/5eg/ Fifth Edition General: Hexblade edition

Hey 5eg, our group is coming from 4e and we all like that edition's particular style of combat, how would model something similar in 5e?

Can a Hexblade just pick up the medium armor and shield they got and stick to Eldritch Blast, the whole time ignoring the magic sword telling them how awesome it would be to sword things?

A short rest should be things like, breaking for lunch, taking a nap, resting after a sports event, watching a show, things that let you just relax.

Walking isn't restful, it just isn't strenuous.

I've always let people rest in the back of a wagon or in a caravan if they don't have a job to do.

Use and enforce the 2-short-2-short-2-long rest cycle and everything works out pretty damned well. Time the lengths of each for the pace of the campaign. If the pace changes by which i mean, over time and lasting, not the occasional slow/busy day, change the rules to keep it working.

Favored Soul sorcerer, Bladesigner wizard, Eldritch Knight fighter, Blade-Pact Warlock (mostly if your DM allows the brand new Hexblade).

I don't think an hour is an unreasonable time frame as long as you allow non-strenuous physical activity like traveling or searching.

Literally 4e with different terminology, no minions, and no marking.

Yes.

Any suggestions for running a low magic sword & sorcery campaign in feudal Japan?

I plan to create my own map and history for the setting, but it's going to be very similar to Sengoku period. It's going to be for a very small number of players (2, with a 3rd player who might be dropping in and out.)

I'm not sure if I should focus on Oni hunting in a strict kill monsters/get treasure kind of game, or if I should try to get the players mixed up in the less mechanical aspects of roleplaying in the era. Players have expressed interest in both types.

Any input or stories would be appreciated.

Not mentioning stone sorcerer

>Any time a party is going to stop adventuring, it's almost always going to be a long rest.
A short rest isn't stopping adventuring. It's stopping for lunch and catch your breath.

An hour is not that long of an amount of time. Unless you literally JUST ran from a fight with others, you're going to be able to get a short rest relatively easily. By the time your rest is done you might have people starting to do patrols for intruders that you can face off after you caught your breath.

Stop depending on 3.5e's 15-minute-work-day. You don't have to fully retreat to get some resources back.

Hadn't actually read that UA. I mostly tune them out - I paid attention to the latest because I am a huge whore for making the Bladelock better.

>I don't think an hour is an unreasonable time frame as long as you allow non-strenuous physical activity like traveling or searching.
Walking around for an hour doesn't let you do some of the things that might be required in a short rest, like treating wounds, spending time in prayer, mediating, communing with nature, or going over the notes of your spell book.

Walk for some of the time, sure, i'd let you do some window shopping for 10 minutes, and you aren't bed ridden, so feel free to get a snack, but if you are straight up traveling? No, that doesn't qualify for my games.

Yes. And Hexblade's Curse works on EB stuff too (meaning Hexblades are both the best bladelocks AND the best EBlocks). And also the best sorclock.

That's inevitable I suppose.

Going to be running a game for some relative newbs soon, was wondering if anyone on Veeky Forums has tried the alternative spell points rule in the DMG? I was thinking of applying it to sorcerers so they feel like something other than "worse wizard". It seems like it would be pretty good, anyone actually used it?

You missed this whole conversation in the last topic. Essentially every caster is a "worse wizard" unless your DM is doing something to reign in the power/versatility of wizards.

that's how it's supposed to be but that's never how it is with rests.

I use the spell points rules for sorcerers, but rather than the stated method of high level spells, which is a limit on straight up casting them, i use
>At level 11 choose a level 6 spell from the Sorcerer spell list. You may cast this spell without spending spell points. Once you cast a spell in this way, you can't cast it again until after a long rest.

>At level 13, choose a 7th level spell, at 15 an 8th level spell, and at 17 a 9th level spell for this feature.

It slightly hurts the versatility, but it also lets them spend more points on upranking spells, since they still the same number of normal points.

It requires slightly more bookkeeping, but as long as you enforce the 'only one spell per level per day of 6 and higher' it's exactly on par with spell slots until about level 19, where slot casters get a second level 6 slot. It also lets sorcs throw out about a billion level one spells per day at high levels, which is thematically appropriate.

If you do it, you should also roll their sorcery points into the pool and have all their abilities run from the same resource. The rules for converting sorcery points into spell slots actually cost the exact same as casting a spell with spell points, so it increases their options further.

As far as making them something that's not a 'worse wizard', the reason wizards are better is that, given enough time and resources, they can learn literally every spell on their class list - sorcs can't, and there's no way past that.

>never how it is
Except for in almost all of the games I've run for the last two years?

I always see people saying that, but the only reason it wouldn't work is if people choose for it not to. Instead of complaining that things aren't functioning HERE, change it in your game.

Forgot to mention that, like this user says, i have combined sorcery and spell points.

I've considered altering when and how you choose the metamagics, since right now the additional ones are generally less used, but i haven't done it yet.

My sorcerers have appreciated the points system.

I appreciate that wizards are better because of their versatility, I'm just looking for something to make the sorcerer feel a little better to play. Although I can't for the life of me work out why WoTC expects 4 choices of metamagic, one of which comes way to late to be a factor in how the class plays, to be enough when some of them are compulsory and some of the are just meh. Might just say fuck it and go with spell points+all the metamagics.

Also, was it an oversight that the favoured soul didn't get ritual casting? I mean, thanks to that, favoured soul now has the unenviable position for being the only class capable of learning augruy without a way to ritual cast it. Seems weird.

>Running Lost mines of phandelver
>Druid encouraged Pip from the Stonehill inn to run away from home
>Deciding it was a better story than getting eaten by wolves, Pip stumbled into another plane and is now stuck in the beast lands until he finds his way to another plane.

>Use and enforce the 2-short-2-short-2-long rest cycle and everything works out pretty damned well.

the default is a 2 short rests and then a long rest

bending the entire campaign into NapQuest to make a fucked up character class less fucked is retarded

nope, its supposed to be 2 short rest: 1 long rest

and justifying 2, 1 hour breaks with no interruptions is pretty weird in any case

It's really like 4e?

For the people talking about short rests, I cannot understand DMs that won't give you time for them. Especially when travelling and rolling random encounters. Characters have to rest for 8 hours, and can only travel for 8 hours without going into a forced march. That leaves 8 more hours for meals, foraging, short resting, etc. Even if you're on an enemy location, get your fucking wizard to cast Rope Trick and you're good.

One thing that i worried about, although it hasn't come up for me as of yet, is Shield. Using spell points lets you cast it significantly more efficiently, and i could see someone doing a gimicky favored soul build using shield every single round.

nice reference

and the warlock can't sword if he ever does find Blackrazor so he'd better get used to EBing

And what on God's good earth is wrong with that?

Yes, 2 shorts followed by long. Which is what i said.
6-8 encounters, 2 short rests, 1 long rest.
That typically becomes 2-S-2-S-2-L, with 2 extra potential encounters in there depending on circumstance.

It was just a warning to keep an eye out and see if its making things silly or not. Like i said, my players haven't been doing that, so i don't know how it would turn out. It may be just fine, it may need some tweaking.

Master of Magic can't make you cast a spell that require more than an action to cast, like True Resurrection spell, because you forget how to cast it when the turn ends, am I right? Or there are some shanenigans?

>I appreciate that wizards are better because of their versatility

They are also better in power. Have more spells/day, better access to more powerful spells, and can use class abilities (that are on par with your sorcerous origin) without spending points. By core anyway, I'm not sure what happens when you heap on optional rules.

Why waste a Rope Trick on a short rest? That's the thing, if you can take a rest, you can probably take a long rest.

There genuinely aren't that many situations where multiple short rests are plausible unless you're exploring a dungeon with placid, mindless inhabitants.

Anons? I could really use a hand. Since the Hexblade mentions Blackrazor, I figured I'd try and set up an article for D&D's soul-sucking starbladed sword. As part of that, I wanna include all the stats from across the editions. Only issue is...

Back in 4e, stats for Blackrazor only appeared (to my knowledge) in the "D&D Alumini: Blackrazor Revealed" article for Dragon Magazine #384. And, of course, with the rearranging done to WoTC's website, all those old articles are gone now. And it wasn't included in the magazine.

So, can any anons help an user get shit done and track down a copy of the 4e writeup? My googlefu is too weak to do it on my own, alas.

While that would be a pretty good trick, if that's the biggest cheese the class can manage then I think I can handle DMing it. Although I would actually be pretty curious to see whether the extra spell efficiency of the point system could lend itself well to more liberal use of counterspell as a sorcerer.
Hm, stone sorcerer with mage slayer and counterspell spam. Time to end magic. Probably still shit, but funny.

>change it in your game.
I'm not the GM. The only thing I can do is plead, and it does nothing.

If your game isn't hitting the pace, change the rest timings. 1 day vs 1 week, 8 hours vs 24 hours, 1 week vs 1 month, as long as you try and get close to the 2-short-2-short-2-long encounter schedule it all works out. Mostly. At least significantly better than not hitting it

Alternatively, add time elements to your campaign. We have X time to get that [item]! We need to rescue the princess! Timmy fell down a well!.

I'm sorry user, bad DMs happen. If you get the chance to DM yourself, let them see the better path.

Can half-elves be black?

dnd.rem.uz/Dragon Magazine/351-400/Dragon Magazine #384.pdf

I see other people saying it should be in here but I don't see it in there.

>if you can take a rest, you can probably take a long rest
You can only benefit from 1 long rest per 24-hour period. So say you get into the dungeon, freshly rested, have a couple of fights and people get hurt. But it's been less than 6 hours since your last long rest, so you can't take another yet. Will you retreat and wait 18 hours before heading back in? 1 hour is not all that much, relatively.

If your players haven't seen Seven Samurai (or even in they have) you should include a quest that follows the plot of the movie. Would a "gather hungry samurai" hook for bringing the players together be plausible?

I know you didn't ask for it, but i figured i'd post the 5e version just so people can see it here.

The problem is that 1) its not organic to most stories or scenarios, 2) the only benefit is to try to prop up warlocks.

Seems... staggeringly pointless and arbitrary.

>At least significantly better than not hitting it

Yet its not clear why contriving your entire campaign simply to please such a gimmicky class will benefit anything.

>We have X time to get that [item]! We need to rescue the princess! Timmy fell down a well!.

Now we care about not loafing off for 2 frikkin hours in the middle of the series of hit and run attacks?

>www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?503194-Balance-Question-Extra-Attack-from-multiple-classes
We clearly read very different things from that thread.
>Complaint about how it sucks to take levels in a class and get dead/redundant features.
>A bunch of pedantic bs about how "you're not losing out on a class feature, you have it twice!"
The closest thing to a legitimate response was essentially
>"you shouldn't multiclassing two martials, two scouts, or two casters, and it's a good idea for the game to punish you for trying in order to discourage you from doing much of it.

As I don't share that POV, redundant features are shit.

That seems quite plausible actually, not bad.

Can Raven Queen sentinel and Chainlock Imp in Raven form breed? I want more birdy buddies.

2) the only benefit is to try to prop up warlocks.
Don't forget battlemasters. They really feel like weaker paladins when they don't get their rests.

Begone, days where every combat character must multiclass or fall behind!

The entire game is balanced around that ratio, whether or not its balanced WELL.

You are expected, by design, to have access to Channel Divinity in most encounters once you get 2, you are meant to be able to use multiple Maneuver dice per encounter, you are MEANT to only be able to Rage for some encounters, the benefit of Circle of the Land druids NEED short rests to make them actually have more spell levels.

It is ALL built for that.
Warlocks are just the most obvious.

I swear, it's like people forget the Internet Archive even exists.
web.archive.org/web/20100223101723/http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4alum/2010february

Really it's two different takes on Blackrazor as part of a contest, so they're fan submissions. But, hey, feel free to use em regardless.

Eh, in some ways.

Not so much with the shifting.
Burst and AOE effects are not square, they're round.
No marking.
No minions.
Magic items are not a requirement, optional by default.

Abilities scale by level better rather than becoming too weak and getting replaced.

And things are written in a more paragraph form.

I don't expect characters to multiclass to keep up. I just don't want redundant class feature bullshit. Your strawman is horseshit.

If I just wanted "single class keeps up" I could get that from fucking Pathfinder, where multiclass almost always falls behind.

Multiclassing in 5e is intended to allow versatility and options at the expense of mechanical power. It mostly works, although cantrip scaling is bullshit that goes against the idea, and fucks some things up.

Maybe it's because I usually throw hard-hitting encounters at my party, but they usually find themselves having to short rest in order to heal with hit dice. The moon druid and the fighter certainly benefit from it, though. I don't see why it's so contriving to justify a couple of 1 hour stops. Read this:

Battlemasters are so universally lauded over champions and EKs that I don't feel the need to prop them up. Seems like its superiority rests on circular logic.

>I don't expect characters to multiclass to keep up.

Yes, you do. Remember? Everyone but the fighter only gets one second attack. So you want to simultaneously shit on nonfighters while stealing from the fighter's unique 11th level ability.

>Your strawman is horseshit.
You're the one who wants to make multiclasses even MORE powerful than they are.

Champion < Eldritch Knight < Battlemaster

Champions are sort of fucked, they are like assassins in that, they appear to be the straight fighting class archetype, but they don't really work out as well despite having fewer options. And they both get kind of almost useful utility that isn't as helpful as they seem to be.

EKs are fine, they just aren't the arcane paladins some people want. They are fighters with defensive spells, not sword and wand.

Common mistake. Magic items aren't optional by default. Marking, feats, and multiclassing are examples of things optional by default.

Yeah, long rest as first resort->short rests are plausible. Under most circumstances, though, breaking into an enemy base, shanking a ton of people, and having the temerity to come back an hour later seems borderline suicidal.

>I'm gonna make up a bunch of bullshit about your wants.

No, what I want is redundant "dead" class features give you something of equivalent value rather than being a dead feature.

>Make MC more powerful!
I want to make MC no longer have dead features, and it would have a side effect of bringing MC closer to SC.

Uh no.

The math in 5e is balanced assuming no magic item bonuses. That's not an error, that's a fact.

>and it would have a side effect of bringing MC closer to SC.

MC is already on par with SC. The only thing you don't get is... third attack except by being a fighter 11! What a tragedy, that single classed fighters have a thing!

Being able to survive without magic items, like in every fucking edition but WotC's, doesn't mean magic items are "optional by default."

I know 4e has pretty good inherent bonuses rule, and I think 3.5 had one as well.

Minimum quality of magic items are expected in the math of both 3e and 4e.

5e does not do that. Ergo not "required".

If you want to see dead features, check out Clerics.

At level 14 they get... Destroy Undead CR3. Some archetypes also rank up Divine Strike, but cantrip based ones get nothing else.

So the one improvement is they can destroy mummies and wights, instead of making them flee.

>be a fighter
>GM doesn't give you a magic weapon
>eat shit for the entire campaign because you can't bypass damage resistance
>"not my fault you didn't pick Paladin :^)"
Nah.

"This class that can do literally nothing else but hit things a lot is SUPPOSED to be completely ineffective at hitting half the enemies in the game" is your next line.

They get class features that do literally nothing, when as a single classes character they would get highly useful features.

But most classes don't give you an alternate feature you can choose to take instead.

That is unfun, and results in people avoiding going further than x levels (4, or 6) to avoid worthless dead features.

The game isn't going to break if characters have another option to replace these powerful features which exist in multiple classes, so that if they hit it as a dead feature (or otherwise decide to trade it out for whatever reason), they aren't stuck with a dead feature.

Some single classes have down levels, why should multi-classing let you entirely bypass that?

>Pedantic arguments
Okay fine, you need 'magic weapon'. You don't need specific qualities of magic item to keep up with the damn math, unlike in 4e (unless they use optional rules that correct the math). That was the point I was making, a point I thought was very clear.

But apparently not.

Multiclassing adds in extra down levels due to the dead features.

But ideally, there would be no down levels at all.

Is it possible to go over 30 AC or is it capped at 30 like all DCs?

Why would DCs be capped?
see: bullshit expertise on perception vs bullshit expertise on stealth

It's possible but extremely difficult and requires magic items your GM will never give you.

Whats a gish?

The difference is in the math. Yes, you are expected, at some point in a non-low magic non-low level game to get a magic weapon, the difference is that it isn't assumed and built into the monster math that it has to
>add damage
>add +hit
or anything else specific.

A racial class of the Gith which use both magic and martial prowess.I forget if it was zerai or yankee.

That's a magic item you are expected to have.

I'm not the other guy, i was just pointing out the difference in how magic items are treated by the system.

Well bladesinger with max INT and DEX already can get 30 easy with Mage Armor/Shield/Haste

If he gets Bracers of Defense/Cloak or Protection/Ring of Protection

>max INT and DEX
>easy

Githzerai and Githyanki. A race that renowned for being suited for classes that melee and magic at the same time also psionics.

PHB says that DC is capped at 30

4ASIs tops

> (You)
>>"you shouldn't multiclassing two martials, two scouts, or two casters, and it's a good idea for the game to punish you for trying in order to discourage you from doing much of it.
>That is actually a sentiment I wanted to get across.
But sometimes you have that cool concept that makes you want features from ranger and paladin. Or ranger and barbarian. Or whatever.

5e doesn't have "hybrid classes" or alternate class features, for you to make a paladin with an animal companion and FE (or whatever) instead of some paladin features.

It doesn't really have any mechanics for selectively trading one class feature for another, even in the limited capacity of themed prebuilt packages like Pathfinder.

Your only option if you want mechanics from multiple classes is multiclassing. And that's not always for a "hybrid party role", sometimes it's because you want a specific combination of features within a party role.

Then you see 5e's mandatory dead features, and you may give up on the whole character you wanted to play.

>you may give up on the whole character you wanted to play.

If you can't make your character concept work with one of the classes that exists already, it's probably not a character concept that belongs in DnD.

Try GURPS instead.

Right.

Gaze of Khirad
Prerequisite: 7th level, the Great Old One patron
You gain the piercing gaze of the blue star Khirad. As an action, you can see through solid objects to a range of 30 feet until the end of the current turn. During that time, you percieve objects as ghostly, transparent images.

Am I misreading this, or is this fucking fantastic for dungeon crawls, and for campaigns with a lot of ambushes and hidden objects like curse of strahd?

To be fair, being able to nuke ALL forms of necromancer minions in one go is decent.

Or Legend, which solved this whole archetype/multiclassing issue like, 5 or 6 years ago.