/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General

Arcane Archer looks pretty fun, so does Ancestor Barb.

I was fine with original Kensai but this one's much more polished and the Swords Bard is much better, still not the best but feels different to Valor now.

Also am I the only person who thought the original Favored Soul was best?

is there something like super hero 5e?

Jack of All Trades means "can do almost anything" not "does everything".

Certain Monk archetypes.

mystic i guess

That sounds like a neat way to have melee capabilities on a warlock without having to invest a lot. How does armor of agathys work with Warlock slots? Since Warlock does get 9th level spells can you decide to cast it at whatever level you want?

warlocks casts all of their known spells at the highest level they can (up to 5). their mystic arcanum slots dont work with their regular known spells, and raw you cannot select a lower level spell and upcast it at the level of your arcanum, though your gm would probably allow it if you asked

More like mutants and masterminds with 5e rules

I don't think so. So you want basically the same kind of character building as M&M with the simplified d20 Dis/Advantage of 5e? I would actually play the shit out of that.

I really see a lot of potential with 5e rule set, i will try to come with some stuff and let other people bash it, but i would be cool to make a community efort

It's one of the simpler, easy to balance things I've seen. The fact flat advantage never goes too high, you can use proficiency as an easy marker to show a character's stronger and most of the easier math for little +2's and shit has already been worked out make it easy to balance.

I don't think I've seen any real hacks of the system yet though which is pretty weird, I mean 3.5e had quite a few at this point.

I'd kill for someone to make a good Shadowrun ripoff with the system. I've never been able to figure Shadowrun out at all even though I love it.

are you freaking me? i was also looking for something like shadow run or warhammer 40k

Huh, kinda wonder how much demand there is for it. From a quick google search the all I can find is Apocalypse stuff. Really depends on how much longer 5e's around for to see if someone else would make it.

Also sort of wonder how hard it would be. I feel like converting 5e to classless would be hard but maybe it's easier to change the setting to work within a class design.

My party went to hell once. A teleportation spell went horribly wrong and we ended up in a dimensional trap that dumped us into hell, where we found a settlement of other unfortunates. It was presided over by a shadowy red dragon that had made a deal with the devils. Ended up getting her to send us back to the material plane by helping her outmaneuver some of her more conniving foes. We fought a 30 foot minotaur and it was awesome.

I've never played m&m, what is character creation like? I guess I mean, what is your character expected to be able to do?
I know shadowrun is geared around puddles of d6s, where your attributes and your skills contribute to these pools and you increase both through character progression. Does 5es skill selection and proficiency bonus really translate that well?
5e is really only features, classes are collections of features, races and backgrounds are collections of features that you get at first level, it's really only a matter of how you collect them together. If you wanted an absolute base model to work from:
>have three archetypes: caster, martial, other (or whatever)
>take all class features, feats, race bonuses, whatever and divide them into those categories
>assign a resource cost to these features based on when they become available
>based on your archetype, you spend that resource to get those features. Features out of your archetype cost more

I enjoy the simplicity of 5e from a GM perspective but it seems their simple style made the game unbalanced due to their laissez faire attitude to the whole rulebook. It requires a bit of homebrewing to balance out PHB classes but it also makes homebrewimg rules easier because of the simplicity of the system. It is the perfect system (other than stealth and grapple rules) to adapt to other genres and settings

>Hell
Yeah, they're on a train ride out of hell right now. It was western themed, and all the devils used guns and had thick drawls.

I just read the Feats for Races and what he'll is going on? Buffing everything is the same as buffing nothing. All the ASIs and awesome perks with no downsides at Lv 1...

Maybe you should read it again, you might have a learning deficiency.

>how much longer 5e's around
is there another fantasy heavy hitter coming in the next three years?
It uses dnd attributes and you have points to buy powers that you can customize, just look for x popular character mutant and masterminds and you will find the character sheet for it

also for shadowrun you dont have to translate the system just the fluff

They're still feats (requiring spending an ASI), just with being a certain race as a requirement. They're not a buff to everything and GWM/SS are still miles above all of them.

At least them giving +1s alongside the features mean you might take them at some point instead of not at all.

Okay /5eg/, I asked a while back for some help on this upgradable weapon I built for my campaign and at the time I only had the first form and some ideas about how it would upgrade.

>Awaken: Slay 20 living creatures with the weapon.

>Exalted: Slay 5 living creatures while blinded with the weapon.

Do you all think these are acceptable conditions? What would you recommend changing?

The current wielder is a TWF assassin, with no idea how to upgrade it or even knows that it can.

Yes, yes, I got the upgrade names from Critical Role, I think it's a cool concept.

Then it should be called "Jack of Most Trades"

I have a 17 in dex on my monk and no other usable odd ability scores (just 11 str), what feat should I grab to get the +1 in dex? Or, should I take +1 in two abilities and a feat for another stat later?

I would have done something like, the thing upgrades after a couple levels after the rogue kills something important with it, a badass creature or important baddie. Then it would get a power based on the bad guy, and hopefully they would coincide with things the rogue likes to do.

Why would they nerf favored soul again..?

I had an idea to do that, but that's reversed for some other weapons I had in mind. More role-play based items.

Are the demon summoning spells from That Old Black magic any good?

If you just want shadowrun fluff, then all you have to do to play shadowrun in 6e is change the fluff. Swap skill names for relevant things or add them. Maybe make some new classes. Guns would be more relevant so you'd probably want to put some more emphasis on the rules for cover.

Because Favored Soul is a SORCERER.

[SPOILER]Meanwhile Theurge WIZARD will be buffed in the next UA. Calling it now.

what's a good hook for an all-mystic one shot?

You're the hex-men, out to fight the brotherhood of evil mages.

It's late... Reserved* not reversed.

Well, in that case the progression of abilities the sword has seem fine. All I can say is that go ahead and try it as is, and if it turns out it's taking fucking forever for the rogue to get twenty kills, like to the point where the new abilities aren't going to make any difference for him, just give it to him earlier.

Which is the best version of favored soul?

Escaped government experiments trying to develop mental powers. Bonus points for cold war setting.

Athlete or +1 DEX/+1 WIS and round the latter up with Observant.

They're... Situational. When they're useful they're a horde of demons to slaughter your enemies. When the higher level ones go wrong they can easily fuck over your party just because you lost concentration.

Pretty much this, make money, weapons and augmentations more imprortent. Add in tech skills for hacking that get penatlies if you're also a spellcaster.

Really it might actually balance things a bit better with guns and augmentations.

First one imo. It was a pretty good gish.

Go +1 dex +1 wos, I suppose. And later get a skill feat that gives you +1 wis if your DM will allow it, otherwise I'm sure there's some +1 wis feat in the book.

Okay user, I'll do that. Thanks!

It's time to sleep, user.

Augs are available to any character in SR, right? Would the 5e equivalent of gaining augs be feats, or something else? Would the "humanity" cost (forget the name) be its own attribute?

>not just always banning wizards

He's right though, WotC hates sorcerers. They exist only as multi-class bait for the other charisma-based classes.

What's the fix on dragonborn, again?

Hardmode: don't say "ban them". One of my players got reincarnated into a dragonborn, and he's a dex fighter. How do I bring the race in line with the others?

Make the breath weapon a bonus action.

Alright boys, tell me your definition of min-maxing in 5e. Is it stacking AC? Standing on the edge of the crater Druid?

Could actually use the Honor stat or whatever from the DMG. Call it humanity.

Make it start at a 10 or 15 on all characters and as it gets lower it puts a negative modifier onto your spellcasting. So if it was 8 your spell saves and attacks get a -1 for example.

Trove > Adventures > Tales of the Yawning Portal

doing stat rolls just so you can miraculously get 3 18s and an appropriate race to max your attack stat.

Anyone else have a lost-cause player in your group? Someone who refuses to engage in the world? Someone who won't bother filling out any of the backstory stuff on the character sheet? Someone who is glued to their phone the entire game? Someone with no motivation to actually be adventuring with the rest of the party? Someone who you feel bad about kicking out because you've been friends with them for years, and also he's roommates with the player hosting the game?

That's all?

>Artificer UA
>Specializations include Alchemist and Gunsmith
>No Tinker specialization
>Only one tinker ability and it's basically a summon

Literally why?

Because it's a class playtest that will be changed, probably dramatically, before it's ever put out to print.

it was rushed out. they'll spin tinker off to its own specialization before it's officially published, watch

Multiclassing and feats, having a 'build' at all.
Which, btw, I personally like, and feels it makes up for a lot of the distance between casters and martials, and allows for more in-party synergies.
It's fun, and makes for a better game than 'straight classes, no feats' (that's a great option for casters, not so much for martials), but it's also the most power hungry thing you can do with your levels.

Can you give an example on what the hell a "Tinker" ability is?

Why not playtest a Tinker Artificer though?

Defensive duelist.

Does any other DM obsess over how they name things? I rewrite nordic or anglo names for cities and things or slightly repronounce greek or christian mytholigical entities to create many things and I nearly obsess over my naming paradigm.

Typically it is looking up random anthological stuff like my elvish kingdom is Sídheim (Síd being a fairy mound and heim meaning home). Or it is a muddling of words (cobbletown: a town centered on an ancient cobble road is called Cobton)

Also am I autistic?

Basically discount batman kind of stuff. The ability to build/maintain/and use small/medium animate/inseminate constructs with various uses that can be used in and/or outside of combat.

Conversative: add Darkvision, buff Breath at highers levels to 4d6/6d6/8d6 at 5/11/17 instead of PHB's 3d6/4d6/5d6 at 6/11/16 (who thought giving +1d6 every 5 levels a good idea?)

Less tame: add claw (1d4 unarmed strike), scale armor (+1 AC when unarmored) along with the conversative buffs. (Basically make the Dragon Hide racial feat baseline)

crazy: breath weapon scales every 4 levels as 2d6/4d6/6d6/8d6/10d6 (1/5/9/13/17)

Doesn't work while wielding Quarterstaves, the best Monk weapon.

There's different tiers to it. Picking a race that has a +2 to the stat that the class you wanna play uses most is min-maxing, but is still really logical and anybody who has the most base understanding of games at all can see how that would be helpful. Maybe it's because that just taking base steps to maxong, but doesn't involve a lot of min.

The point where it gets annoying is when a player takes levels from four different classes in order to achieve a boring "build" that does a lot of damage a couple of times a day (maxing) at the expense of the features they would get from pursuing all those classes normally (min).

It's really up to the player whether or not the character is accepted or not. Is the reasoning for this character having all these abilities a bunch of bullshit? And by bullshit, I mean they either ignore it or conversely write dozens of pages of backstop with the sole purpose of justifying this mess of character levels. Is the player doing this when everybody else is just taking the classes as given, playing the characters as they develop? Is the player utterly incapable of selling this character as believable in any way?

Basically, what I'm getting at, is that min-maxing is just a thing that occurs. What makes it bad is when the person who's min-maxing is that guy. The confusion comes about because so many that guys min-max to get shitty characters. Some people see the symptom as the sole problem.

Everybody does it. It's part of being a fa/tg/uy, shit's important to you, you end up slightly obsessing over it.
Just be aware, nobody cares all that much.
Naming conventions can show the cultural allegiance of regions, how the languages intermingle, all that fun worldbuilding shit... players won't care much, if you're writing a novel readers won't care much. You will, as you do, and those names can act as memory anchors for your plans, but that's all there's to it.

What's even a viable 4-way multiclass?

Dex and wis. Wis and con. And if he gets that far, he can take durable or something to round off con.

UA Ranger 1/Rogue Assassin 3/Warlock Blade 3/Sorcerer the rest of the way, just to say the obvious, low-endurance but stupidly burst-driven.

I often let random people "see beyond the dm screen" (see notes or hear detailed explanations on the meanings of encounters) because I think it's helpful for our group since it's a more newbie group. I'm a first time gm but I took it upon myself to worldbuild an entire continent and ro make it fresh I ripped naming methodology from multiple sources and bastardized Fearunian religion on planar stuff (essentially gutting it to simply the inner planes with heavy modification).

Does this seem too ambitious? I'm trying to make a believable, lived in world without it being too convoluted

It depends on the scope of the campaign(s) you are currently playing, and plan to play, in that world.
Generating content that the players won't see, not now and not later, is a bit wasteful - it can be good as training, or just because you wanted to put some ideas on paper, but in the end if you won't use it in any way it's wasted.

This is a personal opinion, but after a while you're better off doing something else with that creative energy, and switch from worldbuilding to novel writing, or find a new group and start an other campaign.

I have always had trouble with questions like this. I feel like min-maxing might be inevitable as if you learn even a decent amount of information on the game you will unintentionally start doing it or begin to feel compelled to do it. I can definitely say Min-Maxing can be fine as long as the player and the PC are not overbearing with it. I have a problem with it when the player is being That Guy or it makes no sense for the PC.

For example, if a Barbarian who has never had any interest in magic or any inspiration for magic suddenly next level wants to dip into Wizard to get portent just cause its strong is a problem to me.

I find it less of a problem when it's tied to the character's story or can be a natural progression such as Martial Class/Fighters.

I mostly built it to withstand multiple campaigns. The ones that other people tried to run were half baked and poorly conceived so we abandoned them until I started DM'ing. We now fully use my campaign with random offshoots to playtest character concepts.

I built my world in a way that we can run multiple separate campaigns with distinct slightly unconventional designs because I built it with hyperbolic flavored regional points but put enough ground between them that they could be isolated for 20 level campaigns (presumably, we're going to span about 3-5% of map space for 5 levels).

I built the space segmented nearly in the vein of the US (two major mountain ranges creating unique flavor for west/middle/east and tenperature segmented to north/south) and also positiones magical modifications (a permenant door to shadowfell in the north woods and to feylands in the south woods) to add a more hyperbolic and regional influence. This gave options for a wide variety of adventure styles and flavors but doesn't railroad anything.

I guess the concern would be I'm spending too much on worldbuilding

I'm thinking of playing a Dwarven Ancestor Barbarian. He was an urchin raised in a Human Orphanage and never knew his family.

He read up about Dwarven history and always felt like he must have had a great family line, he's adventuring to try and uncover the secrets of his clan and figure it out.

Now I just need a reason why he's a raging madman and why he's got spirits that help him without ruining who his family is. Thoughts?

Think of it this way. What's a universe that's always described as lived-in? That would be star wars. Why do they call it lived in? Because they filmed the first one in a desert and covered everything in dirt. Any world-building shit, like the kind of stuff that actually explained how the galaxy worked, was all EU, meaning extraneous people who were drawn in by the dirt were the ones that came up with the big-picture stuff.

What I'm getting at is, players are going to be much more compelled by the smallest details, rather than the biggest one. I'd say it's rare to have players that care about the governing bodies of the world, the etymologies of the local language, the economics of the region, versus those that are much more interested in how the NPCs always say some funny sounding phrase whenever they greet the players, or it's a custom for people to have shrines in their house with a few gold coins in them. They're not gonna care what the shrine is for, but they'll care about them coins. Just throw dirt on everything, that is the way to get your players interested.

Speaking of which, I don't always bother naming my NPCs, especially when I'm forced to come up with one on the spot (players are in town and wanna visit a shop, etc) and when that happens, the players are perceptive enough to note the theme or real-world ties of the place they're in, and I'll ask them to name the NPC and they'll give me a name that fits thematically. Even if it sometimes ends up being a stupid name. But the stupid names it what makes it fun for my players, and more importantly makes that NPC memorable. If it's memorable enough, he may get tied in to some story stuff.

Never did I spot how obvious this was until you pointed it out.

The spirits show up but of course don't state who they are. The fact that spirits have stuck around and surround him must mean they must have belonged to important dwarves. That is what spurs him to find their identities.

As for why he rages, a lot of kids end up emotionally weird after being in orphanages. Maybe the person who ran it was an abusive bitch and one day you snapped. Or maybe it's just part of your bloodline.

>why he's got spirits that help him
how about the obvious, he knows the rituals to appease the spirits (part of those secrets you mention) so they help him?
anybody could do it, but the rites of passage needed would mean, mechanic-wise, multiclassing as a barbarian.

I come here to learn about min/max ideas then outlaw them in games. You can't GWM on reach weapons or use Sharpshooter with crossbows. You can use a modified version of Revised Ranger and you can use a homebrewed Sorcerer or the PHB version. UA is off limits unless expressly allowed.

I focus on fun but a huge part of making everyone have fun is balance so you need to shut down powergamers

Pray tell, do you outlaw sorlock? Palalock?

>Not outlawing the cancerous mechanic that is multi-classing altogether.

Seriously, 90% of the exploits in this game from multiclassing. If you have a character who can't made with a tweak or two to existing classes, then you need to tear up your character sheet and come back with someone who's not an anime character.

I do that too. I talk to players about their ties to the world and build off that. I did an imorovised memory sequence with a plauer and built the world from that.

I do have one issue in that one of my players is so focused on payment and money but they are all on the frontier with loggers and fur traders thar don't have the coin to pay people. I give them the leveled encounter rewards but he insists poor quest givers should also reward them accordingly

If that's the balance that works for your group, that's great, but those are some quite restrictive and specific rules.
And wtf, is it really broken to GWM or Sharpshooter on things that can get a bonus action attack with a feat? It doesn't feel like it, have you run the numbers?

I limit GWM and Sharpshooter mostly because they limit flavor through RAW. If you want to be the best archer you need to use a crossbow. That's retarded. If you want to be the best melee fighter you need a halberd. Fucking retarded. Limiting those feats opens up more varied builds. An archer with a bow can get extra damage from sharpshooter or an extra attack through CE. Now there is more versatility. It hinders mstagaming and it's easier than simply outlawing feats altoghether

>Oh no, fighters are getting too viable! Better make sure they can't do jack shit with their ASIs except maybe one weapon feat and getting their stat to 20 so everyone plays paladin or druid or whatever instead!
>Oh, also, you can use homebrewed shit
>Modified revised ranger

It's one of these guys who acts like they know how exactly 5e works and tries to homebrew everything in or out and fucks it up.

The real problem isn't multiclasses, usually, except a few very specific ones you can just say 'No' to. And even then stuff like moon druid is still stupid.

And yes, an extra 15 damage a turn for an ASI can break things

>exploits
In 5e they're so watered down you can put the difficulty of an encounter back where you want it by adding an extra goblin or two.
The to-hit math is pretty good, there's no real way for players to always hit or to never be hit at all, and no way to lock enemies out of combat without using Concentration or, in the monk's case, resources and multiple rolls with real chances to fail.
The rest is damage and hps, you can easily throw in an extra bag of hps or two if needed.

Banning/limiting these things doesn't help. If you want people to take a variety of builds, you should really give them the shit for free instead of taking it away, and then they'll be able to do whatever because they haven't specialized themself into an area.

see
I actually would prefer to keep them as is to balance martial vs caster. Problem is they shoehorn flavor and RP is more important than numbers. If min/maxing martials NEED to run the same config to compete then the system is broken. I simply removed a min/max concept to force more versatile concepts. I'm also trying to find ways to make dual wielding and bows competive but until then I'd rather not deal with min/max classes

Warlock smites give a lot more oomph to bows, and bows only, Elven Accuracy makes hiding after a single shot a great option, an Elf Fey Warlock-Arcane Trickster should be among the most damaging ranged characters, and can only do it with bows, not xbows.

>inseminate objects

l l lewd