/5eg/ Fifth Edition General:

whats the best class/multiclass combo in the game?

When I'm dming I'm usually a massive dick and just write off any potential loot as "burned to a crisp" if they solve a problem with fireball.

Dueling being added to college of swords is cool. Martial weapons being lost, otoh, isn't and I feel like Polearms and whips would absolutely fit for the flashy showy fightery thing.

I also feel like I would actually possibly play the revised AA if it was an option rather than reject it out of hand.

Mainly, to deny it to other people.

Give me some cool ideas for playing out a chase for PC kobolds running from a human posse

What I got so far:
-Chase through the forest, hide behind/in the trees
-Give time prior to the chase to set up some traps
-Make kobolds frail as fuck, but as player controlled kobolds die, they take control of the surviving ones
-Bolivian army ending

Anything else to meaningfully prolong the scenario?

I just started my first 5e game and D&D in general, I'm playing a gunslinger class right now, anyone play this yet? Super new to this and we just got done with character phase.

Why does it matter?

Some of my personal favorites are

Swashbuckler/Battle Master
Warlock/Sorcerer
Barbarian/Rogue
Paladin/Warlock

Your choice in class irks me but your sheet looks fine if you're going for a gun-toting witch hunter vibe.

>Why does it matter?

because i want to know?

i'm interested in what people have come up with optimized classes

Maybe give them positions to set up potential hit and run ambushes, possible string it out over several days. Have them be able to lure them to other monsters in the area.

There's been a triggered social justice fool sniping threads early to make some kind of childish statement. It was annoying to everyone with any sense.

Untill they go down is way too strong, at most I'd do a bonus that works like Blackrazor where it resets on a long rest.

You sound like the one being intensely triggered seeing how you're the first to bring up this drama.

I was literally answering the guy's question on the very subject, how am I the first to bring it up? Really? Come on now.

>enter a magically sealed several thousand year old tower
>find ourselves in a room cluttered with once rich tapestries, nicknacks, and rugs. The door to the far side is blocked by piles of misc furniture and decayed garbage
>search the room, find a bookshelf with a magic scroll on it
>DM: This is a custom spell I've made myself...
>group waits with baited breath and wide eyes to find out what it is
>It moves large piles of crap out of the way of doors

Gotta hand it to him, he atleast knows how to fuck with a party even if it's a dick move.

>Be Wizard
>DM says that we find a magic scroll
>Whip out my spell book to copy it down
>"It's a custom spell I came up with myself!"
>Put away spell book

Happened like three times now, feeling a bit jaded.

I'm having it nerfed to ten round bolt action rifles. I'm not going for some ridiculous OP stuff just a proto-sniper. I'm from /k/ and I autist off about this stuff.

What kind of backstory would work better for a character coming from an expedition that attempted to conquer/colonise "Siberia"?

Personally, I think having an entire class built around the mechanics of using a gun is a bit needless given that any other class could simply equip a gun and do basically the exact same thing, but that's really only my opinion. Conceptually, I really don't have a problem with it as long as the mechanics weren't written by some edgelord playing an OP cowboy god.

Depends. Who was the expedition for? If it was for a government you could be a soldier or bureaucrat; if it was for a private company you could be anything from a hired merc to a researcher to a thug trying to bribe the locals into submission, depending on how sketchy your employer is. Depending on how many people actually live in not!Siberia, you could go the missionary route and play a priest trying to convert locals.

What kind of role could hags and hobgoblins play?

As part of the expedition or as opposition to it?

Villians

Hobgoblins is easy to play them as the barbarian hosts. Hags are more wildcards.

Hags could be either the cunning current rulers of the land or simple residents that don't want to see their homes invaded and colonized. Either way, they'd probably be working subtly to make the expedition go south with magical trickery. You could have mysterious problems keep occurring with the colonizations efforts or have some of the explorers disappear inexplainedly. Investigation would lead into an arc that ends in the discovery of a malicious hag coven.
Hobgoblins could either be working for the hags (willingly or through trickery) or completely separate entities that are simply territorial leaders of goblin tribes. Considering that the climate is very cold, they'd probably live in caverns beneath the ground to conserve heat and limit time on the surface as much as possible. They could lead raids against the expedition or simply be guerilla fighters trying to stall their progress.

Polymorph: Does it give saving throws as well?
I think yes, but I want to see if anyone has a contrary ruling and why.
Because it seems like a really great way to make yourself vulnerable to mental spells if you turn into a beast.

I remember there was some sort of rule for various creative maneuvers in the 4e DMG that was meant as a sort of catch-all, is there anything like that in 5e?

I don't understand the question

Would letting Kensai use the +1d4 on melee attacks again be fair? I'm thinking of asking my DM just because I'd rather not be punching with my Whip Kensai.

By RAW that the character uses the saving throws of the creature they polymorph into when they make saving throws while polymorphed, I just wanted to see if there's a good reason for that not to be the case.
I just don't want a player to try and weasel out of using a Polar Bear's +1 Wisdom saving throw against a malicious Polymorph.

Yeah it does, Polymorph's only real drawback is you'll be weak to mental saves. Anything that does damage isn't a big deal though/

When you polymorph someone, they become that beast, essentially. The only thing that doesn't change is personality. But your intelligence and other mental stats do as well.

It is NOT a wildshape that wizards get to cast. I don't understand why DMs let players use it like one.

Quick guys I need help! I'm a permaDM. My resident powergamer is running a one-shot soon and has given us free reign to build the most broken shit imaginable. Help me. Help me build something horrible.

We're going to be level 8 to 12. All I've come up with so far is barbarian/rogue, or a wizard/monk (2 levels wizard for mage armour and bladesong).

In short - what's the most broken thing you can think of anons?

Nuclear Druid.

Hexblade 1/Oathbreaker X

Loremaster

Check out the latest UA, the revised Kensei is included in it

tl;dr Kensei weapons are monk weapons meaning you can use an unarmed strike

Just beware that you can't punch at 10ft

>twincast polymorph as a sorcerer on two party members
>turn them into giant apes because they still have an intelligence of 8

Nuclear Druid, go out and destroy everything.

My advice is just to play something fun, since starting at a higher level like that means you can use any kind of multiclassed build you've probably meme'd up in your mind without having to wait for it to come online.

How does Barbarian and Rogue work? Barbarian explicitly buffs strength characters while Rogue specifically buffs dexterity players.

Don't listen to those memes, it's one idiot constantly pushing his ebin build.

Nuclear druid is a combination of twilight druid and arcana cleric to cast augmented magic missiles. You don't really need much of arcana cleric, just enough to cast magic missile.

You can still use Sneak Attack with Strength.

You basically Dual-Wield Shortswords with advantage on all attacks and +2 damage and resistance while also getting Rogue skills, defensive abilities and sneak attack for more damage.

Or you go for a DEX build and have near 22AC, resistance to everything, half damage as a reaction and sneak attack for damage.

It's decent but not as good as people say, definitely a fairly powerful choice though.

No, fuck this guy It works really well as a grappler and requires no UA or anything, just a simple multiclass.

Keep in mind that you can still use str with something like a dagger if you want. Anyway, the idea is not to buff your dex, but you take rogue so you can gain a nifty bonus action, but more importantly for expertise in athletics.

While raging you have advantage on athletics checks. With expertise that's a fuck huge bonus. No one will be able to escape your grapple through simply trying to break free if you rage grapple.

In one turn you can do the following after you gain second attack from barb.
>bonus action rage
>shove them to the ground
>grapple them
Their speed is now zero so they can't get up.
This is when your teammates who come murderfuck them because they've got advantage so long as they're prone on the ground.

>bonus action rage
>shove them to the ground
>grapple them
If they don't hit you then your rage ends though and then they can just shove you back off.

Are you going to run a specific module or the whole book?

Or just be a caster and get "Hold Person" which can lock down multiple targets if you use a higher spell slot.

And people say 5e fixes the martial/caster disparity.

Shove is still a contest. But if you want, you can even save the rage.
The point is, proficiency in athletics is fucking good if you're gonna abuse grappling.

Anyway, you may disagree. But I believe shove and grapple still count as attacks and Mearls even confirmed this iirc. They're special attacks and they have no attack rolls, but theyre still attacks. So rage persists.

If you're allowed to multiclass with UA, then Nuclear Druid is your best bet. 1st level in Arcana Cleric for Magic Missile, 2 levels in Fighter for Action Surge, and the rest into Twilight Druid. It lets you deal an exponentially scaling amount of damage once or twice a day.

If he vetoes that, then going Hexblade Warlock 3 for Cursebringer, Darkness and Devil's Sight invocation combo, and putting the rest into either Oathbreaker or Devotion for GWM+supersmite spam. As far as I can remember, the Divine Smite can stack with the Invocation smite, which leads to stupid amounts of damage. I'm not 100% sure on that though.

Fighter Sorlock is also good to make you into an EB turret.

Pretty sure you need to either deal or take damage for it to persist, that is until you get the endless rages features later on.

>In one turn you can do the following after you gain second attack from barb.
>>bonus action rage
>>shove them to the ground
>>grapple them

I thought you had to use your second attack to attack and only attack, and could only do that it is our used your first turn to take the attack action?

Not a bad use of spell slots. But someone is more likely to make their save against a hold person than they are against a barb with expertise in athletics.

It's really fun if you want to grapple shit. If you want to be a caster, be a caster. Still, most caster fags don't realize how fragile their existence is. Most DMs just seem to go easy on casters. It's really easy to fuck up a wizard in a single round. Especially if there are other casters to counterspell your reaction spells, if any.

I'm a caster fag myself.

It's just "attacked" a hostile creature, no need to even hit anything

>If you're able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
Doesn't say which one

Yep, you're right. You have to attack a creature or take damage. That's cool.

Cool, I guess I always interpreted that wrong

No, you just need to attack.
>When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
Same for shove.

I can see where it sounds ambiguous. But I believe it has been clarified that you can either attack twice, or shove and grapple, or shove and shove, etc.
You basically replace an attack with one of the special attacks.

The reason you attack martials more often is because casters make combat more interesting, and martials generally want to take the hits because it shows how cool they are for being able to tank so much damage. It's a win win for everybody.
Targeting casters is the intelligent thing an enemy might do, but generally best reserved for a really tough fight.

I know this is kind of a common trope, but would you find it annoying to play alongside the dude with edgy death powers, yet his personality is in start contrast to that?
Very bright personality and generally cheerful?

I'm not talking about playing
>lmao so randumb im supr bubbly xD
But just as a generally optimistic and happy fellow? Someone who would always point to the brighter side of things?
I really like some of the more edgy features and class options, but don't really want to play an edgelord.

>stark contrast
fuck

Okay, please don't kill me, but I'm a pathfinder player, and of late my group is wanting to transition to 5E, which I really fucking dislike due to lack of character options compared to PF. Just feels like I can't make anything but cookie cutter characters with the 2-3 options per class compared to the 12-40-something archetypes per class (of which there are like two dozen) that can be combined as well in Pathfinder.

We're going to be running a campaign soon, and I had a character in mind that was a plant-focused druid with a plant creature companion, ability to wild shape into plant creatures and even a feat that boosted plant-related spells, which there were a considerable amount of in PF. Looking at 5E... I'm not seeing anything even remotely comparable, and as much as I like druids, 5E seems like "Wildshape and be a damage sponge until you run out of charges then cast fireballs", and I'm not a big fan of elemental-focused druids.

Is there any way I can build a character with 5E that will make him more "nature-y" with spells that'll utilize plants to grab/strangle, attack or inflict status effects on people or something of the like without completely turning my character into a useless gimp in battle? Hell, I'd even settle for just being a utility character who does nothing but support if that's what it has to be. Anything that would allow me to use plant creature forms or summon tree people allies or anything of the sort would be greatly appreciated. I'll even take something homebrew if it's well-made so I can pitch it to the DM for approval. I just don't wanna be stuck in a rut with a character that I don't really feel in control of.

Thanks for any help.

That depends. Which death powers we're talking about?

There's no such druid, but there is Primeval Guardian Ranger.

Circle of the Shepard druid seems like a close fit.

Search up the Primeval Guardian archetype for Ranger in Unearthed Arcana.
You can be a tree-man.

Either take variant human and take magic initiate for shillelagh, or dip 1 level into nature druid and take shillelagh. Or dip 1 level into druid and take shillelagh.

Basically get that shillelagh on, my dude. Then pump wis and hit become with your staff and become the tree you were meant to be.

Warlock? Could be annoying but people probably won't mind because all the options except Fey are inherently edgy.

Necromancer? 99% of the time it's annoying

Oathbreaker or other edge Paladins? Can be well done but rarely.

Death Cleric? Probably won't be too bad.

Was it one of those or something else?

5e is more about actually roleplaying your character, rather than a set of stats. You have to get out of the Pathfinder mentality of needing feats to do everything. Pathfinders "options" are like 90% traps that punish you for picking them anyway, compared to more optimal choices. 5e simply does away with all the garbage and bloat.

Primeval Ranger Unearthed Arcana is what you're looking for, in terms of class.

Do you want a "million" options that are fucking terrible and useless or do you want meaningful options that actually work?

Not necromancy, but things that deal necrotic damage. As well as spells like bestow curse and such. Vampiric touch is also cool. I like the draining effect.

I don't so much care for things like necromancy and don't want to forge a skeleton army or anything like that.

Death cleric is what I was considering the most.
I don't much enjoy the mechanics of warlock and necromancer isn't really what I'm going for.

Death Cleric, probably a neutral or good Cleric of Kelemvor is best. Basically gives you all the Dark evil damage spells and class options without too much edge.

Twilight Druid also could work pretty well, they're very themed about the darker sides of a Druid's job but they do good deeds.

Cool, we usually play in homebrew locations but with FR lore just because we're lazy so I'll look into some stuff regarding Kelemvor.
Thanks for the suggestion.

what would be a good backstory for a character played by a complete newb. I'm partial to hermit wood-elf because that's double the excuse to not know shit.

Also is this chart legit?

If you don't mistake object interaction with Use an Object, it looks quite alright.
Personally, I'd remove certain things that are DM discretion from the image.

The new UA is day 5 of next month, right?

You'd be blown away and in shock and awe because 5e is actually a roleplaying game with well designed mechanics rather than an autistic maths and excel spreadsheet simulator.

Hmm, doomguides don't seem so edgy. Might fashion something similar for a character concept. I like it.

like what?

"Determine surprise"
"PC or someone special" under death

For a players' cheat sheet, those things are not their responsibility.

>Well designed mechanics
I mostly agree with you, barring autistic shrieking issues with certain spells/mechanics.
And they overuse (dis)advantage like it was going out of style.
And it doesn't hold up after 11th level, but neither does any other D&D game, really.

Thanks! Since three people have brought it up, I'm gonna check this out, since it apparently hits the nail on the head.

And I know it's gonna be more about the character, but my group is kind of... not great at/not into actually role playing interactions and cares more about combat it seems. That's why I liked Pathfinder, because then I could at least roll up a really flavorful/weird character build and enjoy strangling people with my hair, or being able to summon like seventeen bears for every combat, where in 5E I'm just gonna be stuck with a fairly small pool of options that's even further restricted because the rest of the group kind of plays set roles and choosing the same class as one of them would basically gimp the whole party for lack of utility.

>Doesn't hold up after 11th level
I've been running homebrew games for a couple years now with 5e and never had trouble managing a party all the way up to level 20.

I mean, I guess if it was a player's goal to break the game they could probably find a way to. But that's not someone you really want to play with anyway. There are ways to break it long before then, or at the very least, make it not fun.

egh... Weird they want to jump into 5e if they want a combat simulator. Maybe they should try 4e instead.

Combat is one of the least compelling parts of 5e. Roleplaying and being able to do what you want without having to consult the rules for every little thing is its strength.

Some people would call 5e's lack of "gimmick" characters like hair-witches and bears-summoning-bears druids a strength. Not everyone likes games full of totally randumb anime characters.

But Pathfinder has absolute shit combat mechanics. If you wanted good and tactical combat, play 4e.

It should be mentioned that if you have a character concept, almost everything you want to do can be done so by just refluffing but keeping the mechanics the same.

You want to have weird vine hair?
Okay, use thorn whip, but just say it uses your hair.

All of that can be easily refluffed, your mistake was thinking mechanics have to be rigid and unflinching.

At least playing 5e you won't be as much of an autist.

To be fair you can totally be a bear summoning bears in 5e too. Moon druids, man. What a mistake.

If your players want combat get them to play 4e, which also has a shitload of books and such to go through to create whatever gimmick character you want

And bear in mind, a spell doesn't explicitly have to say "you do this" for it to do the thing you might want. If you want a guy who does vine stuff with his hair, just say you do it when you cast a spell that involves vines

What are some things a wizard npc who heavily specialized in transmutation do to benefit a city he (sort of) rules over?