/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

>You don't tell fighters or paladins to spam melee attack.
But they do it all the same.

strawpoll.me/12540480

This one's pretty tight. Hexblade and GOOlock are roughly tied for the lead, with poor little Seeker getting nothing.

So how do I play to the strengths of my devotion paladin?

>don't tell Warlocks to use their best cantrip
>don't tell fighters to the thing they can do reliably well

What did he mean by this?

It's a druid/wizard build that plays upon a quirk of Harvest Scythe and Magic Missile. The Harvest scythe lets you add 1d10 extra damage per hit when you cast a spell. Rather than cast a strong single shot like a fireball, you shoot off 20+ odd missiles each doing the bonus damage each which adds up very quickly.

Can someone please clarify for me the paladin/warlock melee dps build? Thanks

Because spamming melee attack isn't effective (outside of Smites) and does nothing new. Spamming Eldritch Blast IS effective and can knock enemies all over the place.

Can a quarterstaff be used as an arcane focus and visa-versa?

I think he meant, besides from eldritch blast which is the obvious default, how else does one play to a warlock's strengths especially outside of combat.

So people seem to be under the consensus that mystics are too good or too versatile.

I suggest that they should be allowed to keep their versatility but I think their abilities should be lower in overall power to compensate for versatility.
This is because in addition to their abilities being versatile they also are not spells nor do they require components as spells do.
This means you can't disable a mystic as easily as you can a caster. Additionally, you have a lot more potential to RP in situations where casting a spell wouldn't be a good idea. The only caster that can do something similar is a sorcerer with subtle spell. But here mystics essentially have subtle spell, but all the time, and for free.

Thoughts?

Paladins have lots of passives, but also more spell slots. Make sure your party knows how they can benefit from your passives and save your slots for when you want to nova (or you score a crit). Otherwise spam your melee attack.

Same for warlocks, minus the passives. Abuse the shit out of EB, pick useful invocations that you can abuse, and save your slots for when you want to nova something/apply a worthwhile effect.

>Can a quarterstaff be used as an arcane focus and visa-versa?

Yes. Unless the staff specifically says otherwise.

It's a Twilight Druid poaching Magic Missile somehow.
MM rolls damage once and applies it to all missiles, Twilight Druid adds up to half his level in d10 to one damage instance, it's an easy combo that works twice per long rest.
It begins at level 3, with 2 castings of 4d4+4+4d10 (avg. 36) force damage.

Important enemies better have a brooch of shielding/shield spell (but you'll counterspell that), and the rest of the time, you still have a full Druid's spell list to play with.

Trying to add more morally grey situations in my campaign, don't want to railroad players into it but still want some of those to potentially pop up. Problem is I'm not one hundred percent sure how to do them well to where it isn't the old comic book do you save your side kick or the girl?

>paladin/warlock melee dps
you could just grab a smiting invocation tho, and be a pure warlock or warlock/sorceror.
unless you don't want to be blade pact, but it's not such a big deal, and you get not to multiclass or to do a better multiclass.

>A new DM who is having trouble with story telling.

So the campaign is set in the forgotten realms but I am so new to it all that I am not too familiar with the lore and history so I decided to make some shit up based on what I did know.

I feel the players are having fun at the moment, but I keep adding some strange plot device with each session, making it seem layered.

it could just be me freaking out, but I don't want the PCs to feel the story is too complicated, is there any tips from DMs and players more used to this sort of stuff?

The turret class? You're probably gonna spam eldritch blast.

Serious answer: If you want to do anything fun, play ANY other caster.

They're probably not as strong as GWM fighters, and don't have as much utility as a Wizard.
Who cares if they're good?

No, a quarterstaff is a weapon meant for striking and parrying, an arcane focus is meant for channeling your power into spells. Having them be the same thing is incredibly strong, meaning you get a free hand for a shield or something else.

make it so there is no clear right answer either way and both sides have some kind of merit and flaw.

>Pictured: Warlock without Eldritch Blast

Right, I'm not suggesting they have a strong RAW damage output. And I think that's fine.

The thing about wizards and other casters is they are quite limited by the rules of casting. That's all.

I feel as though I could easily fuck with a campaign as a mystic without trying so much only because of their fairly powerful effects they can pull of without lifting a finger to show that they were the ones who did so.

In other words, not only are they (in their current state) quite good mechanically, but also their potential outside of combat is also quite good in a way I don't think many have considered.

how many plot devices have you introduced?
what do they do?

Write it down.

Also try not to give too much of a shit about Forgotten Realms lore. It's paralyzingly huge.

Layered means it could be covered in lore and background, there is a group of people such as myself who like that.

Even if it's layered doesn't mean it's too complicated, basically you just need the shot caller of the party to know what's going on and people tend to follow suit.

How would i go about emulating Demifiend in 5e? Homebrew classes are allowed

If I were you I would say don't make the mistake of leaving everything open ended.
You should get around to tying up certain story elements. And players often like to experience closure from time to time.

And occasionally you can fuck with them some more by reopening old plotlines in unexpected ways if you find yourself inspired. "Oh you thought you'd seen the last of Captain Banditman? The guards are scrambling trying to figure out how he escaped the city's prison."

Haven't played 5e in a year

Can someone give me a quick rundown on nuclear druid?

...

It's multiclassing using unofficial UA so it's unbalanced as shit. Surprise surprise.

Basically you multiclass a twilight druid with an arcana cleric to gain access to magic missile. Then you spend lots of resources and deal a fuck ton of damage because of the way you calculate magic missile damage and the way twilight druid's harvest scythe feature is worded.

What is a nuclear druid?

What is a radioactive druid?

fuck im a retard

did I accidentally just meme

Ignore the morons. As a warlock, you get access to the most "at-will" type features of any class. You can cast disguise self at will, levitate at will, summon imps at will, which do things for you at will. You get the best cantrip, and can have the most of any class except maybe a bard. You can give yourself gills at will, or summon illusions at will too.

To top it all off, you still get access to 9th level casting eventually, get more 5th level spell slots than anyone. As a warlock, you should always have something to do in your turns more interesting than eldritch blasting someone, but the great thing is, eldritch blasting someone can be an interesting option too. You can push people with it, pull people with it, slow them down with it, etc.

So to play an infernal warlock, first I need to know what you want to do with it. Odds are you can.

>You get more weak features than any other caster and less strong ones!

Ok now hat the peanut gallery is done telling you to spam EB Ill tell how the Warlock is played

First know the campaign your going into and the DMs style. Honestly you could end up as an EB turret if you have a DM that doesnt let you get sufficient Short rests or access to Magic items you actually want and that makes the Warlock a pretty poor choice. If you can get ahold of a Rod of the Pact Keeper your save DCs will shoot up above he curve pretty noticeably and then your pretty much the Debuff king. You actually have a reason too use concentration spells other than Hex and contribute as more than a glorified archer especially when getting more mid-level spells than normal with sufficient short rests

Dont get too blasty with the Fiend spells either.Wall of Fire is only nice in confined spaces or when you can force enemies to have to take damage multiple times from it and EB knockback can often be critical.Fireball and Stink cloud will work similar nullifying a bunch of enemies at once with FB better as a glorified sleep taking out weak enemies and Stink cloud better when your melee guys can engage enemies at the boarders and try to force them to stay in it. Flame strike is utter shit Blindness/Deafness is a nice scaling no concentration debuff and scorcing ray cna be used with Hex for a big burst damage opion if you really wanna nova

>wizards have to wait until the theoretical "late game" that nobody ever has ever reached to be able to cast spells at will
>warlocks can do it at level 2

Get cucked m8. Warlocks are great if you're creative.

>Making a build reliant on a magic item.

Haha wow... it's like you don't know the first thing about character building, holy shit.

Ok, here's the real advice.
First know the campaign your going into and the DMs style. Honestly you will end up as an EB turret. If you want to have fun, Warlock is a poor choice.

At the moment, they have just finished a thing with a young girl running away from home to live with a Dryad in the forest.

It was resolved by the PCs saying they would help with something if the Dryad convinced her to go back home (she was adopted)

After that, they went into the forest which was basically blight infested and stumbled into the fey wild.

basically what I had in mind from this point is that the forest used the blight like a scab for a wound and the fey wilds presences is such a rare thing it only happens once every 100,000 years with something called a convergence. When the party entered the fey wild they were branded with a rune on the back of their hands and after learning a few things from a satyr who explained that a prince had paid for his wish to be granted and it was inevitable that monsters and such would come from the fey into the real world..

I'm planning on giving them a choice if they do manage to kill the prince (they are really set on killing him). They can either get a wish, knowing hundreds of people had been sacrifices and monsters will ravage the country side, or stop the convergence and get nothing.

Play Dragon Age: Origins, it's full of them.

>is it justified to use evil magic to escape an evil situation?
>do you betray and ensure the death of one person to save millions?
>would you turn your back on a friend to secure a political alliance you could use for greater good?
>is the murder of a criminal justified if they'll never be brought to justice?
>is it better to maintain and preserve traditions and keep an empire safe, or break with form and open yourselves to risk from the outside, while opening up new opportunities?
>is it better to side with an evil person prepared to help you defeat a worse evil, or side with a good person who will offer you no aid?

Except no matter what you choose, it turns out alright in the end.

>>do you betray and ensure the death of one person to save millions?
Reminder that Loghain was an idiot and did everything wrong. Literally everything he could fuck up, he did.

Get your DM to approve the recent Warlock UA. Get that invocation that gives you a fly cloak. Go Pact Warlock. Be a molten haze of horror that moves through combat. Cast Darkness on yourself while having Devil's Sight. The enemies will never see you, only hear the flies swarming.

>>Know what your likely to come across in a game or certain classes might not be as fun

>>RRRREEEE WARLOCK SUCKS YOU DUM DUM POOPYHEAD

Wow

You the same asshole bitching about the Warlock all over the thread in a manner that leads me to believe that a Warlock once touched you in a way that made you uncomfortable?

Yeah piggy knowing what your DM is willing to do in a game is imporant.So DMs might nerf the wizard by being overly restrictive on aquiring new spells and things like that. Its good to know what your getting into and the Warlock is a particular class that improves significantly in the right campaign

Do you understand? You can nod if its too hard for you to accknowldge

I want to use static initiative, how should I handle it?

>Dex
>Dex + Proficiency
>Dex + Level
>Dex mod
>Dex mod +Proficiency
>Dex mod + Level
>Level
>New stat
>Dependant on class

Start with the fastest character and then just go clockwise around the table.

Actually, it was a nice breath of fresh air that helping a nice guy (Harrowmont) resulted in a disaster no matter if he had the anvil or not, while helping a ruthless schemer benefited the country. Even with the anvil, he uses the artifact of doom responsibly and shuts the whole thing down when it gets too dangerous.

Yeah, thats the idea, but how will I know who is the fastest? And my idea is make people sit on the table in the order of initiative

But he felt he was making the right choice. From the perspective of the player, he was a fool. From his own perspective, the King was wasting the armies against a small Darkspawn uprising in the name of glory, when the Orlesians posed a constant threat at the border. After all, he'd spent his whole life fighting Orlesians, and darkspawn blights were bordering on myth from the past.

Well, yes and no. Alistair can end up drunk or dead, the Warden can end up dead (as a hero), by persuading the dwarves to embrace the surface world they get badly damaged in a war later on (from what I remember), you can kill Leliana (pls no Inquisition), Zevran, Shale, Sten(?). The political world can be left in ruins if you disrupt the big meeting they have, even if you sort it out a bit afterwards. Leaving Anora alone leaves her vulnerable.

Ultimately, whatever you do, the Blight is ended, but the aftermath can be a shitter.

I hate people who play rogues, Veeky Forums. How do I do make a build that counters the shit Rogues try?

I'm with this guy on Loghain, true the King wasn't the brightest bulb but by abandoning him it created a division that paralyzed the country.

I'll have to try and adapt these, I've borrowed from some books and had an idea for atleast a couple but executing them will be different to say the least.

This is the kind of thing I'm trying to get, working in an NPC that is pretty much Lawful Evil, but in the end is far better for everyone even if he is a bastard.

Stealth Disadvantage and making yourself known to the group, but before you start hating rogues you should play one yourself to understand why you hate themed just the players that play them.

Rage still only lasts a minute. Funny guy until then, I guess.

As in fight them? Take the alert feat, my understanding of it was it negates the advantage of a sneak attack so the Rogue doesn't get the bonus dice.

>is it justified to use evil magic to escape an evil situation?
Nah.
>do you betray and ensure the death of one person to save millions?
Nope.
>would you turn your back on a friend to secure a political alliance you could use for greater good?
Nuh-uh.
>is the murder of a criminal justified if they'll never be brought to justice?
No.
>is it better to maintain and preserve traditions and keep an empire safe, or break with form and open yourselves to risk from the outside, while opening up new opportunities?
This isn't a moral dilemma.
>is it better to side with an evil person prepared to help you defeat a worse evil, or side with a good person who will offer you no aid?
The good guy, duh.

Man, that was easy.

>Can a quarterstaff be used as an arcane focus and visa-versa?
No but an arcane focus staff can be used as a quarterstaff. Many of the magic item ones get a bonus to use for it too.

>Play Dragon Age: Origins

Different user here. Tried. Couldn't.

I was going along and being okay with things, but then Duncan or whatever the asshole's name is takes the three of us to become Gray Wardens or whatever (it's been awhile). The first guy who drinks demon blood dies, which was NOT advertised. The second guy tries to back out since he has a wife and kids, and Duncan kills him - which was ALSO not advertised, no one said you couldn't back out. Then the game forced me to drink the demon blood rather than back out of what was clearly a psychotic, debased cult.

To make matters worse, earlier I met the King, and he seemed like a pretty cool guy. Then the King dies, like, 30 minutes into the game max.

I wanted to go on cool adventures with the King, not get sucked into some kind of weird demon blood drinking cult. At least in Mass Effect when you're forced to join the Specters, you're a military officer by background, so if Earth orders you to join the Specters, well, orders are orders.

But I was just some elf rogue from an alienage who just wanted to stop her friend from getting raped. Next thing I know there's a demon-blood drinking cult trying to induct me?

Apparently when BioWare said "it's a game without a morality system", what they really meant was "it's a game where we railroad you into making what would have been, in our previous games, the Evil choices."

It is a fact that spells require components but it is not a balancing factor that the player's spells require components.

Unless someone knows about a monster that uses silence against the party which I'm unaware of, as an example.

A druid that wild-shapes into an earth elemental with a high amount of uranium ore in its body.

Oh yeah, and don't forget the whole mages and templars situation. People who are essentially walking tactical nukes - are the templars justified in mentally castrating the dangerous ones and borderline enslaving the rest?

I will admit he did truly believe he was taking the best course of action, I have a character for that, dwarf ambassador to the empire who wants to break from it during the chaos of the Emperor being assassinated. She believes it will be for the best but would lead to ruin due to cutting off a border area that keeps the hostile northern empire at bay. Along with Foulspawn and mindflayers attacking from below it'd cut the dwarven kingdoms support inadvertently.

I also do want it to be a possible moral compromise situation to help the greater good. Doesn't mean it always is the best option but it's either a) way easier or b) the last option other than pulling it off themselves because the other option got ruined some how.

Well, user, you seem to realize that Duncan is ruthless. That was the intention. He also dies thirty minutes in, so what's your problem?

MY BROTHER.

Don't do this. Templars vs Mages was the most boring, forced conflict in the game.
Somehow resolved off-screen in the third game.

>People who are essentially walking tactical nukes - are the templars justified in mentally castrating the dangerous ones and borderline enslaving the rest?
The Constitution protects the magically-inclined's rights to bear mana.

I don't know, maybe it's the FUCKING DEMON BLOOD HE FORCED ME TO DRINK THAT COULD HAVE KILLED ME. And the fact that I wasn't allowed to try and stop him from killing the second guy I mentioned. My issue isn't that Duncan is ruthless, my issue is that the game doesn't let me respond to his ruthlessness, but instead forces me to basically shrug and go along with it.

This is the problem with all "moral quandary" games: you're limited only to the resolutions, outcomes, and justifications that the writers intended.

>do I do this bad thing to stop this other bad thing
No, idiot, you find out how to do a good thing to stop the bad thing.

>Man, that was easy.
I mean, if you want to be a Lawful Stupid shit, yeah, it is.

>Lawful good

Meh I guess that's one way to play seeing everything in black and white.

So this is now a dragon age thread?

Apologies, all I wanted was ideas on how to make situations less black and white.

1) You would have died anyway, if Duncan didn't save you earlier. That's true for every origin. Yes, it doesn't make it right for him to put you on the risk of death later, but you could at least show a little gratitude.
2) Yes, you could respond to his ruthlessness. You couldn't back out from drinking blood, but that's because you would have been killed, and I guess they didn't feel like inserting a non-standard game over.

The constitution was made back when we only had cantrips, it wasn't meant to include 9th level spells Do you really want everyone to have access to meteor swarm?

I'm Neutral Good, son.
Nothing gets in my way of doing Good, and I reject your shitty notion of a "Greater Good" that can be reached by doing Evil.

I'm not the biggest fan of how the series went, but how can you claim it's forced? A high number of mages become abominations and slaughter those around them. You see them constantly, even untrained ones, like the girl and Kitty in the Shale expansion, or Connor and the Desire demon.

It makes sense to have to rein them in. But is it justified to wipe them out when you don't know how many are corrupted by demons?

If we outlaw Sniloc's Snowball Swarm, only outlaws will have Sniloc's Snowball Swarm. Then how will we defend ourselves against them OR a hypothetical tyrannical monarch?

Yeah, I'm thinking about this outside of combat. I know most people seem to think of balance in terms of combat ability.

Seriously, being able to do all these abilities with such subtlety is quite a boon.

But the thing is that Dragon Age: Origins was advertised as being BioWare's first RPG that didn't have a moral system in it. That you could make whatever choices you liked without mechanical consequences (though they may be RP ones).

Instead, however, I get the sense that when BioWare said "no moral system", what it really was, was an excuse for them to FORCE the player via railroading to make nothing but what would have, in their previous games, been Evil decisions, constantly force you into "lesser of two evil" situations.

The problem is that the lesser of two evils is still, BY DEFINITION, evil. If I'm playing a game where I'm forced to constantly make "lesser" evil choices, that's still a game where I'm forced to be evil - which means that the entire premise of DO:A is a lie.

It's only Lawful Stupid if it doesn't work.

Hey, guess what, it IS the worst conflict in the game!

Guess what conflict my GM built his entire homebrew around? And then slanted the world in the favor of the Templars by building his own homebrew that gives all Paladins the option to become Anti-Magic Gods with access to Counterspell, Dispel Magic, ect? And then ran a group through a civil war story of Mages vs Templars, and when they sided with the Mages, he explicitly told them he wouldn't let them win, even with TWO ARMIES AND ALL MAGES IN THE WORLD at their side vs one army and a group of Templars?

I can tell you everything you need to know if you tell me what role you want to fill. Or if you tell me what class you want to play. Or what character concept you're going for. Or exactly what specifically you want to optimize.

How will your players know this? Unless they're going to play through the scenario twice, I guess.

Get PAM. Smite on crits.

>he explicitly told them he wouldn't let them win, even with TWO ARMIES AND ALL MAGES IN THE WORLD at their side vs one army and a group of Templars?
well i mean they are anti-magic gods, heh

Yes, it makes sense to rein them in. It doesn't make sense to enslave and abuse them, wipe them out on the slighest provocation and do other horrible, unjustified things to innocent people.
But that's the only thing the templars seemed to do as the series went on. And the only thing mages seemed to do was chimping out, making deals with demons and killing people.
When you try to make your conflict grey by making both sides evil and insane, the conflict is forced.
Still sided with templars, but that's only because Bioware obviously wanted me to side with the mages.

You left the group, right?

> but that's because you would have been killed

I dunno, I'm pretty plucky. I bet I could have taken Duncan. And even if not, he's got that heavy armor on, whereas I was a rogue and therefore lightly dressed. His legs are comparatively constrained, my legs are not.

Therefore, I could execute my most consistently successful plan: RUN AWAY!

I want to play the game where I save schmuck #2 from getting killed, we both leg it, and then we work to take down the evil demon-blood drinking cult that is the Gray Wardens.

I tend towards Chaotic Good characters myself, but fundamentally, when I write "GOOD" on my character sheet, I mean it, and default to that over any other concerns.

>trying to find some music for a D&D session
>bare belly of this Etrian Odyssey loli on all the youtube videos is making me uncomfortable
Helm save me

At no point of the game you're forced into "lesser of two evil" scenarios. That is, until the sequel came in.
No, drinking darkspawn blood is not an evil.

If you're not all-powerful, you can be forced to do somethin evil.
This is something that can happen, and is thus a fiction that could be interesting to explore.

D'you really think your character could've fought Duncan and lived at that point in the game?

Who says they're all subtle and shit?
What is it about these guys that screams subtle?

Is it this?

Mystic Quirks
d20
Quirk
1
You never cut
your hair.
2
You refuse to wear clothes of a specific
color.
3
You never say your name.
4
You never wear footwear.
5
You always wear a mask.
6
You dye your hair bright blue or green.
7
You pick a new name each day.
8
You never immerse yourself in
water.
9
You sleep on bare earth.
10
You never consume alcohol.
11
You wear a veil to conceal your face.
12
You always wear a specific piece of
clothing.
13
You refuse to light fires.
14
You refuse to write things down, instead
using pictograms.
15
You never sit on a chair, preferring to stand
or sit on the floor.
16
You never answer to any name but your
own.
17
You write down the name of each creature
you slay, and name ones that are unnamed.
18
You consume only water and raw
vegetables.
19
You
spend any money you earn within 1
week of gaining it.
20
You often speak to an imaginary
companion, and act only with its blessing.

Standing by and watching a man gut another man for not wanting to drink demon blood without doing anything to stop it, however, is.

Ok hypothetical then:
>Back a noble who is clearly doing the right thing
>Somehow through PC decisions and bad rolls he loses any power
>Need a noble to help change corrupt system
>He was one of the handful of good ones and the only one with real power

Now what?