/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

How bad an idea is a Gnome Eldritch Knight?

>gnome
Very bad idea. EK is all right, though.

Playing a warlock in an upcoming game. I was planning on going fiend patron for survivability and social control and pact of tome for utility and shillelagh, then taking hex via magic initiate so it becomes a once a day power that I don't have to worry about rationing slots for.

What are some other ways to optimize the fun potential of a warlock?

It works. You don't really need the +2 int, but you can run off of dexterity using either hand crossbows or rapier+shield.

I wanted to play a small race as a melee Fighter, was either this or a Halfling Knight.

I was planning for Rapier+Shield and maybe taking Spear Mastery latter on.

i dunno just play what you like
though i found the chain familiar to be super useful

How about:
>Clipped Wings: Kenku have a flying speed of 15 (or 20?) feet. However, they're not able to actually stay aloft for long. If you're flying and not supported by a solid surface at the end of your turn, you fall.

They go from "totally flightless" to "chicken".

Be a gnome barbarian, catch phrase is "no kneecap is safe"

>Have their wings ripped off by their master to stop them flying
>give them flight

Well, rapier+shield gameplay is really just stacking on a load of AC and using spells like shield for more AC.

Barbarogue or rogue might be less like that.

My question is why?

What races have you omitted from your games?

I considered Barbarian but it's honestly a pretty hefty toll on my effectiveness unless I go Bearbarian because my Strength would be so low.

I'd rather not go Rogue but be someone who can fight on the frontlines. Paladin or Ranger might work.

Reposting for new thread

From what I read in a 4E book about the underdark, I think they can go about a month without eating, but prefer to do it at least weekly, daily if there are sufficient slaves.

You rationalize it staying alive because now that it's separate from the Elder Brain it's an individual, and is beginning to show party-favorable traits; it doesn't hate the Elder Brain, but it knows that it's going to be eaten, and kind of enjoys not being eaten so far, so it tells the party it can use its area of expertise (armor creation, study, healing, etc.) that was assigned by its colony to help the players if they keep it out of the hands of the drow and the Elder Brain. And now they have to find a way to feed it.

In that same 4E book, there was a type of plant that gave Illithid the same nutrition as brains, but the secret was lost when their empire fell. Maybe give the players a quest to find that to keep their new "friend" alive morally?

I just want them to have something outside of the very narrow skillset they get innately. Other races get more useful/varied traits, and mobility would compliment their existing skills while still being useful everywhere.

Fluff is a bit different, the missing voice thing is the more important component. Missing wings was just their masters being pissed about being vanquished.

That's a good compromise.

I really don't think they need a buff. Not all races are made equal and it's one with weird roleplaying requirements so if it's too good a lot of players who are bad at roleplay would pick it anyway.

Personally I'm playing a Kenku Shadow Monk and loving it.

I know this is probably really obvious, but, what are the rules on a Gnome using a quarterstaff.

I can't figure out if A) they can only use it by two handing and B) if they'd have any kind of disadvantage due to the size because all the sources I check refuse to list the size and all just tell me it's versatile which sadly is not really what I'm trying to figure out

If it's not heavy, it's fine.

thank you user, somebody asked me this question and it was driving me NUTS not to be able to answer it

just as a follow up weapon sizes don't really exist this edition

How do you describe actions and attacks in combat? It was easy at lower levels but now that everyone has more health and can take a lot more hits I find it harder to describe these more comparatively minor blows.

DEATH IS PRETTY

only describe killing blows

Why not just make their enemies more powerful? or increase the damage they deal.

If you do any but the first, don't call them Kenku anymore. Call them Crowfolk or Dark Aarakocra but do not call them Kenku.

HP isn't meat points, its your ability to avoid physically harmful blows. You didn't really think this game was intentionally designed so that you get all cut up and lose a few fingers and then sleep for the night and you're all better, did you?

As a half-orc BM fighter, any reason to take the feats and shit to dual wield longswords? Is it any better than just wielding a gigantic greatsword?

I want fog of war on roll20, but BLACK.

There anyway to do that? Dynamic lighting looks like a pain in the ass

You need dynamic lighting. Then you can set player's view distances and after a certain distance their sight will fade into pitch black FoW

Barbarian is perfectly fine focused on dexterity, though now that I think about it it's kind of an AC stacking farce too.

You don't truly need a front-liner, really, but if you do you probably want a sentinel sort of faggot.

roll20 fog of war is already black.?

If you (you need all of these): Like extra AC, like making extra attacks, will not be playing past 10th level, would rather have the consistency of multiple strikes than one or two really strong but powerful strikes, are okay with being suboptimal compared to other fighting styles with their corresponding feats, already have the fighting style and think it sounds like fun, you should try out dual wielding!

To get the bonus damage from rage you need to "make a melee attack using Strength."

Tieflings and dragonborn, in exchange for including locathah and all the Volo's races. I've only recently added dragonborn because I found a good angle for them - vikings

>If you (you need all of these): Like extra AC, like making extra attacks, will not be playing past 10th level, would rather have the consistency of multiple strikes than one or two really strong but powerful strikes, are okay with being suboptimal compared to other fighting styles with their corresponding feats, already have the fighting style and think it sounds like fun, you should try out dual wielding!
GS it is!

>recently added dragonborn because I found a good angle for them - vikings
Neato.

What boons can an imp familiar grant a warlock that an owl familiar cannot?

I like dragonborn as a substitute for earth cultures.
In my game they're basically egyptians.

Are there any additional Metamagic options from UA? Or any good homebrews?

Is Magic Initiate Warlock for Hex the best option for a Human Warlocks free feat? It seems that an hour long Hex each day would free up a Spellslot.

What do you mean "boons"?

They can attack, go invisible, etc.

Magic initiate for a casterlock and warcaster for a meleelock

What's this "help action" I've been hearing about and can the normal familiars do it?

Does there exist a comprehensive list of classes and archetypes from all WotC published material? As in, including things like the Oathbreaker Paladin, Martial Ranger, and the other Unearthed Arcana stuff

To get the bonus AC above medium armour from unarmoured defence you need to "get fucking dexterity"

Help gives another character advantage to do a thing.

All familiars can do it.

Does a bard need to be trained in an instrument to use it for a focus? Why are there no harp in the PHB?

So is Roll20 done autistically taking down the troves?

I was actually planning to play a Feylock with the Super Bow invocation. I wanted to have some extra use out of my spellslots at lower levels.

Considering the always Advantage is a pretty huge Attack bonus I think people over value Strength on a Barbarian who isn't using GWM. If you want to Dual-Wield I'd personally never put Strength above 18 because +1 to hit isn't worth it over a feat or +1 AC and Initiative.

Playing a DEX Barbarian with a 14 in Strength can still have an effective +8 to hit at level 2 and then just put it up to 16 at level 4 and leave it there.

I rolled a half-orc fighter with 17 str and my DM said I could use str instead of cha for my intimidation rolls. Seems like a cool idea and I'm not complaining, but is this some variant rule in a book or something?

If you're a dex barbarogue and you want sneak attack, you can still use reckless attack. You'll get rage damage and advantage which negates the smaller to-hit and smallerdamage, and you can then sneak attack when you usually could not.
Of course, enemies then have advantage to attack you when you're supposed to be some dexterity barbarogue tank guy, so eh.

If you're a strength barbarian, why wouldn't you have GWM other than the fact you haven't had a chance to get the feat yet or you took PAM or sentinel and will get GWM next? It's too good not to get, especially considering you have reckless attack.

There's also strength barbarogues which are great for grappling.

Just depends on the situation

It's a variant rule you can use attributes with different stats, but 'strength instead of charisma for intimidation' is a naive idea.

It implies that you can use your strength - a thing viewed very subjectively by different people - in place of an objective measure of your ability to manipulate people, and demolishes the point of having other stats.

Seriously, you should have negative strength added to your intimidation against wizards by this logic because a high powered wizard would fear only other wizards more than your muscle man because the muscle man is just going to get forcecaged and have no way out, whereas a wizard might counterspell him or something.

Strength and how muscley you are should affect the intimidation check's DC instead. Your DM is unknowingly a massive faggot.

what is this art style called?

oh good

Since kenku have been brought up this thread:

>Army employs kenku to smith parts for weapons/armor
>Interchangeable, standardized parts rapidly produced
>Massive boost to logistical ability, item quality, cost reductions across the board
>Still cheaper than paying those faggot wizards for a forging golem or ten

Has yawning portal been scanned yet? I already have a physical copy on the way from Amazon but I just want to read it before it arrives if I can

Yes

Scanned well before release, look at the fucking trove.

Why would a warlock ever choose any pact besides Tome? Can't shillelagh and find familiar make the other two pacts obsolete?

Personally I'm a fan of Dual Wielding Barbarians so I'm biased but I've played a Wood Elf with 2 Rapiers up to level 13 and here's my experience. Keeping in mind my DM give a free feat at level 1 so I have Dual Wielder.

I started with 14, 16, 14, 8, 12, 10. At level 4 I put my ASI in +2 STR, level 8 +2 CON and my last one was another +2 CON

I rage often and use Strength for all attack rolls unless I'm low on Health or fighting a large group of enemies. I rarely miss. Compared to everyone else I hit more often because +9 to hit with magic weapons and permanently having Advantage is just so fucking good. I do an average of about 34.5 damage a round plus my Zealot Aura does 9.5ish damage to everyone around me.

I've got an AC of 18 and resistance to most physical damage plus a fuck huge HP with a d12 Hitdie and +4 CON.

I personally feel like one of the highest damage dealers in the group and when I'm needed to be tanky I can be. It's pretty good.

What's your favorite cantrip or spell from the new UA?

strawpoll.me/12670701
strawpoll.me/12670701
strawpoll.me/12670701

Ah, I was looking the rulebooks section rather than the adventures section. Yahtzee.

What's the current rules for creating spell scrolls?

Hexblade blows even EBlocks out the fucking water for average damage but gives up a lot of invocations and basically has even less variety in it's spell casting.

Chain really should have an Invocation to get their familiar's magic resistance because they're pretty weak compared to Tomelocks.

Flavor.

Plus, Shillelagh and Find Familiar come close, but they're still inferior to the other pacts.

I iunno, but the artist is Jakub Rebelka.

I can't think of a reason why you'd chose Warlock without Tome for 1 reason: cantrips.

You need a DM favorable to providing a couple short rests in between long rests to make Warlocks viable opposed to Wizards - and the extra 3 cantrips, plus Book of Ancient secrets expands your spell pool enough to give such utility with ritual casting.

Blade pact was already trash.

Find familiar from pact of the tome requires an invocation (albeit a good one if you don't have a wizard) and gives you a familiar that can go invisible and detect alignments or do something else, which is notably good enough over a normal familiar.

Still, pact of the tome is probably the most generally useful.

Also UA content made pact of the blade better, even if it still sucks as a concept being 'Throw away all your cool features to be some sort of not-paladin'.

Well, compared to focusing entirely on dexterity and con, it's actually a pretty good idea not to focus entirely on being tanky, because a dex barbarogue is basically 'How tanky can I be' without any 'How functional can I be'. Sure, they do plenty fine damage, 1d8+DEX, 1d8+DEX + Xd6 (sneak attack) but it's nothing astounding considering they're a barbarian.

If you're using two rapiers as a barbarian, your damage really isn't improving much after level 5, which is why barbaroguing is a thing to continue getting damage after level 5.

Otherwise, polearm or GWM barbarians easily do the best.
They have such a high hit chance that it makes GWM good, they can benefit from the bonus action attack and then PAM gives them even more attacks to use GWM on. Then sentinel helps them do their job of protecting their teammates.

isn't the inability to flight one of kenku's key aspects?

>Ambush PCs
>4 out of 5 attempt to hide instead of readying for combat (This was my fault for not being clear about the threat)
>Realise this deadly encounter is a little too deadly as there's no healer in the group
>Decide that I will have the mobs surround the party so that each player can have their own isolated combat of sorts
>One player voices his discontent that I could have but didn't bumrush him with all the worgs and kill his character
why can't i satisfy everyone

I made a fighter in my livegame, and put my wizard on haitus, and I'm shocked how much fun I'm having. Martials are really fun in this edition. He wades into combat without fear and has some great RP options. I always hated martials but I might play this character from now on.

i personally get seriously upset when i do something stupid and there's no consequences. half of my characters become suicidal at some point and most dms won't let you die unless they want it. i mean, what's the point then?
we do something stupid or nothing at all and the plot still progresses just as if we've saved everyone.

You guys decide what scenario i run this saturday night. Won't have most of my players so i wanna run something a bit wild or different. I'd honestly like to TPK since I've never done it before.

I was going for Tomb of Horror but it wont be the same if the players aren't attached to their characters, n'est-ce pas?

Not that I know. They did a good job covering the bases and the only one from 3.5 that I think would be anywhere near worth bringing back would be Widen Spell.

Maybe sorcs could get a Limited Wish, which is a level 7 spell that lets them cast any 6th level or lower spell. But not wizards. Just as a way to help sorcs. Then again most characters wont reach a high enough level to cast it.

Do you have something against being a sorclock? Its a synergy made in Heaven.

No fuck you, run a homebrew setting. The books are fine, but homebrewed shit is almost always better, barring the best of books.

How about a one-shot where the PCs are holding out in a sieged castle, a day before reinforcements arrive, and they have one night to prepare before a demon army attempts one last suicide rush into the castle. Have characters that interact with each other, start the players as a decently high level, and make it likely that they will be overwhelmed, as most of their good supplies have been used in the previous months.

I have this in one campaign I'm in, I'm finding the DM keeps giving easy outs to someone when they've clearly fucked up, choosing things they know might get their character killed.

Yet, they were also happy to just cheap shot kill another character in something that might as well be 'rocks fall, you die', so I don't get it.

no

So yeah, I'd say go sorclock. They're much, much better than regular warlocks and I have yet to see anyone experience dissatisfaction with UNLIMITED SPELL SLOTS. That's what sorcerers should be like anyway.

So making a punishment warlock that has armor of agathys, hellish rebuke, and fire shield and casts blade ward every round...

Yeah or neigh?

What's the /5eg/ default advice for players who want a gish pc?

Arcane Knight?
Bladelock?

>in b4 Paladin or Mystic

Stretch your Roleplaying experience with the Lizardfolk! No emotions allowed!

Cleric or Valor Bard

Not him but it's a cheesy as fuck multiclass. I personally don't allow multiclassing unless a player can give me a good reason other then power.

I personally just let Sorcerers use the spell point variant, give them all metamagic and and extra spell known every even level. There's really not much wrong with them other then the fact they're "Shitty Wizards" and the Spellpoints give them more choice with their Metamagic and more spells known removes their other massive fault.

Warlock2/Abjurationwizard the rest.
I believe taking damage to abjuration wizard's ward doesn't damage armor of agathy's temporary HP yet still triggers the return damage. Also, wizard can cast armor of agathys at levels above level 5 eventually.

That said, it is a good use of blade ward.

Hellish rebuke and armor of agathys are both low level warlock spells, so you only really need a dip.

Arcana Cleric with Magic Initiate for Shillelagh, Valor/Swords Bard and Stone Sorcerer.

Paladinsorcerer, paladin, palock, valor bard, AT rogue or some sort of artificer thing. Or UA bladelock.

HUNGRY is an emotion user

>I personally don't allow multiclassing unless a player can give me a good reason other than power

Now that's some bullshit.