/5eg/ Fifth Edition General

>Thunder Brand Warhammer
>When you hit with an attack using this magic warhammer, the target takes an extra 1d6 thunder damage.
>If you hit the same creature at least twice on your turn, it must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or become stunned until the end of your next turn. If you rolled a 20 in any of those attacks, the DC becomes 15 and the creature is deafened for 1 minute.

How's this? Intended for a paladin, at level 8 or 9.

Sounds good, as long as the encounters are an appropriate challenge level.

It's a bit shitty. Essentially, if you roll the maximum number on any damage dice for a spell, you get to roll 1 more dice and add it to the total damage.

Why would you have a curse that can't be removed with Remove Curse? What's the justification for it not working?

Off the top of my head, the curse from the deck of many things' card Euryale is one example. "Only a god or the magic of The Fates card can end this curse."

What's cooler, Kobold Gunsmith Artificer or Yuan-Ti Dragon (Poison) Sorcerer?

I know that neither are really powerful but they're both ideas I like.

I like the Yuan-Ti idea better but I tend to really dig snakemen in general.

Same. Snakemen are awesome.

Forgot to ask with it though, I know there's not enough Poison spells but are there any really good ones?

One of my players wants to roll up an alchemist from the UA... How decent and balanced is it? I'm always hesitant in regards to UA stuff.
(he also wants to know how decently it can work with a primary focus on healing)

Oh shit. I forgot since they were so insignificant.

The city is Lankhmar-esque in that I wanted to take a lot of inspiration from actual sword/sorcery and have the same kind of massive port city for the campaign to take place in. I wanted the general mundane things to feel grounded in the city with some over the top swordplay and magic stuff going on.

This is the campaign I'm thinking about testing gestalt out in for my players.

As for the "Paladins," the main themes for them are going to be their ability to use resources that aren't themselves to chase their goals and harass the players. They are also going to be somewhat loosely modeled after the Four Horsemen, though not so much in the way that they are going to be signaling the apocalypse or bringing in a dark god or something. I believe I'm going to have Conquest as the Red Horseman (War) and Oathbreaker as the Pale Horseman (Death), but am unsure about which oaths to use for the White Horseman and Black Horseman. I've talked to a friend and been told Vengeance should be the Black Horseman (Plague), but this doesn't quite feel right to me.

Some of their powers will be inspired by the Paladin Oath they are based on, but I am not building player character profiles for them. For example, whichever one Treachery turns out to be will definitely make judicious use of the Channel Divinity - Illusory clone thing, except with the ability to vocalize and taunt the party while he's further away.

Does anyone have any input on the White and Black Horseman and which Oaths to use for them? I'm looking at the tenets of the oaths, their abilities, as well as the general feel about them.

I have a bit of a Paladin fetish, I'll admit, and will likely make the pre-Horseman and post-Horseman major characters/antagonists/etc also Paladins. One of them will definitely be a Crown-inspired dude, while the other might be Devotion who descends into insanity.

I haven't played a sorcerer since when 5e first came out and last weeks releases still have me unimpressed.

What went wrong with Sorcerers, Way of the Four Elements Monks, and Bladelocks and how could you possibly fix them?

> →
Yes, because you can be a fucking dread pirate who trolls his foes and then when they scurry off he can whip out a fucking HAND HELD ARTILLERY PIECE and blow their shit to kingdom come.

All while being stylish.

Sorcerers can't be fixed, they need to be redone.
There is far too much planning involved in what should be a very freeflowing class.

The Alchemist path Artificer is entirely balanced in my opinion. It's ok at healing (has cure wounds), but progresses slower than a Life Cleric for spells. Its healing feature (the healing draught) scales alright, a bit like an accelerated cantrip, but only works once per target per long rest. If you're doing more than one encounter per long rest, it will by no means be overpowered.

Alchemist brings more variable utility as it levels, but none of it is particularly stand-out as better than what anyone else can do. An interesting thing you can do is put a Cure Wounds into an item at 4th level (with Infuse Magic) and then the other characters can use their actions to be healed by you.

I suggest using one of the homebrew fixes to Artificer which makes the companion actually progress with you, however, and replaces the FREE MAGIC ITEMS!!! with other crafting stuff that feels quite a bit better. I cannot for the life of me find it myself, but it's out there.

Would a frost giant camp use a fire? Or would they prefer to be cold and take advantage of their low-light vision?

>Would a frost giant camp use a fire?
HAHAHA
NO.

>In combat, frost giants will hurl rocks and then close in with battleaxes. They are immune to cold, but particularly vulnerable to fire, and have low-light vision. Their power visual senses extend into a higher end of the visible spectrum, allowing them to see more easily through snow and blizzards than other creatures. They will take prisoners if possible.

You tell me.

Do they cook their food? I feel like they would.

That'd involve increasing the temperature, and that shit is far too maug.
Frost giants are cave men without fire. Cave men with access to nearby villages who have actual technology, free for raiding.

Maybe they bribe a Remorhaz?

According to old D&D monster encyclopedias I had as a kid, frost giants frequently start shit with white dragons and kill them to eat. Sounds ridiculous but when you're immune to its breath weapon and are big enough to grapple it, a few frost giants are going to stomp the shit out of a white dragon.

I was curious if there were curses not trivialized by Remove Curse. Since it looks to be quite accessible compared to the curses. Thanks for the deck suggestion!

>I believe I'm going to have Conquest as the Red Horseman (War)
You do realize that one of the horseman for the book of Revelations is in fact Conquest? Pestilence was made up by popular culture.

Do you get to add bonus dice for each maximum roll (of the base dice of the spell), or just one of them?

Double sorcery points given by level as a bandaid if your game isn't going beyond 10ish. Sorcerer is worthless compared to a wizard at every tier but it really stands out in early game.

Each maximum roll of the base dice of the spell. I don't know if the extra dice count towards additional extra dice, though.

I realize this, but the Oath of Conquest felt more War-like to me.

I COULD have Conquest as the White Horseman. I won't deny that. However, I think that Pestilence/Plague is more iconic in the current day (as you say, made up by popular culture).

That would make most of the rest of this pretty easy, however. I would put Vengeance as the Red Horseman (War) and Treachery as the Black Horseman (Famine).

I recall reading some lore that stated that Bael Turath the first tiefling empire was eventually dragged off and transported to the nine hells.

But alas, I cannot find any references. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

But then how do they forge their weapons? Or make the tar necessary to ship-building? I feel like there are major aspects to frost giant society that collapse without fire.

Like they can raid just fine, but they aren't going to find appropriately sized weapons doing that. Plus they aren't the types to make slaves of their victims, that seems more like a fire giant thing.

Nope.

Although each major city in Bael Turath allegedly had huge gaping holes in them that led down into the Nine Hells, and pretty much every major wizard that lived that had a pact/sold his soul to someone/something in the Nine Hells, so it's not too weird. Bane himself was a big fan. It makes more sense that everyone just ran down into the hells when BT got blown the fuck out during the Spellplague.

>but then how do they forge their weapons? Or make the tar necessary to ship-building?
I quote the volo
>Frost giant society has no industry to speak of. It takes what it needs from others, and if it can't take something, it has no need for it.
>Rod plunder consists of living creatures, either livestock or slaves.
>Kvit refers to material goods, the most prized being objects of steel, alcohol and large gems.
>The fire-forged items of steel and iron that they wield and wear are prized as though they were made of gold.

Are you just making up headcanon now because you're bored? All the monster manual entries have explicitly covered that frost giants generally make their weapons out of entire fucking trees and steal a lot of their shit. They also fucking love slaves.

I don't recall them being sailors by any means, because they live in fucking tundra and mountains.

Do you know where one of the good fixes would be? I remember seeing people working on one on here a few weeks back but it's late and I'm having trouble finding it.

I think that they are conflating viking/NORD memes with ice giants.

If you want to use Pestilence then I would suggest using Oath of Treachery but subbing out some of the Oath spells with more on-flavor things like Ray of Sickness, Blight and Contagion

I'm going off what's in Storm King's Thunder, which prominently features frost giants using gigantic long boats to raid along the sword coast. In that adventure they talk about how the fire giants are unique because they take slaves. I'm not trying to use headcannon for any of this, I'm just trying to figure out how frost giants work a little bit before my players encounter them.

So their weapons are hodgepodge? That just seems really strange to me for some reason. In SKT they make a big deal about how the frost giants are recovering the old frost giant lodges and repairing them and gearing up for war. I just wouldn't figure that they would be able to fashion giant axes from salvaged goods without reforging them. But if it's supported in the books....

Thanks for the info!

For those of you that ran/played OotA, how was the month of surface time handled? Did you just narrate over it or did you have the players actually do things? Did any players say nope fuck that to the invite back? If so what did you do?

> In SKT they make a big deal about how the frost giants are recovering the old frost giant lodges and repairing them and gearing up for war.
They do this by pillaging resources. With boats they found. They never make anything themselves, they just take.

Ah, yes, of course. I mentioned that I would be basing the NPC stat blocks on the Oaths and the characters themselves, but not completely lifting them. Of course I'd be doing that.

After talking to a friend of mine on Discord, I've realized that I should probably just go with Conquest, Vengeance, Treachery, and Oathbreaker in that order.

A rough idea of the storyline behind them being relevant would be
>White returns to the city with their victorious army, bringing riches from conquest as well as their vicious veteran military force
>Conquest/White begins to destabilize the city as too many soldiers, refugees/slaves, foreign powers, riches without material backing or food or whatever to support them flow in
>Players deal with Conquest itself, but now the army and all the things that White brought are present and ruining stuff
>Red/Vengeance steps up to take control of some of the factions, or perhaps playing them both as tensions run high
>At the same time, Black/Treachery begins to undermine the city's infrastructure through underworld connections and deceit, abusing the issues that arise from War doing his shit within the city
>Even as/if players deal with Red and Black, the results lead to the emergence of Pale/Oathbreaker
>A dark force begins to emerge from the conflict and the dead begin to rise; fiends show themselves
>If/when Pale/Oathbreaker/Death is dealt with, the players then feel obligated as the HEROES or something (up to them) to hopefully rebuild or reunify, perhaps with themselves as the new leaders

I would absolutely LOVE for one of the players to be a Devotion or Crown Paladin (or maybe even have a Devotion, Crown, Fae, and Vengeance, but for good, Paladin party).

That's just a rough outline with no nuance that I wrote for this post alone. It wouldn't be quite that bad or linear.

Keep in mind there's nothing preventing frost giants from stealing from OTHER giants, who *do* have appropriately sized weapons, which is why other giants fuckin' hate frost giants.

We largely narrated over it and two characters noped out (dropped from the group due to either lack of interest or graduation) and I almost did (it was in character, to go was almost suicide but to not go was even more so especially as an exiled Drow).

The RAW says "choose one of those dice," which led to my confusion.

I'm pretty sure the "those" refers to the original dice that landed on maximums, but it's vague enough about the extra dice that I could see how someone could interpret that they might be included.

Just google "exploding dice" because that's what the mechanic is

How does your group handle Initiative and combat? Grid? Hex? Description?
Are there any particularly useful houserules you use?

Yeah but it's like. Good armor proficiencies, can do all sorts of damage that higher level creatures are less immune to, for free, never needs to do any management of ressources unless the bag is stolen... I still have my doubts about it.

Standard initiative, grid combat. No houserules, but that comes with running AL.

>Initiative
Standard initiative, with the players making/managing our own initiative list so the GM doesn't have to make two.

>Combat
Theater of the mind.
It sucks, I hate it.

>Houserules
Death saving throws are made in secret.

So how evil can a paladin be and how would it be represented?

>Houserules
>Death saving throws are made in secret.

This shits on pretty much every form of reroll ability/feat/skill that require the players to see the roll to decide if they want to add to it or reroll

I think user meant secret from other players, so people can't come help you because they know you're one saving throw from dying.

As evil as you want him to be. However you want it to be represented.

This isn't 3.5. You can't "Fall" anymore, and your powers aren't explicitly handed out to you by a nanny-state God that will cut off the source if he doesn't like your behavior.

5E is fully in the realm of "feelgood" for player responsibility. You'll notice the changes all over. Even familiars aren't real creatures anymore - they're spirits that can reassemble if they get "killed" so you don't feel bad that your toad got squished.

That also defeats the purpose of pretty much anyone with Healing Word, Spare the Dying, etc.

5E is just not the right system for this kind of shit.

I think it could improve combat a lot, since you don't know whether the person who's down is perfectly okay or on the edge of death. Instead of delaying healing actions to focus on other things, they have to decide how much to risk a character dying.

>That also defeats the purpose of pretty much anyone with Healing Word, Spare the Dying, etc.
How does it defeat the purpose of either of those spells?

Mathematically, healing in combat is a losing game.

It's almost always the better action to end combat by destroying/disabling the enemy. Healing Word is the exception because it's a bonus action.

>Todd stabilized; it makes more sense for us to kill the monster than run over to Todd to stabilize him
>Todd did not stabilize, we better go help him
>We don't know if Todd did or did not stabilize, despite knowing other bizarre esoteric things like how much damage my sword does to someone, how much "HP" I have and the numerical value of my Constitution

The spells are resources to be spent when you need them, and thus, know you need them. It's not a coin toss.

"lol nice job retard you used Spare the Dying but he was already stable and it did nothing"

On a scale of 0 to 10, 0.

It is up to you, your DM, and your oath to determine what is considered "evil" and what is not.

For instance, my Paladin regularly ordered mass executions of war prisoners on the charge of heathenous dragon worship, while offering them a one-time chance of renouncing their faith to absolve them and receive the execution of beheading instead of being burned at the stake as a heretic. Still not evil, since they were an orcish horde marching on the kingdoms of men and butchering everything in their path, so when we go Deus Vult not many people batted an eye when we started burning orc cities to the ground.

You just need to determine ahead of time what your god considers to be evil. If you want to be a goody two shoes giving all your money to charity and saving orphans, fine, and if you want to full Deus Vult and leave a trail of heretical blood in your wake wherever you go, that works too, just clear it with your DM as to what you are going for, why, and how. If he's worth a shit he will help you fit your style into his setting so you can crusade to your heart's content.

I've been idly thinking about putting a together a campaign with a polynesian/micronesian theme to it, but I've never run a campaign in that style (...or at all).

Have any of you? Do you have any suggestions?

D&D 5th Edition thus far, aside from a few classes and monsters, runs heavily on a western european fantasy theme, so it's a bit hard to refluff that into other cultural settings.
They still haven't even added lung dragons back into the mix.

>Do you have any suggestions?

Don't.

Oh, no, if the character stabilizes or dies then it's announced to the party, barring some sort of unusual circumstance. It's just a little tweak to turn "lol he's fine for another two rounds at least, watch me fuck this goblin up in the meantime" into "SOMEONE FUCKING HELP HIM ALREADY." Metagaming death saving throws is just way too easy, every group seems to fall into it at some point otherwise

>>We don't know if Todd did or did not stabilize, despite knowing other bizarre esoteric things like how much damage my sword does to someone, how much "HP" I have and the numerical value of my Constitution
I'll admit that stuff makes it feel more game-y, but a person would know roughly where they stand in such things from 'healthy' to 'almost dead' or 'solid hit' vs 'glancing blow.'

In a real scenario you wouldn't be sure whether the unconscious ally is dying or stabilized so you have to make the call between ensuring their survival or dealing with a threat. Sometimes you will make a bad call.

I only think it's fair if the players know about this rule prior to chargen, because it makes Healing Word a million times more useful and makes other things less ideal. I'd never bother wasting time or money on the Medicine skill or healer kit for stabilizing, since it's a secret.

What's the most overpowered combat class in this edition and what contributes to it's power?

I'm actually a little sick of Sorcerer's getting their power from having a slut and/or Bard (you know the type) as an ancestor. I'm tired of bloodlines as their origins.

Why can't Sorcerers just BE? Like, why can't it just be a Gift, or a Talent, or a quirk of the cosmos? Why can't Sorcerers be natural mages who just need a particular focus/specialization to make it work? Or maybe they get their power from nebulous and strange sources? Or the fucking Force? Why do we have to fall back on something that Pathfinder came up with? Why can't we do something fucking different for once?

Paladin. Smite. Lay on Hands. Aura.

aight, 5eg, rate my collection of houserules:

Greyhawk and Norse Pantheons are allowed.

A year has 12 months of 4 weeks of 10 days.

Traveling is done in 24 hour days of 6 4 hour watches.

While traveling, 1 watch of rest = 1 short rest. 6 watches of rest = 1 long rest

During any short rest, if you spend one use of a healer’s kit, you can help an ally regain 1HD of hp without spending any HD. (Medicine DC 15 to heal a 2nd HD)

Druids get druidcraft at level one. This does not count against known cantrips.

The holy water ritual described on PHB 152 takes only 15gp worth of silver powder.

Mounts can carry a rider, but can only carry gear if they have saddlebags or a pack saddle. See Items for details on saddlebags. A pack saddle is the same cost as a normal saddle, and allows a mount to carry up to its maximum capacity, and are only available for Large creatures.

Encumbrance (Non-Optional)
>Over ½ max → encumbered
>>½ max → 7lbs/point Str
>80% max → heavily encumbered
% max → 12lbs/point str
>Max → heavily encumbered + 1 Lvl exhaustion/watch of movement

Crits and fumbles: Dropbox/D&D/5e Criticals and Fumbles. (tables I found online)
When PCs crit, roll on table. When NPCs crit, just double dice.
Without access to that specific file, different rules apply:
For fumbles, roll the 20 again. If you roll below your level, fumble is negated.
For crits, roll the 20 again. If you roll below your level, deal max damage + two damage rolls. If not, deal max damage + one roll.

No flanking. Gang up instead → 4:1.

For skill rolls, a nat 20 is treated as a roll of 22 and a nat 1 is treated as a roll of 0.

Don't both Wild Magic and Storm origins mention that you might have just been bitten by a radioactive wizard or born under a particularly fierce storm, instead of having it in your blood?

Wild.
>Your innate magic comes from the w ild forces of chaos that underlie the order o f creation. You might have endured exposure to some form o f raw magic, perhaps through a planar portal leading to Limbo, the Elemental Planes, or the mysterious Far Realm. Perhaps you were blessed by a powerful fey creature or marked by a demon. Or your magic could be a fluke o f your birth, with no apparent cause or reason.

I really don't count Wild since it's basically unplayable in anything resembling a serious game, and usually gets used in less serious games. At least right up until the entire party gets immolated when that Enhance Ability spell turns into a Fireball centered on the party.

Then change that outcome if you hate it so much. Make it so you spray some level of Burning Hands in a random d8 direction.

Not even the point of my original argument. I just want some discussion about changing Sorcerers to make them fresh.

Bladelocks just need:
>Free thirsting blade at level 5
>A utility option invocation, like being able to summon your pact weapon as something from the tool list and getting free proficiency with it while it's equipped

Then they'd be fine.

Copy Final Fantasy X.

Sorcerers are garbage and only existed to serve as an alternative for people that were

A) Too dumb to plan their spells and wanted the "flexibility" to have less spells on demand
B) Afraid of overzealous DM's stealing their spellbook as a wizard
C) Wanting "muh internal power" wanking

If 5E had come out and there was simply no sorcerer, I doubt most people would have even given a fuck. In fact, if they had scrapped the class entirely and made Warlock a little better, it'd probably have been the wiser choice.

>Wanting "muh internal power" wanking
Eh. Internal Power is a legit fantasy trope. Something in the system should cover it.

>scrapped the class entirely and made Warlock a little better
stopicanonlygetsoerect.jpg

Honestly I think Warlock's a terrible class. The flavor feels very narrow and I personally would never want to play one.

Internal Power's been around forever though, and Sorcerers have been around in d&d for a while. You can't just scrap them.

I truly believe all the Sorcerer needs to be an acceptable power level's more spells and gain all metamagic.

Makes them the versatile caster they're meant to be.

Warlocks are fucking awesome and oozing with flavor. The only thing holding them back is their narrow skillset that restrains them into being one trick ponies.

I get it; WotC was afraid of giving them too many options because players would have busted that asshole wide open to scoop out the sweet powergame goo from inside, but still.

The problem with making Sorcerers good is that there's no way to do it without making them Wizards, at which point, there's no reason to play a Wizard over a Sorcerer if you're gonna get metamagic for free. And the shit that sorcerer could have gotten (unlimited castings of lesser spells, multiple abilities active simultaneously, etc) are now in the domain of the warlock.

Also Bards are just better sorcerers now.

>full casters
>can crib from other casting lists (fuck off Valor bards, Lore is the master race)
>gets armor and weapon proficiencies
>gets actual good skills
>still casting with Cha

But yeah sure you can have some metamagic or whatever.

Sorcerers use their HP to cast spells.

Thoughts?

I think sorcerer's turning their HP into sorcery points is in a thousand shit homebrews and it's a cool idea. Wizards should do something like that.

Why not?

Would it be that big a deal if I just come up with some basic cultures and a relatively simple plot focused around exploring uncharted islands, or trying to band them all together against a common foe?

Either terrible
>high level spells cost too much HP to cast to be reasonable

Or broken
>heal yourself with spells to have HP to cast more spells, allowing infinite casting

Your players are just going to assume you're some fag that watched Moana too many times and meme you to death.

Also classes are going to make even less sense unless you browbeat the players into submission for session 0.

>I want to play a platemail wearing Paladin of the Crown who defends his city state
>Oh sorry this is set on an island of tribal people shooting darts at each other and worshipping thunder birds

>warlock
>terrible class
>narrow flavor

It's a little underpowered compared to wizard, sure, but there's plenty you can do with it. Especially in multiclasses.

>Moana
Honestly this was the first thing that came to mind for me

It's unfortunate but people are going to relate a campaign setting with whatever's relevant in pop culture at the time.

Actually the one thing I like about it is multiclass.

Feels very on flavor that it gives most people a huge boost in exchange for making a deal with another entity.

That's not an issue being War domain would solve. Life clerics belong on the front line.

>Life clerics who have no martial proficiencies belong on the front line
>War clerics who do, will not solve the problem

I see.

That's too bad. I actually lived in the Northern Marianas Islands for a few years which is why I wanted to do it.