/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

Furfags

Arcane recovery is only once a long rest, so it's not really giving you spell slots for every short rest you make. Essentially, wizards just have more spell slots than everybody else.

Warlocks on the other hand can actually spam short rests, so it's broken on them.

Only take healing elixir if it suits the character, i.e. playing transmutation or an artificer-style wizard.

Sea Elves themselves are mentioned in several of the books but haven't been seen yet as far as I know.

Because they're only there so the Wizard doesn't have to use a crossbow when he's saving slots.

In older editions when a low level caster ran out of slots he became a peasant with a crossbow, now he's still feeling like a Wizard but his damage is about the same as it would be with the crossbow.

>You're not going to use it all the time if you don't want to die
Hah! I'm a Bear barbarian, I use Reckless Attack very nearly 100% of the time.

Don't the malenti just use the sahuagin statblocks?

You can get advantage from other means quite easily, and if you have a dozen enemies attacking you you might want to not use it.

My characters an ex-soldier and I figured it seems like a spell armies would want their Wizards to know.

Plus I think we only have a Paladin with any healing ability.

>dont have any friends
Roll20
>I dont have the time
Roll20 late at night on weekends

Just be careful about the group you join. It may even take a couple tries before you finally get into one that you can stay with long-term

That would seem to be the implication, but it's still confusing. Wouldn't a malenti speak elvish and not be able to use the sahuagin's attacks? Sea elves don't have fangs and claws.

Use Roll20, join a 4 hours long weekly game, read Basic Rules.
If you have time for Veeky Forums, you have time for this.

Do Blade Mastery and Sentinel compliment each other as well as it looks like they do? I think I might grab those two for my Battlemaster. I'm new to this though so if any of you more experienced guys have any insight that would be appreciated

I just DM'd my very first game and I'm still reeling from the excitement. I've played 5e for a few months now with my friends and we've all loved it, but it's just been one of us that's been career DM. Now we're switching off.

One thing that nearly nuked my adventure though was being too damn easy—fuck what the DMG says about challenge rating and EXP budgets, my players would have CHEWED through a "Deadly" encounter like it was nothing unless I secretly bumped up their health (just so that it was actually a fun battle instead of a passive curbstomp).

Do you guys have any advice for REALLY balancing encounters in 5e? The DMG seems to assume the worst of its players, and in the future I'd like to construct some battles that are actually challenging without just clandestinely fudging enemy health or attack rolls.

To be fair I've rolled really, really well on HP. We just hit level 11 and I'm up at 142 health with +1 AC while shifted and resistance to all damage except Psychic while raging, so I'm willing to keep permanent Advantage on myself because I can take it if it means squishier members are ignored outright. About the only thing that can really, honestly fuck me over is a charm spell (which I can get advantage on if I know it's coming) or being put to sleep or going unconscious via magic. Fucking Beholder did that shit tonight, annoyed the hell out of me.

Then take the sea elves and give them malenti traits.

He's a nice guy and a good player and the wolf shit isn't even disruptive. It's just like one of those things that you can't un-notice and he keeps bringing it up.

It makes me lose focus because I'm so baffled by it.

>I want to summon a demon, but not, you know, if he's ugly or anything.

Sea elves don't have stats in 5e.

Keep tanking like a boss, man... I feel like most people are so goddamn afraid of taking damage. I play an Oath of Devotion and even with my Lay on Hands I end up in single digits at the end of almost every fight...makes it more exciting and heroic.

I don't understand it myself.

I guess when it comes right down to it I don't believe in werewolves, I just agree with White Wolfs worldview and general outlook on things.

Then take the malenti and give them elf traits. Jesus Christ.

I'm jumping into a campaign as a level 4 characters and I want to play a pugilist type character, and can't figure out how I should build it.

I don't want to deal with monks because of Ki, unless I just justify it as something not-magical, or work with my DM to make a Ki-less Monk. So I was thinking of doing a Barbarian + Tavern Brawler to justify beating the shit out of everyone, but I also was thinking mixing Tavern Brawler with Battle Master Fighter could allow for some interesting fights. Or just do a level in monk and 3 levels in something else.

My DM is relaxed with customizing this shit within reason, but still. I'm not sure what seems best.

Roll20 is great for playing games over long distances with your friends. Roll20 is terrible for finding good games.

Yeah I remember throwing a bugbear at my party and they pretty much just formed a bullying circle around him and kicked his shit in, the rogue kept getting sneak attacks and our fighter kept getting crits, the thing lasted like 2 rounds against a level 3 party of 4.

I've found it helps with challenge to always add some easier enemies in with a large encounter. One large enemy just gets gangbanged too easily without any regard for actual tactics

>don't want to deal with monks because of Ki, unless I just justify it as something not-magical, or work with my DM to make a Ki-less Monk

That's what I did. My character's name was Wallopin' Wallace and he had a few points of "rowdiness."

You gotta know your party, if they're decently optimised and have a good party composition you get a notion of what they can handle.
But desu you need a couple more sessions of DMing them to be sure, maybe they were favoured by the dice in this encounter.

I gotta say I actually like that better, the main reason I grabbed it when the user who made it posted it because I've seen several berserker barbarians and it's the same.

Never use frenzy unless they believe a long rest is coming up or it's a boss fight. Never have I seen one actually try and use intimidating presence except of CR and it doesn't work out well.

I just wanted our barbarian to have more chance to use kinda the main thing of his class.

If you're not running, playing in, or planning to run or play in an Eberron game, you're missing out big time.

>"rowdiness."
That's fuckin solid.

I was going to do a high strength build, because I wanted him to be physically massive (for a human), but it still might be best to just do Monk.

5e has a bit of a problem with expecting maybe 8 combats a day but them being rather weak. Might be that.

I think it's nice to have 'side' or 'optional' bosses, to to make every single fight much harder but also not necessarily something the players absolutely have to fight.

I'm not really sure how I feel about rolling for HP, but then I never really thought about it.
Seems kind of obnoxious in certain kinds of campaigns, really, because I've seen some fighter types roll absolutely dreadful on HP while the squishier classes roll well and it ends up with some ridiculous 'the rogue is the tank, the melee fighter is squishy' shit.

Bugbear is CR1, Bugbear Chief is CR3. Nothing impressive there.

Just suck your DM off and ask for STR+WIS or STR+DEX AC

I mean, I can kinda see why. Our Warlock has lost more than half his health to a single creature in a single turn before, and more than once has been saved purely by the virtue of his Undying Light revival feature. Part of the reason I'm so willing to eat shit is because they can heal me, but I can't heal them, so it just works out best if I take damage instead of anyone else.

It's only because I'm already so beefy that I'm willing to do it. I'd never roll for health on a class with anything less than d10 hit dice. I've gotten nice and lucky, though, with more than one maximum roll.

I think failing to account for the fucking Rogue is what sunk me. Seriously, goddamn, the rogue was doing upwards of 20 damage per turn, easy. (they were all level 5)

The final fight was against the functional equivalent of a Bandit Captain and three bandits. Like I said, the DMG said it was a very deadly encounter. But the enemies would have been WIPED if not for my own shenanigans.

At least now I know I can go all-in with encounters next time. I thought the encounter leaned on difficult already, but now I know I can basically double that without going overboard.

I don't really care that much, I'm just saying it's odd that so much is written about sea elves and malenti but they're never been given stats.

barbarians aren't scary cause they are scary, barbarians are scary cause they fight like madmen. They do crazy insane stunts and take lunatic risks and laugh at the face of battle.

You ever see that deleted scene in the remake of Shaft where that guy is stabbing himself with a screwdriver saying, "You best kill me, motherfucker, you best kill me!"

That shit was too real for the audience. They didn't wanna see that. Thats what its like fighting one of them. They don't care if THEY live so long as YOU die.

Howe 2 make 5e into an encounter-based resource-system instead of an rest-based one without turning it into an MMO-simulator like 4e was?

Hey user, I've got an idea, lets invite all your friends over and I'll jerk you off under the table while you try to DM, it'll be fun!

>bandit captain and 3 bandits
Shit nigger that's a medium encounter for a lv5 3-man party and an easy for a 4-man party. How can you fuck up this badly?

you should always take the average. You will get more points on average. Rolling is for chumps and gamblers.

Yeah, Bugbear Chief. I know it's nothing crazy for their level but I didn't expect them to demolish it so effortlessly.

Well in this case I'm a gambler, and it's worked out for me.

Combat in 5e is all about an action economy. I just ensure that the enemies have 1 or 2 actions more than the PCs.

Adding enemy minions with only 1 hp can help. The die if they get hit, but they can cause confusion when you have 15 of kobold minions running at a party, protecting their dragon prize.

Booming Blade on Swashbucklers is really good though.

You know what I think would be fun? Just let an ordinary tavern brawl escalate the way it does in d&d, but then play out the consequences of that brawl.

Have the guards come out and have the PC's fight 10 at a time, call in the knights, have other heroes come out to intervene, play the whole thing out, see if there is anything you can throw at the players that results in putting them on the defensive.

If somebody is too dumb to run away then they are useless.

You put 3-4 enemies on a single initiative slot. Thats how you tend to handle large battles. If that is too complicated, you can roll a d100 and trade all your bonuses and penalties to initiative for +5's and -5's instead.

What was the rest of the party? It's odd that the rogue's doing the most damage. Typically a fighter, barbarian, paladin or ranger would be doing better unless they've gimped themselves.

I'm not sure there's any easy way other than doing shit like having powers last an entire day or everybody having at-will powers.

It could also be possible to have it so everybody has similar resource pools or that resource pools are also tied into things like health or casting a spell also has a detrimental effect with it or requires money or preparation.

But really they should have just made the adventuring day shorter.

It was my first time DMing, I didn't know better! And they weren't three bandits per se, it was like a bandit, a scout, and some other thing from the NPC appendix of the monster manual. But trust me, the math worked out to be a Deadly Encounter. The real mistake I made was just trusting the numbers in a vacuum—but like they say, I think you have to learn the rules before you can bend them so I'm kind of glad I learned this the hard way.

Yeah, only the bandit captain had multiple attacks. I wanted him to be the big hitter of the enemy party, but he was at the expense of the enemy party's ability to actually do anything.

The next idea I have for a session involves infiltrating a giant wasp's nest or beehive so there'd definitely be lots of potential for tons of grunt enemies. (these sessions are one-shots done when someone from the party can't make it for an adventure in our main campaign)

I'm making a DnD diorama for someone's birthday. What's the classic 5 man party?

Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, Cleric, then who? Ranger? Barbarian? Bard?

It was a rogue, a paladin, and a wizard. All fifth level. There was also a warlock but he had to bail before the final fight due to an emergency coming up.

The paladin was close behind in damage, definitely, but the rogue was just able to land more consistent hits and those Sneak Attack die added up.

the classic party is the 4 man party, thief, fighter, cleric and magic-user.

>players get into a tavern brawl
>having the upper hand
>some buddies of the losing side join against them
>players have some friends in the tavern as well
>they promptly join the fight on the players side
>soon enough the whole tavern is brawling
>city guard comes in through the door
>gets out through the window
>brawl now extends into the streets
>some tusslers roll into the market square
>stall get destroyed
>merchants get into the fray
>takes only a couple of minutes to have the whole town scuffling
>a few days pass
>kingdom is effectively dismantled due to large-scale civil war
>survivors get the tavern brawler feat

if there was an eberron book for 5e it would be better................................

and apparently the first subclass (fighter's) ever and eventually fifth class was the the paladin, so i'd go with that.

Scouts are only CR 1/2, you'd need to get 10 of them coupled with a bandit and a bandit captain to get into deadly encounter range for a 4-man lv5 party.
I'm pretty sure you fucked up the math somewhere.

Well, rogue should be better against high AC targets if that's the case.
Though paladins aren't typically GWM so they don't care as much about low AC as barbarians or fighters might.

Though for all we know the paladin was sword-and-board defense fighting style.

And I wouldn't expect the wizard to show a lot of damage unless they're getting AoE damage on groups.

4 man party and the Paladin. Thanks. You happen to know what the next released class was? I have only 4 non-monster minis planned but it may climb up to 6 at max if my budget expands

hi smug

Honestly I wish any of the tanks in my current party were better. We're still pretty low level, but our Cleric and Fighter both get shredded.

The cleric is even making a point of being tanky.

alright i'm double checking my numbers. The hunting party that my players fought were VERY slightly modified versions of certain NPCs—but significant statistics were all kept the same. There was:
>Leader: CR 2 (450 XP)
>Bandit: CR 1/8 (25 EXP)
>Kenku: CR 1/4 (50 EXP)
>Scout: CR 1/4 (50 EXP)

Total sum of EXP is 575. DMG then says to multiply that by x2 because there's 4 monsters in all. So the functional EXP is 1,150.

Then the XP Threshold by Character Level table says that a "Deadly" encounter for four level 5 characters is 1,100+ EXP. So in theory, this encounter was deadly. In practice, not at all.

Unless I'm really misunderstanding this? I'm pulling all this from DMG p. 82 if anyone wants to check me.

I fucking knew it.
Read the "2. Determine the Party's XP Threshold" again my african american friend, the XP is for each player. So a deadly encounter is 4400.

Here you go.

I forget what the DMG says, but I think the assumption is supposed to be that the recommended 6-8 encounters a day, if they were deadly, would "potentially lead to character death". But I think the book actually says that just one deadly encounter may be enough to kill a character.

Just remember, a freshly rested party of 4 or 5 characters can kill monsters 2-4 CR above their level, even with some low level minions. What you really want to do is go for that 6-8 combats, make 'em smaller, drain the class resources.

that'd be bard, if my sources are right. with monk and cleric as close followups.

shit, U RIGHT. On my initial pass I must have grievously misread that. Thank you so much for catching my mistake.

I'm really glad that I was able to improvise well enough to keep it fun and engaging for the players, but yeah, this will definitely help me plan encounters correctly next time.

I imagine that being able to finely craft an adventuring day—the right amount of encounters, with the right amount of monsters each, paced just well enough, and being more interesting that just plain slugfests—is a skill that can only be honed from experience.

Stop trying to do your 'Unarmed brawler' jerk-off fantasy and just acknowledge that any sensible people, save for magical people who've followed a strict code and who rely entirely on their honed body rather than any armour or anything atop of it (And even they're better off using weapons), should use a fucking weapon like a normal person instead of trying to punch things like corrosive slimes.

>the assumption is supposed to be that the recommended 6-8 encounters a day

does anyone actually do this?

does anyone honestly likes this thing?
or played it for that matter, it overall looks awful, more on the flavor/fluff side than the mechanics but awful nonetheless.

not at all, not now, not ever. it is truly the weakest of weak points in 5e, absolutely retarded assumptions made by the designers.

either you have to make every encounter deadly, or you need to rework your rest mechanics somehow, because it's impossible to cram that many encounters (even if not only combats) in a single day without destroying all semblance of pacing your story might want to have.

In my main campaign which my friend DMs (very well may I add) I think we hover around 3-5 encounters per day. It's lower than that much more often than it's higher. I think they get that it's more fun to have bigger, more challenging encounters than to pad it out with tiny ones that boil down to rolling dice for five minutes.

Quality over quantity.

This. I used to love the unarmed brawler thing but it just doesn't make sense unless you're highly magical.

what are you guys' opinions on custom/homebrewed classes

i really enjoy them because it lets myself and my fellow players make interesting, personalized characters with the potential for novel backstories, but i think that's only the case because i'm playing with really invested players who actually give a shit about making their characters that way.

in the general sense i know that opening that door leads to nothing but gimmicks and trying desperately to be The Most Special And Original Person In The Room

Scout is that you
We've got a Protection Cleric in our group and she's actually pretty solid in the role. She took a lot of stuff like Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians and Sanctuary and stuff so she helps defend and deal damage more or less just by existing.

We've done like 4 and are up to number 5, I have a feeling there's still one or two more before we'll get a rest.

Yep!
Our Cleric is a life Cleric, so she's de-facto healer, but she's also the highest AC in our group.

Honestly, I'm not sure what spells she even takes. I've only ever seen her Cure Wounds, Inflict Wounds, and Sacred Flame, really.

Just use items as "Special Skills". My DM and I are working on my Warlock's inner demon trying to break free, and this can be harnessed during combat to add damage and such, which we're fluffing as the demon's spirit bursting out of the dude when he attacks, but in crunch it's just a belt/pendant etc that is "Add 2d6 fire damage" or whatever.

Otherwise you get special snowflake syndrome which is some guy having all the teleportation, all the magical sword slashes, all the immune to damage shit we left behind in 3.PF

It's much fairer to get a balance.
You can unarmed strike while grappling if your hands are used up or even just unarmed strike sometimes as a barbarian considering it'll still do decent damage but you don't have to do it 24/7.

At the very least it's viable on a shield-using barbarogue if you want to use it to sneak attack.

Damn. Our group's been pretty tame with the race perks, it's mostly just skill tweaks. We don't go wild with the innate abilities.

I played as a walking talking grizzly bear (not trying to be the next sir bearingmeme) that was also a druid. These intelligent bears came from extremely isolated woodland communities, and their stats were basic beast perks (darvision, keen senses), good constitution, and a beefed unarmed attacks. It's kept simple.

I also have a skeleton cleric for a benevolent god of death and while "Death Cleric but good and also a custom race" sounds forced as fuck on paper I really drove home the backstory and he's turned into a really fun character. The skeleton race the DM provided was really neat: no food, no water, no sleep needed, proficiency in Intimidation, and resistance to piercing and poison damage, but weak to bludgeoning damage and falls apart against Dispel Magic and such. Tradeoffs like that.

Another character played as a creature kind of like the Brundlefly and it was lots of fun.

Everyone says hi, I've missed bullshitting about D&D with you

What kind of Fighter have you got? I know you said you're low level so I'm not sure what level of spells you're at but even simple shit like Shield of Faith, Sanctuary, Warding Bond, and Spiritual Weapon can really help out. Spiritual Weapon isn't Concentration so it's a pretty effective way of adding more damage to a fight without sacrificing action economy, as even just casting it is a bonus action, and at higher levels it pairs well with things like Spirit Guardians for larger fights where the Cleric can get off a lot of guaranteed damage and reduce enemy mobility.

Most of them are broken and not very applicable to most games.
If you want a wacky 'make your own class' game, play mutants and masterminds or something.

For 5e, I'd recommend allowing everyone one customizable 'super-feat' that allows them to really define their character, that could do all sorts of shit like 'You no longer have spell slots, but instead reduce your max HP to cast' or suchlike.

...

My DM is using a 3rd party supliment that adds special attack options and stuff for each weapon and a few new ones.

After seeing this is there any reason not to play an Eagle Barbarian to charge people down with a Lance?

Let me tell you what I've been doing the last few sessions a with my group, which is pretty close to some of the suggestions in the dmg I think, but not quite
>party is in a big dungeons real big with traps and puzzles and lots of monsters
>every session, they roll initiative at the start
>that is the initiative for the session
this means I can do things like
>roll initiative for just the monsters and quickly put them in, and combat fits in more with the feel of the session- no pause while six people roll 8+ initiative scores, writing them all down in order, no minutes long equivalent of a jrpg random battle screen
>easily add monsters mid combat as well
>determine things like who makes saves for traps and in what order, and other things that may need a quick reference of who reacts first
>allows for chances to talk/examine/get a surprise hit in without necessarily needing checks- let's the players see if a monster is hostile (he gets a smack in, indicating that he doesn't want to talk) and also I can get at least one hit in before I roll terribly and the party all goes before the monster and kills him
The lack of distinction between exploring time and fighting time makes me more willing to throw encounters in. It makes me more willing to throw a single weak monster in as a "flavor fight" without making a big deal about entering initiative. It makes me more willing to change fights as they go, adding or subtracting monsters being part of the same "flow" as the rest of the session. It makes the players more willing to incorporate the rest of the dungeon instead of subconsciously labeling the room they're in as the "fight room". Just having initiative up constantly, even if they're not necessarily moving their speed in rounds or taking note of how long certain actions take, makes combat less of a distinct, special mode that needs set up and activation and so happens more often.

been considering it, but definitely not until after finals. That place is a hell of a timesink.

Battlemaster. He's got rally, so it's helping a bit, and Parry is keeping him alive a bit more.

Other than him and the Life Cleric, we have a GOO Bladelock, and I'm running a wizard. The Cleric is level 5, the rest of us are level 4.

Things will probably be a bit better, since I just swapped from Sorc to Wizard, so I have more actually useful spells.

Do it.
Dual wield lances, call them talons.

99% of homebrew is retarded overpowered snowflake crap made by people wanting to play anime characters. No, potential designers, your's is not any different. No, you are not good enough to see through your own biases and favoritism.

Anything that doesn't fit into an existing class or can't be made with very slight tweaks to an existing class probably doesn't belong in the game. Fucking deal with it.

>wanting to play anime characters
You now realize that the legends of Cu Culainn and the Eight Immortals are beyond 99% of anime characters.

Looking forward to the next UA?

...oh...right...

This is actually going to be awesome. I could go Bugbear for maximum meme but starting with V.Human for Dual-Wielder might be better.

I'm in two different 5e games where this class is being used. It's not bad, but I'd rather just play a monk and reflavor the ki pool to be bursts of adrenaline instead. It's how I'm playing a monk in yet another campaign, and I'm really enjoying it.