/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

He was raised by his elf parent in the Feywild and is still getting used to life on the Material Plane.

its up now, go check

Yeah as hard as it might be to believe Half-Elf is supposed to be one of the uncommon races according to the PH, along with Half-Orcs, Gnomes, Dragonborn and Tieflings are actually.

Can't think of the last time anyone actually followed that though.

The only instrument he can play is his armpit.
jesus christ i just realized it's been 20+ years since i tried to make an armpit fart noise

Because its a mix of the most dull class and most dull race obviously?
I'm just rolling up a character for a game in a couple of hours and I can't think of any traits or qualities that would make them fun to RP off the top of my head

Stick of Truth's Jew class is obviously Monk but also Paladin so I had to go from there.

>Bards
>dullest class

What the fuck refluff have you been smoking.

I've never heavily based my character's personality on race, so I never understand the mindset of people who think any race is boring. The only thing I think is really a requirement to be bardic is to be inspiring in some fashion.

I've had a human (blonde and blue-eyed) bard that beat-boxed and rapped his inspirations before. I've had a half-giant (goliath reflavored) bard that had heavy armor proficiency and played his chest piece like a steel drum. I had a gnome character in 3.5 with access to inspire courage via a prestige class that used bits from George Carlin stand-up specials.

Not them but I'd have to say, there's nothing that really feels interesting fluff-wise about half-elves, and nothing that really feels interesting fluff-wise when you think of a bard other than the fact that they sometimes might play music.

You can still make interesting characters out of them, but a wizard would feel much more iconic.

Just because a class can do a lot of things doesn't mean the people who play them do those things. Everything-and-the-kitchen-sink classes attract min/maxing faggots who obviously don't care about anything but the powerful features and don't give a shit about characterization.

The Wizards and Bards in my groups have always been the most boring motherfuckers. Meanwhile, the Barbarians and Fighters, the guys who can do literally nothing but hit shit with sticks, are the guys stealing every show because they have to dig deep and come up with shit to justify their existence outside of being an autoattacking meatshield.

5eg isn't sperging out yet so I don't believe you.

We live in a 5e where things like Champion exist. It's pretty much impossible for a Bard to be that level of dull.

>Kingdom of Kupa Keep

>the players will be thinking I'm making a Mario reference, not a white supremacy reference
in reality its both
we must act to preserve a future where myconids and dragon turtle won't be crushed to death by mystics abusing Giant Form

I had an abjurer one campaign ago who liked to tell old ridiculous war stories about his campaigns in the desert. He was a 12-year old warforged, so those stories were his entire life history up to the point of the campaign. Personality knows no class.

See, I think of half elves as more common than elves.

just leveled up to lv 6 sorcerer, is it even worth going up to lv 7?
thinking of going warlock.
any ideas?

I use them that way in my home campaigns. Half-elves are prolific enough that they outbred the elves and are the second most-populous race to humans. Most half-elves are born to other half-elves in the current day of the campaign.

I'm honestly surprised this went over people's heads. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing for this board.

What's the deal with Immortals? Am I supposed to be hitting things with a stick or my brain mostly?

speaking of sperging out, the waves of reactions to Mystic will forever be burned into my skull

>Mystic releases in full
>"its fucking garbage, holy shit, who would play this? shit sorcerer, etc."
>week later
>"upon a week of playing, its overpowered. it can do anything. what the fuck wotc?"
>week later
>"upon further playing, its sort of fine. besides one of the prof. rules, its a jack of all trades class that is fine by not exceptional"

i love seeing the back and forth till it sits in the middle

Banishment, Confusion, and Greater Invisibility are fun spells.

When you think of a champion, there's all sorts of images that could come up that could define interesting characters.

Yes, it's absolutely fucking boring mechanics-wise, but the fluff is much more interesting.

Bards really don't feel very interesting to me fluff-wise. They're just... They study, but they're not wizards, they're all-rounded in skills and they play music? So they're.. Magical Musicmen?

You're a cockroach defensively. Your offense is up to you.

In the middle is where most things get stuck.

You sound like an idiot. Stop getting stuck on shit that doesn't matter.

going for almost straight up blaster fire spells.
i went Phoenix UA and all my spells are firebased.
my spell dc isn't that high (14), so i wana stay awy from debuffs

It'd be a pretty damn good idea to get two levels of warlock. Pick up agonizing blast and repelling blast then blast all day. Put your rest of your levels in sorcerer, though you could take two levels of fighter.

Greater Invisibility is a buff. It doesn't break when you attack, so you maintain constant advantage and are difficult to hit when enemies don't have blindsight, true-seeing, etc.

Is there any plan to continue updating the custom character class sheets? What program were they made in if I wanted to contriboot?

Sorry, I know fuck all about SP these days.

>fluff doesn't matter
If you play games without roleplaying, sure.

But bards don't really make memorable characters outside of 'that one guy who plays music', normally.

Someone post UA pls

dont wana just Eldrict blast all day.
it would defeat whole purpuse of my sorc lvs.

I think of Bards more like this, especially Valor Bards. But that's only because of the fact that Red Mages ARE bards but without music and their name is just The Order of The Red Robe being ripped off.

See, that's exactly what I mean. I never said fluff didn't matter, I said don't get stuck on shit that doesn't matter.

>Durr, bards r just music guys duuuurrrr

Jesus fuck, how simple can you be?

>playing Mystic v2
>DM and party members are prepared for me to break everything because OH MY GOD IT LOOKS SO OVERPOWERED
>I'M TRUSTING YOU ON THIS BUT IF YOU BREAK THE GAME I'M GONNA NERF YOU
>campaign ends with the DM having to buff me repeatedly
Further proof that fucking no one here plays the game or understands what resources are.

>short rests to 5 minutes
>features that happen on a short rest, but can only be used once per long rest, such as certain warlock invocations, Arcane Recovery for the wizard, etc, etc, are rewritten to recharge on a short rest.
>rework classes so every class has at least 2 features that recharge on a short rest.

This is my plan to fix 5e.

You should rethink that Arcane Recovery fix. Wizards are good enough without it.

>guys who can fight great, use magic great and heal great as well as entertain and inspire and know so much stuff due to having been on 101 adventures are boring

how

What problem are you trying to address and how do these changes address that problem?

>Trying to look at the simple aspects of a class
>Hurr stop being simple

You have to look at each class simply and the range of simple ideas that apply.

You can then obviously make other characters, but a lot of characters will often be based on or around that simple idea.

Monks are great in this respect, because on a simple level people will have all sorts of views of them. Some people will view them more towards ninjas, some people will view them more towards a sort of 'sensei' character, some will view them more like a brawler sort of person, some might see them to be passive, harmony-and-peace sorts or some might take them to be religious figures.

If you tell someone to make a bard, they'll think 'Okay, better get an instrument, I'm going to cast some spells and play instruments' and that's the end of it.

I don't care if you can play a bard as a flying magical horseman who fires bananas at high velocity to kill people or whatever, most people will boil the class down to simple musicmen and that's all I ever really see getting played out of bards.

Yeah. You can totally do that, a lot of people don't realize that instruments are simply a focus and you can just use a components pouch or something instead and be a sort of everyman-caster.

He wants to troll 5eg into talking about 4e.

You know that one phrase often comes up as 'A Jack of All Trades is a Master of None' and then the last part gets left out: 'But often better than a Master of One.'

In most cases a guy that can do a bit of everything is an uplift for everyone else.

Speaking of Wizards, I'll be playing one for the first time this week. Just finished a campaign, so we'll be starting a new one, and I've decided to go Wizard. Last campaign, the party Wizard was...not good. I'm hoping to maximize my utility. My plan right now is, every level, I'll take one ritual spell and one non-ritual spell. Sound like a good plan?

And how're people going to put that into a character that's going to be different from the last 100 bards that have been made?

Cleric/Wizard vs. Monk/Sorceror vs. Warlock/Paladin?

>Monksorcerer
Why
>Clericwizard
One level dip cleric overpowered
>Warlockpaladin
Fills a completely different role to clericwizard but three levels of warlock for shillelagh and I suppose they could get wizard rituals with book but honestly the level delay might put them behind wizard in power. Still quite close.

What are some good campaigns to get a bunch of unimaginative logic thinkers into D&D?
We are a bunch of end-20s computer scientists that get together once a week - we wanna do stuff, but we always end up slacking off.

I figured D&D might be fun, but we never played any P&P game before.

OK, work with me for a sec... have you considered making someone who the PCs won't be able to figure out in the first 5 seconds is a bard?

Like, don't have him go "Let me regale you my friends with a minstrel song! Tra la la!" and skip around immediately.

If you can't make a bard that's interesting, then you wouldn't be able to make a fighter or anything else that's interesting, so the fault lies with you.

The same can be said of every class.

Its always good to get your roleplaying boots on, but lucky for you, you can be a numbersfag if you really want to.

Try out Lost Mine of Phandelver. You can check out the adventure here, if you are DMing. Dont let the players read it.

d20.sabotender.com/5th/Supliments/Lost Mine of Phandelver.pdf

Aim for spells that don't overlap too much. You don't have to worry about ritual and non-ritual too much, though rituals are a good idea when you see ones you think you will use.

The important thing is not to grab lightning bolt and fireball at the same, or load up on too many concentration spells at the same time. The advantage of the wizard spell list is the wide variety of effects available to you.

>Cleric/wizard
Good if you're not going to go split the levels too evenly. You want a small amount of one class and a large amount of the other.

>monk/sorcerer
why

>warlock/paladin
overrated

>Monk/Sorceror
You know what my monk needs? To rely on another stat!

How do I make grappler work at high levels?

>Bards really don't feel very interesting to me fluff-wise. They're just... They study, but they're not wizards, they're all-rounded in skills and they play music? So they're.. Magical Musicmen?
There's a reason why words like "chant" can refer to singing and magic. The idea that magic and music are linked is something that's found in many cultures. Väinämöinen, Orpheus, arguably the Pied Piper etc. When you consider that, there's a lot you can do with the fluff beyond just "wizard but he plays the flute instead of saying abracadabra and waving a wand".

Get the party Cleric to take Blade Barrier and just keep throwing poor suckers into it.

Expertise in athletics via rogue or bard
Advantage on strength checks with something like rage or enhance ability

or

access to Bigby's Hand

Sorry I meant Cleric/Wizard vs Warlock/Paladin vs Monk/Druid. On that note, what about Fighter/Sorceror ?

Here's a sorta optimization question.

1. What is the lowest level character who can , without something like Sleep or whatever, reliably grapple a resisting commoner for, say, 30+ rounds straight without rendering them unconscious or something?
2. What would be the most typical build rather than the most low level build for it?

Are you trying to figure out which is better?

The answer is cleric/wizard.

Probably Barbarogue with athletics expertise. At level 2, with 18 strength, that's +8 to grapple checks, and advantage.

1: Level one variant human, Barbarian, grappler feat, athletics skill
2. Barbarian or monk, grappler feat somewhere down the line, take 1 level in rogue for expertise, I guess. Monk might be the best because unarmed, but barbarian rage grants advantage on strength checks (whoch grapple checks fall under)

I agree that wizards are in a good place right now, but under the proposed changes I don't think they would be in a good place, and the change makes sense.

I've discussed it with my players, and combat is pretty boring. They feel like they have to conserve resources so much that using anything is a mistake, thus resulting in repetitive turns. Story wise, it rarely makes sense to take a short rest over a long rest. I could pressure them on that, but not without distorting the story in a way that I don't think is particularly fun.

but is it useful?

Third from the left...is that Simon Pegg?

Does Monk/Druid even work?

>They feel like they have to conserve resources so much that using anything is a mistake, thus resulting in repetitive turns.

This is generally a trap people fall into. Long, repetitive combats end up draining your resources more than if you just nova'd on turn 1 and then play cleanup.

Ki empowered wild shape flurry of blows

In either case, there are a lot of turns that aren't really interesting.

Warlock players have it the worst I think, under current rules. It really sucks to blow a one third to half of your spellcasting ability for the day on legendary resistance critters, or even things with good saves.

Well that depends. I don't think grappling is all that useful if all you're fighting is giants or dragons or huge demons etc.

But if you're fighting things you can grapple? You have to weigh the pros and cons of it. Do you have some way to hurt it after you grapple it? An active Blade Barrier or Fire Wall or even a Cloud of Daggers make for great grapple-blenders. Or, if you have a cliff or window you can throw them through, or a pit of spikes or whatever. However, I don't think grappling just to pull someone away from the rest of the party is worth all that much.

Natural Weapons do not count as unarmed attacks

Yes.

Bigby's Hand can grapple any creatures except gargantuan sized. 26 strength is higher than the great majority of creatures.

Most creatures don't have athletics or acrobatics proficiency, so a player with expertise is going to win grapple checks more often than not as long as the creature isn't too large to grapple.

Grappling is useful if you are able to grapple prone targets for a melee-centric party. A target with 0 move speed from being grappled lacks the movement necessary to stand up.

It does but it's not really a huge improvement over single-classed druid because of the delayed access to druid abilities.

Play a bard that's actually an awful musician so he becomes more of a great storyteller/comedian.

I think you're limiting your view of the archetype and how much overlap there can be between classes. There's the agile swordsman bard, which is more interesting than most rogues IMO. I've seen a lot more flavorful bards than fighters and other classes in general.

if your DM is a cool guy they do

>Bard College of BRUTALITY

>Starting at level 3 you gain proficiency with battleaxes and black and white makeup kits. In addition, Studded Leather Armor that's black and covered in BRUTAL SPIKES grants +1 to AC and Intimidation checks
>Starting at 3rd level, you can charge your performance with HEAVY RIFFS of BLACKEST MAGIC.

>As a bonus action, you can expend a use of Bardic Inspiration to grant yourself a spooky, gothic appearance. When you do so, choose a number of allies you can see and who can see you within 60 feet of you, up to a number of them equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of one). Each target gains 2d6 temporary hit points.

When a target gains these temporary hit points, it can also use its reaction to move up to its speed toward you, without provoking opportunity attacks. It must take the shortest, safest path to you while violently shaking it's head and/or spinning their hair.

>EXTREME preformance
>If you perform for at least 10 minutes with a guitar, bass guitar, vocals, or a drum set, you can attempt to inspire a mosh pit in your audience by "singing", doing EXTREME GUITAR SOLOS, or rapidly spinning your hair. At the end of the performance, choose a number of humanoids within 60 feet of you who watched and listened to all of it, up to a number of them equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of one). Each target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC or be charmed by you. While charmed in this way, the target idolizes you, it speaks glowingly of you to anyone who speaks to it, and it hinders anyone who opposes you, actively seeking violence unless it's a MASSIVE PUSSY. This effect ends on a target after 1 hour, if it gets arrested by the guards, if you attack it, or if it witnesses you not being obnoxiously edgy.

>If a target succeeds on its save against this effect, the target has no hint that you tried to charm it.

>Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

How do you organize your notes on different kingdoms/factions/cities/etc.?

Do you do bullet points for brevity? Long paragraphs with detail? I've yet to find my style of writing down campaign and world building notes so I'm hoping to see how some others go about it.

Even screenshots would be cool.

You're right, but that's houseruling and it's kind of difficult to discuss D&D if we have to account for everybody's houserules.

I'm thinking about trying to make Mystics less "do every single class but not super well" and a bit more focused on their disciplines. I feel like past 6 or so disciplines the class loses a lot of its coherence. Thoughts on how to accomplish this?

People write things down?

More psi points, less disciplines. Rather simple. It is what we are doing.

You could always ask the DM to spice them up (or see if he'll let you refluff into something more interesting). In my not-China campaign, they do ancestor magic.

play awakened and only go for battlefield control and saving throw based debuffs

Right, but then you don't have much left for the next one.

I sympathize with that guy, and I use the shorter rests rule from the DMG. So far, no problems. I have not seen resource based stuff do much of... anything, other than incapacitate a kobold two PCs wanted to imprison and question (and another person timely killed before they could interrogate).

How does buffing casters fix 5e?

You can only pick non-archetype disciplines if you have more archetype disciplines than non-archetype.

What casters operate primarily on short rest cooldowns, besides the weakest casters, warlock?

To different extents.

It's really hard to measure though, because different games have different levels of player creativity and the creative players might play different things.

Pied piper is probably the best example, because most people will know that and there's clearly some magic and music going on there. Not so sure people will have heard of the other examples. And, really, the pied piper could easily have been a warlock with a flute, a wizard with a flute or a sorcerer with a flute. The problem there is that the flute is kind of what's defining them as a bard.

Paladin/sorcerer would be better, or fighter/warlock/sorcerer.
Monk/druid doesn't get much. One level of monk for unarmoured defence and that's it.. Probably. Unless there's some weird combo I'm forgetting.

I'll have to admit I've seen a lot of boring barbarians/fighters, but I think I've seen the most variation in monks/paladins/rogues/warlocks.

But even if I think of doing an awful musician bard, most people seem to almost think it's a requirement. But then again, it's not absolutely 100% ingrained into the class like shapeshifting is in druids.

If you've got the right mindset you can easily spice them up. But the problem is most people don't. They don't provoke enough thought about the character really, much like how monk/paladin/cleric/warlock do.

Drooids I assume.