/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

Go home, 4fag. Oh wait, your edition is so shitty, it doesn't even have a general. No wonder you shitpost in ours.

Do your wranglers know you're loose.

What are some good house rules to keep the pace of the game going, speed up combat and avoid getting bogged down into sessions where nothing really happens?

I'd ban the Lucky feat, I'd make criticals simply do max damage, and if a player declares his intended course of action within 3 seconds of his turn, he gets either +1 Attack or +1 to his spell's saving throw DC for that turn

We play on a grid, but I'm thinking it may actually be making the game much slower.

I'm not the DM in this year's campaign, but I might DM next year. I haven't DM'ed in 5E so far.

I also think our DM has made a huge mistake by letting a player manage initiative. I always handled initiative as a DM in 3.5E and I used it to describe the fight and then immediately go to the next player's turn and ask him what he wants to do. Most people responded immediately, which kept the pacing up.

How do you do it?

But 5e's combat is already really fast.

Players have 15 seconds to make a turn.

It has simple combat, especially compared to 4e

Nowhere is this more visible than off-turn actions. In 4e you have immediate actions which can happen once per round, opportunity actions which can happen once per turn, and free actions which can occur whenever, but can only be used to attack once per turn.
In 5e you have reactions, once per round, and that's it

What does /5eg/ think about this one? Is it overpowered for a cantrip?

That's actually a pretty good way of looking at it, 4e mechanizes the wording more whereas 5e brings it back to a streamlined, and I hesitate to say it, a more natural wording of abilities.

Now if only they also made the natural wording less awkward sounding.

Crossbow Expert's wording is incredibly stupid to the point of almost seeming intentionally obtuse

What's stupid about it's wording?

>"You ignore the loading property of crossbows with which you are proficient"

>"When you make an attack action while holding a one-handed weapon, you may use your bonus action to attack with a loaded hand crossbow you are holding"

Hand crossbows are one-handed weapons, and in order to make the bonus action attack you must be holding it, and without the loaded property it is always considered loaded, so there is no possible scenario in which you can be holding the a loaded hand crossbow and not get the bonus action attack. So why isn't it just "When you make an attack action while holding a loaded hand crossbow, you can make a bonus action attack with the hand crossbow"? As it stands, it's almost as if it's trying to fool people into using two hand crossbows at once or a hand crossbow and a melee weapon

Since monsters will always be missing hit points the d12 is too much

Consider poison spray which is a d12 BUT has only 10ft. range and the more common resist/immune poison damage

It's fucked against undead.
So no it's balanced.

So it shat on a good thing and made combats boring? Or made them faster?

How much would you make an artisan toolset "Barber's Supplies" cost? I want my Monk to dig doin' people's hair.

Either or, it's a matter of opinion more than anything else

I'm fine with both systems personally

Just give players a time limit. Also forces them to be thinking about the session even when it's not their turn, as opposed to just checking their phone or something. 5e combat is already streamlined.

>As it stands, it's almost as if it's trying to fool people into using two hand crossbows at once or a hand crossbow and a melee weapon
But you can do those things.

Also, ignoring the "loading" property does not mean the crossbow loads itself. You can make multiple attacks per turn, which the "loading" property normally forbids, but you still need to reload the crossbow (most likely with a free hand).

drop the grid, would be your biggest time saver

I had to make a bunch of compromises because we didn't have anything but a tiny little table to play on. We dropped the grid, we rolled dice via our phones with quality dice apps, and the spellcasters and myself had spellviewer.exe on tablets. Physical dice are slow as you have to find them.

I actually made things potentially *slower* with a simplified speed factor initiative variant in the DMG (I dropped the modifiers and kept the style) and we rolled initiative each turn. Like this

>DM: Monsters (that you can see) appear to intend to do X
>Player A: I intend to do Y
>Player B: I intend to do Z
>Z Player C: I intend to do Q
>Player A: In that case I intend to do U
>DM: Roll initiative (everyone rolls, Player B is first, then a Dragon, Player A, then Player C, but Player A has action that clearly comes after Player C is done)
>DM: Player B you raise your arm and flames lick your shield as you deflect some of the dragon's breath just in time(Player B rolling) and you take x/2 damage and cast your (some spell) with a divine glow
Player B: (pronouncing/waving his hands in Somatic, Verbal spell gesture) Player A you have (spell effect) now
>DM: and the dragon begins to fly away but then Player C you pick up Player A and throw him at the dragon (Player C rolling)
>Player C: 18 ft. for 18 strength score if I get a running start right?
>DM: Right
>Player C: (HRRRUAAA-!)
>DM: And you meet the dragon mid-air (DM and Player A rolling, see DMG pg. 271) and you catch hold of his scaly back
>Player A: "(some RP phrase you'd expect from a halfling just hurled at a Dragon and is now climbing on top of)"

Was the Dragon 18 ft. away? Technically the Dragon gets to move before Player C and would be further away, but without a grid to check me I went with rule of cool unchallenged.

You CAN, but you WON'T, because doing so is strictly worse than just using a hand crossbow by itself

Ikr. Thought this was a Warcraft lore thread at first.

But the word "loaded" prevents you from using the feat with just one hand crossbow, doesn't it?

When you attack with it, it stops being loaded, so you can't take the bonus action with the same one crossbow
I'm not sure but I thought this is how it works

Nope! You'd think that, but FAQ confirms that because the "loading" quality is removed from the hand crossbow you can use it with one hand crossbow alone, in fact, it's effect is nearly the opposite, because you need a free hand to reload, so it's a one-off thing if you're using a hand crossbow in one hand and a different weapon in the other hand, while you can do it every round if you're using a hand crossbow alone

>Bland
Although a lot of that is up to the DM (and to a lesser degree, the players), no. Combat in 5e is not inherently bland.

The mechanics and classes allow for some quite dynamic combats.

Anyone else find creating NPCs and monsters in this edition the most organic and intuitive out of all the D&D editions? Even if sometimes you're also cribbing from class features.

If we want to get really rules fucked, couldn't you drop your melee weapon before firing the hand crossbow and then pick it back up?

>initiative
What you mentioned is true. Keep track of it yourself and use it to describe the flow of combat and keep your players in the zone.
This alone should make combat pretty good.

>encourage fast actions
I would prefer to just use the initiative thing, as well as wordly encouragement instead.

>crits, my suggestion:
Cap the original dice to the maximum, but roll the additional dice from the critical.

>grids
Grids are okay, they may make movement easier. Alternatively you can do theatre of the mind but for some players this is both less interactive and harder to visualise (both of which will slow down the game and make it less enjoyable for the players).

No.
Loading property is removed completly.
What reamains is ammunition quality, meaning you need free hand to reload.
JUST LIKE BOWS.
And yes you can bonus action attack with your hand x-bow if its your only weapon.
The wording is like this if someone decides to wield i dont know. A one handed melee weapon?
Read the fucking book you dumbheads

cont:
DM needs to know when to go slow and when to go fast
>DM: It takes an hour of time and you find the provisions you're looking for for 15g
or

>Player C: I'm looking for an odd item (Rolls a single persuasion check)
>DM: After (1d4) hours of searching you find a dirty dwarf with a jagged red scar running down his face selling such an item out of the back of The Ol' Troll Stop tavern" He offers to sell you the item for 100gp
>Player C: (rolling Insight) Is he trying to cheat me?
>DM: You sense that he is not.
>Player C: I buy it.

Players and the DM need to meta a little bit. If a character is described with only one or two recognizable features, they're a backround NPC and may not be recurring. If they have recognizable features and you quickly get a name, they're an anchor NPC and may likely be recurring. If interaction begins with the NPC voicing an introduction, there's something important going on. If *they* initiate more in-depth interaction, it's considered player agency saying "I like this concept, I want things to go in this direction" and there's an unspoken agreement that everybody has a chance to do that but nobody should get selfish

>DM: (elaborately describes a room. There's a trap)
>DM: (checking player passive perception) "You note a hole..."
>Player: (Thieves Tool/Dexterity check)
>DM: You notice a potential danger- a wire runs between the door and a needle trap, and skilfully disarm the trap.

Traps are tricky. They need to exist, traps need to be designed well, and have a purpose and add to the theme overall, but they don't often need to be more than "one and a half" rolls. Things need to keep moving quickly.

>Players: (light PC group interaction, its safe now, etc)
>Players each call out one thing they'd like to look at closer
>Each gets a perception or investigation check, possibly discovering things
then move on.

We can get ~7 encounters done in a 3 hour period

sure, but your DM would probably impose some sort of damage penalty on your melee weapon if he's not literally sucking your dick about it.

when people see a 20 they should just immediately drop an additional damage die. it's that simple.

It's to contrast with attacking someone with an unloaded hand crossbow, like pistol whipping them. Nah, you shoot them.

How is a beastmaster supposed to adventure? For instance you get somewhere you need to climb a rope or scale a very steep incline. How is your boar climbing up? You need to shimmy across a thin ledge. How is your bear getting across?

Hey I started playing this with some mates and am really enjoying it but not sure how many times we can all get together to play, how/where do you guys find a new group to play DND with that aren't from your friendship circles?

Take a really small doggo as your beast and carry them.

Would you guys play in fantasy colonial australia, but with your standard "medieval" tech levels?
I was designing a setting and suddenly realised that's what it basically boils to.

What if instead of having Feats, which are often the worst part of 5e, Martial classes like the Fighter, Monk, and Barbarian just got a chance to go up to a maximum of 22 on the physical scores.

Barbarians can already do that.

I don't like this desu

on Str and Con. Just make that +4 and cap at 26 now.

>Feats, which are often the worst part of 5e

>worst part
u wot m8?

feats are shit
grappler feat is shit
keen mind is shit
Athlete is in the right place but seriously you gonna lose an ASI for that?
Heavy Armor Mastery? Holy fuck way to destroy math simplicity
Lucky? muh action resolution
Great Weapon Mastery? Yeah sure let's just bork the DPR values that the rest of the system clearly doesn't take into account
UA feats for races? UNFILTERED AIDS
UA feats for skills? only decent set of feats they've ever made

FEATS SUCC
DEAL WITH IT FROG MAN

The only thing worse than feats is not having feats

Can my cleric worship the rainbow serpent?

If so, yes

What's the toughest monster you should throw against 1st level characters?

terraceque

Feats that are good are bad design. Bad feats are good design, so don't take them because they're bad. Hoooly shit, you're dumb.

>Feats, which are often the worst part of 5e,

M8 stop the b8.

The feats need a little bit of rebalancing (beefing up the bad ones).
That's all there is to it.

Fighters have the best feat support and Barbarians don't loose out either.

Monks are fucked over because they need their ASI to get their AC up.
And there's barely any feat beyond Mobile that let's them shine.

Greataxe Bugbear.

omg mindblowing thought

feats destroy balance between the martial classes

maybe if you just dumped the feats you'd have 3 distinct and balanced martial classes?

>"feats destroy balance between the martial classes"
>doesn't go into detail explaining this statement

Magic initiate (warlock) is pretty good for monks

Hex has no saving throw so you don't need high charisma, and monks make a lot of attacks at low levels

Is it worth taking the warcaster feat on my paladin?

Usually not, it's a nice feat, but it's competing with polearm master and great weapon master and paladins don't get that many ASIs

But Hex is a Concentration spell so it kinda ends up weak + it's only once per long rest.

The best feats for monks are mobile and alert.

>Fighters scale better with feats that are easy to obtain for them
>Other martials don't scale as well from feats and they are harder to obtain for them anyway
It isn't rocket science user. The only reason /5eg/ fervently defend shit like PAM, GWM, Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert is because they have a hard on for battle master fighters

Oh so it is...

Hm, another reason why pact of the blade warlocks are completely useless

Monks have one advantage tho when they reach lvl 14 and use Hex.
They have proficiency in all saving throws.

I think a monk archetype that was centered arround using ki to cast hex could actually be pretty great.
Someone posted something like that a month or so ago.

I actually haven't gotten my head around it yet

yes
5e is really the edition for DMs

Is that Ahriman after he finds the BL?

Guys, I need critique.
I've DMed a campaign of Curse of Strahd, and now I'm doing it again - but with a twist.
Normally, after the party is done with the Death House, they step outside and find themselves in village Barovia, where they meet Ireena. The instantly learn that Strahd is their villain, and from there on their quest is protecting her from him.

This time, however, I've moved the house far away from the village. When they step outside of it, they will wander the wilds for a while and fend off from the beasts, until they find a black stagecoach with Strahd and Rahadin inside.
Strahd offers them help and takes them to his castle, where they spend several days. He's open about being a vampire, but insists that he's a nice vampire - cursed by the Dark Powers, and he seeks to be free from his curse. To do it, he needs to reunite with his true love - Ireena - and he offers a great reward to the party if they break his curse.
Later, however, as they wander Barovia, they come to realize that no, actually, Strahd is a liar and a cunt, and Ireena must be saved from him.

How's that?

What?

Sounds interesting enough I guess. Will this be with players familiar with the module or no however?

Not familiar.

>Anyone else find creating NPCs and monsters in this edition the most organic and intuitive out of all the D&D editions? Even if sometimes you're also cribbing from class features.

If you mean that I can just pull some numbers out of my ass and it won't be any worse than the shit in the MM, then sure, yeah, whatever.

Either it casts spells or it's just some meat that hits hard. 3.5 actually provided concrete rules for making spellcasting monsters or big dumb brutes, 5e just tells you to handwave it. How dumbed down do you need your game to be?

Fucking casuals should stay out of DMing.

Was thinking of taking Magic Initiate- WIZ for Mystic (Immortal) to get some decent attacking power, taking damaging cantrips- Booming Blade as of now and Create Bonfire- (Yes I know it's a meme cantrip but I'm remaking a character from the past who used it as their primary attack)

Looking through the spells for a Level 1 WIZ I see Jump.

>Jump
>Duration: 1 minute
>You touch a creature. The creature's jump distance is tripled until the spell ends.

And I consider Brute Force (Immortal Discipline).
>Mighty Leap (1–7 psi). As part of your movement, you jump in any direction up to 20 feet per psi point spent.

>With Jump active you could go full anime and jump up to 420 feet in a single jump once per turn for a minute (until you run out of brain juice)

To be fair, the most common undead (zombies and skeletons) are still harmed by necrotic damage.

Then it should be a fun twist.
I enjoy the concept of introducing the villain before the PCs might have any reason to think they're a villain.
Be sure to have him as pleasant as possible though. He's unnerving sure because he has presence and is a freaking vampire but he's trying to be a really swell guy.
Just leave hints that he's not all that he is letting on to be and after they've left confirm it more and more

Continuing this meme
>Bestial Form (Flight)
>Grapple enemy (Advantage on Grapple if focusing on Brute Force)
>Jump 420 feet in the air
>Jump 420 feet in the air
>Fly the last 30 feet (Assuming you have a 30 ft movespeed)
>Release enemy, say something edgy and/or smug
>Watch them plummet and take 42d6 falling damage on impact

Would you allow a beast master to tame white dragon, who behave more like feral beasties than anceint schemer.

Even with an intelligence of 5, a white dragon wyrmling is still going to have a sense of being superior to everything around it.

Man I fucked up that post.

>45d6, since you'd fly the remaining 30 feet

Good luck getting back to ground level in one or less turns though.

falling damage caps out at 20d6.

>not just falling then flying before you hit the ground
do it like an eagle
and eagle of grappling

Ah, that makes sense. In either case 20d6 damage is plenty for something as stupid as this, and that means you'd only have to spend 3 PSI points on the jump to get to that height.

Freefalling back to ground level then flying would be fastest but you'd want to fly the enemy up to 200ft (3 PSI would net you 180 with this) before dropping them.

So
>Grapple
>Jump 180 ft, fly 20 ft
>Release enemy
>Freefall until near combat area again, use remaining 10 ft of movement to slow down fall
>Repeat next turn

you're literally bad at tabletop games if you believe this

I can't find rules for using acrobatics to reduce falling damage or for how fall damage interacts with jump height

Fall damage is 1d6 per 10 feet. Monks and magic items can reduce falling damage

So a 20th level barbarian takes 1d6 damage every time s/he makes a high jump?

>Take a coach to Castle Ravenloft
>This one vampire guy is really nice
>But I can't stand the screams of a thousand innocents emanating from his elf friend
>Rahadin is the villain.

RAW, yes. I would argue no, because it's not really falling, it's jumping.

Is there a reason to go to Gauntlgrym in SKT? Is there a quest hook or something?

Drow trying to steal the primordial fire spirit that lives under the great forge. Maybe the players hear that there have been drow raiding parties recently

Just have them start in krezk or where, you know the abbey, and have them take forever to get to the village.

a fairly good one. Drow hired by Duke Zalto of the fire giants steal Maegera the Dawn Titan to power the fire giant's furnace in Ironslag so they can rebuild the Vonindod: The Titan of Death.

It's got a small script but it's pretty loose. A smart DM can really make those Drow Elite Warriors + Shadow Demons + Drow Mages feel fun as the Drow retreat and escape through secret passages.

Stowing a weapon is a free action+ but stowing a weapon and then withdrawing a weapon on the same turn is a standard action, with the exception of the dual wielder feat.

>3.5 actually provided concrete rules for making spellcasting monsters or big dumb brutes
And they 99.9999999% of the time produced something completely unusable for some reason or another.

Grappler is excellent on monks, actually.