/5eg/ Fifth Edition General

>PDK sucks
Purple Dragon Knight's features are so weak because baseline fighter is so great.
In the hindsight, baseline fighter should only have two attacks, with champion getting two more, battlemaster getting better manuevers and PDK getting warlord features that aren't trash.

Eventually in my campaign, if the player characters don't stop it, the rules for magic are going to break down in-universe, and go back to how they were originally in the setting.
Magic under these rules will be closer to will-based and shamanistic magic, the sorts of things that might be expected of Barbarians of Lemuria.
Should I have it become a sort of deal where now everyone rolls to achieve effects, and can expend spell slots to get a +X where X is spell level bonus to the roll?

I have no idea what you're trying to say in the last paragraph, but I've got an idea.
>Vancian casting disappears
>Either spell points or psionics replace it.

No, I meant that magical effects can be achieved by rolling high enough, but I wasn't sure how to balance that, given that holy shit everything is now hinged on the result of the (very swingy) dice.
This is ideal for the villain, who's a champion of Chaos and has rules that allow her to make rerolls like the Lucky Feat, but it seems like a pain in the ass for the players out of universe and characters in-universe.
So I was considering, like you said, to use psionic rules and give everyone low-level Mystic powers.

Psionic archetypes for existing classes. Would you want them? Which classes? What features should the archetypes also have?

strawpoll.me/12550821

Remember, this is a multiple option poll.

The options in those poll were gathered from the most highly voted options from other polls.

>Would you want them?
No.

You're supposed to blow a bunch of PP on the "get a +3 weapon all day" shit.

Hey 1e/2e guys, how long does it usually take for old dungeon crawls like White Plume Mountain and Tomb of Horrors (deaths notwithstanding)? I mean, without the middle-man of "Go to the inn, talk to NPC, go to dungeon, crawl", and going right into the action, I imagine it shouldn't take like months to do, right? Curious cause of the upcoming Yawning Portal module featuring these. Wanna know if I can just pick them up and have like mini-campaigns for my players in between our main one.

Sounds good to me. Houserule it, user!

Don't tell me what to fucking do.

POST HILARIOUSLY BAD HOMEBREWS

A lot of the old-school dungeon crawls originated as Tournament Modules, meaning they were meant to be run in a few hours. (I personally can barely imagine how that's supposed to work and be fun, but not only was it the standard, it was something people actually were clamoring for back in the day.) Dunno how the Yawning Portal versions will be, but depending on how it's done, they can theoretically be done in one setting, or longer depending on the group.
(My dream Halloween game remains doing a one-shot of the Tomb of Horrors using the old rules and a giant stack of pre-gens.)

I'm the guy who did the Warlord homebrew. I'd post it, but it got lost when my computer was stolen- apparently divine punishment.

I wish I had the magus homebrew saved for this occasion.
Wait, no, I don't want this shit on my computer.

So who else is really disappointed with the Soulknife Mystic. Now I may just be spoiled because of Pathfinders Ultimate Psionics but everything about Mystic Soulknife is just underwealming.

It is mechnically solid. But I guess it just feels dull. I miss my customizable lightsaber/green lantern ring.

The psychic focus for Psionic Weapon bro, even though it kind of sucks without using PP on it.

Friend wanted to play an ant man. After that was denied, he picked a goblin instead. Is this the definition of autism?

BY YOUR COMMAND

>all day
Is a couple of minutes, you'll never have enough PP to even last hours, plural.

How in the fuck is baseline fighter that great? I mean second wind is garbage and your attacks come way too late to matter half the time and damage wise everyone keeps up with you AND they can do other stuff.

Mannis, obviously.

Sounds pretty game fucking considering that either high level spells become almost impossible to cast or you can cast high level spells with low level slots.

I'm developing a 'haywire' table.

Haywire, as per Dungeons of Dredmor, means shit goes wack crazy. It's like wild surge, but more focused on the spell than having additional effects.

You cast a spell. It could:
Work properly (Normally)
Fizzle.
Affect a larger area.
Affect a small area.
Affect a different creature.
Become a slightly different spell.
Become an entirely different spell, a level higher or lower.
Become a different elemental type, with perhaps differing effects.
Et cetera. The idea is to have a d20 roll on casting magic, a 1 triggers shit, then there's a d10 table of effects which might have things like 'roll 1d2 to determine if the spell affects a double size area/twice as many people or a half size area' sort of thing.
Sorcerers could roll twice and choose which of the two results they prefer.
Wild mages could probably go haywire on purpose.

The idea is fucky, but it sounds better than completely deconstructing the system. But then again, this is more 'slightly less reliable magic' rather than 'what the fuck' magic. In which case, make it roll 1d2 every time you cast a spell, haywires on a 1.

I'm still a bit mad combat superiority is limited to one subtype of Fighter.

How's Out of the Abyss? My group ran Princes of the Apocalypse and as time went on, we've sort of agreed that it's not really capturing us than we hoped (one of them enjoyed the Elemental Evil video game too) and I admit, I'm kinda drawing a blank of inspiration with the material. Out of the Abyss though upon a gander of the pdf has me quite excited and interested more than PotA and I'm thinking it's the kind of module my players want with their style.

>Implying that's bad homebrew
The unarmored defense looks like the biggest problem, and I'm not 100% sure it except for how it works with shields.

Out of the Abyss CAN be good. It just takes a lot of planning. The introduction is very strong, but getting the players back into the underdark can be tough once they're out.

Not you, user, the other user. The one with the face.

I want a book that is just subclasses that give features of other classes like how Eldritch Knight gives fighters spells

Yeah, I noticed there's a point where they have to go back. My players adore Lost Mines and Phandalin and have made it their base of operations. I can perhaps throw some encounter of demonic nature there that has them go straight back to the Underdark.

Atavistic Fury is a micro-bonus and that's a big ol' 5e No-No. Why not instead of subraces give them +1 Str and Con then let them choose between an additional +1 to Str or Int like the Minotaur race from Waterborne Adventures. Keep Trained to Inherit if you want but frankly with natural armor, natural weapons and elemental resistance it's looking pretty loaded.

>title"Out of the Abyss"
>part where you go back into the Abyss

but why

Does a dual wielding Rouge 2/Bladelock X work well enough? Thinking of using Devil's Sight/Darkness for easy sneak damage while using offhand for more Hex damage.

psionic wizard

>do deadlift
>still alive

It's because demons come out of the abyss

So? DnDland is full of demons anyway

Somebody's trying to become a dragon.

THE DRAGON IS A MYTH
NOTHING EXCEPT DEATH WAITS WITHIN THE VALLEY OF DUST AND FIRE

>Tales from the Yawning Portal
>has nothing to do with the Undermountain

why bother?

>Yawning Portal
your moms pusy?

ouch user

sry
i don't feel good about it

Is this a 'the term Yawning Portal has specific ties to Undermountain in FR lore' thing, or a 'if we're talking about adventures we should be talking about Undermountain' thing?
My Faerun lore has a lot of holes in it, especially when it comes to Waterdeep.

Not him, but I'm going to assume that he's talking about the fact that the Yawning Portal is named after the 40 foot wide, 140 foot deep pit in the middle of it that leads into the ruins of Undermountain.

Yawning Portal is an inn in Waterdeep and its defining feature is the a large deep well that leads to the Undermountain.

Maybe WotC has plans for Undermountain (one of their codenames for upcoming modules is Labyrinth unless TftYP is basically that cause of the old school dungeons) but it's a pretty iconic part of DnD mythos that with the theme of bringing old dungeons to the limelight, why not let the module have this other iconic inn be the starting point?

Tales from the Yawning Portal *is* Labyrinth. The next two products are Dust (September) and Midway (November).

My Official Megadungeon Knowledge is pretty poor; I know next to nothing about Undermountain, and even less about Castle Greyhawk (because there's even less to know). Does Undermountain have a reputation for having portals to other worlds? If so, I can see a logic to 'you can reach these adventures through the halls of Undermountain' or something to that effect.
Then again, they'll probably just port all the adventures over to Faerun, leaving Oerth more and more barren.

>Dust

DARK SUN CONFIRMED FOR SEPTEMBER

GET HYPE MOTHERFUCKERS

SHIRTLESS PSI-BARBARIANS INCOMING

This.

Stannis was so based just thinking about him still evokes some hype.

Ah, I stand corrected then.

>Dust (September) and Midway (November)

Any ideas? Apart from Dark Sun but I can't help but think of something to do with the Aurouch desert. Probably Eberron For Midway, drawing a blank but probably a splat.

>Does Undermountain have a reputation for having portals to other worlds?

Nah, portal can also mean an entry point which the well in the inn is for the Undermountain. The "yawning" bit is because how fucking huge the well's mouth is (it's 40ft diameter.) The owner of the inn was one of the two rare survivors of the Undermountain. His buddy that he went with went on to use his riches he found in the Undermountain to make a mansion, this guy made an inn over the damn entryway.

When Mearls was asked if thri-kreen will get stats, he said "not in the foreseeable future".
You are fake news.

Except Mearls has said not to expect thri-kreen anytime soon, there is a new Forgotten Realms adventure out this year about the Ring of Winter (which isn't likely to be the November product considering their release habits), and Dust has input from Adventure Time's Pendleton Ward, who seems like he wouldn't be the kind of person to bring in for Dark Sun.

...then what are all those obsidian orbs for?
What aren't the Templars telling us?

When did he say this though?

also implying that Pendleton Ward doesn't love post-apocalypse more than Mearls

You got it boss.

Ah, I see. Kinda figured that was what the 'yawning portal' was (and I appreciate that FR flat-out has the Inn with the entrance to the dungeon), but I was hoping there was some decent justification to using the Yawning Portal as the place we talk about old modules at. Guess not; just a convenient name, which feels a little too 'corporate brand re-use' for me to be comfortable. Then again, that's just my own bullshit hangups.

twitter.com/mikemearls/status/841442577073111040

Give me your best mystic builds!

>near future meaning the same thing as foreseeable future

Maybe it won't be September, but it'll come one day.

Some say this is a tease to an Undermountain module. The place is the biggest dungeon in all of the Realms so with all the nostalgia WotC is doing, I can see them throwing this sometime this year. Could make a good setting for the inevitable Ring of Winter storyline that SKT hinted.

But anyway, WotC's touch on nostalgia worked cause I have fond memories of the Yawning Portal so it was nice that I can do these old dungeons with my table on a place I'm familiar with. It just works.

>When the shadows grow long in Waterdeep and the fireplace in the taproom of the Yawning Portal dims to a deep crimson glow, adventurers from across the Forgotten Realms, and even from other worlds, spin tales and spread rumors of dark dungeons and lost treasures. Some of the yarns overheard by Durnan, the barkeep of the Yawning Portal, are inspired by places and events in far-flung lands from across the D&D multiverse, and these tales have been collected into a single volume.

That's literally the framing of the book's narrative.

Dust could be a Feywild/Shadowfell adventure or one set in the Planes.

We could be getting new classes with Midway.

Hey, I'm generally down with it. I mean, my biggest complaint with the aesthetics of 5E is that things feel way too self-referential - like, when we talk about cool wizards, we talk about Raistlin and Elminster rather than Gandalf or Merlin, which bothers me a bit. And seeing them refer to Artemis Entreri and Tika Majere as example characters felt more embarrassing than anything else. But there's definitely value in the nostalgia bits for it, and I have no problem with sitting around at the entrance to Undermountain listening to Al Swearingen tell me about old DnD adventures.
BTW, which old adventure/artifact/trope is the Ring of Winter?

>When you pump every stat point into Justice.

Which race/monsters would you say are the opposite of humans?

>I mean, my biggest complaint with the aesthetics of 5E is that things feel way too self-referential - like, when we talk about cool wizards, we talk about Raistlin and Elminster rather than Gandalf or Merlin

Why? The setting is in the Forgotten Realms where Elminster is a known name in. It's the nature for references to pop up like that when you're in that world. If you were in Middle-Earth or the Arthurian legends, those Gandalf and Merlin references would make sense. They make sense cause we're in the Realms, not anywhere else.

>BTW, which old adventure/artifact/trope is the Ring of Winter?

It's from a novel back in 1992 which shares the same title.

Orcs

Opposite in what way?

But a game of DnD isn't just about being in the Realms. Or it shouldn't be, at least. I guess it's because, while I like the established setting (even Faerun), I still feel that every kid's first campaign when he sits down to run DnD for the first time should be a crazy bullshit world that he makes up in his head.
When a kid sits down for the first time to play, if the book says 'wizards are like Merlin', the kid has some references to draw from. If the book says 'wizards are like Elminster', that feels like just a plug for him to buy more crap.
Again, entirely my aesthetics talking.

Either gnolls or Hobgoblins.

Aboleth

>copy pasting monk abilities into a barbarian
10/10, worst homebrew I have seen in quite a while.

Got any more trainwrecks?

Hey OP, you here? little advice don't make a new thread until we get to page 9 or 10, the board does not move very fast, it wastes sometimes up to or exceeding one hundred posts because no-one is there to answer or weigh in on questions.

>Orcs
A group of violent idiots that want to kill everyone because their god says so

>Gnolls
An even more violent group of even dumber idiots that murder everyone except those that worship the same degenerate god as them

>Hobgoblins
A militaristic society that doesn't slaughter the peoples they conquer, choosing instead to impose draconian laws and integrate them into their society

Humanoid monster races are always based on racist stereotypes, and I include them in my game like I would include any of the "civilized" (white) races.

Nah, just that one.

I might attempt that one again but as a full class, so instead of being a full barbarian with a bunch of Monk shit it'd be more like a 50/50 monk/Barbarian rather than 100% Barb and 50% Monk slapped on for free, with Enhanced Focus replacing Rage as it's own skill and probably a d10 hit die instead of d12.

Or I'll not bother and instead just use Bearbearian with a refluffed Maul as punches or something.

Which monster race works best for an alchemist? Kobold? Goblin?

>A group of violent idiots that want to kill everyone because their god says so

Sounds like humanity to me

...

there are more nipples in the world than there are humans

Some sort of gnomish/fae race's society. However, humans can vary pretty wildly.

I agree the Basic Rules, or in D&D's case the three separate books you have to buy, should be setting agnostic. Especially if you want to get new players into the game, you don't want to shove a bunch of references to your other shit in their face when you want to give them an idea of how things in your game work

Also fuck having Drizzt be the face of elves in the PHB

Should I change this Hobgoblin to a Tiefling or some other ostracized race?

The backstory would fit the same for any of the :monstery" races, tldr
>Grew up in orphanage
>Joined a crew of sailors when they were old enough because "muh racism" made him want to leave the city
>Returned to the city years later, became one of the Orphanage he grew up in's benefactors, paying the bills by being a bounty hunter

except as a Hobgoblin there'd be an extra line tagged on that they worship some other deity (Maybe Tempus?) since I assume that Maggyblunt wouldn't stand for even one Hobgoblin not worshiping them, and I don't really want that to come into play for the character since they already read enough like a shitty teenager OC without bringing Gods into the mix.

*tips fedora furiously*
Upboated, good sir.
EDIT: Thanks for the gold, kind stranger!

>Doesn't actually have a fedora
c'mon son

I, too, like boring bait memes.

github.com/5egmegaanon/5etoolsR20

Just pushed out a big update for 5etoolsR20. It now supports item importing and drag-and-drop support for the imported spell handouts. If you've imported the spells before you'll have to do it again, as it requires new data on the handouts. Note that htis drag-and-drop feature requires you to be a DM currently. I will look into workarounds for player use at a later date.

How long until we get Tales from the Yawning Portal on the mega trove? Probably the first module set that really interests me.

it's not out yet, so soon, most likely.

Thinking if making a Stone Sorcerer for my next game and I'm wondering if I should bother putting Strength above 14 or if I should just take Spear Mastery and Magic/Elemental Weapon so I can pump Con and Cha.

Just so we're clear, if you use Polearm Mastery, you're a coward. Heroes use GWM, Sentinel, and/or Shield Master.

Heroes get the magical weapons. Cowards get wooden sticks.

Nah real heroes kill from the shadows, faggot.