/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General: Baby Monster Edition

Yes, yours is a bad Dan Brown movle character with phenomenal cleric powers.

How many religions are going to maintain a cadre of rogues? There's a domain for that for a reason, or maybe you can make up a "Thievery Domain" for Cleric instead.

this is just bad though.

You are 100% right, user. The only purpose of playing D&D is to get together with your friends and have fun creating the most ridiculous natural 20 scenario possible. Kind of like when you and your mates get together after a hard week of taking care of your wife's son, so that you can put on some indie pop and drink some microbrews and play Cards Against Humanity. And D&D is kind of like that, right? The entire point is to fill your small apartment with autistic laughter. Hey, maybe you should start your own RPG stream and put it on YouTube with a Patreon! I bet people will send you random donations when they watch your super-epic latest nat20 instance where a guy gets a nat20 on his arrow roll and that means he instantly kills the main boss. Anything else would be anti-fun, right? I mean, those monsters have so much HP and combat is kind of boring, right? Who cares if you're completely raping any chance of creating a coherent story, as long as you're having fun, right?

You seem super butthurt about this type of story, what's your backstory?

You're really mad about this and it's funny.

>How many religions are going to maintain a cadre of rogues?

Churches having sneaky fuckers is rather common in fiction, even moreso if said religion is also the government in a theocracy. Not every situation the church wants dealt with can be done so with Paladins yelling DEUS VULT memes.

Merely sick of the "argument" of pro-fun being used to excuse fucking up campaigns. And the absolute fetishization of the natural 20 that has become intolerable in recent years.

Actually no. They just used the stirge's ability to suck blood, pass without trace and greater invisibility to let it substitute some corpses blood for theirs in a blood magic ritual. No natural 20s were rolled, but pass without trace did let them exploit bounded accuracy on skill checks.

It took about 4 sessions of raising the stirge and half a session playing that specific course of actions out.

Any more conplaints autismo?

Strength - 11
Dexterity- 12
Constitution- 12
Intelligence- 15
Wisdom- 11
Charisma- 12

Are those good for a wizard? If I pick high elf my Int becomes 16 and it'll be 18 at level 4. If anyone else has suggestions on how to do this point buy thing with a wizard I'd be glad to hear them, I've never used it before.

Thematically can be argued either way, I'm talking mechanically. Is it stupidly OP to put the second most OP UA onto a non-wizard class?

But you're overlooking the fact that he rolled a reality-altering Natural 20.
That's like getting a reach around from Aladdin's genie while drinking from the Holy Grail.

That God never stood a chance!

The only person fetishizing anything in this thread is you.

If their playgroup doesn't mind it, why do you care so much?

It's already three times as good as Arcane Trickster, I think you already know the answer.

Nah, except that you spelled "complaints" wrong. You probably just hit the wrong key though.

> but pass without trace did let them exploit bounded accuracy on skill checks.

Then fuck bounded accuracy. It's a great concept but it's the worst part of this edition. People throw it around as a buzzword to make it seem like D&D actually has intelligent game mechanics now, but in reality the concept of bounded accuracy is very poorly-executed in 5e.

Good story though, I actually like that. It's clever.

>It's already three times as good as something not that great
uh ok.

In that case what about just leaving AT as is (Including Mage Hand) and just slapping on Cleric spells/cantrips/spellcasting mod instead of Wizard?

>you can only talk about what has already been mentioned in this particular 5e thread

Well, that's a mathematical way to prevent any conversation whatsoever. I am talking about the general D&D culture, numbnuts. Haven't noticed it? My words do not apply to you.

Well, hmm, say a bunch of parents start teaching their kids to bite. You're like, well hmm okay, that's their house not mine, none of my business. So you let it go. Then one day you have kids, and by then, biting is the norm, so they start biting you. And yeah you tell them no, fucking stop that shit you little fuck. But everyone else in their life system tells them it's okay to bite, so who are they going to listen to?

>Churches having sneaky fuckers is rather common in fiction, even moreso if said religion is also the government in a theocracy.

Yes, but unless said God is the God of Shadows or Trickery or whatever, these are stealthy agents, not caster-rogues.

In the former case, they are domain priests with access to divine magics that allow for roguelike activity, not thief acrobat-ninja spellcasters.

Hardly matters, the archetype is clearly wildly OP.

You are so fucking petty it's ridiculous.

It's like a damn homebrew ruleset. If a DM says "Nat 20 doesn't do anything out of combat" and a player throws a fit, that's not an issue with the Nat 20 idea, it's an issue with the player being a whiny little shit.

Would 5e's ruleset work in a video game ala the Infinity Engine DnDs?

>The Cleric Spell list
is not equivalent to
>Illusion and Enchantments, and the occasional whatever Wizard spell

No. 4es would though.

No, fagwit, it's an issue with the entire shift in gaming culture. And Wizards of the Coast, with its fervent greed-driven attempts to pander to a wider market, have slaughtered their loyal fanbase on the altar of quick cash. 5th Edition is the beginning of a new era in roleplaying games. I understand that the kind of person I am talking about might be you yourself so it will require a bit of self-awareness that you likely lack seeing as you didn't play any previous editions of D&D so you don't know what that culture was like. However I recently saw a poll showing that many 5e players started with 3.5, which admittedly contained much of the cancer that started to destroy D&D, so perhaps my rising hope that some people here understand, was for naught.

But let me just tell you something: you fucking idiots have destroyed this game. I run games at an FLGS and have been for the past ten years. I get complimented on my DMing all the time, but I do it through gritted teeth. You fucking morons saw Cards Against Humanity and all these other fuck-ass party games, and decided that that atmosphere was the desirable end-result of all games, including D&D, which has been hijacked and turned into a shitshow of epic proportions. Yes, I can continue to play with the group I currently have, but you people have invaded, diluted, and all-but-irreverisbly fucked up the D&D community into some twisted parody of what it once was. Then you shout "grognard" without knowing what the word even means, with the non-argument that, so long as it's fun, it's good. Well you can have fun with an orgy, but if you all pull out your dicks and start wanking during a D&D session, you are being an asshole to that guy who expected to play D&D. Except you don't understand this because you have never known any way except the asperger-fueled hysterical laughter Crit-Role bullshit you think makes up D&D's entire history.

I can see it working.
Yet every single fucking video game that tried, failed, probably because they tried to do everything but going the SRPG route.

For real, it still baffles my mind that 3e got some pretty damn cool games based on it's system while they never even tried going the obvious route with 4e.

holy shit dude

chill

It's like he's channeling the powerful spirits of the mighty autists of lore.
I don't know whether to clap or offer him a 1-800 help line.

...

Didn't inquisitors work undercover?
Also I wouldn't mind an arcane trickster variant which had cleric spells, but gaining domain features seems retarded.

What would be a cool magical weapon to give to my party Barbarian now that she's all grown up (level 4)? She mentioned in her backstory that she's trying to become faster and more agile to overcome her nemesis.

Seen this bait before. Try something new please.

Could you get a trip so I could filter you?

>Didn't inquisitors work undercover?
Sure, but when you can actually use diety-powers and Zone of Truth people and whatnot, you aren't actually an Inquisitor.
And they typically didn't sneak in through people's windows in any case.

I'm kinda impressed how much anger you have for this subject. Carry on being angry I guess.

I don't think there's any WEAPON that can improve speed or dex, but there are Boots Of Speed that can double one's moving speed for up to ten minutes per day, and also impose disadvantage on opportunity attack rolls made against the wearer during that duration, so it'd be a good start.

Javelin of Lightning

+1 Throwing Anus.
oglaf.wikia.com/wiki/Throwing_Anus

>natural 20

Nothing says EPIC. FUCKING. WIN. like a nat 20 story

...

The main reason I decided to copy Theurge is just so your agent could be more like your god of choice, however getting it's features in addition to spellcasting is too much I agree.

What about, in a different direction,
>You ONLY get your Divine Domain abilities and three Cantrips, if a Divine Domain would give you a spell you can only cast it once/long rest

That way you can still have a lot of choice in direction however won't also be slinging spells like a full Cleric.

Then go play an unchained game

So I only ask my players to roll when the task is possible, and nontrivial. When they get a natural 20, they succeed in an especially successful way.

Why is this bad?

Thor or Tempus or Aphrodite or Glaggerk isn't going to have Holy Rogues.

You don't need this broad archetype of Divine Roguesters. Just make a friggin' Cleric Domain.

I've been clamoring for the same jist as bounded accuracy (only calling it "absolute" rather than "relative" power scaling) for about 14 years, so you may dislike it because it allows mortals to occasionally outwit deities (you know, like in those shitty mythology and S&S tales) but I find it to be glorious.

they should succeed in an especially successful way when they beat the DC by 5 or 10 or whatever. Not on an magic 20 roll.

So overworld travel, what are your fundamentals? I need some ideas cause I feel like I'm taking out player agency with my current method of

>tell them where they want to go on the map
>they move
>if they reach 24 miles, I remind them they can rest or press on and take the risk
>I roll for random encounter for day travel and when they do long rest
>reach town/city/etc.

It just goes like that. My players like travel and want to feel the journey part of the game but I'm feeling like I'm not doing them any good if I keep to my formula that I've used for a while or is that all there is to it?

That's how it seems to be, but I personally allow for slow horizontal movement within its 20 foot range

In theory, it isn't.

In practice, it varies. If you play with retards or spergs, this sort of thing will condition them to believe that even in games where rolls are allowed despite success being numerically impossible, that success (particularly profound success) is guaranteed on a nat 20.

Veeky Forums is mostly comprised of retards, spergs, and retard/sperg-adjacent players.

I like degrees of success in other games, and wish dnd would adopt them.

I think the problem with nat 20s being instant success is that people see that then will do incredibly stupid stuff, then roll for it and expect any loss to be minor but a success major.

So I'll create a halfling and doing stupid stuff to spam roll.

5% chance to do ridiculous stuff and 1/400 of getting bad stuff? When I'm rolling like 50 times a session? The odd is in my favor.

Anons? Way back in AD&D 2e's day, I loved playing the Undead Master kit.

This was a Wizard Kit where, in exchange for only getting 1 weapon proficiency point and giving up access to Alteration, Divination and Illusion spells, you got all the benefits of being a Necromancer, plus the ability to cast Enchantment spells, plus the Control Undead class feature of an evil Cleric, plus the ability to Control Outsiders via that Control Undead feature.

Now, I know you can reasonably pull off a fascimile of this by just taking the Necromancer Tradition and using the right mix of Enchantment and Conjuration spells, but I was curious:

Do folks think there are more crunchy ways to update an Undead Master to 5e?

If yes, how? It's clearly not right for an Arcane Tradition, too top-heavy, but maybe as a prestige class, or a collection of feats...?

If your DM and playgroup is fine with that, sure.

Unless you have specific plans to drop a neato-cool encounter on them like the Wight or 3 Hill trolls or whatever, travel just isn't what they came to experience. It's ok to just have ye olde "dotted lines across the map, now you are in Ancient Wherever, let's start looking for the Ark".

Next you'll want to zazz up provision gathering.
You have only so many hours in a session and everyone is looking forward to a Big Heroic Moment or two.

I kind of agree. So many of the people I used to play DnD with didn't take it seriously, making out of character jokes or doing shit for comedic purposes. The whole "Natural 20 is instawin" concept really bothers me, as when handled incorrectly it can lead to serious bullshit.

Why do you keep asking the question? The 5e necromancer is exactly what you're talking about.

>makes undead better than anyone else
>controls undead even though the cleric doesn't anymore (afaik)
>can use all schools
>can use planar binding to control fiends like the undead master

At least wait and ask on another day, not erry thread.

The issue with that is that then it's a Cleric that is also sneaky instead of a Sneaky that is a Cleric.

Think Eldritch Knight as to Wizard (Rogue first, Cleric second) to your suggested Bladesinger as to Fighter (Cleric first Rogue second).

I guess there's always just the ol' Trickery/Rogue or Paladin/Rogue options.

B-BUT IT'S NOT OPTIMAL!

So I missed when the new UA dropped.
How angry was this thread that it wasn't Mystics?

Has anyone else ever gotten a (You) from a response to a post that isn't their own? Any idea why that would happen?

>The issue with that is that then it's a Cleric that is also sneaky instead of a Sneaky that is a Cleric.

You are seriously hair-splitting at that point.
Like, you want a divine rogue for no other reason than there isn't currently one.

It IS optimal, unless for it to be optimal it has to be some sort of bizarre guy that snipes liches with str based feebleminds from a mile away.

Very.

..
....
maybe.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how more powerful than the *entire* rest of the party combined does your Undead Master class/archetype/whatever need to be to satisfy you?

Well that's either a server-side error on g00k's part, or someone is spoofing your IP and also posting in the same thread as you.

Probably the former.

I'm not actually that guy, I'm mocking him hehe.

But speaking for him, I would say substantially.
Like a full specialist Wizard maybe, with a travelling army of enhanced Undead, and maybe divine favors from Orcus.

Look nigga I thought it was implied by Rogue as main class but evidently its not so I'll put it in the simplest terms I can.

Sneak.
Attack.
Is.
Not.
A.
Cleric.
Feature.

Sure I could use a Trickery cleric, sneak up on a fucker using my Stealth proficiency... and stab them for 1d4+dex.

I had a conversation about this with another user a while back.
I treat travel as part of the dungeon itself.
If it's not important or they just want to spend extra time outdoors for some reason/they're dicking around then I will roll for random encounters like I would do if they were dicking about in a dungeon before clearing it.

So outside random encounters what that essentially means is:
-Maybe the dungeon is hard to reach, put in some sort of challenge they need to get past:
This could be a traveling band of orcs. They could plow through them, try diplomacy, go around, etc.
Maybe it's an environmental challenge. Perhaps they need to cross a massive gorge.
Maybe it's lava, who knows?
-Perhaps I want to give the players some sort of foreshadowing about what is to come in the current adventure, or set up something further down the road (figuratively, but could also literally).
For example I had players heading towards a dragon encounter, but they didn't know this. On the way they passed through a fey-infested forest where pixies were throwing illusions of scary dragons at them just for shits and giggles.
They didn't know right at the time, but the dragon they were making illusions of was the same one that had passed by not long ago.

Bottom line though:
If the traveling is boring, and nothing of interest is going to happen, skip it. Especially if your players don't like random encounters that have nothing to do with anything. If they do like them though, keep em in there.

I suppose. I have some ideas like adding a survival portion to it. So far, they're keeping track of food and make note to hunt and forage. They also went out to detail the way they're camping like how they keep themselves warm and shit. That's what my players really like is how detailed they get in the journey. It stemmed from their love of Fellowship of the Ring in the first half when the characters were traveling and camping out.

I've been thinking of throwing a bigger force out there that might lead to an adventure like they are camping by the river and found something akin to the One Ring. Maybe it's not the One Ring but it has strong malicious power under the guise of a mundane trinket.

Some shit like that.

I'll do the three trolls though I' think they'll appreciate that.

Nice.

For the record, I did indeed play an Undead Master once. Only got to level 6 and never ran into any undead worth, you know, mastering though.

Other the fact that almost nothing in there is for PCs, it would be really kickin' to get an Undead Master to the point that they can control all the undead and all the fiends. As far as I know there is legitimately no limit on evil cleric control abilities in 1e/2e, just how much you can do per encounter.

Is this a good idea?

>Players travel wilds on Hex grid map
>Make Survival checks when moving from one hex to another
>If fail, move to a random hex rather than the intended one

Yes, I grasped several posts ago that you were trying to shoehorn the Sneak attack mechanic on a Cleric, and if it's a domain that grants bonus attack damage dice later on (and of course it will be) so much the better.

I'm not as stupid as you think, I realize what you are trying to justify mechanically.
I just think your weak premise is rather shit.
Sorry, that sounded harsh, but there it is.

You want to do a mechanical thing, with some good Domain trimmings and a better spell list.
I get that.
You are also willing to bullshit some contrived not-really-existent literary trope-thing to make it seem you aren't just trying to have multiclass munchkining without the hassle of multiclassing and losing high level abilities.
I get that too.

I was just trying to dissuade you nicely before.

A single (revised) ranger will circumvent that entire system, brahj.

Just now joining the conversation.
What exactly are you looking for that you can't accomplish through multiclassing or RP?

Trickery cleric/rogue is a pretty common multiclass and fits a good them.
Although to be honest I think trickery cleric needs some work.

If you're cool with homebrew I saved this a while ago. I haven't really analyzed it though. Might spark some inspiration.

If I weren't going homebrew though I'd probably play a mastermind/trickery cleric with the charlatan background to accomplish this idea.

Are there going to be interesting things in those hexes or are you just wasting people's time?

BUT MUH BACKSTAB

He isn't trying to be something coherent, he's trying to be More Badass Caster Rogue.

Anything that requires a survival check is always a waste of time.

How can I play a strength unarmed character who isn't shit?

Oh, okay.
Well anyway. I really like the idea of a kind of inquisitor or huckster type of character. Would fit well with trickery.

Always pretending to be a holy man or actually being one but trying to subvert other faiths could be fun to RP.

But if I were really trying to fuck with clerics of other faiths I think I'd just be a sorcerer and use subtle spell counterspell whenever they try to cast spells and then be like "huh... I guess your god hates you... or they're not as powerful as you think?" But while I like that scenario in my head I can't think of anytime that would ever practically come up.

Unless you are in a hostile environment with set consequences for failing them
Or tracking would reveal some unexpected characteristic about he quarry who's lair you are heading to
Or it would let you discern that you are moving into an area of hostile plants/dangerous pixies/Bullettes/ect

He does have the "when possible" qualifier. If somebody can only get +4, and the difficulty of something is 25, it's not possible for them to succeed--at least not without the "success at a cost" (or whatever it's called) variant rule for coming very close to a DC but not actually hitting it.

Tavern brawler barbarian.
No you will not be as powerful as someone who slices into people with a greatsword, but you shouldn't be. That doesn't make any fucking sense.

BUT you will be able to apply your rage damage to all sorts of items you decide to smash over people's heads when you use them as improvised weapons and then bonus action grapple them.

>attack one: shove them on the ground
>attack two: hit them with a chair
>bonus action grapple

Fuck yeah.

Murderhobo-ing isn't Fight Club, it's a battle for survival.
Sure Weeb Kung Fu mysticism is super-effective, but who wants to be Aragorn's weeb pal?
You don't want to grappy Otyughs, they are covered in poo.

Grappler

Or look up the pugilist class on DMsGuild

>set consequences for failing them
This.
I don't understand how so many DMs don't understand this simple fucking principal.

I agree it doesn't make sense, yet unarmed monks can do it all the same. Why can a nimble unarmed man do as much damage as a buff dude with a sword?

>principal
thanks phone

Unarmed monks don't do as much raw DPR as barbs with swords, user. Their damage is also much more inconsistent.

This is a great idea actually -- from now on, if some guy wants to make a pugilist/grappler, ie someone who willingly chooses to spend his free time not using weapons but rather trying to arm wrestle giants and dragons, I can use otyughs and toilet mimics as antagonists.

Ki is magic. Monks are magic.