/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General

Tieflings, Dragonborn and Half-Orcs should be killed on sight.

Objectively how racist are your campaigns Veeky Forums?

So l'm ditching standart background and race rules for my human only campaign. lnstead, my players will get:
>+1 in two stats of their choice
>a feat
>proficiency in any combination of five skills, tools or languages, as long as they don't pick five of the same type

ls this fine?

Being in the Underdark, a mix of very and not at all.
If the party can use you, race doesn't matter.
If anyone sees the party, the combination of myconids, male drow, derro, and hobgoblins makes them often shot in sight.

There is no broad answer to it though, it's circumstantial as fuck.

If say a tiefling fighter in full plate wanders into a village with his party flying the beloved kings colours no peasant in their right mind is going to fuck with him.

There's also that some places/people are accepting of exotic races and others aren't.

Racist as fuck.
I set it up as a classic "The evil guys are racist aren't they bad" for the players who were very against racism. Orcs were slaves, halflings were barely a person, tieflings were illegals. Then I had them slowly realize that all those races were fucking monsters and it was for a good reason. The humans were reclaiming their lands and the other races refused to help during crisis after crisis.

How can I write a backstory for a Shadow monk without it turning him into a weeb ninja?

I was thinking someone who wasn't charismatic to do business espionage so he got kicked out of his monastery as a start.

The answer is yes, Dragonborns are objectively the worst halfbreed.

Look at how they come to be. Dragon fucks a human.

The size difference is the biggest fucking thing ever. The only reason some are alright is if their dragon ancestor can transform, but from what I remember, that's only Metallic.
So any Chromatic Dragonborns are fucking terrible.

That's kinda up to you. if you feel like the adventures would be fun to run through go for it. I'm gonna be running Sunless Citadel with my group pretty soon, and all of the adventures seem pretty fun and updated.
Read through the synopsis of the adventures first and decide if you like the looks of them.

>Objectively how racist are your campaigns Veeky Forums?
I recently learned that apparently lizardmen are really not welcome anywhere in civilized society in the game I'm in. They live in some southern desert and go up north to pillage and raid so everyone's wary of them.

And my character's race, dragonborn, had warred with the others to gain a shitload of territory several decades ago, so some people are still sore about that.

Isn't the team gutted down to like five guys?

Dragonborn =/= Half-dragon

All you really did was take away some of the RP crutches that less experienced players need. If your group are already great at establishing a real character its fine, but if they struggle whatsoever, i can't see any good reason to strip away backgrounds.

A rogue hidden behind a wall uses their action to shoot enemies, then their Cunning Action to Hide again.

a) Does the attack have advantage?
b) How much do the enemies know with regards to the rogue?

>a) yes.
>b) general direction, unless they are close enough .

>a) Does the attack have advantage?
If the enemies couldn't see them, yeah.

>b) How much do the enemies know with regards to the rogue?
They probably know where the arrow came from, if they were paying attention.

If the enemy didn't detect them, yes.

They know where the attack came from, because it explicitly reveals you unless you have Skulker and miss. They don't know if you stayed in that position or not, assuming you hid before any movement.

Depends on where you go in the setting we're running.

generally though Tieflings are attacked on sight since up until 200 years ago infernals had never touched the world until a god destroyed a continent and there were demons all of a sudden.
Magic users in general are also looked down upon for being weak

They're not new players and are kind of tired of backgrounds, to be honest, and l agree completelly. So they can fluff their characters the way they want and don't have to bargain for the right skills and etc.

I think variant human + customizable background rules is enough. The fluff feature of the background is a nice touch.

>Orcs were slaves, halflings were barely a person, tieflings were illegals. Then I had them slowly realize that all those races were fucking monsters and it was for a good reason.

Nice. Work in some metaphors about 'refugees' and rape and you'll be golden.

Give me the best Mystic Disciplines for each Order, pretty please.

As i said, that's fine then. I don't see a real benefit from taking them away, you don't need to "bargain for the right skills" because the backgrounds sections explicitly tells you to mix and match to form your own that fits, but it also doesn't hurt anything if your players don't rely on it for characterization and backstory elements.

Mike Mearls seems gay as fuck, how long has he had that GAY PRIDE WORLDWIDE avatar?

I can only say that Psionic Restoration is fantastic. Revivify without slots.

He just wants to show you solidarity.

>King starts using Tieflings and knighting them
>Opportunistic usurper to the Throne uses this to stir up the masses
>Convinces them the King is now a puppet of the devils

Sounds like a recipe for disaster, if you're following anywhere close to lore for the Tiefling race

>Rogue pops his head up over the wall
>Enters LOS of enemy
>Enemy can now see them
>Loses advantage

revivify without components.

It's fine, but boring. If you're willing to put in the time, do something like this.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vq1kz6PRAbw5LHy6amH-bNb4OuB8DBXL1RsZROt03Sc/edit#gid=0

Use this spreadsheet. Using it, make it so that you have a variety of human subraces, each of them worth fourteen or fifteen points. Then make a variety of backgrounds, each also worth about fourteen or fifteen points.

Let's assume that you have a group of people that live far to the north and have a strong magical tradition. This might look something like this:

Intelligence +2
Proficiency in Arcana
Acclimatized to cold weather
Choice of one wizard cantrip
Speaks Common and one other language

Now let's say that this was on the road constantly, trading with his neighbors to the south. His background would look something like this:

Choice of Constitution or Charisma +1
Proficiency and expertise in your choice of Deception or Persuasion
Proficient in Vehicles (Land)
Ignore nonmagical difficult terrain

Not a perfect system, but it's pretty okay.

PoLand, so not really

>RP crutches that less experienced players need
Of all the things you guys get autistic about, this is the one I really have a problem with. It's totally possible for someone to make a tiefling or half orc that has an interesting personality. After playing through a dozen humans with x personality types maybe I want to introduce the aspect of xenophobia or I want some sort of combat advantage at the cost of something else. I would understand if the player is just going around like "Hey I'm a fucking dragonborn fear me," but sometimes it's fun to imagine a character who has a drastically different upbringing, culture, and proclivity than what you could expect from some human. If you want literally everyone to be human, dwarf, or elf then go play a Lord of the Rings game.

c) would an attack on the next turn have advantage, and what is the least the rogue would have to do to get that advantage? (ie roll high on Stealth)

Yeah, I've never really gotten some people's obsession with only having those three races, or even just humans, and disparaging anyone that dared deviate from it.

What's the point of Mystics/Psionics what role do they fill, what do they excel at?

Firstly, an all human setting still has diversity of culture, fuck pretty much every fantasy "culture" is LESS exotic than the strange ones on planet earth.

But the more important thing is that i was commenting on the Background mechanic, something designed to help new players ease into RPing a character, and forcing them to have some idea of what the character was before the campaign begins. Crutches aren't a bad thing, when you need them, you use them. When you don't, you stop.

>It's totally possible for someone to make a tiefling or half orc that has an interesting personality

I do not deny this, the problem is most people can't make an interesting personality to begin with and then expect no draw backs for picking an odd race.

>and then expect no draw backs for picking an odd race
Drawbacks?

But sometimes you like to see how large of a step you can make or use them as stilts

My DM is letting me chose any damage type for my Dragon Ancestor.

Are there enough spells that use Force other then Magic Missile or should I just take Lightning?

>I want to be a Tiefling!
The race that is literally devil spawn? Sure, but you might draw negative reactions depending on who you interact with.
>RACIST!

Looking for some opinions.

I usually play 3.5, but I had enjoyed the 5e playtest. When the Tales From the Yawning Portal came out for Roll20, me and my players jumped at the chance, figuring it would be a good thing to run on off days when a bunch of us happen to be around.

We've run five sessions so far, and just started the Forge of Fury, so characters are still just level 3. With that being said, I've been reading ahead on their notes on the later adventures, and one thing that struck me is how...vanilla combat is. While I've always enjoyed the variety of 3.5, it very quickly gets to be a burden to run, so I was hoping it would be a bit simplified...but it seems like they went to the other end of the spectrum.

Most monsters have a generic stat block modified by their racial stats, then between 0 and 2 abilities average, which while interesting, tend to be along the lines of "you get a free move" or "you do an extra die of damage". The functional difference between two monsters is often a matter of swapping a single ability, even if they're something as different as an extraplanar centipede and an orc.

Does combat get better in later levels? Low level combat in 3.5 is pretty bland as well, so I'm curious as to what more experience 5e players/GMs might think.

Disintigrate is force.

Hm, is it common for people to be upset about that? Nobody I know gets annoyed by things like that, and I'd think it'd give neat roleplaying opportunities.

>+5 damage twinned disintegrate

Sign me the fuck up.

I've had people throw racist around a lot at my table, but it's all jokes. We're all of the mind that those who need to throw around the minority card would suck as people regardless of their birth status.

so if you have a theurge with the trickery domain and you hit level 14 you get Improved duplicity, does that allow you to actually use duplicity since that is technically a "upgrade" class feature?

Tieflings aren't straight up devil spawn anymore
Someone in their bloodline got I N F E R N A L E D but majority of them aren't direct descendants of a devil

The world reacting to them being said race, such as being shunned, mistrusted or outright hated. Some people actually get upset when that happens, even if you make it clear at the start.

The mystic is to spells what a (bard/rogue I don't remember which one is worse) is to skills.
You won't be the best, but you can do it.
What, you ask?
Anything.
Want to wrassle with Tiamat?
The Immortal, as a master of body horror, can grow up to Huge and roid up an additional +5 to Strength checks and proficiency.
Sure, much like a swiss knife, you can get a better knife and a better scissor elsewhere, you can make a better build for that with multiple people, but the Mystic can patch almost any deficiency in your party.

...You get the Duplicity at level 2. When you get to 14 it gets upgraded.

Duplicity is the Channel Divinity option for Trickster Clerics.

Glut has killed multiple editions of this game.
I'm fine with a slow release rate, but if anything, I wish the GM's Guild was more open.

at the stage were they are, they can fill pretty much every role and excel at nothing really, at least at high levels.

they are pretty much make your own class, choose your own powers/features with so little restrictions, every mystic might as well be a warlord-lite+secondary healer on top of whatever the fuck it wants to be. they can be blastery controllers, skill monkeys or several ranges of gish, fake martial, meat tank or real martials (with fake extra attacks) and not really scale at all past 9th level.

it's kind of funny how there's way more martial/melee combat support built-in in the current release, compared to caster-centric features for a int based classed.

shit, sorry for being retarded.

>make world
>elves have been mindless zombified due to a superweapon
>magical researchers (wizards and sorcerers) kill en masse for building the superweapon and bringing the world to ruin
>HEY DM CAN I BE AN ELF WIZARD!?

It depends on who I'm playing with. It quickly becomes apparent what each person's political leanings are, and how serious they're being.

If someone is seriously acting like that I make sure to be relentless because it's a surefire sign for future greentext in a thatguy thread.

That's alright. Everyone is sometimes.

It's worth noting that you can combine that with Mirror Image to have 7 copies of yourself whirling around you.

Weren't Psionics Professor X style mind powers?

My party was super racist against one homebrew race, because the antagonist is one of them, and it was one of the two only main non human race not represented by the party. Now that they added a member of said race, they are kinda getting more racist about the last one. To be fair, they are giant stag beetle/ pachyderm people with a love of necromancy.

World wide though, racism varies. Some lands, humans are lucky if they aren't enslaved. Others subjugate the rat folk to a heinous degree. Everyone tends to think of their own race as superior though.

Best race for a melee Dragon Sorcerer? I know it's a meme build but flying around with twinned and quickened Shocking Grasps sounds fun as fuck.

>To be fair, they are giant stag beetle/ pachyderm people
That's awesome, though.

>giant stag beetle/pachyderm

Some people have really weird fetishes.

Do go on about this stagyderm antagonist.

Halfu elf. Bonuses to dex, con, and change plus whatever other else you want thanks to the scag variants

People are racist in it, but the universe is a big place.

yeah i just wanted to check for my first character in 5e.

orphaned half-elf raised by a small olidammara cult. learns to beg/con/thieve. becomes enamored with magic after finding an aptitude in it. raids a mage college, steals spellbooks, cobbles them into his own own and basically practices magic as a kind of prayer to "change" which he feels olidammara represents.

at some iteration but going by the history of the class, there was some new age, psychedelic bullshit added to the mix.

tribality.com/2015/08/20/psionics-part-eight/

you can read about the history of the class and its evolution through time here, i haven't gone through all of it because holy fuck 8 parts, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Should I impose a penalty for trying to fire a bow while standing on someones shoulders?
The halfling is too small to actually shoot over most obstacles and the paladin has taken to hoisting them up onto things or putting then on their shoulders like a deadly piggy back ride

>orphaned half-elf
Smart, playing it safe by making the most cliched character possible. I like it.

>his own own

Disadvantage, but let them get a chariot if they become proficient with land vehicles in the long run if they want it.

Alright, i been lead into this thread to ask if you guys have any cool ideas that i can implement this is my first time dming any ideas for story would be great

Is the simplest fix to Arcane Archer to max their arrows equal to Battlemaster Dice? Maybe Battlemaster Dice -1?

Think Krogan i suppose? Stand about 7 feet tall typically, and live in a harsh desert climate. Humanoid with bulky builds and a large forehead crest. If you don't know better, you might assume their hard skin was chitin, and that they are descended from insects. In reality, they are more closely related to rhinos and elephants. They have redundant organs and nervous systems, alongside a specialized fatty insulation layer that has micro-filaments to adjust them for optimal heat or cold protection in the harsh desert.

Something like this, sorta? not this ripped though (usually)

Depends. If they're in a fight then that means the paladin is going to be useless, because he sure as shit shouldn't be trying to swing a sword and dodge attacks with a halfling on his shoulders, not to mention ranged attacks have penalties against enemies which are within melee range, so how the fuck is the paladin supposed to get in range?

The halfling should probably be having to make dexterity checks to avoid falling off as well.

yeah, i didn't want to write up a convoluted backstory so i kept it simple and decided to keep my character's development in the future. also, i kinda like the acolyte angle and the idea of non cleric/pally fanatics.

They are, but the implementation and specialisation of each mystic allows for different things. The Orders are based around ideals:
The Immortals base their research and most of their brainpower making themselves as hard to kill as possible, hardening skin, growing huge, overloading nerves to archive mythic speeds and forcing regeneration (and healing and kickstarting the recently deceased).
The Avatars manipulate people. They read and manipulate emotions, be it uniting people under a banner or being a walking eye of terror.
The Awakened are Professor X. Mind controlling, breaking wills and frying your brain is standard fare for them.
The Nomads are Wikipedia. They collect info and connect to the Noosphere, the worldwide stream of consciousness where bits and pieces of what people know float, so a Nomad can browse and learn how to pick a lock in a few minutes after dreaming a tutorial on MysTube. On their quest for knowledge they travel a lot and are experts on moving fast, particularly teleporting around the battlefield.
The Soul Knives stab. That's what they do. They can do less stuff than the rest of orders, but are damn good at stabbing with their brainblades.

I love it.

It's happened a few times now, mostly so the paladin can move the halfling to a better position while moving towards the front himself.
They've only used him as a shooting platform exclusively once where the paladin couldn't physically reach the enemies since they were on the other side of a river

Which is hilarious, that now that they're not just vaguely-infernal looking people, but flat-out look like devils, they're no longer devil-descent.
Though still not as funny as 'Half-Orcs were created by the incredibly powerful, highly advanced Hobgoblin Empire (stop laughing!) because we don't anyone thinking about rape.'

I was thinking more like a leathery Stun but that works too.

>actual half-devil can look more human that a 1/20 devil tiefling

THANKS D&D

Have any ideas about what you're doing for setting, or any of that?

Sorry if I was unclear. The antagonist is a different race. He is a Djinn. Not actually genies, they are humans born with a symbiotic magical parasite that lives in their skin. It appears like a unique tattoo, typically black, but other colors are possible. It normally shifts very subtly, and the tattoo is unique like a fingerprint.

Special mystics can predict the lives of Djinn with certainty by reading these markings, as they are tied quite closely with the strands of fate. Magic can influence this fate, making most people of the Djinn race some sort of magic user. While each mark is unique, they all share seven identical points, denoting something akin to the chakra points in Buddhism and yoga.

They were dreaming the WHOLE TIME

/pol/ pls go

For a political intrigue type maybe a Rakshasa is pulling the strings in a city. He manipulates everyone in order to control the city and sew anguish. Their ultimate goal is up to your discretion.

For something a bit more straightforward maybe a metallic dragon has stolen the kings prophet for fun and the party must reach him before a powerful general from a warring nation gets to him and uses his knowledge to crush them

That's still pretty cool.

Revolution/civil war.

Bonus points for getting the players to pick different sides.

As a DM who has run games from 1st-14th levels, I say that the monster mechanical complexity in 5e does not match that of 3.5e creatures with similar CRs in most cases, but it is still decently complex with stronger creatures, especially the ones with lots of traits. However, because 5e is simple, there is lots of room for adding more complexity via homebrewing new features for a monster, and the simplicity allows for easier manipulation of multiple "different" monsters. I will warn you that modules may not give you the complexity you are looking for.

Not familiar?
If you want, here is the racial trait for them. Not balanced against PHB, so be forewarned. They naturally make for great casters, as they don't need to shore up Dex, but you can say the same for barbarian or monk as well.