/5eg/ Fifth Edition General: "Halfling rogue" edition

Excellent.

I was thinking LotR, not Pathfinder, but excellent.

I can't tell if she's robbing him or she's a hooker who just got paid

its shit

As if.

Two fucking fighting styles at first level? Healing at second level? What the fuck is this?

>previous editions
Didn't know one edition counted as several

This is clearly a shoop
I know this from the pixels and having seen many shoops in my time.

Also
>That level 20 ability

3.5 had a warlord it just wasn't very good.

>Veeky Forums screeched like autists so hard that they made a warlord to appease them
autism spoke and they listened
why

Team of noobs is looking for a DM to guide us through a short adventure. Where do we go?

Not from USA, btw

Well they listened to all the screeching autists during the playtest, why not us too?

>tfw barbarians could've given the entire party rage
>tfw barbarians used to be able to cast while raging

That's actually in today's UA. Warlords can grant party members temporary rage, or sneak attack, or maneuvers. It's nuts.

...

>Be artificer
>Infuse magic into everything
>Cast from objects instead of casting while raging

LINK TO WARLORD

it's fake

Once tried that, my DM said I couldn't because "barbarians are already broken enough"

I admit, I'm a little pissed that some of the warlord's abilities are literal spells. Sure Heroism and Mind Blank fit, but can't they have just put a note of "as per Heroism, but it is not otherwise a magical effect?"

Destroys the whole fucking point.

dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/warlord

Thanks user :D

The UA article post is a joke, but they were talking about it last night. It's coming.
youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

Yeah, I guess that's something to say in the survey though. I prefer the warlord to be entirely martial.

Actually fuckin sweet, thanks.

...

Kind of gay that they still have no use for intelligence but whatever.

Chill. Literally zero campaigns are going to make it to level 10 to use it, dude.

...

You see this shit?
They are like a reverse monk.
Half their attributes are just for decoration!

this is appropriate i guess

youtube.com/watch?v=n9KxuAWZwiA

Not true at all. Level 7, 1/short rest you can grant any allies within 60 feet a bonus to their attack rolls equal to your Intelligence modifier for 1 minute.
Their saves are Int and Con, you could legitimately build this with no weapons whatsoever

Fake news. It's not on the site.

Hi guys, new player here. I'm going to be part of a forever dm's campaign, like dude has been playing since the 80s, and i was looking for some advice. Just general advice and i guess some character creation advice. I was thinking id do a warlock

Threadly reminder that Mearls considers the warlord issue CLOSED with the publishing of the Purple Dragon Knight.

This is one my of my favorite memes

My players are at 9 and hardly half way through the story. Depending on what they do and how long they drag things out it might pass into boon territory.

Reminder that (((Mike Mearls))) is a hack

Wow your non level 10 campaign sure has disproved my hypothesis that you won't make it to level 10.. wow... damn.. I am now #TenMissile

Good thing Crawford didn't so he snuck it in as Mystic options

Anyone else autistically plan out their character days in advance and spend hours pouring over options and put it all in a doc file/pdf for using during the game?

Is Crawford, dare I say it, /ourguy/?

yep. Just finished doing that for my Wizard. But the campaign i'm using him in isn't for 4 months. I have a problem with making new characters, that's why i'm in CYOA threads so much

>Not planning your character advancement up to lvl 20
>Not typing in every feature into the character sheet pdf manually
>Not doing this for every character in every campaign
>Not theorycrafting full sheets just for fun
You are small time

I don't know, but I have a lot more respect for them in any case.

He's also never wrong about the rules unlike Mearls. Probably helps that anything he says becomes rules.

...eh. He's still a serious stickler and most of the time Mearls' rulings lean towards the player agency/creativity or fun sides. Still, it's a good thing he saw it fit to put in those mechanics while Mearls was rendered to fetal position muttering "B-but I gave you martial healing..." when people screeched for Warlord.

You DM

That would be a trainwreck and an awful experience for all of us

Same

I have a separate doc for each level from 3-20 with a spellbook prepared copied and pasted from the PHB, that one is just the first one

Run Lost Mines of Phandelver over three or four times, then run it. Boom, you're done.

Do we have an official ruling on the Mighty Leap ability Mystics have yet and whether it causes the jump to happen or just increases your jump distance while not actually letting you jump 120 feet?

*read it over

3 Immortal Mystic/17 Long Death Monk

y/n?

>Implication is campaign will reach and exceed 10
>Immediate reaction is to meme harder

Good.
You autists deserve it.
Just play a fucking battlemaster.

>ask your DM about stats - roll, point buy, array?
>check for the level of combat optimization, stay at the same level of the rest of the group
>if your group is 100% stealth-capable, don't be the clumsy guy in heavy armor. Same, to a lesser degree, goes for social and investigative skills.

You cant multiclass with mystic

How many second chances are too many for That Guy? We've got a that guy that plays a fairly well put together and well role played character, but he has a penchant for character killing, and tries to manipulate events to make it happen whenever possible. After three rerolled characters and a ressurection, we're starting to contemplate kicking him.

The reason I find people don't go to that level is not because people aren't trying to play to that level, but most campaigns flop on the first couple of levels before then. They all want to go to those high levels, but they fail to start off.

And then people say 'Oh, you'll never reach those levels'. Pff.

Either the campaign sucks, you run out of time / drop in or drop out or you go all the way.

>

Guess that's what I'll have to do

Why do people theorycraft high level builds when no one has even had a character higher than 5th level in real life?

watch live play vids on youtube for ideas

autism

Have you or the party confronted him about it? If not try that if he still insist then kick him.

>Either the campaign sucks, you run out of time / drop in or drop out or you go all the way.
>Either you're in 90% of all games, or you're in the 10%

It's fun, and campaigns do go on to high levels (IRL, among friends - online or with random pick-ups, not so much)

No, but seriously, why isn't this weapon in the books

I've played Phandelver so many times on Roll20 that I resort to joining random games and acting the fool.

I always try to steal the loot, I once tried to pocket a little valuable statue in the cave near the beginning and even though my character got in the little treasure area first and alone and rolled huge of Sleight of Hand, the DM was like "naw" and kicked me out, didn't even have rocks fall on me, just kicked me out of the game. Joining the bugbear and ratting out the team is fun too.

Welp thanks for reading this.

Axe

It's an axe silly

Because its horribly designed rule of kewl like that one dagger?

Treat as an improvised weapon.

>center of force would be so far down on that weapon, but its location isn't even bladed
>closest space to the center of force is basically a flat blade
>most effective cutting surface (the center of the blade's curve) is so high that you can only land it while making glancing blows
>giant hammerhead on the opposite end is obviously too large to be a counterweight
This is clearly some kind of one-handed hamglaive.

And I say one-handed despite him two-handing it because it's clear he's just a /5eg/ poster who bought the "shields are bad" meme

If 90% of games only last three sessions and 10% of games last thirty sessions, you actually spend more time in the 10%.

It's not THAT bad, but for real, I've never seen a 5e campaign go higher than level 13. And it's not just because of the difficulties of people's changing schedules. My current players went from level 1 to 13, finished a major story arc, then asked to start again at level 3 because they were all bored of their characters.

Do Dorfs in your games use standard Dorf weapons like Hammers, Axes, Picks, Crossbows etc or do they use Human/Elf friendly weapons like arming swords, spears, bows?

If they use Dorftastic weapons do they use comically oversized double bladed axes or hammers that looks like sledgehammers or do they use weapons that are closer to the real world equivalents?

If Dorfs use Dorfy weapons how do they cope with standard human warfare? How do they handle mass pike formations? Or Halberdiers? Or massed archers? Or heavy knights using lances on horseback? Do they just put on even heavier armor and trudge slowly towards the opponent allowing light cavalry units to endlessly pepper them with arrows?

Do your Dorfs have arcane spell-casters or do they just spam some sort of divine anti-magic shields to avoid shit like fireballs and lightning bolts?

In short how do you avoid Dorfs from being so stereotypically Dorf that they would actually be useless in most conflicts?

In my campaign dorfs and elves are swapped in culture. Dorfs are the nature friendly ones, by not like, leaf nature, more like earth nature, so they still live in mountain homes but they're completely in harmony with the mountains natural forces. Elves, on the other hand, use massive arcane siege weapons and are short tempered bastards. Generally trope swapping helps make something interesting.

>le old reddit switchamaroo xD

Well what are your dwarves like then

Right, I'm back. And as promised, this is how Curse of Strahd basically went off the rails.

Note that this was about a year ago - It was a pretty long campaign. See, the thing is, I've never really been totally sold on Ireena in-game. She's a decent plot-hook, but she's also a huge point of vulnerability, all things considered: Basically, the players can either choose to take her along (not optimal, she's underleveled, and the GM has to focus on running what's basically a DMPC) or leave her alone, in which case Strahd will definently get his hands on her. Sort of a lose-lose situation, if you get what I mean.

Also, it's a little weird that the 'best' outcome to her plot is that she meets the ghost of her past lover and...just sort of drops dead. I mean, I guess it's great that they're reunited and all, but I can't help but think it's kind of a booby prize.

Another issue with Curse of Strahd is that the players, by themselves, aren't directly tied into the plot. They can have peripheral motivations, but they're not really part of the grand good vs. evil conflict that's the heart of the module, though they're doing all the legwork. When I was running the module, I wanted the PCs to have direct motivations, to sort of be swept up in the grand struggle and so on.

I was running the game with a four-person party: Male half-elf Rogue, male human Cleric, female Paladin and female human Wizard. You may say it's a little flat, but this was mainly because I wanted to make sure I had a firm grip on things, and to avoid the more outre character types who'd be severely out of place in Ravenloft.

Note that this isn't a tale of a really dramatic failure. It's more of a story of a campaign going in an unexpected direction, and me struggling to keep up. (Fortunately, my players gave me a lot of leeway.)

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That is 110% a hooker.

For me bulk is standard set up for, but they do have access to magic and utilize it. They have adapted due to being part of a larger empire consisting of all races but their strengths are on being the walking tanks. They've learned to shore up their weaknesses with magic and having specialized units to help assist the main force, but they still lack behind others and it's the reason they are part of the empire instead of an independent kingdom.

That's what I've been doing for 2 weeks now

Don't forget that warlock isn't really a spell caster, just a ranged guy who might sometimes cast a spell

Jews.
Actually they're a bunch of xenophobic cowardly assholes.

Of course dorfs are gonna generally be useless at war, they prefer subterranean existence. Note how dorf 'warriors' usually use tools, not weaponry -- for example, they use non-battle axes (double bladed ones, or single bladed ones without the armor piercing spike), non-war hammers (just big fucking blunt heads, again not aimed at penetrating armor), etc. Dwarves are not big at all in terms of fighting, though they improvise when needed.

Another option is post on Roll20 no guarantee of finding someone but it's worth a shot.

There's a lot of great material here, but here was my big conceit: The female Paladin (Paladiness?) was jinxed. People who got close to her unaccountably died, and she owns a big, Gothic manor somewhere that is destined to go up in flames with her inside. So she's doing the sensible thing and staying the hell away from it, to prolong the inevitable. Also, she's actually the REAL reincarnation of Tatyana. Ireena is a red herring, targeted because Strahd has a thing for women who look like his lost love. The Paladiness is the genuine article.

So everyone's an outsider who gets sucked into Barovia when the mists came up. I ran the introductionary adventure, Death House, and the party nearly got wiped when they refused to sacrifice anything. Fortunately, they made it out alive but not in one piece.

After that, I did what a lot of DMs do - Strahd invited the PCs to the castle for dinner. This was a genuine invitation, because at this point the players aren't really a threat; it gives them a chance to see the place they'll spend many sessions invading before the final battle. The PCs were notably creeped out by the castle, because it started to reflect their past sins. The only one who wasn't disturbed was the Paladiness, who actually felt a sense of familiarity with the place, recalling the time she'd spent here. This lead to the tensest dinner ever, with the PCs wondering if they were about to be slaughtered at the table. (Most of the PCs were fairly new and coming off from the video-game mentality - they didn't get there was an alternate solution to puzzles until later.)

The Paladiness eventually discovers the portrait of Tatyana, and recalled being there when it was drawn. This is actually a surprise to Strahd, because the women are notably different: Tatyana was a young woman, and a peasant girl. The Paladiness is older, of noble blood, and tends towards black humor. Which ironically means that she's more of Strahd's 'type', but there you go.

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Which is why the desire to somehow turn them into front-line melee types is so counter-productive. The warlock is pretty much 100% geared around being hyper-mobile ranged skirmisher and bladelocks take away almost all of the key advantages and don't really cover up the flaws.

I always liked the idea of the bladelock because I like to play around with the idea of someone unarmed/unarmored calling forth some magic and suddenly being equipped for front line. Now I've got a Soul Knife with Mastery of Force to make me happy.

As others said, dorfs qualities in a war are that they can draft troops much more easily and that they use heavily defended positions such as in mountains or in passageways that only smaller creatures can get through, or that have siege weapons set up around them.

Dorfs suck at offense, but they hide where nobody would even want to find them.

So the party (who received safe passage to and out of the castle) leaves, and immediately after that the game is ON. Strahd shifts his focus away from Ireena and towards the Paladiness, but the PCs don't actually realize this until later. This doesn't actually change the story much - the PCs still go through the same dungeons, with just a bit more foreshadowing: For instance, the fortune-teller specifically mentions that the Paladiness is in the *greatest* danger, because the shadow of the past looms over her. Strahd's 'brides' specifically target her first, out of sheer jealousy, to their own tactical detriment.

Here's the problem: the Paladiness begins to reciprocate. They actually hit it off pretty well during the dinner, and there's this whole 'friendly-enemy' thing going on between the party and Strahd, where both sides know they're trying to kill each other but are taking it in stride. This is a problem, because the players are supposed to feel threatened and hunted by a malevolent force that's taking them apart, and it's hard when the primary PC isn't feeling as 'in danger' as the others.

I'll add that OOC, the player told me that in spite of having her memories returned and so on, her PC is not a carbon copy of the original woman. She's basically more ambivalent about the whole thing.

Eventually, the party came up with a plan where the Paladiness used herself to distract Strahd, while everyone else took the chance to sneak in. No, it wasn't an ERP session, but there was a *lot* of flirting, with the girl basically playing coy and doing the whole 'will she/won't she' thing. Again, that's an issue, because - like in the difference between the novel of Dracula and the movie adaptation - it leads to be a very different perspective of the character.

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