/5eg/ Fifth Edition General: "Stop making shitty generals" edition

Ok, that establishes that all of you are familiar with TTRPG and dungeons and dragons, but haven't always had fun sessions.

What don't you like about low level? Too high a mortality rate? Not super-powered enough? Monsters seem dull?

why do capstones suck so much? The last two levels are dead for almost every class.

starting from 1st level is the best way to understand the system, just level them up quickly.
there's reasons why it's designed such way.

Because the designers knew nobody plays on 15+ levels anyway, so they just didn't care.

5e's design philosophy is to be fucking terrified of people having fun so everything has to be watered down until the point of uselessness, except for high level spells, those are apparently fine...

Rather than namefag, I'm just going to start using Pawn Art (I use cardboard pawns) to differentiate my responses.

Keep in mind that 6th level is a pretty substantial level. It DOES free you up to use a lot more of the Monster Manual, but it also makes CR1 stuff and lower more annoying than anything. And the MM is heavily weighted towards lower CR.

mortality rate and a lot of the classes (from what ive seen) get their cool shit around lvl 5-6
as ive said above we already have experience with dnd its just i have no experience dming

>Playing to level 20

You might as well just play BESM or some system that's actually geared towards retarded anime power levels.

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Delete this picture.

＿(┐「ε:)_

Starting out with all your "cool shit" is like opening your Christmas presents in November, but it's your game.
What's your biggest concern as a DM?
Players not following the adventure?
Not being sufficiently descriptive?
Things bogging down?

Here's a key thing to remember, that a lot of DM's ignore. Your job isn't to "Almost beat the PCs" necessarily. Your job is to allow them to win in a manner that's exciting to them, and that gives them a sense of accomplishment in the game.

Wizards did testing and found that hardly anyone plays past level 10, so they front loaded classes and got lazy on the back half because it was easier.

so, what are some fun side-quests you guys have been on recently?

we passed through a small town that had a very fresh grave dug up and the corpse plundered, whereupon we started investigating and asking around. the old gravedigger had fairly recently disappeared, the new one was a drunk who had, in a drunken stupor thought he had seen someone scurry away after he went out for a piss, the corpse belonged to a young girl that had been sick for a long time, and regularly visited the old hedge witch, the wife of the old gravedigger was sweet but fairly blunt, and it seemed she had something to hide.

after a lot of investigating with both social encounters and borderline magnifying glass tier looking for clues stuff so did we manage to sneak into the wifes house when she was out, found her basement to find a half-butchered corpse of a young woman along with, as the other clues would implicate, signs of a monster.

once confronted so did she admit and revealed her "true form". the dm claimed her to be a "wendigo", a human cursed for eating human flesh (she was forced to survive starvation) she and the old gravedigger had, despite that, fallen in love and settled in the town, where he had brought her chunks of the recently passed and then lived in solitude. he died a while ago, and after she had eaten the last of him so was she forced to try to try to get her own food.

the paladin readied his weapon and gave a short speech of her not getting away with this, and she went "okay". the paladin got a slight bit confused before she explained "i don't want to keep doing this anymore, i just want to be with [husband]... just bury me next to where i buried his bones". the paladin got really uncomfortable but went through with a quick mercy-killing and burial next to a small stream of water in a meadow. we got the quest reward for solving the mystery (with some details -out of respect- left out) but we also walked away with a wonderfully bittersweet feeling.

man that was fun.

tg, Curse of Strahd references being possible to ressurect Doru Donavich, a vampire Spawn, but the rules of ressurection are iffy in regards of how they apply to Undead.

I can know you can ressurect them once you kill them, but how does the 10 days period apply then? Doru has been turned for a year.

my biggest concern is that it wont run smoothly and that ill be checking the rules so often that there will be large amounts of time where nothing is happening because im a forgetful faggot

Stacks of powers don't make for interesting characters (or story). It just makes for a shit-ton of powers and abilities. The GM's storytelling ability, the players willingness to "be" a character, and the sum of their adventures together is what makes a high level character a fun experience.

I say this as someone who's DMed campaigns into the high teen levels on 3 occasions, and had long-running games in other systems.

It IS harder for they young crowd to sustain a running campaign over the course of 3-4 years, as life tends to intervene and mess things up.

It's less that people don't WANT to play past level 10, it's just that it's damn tricky keeping a group of players together for the time necessary.

My current 5e group is well into it's second year, but we are older players (most of them close to 30, myself close to 50) so our routines and schedules are pretty stable.

5e is fine at high levels because a lot of your earlier level abilities mature and become more powerful, and the sum of them is quite strong.
Spellcasters get mighty magics, Martials are wielding legendary weapons and armor and all that.

Still forgot an OP question. tsk tsk.

well then, just be a sensible, reasonable human being about your campaign.

don't fumble your die all the time, but try to preserve the momentum if possible. player agency is the most important thing to me, how every decision must be meaningful and consequences must be real and tangible.
the objective is for everyone to have fun, and everyone means not the majority/minority at the expense of the rest.
talk to you players if problems arise, like normal, sensible and reasonable human beings. don't be afraid to kick problem players out. don't set your players for failure with poorly informed decisions, rolls shouldn't automatically stop anyone from success. if you need time to figure something out, don't be afraid to stop for a moment. if you are making your own campaign, don't bother detailing everything, chances are most things will go unused. let your players tell you their stories and incorporate them into your world, if appropriate, so that they feel like part of it. make their backstories matter and the hooks personal when appropriate, again to make them feel like part of the world. reward creative and intelligent play, even at expense of rules and prepared outcomes/plothooks. don't mary sue your npcs/bbeg, let your bbeg have reasonable motives and intentions. play your mobs intelligently and balance your combat as to not trivialize or ostracize part of your players. balance between combat, exploration and social interaction and rotate the spotlight to give everyone a chance to perform as they envisioned their characters.

if playing with a module, remember the module is mostly a guideline, if you have to depart from it or expand out of it, don't be afraid to do so.

and most important of all, make sure everyone agrees to the overall tone and intention of the campaign from the start. failed expectations are the single most important cause of run failure.

daily reminder Scourge Aasimar Sun Soul Monk is super fun even though you're behind the curve a little

Yeah, resurrection does cut it.
Raise Dead has a 10 days limit, Resurrection's is 100 years.

Spellcasters should be familiar with their own spells (another advantage of starting low level), and the resolution of most situations uses simple d20 mechanics/advantage/constested rolls. It's not a particularly rules-dense system.

Your biggest concern is keeping the encounters and challenges interesting and not letting them bog down. Don't get the party stuck in a Big Fight against monsters that are too samey or lack pizazz. A big pack of ogres might be a challenge, but it's a boring fucking challenge unless you give some of the ogres some weird attacks or behaviors.

If you're going into the 4th round of a fight, you better have a plan for something interesting to happen in the 4th to keep everyone's attention focused, be it environmental, some 3rd party monster showing up and attacking both sides, or some other crazy development.

>"Stop making shitty generals" edition

Don't be a fucking shithead memefaggot, OP.

Rogue, Barbarian, Druid, Paladins, and Wizard get pretty cool shit.

Is it possible to make a Dex based tank in 5e?

What kind of special properties would a sentient weapon made by Cloud Giants have?

I've given one of my players a greatsword made by cloud giants that he has to funnel magic into to 'level it up', basically turn it from a +1 weapon to a +2 weapon with one special property.

What should that property be?

>If you're going into the 4th round of a fight, you better have a plan for something interesting to happen in the 4th to keep everyone's attention focused, be it environmental, some 3rd party monster showing up and attacking both sides, or some other crazy development.
I made my players fight a single animated armor for 23 rounds once and then I quit DMing

what the fuck, how.

Yeah, Monks only gain the ability to become invisible and resistant to 99% of damage at 18th level, and an endless supply of Ki at 20th.

Nothing cool.

Rogue with high dex and good armour can use a reaction to halve any damage you DO take once per turn after a few levels. Get shield proficiency from fighter maybe.

How should I go about moving my campaign into Planescape? Baldur's Gate 2 has me thinking about a planar sphere suddenly crashing into the abandoned capital city and tossing them into whatever plane seems most relevant/interesting to their PCs.

Actually ignore that. I'm a retard.

Yeah I heard your story before; at least you did humanity the service of retiring.

What is Swordsinger Wizard?

You no longer need to breathe. (Air gets awful thin up there!)
Resistance to lightning.
Channelling lightning (can do a lightning bolt, or deals electrical damage)
Perhaps it can 'cut' clouds to make the solid clouds that cloud giants build their castles on.

Thanks ill try to keep this all in mind and maybe ill come on tg this saturday and describe how i did

i've never played before but I heard some people say combat took them 30+ minutes, how is that possible?

What skill do l use to read my location by using the stars?

Read the Planescape setting. Most likely, they stepped through a portal accidentally and end up in Sigil or one of the major planar pathways (Infinite staircase, Yggdrasil, Oceanus, Styx). Portals are easier, since it's any bounded passage that can be a portal, the key anything from a tune they are whistling, the exact day and time during the year, or fresh goblin blood.
Again, read the setting. READ THE SETTING.
The planar passageways are a good way of giving them a choice of some kind, if they meet a guide there.. one that doesn't know the way back to the Prime they came from, but can certainly point the way to a portal to Sigil, or whatever other place.

Here's a rule I instituted at 4th level.
Strength gives +1 to hit and +2 damage per 2 points over 10.

I find it counter-balances the almightiness of Dexterity quite nicely, and keeps the fights flowing a bit faster when you're in the mid levels and shit starts having 90-130 hp rather commonly.

Of course I I had decided to use this at 1st level I'd have been careful to use few if any "Strong" Monsters against the party.

But otherwise I find it works very well and the players (Dex based and otherwise) are quite happy with it.

Survival or weaponized autism

EK is one of the best tanks out there

You need Navigator's Tools to get your location.
Simply looking at the stars will only give you your orientation towards North, not your location.

>Spellcasters should be familiar with their own spells (another advantage of starting low level)
and non-spellcasters should be familiar with their own features.

this is the worst problem i've had with my table, both as a dm and as a player because i'm autistic.

we are 5th level now, but one of our players joined at 4th level, he's playing a fucking battlemaster and haven't used a maneuver yet, in two sessions (like 4 or so combats) because he still gets confused with the terminology (we don't play in english as it's not our first language, but his english is a LOT worse than the rest of us') and the system's basic mechanics.

and even some of the others, who have been playing for about a year now, on and off, still don't have their spells and features prepared before hand, don't know how to resolve a spell or are not sure on if such feature works with this other thing or not.

i'm autistic enough to know pretty much the PHB from memory, but you have to give time to the rest of your players to grasp all the things they can do until they start actually thinking instinctively in the system.

the learning curve is ok and expected so don't push them too hard if they fumble too much. you still want to know the general gist of what their classes do, and having them give you their spell lists and give them a look as well, as to make it easier for them.

So is 5etools going to update with the new UA?

Strength's problem isn't its power. Strength's problem is that it's not useful outside of the classes that use it.

You might as well give players +1 hp for every 2 intellect because 'Intellect is weak and even with +1 hp every two levels con saves are more important so it's a tradeoff between skills and saves' but then you realize wizard is perfectly fucking okay without you giving them more heatlh.

Who am I, Negrodamus?

well, maybe you'd want to play first and see how it goes for you...

Astra has taken a few days to update in the past, but usually it was done within the first 4 days.

I kinda figured, but it would have been just as easy to give people something cool. It didn't even need to be game stats. Like, maybe a level 20 barbarian gets unlimited blowjobs.

yeah a lot of classes seem to effectively get 9th level spells as their capstone, after which you can multiclass out. To be fair though, they've limited everyone to one a day.

I feel like having an inspiring capstone is important even if you never get there.

it's probably biasing that high levels broke earlier editions and created a lot of work, so everyone avoided it.

granted, though some of those are uninspiring even if they're mechanically useful. Maybe I should have said "most classes" rather than "almost every class."

No, Strength's problem is that Martials and semi-martials are always better off with Dexterity's wide array of benefits (important save, lots of skills, AC and hit bonus) over Strength.

With Strength slightly weighted with +2 damage, it's actually worth considering a Ranger or Cleric with a secondary Strength stat over Dexterity.

I'veb also replaced Barbarian's Feral Instincts 7th level "Initiative Advantage" with "can use STR on Intimidation/Animal Handling rolls."

...

you are one of the few to think so lowly of polearm mastery and great weapon mastery

>I feel like having an inspiring capstone is important even if you never get there.
At 20th level the Epic Boons open up, those are some serious capstones in terms of sheer power (at least most of them).

But if they make classes shit past 15 because no one plays that far why bother making 20 the level cap.

No good material is made for epic level play so no one plays it. Thus no one plays epic level content and none gets published.

No, I just don't believe that Fighters and Barbarians should all be Glaive masters to kick ass.
My current Berserker is a two-weapon fighter, the Champion is a Sword and Boarder.

Is there a Pyromancer subclass for Sorcerer? I can't find it anywhere.

>Starting drama for no reason in the OP

You suck.

Planeshift: Kaladesh

There's no undead creation process that takes less than a minute, so even if you suspend animation, you're not pulling this off with anything short of a raise dead.

That said, depends on the type of undead, and whether or not the body decays.

With vampires they don't, but liches is another story.

1. classes aren't "shit" beyond 15th level
2. There's never been a large amount of very high level content for any edition of Dungeons of Dragons. The Epic Level Handbook was pretty much splat with some monsters in it.

3. Stuff like the Tome of Beasts has significantly higher level monsters in it, and with bounded accuracy you don't need dungeons full of 20th level monsters anyway.

Phoenix Sorcerer also does a pretty decent approximation of a pyromancer, as does Fire Dragon Sorcerer.

Planeshift: Kaladesh is best simply because you can eventually overcome fire resistance/immunity.

Not officially, no, but Draconic Red and Phoenix are pretty fire-focused.

Could you cast passwall on a ceiling thats about to crush you and your party

You can overcome resistance with a Feat in the PHB.
How do you overcome immunity?

yes it states that it works on ceilings specifically.

...

Well into your second year of a 5e campaign? Do you play monthly or just throw all leveling advice out the window?

It takes about 1 year to 18 months of weekly sessions of 4 hours to reach level 20, and it should be closer to the 1 year mark.

As the other guy pointed out, all the biggest weapon damage comes with strong weapons. Besides ththat, nearly anything you can do in combat besides attacking (grappling, pushing, shoving prone, etc) need strength (or expertise)

>Run Death's House
>Total party kill at shambling mound
That thing is brutal

If there are like 6 or more people at the table and they're fighting something big/many things, then yes, combat can take a half hour or more.

>adventure is called death house
>people die in the house

makes sense

You're picking the archetypes designed for the biggest weapons and then going against what they're supposed to do.

That isn't 'Oh, I like diversity!'
That's 'Oh, I like being powerful no matter what I pick!', and that's like saying 'I don't want to die because I did something really stupid' or 'I want to punch slimes in the face as a wizard and still be viable'. You can do that in pathfinder or something.

You can do sword and board on a fighter, but you should honestly pick anything BUT champion.
You can do two-weapon-fighter on a barbarian, but you should honestly pick anything BUT a berserker, and consider barbaroguing.

>Strength on intimidation and animal handling
God, this fucking meme again.
Charisma represents your objective ability to manipulate people through intimidation.
Strength has no objective bearing on how good you are at intimidation. Just because you have muscles doesn't make you any scarier than a wizard. Some people are actually less scared of you because you have muscles. Some people are actually more scared of you because you have muscles. It's subjective. And strength for animal handling should just be renamed 'Animal abuse', and anybody can abuse an animal without having to be super strong to do it.
In any case, all you're doing is giving people even more reason to use PAM considering they get extra attacks and thus more chances to use the extra damage.

>Death House
>people die

Really does get the old noggin' joggin' eh

And, I mean, also, all you're doing is encouraging all barbarians to become autists who yell 'b-b-be afraid of me senpai' because they all took 8 charisma yet they still somehow intimidate people.

If you don't like having a -1 from charisma to intimidate, actually get some damn charisma. If your DM is reasonable, they will let you have easier intimidation checks because you're a muscley brute (when against people who would be afraid of that) rather than giving you an arbitrary number increase.

>Be obese nerd who never intimidated anyone in his life
>"S-s-s-scaring people is all about your force of personality! If you phrase your threat really well, people will shit their pants!"

So, I recently joined a new game, and after a while it became apparent that the DM is a living, breathing block of rock salt. I mean, it looked cool from the campaign description and the players seems alright, but I am not sure I can get along with the DM. Not mentioning any details since I guess there's a good chance he browses Veeky Forums.
What can I do now? I don't want to be rude and he wasn't even nearly as abrasive to the new guys as he, seemingly, had previously been to other players, but I'm not sure I want to dedicate a couple of hours a week to a game run by a dude who will probably end up in a greentext eventually. Hell, I feel I am already at the beginning of the greentext.

>he thinks the only people that play D&D are obese nerds

good meme friend, and i bet you also think only kids play video games huh

>Be behind bars
>Try to intimidate someone with your muscles
>They laugh at you
>You bash at the bars, I'm so strong I can break through them!
>They laugh at you harder, you're in a forcecage

>Be behind bars
>Make actually convincing threat as a wizard
>They're fucking scared because they know you could actually teleport out and follow through with your threat

Holy fuck you are the worst kind of rollplayer. One that doesn't even fucking know the rules. It says right in the PHB that under certain circumstances, bonuses from other statistics can apply to skills, so that doing something like crushing a stone in your hand in front of a person you're intimidating allows you to roll Intimidation (Strength). I can think of several more examples, like rolling Performance (Strength) if you were a circus strongman, or maybe Medicine (Charisma/Intelligence) if you were curing a hypohondriac. Just shut the hell up and fuck off to 3.pf/4e, it's obvious you want to play a minmaxing combat game and not a roleplaying game. Dickweed.

If you were anything but, you wouldn't spout such retarded bullshit.

>You can do two-weapon-fighter on a barbarian, but you should honestly pick anything BUT a berserker
My campaign's Berserker isn't shit though.
And I don't allow multiclassing.

Strength for intimidation is in the PHB. It's not some random houserule, and there was no need to make it a class feature

>Castercuck power fantasies

Why is the wizard behind bars when they can just leave though?

page?

175, but it's a Variant rule.

>why not kill a man if you can get away with it

Ever heard of being lawful or actually resolving your problems in a way that doesn't make you look like a criminal? Shit, even an evil character might want to go through a proper trial if they knew they would be declared innocent. Have any of you actually lived a life among people? RPGs attempt to simulate life, not power fantasies and excel sheets (talking to rollplayers and minmaxers here).

This.
"I would teleport out and turn you into a newt, but being captured is all part of my plan!" is a rather dubious threat to make to a guard, not to mention the fact that a powerful wizard would be bound and gagged in a cell in the first place.

175. It's more generally about being flexible with skills and letting players use different abilities under certain situations.
>SimilarIy, when your half-orc barbarian uses a display of raw strength to intimidate an enemy, your DM might ask for a Strength (Intimidation) check, even though Intimidation is normally associated with Charisma.