/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General

It's all about numbers, if you check enough roll20 games, you will find the jewel. Found a 1-20 game and I have friends I play in other games with.

You'll find it as long as you keep searching

Well, we have...
>Shamanistic druid that draws power from the land he is devoted to protecting.
>Solitary druid that protects nature as a primal guardian that adopts the form of beasts.
>Whimsical druid that draws his power from the fey custodians of nature.
>Feral druid that both protects beasts and draws his power from the beasts he summons and their spirits.
>Grim druid that is devoted to upholding the barrier between life and death and punishing anyone that dares to pervert it.

Circle of the Shepherd is as close as we're ever going to get to a pet druid, so what other Circles could there even be?

Blow up a teapot

Loots the bodies of his minions before the party can.

Steal the PC's stuff.

Our campaign has officially become player vs DM. Our DM two shotted our pally, cleric, and my bard using some weird homebrew creature she pulled from somewhere. She showed one of our players the creature and it was CR 7 against 4 lvl 3 players. This isn't the only case of her trying to destroy us through unfair means. I would normally quit the game but it's currently my only option and my friends want to keep playing despite the setbacks. I don't know what to roll for my new character for maximum survival. If this were 3.5/Pathfinder I would be able to maybe build something to fight back against the DM's shenanigans but I am not as familiar with 5e since we just started playing. Can anyone help with build suggestions? I realize that no matter what I bring the DM can just cast magic instakill rocks but I at least want something that will give me a fighting chance.

What would a Druid who works against the far realm be like? An astral protector blah blah blah.

I'm having a retard moment - what are some creatures renown for their hording that are not dragons?

The best build I can think of for this situation is talking with the DM and airing your grievances in a polite manner.

I'm sorry but you're fucked. No amount of build optimization will fight off a shitty adversarial DM

I wish that were an option. Our pally talked to her after the session and she blew him off and told us to basically "git gud"

I just want to have fun with my buddies. Why is this hobby full of so much suffering?

That's pretty much every druid already. But if you're talking about a specialization, it would probably be something like an Abjuration Wizard with abilities designed to protect allies from spells and mental intrusions.

Repostain

>Trickery has charm person, disguise self, mirror image, pass without trace, blink, dispel magic, dimension door, polymorph, dominate person (Shouldn't this be monster?), modify memory

>A good bard/sorcerer/wizard/artificer spell (disguise self)
>A good bard/druid/sorcerer/warlock/wizard spell (charm person)
>A good druid/ranger spell (pass without trace)
>A good sorcerer/warlock/wizard spell (mirror image)
>A good sorcerer/wizard/artificer spell (blink)
>A good bard/CLERIC/druid/paladin/sorcerer/warlock/wizard spell (dispel magic)
>A good bard/sorcerer/warlock/wizard spell (Dimension door)
>A good bard/druid/sorcerer/wizard spell (polymorph)
>A good bard/wizard spell (modify memory)
>A good warlock/sorcerer/bard spell (Hold monster)

Only one spell is a cleric spell. Two aren't even wizard spells.
In any case, trickster seems a good choice if you don't have a wizard. That's a lot of great utility to have always prepared.

Trickery was secretly great all along.

She is making the mistake of throwing 1 enemy at you at a time, so you beat it by action economy. Battlemaster fighter, sentinel, inspiring leader, wolf barbarian for maximum hits, and GWM for extreme damage.

You need to all be attacking on not your turn, with reactions and commander strikes, and throw a paladin smiting in there for extra. I DM and if you have a party with a number or damage dealers they can do an insane amount of damage. But just remember if you kill a CR 7 she will throw a CR 8 at you guys.

I've had a similar problem except our DM isn't actively trying to kill us so much as she is chucking random monsters in the mix in places we're likely to bump into them.

Nuclear Druid is the way forward if you want maximum overkill, and if you're allowed UA. Otherwise, Halfling Lucky Diviner will give you maximum "fuck you" points.

What is the Nuclear Druid? Sorry, I'm late to the party on 5e

New DM here. Been learning 5e so I could play with some friends. Started running 3 of them through Storm King's Thunder at first level and it didn't go well. They managed to upset some worgs and goblins, shortly followed by a group wipe. Did I mess up somewhere? How should I go about continuing at this point?

Certainly one of the players can DM instead. Shitstain can either play or get dropped like a bad habit.

My friend played his like a medieval fantasy MIB agent, always listening to the crazies and conspiracy theorists

A mistake.

Unearthed Arcana multiclassing to pump out like over a thousand damage in a turn. It's meant for theory crafting and that alone, but dire situations like shit DMs may call for it and it's more legit cousin, the halfling lucky diviner.

It's a combination of classes and abilities that allows the character to cast Magic Missile twice in the same round for an average of over 1500 unavoidable force damage.

What happened? Upsetting worgs and goblins is like a trademark for adventurers.

The early levels are actually really rough. Somehow this edition is very friendly to newcomers and it absolutely demolishes low level characters. Just keep at it!

>Halfling Lucky Diviner will give you maximum "fuck you" points.

If you can, fit in Bard with College of Lore for Cutting Words

Do you mean the art? Or the actual character? Because the art works fine for any kind of warlock DESU, the character himself is an actual god (or at least Warlock PATRON tier) up to and including granting his own unique magic to followers.

Also edgelord/10. Was noice to see Jas cockblock that whiny bitch at the final quest.

They entered the temple and managed to beat two goblins ringing a bell. After that they decided to deal with the two worgs in the square. But three goblins in the area heard the commotion and went to check it out. They decided to hole up in the church and use the front door as a choke point. Upon one goblin entering and immediately dying, the other two were cautious to enter. Since I assumed the worgs were too big to enter, the goblins had an idea to smash the stained glass windows to let them in.

Have everybody play halflings (or variant human) with 2 levels of wizard, each with the lucky feat and each being a divination wizard. Then, they all put the rest of their levels in twilight druid and nuke the fuck out of everything with magic missiles.

Or, lore bard, moon druid (very good at those levels), lore wizard (one mile hold person as a strength save that autofails since they're paralyzed), some sort of a kiting build (there's fucktonnes of these, fighter sorlock is an idea if you want to spam tonnes of blasts and repel everything, but you should at least be level 5 before you try that)...
Could also try a party of 1 wolf barbarian and 3 PAM oathbreaker paladins. Walk up to what you want to kill, burst it over the moon and then go nap.

So What are the disadvantages of a Elan in lore?
Besides being slightly creepy and being considered a abberation by spells.

The problem was the party size, three is two small, so you should in the future note that they are a little weaker then the adventure thinks they are. Maybe making it one worg, or having the other work be somewhere else, will make it easier. After a few sessions you will know what they can do and fine tune their enemies.

If they were level 1, they did pretty well considering it was 3 versus 2+5.

Are you the Oil Baron?

Wasn't sure how they would do myself so I'll try to adjust next time.

What

1 level Arcana Cleric for Magic Missile, rest in Twilight Druid (because harvest dice affect every single magic missile, not just per-target), if I remember correctly. Well, 2 in Fighter for Action Surge, but salt to taste.

Nevermind. It's a guy who posts every now and then about his terrible female DM.

Ha, Oil Baron over here, pal. I'm also

You could probably do something with the whole invasion of the stepford body snatchers secret society you are assumed to have willingly joined.

How ya doing senpai?
Got some more stories for us?

Sometimes the only winning move is not to play. In this case, since you actually want to continue playing, quit in another way. You and all your friends should build characters that are literally just shopkeeper NPCs. Refuse to go out of town, only focus on your own inventions.

Alternatively, you could all choose to play rogues or other dick ass characters who refuse to fight anything and just proceed to run.

Has anyone noticed the worst DMs that keep getting brought up in the general are actually girls/women?

how are they bod snatchers? I honestly dont know much about elans but I thought they just transformed a human into a elan

>Has anyone noticed the worst DMs that keep getting brought up in the general are actually girls/women?

Well that's not entirely fair. Her older sister was our old DM and did an amazing job. Unfortunately her little sister who was a player took over as our current DM when the older one went to study abroad. It's probably the fault of the rest of us for not throwing our hats in to DM.

I need a second opinion. Pally oathbreaker at level 11, stats 20,12,16,10,14,18. Got resilience (con) and polearm mastery. Should I get char to +5, or get con to +4 so I can finally sate my autism and stop risking rolling to get 10 or higher every level (I feel my luck might be running out)?

Also, what's anyone's opinion on oath of Treachery? Utility and front-line fighting wise?

Were you here for my last bundle? My games are on Saturdays so I tend to post around the start of the week.

We had:
>barbarian loitered in front of a no loitering sign in Menzoberranzan so a cannonball fell from the sky on him
>tiefling rogue passed a perception check and spotted an enemy, kept an eye on them while talking to someone else, but the enemy had advantage on attack because "rogue was distracted" - and was permanently scarred because of the acid attack that resulted (and downed in one hit by high damage)
>had to argue that Sentinel actually did allow the Barbarbian to Opportunity attack on the rogue's attacker because DM didn't believe it was a real thing
>we consult priestess of Lolth for divination and while we're talking to her she steals gold out of my pockets somehow because apparently only I can pass a check to see her doing it despite the whole party being there (she stole over 1000gp because she didn't roll lower than my Dex of 17 at any point over 5 thefts... and for some reason Dex was my DC for her thefts. All this because the DM didn't want me to have enough money for my explosive barrels)
>uncommon item - ring of mind shield - costs over 10,000gp

Think that's everything. Also surface elves don't get harassed at all in Menzoberranzan but my drow guy got attacked by his family guards and is being hunted for tax evasion, again because the DM doesn't want me getting money for explosives.

I'd just say women are generally not as good at tactical games.

Preparing a tactically balanced and overall actually fair and sensible set of encounters and world would relate to that, and not realizing things like how numbers and monster abilities can make something unlike what simple encounter building knowledge would say is fine is...

However, I have the feeling women might be better at improvizing, perhaps.

Apologies for run-on sentences, it's the end of the working day and I write for a living, my mind is drained.

>have a group of 5
>2 of them are a couple
>they played characters who were initially strangers at the start of the campaign
>eventually became romantically interested in one another
>are now a couple 3-4 months into the campaign
>group now express they wanna make 2nd characters cause they feel they might die as the campaign gets more deadly
>we have a session where we make characters
>the couple are making characters
>the guy wants his 2nd character to be bf to his gf's 2nd characterright away
>i tell him sure but I suggest that he can do something more cause they're already RPing as a couple with their current characters
>guy says he realizes that he feels uncomfortable when his gf's current character interacts with NPCs that show a hint of interest in her character esp since her gf got so invested in this NPC's death who cared for her greatly before dying in her arms
>i tell him it's just roleplay and he shouldn't worry about it
>he gets that "alright..." but with a dismissive tone but still insists that his 2nd character should be the SO of his gf's second character

How should I handle this? I'm not against in their characters being together. It's just the nature of couples, I guess, but it has me worried that he gets uncomfortable when she lets her characters get chummy with NPCs. Might snowball from there badly if not carefully observed (he said something along the lines of "I just wanna play the character who can say "back off" to a bard trying to swindle her to his charms, you know?"). I mean, they're pretty good at RPing and we've all had fun and throughout our sessions, it's some legit good DnD I'm having in years and they've been both playing splendidly just that this one moment really struck me enough to leave me pondering. Am I overthinking it? I wanna sit him down and discuss it but I feel like it might be nothing at all to bother with.

Are you having fun?

DMs, how do you get good at describing shit?

I wanna describe my players how pretty the surroundings of their stronghold is. I've tried to put it into words but I do generic "The grass is greener than you could ever imagine as it stretches to the horizon, the wind rippling the grass as if it were waves on the sea." or when we're in a city, I end up saying "The merchant quarter is bustling with dealers selling their wares, you see stalls scattered around and just peeking through these stalls you see hints of the sign of an anvil that tells of the smithy the city guard told you about."

I feel like I could do better especially when it comes with buildings and room descriptions. I feel like I can't weave good words that'll make them immersed.

Probably want to get a pure Lore Bard going, cutting words and vicious mockery can set the tone for the adventure, but getting magical secrets is the key to pure fuckery. Conjure animals to create 8 cows in the empty space directly above the DM's goons is a great way to send a message.

>Changing dwarves so they get proficiency in any tool of their choice instead of just smithing/brewing/masonry, and stonecunning instead applies to that tool/field instead of rocks
Good idea or no?

Sometimes. The combat is generally entertaining and there is a definitive storyline to follow with some interesting junctures. It is fun when the DM isn't throwing stupid shit at us.

curious, what classes require something innane in them and ones that don't? wizards dont, sorcerors do, not sure about psionics.

Read all the original Robert E. Howard stories, in the order that he wrote them (not publication order or chronological order).

By the time you're done, you should be a master of the Purple Prose.

I assume you mean innate? I mean arguably most classes can be fluffed as their abilities innate like a cleric whose magic comes from being a imbued with power by his god from his birth or something.

Does anyone have some good character art of samurai that I could use for my tempest archer cleric?

...

Who, what, where, when, why, how. Grass is grass, peasants are peasants, try to highlight details and how they might stand out among all 5 senses, and why that's important. Sounds of industry, smell of an exotic garden, instead of describing generic stuff the mind automatically filters out anyway use those descriptions as breadcrumbs to points of interest. (Then occasionally start leading them into dead ends and traps so they stay on their toes)

Maybe guy on a horse is more your style than horseguy

Maybe try to make peace with your DM over the whole explosives thing? See if you can reach an understanding about your intentions and her punishments.

Get them to play the opposite sex each.

I made a thing. Mostly, actually, I just ripped off a thing from Spycraft 1.0, but I still put it together.

Can I get Veeky Forums's opinion on this? For context, I'm going to be using it for Storm King's Thunder. The idea is that the entirety of STK is going to be a story that the players are telling to a bunch of folk in a tavern, decades after it happened when they're all retired/doing other things and just meeting up in the tavern for old time's sake.

The intent behind including action dice is threefold:

1) I was going to ask (but not mandate, they still can if they want) that my players not roll up full spellcasters - i.e., preferred classes are Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, and arguably Warlock. I think STK works better as relatively "low" magic (insofar as D&D can possibly be low-magic), or more focused on fighty folk taking on giants. This obviously cuts into healing ability, though, so action dice help with that. Can't have a character telling a story suddenly remember that, oh right, they were killed that one time.

2) There's now a solid, mechanical benefit to roleplaying. Bonus action dice/experience will be granted based on things like players describing things story-style.

3) The potential for random-ass plot twists could be really, really fun.

I'm not even trying to get explosives anymore unless the chips fall that way. But we've discovered that it's always better not to tell her what we're planning, because invariably she fucks with us.

We were playing for an extra 4 hours the other day because the barbarian needed 40 more XP to level and she thought it would be funny to only give him 2xp at a t time, no matter what he killed.

.... But that's fucking stupid

How unbearably cunty

Women.

That's pretty good, thanks!

>Archer tempest cleric

What?

Firstly, it's a heavy armour cleric, so probably 15 strength is preferred to dexterity, though I suppose it's not such a big deal losing an AC and having a slightly better dex mod.
Secondly, abilities such as spirit guardians and tempest cleric's level 1 feature and all that are close range.
Thirdly, a crossbow is better.
Fourth, your ranged attacks are much weaker than everyone else's probably is.
Fifth, optimally you'd want crossbow mastery so you can actually have two attacks which means you might actually deal decent damage, but that bonus action might as well be used on spiritual weapon (Which isn't very archery)
Sixth, if you up the stat for hitting with bows, it doesn't help your cleric things (wisdom).
Seventh, aside from extra attack, there are all sorts of things that helps archery like quick quiver (Bards, rangers), archery fighting style (Fighters, rangers), volley (ranger), anything to grant even more attacks (Horde breaker ranger, extra attack 2/3 fighter...)

I would've thought you'd at least be playing a war cleric if you're focusing on archer things. Not saying war cleric is all that super great, though.

Oh, but I assume you just mean they're a cleric and you're just using a bow rather than focusing on bow-mancing.

If the DM doesn't take their game seriously, why does anyone else?

t. Pathfinder pro

What's your most creative trap that doesn't rely too much on generic "Succeed saving throw or else"? (though fundamentally that's what it is but I need some ideas)

Kill yourself désu

I'm fine with people doing things that aren't exactly the best thing, but when someone does something that makes no sense in the slightest that would work better on a different class without a supporting mechanical gimmick (For example, an archery bard using swift quiver) then it's a bit... Why?

...

One thing planned is an illusionary wall that appears to go somewhere nasty you wouldn't want to go, but is actually just in the middle of a corridor.
However, there's a tripwire right behind it, which is obscured by the illusion. Even if you manage to sort of see through the illusion, it helps obscure the tripwire / people might try to jump through and set it off, etc.
The save is against whatever the tripwire triggers.

I like it. DM action dice seem dangerous though. Like it might be easy for players to feel it's unfair, or randomly have abilities/attacks countered "just because"

Speaking of, the tripwire can probably trigger a pit right in front of the tripwire for you to literally trip right into or jump right into.

Crows?

Because to many, doing something fun and flavourful is more important than doing something mechanically effective.

Devils

I always thought the idea that 'character must spend x hours every day to use there abilities' kinda dumb and unrealistic, noone is gonna spend 8 hour staring at a book with unbroken concentration.

Several kinds of birds (crows, magpies, jays, mockingbirds)
Rats and other rodents (hamsters, squirrels)
Dogs
Kender

>noone is gonna spend 8 hour staring at a book with unbroken concentration
They are in my fucking Everquest-based setting. You don't get any mana back unless you're staring at a book.

If you're going to ignore the mechanics, then why not just play GURPS?

It's fine to not play something mechanically effective, but the game system assumes you'll at least TRY to be vaguely effective, such as not running into combat as a gnome holding two greatswords with 8 strength expecting to do anything more than being reduced to headbutting people for 0 damage.

That's a pretty exteme example, but the thing is that if you want to focus on archery then tempest cleric offers almost no synergy. I wouldn't even label them an archer, but simply the fact they have a bow somewhere on their person. Sure, they don't have to use the heavy crossbow which is mechanically superior, because that's only -1 damage, but if they did nothing but use the bow all the time then they really should be some other class.

I mean realistically like staring at a book for 8 hours, like what are the rules? are a few stray thoughts allowed or does one have to hand a mind of steel to even start spellcasting, are they allowed to do things ect.

Why is Bard the best class in 5e?

That's why the DM only gets action dice beyond his or her starting amount by rewarding players with action dice themselves. Note as well that at most a DM can start a session with 6+players action dice (say, 10, for a 4-person group), whereas players collectively start with at minimum 3xplayers dice (say, 12, for the same). Players will collectively always have more action dice than the DM, unless they're spending them like crazy.

However, I will admit that the system it's from, Spycraft 1.0, really IS intended to be Players VS GM, at least more so than most d20 games. It's designed to accommodate that quite well with its Mastermind system (basically while the players are building Ethan Hunt or James Bond or - let's be honest with ourselves - Austin Powers, the DM is building S.P.E.C.T.R.E. or Hydra or - again, if we're being honest with ourselves - The Foot Clan).

There is a bit of confrontation inherent in the system, basically, so I'd only recommend it for players and DMs who know each other well and know that neither is out to get the other.

>does one have to hand a mind of steel to even start spellcasting
I should fucking hope so given the amazing cosmic power they wield.

God, that takes me back. Spent many an hour staring at that fucking book.

>If you're going to ignore the mechanics, then why not just play GURPS?
It's not about ignoring mechanics, it's about not doing what's optimal, mechanically, for flavour reasons.
>It's fine to not play something mechanically effective, but the game system assumes you'll at least TRY to be vaguely effective
Unless of course you're doing some retarded build like 8 str gnome with dual greatswords that RAW doesnt even work, your build will probably be effective.

This is the problem with casters today. No fucking dedication. They don't want spells that take multiple rounds to cast, require arcane geometries to be drawn in the air or on the ground, long-ass invocations of powerful words that sound like a chuuni poem, or even a bare minimum of Intelligence or whatever other casting stat they have in order to drop meteors on the world.

They just want to snap their fingers, if that, and obliterate entire armies. That's not power, that's being a shitty Mary Sue. It's fucking disgraceful.