town, its enemies are a little more bloodthirsty, there will be more accidents and injuries, etc. If two gods clash, it depends who is stronger.

Ultimately though, the mortals on the ground decide the course of action.

Life Cleric is amazing for healing.

Light Cleric is fair cause it gets fireball and some defense.

I am a personal big fan of War Cleric, with enough Str and Wis you can fake being a martial.

They are one of the best classes to get cause of their effects, they have a fine spell list, domain abiltiies are great, and having a god has built in background for your character.

If you are coming from other versions of D&D I know it's less about healing, cause healing word exists, and keeping people up is a fair tactic. My war cleric has healing word and nothing else.

Honestly I'd just start with a premade adventure. Don't think too hard about the setting or anything. If your friends are new to DnD, then you don't want to overcomplicate things. A simple quest with a couple of battles and a few roleplaying opportunities is more than enough for an introduction.

How about fighters Action Surge?

Lemme clarify

I haven't never DMed before. I've played through premades, and done short one-off sessions of my own design.

I'm just not sure where to begin in creating a more overarching campaign of my own.

>roll 4d6 drop the lowest for stats
>17 16 15 14 14 14

what the fuck do I make

New DM, or new to DnD? Are your players new as well?

If a significant portion of you are new to DnD, play Lost Mines of Phandelver, using the premade characters.

Otherwise, if you're a new DM but not a new player, run a published adventure first. It offloads a lot of the mental processing to allow you to get a handle on the moment to moment parts of DMing. LMoP is still probably the right choice, but don't stick to premade characters.

Clerics are good fun and fairly strong. They have a massive pool of spells to choose from, a lot of flexibility in how to build themselves, and they can take a beating.

I've played a trickster cleric and got a ton of roguish abilities which were very useful. And a player in my current game is playing a tempest cleric and is having a great time.

Not new to DnD, and only the past experience listed My players are all relatively experience.

I'm not looking for "How do I DM"

I'm looking for ideas of where to begin in the creative process of crafting a campaign.

Make whatever the fuck you want.

Also,
>inb4 spergs going 2000% mad that sometimes people roll for stats instead of going clinical point buy or prearranged statlines.

Barbarian is probably the class that benefits the most from stats like that, but really anything would be do-able

>creative process of crafting a campaign.
Read a lot of fantasy series and adapt ideas from them to your own setting. You don't have to be 100% original all the time, but small tweaks here and there can make for a great adaptation.

Also, there was a post regarding this in an earlier thread;

"Playlist by the great Matt Colville. I was once like you, but his videos showed me how easy it is.
He has said on many occasions that the best DM he had was not a "creative-type" person. So no worries there.

You can use a pre-made setting, or make your own.

While it is easiest to use a pre-made one, making your own setting is alot of fun.

What I did for my first session was I just made 1 town and 1 dungeon near the town. The Town was alone in the wilderness and acted as a waystation between two kingdoms in a neutral zone, so people had to pass through here to get from one kingdom to the other. So i didn't even draw a map or anything, because there wasn't anything really close enough.
I also used donjon.bin.sh/ to do most of the work for me. It can randomly generate things like item shops, inns, npcs, even town descriptions.

I generated town, then I generated a list of 20 random npcs. Then I made 2 inns and 1 armoursmith. Then based on the information in the generated town description, the inns, and the armoursmith I generated more NPCs to fill the gaps. Then i wrote up somekind of adventure hook, i used the one in Matt Colville's videos about having someone in the town having their child kidnapped by Goblins. I asked the player what he wanted to do, eventually he went to one of the inns, i had there be a bit a gossip, then the aforementioned parent burst in. If he was in the poor inn it would be the local butcher's kid. If he was in the rich inn, it would have been a painter/artist's child, but the outcome was the same. Then he went to the dungeon and that was that."

>I'm looking for ideas of where to begin in the creative process of crafting a campaign.
You could get together with your players, ask them what they want to do, and have a brainstorming session to establish the overarching parts of the setting. Then you go from there.

First time paladin player here for 5e, recently got the chance to play a Treachery paladin for an upcoming game.

We rolled 4d6 subtracted the lowest, ended up with 15, 16, 16, 14, 14, 11.
Not entirely sure how to build him, the only thing that are "set in stone" so to speak is that it's a half-orc, and no PAM with quarterstaff+shield combo because that makes me irrationally angry.

Any ideas?
He's the type to despise weaklings and believes that the end justifies the means, so was maybe thinking a run of the mill 2h but that feels a bit dull.

start with the end! think of the coolest way a campaign could end, then build towards that goal

Monk

Here is what i do. I make a town and a dungeon before the start of a session. It doesn't matter which town or which dungeon the party ends up in, i just use those that i prepared and change the names of it.

For example, in my first session I had 3 dungeons nearby.

Cave in the hills that leads to a dungeon. This is the hideout for Dwarves who are led by a Duergar. The Dwarves are disguising themselves as goblins when they raid caravans.

Temple in the Swamp. This is the base of operations for a Vegepygmy Chieftain who has been causing trouble for farmers.

Fortress in the mountains. There are tensions between the Deep Gnomes and the local kingdom, this fortress is where said kingdom gets it's !Mithril.

Yea, i made hooks, but i didn't tell the players about this stuff. I said
>You are in town for the wedding for a few nobles
>After the Nobles make a parade through town, they head off to the castle, people disperse and head off to celebrate the wedding.
I ask them where they go, they decide to go to an Inn
I have 1 Inn prepared, but I say they are 2 in town. I doubted they'd go to both Inns.
I describe the Inn and show them 2 bounty posters on the wall.
The player who is a Fighter grabs the bounty posters. One of them says "inquire at bounty store"
Then they talked to NPCs for...like an hour. I just had NPCs explain the politics of the setting during the "party"
The fighter asked to go to the bounty store, which directed them to the swamp.

The Bounty posters are the most direct "quest". They have to uncover the other story lines, which they didn't

I didn't make 3 dungeons. I prepared 1 dungeon for the session. No matter which path they chose, i would use the 1 dungeon i prepared, they aren't going to get through 1 dungeon and get to a second dungeon in 1 session.

They could have gone to another town, but i would just fill their time with random encounters till they go there. And when they arrived, the session would be over. Cliffhanger!

How would you recommend I stat the more human races as ethnicities for a more Conan kind of game? Like make Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Half-Orcs, and Half-Elves into different sorts of the Human.

Biggest belt of giant strength available
Amulet of health

It doesn't reset. Action surge gives you another action. So you can chose to do two actions. Two attack actions. So if you have extra attack you can do 2 attacks and then 2 more attacks with your second action.

You got the stats to back it up. Two weapon fight. More chances to smite.

18 Str 16 Con are your bare bones. Choose how bad you want high Charisma versus Dex for initiative and checks.

At level 4 you take dual wielded and get battle axes.

>maybe thinking a run of the mill 2h but that feels a bit dull.
You chose a dull concept. Go with it or change the concept. Your job as pally is to smite things till they die anyway

Take the +2s they get, and make them +1 and get to throw a point into any other stat.

Wood elves go from +2 Dex +1 Wis to + 1 Dex + 1 Wis + any other stat.

Get rid of darkvision and add different skill proficiencies.

High Elves lose Darkvision and gain arcana.

16+2
14
15+1
11
14
16

ezpz

Exactly the same but without pointy ears/green skin/inhumanly small stature

I still need to figure out what the fuck the gods Are.

I've sort of brought this upon myself through forcing all celestial beings into one corner of the world and having them pretty much not present anywhere else, but I'm happy enough with the rest of my setting and far enough into creating in that I'm not going to back down from that point.

I have a general idea for the other 3/4/5 "shards" of the world.
The Original Elemental now broken into tthe billions of pieces that make up life itself, strewn across the world and/or still manifesting itself in the center of the Elemental Chaos.
The Original Dragon, Io, now broken (to some renamed iterations of Tiamat and Bahamut) and their children/kin/whatever (dragons and all draconic derivatives) populate their shard.
The Original Fiend is now dead (killed by children? or celestial?), but his children (the original demon and devil) lived lived on and populated his shard.
The Original Fey's sister/other half/manifestation of her darker desires/whatever ran away to populate the underdark, the nether realm of her shard, before succumbing to some corruption/??? and becoming an eltritch horror beast terror thing of which tales are still told. Not sure what happened to the original Fey. Titania?
The Original God/Cellestial.. ....??????

As for clerical representation, Element, Dragon, Fiend, and Fey based powers *could* work, but right now they seem to have representation in Wizards Sorcerers and Warlocks. In general thinking of divine power something that's more and more common the closer you reach to the Celestial shard, but unsure exactly how I want everything to tie in.

Any thoughts, feedback, or inspiration, /5eg/? I'll even take a "your ideas are bad" if you could elaborate a slight bit

If you plan to use ring of spell storing, Is it better to have 1 haste and 2 Shields or 2 shield of faith and 3 Shields?

Entirely preference, and depends so much on the party comp and what you are trying to actually do. Shields are nice but if you are doing your part and staying far back, you should instead be preparing lightning bolt or magic missle and keep that crazy range.

I was interested in Heavy Armor Mastery for the DR, since it'd probably get a fair bit of value.

Yeah, was thinking that, was more wondering about feats etc.

Ricky is that you?

Tempest is best, but they're really close together in power level so it really varies based on what you want to do with them, and the wide array of domains mean you can approximate just about any other class or role well enough. Even the worst domain, Trickery, isn't that bad (read: it's playable, even can be strong starting at level 7).

We're talking about being a martial

How exactly is a spell stored I am the ring?

You wanna try English there, friendo?

Could you be any more obvious in your pro-liberal agenda?

If that wasn't intentional, you are one well-brainwashed goy.

I would just re-skin the non-human races as different Ethnicities.
I would try to avoid using more than 1 race that has Dark Vision. It would be weird for multiple human ethnicities to have dark vision. Though admittedly, i would just not use any races with Dark Vision.

Dragonborn are Dragon Nobles. People who were said to be descended from Dragons. They have a draconic breath weapon and resistance based on their noble bloodline. Super pale while people with super bright eyes coloured to their associated dragon type.

Firbolgs and Goliaths work well as Half-Giants

Tritons as people from a society like Atlantis/.

Lizardfolk as crazy savages in the wastelands.

Kenku and Changelings would be cool too. Not sure how you'd make a society of copy-cats, but it could be cool.

Base Humans are from a society that focuses on adaptability

Variant Humans are from a society of highly specialized ability

Then maybe 1 race with Dark Vision. Since you said Conan, gotta take Yuan-ti and have people imbued with Snake Magic.

I would legit just look in the PHB at the different types of humans listed there, cause it goes into detail about it, and assign the different types to this list.

Is there some way to "playtest" a homebrew class without, say, playing it for the entirety of a DnD campaign?

It's not that I don't want to play my own class, it's just that I don't have the time to join another DnD game.

Hunter's mark on Ring of Spell storing for Martial

Then you already have your answer. I've never seen it played. But if you want value the best you could hope for is Inspiring Leader.

Then haste and Blur when that fails.

no

"Liberal" here, this is still horrible.

How the fuck would more peaceful times mean more women are born? What is this typical misogynist bullshit of "women are peaceful" or whatever, charged with the pervasive societal idea that women cannot be criminals or violent or murderers, interestingly a concept subverted by typical Orcish culture where everyone contributes to the fight, not like you care about that though

As for actual feedback, try taking inspiration from good old Genghis Khan. Conquered land is mostly left as it was, although the people must pay patronage/homage/whatever to their conquerors. This left the general populous from revolt/whatever as the status quo was generally unchanged, but also let the conquerors continue their warmarch elsewhere. Do some real research into it and I think you'll find plenty

Anyone got a copy of the DM Guild stuff? I know most of it's shit, but I wanted to check out something called Homeward Bound. Supposedly it's a good base-building subsystem.

Grab the DMG and find out what a level 1 PC can fight against. Then run simple encounters against it. Also make vanilla PCs to compare to for science. Compare how your homebrew does against a low CR enemy and compare it to a level 1 GW fighter.

Go all the way up to 20 a few times, and your homwbrew better have highs and lows. Paladins get better than fighters at level 2, fighters pass them at level 11. Moon Druids are great early. Wizards are great late. You also better kill your PC a few times.

It's only limited to your imagination.

Surely you goddess requires more than devotion to convey such boons. What nergle flavored atrocities have you been doing on the side?

The primordial gods rule over forces that create the universe, the elements, time, life/death, etc. They are typically quite passive and see their worshipers less as extensions of their will and more as one of their many pieces.

The mortal gods arise from the collective consciousness of mortals either as they come to worship different specific things such as the sun and ocean, from specific souces like the god of a single volcano or river, or from truly mortal constructs like deception, war, and love. They tend to be very passive, but their worshipers tend to be very territorial and will fight the faiths of other similar gods, such as an eleven sun god and a human sun god. As their existence is entirely powered by mortal worship, they will become active if a threat to their worshipers arises.

The fanatical gods, often called hybrid gods by the primordial, also arise from the thoughts of mortals. The arise when mortals desire more specific aspects from another gods domain, such a a god of disease from death or lava from both earth and fire. Due to the specific nature of their worship they usually seek to rapidly expand and maintain their worship, making them far more active than others.

The risen gods are mortal souls granted divine power by mortals after they've passed on. Their level of activity ranges greatly based on why their were so worshiped. A god of humanity may be the founder of a great human empire who is now worshiped passively by all humans, but a paladin who died fighting an evil lich may rise as a god to those who hunt the undead and actively campaign against their still living foe. Risen gods can also be killed by each other or exceptionally powerful mortal, so they are often cautious about intervening directly against powerful forces and other god.

Post it to me and I'll tell you exactly why it's shit, thus saving 15 hours of your life.

There's only so much "testing" that can be done through theoretical comparison to other classes, crunching numbers etc. there's some component that can only come through actual play.

One concept (that I've been meaning to start if I ever get time) is to skip all the roleplay garbage and just run the class through a dungeon crawl(or really just a straight transition from fight to fight to rest to fight), following expected encounters/day and shit and comparing with fellow/similar party members/party compositions. And then you repeat for different levels of play.

DND threads so bad you steal the images from MTG threads

I like to have the avatars of gods not only extremely limited in power, but liable to cause problems for themselves if they raise a stink. The idea is mostly that being noticed by the competition in that form leaves them dangerously vulnerable in not obvious ways. They might go around and seduce maidens as a goose or whatever, but they won't dare to lead armies.

So in my setting the Queen of the kingdom the players start in gets married to a Bandit Lord from the Northern Desert. They start in-town when the Queen and Bandit Lord are going through town with a parade celebrating their marriage.

One of my players said "i am on a quest to assassinate the Bandit Lord for atrocities he committed"

Which is fair, he's known as the Bandit Lord, people would assume he's a wicked man.

This player is level 1. He's a monk. We ended the last session infront of the castle gate.

I worry he is legit going to try and kill this guy at level 1, he's the kind of player who would try and do this. But he wouldn't beable to. This "Bandit Lord" would be a very high level character if he was a PC, ~level 20. He some combination of Ganondorf from Legend of Zelda and and Mua'dib from Dune. A Psionic Warrior King from the Desert who uses dark magic psychic powers.

What do I do if the player tries to kill this NPC? The NPC would literally 1 shot the guy, so i dont want to kill him. But i don't want him to get thrown into jail either because i dont want to take agency away from my player. Even if i do something that lets him escape, he'll be on the run not only from the Kingdom's Knights who are Power Rangers, but also from the Bandit Lord's Rogues who are Fedykin from Dune. The queen actually loves the Bandit Lord too, and she's like...20th level Dragonborn Paladin with a robotic arm that shoots lazers.

I just don't see a resolution that will be fun for the player. Either he's dead, in prison, on the run, or exiled from this kingdom. What do?

Could probably get Heavy Armor Master and still dual wield.
Though excluding more nova options, wouldn't Dueling give me more bang for my buck overall?
Seeing as it'd give me constant +6 damage instead of +4.

>If a god decides to do something, what could the party possibly do to contribute to or hinder that?

I'm sorry your life is so out-of-control. I know you feel at the mercy of forces beyond and outside of your control. You would never have asked such a stupidly naive question otherwise.

I sincerely hope you grow strong enough to slay your demons.

Good luck.

The monk would know at least vague information regarding the power level of this guy, stories must have been told of the Bandit Lord's strength/whatever
you could even have a bit of an ooc talk about expectations with the player and work out some shit like "Although his death is my ultimate mission, I am no fool and will not waste my life in vain. I plan to infiltrate his ranks/whatever, and only plan to strike when I am confident in my success."

Who does the concentrating when activating a Spell stored in a ring.

I put it up on dmsguild a while ago in hopes to get some criticism, but the 400 or so people who downloaded ain't said shit

I also posted it here a while back and got some balancing advice, which I put into play

I'll just post the PDF though

Hey meganon do you plan to classify the weapons under simple/martial?

I prefer gods to just be on mortal levels of stats.

Essentially, a god in the material plane is someone who has both created their own plane and has a flow of power from the material plane from worship.

Then, the reasons they don't show up are firstly that they have less control outside of their plane, that they might age/have to feed themselves and their attendants if they don't have a way to prevent that if they stay outside it and that if they're spotted, chances are some followers or minions of another god are going to wander over and smack them the fuck up since they're in a rarely vulnerable state. So, instead, it makes much more sense to make an underling do it for them, such as a semi-powerful angel.

I just dislike overpowered gods as a concept, even if that's supposed to be what a god is. It's just a 'Okay, divine intervention, god makes all your booboos better.' and a reminder that there's always a higher power that can fuck you over at the bat of an eye.

If your player is stupid enough to try and fight this OP bandit lord, have him get beaten and then force him to swear an oath of repayment or something similar to the bandit lord. You don't need to kill him, you could just fib the rules and offer another way to let your player keep playing without detracting too much from whatever story line you thought up of.

Best background?

>misogynist

Bumpin.

I'd say the campaign should've started somewhere where they aren't immediately surrounded by people ten times their level or worse. Instead, somewhere more upstart such as a large village or something.

But, whatever. You have to drive the monk player to realize he's gonna need a montage of adventuring to get up to the right power level.

If he tries to do it, he's a fucking monk, barely armed and barely armoured. He'd just get shoved away by a guard who'd probably think they'd just a crazy homeless person and not even jail them. If the monk still tries to run up despite being shunted away, he'd probably be hurt by a kick, and then he'll have to decide 'okay, I'm gonna keep going until the guards fucking leave me unconscious or I'm going to be fucking sensible'

>Physick

into_the_trash_it_goes.jpeg

I want to play a sickass spearman, what's the best way to go about this? I've only been in one or two pathfinder games, and a single 5e game so any help will be appreciated.

Battlemaster Fighter + all Polearm feats.

Easy peasy.

Forgot my sickass spearman gif.

What can get a 5-10 yo female elf wrongfully/rightfully exiled from her society, aswell as cause her disguise herself as a male?

Just before the Monk tries to kill him, some OTHER adventurer, clearly much higher level, pushes past him and makes an attempt to kill the Bandit Lord. Bandit Lord casually obliterates the guy, possibly while pointing out how outclassed the guy was (though I'd personally avoid this, instead have him be somewhat sorry to kill someone so "weak").

If the Monk still wants to fight him now, let him. Sometimes characters have to die.

I actually just had a session where the party rogue started a needless fight, killed a ton of guards/mercenaries, and then tried to talk down the rampaging horde of horsemen sent to kill him afterwards. Nigga got stomped, and he absolutely had it coming. So don't be afraid to kill the character if he does something incomparably stupid after being warned.

How dickish are your elves?

I don't know if it's at all optimal, but going monk 1/fighter x is an interesting take on it I've seen.

I don't know, what constitutes elvish society?

>female

um hate to break it to you....

me and my friends are trying to get into d&d, we haven't had a session yet so not much is really set in stone.

Depends on the society.
Actions that unintentionally resulted in the death of another elf? Theft or desecration of a sacred artifact? Insulting a lord or sabotaging diplomatic efforts with another tribe?

Not being elfy enough?