/5eg/ Fifth Edition General:

Looks more like a druid to me.

laugh out loud, you were destroyed, wrecked, my family member.

I don't get your problem. Just get Strahd to appear a few times, doing Strahd-like things, like showing up to burgomaster's house and charming his family into having a dinner with him and the party.

>play dorf
>never had this be an issue even with running all over the place
>play second dorf
>it's a monk with Mobile

What do you think of DMPCs? Are they a good thing or a hindrance? When does a supporting NPC turn into a DMPC? Where do you draw the line

keeping a journal and having him be very active is a great idea. I regret letting Strahd take a backseat for an extended period.

I like to play melee characters and I like the lore aspects of both paladin and ranger, which one should I go for? Are rangers useable now with the revision?

It becomes a DMPC if it's showing up the players. It's always a bad thing. Not a hindrance. Objectively bad. Ruins the campaign.

Ask last thread but didn't get any responses.
Any must have encounters in the shadowfell?
Looking to give players a good experience there. Good in terms of pain and suffering.

Any suggestions? I'm just in the brainstorming phase. I might have a side quest they can choose to take or not featuring a shadow dragon lair. Or I might make it their ticket home.
He might have a portal back to the material plane.

>Any must have encounters in the shadowfell?
A portal out

Pretty much this.

DMPCs are not a good thing.
Active NPCs are fine.

If my party is going to have an NPC in their party in combat for any reason, one of these two things happens:

1: That NPC spends the entire fight taking the Dodge Action and trying to get out of the way

2: I cede control of that NPC and allow a player to handle them in-combat as if there were a PC.

If you, the GM, are using an NPC as a stand-in for either yourself or the character you would like to play, if they are preforming the same role as a player character, if they are directly receiving their own share of special treasure (ie: not simple payment for services rendered during an adventure ) or they are otherwise playing a significant role in the party, you should strongly consider whether or not they belong in the game. NPCs outshining the PC's or doing things -for- them is not a good thing. It's not fun, and as a player it would feel like being dragged along for a ride. There's no good reason to use a DMPC when you could use an NPC

I've been told to make a level 20 character, core book only and cannot use 9th level spells (which means I probably need to multiclass). Any advice for building an illusionist who pretends to be an entire cult?

I'm planning to try out a Barbarian now that my Warlock's dead.

Would it be better to go Zealot or Wolf Totem? Also should I go GWM or PAM if I only plan to get one?

Trickery Cleric and his council of clones.

Been considering that one, but at best I get about 7 or so clones using Invoke Duplicity and Mirror Image.

What if I were to illusionist?

Ask if your Invoke Duplicity's can have their own Mirror Images.

Even if it gives them no mechanical boost, just for cool.

Illusinoists have Mirror Image and that's about it.

>I'm DM'ing Curse of Strahd

Found your mistake. Try running your own campaign you uncreative nigger. You don't even deserve to be considered a dungeon master, a fucking computer could do your job. What the fuck are you adding to the game besides being the receiving end of the players dicks?

Take Animate Dead and cast it at a higher level for lots of skeletons. Dress the skeletons up in black cloaks, masks, boots, and gloves. Maybe use magic or perfume to cover up the smell, or use really old skeletons. Then you're free to use your illusion spells elsewhere.

What did he mean by this?

For a healbot they are done. Or a side box. DMPC is usually a bad idea unless it's a small party that really needs an extra member.

No, rangers are still a shit tier class. Wizards needs to stop trying to make them casters and actually put them on par with fighters. Their utility spells aren't worth shit and make ranger a shittier druid.

Warlock 3/Wizard Illusionist 17.

Silent Image at will.

With the Illusionist capstone you can Green Lantern giant Adamantium walls and cages to trap or otherwise inconvenience enemies.

It's really as strong as you are creative, the uses are near endless for utility.

Get a load of this guy.

I don't know, do you always act original plays for every show reharsal you put in?

>Cleric edition
>Clearly uses a necromancer

Come on senpai

>Implying only wizards can be necromancers
That's classism.

You. I like you.
But this begs the question...what if I use the living illusion capstone on a silent image cultist?

Not what I was going for, but it's a nice added twist when combined with the above user's idea.

Gonna be honest with you on this one, as cool as that is, Illusionists have a _lot_ more than just Mirror Image.

>Illusionists have a _lot_ more than just Mirror Image.

Gotta agree, had a player decide to play one and did alot of cc just using the environment.

>The lich warlock doesn't get animate dead

It really activates my almonds

That seems unforgivable, until you realize it's for balance reasons. Since warlocks regenerate their spell slots on short rest, you would be able to raise an army fairly easily.

I remember doing some calculations about this a while ago.

A level 20 Warlock... Has waaaaaaaaaay too many Skeletons. I think it was well over 500 and maybe nearly 800.

Thanks to not needing sleep at that point the Undying never has to Long Rest for exhaustion, he can spend every single hour short resting.

How often do you other DMs reuse settings? Do you make reference to previous player characters and NPCs if you do?

Isn't there a cap on how soon you can short rest? I remember seeing someone talk about it and wasn't sure if it's RAW or not.

Nope, also found the number

768 Skeletons, if they use their level 20 feature it goes up to 800 exactly.

This is all while having EB spam, Invocations and 6-9th spell slots. There's no reasonable way to ever put animate dead on the Warlock's list.

>Borrower of Souls
>Prerequisite: 5th level, Undying patron
>You may cast animate dead once using a warlock spell slot. You may not do so again until you finish a long rest.

That wasn't too hard, was it, WotC?

My DM does it all the time. All our adventures takes place in the same setting, and he advances the timeline - a lot, or a little - each time. Our previous characters so far ended up legendary, but time warps all.
For example, our party's cleric became a saint, with a dedicated monastery and a knightly order. There are lots of stories about him, all of which don't tell about that one time he destroyed three countries by unleashing the demons upon the world, or that one time when it turned out he serves a different deity than he claims to serve, or that one time when he tried to betray and kill his friends in order to advance the agenda of his dark god.

Yeah that'd be broken as fuck, unless you build encounters specifically to fuck up huge swathes of those skeletons.

Looks like they're raising something of an undead abomination and they're not wearing armor. My default would be Wizard (Necromancer).

Who would ever take that though? That gets you 4-8 Skeletons which is honestly not even worth the slot let alone the invocation.

If anything I'd make a Warlock only undead spell that makes one super creature.

Guys I'm DMing a solo campaign for my DM where she is the Chosen One(tm) of the Blood Queen. I want to do a dungeon for her next game, likely involving some artifacts, and a chase/fight with her archrival. Has anyone got any good ideas or solo dungeons I could adapt a bit? I'm very new to DMing (it's actually my first game and this is gonna be the second session).

Any old school ravenloft fans out there?

I'm thinking of adding Gabrielle Aderre to Curse of Strahd somehow

Sounds like the perfect cult

Oh no, the kicker is, he's a saint of the wrong religion. Nobody knows he's a fake and a traitor, and his actual cult forgot his name after 500 years.

Hey /5eg/ i'm having trouble coming up with ideas for a campaign I want to run, think you could help? All i really have is that I want to run it from abuot level 3 up to 20, and there's an elven genocide being carried out by a huge horde of orcs. I have literally no ideas beyond this, I can't even think of how to make a story like this take up 17 levels

That's actually way better

They're part of a coalition sent to aid in halting the orks, they fight the usual goblins, orks and ogres for a bit. Soon they start dealing with higher up war leaders and chiefs then bam devils are behind it for higher levels. Can mix in some political intrigue with interrupting people supplying orks on the down low, or getting more aid from parties that aren't involved. Some social interactions involve helping relocate displaced elves to new homes and fortifying places against siege.

Youd get a solid and potentially meaty immobile cultist. Pretty sure it explicitly says "inanimate material".

holy moly that actually sounds really interesting, thanks a bunch user

Just rip off Shadows of Mordor entirely.
youtu.be/bGEkOpfVNt4?t=218

I've never run a 1v1 game before, but I do know that TSR published some 1v1 modules back in the day, as did Dungeon magazine. The OSR General trove should have them.

As for running it, be sure to have a contingency if the player dies. Either they get knocked out and captured, or perhaps some greater power won't let them die, because of their Chosen nature.

That was the idea yeah, the backstory she gave me was more tame but I decided on the CO thingy for cases where she happens to get "killed" (it's always going to be knockouts unless there's a way back or really stupid shit happens like jumping off cliffs) and because it makes it more epic I think; I mean if you're gonna have a solo campaign, you want it to be epic I think. That's why I have trouble coming up with things to do, since my mind is telling me to just throw goblins and easy encounters/quests at her until I learn to DM better, but I don't want to make it a run-of-the-mill campaign, hence asking for ideas/premade stuff I can mold.

No problem m8, the other main thing to do is be sure what level of detail and such your group is ok with, if you catch my meaning. Orks are not typically known for being nice or merciful.

Clerics could always use maces before 3e, I don't know what you're talking about.

Based on deity was only if you used optional rules. Traditionally they were restricted to all blunt weapons.

"I hate both people who look different from me and people who have fun differently from me."

I'll have to disagree with you there my man.
My DM put a Rogue in the party, who in combat just stayed at range shooting his bow, in exploration scouted ahead and brought back some info and navigated us around obvious traps and in social always split from us when we came into a city and did our stuff, to join us later with an extra piece of info or two that he got in the shady spots of town.
It really rounded the party out, since we were two brute martials and a wiz. Then when a Monk player joined us the Rogue DMPC went away, saying he got prospects of a more lucrative, less risky business which, surprise surprise, would come up in the future as plot
I agree it doesn't work for every group though.

It actually gets you only ~1/3/5, because the casting you use to maintain them would keep you from making more.

Oh, yeah, definitely. My idea was that this horde is being led by a misled half-orc after his soulmate was witch-hunted by a group of zealous elves

Sounds faggy.

:^( but he angery

Hey Rui

wat

That works, another would be the devil's have promised them rulership over the land once they eradicate the elves. The truth is the elves protect and maintain an ancient ward/site that helps maintain the balance between the planes. The devil's see it as the easiest to target and the orks are useful idiots facilitating the destruction of the material plane due to a very hostile take over by the hells.

Goddamn, I could never come up with anything like this. Enlighten me with your fantastical visions, user, I beseech you

Cool I got that covered.

Practice, read books think to yourself "is this a game I'd be blown away by?" Never stop improving.

No. Manage your shit.

Level 3 party should be setting their sights on something like "surviving the night in a haunted house", while level 7's have all the gumption of "Saving the duchess's jewls" and level 12 are more along the lines of stopping the genocide of elves.

How similar are 5e's tabaxi to the catfolk of previous editions?

>party ends up being all dwarves

>don't stop genocide

So my fighter got a Wyrmling in to a sleeper hold by describing their intention and rolling a successful grapple check. Would this be best resolution?;

Use the rules for suffocation without the couple minutes required for suffocation to begin. On the fighters turn he uses his action to further strangle the Wyrmling, contesting strength rolls and knocking off a point of constitution modifier until the Wyrmling is KO'd.

Until Wyrmling is KO'd or succeeds on ending grapple with a successful check*

Should've specified.

Might have to use either major image or minor illusion, and make them mannequins of cultists in the case of silent image.

Any reason why the party can't level up while progressively making larger and larger efforts to stop the genocide?

If I die and get reincarnated (Fuck I hate this spell but it's all I've got) and become a dwarf, should I be a racist? Is it a genetic or taught quality?

>party ends up being all (half-)orcs
>help genocide
ebin

The bit that lets you make illusions real is what I was referring to for inanimate.

So yeah mannequins could work but theyd be immobile. Until you cast Animate Objects on them

Much as I'd love to make a /pol/ joke about being born racist, I've never actually been to that board so...I guess don't be a racist unless you spend your time with a lot of dwarves after reincarnation.

user, pat yourself on the back and grab yourself a rum and coke because you're on a roll today.

>Still shit tier
Goddamn it, I love the idea for em but I agree, they should be much more focused on the Martial side. OoV pally it is then

Ignore him, Revised Rangers are decent.

Is BM still the end all be all for subclasses? Not many people seem to dig the other two

Dont get too excited, I forgot that Concentration is a thing. I dont remember if Animate Objects/various Illusion spells both have it but if so that throws a wrench in the plan.

>taking mobile instead of a stat up
Can you really afford to do that?

Beast Conclave is a viable option now, if that's what you meant. Mechanically, it's far better off than it was before.

Fairly certain people only talked about PHB beastmaster rangers instead of the others was because it just sucked *that much*.

Personally I'd go Hunter.

Hunter does it's job good, it's an AoE focused martial who treat single target damage as a secondary role. The issue is that AoE damage never looks as impressive on paper.

Deepstalker's good, very good. The rerolling attack is really good with sharpshooter and GWM.

Horizon Walker's cool but nothing fantastic in numbers. Being able to teleport 10 feet with every attack is one of the best abilities in the game.

Primeval Guardian's pretty fucking OP as is, at will healing.

It's mixed, some studies show babies preferring playmates of their own color. Nothing concrete one way or another though because some contradict that.

Minor Illusion has no concentration, so I could Animate Objects one of those and perhaps some floating knives and swords to make Mister Cultist look like a telekinetic.

Still, you're being reincarnated with every life experience you've had before. It may cause you to want to be around dwarves due to your physical body or your previous race on account of your memories. Honestly, your call.

What's something cooler then a tree I could refluff my Primeval Guardian into?

>implying trees aren't fucking radical
kys

Generally I agree, I divided XP among my players and the NPC after the last fight. When a couple players felt gipped of a bump in their XP I pointed out the NPC didn't join the fight until they explicitly asked her to.